an introductionthe imagination of a student novice to the field with concepts such as the
comic, dance, drugs, eroticism, madness, or harmony.
Based on the previous condensed overview of the concept of religion
and the field of Religious Studies, it can be affirmed that they are con-
tested concepts, but they also apparently embody contradictory elements.
The selections for this book reflect their contradictory nature, which
helps us to witness them as representing a conjunction of opposites at
times as evident by concepts such as doctrine and the comic, orthodoxy
and heterodoxy, purity and pollution, and violence and non-violence.
Other selections appear because they broaden the horizons of grasping
religion instead of understanding it as something sober and static, which
is my rationale for including the comic, festivals, and play. Such selec-
tions are made with the explicit intention to demonstrate to students that
religion and Religious Studies are not static entities, but are rather subject
to historical vicissitudes and continue to dynamically change. In addition,
some concepts differ according to the religious culture in which they are
discovered. This point possesses two important implications: no single
definition of a concept is totally adequate, and the illustrative examples
taken from variety of religions from East and West, ancient and modern,
and simple and complex religious cultures are part of the definition of a
concept. Therefore, a concept is further defined by the various examples,
and they should be grasped as part of the definition and not merely illus-
trations of a concept, which necessarily means that definitions of a con-
cept unfold further by means of the examples provided. Embodied within
the individual definitions of concepts the reader will notice terms in bold
letters. This practice is intended to refer the reader to a more complete
definition in another location.
Further reading: Barrett (2000); Boyer (1994); Capps (1995); A. Cunningham
(1990); Derrida (1998); Dubuisson( 2003); Gill (1994); McCauley (2000);
Marion (1991); Mithen (1996); Olson (2003); Rappaport (1999); Riesebrodt
(2004); J. Z. Smith (1978, 1982, 1987, 1998, 2004); W. C. Smith (1963, 1981);
M. Taylor (2007); Walls (1990); Whitehouse (2000); C. Williams (1990)