Jesus and Addiction to Origins - Toward an Anthropocentric Study of Religion - Willi Braun
4. Jesus and Addiction to Origins
Jesus and Addiction to Origins - Toward an Anthropocentric Study of Religion - Willi Braun
Willi Braun [+]
University of Alberta
Willi Braun is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of History and Classics and the Program in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is the former President of the North American Association for the Study of Religion and also the past President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. Although a specialist in the writings and social formations of earliest Christianities in the Roman empire, his work also focuses on the methods and theories of the academic study of religion itself. He has published and presented his work widely and served as editor of a variety of books and journals, including his longtime role as editor of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion; most recently, he co-edited Reading J. Z. Smith: Interviews and Essay (Oxford, 2018).
Description
The history of the Christianity’s relationship to and evaluation of Jesus presents us with a useful case study for the place of “history” in Christian discourses about their past. The chapter argues that “history,” as understood in Christian thought, is an ambiguity that is often in an antagonistic tension with the documentary history that can threaten the imaginary artifice of “history.”