Eric J. Sharpe

Explores the way in which Jewish rabbis during the first Christian centuries preserved and passed on their sacred tradition, and he shows how early Christianity is better understood in light of how that tradition develoed in Rabbinic Judaism.

Clears the ground for students who are setting out to understand, rather than just to practice, religion. It discusses, among other things, the relationship between commitment to a particular tradition and the quest for intellectual understanding of religion "in the round", "holiness" as an identifying aspect of religion, functional "modes" of religion, and finally some questions connected with thesecularization process.Assuming throughout that theology and religious studies ought not to be seen as competing approaches, but as sources for complementary insights, it offers the student a fundamental introduction to an important area of inquiry.

This book is now firmly established as the standard treatment of its subject. The history of comparative religion is traced in detail from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, in the work of scholars such as Max Muller and anthropologists - such as Tylor, Lang, Robertson-Smith and Frazer - through the American psychologists of religion - such as Starbuck, Leuba, William James - to the period after the First World War, when the evolutionary approach was seriously called into question. It also examines the relevance of religion to Freud and Jung; the 'phenomenology of religion'; the tensions between comparative religion and theology; and the work of such outstanding personalities as Nathan Soederblom and Rudolf Otto. The last two chapters review the main issues raised since the Second World War.