These are external perspectives. Religions themselves however construct or constitute knowledge, are knowledge-practices. Such Knowledge within Religion can take on very different forms and organizational principles. In particular, it can become dogmatic and produce systematic images of God, the world, and humanity. Some religions systematize such knowledge in the form of theology. It can also take on narrative forms and become written history, which tells of its own beginnings, development, and threats survived. That applies both to the internal and the external perspectives of religious groups and organizations. Religions create knowledge about themselves in order to maintain or reform traditions, or train specialists, as well as to erect polemical or schismatic boundaries. Such knowledge can compete with popular meanings on many levels, such as when it concerns the interpretation of rituals by participants as opposed to observers. Knowledge within religion disposes of different media, through which it disseminates and expresses itself. For example, popular knowledge of religion deploys forms and media different from those of the dogmas of theology, with which it might be in competition.

While a community's account of its past and its particular recollections of itself are not the only means of achieving orientation and constructing a coherent identity, historical narratives so generated are consistently important. For religious communities, two basic strategies can be distinguished. For some religious groups, tradition—conceived of as a normative and unchanging ideal—is the most important source of authority. Other religious groups have a different relationship with their past, recollecting their communal history in a manner which accepts and integrates the notion of the pastness of the past. Regarding this latter strategy, religious communities find themselves needing to negotiate the delicate balance between the realities of historical change and the continuity usually required to legitimate central religious tenets and institutions. The aim of the panel is to analyze canonized traditions of narratives about their past sustained by different religions and to relate their patterns and history of tradition/re-creation to the history of the religious group.

Bernd-Christian Otto

„Selbsthistorisierung als ‚Wissens’-Strategie selbstreferentieller Magier: Eliphas Lévis Histoire de la Magie“ more: Bernd-Christian Otto

Christian Mazenik

"Welche Rolle spielt die Historisierung der eigenen Traditionen (Schriften, Erzählungen, Dogmen, Institutionen) in der Herausbildung des antiken Christentums?" more: Christian Mazenik

Jörg Rüpke

"Historisierung von Religion in der römischen Republik" more: Jörg Rüpke

Maya Burger

"Indische Traditionen und Narrativen" more: Maya Burger

Michael Weichenhan

„... das alte Testament bei den Indiern zu suchen“. Die Suche nach dem Ursprung vor der Entstehung der Indologie" more: Michael Weichenhan

Reinhard Zöllner

"Das Heilige Land der Götter und Buddhas: Kollektive religiöse Identität in Japan" more: Reinhard Zöllner

Sabine Schmolinsky

"Textgeburten oder: Zur Frage von Historie und Fiktion im mittelalterlichen Christentum" more: Sabine Schmolinsky

Liturgical education, especially of religious leaders from different confessions, has experienced plenty of vicissitudes in modern times. We may note, among other things: the legally-binding observance of liturgical rubrics, the requirement at the time of Kaiser Joseph II and the Enlightenment to study “pastoral liturgics” as part of an emphasis on pastoral care, the emergence of handbooks on the history of the liturgy from the late nineteenth century, and the liturgical education of the early twentieth century with its decided emphasis on the aesthetic dimension.
Recent discussion of the “Scholae Rituum” of modern times (the concept goes back to the educational centres established by Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century) has been dominated by early twentieth-century pre-occupations. The panel aims to explore these perspectives and then consider the question of how far the ritual dimension of the liturgy has been considered, whether implicitly or explicitly, in different historical models of liturgical education. In particular, should considerations of liturgical space, image, and body be included in this area of religious and theological education? The aim is to encourage an exploration of this significant dimension of religious education over a two-hundred year period.
For lack of time and to encourage comparative work, the panel will concentrate on Western Christianity, taking different confessional traditions into consideration.

Michael Meyer-Blanck

Michael Meyer-Blanck: Gewusste Religion und gelerntes Ritual. Historische und systematische Gesichtspunkte liturgischer Ausbildung in der lutherischen Kirche more: Michael Meyer-Blanck

Michael Baumann / Ralph Kunz

"Grundlegung, Entwicklung und Wandel der liturgischen Bildung in der Zürcher Kirche." more: Michael Baumann / Ralph Kunz

The issue of ritual knowledge, which is characteristic of the Medieval and Early Modern periods in Europe, seems to be at least as instructive for understanding modes of ritual action as the rituals themselves, and no less in need of explanation. Taking this thesis as its starting point, the panel will analyze different examples of ritual explanations of the time. We will examine the internal and external perspectives of the various categories of knowledge in which rituals are described, including the origin and history of a given ritual, its meaning, its function, the propriety of particular ritual actions etc. Particular attention will be paid to the motivation behind the teaching and learning of ritual knowledge as well as the interaction between knowledge relating to ritual and ritual action.
It will also engage with the shifts of negotiated topoi within the given time-frame as well as afterwards, and ask whether, and to what degree, social context and the functions of rituals influence perceptions here — are we interested in knowing the same things about liturgy as about legal ritual or customs relating to feasts and festivals? How do such differences, revealed by comparative analysis, relate to current conceptualizations, which include the blanket-term “ritual”?  How does the contemporary interest in knowing about rituals relate to current theory about ritual? We might look, for example, at medieval explanations of the liturgy, Christian views of Jewish liturgical practice, discussions of everyday and festival practices, travel journals, and Enlightenment debate over ritual practices reported for distant continents. We will also take a brief look at the medial transportation of ritual knowledge.

Andreas Scheib

"Die Eucharistiedebatte im 17. Jahrhundert" more: Andreas Scheib

Dietrich Schotte

"Kontingente Ausdrucksformen von Furcht-Thomas Hobbes' Analyse religiöser Rituale" more: Dietrich Schotte

Paola von Wyss-Giacosa

"Ritualkritik im Bild" more: Paola von Wyss-Giacosa

In polytheistic religions, knowledge about gods and their respective responsibilities and accessibility is one of the central aspects of religious competence. The panel’s initial hypothesis is that differentiated iconographic signs, that is divine images, not only communicate such knowledge but actually create it. In other words, such representations do not simply encode knowledge available in other media but produce new knowledge, by re-combining traditional elements, by transposing concepts from one culture to another, and by referring to other images. Myths, spontaneous or institutionalized interpretation of ritual, and explicit theological discourse all in their different modes refer to, elaborate and systematize or modify this "knowledge of images". In so doing, they effectively compete with one another. Such competition may be further exacerbated by intellectuals’ criticism of iconism, which throws into doubt the very legitimacy of this form of knowledge. The panel aims to test the hypothesis by taking examples of new gods and their images, that is, by analyzing texts that deal in some way with new images, whether by accounting for them, by exploring them or by criticizing them. We hope to encourage comparison with cases from other cultures and periods, while basing discussion on examples from Greco-Roman antiquity.

Adrian G. Dumitru

"The Image of the Seleucid Kings - Humans passing for Gods or Gods playing Humans" more: Adrian G. Dumitru

Martin Kirves

"Die Grenzen der Anschaulichkeit: Der Status des sakralen Bildes in Bernard Picarts Illustrationen der Ceremonies et Coutumes religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde (1723)" more: Martin Kirves

Matthew McCarty

"Mages, Ritual and the Divine: Religious Knowledge and Technology in the Roman Provinces" more: Matthew McCarty

Rubina Raja

"Reading the Divine Image: Correspondance and Discrepancy in Textual and Material Representations of Divine Images in the Roman Near East" more: Rubina Raja

Silviu Anghel

"Christian viewers of Pagan images. Considerations on the accounts of active pagan shrines and their statues in the writings of Church Fathers" more: Silviu Anghel

Theodor E. Ulieriu-Rostas

"Reading blasphemies on Greek vases? Mythical innovation and visual language in the iconography of Marsyas" more: Theodor E. Ulieriu-Rostas