Table of Contents

Preface
Part One: Religion as a Problem for Historians
1. The Problem
2. An Extreme Example
3· Rationalization and Explanation
4· The Concept of Religion
5· Religion as Compensation
6. Religion as Symbols
Part Two: Proposals for a Historiographic Solution
7· A Definition of Religion 
8. Nonrational Thinking 
g. A Definition of Religiosity 
10. The Empirical Accessibility of Religion and Religiosity 
11. Physiocentric Religion 
12. Religious Doubt 
13. Religious Irrationality
Part Three: The Religious Roots of Antisemitism
14. From Anti-Judaism to Antisemitism
15. The Revolution in Religiosity
16. Physiocentric Antisemitism
17. Religiosity and Objectivity
Index

About the Author

Gavin I. Langmuir, a distinguished medievalist, is Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (California, 1990).

Reviews

"Langmuir critically probes the vast literature on the nature of religion--the work of Emile Durkheim, Clifford Geertz, Robert Bellah, Mircea Eliade, William James, and others. He finds standard definitions and descriptions wanting, but his appraisals brilliantly survey the basic worlds that have shaped religious studies."--Charles H. Lippy, "Church History