Periodical Literature

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

PERIODICAL LITERATURE . The appearance of periodical publications devoted to the study of religion, rather than to theology, missionary, or pastoral concerns, is inseparable from the institutionalization of the study of religion, which resulted in the establishment of the first chairs in the history of religions, beginning in 1873. An example of this is the Revue de l'histoire des religions, founded in 1880, shortly after Albert Réville became the first professor of history of religions at the Collège de France, a process of institutionalization that would be solidified six years later with the creation of the Fifth Section, Sciences religieuses, of the École Pratique des Hautes Études. A similar development took place almost ½ century later in Italy when Raffaele Pettazzoni, appointed to the first Italian chair of history of religions in 1924, founded the journal Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni in 1925. Given the role played by the study of Asian religions in the development of the discipline, attention must be paid to the fact that the Journal asiatique, the oldest journal devoted to Asian studies, was founded in 1822, not long after the discoveries of Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, Jean-François Champollion and William Jones, to mention just a few of the pioneers in the deciphering of ancient languages. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society followed suit in 1834, the Journal of the American Oriental Society in 1843, the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft in 1847, the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes in 1877 and Le Muséon: Revue d'études orientales in 1882. What one encounters since the nineteenth century in terms of periodical publications on religion, then, is a situation that mirrors the debates that take place to this day: On the one hand, the assumption that insofar as one can determine the boundaries of "religion" as a phenomenon, one can also have periodical publications devoted exclusively to its study, journals that generally have words such as religion or religione as part of their titles. On the other hand, there is the realization that insofar as religion pervades the life of ancient and nonmodern contemporary cultures, its study must be carried out in publications such as the Journal asiatique, devoted to the history, philology and archaeology of those cultures, as well as in publications such as American Anthropologist or Anthropos, founded in 1888 and 1906, respectively.

If one examines the journals devoted specifically to the study of religion one finds that most of the early ones, besides publishing studies in the history of various religions, were concerned with theoretical issues such as the origins of religion, a topic that is only recently being studied again. One also realizes the precariousness of the academic conceptual apparatus, for now-abandoned terms such as mana, tabu and totem, were as current in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as discourse, social construction and transgression are in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. We find also that these journals, although open to foreign scholars, tended to publish work produced in a specific language—French in the case of the Revue de l'histoire des religions, German in that of the Archiv für Religionswissenschaft (1898–1942), and Italian in that of the Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni. This is a trend that continues in the case of periodicals established later in the twentieth century, such as the Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte (1948); Kairos: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft und Theologie (1959); History of Religions (1961); Religion (1971); Religious Studies Review (1975); the Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft (1993); and Ilu, Revista de ciencias de las religiones (1995), some of which are the publications of national associations. Exceptions to this trend are History of Religions (1961) and Religion (1971), two English-language journals that were conceived as international publications, rather than as the organs of a national association. Another exception, although in the opposite direction, is Archæus: Études d'histoire des religions/Studies in the History of Religions (1997), a Romanian journal that publishes studies in English, French and Italian. Scandinavian, rather than national or, strictly speaking, international, is Temenos: Studies in Comparative Religion Presented by Scholars in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden (1965). A special case is Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses (1971), published in the two official languages of Canada—English and French. Of the journals devoted to the history of religions, the only one that is both multilingual and international is the journal of the International Association for the History of Religions, Numen: International Review for the History of Religions, founded in 1954 by Pettazzoni.

The journals listed above tend to publish philological, historical and anthropological studies of religion, in some cases from a comparative perspective. Methodological, theoretical and meta-theoretical concerns are present, explicitly or implicitly, but they are not generally the focus of the articles. Specifically devoted to theoretical issues is Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (MTSR, 1989), the official journal of the North American Association for the Study of Religion, a group of scholars concerned precisely with the theory of religion. The North American Association for the Study of Religion and MTSR constitute the theoretical, non-confessional, counterpart to the American Academy of Religion, an organization that represents scholars of religion as well as theologians working in the United States. Its official publication began in 1933 as the Journal of the National Association of Biblical Instructors ; in 1937 it changed its name to the Journal of Bible and Religion, becoming the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR ) in 1966. Unlike MTSR and the journals mentioned earlier, a typical issue of JAAR is likely to contain articles that deal with history of religions and theoretical issues, but also with philosophy of religion and "theological reflection." Among journals that deal with religion mainly from history of ideas, philosophical, and theological angles we may mention the Journal of Religion (1921) and Religious Studies (1965)—the latter, despite its name, being devoted almost exclusively to philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. On the other hand, the Harvard Theological Review (1908) publishes, despite its title, studies that deal with religion from theological and nontheological perspectives.

The tension between scholarly and theological approaches that has characterized the study of religion is present not only in the existence of journals such as MTSR and JAAR, or in the coexistence of historical, theoretical, philosophical, and theological articles in the pages of JAAR, but also in the trajectories of journals now devoted to the sociology of religion, some of which began as theological publications or as the publishing outlets of Catholic sociologists. A case in point is Social Compass: Revue Internationale de Sociologie de la Religion/International Review of Sociology of Religion, now the respected journal of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion/Société Internationale de Sociologie des Religions, which began in 1953 as a Catholic pastoral publication of a Thomist orientation. Similarly, Sociology of Religion began in 1940 as the American Catholic Sociological Review ; the title was changed to Sociological Analysis in 1963, acquiring its current name in 1993. To be sure, not all sociology of religion periodicals have a theological background; it should be enough to mention the Année sociologique, the journal founded by Émile Durkheim in 1898, whose pages saw the publication of some of the most influential studies in the sociology of religion—studies by Durkheim, Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert on the nature of religion, magic, and sacrifice. Three other important journals must be mentioned: Archives de sciences sociales des religions, founded in 1956 as Archives de sociologie des religions, where one finds articles that approach religion from sociological and anthropological perspectives; the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (1961), where one finds mainly quantitative studies of sociology and to a lesser extent psychology of religion; and the Internationales Jahrbuch für Wissens- und Religionssoziologie, published from 1965 to 1973 as the Internationales Jahrbuch für Religionssoziologie. An overview of research trends can be found in the Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion (1977). Changes in the religious landscape give rise to new journals; thus contemporary developments, such as New Age and, in general, noninstitutional forms of religion, are studied in Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions (1997) and in Implicit Religion (1998). Occasionally one finds valuable contributions to the sociology of religion in general sociology journals, such as the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (1949), the British Journal of Sociology (1950), and Sociologus: Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologue und Soziologie/Sociologus: A Journal of Sociology and Social Psychology (1951).

Turning to anthropology, in addition to American Anthropologist and Anthropos, scholars of religion can find a wealth of material on the religions of small-scale societies, as well as on topics such as mythology, ritual, and the theory of religion, in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1995), previously published as Man (1901–1994); in Comparative Studies in Society and History (1948); Ethnohistory (1954); L'Homme: Revue française d'anthropologie (1961); American Ethnologist (1974); L'uomo: Società, tradizione, sviluppo (1977); and History and Anthropology (1986). One of the aspects of religion to which anthropologists have paid a great deal of attention has been that of ritual, a component of religion discussed in many of the journals mentioned already, there being, in addition, a Journal of Ritual Studies (1987). Ritual constitutes a link among sociological, political, anthropological and psychological approaches to religion. To these disciplines one must now add cognitive and ethological approaches to ritual and to religion in general; contributions informed by these approaches can be found in history of religions and anthropology journals such as Numen and Man, and in the Journal of Cognition and Culture (2001). Specifically devoted to the psychology of religion are the Archiv für Religionspsychologie/Archive for the Psychology of Religion (1914) and the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (1991).

The religious practices of contemporary large-scale societies are sometimes examined in the periodicals mentioned above; more often, however, contemporary developments are studied in articles that, along with those devoted to historical and philological research, are published in journals devoted to Asian societies. In addition to the Journal asiatique, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Journal of the American Oriental Society, the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, and Le Muséon, mention should be made of T'ung Pao (established as T'oung Pao in 1890); the Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient (1901); the Rivista degli studi orientali (1907); the Rocznik orientalistyczny (1914); the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (1917); the Archív orientální (1929); the Journal of Asian Studies (1941, known until 1956 as the Far Eastern Quarterly ); Asiatische Studien/Études asiatiques (1947); the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens und Archiv für indische Philosophie (1957); A.I.O.N.: Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli (1979); and the Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie (1985)—all of which contain a wealth of articles dealing with all aspects of religion, from the ancient Near East to West, South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia. Most of these journals publish studies that deal from various perspectives with the religious traditions of India, as do all the history of religions journals mentioned earlier. In addition to those publications, mention should be made of Indologica Taurinensia (1973), which has published the proceedings of many of the World Sanskrit Conferences. The Journal of Indian Philosophy (1970), which because of its title one would expect to deal exclusively with the philosophical aspects of the Indian tradition, narrowly understood, contains valuable studies on the history of religions, including Buddhism. Articles dealing with the history, philosophy, archaeology, mythology and ritual practices of Buddhism can be found in most of the journals listed above. In addition, there are specialized publications, such as the Journal of the Pali Text Society (1882); the Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques (1932), where one finds Louis de La Vallée Poussin's still indispensable contributions; the Indo-Iranian Journal (1957), most of whose reviews were written by one of its two editors, the boundlessly erudite Jan Willem de Jong; the Eastern Buddhist (1966); the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (1978); the Journal of Buddhist Ethics (1994); and the Journal of Global Buddhism (2000).

The religions of East Asia are also dealt with in the publications already mentioned, as well as in specialized periodicals such as the Journal of Chinese Religions (1982). As in the case of the study of Indian religions, articles dealing with Chinese religion can be found in periodicals whose titles do not contain the term religion, such as the Journal of Chinese Philosophy (1973), Early China (1975), Modern China (1975), and Early Medieval China (1994). The issue of boundaries is not, however, confined to approaches or disciplines: It also involves sensitive political considerations regarding the status of a cultural/linguistic area; a case in point is Tibet, whose religion is more likely to be studied in the history of religions, Asian, and Buddhist studies journals mentioned above or in such periodicals as the Central Asiatic Journal (1955) or Studies in Central and East Asian Religions (1988) than in those devoted exclusively to Chinese religions. Work on the religious traditions of Japan can be found in Japanese Religions (1959) and the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (1974, first published in 1960 as Contemporary Religions in Japan ). Contributions to the study of African religions, on the other hand, are published in Journal of African Religion/Religion en Afrique (1967) as well as in the anthropology journals mentioned above. It is also in anthropology journals that one finds studies of Latin American religion; other valuable studies can be found in specialized publications such as the Journal de la Société des américanistes (1896) and the Journal of Latin American Lore (1975).

A mere list of the journals that deal with Christianity and, because of their role in the emergence of this religion, with Israelite and other Near Eastern religions, would exceed the length allotted to this entry. The same applies to periodicals devoted to the Greco-Roman world, a world whose philosophical, religious, and cultic vocabulary lives on in the languages of the West. Among the periodicals that publish studies of the religions of the Ancient Orient, along with those that deal with the writings canonized by Christians as the Old Testament, one may mention the Zeitschrift für die alttestamentalische Wissenschaft (1881), Orientalia (1920), Analecta orientalia (1931), Orientalia christiana periodica (1935), Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatsiche Archäologie (1886, published until 1938 as Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete ), Vetus Testamentum (1951), Orientalia suecana (1952), Oriens antiquus (1962), Altorientalische Forschungen (1974) and the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions (2001). Studies of Greek and Roman religion are found in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie (1883); the Journal for Hellenic Studies (1880); Gnomon: Kritische Zeitschrift für die gesamte klassische Altertumswissenschaft (1925); Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies (1958); Arethusa (1968); Helios (1974); Classical Antiquity (1982); Metis: Revue d'anthropologie du monde grec ancien (1988); and Kernos: Revue internationale et pluridisciplinaire de religion grecque antique (1988). Studies of the early Christian world, in most cases in the context of the religions of late antiquity, can be found in the Zeitschrift für die neutestamentalische Wissenschaft und die Kunde der ältere Kirche (published from 1900 to 1920 as the Zeitschrift für die neutestamentalische Wissenschaft und die Kunde des Urchristentums ); the Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum (1958, published as Antike und Christentum, Kultur- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien from 1929 to 1950); Vigiliæ Christianæ: A Revue of Early Christian Life and Languages (1947); Novum Testamentum (1956); the Journal of Early Christian Studies (published as Second Century from 1981 to 1992); Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum/Journal of Ancient Christianity (1997); and the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism (2000).

The world of medieval Christendom is the subject of a multitude of periodicals; some of them, such as the Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge (1926), are dedicated to the study, exegesis and, in some cases, promotion of Christian theological speculation, while others, such as Le Moyen âge: Revue d'histoire et de philologie (1888); the Frühmittelalterliche Studien (1967); Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies (1970); and Mediaevistk: Internationale Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung (1988), approach medieval and early modern Christianity from historical and other perspectives. Among the journals that encompass the entire history of Christianity mention should be made of the Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (1877), the Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique (1900), Church History (1932), and the Journal of Ecclesiastical History (1950). It goes without saying that given the role of Christianity in the history of the world, general history journals such as the American Historical Review (1895); the Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales (founded in 1929 as Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, later known as Économies, sociétés, civilisations ); Sæculum (1950); and Past and Present (1952), regularly publish articles on the history of this religion.

Of the religions that emerged after Christianity, none is more important than Islam, a fact that is reflected in the number of publications devoted to its study. Among the journals dedicated to the study of the Islamic world, we may mention Der Islam: Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients (1910); Die Welt des Islams: International Journal for the Study of Modern Islam (1913); Arabica: Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies/Revue d'études arabs et islamiques (1954); Annales islamologiques (1954); Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean (1988); the Journal of Islamic Studies (1990); and the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies (1996). More specialized periodicals include the Journal of Qurʾanic Studies (1999); the Journal of the History of Sufism/Journal d'histoire du soufisme (2000); and the Journal of Islamic Philosophy (2003).

If one approaches the world of journals from the point of view of a given religious tradition, one realizes soon enough that, given the fluid boundaries of what constitutes "religion," in order to do justice to that tradition one must make use of journals in several disciplines—religion, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and history, among others. But given the fact that religious traditions are not self-contained entities, one must also consult periodicals that deal with traditions and with geographical areas that border the cultures with which one is concerned. Thus, a scholar primarily interested in Indian Buddhism is likely to find relevant research in the Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques, the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, the Journal of Indian Philosophy, the Indo-Iranian Journal, the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd-Asiens, and the Journal asiatique, as well as in the Revue de l'histoire des religions, Numen, History of Religions, Religion, and Man, not to mention periodicals that deal with Southeast and Central Asian cultures. Likewise, if one is interested in religions that predate the written record one needs to consult periodicals such as the Journal of Indo-European Studies (1973) and the Journal of Prehistoric Religion (1987), along with publications that deal with archaeology. On the other hand, if one pursues research in comparative religion or in theoretical issues from a comparative perspective, then the range of publications that are likely to contain material relevant to one's research is virtually unlimited. For example, research on religion from an ethological perspective would require consulting psychology and also biology and animal behavior periodicals.

Two issues must be mentioned when dealing with periodical literature. One of them involves the language of the contributions. Unlike periodicals devoted primarily to ancient religions and philologies, most of the religious studies journals published in the English-speaking world, France, Germany, or Italy have traditionally published articles in the languages of the country in question, Numen being one of the few journals that as a matter of policy publishes contributions in the main Western European languages—a fact not unrelated to the role of Dutch publishing houses since the time of the Reformation. The situation is now changing. Some of those changes would seem to be positive—as when, for example, one finds English articles in French and German journals, as this would seem to indicate an openness towards international scholarship. The truth is, however, that some of those articles have been written, for example, by French or German speakers who are forced to publish in English, for otherwise their work will not be read beyond the French- or German-speaking world. Even Numen now receives few submissions in languages other than English; the same being true of the Archiv für Religionspsychologie/International Archive for the Psychology of Religion, which describes itself as trilingual, but which also acknowledges that most of its articles are in English. It is true that Eastern European journals such as the Rocznik orientalistyczny have traditionally published articles in languages other than Polish, including some by Poles, such as the Buddhist scholar Stanislaw Schayer. This, however, did not involve a virtual linguistic monopoly such as the one we are witnessing today. Among the many dangers of this linguistic monopoly is that the research of authors who publish in languages other than English will be ignored, as articles are not generally translated after they have appeared in a journal. In addition, even if everything were to appear in English and everyone were able to read that language, the vast amount of work published in a variety of languages since the first scholarly periodicals saw the light of day would become as inaccessible as if they had been inscribed in cuneiform script. The situation regarding reviews is even more grave, as some English-language journals do not review books published in languages other than English. An example of this systematic ignoring of scholarship is the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, where one would look in vain for reviews of important theoretical and historical works published in languages such as French, German, and Italian. Such scandalous neglect both reflects and perpetuates the provincialism of the North American discussion in various fields of scholarship in religion, especially in the area of theory of religion, a field in which, with the exception of research on religion and cognition, the most interesting work is not being done in English.

Even more urgent is the issue of price. Periodicals usually have different rates for individual and for institutional subscribers, the cost for individuals being substantially lower. In either case, however, the prices are increasing. As a result of the concentration of ownership, the situation is more dire in the case of the sciences, but even journals in the humanities and social sciences are being priced beyond the reach of many institutions, even in rich countries, not to mention individual scholars. This is a problem beyond the control of the contributors and also of the editors of existing journals. The situation is complicated by the growth in the number of academics, the increase in specialized research, and, not least, the need to publish in order to maintain one's academic position and, increasingly, even to obtain an entry-level one. Fortunately, the situation is being ameliorated by the electronic availability of periodicals; but it must be noted that such availability presupposes an institution's electronic subscription to a periodical as well as the availability of computers.

Bibliography

Because of the constant appearance of new journals, surveys of periodical publications become outdated as soon as they are published. Keeping that in mind, as well as the fact that encyclopedia articles dealing with journals tend to focus on those that deal with theological, biblical and Christian themes, one can consult the entries "Zeitschriften: I. Evangelische, II. Katholische," in the third edition (1962) of Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 6, col. 1885–1881 (the entry in the fourth edition, scheduled for completion in 2005, will include references to humanities, social sciences, and religious studies journals); "Zeitschriften, Theologische" in the Theologische Realenziklopädie vol. 36, 2004, pp. 615–625, as well as "Periodical Literature" in the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 11, pp. 243–246. See also the Bulletin signalétique 519: Philosophie, sciences religieuses and the Bulletin signalétique 527: Histoire et Sciences des Religions (Paris), as well as the Zeitschriften Verzeichnis Theologie (Universität Tübingen, 1977). Other sources include Guide to Social Science and Religion in Periodical Literature (Flint, Mich., 1965); John Regazzi, A Guide to Indexed Periodicals in Religion (Metuchen, N.J., 1975); David Westerfer, Les revues en sciences religieuses: éléments pour un programme international de recherches, liste de base des revues (Strasbourg, 1976); Otto Lankhorst, Les revues de sciences religieuses: approache bibliographique internationale, Strasbourg, Cerdic, 1979; Michael J. Walsh, Religious Bibliographies in Serial Literature: A Guide (Westport, Conn., 1981); J. P. Cornish, Religious Periodicals Directory (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1986); Eugene C. Fieg, Religion Journals and Serials: An Analytical Guide (New York, 1988); James Dawsey, A Scholar's Guide to Academic Journals in Religion [ATLA Bibliography Series 23] (Metuchen, N.J., and London, 1988); and Willem Audenaert, Clavis foliorum periodicorum theologicorum (Louvain, Belgium, 1994).