This article argues for a re-appreciation of explicit and self-reflective historicising, comparing, and theorising as three research practices that offer the best answers to the main challenges that the historical study of religion\s faces today. In examining these research practices, I stress the intersection of particularising and generalising tendencies. First, the practice of historicising requires a contextualisation of the historical object(s) and the historian's own situatedness; such a dual contextualisation dovetails with the relational paradigm that characterises current studies of religion\s. Second, comparative research practices make explicit what is often concealed: the methodological back-and-forth between the contemporary researcher's frameworks and the selected data set. Rather than delegitimising comparison, this awareness should lead to deeper scrutiny and an ambition to carefully generalise. Third, shifting to a processual notion of theorising rather than engaging solidified theory enables cross-disciplinary collaboration on and public engagement with large themes in history and society. By illustrating these three research practices and highlighting several of their operational steps, I hope to contribute to the dialogue between historians and social-scientific theory.In the early 1990s, the American historian of religion\s Bruce Lincoln posted thirteen "theses on method" on his office door, which have since been reprinted several times. One of the first statements read:To practice history of religions in a fashion consistent with the discipline's claim of title is to insist on discussing the temporal, contextual, situated, interested, human, and material dimensions of those discourses, practices, and institutions that characteristically represent themselves as eternal, transcendent, spiritual, and divine.
The Berlin Kephalaia, known as the "Kephalaia of the Teacher." Pages 1-295 are translated in Gardner, I., ed. The Kephalaia of the Teacher. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Pages 291-440 are published and translated by Wolf-Peter Funk. Individual chapters are cited with a single number, while specific passages are cited with a chapter number followed by the
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.