Comparative Method in Religion
The comparative method in religion is the systematic comparison of two or more religious traditions to identify similarities, differences, and patterns, and through them to understand religion more broadly. Founded as a discipline by F. Max Müller in the nineteenth century - who borrowed Goethe's dictum that to know one religion is to know none - the comparative project was sharply rethought in the twentieth, above all by Jonathan Z. Smith. In Imagining Religion (1982) and later work, Smith insisted that comparison is not a natural perception of objective resemblance but a scholarly act: the comparativist must specify the respect in which things are being compared (the tertium comparationis), choose comparanda for a reason, and remain answerable for the differences as much as the similarities. The method thus combines disciplined juxtaposition with explicit theory about why and how a comparison is made.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Smith, J. Z. (1982). Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. · ISBN 9780226763606
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.