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Professor Robert Segal

Professor Robert Segal
BA (Wesleyan University), MA, PhD (Princeton University)

Chair in Religious Studies

Overview
Professor Robert Segal
Professor Robert Segal

Contact Details

Telephone
work +44 (0)1224 273990
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The University of Aberdeen School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, King's College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen. AB24 3UB

Media Appearances:

  • An interview with the Religious Studies Project on 'Jung on Religion': http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/robert-segal-on-carl-jung/ 
  • An interview with Rainmaker.fm on 'Joseph Campbell':
    http://rainmaker.fm/audio/draft/storytelling/ 
  • An interview with Susan Cahill on Myth for the Talking Books - NewstalkFM (forthcoming)

 

Biography

  • 2019-to date Honorary Professor, University of Essex
  • 2019-to date Professorial Research Felllow, University of Vienna
  • 2006-date Sixth Century Chair in Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen
  • 1999-2006 Professor of Theories of Religion, Lancaster University
  • 1996-99 Reader in Theory of Religion, Lancaster University
  • 1994-96 Lecturer, Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University
  • 1993-94 Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies and Classics, Acting Director of the Jewish Studies Program, Tulane University, New Orleans
  • 1988 Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Pittsburgh
  • 1984-94 Program in Religious Studies, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies (1984-87); Associate Professor of Religious Studies (1987-89); Full Professor of Religious Studies (1989-94)
  • 1982-84 Lecturer, Western Culture Program, Stanford University
  • 1981 (fall) Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Toronto
  • 1975-82 Assistant Professor of Religion and Humanities, Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Research

Research Grants

Fellowships and Grants:

  • 1985 American Council of Learned Societies Travel Grant
  • 1986 Fellow, Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion, Divinity School, University of Chicago
  • 1986 American Philosophical Society Research Grant
  • 1986-87 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
  • 1987 National Endowment for the Humanities Travel Grant
  • 1987-88 Mellon Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh
  • 1992 National Endowment for the Humanities Travel Grant
  • 1994 American Philosophical Society Research Grant
  • 1995 British Academy Small Personal Research Grant
  • 1995 Fellow, Thomas Reid Institute, University of Aberdeen
  • 1995 British Academy Overseas Conference Grant
  • 1997-98 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
  • 1997 British Academy Small Personal Research Grant
  • 1997-98 Fellow, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
  • 2000 British Academy Small Personal Research Grant
  • 2001 Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge (October-December 2001)
  • 2002 Life Member, Clare Hall
  • 2009 Carnegie Trust Grant
Further Info

Editorships:

  • Editor, Bulletin for the Study of Religion (2020 on)
  • European Editor, Religion (1997-2007)
  • Editorial Board: Annals of Scholarship, International Journal of Jungian Studies, Blackwell Religion Compass, Zygon, Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception, Amaltea: Journal of Myth Criticism, Bulletin for the Study of Religion
  • Editor, Theorists of Myth Series, Routledge

Memberships and Offices:

  • American Academy of Religion, British Association for the Study of Religion, American Folklore Society, Folklore Society, British Centre for Durkheimian Studies, International Association of Jungian Studies, International Association for Comparative Mythology
  • Director, Centre for the Study of Myth, University of Aberdeen (2009-)

Publications

Books (authored):

  • The Poimandres as Myth: Scholarly Theory and Gnostic Meaning. Religion and Reason Series, No. 33. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986.
  • Religion and the Social Sciences: Essays on the Confrontation. Brown Studies in Religion, Vol. 3. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.
  • Joseph Campbell: An Introduction. New York: Garland Publishing, 1987. Revised paperback edition: New York: Penguin/NAL, 1990. Reprinted trade paperback edition: New York: Penguin/Meridian, 1997.
  • Explaining and Interpreting Religion: Essays on the Issue. Toronto Studies in Religion, Vol. 16. New York: Peter Lang, 1992.
  • Theorizing about Myth. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.
  • Myth: A Very Short Introduction.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004.  Translated into German, Korean, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, Czech, Polish, and French.  Second ed., 2015.

Books (edited):

  • The Gnostic Jung. Princeton: Princeton University Press; London: Routledge, 1992.
  • The Allure of Gnosticism: The Gnostic Experience in Jungian Psychology and Contemporary Culture. With June Singer and Murray Stein. Chicago: Open Court, 1995.
  • Theories of Myth: A Reference Set. 6 vols. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996.
  • The Myth and Ritual Theory. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998.
  • Jung on Mythology. Princeton: Princeton University Press; London: Routledge, 1998. Greek translation: Kedros, 2004.
  • Hero Myths: A Reader. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. Greek translation: Kedros, 2003.
  • The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. Paperback with corrections: Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Expanded and revised second edition in progress (2020).
  • Myth: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. 4 vols. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.
  • 30-Second Mythology. East Sussex, UK: Ivy Press, 2012. Translated into French, German, Spanish, and Russian.
  • The Hero’s Quest. Co-edited with Bernard Schweizer. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2013.
  • Vocabulary for the Study of Religion. Co-edited with Kocku von Stuckrad. Three volumes (400+ entries). Leiden and Boston: Brill 2015. [Entries by me on comparative method, deus otiosus, explanation and interpretation, hero, origins of religion, reductionism, sacred, theories of religion.]

Introductions and forewords:

  • Introduction to In Quest of the Hero: Otto Rank, Lord Raglan, and Alan Dundes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), vii-xli
  • Foreword to Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), xix-xxxv
  • Introduction to William Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 2002), vii-xlii
  • Introduction to Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (second edition), translated Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), vii-xxxviii
  • Foreword to Daniel Dubuisson, Twentieth Century Mythologies (London: Equinox, 2006), ix-xiii
  • Introduction to Myth: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 1-20
  • Introduction to 30-Second Mythology (East Sussex, UK: Ivy Press, 2012), 6-9

Entries in encyclopedias and dictionaries and chapters in books:

  • “Joseph Campbell's Theory of Myth,” in Sacred Narrative, ed. Alan Dundes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 256-69. Reprinted from Journal of the American Academy of Religion Supplement, 44 (March 1979), 98-114
  • “Joseph Campbell the Perennial Philosopher: An Analysis of His Universalism,” in Paths to the Power of Myth, ed. Daniel C. Noel (New York: Crossroad, 1990), ch. 6
  • “Adonis: A Greek Eternal Child,” in Myth and the Polis, eds. Dora C. Pozzi and John M. Wickersham (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), ch. 4
  • “Reductionism in the Study of Religion,” in Religion and Reductionism: Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the Challenge of the Social Sciences for the Study of Religion, eds. Thomas A. Idinopulos and Edward A. Yonan (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 4-14
  • “Smith Versus Frazer on the Comparative Method,” in William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment, ed. William Johnstone (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 343-50
  • Entries on “Ideology,” “Magic, Science and Religion,” “Origin of Religion,” “Rationalism/ Intellectualism,” “Sacred,” and “Science of Religion,” in Harper's Dictionary of Religion, ed. Jonathan Z. Smith (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995)
  • “Does Myth Have a Future?,” in Myth and Method, eds. Laurie L. Patton and Wendy Doniger (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 82-106
  • “Tylor’s Theory of Myth as Primitive Science,” in The Sum of Our Choices: Essays in Honour of Eric J. Sharpe, ed. Arvind Sharma (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 70-84
  • “Response to Hyam Macoby’s ‘Holiness and Purity’,” in Reading Leviticus, ed. John F. A. Sawyer (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 171-73
  • “Religious Studies,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, ed. William H. Swatos, Jr. (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1998), 408-12
  • “The Existentalist Reinterpretation of Myth: Rudolf Bultmann and Hans Jonas,” in Myth and the Making of Modernity, eds. Michael Bell and Peter Poellner (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 115-24
  • “Anthropology and Sociology of Judaism: Ancient Israel,” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism, N.S., XIV, ed. Jacob Neusner (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 3-18
  • “In Defense of Reductionism,” in The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion, ed. Russell T. McCutcheon (London: Cassell, 1999), 139-63. Reprinted from Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 51 (March 1983), 97-124
  • Entries on “Joseph Campbell” and “Gnosticism,” in Contemporary American Religion, ed. Wade Clark Roof (New York: Macmillan, 2000)
  • “Jung’s Psychologizing of Religion,” in Beyond New Age, eds. Steven Sutcliffe and Marion Bowman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 65-79
  • “Diagnosing Religion,” in What Is Religion?, eds. Thomas A. Idinopulos and Brian C. Wilson (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 107-12
  • “Categorizing Religion,” in Perspectives on Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, eds. Armin W. Geertz and Russell T. McCutcheon (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 187-94. Reprinted from Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 12 (2000), 187-94
  • “Are There Modern Myths?,” in Changing Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade, ed. Bryan Rennie (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 25-32
  • “Eliade, Mircea,” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2001), vol. 7, pp. 4406-09
  • “Myth in Religion,” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2001), vol. 15, pp. 10273-78
  • “Myth as Primitive Philosophy: The Case of E. B. Tylor,” in Thinking Through Myths, ed. Kevin Schilbrack (London: Routledge, 2002), 18-45
  • “Robertson Smith’s Influence on Durkheim’s Theory of Myth and Ritual,” in Reappraising Durkheim for the Study and Teaching of Religion Today, eds. Thomas A. Idinopulos and Brian C. Wilson (Leiden, Brill, 2002), 59-72
  • “Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien,” Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Tübingen), 4th ed. (2002), Band 5, pp. 297-98
  • “Mythos/Mythologie: Begriff und Begriffsgeschichte,” Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Tübingen), 4th ed. (2002), Band 5, pp. 1682-83
  • “Mythos/Mythologie: Mythos und Ritual,” Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Tübingen), 4th ed. (2002), Band 5, pp. 1684-87
  • “Psychoanalyzing Myth: From Freud to Winnicott,” in Teaching Freud on Religion, ed. Diane Jonte-Pace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 137-62
  • “Clifford Geertz’s Interpretive Approach to Religion,” in Selected Readings in the Anthropology of Religion, eds. Stephen D. Glazier and Charles A. Flowerday (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 17-34
  • “Jung on UFOs,” in UFO Religions, ed. Christopher Partridge (London: Routledge, 2003), 314-28
  • “Tylor: A Test Case of Kippenberg’s Thesis,” in Religion in kulturellen Diskurs: Festschrift für Hans Kippenberg, eds. Brigitte Luchesi and Kocku von Stuckrad (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 17-31
  • “In Defense of the Comparative Method,” in The Comity and Grace of Method: Essays in Honor of Edmund F. Perry, eds. Thomas Ryba, George D. Bond, and Herman Tull (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004), 29-40 [abridged and revised version of “In Defense of the Comparative Method,” Numen, 48 (2001), 339-73]
  • “James and Freud on Mysticism,” in William James and “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, ed. Jeremy Carrette (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), 124-32
  • “Myth: Theoretical Approaches,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, eds. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), 330-35
  • “Myth,” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (2005), vol. 4, pp. 1560-67
  • “Gaster, Theodor H.,” Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.), (2005), vol. 5, pp. 3288-89
  • “Heroes,” Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.), (2005), vol. 6, pp. 3956-61
  • “Jung, C. G.,” Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.), (2005), vol. 7, pp. 5030-36
  • “Smith, W. Robertson,” Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.), (2005), vol. 12, pp. 8451- 53
  • “Sociology and Religion: Further Considerations,” Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.), (2005), vol. 12, pp. 8487-90
  • “Sociology of Religion: Further Considerations,” Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.) (2005), vol. 12, pp. 8497-501
  • Entries on “Campbell, Joseph,” “Confession of Faith,” “Creed,” “Myth,” “Passage Rite,” “Prayer,” “Purification,” "Religion, Study of,” “Ritual,” “Sacrament,” “Sacred,” “Sacrifice,” and "Worship," Encyclopedia Britannica (online) (2005)
  • “Theories of Religion,” in Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, ed. John R. Hinnells (London: Routledge, 2005), 49-60. Revised for 2nd ed. (2010): 75-92
  • “Myth and Ritual,” in Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, ed. John R. Hinnells (London: Routledge, 2005), 355-78. Revised for 2nd ed. (2010): 372-96
  • “Contributions from the Social Sciences,” in Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, eds. Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 311-27
  • “Myth and Ritual,” in Theorizing Rituals, eds. Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek, and Michael Stausberg (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 101-21
  • “The Postmodernist Challenge to the Comparative Method,” in Comparing Religions, eds. Thomas A. Idinopoulos, Brian C. Wilson, and James C. Hanges (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 249-70
  • “Bringing Myth Back to the World: The Future of Myth in Jungian Studies,” in Dreaming the Myth Onwards, ed. Lucy Huskinson (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 91-105
  • “Violence Internal and External,” in Religion, Terror and Violence, eds. Bryan Rennie and Philip L. Tite (New York and London: Routledge, 2008), 13-38
  • “Religion as Ritual: Roy Rappaport’s Changing Views from Pigs for the Ancestors (1968) to Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (1999),” in Contemporary Theories of Religion, ed. Michael Stausberg (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 66-82
  • “Jung and White on Gnosticism,” in Cultures and Identities in Transition, eds. Murray Stein and Raya A. Jones (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 168-74
  • “From Nineteenth- to Twentieth-Century Theorizing about Myth in Britain and Germany,” in In the Embrace of the Swan: Anglo-German Mythologies in Literature, the Visual Arts and Cultural Theory, eds. Rüdiger Görner and Angus Nicholls (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2010), 41-64
  • “David Daube on Causation in the Bible,” in David Daube: A Centenary Celebration, ed. Ernest Metzger (Glasgow: Traditio Iuris Romani, 2010), 37-47
  • “Myth and Mythology: Religious Studies,” in Religion Past and Present (2010), vol. 8, pp. 676-77 “Myth and Mythology: Myth and Ritual,” in Religion Past and Present (2010), vol. 8, pp. 677-78
  • “Jung on Myth,” in Teaching Jung, eds. Kelley Bulkeley and Clodagh Weldon (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 75-92
  • “Jung and Lévy-Bruhl,” in The Archaic, ed. Paul Bishop (London and New York: Routledge, 2012) 188-218 [revised and expanded from article of same title in Journal of Analytical Psychology, 52 (2007), 635-58]

  • “Does the Gaia Hypothesis Bring Myth Back to the World?,” in Science and the World’s Religions, eds. Patrick McNamara and Wesley J. Wildman (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2012), 117-49

  • “William Robertson Smith on the Wilderness,” in Wilderness in Mythology and Religion, ed. Laura Feldt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 229-40
  • “Myth and Literature,” in Myth and Subversion in the Contemporary Novel, eds. Jose Manuel Losada Goya and Marta Guirao Ochoa (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 23-37
  • “William James on Religion and Emotion,” in Emotions and Religious Dynamics, ed. Douglas J. Davies with Nathaniel A. Warne (Surrey: Ashgate, 2013), 153-66
  • “On the Hero’s Quest” and “Theories of Myth,” in The Hero’s Quest, eds. Bernard Schweizer and Robert A. Segal (Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2013), 1-11 and 15-34
  • “Animism for Tylor,” in The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, ed. Graham Harvey (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 53-62
  • “Lucien Lévy-Bruhl,” in Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology, eds. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2013), I, 478-81
  • “Max Müller,” in Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology, eds. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2013), I, 563-65
  • “William Robertson Smith,” in Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology, eds. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms (Thousand Oaks, CA:  SAGE, 2013), I, 779-81
  • “Freudian and Jungian Approaches to Myth: the Similarities,” in Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious, eds. Leon Burnett, Sanja Bahun, and Roderick Main (London:  Karnac, 2013), 101-19
  • “Explanation and Interpretation,” in Jung and the Question of Science, ed. Raya A. Jones (London and New York, 2014), 82-97
  • “Myth and Literature,” in Zwischen Präsenz und Repräsentation: Formen und Funktionen des Mythos in theoretischen und literarischen Diskursen, eds. Bent Gebert and Uwe Mayer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 258-73
  • “The Life of King Saul as Myth,” in Myth and Scripture, ed. Dexter E. Callender, Jr. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 245-74 
  • “Replies,” in Myth and Scripture, ed. Dexter E. Callender, Jr. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 291-96 
  • “Greek Myth and Psychoanalysis,” in Approaches to Greek Myth, ed. Lowell Edmunds, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 407-56 
  • “Myth in Religion,” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed., (2015), vol. 16, pp. 172-78
  • “The Challenge to Myth from Religion,” in Myths in Crisis/The Crisis of Myth, eds. Jose Manuel Losada and Antonella Lipscomb (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 63-70
  • “Joseph Campbell,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015)
  • “Hero,” Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, ed. David Leeming, third ed.  (New York: Springer, 2015), ch. 296
  • “Theorizing Myth and Ritual,” in Theorizing Old Norse Myth, eds. Stefan Brink and Lisa Collinson (Tournhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2017), 13-30
  • “From Nineteenth- to Twentieth-Century Theorizing about Myth in Britain and Germany: Tylor versus Blumenberg,” in Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture, eds. Paul-Francois Tremlett, Liam T. Sutherland, and Graham Harvey (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 63-86
  • “The Snake in the Garden of Eden,” in Fallen Animals, eds. Zohar Hadromi-Allouche and Aine Larkin (London: Ashgate, 2017), 21-25
  • “The Anthropology of Religion: Originative Figures,” in William B. Parsons, ed., Religion: Social Religion (Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference, 2017), 219-34
  • “Hell and Paradise for Milton: Physical Places and States of Mind,” in Fall Narratives, eds. Zohar Hadromi-Allouche and Aine Larkin (London and New York:  Routledge, 2017), 28-36
  • “Is a Jungian Analysis Scientific?,” in Contemporary Influences of C. G. Jung’s Thought, eds. Ilona Blocian and Andrew Kuzmicki (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 64-71
  • “In Defense of a Naturalistic Approach to Religion,” in The Question of Methodological Naturalism, ed. Jason N. Blum (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 153-66
  • “Carl Jung and Gnosticism,” in The Gnostic World, eds. Garry W. Trompf and others (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 549-52
  • “Jung on Myth,” in Jung and Philosophy, ed. Jon Mills (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 204-19
  • “Sir James George Frazer,” Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) 

Series Editor’s Forewords to Theorists of Myth Series (Routledge [formerly Garland]):

  • Robert Ackerman, The Myth and Ritual School, vol. 2 (1990) (reprinted 2002)
  • S. Daniel Breslauer, Martin Buber on Myth, vol. 3 (1990)
  • Steven F. Walker, Jung and the Jungians on Myth, vol. 4 (1995) (revised 2002)
  • Dan Merkur, Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth, vol. 5 (2004)
  • Roland Champagne, The Structuralists on Myth, vol. 6 (1992)
  • Richard J. Golsan, Rene Girard and Myth, vol. 7 (1993) (reprinted 2002)
  • Christopher G. Flood, Political Myth, vol. 8 (1996) (reprinted 2002)
  • Ford Russell, Northrop Frye on Myth, vol. 10 (1998) (reprinted 2000)
  • Douglas Allen, Mircea Eliade on Myth and Religion, vol. 11 (1998) (reprinted 2002)
  • William Schultz, Cassirer and Langer on Myth, vol. 12 (2000)
  • Laurence Coupe, Kenneth Burke on Myth, vol. 13 (2004)

  • Angus Nichols, Myth and the Human Sciences: Hans Blumenberg’s Theory of Myth, vol. 16 (2015)

Articles:

  • “The First Sociologist of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15 (December 1976), 365-68
  • “Transcending Psychology’s Bounds?” Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 (May 8, 1978), 23
  • “Eliade’s Theory of Millenarianism,” Religious Studies, 14 (June 1978), 159-73
  • “Joseph Campbell’s Theory of Myth,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion Supplement, 44 (March 1979), 98-114
  • “In Defense of Mythology: The History of Modern Theories of Myth,” Annals of Scholarship, 1 (Winter 1980), 3-49
  • “The Myth-Ritualist Theory of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 19 (June 1980), 173-85
  • “The Historical Inexplicability of Anti-Semitism,” Contemporary Jewry, 5 (Fall-Winter 1980), 66 73
  • “The Social Sciences and the Truth of Religious Belief,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 48 (September 1980), 403-13
  • “Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, A History of Anthropological Thought,” Annals of Scholarship, 2 (Winter 1981), 119-28
  • “Assessing Social Scientific Theories of Religion,” Bulletin of the Council on the Study of Religion, 13 (June 1982), 69-72
  • “The Future of Myth,” Texas Review, 4 (Spring/Summer 1983), 105-14
  • “In Defense of Reductionism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 51 (March 1983), 97-124. Reprinted in The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion, ed. Russell T. McCutcheon (London and New York: Cassell, 1999), 139-63
  • “Victor Turner’s Theory of Ritual,” Zygon, 18 (September 1983), 327-35
  • “The Application of Symbolic Anthropology to Religions of the Greco-Roman World,” Religious Studies Review, 10 (July 1984), 216-23
  • “Anthropological Definitions of Religion,” Zygon, 20 (March 1985), 78-79
  • “A Jungian View of Evil,” Zygon, 20 (March 1985), 83-89
  • “Have the Social Sciences Been Converted?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24 (September 1985), 321-24
  • “The ‘De-Sociologizing’ of the Sociology of Religion,” Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, 7 (Spring 1986), 5-28
  • “Response to Blasi and Nelson,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 25 (September 1986), 369-72
  • “Are Historians of Religions Necessarily Believers?” Religious Traditions, 10 (May 1987), 71-76
  • “Relativism and Rationality in the Social Sciences,” Journal of Religion, 67 (July 1987), 353-62
  • “Jung and Gnosticism,” Religion, 17 (October 1987), 301-36
  • “Hans Blumenberg as Theorist of Myth,” Annals of Scholarship, 5 (Fall 1987), 83-95
  • “Interpreting and Explaining Religion: Geertz and Durkheim,” Soundings, 71 (Spring 1988), 29-52
  • “Meanings and Causes: Response to Kepnes,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 27 (December 1988), 637-44
  • “A Reply to Eric J. Sharpe,” Religious Traditions, 11 (1988), 13-20
  • “How Historical Is the History of Religions?,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 1 (Spring 1989), 2-19. Reprinted in Mircea Eliade: A Critical Reader, ed. Bryan Rennie (London: Equinox, 2006), 325-36
  • “What Does Comparative Religion Compare?” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 1 (Spring 1989), 65-70
  • “J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion,” Religious Studies Review, 15 (October 1989), 334-37
  • “Religionist and Social Scientific Strategies,” Religion, 19 (October 1989), 310-16
  • “Axioms and Dogmas in the Study of Religion” (with Donald Wiebe), Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 57 (Fall 1989), 591-605
  • “Clifford Geertz and Peter Berger on Religion: Their Differing and Changing Views,” Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, 15 (February 1990), 2-10
  • “The Romantic Appeal of Joseph Campbell,” Christian Century, 107 (April 4, 1990), 332-35 Reprinted as “Following Your Bliss,” Cultural Vistas, 2 (Summer 1991), 19-22
  • “Frazer and Campbell on Myth: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Approaches,” Southern Review, 28 (Spring 1990), 470-76
  • “Misconceptions of the Social Sciences,” Zygon, 25 (September 1990), 263-78
  • “Fending Off the Social Sciences,” Council of Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin, 19 (November 1990), 89-92
  • “Victorian Anthropology” (review essay), Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 58 (Fall 1990), 469-77
  • “The Concept of Survival: Of the Useless or of the Useful?,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 2 (Fall 1990), 253-58
  • “Reply to Daniel Pals” (with Donald Wiebe), Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 59 (Winter 1991), 709-13
  • “Adonis: An Ancient Peter Pan,” Psychological Perspectives, no. 24 (Spring/Summer 1991), 124-32
  • Introduction to “The Symposium on the Sacred,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 3 (Spring 1991), 1-2
  • “Religion as Interpreted Rather than Explained: John Hick's An Interpretation of Religion,” Soundings, 74 (Spring/Summer 1991), 275-88
  • “Religionists’ Misconceptions: Replies to Sharma and Pals,” Zygon, 27 (March 1992), 107-11
  • “Joseph Campbell on Jews and Judaism,” Religion, 22 (April 1992), 151-70
  • “Whose Thinking in Religious Studies Is Prejudicial?,” Council of Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin, 21 (September 1992), 70-71
  • “Fairy Tales, Si; Myth, No: Bruno Bettelheim's Antithesis,” Psychoanalytic Study of Society, 18 (1993), 381-90
  • “Paralleling Religion and Science: The Project of Robin Horton,” Annals of Scholarship, 10 (1993), 177-98
  • “Mythopoeic versus Religious Thought: A Reply to Michael Barnes,” Religion, 24 (January 1994), 77-80
  • “Joachim Wach and the History of Religions,” Religious Studies Review, 20 (July 1994), 197-201
  • “Hume’s Natural History of Religion and the Beginning of the Social Scientific Study of Religion,” Religion, 24 (July 1994), 225-34. Reprinted in Thinking About Religion, ed. Ivan Strenski (Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 13-22
  • “Tylor’s Anthropomorphic Theory of Religion,” Religion, 25 (January 1995), 23-30
  • “In Defense of ‘the Religion School’,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 7 (1995), 259-66
  • “The Allure of Gnosticism for Jung,” Harvest, 41 (1995), 78-88
  • “Gnosticism, Ancient and Modern,” Christian Century, 112 (November 8, 1995), 1053-56
  • “Critical Notice: Richard Noll, The Jung Cult,” Journal of Analytical Psychology, 40 (October 1995), 597-608
  • “The Myth and Ritual Theory: An Overview,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 6 (1997), 1-18
  • “Response to John Hick’s ‘The Subjective and Objective Dimensions of the Study of Religion’,” Religious Traditions, 18-20 (1995-97), 93-99
  • “Postmodernism and the Social Scientific Study of Religion,” Religion, 27 (April 1997), 139-49
  • “From Theology to Social Science: The Case of William Robertson Smith,” Council of Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin, 26 (September 1997), 61-64
  • “Jung and Gnosticism: A Reply to Matthew Brewer,” Harvest, 44 (1998), 126-49
  • “Weber and Geertz on the Meaning of Religion,” Religion, 29 (January 1999), 61-71
  • “Joseph Campbell as Antisemite and as Theorist of Myth: A Response to Maurice Friedman,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 67 (June 1999), 461-67
  • “Is Analytical Psychology a Religion? Rationalist and Romantic Approaches to Religion and Modernity,” Journal of Analytical Psychology, 44 (October 1999), 547-60
  • “Comments on Storr’s and Shamdasani’s Articles,” Journal of Analytical Psychology, 44 (October 1999), 561-62
  • “Why Isn’t Religion an Independent Variable?,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 11 (1999), 408-19
  • “In Defense of Social Scientific Naturalism: A Response to David Ray Griffin,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 68 (March 2000), 133-41
  • “Categorizing Religion,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 12 (2000), 187-94
  • “Making the Myth-Ritualist Theory Scientific,” Religion, 30 (July 2000), 259-71
  • “In Defense of the Comparative Method,” Numen, 48 (July 2001), 339-73
  • “Ninian Smart and Religious Studies,” Council of Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin, 30 (April 2001), 27-29
  • “In Memoriam: Ninian Smart,” Religious Studies News, (Spring 2001), 14
  • “Durkheim in Britain: The Work of Radcliffe-Brown,” JASO (Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford), 30/2 (1999), 131-62
  • “Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth,” Religious Studies Review, 28 (July 2002), 191-96
  • “Myth and Politics: A Response to Robert Ellwood,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 70 (September 2002), 611-20
  • “Response to Laurence Coupe’s ‘Myth Without Mystery: The Project of Robert Segal’,” Religious Studies Review, 29 (January 2003), 14-17
  • “Jung’s Very Twentieth-Century View of Myth,” Journal of Analytical Psychology, 48 (November 2003), 593-617
  • “The Place of Religion in Modernity” (review essay), History of the Human Sciences, 17 (2004), 131-49
  • “The Function of ‘Religion’ and ‘Myth’: A Response to Russell McCutcheon,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 73 (January 2005), 209-13
  • “Classification and Comparison in the Study of Religion: The Work of Jonathan Z. Smith” (review essay), Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 73 (December 2005), 1175-88
  • “All Generalizations Are Bad: Postmodernism on Theories,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74 (March 2006), 157-71
  • “Reply to Moosa,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74 (March 2006), 176-77
  • “Response to Ochs,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74 (March 2006), 129-31 [revised and republished: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74 (June 2006), 495-98]
  • “The Frazerian Roots of Contemporary Theories of Religion and Violence,” Religion, 37 (March 2007), 4-25
  • “Jung and Lévy-Bruhl,” Journal of Analytical Psychology, 52 (November 2007), 635-58
  • “Reply to Susan Rowland,” Journal of Analytical Psychology, 52 (November 2007), 667-71
  • “The Place of Ethics in Modern Theories of Religion,” Diskus, 8 (2007), 1-16 (online)
  • “William Robertson Smith: Sociologist or Theologian?,” Religion, 38 (March 2008), 9-24
  • “William Robertson Smith vis-à-vis Emile Durkheim as Sociologist of Religion,” Journal of Scottish Thought, 1/2 (2008), 1-12
  • “The Invention of World Religions: The Critics,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 20 (2008), 111-13
  • “Myth and Science: Their Varying Relationships,” Blackwell Religion Compass, 3 (2009), 1-22 (online)
  • “Kuhn and the Study of Religion,” Religion, 39 (December 2009), 352-55
  • "Jung as Psychologist of Religion and Jung as Philosopher of Religion," Journal of Analytical Psychology, 55 (June 2010), 361-84
  • “Reply to Roderick Main and George Hogenson,” Journal of Analytical Psychology, 55 (June 2010), 394-97
  • “Functionalism Since Hempel,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 22 (2010), 340-53
  • “Race and Religion in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of Scottish Thought, 2:1 (2010), 1-8
  • “In Defence of Theories of Myth,” Cosmos, 26 (2010), 1-22
  • “La mia esperienza degli studi religiosi in Gran Bretagna,” Humanitas, N.S., 66 (2011), 88-90
  • “What is ‘Mythic Reality’?,” Zygon, 46 (September 2011), 588-92
  • “Mysticism and Psychoananalysis: Parsons and Kripal” (review essay), Religious Studies Review, 37 (March 2011), 1-18
  • “Relativism and Its Deniers,” Soundings, 95 (2012), 156-67
  • “A Cross to Bear, But Not in Public?,” Times Education Supplement, No. 5018 (November 9, 2012), 36-7
  • “Was King Saul’s Reign Really a Tragedy?,” Jewish Chronicle, (December 7, 2012), 26
  • “Breadth Versus Depth,” Times Higher Education, (September 12, 2013)
  • “Weber, Geertz, and Ricoeur on Explanation and Interpretation,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 43 (February 2014), 25-33

  • “On Mills’ ‘Jung’s Metaphysics’,” International Journal of Jungian Studies, 6 (October 2014), 217-26

  • “Interpretation and Explanation: A Response to Jason Blum’s Defense of the Phenomenology of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 82 (December 2014), 1149-51
  • “The Approach to the Social Sciences in Religion Past and Present,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 44 (September 2015), 15-20
  • “The Modern Study of Myth and Its Relation to Science,” Zygon, 50 (September 2015), 757-71
  • “The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion,” Relegere, 5/2 (2015), 181-90
  • “Is There a Better Way to Study Religion? The View of William E. Paden,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 30 (2018), 157-64
  • “At One Remove from the Gods,” Book of the Week, Times Higher Education, No. 2399 (14-20 March   2019), 42-43 

Under Contract:

  • Theorizing about Religion (Cambridge University Press) (2020)
  • The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion (2nd edition) (co-edited) (2020)
  • Oxford Handbook of Myth Theory (edited) (Oxford University Press)
  • E. B. Tylor (Keynote Thinkers Series) (Bloomsbury)
  • A Cultural History of Myth (co-edited) (Bloomsbury)

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