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Panel

Polytheism/Monotheism

Polytheism/Monotheism More Gods, More Diversity?

 Launch Media

ABOUT About the Panel

Panelists include Wendy Doniger, University of Chicago professor of the history of religions; Jack Miles, professor of religious studies at the University of California, Irvine; Benjamin Sommer, professor of Bible studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary; and Malika Zeghal, associate professor of the anthropology and sociology of religion and Islamic studies at the University of Chicago.

  • ABOUT Wendy Doniger

    Wendy Doniger is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, where she also teaches in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on Social Thought, and the College.  She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, with a D.Phil. from Oxford University. Her primary research and teaching interests are Hinduism and mythology.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Jack Miles

    Jack Miles is a Professor of English and Religious Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and Fellow for Religious Affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. His book God: A Biography won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 and has been translated into sixteen languages. The book’s sequel Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, earned Miles a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Benjamin Sommer

    Benjamin Sommer joined the Jewish Theological Seminary faculty as professor of Bible in 2008. His research focuses on the history of Israelite religion, literary analysis of the Bible, and biblical theology. He has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Chicago, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Shalom Hartman Institute, among others. His book, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 was awarded the Salo Baron Prize by the American Academy for Jewish Research.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Malika Zhegal

    Malika Zeghal is a political scientist who studies religion through the lens of Islam and power. She has more general interests in the circulation and role of religious ideologies in situations of conflict and/or dialogue. She has published a study of central religious institutions in Egypt and a volume on Islam and politics in Morocco (Islamism in Morocco: Religion, Authoritarianism, and Electoral Politics), which won the French Voices-Pen American Center Award.

    Profile
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This idea of the functionality of polytheism is common to a number of religions who, nevertheless, philosophically will maintain a monistic position.       

Religious scholars Benjamin Sommer, Jack Miles, Malika Zeghal, and Wendy Doniger (specializing in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, respectively) exchange views on the degree to which polytheism has contributed to the development of those religions, with particular focus on the ways in which monotheistic or polytheistic beliefs have affected its past and current tolerance of other religions.

Above: Hindu temple in Saint Andre on Reunion Island. Photograph by Iwan Beijes.

Tags

religion, history, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Bible, polytheism, monotheism

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