Never underestimate the ability of senior academics to dismiss a book with what sound like words of praise.<\/p>\n
Today’s example, Wendy Doniger’s <\/a>(leading scholar of history of religion, particularly in India) blurb on a new book called The Origins of the World’s Mythologies.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n “Not since Frazer’s Golden Bough, has anyone achieved such a grand synthesis of world mythology. Boldly swimming upstream against the present scholarly emphasis on difference and context, Witzel assembles massive evidence for a single, prehistoric, Ur-mythology. An astonishing book”<\/p>\n –Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago and author of The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In other words, I think she is saying that it follows a solipsistic (“swimming upstream”) and out-of-date methodology (the Golden Bough <\/em>reference), and what astonishes her is that Oxford actually published it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Never underestimate the ability of senior academics to dismiss a book with what sound like words of praise. Today’s example, Wendy Doniger’s (leading scholar of history of religion, particularly in India) blurb on a new book called The Origins of the World’s Mythologies. “Not since Frazer’s Golden Bough, has anyone achieved such a grand synthesis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,4],"class_list":["post-4812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-publishing","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1fC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12851,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12851","url_meta":{"origin":4812,"position":0},"title":"Free Book Reviews from Latest Pomegranate","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 13, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"As ever, book reviews in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies are open-access free downloads. Here are links to the four in this issue.((I receive a small commission on Amazon sales, which helps to pay for this website.)) The King in Orange: The Magical and Occult Roots of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/king_in_orange-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":259,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=259","url_meta":{"origin":4812,"position":1},"title":"\"Addicted\" to Greek mythology There\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 8, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Addicted\" to Greek mythology There are days when I feel like we are still intellectually in the 4th century C.E. Consider this little flap over \"Classical education\" and the danger of becoming \"addicted to Greek mythology.\" To read the article by Christian-homeschooling celebrity Elizabeth Smith that started it, go here\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":579,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=579","url_meta":{"origin":4812,"position":2},"title":"'Narnia made me Pagan'Starhawk's essay\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 18, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"'Narnia made me Pagan'Starhawk's essay on BeliefNet discusses how C.S. Lewis's Narnia books contributed to her becoming Pagan.But Lewis is a mystic, and Aslan is a deity who bursts out of the confines of any dogma. His sensibility is as Pagan as his theology is Christian. The book is steeped\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2244,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2244","url_meta":{"origin":4812,"position":3},"title":"Wendy Griffin Named Cherry Hill Dean","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Cherry Hill Seminary has named Wendy Griffin of California State University, Long Beach as its new academic dean. They made a good choice. I have worked with Wendy for several years on\u00a0 the American Academy of Religion's Contemporary Pagan Studies steering committee, which she co-chaired from 2005-10. She and I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"education\"","block_context":{"text":"education","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=education"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wendy Griffin","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/WendyGriffinAAR2-119x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6261,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6261","url_meta":{"origin":4812,"position":4},"title":"More Reflections on Doninger’s Hinduism Book","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 20, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Like a lot of people, I was dismayed (to put it mildy) that Penguin India has pulled Wendy Doniger's book The Hindus: An Alternative History from sale in that country. Indologist Koenraad Elst, no stranger to such controversies, explains some of the background on Indian law about religions here. Art.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Hinduism\"","block_context":{"text":"Hinduism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=hinduism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51sBGrYcIEL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2%2CTopRight%2C1%2C0_SH20_BO1%2C204%2C203%2C200_.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12073,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12073","url_meta":{"origin":4812,"position":5},"title":"Mourning Wendy Griffin","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 12, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"My day was knocked sideways around noon when I learned that Wendy Griffin (1942\u20132021) had died a couple of hours earlier, peacefully and at home, according to Doug Cox, her husband. After a late-blossoming career as an academic, where she retired after charing the Department of Women's, Gender & Sexuality\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/wendy-the-folksinger-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4812"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4822,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812\/revisions\/4822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}