Books by Bruce Lincoln

No detailed description available for "Myth, Cosmos, and Society".

What is authority? How is it constituted? How ought one understand the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) relations between authority and coercion? Between authorized and subversive speech? In this fascinating and intricate analysis, Bruce Lincoln argues that authority is not an entity but an effect. More precisely, it is an effect that depends for its power on the combination of the right speaker, the right speech, the right staging and props, the right time and place, and an audience historically and culturally conditioned to judge what is right in all these instances and to respond with trust, respect, and even reverence. Employing a vast array of examples drawn from classical antiquity, Scandinavian law, Cold War scholarship, and American presidential politics, Lincoln offers a telling analysis of the performance of authority, and subversions of it, from ancient times to the present. Using a small set of case studies that highlight critical moments in the construction of authority, he goes on to offer a general examination of "corrosive" discourses such as gossip, rumor, and curses; the problematic situation of women, who often are barred from the authorizing sphere; the role of religion in the construction of authority; the question of whether authority in the modern and postmodern world differs from its premodern counterpart; and a critique of Hannah Arendt's claims that authority has disappeared from political life in the modern world. He does not find a diminution of authority or a fundamental change in the conditions that produce it. Rather, Lincoln finds modern authority splintered, expanded, and, in fact, multiplied as the mechanisms for its construction become more complex-and more expensive.

Lincoln mounts an argument for the value of comparison, which is often derided as limited and limiting; instead, he shows how carefully considered comparisons can illuminate both subjects.

Among those institutions most in need of an impressive creation account is the state: it's one of the primary ways states attempt to legitimate themselves. Using the story of how Harald Fairhair unified Norway in the ninth century, the author illuminates the way a state's foundation story blurs the distinction between history and myth.

Assembles a collection of essays that both illustrates and reveals the benefits of his methodology, making a case for a critical religious studies that starts with skepticism but is neither cynical nor crude. This book tackles many questions central to religious study.

How does religion stimulate and feed imperial ambitions and violence? This title identifies three core components of an imperial theology that have transhistorical and contemporary relevance: dualistic ethics, a theory of divine election, and a sense of salvific mission. It shows how the religious ideas shaped Achaemenian practice.

Beginning with a dissection of the instruction manual given to each of the 9/11 hijackers, this book talks about the September 11 and serves as a study on the character of religion. It shows how the terrorists justified acts of destruction and mass murder "in the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate."

In "Theorizing Myth", Bruce Lincoln traces the way scholars and others have used the category of "myth" to fetishize or deride certain kinds of stories, usually those told by others.