Attached Paper In-person November Annual Meeting 2025

The Reception of the History of Religions School in France

Description for Program Unit Review (maximum 1000 words)

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Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

The pioneering work of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule in the study of ancient Judaism and formative Christianity garnered considerable attention from contemporary French scholars of religion. The efforts of figures such as Gunkel, Bousset, and others to extricate Judaism and Christianity from the historical-religious vacuum in which they had long been studied, paralleled the comparative approaches of liberal Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars in France. However, the institutional and ideological contexts for conducting comparative religion in France and Germany were markedly different, with the French Histoire des religions closely intertwined with the laicization agenda of the Third Republic. This paper explores the scientific and theological responses of three key figures—liberal Protestant Jean Réville, Catholic Modernist Alfred Loisy, and liberal Jewish scholar Salomon Reinach—who engaged with the methods and theological underpinnings of the Schule. It also situates their work within the broader historical contexts of the Dreyfus Affair, the Modernist crisis within the Catholic Church, and the solidification of the principle of laïcité through the 1905 Separation of Churches and State.