Anthropologists and the Bible

The anthropology of religion was shaped by – and sought to influence – new understandings of the scriptures. Maintaining an uneasy, often unacknowledged, usually one-sided dialogue with biblical scholarship, the Victorian anthropologists introduced new comparative perspectives. Succeeding schools of anthropology applied their own particular analytical methods. Over a period of 150 years, despite changes in intellectual fashions, the anthropology of the bible has been a testing ground for the anthropology of religion.