(avg. read time: 4–8 mins.)
In view of my forthcoming graduation, which I anticipate to be my last one (but I hesitate to say that too strongly), I would like to revisit the second chapter of my dissertation on methodology. This is the area where I did the most adventuring outside of the realm of biblical studies, to the point that much of the research I did ultimately had to be left out. I would like to return to the subject of some of that research another time, but here we will focus on what actually contributed to the chapter. This brings us into the controverted realm of comparative studies.
To discuss comparative studies, particularly through the medium of comparative religion, where they have perhaps been most controversial, I will proceed in three parts. First, I introduce the subject matter and explore the assumptions made about comparison. Second, I examine what is complementary to the question of assumptions: the question of purpose/goal in comparison. Our purposes also require examination to articulate clearly, to determine whether the tools used in comparison are fit for said purpose, and to understand how our purposes shape our work. Third, I describe what are considered to be among the best practices in comparative work today after a history full of misguided practices.
My own interest in posting this here is not only to give my readers some tools for evaluating works of comparative religion or the use of comparison in biblical studies in particular. I also hope this work will help in evaluating the popular-level comparisons one can find every day in all kinds of media addressing all manner of subjects. Comparison is inevitable. It helps to know how to do it well and in a way that can be insightful, rather than superficial.
It is only natural that comparative studies are foundational to all manner of explorations and scholarly enterprises. Comparison is one of the fundamental functions of the human brain. It is an essential means by which relationships, categories, distinctions, symbols, stories, and all types of communication in general take shape.1 The various acts of translation between languages and cultures depend on it. Indeed, it is foundational to the formation of communities, including of the earliest Christians. To form a communal identity, as well as to distinguish one community from another, it is crucial to have an understanding of how a group compares and contrasts to others. But it is, of course, also necessary to the individual’s development of the sense of self and of relationships with other individuals.
At its most basic, comparison involves the selection, juxtaposition, and manipulation of, “two or more unrelated objects that an individual perceives to share one or more similar or overlapping characteristics.”2 Or, in the words of Jonathan Z. Smith, “Comparison provides the means by which we ‘re-vision’ phenomena as our data in order to solve our theoretical problems.”3 While comparison seems naturally drawn towards the postulation of similarity—hence the link of “compare” to similarity and of “contrast” to difference—the act of comparison necessarily assumes both similarity and difference, as Fitz John Porter Poole observes:
On the one hand, the postulation of identity precludes the possibility of comparison by obliterating the “gap” and rendering comparison tautological. On the other hand, the postulation of difference is meaningless for comparison without some connective tissue of postulated similarity. Difference makes a comparative analysis interesting; similarity makes it possible. Neither quality, however, is simply and unproblematically inherent in the phenomena to be compared. Only abstract concepts can provide the problems, lenses, and constructed patterns in terms of which we can postulate analytically useful similarities and differences.4
Individual comparativists may emphasize one of these qualities over the other, but a proper comparative analysis cannot ignore either. To engage in this task well and to make sure we are not ignoring either factor, it helps to be clear about the assumptions with which we engage comparative work.
Assumptions
In order for comparison to be possible, the comparativist must first posit the respect in which two or more given entities are similar. This positing stems from the recognition of a pattern. The comparativist states this pattern in terms of a concept. With the concept defined (at least, ideally, as failure to define adequately or at all is a frequent failure in comparative work), the comparativist then develops an analytic model that specifies the focus of the analysis “by emphasizing a particular dimension (or set of dimensions) of the phenomena to be compared, and not by postulating the comparison of phenomena in toto.”5 A properly comparative inquiry makes clear with its model that “categories are our tools of description and analysis, that they are map, not territory, but that they may for that reason be useful in seeing aspects of the territory we might not have otherwise seen.”6
Some of my methodological assumptions about what constitutes a good comparison of beliefs from different religious contexts—as well as what makes for good comparison in general—broadly agree with those of Robert Neville and Wesley Wildman of the Comparative Religious Ideas Project.7 1) Comparison first requires understanding all sides compared in their own terms (i.e., in their own contexts). It also helps to attend to the differences in importance an element has in one context as opposed to another.8 Perhaps the most frequent failure of comparative analysis is decontextualizing a thing in order to overstress similarity to another thing. Another one, related to the second point, is flattening the conceptual landscape surrounding the thing in order to overstress similarities of contextual elements. As an illustration, a frequent point of similarity people make between The Lion King and Kimba, the anime of many forms, is between the characters Scar from the former and Claw from the latter. But this comparison overlooks not only the superficiality of the similarities, but also how more significant elements of Scar’s personality have no equivalent in Claw, not to mention, unlike Claw, Scar is essential to the story of the Lion King.
2) Comparison is more than assembling accurate representations of the things to be compared; a “third term” is necessary for defining the respect in which things are similar and different.9 We will explore this assumption further in Part 3. What is necessary to note for now is that comparison requires a framework and a focus by which one says, “X is like Y in respect to W.” Even more helpful is an argument that presents how “X is more like Y than Z in respect to W.”
3) Comparisons are claims that aim to be true in what they assert about the relations among religious ideas and should be grounded in processes that test them according to relevant criteria. One can substitute “religious” for any other category of comparison. There are, of course, attempted comparisons that show that someone somewhere in the chain of information operated in bad faith in order to make a malicious assertion, the truth of which does not matter to the asserter (this is especially common in claims about the origins/genealogy of things). But in any case, comparisons are at least presented as making claims of truth about the comparanda (the things compared).
4) Claims to the truth of comparisons ought not capitulate in the face of critical qualifications but should amend and improve themselves. That is, a good comparative approach should be a “properly empirical procedure that prizes vulnerability of comparative hypotheses and actively seeks to improve them in as many ways and with as much diligence as possible.”10 Detail-oriented comparison is particularly vulnerable, as the more details it seeks to incorporate, the more chances there are for misunderstandings on the part of the analyst.
To these assumptions that Neville and Wildman articulate, I also add the following. 5) Comparisons that involve deeper examination of details are more likely to be accurate and illuminating than comparisons that involve much broader generalizations.11 That is, comparisons that address the potential pitfalls we have noted already are better fit for purpose.
6) Genealogical comparisons of ideas or beliefs are possible, but much more difficult to establish than often assumed.12 It is, of course, possible in light of such things as investigations of plagiarism or when artists readily admit to influence by this or that (to say nothing of when something is a clear “rip-off,” as happens in film and video games in particular). But I am referring to cases where the facts of the matter are not so straightforward and information on historical relationships is sketchy at best. In Smith’s words, the subjective experience of déjà vu that inspires comparison has often been “projected as an objective connection through some theory of influence, diffusion, borrowing, or the like. It is a process of working from a psychological association to an historical one; it is to assert that similarity and contiguity have causal effect.”13 It is better and less fraught with difficulties to look for analogy (simply performing similar functions), as opposed to homology (performing similar functions specifically due to common ancestry/descent).14
7) As opposed to the modernist tendency to emphasize similarity at the service of some universalist idea and the postmodernist tendency to emphasize difference at the service of some nominalist idea, a better approach would be to attend to similarity and difference that emerges from perspectives that take both into account. This involves an interplay (what André Droogers calls “methological ludism [play]”15) of perspectives. In religion, this would include the interplay of perspectives of the researcher as an outsider and of the researched as involved participants (particularly if the researcher is also an involved participant already), as well as an interplay of such perspectives with each comparandum in turn. It may become clearer in the course of investigation that the similarities or differences are more crucial to stress for the subject matter in question or for the particular purposes of the comparativists in undertaking this analysis. And it is that matter of purposes that the next part will address.
For more on the many shared characteristics of humans that makes comparison and communication possible, see Jeppe Sinding Jensen, “Revisiting the Insider-Outsider Debate: Dismantling a Pseudo-problem in the Study of Religion,” MTSR 23 (2011): 29–47.
Aaron W. Hughes, Comparison: A Critical Primer (Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2017), 9.
Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 52 (emphases original).
Fitz John Porter Poole, “Metaphors and Maps: Towards Comparison in the Anthropology of Religion,” JAAR 54 (1986): 417. Cf. Robert Ford Campany, “‘Religious’ as a Category: A Comparative Case Study,” Numen 65 (2018): 342.
Poole, “Metaphors,” 420.
Campany, “‘Religious,’” 342.
I draw the following four assumptions about comparison from Robert Cummings Neville and Wesley J. Wildman, “Comparing Religious Ideas,” in Ultimate Realities, vol. 2 of The Comparative Religious Ideas Project, ed. Robert Cummings Neville (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001), 190.
Neville and Wildman, “Comparing,” 201.
Cf. Smith, Drudgery Divine, 51.
Wesley J. Wildman and Robert Cummings Neville, “How Our Approach to Comparison Relates to Others,” in Ultimate Realities, vol. 2 of The Comparative Religious Ideas Project, ed. Robert Cummings Neville (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001), 215.
Such comparisons are more likely to achieve what Poole refers to as good qualities of analogical mapping: “1) clarity of definition of mappings; 2) richness or density of predicates (especially relational predicates); 3) systematicity or coherence of mapping; and 4) abstractness of mapping with respect to the hierarchical level of the predicates in the propositional semantic networks representing the domains to be compared.” Poole, “Metaphor,” 422–23.
As an example of a good genealogical comparison, see Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East, ConBOT 50 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2001).
Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 22.
On this distinction, see Campany, “‘Religious,’” 335.
André Droogers, “Playing with Perspectives,” in Methods for the Study of Religious Change: From Religious Studies to Worldview Studies, ed. André Droogers and Anton van Harskamp (Sheffield; Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2014), 62–63.