Jonathan Z. Smith is considered one of the best known theorists of religion. He made significant contributions to the study of religion as an academic field by developing and elucidating many concepts first proposed by Eliade, and clarifying how primitive religions dealt with the sacred and profane as categories of classification. Understanding his works will add much to the pursuit of religion as an academic endeavor.
In his book, Imaging Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, Smith begins, in the introduction, with what appears at first to be a disconcerting idea. He asserts that while mankind has the archaeological and textual evidence of deities and interactions with them for centuries, the concept of religion, at least for western man, is only a few centuries old CITATION Jon82 \l 1033 (Smith 1982). What he means by this idea is integral to all of his other ideas and writings.
We are well aware that an immense amount of data exists which can be classified as religious, but Smith declares that religion as a construct is entirely manmade and is the pervue of religious scholarship. While he does not discuss why this paradigm needed to be constructed as an academic framework of the academy, it might well be necessitated by the harsh assessment of religion arising out of the Enlightenment, and more particularly the French version of Voltaire and Diderot. These leading thinkers advocated the overthrow of religion in such a dramatic way as to affect religious thinking to the present day. In order for religion to be an acceptable subject of intellectual inquiry within the academy, a paradigm was necessary in which scientific inquiry could be made. It is within this conceptualization that his statement about religion being a modern idea is to be understood.
Another idea primary to Smith's thoughts about religion is that of choice. The ability to compare between societies that are very different from each other is a huge problem. Smith maintains that scholarship is always an act of selection, choice, and focus rather than an attempt to find some kind of timeless means in some symbol or text. This act of choosing is a key element in understanding the basics of any religious ideas, and is a skill, primary to the religious historian. With such a wide array of possible data to choose from, skillful selection will lead to great understanding of the subject under consideration. Smith proposes three conditions for choosing a particular piece of data for an example. First, the data should be thoroughly understood within the context, taking into account the relevant primary material, its history, and tradition of its interpretation CITATION Jon82 \l 1033 (Smith 1982). Secondly, the data should reinforce the theory being examined or a fundamental question central to the academic pursuit. Smith believes these considerations are essential if the historian of religion is to construct the context in a way that is relevant to his goals.
One of Jonathan Smith's most enduring contributions to the academic study of religion is the idea of mapping strategies to aid in understanding. In the Wobbling Pivot CITATION Jon78 \l 1033 (Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion 1978) Smith analyzes and critics Eliades' assessment of sacred time and space and assesses how Eliades choices affected his theories on these two important aspects of religious studies. For Eliade the Sacred, or more particularly sacred time and space are where the Sacred manifests itself. Outside of the sacred is the profane or the chaotic. Reality comes solely through repetition or participation. Man must appropriate reality for himself through this act of repetition, even in the midst of the contradictions of the profane and the sacred. It is on these two planes that mankind always exists. Eliade looked at history as man's second fall as humanity attempts to assert the value of his own creativity[1]. From this idea Eliade believed that the function of religion was to awaken and sustain the consciousness of another world. This experience of the sacred leads to ideas of reality, truth, and meaning, which ultimately became the basis of scientific knowledge.
Smith, in his critic of Eliade, raises the importance of the idea of chaos from that which is merely to anthesis of the sacred, to chaos being a sacred power in its own right. As Smith asserts, chaos is only significant within the paradigm of religion,[2] opposing order and threatening the paradigm itself. The idea of the opposing force gives creativity to and bolsters the idea of the Sacred, and is therefore extremely powerful. Within the framework of religion or myth, chaos in never finally overcome or defeated. In a sense, it serves as the necessary evil which shows off the power of the gods.
Smith also examines Eliade's ideas concerning the center as the place of intersection between the upper world and the earth and concludes that the center is many times much more disjunctive than it is conjunctive. His critique raises issues of selection which he talks about in the idea of religion regarding the selection of certain data arrive at conclusions at the exclusion of others. He mentions that Eliade simply ignores or misreads the Babylonian creation epic.[3] He alludes to other primordial narratives that were ignored by Eliade as well.
The importance or inherent danger in classification and closed minded approach to studying ancient religious or mythical practices raises Smith's issue of comparison. The inherent danger is that of imposing a bias onto what one is looking at and then drawing wrong conclusions. This is a point he first makes in his introduction of religion (Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown 1982), in which he discusses the difference between a theologian and a historian. A historian finds it difficult to find a place to stand in such a messy world and its chaos. It is Eliade who stresses that this is the fundamental question. However, both the history of man and of religion is wrapped up in this question.
Having looked at Smith's concept of religion as an academic construct and his ideas of comparing, with its limitations and human element, as shown in his critique of Eliade and the data he might have chosen over other data less supportive of his theory, Smith introduces us to his concept of mapping. Picking up with Eliade's ideas of finding a play for the religious historian to stand in this rather messy world, Smith proposes a key element to his mapping strategy which is that the nature of our study as religious historians is to study the passion and drama of man discovering the truth of what it is to be human CITATION Jon78 \l 1033 (Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion 1978). Within a historical framework, human beings are engaged in a quest of discovery of who they are and what their relationship is with the cosmos in which they leave. It is a search for meaning and understanding. Religion, in the academic sense, is a study of the various ways to map, construct, and inhabit such positions of power through the use of myths, rituals, and experiences of transformation.[4]
Within that framework is the key understanding of the profane and the sacred. The first step to finding meaning in life is the realization that it is order which gives us meaning. We are bent to classification as human beings, and while nothing is inherently profane or sacred, order designates them to be so. These are categories or mobile boundaries that shift according to the map being used. This mapping strategy creates a world in which people are able to gain significance and value. It is the creation of a space, which has limitations ascribed and freedoms enjoyed. Certain things are defined outside the space and other things with in, but a premium is placed on proper place. From that designated space some things determined to be undesirable could be pushed to the periphery. This establishment of space bespeaks of power and value and both power and value give meaning and order to humanity.
Smith raises a rather disturbing flag when discussing this mapping strategy as being a world locative map when he says that this strategy historically found itself in the hands of scribal elites, who through their ability to read and write maintained severe restrictions on and control of place. Texts were held by these elites and existed and were used by the priests to perpetuate their temples, and as such a self-serving ideology developed. He raises the issue in relation to religion in which in order to control people by only allowing certain elite to control the texts of a religion, used ritual and myth to control people through congruency and conformity. Religion played a leading role in dividing humanity into distinctions such as us versus them or Hellene versus Barbarian.
The dangers of religion in this type of mapping are that it has a dehumanizing effect, which is diametrically opposed to Smith's key formulation which is to discover the truth of what it means to be human. In addition to robbing a person of his humanity, it hampers our understanding of the worlds of other human beings.
As for choices a religious historian makes for comparison in his studies within religion, Smith chooses to look at the incongruities found in the data. Since congruities and conformities have such negative effects, it is possible that by observing and considering the incongruities to gain valuable insight. For example, in ritual use, such as the bull-roarer used among the Australian tribes, a certain belief is held up to the age of initiation regarding its efficacy. When a boy becomes a man he is told the truth concerning the fable. While one might view the use of a lie as indicating the loss of perspective of the ritual, Smith believes it is the incongruity between the expectation and the actuality that serves as a vehicle of religious experience.[5] It is this sudden breakthrough of knowledge that is regarded as an epiphany. It is this point of rupture in which the eternal breaks through into the immediate that defines the religious experience.
This concept of mapping proposed by Smith of the standard cultural mapping in which the primitive is viewed as non-human or them prevents us from recognizing what is human or humane in other cultures. We tend to consider the extraordinary, excitable, exotic aspects of religion rather than the ordinary categories of experience. As Smith so aptly states, Human life-or perhaps more pointedly, humane life is not a series of burning bushes.[6] Congruity, then, is not a valid option in choosing data for comparison.
So what does mapping say to us as religious historians? While maps are representational, we have to get beyond the maps to the territory itself. While they are not the ideal method of understanding religion they are really all we have. Mapping may provide an exaggerated reality. As Smith notes with the choices that Eliade made in studying tribal practices, it is so easy in our choices to superimpose our thinking and wills onto our subjects.
In conclusion, something should be said about Smith's ideas of Ritual and Place. One of his main tenets, in the study of religion, is the idea of place versus no place. Smith, who was influenced by Eliade, elaborates on the idea of a sacred center. In Eliade's concept this center operated as the point of contact between earth and heaven that provided a central point for man. He believed that if such a center point is destroyed that chaos ensued. Smith concludes that Eliade either misunderstood or misread the myth concerning the sacred pole he used in delineating his idea of sacred place CITATION Jon87 \l 1033 (Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual 1987). Smith determines through a re-examination of the data that rather than being a place of conjunction and access between earth and heaven, it pole represents a place of disassociation. Here again, Smith highlights the importance of clearly understanding the scientific data before making broad application to primitive societies.
So what was sacred space for Smith? What was its importance?
A sacred place is a place of clarification (a focusing lens) where men and gods are held to be transparent to one another. It is a place where, as in all forms of communication, static and noise, (i.e. the accidental), are decreased, so that the exchange of information will be increased[7] CITATION Jon78 \l 1033 (Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion 1978).
Smith looks at the sacred space or the temple as a focusing lens where the ordinary becomes significant, just by the mere fact of being there. The place and the rituals become sacred by having our attention drawn to them. In this sense there is nothing inherently sacred or profane. These are as previously stated, not hard and fast categories, but mobile boundaries, determined by the mapping strategy employed. Things are not inherently sacred, only sacred in relation to other things. Rituals, as Smith proposed from ancient hunting rituals, are used to rationalize the incongruities of the world around us. The world is inherently messy. It is chaotic and disorderly. The worshiper enters into sacred space which has been designated and set aside as sacred space, and as the worshipers focus in that place upon the ritual, the incongruities of the world began to make some sense. It may have been this realization the Psalmist David experienced in Psalm 73: 12-17, where he lamented how the wicked seemed to daily increase in wealth and blessing and professed that he did not understand the inequity of how God could bless them. Then he says in verse 17, Until I went into the sanctuary of God, and I understood their end.
Sacred space and concentration upon ritual bring an understanding and help to rationalize the incongruity of the world and provides the religious experience that confirms that which makes a person human.
Conclusion
Strongly influenced by Eliade, Jonathan Smith brings many additional understandings to the academic study of religion. His idea of mapping helps to define the limitations we have to understanding, not only our own world, but the worlds of others. His beliefs about the sacred and the profane and their relationship to forms of classification add a new dimension to the understanding of religion and how it allows sacred space to be defined. The idea of the temple and ritual as a lens to bring into focus and gain objectivity as to the incongruities of the messy world around us, helps to understand both what is humane and our own humanness.
Works Cited
BIBLIOGRAPHY \l 1033 Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. Norfolk: Biddles Ltd, 1966.
Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
. Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978.
. To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.
[1] The Wobbling Pivot P. 93
[2] Ibid, P. 97
[3] Ibid, P. 99
[4] Map Is Not Territory, P. 29
[5] Map Is Not Territory, P. 301.
[6] Ibid, P. 308.
[7] Map Is Not Territory, The Bare Facts of Ritual, P. 54