ABSTRACT
The historical record has long posed a problem for the academic study of religion on account of the fact that history has taken on a merely supporting role, subservient to what some scholars maintain should be the elucidation of the universal and thus ahistorical meaning of the sacred and its role in helping us to understand religious experience. But if the study of religion is itself understood as a human exercise predicated on other human exercises and productions, then the role of history and the historical record should play a far more prominent role. As Arthur McCalla agues, the field of religion has struggled with the notion of history. This is all the more remarkable since one of its major subfields is, after all, commonly called in English the “history of religions.”.
