Rethinking ghosts in world religions / edited by Mu-chou Poo.

• Superior document: Numen book series. Studies in the history of religions, v. 123
• TeilnehmendeR: Pu, Muzhou.
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in the history of religions ; 123.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (360 p.)
• Notes: Proceedings of a conference held in Dec. 2005.

The central theme of this volume is to re-examine the received concepts and images of ghosts in various religious cultures ranging from the Ancient Near East and Egypt to the Old Testament, the Classical Era, Early Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Early India, and Medieval China. As a religious phenomenon, the realm of ghosts has been less studied than the realm of the divine. Through a collaborative effort by scholars from different disciplines, this volume proposes a multi-cultural approach to construct a wider and complicated picture of the phenomenon of ghosts and spirits in human societies and to have a grasp of the various problems involved in understanding the phenomenon of ghost.

Table of Contents

Wind and smoke : giving up the ghost of Enkidu, comprehending Enkidu's ghosts / Jerrold S. Cooper -- Belief and the dead in Pharaonic Egypt / Christopher J. Eyre -- Where have all the ghosts gone? : evolution of a concept in biblical literature / Sze-kar Wan -- Ghosts and responsibility : the Hebrew Bible, Confucius, Plato / Steven Shankman -- The Roman manes : the dead as gods / Charles W. King -- The ghostly troop and the battle over death : William of Auvergne (d. 1249) connects Christian, Old Norse, and Irish views / Alan E. Bernstein -- Ghosts of the European Enlightenment / Fernando Vidal -- Ghost, vampire, and scientific naturalism : observation and evidence in the supernatural fiction of Grant Allen, Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle / Shang-jen Li -- The cult of Vetāla and Tantric fantasy / Po-chi Huang -- The culture of ghosts in the Six Dynasties period (c. 220-589 C.E.) / Mu-chou Poo -- Allegorical narrative in Six Dynasties anomaly tales : ghostly sightings and afterworld vengeance / Yuan-ju Liu -- Chinese ghosts : reconciling psychoanalytic, structuralist, and Marxian perspectives / P. Steven Sangren.