The shift in approach described by Taylor in his introduction to the JSRNC appears to be connected to a similar attempt, to take a wide perspective, in the development of The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature under his editorship. Like the JSRNC, the encyclopedia appears limited to representing the current state of research in the field. Pertinent to this investigation, however, is an entry on the “religio-ecological method” that Hultkrantz laid out in his 1966 article in Ethnos.¹ The appearance of Hultkrantz’s approach is mediated by the fact that the entry itself seems to have little to do with his work. In his gloss on Hultkrantz’s “perspective,” Jordan Paper gives over roughly ten percent of the entry to a confusing summary of the approach that renders it sounding more like the publisher’s description of Tanner’s and Mitchell’s Religion and Environment.² Although Hultkrantz, as discussed below, was not always clear on the details of his approach, he was quite consistent across basic descriptions of the method in publications spanning nearly thirty years.³ Thus, it is surprising to find that Paper dedicates only 208 of the 1954 words of this entry to discussion of Hultkrantz and his method. The remaining nearly ninety percent is intended to provide a “demonstration” of the approach that culminates with the following paragraph:

The distancing of humans from animals, plants, and Earth in post-industrial cultures becomes absolute. Theriomorphic and plant spirits, once replaced by anthropomorphic spirits, are for an increasing number of contemporary Westerners now replaced by alien spirits from cosmically distant sacred realms. The North American spiritual journey into romanticized wilderness has been superseded by fantasized alien abduction.⁴

This quote highlights the distance Paper appears to have travelled from Hultkrantz or his “religio-ecological method.” Taken by itself, this could be dismissed as an example of scholarly wandering that happens to have been included in an encyclopedic volume. Taken together with the trend of scholarly interest that appears to have reductively constructed the relationship between religions and environments as a unidirectional flow of influence, Paper’s entry seems to be less of a resource than a barrier to understanding the kind of scholarship suggested by Hultkrantz in his proposal of the “religio-ecological method.”

In his entry in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature Paper claims that Hultkrantz’s approach was “stimulated” by the anthropological work of William Sanders.⁵ Paper cites Sanders’ book (co-authored with Barbara J. Price) Mesoamerica: The Evolution of Civilization as a source for this claim, despite the fact that Hultkrantz’s methodological essay in Ethnos was published two years earlier.⁶ It is not the goal of this chapter to attempt to decipher Paper’s thought process in the course of writing this entry; it is, however, important to correct his mistake as to the inspiration for Hultkrantz’s work. In his 1966 article, Hultkrantz explicitly builds his “religio-ecological method” on the work of Julian Steward: “On the whole, Steward’s culture-ecological theory provides us with a clear-cut tool for measuring the impact of environment on culture.”⁷ An examination of publication dates concerning Hultkrantz’s reference to Steward’s 1955 book, Theory of Cultural Change (published two years before the date that Sander’s doctoral dissertation was submitted to the faculty of Harvard University) appears to prove Paper’s claim invalid. Further, Sander’s interest in the effects of the environment on the development of Mesoamerican cultures appears to stem from the same general source as the “religio-ecological method:” seemingly widespread interest, on the part of social scientists at the time, in adapting the natural scientific concept of “Ecology” and, specifically, the resulting development of a “research strategy” within Anthropology of “cultural ecology.”⁸ It is important to this investigation to establish the source material that lead to the development of the “religio-ecological method” because Hultkrantz seems to adopt, with little change, his major conceptual framework directly from Steward.

A key concept developed by Steward and deployed in support of his “multilinear evolution” theory in Theory of Cultural Change: the Methodology of Multilinear Evolution, is the idea of the “cultural core.” He writes “[It is] the constellations of features which are most closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements. The core includes such social, political, and religious patterns empirically determined to be closely connected with these arrangements. Innumerable other features may have great potential variability because they are less strongly tied to the core.”⁹ It appears that this concept of a “cultural core” is integral to Hultkrantz’s understanding of the “religio-ecological method.” In his contribution to Circumpolar Religion and Ecology, written nearly thirty years after “An Ecological Approach to Religion”, Hultkrantz explains that the features of a “cultural core” pertinent to “Religion” can be considered a “religious core.”¹⁰ Steward argues that the “cultural core” is not a universal unit for cross-cultural comparison, but rather it can be used heuristically to interpret data in developing a “cultural type.”¹¹

It is this “type” that functions for cross-cultural comparisons and for examining connections between features of cultures and environments.¹² Hultkrantz appears to assimilate much of Steward’s concept with a simple shift in terminology: 

The quality and essence of this environmental impact on religion may be assessed in the same way as in cultural ecology, viz., by the formulation of the concept type of religion corresponding to Steward’s cultural type. The type of religion contains those religious patterns and features which belong to or are intimately associated with the cultural core and therefore arise out of environmental adaptations…Type of religion may now be defined as a constellation of important religious traits and complexes which in different places have similar ecological adaptation and represent a similar cultural level.¹³

Hultkrantz’s integration of Steward’s theoretical approach points to an important methodological consideration for this dissertation: connections between environments and religions are best seen at the level of “categories.” Recall that the present investigation is aimed at examining the potential causal relationship between “agriculturally marginal landscapes” (a category of environment) and the two oldest religions regarded today as “monotheistic” (a category of religion). Although methodological details are discussed in greater depth in the next chapter, it is important to tease out particular aspects of Hultkrantz’s “religio-ecological method” that can be used in this research from those that are too problematic for effective application.

In “Ecology of Religion, Evolutionism and Comparative Religion” Svein Bjerke articulates a key issue with Hultkrantz’s adapted “religious core” concept. He writes, “The 'type' of religion is thus basically the religious aspect of the cultural core. It is, however, conceded by Steward that it is difficult to decide with some precision exactly what elements to include in the cultural core as its definition in any given case…”¹⁴ This lack of specificity and the apparent limited potential for standardization across studies seems to weaken the applicability of Hultkrantz’s approach. Bjerke observes, “Hultkrantz is well aware of the difficulties inherent in the concept of cultural core and thus of his 'type of religion', but he still seems to conceive of the distinction between the ecologically explainable type of religion and the historically explainable features which are not part of the 'type of religion', as crucial to his religio-ecological approach.”¹⁵ Bjerke’s criticism is grounded in claims made by Hultkrantz regarding the applicability of his “religio-ecological method” to only those religions with features obviously impacted by environmental contexts.¹⁶ Although Bjerke’s comments were presented in 1973, less than a decade after Hultkrantz’s article appeared in Ethnos, they apply as late as twenty years later when the latter maintained, “The method presupposes a situation where the impact of nature on culture is discernable. In practice this limits the use of the model primarily to investigations of what were formerly called ‘primitive’ religions.”¹⁷

It is difficult to deny the problematic nature of a supposedly scientific “method” proposed with the caveat that it can only be used in cases where results are obvious in advance. It is important to recognize the type of scholarship that fits within these particular confines: that of anthropologists like Hultkrantz. Considering his voluminous publication history and career, it seems fair to characterize Hultkrantz as a scholar interested primarily in the religions of indigenous societies. His interest in the effects of the environments contextualizing the development of these religions has been established, but it is important to identify the path that led Hultkrantz to this particular interest. The histories of Anthropology and Religious Studies are full of work by scholars like Hultkrantz, who have attempted to apply social scientific methods to their study of specific indigenous religions. The various individual intentions behind taking up such work and the consequences of scholarship resulting from these endeavors can, at best, be described as a “mixed bag.” 

A volume such as Circumpolar Religion and Ecology would seem to be aimed at addressing the question that motivates the present investigation, but the studies appear to be limited by the same issue noted by Hultkrantz regarding his “method:” the lack of applicability. In fairness to many of the thoughtful scholars whose work is published in this volume, the questions motivating the research presented in the book do not seem specifically concerned with the influence of nature environments on the generation and development of religions. Instead, potential connections of this sort are described or observed in the course of examining a particular feature of this society or that culture. It is beyond the purview of this investigation to unpack the long history of what Alice B. Kehoe calls “the European Primitivism tradition,” but it is cogent to this discussion to point out that within such a history are studies to which the “religio-ecological method” could be applied.¹⁸ Although Hultkrantz is not alone in claiming that indigenous religions are more directly affected by environmental contexts, the lack of data supporting this claim underlies the motivation for this dissertation. It is unfortunate and ironic that, in decades of calling for scholarship to fill this gap, Hultkrantz himself precluded the possibility of research that might validate his claim.¹⁹ It seems quite possible that the “religio-ecological method” is limited in applicability because it was generated in a culture that conceived of an insurmountable gap between European Christian and indigenous societies.²⁰ This dissertation is not intended to validate Hultkrantz’s claims or hold up his work as a model of scholarship. Rather, this research shows the influence of natural environments on the origins of specific aspects of the worship of YHWH and Ahura Mazda that appear integral to the modern religions of Judaism and Zoroastrianism, respectively. Due to the limitations built into his “religio-ecological method,” Hultkrantz’s work can, at most, be treated as a theory concerning the potential influence of environments on religions, rather than a methodology for investigating such an idea. 

It is to his credit that Hultkrantz spent decades arguing for this approach despite the threat of being accused of “Materialistic Reductionism” or “Environmental Determinism.” Steward and Hultkrantz appear to have been aware of these criticisms and attempted to protect their work from accusations of this kind. So too must it be discussed for purposes of this investigation. Steward argues for an approach to examining patterns of cultural development that “is distinctive in searching for parallels of limited occurrence instead of universals.”²¹ Although he is ultimately concerned with identifying the variables or conditions that might lead to such parallels, it is significant that Steward explicitly distinguishes his approach from generalizing perspectives that assume either (1) that cultures develop within a universal sequence of evolutionary stages or (2) that cultures develop under relatively unique circumstances and are inevitably different.²² Steward writes, “I wish to stress that my delimitation of the problem and method precludes all efforts to achieve universal explanations or formulations of human behavior.”²³ Similarly, Hultkrantz differentiates his approach from the work of scholars who “favour a materialistic explanation of religion,” by limiting the scope of applicability to cases where a connection is obvious without research.²⁴ He writes, 

Some ecologists have used this general scheme to introduce a reductionist, materialistic view of cultural development. However, my own conception of the nature of ecological impact differs considerably. I believe that the environment offers materials, associations, and perspectives which may influence a people, but it does not automatically impose itself on a culture, nor does it constitute the conditions of cultural creativity. A society’s use of its environment expresses, rather than causes, its cultural ideas and activities. In a way, the environment may, directly or indirectly, influence the directions of human creativity.²⁵

Hultkrantz appears to wrestle with articulating the boundaries of these limitations and although he seems able to communicate the fact that religions are the results of complex interactions of various factors, he struggles to parse out the environmental variable.