Introduction
“The ecological approach to religion is not new.”1
In his article “An Ecological Approach to Religion”, Åke Hultkrantz argues for a causal relationship between natural environments and religions.2 Since its publication, Hultkrantz’s “religio-ecological method” has been one of the few attempts to explore this potential relationship; it is both compelling and, due to its lack of substantiation, unsatisfying. Hultkrantz suggests that aspects of religions, like cultures, are shaped by the environmental contexts in which they develop. This assertion is made without support and the question raised by his article is left tantalizingly unaddressed: how do environments affect the generation and development of religions? The investigation taken up in this dissertation is one attempt to address this question. It is impossible to explore the full range of possible effects that natural environments may have had on religions in a single volume. By way of contributing to the investigation of this large question, this work focuses on a specific comparative case study: the potential causal relationship between “agriculturally marginal landscapes”and the two oldest religions regarded today as “monotheistic”. This dissertation argues that the respective origins (and early development) of communities of worship centered around Ahura Mazda and YHWH were affected by similar environmental contexts.3
1 Ake Hultkrantz, “Ecology of Religion: Its Scope and Methodology,” in Science of Religion. Studies in Methodology : Proceedings of the Study Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions, Held in Turku, Finland, August 27-31, 1973 (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, Inc., 1979), 225.
2 Ake Hultkrantz, “An Ecological Approach to Religion,” Ethnos 31, no. 1–4 (1966): 131–50.
3 Throughout this dissertation references to these deities will be made using their “proper names” as given in the texts associated with their respective communities of worship. It appears that the Tetragrammaton is the closest approximation of the “name” of the Israelite deity described in the Hebrew book of Exodus (6:3). The different histories of these deities makes the problem of calling YHWH by any name potentially much more complicated than naming Ahura Mazda.
