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This conclusion reviews the themes of the book, in particular its notion of ‘imagining witchcraft’. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, it claims that witchcraft, like religion, is a second-order category created by scholars for their own comparative purposes: accordingly scholars have the responsibility to use the category well. Drawing on the work of Clifford Geertz, the conclusion argues that we study not ‘The Other’ but others—real people and their own projects of self-imagination. Accused witches were caught in multiple layers of imaginative labeling—as criminals, Satanists, pagans, demoniacs. They also imagined themselves as Christians, wives, mothers. The task of this book has been to explore these multiple imaginations in an attempt to understand all the actors caught up in witch-trials: the accused, their accusers, magistrates, and alleged victims.

The introduction establishes the book's foundation by reviewing the history and critique of the comparative method, also reciting rebuttals posed by proponents of a new comparativism. Responding to Jonathan Z. Smith's criticisms of past comparative studies and his prescription for an approach that furthers the field and its study, the introduction outlines how each chapter uses comparison to investigate and hone categories and assumptions central to the discipline. Examined throughout the book are conceptions of “the sacred,” a category hotly contested by practitioners and recently truncated or neglected by scholars. The introduction frames the sacred as an enlivening category for comparing multilayered religious contexts, one that connotes transcendent meaning and power yet is not limited to the metaphysical or hegemonic. As an intricately woven reference structure, the sacred can be especially useful when casting the wide net of comparison; moreover, comparative explorations provide multifaceted scenarios from which to deepen understandings of the sacred in its complexity.

This chapter draws from the field of comparative religion in order to map out the prospects and pitfalls of juxtaposing the Talmudic and Middle Persian corpora, a task beset with significant limitations. Building on the writings of Jonathan Z. Smith, this chapter argues that the best comparative approaches toward Talmudic and Middle Persian literatures are ones that seek a nuanced application of sameness and difference and avoid humanistic attempts at harmonization. Instead of forcing insular, exegetical Talmudic and Middle Persian texts into dialogue with one another through parallel taxonomies, this chapter explains why the rabbis are insular in a diverse social context and how comparativists can differentiate between (a) which types of data are phenomenological affinities between two ancient religions in contact, and (b) which are evidence of intercultural activity. After this theoretical discussion of comparison, the chapter goes on to provide readers with a sweeping overview of the Middle Persian (Pahlavi) corpus, highlighting the key differences between it and the Talmud, such as their dates and transmissional backgrounds, as well as those sources that prove most useful for Talmudic studies, such as the Book of a Thousand Judgments, the Zand-Avesta, and archaeological relics such as seals and inscriptions.

This chapter explores more recent work in the field of religious studies in which the question of defining religion is again addressed and in which the modern parameters of the category of religion are called into question. Wilfred Cantwell Smith's and Jonathan Z. Smith's quite different approaches to “religion” are discussed, as are current discourses on rejecting religion as a category, especially those of Asad, Fitzgerald, Dubuisson, and Maurice Bloch. The chapter also explores the special relationship between an idea of religion as a distinct field and the phenomenon of colonialism, as well as the idea of the secular state. In the end, the chapter concludes that what we call “religion” is, as Bloch argues, an arbitrary portioning of the larger social imaginary.

Using the methods of Mircea Eliade, Jonathan Z. Smith, and Wendy Doniger as representative of the history of religions approach to the study of religion, the chapter compares these figures to selected postmodern thinkers on the topics of hermeneutics, comparison, and difference.

Religion scholar Jonathan Z. Smith identifies five modes of social comparison: the ethnographic, encyclopedic, morphologic, evolutionary, and statistical. Each mode essentially shapes the perception of difference and similarity. This is particularly evident in the hierarchies and teleologies that form central parts of some modes, often valuing the members of one category over another because they are “higher” or “more advanced.” These modes bear examination because each form of social or cultural knowledge operative in British India–or anywhere–necessarily depends on at least one of these modes.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's account of the compatibility of theological and religious studies. He says that aside from matters of academic politics, there is no conflict between theological and religious studies. The conflict, as he sees it, “arises almost wholly with the transcendentalists who propose a powerful, rival understanding of the necessarily plural interpretative and comparative ventures which characterize the study of religion”.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's account of his appreciation for the work of Wilfred Cantwell Smith. He reflects on W. C. Smith's article “The Study of Religion and the Study of the Bible” published in Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR) in 1971. He suggests that W. C. Smith's constant use of the singular “The Bible” and “The Church” commits the same sort of reification, the same sort of misplaced concreteness, he has elsewhere warned against. Jonathan Z. Smith also says that the JAAR article opened for him a larger world of texts that he probably never would have otherwise read, texts which raise issues he never would have thought about.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's account of new frontiers for education in America. He identifies a new situation in education, characterized by a shift from a language of topics and subjects to a language of skills and capacities broadly understood. He says that the task of components within educational institutions, especially those preeminently committed to collegiate education such as honors programs, is to experiment with this new situation rather than to construct sanctuaries in which to protect the last exemplars of a dying breed. The task before them is the celebration and utilization of attributes such as professionalism and diversity to educational ends. Smith then goes on to describe how such experimentation can proceed.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's account on graduate education. He discusses the teleology of graduate studies: the dissertation and the teaching. He cites the lack of a graceful middle range in the graduate curriculum, i.e. what is offered between a student's first course and the moment when he or she has fulfilled all course requirements. Smith then addresses the particular matter of religious studies at the graduate level. He presents two arguments. First, that the debates over the nature of the academic study of religion have rarely been substantive; they have been largely political and tactical. Second, that the graduate study of religion was preceded, in the typical student's career, by a course of postbaccalaureate professional study within a theological faculty.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's responses to two questions: “What is the difference between religion and religious studies?” “What is the difference between religious studies and other humanistic and social scientific fields?” To the first question he responds, either every difference or no difference at all. To the second question he says that, “the distinction between religious studies and other humanistic disciplines is largely heuristic” and that “religious studies is simply one more functional way of cutting up the pie in the modern university”.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's account of the development of undergraduate education. He says that “coherence and organization will not emerge from merely rearranging already existing courses by a process that resembles Lévi-Strauss's bricolage; it will only be achieved by courses specifically designed to fulfill widely agreed upon educational purposes.” He also identifies a shift from a language of topics and subjects to a language of skills and capacities. He believes that this is a forecast of the future shape of curricular discussions and marks a return to the classical and medieval understandings of the liberal arts as, preeminently, ways of doing.

Chapters 5 and 6 move from genealogy to analysis, with the aim of dismantling the category “Abrahamic religions.” Chapter 5 begins this process by turning to the intimate connections that develop between disciplinary formation and words. Where do the words, for example, that we employ to analyze data that we regard as “religious” come from? How do such words help (and hinder) our ability to understand? What is gained (and lost) from our use of generic terms such as “Abrahamic religions”? The argument of this chapter is that we put far too much stock in generic and essentialist terms with the result that we lose sight of the variations subsumed under them.

This chapter presents a speech by Jonathan Z. Smith, which starts from the proposition that an introductory course serves the primary function of introducing the student to college-level work, to work in the liberal arts. He discusses the importance of stepping back and reflecting on the nature of the liberal arts curriculum; that every item studied in an introductory course must have a conversation partner; and that an introductory course should include a “laboratory” component.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's speech on connections, specifically those involving the American Academy of Religion (AAR). He identifies and discusses three areas of common concern and discourse which give learned societies a functional unity: theory, education, and public discourse. Each of these three areas also connects the insular work of a particular association with a different, wider audience.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's assessment of the state of religions studies in the US. He first provides some generalizations about religious studies, including how professional associations seem to foster localisms of every stripe, thus undercutting the very function that requires their existence; that religious studies are vulnerable to economic forces; and the lack of theoretical and professional discourse to mitigate and negotiate the debates over religion. He then focuses on a 1993 crisis involving religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's views about the college major, which he calls the great, unexamined aspect of undergraduate education. He says that although majors consume more than half of a student's college career, and more than half of a faculty member's teaching effort, the major is held largely unaccountable to the wider faculty or institution except in the most ceremonial sense. He also calls on faculty to cease passing off their responsibility to students and their high schools. It is not the careerism of students that has disfigured liberal learning, but that of the faculty and their colleagues.