Jonathan Z. Smith

Jonathan Zittell Smith (November 21, 1938 – December 30, 2017), also known as J. Z. Smith, was an American historian of religions. He was based at the University of Chicago for most of his career. His research included work on such diverse topics as Christian origins, the theory of ritual, Hellenistic religions, Māori cults in the 19th century, and the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, as well as methodological studies on such common scholarly tools as description, comparison, and interpretation. An essayist, his works include Map Is Not Territory, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, and a collection of his writings on pedagogy, On Teaching Religion.

Life and career Smith was born on November 21, 1938, in Brooklyn, New York City, and grew up in Manhattan. As a teenager, he desired to become an agrostologist. with a thesis on anthropological thought, focused on Sir James George Frazer, The Glory, Jest and Riddle: James George Frazer and The Golden Bough. and served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2008.

While at the College of the University of Chicago Smith also wrote on pedagogy and the reform of undergraduate education in the United States. This emphasis on teaching also affected Smith's output in another way—up until that point, much of his written work began as lectures, and most of his publications were essays.

Smith never used a computer. He typed or hand-wrote all of his papers. Furthermore, he despised the telephone and thought the cell phone was "an absolute abomination."

Smith died of lung cancer on December 30, 2017. He was survived by his wife Elaine, daughter Siobhan, and son Jason.

Comparison of religions Intellectually, Smith was influenced by neo-Kantian thinkers, especially Ernst Cassirer and Émile Durkheim. He was also influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Smith's dissertation focused on James Frazer's The Golden Bough and the method that Frazer used in the comparison of different religions. Later, much of Smith's work focused on the problem of comparison and how best to compare data taken from societies that are very different from one another. His most influential essay on this topic is perhaps "In Comparison a Magic Dwells".

Books and selected works The Glory, Jest and Riddle: James George Frazer and The Golden Bough, PhD thesis, Yale University 1969 (unpublished) Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions, University of Chicago Press, 1975 (paperback 1993): Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, University of Chicago Press, 1982 (paperback 1988): To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual, University of Chicago Press, 1987 (paperback 1992): "Dying and Rising Gods," Encyclopedia of Religion (New York, 1987), 4:521-27. Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, University of Chicago Press, 1990 (paperback 1994): The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (Jonathan Z. Smith, editor, William Scott Green, associate editor, with The American Academy of Religion), 1995: Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, University of Chicago Press, 2004 On Teaching Religion: Essays by Jonathan Z. Smith (ed. Christopher Lehrich), Oxford University Press, 2012 Reading J. Z. Smith: Essays and Interview, 1999–2010 (ed. Russell T. McCutcheon and Willi Braun), Oxford University Press, 2018 "Narratives into Problems": The College Introductory Course and the Study of Religion", The Journal of the American Academy of Religion