NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 79, Nummer 3, 2025

Michael Taussig’s The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980) has had a continuing impact as an inspiration for ethnographies of resistance and the material turn in anthropology. Perhaps the most enduring influence is its analysis of quasi-religious narratives as a critique of Western, hegemonic systems. The article traces Taussig’s text’s lasting impact on the ethnography of the devil and concludes, however, that one crucial problem in Taussig’s analysis remains to be solved.

In 1903, the famous Jewish scholar Solomon Schechter articulated his belief that Higher Bible Criticism was not merely a scholarly endeavor but a tool that could fuel antisemitism. Higher Criticism as a scientific method for the study of the Hebrew Bible had originated in Germany in the nineteenth century and was mostly practiced by Protestant scholars. The name most associated with Higher Criticism is Julius Wellhausen whose work Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1883) is indeed laced with supersessionist and openly anti-Jewish remarks. Jewish scholars of the so-called Wissenschaft des Judentums objected to Higher Criticism as they felt that the Christians had “stolen the Bible” from the Jews. Yet there were also Jewish scholars of that day who were attracted to some of Wellhausen’s ideas, such as his predilection for the prophetic voice in the Bible.