Death, ritual and belief : the rhetoric of funerary rites
Describing a great variety of funeral rituals from major world religions and from local traditions, this book shows how cultures not only cope with corpses but also create an added value for living through the growth of afterlife beliefs.
Comparative studies
viii, 263 pages ; 24 cm
9780826454836, 9780826454843, 0826454836, 0826454844
1261047839
Symbols, death and dying; rituals and corpses; soul, ethics and destiny; ancestors and identity; ghosts, purity and the influential dead; theories of grief; memorials; sacrifice, violence and conquest; the death of Jesus and Christianity; death, grief and the birth of religions.