The Encyclopedia of Religion, Volume 7

A substantial portion of the opening section is devoted to iconography and religious imagery. After examining iconoclasm as a historical and theological phenomenon, the encyclopedia treats iconography both theoretically and through individual cultural traditions. These include African, Australian Aboriginal, Native American, Mesoamerican, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic contexts. The articles investigate the relationship between visual representation and religious meaning, showing how images, symbols, sacred objects, divine figures, ritual forms, temples, manuscripts, sculpture, and painting function within particular religious traditions. 

The volume is notable for its comparative method. Rather than treating religious images simply as artistic objects, contributors analyze their ritual functions, theological meanings, historical development, social contexts, and relationship to myth and sacred experience. Articles on Hindu and Buddhist iconography, for example, explain how visual forms encode doctrinal concepts, divine attributes, cosmological ideas, and practices of devotion, while studies of Jewish and Christian traditions consider the complex historical relationship between representation, prohibition, symbolism, and worship.

Particularly important in this volume is the extensive treatment of religious iconography, through which readers can examine how different civilizations have transformed theological, cosmological, and ritual ideas into visible forms. The combination of specialist articles, cross-references, visual documentation, and bibliographical guidance makes the volume valuable both as a reference encyclopedia and as a foundation for specialized research in the academic study of religion.