Celibacy and Religious Traditions

Celibacy and Religions Traditions is a collection of essays edited by Carl Olson. Each essay covers a different culture or religion: (ancient) Greece and Rome, Judaism, early Christianity, medieval Christianity, Protestantism, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Daoism, Shinto, Yoruba, Native Americans, and Mesoamericans. Each chapter is short and therefore the reader should expect a wide survey and not too much depth.For the most part, the book was nicely organized and the writing was interesting, not too dull, yet still scholarly in tone. I found it interesting how celibacy could be viewed as a form of purity, or it could be seen in the context of social controls, or how celibacy could be linked to gaining certain powers. It was also interesting to trace celibacy's role in Christianity over the ages. I didn't realize that, originally, it was seen as unnatural, and I also didn't know that life-long celibacy in Judaism is frowned upon as well. I was actually surprised at how many cultures and religions either frowned upon celibacy or otherwise had an ambivalent relationship with it.That said, there were a few obvious typos, such as "god" for "good", and the chapter of celibacy amongst the Yoruba people was very poorly organized. The chapter on Shinto had no citations! At all. I would expect a scholarly work to have some citations, especially since all the other essays in this collection had them. One of the chapters on celibacy in Hinduism (there are two) unfortunately cites Wendy Doniger. The citation is brief and the rest of the chapter seems okay to me.The best chapters are those on Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism. These chapters are lucid, cover a lot of material without weighing the reader down in details, and provide lots of food for thought.If this is a subject you find interesting, I would recommend purchasing this book.