The big idea: Religious language does something ordinary language does not: it points at what its speakers say cannot be said plainly.
So the words work differently — and reading them as flat statements is how outsiders misread traditions.
Émile Durkheim drew the distinction most scholars still start from: the sacred is what a community sets apart and treats as not ordinary; the profane is everything else. Profane here means everyday, not disrespectful.
What is sacred is not a property of the object. It is how the community treats it — which is why the same river, book or day can be sacred to one community and unremarkable to its neighbour.
What setting apart looks like
In place
A building, a room inside it, a river, a mountain, a direction to face. Often a threshold you cross, or a covering you put on or take off.
In time
A day of the week, a month, a season of fasting, an hour of prayer. The calendar itself carries the meaning.
In handling
Washing before touching, wrapping, raising, never placing on the floor. How a community handles an object tells you what it holds the object to be.
Place, time, handling — three ways a community marks something off.
Free preview
This is the free notes preview
You're reading the free notes. Aimnova Pro unlocks the full study experience — and you can try it with your first topic free to keep:
- FlashcardsLock in vocabulary and key terms with spaced repetition.
- Practice questionsAnswer exam-style questions and get instant AI marking.
- Mock exams & past-paper vaultSit full mocks and see exactly how examiners award marks.
- Personalised study planA daily plan built around your exam date and weak areas.
Three words that do not mean what they mean outside this subject: Get these three wrong and the whole course reads wrongly. Each is a technical term here.
| Term | What it does NOT mean here | What it does mean |
|---|---|---|
| Myth | A false story, or a story nobody believes | A narrative that carries a community's understanding of origins, order and purpose. Whether it is historically accurate is a separate question the word does not settle |
| Ritual | An empty routine done out of habit | A patterned action whose form matters — repeated because the repetition is part of the meaning, not in spite of it |
| Symbol | An arbitrary label standing in for something | A sign that participates in what it points to. Adherents often treat the symbol and what it signifies as inseparable |
Calling a story a myth in an exam answer is not an insult and not a verdict on whether it happened. It is a claim about the work the story does for the community that tells it.
If you mean "this did not happen", say that — and expect to be asked how you know.
The mark-losing sentence: Never write "this is just a myth, so it is not really true" — that is two errors in eight words.
The technical term is used as an insult, and a verdict on truth is given where the question asked for an explanation.
Practice with real exam questions
Answer exam-style questions and get AI feedback that shows you exactly what examiners want to see in a full-marks response.
The guide asks you to explore terminology associated with God — and the terms come in two groups. Some describe what God is held to be like. Others describe how the words themselves are being used.
What adherents hold God to be
- omnipotent — all-powerful
- Omniscient — all-knowing
- Omnibenevolent — all-good
- transcendent — beyond and outside the world
- immanent — present and at work within the world
- Eternal — without beginning or end, or outside time altogether
How the divine is conceived
- Monotheism — one God (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism)
- Polytheism — many deities
- Monism — one ultimate reality, of which all is an expression
- Non-theistic — the goal is not union with a creator God
How the words are being used
- Literal — the words mean what they usually mean
- Analogy — a human word stretched, not abandoned
- Metaphor — one thing spoken of as another
- Via negativa — saying only what it is not
The same reach for the divine, from plain speech through to deliberate silence. Each mode is a different claim about the words, not about the speaker's sincerity.
Interactive diagram
Explore the labelled diagram, charts and maps for this topic in full study mode.
How this is tested. Paper 1 gives you a short passage from a tradition's text. Part (a) asks what is in it; part (b) asks you to explain an idea from it. Both go better if you can see what kind of language you are reading.
Part (a) — reading the passage
- Pick out the tradition's own terms and use them
- Three separate teachings, not one restated three ways
- Do not decide yet whether the language is literal
Part (b) — explaining the idea
- Say how the tradition itself reads the language
- Where schools read it differently, say so and name them
- Accurate terminology throughout — that is a band descriptor
One question worth asking of any passage: Would an adherent read this literally?
Often some do and some do not — and saying which is exactly the internal diversity the markbands reward.