Name: History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2
ISBN: 9780226027357

Mircea Eliade

In volume 2 of this monumental work, Mircea Eliade continues his magisterial progress through the history of religious ideas. The religions of ancient China, Brahmanism and Hinduism, Buddha and his contemporaries, Roman religion, Celtic and German religions, Judaism, the Hellenistic period, the Iranian syntheses, and the birth of Christianity—all are encompassed in this volume.

From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity

History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2

Deyana

Another course text for my freshman religion class in college; despite this text being incredibly detailed which I often appreciate, I found it incredibly challenging to navigate along with its interesting choices to portray certain religions more/less/in different lights than others. My class and I mostly complained about its difficulty to digest, and my incredible professor also had some reservations of their own on a different matter. 

(Perhaps it was the fact that I read the entirity of this book with the exception of a couple of chapters which did not allow me much time to think on what I had read, but it is still not easy to get through).

Daniel Voicu

This volume completes the immensely learned three-volume A History of Religious Ideas. Eliade examines the movement of Jewish thought out of ancient Eurasia, the Christian transformation of the Mediterranean area and Europe, and the rise and diffusion of Islam from approximately the sixth through the seventeenth centuries. Eliade's vast knowledge of past and present scholarship provides a synthesis that is unparalleled. In addition to reviewing recent interpretations of the individual traditions, he explores the interactions of the three religions and shows their continuing mutual influence to be subtle but unmistakable. As in his previous work, Eliade pays particular attention to heresies, folk beliefs, and cults of secret wisdom, such as alchemy and sorcery, and continues the discussion, begun in earlier volumes, of pre-Christian shamanistic practices in northern Europe and the syncretistic tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. These subcultures, he maintains, are as important as the better-known orthodoxies to a full understanding of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2 From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity

Reviews