Customer Reviews

A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms

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Mircea Eliade could be reasonably considered as one of the Re-founding Fathers of modern study of religion. His History of Religious Ideas is thus one of the corner stones of modern research in this field. This particular part of his history is as well written as the others. It deals very well with most of the improtant currents in mediaeval Christianity, including the spread of Christianity to Slav tribes, the Cluny rerform, the religious life associated with the rise of mendicant orders, Meister Eckhart, devotio moderna but he does not forget about the rise of neopaganism in Renaissance Italy, about the role of alchemy in religious feeling of the sixteenth century, he even ventures to say that modern physics was created almost unintentionally. This book is truly amazing.

There are also some down sides to the book. One, it cannot be taken as the "state-of-the-art" of religous study. Eliade has been surpassed by new research in the field. It is therefore better to use the book as a general background. Second, it has been shown that Eliade unfortunately developed the habit of sometimes stretching the truth to fit his analysis. He did not use this questionable method to such an extent as to render his whole analysis worthless but it does cast a shadow on his academic honesty.

BTW, I do not feel qualified to comment on his treatment of religious phenomena outside the Judeo-Christian cultural sphere.

The final volume of the trilogy is the smallest, the most succinct and the most approachable of the three. After a brief review of the religions of Eurasia (from Turkey to Finland) we plunge in to the formative years of Christianity when the first step is taken toward ensuring an orthodoxy that would later be enforced with torture. Origen and Augusting, the two greatest writers of the church, are discussed in this context.

Next is the story of Islam - or rather Muhammed - and how he became a warrior-ruler, leading his tribe to ever larger victories over Christendom. The lonely years of Judaism (from the fall of the Roman Empire to late in the Middle Ages) is given a empathetic hearing before moving onto the church in the Middle Ages, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Finally, a last look at Buddhism, the Tibetan way. ALways informative and entertaining, provocative with his conclusions.

This three volume series is an excellent overview of human thinking and aspiration. The accomplishment is magnificent, a life work.

Editing: Four Stars. Translations are always difficult.

Copy Editing: Five Stars. Very clean.

As admirable as this three-volume set may be, it was published in 1985...25 years ago.

As the years have gone by, Eliade's speculations about the possible religions of prehistoric man have only become more boring, while it is now becoming clear that he missed one of the most gigantic chapters in the history of religion, brilliantly described (in massive detail) in Jenkins' The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died.

It's hard to blame Eliade for missing this huge, thousand-year history, because everyone else did.

Why?

Don't ask me!