I have spent a very long time reading all of the books of Mircea Eliade. This book represents his writing as well as any other. It isn't the easiest to get into, but I recommend all of his books and this is no exception. It is true that he has a tendency to get repetitive, and he does at times over-generalize, but only in his own cautious way. Even considering this, scholarship hasn't been kind to the exceptional Eliade. Having spent years studying his work, I have some insights into these controversies.
The first, and most important, is related to his involvement in his youth in a far-right political movement, the Iron Guard. This is very troubling. It's beyond disappointing that he never unequivocally disavowed this activity. However, all of the evidence available in his work shows him to be equally interested in and sympathetic to the Hebrew religion as he is to all religions from all times, places and cultures. In fact, he is very insightful on this topic.
Secondly, his scholarship has been challenged on two fronts. First, that he holds more recent and advanced religions in general and Christianity in particular to be superior to the more primitive and archaic religions. That is, that he supports an outmoded sense of "progress" which emphasizes the West. While there does indeed seem to be a certain theme of progress running through his work, and we can find some passages and chapters that corroborate this notion, there are far more passages that support a universal appreciation and even assessment of all religions. Actually, the idea of progress being tied closely to an historical value, he seems to find little or no positive value in historical events and developments. Eliade seems to believe that both extremes are simultaneously and paradoxically true in some complex manner that he could never fully explicate. Lastly, there is the question of his methods and motives. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, whom I respect, seems to believe that Eliade has "no methodology." What it really boils down to, in my thought, is that Eliade is a scholar but nonetheless one motivated by personal religious feeling, a thing frowned upon and perhaps becoming extinct in academia. Scholem, Corbin, Jonas are guilty of the same thing, but it brings passion to their work, like Eliade. This in turn, in Eliade's case, ties into the final issue, whether his work is more scholarly or rather theological and apologetic. I will leave this up to the reader to decide. Thank you.
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