Review of A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 and Other Related Thoughts

November 5th, 2020

I just finished reading Volume 1 of A History of Religious Ideas by Mircea Eliade and I wanted to write a review, but first I wanted to have a quick discussion about some thoughts that I’ve been having recently. I had breakfast with someone who I would consider a conservative Christian this week. I had given him a copy of the sermon by Henry Emerson Fosdick entitled Shall the Fundamentalists Win? (an online version can be found here). This was the basis of our discussion. Not having read the New Testament yet, I was not able to comment on the points that Fosdick makes in his sermon about various doctrinal positions though, and thus was not able to have any meaningful discussions surrounding it. However, at the present moment having read and studied the Old Testament, I am of the opinion, as I have written in the past, that the earliest parts of the Bible are neither historical truth nor literary fiction (see the following posts for reviews of books as well as thoughts that have led me to this position: Before Philosophy, Who Wrote the Bible?, The Bible Unearthed, and A History of the Jews Part 1). I talked about a couple of examples that I had picked up on such as the use of “to this day” in certain parts of the Bible and the fact that certain archeological discoveries contradicted the Bible. My breakfast partner cited various examples such as Jesus fulfilling x amount of Old Testament prophecies and how when he went to Israel he saw Jericho and learned from the archeologist about how the walls fell down as it was told in the Bible. I left feeling a bit weathered as I haven’t been to Israel nor have I read the New Testament yet or studied the prophecies in detail but after doing a bit of research on the archeology of Jericho I became less conflicted. See below for some Wikipedia articles on the subject:

From what I’ve found and interpreted, it would seem that most scholars agree with Kathleen Kenyon’s conclusions about Jericho except for Bryant G. Wood (who is in fact a young earth creationist). Israel Finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman mention in The Bible Unearthed that during the time that it has been estimated that the Battle of Jericho took place, as estimated from Biblical chronology, there were no walls surrounding Jericho. For those that would claim otherwise, it seems that knowledge has been eclipsed by conviction. I may dive deeper into this just to understand this one specific instance of Biblical incongruence, but to reiterate what is said in The Bible Unearthed:

The [Hebrew] Bible’s integrity and, in fact, it’s historicity, do not depend on dutiful historical “proofs” of any of its particular events or personalities, such as the parting of the Red Sea, the trumpet blasts that toppled the walls of Jericho, or David’s slaying of Goliath with a single shot of his sling. The power of the biblical saga stems from its being a compelling and coherent narrative expression of the timeless themes of a people’s liberation, continuing resistance to oppression, and quest for social equality. It eloquently expresses the deeply rooted sense of shared origins, experiences, and destiny that every human community needs in order to survive. In specific historical terms, we now know that the [Hebrew] Bible’s epic saga first emerged as a response to the pressures, difficulties, challenges, and hopes faced by the people of the tiny kingdom of Judah in the decades before it’s destruction and by the even tinier Temple community in Jerusalem in the post-exilic period. Indeed, archeology’s greatest contribution to our understanding of the [Hebrew] Bible may be the realization that such small, relatively poor, and remote societies as late monarchic Judah and post-exilic Yehud could have produced the main outlines of this enduring epic in such a short period of time. Such a realization is crucial, for it is only when we recognize when and why the ideas, images, and events described in the [Hebrew] Bible came to be so skillfully woven together that we can at last begin to appreciate the true genius and continuing power of this single most influential literary and spiritual creation in the history of humanity.
The Bible Unearthed, pg 318

A battle of Jericho may very well have taken place and thus is not a literary fiction, but that does not mean that what the Bible presents is the inerrant truth either. Certainly, many Jews and Christians reading the Bible from the time of the exile to the time of the enlightenment didn’t think of the Bible as inerrant, but simply history because they didn’t know anything that would suggest otherwise. I don’t think that a person needs to believe with all their heart that the battle of Jericho happened as it is described in the Bible to be a faithful Christian and asserting that the account is historically accurate and inerrant seems to drive freethinking individuals away from being Christians. If I need to believe that the battle of Jericho happened exactly as it is described in the Bible to be a Christian, despite knowing that the majority of scholars disagree with it, then I guess I’m not a Christian. This feeds into another thought that I’ve been having with regards to relationships and Christian communities. I want to be a part of a Christian community because of shared values: treating people with respect, being pleasant, showing generosity, caring about each other, but at the same time I don’t want to feel any dissonance if I don’t hold the same beliefs of the group. In most Christian communities, the belief seems to precede values. I’ve felt dissonance from not believing what the group believes and felt that I wasn’t fully integrated with the group. It’s hard for me to believe that the book of Genesis is historically accurate for example, but this seems to still be a matter of debate among some Christians. Something that I’ve thought about related to this has been this idea that the only reason we do anything is because we want to do it. A person may say “but I go to the gym even though I don’t want to go” which I say may be true, but that just means there is a stronger want that makes them go: they want to be healthy, they want to look good, and/or they want to get stronger, etc. Similarly, the person may not end up going to the gym because they didn’t want to go, but the want is still there: they wanted not to go. I have two wants: I want to be involved in a group that shares the same values as me (the root want is that I want to find a partner that shares the same values as me and be a part of that community with my partner and raise children in that community) and I want to not suspend my logic and reasoning to be a part of that group. I want my opinions to be based on independent reasoning without the undue influence of authority, doctrine, or tradition. I value logic, reason, and independent thinking as a way to improve myself and the world around me and I don’t want to forfeit that for blind faith. In Christian communities, these seem to be in conflict. What I feel at the present moment is that in order to attract a partner from a particular Christian group, I need to believe what the group believes, but I find it difficult to blindly believe what the group believes sometimes. In the episode on cults from the Netflix series Explained (see this previous post as well as the video on Youtube. There is another good Youtube video explaining cults as well.) they mentioned the Asch Conformity Experiments which is an experiment that looked at group conformity (here is a video that shows the experiment with commentary). Basically, they had 8 people in a room, 7 of whom were actors, and asked them to provide answers to a series of questions. The actors were told to respond incorrectly to some of the questions and the result was that the 1 non-actor answered incorrectly 75% of the time on at least 1 out of 12 questions. The voiceover in the video mentions that sometimes we go along with a group because what they say convinces us they are right, but sometimes we conform because we are apprehensive that the group will disapprove if we are deviant. The former is called informational conformity and the latter is called normative conformity. Since we are all social creatures, the desire to conform and be a part of a group is very strong. I want to be a part of a group, but I don’t want to normatively conform with the group, but it seems like I need to believe what the group believes even though it causes cognitive dissonance. That seems to be a barrier when it comes to partners as well. I believe in Christian values for raising children, but I also believe in using logic and reason to improve things instead of simply believing that if I pray hard enough things will get better. I’ve gone on dates with several Christian women and more often than not, it seems that they get too hung up on the faith side of things, like if we don’t believe the exact same thing then we can’t be together. For example, there was one person I went out with who described herself as a baptist, and when I said I was a methodist, she said that methodists believe in works leading to salvation as opposed to faith leading to salvation implying that methodists are wrong (I could sense the “lessons” that her church and/or pastor were teaching her). Mircea Eliade mentioned something in A History of Religious Ideas (I promise, I’ll get to a review soon) when discussing the cult of Dionysus about “absolute religious experience” and how “such experience can be realized only by denying everything else“. I think many Christians treat Christianity as absolute truth and deny anything that contradicts it (see Young Earth Creationists for an extreme example). They treat the Bible as monolithic, inerrant, and have a take-all or leave-all attitude, and any conclusions that are made, be they scientific or historic, (or any other forms of academic research that concern Biblical doctrine) that may contradict their doctrine are denied. Knowledge is once again eclipsed by conviction. This reminds me of all of the news that we’ve been seeing on conspiracy theories. I don’t have the wherewithal to organize and discuss this in detail, but taking a look at the flat earth conspiracy for instance one can see the similarities with young-earth creationism. Generally speaking, we know that the earth is not flat just as we know that the earth isn’t 6,000 years old, yet tell one of these folks this and they will start offering arguments for why this not the case and any attempt to show them evidence that proves otherwise is explained away with a variety of illogical reasons (I wish I had my own personal Spock to point out logical and illogical arguments). I’m not saying that Christianity is some sort of conspiracy theory, but there are certainly a number of Christians that fall into the same traps that believers of conspiracy theories fall into, and the illogical arguments that are presented only serve to push folks away from Christianity. I’m sure I will have more to say about this once I’m finished reading the New Testament, but this is where I’m at currently.

Finally a review of A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 – From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries by Mircea Eliade. The book was an insightful read, very academic, and covered a lot of ground. It compiled the latest literature on religious studies at the time (i.e. 1978) and presented in a way that looked at various regions, cultures, and people groups. The author talked about the religiosity of Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Mesolithic cultures; the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Canaanites, Hittites, Israelites, Greeks, Iranians, and Indo-Europeans; the foundations of Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism; and various cults, myths, rituals, and theology, as well as comparing and drawing parallels between things. I’m sure I could dive deeper into a lot of the things discussed in the book, but I feel that would take a lifetime and more. I found that I was not able to engage with a lot of the book as a lot of it was a bit over my head, but I book-marked a few pages that had passages that stood out to me and I’ll do my best to give a general overview. Starting with the Paleolithic peoples, the first religious ideas likely revolved around the idea of being oriented in space (termed orientatio in the book), tool-making (stone tools, various objects made from bones and antlers clothes and tents made from skins, etc), and fire (check out this movie from 1981 called Quest for Fire) as well as around the hunting of game. The result of the latter was that a special relationship was made between the hunter and the slain animal. There was a sort of “mystical solidarity” because the shed blood is similar to human blood which reveals the kinship between human society and the animal world. To kill the hunted beast or later, the domestic animal is equivalent to a “sacrifice” in which the victims are interchangeable. Another important idea revolved around death and burial. Many graves are found where the body is surrounded by a certain number of objects intended for personal adornment (shells, pendants, necklaces) as well as oriented in a certain way, primarily with the head facing east. The presence of these objects implies not only a belief in the survival of the deceased individual but also that they will continue with their particular activity in the other world. Similarly, the use of red ocher was used as a ritual substitute for blood as a symbol of life, which would suggest a belief in survival after death. Mircea provides the following conclusion on this belief:

“To sum up, we may conclude that the burials confirm the belief in survival (already indicated by the use of red ocher) and furnish some additional details: burials oriented toward the east, showing an intention to connect the fate of the soul with the course of the sun, hence the hope of a rebirth, that is, of a postexistence in another world; belief in the continuation of a specific activity; certain funeral rites, indicated by offerings of objects of personal adornment and by the remains of meals.
A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1, pg 11

Mircea then goes on to elaborate about a fellow scholar who witnessed the funerary customs of the Kogi Indians and a contemporary (1966) burial of a young girl within the tribe. A site was prepared and the shaman performed a series of ritual gestures and pronouncements using the language “village of death”, “house of death”, “the house is closed and it must be opened”, and “here is the womb” (this mention of the womb explains the fetal position of the bodies found at other sites as well as the idea of the “womb of the Universal Mother”, which is likely where the idea of Mother Earth seen throughout many myths comes from). Other ritual gestures are performed, the body is covered up (“closing the house”), and ritual movements are made around the grave before the attendants withdraw. The whole ceremony lasts approximately two hours. The fascinating thing, as was noted by the colleague, is that a future archeologist would approach the site solely on the archeological level finding the body in the fetal position, the red ocher, the head facing towards the east, and the personal adornments without actually experiencing or understanding the ceremony that was performed and the significance of the words and gestures. Some other items of study that were mentioned were deposits of bones, cave paintings, and feminine figurines. Mircea mentioned at the end of the chapter on the paleolithic religious experience that by studying contemporary “primitive” populations it is plausible to state that a certain number of myths were familiar to Paleolithic populations such as cosmogonic myths and myths of origin (origin of man, of game, of death, etc.). One cosmogonic myth involves primordial Waters and the Creator which was likely inherited from the earliest prehistory due to its dissemination to cultures worldwide. On the origin of animals and the religious relations with the hunter and game, a Lord of Wild Beasts presented itself in the myths. Others include myths, legends, and rites related to ascent to the sky and “magical flight” and of celestial and atmospheric phenomena. This is one of the few events that spontaneously reveals transcendence and majesty. Similarly, certain experiences and symbolisms contribute to consecrating the celestial space as the dwelling place of superhuman beings: gods, spirits, civilizing heroes. Additionally, as language developed, it played a decisive role in the religious experiences of paleolithic peoples by allowing individuals to breathe imaginary and magical universes into existence.

Around the end of the Ice Age (ca. 8,000 BCE), the climate and landscape radically changed which cause many people groups to migrate and adapt to the changing conditions. The new cultures that developed were termed Mesolithic and Neolithic and specifically in the Near East, this new culture coincided with the domestication of the first animals and the beginnings of agriculture, namely goats and sheeps and cereals. The Mesolithic cultures of the Near East are also associated with a creative period with the development of advanced work, technology, and imaginary worlds, but still retained the character of the hunter-gatherer societies. In addition to agriculture, the development of new technologies such as the bow and the manufacture of cords, nets, hooks, pottery, and boats able to make long voyages. As with the earlier paleolithic inventions these discoveries gave rise to mythical fictions that sometimes led to various ritual behaviors. Henri Frankfort in Before Philosophy talked about how the Mesopotamians would attach personalities to various objects like flint:

“Dark, heavy, and hard, it would show a curious willingness to flake under the craftsman’s tool though that tool was only of horn softer than the stone against which it was pressed.”
Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Man (pages 143-144)

And to quote Mircea Eliade:

“In working with a piece of flint or a primitive needle, in joining together animal hides or wooden planks, in preparing a fishhook or an arrowhead, in shaping a clay statuette, the imagination discovers unsuspected analogies among the different levels of the real; tools and objects are laden with countless symbolisms, the world of work – the microuniverse that absorbs the artisan’s attention for long hours – becomes a mysterious and sacred center, rich in meanings.”
A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 (pages 34-35)

Fastforwarding to the present day, There is a book called Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Mehigh Chicksentmehigh). That touches on how to get into a flow state with whatever you’re working on. I haven’t read the book, but it would be interesting to read it in light of this idea from A History of Religious Ideas. This Youtube video gives an overview of the book. Another thing noted in the video and subsequently in the book is this idea that getting into the flow state leads to an ecstatic state of mind which is interesting because Mircea mentions this idea of ecstatic religious experiences through A History of Religious Ideas. While we can still access the experience the results of this state within the realms of our imagination, but for the prehistoric man, this activity also possessed a mythical dimension. A number of supernatural figures and mythical episodes which show up in many of the later religious traditions likely originated within the framework of the discoveries and experiences forged in the stone age. As well, the heritage of the Paleolithic hunters lived on. in agriculturalist societies, hunting likely still continued as a means of subsistence. A certain number of hunters also likely were employed as guardians of the villages first against wild beasts, later against bands of marauders. The first military organizations likely formed from these guardians and the symbolism and ideology of the paradigmatic hunter were carried on in the warriors, conquerors, and military aristocracies. Similarly, blood sacrifices carry on the tradition of the hunters being practiced by cultivators and pastoralists in either animal or human form. The domestication of food plants likely gave rise to the first origin myths. Man needed to adjust his ancestral behavior, chiefly with regards to calculating time, to perform a series of complex tasks in preparation for the harvest of the domesticated food plants which required months of planning. This gave rise to an existential situation that inspired creations of values and reversals of values. One in particular was the role of women. Since gathering was primarily the woman’s role, the domestication of the once gathered food plants gave her the unique position of understanding the “mysteries” of creation and of the rhythm of vegetation: birth, death, and rebirth. “The fertility of the earth is bound up with feminine fecundity”. This further expanded on the Mother Earth symbolism discussed earlier and led to the creation of certain fertility goddesses (Isis, Inana, Demeter). With regards to time, a cosmic cycle was developed and the idea of circular time took root (this can be compared with the linear or historical time of the Hebrews). The religious additions of the Mesolithic and Neolithic cultures were thus cults of the dead and fertility, beliefs and rituals connected with the mystery of vegetation, rich cosmogonies with regards to the cycles of the world, and the hope of a postexistence.

The next four chapters touch on the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, pre-Hellenic, pre-Indian, Hittite, and Canaanite religious experiences. I don’t want to get into all the various intricacies of these various people groups, but I did want to summarize an important point on the Canaanites and their relation to the early Israelites. The Canaanites arrived in palestine shortly before 3000 BCE and marked the first establishment of the Semites. they became sedentary, practiced agriculture, and developed an urban civilization. Around 2200 BCE, the semi-nomadic, semi-agricultural Amorites, another Semitic population, irrupted (Yet another group is the Hyksos, a likely Semitic people group, which invaded Egypt in 1674 BCE. These peoples are not pertinent to the present discussion, but I figured they were worth mentioning). These conquering groups invade but then adopt the lifestyle of the original inhabitants. This is repeated when the Israelites show up. The tension and symbiosis between the cults of agrarian fertility of the agriculturalists and the ideology of the nomadic pastoralists reached new dimensions with the settling of the Hebrews in Canaan and is forever described in the Hebrew Bible which polemicizes against paganism and lays the foundations for monotheism. The result of this has had a profound impact on the history of western civilization to be sure! A book that would be interesting to read with respect to this would be Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel by Frank Moore Cross, but that will have to be saved for a later date. An interesting thing to note, which I’m sure is talked about in the book mentioned above is the god El, who is the head of the Canaanite pantheon whose name means “god” in Semitic. He is called “Powerful”, “Father of Gods and Men”, “King”; is “holy”, “merciful”, “very wise”; has the titles Roi (who sees or of the vision) Shaddai (almighty or of the mountain), Olam (everlasting or of eternity), and Elyon (most high) among the Israelites; and is the root for El-ohim, Beth-el, and Isra-el (suggested meanings for the name are discussed in A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson: “He who fights Gods, he who fights for God, he whom God fights, or whom God rules, the upright one of God, or God is upright” (page 20).). There are various Canaanite myths associated with him and deities such as Baal and Asherah, but I won’t get into those here.

The Religion of Israel is the religion of the book. The Hebrew Bible is made up of texts of different ages some of which represent oral traditions of considerable antiquity, however the Hebrews were more interested in “sacred history” (i.e. their relation with God) than the cosmogony and origin myths (creation of man, origin of death, etc.). This was certainly true from a certain period on and for a certain religious elite, but there is no reason to conclude that the ancestors weren’t interested in these creation and origin myths and in fact show up in the first Chapters 1-11 of Genesis. The archaic image of the primordial ocean and of the creator God is presented in Genesis 1:1-2:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
Genesis 1:1-2, NLT

The is also the power of the Word which affects the chaos such as in Genesis 1:3:

“The God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.”
Genesis 1:3, NLT

This account presents a different structure from many of the myths of ancient Near Eastern civilizations which describe the aquatic chaos as a personified entity/monster that must be defeated in cosmogonic combat. Similarly, the world and man is not created from the “demonic” primordial being. To quote Mircea again:

“The biblical account presents a specific structure: (1) creation by the Word [which appears in other myths]; (2) of a world that is “good”; and (3) of life (animal and vegetable) that is “good” and that God blesses (1:10, 21, 31); (4) finally, the cosmogonic work is crowned by the creation of man.’
A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 (page 163)

The world is “good” and man is imago dei and lives in paradise, but through a series of errors and sins on the part of the ancestors, life is painful and men no longer live in paradise. God has no responsibility in the deterioration of his masterpiece, it is the results of mans own acts. I think the key innovation here is the recognition that the goodness or badness of the world is a direct result of man’s actions and not some divine being. I heard it mentioned once that in ancient Greece one might say that Ares had overtaken a person and made them act with rage, but thinking about this potential innovation among the Hebrews, they would say no, the actions are on the part of the person, not the deity. The result of this I think can be seen in the legal system of many of the world’s civilizations. The second account that is described in chapter 2 is older and uses the name Yahweh. This story describes springs coming up from the ground and man created from the dust of the ground and had life breathed into him. Similarly plants and trees grow up from the ground. This account is different from the account in Genesis 1 because there is no “aquatic “chaos” to the world of “forms” but rather the desert and dryness to life and vegetation” (page 164). Mircea mentions that it is plausible to assume that this origin myth formed in a desert region. The creation of man from the soil was a common theme throughout the near east though: “man was formed from a primal substance (earth, wood, bone) and was animated by the creator’s breath” (page 165). Similarly, the myth of an original paradise inhabited by primordial man and whose access is difficult for human beings is also common. The prohibition of the eating from the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil were not common. The idea that emerges is “the existential value of knowledge” and that “knowing can radically alter the structure of human existence” (page 166). Mircea goes on to about the notion of “original sin” and that this greatest sin was the desire to be like God which has significant consequences for Hebrew and Christian Theology. Mircea also elaborates on Cain and Abel, the flood, the religion of the patriarchs and the “god of the father” and how this merged with the Canaanite El, Abraham, and the historicity of Moses. I do not wish to do a full analysis of each of these points, but I did want to provide a quote on Moses:

“There are no reasons for doubting the reality of the personage known by the name of Moses, but his biography and the specific traits of his personality escape us. By the mere fact that he has become a charismatic and fabulous figure, his life, beginning with his miraculous preservation in a papyrus basket left among the reeds of the Nile, follows the model of many other heroes (Theseus, Perseus, Sargon of Agade, Romulus, Cyrus, ts.)
A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 (page 178)

Moses is certainly the pivotal character of the Old Testament, but there is so much that is not known about him. It has been difficult to separate the historical and probable from the mythical, legendary, and folkloric, and the fact that there is very little archeological evidence for the Exodus as it is described in the Bible makes it a mystery to be sure. There have been a couple of extrabiblical things that are of interest to this discussion, namely the Hyksos that I mentioned earlier and Akhenaten who is the first recorded monotheist, but the research seems inconclusive on their connection to the Exodus and Moses. The last thing that is mentioned is the syncretism with Yahweh and El, and the religion in the time of the Judges. I’ll save this discussion for later though.

The book goes on to discuss the Indo-Europeans and the Vedic Gods; India before the Buddha; The Greek religious experience including Zeus, the Olympians, the Heroes, the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the Cult of Dionysus; Zarathustra/Zoroaster and the Iranian Religion; and another chapter on the Israelites during the period of the Kings and Prophets. There is a lot to unpack and I do not wish to get into everything that I noticed or found interesting, but I would like to make mention of a couple of things. I kind of glazed over the Indo-European, Vedic, and Indian chapters as they didn’t really resonate with me. I think it would be interesting to do an in-depth study of the history of Hinduism, which is where these chapters lead into, but that is not relevant to my present course of study and so it will likely be a long time before I get to it (if I get to it at all!). Check out this video on Hinduism though. Zoroastrianism, on the other hand, is an interesting religion to study as it influenced Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Greek Philosophy, but is an obscure religion that most Christians are not familiar with (check out this video for an overview of Zoroastrianism). A note about Zarathustra: he represents one aspect of the Iranian religion, specifically Mazdaism, which centers around the worship of Ahura Mazda. The historicity of Zarathustra is not a difficulty and it was normal for the historical personage to be transformed into a paradigmatic model for believers (The historical personage of Moses and Jesus may have been transformed into a paradigmatic model a similar way). To quote Mircea Eliade:

“After a few generations the collective memory can no longer preserve the authentic biography of an eminent personage; he ends by becoming an archetype, that is, he expresses only the virtues of his vocation, illustrated by paradigmatic events typical of the model he incarnates.”
A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 (page 303)

I think this may be true of Moses and of Jesus Christ (the book mentions Jesus and Buddha). I can certainly understand that most Christians may have an issue with this, but I’ll explore that at a later date. I should like to explore Zoroastrianism more as it seems that Christianity actually pulled a lot from Zoroastrianism: The dualism of good (God) and evil (The Devil), Heaven and Hell, a Messiah born of a virgin, the final judgment, and the resurrection. To conclude this discussion I’ll discuss the last part of the second section on the Israelites which discusses how the prophets valorized history. Mircea states that from the time of prophets onwards historical events had a value in themselves since they were determined by the will of God. Historical facts acquired religious value and became moments when man came face to face with God. The Hebrews were the first to discover history as an epiphany of God and this conception was taken and amplified by Christianity. That is where I will leave this review.

In summary, this book was a bear to get through (and I’ve got two more volumes to go). There was so much that I didn’t even mention that is of relevance, but I can only do so much. I’m sure I will come back to certain parts of the book in the future if I decide that it would be worth diving into a particular subject, but at present, the next book I will be reading is Leadership 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves and then I will be moving onto Greek Myth, History, and Philosophy. Greek Religion, as was discussed in this book, was interesting and I suspect I’ll get into it a little bit more when reading the works of Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, and Thucydides. Some interesting things to look out for would be how greek religion influenced Christianity, particularly with regards to Hermes. Mircea mentioned that “Hermes, identified by the philosophers with the Logos, will be compared to Christ by the Church fathers, in anticipation of the countless homologies and identifications made by the alchemists of the renaissance (see volume 3)” (pages 276-277). It will be interesting to see what this is all about.