History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1

From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

Eliade Mircea

Preface

1. In the Beginning... : Magico-Religious Behavior of the Paleanthropians
2. The Longest Revolution: The Discovery of Agriculture – Mesolithic and Neolithic
3. The Mesopotamian Religions
4. Religious Ideas and Political Crises in Ancient Egypt
5. Megaliths, Temples, Ceremonial Centers: Occident, Mediterranean, Indus Valley
6. The Religions of the Hittites and the Canaanites
7".When Israel Was a Child"
8. The Religion of the Indo-Europeans. The Vedic Gods
9. India before Gautama Buddha: From the Cosmic Sacrifice to the Supreme Identity Atman-Brahman
10. Zeus and the Greek Religion
11. The Olympians and the Heroes
12. The Eleusinian Mysteries
13. Zarathustra and the Iranian Religion
14. The Religion of Israel in the Period of the Kings and the Prophets
15. Dionysus, or Bliss Recovered

List of Abbreviations
Present Position of Studies: Problems and Progress, Critical Bibliographies
Index

About the Author

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor at the Divinity School and professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He was one of the most influential scholars of religion of the 20th century and one of the world's foremost interpreters of religious symbolism and myth. Eliade was the author of many works of scholarship and fiction, including "A History of Religious Ideas" and ten novels.

Reviews

"No one has done so much as Mr. Eliade to inform literature students in the West about 'primitive' and Oriental religions... Everyone who cares about the human adventure will find new information and new angles of vision" – Martin E. Marty, New York Times Book Review

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