Little Book on Religion for People Who Are Not Religious Book

This is a book which I haven't known how to shelve here for some time. I picked it up at a used book sale in the early 80s on a whim, and read the first chapter; but I never got back to it, and eventually donated it to the library here at Bluefield College. It's sat on my "maybe-to-read" shelf for awhile; but realistically, I'm facing the fact that in the years I have left, there are too many other subjects I want to investigate more than the themes in the rest of this book. So, "started -not-finished" is the more honest shelf choice. In this case, though, that's not a negative judgment on the book; on the contrary, I liked and benefited from what I read --I think that chapter was, from my personal perspective, the real "meat" of the book anyway!

The book is organized in terms of broad common themes running through a large number of the world's religious traditions (with particular attention to "primitive" religions), over a worldwide geographical range. And the first of these to be treated is the idea of a transcendent Creator sky god, not identified with any heavenly body --a surprisingly widely distributed concept, including not only the Semitic El, but such deities as the Siberian Bai Ulgen, etc. To me, that chapter was fascinating, and IMO, the facts presented strongly suggest primitive monotheism. (Eliade himself stops short of drawing that conclusion; but he does present several bibliographic references to other scholars who do draw it.)

From what I did read and skim, I would say that for any readers who have a serious interest in comparative religion, this would be a great introduction to that field. (During his lifetime, Romanian scholar Eliade was a world-class authority on the subject; he served as editor-in-chief for Macmillan's monumental 1987 Encyclopedia of Religion, and also wrote Shamanism in Siberia, the definitive study of that phenomenon.)