Abstract

The book is designed as an introductory text in the history of pre-Christian religion. The religions are examined in their socio-historical context and are treated as religions in the broad sense in which they provided total frameworks of meaning for a particular culture. The religions treated are the standard ones: Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek. Loew's technique is to examine in detail the literature of each culture and to reconstruct from it the sacred space in which the people of that culture must have moved. His categories of myth, sacred history, and philosophy are meant to be more or less adequate characterizations of the shape of the expression of the sacred in the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek cultures respectively. Of course there is overlap, e.g., the obviously mythic roots of Greek literature. Loew is best on the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian religions. When he comes to the Hebraic religions he oversimplifies the picture to a considerable degree, as is the case also with his treatment of the Greeks. But this is perhaps a justifiable procedure in an introductory text. Each chapter concludes with a brief but helpfully annotated bibliography.--E. A. R.