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Frazer's “Folk-Lore in the Old Testament”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

Henry Preserved Smith
Affiliation:
Union Theological Seminary, New York

Extract

Sir James George Frazer is a well known authority on the subject he has made his own, and his voluminous works are familiar to every student of anthropology and the history of religions. The fact that he has put his extensive knowledge at the disposition of the Old Testament student is to be welcomed. This he has done in the works mentioned below, the larger one in three volumes, the smaller one by condensation and omission giving the main points of interest. That the larger work meets a felt want is indicated by the fact that a second printing was called for the year after the first publication, a symptom of the present interest in the comparative study of religions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1924

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References

1 Folk-lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend, and Law, by Sir Frazer, James George, Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Three volumes. London, Macmillan and Company, 1918 and 1919.Google Scholar

Folk-lore in the Old Testament (abridged edition). One volume. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1923.Google Scholar

2 Volume II, pp. 412–424. My citations are from the three-volume edition.

3 Volume II, part II, chapter IV.

4 Volume II, part II, chapter VIII.

5 Studies in Biblical Archaeology, 1894, pp. 47–63.

6 Volume I, part II, chapter II, pp. 429–565.

7 Volume II, pp. 263–341.

8 Volume I, part I, chapter IV.

9 Volume I, pp. 52–76.

10 Volume I, part I, chapter III.

11 Volume I, part I, chapter V.

12 Volume II, part III, chapter VI.

13 Volume III, part III, chapter VII.

14 Volume II, pp. 511 f.

15 Volume II, p. 517.

16 Volume II, part III, chapter VIII.

17 Volume II, part III, chapter I.

18 Volume III, part IV, chapter II.

19 Volume III, part IV, chapter V.

20 Volume III, part IV, chapter VII.

21 These topics are discussed also in the abridged edition. The main differences between this and the larger work are the omission of the long footnotes and the excision of some of the less important chapters. The two most extended of these are the discussion of cross-cousins and ortho-cousins suggested by Jacob's marriage, and one on boring the servant's ear. In both cases the result for the Old Testament is very slight.