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Eliade's Theory of Millenarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert A. Segal
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Religion, Reed College, Portland, Oregon

Extract

To the extent that Mircea Eliade is concerned with millenarianism he is concerned with it as only an instance of religious phenomena generally and is concerned with its meaning rather than its cause. Yet presupposed in the meaning he finds is a theory of its cause, and that theory is worth examining both because it elucidates Eliade's approach to religion as a whole and because as an explanation of millenarianism it is atypical and even unique.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page note l See especially ‘Cosmic and Eschatological Renewal’, in The Two and the One, tr. Cohen, J. M. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), pp. 125–59.Google ScholarSee also Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, tr. Trask, Willard R. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959)Google Scholar, passim, and Myth and Reality, tr. Trask, Willard R. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968), passim.Google Scholar

page note l In the preface to the paperback edition of Cosmos and History Eliade says: ‘In using the term “archetype,” I neglected to specify that I was not referring to the archetypes described by Professor C. G. Jung. This was a regrettable error …I need scarcely say that, for Professor Jung, the archetypes are structures of the collective unconscious. But in my book I nowhere touch upon the problems of depth psychology nor do I use the concept of the collective unconscious. As I have said, I use the term “archetype” …as a synonym for ” or “paradigm” …’(viii–ix).

page note l Cosmos and History, p. 75.Google Scholar

page note 2 ibid. p. 95.

page note 3 ibid. p. 154.

page note l ibid. p. 75.

page note 2 ibid. p. 95.

page note 3 ibid. p. 142.

page note 4 ibid.

page note 5 See ibid. pp. 95–202. Eliade lists other means of rationalizing suffering, means short of imputing it to Providence, but these strategies - ‘suffering [it is said] proceeds from the magical action of an enemy, from breaking a taboo, from entering a baneful zone, from the anger of a god…’ (ibid. p. 97) - bear little evident connection to the bestowal of metahistorical meaning on historical events.

page note l ibid. p. 142.

page note 2 ibid. p. 141.

page note l ‘Cosmic and Eschatological Renewal’, pp. 125–40.Google Scholar

page note 2 ibid. p. 128.

page note 3 ibid. p. 130.

page note l Myth and Reality, p. 49.Google Scholar

page note 2 ibid.

page note 3 ibid. p. 50.

page note 4 For a summary of the different interpretations and an attempted reconciliation of them see Cross, Frank Moore Jr,. ‘The Divine Warrior in Israel's Early Cult’, in Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 1130.Google Scholar

page note 5 Cosmos and History, p. 60.Google Scholar

page note l Myth and Reality, pp. 64–5.Google Scholar

page note 2 Cosmos and History, p. 102.Google Scholar

page note 3 ibid. p. 104.

page note l ibid.

page note 2 ibid. p. 106–7.

page note 3 ibid. p. 107.

page note 4 ibid. p. 111.

page note l The Death of the Past (London: Macmillan, 1969), p. 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page note 2 Cosmos and History, p. 154.Google Scholar

page note l ‘Cosmic and Eschatological Renewal’, p. 132.

page note l New Heaven, New Earth (New York: Schocken, 1969), passim.Google Scholar

page note 2 ‘Cosmic and Eschatological Renewal’, p. 129.