How Historical Is the History of Religions?

Segal’s identification of the confusion between the meaning and the significance of religious phenomena in Eliade’s thought is instructive, and, I believe, accurate. The question is, to what extent does it invalidate or undermine that thought. It may, in the end, support the claim that Eliadean history of religions is something quite other than history as it is commonly conceived. It is something other than the attempt at an accurate reclamation and reconstruction of past events and their present entailments. However, such a claim is entirely consistent with Eliade’s own insistence that the History of Religions is a cultural and transformative discipline ( Quest , 62), and it is also harmonious with recent re-evaluations of historiography as itself value-laden (see Rennie, “History after History”). Robert Segal’s “How Historical is the History of Religions?” appeared in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 1/1 (1989): 2–17. All rights reserved. Copyright © Brill Academic Publishers. Reprinted by permission of Brill Academic Publishers and the author.