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Religion in Human Evolution
religion in human evolution Religion in
Human Evolution
From the Paleolithic
to the Axial Age
Robert N. Bellah
the belknap press of
harvard university press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2011 Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Bellah, Robert Neelly, 1927–
Religion in human evolution : from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age / Robert N. Bellah.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 674- 06143- 9 (alk. paper)
1. Religion. 2. Human evolution— Religious aspects. 3. Th eological anthropology.
4. Ethnology— Religious aspects. 5. Religions. I. Title. II. Title: From the Paleolithic
to the Axial Age.
BL256.B435 2011
200.89'009—dc22 2010054585 In memory of Melanie Bellah
and for our grandchildren,
and theirs . . . Contents
Preface ix
Ac know ledg ments xxv
1. Religion and Reality 1
2. Religion and Evolution 44
3. Tribal Religion: Th e Production of Meaning 117
4. From Tribal to Archaic Religion: Meaning and Power 175
5. Archaic Religion: God and King 210
6. Th e Axial Age I: Introduction and Ancient Israel 265
7. Th e Axial Age II: Ancient Greece 324
8. Th e Axial Age III: China in the Late First Millennium bce 399
9. Th e Axial Age IV: Ancient India 481
10. Conclusion 567
Notes 609
Index 715 Preface
Very deep is the well of the past.
thomas mann, Joseph and His Brothers
Th ose moments which the spirit appears to have outgrown still
belong to it in the depths of its present. Just as it has passed
through all its moments in history, so also must it pass through
them again in the present.
hegel, Reason in History
When one reads the poems and the writings of the ancients,
how could it be right not to know something about them as
men? Hence one should try to understand the age in which they
have lived. Th is can be described as “looking for friends in
history.”
mencius 5B:8
Th is is a large book about a large subject. It is therefore incumbent on me to
give the reader an explanation of why it is so long (it could be many times lon-
ger), a road map, and a response to certain objections that may leap to the
mind of some readers. I will begin by using the three epigraphs above to give
an idea of what I am trying to do.
Mann’s metap hor of the past as a well, in the opening sentence of his book,
is complemented immediately by his second sentence: “Should we not call it
bottomless?” It becomes clear in the long prologue that starts with these sen-
tences that Mann is afraid, as he embarks on a story that reaches back into the
second millennium bce, that he will fall ever further into the past, lose his
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