E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) THE IDEA OF GOD IN EARLY RELIGIONS by F. B. JEVONS, LITT.D. Professor of Philosophy in the University of Durham Cambridge: at the University Press 1913 First Edition, 1910 Reprinted 1911, 1913 _With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_ PREFACE In _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ the late Professor William James has said (p. 465): 'The religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological complications, has shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its stages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse between themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related. This intercourse is realised at the time as being both active and mutual.' The book now before the reader deals with the religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, in the earlier stages of religion. By 'the Idea of God' may be meant either the consciousness which individuals have of higher powers, with which they feel themselves to be related, or the words in which they, or others, seek to express that consciousness. Those words may be an expression, that is to say an interpretation or a misinterpretation, of that consciousness. But the words are not the consciousness: the feeling, without which the consciousness does not exist, may be absent when the words are spoken or heard. It is however through the words that we have to approach the feeling and the consciousness of others, and to determine whether and how far the feeling and the consciousness so approached are similar in all individuals everywhere and at all stages. F. B. JEVONS. HATFIELD HALL, DURHAM. _October, 1910_ CONTENTS PAGE BIBLIOGRAPHY ix I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. THE IDEA OF GOD IN MYTHOLOGY 30 III. THE IDEA OF GOD IN WORSHIP 60 IV. THE IDEA OF GOD IN PRAYER 103 V. THE IDEA AND BEING OF GOD 152 INDEX 167 BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, Grant. The Evolution of the Idea of God. London, 1897. Anthropology and the Classics. Oxford, 1908. Bastian, A. Volks- und Menschenkunde. Berlin, 1888. Bousset, W. What is Religion? (English Translation). London, 1907. Crawley, A.E. The Idea of the Soul. London, 1909. Fossey, C. La Magie Assyrienne. Paris, 1902. Frazer, J.G. Early History of the Kingship. London, 1895.