Les trois tomes de l' "Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses" - "De l'âge de la pierre aux mystères d'Eleusis" (1975), "De Gautama Bouddha au triomphe du christianisme" (1978) et "De Mahomet à l'âge des Réformes" (1983) - représentent une œuvre irremplaçable. L'érudition et la puissance intellectuelle synthétique de Mircea Eliade apportent au lecteur une vision des religions qui fait apparaître à la fois "l'unité fondamentale des phénomènes religieux et l'inépuisable nouveauté de leurs expressions" selon sa formule. Le tome I nous conduit des premiers comportements magico-religieux des hommes préhistoriques à l'épanouissement du culte de Dionysos, à travers les religions mésopotamiennes et de l'Egypte ancienne, la religion d'Israël, la religion des Indos-Européens, les religions de l'Inde avant Bouddha, la religion grecque et la religion iranienne.

In volume 2 of this monumental work, Mircea Eliade continues his magisterial progress through the history of religious ideas. The religions of ancient China, Brahmanism and Hinduism, Buddha and his contemporaries, Roman religion, Celtic and German religions, Judaism, the Hellenistic period, the Iranian syntheses, and the birth of Christianity—all are encompassed in this volume.

This volume completes the immensely learned three-volume A History of Religious Ideas. Eliade examines the movement of Jewish thought out of ancient Eurasia, the Christian transformation of the Mediterranean area and Europe, and the rise and diffusion of Islam from approximately the sixth through the seventeenth centuries. Eliade's vast knowledge of past and present scholarship provides a synthesis that is unparalleled. In addition to reviewing recent interpretations of the individual traditions, he explores the interactions of the three religions and shows their continuing mutual influence to be subtle but unmistakable. As in his previous work, Eliade pays particular attention to heresies, folk beliefs, and cults of secret wisdom, such as alchemy and sorcery, and continues the discussion, begun in earlier volumes, of pre-Christian shamanistic practices in northern Europe and the syncretistic tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. These subcultures, he maintains, are as important as the better-known orthodoxies to a full understanding of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Monumentala lucrare Istoria credinţelor şi ideilor religioase explorează originea şi semnificaţiile divinităţilor şi riturilor din diferite epoci şi regiuni ale lumii, punând in evidenţă, după cum afirma autorul insuşi, „unitatea fundamentală a fenomenelor religioase şi, în acelaşi timp, noutatea inepuizabilă a expresiilor lor”.