{"product_id":"2026200015943-secondhand-the-religion-of-the-semites-the-fundamental-institutions","title":"The Religion Of The Semites: The Fundamental Institutions","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew works have so fundamentally reshaped the study of ancient religion as The Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions — a landmark text that stands as one of the most influential contributions to the anthropology of religion ever written. W. Robertson Smith chronicles the religious life of the ancient Semitic peoples — including the Hebrews, Arabs, and Phoenicians — arguing with rigorous scholarship that the communal act of sacrifice, rather than personal belief, formed the very bedrock of ancient religious practice. Set against the sweeping backdrop of the ancient Near East, the work presents a systematic and penetrating analysis of ritual, myth, totemism, and the sacred bonds between worshippers and their gods, drawing on a vast command of biblical, classical, and Arabic sources.\n\nSmith's prose carries the confident authority of a Victorian polymath, yet his insights remain strikingly modern, anticipating the later work of Émile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, and James George Frazer, all of whom acknowledged their profound debt to his ideas. This Meridian Library edition made Smith's essential scholarship accessible to a new generation of readers, cementing its status as a cornerstone text in comparative religion and social anthropology. A century and a half after its first delivery as lectures at Aberdeen, the questions Smith raises about the social origins of the sacred remain urgently unresolved — and irresistibly compelling.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203264684251,"sku":"2026200015943-SECONDHAND","price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/edfbdd3c-e819-4576-8814-6a1ceee288e9.png?v=1788146860","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200015943-secondhand-the-religion-of-the-semites-the-fundamental-institutions","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}