THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS IN THE NINETEENTH 



CENTURY 



BY GEORGE FOOT MOORE 



[George Foot Moore, Frothingham Professor, History of Religion, Harvard Uni- 

 versity, since 1902. b. West Chester, Pennsylvania, October 15, 1851. Grad. 

 Yale, 1872; Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1877; A.M. Yale, 1883; 

 D.D. ibid. 1897; D.D. Marietta, 1885; LL.D. Western Reserve University, 

 1903. Pastor of Putnam Presbyterian Church, Zanesville, Ohio, 1878-83; 

 Professor of Hebrew, Andover Theological Seminary, 1883-1902. Member of 

 American Oriental Society, Society of Biblical Literature, Deutsche Morgen- 

 landische Gesellschaft. Author of Commentary on Judges; The Book of Judges 

 in Hebrew, Critical Edition with Notes; and many articles in biblical journals, 

 and in Encyclopedia Biblica.] 



THE encyclopedic scheme of this Congress assigns to the History 

 of Religions its proper place as one of the great departments of 

 historical science. My task is to trace the progress of this branch 

 of learning in the nineteenth century. The Philosophy of Religion 

 belongs to another division of the Congress; the Problems and 

 Methods of the History of Religions are to be discussed at this 

 session by Professor Schmidt; while the history of research in the 

 chief religions of the world individually, and the present state of 

 investigation in each, will engage the several sections of this Depart- 

 ment. The nature and scope of the present paper are thus defined; 

 it is to sketch in outline the development within the last century of 

 the general history of religions, avoiding as far as possible trenching 

 upon the fields of other speakers. 1 



The history of religions was not, either in name or in fact, a new 

 study in the nineteenth century. The revival of learning brought 

 to the knowledge of scholars the religions of the Greeks and Romans, 

 and what Greek and Latin writers had to tell of the religions of other 

 ancient peoples Egypt, the Semitic East, Persia, and India. The 

 study of the Bible, to which the Reformation gave a new impulse, 

 opened the sources of the history of Judaism and Christianity. 

 Travelers and discoverers from the beginning of the fourteenth cen- 

 tury brought back accounts, often marvelous enough, of the relig- 

 ions of remoter Asia, and, from the new continent beyond the sea, 

 of the civilized peoples of Mexico and Peru as well as of the savage 

 tribes. Soon missionaries, both in the Old World and in the New, 

 from more intimate acquaintance, began to give more authentic 



1 See Hardy, E., Zur Geschichte der vergleichenden Religions forschung, in 

 Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft, iv, 45-66, 97-135, 193-228; Jastrow, M., Jr., 

 The Study of Religion, 1901, c. 1. To the classified bibliography appended to the 

 latter work (pp. 401-415) the reader is referred for a fuller survey of the literature 

 than can be given in this paper. 



