Folk-lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend, and Law

Abstract

THOUGH the “Golden Bough” will always rank as the greatest and most original achievement of Sir James Frazer, while again in “Totemism and Exogamy “he has given his most important contribution to scientific anthropology and sociology, the present book on folklore in the Old Testament, now abridged into one volume, makes an even greater appeal to the reader's general or philosophical interest than the other works, for it deals with the most important fact in human tradition and literature, and one associated with intimate personal experiences of all of us. In a field apparently made almost completely sterile by criticism, higher criticism, and uncritical speculations, Sir James contrives to revive dead questions and to reshape facts and situations familiar, yet always incomprehensible, until now they receive a new meaning in the light of comparative anthropology. In this work the learned author once more vindicates for anthropology its claim to be the ablest interpreter of all the documents of human tradition and culture.

Folk-lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend, and Law.

By Sir James George Frazer. Abridged edition. Pp. xxx+476. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1923.) 18s. net.