Such an encyclopedia as this has long been overdue. In all areas of religious studies—in the historical religious traditions as well as in nonliterate ("primitive") religious systems—the "information explosion" of recent decades has demanded a new presentation of available materials. Further, in the last half century, new methodological approaches and more adequate hermeneutics have enhanced our knowledge of the existential value, the social function, and the cultural creativity of religions throughout history. We understand better now the mind and the behavior of homo religious ("religious man"), and we know much more about the beginnings, the growth, and the crises of different religions of the world.

These impressive advances in information and understanding have helped to eradicate the cliches, highly popular in the nineteenth century, concerning the mental capacity of nonliterate peoples and the poverty and provincialism of non-Western...