The commonalties among the majority of religions, to
which comparative studies (especially those of Mircea Eliade)
point, are significant at the structural level. We have, on the
one hand, all the limitations of the individual human-one among
many, mortal, subject to illness and defeat, object of passion
and seduction, deceitful, limited in understanding of the
various forces affecting one's projection as part of nature, and
as part of the human species. On the other hand, there is the
uniqueness of the immortal, untouchable, impervious, omniscient,
entity (or entities) able to understand and unleash forces far
more powerful than those of nature or of men, an entity (or
entities) upon which depends the destiny of all that exists.
Through belief, all the limitations of the human being are
erased. It is quite instructive, as well as impressive, how every
limitation of the human being, objective and subjective, is
counteracted and given a life of its own in the language housing
the progression from man to gods or to God, on one side, and to
the practice of religion, on the other.
The various gods constituted in the world's religious texts also
recount what people do in their respective environment, natural
or tamed to some degree. They tell about what can go wrong in
their life and work, and what community rules are most
appropriate to the pragmatic context. The value of rain in the
Middle East, the fine- tuning of work to seasonal changes in the
Far East, the significance of hope and submission in the Indian
subcontinent, the increased role of animal domestication, the
extension of farmland, the role of navigation in other parts of
the world are precisely encoded in the various religions and in
their books.
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