Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 99. Chapters: Mircea Eliade, Pieter Willem van der Horst, Henry Corbin, R. Joseph Hoffmann, Al-Shahrastani, David Dean Shulman, Mark Juergensmeyer, Maxime Rodinson, Ioan P. Culianu, Walter Baetke, Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, Matthew Simpson, Richard Foltz, Milton Hook, Friedrich Heiler, Elaine Pagels, Nathan Sivin, Mary Boyce, John Louis Nuelsen, Eric J. Sharpe, Henry Mayr-Harting, Abdur-Rahman al-Mu'allimee al-Yamani, James Gordon Lindsay, Joseph Klausner, Mateus Soares de Azevedo, Heiko Oberman, Mattias Gardell, Gerhard Forde, Constant Mews, Ronald Numbers, Andrei Oisteanu, Allen Brent, Adrian Hastings, Barbara Thiering, Vincent Harding, Roy Hunter Short, Nolan Bailey Harmon, David Carrasco, Veselin Cajkanovic, Paula Fredriksen, Richard Bulliet, Dimitri Obolensky, Gerard Brandt, Haym Soloveitchik, Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Randall J. Stephens, Jonathan M. Butler, William Maziere Brady, Martin E. Marty, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Albert J. Raboteau, John Fletcher Hurst, Nathan Söderblom, Simon Cox, Franklin Elmer Ellsworth Hamilton, Warren H. Carroll, James Aitken Wylie, Gerd Tellenbach, Giovanni Bona, D. G. Hart, Laurence F. Renehan, Markus Hansiz, J. A. O. Preus II, Robert A. Orsi, Giuseppe Agostino Orsi, S. Kent Brown, E. O. James, Josef W. Meri, Heinrich Heppe, James Webb, David C. Lindberg, Kurt Rudolph, John Dowling, Martin Goodman, Jean-François Mayer, Friedrich Wilhelm Franz Nippold, Dimitry Pospielovsky, Johann Matthias Schröckh, Peter Dobkin Hall, William A. Christian, Stafford Poole, Antonio Agustín y Albanell, Michel Tardieu, John Hungerford Pollen, Rory Sweetman, Hans Lietzmann, Maurice Carmody, Philippe-André Grandidier, Giuseppe Catalani, Charles Cutler Torrey, Henry Soames, Johann Theodor Katerkamp, Thomas O'Loughlin, Suitbert Bæumer, Antoine Henri de Bérault-Bercastel, Moritz Hohenbaum van der Meer, David S. Katz, Daniele Farlati, Henry Foley, Olav Hammer, Johann Spörlein, José Orlandis, Demetrios Constantelos, Giovanni Domenico Costadoni, Bruce Nolan, Karl Friedrich Stäudlin, Etienne-Michel Faillon, George Playter, Francis Carolus Eeles, Usha Sanyal, Joseph Kitagawa, Jan Jakob Maria de Groot, Tor Andræ, Edwin Gaustad, Alexander Campbell Cheyne, Richard Otto Zöpffel, John Gilmary Shea, Gilles Quispel, Giovanni Filoramo, Paul Winter, G. Henry Wouters, Sarah Allan, John Muether, Antonio Amico, Robert F. Taft, Pietro Balan, Harold D. Hunter. Excerpt: Mircea Eliade (Romanian pronunciation:; March 13 1907 - April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved influential. One of his most influential contributions to religious studies was his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them. His literary works belong to the fantasy and autobiographical genres. The best known are the novels Maitreyi ("La Nuit Bengali" or "Bengal Nights"), Noaptea de Sânziene ("The Forbidden Forest"), Isabel si apele diavolului ("Isabel and the Devil's Waters") and the Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent, the novellas Domnisoara Christina ("Miss Christina.