Editing Mircea Eliade (section)

===Overgeneralization===
Eliade cites a wide variety of myths and rituals to support his theories. However, he has been accused of making overgeneralizations: many scholars think he lacks sufficient evidence to put forth his ideas as universal, or even general, principles of religious thought. According to one scholar, "Eliade may have been the most popular and influential contemporary historian of religion", but "many, if not most, specialists in anthropology, sociology, and even history of religions have either ignored or quickly dismissed" Eliade's works.<ref>Douglas Allen, "Eliade and History", in ''Journal of Religion'', 52:2 (1988), p. 545</ref>

The classicist [[Geoffrey Kirk|G. S. Kirk]] criticizes Eliade's insistence that [[Australian Aborigines]] and ancient [[Mesopotamia]]ns had concepts of "being", "non-being", "real", and "becoming", although they lacked words for them. Kirk also believes that Eliade overextends his theories: for example, Eliade claims that the modern myth of the "[[noble savage]]" results from the religious tendency to idealize the primordial, mythical age.<ref name="Kirk, Myth..., footnote, p.255">Kirk, ''Myth...'', footnote, p. 255</ref> According to Kirk, "such extravagances, together with a marked repetitiousness, have made Eliade unpopular with many anthropologists and sociologists".<ref name="Kirk, Myth..., footnote, p.255"/> In Kirk's view, Eliade derived his theory of [[Eternal return (Eliade)|eternal return]] from the functions of [[Australian Aboriginal mythology]] and then proceeded to apply the theory to other mythologies to which it did not apply. For example, Kirk argues that the eternal return does not accurately describe the functions of [[Native American mythology|Native American]] or [[Greek mythology]].<ref>Kirk, ''The Nature of Greek Myths'', pp. 64–66</ref> Kirk concludes, "Eliade's idea is a valuable perception about certain myths, not a guide to the proper understanding of all of them".<ref>Kirk, ''The Nature of Greek Myths'', p. 66</ref>

Even [[Wendy Doniger]], Eliade's successor at the University of Chicago, claims (in an introduction to Eliade's own ''Shamanism'') that the eternal return does not apply to all myths and rituals, although it may apply to many of them.<ref name="Doniger Forward p.xiii"/> However, although Doniger agrees that Eliade made overgeneralizations, she notes that his willingness to "argue boldly for universals" allowed him to see patterns "that spanned the entire globe and the whole of human history".<ref>Wendy Doniger, "Foreword to the 2004 Edition", Eliade, ''Shamanism'', p. xii</ref> Whether they were true or not, she argues, Eliade's theories are still useful "as starting points for the comparative study of religion". She also argues that Eliade's theories have been able to accommodate "new data to which Eliade did not have access".<ref name="Doniger Forward p.xiii"/>