ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers the nature, structure, and function of definition so that the claim can be properly understood. It analysis of the experience of the sacred in the profane is entirely consistent with the proposed ethological understanding. The book presents a précis of the foregoing argument and an explicit statement of the understanding and the definitions it implies. It looks at Biblical prophecy in the mid-first millennium BCE as an example of the interaction of religion and art that provides compelling insight into the increasing success of the text as the exemplary sacred art. The working hypothesis that has been developed is that religion consists of the composite effects of art that “expresses the inexpressible,” and allows “visions of the invisible” in a specifically understood process.
