ABSTRACT
In a curious omission, the Encyclopedia of Religion, both the first and the revised second editions, leaves out the term "belief" as the subject of a distinct entry. And the Encyclopedia is a justifiably award-wining achievement by an international crew of major scholars, which has had important if subtle ramifications for unification of the study of religion. Jonathan Z. Smith's attention to issues of classification and taxonomy with regard to religion as well as botany and the logic of classification in general is not merely a signal contribution to the self-awareness of the field, it is nearly legendary in his personal biography. The absence of belief from Mircea Eliade's encyclopedic project must be a result, direct or indirect, of an editorial perspective imposed on the enormously amorphous subject of religion. Eliade emphasized myths, symbols, and, he notes, due to the spur provided by the modern desacralization of Western societies, the value of greater knowledge of primal religions.
