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How Did Bernard And Picart Change The Concept Of Religion

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Humanity has undertaken forms of religious activities for thousands of years. Archaeologists credit early homo sapiens with expressing the first form of religious activities in the intentional burial of their dead as long as 300,000 years ago. The Bible gives accounts of Abraham and even some before him, worshipping the God of the Bible and forming Judaism 2,000 years before Christ. Accounts of Hinduism date back to 1,500 years before Christ. Some form of religion or another has certainly been around for many years and religion in itself has undergone many changes to arrive at what we know it as today. The word religion is often interchanged with faith or belief system, but some scholars estimate that there are 4,200 religions in the world today. So how can the authors of The Book that Changed Europe claim that two men that lived in the late 1600s and early 1700s invented religion? These two men, Bernard and Picart may not have introduced the concept of religion to the world, but they did, , , transform it and the way that it was viewed. …show more content…

Protestants and Catholics alike, as well as humanists and Hebraists all studied religions. They did this in order to gain a sense of what others believed in order to bolster their own beliefs and ensure that what they believed and practiced remained pure even with the influx of new believers. So, Bernard and Picart were not the only ones to study religions around the globe. The way that they went about studying religions, however, is what really set them apart from all other scholars. These men combined and juxtaposed everything in relation to the rituals from one religion to

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