The Idea of God in Early Religions is F. B. Jevons’s concise study of how concepts of deity emerged among early and so-called primitive peoples. Drawing on the comparative anthropology of religion, Jevons examines animism, totemism, ancestor worship, and the development of belief in higher gods, weighing competing theories of religious origins.
Written by a respected scholar of the field, the book offers a clear introduction to the questions that preoccupied late-Victorian and Edwardian students of religion. Jevons engages with figures such as Tylor and Frazer while advancing his own arguments about the religious instinct. It serves as a readable entry point into the early anthropology of religion and the search for the roots of the idea of God.