119 true if they are taught them by the Watch Tower Society. Hence, the Bottings compare the Society’s teachings with what George Orwell has to say about ’blackwhite’ in the not-so-fictitious world of Oceania: ’Oceanic society rests ulti- mately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the Party is not infallible, there is need for an unswerving, moment-to-moment flexibility of facts. The key word here is blackwhite ....’ In subsequent discussions on such matters as the conversion and indoctrina- tion of new Jehovah’s Witnesses, the nature of Watch Tower literature, the ’disci- plining and mental regulating’ of youth, and the recent widespread dissent among those Witnesses (and ex-Witnesses) who no longer readily accept the dicta of the Governing Body, the Bottings follow much the same theme rather successfully. But this does not mean that there are no weaknesses in The Orll’ellian World worth mentioning. There are a number of small factual errors. For example, Watch Tower President Fred Franz was only ninety, not ’well into his nineties’ when the Bottings wrote. Most of the ’elect’-those Witnesses who hope to go to heaven-do not live around New York and Pennsylvania. The concept of the ’supposed perfection of the &dquo;Little Flock&dquo; ’ (the ’elect’) was not taught first in 1983. And contrary to Witness doctrine, there are not 360 days in the traditional Jewish year. More serious than these peccadillos, however, are three other factors: first, Gary Botting would have been wise not to have included so much personal au- tobiography in a work so soundly based on Heather’s able social-scientific re- search. Second, he too often becomes sidetracked on the issue of evolution versus creation. Finally, his attempt to make more out of 1984 as an apocalyptic year in the Witnesses’ prophetic calendar than is warranted by the facts weakens the whole work. Any Jehovah’s Witness who reads The Om~ellinn World may rightly say that the Watch Tower Society has never specifically mentioned 1984 as a ’marked date’ and dismiss everything the Bottings have written. And that would be a tragedy. Despite the above-mentioned shortcomings, this book says a good deal not only about the Witnesses but about human psychology and the sociology of religion as well. Then, too, for anyone interested in the topic, it is well written and most enjoyable reading. M. James Penton University of Lethbridge Dictionnaire des religions Paul Poupard, dir. Paris: P.U.F., 1984. xiv + 1830 p. « L’originalit6 d’un dictionnaire tient ~ la s6lection d’une information. Elle est aussi le fait des techniques de r6flexion proposees » (ix). Voilà qui est particulièrement vrai de ce Dictionnaire des religions qui, parmi ses 1,500 entrées dispos6es par ordre alphabetique, a r6ussi a inserer une presentation de chacun des quatre centres universitaires qui y ont collabor6: le Centre d’Histoire des Religions de Louvain- la-Neuve, le Centre d’Histoiro dos Religions de l’Universit6 de Liège, le Dcparte- mont de Sciences des Religions de 1’ Universite de Paris-Sorbonne et l’lnstitut dc· Science et de Thoologio des Religions de l’Institut Catholique de Paris. Un article Homo Religioslls (J. Ries) d6finit ensuite en quelque sorte l’objet formel de cette