The universal concept of the sacred is a nineteenth-century scholarly invention

Evidence

It was late nineteenth-century anthropological and theological thought that rendered a variety of overlapping social usages rooted in changing and heterogeneous forms of life into a single immutable essence, and claimed it to be the object of a universal human experience called “religious.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 138 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “sacred” in early modern English usage generally referred to individual things, persons, and occasions that were set apart and entitled to veneration. Yet if we consider the examples given in the dictionary—the poetic line “That sacred Fruit, sacred to abstinence,” the inscription “sacred to the memory of Samuel Butler,” the address-form “your sacred majesty,” the phrase “a sacred concert”—it is virtually impossible to identify the setting apart or the venerating as being the same act in all cases. The subject to whom such things, occasions, or persons are said to be sacred does not stand in the same relation to them. It was late nineteenth-century anthropological and theological thought that rendered a variety of overlapping social usages rooted in changing and heterogeneous forms of life into a single immutable essence, and claimed it to be the object of a universal human experience called “religious.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 138 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nineteenth-century knowledge demanded historical development stages for every object; Nineteenth-century thought unified varied sacred usages into one universal religious essence — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 138; Nineteenth-century anthropology invented the sacred as a universal religious essence — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 138 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Nineteenth-century anthropology invented the sacred as a universal religious essence #corroborates (0.97) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 138
• Nineteenth-century thought unified varied sacred usages into one universal religious essence #expands (0.92) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 138