A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

As Jeremiah tells it: “the word of Yahweh was addressed to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you; I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations’” (Jer. 1:4 ff.).