A History of God

A History of God: the 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

© 1993 Karen Armstrong

460 pages

I checked this out in early 2006 but quickly lost interest after encountering the Sumerian mythology that Armstrong introduces the book with. After breaking through this, I found A History of God to be a quite readable and informative history of the three Abrahamic religions, covering their initial origins and then tracking their development through the centuries, devoting separate chapters to the religions' response to mystics and the philosophic God of the Greeks. Armstrong is interested in what the idea of God has meant for people whose culture has been partially formed by the Abrahamic faiths, although she connects the book's narrative to a greater human story by comparison and contrast to Hinduism and Buddhism. Armstrong's voice seems fair: I can imagine no objections raised against her treatment of the faiths except from ardent inerranists or anti-religionists. The book is a thorough and readable take on the intellectual, philosophical, and theological histories of two of the world's largest religions and their progenitor.

Buddha

Buddha

© 2001 Karen Armstrong

205 pages

Karen Armstrong's Buddha is a concise biography of Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as (the) Buddha. The book, divided into five key sections, begins with Armstrong introducing the texts she uses as her sources -- vouching for or admitting potential weaknesses in them. Because Gautama is known solely as a religious figure, the book is written about that figure and the chapter titles reflect that. Armstrong begins by writing on the Brahmin religion and the beginnings of the Axial Age in the region that Gautama grew up in, writing on the communities of monks who had "gone forth", abandoning their homes to live in the forests or to travel through the land looking for spiritual teachers. Although she wrote of this in The Great Transformation, it's so different from the reality I know that it still strikes me. According to Armstrong, these people were not looking for bliss or contentment -- they were looking for freedom from the cycle of life. What I didn't know was that they believed even the gods yearned to be free from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth -- that the gods themselves wanted to achieve Nibanna/Nirvana. Nothing save freedom from the cycle was worthwhile.

The book records Gautama's call go "go forth" and his journey -- exploring the various traditions of the teachers he meets. According to Armstrong, he realizes early on that if he is to find Nibanna, he must find a way that is demonstrably true: accepting things on faith will not do. Eventually he realizes the way of Nibanna and the book switches to the growth of his Sangha as depicted in the Buddhist scriptures, even mentioning an attempt to seize power by one of his disciples. The book ends with his death.

Buddha was a tidy and helpful biography. Armstrong establishes the context, fits Buddha's story within it, and tells that story well, sometimes examining controversial subjects like misogyny in some of the Buddhist texts. Although most of the information in here I've gleaned from other source, I think its presentation here is sharp and reccommend it for someone curious about Buddha.

The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation: the Beginning of our Religious Traditions
© 2006 Karen Armstrong
469 pages

I looked forward to reading this book, and my expectations were met. Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation is a historical narrative detailing the creation of four of the most influential religious and philosophical traditions to date -- Confucianism and Taoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, transcendental monotheism in Israel, and rationalism in Greece. She begins by examining the state of the "axial peoples" who lived in a time of transition -- when cities were becoming civilizations, and the thoughts of a few becoming the codified belief-systems of a few. The book is both a history book in its own right and one on the formation of these religious and philosophical traditions.


She begins where civilization began -- the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates -- and moves to Iran before focusing on the first axial people, the Indian "Aryans". Beginning with the chapter "Ritual", Armstrong devotes a single chapter each to a number of themes that may sum up the growing traditions -- detailing thoughts on knowledge, suffering, cosmic unity, and the like. Each of the four civilizations gets its due in every chapter, although some traditions may dominate a given theme: the teachings of Buddha, for instance, are covered in more detail than the others in "Suffering". The book ends with comments on how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each built on parts of those traditions, connecting ancient religions to more contemporary ones. (Armstrong's treatment of Israel reminded me of Isaac Asimov, and like him she makes a distinction between early Hebrew monotheism (which he called "Yahvism") and Judaism. The book's ending chapter. Also in the interests of connecting the old with the new, Armstrong summarizes her books and emphasizes the common themes that connected the axial traditions -- particularly empathy for all humans.

Armstrong writes quite well, creating a compelling narrative that seems to be quite well-informed. She keeps her various chapters and sections-within-chapters connected to one another in such a way that the reader doesn't lose focus, but instead keeps her thesis in mind. I enjoyed the book very much. I think I may obtain a personal copy sometime in the future.