by Karen Armstrong | Goodreads
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
by
Karen Armstrong
4.03 · Rating details · 3,431 ratings · 257 reviews
In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. Now, in The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal "Axial Age" can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times.
Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. With regard to dealing with fear, despair, hatred, rage, and violence, the Axial sages gave their people and give us, Armstrong says, two important pieces of advice: first there must be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action.
In her introduction and concluding chapter, Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today. In our various institutions, we sometimes seem to be attempting to create exactly the kind of religion that Axial sages and prophets had hoped to eliminate. We often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to be the major catalyst of spiritual change. (less)
Jul 22, 2011William2 rated it really liked it
Shelves: uk, nonfiction, 21-ce, history, religion, spirituality
Karen Armstrong takes great mountains, virtual Everests, of wretched scholarly prose and turns them into something highly readable. She is a first-rate disseminator and popularizer of the history of religion. The Great Transformation reviews the history of what Karl Jaspers famously termed the "Axial Age." During this period, roughly 900-200 B.C.E., the foundations for all of our present religious traditions were laid down: Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, the other monotheisms, etc. For example, she follows the Aryans from the Caucasus onto the Gangetic Plain and unfolds the story of proto-Hindu culture there. Similarly, she writes of the pre-Biblical development of what would become Judaism, and so on for all the relevant faiths. These are stories I have never come across elsewhere. Leave it to Armstrong to see this gap in common knowledge of religious history and seek to fill it. What she has undertaken here is of enormous scope. To write the proto-history and then the history of all the Axial faiths is not just ambitious, it is an effort that astonishes the reader as he watches it unfold. I recommend all Armstrong's books but especially The Case for God (also reviewed here) and A History of God. What marks her prose is tremendous empathy. Her portraits of the various Axial Age peoples are stunning in their range and complexity. It is a very dense book, but loaded with fascinating information for the patient reader. Armstrong believes that there is much to be learned from our religious history. Properly understood it is both a cautionary tale and an indication of how very much we need spirituality in our lives. To paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, without it we are left with a great "God-shaped hole" in our lives. Christopher Hitchens (R.I.P.) and Richard Dawkins think we can discard it. I disagree. This is an integral part of our evolution as a species and we have much to learn from it. (Note: The other writer of excellence in this field I'm familiar with is Elaine Pagels. She, too, has a number of wonderful books but it is her The Gnostic Gospels (also reviewed here) that is her summa.) Highly recommended! (less)
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Jan 25, 2008John rated it really liked it
Shelves: history-of-religion
The Great Transformation argues that the core religious/philosophical traditions of several major civilizations -- China, India, Greece, and Israel -- emerged at about the same time, for the same reasons, and were preoccupied with the same ideas. The time is what philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, the period from approximately 700-200 B.C. when these civilizations all developed philosophical or religious tenets that emphasized what we might now call inner spiritual development rather than abasement before omnipotent deities. The reason, Armstrong suggests, is that each of these societies was seeking a way beyond the incessent violence that marked their existence. As for the ideas, they have become cliches but are no less powerful for that: first, do unto others as you would have them do unto you; and second, be the change you wish to see in the world. Armstrong concludes that from these concepts, explored in different places and for somewhat different reasons, emerged Confusianism, Buddhism, classical Greek philosophy, and rabbinical Judaism (she considers the core precepts of both Christianity and Islam to be mere latter-day variations on rabbinical Jewish thought, with few innovations to contribute to that philosophical tradition).
Much as I enjoy reading early religious history, I'll confess that I don't have the background to evaluate Armstrong's argument on its merits. It's certainly compelling -- and given my own leanings (which are pretty vague, but could be said to be triagulated by agnosticism, unitarianism, and secular humanism), the argument that religion is at its best when it emphasizes personal growth rather than proper worship of the correct Sky God is one I'm inclined to favor. I did find myself wondering whether Armstrong was overstating the extent to which these complex philosophies had an impact on their own societies, as well as the extent to which they displaced, even temporarily, traditional religious emphasis on pleasing and/or appeasing an external deity. In addition, her final chapter -- aimed at today's fundamentalists of all faiths -- spends more time celebrating Christianity's and Islam's connections to Axial Age tradition than exploring why those connections seem, more and more, a minor part of both faiths (at least as professed by their loudest adherents).
Still, this was a thought-provoking read and, while slow going at times, one I found rewarding. A final word of praise: the book contains many useful maps and an excellent glossary, both of which are essential to a work like this but, I find, are too rarely included. Bravo to Armstrong and her publisher for providing them; they really help. (less)
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Oct 13, 2013P.J. Wetzel rated it liked it
I came to be aware of this book through my research for my distant future fantasy/sci-fi novel series 'Eden's Womb'. I wanted to understand the origin and evolution of mankind's religious journey in order to project a plausible future. That's a tall order, of course, but for me the study was a fascinating journey. I started by reading Huston Smith's iconic 'The World's Religions' and then began to delve deeper.
Along the way I had a little epiphany: It seemed that many major faith traditions/institutions were founded about the same time (800 to 200 BCE). I pursued this idea, wondering if the nascent trade routes that would become the Silk Road had begun a cultural exchange that early in human history.
Well, as I dug into it, I found out that my idea was far from original (few ever are). Karl Jaspers had the idea, and published it in `The Origin and the Goal of History' in 1953. Karen Armstrong seems to have latched onto Jaspers' grand theories as a way of hooking the reader (selling more books). But it remains unclear whether she actually believes them. Nowhere did she overtly refute Jasper's theories, but in the meat of the text she seems uninterested in reinforcing them. Sometimes it seems as if she finds his themes unsupportable but doesn't want to make an issue of it. That's not the kind of incisive scholarly analysis I would hope for from a book with such a grand title published by an expert. It's clear she's more interested in the detail. She shies away from big-picture analysis. Result: the title begins to come across as disingenuous--false advertising. And I begin to feel cheated.
From my point of view I wanted insight into the maturing of the human psyche, its causes and implications. Were there unifying factors that led to this period of unprecedented global advancement in and formalization of human thought?
Through my own independent research I found that this revolution or maturing of human consciousness seemed to be entirely global. Jaspers and Armstrong focus only on four major hubs of emergent civilization (Greece, Judea, India and China). What I found was that there were many more examples of emerging faith traditions and landmark human advancement that flowered during this period. Shinto religion began during this time frame as did the Norse theology--Odin first appears during this time. The first major cities of the Maya civilization arose during this period. The Polynesians were at the height of their seagoing prowess as they migrated across the south Pacific, and humans arrived in Madagascar for the first time. Clearly any unifying mechanism went far beyond cultural stimulation via the Silk Road trade routes.
To my disappointment Armstrong mentions none of these other cultures, and does not seem to be interested in the physical/environmental/external underpinnings of why this revolution happened. Rather she focuses on something she seems to implicitly assume is a 'universal' underpinning of human morality.
Fine. She's on a different wavelength. By now this has become abundantly clear. Okay, I'll sit back and let her elaborate before I pass judgment.
So now she proffers her primary theme: it's all about the `Golden Rule' -- "Do unto others as you (in your '*infinite wisdom and universal understanding*') would desire that others would do unto you."
For the obvious reasons (highlighted in the sarcastic parenthetical expression) this ancient and revered ethical directive is becoming one of the old canards that can no longer be supported. It translates into: 'ignore cultural diversity, reject the opportunity to expand your personal horizons through deep listening and understanding of your neighbor's point-of-view, and just blindly assume that everyone wants to be treated the way you want to be treated'.
Surely (Armstrong implicitly assumes) the 'Golden Rule' is a universal sign of humanity's newly emerging (shallowly defined) 'compassion' to which all these nascent religious movements must have aspired, and thus to which they all gravitated.
To me this is not a satisfying explanation. I see no universality. I'll offer one benign example: In China you must burp to express your satisfaction for a meal. In western Europe the burp is a sign that you're uncultured. Okay, here are a few more examples: http://mrfarshtey.net/WorldCultures/2...
The closest Armstrong comes to addressing my 'big-picture' question is by regurgitating Jaspers' thesis that the Great Transformation was a result of an interregnum between eras of war and destruction and suppression of original thought by great empires. This seems insufficient, and again this is not my original thought--it is shared by other critics.
Having posited her theme for the 'Axial Age' (as Jaspers called it), Armstrong proceeds to delve into an historical survey, in chronological blocks, of the secular and spiritual events in the four cultures. It turns out that the Axial thinkers (by her definition) arose sporadically, not simultaneously in most cases. In fact she concludes that Axial thinking never really took hold in Greece as it spawned the Western philosophies.
No unifying motivation? Why publish it under such a lofty title: "The Great Transformation"? Why parrot Jaspers' themes if you don't even support them?
Here's why: your publisher wants to sell books.
Armstrong is a 'can't see the forest for the trees' thinker. Her book reads like a series of book reports (here is what I read and here's what I got out of it). Too often her work becomes a tedious recitation of factual historical events and summations of ancient writings without any raison d'être. Rather, it seems, she has an obsession for completeness (demonstrated in other works of hers such as `A History of God'.) Finally, a pet peeve: Armstrong has the annoying habit of using `chic' words drawn from the subject culture, such as nibbana (nirvana), ahimsa (harmlessness) and li (tradition). There are many of these. She defines them once and then expects the reader to remember them all.
As a research earth scientist I find myself wondering if human interactions with the changing global climate of the time may have contributed to this great global revolution. Psychologists may wonder if this was a result of the natural evolution of human self-awareness as we came to recognize our mind as a useful tool. Armstrong peripherally mentions (in barely a few lines) such revolutions as the smelting of iron and the domestication of the horse as contributing factors to destabilization during these times. She was silent on my Silk Road thesis and the others. In the end, this book was not what I was hoping for. (less)
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Dec 17, 2010Nicholas Whyte rated it did not like it
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1541807.html
This is a rather brave attempt to wring significance out of the fact that Confucius, the Buddha, Socrates and Jeremiah all lived at about the same time, between them causing a revolution in the way in which humans relate to the universe in philosophy and religion. It did not completely work for me. I found Armstrong's account of the evolution of the Old Testament as a product of the Jews' exile in Babylon pretty compelling, and we have a couple more of her books on the shelves which I am looking forward to reading now. Her description of ancient Greek thought, which I gave tutorials on many years ago, seemed decent enough and made a very interesting claim about the importance of Sophocles in particular and Greek theatre in general as giving people a new way to talk about and think about the world. But her Indian sections were rather dull, and her Chinese sections very dull indeed, coming alive respectively only with the appearance of the main characters, the Buddha and Confucius. It is my fault more than hers, but I felt completely adrift in Chinese geography; various kingdoms with unfamiliar and confusingly similar names, and no obvious relationship to the present day geography which I know a little better.
And I was not convinced by the book's overall thesis, which seems to be that the near-coincidence of lifespan of the four main characters is a particularly interesting fact. It is true, but rather dull, to note, for instance, that James Marsters and Sophie Aldred were born on the same day. I think it is a little more interesting that Alexander Hamilton and the Duchess of Devonshire were born and died within two years of each other, because both were engaged in politics, and particularly in relations between England and America, at the same time. But Armstrong doesn't seriously argue that there was any influence, or even much in the way of common roots, between her four main characters, so we get four completely different stories (only two of which are interesting) chopped across each other with various totally disparate incidents lumped together purely because they happened at roughly the same time. It did not really work for me. (less)
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Jul 14, 2012Megan Kiekel rated it it was amazing
Shelves: history, nonfiction, religion
This textbook covers the beginnings and transformation of the major world religions through the Axel Age, from 1600 BCE to 220 BCE, plus an epilogue that brings the history into the current time.
I borrowed this from our friend Steve last fall, and I haven’t had enough brain cells to absorb this much information until now. This was the textbook from one of his religion classes in undergrad (he’s a genius grad school engineer now), and he passed it on to me because he knew I’d love it. I have to give this copy back to Steve, but I’m totally buying it for reference. (For the record- I did not read an entire textbook in a month. I was reading this well into October as well).
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I needed a clear head to read it; it’s a lot of information to take in. But it is amazing to trace the changes in philosophies and religious practices over time with the changes in human development. Each chapter is broken into four parts: one focusing on each of the major Axel Age peoples in China, Greece, India, and Jerusalem.
This was an introduction to this information for me, so I’m not really able to fully criticize the biases or limitations of this text. Armstrong did seem to have a strong detachment from the information, except when she was drawing her main points in the introduction and final chapter. All history texts, of course, are an argument: the author chooses which information to include and which to leave behind in order to strengthen their points and persuade the reader to their way of thinking. It is impossible to be objective when writing about history because of the vast amount of information out there. Armstrong obviously focused on what tied the major world religions together and made connections between their individual developments over the age. A book could probably just as easily be written on the differences of these religions.
I’d love to come back to this after I know more.
P.S. If you dislike religious history that is not written from a theological standpoint, then you may find this work offensive. (less)
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Nov 07, 2016Tim Pendry rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: cultural-studies, classics, history-of-science, history-of-philosophy, history, east-asian, religion-spiritual, south-asian, ancient-world, classical-civilisation
The core of this book is a solid account of the 'spiritual' traditions of four great civilisations (the Hellenistic-Pagan; the Judaean; the South Asian; and the Chinese) during the thousand or so years before the end of the third century BC. As far as it goes, it is an excellent and coherent narrative.
But I have my doubts. The story sometimes seems shoe-horned not only into the contention that all four cultures saw a first axial age that defined Old World culture until a second 'axial age' in the early modern era but it seems to be designed to be a rather passive-aggressive polemic for religion.
Although the range of reading is extensive, the transmission of specialist research impressive and the insights to be had considerable (until the very last chapters when Armstrong sometimes just tells a story most educated people already know), some claims for the early period seem excessive.
There are occasions when she appears to lack imagination about the claims of her sources. Is it really so that the very ancient Chinese conducted war in such stately fashion? Perhaps but perhaps the story is derived from later literary tropes. She takes texts on trust sometimes.
But the book disappoints because one soon becomes suspicious of her ideological motivation. The first and last chapter spin a yarn about religiosity that I found irritating and even misleading insofar as an empathic sentimentality was linked without warrant to her academic findings.
I found this shoe-horning of history into a 'sell' for religion in an age of violence (the book was written five years after 9/11) on the edge of objectionable as if somehow the essentialism of religion was not in itself part of the problem of all times. Complexity went out the window.
Still, if you can get her spirituality 'sell' (what the hell is this thing called 'spirituality' when it is not ideology or sentiment?) out of the way, her narrative flows, she is readable and one gets a sense of how one idea builds on its predecessors and why some particular ideas take root.
As history it is mostly very worthwhile but as proselytising for empathy and idealistic sentiment, it is in cloud-cuckoo land. There is some very good analysis of the social and political conditions in which ideas take root but very little critique of the nexus between material reality and 'religion'.
This intellectual weakness frustrates when the book is taken as a whole. It stays in the library as a ready reference on some key ideas and thinkers, with some sound general history thrown in, but it cannot be regarded as a first class text because its final analysis is overwhelmed with apologia.
The fashion for 'spirituality' is one of the problematics of current Western culture. The main theme of the sentimentalists is that if only we would listen to the great teachers and become empaths or submit to something outside ourselves, the violence would cease. Well, perhaps!
In fact, the violence and terror won't cease because universal empathy is a human impossibility. We are who we are, complex creatures. If someone has an idea you can be sure that the idea will be used as a tool or a weapon to gain advantage. Yes, this is what we are.
Her book-ending chapters presents a world of shoulds and oughts that defies reality and creates a vision that is always going to be more fiction than fact. Exhortation may influence some people to be better persons but as many or more will and must ignore the message.
If anything an excess of empathy, when faced by the standard alleged sociopathy of social systems, simply neuters the 'good' and sends them into defensive postures, private life, clerisy or the monastery, leaving everyone else as prey while the faithful protect themselves with 'sacred space'.
If humanity is to be liberated in terms of both private freedoms and the avoidance of oppressive harms, it is a moot point whether a passive intellectual and 'spiritual' approach will offer anything more than this defensive protection for the few (often at the expense of the many).
I have no problem with people believing in nonsense or even coming together consensually in societies that believe in nonsense but the idea that 'spirituality' will do anything other than abandon the mass of the people to the wolves is increasingly absurd.
'Spirituality' (I am still waiting for a non-nonsensical definition beyond mere sentiment) may be regarded as any belief system that eases the suffering and neuroses of life. There is nothing wrong with that - unless we think it reflects anything other than magical thinking.
Out of spirituality comes religion which is little more than the imposition of social order on the crooked timber of humanity, a process of containing and corralling the human 'spirit' (actually the human being) in despair at any other form of social organisation possibly 'being good'.
This book, for all its descriptive and narrative value, thus becomes a false friend to a species that needs to stop evading and avoiding material reality and the actual structures of power, stop trying to find bolt holes for itself and start creating practical approaches to solving problems.
In essence, there are only two problems here ... how to ensure human autonomy within an otherwise functional social system and how to ensure that one person does not do harm to another person. The great faiths partially solve the second but usually at the expense of the first.
They are only a partial solution because religious and 'spiritual' tendencies to treat personal liberation as liberation from the world will often result in the accidental de-humanisation of humanity, running away from materiality by (for example) 'abandoning the ego'.
The religious obsession with abandoning the ego is cowardice. The real task is to embrace the ego and put it to work as a lifetime project of self improvement and the social project of equalising the value of all egos viz. a society where you can 'do what thou wilt an harm no-one'.
There are arguments, of course, for mystery and ritual - like the Greek tragedies or Chinese li - as undogmatic artistic and magical endeavours that are not trying to make too many claims.
The poetry, drama, art, ritual and magic in the performance art that is 'religion' is not a bad thing but it is only valuable when it allows persons to appreciate the liminalities and absences in the world. Subsequently building a system out of such things destroys that very purpose.
One final world of praise for the book, however. It is very well served with maps, charts and plans - 25 in all. These are invaluable in comprehending the narrative. Despite the irritations, the book still remains recommended for anyone wanting a basic overview of ancient intellectual culture.
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Feb 26, 2012Jason rated it it was amazing
Karen Armstrong looks beyond doctrine to find a common core in the religious and philosophical traditions that emerged during the years 900 to 200 BCE - an era the German philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age. All around the world at the time, people were trying to address the question of violence and endless war.
What she found in the writings of the great thinkers and sages of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Judaism and the precursors of Christianity in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece is this: what a person believes is not what brings an end to suffering. Suffering only ends when we let go of selfishness and learn compassion for others. Or, as Rabbi Hillel summarized it: "What is hateful to yourself, do not to others. That is the whole of The Torah. The rest is commentary."
From this perspective, arguing over whose views on God are "correct" is not just pointless but actually harmful to ourselves and to others. This concurs with what the Buddha said to many a disciple. The remedy to conflict is not to find the flaws in our enemy, but to look inside ourselves for our own flaws.
Even for those not interested in saving the world or finding peace within themselves, this book should still prove an enjoyable reading experience. It is a thoroughly researched, well-written romp through a very interesting time in history, over a wide range of peoples and cultures. Armstrong's writing is always clean and lively, never stuffy or morbidly academic.
This is a book well-suited for our troubled times. (less)
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Mar 28, 2015Sarahj33 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: owned-books, lifestyle, religion
So I bought this book about three years ago at a street festival in Michigan when I was on a big non-fiction kick. I never got past the first couple of chapters because the writing felt pretty dense and seemed to assume that I had a background knowledge of things like the Assyrian Empire and the Book of Deuteronomy. I still don't know anything about those things, but I decided to give the book another go as part of my quest to actually read all the books that are languishing on my shelves before buying any new ones.
And somehow, this book was exactly the book I needed to be reading right now. If you've been keeping up with the news lately, it can feel like a lot of things are going wrong in the world, and organized religions in some form are implicated in a lot of the world's problems. So to open a book and read about lots of very smart people from 500 BCE seeing the same problems and actually coming up with solutions is very comforting. Obviously the solutions didn't last forever, but I've come away from this book convinced that we can learn a lot from the sages of the Axial Age.
The basic idea of The Axial Age is that around the same time, many of the world's religions took profound leaps forward in terms of incorporating ethical systems into their traditions - new ethical systems that were based on the Golden Rule, non-violence, and the suppression of ego. These systems also took the fascinating position that, although they never denied the existence of a god, they thought it was counter productive to try to define "God" when God is by nature undefinable. It would be much more appropriate to spend your energy leading a good life than worrying about whether Yahweh was more powerful than Baal. Armstrong writes clearly and concisely, weaving together different stories in a well organized but intricate web. I ended up changing my mind about the writing being too dense and requiring too much outside knowledge - it is easy to follow her arguments and conclusions even if you don't know anything about Vedic texts or the Chinese classics.
This book doesn't claim to be a panacea for all the world's problems, but to me it felt like it could be. Armstrong doesn't deny the various problems of the Axial traditions - the Greek Axial Age never really coalesced, the Chinese tradition split into several splinter groups, basically all the Axial sages completely ignored women, etc. And, of course, none of them could really make it last for more than a few hundred years. But overall the message of the book is hopeful. These guys were on to something, and it shows that even if religion is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. (less)
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Dec 07, 2009Charles Matthews rated it really liked it
We can be almost certain that somewhere, at this very moment, someone is committing an act of violence in the name of God. That troubling realization underlies this book, an attempt to reach back 2,500 years and more, to survey our earliest attempts to establish systems of belief that promise a release from human strife.
Karen Armstrong's "great transformation" took place in what the philosopher Karl Jaspers called "the Axial Age" – roughly seven centuries, starting around 900 B.C., in which the foundations were laid for Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as for such later faiths as Christianity and Islam and for secular inquiries into the nature of being and the good life. In discrete corners of the world -- places we now know as Greece, Israel, India and China – thinkers developed new concepts of human beings' relationship to God and to one another.
This was the age of great texts: the Hebrew scriptures; the Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita and Mahabharata; the Analects of Confucius; the dialogues of Plato. All of them stressed the primacy of doing good. As Armstrong sums it up, "First you must commit yourself to the ethical life; then disciplined and habitual benevolence, not metaphysical conviction, would give you intimations of the transcendence you sought."
The Golden Rule -- do unto others as you would have them do unto you -- recurs through all four of the traditions Armstrong surveys. "The Axial sages put the abandonment of selfishness and the spirituality of compassion at the top of their agenda," she writes. "For them religion was the Golden Rule. They concentrated on what people were supposed to transcend from – their greed, egotism, hatred, and violence."
What makes the emergence of this "spirituality of empathy and compassion" more striking, and earns it the designation of "great transformation," is that in all four regions, Armstrong observes, it was "rooted in fear and pain." Brutal tribal warfare was the rule at the opening of the Axial Age, and religion was very much a matter of trying to make sure – through ritual and sacrifice and other means of subjugation to a mysterious higher power -- that you had a god on your side who was stronger than the other guy's god. Armstrong's often fascinating intellectual history shows how a new attitude toward God and humanity emerged from these bellicose origins, a belief that "Heaven was not simply influenced by the slaughter of pigs and oxen, but by compassion and justice."
The transformation was brought about by a variety of thinkers whose ideas Armstrong presents with a welcome lucidity. There is, for example, the biblical author or editor – "or, more probably, a school of priestly writers and editors," Armstrong notes – whom scholars identify as "P." Armstrong shows how, in the opening chapter of Genesis, P transformed the creation myth, which in most traditions was presented as a titanic struggle, into a story of calm mastery: "There was no fighting or killing. God simply spoke a word of command: 'Let there be light!' … P methodically extracted aggression from the traditional cosmogony."
Other sages recognized that religious dogma was itself a cause of strife. Confucius "discouraged theological chatter," Armstrong tells us. "Instead of wasting time on pointless theological speculation, people should imitate the reticence of Heaven and keep a reverent silence. … The ultimate concern was not Heaven but the Way." The Buddha, Armstrong says, even went so far as to deny the existence of "an authoritative, overseeing deity," because it "could become another prop or fetter that would impede enlightenment. … But his rejection of God or gods was calm and measured. He simply put them peacefully out of his mind."
"The Great Transformation" is likely to irk scholars and specialists who object to an amateur, a former nun with degrees in English literature, venturing onto their turf. The book does seem over-ambitious in its attempt to survey four distinct cultures over a span of seven centuries about which reliable documentation is scant and what little is known has been overlaid with interpretation and speculation. Armstrong often glosses over the economic, social and political forces that underlie the transformation. She's much more focused on what was thought than on why it was thought. And there are good reasons to object to her overuse of phrases like "a time of transition." We're always in some kind of transition, after all – history is not a row of little fixed and stable boxes between which human beings scurry, doffing old ideas and putting on new.
But above all else, this is a book that aims to still the noise of our own troubled time. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Armstrong has been a frequent commentator in the media on matters of belief, particularly on the emergence of militant fundamentalism. Her book is a defense of the healing power of religion in an age when many have concluded, as she puts it, "that religion itself is inescapably violent or that violence and intolerance are endemic to a particular tradition." She reminds us that the Axial sages lived "in violent societies like our own. What they created was a spiritual technology that utilized natural human energies to counter this aggression." Armstrong's conviction, passion and intelligence radiate throughout the book, making us feel the urgency of the ideas it seeks to convey.
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Jun 21, 2010Nathan rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: history, franklin-library, sociology
Beginning with an exploration of Asian religious tradition, Karen Armstrong gradually moves to a general, and rather generic, call for religious tolerance. She focuses exclusively on the religious traditions of the Asian continent, notably Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, and while she does a cracking good job of it (her explication of Buddhist belief was the clearest I've ever read), she does so to the neglect of the contributions of the West to religious thought, notably Catholicism and post-Reformation Christianity. If these are too modern for her selected timeframe, she ought to have presented Judaism as more separate from Christianity; as it is, the omission feels like a job half-done.
She also doesn't do so well when highlighting the distinctives of each particular faith, combining them into a single nebulous philosophy more akin to modern New Age thought, rather than presenting each as an independent system. I think part of the problem was ambition: she can't possibly present a nuanced and exact portrait of each faith in the amount of detail she needs to. This sort of syncretism, while it may help the cause of religious tolerance in general, does nothing to further the ostensible goal of such a study: substantive dialogue on religious issues that doesn't degenerate into violence.
This book had potential, and realizes some of it. But it leaves much to be desired, foremost a fulfillment of its own solution: genuine discussion between different faiths that isn't afraid to acknowledge differences. (less)
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Apr 05, 2015Dawn rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: history, non-fiction, audiobook, religion, authors-women, read-2015
Much as I’d like to just leave my review to one word, fascinating, I don’t think that would be sufficient.
So, this book left me feeling just a bit uneducated as I know practically nothing about all but one of the religions discussed but I did find it curious, as obviously the author has, that all three would have such similar ideas at approximately the same time. The progression of each religion based on their geographical area and societal influences as well as their ultimate conclusions, which while laudable don’t seem to have been followed very well through the centuries, made for some thought provoking reading.
While the conclusions of the book came across to me as simplistic to the point of being boiled down to ‘be nice’, the lead up to that and all the historical elements were very well presented.
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May 24, 2010Cliff rated it really liked it
A bit dry but very well researched.
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Dec 09, 2019Becca rated it it was amazing
Shelves: non-fiction
Armstrong is quickly becoming one of my favorite religious thinkers. Here, she gives a history of the evolution of religious concepts from ancient times through the Axial Age when the ideals governing the world's societies were developed, taking us into the development of religion and philosophy in Asia, Eurasia, India, and the Middle East. I've been waiting to read a book like this practically my whole life, and while I certainly learned plenty, I now have even more questions: What about the ancient religions in the Americas? They followed many of the same evolutionary paths that the Eastern-based religions did, but Armstrong said nothing about the Western ancients. I understand this is meant to be a book about the thoughts that are still prevalent today on a global scale, so those religions may be outside the scope of this work, but I certainly hope she writes about them someday and how they fit into the timeline she's developed here.
She frequently uses the term "technology" in this book to describe the mental/doctrinal inventions developed over different regions to address life's common questions and challenges. It's such a wonderful way to think about religious thought.
Some things to know if you are considering reading this:
*Armstrong is a former Catholic nun who is a leading scholar in the field of world religion and religious history.
*While she continues to believe in Christian principles, her books are wonderfully neutral. You'd never guess she adheres to any specific viewpoint because she is unfailingly fair and respectful of each viewpoint she's talking about.
*If you're looking for scholarly "proof" of the supremacy of Christianity, you won't find it here. But I guarantee you'll see the faith (and all the others) with a much deeper appreciation than you did before. (less)
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Jan 14, 2019Jill Hudson rated it liked it
I was surprised by the many gushing reviews this book has received. Yes, it is a useful survey of the emergence and development of several world religions, and a very readable introduction to their characteristics. It also makes a strong case for mutual understanding and tolerance. But for me it just doesn't do 'what it says on the tin'. It offers no real explanation of why so many similar ideas emerged in different cultures at a similar time, though on the cover it says it is going to. Why were so many of Plato's ideas so reminiscent of Hinduism? What were the links between the two? We never find out; and what is more, the similarities between the various religions and philosophies are stressed rather too simplistically at the expense of the differences. Armstrong implies that metaphysical beliefs simply weren't important to the 'Axial sages', whose insights she boils down to not much more than 'The Golden Rule' which she says has never been improved upon. In fact Jesus' statement of this 'rule' goes way beyond most of its previous formulations, in that most other sages stated it in its 'negative' form ('Don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you') whereas Jesus', positive, version is much, much more challenging ('Do to others what you would have them do for you'). She claims that 'loving your neighbour' is pretty much all that true religion entails, forgetting that loving God is seen as equally important, not only by Jesus but by the Jewish 'Shema' and by the champions of many other faiths as well. Belief in God is not an optional extra; genuine compassion and transformation are only attainable when God's grace indwells us, not as a result of 'discipline'. Furthermore neither Christianity, rabbinic Judaism nor Islam emerged in Armstrong's 'Axial Age' (900-200BCE) at all, so she has to perform some dodgy sleight of hand to force them to fit into her framework. She is also guilty of some vague, generalised statements unbacked up by evidence and almost worthy of Philomena Cunk (e.g. 'In the ancient world it was generally permissable to eat only meat that had been sacrificed ceremonially in a sacred area'(!) - p161). I think I would have enjoyed this book more if its blurb hadn't made all sorts of extravagant claims which the content doesn't live up to. (less)
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Jan 19, 2015Miroku Nemeth rated it really liked it
I have mixed feelings about this book. It's a perspective on history that is interesting in many ways, but very misleading in others. The attribution of nonviolence to peoples who were violent is really quite inexplicable if it was actually a historical analysis of the theoretical "axis age" (that this is a problematic construction is actually borne out by the tortured argument structure of the book), but it is a recurrent theme she uses to support her thesis throughout the 500 and some odd ...more
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Feb 21, 2012Kathy rated it it was amazing
I read this book after reading Armstrong's wonderful book, "The Spiral Staircase." As a person who has never studied religious history, I lack the context for assessing Armstrong's treatment of the Axial Age during which major religions evolved versions of the Golden Rule. Her writing is very clear and easy to read, and she provides extensive documentation and explanations at the back. For me, the book was a captivating journey through a dimension of history that has fueled my curiosity. She stimulated me to read her other books, which I also found very valuable. A winner of a TED award, Armstrong is an important philosopher, humanitarian, and voice for peaceful communication among the world's religions. (less)
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Jul 13, 2013AC Fick rated it it was amazing
Armstrong is informed and informative without ever being didactic or preachy. This book, given the vast scope of its subject matter -- across time and space -- is infinitely readable, while always being detailed, specific, and accurate.
If you're intrigued by or interested in the history of the major religious and faith-based traditions in the world, this book is rewarding reading.
In fact, this ought to be required reading for all students of humanity; everyone, every last one of us, ought to read this book. (less)
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Jun 27, 2011Lori rated it it was amazing
I have read this two times and now am having it read to me in bed by my husband, a release for gut centered pacifists pained by all these wars.
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Apr 18, 2011Tom rated it it was amazing
Shelves: philosophy, non-fiction, history
It took a long time to finish this book, but it is worth the effort. In its scope and importance, it reminds me of Ideas: from Fire to Freud, another very worthwhile book. However, this one is more focused and, in some ways, more original.
Armstrong deals with what the historian Karl Jaspers calls the Axial Age (that period between 900 and 200 BC) during which the major philosophical and religious traditions that exist today, began. She follows developments in this regard in 4 distinct regions and traditions: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. “The Axial Age was one of the most seminal periods of intellectual, psychological, philosophical and religious change in recorded history; there would be nothing comparable until the Great Western Transformation, which created our won scientific and technological modernity.”
A recurring point made by Armstrong, is that, in each of these examples, advances in understanding occurred in the midst of periods of violence and turmoil. Perhaps such social, and spiritual stresses are necessary pre-conditions for such change.
“The prophets, mystics, philosophers, and poets of the Axial Age were so advanced and their vision was so radical that later generations tended to dilute it. In the process, they often produced exactly the kind of religiosity that the Axial reformers wanted to get rid of. That, I believe, is what has happened in the modern world.”
“In Middle Eastern treaties, to 'love' meant to be helpful,loyal, and to give practical support. The commandment to love was not excessively utopian, therefore, but was within everybody's grasp.”
In speaking about the importance of theater in Greek culture: “The playwrights often chose subjects that reflected recent events, but usually presented them in a mythical setting that distanced them from the contemporary scene and enabled the audience to analyze and reflect upon the issues. The festival was a communal meditation, during which the audience worked through their problems and predicament. All male citizens were obliged to attend; even prisoners were released for the duration of the festival.”
In fifth century BC China a school of philosophy founded by Mozi, “...used the imagery of the working man, comparing Heaven's organization of the world to the compasses and L-square of the wheelwright and the carpenter, who employed these instruments 'to measure the round and the square throughout the world.;”
Mencius (371-288 BC) was a devout Confucian. He taught that it was natural for people to feel compassion toward those who suffer. [This is supported as well by newer findings in human behavior and neuroscience] “Every single person had four fundamental 'impulses' (tuan) that, if properly cultivated, would grow into the four cardinal virtues: benevolence, justice, courtesy, and the wisdom to distinguish right from wrong. They were like the first shoots that would one day grow into a plant...You could stamp on these 'shoots'-just as you could cripple or deform yourself-but if they were cultivated properly, they acquired a vibrant, dynamic power of their own. Once they were active, they would transform not only the person who practiced them, but everyone with whom he came into contact.”
“The Greek word idea did not mean 'idea' in the modern English sense..[it] was not a private, subjective mental construct, but a 'form' pattern' or essence'. A form of ideas was an archetype, the original pattern that gave each particular entity its distinctive shape and condition. Plato's philosophical notion can be seen as a rationalized and internalized expression of the ancient perennial philosophy in which every earthly object or experience has its counterpart in the divine sphere.”
“We moderns experience thinking as something that we do. But Plato envisaged it as something that happened to the mind: the objects of though were living realities in the psyche of the person who learned to see them. This vision of beauty was not merely an aesthetic experience. Once people had experienced it, they found that they had undergone a profound moral change and could no longer live in a shabby, unethical way. A person who had achieved this knowledge could 'bring forth not merer reflected images of goodness, but true goodness, because he will be in contact not with a reflection but the truth...Plato's description of beauty was clearly similar to what others called God or the Way” In Plato's world: “..the nous of each human being was divine; each had a daimon, a divine spark, within him or herself, whose purpose was to 'raise us up away from the earth and toward what is akin to us in heaven.' Human beings therefore lived in a perfectly rational world, the exploration of which was both a scientific and a spiritual enterprise.”
“The Hellenistic philosophers may not have been as revolutionary as their predecessors, but hey had lasting influence, and in many ways they epitomized the emerging Western spirit. In the West, people gravitated toward science and logos, and were less spiritually ambitio9us than the sages of India and “China. Instead of making the heroic effort ot discover a realm of transcendent peace within, the Hellenistic philosophers were prepared to settle for a quiet life. Instead of training the intuitive powers of the mind, they turned to scientific logos. Instead of achieving mystical enlightenment, the West was excited by a more mundane illumination. The Western genius for science eventually transformed the wolrld, and in the sixteenth century its scientific revolution introduced a new Axial Age. The would greatly benefit humanity, but it was inspired by a different species of genius. Instead of the Buddha, Socrates, and Confucius, the heroes of he second Axial Age would be Newton, Freud, and Einstein.”
Re: the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) credited to Laozi: “While other creatures kept to the Way designed for the, humans had separated themselves from thier dao by constant, busy yu wei relfection: they made distinctions that did not exist, and formulated solemn principles of action that were simply egotistical projections.”
Re: Jewish theology: “ The rabbis fully accepted the Axial principle that the ultimate reality was transcendent and ineffable. Nobody could have the last word on the subject of God. Jews were forbidden to pronounce God's name, as a powerful reminder that any attempt to express the divine was so inadequate that it was potentially blasphemous...What we call 'God' was not the same for everybody. Each of the prophets had experienced a different 'God', because his personality had influenced his conception of the divine.”
Re: Muslim theology: “the Quran did not claim to be a new revelation, but simply to resate the message that had been given to Adam, the father of humanity, who was also the first prophet. It insisted that Muhammad had not come to replace the prophets of the past but to return to he primordial faith of Abraham, who lived before the Torah and the gospel-before, that is, the religions of God had split into warring sects.”
“When warfare and terror are rife in a society, this affects everything that people do. The hatred and horror infiltrate their dreams, relationships, desires, and ambitions. The Axial sages saw this happening to their own contemporaries and devised an education rooted in the deeper, less conscious levels of the self to help them overcome this. The fat that they all came up with such profoundly similar solutions by so many different routes suggest that they had indeed discovered something important about the way human beings worked. Regardless of the theological 'beliefs'-which, as we have seen,did not much concern the sages-they all concluded that if people made a disciplined effort to reeducate themselves, they would experience and enhancement of their humanity, in one way or another, their programs were designed to eradicate the egotisms that are largely responsible for our violence and promoted the empathic spirituality of the Golden Rule....The practice of disciplined sympathy would itself yield intimations of transcendence.”
“This is not to say that all theology should be scrapped or hat the conventional beliefs about God or the ultimate are 'wrong'. But-quite simply- they cannot express the entire truth. ...Christianity... has set great store by doctrinal orthodoxy, and many Christians could not imagine religion without their conventional beliefs. This is absolutely fine, because these dogmas often express a profound spiritual truth. The test is simple: if people's beliefs-secular or religious- make them belligerent, intolerant and unkind about other people's faith, they are not 'skillful'. If, however, their convictions impel them to act compassionately and to honor the stranger, then they are good, helpful and sound. This is the test of true religiosity in every single one of the major traditions.”
What I found most original about this book is the idea that over centuries, humans, at least some of us, have been engaged in a gradual advance in our spiritual nature and that, across time and distance, different cultures and traditions have converged in very similar ways. The general road map that Armstrong describes runs through ritual, kenosis (emptying...of one's ego and material attachments), knowledge, suffering, empathy, concern for everybody and all is one. She argues that the Axial sages brought forth new formulations during times of violence and social upheaval. Given recent history, are we in a period when there will be further advances in human spiritual development?
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Jan 22, 2011Sean rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction
"The Great Transformation: The Beginnings of Religious Traditions" is the sort of scholarship you can come to expect from Karen Armstrong, an independent scholar from Britain who writes extensively on religious topics. She is able to take quite complicated issues and ideas and his able to make them accessible to a wider audience. This really is the biggest job of a scholar, whether independent or attached to a university- to be able to communicate your thoughts and ideas in a coherent way. If you can do this to a massive audience of non-academics, all the better. In this regard, Karen Armstrong is in many ways second-to-none.
"The Great Transformation" describes a theoretical period in history known as the "Axial Age," which according to her estimations ran from about 900 BCE to 200 BCE (with extensions into the Common Era). During this time period of immense change and characterized by violence and trauma, nearly all of the worlds major religious or philosophical traditions got their starts, from Israelite Monotheism to Vedic Religions to Chinese Religions to Greek Philosophy. Its a very broad theory they implies that humanity as a whole had reached a certain point by this time period to need a new form of religiosity and spirituality and therefore, this transition happened in a number of places simultaneously. For Armstrong, the transition to Axial Age religions involved an evolving sense of self and an acute awareness of suffering and pain. These religions gave their followers the tools to live in chaotic times and make sense of the rapid changes surrounding them. There is also the sense that the religious journey is one that forced the follower to acknowledge the impermanence of things and the difficulty of knowing the divine. What these faiths did was to encourage their followers towards a certain "knosis" of the divine, or to a sense of truths and ideas which are not able to be articulated. This is the sort of knowledge that cannot be taught but knowledge acquired through living and practice.
The book has some amazing ideas and deserves a high rating for the audacity to try to synthesize almost 1,000 years of complex history and philosophy from four different areas. The information is fascinating and clearly aimed for a modern audience- whom she tries to encourage at the end to take the lessons from these thinkers and apply them to the modern world. However, I cannot rate this higher for a number of reasons. First is that while the information is extremely useful and interesting, it suffers from a real lack of organization. The book is arranged chronologically and thematically but within chapters, there is really jumping between the four regions. I do not think that she chose the order of the content randomly but her chain of logic is hard to discern. I also think that by trying to connect these movements so closely, she risks making them seem like they were in extremely close contact and that their developments were in one logical stream. It is a very tricky line to balance and I feel at times, she gets trapped in the idea of the Axial Age. What I may consider doing in the future is reading all of the material for one area at once to be able to connect the sections across chapters. Second is that I am not sure how much I buy into the Axial Age theory. The evidence is compelling but I am wary of "all-encompassing" theories of religion. We must be careful not to allow the theory to overtake what I would call the organic nature of religion.
As a new scholar of religion myself, I can agree with this theory on a basic level. I think that this new conception of humanity was a logical development of religion and shows one way that humans can react to profound change. An axial mindset would be useful in the modern world and I think this book goes a long way to remind us of these essential truths founded by these seekers so many years ago. (less)
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Jul 21, 2017Mary Ellen rated it really liked it
Karen Armstrong's scholarly exploration of the Axial Age was esoteric at times, and I found her discussion of Christianity to be surprisingly lacking, but ultimately I loved how she rounded it all out with a discussion of how compassion and the Golden Rule is the heart of all the world's religious traditions. Very inspiring.
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Dec 15, 2007Adam rated it it was amazing
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
In 1948, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term "Axial Age" to denote an astonishing era, from roughly 900 B.C. to 200 B.C., in which the foundations of the world's great religions were laid. This was the time of Socrates, Elijah, Siddhartha, Confucius. In her magisterial new exploration of the era, Karen Armstrong argues that all Axial Age traditions emphasized justice and were committed to the practice of "disciplined sympathy" and compassion. The Great Transformation is Armstrong at her best -- translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose that will delight scholars and armchair historians alike, drawing connections between the distant past and our own religious practices, suggesting that the antidotes to some of contemporary religion's excesses lie in the roots of the religious traditions themselves.
Armstrong's emphasis on the things that unify Hinduism, Socratic philosophy, Judaism and Confucianism has just a whiff of the old colonialist approach to "world religions," reveling in religions' resemblances without sufficiently acknowledging their particularities. (The Brits who "discovered" Hinduism cast it, and every other religion, in terms that looked a lot like Christianity. Armstrong does much the same thing in reverse, casting Judaism and its spiritual descendants in terms that look a lot like Buddhism.) This approach fails to recognize the ways in which Buddhist compassion and Hindu compassion and Christian compassion and Jain compassion may meaningfully differ. Without an honest appraisal of those differences, it is hard to evaluate, say, the difference between the morality of the euthanasia advocate and the radical pro-life Catholic. Whose compassion trumps, that of George W. Bush or of John Paul II?
And yet, Armstrong's call to rededicate our religious selves to compassion, other-directed love and service is downright rousing. People from many different faiths will close this book reminded of the value their tradition places on compassion and recommitted to expressing it in their own religious idiom.
Reviewed by Lauren F. Winner
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
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Jan 09, 2010Mark rated it liked it
I like reading Karen Armstrong's books. This book is a travel through religious history, especially that of the Judaism and Christianity. It includes Islam, but not to the same extent. The book seems centered around the 'axial' age of religions; that is, the movements,mostly early on, that defined religious belief as a changing phenomenon motivated by individual betterment, rather than traditional acceptance of socially defined belief.
The book starts with the Aryans, around 1600 B.C.E and takes the reader through to the early Islamic believers, around 700 C.E. With chapter titles such as "Knowledge", "Suffering", "Empathy", and "Concern With Everybody", the tone of the book is clear. Armstrong does not completely disregard the violence that religion has caused through the ages, but plays it down. It seems her argument is that there is a 'true' nature of religion that is overshadowed by its long, violent history. This argument is akin to the modern versions of 'spirituality' that can be found in western societies today.
Armstrong is primarily a historian, which is what I like about the book. There are tidbits of information in each chapter that are often helpful to piecing puzzles together about societies and belief systems. The chapters read like religious history, but with a few directives thrown in, reminding the reader that the religion itself (the 'true' religion) is beyond the actual historical connotations. She is a thorough writer, leaving little to the imagination; again, a sign of a good historian.
I think that the subtitle of the book, "The Beginnings of our Religious Traditions", is at the core of the book, her point being that in the beginning, most religious were simply the product of "sages" trying to live in a world filled with violence. While this may be true, a 'true' historian would need to be faithful to the history, not the intentions.
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Nov 03, 2016Daniel Seifert rated it liked it
Shelves: religious-studies, reference, history
Armstrong, a religious historian in her own right, discusses four Axial cultures under that while they are not synchronic developments/transformations in human development, they are great Axial figures (900 BC to 200 CE) such as Zoroaster in Persia, Buddha in India, and Laozi and Confucius in China. Wile I am not a ride reader of history, I found helpful this rich background to my familiarity with Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that are categorized as “latter day flowerings of the Axial Age,” and other creative traditions who gave us, e.g., the Pali canon, the Greek tragedies, or the Tao.
Like any tradition or history, Armstrong delivers a disjunctive, raggedness in her telling. For example she echoes her sympathies for Aristotle who had “a better understanding of traditional spirituality than Plato” and was “more comfortable with emotions” than his master. While later writing a lament that “unfortunately,” Aristotle “made an indelible impression on Western Christianity.”
Anyone who has read Armstrong's books (e.g., A History of God) knows she seeks understanding the enduring relevance of the traditional teachings handed down and to retrieve their authentic import--to “bring the best insights of modernity to the table” with the ultimate outcome of such efforts being “recreation” of the “Axial vision.” She propels in her quest the gradual discovery of interiority, a move away from tribalism and ritualism as the “great transformation” marking the Axial Age. Perhaps the end of the text provides a sense of this aim in an appeal to mutual understanding and tolerance “in a tragic world, where, as the Greeks knew, there can be no simple answers."
With the themes of The Great Transformation, she ends with an inspiring call for a return to the Axial Age principles of human compassion, selflessness, and a desire to avoid inflicting harm as a remedy for many of today’s social and religious ills, a fitting way to leave with us with "The Way Forward." (less)
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May 05, 2017Laura rated it it was amazing
I loved this book. I have read a lot of Karen Armstrong's work and love the way she explains religion in a scholarly and yet respectful manner for every religious tradition. However, this was my favorite by far. I got lost in her descriptions of the mindset, culture, and beliefs of the peoples of the Axial Age. It was fascinating to visit Ancient Greece, China, India, and Israel. I just couldn't get enough and would have read on another 400 pages.
Sometimes at the end of Armstrong's work she seems a little preachy and flippant about how we should be applying her insights into these religions to our own day and our own problems, but this time she did not fall into that trap. She gently scolded and clearly showed how we are now going through our own time spiritual upheaval just as the axial peoples did before our time. She already showed us in the book how they religions and beliefs changed in response to the hardships the various civilizations encountered so she left it to the reader to infer that the same type of transition would occur in our own time to be able to successfully heal the divisions in our society. Where that transition may take us, no one knows, but Ms. Armstrong and I both pray that it takes toward compassion and the insights of the sages of the Axial Age.
Cannot recommend it highly enough!!! (less)
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Jan 15, 2018Bonnie rated it it was amazing
Shelves: history
An excellent book if you're interested in religion or history, or some perspective on the confusing state of affairs in the world today. Ms. Armstrong explains in depth the changes that occurred in four main civilizations from around 1000 years before and until around 500 years into the common era. The peoples she studies are the Israelites, the Greeks, Indian and Chinese, during times of upheaval for each of them. In general she shows how for each of these groups a greater understanding of individuality emerged, causing them to grapple with how to reconcile that awakening with the demands of the society. It was basically a transformation from tribal to a larger awareness. Her focus is the religious struggles, though she describes other aspects that are relevant.
I loved it just for the historical information, but here's a great quote from the end:
"Today we are making another quantum leap forward. Our technology has created a global society, which is interconnected electronically, militarily, economically, and politically. We now have to develop a global consciousness, because whether we like it or not, we live in one world. Even though our problem is different from that of the Axial sages, they can still help us. They did not jettison the insights of the old religion, but deepened and extended them. In the same way, we should develop the insights of the Axial Age." (less)
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Oct 21, 2016JJ Lehmann rated it really liked it
Shelves: in-collection
Although I'm not quite convinced on the concept of an Axial age, it is quite fascinating that so many giants of the religion world arose around the same time. In my opinion, it seems that because of the violence and desperation of the time or perhaps both made the populace open to, and the ground fertile for, the rise of spiritually intelligent people to combat this dukkha. It just seems to easy to connect them all.
That said, every academic field of study needs a person that can popularize its information to the general public. It seems that Karen Armstrong has taken over that role from the great Huston Smith, and she does it quite well. She is extremely readable and explains often complex information in a way that most will understand. I agree with her that these sages have a lot to teach us as we struggle with our current divisiveness. (less)
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May 21, 2017Erin Britton rated it it was amazing
In 'The Great Transformation', Karen Armstrong tackles a far greater range of religious philosophies than she has done in previous books. This time, Armstrong considers the numerous ideologies than came into existence during the turbulent five centuries (800 BC to 300 BC) known as the Axial Age. It was during this period that many of the main religious theories - Daoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Philosophical Rationalism - were developed and Armstrong considers each of these theories. As ever, Armstrong provides a clear and scholarly explanation of a complex subject and 'The Great Transformation' is an excellent introduction to religious theory although, due to the scope of the topic, it cannot provide an in-depth study of any one of the religious ideologies. (less)
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Jun 05, 2010Chris rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: religion
Originally I tried to read this one as an old fashioned book. However, I found it difficult to find the time to dedicate to it. While it is a very interesting read, it was a slow read for me. I needed time to let the concepts and the history sit in my mind.
Then I decided to get the audiobook version of it. (Thank you Audible.com!) Driving back and forth to work turned out to be a great time to absorb this tome.
It ties in directly to Armstrong's 'Charter for Compassion'. Listening to it felt like I was in the lecture hall while Professor Armstrong led us in an exploration of religions and philosophies. While I cannot recommend this book for everyone, if you have a geeky interest in religions and ideas, this is your kind of book. (less)
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Oct 04, 2015Nik rated it really liked it
Shelves: religion-philosophy, history
Karen Armstrong proposes that the test of true religiosity in every single one of the major religious traditions, is to act compassionately and to honor the stranger. She suggests that when looking at the worlds major religious traditions one may discover the spiritual kernel behind all of them when one avoids jettisoning the doctrines within them. She gives a wide and broad view of the axial age within each faith tradition and helps one see the commonality behind this striving for compassion. I thought it was a great read and one worth promoting. Our world can use more compassion and each of our faith traditions can certainly promote this need in a more effective way. (less)
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=========================
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions Kindle Edition
by Karen Armstrong (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 out of 5 stars 163 ratings
Length: 496 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A splendid book. . . . Lucid, highly readable. . . . Relevan[t] to a world still embroiled in military conflict and sectarian hatreds.” —The New York Times“Masterful. . . . Stimulating. . . . A tour de force.” —The Christian Science Monitor“The Great Transformation is Armstrong at her best–translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose. . . . Her call to rededicate our religious selves to compassion, other-directed love and service is downright rousing.” —The Washington Post“Remarkable and persuasive.” —The Independent“Perhaps her most ambitious work to date. . . . Thoroughly researched and readable.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
It's not what one may expect from a book about the development of the world's religions: "Crouched in his mother's womb, he lay in wait for his father, armed with a sickle, and the next time Uranus penetrated Gaia, he cut off his genitals and threw them to the earth." However, the Greek myth of Cronus clearly illustrates Armstrong's main thesis, that the "simultaneous" development of the world's religions during what Karl Jung called the axial age, is a direct result of the violence and chaos, both physical and spiritual, of past civilizations. Armstrong, a former nun turned self-described "freelance monotheist," has enough background and personal investment in the material to make it come alive. Her delivery is crystal clear, informative and, though somewhat academic, easy for the layman to understand. Her voice is straightforward yet wrought with palpable concern. This reinforces the book's goals of creating a clear understanding of where religious developments have come from and explaining how today's "violence of an unprecedented scale" parallels the activities that created the "axial age" in the first place.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
From The Washington Post
In 1948, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term "Axial Age" to denote an astonishing era, from roughly 900 B.C. to 200 B.C., in which the foundations of the world's great religions were laid. This was the time of Socrates, Elijah, Siddhartha, Confucius. In her magisterial new exploration of the era, Karen Armstrong argues that all Axial Age traditions emphasized justice and were committed to the practice of "disciplined sympathy" and compassion. The Great Transformation is Armstrong at her best -- translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose that will delight scholars and armchair historians alike, drawing connections between the distant past and our own religious practices, suggesting that the antidotes to some of contemporary religion's excesses lie in the roots of the religious traditions themselves.
The Axial Age was anticipated, Armstrong writes, by the prophetic priest Zoroaster. Outraged at the violence of the Aryan warrior culture, Zoroaster conceived of the cosmos as a battle between the forces of good and evil, and he envisioned a great judgment that would eventually culminate in a world of peace and justice. Zoroastrianism is now known to us largely as a historical relic, but his "passionately ethical vision" and his determination to find a spiritual idiom that promoted peace bore fruit in the religious traditions of the Axial Age.
Other sages also emerged from the conflicts of the era: In India, the Axial Age coincided with the collapse of the Harappan civilization; in Greece, spirituality and philosophy flourished as the Mycenaean kingdom gave way to the Macedonian empire. Socratic philosophy was forged in the brutality of the Peloponnesian War. Breaking sharply from the Greek tradition of vengeance, Socrates argued that retaliation was always unjust and that the key to enlightenment and social virtue was acting with forbearance toward everyone, friend or enemy. The Buddha similarly taught that focusing on the self led to envy, conceit and pride; only a movement into "no self" would lead to "non-distress" and "unhostility."
When the kingdom of Israel, profitably allied with Assyria, failed to care for its poor, the prophet Amos warned that God would turn against his chosen people if they did not clean up their act. Amos, Armstrong writes, exemplified kenosis, or self-emptying: He believed that "his subjectivity had been taken over by God," so it was not Amos offering radical prophecies but God himself. God had experienced the injustices committed by Israel as painful and humiliating acts against him -- so Amos was calling the Israelites to feel, as their God felt, the sufferings of others.
Though this is a study of ancient history, Armstrong has a present-day agenda. We also live in a time of great social transformation and unrest, and, like the Axial sages, we should foster compassion, self-emptying and justice.
She notes that compassionate spirituality leaves room for doctrine: "This is not to say that all theology should be scrapped or that the conventional beliefs about God or the ultimate are 'wrong.' . . . The test is simple: if people's beliefs -- secular or religious -- make them belligerent, intolerant, and unkind about other people's faith, they are not 'skillful.' If, however, their convictions impel them to act compassionately and to honor the stranger, then they are good, helpful, and sound. This is the test of true religiosity . . . . Instead of jettisoning religious doctrines, we should look for their spiritual kernel."
Armstrong's emphasis on the things that unify Hinduism, Socratic philosophy, Judaism and Confucianism has just a whiff of the old colonialist approach to "world religions," reveling in religions' resemblances without sufficiently acknowledging their particularities. (The Brits who "discovered" Hinduism cast it, and every other religion, in terms that looked a lot like Christianity. Armstrong does much the same thing in reverse, casting Judaism and its spiritual descendants in terms that look a lot like Buddhism.) This approach fails to recognize the ways in which Buddhist compassion and Hindu compassion and Christian compassion and Jain compassion may meaningfully differ. Without an honest appraisal of those differences, it is hard to evaluate, say, the difference between the morality of the euthanasia advocate and the radical pro-life Catholic. Whose compassion trumps, that of George W. Bush or of John Paul II?
And yet, Armstrong's call to rededicate our religious selves to compassion, other-directed love and service is downright rousing. People from many different faiths will close this book reminded of the value their tradition places on compassion and recommitted to expressing it in their own religious idiom.
Reviewed by Lauren F. Winner
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
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From AudioFile
During the ninth century BCE, the people of India, China, the area now known as Israel, and Greece developed religious and philosophical traditions that continue today. This era of intense spiritual activity came to be known as the Axial Age and brought us the figures of Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and the Hebrew prophets. Religious scholar Karen Armstrong examines the development of these four traditions, which have in common a call for personal responsibility followed by effective action. The material is deep, with many names of people and places, and requires great concentration. Also, Armstrong is far from aurally engaging. When making transitions, she doesn't uses pauses effectively, a characteristic that causes one to lose track momentarily. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
by
Karen Armstrong
4.03 · Rating details · 3,431 ratings · 257 reviews
In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. Now, in The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal "Axial Age" can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times.
Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. With regard to dealing with fear, despair, hatred, rage, and violence, the Axial sages gave their people and give us, Armstrong says, two important pieces of advice: first there must be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action.
In her introduction and concluding chapter, Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today. In our various institutions, we sometimes seem to be attempting to create exactly the kind of religion that Axial sages and prophets had hoped to eliminate. We often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to be the major catalyst of spiritual change. (less)
Jul 22, 2011William2 rated it really liked it
Shelves: uk, nonfiction, 21-ce, history, religion, spirituality
Karen Armstrong takes great mountains, virtual Everests, of wretched scholarly prose and turns them into something highly readable. She is a first-rate disseminator and popularizer of the history of religion. The Great Transformation reviews the history of what Karl Jaspers famously termed the "Axial Age." During this period, roughly 900-200 B.C.E., the foundations for all of our present religious traditions were laid down: Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, the other monotheisms, etc. For example, she follows the Aryans from the Caucasus onto the Gangetic Plain and unfolds the story of proto-Hindu culture there. Similarly, she writes of the pre-Biblical development of what would become Judaism, and so on for all the relevant faiths. These are stories I have never come across elsewhere. Leave it to Armstrong to see this gap in common knowledge of religious history and seek to fill it. What she has undertaken here is of enormous scope. To write the proto-history and then the history of all the Axial faiths is not just ambitious, it is an effort that astonishes the reader as he watches it unfold. I recommend all Armstrong's books but especially The Case for God (also reviewed here) and A History of God. What marks her prose is tremendous empathy. Her portraits of the various Axial Age peoples are stunning in their range and complexity. It is a very dense book, but loaded with fascinating information for the patient reader. Armstrong believes that there is much to be learned from our religious history. Properly understood it is both a cautionary tale and an indication of how very much we need spirituality in our lives. To paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, without it we are left with a great "God-shaped hole" in our lives. Christopher Hitchens (R.I.P.) and Richard Dawkins think we can discard it. I disagree. This is an integral part of our evolution as a species and we have much to learn from it. (Note: The other writer of excellence in this field I'm familiar with is Elaine Pagels. She, too, has a number of wonderful books but it is her The Gnostic Gospels (also reviewed here) that is her summa.) Highly recommended! (less)
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Jan 25, 2008John rated it really liked it
Shelves: history-of-religion
The Great Transformation argues that the core religious/philosophical traditions of several major civilizations -- China, India, Greece, and Israel -- emerged at about the same time, for the same reasons, and were preoccupied with the same ideas. The time is what philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, the period from approximately 700-200 B.C. when these civilizations all developed philosophical or religious tenets that emphasized what we might now call inner spiritual development rather than abasement before omnipotent deities. The reason, Armstrong suggests, is that each of these societies was seeking a way beyond the incessent violence that marked their existence. As for the ideas, they have become cliches but are no less powerful for that: first, do unto others as you would have them do unto you; and second, be the change you wish to see in the world. Armstrong concludes that from these concepts, explored in different places and for somewhat different reasons, emerged Confusianism, Buddhism, classical Greek philosophy, and rabbinical Judaism (she considers the core precepts of both Christianity and Islam to be mere latter-day variations on rabbinical Jewish thought, with few innovations to contribute to that philosophical tradition).
Much as I enjoy reading early religious history, I'll confess that I don't have the background to evaluate Armstrong's argument on its merits. It's certainly compelling -- and given my own leanings (which are pretty vague, but could be said to be triagulated by agnosticism, unitarianism, and secular humanism), the argument that religion is at its best when it emphasizes personal growth rather than proper worship of the correct Sky God is one I'm inclined to favor. I did find myself wondering whether Armstrong was overstating the extent to which these complex philosophies had an impact on their own societies, as well as the extent to which they displaced, even temporarily, traditional religious emphasis on pleasing and/or appeasing an external deity. In addition, her final chapter -- aimed at today's fundamentalists of all faiths -- spends more time celebrating Christianity's and Islam's connections to Axial Age tradition than exploring why those connections seem, more and more, a minor part of both faiths (at least as professed by their loudest adherents).
Still, this was a thought-provoking read and, while slow going at times, one I found rewarding. A final word of praise: the book contains many useful maps and an excellent glossary, both of which are essential to a work like this but, I find, are too rarely included. Bravo to Armstrong and her publisher for providing them; they really help. (less)
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Oct 13, 2013P.J. Wetzel rated it liked it
I came to be aware of this book through my research for my distant future fantasy/sci-fi novel series 'Eden's Womb'. I wanted to understand the origin and evolution of mankind's religious journey in order to project a plausible future. That's a tall order, of course, but for me the study was a fascinating journey. I started by reading Huston Smith's iconic 'The World's Religions' and then began to delve deeper.
Along the way I had a little epiphany: It seemed that many major faith traditions/institutions were founded about the same time (800 to 200 BCE). I pursued this idea, wondering if the nascent trade routes that would become the Silk Road had begun a cultural exchange that early in human history.
Well, as I dug into it, I found out that my idea was far from original (few ever are). Karl Jaspers had the idea, and published it in `The Origin and the Goal of History' in 1953. Karen Armstrong seems to have latched onto Jaspers' grand theories as a way of hooking the reader (selling more books). But it remains unclear whether she actually believes them. Nowhere did she overtly refute Jasper's theories, but in the meat of the text she seems uninterested in reinforcing them. Sometimes it seems as if she finds his themes unsupportable but doesn't want to make an issue of it. That's not the kind of incisive scholarly analysis I would hope for from a book with such a grand title published by an expert. It's clear she's more interested in the detail. She shies away from big-picture analysis. Result: the title begins to come across as disingenuous--false advertising. And I begin to feel cheated.
From my point of view I wanted insight into the maturing of the human psyche, its causes and implications. Were there unifying factors that led to this period of unprecedented global advancement in and formalization of human thought?
Through my own independent research I found that this revolution or maturing of human consciousness seemed to be entirely global. Jaspers and Armstrong focus only on four major hubs of emergent civilization (Greece, Judea, India and China). What I found was that there were many more examples of emerging faith traditions and landmark human advancement that flowered during this period. Shinto religion began during this time frame as did the Norse theology--Odin first appears during this time. The first major cities of the Maya civilization arose during this period. The Polynesians were at the height of their seagoing prowess as they migrated across the south Pacific, and humans arrived in Madagascar for the first time. Clearly any unifying mechanism went far beyond cultural stimulation via the Silk Road trade routes.
To my disappointment Armstrong mentions none of these other cultures, and does not seem to be interested in the physical/environmental/external underpinnings of why this revolution happened. Rather she focuses on something she seems to implicitly assume is a 'universal' underpinning of human morality.
Fine. She's on a different wavelength. By now this has become abundantly clear. Okay, I'll sit back and let her elaborate before I pass judgment.
So now she proffers her primary theme: it's all about the `Golden Rule' -- "Do unto others as you (in your '*infinite wisdom and universal understanding*') would desire that others would do unto you."
For the obvious reasons (highlighted in the sarcastic parenthetical expression) this ancient and revered ethical directive is becoming one of the old canards that can no longer be supported. It translates into: 'ignore cultural diversity, reject the opportunity to expand your personal horizons through deep listening and understanding of your neighbor's point-of-view, and just blindly assume that everyone wants to be treated the way you want to be treated'.
Surely (Armstrong implicitly assumes) the 'Golden Rule' is a universal sign of humanity's newly emerging (shallowly defined) 'compassion' to which all these nascent religious movements must have aspired, and thus to which they all gravitated.
To me this is not a satisfying explanation. I see no universality. I'll offer one benign example: In China you must burp to express your satisfaction for a meal. In western Europe the burp is a sign that you're uncultured. Okay, here are a few more examples: http://mrfarshtey.net/WorldCultures/2...
The closest Armstrong comes to addressing my 'big-picture' question is by regurgitating Jaspers' thesis that the Great Transformation was a result of an interregnum between eras of war and destruction and suppression of original thought by great empires. This seems insufficient, and again this is not my original thought--it is shared by other critics.
Having posited her theme for the 'Axial Age' (as Jaspers called it), Armstrong proceeds to delve into an historical survey, in chronological blocks, of the secular and spiritual events in the four cultures. It turns out that the Axial thinkers (by her definition) arose sporadically, not simultaneously in most cases. In fact she concludes that Axial thinking never really took hold in Greece as it spawned the Western philosophies.
No unifying motivation? Why publish it under such a lofty title: "The Great Transformation"? Why parrot Jaspers' themes if you don't even support them?
Here's why: your publisher wants to sell books.
Armstrong is a 'can't see the forest for the trees' thinker. Her book reads like a series of book reports (here is what I read and here's what I got out of it). Too often her work becomes a tedious recitation of factual historical events and summations of ancient writings without any raison d'être. Rather, it seems, she has an obsession for completeness (demonstrated in other works of hers such as `A History of God'.) Finally, a pet peeve: Armstrong has the annoying habit of using `chic' words drawn from the subject culture, such as nibbana (nirvana), ahimsa (harmlessness) and li (tradition). There are many of these. She defines them once and then expects the reader to remember them all.
As a research earth scientist I find myself wondering if human interactions with the changing global climate of the time may have contributed to this great global revolution. Psychologists may wonder if this was a result of the natural evolution of human self-awareness as we came to recognize our mind as a useful tool. Armstrong peripherally mentions (in barely a few lines) such revolutions as the smelting of iron and the domestication of the horse as contributing factors to destabilization during these times. She was silent on my Silk Road thesis and the others. In the end, this book was not what I was hoping for. (less)
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Dec 17, 2010Nicholas Whyte rated it did not like it
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1541807.html
This is a rather brave attempt to wring significance out of the fact that Confucius, the Buddha, Socrates and Jeremiah all lived at about the same time, between them causing a revolution in the way in which humans relate to the universe in philosophy and religion. It did not completely work for me. I found Armstrong's account of the evolution of the Old Testament as a product of the Jews' exile in Babylon pretty compelling, and we have a couple more of her books on the shelves which I am looking forward to reading now. Her description of ancient Greek thought, which I gave tutorials on many years ago, seemed decent enough and made a very interesting claim about the importance of Sophocles in particular and Greek theatre in general as giving people a new way to talk about and think about the world. But her Indian sections were rather dull, and her Chinese sections very dull indeed, coming alive respectively only with the appearance of the main characters, the Buddha and Confucius. It is my fault more than hers, but I felt completely adrift in Chinese geography; various kingdoms with unfamiliar and confusingly similar names, and no obvious relationship to the present day geography which I know a little better.
And I was not convinced by the book's overall thesis, which seems to be that the near-coincidence of lifespan of the four main characters is a particularly interesting fact. It is true, but rather dull, to note, for instance, that James Marsters and Sophie Aldred were born on the same day. I think it is a little more interesting that Alexander Hamilton and the Duchess of Devonshire were born and died within two years of each other, because both were engaged in politics, and particularly in relations between England and America, at the same time. But Armstrong doesn't seriously argue that there was any influence, or even much in the way of common roots, between her four main characters, so we get four completely different stories (only two of which are interesting) chopped across each other with various totally disparate incidents lumped together purely because they happened at roughly the same time. It did not really work for me. (less)
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Jul 14, 2012Megan Kiekel rated it it was amazing
Shelves: history, nonfiction, religion
This textbook covers the beginnings and transformation of the major world religions through the Axel Age, from 1600 BCE to 220 BCE, plus an epilogue that brings the history into the current time.
I borrowed this from our friend Steve last fall, and I haven’t had enough brain cells to absorb this much information until now. This was the textbook from one of his religion classes in undergrad (he’s a genius grad school engineer now), and he passed it on to me because he knew I’d love it. I have to give this copy back to Steve, but I’m totally buying it for reference. (For the record- I did not read an entire textbook in a month. I was reading this well into October as well).
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I needed a clear head to read it; it’s a lot of information to take in. But it is amazing to trace the changes in philosophies and religious practices over time with the changes in human development. Each chapter is broken into four parts: one focusing on each of the major Axel Age peoples in China, Greece, India, and Jerusalem.
This was an introduction to this information for me, so I’m not really able to fully criticize the biases or limitations of this text. Armstrong did seem to have a strong detachment from the information, except when she was drawing her main points in the introduction and final chapter. All history texts, of course, are an argument: the author chooses which information to include and which to leave behind in order to strengthen their points and persuade the reader to their way of thinking. It is impossible to be objective when writing about history because of the vast amount of information out there. Armstrong obviously focused on what tied the major world religions together and made connections between their individual developments over the age. A book could probably just as easily be written on the differences of these religions.
I’d love to come back to this after I know more.
P.S. If you dislike religious history that is not written from a theological standpoint, then you may find this work offensive. (less)
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Nov 07, 2016Tim Pendry rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: cultural-studies, classics, history-of-science, history-of-philosophy, history, east-asian, religion-spiritual, south-asian, ancient-world, classical-civilisation
The core of this book is a solid account of the 'spiritual' traditions of four great civilisations (the Hellenistic-Pagan; the Judaean; the South Asian; and the Chinese) during the thousand or so years before the end of the third century BC. As far as it goes, it is an excellent and coherent narrative.
But I have my doubts. The story sometimes seems shoe-horned not only into the contention that all four cultures saw a first axial age that defined Old World culture until a second 'axial age' in the early modern era but it seems to be designed to be a rather passive-aggressive polemic for religion.
Although the range of reading is extensive, the transmission of specialist research impressive and the insights to be had considerable (until the very last chapters when Armstrong sometimes just tells a story most educated people already know), some claims for the early period seem excessive.
There are occasions when she appears to lack imagination about the claims of her sources. Is it really so that the very ancient Chinese conducted war in such stately fashion? Perhaps but perhaps the story is derived from later literary tropes. She takes texts on trust sometimes.
But the book disappoints because one soon becomes suspicious of her ideological motivation. The first and last chapter spin a yarn about religiosity that I found irritating and even misleading insofar as an empathic sentimentality was linked without warrant to her academic findings.
I found this shoe-horning of history into a 'sell' for religion in an age of violence (the book was written five years after 9/11) on the edge of objectionable as if somehow the essentialism of religion was not in itself part of the problem of all times. Complexity went out the window.
Still, if you can get her spirituality 'sell' (what the hell is this thing called 'spirituality' when it is not ideology or sentiment?) out of the way, her narrative flows, she is readable and one gets a sense of how one idea builds on its predecessors and why some particular ideas take root.
As history it is mostly very worthwhile but as proselytising for empathy and idealistic sentiment, it is in cloud-cuckoo land. There is some very good analysis of the social and political conditions in which ideas take root but very little critique of the nexus between material reality and 'religion'.
This intellectual weakness frustrates when the book is taken as a whole. It stays in the library as a ready reference on some key ideas and thinkers, with some sound general history thrown in, but it cannot be regarded as a first class text because its final analysis is overwhelmed with apologia.
The fashion for 'spirituality' is one of the problematics of current Western culture. The main theme of the sentimentalists is that if only we would listen to the great teachers and become empaths or submit to something outside ourselves, the violence would cease. Well, perhaps!
In fact, the violence and terror won't cease because universal empathy is a human impossibility. We are who we are, complex creatures. If someone has an idea you can be sure that the idea will be used as a tool or a weapon to gain advantage. Yes, this is what we are.
Her book-ending chapters presents a world of shoulds and oughts that defies reality and creates a vision that is always going to be more fiction than fact. Exhortation may influence some people to be better persons but as many or more will and must ignore the message.
If anything an excess of empathy, when faced by the standard alleged sociopathy of social systems, simply neuters the 'good' and sends them into defensive postures, private life, clerisy or the monastery, leaving everyone else as prey while the faithful protect themselves with 'sacred space'.
If humanity is to be liberated in terms of both private freedoms and the avoidance of oppressive harms, it is a moot point whether a passive intellectual and 'spiritual' approach will offer anything more than this defensive protection for the few (often at the expense of the many).
I have no problem with people believing in nonsense or even coming together consensually in societies that believe in nonsense but the idea that 'spirituality' will do anything other than abandon the mass of the people to the wolves is increasingly absurd.
'Spirituality' (I am still waiting for a non-nonsensical definition beyond mere sentiment) may be regarded as any belief system that eases the suffering and neuroses of life. There is nothing wrong with that - unless we think it reflects anything other than magical thinking.
Out of spirituality comes religion which is little more than the imposition of social order on the crooked timber of humanity, a process of containing and corralling the human 'spirit' (actually the human being) in despair at any other form of social organisation possibly 'being good'.
This book, for all its descriptive and narrative value, thus becomes a false friend to a species that needs to stop evading and avoiding material reality and the actual structures of power, stop trying to find bolt holes for itself and start creating practical approaches to solving problems.
In essence, there are only two problems here ... how to ensure human autonomy within an otherwise functional social system and how to ensure that one person does not do harm to another person. The great faiths partially solve the second but usually at the expense of the first.
They are only a partial solution because religious and 'spiritual' tendencies to treat personal liberation as liberation from the world will often result in the accidental de-humanisation of humanity, running away from materiality by (for example) 'abandoning the ego'.
The religious obsession with abandoning the ego is cowardice. The real task is to embrace the ego and put it to work as a lifetime project of self improvement and the social project of equalising the value of all egos viz. a society where you can 'do what thou wilt an harm no-one'.
There are arguments, of course, for mystery and ritual - like the Greek tragedies or Chinese li - as undogmatic artistic and magical endeavours that are not trying to make too many claims.
The poetry, drama, art, ritual and magic in the performance art that is 'religion' is not a bad thing but it is only valuable when it allows persons to appreciate the liminalities and absences in the world. Subsequently building a system out of such things destroys that very purpose.
One final world of praise for the book, however. It is very well served with maps, charts and plans - 25 in all. These are invaluable in comprehending the narrative. Despite the irritations, the book still remains recommended for anyone wanting a basic overview of ancient intellectual culture.
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Feb 26, 2012Jason rated it it was amazing
Karen Armstrong looks beyond doctrine to find a common core in the religious and philosophical traditions that emerged during the years 900 to 200 BCE - an era the German philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age. All around the world at the time, people were trying to address the question of violence and endless war.
What she found in the writings of the great thinkers and sages of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Judaism and the precursors of Christianity in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece is this: what a person believes is not what brings an end to suffering. Suffering only ends when we let go of selfishness and learn compassion for others. Or, as Rabbi Hillel summarized it: "What is hateful to yourself, do not to others. That is the whole of The Torah. The rest is commentary."
From this perspective, arguing over whose views on God are "correct" is not just pointless but actually harmful to ourselves and to others. This concurs with what the Buddha said to many a disciple. The remedy to conflict is not to find the flaws in our enemy, but to look inside ourselves for our own flaws.
Even for those not interested in saving the world or finding peace within themselves, this book should still prove an enjoyable reading experience. It is a thoroughly researched, well-written romp through a very interesting time in history, over a wide range of peoples and cultures. Armstrong's writing is always clean and lively, never stuffy or morbidly academic.
This is a book well-suited for our troubled times. (less)
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Mar 28, 2015Sarahj33 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: owned-books, lifestyle, religion
So I bought this book about three years ago at a street festival in Michigan when I was on a big non-fiction kick. I never got past the first couple of chapters because the writing felt pretty dense and seemed to assume that I had a background knowledge of things like the Assyrian Empire and the Book of Deuteronomy. I still don't know anything about those things, but I decided to give the book another go as part of my quest to actually read all the books that are languishing on my shelves before buying any new ones.
And somehow, this book was exactly the book I needed to be reading right now. If you've been keeping up with the news lately, it can feel like a lot of things are going wrong in the world, and organized religions in some form are implicated in a lot of the world's problems. So to open a book and read about lots of very smart people from 500 BCE seeing the same problems and actually coming up with solutions is very comforting. Obviously the solutions didn't last forever, but I've come away from this book convinced that we can learn a lot from the sages of the Axial Age.
The basic idea of The Axial Age is that around the same time, many of the world's religions took profound leaps forward in terms of incorporating ethical systems into their traditions - new ethical systems that were based on the Golden Rule, non-violence, and the suppression of ego. These systems also took the fascinating position that, although they never denied the existence of a god, they thought it was counter productive to try to define "God" when God is by nature undefinable. It would be much more appropriate to spend your energy leading a good life than worrying about whether Yahweh was more powerful than Baal. Armstrong writes clearly and concisely, weaving together different stories in a well organized but intricate web. I ended up changing my mind about the writing being too dense and requiring too much outside knowledge - it is easy to follow her arguments and conclusions even if you don't know anything about Vedic texts or the Chinese classics.
This book doesn't claim to be a panacea for all the world's problems, but to me it felt like it could be. Armstrong doesn't deny the various problems of the Axial traditions - the Greek Axial Age never really coalesced, the Chinese tradition split into several splinter groups, basically all the Axial sages completely ignored women, etc. And, of course, none of them could really make it last for more than a few hundred years. But overall the message of the book is hopeful. These guys were on to something, and it shows that even if religion is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. (less)
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Dec 07, 2009Charles Matthews rated it really liked it
We can be almost certain that somewhere, at this very moment, someone is committing an act of violence in the name of God. That troubling realization underlies this book, an attempt to reach back 2,500 years and more, to survey our earliest attempts to establish systems of belief that promise a release from human strife.
Karen Armstrong's "great transformation" took place in what the philosopher Karl Jaspers called "the Axial Age" – roughly seven centuries, starting around 900 B.C., in which the foundations were laid for Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as for such later faiths as Christianity and Islam and for secular inquiries into the nature of being and the good life. In discrete corners of the world -- places we now know as Greece, Israel, India and China – thinkers developed new concepts of human beings' relationship to God and to one another.
This was the age of great texts: the Hebrew scriptures; the Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita and Mahabharata; the Analects of Confucius; the dialogues of Plato. All of them stressed the primacy of doing good. As Armstrong sums it up, "First you must commit yourself to the ethical life; then disciplined and habitual benevolence, not metaphysical conviction, would give you intimations of the transcendence you sought."
The Golden Rule -- do unto others as you would have them do unto you -- recurs through all four of the traditions Armstrong surveys. "The Axial sages put the abandonment of selfishness and the spirituality of compassion at the top of their agenda," she writes. "For them religion was the Golden Rule. They concentrated on what people were supposed to transcend from – their greed, egotism, hatred, and violence."
What makes the emergence of this "spirituality of empathy and compassion" more striking, and earns it the designation of "great transformation," is that in all four regions, Armstrong observes, it was "rooted in fear and pain." Brutal tribal warfare was the rule at the opening of the Axial Age, and religion was very much a matter of trying to make sure – through ritual and sacrifice and other means of subjugation to a mysterious higher power -- that you had a god on your side who was stronger than the other guy's god. Armstrong's often fascinating intellectual history shows how a new attitude toward God and humanity emerged from these bellicose origins, a belief that "Heaven was not simply influenced by the slaughter of pigs and oxen, but by compassion and justice."
The transformation was brought about by a variety of thinkers whose ideas Armstrong presents with a welcome lucidity. There is, for example, the biblical author or editor – "or, more probably, a school of priestly writers and editors," Armstrong notes – whom scholars identify as "P." Armstrong shows how, in the opening chapter of Genesis, P transformed the creation myth, which in most traditions was presented as a titanic struggle, into a story of calm mastery: "There was no fighting or killing. God simply spoke a word of command: 'Let there be light!' … P methodically extracted aggression from the traditional cosmogony."
Other sages recognized that religious dogma was itself a cause of strife. Confucius "discouraged theological chatter," Armstrong tells us. "Instead of wasting time on pointless theological speculation, people should imitate the reticence of Heaven and keep a reverent silence. … The ultimate concern was not Heaven but the Way." The Buddha, Armstrong says, even went so far as to deny the existence of "an authoritative, overseeing deity," because it "could become another prop or fetter that would impede enlightenment. … But his rejection of God or gods was calm and measured. He simply put them peacefully out of his mind."
"The Great Transformation" is likely to irk scholars and specialists who object to an amateur, a former nun with degrees in English literature, venturing onto their turf. The book does seem over-ambitious in its attempt to survey four distinct cultures over a span of seven centuries about which reliable documentation is scant and what little is known has been overlaid with interpretation and speculation. Armstrong often glosses over the economic, social and political forces that underlie the transformation. She's much more focused on what was thought than on why it was thought. And there are good reasons to object to her overuse of phrases like "a time of transition." We're always in some kind of transition, after all – history is not a row of little fixed and stable boxes between which human beings scurry, doffing old ideas and putting on new.
But above all else, this is a book that aims to still the noise of our own troubled time. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Armstrong has been a frequent commentator in the media on matters of belief, particularly on the emergence of militant fundamentalism. Her book is a defense of the healing power of religion in an age when many have concluded, as she puts it, "that religion itself is inescapably violent or that violence and intolerance are endemic to a particular tradition." She reminds us that the Axial sages lived "in violent societies like our own. What they created was a spiritual technology that utilized natural human energies to counter this aggression." Armstrong's conviction, passion and intelligence radiate throughout the book, making us feel the urgency of the ideas it seeks to convey.
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Jun 21, 2010Nathan rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: history, franklin-library, sociology
Beginning with an exploration of Asian religious tradition, Karen Armstrong gradually moves to a general, and rather generic, call for religious tolerance. She focuses exclusively on the religious traditions of the Asian continent, notably Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, and while she does a cracking good job of it (her explication of Buddhist belief was the clearest I've ever read), she does so to the neglect of the contributions of the West to religious thought, notably Catholicism and post-Reformation Christianity. If these are too modern for her selected timeframe, she ought to have presented Judaism as more separate from Christianity; as it is, the omission feels like a job half-done.
She also doesn't do so well when highlighting the distinctives of each particular faith, combining them into a single nebulous philosophy more akin to modern New Age thought, rather than presenting each as an independent system. I think part of the problem was ambition: she can't possibly present a nuanced and exact portrait of each faith in the amount of detail she needs to. This sort of syncretism, while it may help the cause of religious tolerance in general, does nothing to further the ostensible goal of such a study: substantive dialogue on religious issues that doesn't degenerate into violence.
This book had potential, and realizes some of it. But it leaves much to be desired, foremost a fulfillment of its own solution: genuine discussion between different faiths that isn't afraid to acknowledge differences. (less)
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Apr 05, 2015Dawn rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: history, non-fiction, audiobook, religion, authors-women, read-2015
Much as I’d like to just leave my review to one word, fascinating, I don’t think that would be sufficient.
So, this book left me feeling just a bit uneducated as I know practically nothing about all but one of the religions discussed but I did find it curious, as obviously the author has, that all three would have such similar ideas at approximately the same time. The progression of each religion based on their geographical area and societal influences as well as their ultimate conclusions, which while laudable don’t seem to have been followed very well through the centuries, made for some thought provoking reading.
While the conclusions of the book came across to me as simplistic to the point of being boiled down to ‘be nice’, the lead up to that and all the historical elements were very well presented.
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May 24, 2010Cliff rated it really liked it
A bit dry but very well researched.
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Dec 09, 2019Becca rated it it was amazing
Shelves: non-fiction
Armstrong is quickly becoming one of my favorite religious thinkers. Here, she gives a history of the evolution of religious concepts from ancient times through the Axial Age when the ideals governing the world's societies were developed, taking us into the development of religion and philosophy in Asia, Eurasia, India, and the Middle East. I've been waiting to read a book like this practically my whole life, and while I certainly learned plenty, I now have even more questions: What about the ancient religions in the Americas? They followed many of the same evolutionary paths that the Eastern-based religions did, but Armstrong said nothing about the Western ancients. I understand this is meant to be a book about the thoughts that are still prevalent today on a global scale, so those religions may be outside the scope of this work, but I certainly hope she writes about them someday and how they fit into the timeline she's developed here.
She frequently uses the term "technology" in this book to describe the mental/doctrinal inventions developed over different regions to address life's common questions and challenges. It's such a wonderful way to think about religious thought.
Some things to know if you are considering reading this:
*Armstrong is a former Catholic nun who is a leading scholar in the field of world religion and religious history.
*While she continues to believe in Christian principles, her books are wonderfully neutral. You'd never guess she adheres to any specific viewpoint because she is unfailingly fair and respectful of each viewpoint she's talking about.
*If you're looking for scholarly "proof" of the supremacy of Christianity, you won't find it here. But I guarantee you'll see the faith (and all the others) with a much deeper appreciation than you did before. (less)
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Jan 14, 2019Jill Hudson rated it liked it
I was surprised by the many gushing reviews this book has received. Yes, it is a useful survey of the emergence and development of several world religions, and a very readable introduction to their characteristics. It also makes a strong case for mutual understanding and tolerance. But for me it just doesn't do 'what it says on the tin'. It offers no real explanation of why so many similar ideas emerged in different cultures at a similar time, though on the cover it says it is going to. Why were so many of Plato's ideas so reminiscent of Hinduism? What were the links between the two? We never find out; and what is more, the similarities between the various religions and philosophies are stressed rather too simplistically at the expense of the differences. Armstrong implies that metaphysical beliefs simply weren't important to the 'Axial sages', whose insights she boils down to not much more than 'The Golden Rule' which she says has never been improved upon. In fact Jesus' statement of this 'rule' goes way beyond most of its previous formulations, in that most other sages stated it in its 'negative' form ('Don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you') whereas Jesus', positive, version is much, much more challenging ('Do to others what you would have them do for you'). She claims that 'loving your neighbour' is pretty much all that true religion entails, forgetting that loving God is seen as equally important, not only by Jesus but by the Jewish 'Shema' and by the champions of many other faiths as well. Belief in God is not an optional extra; genuine compassion and transformation are only attainable when God's grace indwells us, not as a result of 'discipline'. Furthermore neither Christianity, rabbinic Judaism nor Islam emerged in Armstrong's 'Axial Age' (900-200BCE) at all, so she has to perform some dodgy sleight of hand to force them to fit into her framework. She is also guilty of some vague, generalised statements unbacked up by evidence and almost worthy of Philomena Cunk (e.g. 'In the ancient world it was generally permissable to eat only meat that had been sacrificed ceremonially in a sacred area'(!) - p161). I think I would have enjoyed this book more if its blurb hadn't made all sorts of extravagant claims which the content doesn't live up to. (less)
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Jan 19, 2015Miroku Nemeth rated it really liked it
I have mixed feelings about this book. It's a perspective on history that is interesting in many ways, but very misleading in others. The attribution of nonviolence to peoples who were violent is really quite inexplicable if it was actually a historical analysis of the theoretical "axis age" (that this is a problematic construction is actually borne out by the tortured argument structure of the book), but it is a recurrent theme she uses to support her thesis throughout the 500 and some odd ...more
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Feb 21, 2012Kathy rated it it was amazing
I read this book after reading Armstrong's wonderful book, "The Spiral Staircase." As a person who has never studied religious history, I lack the context for assessing Armstrong's treatment of the Axial Age during which major religions evolved versions of the Golden Rule. Her writing is very clear and easy to read, and she provides extensive documentation and explanations at the back. For me, the book was a captivating journey through a dimension of history that has fueled my curiosity. She stimulated me to read her other books, which I also found very valuable. A winner of a TED award, Armstrong is an important philosopher, humanitarian, and voice for peaceful communication among the world's religions. (less)
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Jul 13, 2013AC Fick rated it it was amazing
Armstrong is informed and informative without ever being didactic or preachy. This book, given the vast scope of its subject matter -- across time and space -- is infinitely readable, while always being detailed, specific, and accurate.
If you're intrigued by or interested in the history of the major religious and faith-based traditions in the world, this book is rewarding reading.
In fact, this ought to be required reading for all students of humanity; everyone, every last one of us, ought to read this book. (less)
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Jun 27, 2011Lori rated it it was amazing
I have read this two times and now am having it read to me in bed by my husband, a release for gut centered pacifists pained by all these wars.
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Apr 18, 2011Tom rated it it was amazing
Shelves: philosophy, non-fiction, history
It took a long time to finish this book, but it is worth the effort. In its scope and importance, it reminds me of Ideas: from Fire to Freud, another very worthwhile book. However, this one is more focused and, in some ways, more original.
Armstrong deals with what the historian Karl Jaspers calls the Axial Age (that period between 900 and 200 BC) during which the major philosophical and religious traditions that exist today, began. She follows developments in this regard in 4 distinct regions and traditions: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. “The Axial Age was one of the most seminal periods of intellectual, psychological, philosophical and religious change in recorded history; there would be nothing comparable until the Great Western Transformation, which created our won scientific and technological modernity.”
A recurring point made by Armstrong, is that, in each of these examples, advances in understanding occurred in the midst of periods of violence and turmoil. Perhaps such social, and spiritual stresses are necessary pre-conditions for such change.
“The prophets, mystics, philosophers, and poets of the Axial Age were so advanced and their vision was so radical that later generations tended to dilute it. In the process, they often produced exactly the kind of religiosity that the Axial reformers wanted to get rid of. That, I believe, is what has happened in the modern world.”
“In Middle Eastern treaties, to 'love' meant to be helpful,loyal, and to give practical support. The commandment to love was not excessively utopian, therefore, but was within everybody's grasp.”
In speaking about the importance of theater in Greek culture: “The playwrights often chose subjects that reflected recent events, but usually presented them in a mythical setting that distanced them from the contemporary scene and enabled the audience to analyze and reflect upon the issues. The festival was a communal meditation, during which the audience worked through their problems and predicament. All male citizens were obliged to attend; even prisoners were released for the duration of the festival.”
In fifth century BC China a school of philosophy founded by Mozi, “...used the imagery of the working man, comparing Heaven's organization of the world to the compasses and L-square of the wheelwright and the carpenter, who employed these instruments 'to measure the round and the square throughout the world.;”
Mencius (371-288 BC) was a devout Confucian. He taught that it was natural for people to feel compassion toward those who suffer. [This is supported as well by newer findings in human behavior and neuroscience] “Every single person had four fundamental 'impulses' (tuan) that, if properly cultivated, would grow into the four cardinal virtues: benevolence, justice, courtesy, and the wisdom to distinguish right from wrong. They were like the first shoots that would one day grow into a plant...You could stamp on these 'shoots'-just as you could cripple or deform yourself-but if they were cultivated properly, they acquired a vibrant, dynamic power of their own. Once they were active, they would transform not only the person who practiced them, but everyone with whom he came into contact.”
“The Greek word idea did not mean 'idea' in the modern English sense..[it] was not a private, subjective mental construct, but a 'form' pattern' or essence'. A form of ideas was an archetype, the original pattern that gave each particular entity its distinctive shape and condition. Plato's philosophical notion can be seen as a rationalized and internalized expression of the ancient perennial philosophy in which every earthly object or experience has its counterpart in the divine sphere.”
“We moderns experience thinking as something that we do. But Plato envisaged it as something that happened to the mind: the objects of though were living realities in the psyche of the person who learned to see them. This vision of beauty was not merely an aesthetic experience. Once people had experienced it, they found that they had undergone a profound moral change and could no longer live in a shabby, unethical way. A person who had achieved this knowledge could 'bring forth not merer reflected images of goodness, but true goodness, because he will be in contact not with a reflection but the truth...Plato's description of beauty was clearly similar to what others called God or the Way” In Plato's world: “..the nous of each human being was divine; each had a daimon, a divine spark, within him or herself, whose purpose was to 'raise us up away from the earth and toward what is akin to us in heaven.' Human beings therefore lived in a perfectly rational world, the exploration of which was both a scientific and a spiritual enterprise.”
“The Hellenistic philosophers may not have been as revolutionary as their predecessors, but hey had lasting influence, and in many ways they epitomized the emerging Western spirit. In the West, people gravitated toward science and logos, and were less spiritually ambitio9us than the sages of India and “China. Instead of making the heroic effort ot discover a realm of transcendent peace within, the Hellenistic philosophers were prepared to settle for a quiet life. Instead of training the intuitive powers of the mind, they turned to scientific logos. Instead of achieving mystical enlightenment, the West was excited by a more mundane illumination. The Western genius for science eventually transformed the wolrld, and in the sixteenth century its scientific revolution introduced a new Axial Age. The would greatly benefit humanity, but it was inspired by a different species of genius. Instead of the Buddha, Socrates, and Confucius, the heroes of he second Axial Age would be Newton, Freud, and Einstein.”
Re: the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) credited to Laozi: “While other creatures kept to the Way designed for the, humans had separated themselves from thier dao by constant, busy yu wei relfection: they made distinctions that did not exist, and formulated solemn principles of action that were simply egotistical projections.”
Re: Jewish theology: “ The rabbis fully accepted the Axial principle that the ultimate reality was transcendent and ineffable. Nobody could have the last word on the subject of God. Jews were forbidden to pronounce God's name, as a powerful reminder that any attempt to express the divine was so inadequate that it was potentially blasphemous...What we call 'God' was not the same for everybody. Each of the prophets had experienced a different 'God', because his personality had influenced his conception of the divine.”
Re: Muslim theology: “the Quran did not claim to be a new revelation, but simply to resate the message that had been given to Adam, the father of humanity, who was also the first prophet. It insisted that Muhammad had not come to replace the prophets of the past but to return to he primordial faith of Abraham, who lived before the Torah and the gospel-before, that is, the religions of God had split into warring sects.”
“When warfare and terror are rife in a society, this affects everything that people do. The hatred and horror infiltrate their dreams, relationships, desires, and ambitions. The Axial sages saw this happening to their own contemporaries and devised an education rooted in the deeper, less conscious levels of the self to help them overcome this. The fat that they all came up with such profoundly similar solutions by so many different routes suggest that they had indeed discovered something important about the way human beings worked. Regardless of the theological 'beliefs'-which, as we have seen,did not much concern the sages-they all concluded that if people made a disciplined effort to reeducate themselves, they would experience and enhancement of their humanity, in one way or another, their programs were designed to eradicate the egotisms that are largely responsible for our violence and promoted the empathic spirituality of the Golden Rule....The practice of disciplined sympathy would itself yield intimations of transcendence.”
“This is not to say that all theology should be scrapped or hat the conventional beliefs about God or the ultimate are 'wrong'. But-quite simply- they cannot express the entire truth. ...Christianity... has set great store by doctrinal orthodoxy, and many Christians could not imagine religion without their conventional beliefs. This is absolutely fine, because these dogmas often express a profound spiritual truth. The test is simple: if people's beliefs-secular or religious- make them belligerent, intolerant and unkind about other people's faith, they are not 'skillful'. If, however, their convictions impel them to act compassionately and to honor the stranger, then they are good, helpful and sound. This is the test of true religiosity in every single one of the major traditions.”
What I found most original about this book is the idea that over centuries, humans, at least some of us, have been engaged in a gradual advance in our spiritual nature and that, across time and distance, different cultures and traditions have converged in very similar ways. The general road map that Armstrong describes runs through ritual, kenosis (emptying...of one's ego and material attachments), knowledge, suffering, empathy, concern for everybody and all is one. She argues that the Axial sages brought forth new formulations during times of violence and social upheaval. Given recent history, are we in a period when there will be further advances in human spiritual development?
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Jan 22, 2011Sean rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction
"The Great Transformation: The Beginnings of Religious Traditions" is the sort of scholarship you can come to expect from Karen Armstrong, an independent scholar from Britain who writes extensively on religious topics. She is able to take quite complicated issues and ideas and his able to make them accessible to a wider audience. This really is the biggest job of a scholar, whether independent or attached to a university- to be able to communicate your thoughts and ideas in a coherent way. If you can do this to a massive audience of non-academics, all the better. In this regard, Karen Armstrong is in many ways second-to-none.
"The Great Transformation" describes a theoretical period in history known as the "Axial Age," which according to her estimations ran from about 900 BCE to 200 BCE (with extensions into the Common Era). During this time period of immense change and characterized by violence and trauma, nearly all of the worlds major religious or philosophical traditions got their starts, from Israelite Monotheism to Vedic Religions to Chinese Religions to Greek Philosophy. Its a very broad theory they implies that humanity as a whole had reached a certain point by this time period to need a new form of religiosity and spirituality and therefore, this transition happened in a number of places simultaneously. For Armstrong, the transition to Axial Age religions involved an evolving sense of self and an acute awareness of suffering and pain. These religions gave their followers the tools to live in chaotic times and make sense of the rapid changes surrounding them. There is also the sense that the religious journey is one that forced the follower to acknowledge the impermanence of things and the difficulty of knowing the divine. What these faiths did was to encourage their followers towards a certain "knosis" of the divine, or to a sense of truths and ideas which are not able to be articulated. This is the sort of knowledge that cannot be taught but knowledge acquired through living and practice.
The book has some amazing ideas and deserves a high rating for the audacity to try to synthesize almost 1,000 years of complex history and philosophy from four different areas. The information is fascinating and clearly aimed for a modern audience- whom she tries to encourage at the end to take the lessons from these thinkers and apply them to the modern world. However, I cannot rate this higher for a number of reasons. First is that while the information is extremely useful and interesting, it suffers from a real lack of organization. The book is arranged chronologically and thematically but within chapters, there is really jumping between the four regions. I do not think that she chose the order of the content randomly but her chain of logic is hard to discern. I also think that by trying to connect these movements so closely, she risks making them seem like they were in extremely close contact and that their developments were in one logical stream. It is a very tricky line to balance and I feel at times, she gets trapped in the idea of the Axial Age. What I may consider doing in the future is reading all of the material for one area at once to be able to connect the sections across chapters. Second is that I am not sure how much I buy into the Axial Age theory. The evidence is compelling but I am wary of "all-encompassing" theories of religion. We must be careful not to allow the theory to overtake what I would call the organic nature of religion.
As a new scholar of religion myself, I can agree with this theory on a basic level. I think that this new conception of humanity was a logical development of religion and shows one way that humans can react to profound change. An axial mindset would be useful in the modern world and I think this book goes a long way to remind us of these essential truths founded by these seekers so many years ago. (less)
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Jul 21, 2017Mary Ellen rated it really liked it
Karen Armstrong's scholarly exploration of the Axial Age was esoteric at times, and I found her discussion of Christianity to be surprisingly lacking, but ultimately I loved how she rounded it all out with a discussion of how compassion and the Golden Rule is the heart of all the world's religious traditions. Very inspiring.
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Dec 15, 2007Adam rated it it was amazing
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
In 1948, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term "Axial Age" to denote an astonishing era, from roughly 900 B.C. to 200 B.C., in which the foundations of the world's great religions were laid. This was the time of Socrates, Elijah, Siddhartha, Confucius. In her magisterial new exploration of the era, Karen Armstrong argues that all Axial Age traditions emphasized justice and were committed to the practice of "disciplined sympathy" and compassion. The Great Transformation is Armstrong at her best -- translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose that will delight scholars and armchair historians alike, drawing connections between the distant past and our own religious practices, suggesting that the antidotes to some of contemporary religion's excesses lie in the roots of the religious traditions themselves.
Armstrong's emphasis on the things that unify Hinduism, Socratic philosophy, Judaism and Confucianism has just a whiff of the old colonialist approach to "world religions," reveling in religions' resemblances without sufficiently acknowledging their particularities. (The Brits who "discovered" Hinduism cast it, and every other religion, in terms that looked a lot like Christianity. Armstrong does much the same thing in reverse, casting Judaism and its spiritual descendants in terms that look a lot like Buddhism.) This approach fails to recognize the ways in which Buddhist compassion and Hindu compassion and Christian compassion and Jain compassion may meaningfully differ. Without an honest appraisal of those differences, it is hard to evaluate, say, the difference between the morality of the euthanasia advocate and the radical pro-life Catholic. Whose compassion trumps, that of George W. Bush or of John Paul II?
And yet, Armstrong's call to rededicate our religious selves to compassion, other-directed love and service is downright rousing. People from many different faiths will close this book reminded of the value their tradition places on compassion and recommitted to expressing it in their own religious idiom.
Reviewed by Lauren F. Winner
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
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Jan 09, 2010Mark rated it liked it
I like reading Karen Armstrong's books. This book is a travel through religious history, especially that of the Judaism and Christianity. It includes Islam, but not to the same extent. The book seems centered around the 'axial' age of religions; that is, the movements,mostly early on, that defined religious belief as a changing phenomenon motivated by individual betterment, rather than traditional acceptance of socially defined belief.
The book starts with the Aryans, around 1600 B.C.E and takes the reader through to the early Islamic believers, around 700 C.E. With chapter titles such as "Knowledge", "Suffering", "Empathy", and "Concern With Everybody", the tone of the book is clear. Armstrong does not completely disregard the violence that religion has caused through the ages, but plays it down. It seems her argument is that there is a 'true' nature of religion that is overshadowed by its long, violent history. This argument is akin to the modern versions of 'spirituality' that can be found in western societies today.
Armstrong is primarily a historian, which is what I like about the book. There are tidbits of information in each chapter that are often helpful to piecing puzzles together about societies and belief systems. The chapters read like religious history, but with a few directives thrown in, reminding the reader that the religion itself (the 'true' religion) is beyond the actual historical connotations. She is a thorough writer, leaving little to the imagination; again, a sign of a good historian.
I think that the subtitle of the book, "The Beginnings of our Religious Traditions", is at the core of the book, her point being that in the beginning, most religious were simply the product of "sages" trying to live in a world filled with violence. While this may be true, a 'true' historian would need to be faithful to the history, not the intentions.
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Nov 03, 2016Daniel Seifert rated it liked it
Shelves: religious-studies, reference, history
Armstrong, a religious historian in her own right, discusses four Axial cultures under that while they are not synchronic developments/transformations in human development, they are great Axial figures (900 BC to 200 CE) such as Zoroaster in Persia, Buddha in India, and Laozi and Confucius in China. Wile I am not a ride reader of history, I found helpful this rich background to my familiarity with Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that are categorized as “latter day flowerings of the Axial Age,” and other creative traditions who gave us, e.g., the Pali canon, the Greek tragedies, or the Tao.
Like any tradition or history, Armstrong delivers a disjunctive, raggedness in her telling. For example she echoes her sympathies for Aristotle who had “a better understanding of traditional spirituality than Plato” and was “more comfortable with emotions” than his master. While later writing a lament that “unfortunately,” Aristotle “made an indelible impression on Western Christianity.”
Anyone who has read Armstrong's books (e.g., A History of God) knows she seeks understanding the enduring relevance of the traditional teachings handed down and to retrieve their authentic import--to “bring the best insights of modernity to the table” with the ultimate outcome of such efforts being “recreation” of the “Axial vision.” She propels in her quest the gradual discovery of interiority, a move away from tribalism and ritualism as the “great transformation” marking the Axial Age. Perhaps the end of the text provides a sense of this aim in an appeal to mutual understanding and tolerance “in a tragic world, where, as the Greeks knew, there can be no simple answers."
With the themes of The Great Transformation, she ends with an inspiring call for a return to the Axial Age principles of human compassion, selflessness, and a desire to avoid inflicting harm as a remedy for many of today’s social and religious ills, a fitting way to leave with us with "The Way Forward." (less)
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May 05, 2017Laura rated it it was amazing
I loved this book. I have read a lot of Karen Armstrong's work and love the way she explains religion in a scholarly and yet respectful manner for every religious tradition. However, this was my favorite by far. I got lost in her descriptions of the mindset, culture, and beliefs of the peoples of the Axial Age. It was fascinating to visit Ancient Greece, China, India, and Israel. I just couldn't get enough and would have read on another 400 pages.
Sometimes at the end of Armstrong's work she seems a little preachy and flippant about how we should be applying her insights into these religions to our own day and our own problems, but this time she did not fall into that trap. She gently scolded and clearly showed how we are now going through our own time spiritual upheaval just as the axial peoples did before our time. She already showed us in the book how they religions and beliefs changed in response to the hardships the various civilizations encountered so she left it to the reader to infer that the same type of transition would occur in our own time to be able to successfully heal the divisions in our society. Where that transition may take us, no one knows, but Ms. Armstrong and I both pray that it takes toward compassion and the insights of the sages of the Axial Age.
Cannot recommend it highly enough!!! (less)
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Jan 15, 2018Bonnie rated it it was amazing
Shelves: history
An excellent book if you're interested in religion or history, or some perspective on the confusing state of affairs in the world today. Ms. Armstrong explains in depth the changes that occurred in four main civilizations from around 1000 years before and until around 500 years into the common era. The peoples she studies are the Israelites, the Greeks, Indian and Chinese, during times of upheaval for each of them. In general she shows how for each of these groups a greater understanding of individuality emerged, causing them to grapple with how to reconcile that awakening with the demands of the society. It was basically a transformation from tribal to a larger awareness. Her focus is the religious struggles, though she describes other aspects that are relevant.
I loved it just for the historical information, but here's a great quote from the end:
"Today we are making another quantum leap forward. Our technology has created a global society, which is interconnected electronically, militarily, economically, and politically. We now have to develop a global consciousness, because whether we like it or not, we live in one world. Even though our problem is different from that of the Axial sages, they can still help us. They did not jettison the insights of the old religion, but deepened and extended them. In the same way, we should develop the insights of the Axial Age." (less)
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Oct 21, 2016JJ Lehmann rated it really liked it
Shelves: in-collection
Although I'm not quite convinced on the concept of an Axial age, it is quite fascinating that so many giants of the religion world arose around the same time. In my opinion, it seems that because of the violence and desperation of the time or perhaps both made the populace open to, and the ground fertile for, the rise of spiritually intelligent people to combat this dukkha. It just seems to easy to connect them all.
That said, every academic field of study needs a person that can popularize its information to the general public. It seems that Karen Armstrong has taken over that role from the great Huston Smith, and she does it quite well. She is extremely readable and explains often complex information in a way that most will understand. I agree with her that these sages have a lot to teach us as we struggle with our current divisiveness. (less)
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May 21, 2017Erin Britton rated it it was amazing
In 'The Great Transformation', Karen Armstrong tackles a far greater range of religious philosophies than she has done in previous books. This time, Armstrong considers the numerous ideologies than came into existence during the turbulent five centuries (800 BC to 300 BC) known as the Axial Age. It was during this period that many of the main religious theories - Daoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Philosophical Rationalism - were developed and Armstrong considers each of these theories. As ever, Armstrong provides a clear and scholarly explanation of a complex subject and 'The Great Transformation' is an excellent introduction to religious theory although, due to the scope of the topic, it cannot provide an in-depth study of any one of the religious ideologies. (less)
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Jun 05, 2010Chris rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: religion
Originally I tried to read this one as an old fashioned book. However, I found it difficult to find the time to dedicate to it. While it is a very interesting read, it was a slow read for me. I needed time to let the concepts and the history sit in my mind.
Then I decided to get the audiobook version of it. (Thank you Audible.com!) Driving back and forth to work turned out to be a great time to absorb this tome.
It ties in directly to Armstrong's 'Charter for Compassion'. Listening to it felt like I was in the lecture hall while Professor Armstrong led us in an exploration of religions and philosophies. While I cannot recommend this book for everyone, if you have a geeky interest in religions and ideas, this is your kind of book. (less)
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Oct 04, 2015Nik rated it really liked it
Shelves: religion-philosophy, history
Karen Armstrong proposes that the test of true religiosity in every single one of the major religious traditions, is to act compassionately and to honor the stranger. She suggests that when looking at the worlds major religious traditions one may discover the spiritual kernel behind all of them when one avoids jettisoning the doctrines within them. She gives a wide and broad view of the axial age within each faith tradition and helps one see the commonality behind this striving for compassion. I thought it was a great read and one worth promoting. Our world can use more compassion and each of our faith traditions can certainly promote this need in a more effective way. (less)
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The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions Kindle Edition
by Karen Armstrong (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 out of 5 stars 163 ratings
Length: 496 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A splendid book. . . . Lucid, highly readable. . . . Relevan[t] to a world still embroiled in military conflict and sectarian hatreds.” —The New York Times“Masterful. . . . Stimulating. . . . A tour de force.” —The Christian Science Monitor“The Great Transformation is Armstrong at her best–translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose. . . . Her call to rededicate our religious selves to compassion, other-directed love and service is downright rousing.” —The Washington Post“Remarkable and persuasive.” —The Independent“Perhaps her most ambitious work to date. . . . Thoroughly researched and readable.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
It's not what one may expect from a book about the development of the world's religions: "Crouched in his mother's womb, he lay in wait for his father, armed with a sickle, and the next time Uranus penetrated Gaia, he cut off his genitals and threw them to the earth." However, the Greek myth of Cronus clearly illustrates Armstrong's main thesis, that the "simultaneous" development of the world's religions during what Karl Jung called the axial age, is a direct result of the violence and chaos, both physical and spiritual, of past civilizations. Armstrong, a former nun turned self-described "freelance monotheist," has enough background and personal investment in the material to make it come alive. Her delivery is crystal clear, informative and, though somewhat academic, easy for the layman to understand. Her voice is straightforward yet wrought with palpable concern. This reinforces the book's goals of creating a clear understanding of where religious developments have come from and explaining how today's "violence of an unprecedented scale" parallels the activities that created the "axial age" in the first place.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
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From Bookmarks Magazine
If you've already written God's biography (A History of God), surely it's a cakewalk to tackle the era before His ascendancy in theological affairs. But making sense of four disparate cultures and religious traditions in the space of 400 pages proves to be a risky proposition for Armstrong. Critics agree that her central theme, "the gradual elimination of violence from religion" (New York Times), makes for compelling reading, as does her weaving together of similarities among disparate faiths. Though her analysis shines, many reviewers feel the book suffers from too broad a focus; centuries are foreshortened, and even her supporters feel her conclusion doesn't do the book justice. With classic titles like The Battle for God and Islam: A Short History in her bibliography, the "runaway nun" remains our preeminent writer on popular religion, but this tome might best be reserved for her hardcore followers.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Bookmarks Magazine
If you've already written God's biography (A History of God), surely it's a cakewalk to tackle the era before His ascendancy in theological affairs. But making sense of four disparate cultures and religious traditions in the space of 400 pages proves to be a risky proposition for Armstrong. Critics agree that her central theme, "the gradual elimination of violence from religion" (New York Times), makes for compelling reading, as does her weaving together of similarities among disparate faiths. Though her analysis shines, many reviewers feel the book suffers from too broad a focus; centuries are foreshortened, and even her supporters feel her conclusion doesn't do the book justice. With classic titles like The Battle for God and Islam: A Short History in her bibliography, the "runaway nun" remains our preeminent writer on popular religion, but this tome might best be reserved for her hardcore followers.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From The Washington Post
In 1948, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term "Axial Age" to denote an astonishing era, from roughly 900 B.C. to 200 B.C., in which the foundations of the world's great religions were laid. This was the time of Socrates, Elijah, Siddhartha, Confucius. In her magisterial new exploration of the era, Karen Armstrong argues that all Axial Age traditions emphasized justice and were committed to the practice of "disciplined sympathy" and compassion. The Great Transformation is Armstrong at her best -- translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose that will delight scholars and armchair historians alike, drawing connections between the distant past and our own religious practices, suggesting that the antidotes to some of contemporary religion's excesses lie in the roots of the religious traditions themselves.
The Axial Age was anticipated, Armstrong writes, by the prophetic priest Zoroaster. Outraged at the violence of the Aryan warrior culture, Zoroaster conceived of the cosmos as a battle between the forces of good and evil, and he envisioned a great judgment that would eventually culminate in a world of peace and justice. Zoroastrianism is now known to us largely as a historical relic, but his "passionately ethical vision" and his determination to find a spiritual idiom that promoted peace bore fruit in the religious traditions of the Axial Age.
Other sages also emerged from the conflicts of the era: In India, the Axial Age coincided with the collapse of the Harappan civilization; in Greece, spirituality and philosophy flourished as the Mycenaean kingdom gave way to the Macedonian empire. Socratic philosophy was forged in the brutality of the Peloponnesian War. Breaking sharply from the Greek tradition of vengeance, Socrates argued that retaliation was always unjust and that the key to enlightenment and social virtue was acting with forbearance toward everyone, friend or enemy. The Buddha similarly taught that focusing on the self led to envy, conceit and pride; only a movement into "no self" would lead to "non-distress" and "unhostility."
When the kingdom of Israel, profitably allied with Assyria, failed to care for its poor, the prophet Amos warned that God would turn against his chosen people if they did not clean up their act. Amos, Armstrong writes, exemplified kenosis, or self-emptying: He believed that "his subjectivity had been taken over by God," so it was not Amos offering radical prophecies but God himself. God had experienced the injustices committed by Israel as painful and humiliating acts against him -- so Amos was calling the Israelites to feel, as their God felt, the sufferings of others.
Though this is a study of ancient history, Armstrong has a present-day agenda. We also live in a time of great social transformation and unrest, and, like the Axial sages, we should foster compassion, self-emptying and justice.
She notes that compassionate spirituality leaves room for doctrine: "This is not to say that all theology should be scrapped or that the conventional beliefs about God or the ultimate are 'wrong.' . . . The test is simple: if people's beliefs -- secular or religious -- make them belligerent, intolerant, and unkind about other people's faith, they are not 'skillful.' If, however, their convictions impel them to act compassionately and to honor the stranger, then they are good, helpful, and sound. This is the test of true religiosity . . . . Instead of jettisoning religious doctrines, we should look for their spiritual kernel."
Armstrong's emphasis on the things that unify Hinduism, Socratic philosophy, Judaism and Confucianism has just a whiff of the old colonialist approach to "world religions," reveling in religions' resemblances without sufficiently acknowledging their particularities. (The Brits who "discovered" Hinduism cast it, and every other religion, in terms that looked a lot like Christianity. Armstrong does much the same thing in reverse, casting Judaism and its spiritual descendants in terms that look a lot like Buddhism.) This approach fails to recognize the ways in which Buddhist compassion and Hindu compassion and Christian compassion and Jain compassion may meaningfully differ. Without an honest appraisal of those differences, it is hard to evaluate, say, the difference between the morality of the euthanasia advocate and the radical pro-life Catholic. Whose compassion trumps, that of George W. Bush or of John Paul II?
And yet, Armstrong's call to rededicate our religious selves to compassion, other-directed love and service is downright rousing. People from many different faiths will close this book reminded of the value their tradition places on compassion and recommitted to expressing it in their own religious idiom.
Reviewed by Lauren F. Winner
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
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From AudioFile
During the ninth century BCE, the people of India, China, the area now known as Israel, and Greece developed religious and philosophical traditions that continue today. This era of intense spiritual activity came to be known as the Axial Age and brought us the figures of Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and the Hebrew prophets. Religious scholar Karen Armstrong examines the development of these four traditions, which have in common a call for personal responsibility followed by effective action. The material is deep, with many names of people and places, and requires great concentration. Also, Armstrong is far from aurally engaging. When making transitions, she doesn't uses pauses effectively, a characteristic that causes one to lose track momentarily. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* The foremost English-language historian of religion today, whose A History of God (1993) has become the standard popular work on the great monotheisms, expands upon German philosopher Karl Jaspers' characterization of the long period preceding the rise of Rome--900 to 200 B.C.E.--as the Axial Age. That at first puzzling geometric metaphor crystallizes Jaspers' sense, which Armstrong clearly shares, of that immense era as pivotal in human consciousness. During it the major religious traditions began and refined the moral attitudes they manifest to this day. Commencing as tribal and aristocratic, the pre-Christian religions became personal and democratic as the realm of divinity came to be perceived as transcendent. Most important was the development of nonviolence as a holy ideal, not least because the early religions initially employed violence in their rituals and justified violence by their adherents. The Aryans of northern India and the Chinese, both initially violent, attempted to constrain belligerence and avert chaos by fashioning what became Hinduism and Buddhism, and Confucianism and Taoism, respectively. Meanwhile, the smaller civilizational formations of the Jews and the Greeks responded to experiences of, respectively, periodic near-obliteration and social collapse with monotheism and philosophical rationalism, respectively. Armstrong tells this huge story in 10 chapters that each relate historically parallel developments among the Indians, Chinese, Greeks, and Jews. Magisterially but companionably, she unfolds the successive movements that molded religious consciousness in each nation, explaining them with such clarity that this book ranks with A History of God as one of her finest achievements and an utterly enthralling reading experience. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* The foremost English-language historian of religion today, whose A History of God (1993) has become the standard popular work on the great monotheisms, expands upon German philosopher Karl Jaspers' characterization of the long period preceding the rise of Rome--900 to 200 B.C.E.--as the Axial Age. That at first puzzling geometric metaphor crystallizes Jaspers' sense, which Armstrong clearly shares, of that immense era as pivotal in human consciousness. During it the major religious traditions began and refined the moral attitudes they manifest to this day. Commencing as tribal and aristocratic, the pre-Christian religions became personal and democratic as the realm of divinity came to be perceived as transcendent. Most important was the development of nonviolence as a holy ideal, not least because the early religions initially employed violence in their rituals and justified violence by their adherents. The Aryans of northern India and the Chinese, both initially violent, attempted to constrain belligerence and avert chaos by fashioning what became Hinduism and Buddhism, and Confucianism and Taoism, respectively. Meanwhile, the smaller civilizational formations of the Jews and the Greeks responded to experiences of, respectively, periodic near-obliteration and social collapse with monotheism and philosophical rationalism, respectively. Armstrong tells this huge story in 10 chapters that each relate historically parallel developments among the Indians, Chinese, Greeks, and Jews. Magisterially but companionably, she unfolds the successive movements that molded religious consciousness in each nation, explaining them with such clarity that this book ranks with A History of God as one of her finest achievements and an utterly enthralling reading experience. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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ASRA
THE AXIAL PEOPLES
(c. 1600 to 900 BCE)
The first people to attempt an Axial Age spirituality were pastoralists living on the steppes of southern Russia, who called themselves the Aryans. The Aryans were not a distinct ethnic group, so this was not a racial term but an assertion of pride and meant something like “noble” or “honorable.” The Aryans were a loose-knit network of tribes who shared a common culture. Because they spoke a language that would form the basis of several Asiatic and European tongues, they are also called Indo-Europeans. They had lived on the Caucasian steppes since about 4500, but by the middle of the third millennium some tribes began to roam farther and farther afield, until they reached what is now Greece, Italy, Scandinavia, and Germany. At the same time, those Aryans who had remained behind on the steppes gradually drifted apart and became two separate peoples, speaking different forms of the original Indo-European. One used the Avestan dialect, the other an early form of Sanskrit. They were able to maintain contact, however, because at this stage their languages were still very similar, and until about 1500 they continued to live peacefully together, sharing the same cultural and religious traditions.
It was a quiet, sedentary existence. The Aryans could not travel far, because the horse had not yet been domesticated, so their horizons were bounded by the steppes. They farmed their land, herded their sheep, goats, and pigs, and valued stability and continuity. They were not a warlike people, since, apart from a few skirmishes with one another or with rival groups, they had no enemies and no ambition to conquer new territory. Their religion was simple and peaceful. Like other ancient peoples, the Aryans experienced an invisible force within themselves and in everything that they saw, heard, and touched. Storms, winds, trees, and rivers were not impersonal, mindless phenomena. The Aryans felt an affinity with them, and revered them as divine. Humans, deities, animals, plants, and the forces of nature were all manifestations of the same divine “spirit,” which the Avestans called mainyu and the Sanskrit-speakers manya. It animated, sustained, and bound them all together.
Over time the Aryans developed a more formal pantheon. At a very early stage, they had worshiped a Sky God called Dyaus Pitr, creator of the world. But like other High Gods, Dyaus was so remote that he was eventually replaced by more accessible gods, who were wholly identified with natural and cosmic forces. Varuna preserved the order of the universe; Mithra was the god of storm, thunder, and life-giving rain; Mazda, lord of justice and wisdom, was linked with the sun and stars; and Indra, a divine warrior, had fought a three-headed dragon called Vritra and brought order out of chaos. Fire, which was crucial to civilized society, was also a god and the Aryans called him Agni. Agni was not simply the divine patron of fire; he was the fire that burned in every single hearth. Even the hallucinogenic plant that inspired the Aryan poets was a god, called Haoma in Avestan and Soma in Sanskrit: he was a divine priest who protected the people from famine and looked after their cattle.
The Avestan Aryans called their gods daevas (“the shining ones”) and amesha (“the immortals”). In Sanskrit these terms became devas and amrita. None of these divine beings, however, were what we usually call “gods” today. They were not omnipotent and had no ultimate control over the cosmos. Like human beings and all the natural forces, they had to submit to the sacred order that held the universe together. Thanks to this order, the seasons succeeded one another in due course, the rain fell at the right times, and the crops grew each year in the appointed month. The Avestan Aryans called this order asha, while the Sanskrit-speakers called it rita. It made life possible, keeping everything in its proper place and defining what was true and correct.
Human society also depended upon this sacred order. People had to make firm, binding agreements about grazing rights, the herding of cattle, marriage, and the exchange of goods. Translated into social terms, asha/rita meant loyalty, truth, and respect, the ideals embodied by Varuna, the guardian of order, and Mithra, his assistant. These gods supervised all covenant agreements that were sealed by a solemn oath. The Aryans took the spoken word very seriously. Like all other phenomena, speech was a god, a deva. Aryan religion was not very visual. As far as we know, the Aryans did not make effigies of their gods. Instead, they found that the act of listening brought them close to the sacred. Quite apart from its meaning, the very sound of a chant was holy; even a single syllable could encapsulate the divine. Similarly, a vow, once uttered, was eternally binding, and a lie was absolutely evil because it perverted the holy power inherent in the spoken word. The Aryans would never lose this passion for absolute truthfulness.
Every day, the Aryans offered sacrifices to their gods to replenish the energies they expended in maintaining world order. Some of these rites were very simple. The sacrificer would throw a handful of grain, curds, or fuel into the fire to nourish Agni, or pound the stalks of soma, offer the pulp to the water goddesses, and make a sacred drink. The Aryans also sacrificed cattle. They did not grow enough crops for their needs, so killing was a tragic necessity, but the Aryans ate only meat that had been ritually and humanely slaughtered. When a beast was ceremonially given to the gods, its spirit was not extinguished but returned to Geush Urvan (“Soul of the Bull”), the archetypical domestic animal. The Aryans felt very close to their cattle. It was sinful to eat the flesh of a beast that had not been consecrated in this way, because profane slaughter destroyed it forever, and thus violated the sacred life that made all creatures kin. Again, the Aryans would never entirely lose this profound respect for the “spirit” that they shared with others, and this would become a crucial principle of their Axial Age.
To take the life of any being was a fearful act, not to be undertaken lightly, and the sacrificial ritual compelled the Aryans to confront this harsh law of existence. The sacrifice became and would remain the organizing symbol of their culture, by which they explained the world and their society. The Aryans believed that the universe itself had originated in a sacrificial offering. In the beginning, it was said, the gods, working in obedience to the divine order, had brought forth the world in seven stages. First they created the Sky, which was made of stone like a huge round shell; then the Earth, which rested like a flat dish upon the Water that had collected in the base of the shell. In the center of the Earth, the gods placed three living creatures: a Plant, a Bull, and a Man. Finally they produced Agni, the Fire. But at first everything was static and lifeless. It was not until the gods performed a triple sacrifice—crushing the Plant, and killing the Bull and the Man—that the world became animated. The sun began to move across the sky, seasonal change was established, and the three sacrificial victims brought forth their own kind. Flowers, crops, and trees sprouted from the pulped Plant; animals sprang from the corpse of the Bull; and the carcass of the first Man gave birth to the human race. The Aryans would always see sacrifice as creative. By reflecting on this ritual, they realized that their lives depended upon the death of other creatures. The three archetypal creatures had laid down their lives so that others might live. There could be no progress, materially or spiritually, without self-sacrifice. This too would become one of the principles of the Axial Age.
The Aryans had no elaborate shrines and temples. Sacrifice was offered in the open air on a small, level piece of land, marked off from the rest of the settlement by a furrow. The seven original creations were all symbolically represented in this arena: Earth in the soil, Water in the vessels, Fire in the hearth; the stone Sky was present in the flint knife, the Plant in the crushed soma stalks, the Bull in the victim, and the first Man in the priest. And the gods, it was thought, were also present. The hotr priest, expert in the liturgical chant, would sing a hymn to summon devas to the feast. When they had entered the sacred arena, the gods sat down on the freshly mown grass strewn around the altar to listen to these hymns of praise. Since the sound of these inspired syllables was itself a god, as the song filled the air and entered their consciousness, the congregation felt surrounded by and infused with divinity. Finally the primordial sacrifice was repeated. The cattle were slain, the soma pressed, and the priest laid the choicest portions of the victims onto the fire, so that Agni could convey them to the land of the gods. The ceremony ended with a holy communion, as priest and participants shared a festal meal with the deities, eating the consecrated meat and drinking the intoxicating soma, which seemed to lift them to another dimension of being.
The sacrifice brought practical benefits too. It was commissioned by a member of the community, who hoped that those devas who had responded to his invitation and attended the sacrifice would help him in the future. Like any act of hospitality, the ritual placed an obligation on the divinities to respond in kind, and the hotr often reminded them to protect the patron’s family, crops, and herd. The s...
About the Author
Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs, including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, and Buddha. Her work has been translated into forty languages, and she is the author of three television documentaries. Since September 11, 2001, she has been a frequent contributor to conferences, panels, newspapers, periodicals, and other media on both sides of the Atlantic on the subject of Islam. She lives in London.
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Product details
Print Length: 592 pages
Publisher: Anchor; 1st edition (March 28, 2006)
Publication Date: March 28, 2006
Language: English
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Karen Armstrong
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Biography
Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs-including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and The Great Transformation-and two memoirs, Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into forty-five languages. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions; lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department; participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan, and Davos; addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York; is increasingly invited to speak in Muslim countries; and is now an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. In February 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and is currently working with TED on a major international project to launch and propagate a Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, to be signed in the fall of 2009 by a thousand religious and secular leaders. She lives in London.
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Customer reviews
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Q
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2017
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This is an excellent history of the ancient world with focus on Greece, Israel, India, and China. She surveys political developments but also with special attention to religious and philosophical developments and major figures. The Great Transformation is a theory of the "Axial age" from about 900 to 200 BC. The Great Transformation is religious and social in nature. What's amazing is that far distant areas of the world underwent comparable developments at the same time, with no apparent communication: the Hebrew prophets, Buddha, Confucius, Greek tragedians and philosophers. It's like the whole world underwent a religious and philosophical revival. As I understand it, religion is transformed from a ritual practice to one that is more moral and ethical, with a value on self-sacrifice. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Politically there are important developments too, from tribal "compactness" to a more cosmopolitan outlook; and in Israel, we see the beginnings of the separation of religion and the state.
Armstrong has done a lot of research for this book, and she presents the latest thinking on many issues of the time. Most of the time she is careful to present speculation as such, but often she presents speculation as fact. The historical record for this period is very scant.
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Anne Mills
3.0 out of 5 stars Not Her Best: Perhaps Too Much Breadth to Leave Much Depth
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2015
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This book was something of a disappointment to me, at least compared to several other of Ms. Armstrong's works. Some of her books have been very important to me, offering understanding, knowledge, and even enlightenment. This one, however, falls short of her best efforts, perhaps because it attempts so much. The problem is not the quality of Ms. Armstrong's research or clarity. In discussing the evolution of four major religious/philosophical traditions (the Indian, the Chinese, the Judaic, and the Greek) in the centuries around 500 BC, she imparts an enormous amount of information without overloading or confusing the reader. Rather, it seems to me that she tries to force what she is telling us into a pre- determined conclusion; that religion in general in this period moved away from violence and towards compassion. Certainly, this pattern did appear in the emergence of Buddhism, in some Hebrew texts, and in some strains of Chinese thought. But other, contradictory elements were there as well, and the compassion she finds in Chinese thinking seems very different to me from the compassion of Buddhism, or from contemporary developments in Judaic thought -- let alone what was happening in Greece. This is an interesting and instructive book, but it lacks for me the depth of some of her other works.
20 people found this helpful
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Richard F. Wilson
5.0 out of 5 stars A challenge worth the effort
Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2017
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My first comment is that the Amazon post from Publishers Weekly (pasted here) needs an editor..
Karl Jung is not the one who coined the term Axial Age. It was Karl Jaspers.
Furthermore, the review is sensationalistic and misses the key points of Armstrong's work.
"It's not what one may expect from a book about the development of the world's religions: 'Crouched in his mother's womb, he lay in wait for his father, armed with a sickle, and the next time Uranus penetrated Gaia, he cut off his genitals and threw them to the earth.' However, the Greek myth of Cronus clearly illustrates Armstrong's main thesis, that the 'simultaneous' development of the world's religions during what Karl Jung called the axial age, is a direct result of the violence and chaos, both physical and spiritual, of past civilizations. Armstrong, a former nun turned self-described 'freelance monotheist,' has enough background and personal investment in the material to make it come alive. Her delivery is crystal clear, informative and, though somewhat academic, easy for the layman to understand. Her voice is straightforward yet wrought with palpable concern. This reinforces the book's goals of creating a clear understanding of where religious developments have come from and explaining how today's 'violence of an unprecedented scale' parallels the activities that created the 'axial age' in the first place."
In The Great Transformation (TGT) Armstrong meticulously, but without losing energy, explores the emergence of the pivotal religions of the world that emerged from c. 900 to c. 200 BCE. Her treatment is, first of all, historical and cultural, with emphases upon India (Hinduism and Buddhism), China (Taoism and Confucianism), the Middle East (Judaism), and ancient Greece.
Although Armstrong often is tagged as a comparative religion scholar/writer, she is less interested in comparing religions (comparisons almost always devolve into value assessments that fuel competitive approaches to religion) than she is showing how diverse histories and cultures leave us with deep resonances of religious and spiritual awareness.
Those resonances--including ritual, kenosis (emptying), knowledge, suffering, empathy, and concern for everybody--provide the clues to a careful reader to help understand how regional/cultural/historical expressions of religion finally transcended those beginnings and became viable across cultures and eras in history.
The transformation suggested in the book's title is kaleidoscopic. From time to time and from place to place the resonances emerge from particular circumstances and move toward universally recognized traits of authentic, transformative religions.
A delight found in each chapter is Armstrong's judicious use of primary sacred texts--yes, including Homer's epics and the Greek dramatists broad ouvre--that contextualize the values of religion without attempting to put all religions in one proverbial pot.
Finally, TGT begins with reflections upon recent history (e.g., the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001) and the rise of the perceived certainties of science and technology that have had the effect of muting the myths and mysteries found in the history of religions. Armstrong's closing parenthesis, "The Way Forward," holds out the hope those seeking to survive the twenty-first century might find, again, the values of myth and mysteries from ancient and contemporary flowerings of Axial Religion.
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Joseph G. Liscouski
5.0 out of 5 stars Really happy I read it
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2016
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There is a lot of stuff in this book and you have to be prepared to spend the time with it, but it is well worth it. It helped answer a lot of questions and gave me a perspective I hadn't had access to before. Really happy I read it, and may read it again - sometimes a book changes you and your point of view and you see things differently the second time around.
If you want to understand the development of religious thinking, and more importantly, the cultural and historic setting for that development, I'd highly recommend this book. Just be prepared to spend the time needed. This is the third book I've read by this author and I've learned a lot from them.
8 people found this helpful
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Shawn Thompson aka the intimate ape
4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding review of the spiritual origins of humanity
Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2016
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Whether you believe in religions or not, spirituality or not, this book has a wonderful range of clear, uncluttered, undogmatic and useful insights for the open, enquiring mind about the spiritual origins of humanity. The book is vastly useful because of the intelligent perspective it gives across the origins of spirituality in different places and different cultures and the way it balances and compares the different origins. Armstrong gives us the sense of putting different pieces together in the puzzle of the underlying urge for spirituality in human beings.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2015
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fascinating book
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Arijit Ghosh
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
Reviewed in India on November 28, 2019
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Excellent book to understand and appreciate evolution of different religions and philosophies in India, China, Middle East and Greece, during the first millennia BCE. Gives us a glimpse of life then with the historical context of what the author calls, the Axial Age.
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Sarthak Maji
1.0 out of 5 stars Very poor binding
Reviewed in India on August 29, 2019
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The rating is for binding of the book which is terribly poor... Don't buy the paperback version..
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Shawn Thompson aka the intimate ape
5.0 out of 5 stars The roots of spirituality in diversity
Reviewed in Canada on August 27, 2016
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Karen Armstrong gives amazing clarity and insight to the root of spiritual development that in its diversity defines the potential of human nature.
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ASRA
THE AXIAL PEOPLES
(c. 1600 to 900 BCE)
The first people to attempt an Axial Age spirituality were pastoralists living on the steppes of southern Russia, who called themselves the Aryans. The Aryans were not a distinct ethnic group, so this was not a racial term but an assertion of pride and meant something like “noble” or “honorable.” The Aryans were a loose-knit network of tribes who shared a common culture. Because they spoke a language that would form the basis of several Asiatic and European tongues, they are also called Indo-Europeans. They had lived on the Caucasian steppes since about 4500, but by the middle of the third millennium some tribes began to roam farther and farther afield, until they reached what is now Greece, Italy, Scandinavia, and Germany. At the same time, those Aryans who had remained behind on the steppes gradually drifted apart and became two separate peoples, speaking different forms of the original Indo-European. One used the Avestan dialect, the other an early form of Sanskrit. They were able to maintain contact, however, because at this stage their languages were still very similar, and until about 1500 they continued to live peacefully together, sharing the same cultural and religious traditions.
It was a quiet, sedentary existence. The Aryans could not travel far, because the horse had not yet been domesticated, so their horizons were bounded by the steppes. They farmed their land, herded their sheep, goats, and pigs, and valued stability and continuity. They were not a warlike people, since, apart from a few skirmishes with one another or with rival groups, they had no enemies and no ambition to conquer new territory. Their religion was simple and peaceful. Like other ancient peoples, the Aryans experienced an invisible force within themselves and in everything that they saw, heard, and touched. Storms, winds, trees, and rivers were not impersonal, mindless phenomena. The Aryans felt an affinity with them, and revered them as divine. Humans, deities, animals, plants, and the forces of nature were all manifestations of the same divine “spirit,” which the Avestans called mainyu and the Sanskrit-speakers manya. It animated, sustained, and bound them all together.
Over time the Aryans developed a more formal pantheon. At a very early stage, they had worshiped a Sky God called Dyaus Pitr, creator of the world. But like other High Gods, Dyaus was so remote that he was eventually replaced by more accessible gods, who were wholly identified with natural and cosmic forces. Varuna preserved the order of the universe; Mithra was the god of storm, thunder, and life-giving rain; Mazda, lord of justice and wisdom, was linked with the sun and stars; and Indra, a divine warrior, had fought a three-headed dragon called Vritra and brought order out of chaos. Fire, which was crucial to civilized society, was also a god and the Aryans called him Agni. Agni was not simply the divine patron of fire; he was the fire that burned in every single hearth. Even the hallucinogenic plant that inspired the Aryan poets was a god, called Haoma in Avestan and Soma in Sanskrit: he was a divine priest who protected the people from famine and looked after their cattle.
The Avestan Aryans called their gods daevas (“the shining ones”) and amesha (“the immortals”). In Sanskrit these terms became devas and amrita. None of these divine beings, however, were what we usually call “gods” today. They were not omnipotent and had no ultimate control over the cosmos. Like human beings and all the natural forces, they had to submit to the sacred order that held the universe together. Thanks to this order, the seasons succeeded one another in due course, the rain fell at the right times, and the crops grew each year in the appointed month. The Avestan Aryans called this order asha, while the Sanskrit-speakers called it rita. It made life possible, keeping everything in its proper place and defining what was true and correct.
Human society also depended upon this sacred order. People had to make firm, binding agreements about grazing rights, the herding of cattle, marriage, and the exchange of goods. Translated into social terms, asha/rita meant loyalty, truth, and respect, the ideals embodied by Varuna, the guardian of order, and Mithra, his assistant. These gods supervised all covenant agreements that were sealed by a solemn oath. The Aryans took the spoken word very seriously. Like all other phenomena, speech was a god, a deva. Aryan religion was not very visual. As far as we know, the Aryans did not make effigies of their gods. Instead, they found that the act of listening brought them close to the sacred. Quite apart from its meaning, the very sound of a chant was holy; even a single syllable could encapsulate the divine. Similarly, a vow, once uttered, was eternally binding, and a lie was absolutely evil because it perverted the holy power inherent in the spoken word. The Aryans would never lose this passion for absolute truthfulness.
Every day, the Aryans offered sacrifices to their gods to replenish the energies they expended in maintaining world order. Some of these rites were very simple. The sacrificer would throw a handful of grain, curds, or fuel into the fire to nourish Agni, or pound the stalks of soma, offer the pulp to the water goddesses, and make a sacred drink. The Aryans also sacrificed cattle. They did not grow enough crops for their needs, so killing was a tragic necessity, but the Aryans ate only meat that had been ritually and humanely slaughtered. When a beast was ceremonially given to the gods, its spirit was not extinguished but returned to Geush Urvan (“Soul of the Bull”), the archetypical domestic animal. The Aryans felt very close to their cattle. It was sinful to eat the flesh of a beast that had not been consecrated in this way, because profane slaughter destroyed it forever, and thus violated the sacred life that made all creatures kin. Again, the Aryans would never entirely lose this profound respect for the “spirit” that they shared with others, and this would become a crucial principle of their Axial Age.
To take the life of any being was a fearful act, not to be undertaken lightly, and the sacrificial ritual compelled the Aryans to confront this harsh law of existence. The sacrifice became and would remain the organizing symbol of their culture, by which they explained the world and their society. The Aryans believed that the universe itself had originated in a sacrificial offering. In the beginning, it was said, the gods, working in obedience to the divine order, had brought forth the world in seven stages. First they created the Sky, which was made of stone like a huge round shell; then the Earth, which rested like a flat dish upon the Water that had collected in the base of the shell. In the center of the Earth, the gods placed three living creatures: a Plant, a Bull, and a Man. Finally they produced Agni, the Fire. But at first everything was static and lifeless. It was not until the gods performed a triple sacrifice—crushing the Plant, and killing the Bull and the Man—that the world became animated. The sun began to move across the sky, seasonal change was established, and the three sacrificial victims brought forth their own kind. Flowers, crops, and trees sprouted from the pulped Plant; animals sprang from the corpse of the Bull; and the carcass of the first Man gave birth to the human race. The Aryans would always see sacrifice as creative. By reflecting on this ritual, they realized that their lives depended upon the death of other creatures. The three archetypal creatures had laid down their lives so that others might live. There could be no progress, materially or spiritually, without self-sacrifice. This too would become one of the principles of the Axial Age.
The Aryans had no elaborate shrines and temples. Sacrifice was offered in the open air on a small, level piece of land, marked off from the rest of the settlement by a furrow. The seven original creations were all symbolically represented in this arena: Earth in the soil, Water in the vessels, Fire in the hearth; the stone Sky was present in the flint knife, the Plant in the crushed soma stalks, the Bull in the victim, and the first Man in the priest. And the gods, it was thought, were also present. The hotr priest, expert in the liturgical chant, would sing a hymn to summon devas to the feast. When they had entered the sacred arena, the gods sat down on the freshly mown grass strewn around the altar to listen to these hymns of praise. Since the sound of these inspired syllables was itself a god, as the song filled the air and entered their consciousness, the congregation felt surrounded by and infused with divinity. Finally the primordial sacrifice was repeated. The cattle were slain, the soma pressed, and the priest laid the choicest portions of the victims onto the fire, so that Agni could convey them to the land of the gods. The ceremony ended with a holy communion, as priest and participants shared a festal meal with the deities, eating the consecrated meat and drinking the intoxicating soma, which seemed to lift them to another dimension of being.
The sacrifice brought practical benefits too. It was commissioned by a member of the community, who hoped that those devas who had responded to his invitation and attended the sacrifice would help him in the future. Like any act of hospitality, the ritual placed an obligation on the divinities to respond in kind, and the hotr often reminded them to protect the patron’s family, crops, and herd. The s...
About the Author
Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs, including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, and Buddha. Her work has been translated into forty languages, and she is the author of three television documentaries. Since September 11, 2001, she has been a frequent contributor to conferences, panels, newspapers, periodicals, and other media on both sides of the Atlantic on the subject of Islam. She lives in London.
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Product details
Print Length: 592 pages
Publisher: Anchor; 1st edition (March 28, 2006)
Publication Date: March 28, 2006
Language: English
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Karen Armstrong
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Biography
Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs-including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and The Great Transformation-and two memoirs, Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into forty-five languages. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions; lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department; participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan, and Davos; addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York; is increasingly invited to speak in Muslim countries; and is now an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. In February 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and is currently working with TED on a major international project to launch and propagate a Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, to be signed in the fall of 2009 by a thousand religious and secular leaders. She lives in London.
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Q
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2017
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This is an excellent history of the ancient world with focus on Greece, Israel, India, and China. She surveys political developments but also with special attention to religious and philosophical developments and major figures. The Great Transformation is a theory of the "Axial age" from about 900 to 200 BC. The Great Transformation is religious and social in nature. What's amazing is that far distant areas of the world underwent comparable developments at the same time, with no apparent communication: the Hebrew prophets, Buddha, Confucius, Greek tragedians and philosophers. It's like the whole world underwent a religious and philosophical revival. As I understand it, religion is transformed from a ritual practice to one that is more moral and ethical, with a value on self-sacrifice. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Politically there are important developments too, from tribal "compactness" to a more cosmopolitan outlook; and in Israel, we see the beginnings of the separation of religion and the state.
Armstrong has done a lot of research for this book, and she presents the latest thinking on many issues of the time. Most of the time she is careful to present speculation as such, but often she presents speculation as fact. The historical record for this period is very scant.
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Anne Mills
3.0 out of 5 stars Not Her Best: Perhaps Too Much Breadth to Leave Much Depth
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2015
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This book was something of a disappointment to me, at least compared to several other of Ms. Armstrong's works. Some of her books have been very important to me, offering understanding, knowledge, and even enlightenment. This one, however, falls short of her best efforts, perhaps because it attempts so much. The problem is not the quality of Ms. Armstrong's research or clarity. In discussing the evolution of four major religious/philosophical traditions (the Indian, the Chinese, the Judaic, and the Greek) in the centuries around 500 BC, she imparts an enormous amount of information without overloading or confusing the reader. Rather, it seems to me that she tries to force what she is telling us into a pre- determined conclusion; that religion in general in this period moved away from violence and towards compassion. Certainly, this pattern did appear in the emergence of Buddhism, in some Hebrew texts, and in some strains of Chinese thought. But other, contradictory elements were there as well, and the compassion she finds in Chinese thinking seems very different to me from the compassion of Buddhism, or from contemporary developments in Judaic thought -- let alone what was happening in Greece. This is an interesting and instructive book, but it lacks for me the depth of some of her other works.
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Richard F. Wilson
5.0 out of 5 stars A challenge worth the effort
Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2017
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My first comment is that the Amazon post from Publishers Weekly (pasted here) needs an editor..
Karl Jung is not the one who coined the term Axial Age. It was Karl Jaspers.
Furthermore, the review is sensationalistic and misses the key points of Armstrong's work.
"It's not what one may expect from a book about the development of the world's religions: 'Crouched in his mother's womb, he lay in wait for his father, armed with a sickle, and the next time Uranus penetrated Gaia, he cut off his genitals and threw them to the earth.' However, the Greek myth of Cronus clearly illustrates Armstrong's main thesis, that the 'simultaneous' development of the world's religions during what Karl Jung called the axial age, is a direct result of the violence and chaos, both physical and spiritual, of past civilizations. Armstrong, a former nun turned self-described 'freelance monotheist,' has enough background and personal investment in the material to make it come alive. Her delivery is crystal clear, informative and, though somewhat academic, easy for the layman to understand. Her voice is straightforward yet wrought with palpable concern. This reinforces the book's goals of creating a clear understanding of where religious developments have come from and explaining how today's 'violence of an unprecedented scale' parallels the activities that created the 'axial age' in the first place."
In The Great Transformation (TGT) Armstrong meticulously, but without losing energy, explores the emergence of the pivotal religions of the world that emerged from c. 900 to c. 200 BCE. Her treatment is, first of all, historical and cultural, with emphases upon India (Hinduism and Buddhism), China (Taoism and Confucianism), the Middle East (Judaism), and ancient Greece.
Although Armstrong often is tagged as a comparative religion scholar/writer, she is less interested in comparing religions (comparisons almost always devolve into value assessments that fuel competitive approaches to religion) than she is showing how diverse histories and cultures leave us with deep resonances of religious and spiritual awareness.
Those resonances--including ritual, kenosis (emptying), knowledge, suffering, empathy, and concern for everybody--provide the clues to a careful reader to help understand how regional/cultural/historical expressions of religion finally transcended those beginnings and became viable across cultures and eras in history.
The transformation suggested in the book's title is kaleidoscopic. From time to time and from place to place the resonances emerge from particular circumstances and move toward universally recognized traits of authentic, transformative religions.
A delight found in each chapter is Armstrong's judicious use of primary sacred texts--yes, including Homer's epics and the Greek dramatists broad ouvre--that contextualize the values of religion without attempting to put all religions in one proverbial pot.
Finally, TGT begins with reflections upon recent history (e.g., the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001) and the rise of the perceived certainties of science and technology that have had the effect of muting the myths and mysteries found in the history of religions. Armstrong's closing parenthesis, "The Way Forward," holds out the hope those seeking to survive the twenty-first century might find, again, the values of myth and mysteries from ancient and contemporary flowerings of Axial Religion.
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Joseph G. Liscouski
5.0 out of 5 stars Really happy I read it
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2016
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There is a lot of stuff in this book and you have to be prepared to spend the time with it, but it is well worth it. It helped answer a lot of questions and gave me a perspective I hadn't had access to before. Really happy I read it, and may read it again - sometimes a book changes you and your point of view and you see things differently the second time around.
If you want to understand the development of religious thinking, and more importantly, the cultural and historic setting for that development, I'd highly recommend this book. Just be prepared to spend the time needed. This is the third book I've read by this author and I've learned a lot from them.
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Shawn Thompson aka the intimate ape
4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding review of the spiritual origins of humanity
Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2016
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Whether you believe in religions or not, spirituality or not, this book has a wonderful range of clear, uncluttered, undogmatic and useful insights for the open, enquiring mind about the spiritual origins of humanity. The book is vastly useful because of the intelligent perspective it gives across the origins of spirituality in different places and different cultures and the way it balances and compares the different origins. Armstrong gives us the sense of putting different pieces together in the puzzle of the underlying urge for spirituality in human beings.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2015
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fascinating book
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Arijit Ghosh
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
Reviewed in India on November 28, 2019
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Excellent book to understand and appreciate evolution of different religions and philosophies in India, China, Middle East and Greece, during the first millennia BCE. Gives us a glimpse of life then with the historical context of what the author calls, the Axial Age.
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Sarthak Maji
1.0 out of 5 stars Very poor binding
Reviewed in India on August 29, 2019
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The rating is for binding of the book which is terribly poor... Don't buy the paperback version..
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One person found this helpful
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Shawn Thompson aka the intimate ape
5.0 out of 5 stars The roots of spirituality in diversity
Reviewed in Canada on August 27, 2016
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Karen Armstrong gives amazing clarity and insight to the root of spiritual development that in its diversity defines the potential of human nature.
One person found this helpful
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