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During the Axial Age — 900 to 200 B.C.E. — the world's major religious traditions responded to their surrounding cultural influences and developed the philosophical attitudes they exhibit to this day. In lucid and reasoned prose Karen Armstrong details the impact violence and other worldly forces had in determining the developmental process of religion. The Great Transformation is an absorbing read, sure to stand out amongst works of religious history. Recommended by Chandler, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
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.
Review:
"Having already recounted 'a history of God,' the redoubtable Armstrong here narrates the evolution of the religious traditions of the world from their births to their maturity. In her typical magisterial fashion, she chronicles these tales in dazzling prose with remarkable depth and judicious breadth. Taking the Axial Age, which spans roughly 900 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E., as her focal point, Armstrong examines the ways that specific religious traditions from Buddhism and Confucianism to Taoism and Judaism responded to the various cultural forces they faced during this period. Overall, Armstrong observes, violence, political disruption and religious intolerance dominated Axial Age societies, so Axial religions responded by exalting compassion, love and justice over selfishness and hatred. Thus, the central Buddhist and Jain practice of ahimsa, doing no harm, developed in India in reaction to the self-centeredness of Hindu ritual, and Hebrew prophets such as Amos proclaimed that justice and mercy toward neighbors offered the only correct way of walking with God. Accounts of the world's religions often present them as discrete entities developing apart from each other in a vacuum. Armstrong's magnificent accomplishment offers us an account of a violent time much like ours, when religious impulses in various locations developed practices of justice and love." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Having already recounted 'a history of God,' the redoubtable Armstrong here narrates the evolution of the religious traditions of the world from their births to their maturity. In her typical magisterial fashion, she chronicles these tales in dazzling prose with remarkable depth and judicious breadth. Taking the Axial Age, which spans roughly 900 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E., as her focal point, Armstrong examines the ways that specific religious traditions from Buddhism and Confucianism to Taoism and Judaism responded to the various cultural forces they faced during this period. Overall, Armstrong observes, violence, political disruption and religious intolerance dominated Axial Age societies, so Axial religions responded by exalting compassion, love and justice over selfishness and hatred. Thus, the central Buddhist and Jain practice of ahimsa, doing no harm, developed in India in reaction to the self-centeredness of Hindu ritual, and Hebrew prophets such as Amos proclaimed that justice and mercy toward neighbors offered the only correct way of walking with God. Accounts of the world's religions often present them as discrete entities developing apart from each other in a vacuum. Armstrong's magnificent accomplishment offers us an account of a violent time much like ours, when religious impulses in various locations developed practices of justice and love." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"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... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) 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. Lauren F. Winner, a visiting lecturer at Duke Divinity School, is the author of 'Girl Meets God: A Memoir.'" Reviewed by Lauren F. Winner, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Review:
"Both liberals and conservatives in all the world's religious and political camps could benefit from the historical insights gathered in this eminently significant volume." Library Journal
"A useful text for an intolerant and uncompassionate time." Kirkus Reviwes
Review:
"Karen Armstrong is a genius." A. N. Wilson, author of Jesus: A Life
Review:
"Armstrong is a lucid writer with a knack for synthesizing vast quantities of research." The Globe and Mail
Review:
"Armstrong has a dazzling ability: she can take a long and complex subject and reduce it to the fundamentals, without oversimplifying."
The Sunday Times
Synopsis:
From one of the world's leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the bestselling "A History of God" comes a major new work: a chronicle of the ninth century BCE, when the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity into the present day. 25 maps.
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.
fzalatimo, April 6, 2006 (view all comments by fzalatimo)
Karen is an authority in her field,she wrote abook about the Profet Mohamad the Alazhar Alsherief canot match.
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The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
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Karen Armstrong
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496 pages
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Reviews:
"Staff Pick"
by Chandler,
During the Axial Age — 900 to 200 B.C.E. — the world's major religious traditions responded to their surrounding cultural influences and developed the philosophical attitudes they exhibit to this day. In lucid and reasoned prose Karen Armstrong details the impact violence and other worldly forces had in determining the developmental process of religion. The Great Transformation is an absorbing read, sure to stand out amongst works of religious history.
by Chandler
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Having already recounted 'a history of God,' the redoubtable Armstrong here narrates the evolution of the religious traditions of the world from their births to their maturity. In her typical magisterial fashion, she chronicles these tales in dazzling prose with remarkable depth and judicious breadth. Taking the Axial Age, which spans roughly 900 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E., as her focal point, Armstrong examines the ways that specific religious traditions from Buddhism and Confucianism to Taoism and Judaism responded to the various cultural forces they faced during this period. Overall, Armstrong observes, violence, political disruption and religious intolerance dominated Axial Age societies, so Axial religions responded by exalting compassion, love and justice over selfishness and hatred. Thus, the central Buddhist and Jain practice of ahimsa, doing no harm, developed in India in reaction to the self-centeredness of Hindu ritual, and Hebrew prophets such as Amos proclaimed that justice and mercy toward neighbors offered the only correct way of walking with God. Accounts of the world's religions often present them as discrete entities developing apart from each other in a vacuum. Armstrong's magnificent accomplishment offers us an account of a violent time much like ours, when religious impulses in various locations developed practices of justice and love." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Having already recounted 'a history of God,' the redoubtable Armstrong here narrates the evolution of the religious traditions of the world from their births to their maturity. In her typical magisterial fashion, she chronicles these tales in dazzling prose with remarkable depth and judicious breadth. Taking the Axial Age, which spans roughly 900 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E., as her focal point, Armstrong examines the ways that specific religious traditions from Buddhism and Confucianism to Taoism and Judaism responded to the various cultural forces they faced during this period. Overall, Armstrong observes, violence, political disruption and religious intolerance dominated Axial Age societies, so Axial religions responded by exalting compassion, love and justice over selfishness and hatred. Thus, the central Buddhist and Jain practice of ahimsa, doing no harm, developed in India in reaction to the self-centeredness of Hindu ritual, and Hebrew prophets such as Amos proclaimed that justice and mercy toward neighbors offered the only correct way of walking with God. Accounts of the world's religions often present them as discrete entities developing apart from each other in a vacuum. Armstrong's magnificent accomplishment offers us an account of a violent time much like ours, when religious impulses in various locations developed practices of justice and love." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review"
by Library Journal,
"Both liberals and conservatives in all the world's religious and political camps could benefit from the historical insights gathered in this eminently significant volume."
"Review"
by Booklist,
"[A]n utterly enthralling reading experience."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviwes,
"A useful text for an intolerant and uncompassionate time."
"Review"
by A. N. Wilson, author of Jesus: A Life,
"Karen Armstrong is a genius."
"Review"
by The Globe and Mail,
"Armstrong is a lucid writer with a knack for synthesizing vast quantities of research."
"Review"
by The Sunday Times,
"Armstrong has a dazzling ability: she can take a long and complex subject and reduce it to the fundamentals, without oversimplifying."
"Synopsis"
by Libri,
From one of the world's leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the bestselling "A History of God" comes a major new work: a chronicle of the ninth century BCE, when the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity into the present day. 25 maps.
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