A History of God : The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (4 Cassettes)

Rating:
Summary: Mono - mania
Review: Religion "seems to be something we have always done" writes Karen Armstrong in the introduction to her monumental survey of monotheism, A History of God. Tracing the roots and shoots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam over four millennia, she shows us that we end up asking the same questions across eras and cultures: Can I know god directly or only through his emanations? Is he inside me or up there in the sky? Is the best way to reach him through the head or the heart?

These days, much of our exposure to the major monotheistic religions is through their extreme actors: pederast priests, fanatic West Bank settlers, suicide bombers, demagogic leaders of murderous ethnic cleansing campaigns. One of the revelations of this book is how subtle, flexible and tolerant Judaism, Islam and Greek Orthodox Christianity have been over the centuries. Their major thinkers tried to reach god through rational proofs or through mystical intuitions; in either case the religions stayed open to discovering new spins on the Big Truths.

Although Armstrong is remarkably even-handed in laying out the doctrinal evolution of the three major monotheistic religions, it's apparent that Western European Christians got the short end of the theological stick. Instead of the emotional subtleties and sense of joy one can derive from the mystical traditions of, say, the Sufism of Abu Hamid al Ghazzali or the Kabbalistic system of Isaac Luria, the churches of Christ got the tortured dogma of Martin Luther or the physical torture of Torquemada. As Armstrong states, "Instead of allowing their so-called deviants to go private, Western Christians simply persecuted them and attempted to wipe out nonconformists. In Islamdom, esoteric thinkers usually died in their beds."

If the book has a flaw, it's the sheer volume of research and detail. At times you feel like you're drinking from a fire hose. (Was it Al Junayd, al Hallaj, Ibn Sina or Al Ghallazi whose sense of union with god, called fana, was considered blasphemous during the tenth - or was it the eleventh? - century?) Mired in obscure doctrinal disputes, the mystics and philosophers coming at us fast and furious, it's easy to lose track of the big picture.

Not that Armstrong doesn't step back to lay out some big ideas: monotheism has survived through the centuries because it has evolved as cultures have changed; when god becomes too remote or scary, some prophet comes along to make him more human-like and accessible; approaching god through our emotions seems to satisfy an innate need to surrender our selves to a union with something grander than we are.

After several thousand years of batting the issue around, present-day monotheists seem to be migrating towards the extreme positions. The secularists believe we've outgrown the idea of god, and turn to science as the source of answers to "that which is not yet known." The fundamentalists, according to Armstrong, are ahistorical, more concerned with the literal interpretation of ancient texts than finding a god who works in these times. Perhaps Yaweh, Allah and Jesus will go the way of Baal, Anat, Ishtar and Zeus, supreme beings who had their day, then faded into the mists of history. What will probably not die is the desire to transcend the mere reality of our selves and to invent stories that explain who we are and why we are here.

Karen Armstrong has given us a brilliant summary of our run-ups to the numinous. It may be more information than you want, but you will be a better deist or atheist for making the effort.

Related Readings. A couple of other writers who come at these questions from a different angle are Joseph Campbell in The Masks of God, a classic of comparative religion, and Sam Harris, whose The End of Faith shows what damage can occur when god ends up as a tool in the wrong hands.






Rating:
Summary: A whirlwind Trip over 3000+ years
Review: Armstrong has created a whirlwind review of the 3000+ years of man's view of God. Each chapter could be a set of books by itself, because the book has a fast pace. It is a book that could be used as a introductory level textbook. If you want to really learn you need to take notes on the areas she addresses because of tremendous volume of facts she writes about. A great deal of emphasis in the book on the commonality of the 3 major religions. Excellent analysis of the difference between the "God" of Philosophy and the "God" of Theology.

Rating:
Summary: Must reading for anyone interested in religion
Review: If ever we establish a required reading list for mankind, this book must be included. Ms. Arnstrong gives us a panoramic view of religion that is honest, intelligent, and extremely thought provoking.

Rating:
Summary: A+ read!
Review: There are some great reviews already posted, so I'll keep this short. This book is excruciatingly hard to read. Honestly, it is almost unreadable - mostly due to an abundance of names foreign to the English ear. That said, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the roots monotheism and the interconnections between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I suffered through this book because it is a wealth of knowledge excellently presented without bias (well, at least as much as any book on religion can be presented without bias). If you have the stamina, read this book. You'll be better for it.

Rating:
Summary: Good book but long read
Review: I learned a lot from this book and it is well worth the effort to read it. My major complaint with it is that it sent me to the glossary and dictionary too many times.

Here is an example of the language use: "The other countries of the Oikumene found it increasingly difficult to ignore the Western world." It could have been easily written: "The other countries of the civilized world found it increasingly difficult to ignore the Western world". The author does this constantly throughout the book. I think I would have got much more out of the book if was dumb down to a non-theologian level.


Rating:
Summary: A Difficult, Fascinating Look at Ideas of God
Review: Armstrong's goal in this book is monumental, nothing less than to provide the history of monotheism from its beginnings in prehistory to the present. While she narrows it to the major religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, she also brings in other religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. The result is a masterpiece of scholarly theology. One of the most important aspects is that it is comparative religion, and narrowing it to any one faith would have been a huge loss. Not all authors could have handled the comparison without one religion (their own) coming out "on top." But while Armstrong is a Christian, as her other books demonstrate she is enough of a scholar in each of the others that I felt no bias. At times there was a lack of information on Islam, but she was careful to note that there isn't yet enough research on Islam in the time period she is discussing.

I read this book years ago and found it so difficult that while I finished it, it did not stick. Over the last year, a group from my church took on the task of reading it a chapter a month. This is a hard way to read a book as complex as this, as one tends to lose continuity in the reading. And we dropped from about twenty at our first meeting to a core group of six who stuck it out to the end. But the six enjoyed it very much, and agreed that we'd learned some incredible things from it.

One of my insights from the book was the importance of her ongoing insistence that she is writing not about God but about the idea of God. We can't really know God. Judaism is the most clear and practical about this, even in the Hebrew Bible. When times change and the idea of God no longer fits what the people need from God, people change the idea of God. This is seen in the Reformation as well, and in the Enlightenment. This idea is of course the opposite of the fundamentalist idea (in any religion) that God always was and is and will be the same. I cannot see many fundamentalists reading her book in the first place. But if they did, these ideas that she is considering the idea of God, not God "Himself," and that that idea necessarily changes, would be very troubling to such a person.

While others have mentioned Armstrong's stress on a personal God in all three religions, what struck me was the extent to which all three had at least minority movements which found other ways of expressing God, even if the word used for God remained masculine. I have spent more than a decade trying to find a way of experiencing and understanding God that is not just man-on-a-throne-in-the-sky. I found many ways, some of them small, in her book, where some in all three faiths were on the same search.

I had two problems with the book. One was unavoidable. In several places, a single sentence would be so packed with information and implications that she could have written a whole chapter or even a book unpacking it. I wanted her to! But the book was already a long one.

The other problem she and her editors could have done something about. Each chapter was long, and had no breaks at all. With the complex material, it would have helped. She's very organized when she makes a major switch between the major faiths, but I didn't catch on for several chapters. My reading group agreed that it would have helped if she had made breaks within chapters for that or other major breaks in topic. And I don't think it would have made her book less scholarly to do so.

But these are minor problems in a major work by a theologian and scholar whose other books I now want to read.

Rating:
Summary: For freethinkers only
Review: If you already have a perception of God as a humanoid, male, bearded figure sitting in a throne in the clouds, then this book isn't for you. If, however you have always been curious as to the "invention" of God, when and where, then you will probably enjoy this read. It gets a bit long winded and sluggish, but if you skim over the sleepy parts it's quite interesting. Another book fundamentalists shouldn't read. Too much fact, not enough hype.

Rating:
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: I selected this book in my first attempt to understand the major religions of the world and how they have captivated nearly the entire planet into practicing faith-based living. I am not a spiritual person but I have been curious about why so many people are and how our world came to be this way. This book is just entirly too detailed and overloaded with information for me. Some recommendations have praised the book as a must-have for the religious scholar and I could not agree more. Unfortunately, few of us are religious scholars. If one is looking for beginners level information, I cannot recommend this book. My wife is a life-long practicing catholic and can just keep up with the information regarding christianity but is lost on the rest. I plan to keep this book while I try to find some easier reading material and then probably go back to it in a couple of years.

Strengths - The author is unbiased and presents attractive and shameful aspects of all religions with equal proportion.

Critiques - I get the sense that the author is trying to show off ALL the information that she knows which makes the book impossible and cumbersome to follow for the novice.

Rating:
Summary: Writing a history of God without believing in God
Review: Karen Armstrong has prodigious learning and prodigious industry. However she does not have faith or belief in God. Because of this her history of God lacks the kind of inner depth and understanding which can come only out of ' real connection' with God. As to the presentation on the whole I feel myself capable of commenting only on her presentation of Judaism. She knows so much and yet here too my feeling is that she just does not somehow ' get it'.
So I would say to any reader for whom their own connection with God is most important this is not a very recommended work.

Rating:
Summary: Very intelligent book
Review: This book reminds me of a Judeo-Christian-Muslim version of Edith Hamilton's classic work, "Mythology".

Destined to become a classic. I highly recommend it for the aspiring religion scholar.