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Summary: Explains how three religions view God
Review: What Joseph Campbell (The Masks of God, etc.) did for myth and William H. McNeill (The Rise of the West) did for universal history, Armstrong has here done for the idea of God in three historically related religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Like them also, she tells a story; with great skill she weaves into a single cloth social history, the history of ideas, comparative religion, and sometimes even the clash of empires. At the same time she picks her way carefully through a vast array of scholarly opinion, often without choosing among opposing views; yet she is not afraid to make a choice among possibilities, even to criticize the traditions she is describing. Thus the work has a personal dimension, and one that will sometimes offend conservatives of all three religions. For instance, she considers much of religious orthodoxy to be intellectually idolatrous because it fails to recognize the socially constructed nature of conceptions of the divine. Ideas of God, like all ideas, arise to fulfill human needs which are in turn derived from particular conditions; in accordance with mystical theology everywhere, concepts of God only point to what can never be adequately defined. An important addition to any general library collection.
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Summary: An Archaeology Expedition for "God"
Review: A History of God is a personal, yet informed, logically sound, wide-ranging, yet mercifully selective, and pragmatic account of four millennia of events and debate surrounding the god of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Karen Armstrong's thesis is not metaphysical; she does not try to prove the existence of any type of god or the validity of any denomination, program, or vision. The book is also not encyclopedic; numerous scholars have offered views not included here (although she graciously includes 10 pages of bibliography, 17 pages of endnotes, a seven-page glossary, and a 24-page index). Armstrong's book is a history of how Jewish, Christian, and Muslim commentators (it is, in this sense, elitist) have attempted to make "God" work for believers throughout four millennia.Her orientating point is West Asia, with occasionally significant glances at Europe and North Africa. This is not a universal account, by any means. Armstrong's use of the word, "oikumene", identifies her focus as more political and economic than theological. The "God" in the title is limited to a region of the world centrally situated between India and Europe. One of the most fascinating results of this orientation, is that Western, Augustinian, Christianity is peripheral to the original ferment occurring in the center. After giving Augustine his due, Armstrong slights Western Christianity, which still gets more space than Buddhism and Hinduism, both inserted to give fair credit for inspiring several developments in the story. For whatever reason, personal or scholarly, therefore, Christianity is ironically placed in the third position in the roll call of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Just as recent scholars and commentators on the subject of globalization have done, Armstrong traces the linkages between Islam in the early middle ages and Europe, and then discusses how the shift during the industrial age affected Judaism and Islam. To reset the balance caused by western industrialization, she purposefully overcompensates with Muslim and Jewish material. If it seems that a great deal of Christian developments are forgotten or abbreviated, it only highlights how industrialization, armed with Christianity, marginalized west Asian society. Armstrong's argument rests on this geographical point. For whatever reason Europe embraced Augustine, it abandoned and ridiculed approaches, that Jewish, Orthodox Christian, and Islamic authors had developed, which Armstrong wants to recover for contemporary, personal, and inter-denominational benefit. But the prejudices accumulated by industrialization and the offshoots of Augustinian Christianity make understanding difficult. What Armstrong wants to recover, is a more mystical, tolerant, and creative, less transcendent, vengeful, personal approach to "God". Beginning with her discussions of the primitive Yahweh cult and the Jewish prophets, Islamic Falsafah, and then again in her section on mystics, Armstrong attacks the notion of a God as just another being like us. Accenting with developments in Buddhism and Hinduism, she builds the conceivable outlines of a mystical monotheism, only to witness western traders and missionaries undermine the society fermenting this vision. Armstrong is trying to salvage what she can from the obliteration in 396 pages. A History of God is not a half-baked theology, flawed pilgrimage, or a cynical hack's grasp for bestseller status. It's another expression of the consequences of globalization during western-led industrialization. Only instead of seeking answers in trade figures and labor statistics, Armstrong tries to resurrect the shards of a vision of "God".
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Summary: Important Work, But Info Overload for Topic Novices
Review: REVIEW: Karen Armstrong has done a remarkable job in covering such a huge subject and I learned a fair amount reading this book. However, for me as a new comer to the study of religions/theology, the book just offered too much material. I was looking for more of an introduction to the major religions, including their major beliefs, rituals, differences, etc. This book is just too detailed for me to have gotten that information efficiently. There must have been a thousand different people brought up by Ms. Armstrong; I can remember probably less than 5. I would have preferred something more like Brian Magee's "Story of Philosophy" which is an excellent non-academic introduction to philosophy. Armstrong's book is long, thorough, and may be appropriate for the serious student of religion that has already had an introduction, but I don't recommend it as a first read on the topic. STRENGTHS: The author's obvious breadth of readings and knowledge of the topic. The detailed endnotes and index are a plus. WEAKNESSES: For me, the chapters were just too long and monotone. The book could use more organization (e.g. subchapters); graphics, lists, and/or sidebars to make it more interesting and easier to read. Also, I hated the italic font. I couldn't tell the difference between the "h" and the "b". This is normally not a problem, but for someone not used to reading arabic names it's a big issue. WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: Serious students of religion that already have an introduction to the major religions and who don't mind reading longer books that may not be easy to read. [feedback welcome]
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Summary: Dense and not for all tastes
Review: This is an impressive (if selective) overview of theological ideas. But it is heavy going. Keep a dictionary handy, unless words like antinomian, Hellenistic, and apophatic are familiar to you. KA does a great job with truly complex material, but she can only simplify so far. Reading this book is an effort. I learned a lot, but if I had not had a friend reading it too I am not sure I would have finished it on my own.
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Summary: And On The Eighth Day, Man Created God
Review: Karen Armstrong is like the kid in the crowd who points out "The Emperor has no clothes!" She painstakingly weaves the evolution of a jealous, violent, and partisan God of the Old Testament to a more ethereal and abstract modern-day version. As the old saying goes, "God created Man, and Man returned the favor". God, having had every manner of human weakness foisted upon Him by generations of superstitious and power-hungry holy men, gradually becomes more enlightened as a reflection of the evolving moral consciousness of each new era. The attempt of a dualistic consciousness to describe a non-dualistic reality is of course a bit of a lost cause. The simple acknowledgment of the existance of a Creator by its creations would by definition preclude the lesser from ever understanding the true nature of the greater. The internal inconsistencies of fundamentalist theology are legion. One simple example of this is the simultaneous belief that a) God is infinite, and b) God can get angry, then forgive. If God is infinite then He cannot change His mind, because to change requires separate states in time, and God, being infinite, is a non-temporal being living outside the bounds of time. If God lives within time, then He had to have a beginning in time (even if that beginning were the beginning of time), in which case He is not infinite. It's got to be one or the other, and yet most theologies would insist on both. These inconsistencies point out that the "Word Of God" upon which institutions down through the ages have based their moral authority is really all about power and control, not Divine Guidance. Perhaps most importantly, however, is the idea that the concept of God represents our highest ideals and strivings. He is the ultimate projection of what is divine within ourselves, and is real in that most of us would believe that we have the spark of divine essence within us.
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Summary: Interesting but biased
Review: I have just finished this book and Jerusalem and found both to be interesting but biased. I cannot attest to whether Ms. Armstrong's "facts" are accurate or not but I can state that she has an extreme bias in favor of Islam and against Christianity and Judaism. Her language glosses over the barbaric acts of Muslims while highlighting the barbaric acts of Christians and Jews. Her tone and implication is that Islam has been beneficient and Christianity and Judaism have been hateful, especially Christianity.
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Summary: No history here
Review: I was hoping to get some good history on God. All I got was 600 pages of contortionist philosophy. Reading this book was like wading through mud. If you believed in God before reading this, you won't afterwards.
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Summary: Not Exactly What I Expected
Review: Received Armstrong's _History of God_ as a gift. "Great!", I thought, because I have an interest in looking at the linkages and similarities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and learning more about how they are related through history. This is exactly what I thought this book would be strong in, but it did not live up to my expectations. While it does the history of all three religions and in the history one is shown similarities and continuities among the three, far more emphasis is placed on the dissimilarities and separations of traditions within each religion. The book is organized by historical period and by tradition, with an attempt to cover each significant subtradition or thinker of religious thought. I had expected (and would rather have) a thematic organization with most chapters on specific themes that the traditions could be compared across. The author's result is history more for history's sake than as illustration of themes in, or theory of, religion. The one exception I saw to this was the central theme which informs the whole book, and that theme is not one to which I subscribe. She writes throughout from the perspective of one who has pre-concluded that God is nothing more than a social construction. The variety of religious thought and the emphasis on fractures between traditions in each religion are meant to show us that God exists only in the eye/mind of the beholders. If your interest in the book is primarily historical you are likely to be much more pleased with the book than I was, but if your interest comes from believing in the one God shared by these three religions and thus wishing to learn more about how these religions are related, I suspect you will be a bit disappointed.
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Summary: A useful survey -- with some serious omissions
Review: It's easy to understand why many people find this book helpful. It represents a vast amount of research. Armstrong is a learned woman. The breadth of her knowledge is very impressive. She is also a good writer. She has a friendly style. And almost everyone will find something here of interest. I especially liked the section about Mohammed, as I know very little about Islam. Armstrong is at her best when she elucidates various issues (such as the feminine/goddess) that continue to be embarrassing to orthodox Christianity. But a book that calls itself a History of God must be held to a high standard. Armstrong's discussions of a number of important issues are inadequate -- about what one would expect of an overview. Her book, then, is a useful survey. It takes the reader competently across a vast amount of material. But the author keeps presenting more of the same, and fails to take the reader any deeper. By the 7th chapter I found myself slogging along, and losing interest. Armstrong's treatment of the Old Testament is in general competently done. Yet there are omissions. The author never mentions the Ras Shamra tablets found on the coast of Lebanon in the late 1920s, despite their extreme importance. She has imbibed, however, the correct conclusions about Judaism's great debt to Canaanite religion. Her discussion of the Book of Job (pp 65-66) fails to recognize that the ending part of Job was an afterthought, added by a later scribe, rather than original to the text. Indeed, the whole discussion of Job is inadequate. Armstrong seems unaware that most of the Wisdom Literature and the Gnostic Demi-urge followed and flowed directly from Job, which is arguably the most controversial book in the Old Testament. She fails to illuminate its meaning and true significance, which is vital to understand the role of Jesus as reformer. Armstrong's handling of the New Testament is less skillful. She allocates only four pages to Gnostic-Christianity, a woeful amount, and never even mentions the Nag Hammadi or the Gospel of Thomas. She recognizes the common ground between Christianity and Hinduism/Buddhism, but never follows up on this vitally important area with any analysis. There is no discussion of Jewish-Christianity, an issue about which orthodox Christians tread with extreme care--no mention of the Ebionites (the poor), for example, which is egregious given the reference "Blesed are the poor" in the first Beatitude of Jesus. (But then, Armstrong is not alone in this omission. I know of no other Christian scholars who have made the connection.) Armstrong also uncritically accepts the wrong judgment of orthodoxy that Jesus' dying words "Eli Eli" refer to the Father when in fact they refer to Elijah (p. 77). Her discussion of the Arian controversy in chapter 4 mentions the new doctrine of creation from nothing (ex nihilo), but the author neglects to mention the most important (and appalling) implication: the fact that orthodoxy in the process also rejected the immortality of the soul. Nor is there a discussion of the grave consequences for Christianity of this error. The author correctly mentions that Christians "were confused about the Holy Spirit" (p 115) but she fails to follow up this lead in with any clarification of this most important subject.
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Summary: Complexity Reduced
Review: I was fascinated and filled with a deep sense of satisfaction after reading this book. As a fan of comparative religion, I found this book an essential guide to those who are searching for a realistic vision of the world and the growth of theology. Understanding my own roots and the path that "God" has taken to reach my understanding, but never being able to describe it to others, I've finally found a book to describe the basis of belief. Rather than de-bunking faith , I've found new strength in knowing why the beliefs of today are so prevalent and what my existence means to God, my society, and myself.
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