Read an Excerpt
Summary and Analysis of A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Based on the Book by Karen Armstrong
By Worth Books OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4403-5
CHAPTER 1
Summary
1. In the Beginning ...
The modern idea of God, the theistic narrative we would be familiar with today, can be traced back to the Middle East some 14,000 years ago. The Sumerians, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Canaanites all founded their own systems of faith and ritual around this time. This complicated and vast religious growth was a response to what the ancients viewed as the unsolvable mystery of existence, variously called mana, numina, jinn: the occupants of the unseen spiritual world. Initially, the central figure or High God was seen as the "Great Mother" or "Sky God": Inana to the Sumerians, Ishtar to the Babylonians, Aphrodite in Greece. Smaller deities, like her children, and stories emerged to explain humanity's struggle on earth, but there was no separation, ultimately, between human life and the sanctified gods. As power shifted in the Oikumene (civilized society), the old ways of the maternal God with her various emanations made way for a father God, a jealous, warring deity and a conception we recognize in the Bible's Yahweh. This occurred around the Axial Age (800–200BCE), and had contemporaneous parallels in China and India where Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism began to flourish in their own way. In response to Greek and Arab philosophy, and as societies changed, agriculture predominated, and the noble and merchant classes arose, a new explanation was needed to bind society together, and the various religions and cults began to move toward the acceptance of a single, monotheistic God, rather than a Great Mother flanked by her many subdeities.
Need to Know: God has a long history, going back to the dawn of mankind and to preagricultural society. There being no scientific or empirical method to explain existence, life was generally felt to be imbued with mystery.
2. One God
During the Axial Age, the major religions of our time took shape. In Judaism, perhaps the oldest of the world religions, this begins with Isaiah's witnessing of the appearance of the God Yahweh, who announced, for the first time in recorded history, that he was not only the "god of armies" but the God of the entire world. Other gods must not be worshipped any longer (though they still existed and competed with Yahweh's preeminence). At this time, the concept of compassion also entered religion. Inner change for God was expected, as well as outer demonstrations of faith (sacrifice, ritual, etc.). Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Amos, and Moses are seen as enforcers of the terribile and fascinans (terrible and fascinating) power of the new God, which is transcendent and inexplicable unlike the other gods, which were familiar and known actors in the human world.
At this time, Israel was the only kingdom promoting faith in Yahweh; other kingdoms remained pagan, since it was easier and less politically and morally demanding. With the changes brought about by historical events, such as the conquest of Babylon by Persia in 539 BCE, the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) were written, rewritten, and edited to accommodate the new faith and the circumstances surrounding it. Greek philosophy influenced the early Jews and many of the ancient Greeks merged faith in Yahweh with faith in Zeus. The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria emerged in 30 BCE to attempt to explicate or rationalize a synthesis of Jewish faith and Greek philosophy.
Need to Know: The move toward Yahweh, as opposed to other gods, was a political project as well as a spiritual undertaking, to be obtained through immense struggle, sacrifice, and denial of the old ways of human overlords and kings.
3. A Light to the Gentiles
Jesus Christ was a little known mendicant in northern Palestine, a Jewish child from a well-off family who began to wander, preaching and exorcising demons as many Galilean faith healers did at that time. The four books of the New Testament give very different and often contradictory accounts of his life and deeds. Not much is known, in fact, about his actual existence or exact teachings, since the Bible was often edited or rewritten. Nevertheless, disciples began to pray to Jesus from very early on. One of his main doctrines appears to be the belief that non-Jews (goyim) could be welcomed in Israel even though they did not worship Yahweh, which was scandalous at the time and led to his crucifixion by the Romans. Jesus also represented a personalized relationship with God.
After the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written (within one hundred years of Jesus's death), St. Paul became the first and most important Christian writer, evangelist, and thinker. Much of early Christian faith overlaps neatly with Buddhism: concepts of sacrifice, personalized god experience, and the notion that an ordinary human could participate in divinity. By the fourth century CE, Christianity's impact was being felt as more than a fringe cult belief system, and had become fully separated from the Jewish faith (from which it originated). Some important early Christian thinkers were Plotinus (205–270 CE), Origen (184–253 CE), and the gnostic Tertullian (160–220 CE). Christianity, in the early centuries of the Common Era, was hotly debated by scholars, statesmen, devotees, and philosophers — leading finally to the series of crises discussed in the next chapter.
Need to Know: The event of Jesus, historically speaking, and his teachings were not perhaps as momentous then as we make it out to be today, and certainly not as important as what came later. His final persecution and crucifixion, and the histories of his life written by his disciples, as well as a rich discussion that sprung up in the region concerning the nature of God, propelled Christianity to greater and greater significance in the region.
4. Trinity: The Christian God
The central issue of the early Christian debate occurred between two thinkers, Athanasius and Arius. Athanasius believed that Jesus was literally divine, as much God as God himself, whereas Arius believed Jesus to be part of the created order, sent to this world by God as messenger. This and other knotty concepts of divinity were part of a lively cultural debate that eventually led to the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, wherein Christianity was accepted as the state religion and also defined, in detail, as a faith and dogma. Emperor Constantine had recently converted to Christianity, still a more or less minor faith at the time, and the power of the Roman Empire did much to project the faith around the world.
Yet the issue of the divinity of Jesus — was he made of the same material (homoousion) as God, or was he just a human representative? — continued until a resolution, of sorts, was introduced by a group known as the Cappadocians (three men: Basil, Bishop of Caesarea; Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa; and Gregory of Nazianzus). It was the Cappadocians who developed the idea of the Holy Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — as a resolution to the issue of God's expression on earth. The third in this trifecta, the Holy Spirit, to this day is a controversial issue, few people knowing exactly what it means. But that was precisely the point: The Cappadocians wanted to maintain a certain amount of irrationality in the faith to prevent Christianity from becoming as rational as Greek philosophy. Later St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) began his work, particularly his Confessions, and became the most influential Christian thinker in Western thought.
Need to Know: The First Council of Nicaea (325 CE) and Emperor Constantine brought Christianity into global significance. However, the discussions of the nature of God, Christ, divinity, faith, and dogma continued for many centuries.
5. Unity: The God of Islam
Pre-Islamic Arabia resembled ancient Sumer or Canaan in that the tribal culture there was a confusion of faiths and deities — centering mainly on the three so-called "daughters of fate," al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat — with no single faith or dogma at its core that could unite society under one God. In 610 CE, Muhammad had an experience with the angel Gabriel that would change all that, bring together the pagan Arabian tribes, and project a new monotheistic God in the region around Mecca and Medina. Via a long succession of miracles, Muhammad received the recitation (the "qur'an," or Koran) from Gabriel and this teaching became the basis for the new religion of Islam (a word which can be interpreted as "existential surrender"). A genius of the small Quraysh tribe, by the time of his death in 632, Muhammad achieved more with a new divine order than perhaps anyone in history. Within a hundred years of his death, the faith spread as far afield as China and India.
Islam rejected the debates of the Christian world (discussed in the previous chapter) as well as the trinity, and maintained an emphasis on the "one true God" from which all other faiths (including Judaism and Christianity) emanated. They viewed these different faiths as sister religions, however, as legitimate a set of beliefs as Islam itself. Islam also had a strong and historically important emphasis on knowledge and learning, and a central appreciation for natural science, philosophy, and medical research. Once Muhammad died, the rights of divine inheritance were disputed, forming the Muslim sects of Sunni and Shia who both had claims to the caliphate. Around 700 CE, the practice of conversion was actually outlawed, but once the power centers and dynasties had accepted Islam as their faith it became politically expedient to project Islam in the unknown world. This later collided Islam with the centers of philosophy in the Hellenic world, and resulted in a long, early history of Islamic philosophy — not totally unrelated to what the early Christians and Jews experienced.
Need to Know: The focus for Islam, as opposed to Christianity's trinity, was unity, oneness. Since the faith emphasized the importance of knowledge, it produced countless advancements in philosophy, natural science, medical research, public welfare and ecumenicalism, and religious tolerance.
6. The God of the Philosophers
The combination of a bedrock of preexisting Greek philosophy and the incoming Arab Muslim thinkers produced a period, after the ninth century, of philosophizing unmatched elsewhere in history. Major Islamic thinkers (Faylasufs) of this period were al-Farabi, al-Kindi, Abu Bakr ar-Razi, al-Din Kirmani, Ibn Sina, al-Ghazzali, Ibn Rushd, and the Ismaili thinkers, including al-Sijistani. Many theories of God's nature, divinity, emanations, and his relation to logic and philosophy were explored, all or most of them based on or contrasted with Aristotle's idea of the Prime Mover. The Jewish thinkers of this period — many of them in southern Spain where Jews, Christians, and Muslims freely intermingled — were Maimonides and Levi ben Gershom. In the Christian sphere there was Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Peter Abelard, John Italos, and Anselm of Canterbury. During this time there was schism, once again, between those theologians who believed in the Holy Trinity (this was Latin theology) and those who found it incomprehensible and believed in God's unity (Greek theology).
Need to Know: Religion, science, and philosophy are historically tied and based, in many ways, upon the same principles. For centuries after Muhammad's death, debates involving divinity, theology, philosophy, science, and medicine went on peaceably and with great productivity in Europe and Arabia.
7. The God of the Mystics
Mysticism exists in all three major monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It can be described as an attempt to personalize a transcendent God, emphasizing that "no supreme value can be less than human." Mysticism has a bad name today — mystics can be seen as cranks who believe in crazy things — but at the same time, it has seen a resurgence in popular culture. Mysticism stresses the importance of mystery, equanimity, stability, and intellect. These ideas run through all three major religious traditions. The very old sect of Sufism, in Islam, is the most stunning example. Sufis identified God with the innermost self, and so founded traditions of fasting, vigils, and chants. These practices are still celebrated today in Muslim countries. The central claim of the Sufis, as of most mystics, was that the love of God — for God's own sake — trumped everything. In pursuit of this, dogma involving music, chants, yoga, asceticism, gatherings, fasts, and the use of drugs emerges. Because of these elements, mysticism has always been a controversial component of religious societies, even as they often exemplify the most fundamental principles of religious faith.
Need to Know: The Sufis are a Muslim sect of mystics, and a minority of them can be found in any country where Islam is practiced.
8. A God for Reformers
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were periods of great change and crisis for the three major monotheistic faiths. In Europe, Christians split into Catholics and Protestants. Columbus landed in the New World to impose Christianity there, and Islam turned toward the study of Shariah — or law — and away from its former philosophical and scientific preoccupations. Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492.
Ensuing events of war, imperialism, catastrophe, and state tyranny brought forward a pall of conservatism over all of Western religion. Ideas of Hell, an actual place at the center of the earth, raging with fire, were articulated and disseminated. The West became suspicious of Islam, as Muslim dynasties grew in power during the Islamic Ottoman (Asia Minor), Safavid (Persia), and Mogul (India) empires. Yet this was a period of the European and Arab Renaissances, giving rise to art and scientific advancement, while also promoting pernicious anti-Semitism throughout the West. Questions about how and why a perfect God could create a world rife with evil and horror emerged, and the theory of God's "withdrawal" began to be discussed. Scholars examined the idea of "reintegration" or return to faith. This schismatic period also gave rise to Martin Luther in Germany and John Calvin in Switzerland, whose extremist beliefs in Jesus, and theories of election, predestination, anti-Catholicism, and belief in personal interpretation of the Bible, at once helped to cast off the hold of the Catholic Church while also promoting anti-Semitism, misogyny, and Christian fundamentalism. Their efforts and effects are known as the Reformation period in Europe.
Need to Know: The "Middle Ages," or medieval times, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a period of great rupture, dissonance, and crisis for the major faiths. Scholars and thinkers of all kinds were asking the question: How could a divine God allow so much evil and agony in a world He created?
9. Enlightenment
With the eighteenth century came the advent of technicalization, European imperialism, and the predominance of the Western world. The Enlightenment brought reason and empirical research again to the fore of modern thought. The slow fade of what was formerly a purely agricultural world had great implications for concepts of God. Secularization spread. Specialization, early industrialism, and advanced technologies reshaped global discourse, trade, and religious belief profoundly. Pascal, Descartes, and Montaigne were major figures of this era, each of whom tended to pursue concepts of God directly through scientific thinking (Pascal's Pensées is his best-known work on this topic). More practical empiricists, like Isaac Newton, were eager to dispel with the idea that God could exist at all. The Dutch Jew Baruch Spinoza can be considered the first secular Western religionist, since he was excommunicated from his synagogue in Amsterdam in 1656 for his freethinking.
As time passed, science and empirical thinking came to represent the ideal of true liberty, which had formerly been the domain of God. A sect called Deism, which allowed room for both God and the principles of Enlightenment thinking became the worldview of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a response to this secularized rationalized religious view, a hostile and somewhat retrograde "born-again" faith erupted in America and spread during a period in the early eighteenth century called the Great Awakening. In the Jewish sphere, parallels could be seen in the work of Shabbetai Zevi, Rabbi Nathan, Jacob Frank, and Israel ben Eliezer. Fundamentalist Hasidism spread even as Jewish Enlightenment thought grew. During this period, Islam is generally felt to have been "in decline," although this has not been studied very much. As Muhammad ibn al-Wahhab attempted to return Islam to its "purity," Diderot, Holbach, and Laplace, by the end of the eighteenth century, were declaring God "dead."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Summary and Analysis of A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Worth Books. Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
![The Rake's Revenge [Wedding Series Book 5]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/2940000102091_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "The Rake's Revenge [Wedding Series Book 5]")