Karen Armstrong's "A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam"

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

by Karen Armstrong

1993, Ballantine Books; numbers in [] indicate the page # of the Ballantine paperback edition

IN THE BEGINNING, human beings created a God who was the First Cause of all things and Ruler of heaven and earth..."

- Karen Armstrong - A History of God

Who:	When:	Where:	What:
Abraham = "father of a multitude"	20th-19th C BCE	Ur in present-day Iraq	Had a vision from Yahweh to move to Canaan; later, he had a vision telling him to kill his son Isaac
Isaac			Son of Abraham
Jacob			Grandson of Abraham
Moses	? (Biblical account not written until 8th C BCE, centuries later) [12]		Purportedly directed by Yahweh to lead his people out of captivity in Egypt toward, once again, Canaan, the "land of milk and honey"
Joshua
David			Founded the first independent Jewish Kingdom in Jerusalem
Solomon			Had many pagan wives (polygamist) whose beliefs he purportedly tolerated and respected
Ahab			His pagan wife Jezebel was blamed by Elijah for bringing a drought through her worship of the "wrong" god; Elijah gathered together all the worshippers of Baal, a popular fertility god in Canaan, and humiliated them, purportedly showing Yahweh was able to send lightning bolts down to destroy a sacrificial offering, whereas Baal allegedly could not; he then launched a massive pogrom against the Baal prophets and had them all slaughtered [26]
Isaiah	742 BCE		Had a vision of Yahweh in the Temple; God was now seen acting through catastrophe as well as through triumph: You may multiply your prayers, I shall not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. Wash, make yourself clean. Take your wrong-doing out of my sight. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Search for justice. Help the oppressed. Be just to the orphan, Plead for the widow.
Amos			The first of the prophets to emphasize the importance of social justice and compassion. [46] The Jews would be the first people in the ancient world to establish a welfare state that would be the envy of its neighbors.
	587 BCE		Jerusalem destroyed -> Jews deported to Babylon
	539 BCE		Cyrus, King of Persia, conquers Babylon -> greater tolerance toward Jews, 42k of whom were allowed to return to Israel, where they imposed their religion on their bewildered religious brothers
King Josiah			Discovered and enforced Deuteronomy while renovating a Temple; "no wonder God is mad at us," he reasoned. "We have not been keeping his laws." Because Jewish laws were enforced throughout the land, pagan temples were destroyed; this was also when the Ten Commandments were promulgated. [65]
Book of Proverbs	3rd C. BCE
Alexander of Macedonia	332 BCE		Conquered Darius III of Persia -> colonization of Asia and Africa -> translation of the Bible into Greek
Rabbi Hillel the Elder			Challenged to explain the essence of the Torah to a pagan while he stood on one foot, Hillel said, "Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you. That is the whole of the Torah: go and learn it." [72]

mana = holiness [15]

elohim = one chosen god

goyim = Gentiles.

According to pre-Christian Jewish law and tradition, murder was the greatest of all sins, a sacrilege.

Serving another human being is an act of imitatio dei.

Many holy wars resulted from the intolerance bred by the idea of an absolutist god (versus a god demanding self-examination, such as the Yahweh described by Amos and Isaiah.

- the Crusaders later justified their carnage by election, arguing they had taken the place of the Jews as God's Chosen People; [55]

Axial Age = 800-200 BCE, a flourishing of compassionate, rationalistic philosophy throughout the Mediterranean (and India and China, for that matter);

- 8^th C BCE => rise of Hinduism and Buddhism

- Atman = divine principle in each person (versus contemporary Jewish interpretation of a separation between God and man;

- Dharma = truth about right living which alone could free us from pain.

- "compassion and respect for other men is always associated with religions of the Axial Age."

Yoga = "yoking of the mind" through special discipline of concentration;

Philo was a mystical Jewish thinker and writer who viewed words as inadequate to describe the experience of God and the Holy Spirit.

I… have suddenly become full, the ideas descending like snow, so that under the impact of divine possession, I have been filled with Corybantic frenzy and become ignorant of everything, place, people, present, myself, what was said and what was written. For I acquired expression, ideas, an enjoyment of life, sharp-sighted vision, exceedingly distinct clarity of objects such as might occur through the eyes as a result of clearest display. [70]

Jesus [70]

The first account of his life was St. Mark's, which is probably the most accurate, written in 70 CE, 40 years after his death.

- absent from Mark is any heralding, angels, etc.

- believed that charity and loving kindness are the most important of the mitzvot;

"Jesus himself certainly never claimed to be God." [81] - he did say he was bar nasha = Son of Man in Aramaic

Paul never called Jesus God.

The earliest Christian writer was St. Paul.

Christ means "Massiach" = Anointed One in Hebrew

Order in Bible is: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Figure:	Where in Bible:	Profession:	Relationship to JC:	Written (year):	Comment:
Mark	Gospel of Mark		Boy during final years of JC's life; traveled with Peter, who supplied the information on which his account is based;	70 BCE (40 years after the crucifixion)	Earliest, probably most authentic; simplest, shortest, most direct; focused heavily on death and resurrection. Does not mention genealogy or birth;
Peter	Acts	Fisherman	Traveled with him for 3 years
Matthew	Gospel of Matthew		1 of his 12 disciples
Luke	Gospel of Luke	Physician	Never met him; lived after the crucifixion; may have met Mary
John	Gospel of John		Closest to Jesus; stood alone at the foot of the cross

Influences on Christianity and Judaism:

Ancient Greek society:

Hellenization influenced both Roman empire and the Jewish diaspora living in it.

Socrates had been sentenced to death in 399 BCE but his ideas continued to resonate. Many Jewish thinkers dismissed Greek philosophy as "silliness."

Aristotle lived from 384-322 BCE.

- he conceived of God as uninvolved in human affairs;

- he was thought to be incompatible with Yahweh;

- believed in finding truth through reason versus the Jewish (and later Christian) idea of truth through revelation. [68]

From http://www.2think.org/hii/god.shtml:

The 4,000 year quest of Judaism, Christianity & Islam. This book explores how the Jews transformed pagan idol worship into monotheism and how Christianity and Islam both rose from this foundation. Also explored are the variations of who or what "God" is thought to be by the various religious leaders over the centuries. A History of God completely changed my outlook on life. It is fascinating to see how humans have created and recreated various gods in their own image. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Effectiveness rather than philosophical or historical demonstration has always been the hallmark of a successful religion."

"Religion was a matter of cult and ritual rather than ideas; it was based on emotion, not on ideology or consciously adopted theory. This is not an unfamiliar attitude today: many of the people who attend religious services in our own society are not interested in theology, want nothing too exotic and dislike the idea of change. They find that the established rituals provide them with a link with tradition and give them a sense of security."

"Human beings are aware that something is wrong with their condition; they feel at odds with themselves and others, out of touch with their inner nature and disoriented. Conflict and lack of simplicity seem to characterize our existence. Yet we are constantly seeking to unite the multiplicity of phenomena and reduce them to some ordered whole. To find the underlying truth of reality, the soul must refashion itself, undergo a period of purification and engage in contemplation. It will have to look beyond the cosmos, beyond the sensible world and even beyond the limitations of the intellect to see into the heart of reality. This will not be an ascent to a reality outside ourselves, however, but a descent into the deepest recesses of the mind. It is, so to speak, a climb inward."

"A God who is in some mysterious way a person and who takes an active part in human history lays himself open to criticism. It is all too easy to make this "God" a larger-than-life tyrant or judge and make "him" fulfill our expectations. We can turn "God" into a Republican or a socialist, a racist or a revolutionary according to our personal views. The danger of this has led some to see a personal God as an unreligious idea, because it simply embeds us in our own prejudice and makes our human ideas absolute."

"The ultimate failure of a rational deity has something important to tell us about the nature of religious truth."

"A personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. Instead of inspiring the compassion that should characterize all advanced religion, "he" can encourage us to judge, condemn and marginalize."

"The mystical experience of God has certain characteristics that are common to all faiths. It is a subjective experience that involves an interior journey, not a perception of an objective fact outside the self; it is undertaken through the image-making part of the mind--often called the imagination--rather than through the more cerebral, logical faculty."

"Today many people in the West would be dismayed if a leading theologian suggested that God was in some profound sense a product of the imagination. Yet it should be obvious that the imagination is the chief religious faculty. Human beings are the only animals who have the capacity to envisage something that is not present or something that does not yet exist but which is merely possible. The imagination has thus been the cause of our major achievements in science and technology as well as in art and religion. The idea of God, however it is defined, is perhaps the prime example of an absent reality which, despite its inbuilt problems, has continued to inspire men and women for thousands of years. As in art, the most effective religious symbols are those informed by an intelligent knowledge and understanding of the human condition."