دو فصل آخر رو دیگه نخوندم. متاسفانه با این‌که تازه من متن انگلیسی رو می‌خوندم که به نظرم از دو تا ترجمه ی موجود در بازار روون‌تر و قابل فهم‌تر هست، باز توی دنبال کردن روند کلی فصل‌ها به مشکل‌ می‌خوردم. فصل‌ها اصلا بخش‌بندی نشدن و روایت کلی داستان اصلی فصل زیر تعداد زیادی از داستان‌های فرعی و حاشیه‌ای دفن میشه. این نحوه‌ی نگارش کتاب ادامه‌ی خوندنش رو برای من بی‌فایده کرد. کتاب یه بایاس مثبت هم نسبت به اسلام و شیعه داره به طور خاص به نظرم. چیزهای جدیدی یاد گرفتم به خصوص از خوندن فصل‌های ابتداییش ولی کتابی نیست که به کسی توصیه کنم خوندنش رو.

Armstrong, a former Catholic nun, traces the histories of Christ, Yahweh, and Allah from their common roots to the present, taking brief excursions along the way to explore some of the more interesting and eccentirc sects that have sprung up and usually been exterminated with extreme prejudice along the way. She points out, for example, that all three trace their claims of Truth back to a single man, Abraham, who believed in a god named El, who is none of the three major monotheistic deities of the west. Oh, and while Abraham did worship a single god, he believed in many gods. Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Catherism, Sufism, and others are explored. Armstrong does a particularly good job in my opinion of distilling complex theological principles into succinct, easy to understand language without demeaning or simplifying the complexity of issues like the nature of faith, the mysteries of trinity, the Council of Nicaea, the process of biblical redaction, the particularities of Orthodox iconography, and the subtle differences between canonical and liturgical traditons. A very good read.

To say that 'God' has been a topic of interest throughout the history of mankind would be a huge understatement. The books explores different philosophies on 'God' or the 'reality' known commonly as God. The book will take you to the ancient era, where myths played an important role in holding communities together. It then slowly moves to the rise of 'cults' which opposed the myths, and those which tried to merge the older myths, with the new ones, or create a bond, both symbolically and literally. After that comes the monotheistic faith, which keeps evolving for ages.

I truly admired the manner in which the book talks about the God, and the various interpretations of this concept. Primarily centered on the three Abrahamic faiths, the book also touches on the concepts of Hinduism and Buddhism, and the ideological similarities present across all these faiths. The thorough nature of the book reflects on the directions, which the philosophers, mystics, priests, intellectuals and so on had taken the discussion of God to. The book then moves from the time when God was the most important part within a society, to a time when God became a less important element, to the point when God was considered an important part of history, but nothing more than that. Also, how the pendulum keeps shifting. People kept moving from one intellectual hypothesis to another. What may seems like an end of a debate, was in many cases, the beginning of a new argument. Mankind, across all faiths, it seems, kept finding ways to keep God relevant, in either positive, or negative light.

It surprises me how much the author had to go through to come up with something as gigantic as this. Karen Armstrong is indeed a name that I had been hearing for a long time. A truly amazing book, specially recommended to those who want to learn about the divine myths, the ancient concept of gods, and ultimately the monotheistic trends, leading to the various movements which countered the God-element within the society.

While I found the entire book amazing, the parts where mysticism was discussed in detail, were my favourite ones. The way mysticism, across all the three faiths, was discussed, was quite beautiful, and quite rewarding, from an intellectual perspective.

--

This sudden attraction to ebooks is fascinating! The second book that I read in digital format during the last month or so, on my cellphone. Fascinating, indeed!

A comprehensive, digestible overview of the history of religious thinking in the three major monotheistic faiths. Armstrong makes many complex ideas people have had about God—the nature of God, how to come close to God, how to serve God, and so on—easy to understand. However, this can at times read like a series of encyclopedia entries for dozens of thinkers and writers, and Armstrong’s ability to make that engaging to read can be uneven. I’d still say this would be a good read for those who want an introduction to religious thinking in the West and Near East.

A MAJOR PROBLEM WITH RELIGION

(You may have already thought of a few, but this is my current thing.)

Religious thought is metaphorical and the constant danger is that the unlettered will take the metaphor literally. For instance, the Holy Trinity in Christianity - sorting out a satisfactory formula expressing the relationships between God the Father & Jesus the Son & the Holy Spirit presented hideous problems which took around 300 years to resolve and - it seems to me - the whole enterprise was utterly - utterly - futile because it stemmed from a misreading of a metaphor in the New Testament, i.e. Jesus as Son of God.

You don't need to figure out the relationships between metaphors, but if you think they're actually describing realities, then you do.

Fundamentalists appear to be unable to either grasp the idea of metaphorical language, or, allowing them that degree of intelligence, unable to accept that the Bible is poetry which uses metaphor all the time

- And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and it was not consumed.

And indeed, Christ is a metaphor - that is, the idea of his incarnation, and the idea of him being a sacrifice for our sins, and the idea of salvation itself - all metaphors.

Religion has its educated few and its unschooled many - the elite develop the metaphorical philosophical reading of the text and leave the credulous literal reading to the laity and they bowl along on separate levels, mostly. But then it comes unstuck.

You can see the incorrect understanding of metaphor right there in the New Testament. Various parables of Jesus have been transformed by error into miracles of Jesus - the stilling of the storm, the feeding of the 5000, turning water into wine, and the weird story of the withering of the fig tree - these make no sense until you read them as parables. We recall that Jesus explicitly rejects miraculous acts of this sort in the Temptation:

And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.

And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

So these mistakes were being encrypted into the canon at the point where the oral tradition was being written down. It was simple confusion, but it sowed the seeds for centuries of wrongheadedness.

Karen Armstrong makes the excellent point that by the time of the Reformation even the learned in the West had become literalistic, and that this exposed their faith to the undermining effects of science as science extended its authority. The Church painted itself into a stupid corner. If it had remained the mystical transcendental Church it wouldn't have had to make any of those numerous embarrassing climb-downs it had to do. But maybe it would have been abandoned by the majority if it had.

A MAJOR PROBLEM WITH THIS BOOK

Karen Armstrong is a poor writer. Other goodreaders say stuff like :



My braincells are rebelling against me for continuing to read this, giving up. It's all the waffle and blather about Ultimate Reality, I just can't put myself through it.

I don't want to say that I have given up on this book. I enjoyed it so far, but I just moved on... It sits here out of my guilt, and becasue I haven't given it up completely. I may go back to it anyday now

haven't picked it up for several months, hope to get back to it someday
I predict that there will be a new religion created by the time I finish this book

Earnest readers drag themselves through this book. That can't be good. She has the knowledge but she is turgid, she has no light touch, no human anecdotes, no humour, okay what was I expecting, Bill Bryson? No, but Karen really got on my wick. She's boring. You have to keep plugging away, then another big thinker from 17th century Lithuania hoves into view and you think... hey, I haven't watched Paranormal Activity 2 yet! I did not read every word of this. i flipped forward, backwards, sideways, hemmed & hawed, put it down for months, walked around it glaring at it, hoped someone would steal it, they didn't, finally took it on holiday where there wasn't a wifi connection, and really, I think the whole thing needed some oomph. It was oomphless. It was an oomph-free zone.

A FAVOURITE ANECDOTE FROM PAGE 431

Speaking as an atheist, I love this story. In fact, I revere this story.

One day in Auschwitz, a group of Jews put God on trial. They charged him with betrayal and cruelty. Like Job, they found no consolation in the usual answers to the problems of evil and suffering in the midst of this current obscenity. They could find no excuse for God, no extenuating circumstances, so they found him guilty and, presumably, worthy of death. The Rabbi pronounced the verdict. Then he looked up and said that the trial was over, it was time for the evening prayer.

This book is terrible.

I am a religious person, a casual scholar of religious history, (mostly ancient Israel orientated), and I have taken several courses on early religion with leaders of other faiths to give myself what I consider a well-rounded and open approach to religion and different ways of understanding religion. WIth that being said, I have never read a book so full of misunderstanding, mistranslations, and flat out twisting of references to get them to say what she wants.

I got about halfway through the first chapter, the author seems to ignore the wealth of information and research that is out there, from theological sources as well as peer-reviewed journals. A perfect example is when she talks about the building of stone altars and the renaming of an area as a carry-over from Caananite fertility cults, while more current research has shown evidence of these types of standing stones altars and renaming to have been practiced by Jews/Hebrews/Israelites from as early as 2000 BCE and as recent as 600 BCE. It seems to have died off with the increased orthodoxy of the Pharasies inside Jerusalem around this time.

Anyways, I quickly reached a point where I could no longer read the book, due to one inaccuracy after another. I find it hard to believe that someone who spent some time as a nun (as she claims in the introduction), could come away with so little knowledge of the history of religion or how God is viewed.

If you want to learn more about religious history or understand more about how to view God, than Bravo. But be aware, this is not the book to do it.

Much to absorb...had to read slowly.
Her knowledge on world religions is vast and amazing.

Excerpts from her book:
In the west, a more literal understanding of scripture has long prevailed.

Religions have failed to achieve high standards. They use God to prop up their own loves and hates, which they attribute to God himself. Yet these Jews, Christians and Muslims who punctiliously attend divine services yet denigrate people who belong to different ethnic and ideological camps deny one of the basic truths of their religion. The God of historical monotheism demands mercy not sacrifice compassion rather than decorous liturgy.

Fundamentalism is literal and intolerant in its vision. In the United States, which has always been prone to extremist and apocalyptic enthusiasm, it has attached itself to the New Right. Christian Fundamentalists seem to have little regard for the loving compassion of Christ. They are swift to condemn the people they see as the enemies of God. Most would consider Jews and Muslims destined for hellfire, and are inspired by the devil. In all forms of religion, fundamentalism is a fiercely reductive faith.

Compassion is a particularly difficult virtue. It demands that we go beyond the limitations of our egotism, insecurity and inherited prejudice. In times, all three of the God- religions have failed to achieve this.

Science has been felt to be threatening only by those Western Christians who got into the habit of reading the scriptures literally and interpreting doctrines as though they were matters of objective fact.

Creation was not originally conceived in such a literal manner until the Council of Nicaea in 341.

This has been on my shelf for a couple years. When I finally picked it up, I was reminded that I'd tried one of Armstrong's books before. It was her biography on Muhammad. I'd put that one down because it was too hagiographic.

Which made HoG peculiar. If you approach the book with the understanding that Armstrong is not a believer in God, then you'll get along better. She explains how the God of the big three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, evolved from the pantheon. And each other. For instance, she argues that the Christian trinity was invented in response to the Arian controversy. What she says makes sense - as long as you recognize she's coming from the assumption that the Trinitarian God doesn't exist.

But then she gets to Islam. I can't help noticing a difference. She presents the history of Islam very charitably. As you read about Muhammad, you can imagine the supernatural claims of his life actually happened. Embarrassing elements of Christianity are trumpeted while those of Islam (e.g the so called Satanic Verses) are explained away.

For a person who admits she lost her Catholic faith because she found their God too harsh and judgmental, her affinity for Islam is curious.

A History of God by Karen Armstrong
How Men interpreted Divinity for the Last Four Thousand Years

A History of God unveils the quest of humans to understand the purpose of creation and the mastermind behind it since the ancient times of Abraham's Canaan until the birth of Atheism in the 20th Century. Armstrong mainly discusses Judaism, Christianity, & Islam, being the most influential monolithic religions to reveal that over the course of time they have been divided into several branches, each modified to adopt the circumstances in which they were born, and each affected by and affecting the other sects in ways that may not be clearly perceivable.

Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia, Mediterranean regions & European empires, all have been exposed to waves of beliefs and human dominance which erased concepts, modified ideas, and introduced new notions. Abraham's El, Moses' Yahweh, The founding of Israeli Kingdoms, The expulsion of Jews, The birth of Christ and the Introduction of the Trinity, the Rise of Islam of Prophet Muhammad's Mission to create a world which works by the laws of Allah and for the benefit of his followers, the reformation of the idea of God and the roles of Mystics and Philosophers, the resentments towards the deity and seeking atheism as the solution of salvation, and many more events are covered in a brief, fast pacing way. Yes, quite a mix.

A History of anything cannot be summed in a mere 500 pages or so. However, Armstrong did a good job collecting, organizing and analyzing the data of four millenniums of human history of understanding God, but how reliable the references were is to be seen. The presentation of words was not well-suited to the average reader to make it easily accessible, as ideas so complicated and foreign never ceased to pop up here and there, trying to clear things up but they blur other things out. Regardless, The book opens up a vast door to the world of theology. Confusing? Yes, very. Mistaken? At some points, yes, but that doesn't mean to question the validity of the whole research, it will make you ask more questions than you think. Informative? Definitely.

Three stars because it gave me nightmares to connect the dots, which are still not yet fully connected.

You are plagued with this feeling at times which can most aptly be described as nagging. At times of mental or physical idleness, there is this thought that slowly seeps into your mind and like an ink stain spreads all over you. I thought that once the review for this book was typed and posted, I had gotten done with it but it was not to be. There was still a clamor in my mind that I might not have done justice to the book with the review I put in. Things came full circle when a friend who happens to follow my reviews asked me ‘You didn’t much want to write a review for this book, did you ?’ and that made me want to attempt a review for this book once again and so here goes :

Growing up in India is to grow up with Gods all around you. From a young age, I had seen people approaching God for reasons which are purely domestic and personal in nature. Looking at my time as school goer, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that students (myself included) look for a divine intervention prior to attempting a major exam. There was even an anecdote of a celebrity who mentioned about a time when he wrote his high school exams and had no hope of clearing them. The day before results were due, he goes to a place of worship and with a rather embarrassed face tells God :

‘I mean….you know….well…I am not saying you should get me through but then if I don’t make it then people would think you didn’t do your job well…so what say ?’

and he ended up passing the exam. He might have romanticized the whole episode but then these are little occurrences that cement our belief in this unseen entity. Belief also takes rather exaggerated forms too, for example did you know that there is a place of worship dedicated exclusively for blessings to get a visa to the US ? It might appear laughable to a lot of us but for those who tend to strongly believe in this aspect, the belief is strengthened with each new visa getting approved. Lighter side apart, not all forms of belief are laughable. A while ago, I did happen to spend some time with a doctor who told me of instances where patients with life threatening medical scenarios have managed to pull through simply by the power of their mind and their unshakable belief in an entity that they place higher than all forms of life on Earth.

The interpretations that humanity have ascribed to God have turned this abstraction into both a boon and a bane. A boon in the strength of mind it imparts to people and a bane in terms of the atrocities committed in the name of religion.

The scope of Karen Armstrong’s book is a detailed introspection on the nature of God as seen by the three major monotheistic religions : Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The centuries of history behind these religions means that the narrative is broad, exhaustive and rather difficult to grapple with. Armstrong however plods determinedly ahead and tries to make sense of how the abstraction of God has achieved shape and form among the followers of these religions. What is most interesting to note here is how the same root ( a belief in a supernatural, omnipotent entity) gave rise to three different offshoots of religions that now command a multitude of followers across the globe. The author devotes a couple of chapters for each religion and dissects them as best as possible in those few pages. The sad truth behind all religions is how much the tenets put down for lasting peace, tolerance and kindness have been bent into shapes that have supported fundamentalism and massacres across history. One question that has never ceased to trouble me about this abstraction is why does violence occur in the name of a kind, benevolent deity ? Is it that humanity is eager to take God back to his ancient roots of violence, bloodshed and sacrifices ? Armstrong offers no answers to these questions for her job here is to act as a bard, a person who recounts facts and nothing more or less. From pagan beginnings to the World of today, Armstrong traces the story of the old man in the sky.

For all these thoughts around the meat around this topic, reading this book is like getting hit on the head with a load of bricks. I don’t mean that you get hit once and then recover, you get hit again and again and again. The flow of facts, theories and explanations are akin to a flood that can sweep you away if you do not hang on for dear life. A reading of the title of this book will bring to your mind an image of an easily understandable history of God as told by the three religions but then nothing could be farther from the truth. You practically have to wade your way through very hefty material which almost reads like a theology text book. Armstrong is not a great author in terms of her skills in associating with a common reader. It is as if - this is how I am going to write and you better keep up if you want to understand what I am trying to say. This is the one book that frustrated me the most in 2015. I wanted to skip and move away from this book but I simply couldn’t for the topic is an amusing one. Hemming and hawing, grumbling and mumbling I finally finished the book.

Don’t come to this book expecting an easy, light and understandable read for you will be sorely disappointed.

In the chapter ‘The End Of God’, I came across this :

One day in Auschwitz, a group of Jews put God on trial. They charged him with betrayal and cruelty. Like Job, they found no consolation in the usual answers to the problems of evil and suffering in the midst of this current obscenity. They could find no excuse for God, no extenuating circumstances, so they found him guilty and, presumably, worthy of death. The Rabbi pronounced the verdict.

Then he looked up and said that the trial was over, it was time for the evening prayer.

I know I'm an atheist and all, but I still enjoy Armstrong. Wrote this review several years ago:

Rarely does one come across a book that is recognized as erudite, essential, and readable simultaneously. Karen Armstrong's The History of God has brilliantly analyzed the rise of fundamentalism as a reaction to the emphasis on logos of the Enlightenment as opposed to mythos that had been essential to one's view of the world. "The economic changes over the last four hundred years have been accompanied by immense social, political, and intellectual revolutions, with the development of an entirely different, scientific and rational, concept of the nature of truth; and once again, a radical religious change has become necessary." As science and technology began to become associated with such visible successes in overcoming disease and social ills, the tendency was to believe that logos (rational, scientific thinking related exactly to facts and external realities) was the only “means to truth and began to discount mythos [that which is timeless and constant, “looking back to the origins of life . . to the deepest levels of the human mind . . . unconcerned with practical matters” and rooted in the unconscious, that which helps us through the day, mythological stories not intended to be literal, but conveying truth:] as false and superstitious.” The temptation is to think of mythos as meaning myth. Inj this context that would be incorrect. Armstrong uses this word as it relates to mystery and mysticism, rooted ultimately in traditional biblical and Islamic history “which gives meaning to life, but cannot be explained in rational terms.”Logos, however, was unable to assuage pain and suffering leading to a vacuum the fundamentalists sought to revive. The danger unseen by modern fundamentalists is that they have tried to imbue mythos with an element of literalism essential to logos. The difference between these two concepts forms the basis for the battle between modernism and fundamentalism.

She traces the beginning of the fundamentalist movement back to the time of Columbus when a crisis occurred in Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella expelled both Muslims and Jews from Spain. The three religious groups had actually coexisted quite happily and profitably together for several centuries, but the prospect of modernity and threats from a new world view, science, threatened age-old traditions and myths. The fundamentalist movement was an attempt by traditionalists to retain a sectarian view of the world.

For many of these people the world can be divided into two camps: good and evil and those forces that are not allied with their own narrow view of the world are labeled as evil. That these believes are rooted in fear does not lessen their impact or importance to the faithful. Often an arrogance and condescension – I plead guilty here – make secularists insensitive to those who feel their religious beliefs have been undermined and challenged. The seemingly irreconcilable difference between rationalism and mysticism perhaps make militant fundamentalism inevitable. The danger for fundamentalist lies in their attempts to turn mythos into logos, e.g., have sacred texts be read literally and inerrantly as one would read a scientific text. That may lead to inevitable discrepancies between observation and belief that may hasten the defeat of religion.

Of great benefit, is Armstrong's clear explanation of the differences and conflicts that exist in Islam. Shiite and Sunni branches represent very different interpretations of a major faith.

The eventual outcome of the dichotomy of secular versus sectarian remains unknown. What is apparent is that fundamentalism cannot tolerate pluralism or democracy and compromise seems unlikely. The author identifies two major threads in the development of fundamentalism: (a) fear of the modern world and (b) that the response to fear is to try to create an alternative society by preaching "an ideology of exclusion, hatred, and even violence." She warns at the end of the book, "If fundamentalists must evolve a more compassionate assessment of their enemies in order to be true to their religious traditions, secularists must also be more faithful to the benevolence, tolerance, and respect for humanity which characterizes modern culture at its best, and address themselves more emphatically to the fears, anxieties, and needs which so many of their fundamentalist neighbors experience but which no society can safely ignore."

الكتاب موسوعة كبيرة سيستغرق وقتا طويلا لاكماله.. قراءة اساسية لمن يدرس الثيولوجيا (علم العقائد)، الميثولوجي (علم الأساطير) ومقارنة الاديان

سأذكر نقطة منه علقت بذهني

فهمت منه مفهوم شخصنة الاله.. عندما جسد البشر الاله بحيث يكون بعيدا، ليس كمثل اي شيء نعرفه، اصبح الاله بعيدا، ولم يعد البشر يشعرون بالقرب منه

فهنا جسدته بعض الديانات بصفات نفهمها نحن البشر ونشعر بها، كي نشعر نحوه بالتآلف والقرب، وهنا اختلف المسيحيون عن بقية الأديان الابراهيمية، بحيث أنهم حولوه الى رجل، أو أب حنون محب، بينما ركز المسلمون واليهود على اعطاؤه صفات بشرية (كالغضب والفرح والحب والبغض والغيرة) ونسب له اليهود صفات بشرية تدل على الضعف كـ(التعب)..


الكتاب حول الى فلم وثائقي تحت نفس العنوان.. هنا الرابط له
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx4m1S...


في الفيديو أيضا ملخص اخر له
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlnnWb...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPfFx9...

كانت عقيدة كارين بحد ذاتها تحيرني، كونها تركت الديانة الكاثوليكية بعد كونها راهبة.. هل هي ملحدة أو أغنوستية ترى أن الدين ظاهرة مفيدة وصحية للشعوب؟

أعتقد انه بعد السماع لمحاضراتها أنها "موحدة" تميل لفهم يهودي للاله، مع أخذها لخلاصة رسائل الديانات المونوثية الثلاث.. أدرك أنني أمارس التقنين عليها ولكن الفضول يحركنا نحن البشر لتصنيف من امامنا :)