the great transformation: the beginning of our religious traditions
by buachum - July 31st, 2010. Filed under: Spread the word.Buy The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions 
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From one of the worldâs leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the bestselling A History of God, The Battle for God and The Spiral Staircase, comes a major new work: a chronicle of one of the most important intellectual revolutions in world history and its relevance to our own time.
In one astonishing, short period â the ninth century BCE â the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity into the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Historians call this the Axial Age because of its central importance to humanityâs spiritual development. Now, Karen Armstrong traces the rise and development of this
transformative moment in history, examining the brilliant contributions to these traditions made by such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Ezekiel.
Armstrong makes clear that despite some differences of emphasis, there was remarkable consensus among these religions and philosophies: each insisted on the primacy of compassion over hatred and violence. She illuminates what this âfamilyâ resemblance reveals about the religious impulse and quest of humankind. And she goes beyond spiritual archaeology, delving into the ways in which these Axial Age beliefs can present an instructive and thought-provoking challenge to the ways we think about and practice religion today.
A revelation of humankindâs early shared imperatives, yearnings and inspired solutions â as salutary as it
is fascinating.
Excerpt from The Great Transformation:
In our global world, we can no longer afford a parochial or exclusive vision. We must learn to live and behave as though people in remote parts of the globe were as important as ourselves. The sages of the Axial Age did not create their compassionate ethic in idyllic circumstances. Each tradition developed in societies like our own that were torn apart by violence and warfare as never before; indeed, the first catalyst of religious change was usually a visceral rejection of the aggression that the sages witnessed all around them. . . .
All the great traditions that were created at this time are in agreement about the supreme importance of charity and benevolence, and this tells us something important about our humanity.
From the Hardcover edition.…….
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2010-06-21
By David Marshall (Seattle area)
Some reviewers call this book “magisterial.” It is vast in design and intricate in detail. It fills the horizon like a mountain — or like a cloud? Like a whale or it is very like a weazel?
That is the question that I ask, having listened to about eighty percent of the book in Armstrong’s voice. Armstrong is fond of bifucating “mythos” and “logos;” can one call a vast and detailed myth “magisterial,” or need that adjective be fixed to something unmoving and solid? I found the book erudite and insightful. Armstrong almost always seems to know very well what happened, despite all the odds.
What sometimes gives me pause . . .
First, Armstrong’s own mythos seems to intrude upon her story and shape it, with pieces lopped off or added on to a Proscrustean creation. Times don’t quite match: well make them match. Ethics are really rather different between the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Indians: well lets patch them together somehow.
The strangest patchwork job is Armstrong’s determination to bring Mohammed into the story as the “last flower” of the Axial Age. This is strange because the man mass-murdered, tortured, raped, enslaved, invaded, and generally made a not very fragrant petunia; also because he lived a thousand years after the period Armstrong covers. Yet having read some of her other books, one knows Mohammed will be brought in, as sure as you’ll find Wally somewhere in the picture.
Who knows how much of this book is pure mythos and how much tells something that once happened? I’ve been studying world religion for decades, and I’m not sure. I kinda sorta doubt anyone knows the pre-Vedic Aryans as well as Armstrong thinks she does, for instance, though have no expertise in the period.
The cultures I know best here are Chinese, and a bit about Hebrew and Greek. Seemed to me her discussion of them were mostly pretty good, though I suspect she’s offering some iffy theories with the Hebrews. Her pronunciation of Chinese names is painful to listen to, read with such assurance, too — couldn’t she ask a Chinese for some sort of clue how to pronounce these words? That made me wonder about her equally brisk reading of Sanskrit and Hebrew, not to mention her facts.
My final complaint is the lack of humor. We are not amused. How can one write about Zhuang Zi without a twinkle in one’s eye? It’s as if she had the word “magisterial” in her own mind, and srove to live up to it. Narry a certifiable joke and barely a hint of taking herself less than seriously — for this reason, and the bad Chinese pronunciation, I advise you to READ, not listen to the tape.
Yet there is a majesty here too. Armstrong is a fluent story-teller. The ages of man rise up before one, whether solid rock or ephemeral intellectul haze, or some combination of the two. It’s a worthwhile sight. Don’t assume all you see will remain as the sun continues to rise and interrogates the landscape more thoroughly; but it is a prospect worth this vision, a first glimpse of human progress and some of the most magnificent human words and sentiments ever written — a wisdom that, I agree with Armstrong (though for me it does come down to Jesus) remains, and that we still have long indeed to live up to.
Take Isaiah, Confucius, Lao Zi, Socrates, Epictetus, Buddha at his best, as teachers. They live on to instruct us, not merely to adorn our maps of a past intellectual world. Armstrong takes them seriously enough that her account is worth reading.
2010-05-07
By John Drake (Ithaca, NY)
This is a lucid and rousing review of the history of the major old world religions by Karen Armstrong. Among the surprises: for half its history, Judaism was not monotheistic. And among the messages: faith is not a prerequisite for religious commitment. The idea of an “Axial Age” of spiritual sages is chronological contrivance–the span of time from the ninth century BCE all the way to the seventh century CE is just too long to consider a specific “age”. One might also argue with her implicit assertion that Buddhists, Jews, Jains, et al. innovated religious compassion, while peoples in the Americas, Africa, Australia did what…nothing? Still, Armstrong makes me want to believe in the necessity of religion in society…almost.
2010-02-28
By Poniplaizy (Mount Joy, PA USA)
Let me start by saying that I’m an atheist, but I am interested in the phenomenon of religion–where it comes from, why people believe it, what effects it has on individuals and society. From that perspective, *The Great Transformation* sounded like it would be right up my alley. Unfortunately, it was not.
I could give a one-word review of this book: UNBELIEVABLE. But then I would have to exclude the other applicable word: BORING.
Let’s just go with UNBELIEVABLE for a moment. Forget about objectivity–*The Great Transformation* is a mishmosh of fallacies, prejudices, and justification. The paragraph where I realized that occurs on page xvii of the Introduction. Here are the phrases that caught my eye, with my reaction in parentheses:
“I found that any sustained discussion of [women and Axial Age philosophies] was distracting. Whenever I tried to address the issue, it seemed intrusive.”
(I’m sure it was intrusive, since it conflicts with Armstrong’s notion that Axial Age philosophies are by definition unimaginably beautiful and profound.)
“It is not as thought the Axial sages were out-and-out misogynists…”
(Oh yeah? Try these passages on for size.
‘Disorder is not sent down by Heaven, it is produced by women.’–Confucius
‘Those who cannot be taught, cannot be instructed. These are women and eunuchs.’–Confucius
‘Allowing women into the sangha would cause these teachings to survive only half as long — 500 years instead of 1,000.’–The Buddha)
“…like some of the fathers of the church, for example.”
(Ah, here we go. Only Christians get the bad rap, while every other religion is excused from having to toe the line.)
“They were men of their time…”
(And the church fathers were not? Why is more expected of Christians, while letting other religions slide?)
OK, do you get the drift? There was enough fatuous crap in that one paragraph to let me know exactly how bogus everything else was going to be. And it was. To list every instance of PC anti-Western regurgitation would require a book of its own. At the end, Armstrong puts the final nails in the coffin by portraying Islam as a gentle, peaceful religion while Christianity of course is responsible for all the evils that ever occurred in civilization. Armstrong ends by advising that our only option is to follow the Axial religions in a modern way, grafting modern moral principles onto the stem of these ancient religions. Too bad she is so narrow and blinkered she never even contemplates the option being taken in civilization today–namely, that people are simply discarding religious fairy tales and moving into an age of true humanism and ethics where we make things better on our own instead of relying on the outmoded philosophies of thousands of years ago.
As an atheist, I would’ve laughed my way through the book except that it was so boringly written I had to fight off unconsciousness in order to read it. If you do make it through *The Great Transformation,* I suggest you drink some coffee, take a deep breath, and quickly pick up something by Daniel C. Dennett or Sam Harris to give your poor brain a chance to recover!
2010-01-26
By Leonard Sotsky
If you are a seminarian, or student of religion, this book opens more doors on religion. Very informative.
2010-01-08
By Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France)
If you enjoyed Gore Vidal’s Creation but wanted a more academic grounding, this is the ideal book for you. The book covers the the foundations of four distinct traditions of the “axial” age: judeism/monotheism, confucianism/daoism, buddhism/yogic meditation, and Greek rational philosophy. Armstrong’s central idea is that all four have a common goal, that is, to turn inward and gain compassion via introspection. Each tradition, she says, emerged from the worst kind of violent upheaval and sowed the kernal of what became the most important religious traditions that survive to the present day.
This is a very interesting idea that really got me to think about early history in a new way. As a classicist, I know the western antique tradition well, but there were certain things that I could not quite get my head around. Why, I have always wondered, did the Athenians invent tragedy, the socratic philosophical method, and the discipline of history in the space of a single generation? According to Armstrong, the common thread was the impulse to introspection, knowing oneself, as a reaction to the interminable petty warfare between the city states. The tragedians used theatre to force the audience to empathize with their adversaries, finding their common humanity. Socrates and his followers got citizens to admit that they didn’t know what they thought they did by asking questions and seeking definitions. Finally, Thucydides reported on the terrible war, not from a nationalistic point of view, but as a tragedy that impacted everyone, bringing out not glory but the worst horror, with the goal of stimulating debate on its causes. While I will have to evaluate and integrate all this, it is a priceless new perspective and worth the price of admission for me.
The other traditions that the book covered were far more difficult for me to absorb, due to my own deficiencies in historical knowledge. But then, Armstrong has planted a desire in me to learn more, a sure sigh of the book’s success.
However, the book is not perfect. With so much background detail, it is often difficult to see where Armstrong is going. I often felt lost and unsure of my own judgments, particularly in the descriptions of Daoism, which I found impossible to understand. Moreover, I feel unconvinced that you can really lump all of these traditions together so neatly, that what happened really means what Armstrong argues they do. Finally, given my negative view of organized religion, I wonder what the impact of these ideas has been: while new notions, techniques of inquiry, and compassion were certainly introduced, to me they appear only to have provided courses of action to the very few.
Nonetheless, this is deep food for thought. I will never see Greek culture in the same way. The book is a very full meal.
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