The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

by Karen Armstrong

In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. Now, in The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal "Axial Age" can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times.

Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. With regard to dealing with fear, despair, hatred, rage, and violence, the Axial sages gave their people and give us, Armstrong says, two important pieces of advice: first there must be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action.

In her introduction and concluding chapter, Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today. In our various institutions, we sometimes seem to be attempting to create exactly the kind of religion that Axial sages and prophets had hoped to eliminate. We often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to be the major catalyst of spiritual change.

Genres: Religion, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Spirituality, Theology, Judaism

592 pages, Paperback

First published March 9, 2006

About the author

Karen Armstrong is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical Christian faith. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, while in the convent and graduated in English. She left the convent in 1969. Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule.
Armstrong received the US$100,000 TED Prize in February 2008. She used that occasion to call for the creation of a Charter for Compassion, which was unveiled the following year.

Reviews

[فؤاد · Rating 4 out of 5]

کارن آرمسترانگ، ایدۀ اصلی کتاب رو از کارل یاسپرس گرفته که در آغاز و انجام تاریخ، گفته در حوالی قرن پنجم قبل از میلاد، در فاصلۀ بین از بین رفتن یک نظم قدیمی و پدید اومدن یک نظم جدید، یک آشوب عمومی در جهان پدید اومد. این آشوب باعث تشویش و اضطراب مردم شد، اما در عین حال آزادی لازم رو در اختیار متفکرها قرار داد تا در سنت ها و باورهای عمومی تجدید نظر کنن و نوعی معنویت جدید ایجاد کنن که مشخصه هاش در هر سرزمین متفاوت بود، اما اساسش، افزایش خودآگاهی و درون نگری، پذیرش سرشت دردناک زندگی، گذشتن از خود و همدردی با دیگران، و سلوک شخصی به سمت حقیقتی برین و غیر قابل بیان بود. آرمان‌هایی که به باور کارن آرمسترانگ جهان امروز ما همچنان بهشون نیاز داره.

آرمسترانگ توی این کتاب سترگ، تاریخ این سرزمین ها (چین، هند، اسرائیل، یونان) رو بر اساس این نظریۀ کارل یاسپرس روایت می کنه. تاریخ یک هزاره رو نقل می کنه (از ۸۰۰ قبل از میلاد تا ۲۰۰ قبل از میلاد)، هر قرن رو در یک فصل جداگانه، و این معنویت، ریشه هاش، و نتایجش رو شرح میده. حتی اگر این نظریۀ یاسپرس رو قبول نداشته باشید یا براتون اهمیت نداشته باشه، کتاب به قدری سرشار از اطلاعاته که خوندنش همچنان آموزنده و لذتبخشه. ترجمه هم برازندۀ چنین اثر بزرگیه.

فقط یک نکته: کارن آرمسترانگ تاریخ چهار کشور محوری رو همزمان نقل می کنه، یعنی کمی از تاریخ چین می گه، بعد میره سراغ هند، بعد اسرائیل، بعد یونان، دوباره بر می گرده سراغ چین، بعد کمی هند، و به همین ترتیب...
این شیوه شاید از بعضی جهات خوب باشه، اما چون کتاب طولانیه، قطعاً دنبال کردن تاریخ هزار سالۀ چهار کشور به صورت همزمان، باعث میشه آدم گیج بشه و سیر تاریخ هر کشور رو فراموش کنه، اتفاقی که در خوانش اول برای من افتاد. در نتیجه، دوباره برگشتم از اول و این بار تاریخ هند رو به طور کامل خوندم و تموم کردم، بعد برگشتم از اول و تاریخ چین رو شروع کردم و تا آخر خوندم، باز برگشتم از اول و تاریخ اسرائیل رو شروع کردم و همین طور... که در عمل روش خیلی مفیدی بود.

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karen Armstrong takes great mountains, virtual Everests, of wretched scholarly prose and turns them into something highly readable. She is a first-rate disseminator and popularizer of the history of religion. The Great Transformation reviews the history of what Karl Jaspers famously termed the "Axial Age." During this period, roughly 900-200 B.C.E., the foundations for all of our present religious traditions were laid down: Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, the other monotheisms, etc. For example, she follows the Aryans from the Caucasus onto the Gangetic Plain and unfolds the story of proto-Hindu culture there. Similarly, she writes of the pre-Biblical development of what would become Judaism, and so on for all the relevant faiths. These are stories I have never come across elsewhere. Leave it to Armstrong to see this gap in common knowledge of religious history and seek to fill it. What she has undertaken here is of enormous scope. To write the proto-history and then the history of all the Axial faiths is not just ambitious, it is an effort that astonishes the reader as he watches it unfold. I recommend all Armstrong's books but especially The Case for God (also reviewed here) and A History of God. What marks her prose is tremendous empathy. Her portraits of the various Axial Age peoples are stunning in their range and complexity. It is a very dense book, but loaded with fascinating information for the patient reader. Armstrong believes that there is much to be learned from our religious history. Properly understood it is both a cautionary tale and an indication of how very much we need spirituality in our lives. To paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, without it we are left with a great "God-shaped hole" in our lives. Christopher Hitchens (R.I.P.) and Richard Dawkins think we can discard it. I disagree. This is an integral part of our evolution as a species and we have much to learn from it. (Note: The other writer of excellence in this field I'm familiar with is Elaine Pagels. She, too, has a number of wonderful books but it is her The Gnostic Gospels (also reviewed here) that is her summa.) Highly recommended!

[P.J. Wetzel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came to be aware of this book through my research for my distant future fantasy/sci-fi novel series 'Eden's Womb'. I wanted to understand the origin and evolution of mankind's religious journey in order to project a plausible future. That's a tall order, of course, but for me the study was a fascinating journey. I started by reading Huston Smith's iconic 'The World's Religions' and then began to delve deeper.

Along the way I had a little epiphany: It seemed that many major faith traditions/institutions were founded about the same time (800 to 200 BCE). I pursued this idea, wondering if the nascent trade routes that would become the Silk Road had begun a cultural exchange that early in human history.

Well, as I dug into it, I found out that my idea was far from original (few ever are). Karl Jaspers had the idea, and published it in `The Origin and the Goal of History' in 1953. Karen Armstrong seems to have latched onto Jaspers' grand theories as a way of hooking the reader (selling more books). But it remains unclear whether she actually believes them. Nowhere did she overtly refute Jasper's theories, but in the meat of the text she seems uninterested in reinforcing them. Sometimes it seems as if she finds his themes unsupportable but doesn't want to make an issue of it. That's not the kind of incisive scholarly analysis I would hope for from a book with such a grand title published by an expert. It's clear she's more interested in the detail. She shies away from big-picture analysis. Result: the title begins to come across as disingenuous--false advertising. And I begin to feel cheated.

From my point of view I wanted insight into the maturing of the human psyche, its causes and implications. Were there unifying factors that led to this period of unprecedented global advancement in and formalization of human thought?

Through my own independent research I found that this revolution or maturing of human consciousness seemed to be entirely global. Jaspers and Armstrong focus only on four major hubs of emergent civilization (Greece, Judea, India and China). What I found was that there were many more examples of emerging faith traditions and landmark human advancement that flowered during this period. Shinto religion began during this time frame as did the Norse theology--Odin first appears during this time. The first major cities of the Maya civilization arose during this period. The Polynesians were at the height of their seagoing prowess as they migrated across the south Pacific, and humans arrived in Madagascar for the first time. Clearly any unifying mechanism went far beyond cultural stimulation via the Silk Road trade routes.

To my disappointment Armstrong mentions none of these other cultures, and does not seem to be interested in the physical/environmental/external underpinnings of why this revolution happened. Rather she focuses on something she seems to implicitly assume is a 'universal' underpinning of human morality.

Fine. She's on a different wavelength. By now this has become abundantly clear. Okay, I'll sit back and let her elaborate before I pass judgment.

So now she proffers her primary theme: it's all about the `Golden Rule' -- "Do unto others as you (in your '*infinite wisdom and universal understanding*') would desire that others would do unto you."

For the obvious reasons (highlighted in the sarcastic parenthetical expression) this ancient and revered ethical directive is becoming one of the old canards that can no longer be supported. It translates into: 'ignore cultural diversity, reject the opportunity to expand your personal horizons through deep listening and understanding of your neighbor's point-of-view, and just blindly assume that everyone wants to be treated the way you want to be treated'.

Surely (Armstrong implicitly assumes) the 'Golden Rule' is a universal sign of humanity's newly emerging (shallowly defined) 'compassion' to which all these nascent religious movements must have aspired, and thus to which they all gravitated.

To me this is not a satisfying explanation. I see no universality. I'll offer one benign example: In China you must burp to express your satisfaction for a meal. In western Europe the burp is a sign that you're uncultured. Okay, here are a few more examples: http://mrfarshtey.net/WorldCultures/2...

The closest Armstrong comes to addressing my 'big-picture' question is by regurgitating Jaspers' thesis that the Great Transformation was a result of an interregnum between eras of war and destruction and suppression of original thought by great empires. This seems insufficient, and again this is not my original thought--it is shared by other critics.

Having posited her theme for the 'Axial Age' (as Jaspers called it), Armstrong proceeds to delve into an historical survey, in chronological blocks, of the secular and spiritual events in the four cultures. It turns out that the Axial thinkers (by her definition) arose sporadically, not simultaneously in most cases. In fact she concludes that Axial thinking never really took hold in Greece as it spawned the Western philosophies.

No unifying motivation? Why publish it under such a lofty title: "The Great Transformation"? Why parrot Jaspers' themes if you don't even support them?

Here's why: your publisher wants to sell books.

Armstrong is a 'can't see the forest for the trees' thinker. Her book reads like a series of book reports (here is what I read and here's what I got out of it). Too often her work becomes a tedious recitation of factual historical events and summations of ancient writings without any raison d'être. Rather, it seems, she has an obsession for completeness (demonstrated in other works of hers such as `A History of God'.) Finally, a pet peeve: Armstrong has the annoying habit of using `chic' words drawn from the subject culture, such as nibbana (nirvana), ahimsa (harmlessness) and li (tradition). There are many of these. She defines them once and then expects the reader to remember them all.

As a research earth scientist I find myself wondering if human interactions with the changing global climate of the time may have contributed to this great global revolution. Psychologists may wonder if this was a result of the natural evolution of human self-awareness as we came to recognize our mind as a useful tool. Armstrong peripherally mentions (in barely a few lines) such revolutions as the smelting of iron and the domestication of the horse as contributing factors to destabilization during these times. She was silent on my Silk Road thesis and the others. In the end, this book was not what I was hoping for.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Transformation argues that the core religious/philosophical traditions of several major civilizations -- China, India, Greece, and Israel -- emerged at about the same time, for the same reasons, and were preoccupied with the same ideas. The time is what philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, the period from approximately 700-200 B.C. when these civilizations all developed philosophical or religious tenets that emphasized what we might now call inner spiritual development rather than abasement before omnipotent deities. The reason, Armstrong suggests, is that each of these societies was seeking a way beyond the incessent violence that marked their existence. As for the ideas, they have become cliches but are no less powerful for that: first, do unto others as you would have them do unto you; and second, be the change you wish to see in the world. Armstrong concludes that from these concepts, explored in different places and for somewhat different reasons, emerged Confusianism, Buddhism, classical Greek philosophy, and rabbinical Judaism (she considers the core precepts of both Christianity and Islam to be mere latter-day variations on rabbinical Jewish thought, with few innovations to contribute to that philosophical tradition).

Much as I enjoy reading early religious history, I'll confess that I don't have the background to evaluate Armstrong's argument on its merits. It's certainly compelling -- and given my own leanings (which are pretty vague, but could be said to be triagulated by agnosticism, unitarianism, and secular humanism), the argument that religion is at its best when it emphasizes personal growth rather than proper worship of the correct Sky God is one I'm inclined to favor. I did find myself wondering whether Armstrong was overstating the extent to which these complex philosophies had an impact on their own societies, as well as the extent to which they displaced, even temporarily, traditional religious emphasis on pleasing and/or appeasing an external deity. In addition, her final chapter -- aimed at today's fundamentalists of all faiths -- spends more time celebrating Christianity's and Islam's connections to Axial Age tradition than exploring why those connections seem, more and more, a minor part of both faiths (at least as professed by their loudest adherents).

Still, this was a thought-provoking read and, while slow going at times, one I found rewarding. A final word of praise: the book contains many useful maps and an excellent glossary, both of which are essential to a work like this but, I find, are too rarely included. Bravo to Armstrong and her publisher for providing them; they really help.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 1 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1541807.html

This is a rather brave attempt to wring significance out of the fact that Confucius, the Buddha, Socrates and Jeremiah all lived at about the same time, between them causing a revolution in the way in which humans relate to the universe in philosophy and religion. It did not completely work for me. I found Armstrong's account of the evolution of the Old Testament as a product of the Jews' exile in Babylon pretty compelling, and we have a couple more of her books on the shelves which I am looking forward to reading now. Her description of ancient Greek thought, which I gave tutorials on many years ago, seemed decent enough and made a very interesting claim about the importance of Sophocles in particular and Greek theatre in general as giving people a new way to talk about and think about the world. But her Indian sections were rather dull, and her Chinese sections very dull indeed, coming alive respectively only with the appearance of the main characters, the Buddha and Confucius. It is my fault more than hers, but I felt completely adrift in Chinese geography; various kingdoms with unfamiliar and confusingly similar names, and no obvious relationship to the present day geography which I know a little better.

And I was not convinced by the book's overall thesis, which seems to be that the near-coincidence of lifespan of the four main characters is a particularly interesting fact. It is true, but rather dull, to note, for instance, that James Marsters and Sophie Aldred were born on the same day. I think it is a little more interesting that Alexander Hamilton and the Duchess of Devonshire were born and died within two years of each other, because both were engaged in politics, and particularly in relations between England and America, at the same time. But Armstrong doesn't seriously argue that there was any influence, or even much in the way of common roots, between her four main characters, so we get four completely different stories (only two of which are interesting) chopped across each other with various totally disparate incidents lumped together purely because they happened at roughly the same time. It did not really work for me.

[Megan Kiekel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This textbook covers the beginnings and transformation of the major world religions through the Axel Age, from 1600 BCE to 220 BCE, plus an epilogue that brings the history into the current time.

I borrowed this from our friend Steve last fall, and I haven’t had enough brain cells to absorb this much information until now. This was the textbook from one of his religion classes in undergrad (he’s a genius grad school engineer now), and he passed it on to me because he knew I’d love it. I have to give this copy back to Steve, but I’m totally buying it for reference. (For the record- I did not read an entire textbook in a month. I was reading this well into October as well).

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I needed a clear head to read it; it’s a lot of information to take in. But it is amazing to trace the changes in philosophies and religious practices over time with the changes in human development. Each chapter is broken into four parts: one focusing on each of the major Axel Age peoples in China, Greece, India, and Jerusalem.

This was an introduction to this information for me, so I’m not really able to fully criticize the biases or limitations of this text. Armstrong did seem to have a strong detachment from the information, except when she was drawing her main points in the introduction and final chapter. All history texts, of course, are an argument: the author chooses which information to include and which to leave behind in order to strengthen their points and persuade the reader to their way of thinking. It is impossible to be objective when writing about history because of the vast amount of information out there. Armstrong obviously focused on what tied the major world religions together and made connections between their individual developments over the age. A book could probably just as easily be written on the differences of these religions.

I’d love to come back to this after I know more.

P.S. If you dislike religious history that is not written from a theological standpoint, then you may find this work offensive.

[عمر الحمادي · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب رائع يلخص في صفحات عديدة تتابع ظهور الأديان الرئيسية اليوم وكيف أن حكماءها قد تقاطعت أفكارهم تقاطعاً عظيماً... أنصح المتشددين بقاراءته لعل الكتاب يساعدهم على هجر النظرة الضيقة التمكن من رؤية الأديان بنظرة أكثر شمولية وأوسع أفقاً.

العصر المحوري -بحسب كارل غاسبار- هو ذلك العصر الممتد بين ٩٠٠ إلى ٢٠٠ ق.م وفي أربع مناطق مميزة ظهرت الحركات الدينية الكبرى في تاريخ الإنسانية: الكونفشيوسية والداوية في الصين، الهندوسية والبوذية في الهند، الوحدانية الإبراهيمية في الشرق الأوسط، والعقلانية الفلسفية في اليونان، أنبياء ومتصوفو وفلاسفة وشعراء العصر المحوري كانوا متطورين جداً وغير مغالين كما هم تلاميذهم، وإجماع عصر المحور هو شهادة بليغة على السعي الروحي نحو الرحمة والمحبة والتسامح، بل قد تجد إيمانك متوافق مع إيمان الآخرين دون أن تغادر تراثك الخاص، ما يميز تراث العصر المحوري في كل المناطق الأربعة هو تجذر الخوف والألم في هذا التراث، والمطالبة بالإقرار بهذه الآلام كمقدمة من أجل التنوير.

اكتشف علماء الآثار أن معظم السكان في مناطق اليهود عبدوا بعل إلى جانب يهوه -إله الحرب- حتى القرن السادس ثم بدأوا بتقليل عدد الآلهة التي عبدوها وتجاهل عبادة الآلهة الأخرى، أما البراهمة في الهند فقد اتجهوا إلى تحرير أنفسهم من الشعائر الخارجية والآلهة وركزوا على النفس الخالدة واكتشاف عالمها المستقل.

تعلم الإسرائيليون التعالي على مصالحهم الذاتية وأن يحكموا بالعدل والمساواة، وكان النبي فيهم مثالاً حياً على إفراغ النفس من الأنانية.

أصيب أفلاطون بالرعب من مقتل معلمه سقراط بدعوى تعليمه أفكار دينية زائفة للشباب، إلا أنه في نهاية حياته دافع عن إيقاع عقوبة الموت على من لم يشاركوه آراءه، سعى أفلاطون إلى فرض الفضيلة من الخارج ولم يكن يثق بدافع الرحمة، وجعل دينه الفلسفي فكرياً بالكامل، ومع التقدم الهائل في العلوم والطب والرياضيات، حصل بعد عن الروحانية، رغم إن أفلاطون دافع عن عبادة الأولمب لأنها مهمة وأساسية للمدينة رغم كونها أقل درجة من الفلسفة عنده

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karen Armstrong looks beyond doctrine to find a common core in the religious and philosophical traditions that emerged during the years 900 to 200 BCE - an era the German philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age. All around the world at the time, people were trying to address the question of violence and endless war.

What she found in the writings of the great thinkers and sages of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Judaism and the precursors of Christianity in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece is this: what a person believes is not what brings an end to suffering. Suffering only ends when we let go of selfishness and learn compassion for others. Or, as Rabbi Hillel summarized it: "What is hateful to yourself, do not to others. That is the whole of The Torah. The rest is commentary."

From this perspective, arguing over whose views on God are "correct" is not just pointless but actually harmful to ourselves and to others. This concurs with what the Buddha said to many a disciple. The remedy to conflict is not to find the flaws in our enemy, but to look inside ourselves for our own flaws.

Even for those not interested in saving the world or finding peace within themselves, this book should still prove an enjoyable reading experience. It is a thoroughly researched, well-written romp through a very interesting time in history, over a wide range of peoples and cultures. Armstrong's writing is always clean and lively, never stuffy or morbidly academic.

This is a book well-suited for our troubled times.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The core of this book is a solid account of the 'spiritual' traditions of four great civilisations (the Hellenistic-Pagan; the Judaean; the South Asian; and the Chinese) during the thousand or so years before the end of the third century BC. As far as it goes, it is an excellent and coherent narrative.

But I have my doubts. The story sometimes seems shoe-horned not only into the contention that all four cultures saw a first axial age that defined Old World culture until a second 'axial age' in the early modern era but it seems to be designed to be a rather passive-aggressive polemic for religion.

Although the range of reading is extensive, the transmission of specialist research impressive and the insights to be had considerable (until the very last chapters when Armstrong sometimes just tells a story most educated people already know), some claims for the early period seem excessive.

There are occasions when she appears to lack imagination about the claims of her sources. Is it really so that the very ancient Chinese conducted war in such stately fashion? Perhaps but perhaps the story is derived from later literary tropes. She takes texts on trust sometimes.

But the book disappoints because one soon becomes suspicious of her ideological motivation. The first and last chapter spin a yarn about religiosity that I found irritating and even misleading insofar as an empathic sentimentality was linked without warrant to her academic findings.

I found this shoe-horning of history into a 'sell' for religion in an age of violence (the book was written five years after 9/11) on the edge of objectionable as if somehow the essentialism of religion was not in itself part of the problem of all times. Complexity went out the window.

Still, if you can get her spirituality 'sell' (what the hell is this thing called 'spirituality' when it is not ideology or sentiment?) out of the way, her narrative flows, she is readable and one gets a sense of how one idea builds on its predecessors and why some particular ideas take root.

As history it is mostly very worthwhile but as proselytising for empathy and idealistic sentiment, it is in cloud-cuckoo land. There is some very good analysis of the social and political conditions in which ideas take root but very little critique of the nexus between material reality and 'religion'.

This intellectual weakness frustrates when the book is taken as a whole. It stays in the library as a ready reference on some key ideas and thinkers, with some sound general history thrown in, but it cannot be regarded as a first class text because its final analysis is overwhelmed with apologia.

The fashion for 'spirituality' is one of the problematics of current Western culture. The main theme of the sentimentalists is that if only we would listen to the great teachers and become empaths or submit to something outside ourselves, the violence would cease. Well, perhaps!

In fact, the violence and terror won't cease because universal empathy is a human impossibility. We are who we are, complex creatures. If someone has an idea you can be sure that the idea will be used as a tool or a weapon to gain advantage. Yes, this is what we are.

Her book-ending chapters presents a world of shoulds and oughts that defies reality and creates a vision that is always going to be more fiction than fact. Exhortation may influence some people to be better persons but as many or more will and must ignore the message.

If anything an excess of empathy, when faced by the standard alleged sociopathy of social systems, simply neuters the 'good' and sends them into defensive postures, private life, clerisy or the monastery, leaving everyone else as prey while the faithful protect themselves with 'sacred space'.

If humanity is to be liberated in terms of both private freedoms and the avoidance of oppressive harms, it is a moot point whether a passive intellectual and 'spiritual' approach will offer anything more than this defensive protection for the few (often at the expense of the many).

I have no problem with people believing in nonsense or even coming together consensually in societies that believe in nonsense but the idea that 'spirituality' will do anything other than abandon the mass of the people to the wolves is increasingly absurd.

'Spirituality' (I am still waiting for a non-nonsensical definition beyond mere sentiment) may be regarded as any belief system that eases the suffering and neuroses of life. There is nothing wrong with that - unless we think it reflects anything other than magical thinking.

Out of spirituality comes religion which is little more than the imposition of social order on the crooked timber of humanity, a process of containing and corralling the human 'spirit' (actually the human being) in despair at any other form of social organisation possibly 'being good'.

This book, for all its descriptive and narrative value, thus becomes a false friend to a species that needs to stop evading and avoiding material reality and the actual structures of power, stop trying to find bolt holes for itself and start creating practical approaches to solving problems.

In essence, there are only two problems here ... how to ensure human autonomy within an otherwise functional social system and how to ensure that one person does not do harm to another person. The great faiths partially solve the second but usually at the expense of the first.

They are only a partial solution because religious and 'spiritual' tendencies to treat personal liberation as liberation from the world will often result in the accidental de-humanisation of humanity, running away from materiality by (for example) 'abandoning the ego'.

The religious obsession with abandoning the ego is cowardice. The real task is to embrace the ego and put it to work as a lifetime project of self improvement and the social project of equalising the value of all egos viz. a society where you can 'do what thou wilt an harm no-one'.

There are arguments, of course, for mystery and ritual - like the Greek tragedies or Chinese li - as undogmatic artistic and magical endeavours that are not trying to make too many claims.

The poetry, drama, art, ritual and magic in the performance art that is 'religion' is not a bad thing but it is only valuable when it allows persons to appreciate the liminalities and absences in the world. Subsequently building a system out of such things destroys that very purpose.

One final world of praise for the book, however. It is very well served with maps, charts and plans - 25 in all. These are invaluable in comprehending the narrative. Despite the irritations, the book still remains recommended for anyone wanting a basic overview of ancient intellectual culture.

[Sarahj33 · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I bought this book about three years ago at a street festival in Michigan when I was on a big non-fiction kick. I never got past the first couple of chapters because the writing felt pretty dense and seemed to assume that I had a background knowledge of things like the Assyrian Empire and the Book of Deuteronomy. I still don't know anything about those things, but I decided to give the book another go as part of my quest to actually read all the books that are languishing on my shelves before buying any new ones.

And somehow, this book was exactly the book I needed to be reading right now. If you've been keeping up with the news lately, it can feel like a lot of things are going wrong in the world, and organized religions in some form are implicated in a lot of the world's problems. So to open a book and read about lots of very smart people from 500 BCE seeing the same problems and actually coming up with solutions is very comforting. Obviously the solutions didn't last forever, but I've come away from this book convinced that we can learn a lot from the sages of the Axial Age.

The basic idea of The Axial Age is that around the same time, many of the world's religions took profound leaps forward in terms of incorporating ethical systems into their traditions - new ethical systems that were based on the Golden Rule, non-violence, and the suppression of ego. These systems also took the fascinating position that, although they never denied the existence of a god, they thought it was counter productive to try to define "God" when God is by nature undefinable. It would be much more appropriate to spend your energy leading a good life than worrying about whether Yahweh was more powerful than Baal. Armstrong writes clearly and concisely, weaving together different stories in a well organized but intricate web. I ended up changing my mind about the writing being too dense and requiring too much outside knowledge - it is easy to follow her arguments and conclusions even if you don't know anything about Vedic texts or the Chinese classics.

This book doesn't claim to be a panacea for all the world's problems, but to me it felt like it could be. Armstrong doesn't deny the various problems of the Axial traditions - the Greek Axial Age never really coalesced, the Chinese tradition split into several splinter groups, basically all the Axial sages completely ignored women, etc. And, of course, none of them could really make it last for more than a few hundred years. But overall the message of the book is hopeful. These guys were on to something, and it shows that even if religion is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution.

[M. Altuğ Yayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Karen Armstrong'un Büyük Dönüşüm adlı kitabı, dini düşüncenin en etkili dönemlerinden biri olan "Eksen Çağı"nı büyük bir incelikle ele alıyor. Armstrong, Çin'den Yunanistan'a, Hindistan'dan İsrail'e kadar uzak diyarlarda yaşamış filozof ve mistiklerin ortaya koyduğu öğretileri ve bunların dünya genelinde nasıl bir iz bıraktığını anlatıyor. Kitapta beni en çok etkileyen, Eksen Çağı düşünürlerinin şefkati merkeze almaları ve bencillikten uzak durma konusunda ortak bir anlayışa sahip olmaları. O dönemin koşullarında, yaşanan şiddet ve nefrete karşı bu düşünürlerin kişisel sorumluluk ve öz eleştiriyi ön planda tutarak şefkatli ve özverili bir yaklaşımı savunmaları oldukça dikkat çekici. Armstrong, o dönemden günümüze taşınabilecek dersleri hatırlatarak, bugünün dünyasında artan şiddet ve ayrışmaya karşı bu düşüncelerin nasıl ilham kaynağı olabileceğini gerçekten açık bir şekilde göstermiş oluyor.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 3 out of 5]

In granting Karen Armstrong’ The Great Transformation only three stars, I am willing to consider that the fault in the stars is mine and that what she has written is better than my understanding. Ms Armstrong is a life long seeker after of sacred truths with a very strong notion of what she wants to find. This is not to charge her with selective reporting, but to express some of my uncertainty over her findings.

To begin with a quibble, you are asked to accept that a period of several hundred years, is a single period. It is during this period that the worlds still continuing religious traditions were founded. The ones that Ms Armstrong discusses are Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Side note, there are ongoing debates over Confucianism as a religion, and the word choice “philosophical rationalism in Greece” suggest something other than religion can be at work. So that is two quibbles.

Her grand theory is that there is something in humans that seeks/demands some variation of what she calls a “Sky God”. A rationalistic, and most unromantic analysis might be, early humans became aware that there was a lot f things they did not understand, or operated beyond human understanding, therefore
1 It has to be magic.
2. Some entity must be behind it.
3 That entity wants us to live in some particular way.

My read is that none of these things must be true and the step between 2 and 3 is very large. It is now about 2500 years later. The mechanics behind many of the earlier unknowns have known causes and effects, and are presumable unromantic and allowing for things like Quantum dynamics, something may never be 100 % explainable. That is on me and of no abiding interest to the author.

Early on the author emphasizes that all of these belief systems underwent many transformations. Sometimes refinements and sometime steps backwards. At their best, each taught that how one goes about living is more important that what rituals one practices. This seems entirely sound to me, and a major if not the only problem is getting more people to hold to practice over doctrine.
Two data points:
It is my understanding that a core belief, at least among what was called the Old Believers of the Russian Orthodox Church was that we are all going to fail at living a heaven worthy life. Therefore, we must prove our sincerity by practicing perfect obedience to ritual.

I well remember a Lutheran Pastor, conducting his sermon, speaking derisively about those who believe we humans can earn heaven by merely living good lives.

It seems that the four faiths may have taught practice over doctrine, but none stayed with that as the last word.

What cannot be denied is that Ms Armstorng has brought together a vast amount of research. Each of the four beliefs are tracked though their earliest formative years, about 900-200 B.C.E. Much of this history is interesting and mostly accessible to non-academics. It is a lot of detail. More or less common changes are tracked as they appeared among the various writers, prophets and influencers in each geography. It seems that no one read of any religion satisfied followers. A remote sky god meant there was no local agency for a believer to address local needs. Gods that were too much like humans could not be sufficiently divine. Schools arose arguing ever more remote esoteric problems, even as John or Jane Doe wanted to know what to do here and now. In all of this there seems to be almost no mention of religious wars.
Karen Armstrong never seems to close around the problem: If I am doing Gods Will, and you are not, I get to condemn you to the worst crimes, no matter what the local formulation of the Golden Rule.

Ultimately, I found reading The Great Transformation a lot of work. I suspect it is worth the effort. At some point I could only count the pages to the end. That may be on me, but it is my warning to those who may not feel interested in these many details and this much discussion.

[Lucy Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know much about Indian or Chinese religious history, so those sections were difficult for me. Even though her writing is accessible, I had trouble keeping track of the big picture. At least I'm closer to understanding that history than before 🤷

I only know Jewish history through Sunday School, so reading any more academic take on how the doctrine changed over time completely blew my mind.

The Greek pieces didn't blow my mind, but I do feel like I have a better grasp of that history now. Like I wouldn't be able to articulate the differences between Socrates and Plato on my own, but maybe I could at least recognize them now.

Her thesis that all these religions are related didn't really come together for me, but the history is cool!

[Massimo Pigliucci · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers the period between the 8th and the 3rd centuries BCE was a time of great transformation throughout the Eurasian continent. This is the timespan that comprises the rise of Buddhism in India, Confucianism and Daoism in China, Judaism in what we now call the Middle East, and Greek classical philosophy. Karen Armstrong embarked in an ambitious project to update and expand Jaspers’s original insight, though the very existence of a distinct Axial age—as Jaspers called it—is doubted by more than a few historians. The book is ambitious in scope, and the material treated by Armstrong is certainly fascinating. Her approach is strictly chronological: she begins with what she regards as the pre-Axial period (1600-900 BCE) and ends with the post-Axial one (after 220 BCE). There are, however, several issues which seriously undermine the value of The Great Transformation. First off, and most glaringly, Armstrong writes as if Jaspers’s ideas were well established, rather than controversial. Which means there is no critical discussion at all of the very concept that underlies the book. Second, she tries a bit too hard to find the commonalities across all the “spiritual” movements she discusses, part of a broader agenda she had already pursued in previous books, like A History of God, published over a decade before The Great Transformation. I think that the differences between the various religions are just as significant and important as their commonalities, and that makes the whole idea of a “universal” spiritual awakening more than a bit problematic. Third, Armstrong stretches the already vaguely defined Axial age too much, including in it, at least by implication, both Christianity and Islam. That risks rendering the whole concept close to meaningless, but she had to do it because she absolutely wants to demonstrate the existence of a common thread running across all the wisdom traditions. Fourth, we get no explanation whatsoever of why the Axial age was limited to Eurasia. Nothing about Africa, nothing about the Americas. Even though those areas where not within the purview of the original concept as articulated by Jasper, one is left wandering what happened to the “spirituality” of those people. Fifth, Armstrong keeps talking about the invention of “spiritual technologies” but we get only a vague idea of what they are and how they work. Indeed, there is an acknowledgment, near the end, that all religious traditions eventually devolve into parochial and often violent approaches that are dramatically contradictory with the intentions of their respective founders. Why is that the case, if religion is the positive engine of inner and social transformation that Armstrong says it is? Finally, the Hellenistic philosophies (Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, Cynicism, and so forth) barely get a mention and are dismissed as too intellectual and insufficiently based on intuition and mysticism. Perhaps, but I would trade any of those for any of the semi-rational (and sometimes downright irrational) religions Armstrong is so fond of. At least we never hear of Stoics massacring Cynics because of a doctrinal divergence in how they conceptualize virtue…

[Corina Anghel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this book on Easter, because although I am not religious, I wanted to celebrate the spirituality of the Holiday. It was absolutely fascinating to read the history of the four most popular religions of the world and it was so interesting to discover that:
- the Christian God's (and Islams's Allah's) story dates long back, evolving from the story of Yahweh, a warrior god who later on "started" to also support people with their crops and "became" omniscient and omnipresent when the Jews were exiled to Babylon and had to leave their physical temple;
- the Greeks didn't receive too much support and guidance from their Gods who seemed to mirror the same challenges they were going through so instead they focused on asking questions, analyzing and on dialogue which soon enough resulted in the invention of democracy, philosophy and scientific interest;
- the Hindus started focusing on themselves and invented meditation and the Buddhist practices when some wise scholars changed the sacrificial rituals, replacing the violence in them with an inward focus. Instead of sacrificing an animal they would pretend to sacrifice themselves and that, in exchange would make them feel they are one with the Gods. Soon, they realized they can achieve Nirvana by themselves and a lot of them renounced the normal life to go on quests of finding their true selves (sure, that is not within reach to everybody so the majority of the population still had a strong connection to the old Gods, or just practiced yoga and various forms of more simple meditation);
- the Chinese people, with a strong cult of the ancestors, were much more pragmatic and focused more on the present life than on the past or future, their rituals explained up to the utmost details were means to show how one should live the best of life. I like how they believed that spirituality and "heaven" is something that you can bring on Earth rather then something you need to reach for.

My summary is, of course, over-simplified. What is interesting is to see how these religious and spiritual practices evolved depending on the period, on what happen in people's lives and what were their needs in certain times. In our contemporary, highly scientific, world, when people focus on their own individuality, it is no wonder that so many people from western countries are now drawn to the spiritual practices of the yogis rather than the religious christian rituals and the figure of an almighty God.

What all the sages from the Axial Age* had in common and what Karen Armstrong tried to show is that they all "put the abandonment of selfishness and the spirituality of compassion at the top of their agenda". No matter if their beliefs were secular or religious as long as they made people act compassionately and to "honor the stranger" they were "skillful".

The book is sometimes a challenge to follow as there are so many concepts and historical figures mentioned and you really want to remember all (I took a lot of notes). I admire the author so much for having the skill and knowledge to put everything together so comprehensively and, on top of that, because in 2009 she created a Charter for Compassion, an umbrella for people to engage in collaborative partnerships worldwide to do good.


* Axial Age = is a term coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers in the sense of a "pivotal age", characterizing the period of ancient history from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE, the time in which all foundations that underlie current civilization came into being.

[Charles Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

We can be almost certain that somewhere, at this very moment, someone is committing an act of violence in the name of God. That troubling realization underlies this book, an attempt to reach back 2,500 years and more, to survey our earliest attempts to establish systems of belief that promise a release from human strife.

Karen Armstrong's "great transformation" took place in what the philosopher Karl Jaspers called "the Axial Age" – roughly seven centuries, starting around 900 B.C., in which the foundations were laid for Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as for such later faiths as Christianity and Islam and for secular inquiries into the nature of being and the good life. In discrete corners of the world -- places we now know as Greece, Israel, India and China – thinkers developed new concepts of human beings' relationship to God and to one another.

This was the age of great texts: the Hebrew scriptures; the Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita and Mahabharata; the Analects of Confucius; the dialogues of Plato. All of them stressed the primacy of doing good. As Armstrong sums it up, "First you must commit yourself to the ethical life; then disciplined and habitual benevolence, not metaphysical conviction, would give you intimations of the transcendence you sought."

The Golden Rule -- do unto others as you would have them do unto you -- recurs through all four of the traditions Armstrong surveys. "The Axial sages put the abandonment of selfishness and the spirituality of compassion at the top of their agenda," she writes. "For them religion was the Golden Rule. They concentrated on what people were supposed to transcend from – their greed, egotism, hatred, and violence."

What makes the emergence of this "spirituality of empathy and compassion" more striking, and earns it the designation of "great transformation," is that in all four regions, Armstrong observes, it was "rooted in fear and pain." Brutal tribal warfare was the rule at the opening of the Axial Age, and religion was very much a matter of trying to make sure – through ritual and sacrifice and other means of subjugation to a mysterious higher power -- that you had a god on your side who was stronger than the other guy's god. Armstrong's often fascinating intellectual history shows how a new attitude toward God and humanity emerged from these bellicose origins, a belief that "Heaven was not simply influenced by the slaughter of pigs and oxen, but by compassion and justice."

The transformation was brought about by a variety of thinkers whose ideas Armstrong presents with a welcome lucidity. There is, for example, the biblical author or editor – "or, more probably, a school of priestly writers and editors," Armstrong notes – whom scholars identify as "P." Armstrong shows how, in the opening chapter of Genesis, P transformed the creation myth, which in most traditions was presented as a titanic struggle, into a story of calm mastery: "There was no fighting or killing. God simply spoke a word of command: 'Let there be light!' … P methodically extracted aggression from the traditional cosmogony."

Other sages recognized that religious dogma was itself a cause of strife. Confucius "discouraged theological chatter," Armstrong tells us. "Instead of wasting time on pointless theological speculation, people should imitate the reticence of Heaven and keep a reverent silence. … The ultimate concern was not Heaven but the Way." The Buddha, Armstrong says, even went so far as to deny the existence of "an authoritative, overseeing deity," because it "could become another prop or fetter that would impede enlightenment. … But his rejection of God or gods was calm and measured. He simply put them peacefully out of his mind."

"The Great Transformation" is likely to irk scholars and specialists who object to an amateur, a former nun with degrees in English literature, venturing onto their turf. The book does seem over-ambitious in its attempt to survey four distinct cultures over a span of seven centuries about which reliable documentation is scant and what little is known has been overlaid with interpretation and speculation. Armstrong often glosses over the economic, social and political forces that underlie the transformation. She's much more focused on what was thought than on why it was thought. And there are good reasons to object to her overuse of phrases like "a time of transition." We're always in some kind of transition, after all – history is not a row of little fixed and stable boxes between which human beings scurry, doffing old ideas and putting on new.

But above all else, this is a book that aims to still the noise of our own troubled time. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Armstrong has been a frequent commentator in the media on matters of belief, particularly on the emergence of militant fundamentalism. Her book is a defense of the healing power of religion in an age when many have concluded, as she puts it, "that religion itself is inescapably violent or that violence and intolerance are endemic to a particular tradition." She reminds us that the Axial sages lived "in violent societies like our own. What they created was a spiritual technology that utilized natural human energies to counter this aggression." Armstrong's conviction, passion and intelligence radiate throughout the book, making us feel the urgency of the ideas it seeks to convey.

[Ali Maretzki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though it took me forever to get through, I really enjoyed this book and learned so much. Growing up within a specific religious framework, I found Armstrong's historical trace across the four distinct people groups refreshing in understanding the crossovers between philosophical/religious belief. Key takeaways are: the reality that compassion is a cultivated/disciplined choice rather than a passively accepted transformation of the heart + the inability/inadequacy of a singular framework to capture divinity.

[Jill Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was surprised by the many gushing reviews this book has received. Yes, it is a useful survey of the emergence and development of several world religions, and a very readable introduction to their characteristics. It also makes a strong case for mutual understanding and tolerance. But for me it just doesn't do 'what it says on the tin'. It offers no real explanation of why so many similar ideas emerged in different cultures at a similar time, though on the cover it says it is going to. Why were so many of Plato's ideas so reminiscent of Hinduism? What were the links between the two? We never find out; and what is more, the similarities between the various religions and philosophies are stressed rather too simplistically at the expense of the differences. Armstrong implies that metaphysical beliefs simply weren't important to the 'Axial sages', whose insights she boils down to not much more than 'The Golden Rule' which she says has never been improved upon. In fact Jesus' statement of this 'rule' goes way beyond most of its previous formulations, in that most other sages stated it in its 'negative' form ('Don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you') whereas Jesus', positive, version is much, much more challenging ('Do to others what you would have them do for you'). She claims that 'loving your neighbour' is pretty much all that true religion entails, forgetting that loving God is seen as equally important, not only by Jesus but by the Jewish 'Shema' and by the champions of many other faiths as well. Belief in God is not an optional extra; genuine compassion and transformation are only attainable when God's grace indwells us, not as a result of 'discipline'. Furthermore neither Christianity, rabbinic Judaism nor Islam emerged in Armstrong's 'Axial Age' (900-200BCE) at all, so she has to perform some dodgy sleight of hand to force them to fit into her framework. She is also guilty of some vague, generalised statements unbacked up by evidence and almost worthy of Philomena Cunk (e.g. 'In the ancient world it was generally permissable to eat only meat that had been sacrificed ceremonially in a sacred area'(!) - p161). I think I would have enjoyed this book more if its blurb hadn't made all sorts of extravagant claims which the content doesn't live up to.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beginning with an exploration of Asian religious tradition, Karen Armstrong gradually moves to a general, and rather generic, call for religious tolerance. She focuses exclusively on the religious traditions of the Asian continent, notably Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, and while she does a cracking good job of it (her explication of Buddhist belief was the clearest I've ever read), she does so to the neglect of the contributions of the West to religious thought, notably Catholicism and post-Reformation Christianity. If these are too modern for her selected timeframe, she ought to have presented Judaism as more separate from Christianity; as it is, the omission feels like a job half-done.

She also doesn't do so well when highlighting the distinctives of each particular faith, combining them into a single nebulous philosophy more akin to modern New Age thought, rather than presenting each as an independent system. I think part of the problem was ambition: she can't possibly present a nuanced and exact portrait of each faith in the amount of detail she needs to. This sort of syncretism, while it may help the cause of religious tolerance in general, does nothing to further the ostensible goal of such a study: substantive dialogue on religious issues that doesn't degenerate into violence.
This book had potential, and realizes some of it. But it leaves much to be desired, foremost a fulfillment of its own solution: genuine discussion between different faiths that isn't afraid to acknowledge differences.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much as I’d like to just leave my review to one word, fascinating, I don’t think that would be sufficient.
So, this book left me feeling just a bit uneducated as I know practically nothing about all but one of the religions discussed but I did find it curious, as obviously the author has, that all three would have such similar ideas at approximately the same time. The progression of each religion based on their geographical area and societal influences as well as their ultimate conclusions, which while laudable don’t seem to have been followed very well through the centuries, made for some thought provoking reading.
While the conclusions of the book came across to me as simplistic to the point of being boiled down to ‘be nice’, the lead up to that and all the historical elements were very well presented.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and readable account of the moment in time when most of the world's monotheistic religions began. My knowledge bank here is unimpressive, and I take her explanations at face value. Yes, the concept of the Axial Age rests on a great numper of assumptions, but these assumptions are as well grounded as assumptions can be. The tale told is, for this reader, quite compelling. This is complicated stuff, and Armstrong makes it approachable without pandering. I recommend this to anyone interested in religion and religious history.

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry but very well researched.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The consensus of the Axial Age is an eloquent testimony to the unanimity of the spiritual quest of the human race. The Axial peoples all found that the compassionate ethic worked. All the great traditions at this time are in agreement about the supreme importance of charity and benevolence, and this tells us something important about our humanity. To find that our own faith is so deeply in accord with others is an affirming experience. Without departing from our own tradition, we can learn from others how to enhance our particular pursuit of the empathic life.

What mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved. Religion was about doing things that changed you at a profound level. Before the Axial Age, ritual and animal sacrifice had been central to the religious quest. You experienced the divine in sacred dramas that, like a great theatrical experience today, introduced you to another level of existence. The Axial sages changed this; they still valued ritual, but gave it a new ethical significance and put morality at the heart of the spiritual life. The only way you could encounter what they called "God," "Nirvana," "Brahman," or the "Way" was to live a compassionate life. Indeed, religion was compassion.

I re-read this with a specific eye to the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and Armstrong writes so well, so simply and factually, that she brings the topic alive. I have always been so fascinated with the ways humans have conceived of the divine, the mystery, the meaning we so long to find in everyday lives and in times of evil, a place we are right now. She writes that we can find solace in our wisdom traditions if we look at their original messages which is the now well known evidence that so many cultures created the golden rule independently, treat others exactly how you wish to be treated. I have moved beyond the tradition I was raised in, and I am centering and amplifying indigenous wisdom since I find that is more true, more resonant for the way we have to live on this planet if we want it to support us. The golden rule also helps that, by less exploitation of peoples and the planet, but the indigenous ways of reciprocal community, realizing we are part of nature, not a visitor, and respect for the earth and her peoples are the religion written in the world.

Perhaps every generation believes that it has reached a turning point of history, but our problems seem particularly intractable and our future increasingly uncertain. Many of our difficulties mask a deeper spiritual crisis. During the twentieth century, we saw the eruption of violence on an unprecedented scale. Sadly, our ability to harm and mutilate one another has kept pace with our extraordinary economic and scientific progress. We seem to lack the wisdom to hold our aggression in check and keep it within safe and appropriate bounds. The explosion of the first atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki laid bare the nihilistic self-destruction at the heart of the brilliant achievements of our modern culture. We risk environmental catastrophe because we no longer see the earth as holy but regard it simply as a "resource." Unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that can keep abreast of our technological genius, it is unlikely that we will save our planet. A purely rational education will not suffice. We have found to our cost that a great university can exist in the same vicinity as a concentration camp. Auschwitz, Rwanda, Bosnia, and the destruction of the World Trade Center were all dark epiphanies that revealed what can happen when the sense of the sacred inviolability of every single human being has been lost.

Religion, which is supposed to help us to cultivate this attitude, often seems to reflect the violence and desperation of our times. Almost every day we see examples of religiously motivated terrorism, hatred, and intolerance. An increasing number of people find traditional religious doctrines and practices irrelevant and incredible, and turn to art, music, literature, dance, sport, or drugs to give them the transcendent experience that humans seem to require. We all look for moments of ecstasy and rapture, when we inhabit our humanity more fully than usual and feel deeply touched within and lifted momentarily beyond ourselves. We are meaning-seeking creatures and, unlike other animals, fall very easily into despair if we cannot find significance and value in our lives.

Today we often assume that before undertaking a religious lifestyle, we must prove to our own satisfaction that "God" or the "Absolute" exists. This is good scientific practice: first you establish a principle; only then can you apply it. But the Axial sages would say that this was to put the cart before the horse. First you must commit yourself to the ethical life; then disciplined and habitual benevolence, not metaphysical conviction, would give you intimations of the transcendence you sought. This meant that you had to be ready to change. The Axial sages were not interested in providing their disciples with a little edifying uplift, after which they could return with renewed vigor to their ordinary self-centered lives. Their objective was to create an entirely different kind of human being. All the sages preached a spirituality of empathy and compassion; they insisted that people must abandon their egotism and greed, their violence and unkindness. Not only was it wrong to kill another human being; you must not even speak a hostile word or make an irritable gesture. Further, nearly all the Axial sages realized that you could not confine your benevolence to your own people: your concern must somehow extend to the entire world.

We must continually remind ourselves that the Axial sages developed their compassionate ethic in horrible and terrifying circumstances. They were not meditating in ivory towers but were living in frightening, war-torn societies, where the old values were disappearing. Like us, they were conscious of the void and the abyss. The sages were not utopian dreamers but practical men; many were preoccupied with politics and government.

They were convinced that empathy did not just sound edifying, but actually worked. Compassion and concern for everybody was the best policy. We should take their insights seriously, because they were the experts. They devoted a great deal of time and energy to thinking about the nature of goodness. They spent as much creative energy seeking a cure for the spiritual malaise of humanity as scientists today spend trying to find a cure for cancer. We have different preoccupations. The Axial Age was a time of spiritual genius; we live in an age of scientific and technological genius, and our spiritual education is often undeveloped.

Auschwitz, Bosnia, and the destruction of the World Trade Center revealed the darkness of the human heart. Today we are living in a tragic world where, as the Greeks knew, there can be no simple answers; the genre of tragedy demands that we learn to see things from other people's point of view. If religion is to bring light to our broken world, we need, as Mencius suggested, to go in search of the lost heart, the spirit of compassion that lies at the core of all our traditions.

[Michael Holm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Transformation is about the development of religious and philosophical thought in four cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and Asia during Karl Jaspers' Axial Age, the ninth to third centuries BCE. Israel, Greece, India and China are the four cultures from which modern world religions developed. Egypt was not included since its religion during this age is not one of the modern world religions. Greek thought is included because of modern western philosophy. Armstrong examines each region in the ninth century, then advances to the eighth century, then to the seventh, etc. In India, the Hindu and Buddhist thought; in Greece, the Olympian pantheon after Homer and the beginning of philosophy; in Israel, the influence of the Babylonian Exile upon the writing of the books of the Old Testament; in China, Daoism and Confucianism. After the third century has been presented, there is a chapter to tell important subsequent developments such as Alexander's empire, the Maccabean revolt in Jerusalem, the birth of Islam and a very brief mention of Christianity. In conclusion, she offers her 'lessons learned' from her study. Footnotes appear afterwards in the Notes section.

I was looking for illumination on Pythagoras' belief in the transmigration of souls. Did he invent this idea or did he adopt it from exposure to Zoroastrianism originating in Persia? Zoroastrianism is described but no evidence is cited in this book for it being the source of Pythagoras' belief. Possibly he encountered it in Egypt.

I chose to read this work because the library does not have a copy of Karl Jaspers' 'The Origin and Goal of History' but it does have Karen Armstrong's book. She claims that general literacy appeared in the Eastern Mediterranean in the eighth century BCE. That's when religious texts began to be written. Records of prior writing is of record-keeping for taxation and royal boasting. Gradually I began to appreciate her explanations of possible and probable thought in each region. I have been very ignorant about Indian and Chinese history and thought. Apparently Armstrong is very familiar with the writings that survived - Homer's works, the Psalms, the Pentateuch, the prophets, the Analects, the Upanishads, etc. Recreating the development of religious thought before the eighth century is necessarily speculative since there is not a written record of it. She cites an extensive bibliography and has a section of footnotes by chapter. So while her historical exposition may not be rigorous, it is informative and illuminating and based upon a lot of reading. Her history of Judaism is in harmony with several recent books by biblical scholars and Wikipedia articles concerning the composition of the Old Testament. These works claim that the Jewish priests who wrote the books were significantly influenced by the Babylonians during their captivity there. She explains the J, E and P threads in the Pentateuch summarily. I am familiar with the history of philosophy and her portrayal of Greek philosophy is not unusual.

I have reservations about this work as a history because a lot of the exposition is not substantiated by written records, but relies upon an analysis of religious writing. Is analysis of literature (including the Old Testament) an adequate basis for historical knowledge? Perhaps it is when studying religious thought. Not all of the Old Testament is accepted as historical by some recent biblical scholars. But close analysis has made understanding of the development of monotheism in Judaism possible. The Amos and Hosea prophecies reflect that Yahweh was chief of many other competing gods such as Baal. Later books, written after the Babylonian Exile, assert that Yahweh is the only god. How much of her description of Chinese thought is based upon historical sources and how much relies upon religious works is beyond my ability to evaluate.

I was looking for illumination on Pythagoras' belief in the transmigration of souls. Did he invent this idea or did he adopt it from exposure to Zoroastrianism originating in Persia? Zoroastrianism is described but no evidence is cited in this book for it being the source of Pythagoras' belief. Possibly he encountered it in Egypt.

The Indian and Chinese cultures seem to think that the mental world is 'more real' than the physical. That is, our conscious experience is reality and the physical world is constantly changing. Thinkers in India seem to have pursued this path to their concepts of atman and Brahman. Plato proposed the theory of the ideal 'forms', possibly under the influence of Pythagoras. It is an interesting coincidence with idealist thought in Western philosophy.

I found this book to be stimulating, especially because I was very ignorant of Asian history and thought. Karen Armstrong is a lifelong student and prolific writer of religious thought of the world religions. Her 'lessons learned' is the Golden Rule as expressed in all of these religions and philosophies. She promotes compassion, tolerance and ethical action in the world. I am not sure that the survey of Axial Age sages agrees completely with that. Aristotle said that good works result in virtue. We are what we do. We become divine by loving and caring for our fellow humans. Is that what the major world religions say?

Another thing I learned is that the belief in a life after death was very common, if not universal, among the cultures Armstrong examined. It seems that this belief was founded upon animism, that organisms are animated by a life force or energy. Plato exalted the human mind to divinity and thus immortality, thus solidifying the common belief of a life after death. This belief is still common today even after science has revealed that the body is a huge colony of cells whose needs and functioning animate us. Humans in turn form societies which are colonies of individuals. This understanding argues that consciousness does not survive death. And yet....and yet does this understanding forbid the cultivation of the mind and our experience through music, the arts, literature, sports, socializing and charitable works? I think not.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

The length of this book is a monumental undertaking but I persevered! And I feel rewarded for doing so. It feels largely academic but is such an intriguing recount of religious history. Instead of expecting myself to remember every detail I decided to look for trends. What I came away with was that since the beginning of man, we have looked upward or outward for a higher being or a higher cause. We have looked for sense of belonging and purpose and meaning. It is utterly amazing that different cultures around the globe found answers to these quests and questions differently. This book helps you see the similarities and differences in what we've come to at the present. I loved her closing words that sum up religious worship or value systems - if your beliefs make you belligerent, intolerant and unkind toward's others' beliefs, you are not being "skillful." If your beliefs compel you to be compassionate and "honor the stranger," then you are "sound." Honor the stranger - I like that.

[Ahmed · Rating 3 out of 5]

الكتاب يتكلم عن ا��بع ديانات او حضارات خلال فترات زمنية متعاقبة: الاغريقية، الصينية، اليهودية والهندية.

الهندية عجبتني اكثر شي، يمكن لان ما قاري عنها هواي. الاغريقية كانت جيدة لان متنوعة بالاحداث. اليهودية مفيدة لفهم الانبياء المتعددين الموجودين. الصينية ما كنت استمتع بيها، ما اعرف اذا كانت بسبب قصصهم المتشابهة او دياناتهم المتشابهة بس كانت مملة نوعا ما.

الكتاب جيد بصورة عامة رغم ان احيانا يتسم بالتكرار او الطرح الممل، ولكن المادة الكثيفة اللي يتناولها يجعله كتاب مهم لفهم هذه الاديان وخصوصا الخاتمة القوية اللي تجمع كل افكار الكتاب بمقالة فلسفية قصيرة.

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Armstrong is quickly becoming one of my favorite religious thinkers. Here, she gives a history of the evolution of religious concepts from ancient times through the Axial Age when the ideals governing the world's societies were developed, taking us into the development of religion and philosophy in Asia, Eurasia, India, and the Middle East. I've been waiting to read a book like this practically my whole life, and while I certainly learned plenty, I now have even more questions: What about the ancient religions in the Americas? They followed many of the same evolutionary paths that the Eastern-based religions did, but Armstrong said nothing about the Western ancients. I understand this is meant to be a book about the thoughts that are still prevalent today on a global scale, so those religions may be outside the scope of this work, but I certainly hope she writes about them someday and how they fit into the timeline she's developed here.

She frequently uses the term "technology" in this book to describe the mental/doctrinal inventions developed over different regions to address life's common questions and challenges. It's such a wonderful way to think about religious thought.

Some things to know if you are considering reading this:
*Armstrong is a former Catholic nun who is a leading scholar in the field of world religion and religious history.

*While she continues to believe in Christian principles, her books are wonderfully neutral. You'd never guess she adheres to any specific viewpoint because she is unfailingly fair and respectful of each viewpoint she's talking about.

*If you're looking for scholarly "proof" of the supremacy of Christianity, you won't find it here. But I guarantee you'll see the faith (and all the others) with a much deeper appreciation than you did before.

[Miroku Nemeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. It's a perspective on history that is interesting in many ways, but very misleading in others. The attribution of nonviolence to peoples who were violent is really quite inexplicable if it was actually a historical analysis of the theoretical "axis age" (that this is a problematic construction is actually borne out by the tortured argument structure of the book), but it is a recurrent theme she uses to support her thesis throughout the 500 and some odd pages of this text. She insists on finding ahimsa where there is no ahimsa, making maddening logical leaps when doing so.

It's sad because I do believe in the idea that her construction of the core of the beliefs of the axial age puts forth is actually one worth supporting. I believe that the values of compassion, spirituality, and a universal application of the "Golden Rule" found throughout the cultures surveyed in this book are what all human beings, religious or non-religious, need to live by, and I support any who wish to foster these things among humanity. It is an essential aspect of my work as a teacher to try and bring awareness of these values across the "walls" where "good fences" do not "make good neighbors". Worth a read on many levels, and of much redeeming value, but a very agenda-driven (even if a positive and beautiful agenda) narrative that is not necessarily very historical. Perhaps if I hadn't been reading so much of the history of violence and warfare recently, including Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined", this wouldn't have bothered me so much, but these readings only brought what I had long known to the forefront of my mind and thus clashed with her reshapings of history.

[Edwin Setiadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The birth and evolution of religion

Karen Armstrong refer to it as the Axial Age. It was a period of time between 900 to 200 BC where in 4 distinct regions the great world traditions came into being: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and mythology and philosophical rationalism in Greece.

These traditions bring us the likes of Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Confucius, Jeremiah, Euprides, Mencius, and the mystics of Upanishads. Even today, in times of spiritual and social crisis we constantly referred back to this period of time for guidance, as Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were all latter-day flowering of the original Axial Age.

So what prompted these 4 regions to develop a similar philosophy?

This book is about the history of that period of time. It is about the people and the conflicts, the drama, and the reconciliations.  About how spiritual and religious lives evolved, with all the stories exquisitely told in impressive detail and reads like 4 different epic colossal movies. It is quite literally 4 big historical accounts combined into one dense narrative.

Now, due to its incredible wealth of knowledge this book is not only heavy to read, but also challenging to summarize. But here are the 5 main points that I learned from the book:

Firstly, the 4 Axial Age traditions were born out of a reaction of their respective circumstance of the time. Confucius was born in the middle of lawless, battle-torn, region. The birth of the dark Greek mythology stems from a period of 400 years of darkness in that region due to war and hardship. The Axial Age in India began when the ritual reformers began to extract the conflict and agression from the sacrificial contest. While Israel started their Axial Age after the destruction of Jerusalem and the enforced deportation of the exiles to Babylonia, which then the priestly writers began to create a philosophy of reconciliation and non-violence.

Even in what Armstrong refer as “the final flowering of the Axial Age”, the prophet Muhammad (PBUH) lived in a violent society when old values were breaking down, before Islam arrises. Indeed, as Armstrong remarks, “[t]he religious traditions created during the Axial Age in all four regions were rooted in fear and pain.”

The second point of the book is, when the environment changes the religion changes along with it. One of the most common occurances of change is political move, which can sometimes include or emit a deity from a culture. For example, when King Solomon made diplomatic marriages with foreign princesses, the marriages include the merging of the gods in the royal cult, where they built temples for them in the hills outside Jerusalem.

Another example of the politics of gods is the story of Elijah. In the old Middle Eastern theology, El had appointed a deity to each of the nations: Yahweh was the god of Israel, Chemish the holy one of Moab, while Milkom was the god of Ammon. But some Israelites prophets felt that their god Yahweh would be undermined in the region if a king imported a foreign deity into the royal cult. Hence, during his time, Elijah tried to keep the god of Baal in Phonecia so that Yahweh would remain thriving as the local god, where the brutal story on how exactly he did it was told grippingly in the book.

Meanwhile, Yahweh Himself was originally one god among many others (He was a god of war), but later in the 6th century BC as the circumstances changed He too evolved to become the only God in the eyes of the worshipers, which in turn evolved to eventually become the sole God that we familiar with today.

Thirdly, when the religion gets too brutal or corrupted there will be a breakaway sect, such as Christianity from Judaism, Protestants from Catholic, and the many religion out of Hinduism like Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, while Islam fixed the problems of old Pagan faith that was no longer working in Arabian society.

Fourthly, all of the Axial Age changes had often occurred between two imperial-style ventures. The Indian Axial Age occurred after the demise of the Harappan Civilization and ended with the rise of the Mauryan empire. The Greek Axial Age transformation occurred between the Mycenaean kingdom and the Macedonian empire. The Chinese Axial Age got under way after the collapse of the Zhou dynasty and ended when Qin unified the warring states. And the Jews, who had suffered horribly from the imperial adventures in the region, had been propelled into their Axial Age after the destruction of their homeland and the trauma of deportation that severed their link with their past and thus forced them to start again.

And lastly, most of the Axial Age sages did not leave a book. Instead, their teachings were passed on orally, which was the custom back then. And their wisdom were eventually written down as a holy text long after they’re gone, which as you can imagine could be exposed to the many risks of human errors or misquotations or hidden agenda of the writers.

Hence, everything that have been written down ever since, everything that we now know in the modern society, are the product of many environmental changes, compromises, evolution, revolution, mergers and acquisitions, or even anihilation of deities and cults over a long and turmulous period of time.

So, in short: 1. The Axial Age were born as a response of a violent era 2. When the environment changes the religion changes with it 3. When the religion gets too brutal or corrupted there will be a breakaway sect 4. The Axial Age occurred between two imperial-style ventures 5. Most of the Axial Age sages did not leave a book, and their written wisdom could be exposed to the many “agency problems.”

Seeing this summary might prompt us to ask the next question: will this pattern repeat itself? Karen Armstrong remarks that reformation should be happening all the time, that religion cannot stand still. Because if they cannot adapt they will become obsolete and fade away, just like the many religious cults mentioned in the book that did not survive the Axial Age. And yes, according to Armstrong, we are now in the midst of a Second Axial Age.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book after reading Armstrong's wonderful book, "The Spiral Staircase." As a person who has never studied religious history, I lack the context for assessing Armstrong's treatment of the Axial Age during which major religions evolved versions of the Golden Rule. Her writing is very clear and easy to read, and she provides extensive documentation and explanations at the back. For me, the book was a captivating journey through a dimension of history that has fueled my curiosity. She stimulated me to read her other books, which I also found very valuable. A winner of a TED award, Armstrong is an important philosopher, humanitarian, and voice for peaceful communication among the world's religions.