By Karen Armstrong
"An admirable and ambitious paintings of synthesis that may supply perception and delight to hundreds of thousands of lay readers."
THE WASHINGTON publish e-book WORLD
In this stunningly clever publication, Karen Armstrong, certainly one of Britain's premiere commentators on spiritual affairs, strains the background of ways women and men have perceived and skilled God, from the time of Abraham to the current. From classical philsophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the trendy age of skepticism, Karen Armstrong plays the close to miracle of distilling the highbrow heritage of monotheism into one fantastically readable quantity, destined to take its position as a vintage.
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Additional info for A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Theirs will be a Temple of the Spirit; rather than the previous animal sacrifices, they purified themselves and sought forgiveness of sins by means of baptismal ceremonies and communal foodstuff. God may stay in a loving brotherhood, now not in a stone temple. the main revolutionary of all of the Jews of Palestine have been the Pharisees, who discovered the answer of the Essenes too elitist. within the New testomony, the Pharisees are depicted as whited sepulchres and blatant hypocrites. this is often a result of distortions of first century polemic. The Pharisees have been passionately religious Jews. They believed that the complete of Israel used to be known as to be a holy kingdom of monks. God should be found in the humblest domestic in addition to within the Temple. accordingly, they lived just like the legit priestly caste, watching the targeted legislation of purity that utilized simply to the Temple of their personal houses. They insisted on consuming their foodstuff in a country of formality purity simply because they believed that the desk of each unmarried Jew was once like God's altar within the Temple. They cultivated a feeling of God's presence within the smallest aspect of everyday life. Jews may now technique him at once with no the mediation of a priestly caste and an intricate ritual. they can make amends for their sins via acts of loving-kindness to their neighbour; charity was once an important mitzvah within the Torah; while or 3 Jews studied the Torah jointly, God used to be of their midst. throughout the early years of the century, rival faculties had emerged: one led by means of Shammai the Elder, which used to be extra rigorous, and the opposite led through the good Rabbi Hillel the Elder, which grew to become by way of some distance the most well-liked Pharisaic celebration. there's a tale that in the future a pagan had approached Hillel and informed him that he will be prepared to transform to Judaism, if the grasp may well recite the full of the Torah to him whereas he stood on one leg. Hillel responded: 'do no longer do unto others as you wouldn't have performed unto you. that's the complete of the Torah: move and research it. ' {77} via the disastrous 12 months 70, the Pharisees had turn into the main revered and demanding sect of Palestinian Judaism; that they had already proven their people who they didn't want a Temple to worship God, as this recognized tale exhibits: as soon as as Rabbi Yohannan ben Zakkai used to be coming forth from Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua after him and beheld the Temple in ruins. 'Woe unto us! ' Rabbi Joshua stated, 'that this, where the place the iniquities of Israel have been atoned for, is laid waste! ' 'My son,' Rabbi Yohannan acknowledged, 'be now not grieved. now we have one other atonement as powerful as this. and what's it? it truly is acts of loving kindness, because it is expounded: "For I wish mercy and never sacrifice. " ' {78} it really is acknowledged that when the conquest of Jerusalem, Rabbi Yohannan have been smuggled out of the burning urban in a coffin. He were against the Jewish insurrection and inspiration that the Jews will be with out a nation. The Romans allowed him to came upon a self-governing Pharisaic group at Jabneh, to the west of Jerusalem. comparable groups have been based in Palestine and Babylonia, which maintained shut hyperlinks.