For thousands of years, devotees of the world’s dominant religions- Judaism, Christianity and Islam- have wrestled with the conception of God. Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun, is acclaimed for her work titled A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, an academic study that guides readers along humanity’s quest to trace the evolution of God. Her theories examine the images of a deity as an idea versus a symbol in religious ethos while demonstrating the interrelation of Christian, Islamic and Jewish understandings of the divine. Although the title is ambitious and demands attention, I will be assessing Armstrong’s ability to articulate each historical academic, the organization of her writing including …show more content…
This would have enhanced the reader’s understanding of her theories; however, the author seems to have overlooked this aspect. To some extent, the author’s poor presentation causes the quality of her work to suffer.
Armstrong drives the quality of her work even further. From ancient philosophies and mysticism to the Enlightenment, and the Reformation, Karen Armstrong poorly arranges the structure of her text. Although the author provides the readers with a chronological order of religious happenings, she exceeds the limit. For an introductory text, the author makes excessive references to various philosophers, reformers and their theories.
Armstrong mentions, “Luria gave a new meaning to the original image of the exile of the Shekinah. It will be recalled that in the Talmud, the Rabbis had seen the Shekinah voluntarily going to exile with the Jews after the destruction of the Temple” (1). As an author, her writing preference seems to be to use numerous examples to validate her theories. Though Armstrong has a lot of knowledge of religious history, she fails to maintain a consistent writing style within her
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Being a scholar in religious studies we (the readers) hope that Armstrong would introduce new ideologies gradually. Instead, the author makes parts of her text difficult to read by frequently using complex terms and unfamiliar names of scholars. “King Uzziah of Judah had died that year and was succeeded by his son Azha. After the death of King Jeroboam II, five kings had sat on the throne between 746 and 736, while King Tigleth Pilesar III, king of Assyria….” (Armstrong, 40). Her attempt to captivate the reader weakens as the reader may not know anything about the people whom she is referring to. Furthermore, the reader becomes unfocused, struggles to grasp an understanding of key ideas and additional theories. As an author, her writing style relies on the use of numerous examples to validate her theories. But to create a more comprehensible work, Armstrong should have made her book more coherent and relatable to the reader. The use of several examples hurts the reader, in a way that makes religious ideas confusing and, at the same time, boring the reader with these unfamiliar religious
Evans, C. Stephen. Critical Dialog in Philosophy of Religion. 1985. Downers Grove, IL. InterVarsity Press. Taken from Philosophy of Religion - Selected Readings, Fourth Edition. 2010. Oxford University Press, NY.
Niles, Patricia. “The Enlightenment.” Novaonline. Niles and C.T. Evans, 7 May 2011. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. .
Jenkins, Phillips. The Lost History of Christianity. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008. Print. Phillips, Jonathan.
In the book A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, Madame Guyon touches on how one can accept all things God through prayer. Through the simple steps of meditation and reading accompanied by meditation, Madame Guyon teaches the reader how to use those steps to have a relationship with God. As a person of the Quietism faith in the seventeenth century, Madam Guyon was going against the norm of the church structure. Not only was she advocating people did not need to go to weekly services, but she was also going against the male’s leaders of the church. One of the questions this book can help historians to answer is how religion shaped everyday life. However, the readers need to keep in mind the biases surrounding this book. This is just one of the many religious books of the seventeenth century and viewing the book from a 21nd mindset. Madame Guyon was one of the few female religious leaders in the seventeenth century France.
The authors Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey's essay is credible because they both have knowledge and experience regarding the topic and researched various parts of the topic using reliable sources. Along with this essay, Charles Colson has written thirty books which have received much praise among the Christian community. He has also received many awards including the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1993, the Presidential Citizen's Medal
The. 1987 Lopez, Kathryn Muller. Read Daniel: Negotiating The Classic Issues Of The Book. Review & Expositor 109.4 (2012): 521-530. ATLASerials, a Religion Collection.
"EXPLORING THEOLOGY 1 & 2." EXPLORING THEOLOGY 1 2. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
A. “The Church in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution”. Verbal Conscience. March 2012. Web. The Web.
Proving to be the paramount of the conflict between faith and reason, the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century challenged each of the traditional values of that age. Europeans were changing, but Europe’s institutions were not keeping pace with that change.1 Throughout that time period, the most influential and conservative institution of Europe, the Roman Catholic Church, was forced into direct confrontation with these changing ideals. The Church continued to insist that it was the only source of truth and that all who lived beyond its bounds were damned; it was painfully apparent to any reasonably educated person, however, that the majority of the world’s population were not Christians.2 In the wake of witch hunts, imperial conquest, and an intellectual revolution, the Roman Catholic Church found itself threatened by change on all fronts.3 The significant role that the Church played during the Enlightenment was ultimately challenged by the populace’s refusal to abide by religious intolerance, the power of the aristocracy and Absolutism, and the rising popularity of champions of reform and print culture, the philosophes, who shared a general opposition to the Roman Catholic Church.
Since the beginning of time, religion has played one of the most significant roles within human existence and has been believed to be the source whereby our governing laws have been derived. However, dating back to as early as the 3rd to 6th century, Greek philosophers inclusive of Diagoras of Melos, Euhemerus, alongside the schools of Hindu philosophy, Samkhya and the Greek Cyrenaic School were all amongst some of the first who did not accept the idea of God (Friedrich, 1942, 25). In the 7th century and during the Early Middle Ages, undergoing the Golden Age, the idea of knowledge was emphasised amongst the Muslim world, translating and collaborating knowledge from all over the world, giving rise to a group of people known as the Dahriyya who were the ‘holders of materialistic opinions of vari...
Smart, Ninian. "Blackboard, Religion 100." 6 March 2014. Seven Dimensions of Religion. Electronic Document. 6 March 2014.
While most westerners know the story of Joseph as a passage from the end of the book of Genesis in the Bible or the Torah, understanding the story and its intricacies in sura 12 of the Qur’an proves equally important. Joseph’s story in Genesis emphasizes his personal abilities and God rewarding him and his people’s loyalty and faith amidst hardship. The Qur’an takes the same plot and enforces the theme of monotheism and Joseph’s prophetic role in its spread. The Qur’an’s interpretation serves as a more influential religious text in the context of its body of belief, whereas the Biblical story of Joseph, with its thematically intriguing story line and embellishments, comparatively serves a greater literary purpose. By reading and understanding both passages, one can gain a clearer knowledge of what is regarded as important to the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths.
Kerr, H. (1990). Readings in christian thought (2nd ed.). H. T. Kerr (Ed.). Nashville: Abingdon Press.
Kohn, Risa Levitt, and Rebecca Moore. A Portable God: The Origin of Judaism and Christianity. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Print.
Moreover, the main character of this arguably structural fictional novel, travelogue and biography, which encompasses both historical and biographical events, begins his journey through the truths of studying eleventh century Egypt. Amitav places himself in the story as a doctoral student who is given the opportunity to study social anthropology. As we learned and discussed throughout this course, there are a variety of methods in which to study religion. Social anthropology focuses on“the study of human beings and societies viewed primarily as both the creators and the creations of culture . . . sociology of religion . . . focuses its attention on social behavior and the way in which religion interacts with other dimension...