[PDF] The Price Of Monotheism eBook

Author : Jan Assmann
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 25,19 MB
Release : 2009-10-29
Category : Religion
ISBN : 080477286X

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Nothing has so radically transformed the world as the distinction between true and false religion. In this nuanced consideration of his own controversial Moses the Egyptian, renowned Egyptologist Jan Assmann answers his critics, extending and building upon ideas from his previous book. Maintaining that it was indeed the Moses of the Hebrew Bible who introduced the true-false distinction in a permanent and revolutionary form, Assmann reiterates that the price of this monotheistic revolution has been the exclusion, as paganism and heresy, of everything deemed incompatible with the truth it proclaims. This exclusion has exploded time and again into violence and persecution, with no end in sight. Here, for the first time, Assmann traces the repeated attempts that have been made to do away with this distinction since the early modern period. He explores at length the notions of primary versus secondary religions, of "counter-religions," and of book religions versus cultic religions. He also deals with the entry of ethics into religion's very core. Informed by the debate his own work has generated, he presents a compelling lesson in the fluidity of cultural identity and beliefs.

Author : Rodney Stark
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 24,92 MB
Release : 2003-04-13
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780691115009

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Western history would be unrecognizable had it not been for people who believed in One True God. There would have been wars, but no religious wars. There would have been moral codes, but no Commandments. Had the Jews been polytheists, they would today be only another barely remembered people, less important, but just as extinct as the Babylonians. Had Christians presented Jesus to the Greco-Roman world as ''another'' God, their faith would long since have gone the way of Mithraism. And surely Islam would never have made it out of the desert had Muhammad not removed Allah from the context of Arab paganism and proclaimed him as the only God. The three great monotheisms changed everything. With his customary clarity and vigor, Rodney Stark explains how and why monotheism has such immense power both to unite and to divide. Why and how did Jews, Christians, and Muslims missionize, and when and why did their efforts falter? Why did both Christianity and Islam suddenly become less tolerant of Jews late in the eleventh century, prompting outbursts of mass murder? Why were the Jewish massacres by Christians concentrated in the cities along the Rhine River, and why did the pogroms by Muslims take place mainly in Granada? How could the Jews persist so long as a minority faith, able to withstand intense pressures to convert? Why did they sometimes assimilate? In the final chapter, Stark also examines the American experience to show that it is possible for committed monotheists to sustain norms of civility toward one another. A sweeping social history of religion, One True God shows how the great monotheisms shaped the past and created the modern world.

Author : Jan Assmann
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 29,72 MB
Release : 2009-06-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0674020308

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Moses is at the foundation of monotheism, and so of Western culture. Here the factual and fictional events and characters in religious beliefs are studied. It traces monotheism back to the Egyptian king Akhenaten and shows how Moses's followers established truth by denouncing all others as false.

Author : Sigmund Freud
Publisher : Leonardo Paolo Lovari
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 36,36 MB
Release : 2016-11-24
Category : History
ISBN : 8898301790

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The book consists of three essays and is an extension of Freud’s work on psychoanalytic theory as a means of generating hypotheses about historical events. Freud hypothesizes that Moses was not Hebrew, but actually born into Ancient Egyptian nobility and was probably a follower of Akhenaten, an ancient Egyptian monotheist. Freud contradicts the biblical story of Moses with his own retelling of events, claiming that Moses only led his close followers into freedom during an unstable period in Egyptian history after Akhenaten (ca. 1350 BCE) and that they subsequently killed Moses in rebellion and later combined with another monotheistic tribe in Midian based on a volcanic God, Jahweh. Freud explains that years after the murder of Moses, the rebels regretted their action, thus forming the concept of the Messiah as a hope for the return of Moses as the Saviour of the Israelites. Freud said that the guilt from the murder of Moses is inherited through the generations; this guilt then drives the Jews to religion to make them feel better.

Author : Polymnia Athanassiadi
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 31,31 MB
Release : 1999-07-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0191541451

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In this book distinguished experts from a range of disciplines (Orientalists, philologists, philosophers, theologians and historians) address a central problem which lies at the heart of the religious and philosophical debate of late antiquity. Paganism was not a unified tradition and consequently the papers cover a wide social and intellectual spectrum. Particular emphasis is given to several aspects of the topic: first, monotheistic belief in late antique philosophical ideals and its roots in classical antiquity and the Near East; second, monistic Gnosticism; third, the revelatory tradition as expressed in oracular literature; and finally, the monotheistic trend in popular religion.

Author : Jan Assmann
Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 38,28 MB
Release : 2008-06-17
Category : History
ISBN : 0299225534

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For thousands of years, our world has been shaped by biblical monotheism. But its hallmark—a distinction between one true God and many false gods—was once a new and radical idea. Of God and Gods explores the revolutionary newness of biblical theology against a background of the polytheism that was once so commonplace. Jan Assmann, one of the most distinguished scholars of ancient Egypt working today, traces the concept of a true religion back to its earliest beginnings in Egypt and describes how this new idea took shape in the context of the older polytheistic world that it rejected. He offers readers a deepened understanding of Egyptian polytheism and elaborates on his concept of the “Mosaic distinction,” which conceives an exclusive and emphatic Truth that sets religion apart from beliefs shunned as superstition, paganism, or heresy. Without a theory of polytheism, Assmann contends, any adequate understanding of monotheism is impossible. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the Public Library Association

Author : Bob Becking
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 33,99 MB
Release : 2002-02-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0567232123

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The view of ancient Israelite religion as monotheistic has long been traditional in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, religions that have elaborated in their own way the biblical image of a single male deity. But recent archaeological findings of texts and images from the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their neighbourhood offer a quite different impression. Two issues in particular raised by these are the existence of a female consort, Asherah, and the implication for monotheism; and the proliferation of pictorial representations that may contradict the biblical ban on images. Was the religion of ancient Israel really as the Bible would have us believe? This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to these issues, presenting the relevant inscriptions and discussing their possible impact for Israelite monotheism, the role of women in the cult, and biblical theology.

Author : Jan Assmann
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 50,16 MB
Release : 2020-03-24
Category : Bibles
ISBN : 0691203199

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A groundbreaking account of how the Book of Exodus shaped fundamental aspects of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam The Book of Exodus may be the most consequential story ever told. But its spectacular moments of heaven-sent plagues and parting seas overshadow its true significance, says Jan Assmann, a leading historian of ancient religion. The story of Moses guiding the enslaved children of Israel out of captivity to become God's chosen people is the foundation of an entirely new idea of religion, one that lives on today in many of the world's faiths. First introduced in Exodus, new ideas of faith, revelation, and above all covenant transformed basic assumptions about humankind’s relationship to the divine and became the bedrock of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Author : John Corrigan
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 39,32 MB
Release : 2016-01-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1317347005

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Thematic examination of monotheistic religions The second edition of Jews, Christians, Muslims: A Comparative Introduction to Monotheistic Religions, compares Judaism, Christianity, and Islam using seven common themes which are equally relevant to each tradition. Provoking critical thinking, this text addresses the cultural framework of religious meanings and explores the similarities and differences among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as it explains the ongoing process of interpretation in each religion. The book is designed for courses in Western and World Religions.

Author : James K. Hoffmeier
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 23,26 MB
Release : 2015-01-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0199792143

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Pharaoh Akhenaten, who reigned for seventeen years in the fourteenth century B.C.E, is one of the most intriguing rulers of ancient Egypt. His odd appearance and his preoccupation with worshiping the sun disc Aten have stimulated academic discussion and controversy for more than a century. Despite the numerous books and articles about this enigmatic figure, many questions about Akhenaten and the Atenism religion remain unanswered. In Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism, James K. Hoffmeier argues that Akhenaten was not, as is often said, a radical advocating a new religion, but rather a primitivist: that is, one who reaches back to a golden age and emulates it. Akhenaten's inspiration was the Old Kingdom (2650-2400 B.C.E.), when the sun-god Re/Atum ruled as the unrivaled head of the Egyptian pantheon. Hoffmeier finds that Akhenaten was a genuine convert to the worship of Aten, the sole creator God, based on the Pharoah's own testimony of a theophany, a divine encounter that launched his monotheistic religious odyssey. The book also explores the Atenist religion's possible relationship to Israel's religion, offering a close comparison of the hymn to the Aten to Psalm 104, which has been identified by scholars as influenced by the Egyptian hymn. Through a careful reading of key texts, artworks, and archaeological studies, Hoffmeier provides compelling new insights into a religion that predated Moses and Hebrew monotheism, the impact of Atenism on Egyptian religion and politics, and the aftermath of Akhenaten's reign.