A History of God

Title: A History of God

Author: Karen Armstrong

Publisher: Vintage, 1999 (First published 1993)

ISBN: 9780099273677

Pages: 511

Men always believed in god – some god, be it a force of nature, one among a pantheon, a personal one or a universal one. It helped mankind find solace among the manifest evil of their day to day lives. They thought him to be an arbiter of human affairs providing justice and fairness in all transactions. Many attributes were added to him in due course, like omnipotence and omniscience. This obviously created practical difficulties. How can an omnipotent god allow evil to thrive in the midst of his followers? Citing a case from recent memory, many Jews thought that god was dead in the gas chambers and torture rooms of Auschwitz. Philosophers stepped in to provide a way out of the paradox by traditionally assigning transcendence to god and making him detached from this world. Armstrong traces the story of the birth and development of the concept of divinity from ancient Sumer to the end of the last century. The book is very relevant to our society which is racked with suicide bombers encouraged to waste their own as well as of a good many innocent ones, by the misguided conception of a god. The author opines that in order to face the spiritual challenges of a new century, we need to have a look at the history of god and hence the relevance of this book. Coming from an author who had been a nun once, this book is written with the sharpness one would associate with a person of the priestly class. Though she has lost faith in god, the book is written in an objective way – never once allowing the author’s personal faith stand in the way of narration.

An excellent coverage of the origin of the concept of divinity in the middle-eastern region is presented. Earliest civilizations came up with a belief system that was thankful to the godhead for creating order by dispelling chaos. Sumerian origin myths appearing in the litany of Enuma Elish speak about a featureless watery realm existing in the beginning, on to which life forms and geographical features were created by god. Armstrong argues that this is a distant memory of the swampy land of the ancestors of the Sumerian people. Their brave act of creating a civilization from the primal disorder is projected on to a god who is credited with creation of the world. Paganism ruled the world in that distant era. They surmised a bewildering multiplicity of gods who were worshipped in the form of idols, poles, trees or mountains and others. Contrary to popular belief that the pagans considered the idols to be gods, the author asserts that it was a monotheist conceit to accuse their rivals of worshiping material objects. The devotee offers his prayers to the divinity who is ‘represented’ in the idol and not the material itself. Ask any practicing Hindu even now, and he will cheerfully declare that he is only worshiping an aspect of the god which transcends the material world. Similarly, paganism is inherently tolerant as there is always room for another god. Then comes the contrast with monotheism, as represented by its oldest representative, Judaism. The world first glimpsed a vengeful god full of jealousy against other gods and his prophets steeped in intolerance and violent usurpation of other religions. We read about Yahweh asking his followers to attack pagans and to ‘tear down their altars, smash their standing stones, cut down their sacred poles and set fire to their idols’ (Exodus 34:13). The modern world is still reeling under the harmful effects of strict monotheism in the form of terrorism. But the author, writing before the onset of suicidal jihad, does not make this logical conclusion, which is apparent now. Armstrong also notes that the status of women went down as monotheistic religions having a male divinity gained ground. Gone were the days when pagan gods and goddesses shared their fortunes with their followers.

The book gives an enlightening discussion on the development of the concept and nature of divinity ascribed on Jesus in the first four centuries of the Common Era. He is described as a man without the trappings of being a god in the gospel according to Mark, which was the oldest. It is curious to note that as the further gospels came along, more miracles and deification had taken place on the person of the revolutionary carpenter of Galilee. Early Christian fathers found it difficult to sell the Jewish god to gentiles from across the Roman world. St. Paul took Christianity out of the confines of Judaism as a replacement to pagan beliefs of Rome. Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, adapted the Jewish god to Roman sensibilities by cloaking him with Greek philosophy. Concepts of trinity and divinity of Jesus seemed to contradict the fundamental precept of monotheism. In response to theological counter-arguments, Church developed its dogma. The first clash of belief systems occurred in 325 CE at the First Council of Nicaea, when the heresy of Arrius was soundly defeated by Athanasius. With the conversion of Emperor Constantine, Christianity became the official religion. The philosophy of god in the religion was further enriched by Augustine, and after the end of the first four centuries, it had solidified beyond revision or redemption.

When it comes to Islam, we see the author shedding all traces of disinterested skepticism and approving its tenets wholeheartedly, at face value. The uncritical acceptance of Islamic ideas is in marked contrast to the attitude shown towards Judaic and Christian precepts. We see verbatim reproductions about the beauty of structure and poetic nature of the Arabic language expressed in the Koran, as seen in propaganda literature handed out by Islamic proselytes. She even goes to the extreme as saying that “Muhammad preached an ethic we might call socialist” (p.167). In a bid to stress on the universal acceptance of religious truth by Islam, Armstrong argues that if Muhammad had known about Hinduism and Buddhism, he’d have included their religious sages as prophets (p.178). This is far from convincing and may even be shown to be entirely false. Seventh-century Arabia had a flourishing trade with India, and Mecca was a prominent trading post in Hijaz. Even if he was not aware of these Indian religions, the Koran is not Muhammad’s word – it is the word of god revealed through the Prophet. Surely, god knew about the existence of these religions? Another outrageous suggestion is that the Koran grants women equal status! This is thrust into our throats with a pinch of salt in the assertion that veiling of women was a Persian custom adopted by their Muslim conquerors. Nobody was said to be forced into accepting Islam, but its rapid spread to North Africa is offhandedly explained away as the result of Arab imperialism. Why this hypocrisy is hard to imagine.

If the readers had any doubts about what is in religion in addition to an all-pervading god, an exhaustive discussion on what happened in philosophical discourses that run from dark ages to the present is given. Most of the readers would find this tedious and boring. This is definitely not due to any incompetence or lack of preparation on the part of the author. On the contrary, every effort has been made to condense the arguments in a few paragraphs and in lucid style. Salient points of the systems proposed by a lot of philosophers over the centuries are neatly catalogued. But lengthy narratives on god, transcendence and spirit are bound to elicit a yawn from most of us lay men. The failasufs (practitioners of Falsafah, from which the word philosophy came into vogue) made deep study on every aspect of Islam’s seemingly straightforward monotheism. Muid ad-Din ibn al-Arabi, a Spanish mystic in the Umayyad period, is noted for the tolerance advocated in his works. Sufism also tried to make Islam mellow. The physical success made possible by its armies made Islam accommodative and poised to conquer Europe when the axe fell in the form of Renaissance. The Reformation and Enlightenment that followed it, made Europe at the forefront of material development. Discovery and conquest of the New World made it vigorous. Islam suddenly found itself on the back foot. It succumbed to fundamentalist doctrines like Wahhabism propounded by Mohammed ibn al-Wahhab in Saudi Arabia. Exactly at this point, Europe turned to reason and secularism. Whereas the word ‘atheist’ was used disparagingly as a nasty slur even till the Middle Ages, it acquired the overtones of a badge of honour. It is curious to compare atheists of today with Christians and Jews who were called atheists by pagan Romans.

The book’s extensive coverage is limited to the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Some traces of Buddhist philosophy is included, which is more of a comparative nature. It gives undue significance to medieval practices like mysticism by giving it a good press in assertions like “even though there are obvious differences between medieval mysticism and modern psychiatric therapy, both disciplines have evolved similar techniques to achieve healing and personal integration” (p.290). The book is adorned with an extensive index and a thorough bibliography.

The book is recommended only to serious readers.

Rating: 3 Star

India - A History

Title: India – A History

Author: John Keay

Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2007 (First published 2000)

ISBN: 9780007259281

Pages: 576

In fables and legends we come across the story of a magic pill, having the size of a small pea but containing the nourishing potential of a hundred feasts. Such stories are not amenable to rational thinking, but this book is a real case in point, in which the entire history of the Indian subcontinent from the pre-Harappan age to the ascent of Prime Minister Vajpayee is condensed in a brilliant saga told over 534 pages of absorbing narrative. As can be expected when the history of five millennia is being told, the author has to be very careful in not venturing too deep into the historical waters. John Keay is immensely successful in achieving his objective without omitting any important event or personality even while presenting almost all there is to it, in a nutshell. With a heart deeply sympathetic to the Indian spirit, Keay sails through centuries of rule and misrule by Hindu kings and Muslim sultans to reach the British period. Astonishingly for an Indophile, the author inspects the pre-Independence politics with a distinctly skeptic viewpoint that is also critical of the nationalist perspective. Barring a few minor glitches like failing to distinguish between the various hues of right-wing politics like that of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS, the book is essentially free from factual errors. Wherever an event can be interpreted both ways, Keay’s locus is strictly anti-nationalist. Even though John Keay needs no introduction, it may be noted that he lives in Scotland and is the author of three acclaimed histories on India.

A delectably objective narrative of ancient India ending with the invasion of Alexander can be found in these pages. Keay’s work combines extensive research and wit, without losing sight of the relevance of incidents to present-day society. India always took pride in its culture, which was thought to be established on the soil from time immemorial. The realization came about during the British Raj and it is only natural to conceive a pride in one’s past in a bid to keep one’s head high above the high-tide line of oppression by foreign aggressors – both on the economical and cultural spheres. The remains of a great civilization were found in Harappa and Mohenjo Daro during the 20^th century. This confirmed what was till then only a hope of establishing the country’s heritage with something tangible to show off. The remains of the exquisite urban settlements tell eloquently of a people whose achievement could well contend for the title of the ‘cradle of civilizations’. Early archeologists thought the Harappan culture to be one of the mere outposts of the Sumerian, but later excavations have proved that the civilization was homemade, with remains of intermediate stages unearthed in sufficient numbers. The coming of the Aryans eclipsed these urban dwellers. By invasion or assimilation, Aryans obtained hegemony in society and Vedic literature dawned on the world. All this time, migration to the east continued, bringing more and more of the Ganga plains under cultivation. For hunter-gatherers, land is of marginal importance that could be brought under communal control for enjoyment by all. When agriculture predominated, as seen in the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata and the Puranas, individual property rights became essential. Local republics like the Gana Sanghas gave way to kingdoms. Buddhist texts describe the events in the Ganga valley in more detail. Alexander’s invasion, though it did not bring in any immediate revolutionary change, was instrumental in opening up India’s minds and geography to outside influence.

British historians first began the practice of dividing Indian history into the Hindu, Muslim and British periods, loosely based on chronology as the ancient, medieval and modern eras. Leftist historians take them to task for studying history on religious lines, but this book also follows this line. Keay has also followed the politically correct way; by employing delicate care not to aggrandize anything nationalist historians may find it worthwhile to cater to their constituency. Thus, Shivaji doesn’t get any credit for his strict policy not to desecrate mosques, the Koran and not to seize women (as conceded by Keay himself). But the hordes of sultans and bigoted Mughals who indulged in desecration and demolition of temples, rape and pillage of Hindu kingdoms and women and conversion as an instrument of state policy are condoned by construing such acts as ‘natural’ actions to collect booty from conquered territories, victor’s natural right to confiscate anything considered valuable by the vanquished and an attempt to swell the ranks of the minority who was ruling the land, respectively. In a clear reflection on the priorities of the Delhi sultans, Keay quotes Balban, who ruled from 1265 to 1287, regarding the circumstances which forced his hand in temporarily stopping the conquest of neighbouring Hindu kingdoms and to stay put in Delhi trying to ward off a likely Mongol raid. Balban says that, “if this anxiety as guardians and protectors of Mussulmans were removed, I would not stay one day in my capital, but would lead forth my army to capture treasures and valuables, elephants and horses and would never allow the Rais and Ranas [i.e., the rajputs and other Hindus] to repose in quiet at a distance” (p.248). We can’t expect modern-day ideals of equality or enlightenment from a bigotedly barbarous medieval sultan, but treating the vast majority of his subjects to a status not much above that of animals and never a moment of care about their welfare helps to explain the extreme backwardness of the country on all parameters of economic wellbeing when at last it stepped on to modernity. Vast amounts of treasure in gold, gems and jewelry were amassed as war booty and taken out of the country, impoverishing it for centuries to come. In fact, India has still not freed herself from the adverse impact of economic pillage that continued throughout the medieval era.

When he reaches the 20^th century, the author gives a version of events that is considerably at variance with the Congress-centric narrative common in India. While Indian children learn in their classrooms that Curzon’s partition of Bengal in 1905 was a deliberate ploy of ‘Divide and Rule’, implying that the division of Bengal into Hindu and Muslim majority areas was designed to drive a wedge between the two communities, Keay argues that Curzon made a division which was already there in the minds of the adherents of India’s two most numerous religions. He quotes a League leader who remarked that “we divide and you rule”, and buttresses this argument with what happened when elections to provisional assemblies were conducted in accordance with the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935. In the meanwhile, bowing to extensive agitation by Congress, Britain had annulled the partition of Bengal. In the combined province, Muslims constituted the majority which became painfully evident to Congressmen in Bengal when their party faced a rout at the hustings. Demand then arose from them for a separate electorate for Hindus on the lines of those granted to minorities. Keay concludes that this incident was the real reason for the spar between Subhash Chandra Bose who hailed from Bengal and Nehru’s official faction within the Congress. In the end, Gandhi intervened against Bose, whose only option then was to get out of the party. He conspired against the government’s war effort. Arrested and charged for sedition, Bose escaped narrowly from house arrest and allied with Hitler and Japan’s Tojo. Finding an easy puppet for legitimising its already planned invasion of India, Japan placed him on the forefront of the war in the guise of a hastily constituted Indian National Army (INA). They occupied the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and declared India’s independence there. Keay notes with irony that Bose ended up in those islands – which contained a penal colony that housed people convicted and transported – exactly where he would have gone, had he not fled India. He also finds fault with Congress’ totally uncooperative stand towards the British when they proclaimed India’s participation in the Second World War without consultation or consent of Indians. The Muslim League freely collaborated with the government. This might have helped them gain advantage over the Congress when the issue of partition of the country heated up after the war’s conclusion.

The book contains some assertions which may seem controversial. One is that the Pallavas of early Tamil Nadu were descendants of the Pahlavi/Parthian interlopers who reached India from Iran. It also clearly brings out the vast uncertainties in dates of kingdoms and societies as ancient India was not very enthusiastic in history writing. Even with this huge doubt on the chronology, we find a few Indians attributing impossibly antique time periods for the country’s earliest dynasties and origin of religious literature like the Vedas and epics. The book is a classic as far as its subject matter is concerned, and endowed with a large number of monochrome photographs, an extensive index, a comprehensive list of bibliography and enlightening footnotes collected at the end of the book. This book is written in an impeccable style celebrating the author’s extraordinary mastery over unlocking the beauty of English language. The size of letters is somewhat small, which may cause some difficulty to readers.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Killing Jesus

Title: Killing Jesus – A History

Author: Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard

Publisher: Macmillan, 2013 (First)

ISBN: 9781447252665

Pages: 293

A dramatic rendering of the Biblical text, with a touch of historical characters in the background.

Killing Jesus is the third in the series put out by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. The first two are titled ‘Killing Kennedy’ and ‘Killing Lincoln’, the two American presidents who were assassinated. The intention is to put the event in the right historical perspective by narrating the background which led to the event, the prominent characters involved in the incident, its aftermath and the grim personal experiences of the deceased. Even though I have not read the first two, the historical honesty of them is not to be doubted, as the protagonists lived so near to us in time. But attempting the story of narrating the killing of Jesus Christ is a tremendous effort, judging from the vastness of time which separates Him from us and the wide divergence of cultural ethos that existed in ancient Palestine and today’s world. While there is no question of refuting the opening line of the book that ‘Jesus of Nazareth was the most influential man who ever lived’, it is equally true that no historical evidence exists that depicts him as a human being. The gospels are our only sources of information. All later works are simply borrowings from the Holy Book. Under such circumstances, we can only conclude that this book is just a feeble effort to present a few Bible stories under the guise of history. The Holy Bible is the world’s most read book, which is presented in numerous versions and all languages so as to appeal to all classes of people. This book is also one among them, which ascribes historical authenticity to stories in the New Testament.

The state of suppressed unrest that prevailed in Palestine at the time of Jesus is clearly brought out in the text. The land was under Roman occupation, but some form of autonomy was provided. Herod ruled as the governor of Rome with an iron hand, but being a Jew, he provided some semblance of local authority. After his death, the country was divided into Galilee in the north and Judaea in the south. The former was ruled by Herod Antipas, a Jew. The Romans couldn’t find any native worthy enough to administer Judea that also included Jerusalem. This area was then looked after by the Roman prelate himself – Pontius Pilate, who walked into history as the man who ceremonially washed his hands pure off the crime of crucifying Jesus. He was under strict orders from Emperor Tiberius not to meddle with Jewish religion. This gave a carte blanche to Caiaphas, the high priest of the Temple in Jerusalem. He could accuse anybody of heresy or who tried to interfere with rituals and condemn them to death. As a mark of superiority of the occupying power, it was insisted that such sentences of death need to be corroborated by Pilate. Caiaphas and his entourage converted the temple into a centre of profit, by obtaining a cut on every cash transaction inside it, in the form of sale of sacrificial lambs, doves and money changers. Besides this, the ordinary people reeled under the yoke of excessive taxation. The expenses incurred by Rome in maintaining a garrison and Roman roads need to be defrayed in addition to grand tributes to the emperor. The Jewish governors themselves indulged in magnificent construction projects that drained the money out of the rural poor. The famished society of Galilee was thus ripe for a rebellion for economic causes alone. This was complemented on the religious side by unfulfilled prophecies in scriptures that trumpeted about a savior who would appear in their midst and shake off the immense burden from their shoulders. All these factors contributed to Jesus’ efforts to rally the people to his cause. What the people and the authorities didn’t understand was that his kingdom was of heaven and not of this world.

For reasons best known to themselves, the authors deliberately paint a very debased picture of the Roman Empire and the men who ran it. Countless details of wanton cruelty, perverted sexual acts and extreme depths of immorality flood the pages whenever a historical discussion is presented in this book. The torture inflicted on Jesus by Roman soldiers just prior to crucifixion is described in excruciating detail bordering on revulsion from readers. It seems that the authors were carried away by extreme passion! Even though it claims to be a historical work on the title, the relationship between it and true history is a very tenuous one. It claims that a dove came to rest on Jesus’ person at the time of his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist. The historical source of this curious observation cited in the book is that this incident is vividly described in all four gospels! When there are differences among gospels, it is attributed to the separation in time between the compilation of the gospels. When they agree on a point, it is ‘overwhelming evidence’ of the ‘authenticity’ of that event. Such is the convoluted logic of this book. In order to put on a cloak of historicity, the book includes a few chapters on real Roman emperors, but of course, by demonizing them and their pagan ways. Blind assertions that are not at all anchored on fact abound in this book, such as “Jesus was born in the spring of either 6 or 5 BC is based on clear historical evidence” (p.21), “there is growing acceptance of the gospels’ overall historicity and authenticity” (p.22) and “women in Jesus’ time were considered equal to men” (p.147). The book assumes that the Magi made their journey from Persia to pay obeisance to new born Jesus, on the flimsy argument that some Chinese astronomers had recorded the sighting of a comet on the western sky around 5 BC. Josephus and Philo are the historians on whom O’Reilly and Dugard heavily leans on, but their dubious distinction as historians mar the narrative’s objectivity. The book is gifted with a good index and a brief description on the sources of reference material.

This book is a compilation of stories from the Bible. But they are told in an appealing way and hence this book is recommended as a work of fiction.

Rating: 3 Star