The short
introduction tells of a
30cm 40,000-year-old statue of a Lion Man from
the Stadel Cave in southern
Germany. Homo Sapiens had an interest
in going beyond empirical evidence
and an appetite for an enhanced state of being
– the sacred. Beyond logical
reasoning in the left hemisphere of the brain,
there is a right hemisphere that
links to overall context, emotions and
empathy. We are surrounded by transcendence
and can go beyond our normal state by dance,
music, poetry, nature, sex or
sport as well as by religion. Our era is
dominated by logos, logic, and
concern
for ourselves. But several religious
traditions seek transcendence – going beyond
the self and learning to empty out “self” by kenosis.
That brings a
focus on empathy. The religions have
differences in emphasis. Some focus on the
cosmos; others focus on society. Chapter 1,
Israel: Remembering
in order to belong. Civilization
began around
3500 BCE in Sumer cities on the Mesopotamian
plain in today’s Iraq. It was an
agrarian society based on structural
inequality: an aristocracy and peasants in
serfdom. The biblical stories and the moral
codes for the aristocrats contain
variants of what was then in that area. Around
1600 BCE Egypt took control of areas
around the Nile delta where other groups had
settled. That included city
settlements in Canaan where Israel would
settle. References to Egypt include
these city settlements. Most of the religious
and behavioural codes that developed
were memorized. Anything written, scripture,
was intended to coerce moral code
compliance. The Israelites began as a
self-governing people in Canaan. Calls
for a king came later to address a threat from
the Philistine people. Then
followed King David’s united kingdom for
Israelites, and Solomon’s kingdom. The
wisdom and behavioural codes from Egypt and
Mesopotamia were associated with
David and Solomon. After this
period the kingdom split
and prophets emerged in both the Northern and
Southern Israelite kingdoms. Scripture
we would recognise came much after Solomon.
The Northern Kingdom fell to the
Assyrians and the leadership was exiled. It
vanished from history. Next the king
and aristocracy of the Southern Kingdom were
exiled to Babylon. Chapter 2,
India: Sound and
Silence. Aryan
pastoralists arrived in the Pakistan
area around 1500 BCE. Three hundred years
later a priestly elite began gathering
their Sanskrit hymns into the Rig Veda
(knowledge in verse) – publicly recited.
The Aryans slowly moved East to the Ganges.
They were rough hard-drinking cowboys
living by looting settled communities. The Rig
Vega celebrated this lifestyle.
The hymns contain accounts of cosmic battles.
There are “divas” associated
with the cosmos, like the miracle of dawn.
Then a mysterious all-encompassing reality
emerged evolving into “Brahman” in the 10th
century BCE. By the 9th
century BCE Aryans had settled
two agrarian states. This required social
stratification. A warrior caste now
did the raiding but also took part in the
agricultural life. The old order
became obsolete. New rites evolved. New hymns
were added to the Rig Veda. A diva
emerged that embodied the ultimate Brahman –
the mythical Prajapati, “the All”.
These changes were codified later - around 600
BCE. Attainment of the transcendent
required activity to win one’s place in the
world of the gods after death. Chapter 3,
China: The
Primacy of Ritual. Historical
China began with agriculture and small towns
for a nomadic hunting people, the
Shang, in the Great Plain of China around 1600
BCE. The king was a son of Di, God
most High. Princes ruling other cities used
names of heavenly vassals of Di - sun,
moon, stars, sky. The Zhou invaded around 1050
BCE and preserved this system
but linked Di to their Tian (heaven). An
oracle system began moving toward the Yijang,
“Classic of Changes”, that later produced
the view of a cosmic order of opposing
and complementary forces. The Zhou
established an educational
system, and Documents, a
record of practical government matters
like the “Mandate of Heaven.” This mandate
supposedly passed to the Zhou king because
he listened to the little people – the serfs.
Chinese
scripture does not separate
religion and politics. Heaven is a cosmic
force including justice and peace,
but it is not a personalised “god”. Ritual
myths of the Zhou conquest added to
the public readings with dancing to make a
performance of the scripture. Around
900 BCE slow decline set in. In
771 BCE
the Western Zhou capital fell and the kingdom
began to fragment. Around this
time, moderation and self-control with
appropriate behaviour at the court
became themes. Canons added to the Documents
scripture praised the character
of the ideal ruler. By the 7th century, new
and powerful states were forming around
the Great Plain that had little interest in
the virtues of the Zhou. Chapter 4,
New story; New
Self. The situations
of the Israelites,
Aryans and Chinese all changed and the
scriptures were reworked to better fit
the new circumstances. The Israeli
prophet Ezekiel expresses
his trauma from exile in Babylon. The
suffering and evolution of the exiles was
expressed in scripture. Remembering Zion by
recalling the memorized stories, hymns,
and laws that the exiles brought with them
gained new significance and these
elements were re-assembled to produce the
Hebrew Bible – a history with priestly
legislation, collected prophetic oracles,
psalms, and other wisdom writings. This
“jewel” is a narrative history with the book
of Deuteronomy as its “spine”. The
books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and
Numbers lie on one side of the spine:
Joshua through to Kings lie on the other. This
reworked scripture used the
theme of exile and return. The God of this
bible is elusive. This scripture and
related ritual served to preserve the
community in Babylon for their future
return to their homeland. The purity rituals,
formerly used only by priests, served
to create a community apart, but also brought
an ethical dimension – empathy and
egalitarianism with a call to treat the
stranger as one of themselves. In 530 BCE
Cyrus II of Persia conquered
Babylon. Cyrus sent Nehemiah to the former
province and to Jerusalem. Then Cyrus
sent Ezra, a priest and scribe, to establish
their law, the torah of
Moses, to be the law of that province. Ezra
called a meeting and from a high
platform read out loud the new law to the
assembled people. Ezra also gave a commentary
as he read that was divinely inspired.
Meaningful ritual was added. The former
priestly celebration of Sukkoth was changed
into a public ritual with the whole
population making shelters for themselves to
remember their ancestors’ years in
the wilderness. Several texts were re-written
to reflect things such as Jerusalem’s
destruction and the exile to Babylon. Ezra
restored ninety-four of the sacred
texts supposedly destroyed with the fall of
Jerusalem. In China
rulers on the edge of the Great
Plain sought more territory. They felt no
loyalty to the Zhou and little
respect for the rituals and teachings. The
principalities on the Plain felt
threatened. An aristocratic shift to luxury
hurt the economy and lower nobility
became impoverished. Kong Qui (551-479 BCE)
was one of these lower nobility. He
retired from politics at 68, became a teacher
and founded a philosophical school
that developed alternative models of society
and conduct. He was called “our
master Kong” - Kong fuzi – Confucius.
Teaching was oral. It was students
who wrote things down. An anthology of
aphorisms attributed to Confucius was
written on strips of silk or bamboo of the day
– the Analects. Confucius’
students studied the classics:
Documents, Odes, Rites and Music in a
communal context which developed
kindness and consideration for others. This
was all about what Confucius
called ren, “the power of the Way” - daode.
Ren included treating
people as equals. Caring for family was part
of ren, but it extended in
widening circles of compassion to the entire
world. Confucius’ vision was of an
elite of scholars that might teach the princes
the Way of yao so as to
take up the Mandate of Heaven. Meanwhile in
India the Aryans had
rituals and scripture to help the gods
maintain cosmic order but also there
were lifelong ritual actions (karma)
for individuals that would give them
rebirth with the gods after death. Doubt was
developing about the effectiveness
of the karma. In the sixth
century, almost 250 new
scriptures, Upanishads, were produced. The
Upanishads came at a time of urbanization
and some erosion of classes. Some of the
priestly exercises for contemplating
the cosmos were extended to the person
exploring the inner self. It was an attempt
to allow others to enter the experiences of
visions of the transcendent unity of
reality that lies beyond words. It led to a
different view of “self”. Since all
things are One, the atman, the sacred
core of everything, was inseparable
from Brahman that sustained the cosmos. The
myth of Prajapati has him projecting
his own atman onto all creatures so
that the cosmos is essentially
divine. Thus, a sacred part of the “I” lies
within oneself. It is not found by logic.
The mystics used training at the feet of a
teacher and mantras. Essentially, a
human could become the sacred reality she
sought. The search for the divine
looked within. In India
scripture could only be
studied with a teacher on an apprenticeship
model. A teacher helped the student
find the knowledge in herself, modelling ways
that reveal it. At the time, the sacred
texts took the form of sutras, short pithy
aphorisms that made sense to the student
in this teaching context, but made little
sense to an outsider. Many young people
in this period cared about transformation
enough to submit to this master-pupil
teaching regime with a guru. The
interconnectedness of all creatures sharing
the same sacred core calls for a practice of
non-violence. Chapter 5,
Empathy. The
chapter looks at the 5th and 4th century BCE
when China adjusted Confucianism
and produced Daoism, India produced the Jains
and the Buddha, and Greece
produced Oedipus Rex, and other drama
around empathy. In China,
“warring states” fighting
was ongoing around the Great Plain. In most
states Confucius was seen as idealistic.
Military advice was sought from leaders of
gangs of warriors hired for fighting,
known as xie. One of the leaders, Mozi,
“Master Mo”, produced
an unexpected message of non-violence. He
produced writing. He took empathy and
compassion from Confucius, but Mozi
preached jian ai, concern for
everyone. He dismissed other teachings of
Confucius. He accepted the idea of
Heaven but preferred to call it God, in line
with the thinking of the serfs. There were
social changes too. Casting
iron led to new tools, better agriculture, and
resulting population growth.
Cities became centres for trade and industry.
In the Wei state, the aristocracy
was replaced by a salaried civil service. Now
villagers could be conscripted.
Rulers could confiscate peasant land. There
was a kind of despotism – rulers were
forcing their people to accept unnatural
norms. Some chose to leave this society
to become hermits. The philosopher Yangzi
“Master Yang”, supported this
approach. Putting your life in danger defied
Heaven said these Daoists. But there
were two big religious reactions. The Legalism
of Shun Dao saw the new social
institutions as the Way of Heaven that should
be left alone to unfold. This legalism
was adopted by Qin state. It made Qin the most
powerful state. Mencius saw
Confucianism as the way
forward but with reforms. It was his students
who left the writings under his
name. For him, the sage had empathetic concern
for the people. The great rulers
had ruled by ren – the scope of any
activity included others and the
ruler was benevolently aware of their needs
and rights. Compassion was a
natural impulse. The Dao, or the Way of
Heaven, could be discovered in oneself
by practicing compassionate actions and the
Golden Rule: “… treat others as you
would wish they treated you …” Transformation
and sagehood were within the
reach of anybody and the sage had a duty to
challenge the problems of the time. In India, the
Aryan chiefdoms in
the East Ganges region were now part of
expanding kingdoms beside the Ganges
and there were several republics to the East.
Urbanisation and a new merchant
class called for innovation and change. At the
same time, disease and death were
in these cities as was the greed of kings and
merchants. Sacrificial rites that
provided an afterlife with the gods were
increasingly questioned. People
believed in a reincarnation into a better or
worse life form depending on their
goodness – a sort of everlasting treadmill of
lives. “Renouncers” dominated
religious change in India in the 5th century
BCE. They abandoned the profane
life, their families and their property. They
lived in the forests by begging. Ascetic
schools developed around a guru. Two schools,
Jainism and Buddha, dominated and
developed scriptures. Mahavira, the
founder of the first school,
gained insight into harmlessness or
non-violence – kindness, consideration and
respect for any living thing. He achieved what
Jain scriptures call “omniscience”
– seeing “all levels of reality simultaneously
in every dimension of time and
space”. Jainism has no Western style God.
Human beings are defined by their
deeds – not class, rituals or sacrifices. The
Jain went beyond the renouncer
vows: no killing, no lying. They added
no speaking unkindly or impatiently, no
stealing, and no owning anything. Jains
developed their own meditation method -
standing motionless. The attitude to
scripture was ambivalent and there was some
loss of scripture. The Kapa
Sutra is significant; not for its words
in a little-understood dialect, but
for its role on the 8th day in the ritual of
the festival of Pargushan, “Abiding”,
that celebrates the coming of the monsoon.
Then it is recited at high speed by
monks at the culmination. The event is binding
for the community. The second
school was founded by “Buddha”.
Both Buddha and Mahavira came from republics,
both accepted karma and rebirth
and both achieved enlightenment without a
guru. Both believed anyone could reach
the sublime state by following the correct
regimen and both founded communities
of disciples. Both supported non-violence and
emphasised compassion for all
creatures. Buddhist scriptures are shaped by
the call to dedicated action for
enlightenment into a timeless truth. They are
not an accurate biography of
Buddha. “Like any myth, its meaning would
remain opaque unless it was put into
practice …” Buddha used a
specialised form of
Yoga to achieve nirvana. In meditating
Buddha cultivated helpful emotions
and developed the yoga practice known as “the
immeasurables” and the insight known
as the “Four Noble Truths” – something
Buddhists achieve. However, the Pali
scriptures tell that Buddha was called to
“return to the marketplace” to help
others. He tramped through cities and towns in
the Ganges region bringing his teaching
and made his challenge to disciples and monks
who had achieved enlightenment: “Go
now”. After Buddha died, a council was held to
codify the first collection of
scriptures and, as at the councils of Jains,
there was a chanting by monks.
Here it was of the dharma. Despite
some reticence about scripture, fifty
years after the first council, monks developed
ways of memorising sermons and
rules of order and the Pali Canon
developed. It included discourses by
some more advanced disciples. It showed that
Buddha adapted teachings to the needs
of the audience and meeting people where they
were. Armstrong
turns to the Greeks, also
Aryans, who like the Indian Aryans saw the
divine merging with humanity. The Greeks
did not produce scriptures. Their epics Iliad
and Odyssey were “cultural texts”
to initiate elite youths into the Athenian
ethos. The Greeks experienced the divine
in outstanding human achievement, and in the
5th century BCE they developed a secular
psychology in the egalitarian city system
established at Athens by Solon. They
did it by means of Greek tragic drama.
Participation in an annual drama contest
was a civic duty. By witnessing the anguish of
a hero on the stage Greeks
learned to appreciate the pain of others.
Suffering allowed mortals to get a
divine perspective. The poets dramatized the
Homeric heroes like Oedipus the King.
There was debate between the hero, the family
and colleagues and a Chorus
representing the citizenry that spoke in a
poetic lyrical style. The hero was
more prosaic. The drama was
in response to a legal
system that introduced the concept of personal
responsibility that distinguished
an intentional crime from an excusable one.
Athenians believed that without the
power of the gods humans were impotent, and
provision in the law had to be made
for mental sickness from a spiritual power
that took possession. It was argued
that supernatural powers were not outside the
tragic hero but operated at the
centre of decisions. The hero could not choose
because his decision was
determined by the gods and was conditioned by
a reverential fear of the sacred.
He could only recognize that the compulsion
was divine. In this context the
citizen was asked to regard himself – even
minimally – as a free agent. This is
illustrated in Sophocles’ masterpiece Oedipus,
presented at the City Dionysia
in 429 BCE. And it took a century of such
dramas to get the message of a free
agent across! By the time of
Sophocles’ death, the
city had moved into the world of the
philosophical logos, logic, of
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (384-322 BCE).
“But old habits die hard. Firstly,
Plato presents Socrates’ dialogues as a
philosophical version of the ancient
Aryan brahmadya ritual.” And in the
account of Sophocles’ thoughts about
his trial and coming death, it becomes clear:
“Throughout his life … Socrates, champion
of logos, had experienced a divine presence in
his mind, sometimes in tune with
his own ideas, sometimes not, but always fused
with his most profound and momentous
deliberations.” Chapter 6,
Unknowing. This begins
in India after Buddha’s death. It is an
unsettling time of kings murdered by
their sons and of the new idea of the imperial
state. The first dynasty was
Mauryan in 268 BCE followed by the Sunga until
finally the Gupta (320-540 CE)
introduced a more decentralized empire that
ushered in India’s golden age. These
empires required ceaseless military activity
to put down revolts, acquire more
land or take prisoners of war for manpower.
Yet the idea of nonviolence lived on. This context
of tumult produced the
well-loved sacred epic Mahabharata.
Here, the assassination of kings is
normal; accepted monarchical practice is
“exterminated”; and dharma – duties
of each class of society – is a “dead letter”.
It
is a big epic – 8 times the Iliad and
Odyssey combined. It is set in 9-10th
century BCE in the Ganges area
about a war around a succession issue between
two sets of cousins. Gods and
humans intermingle. It is “a scripture that
brings no easy answers, no neat
doctrines, no final certainty.” It is
impossible to summarize. It was always
performed – and with gestures. Also, it has
gathered didactic tales and
priestly myths over the centuries since the
oral work 400 BCE – 400 CE. Armstrong
takes us though the surprising actions of
gods, people and mixtures of the two.
There is treachery and dropping of the duties,
dharma. Those who follow
the dharma end up dead or mourning in
great sorrow. The riddles and unanswerable
questions keep coming about old-time duty, war
and empire-ruling. Human life is
unsatisfactory. Just live with that and show a
lot of compassion to others. In the China
of the warring states,
the Yangists escape violence in forests but
find that disaster and death occur
there too. A second phase of Daoism gives
birth to a scripture – “The Classic
Way and its Potency” Daodejing. The jing
here relates to a work
of unique spiritual importance and Loazi is
the person linked to it. Poems
point to the limits of our understanding –
there are things, so there must be some
way they were produced about which we know
nothing. (The theory of evolution is
something, but if one pushes back on that,
Laozi is right – nothing.) Laozi
notes that to retire when the task is
accomplished is the way of heaven. A wise
person will live his life humbly, content with
little, avoiding excess, extravagance
and arrogance. Putting one’s own self last, it
comes first. Wu-wei no
longer meant do nothing. It meant restrict
activity to what is necessary and
avoiding extremity. A deeper solution: If I
have no self, I have no pain. This was taken
up in a book attributed
to Zhuangzi (369-286 BCE) in the third phase
of Daoism. However, the book was
compiled later in the Han period (206
BCE – 2 CE) and later chapters
were added. Zhuangzi’s experience of the
forest was like Laozi’s, but he wanted
us to leave our left hemisphere reasoning and
our personal positions and align
with heaven’s perspective and the wider right
hemisphere connections. People
jostle for their certainty, intolerant of the
beliefs of others, but the Deo eludes
definition – its one constant is unknowing.
Without egotism, Zhuangzi achieved
unselfconsciousness
and benevolence. Daoism came full circle from
self-preservation to abandoning
self-assertion. Xunzi was the
last Confucian thinker
of the Warring States period. He left no work
in the canon, but he gave the content
of the jing, that would become the
“Chinese Classics” and created a
powerful synthesis of the works of his time.
Learning began with recitation of
the Classics and ended with a reading of the
ritual texts and in parallel it
began by learning to be a person of manners
and ending by learning to be a
sage. Anybody, could become a sage by daily
practice of benevolence and righteousness.
The high point was the five jing “classics”
– Rights, Music, Odes and
Documents, and the Spring and Autumn
Annals, but study of these without
ritual was futile. Xunzi believed in the value
of the jing. This was
despite his disillusionment over human nature
following the 260 BCE conquest of
the Zhao state by the Qin and their massacre
of 400,000 prisoners by burial alive.
Xunzi remained a solid Confucian but was
influenced by Daoism. He believed the
mind had to be still and emptied of egoistical
things to reach the panoptic vision
of the sage. Not mentioned
by Xunzi, the Zhouyi
“Changes
of Zhou”, would shortly become the
sixth Chinese Classic – the Yijing.
During the 3rd to 2nd century BCE a
set of commentaries known as the Ten Wings or
Appendices had given the Zhouyi
a new significance as a proto-scientific
account of a well-ordered dynamic and
benign universe that was a source of goodness.
The Wings presented the cosmos in
a ceaseless process of change or
transformation that was impersonal, tranquil
and simple. The Great Ultimate, Taiji,
indescribable and unknowable source
of being, consisted of twin forces, yin
yang, respectively female and
passive or male and active. From yin yang
evolved Eight Trigrams - 3-line
diagrams of broken and unbroken lines. In
“Wings” they no longer represented good
and bad fortune, but cosmic heavenly forces.
The Trigrams multiplied to Sixty-Four
Hexagrams that represented all possible forms
of change, possibilities and
institutions on earth. The spirits of
old had become orderly natural forces.
“The philosophy is clear: human beings are
firmly embedded in the cosmos.” The
Great Appendix describes Fu Xi, the first sage
king, whose royal “virtue”
allowed him to read the Cosmos like a text.
The perception of sympathy between
Heaven and Earth inspired him to create
technologies that helped human beings
live more productively – knotted chords for
keeping records, nets and squares
for hunting and fishing. This inspired later
sages to make more sophisticated
inventions. In this period
came important commentaries
on The Spring and Autumn Annals that
were oral: Gongyang, Guliang and
Zuozhuan. The first two gave the old
portents of eclipses, fires and floods
as warnings for rulers of the day. By the end
of the Warring States period, the
notion that scripture could be the repository
of political authority had taken
root. Greece entered
a new phase in 334
BCE when Alexander, king of Macedonia crossed
into Asia Minor, liberated the
Greek city of Ephesus and went on to defeat
the Persian army of Darius III a
year later. Ten years later on his death his
empire extended to Afghanistan and
India. In 301 BCE the province of Judah fell
to Ptolemy I Soter with a power
base in Egypt. Some blending with Greek
culture occurred. Philo of Alexandria
applied Greek discipline to the torah.
Textual study moved from a scribal
elite to study groups for male Israelites. In
the writings of Ben Sira, priest
and scribe in Jerusalem, there was a different
blending of Greek and Hebrew
traditions for his students who were destined
to become scribal retainers
ministering to the priestly aristocracy who
governed the temple state under the
auspices of the Ptolemies. Instruction was
oral, but was committed to writing for
greater outreach to future generations. Ben
Sira may have been the first
Israelite to link the traditional “wisdom” of
Israel with the Greek primordial
Wisdom in the laws of the Cosmos. Wisdom hymns
probably entered the Jewish canon
in this period. Chapter 7:
Canon. This takes
us back to China and the 221 BCE dynasty of
First Emperor Qin who ended the
Warring States period by conquering his last
rival. He adopted “Legalism”, abolished
the aristocracy, forced them into the capital
and confiscated their weapons.
The empire was divided into 36 commanderies
ruled by officials answerable to
the central government. Rituals focused on the
emperor. The Classics
were controlled by the regime’s philosophers.
When
he died in 210 BCE there was rebellion
and 3 years of anarchy until Liu Bang founded
the Han dynasty. Han pulled back on
the changes and used a blend of Dao and
Legalism – a synthetic approach that was
a norm in China. Chinese scriptures saw humans
adopting the Way of Heaven (or of
Nature). The previous control on the Classics
motivated development of
an official canon. Dong Zhongshu adapted the
commentary of the Annals as
a blueprint for the Han ideology arguing that
Confucius had set out a model and
the monarch’s role was aligning the people
with the Way of Heaven. Dong’s Luxuriant
Gems was taken up when Wu became the
Han emperor in 141 BCE and Dong’s
advice of an academy to study Annals was
taken up. In 124 BCE Confucian scholar
Gongsan Hang suggested state officials should
be trained and tested on the Classics.
Things moved slowly, but by 140 CE 30,000
young men were studying the Classics
in the academy. Confucianism had a canon
of five Classics that would last
until 1911, but the canon did not contain
teachings relating to interior transformation
of a person. In India, the
Buddhist First Council,
shortly after Buddha’s death, affirmed the
Pali Canon but not to everyone’s satisfaction.
Teachings were altered to new situations and
that was happening as Buddhism
spread to Sri Lanka and into Han China. There
was not just one authoritative
doctrine. At the Second Conference, 330 BCE,
the Theravadins, “elders”, accused
some monks of relaxing monastic rules and monk
Mahadeva raised 5 objections to claims
of “the worthy” to have attained nirvana.
These were debated a few decades later
at the Third Conference convened by emperor
Ashoka. When the vote went against
them the Theravadins withdrew from the
majority. Others were attracted to the
Mahayana
“Greater Vehicle”. Emperor Ashoka wanted
Buddhists to reach out to lay people –
much of the teaching and preaching was for
monks alone and that may have
encouraged the Mahayana to evolve over
centuries. There was the issue of compassion
for the laity and the issue of “the worthy”
reaching nirvana. The latter issue was
addressed by elevating the special status of
the Buddha and his nirvana. Buddha
stories appeared. In time Mahayana became the
dominant and most popular form of
Buddhism. It is massive. It is dynamic
insisting that its scripture be
implemented. The texts are chanted – with a
teacher – and can be an object of
worship. Instead of leaving Buddha in the
past, the Mahayana form releases him as
a force in the present to console, clarify or
protect. Both Theravadins and
Mahayanists had meditative practices for
recollecting the Buddha. In Israel, (or
“In Judah?”) Ben Sira’s
grandson translated his book to Greek around
130 BCE when the intellectual and social
climate in Judah was narrow and he wanted to
show has grandfather’s vision of a
wider world of Israel. Ben Sira had devoted
himself to reading the Law and the
Prophets and to writings succeeding the
prophets. Tumultuous events in Judah
had resulted in a narrower canon. Ben Sira
believed his insights corresponded
with those of prophets, but religious
authorities claimed the era of prophets
had ended with Ezra. Many did not accept this.
By the end of the 3rd century
BCE more Judahites had Greek educations and
hoped to become citizens of the
world, so that the torah seemed
archaic and inhibiting. Tobiads, one
aristocratic clan in Jerusalem wanted to
discard the Hebrew traditions. Meanwhile,
the Ptolemies had lost their Syrian
territories to the Seleucids who controlled
the population through a network of poleis
each with gymnasia to
enculturate the local people and create a
Hellenised ruling class. By 175 BCE
and Antiochus IV, the kingdom was
impoverished. The leader of the Tobiads,
Jason, gained office as high priest by bribery
and Jerusalem got status as a
polis. Jason’s rival Menelaus secured the high
priesthood by a double bribe.
Civil war ensued. Antiochus overcame Jason’s
army. Grateful Menelaus allowed Antiochus
into the “Holy of Holies” where he seized 6
years’ worth of tribute money from
the treasury. Judaism was
not as today. Scriptures
were the preserve of the scribes and ruling
class. The majority religion was a
temple religion based on the divine presence
in the Holy of Holies. Israelites
felt that the temple was another dimension –
holy and set apart. Antiochus’
violation of their holy place profoundly
disturbed Judahites. In 170 BCE
Antiochus installed a Hellenistic cult in the
temple and banned Judahite
dietary laws. The Hasmonean priestly family
led by Judas Maccabeus led a rebellion
that established a small empire reaching
beyond Judah in 165 BCE. But it was no
more just and humane and showed Greek
characteristics. Scripture was important
to the Hasmoneans and they sought to establish
a kanon. They insisted
theirs was the right to choose the canon,
declared the era of prophesy over and
installed their high priest who was not
descended from Aaron as previously required.
A group of scribes and priests seceded from
the temple and established their
own community. Others did not
accept the ban on
new scriptures. New texts were produced and
attributed to figures of the past –
but they were not forgeries. The new prophetic
writers were concerned with access
to God when the temple had been defiled. “A
cluster of ideas was forming in which
a human being ascended to heaven, entered the
Presence, was transformed – even divinised
– and became a redemptive figure.” The Hasmonean
canon – torah –
included the Pentateuch and Prophets Moses to
Ezra. The Qumran sectarians also
have Law and Prophets plus some of their own
additions. Together with their Community
Rule and Damascus Rule this
comprises their New Covenant that they
celebrated in a ritualized meal. In 63 BCE the
Hasmonean regime fell
to Roman armies. Rome established a harsh
regime with heavy taxation that impoverished
the low class in Galilee. A puppet king Herod
was installed (40-4 BCE) who
built a new temple and supported Judahite
communities outside Palestine. New
scriptures appeared in Greek: Tobit and Wisdom
of Soloman. Josephus, historian at
the time, leaves a record including an
escalation of non-violent protests of the
harsh regime with self-styled prophets. He
does not mention Jesus of Nazareth,
crucified around 30 CE. In
66 CE a widespread
revolt took place. The war ended with a siege
of Jerusalem. The Romans burned
the city in August 70 CE. A group of Pharisees
created a new scripture that
replaced the temple. Chapter 8,
Midrash. This
substantial
chapter shows how rabbinic Judaism and
Christianity emerged side by side. Followers
of Jesus of Nazareth said his death had begun
a New Testament or covenant
between God and humanity. Most Judeans felt no
need to abandon the Sinai revelation
and found new ways of expressing it in
rabbinic Judaism. Pharisees led
by Rabbi Akiva were
allowed by the Romans to establish an academy
at Yavne where a recited
tradition developed. Scripture was the written
Torah but its interpretation, Midrash,
a commentary like that of Ezra, gave it
life in new circumstances. This
became an oral tradition of the Rabbis. Mishnah
was a commentary memorized by a student, then
applied, then passed on by that new
Rabbi to the next student. Interpretations
could move from the intentions of
the scriptures on Laws and Prophets and thus
that scripture was kept open. In 130 CE
Roman emperor Hadrian
visited and decided to leave a new city with
Roman Gods. Then Hadrian banned circumcision,
Torah teaching and rabbinic ordination. A
revolt kept the Romans at bay for 3
years, then the stronghold fell. Jews were
banned from Judea. Rabbi Akiva died
a martyr. A new emperor relaxed the bans, but
the Rabbis moved to Lower Galilee,
realized the temple era was over, and began a
written Mishnah for this new world.
The Mishnah helped them to live as if the
temple were still standing by its Six
Orders. Two of these orders were Festivals and
Holy Things. The ancient
liturgical calendar gave homely ceremonies a
more lustrous aura. Passover ceremonies
in the temple were described, as well as
explaining how to do them in a home. Every
village became a Jerusalem and every home a
temple. Communal study introduced
Jews to the divine presence “when two sit
together and interchange words of the
Torah …”. The Rabbis also put together the
final text of a more somber Bible. Apocalyptic
texts were excluded, but the book of Daniel
was included, perhaps taking into
account scriptures of the Jesus movement.
Compassion is central to Rabbinic
spirituality.
How could Israel atone for its sins without
sacrifices? Acts of loving-kindness
would be just as good! The followers
of Jesus of Nazareth
were taking the tradition in another
direction. This began as the party of the
little people – a popular movement of
itinerant preachers and healers ministering
to the marginalized people of Galilee. The
crowds around Jesus were hungry,
depressed, sick with psychological disorders
attributed to demons. Jesus called
for renewing the original contract with
Yahweh, champion of the little people.
The Kingdom of God was based on justice and
equity. Followers should behave as
if that Kingdom had arrived. In it the poor
would be first; the rich and powerful
last. They must love their enemies, turn the
other cheek and give to those who
asked for help. Followers should live
compassionately, observe the Golden Rule
and give possessions to the poor. People
admitted to the Kingdom would not be
those with the correct beliefs, but those who
had given food to the hungry and
drink to the thirsty, had welcomed the
stranger, clothed the naked, cared for
the sick, and visited those in prison. This teaching
was political. It was
a critique of imperial power. Asked if it’s
permissible to pay taxes, Jesus
said “Give back to Caesar what belongs to
Caesar and to God what belongs to God”.
This is political. Roman taxation was seen as
illegitimate since the Holy Land
and its produce belonged to God. There was
not, Jesus’ reply implied, much to give
to Caesar. The event that
likely led to his death
was a provocative entry into Jerusalem and a
demonstration in the temple where
he turned over money changers’ tables and
declared God’s house was a den of thieves.
The temple had been an instrument of imperial
control since the Persians and
tribute extracted from the people was stored
there. Within days, Jesus was
sentenced to be crucified. Crucifixions were
routine, likely without a trial,
and unimaginably brutal. The Gospels
are not historical – they
are midrash – Hebrew scriptural verses
woven to create a story that
released meaning and hope into a perplexing
time. The earliest New Testament texts
are letters that Paul, a former Pharisee,
wrote to early Christian communities
he founded in the Eastern Mediterranean during
the 50s – some 20 years after Jesus’
death. An early collection of teachings, text
called by scholars “Q”, survives
only in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospel. Paul’s letters
use Hebrew
scriptures to interpret the events of Jesus’
life. It seems after the
crucifixion followers had visions of Jesus
standing like Enoch beside God’s Throne.
The visions inspired an ekstasis that
followers felt was a pouring out
of the Spirit of God. To them certain
scriptural texts seemed to predict Jesus’
exaltation and they applied “lord”, “son of
man” and “son of God” to him who
was recognized as the messhiah or in
Greek cristos – the “anointed
one”. Like Rabbinic midrash, this
exegesis was not a rational academic
inquiry. The first Christians believed they
were living in the last days before
Jesus returned to inaugurate the Kingdom of
God. The earliest
Christians avoided mention
of Jesus’ death. The first detailed account
was around 70CE in Mark’s Gospel,
likely told orally in Galilee and Syria. Jesus
is presented as a little peoples’
prophet like Elijah who also spent 40 days in
the wilderness struggling with Satan
and walked on waters. It recalled the Exodus
from Egypt. The feeding of the
crowds recalled the manna that fed the
Israelites in the wilderness. Like Moses
Jesus issued new commandments from a
mountaintop and his twelve disciples
represented the tribes of Israel. Mark
presents Jesus as a suffering, defeated
Messiah with his mission a journey to the
Cross. For Mark, the death was a
mythos – one more suffering of the innocent
that happens all the time. His account
is a collection of scriptural texts,
principally Psalm 12. And the death is
linked to the end of Jerusalem – the veil in
the temple was torn top to bottom.
Election to divine sonship meant ignominy and
suffering which followers should expect.
But God’s kingdom will come. The Gospels of
Matthew and Luke,
based on Mark and Q, are also examples of midrash.
Matthew’s birth
stories, for gentiles as well as Jews, have
Persian magi honouring the birth. He
never misses giving a scriptural antecedent to
events in Jesus’ life. In the Sermon
on the Mount Jesus is the new Moses giving the
new law commenting on the inadequacy
of the old. Luke too shows scriptures pointing
towards Jesus as the ultimate
revelation. Mary’s song while pregnant with
Jesus collects scripture to show
the triumph of the little people in the coming
Kingdom. By the time
Matthew was writing in the
80s and Luke was writing, maybe in the early
100s, Christians claimed Jesus
rose from the dead and appeared to the
disciples before ascending to heaven.
Luke describes two disciples walking sadly
from Jerusalem to Emmaus after Jesus’
death when they were joined by a stranger who
asked why they were distressed.
Then tell him. The stranger explained how
scriptures had predicted a suffering
Messiah. In sharing a meal “their eyes were
opened”. They realized their companion
was the risen Christ. He vanished. They said
to one another: “Did not our
hearts burn within us … as he talked to us on
the road and explained the
scriptures”. In Pirke
Avot the rabbis claimed
that when two or three studied Torah, the
Presence was in their midst. Jesus’
followers had a similar experience but for
them the Presence once enshrined in
the lost temple was embodied in the person of
Jesus. Exegesis made their “hearts
burn”. They would also experience that
Presence in the ritualized meal that
reproduced Jesus’ death, in the insights seen
when scriptures blended together
and in their dealings with the stranger. The
synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark
and Luke, tell of an incident when the
disciples saw Jesus ablaze in divine
light – he was “transfigured”. Moses and
Elijah appeared beside him. This could
be an Easter vision or a midrash vision. It
recalls Ezekiel’s vision. The early
Christians seem to have caught something of
divine glory associated with Jesus. John’s gospel,
written about 100 CE,
is different. It begins with a prologue that
may have been a circulating text
at the time: “In the beginning was the word:
the word was with God and the word
was God”. Paul’s letter to the Philippians ~25
CE shows Christians already
experienced eternal and heavenly realities as
present. They also identified
Jesus with the suffering servant prophesied by
second Isaiah. Jesus emptied
himself to join human kind, kenosis,
and Philippians should also empty
themselves in their dealings. Paul expected
the return of Jesus and the Kingdom
of God at any time. And the teaching is quite
radical – egalitarian with no
male/female, freeman/slave and the rule of
charity – love cannot avenge a
neighbour, love is the fulfillment of the law.
Christians were to behave discretely
not to attract persecution and to wait for the
coming. By the second
century, as
Christians lived amongst Graeco-Roman society,
several letters written in Paul’s
name appeared – Colossians and Ephesians -
that urged living by the society’s
norms. Marcion (d. 169) produced a New
Testament based on Luke and early Paul
to replace the Hebrew Bible so as to replace
the violent vengeful God. Others,
opposing Marcion, produced so-called “pastoral
epistles” in Paul’s name – like Titus
and Timothy. Marcion made some gentile
Christians uneasy about the links with
Judaism. There have been accusations of
anti-Semitism that may stem from an internal
debate between the post-temple rabbis and the
Jesus movement. Most Christians
were Jews. And Judaism always had a
self-critical component. John’s gospel,
other than the prologue, may reflect conflict
in the Jesus movement. In the other
gospels Jesus keeps his messiahship secret but
in John Jesus declares it
wherever possible. Some may have felt that the
claims challenged Jewish monotheism.
But the gospel and the three epistles
attributed to John suggest a community that
felt threatened. The gospel presents a dualism
that suggests a cosmic battle –
light versus darkness, world against spirit,
life versus death. These Johannine
Christians felt the most important duty was to
cling together and love one
another. There seems to have been a schism in
which some found the teachings
intolerable and were regarded as Antichrists. In the book of
Revelation, the
dualism has morphed into a full-scale cosmic
war between good and evil forces.
The author, John of Patmos, assures readers
that God will intervene at a
critical moment and vanquish the group’s
enemies. Undermining the non-violent ethic
of the synoptic gospels, this “disturbing
text” draws heavily on the imagery of
the Roman amphitheatre. John of Patmos was not
alone in his use of this. A 5th
century Palestinian, Rabbi Aha, would also
envision the Judgement as a dramatic
reversal of Roman games. In Revelation too
there is an unpleasant reversal where
those who have worshipped the beast “will be
tortured … and the smoke of their
torture will go up for ever and ever”. The
Lamb, a cruel conquering hero, is
the antithesis of the vulnerable “lamb of God
that takes away the sins of the
world”. John offers an alternative when Roman
power seemed invincible. But Rabbi
Aha wrote when Palestine was ruled by
Christian Roman emperors who were similarly
merciless towards subject peoples. There is talk
today of violence in
scripture. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has said:
“Every scriptural canon has within it
text which, read literally, can be taken to
endorse narrow particularism, suspicion
of strangers and intolerance towards those who
believe differently. Each has also
sources that emphasize kinship with the
stranger, empathy to the outsider, the courage
to extend a hand across boundaries of hatred
and hostility.” Will we use the
generous texts to interpret the whole, or the
abrasive passages? Tragically,
Christians have often made the wrong call.
Their disastrous history of antagonism
to Jews should make them wary of castigating
supposed intolerance of scriptures
of other faith traditions. As the
Christian canon was evolving, a
revelation on a battlefield gave rise to a new
religious passion in India. In the
Bhagavad Gita, incorporated into the Mahabharata
is bhakti
(“devotion”), a spirituality that spread
throughout the subcontinent,
overturned the ritual of the Brahmins and
replaced it with a faith centred on
loving devotion to a deva. It has no
easy answers on warfare or ahimsa.
The context is the Great Battle of the Mahabharata
and battle lines form
when Arjuna, normally an intrepid warrior, has
a Mahabharata moment when
a character is suddenly paralyzed with sorrow
and dread. Turning to his cousin Krishna
his charioteer he says he cannot fight. They
are trying to save the world yet
in the enemy ranks he sees friends, gurus and
kinsmen – fathers, grandfathers,
teachers … How can they heal an adharmic world
if they violate the timeless
laws of family duty? Krishna tries to hearten
him without success. Then he tells
him to dissociate himself from the effects of
his actions so that he acts
impersonally. Then he says enter a meditative
state focussing on Krishna himself.
He, Arjuna’s friend and kinsman, is the avatar
of Vishnu, the ground of being.
He is also Indra, Shiva and the sacred
mountain Meru; he is the eternal symbol
AUM, the essence of all things sacred and
profane. The all-pervasive reality that
sustains the universe had been revealed in a
human being. Arjuna bows in
terror. He sees all
things. Everything that exists rushes
inexorably towards Krishna as a river to
the sea and a moth to a flame. He sees the
assembled warriors too. From a human
perspective the Great Battle has not begun,
but in the timeless realm of the sacred,
Krishna has already annihilated both armies.
Krishna now tells Arjuna that he Vishnu
had descended to an earthly body time and
again to save humanity from itself.
He had come again to fight the battle that
would usher in the Kali Yuga, the fourth
and final age of our current world cycle.
Krishna could save those who love him
from the ill effects of their karma. Hitherto, moksha
was only
available for elite priests. Now selfless
devotion to Krishna was possible for
even little people. Whatever the caste,
anybody inspired by the love of Krishna
could transcend greed, selfishness and
partiality in the ordinary duties of
daily life. Knowledge (veda) was no
longer an esoteric pursuit, but could
be acquired by the practice of simple virtues
and by retreating occasionally to
a quiet place to contemplate the mystery of
Krishna. The Bhagavad Gita
did not negate earlier spirituality, it made
Vedic spirituality available to
everyone. Chapter 9,
Embodiment. This begins
with a history of Christian philosophical
struggles with the incarnation of God
in the man Jesus, transitioning to
disagreement on original sin. Two major
Rabbinical texts emerged in Palestine and
Babylon. Then there is an account of scripture
with Buddhism’s growth in China. By the 3rd
century CE elite classes
around the Mediterranean were attracted to
Christianity, and the study of
scripture became an art form. Early
theologians were mainly Platonists – people
could transcend the physical world by their
natural powers. Origen (185-254)
believed we had fallen from original
perfection, but it was possible to regain
an angelic status by studying scripture. His
exegetical method dominated
Eastern and Western Christianity for over a
millennium. Every single word had
in some sense been spoken by Christ, the Word
of God, and the interpreter was
to make that divine voice audible. This
required a spiritual process with
prayer and virtue. Origen applies this in his
Commentary on the Song of
Solomon and treatise on the song of
songs. Origen lived
when Christians were a
despised minority. That changed when
Constantine adopted Christianity and then
became
sole Roman emperor in 323 CE. He moved the
capital from Rome to a new city of
Constantinople
in Byzantium on the Bosphorus. Christians were
no longer marginal citizens.
Constantine hoped Christianity would be a
force for unity in the empire, but
discovered that the church was divided on the
nature of Jesus. Arius (250-336),
presbyter in Alexandria, who noted that Wisdom
had declared that God created me,
and so he suggested that Jesus, the Word and
Wisdom, was created. He told his
Bishop Alexander and Eusebius (260-340) Bishop
of Caesarea. Arius’ thinking
could be compatible with scripture and Origen.
However,
a new philosophy was taking hold in
Syrian and Egyptian deserts as a result of
Anthony (250-356) who became a hermit
in the desert replicating the lifestyle of the
very first Christians as
described in Acts of the Apostles. Monasticism
challenged Constantine’s
imperial Christianity. Arius was opposed by
Athanasius (296-373), assistant of Bishop
Alexander. At the Council
of Nicaea 325 Athanasius’
view carried – Jesus was not created like
everything else but in an ineffable
manner from the essence of God. It took 50
years before the Nicene Creed was
finally accepted, but to this day many Eastern
Christians find it unacceptable.
The Creed emerged from ritual not scripture –
the church directed prayers at
Jesus and revered him as divine. And for
Arius, that was idolatry. But Jesus
had given Christians an image of the otherwise
transcendent and unknowable God.
Also, the liturgy allowed Christians to
experience a new sense of humanity that
allowed them to participate in the divine
life. In the fourth century they
called this deification. Like the incarnate
Logos they were sons of God – as Paul
had stated. Indeed, the Christians now with a
hold in the world, could build
basilicas and produce dramatic liturgy so that
the simple Eucharistic meal had
become a feast for the senses – great
processions, massed choirs and clouds of
incense. Christian spirituality had been
reunited with the body. During the 4th
century there was a mushrooming of tangible
devotions like the veneration of
relics. Christians from all over the Christian
world went to new churches in
Jerusalem and Palestine. The monks in the
desert claimed to have returned to
their angelic state by intensely corporal
asceticism. The sanctification of the
corporal in the Eucharistic liturgy made
Christ’s incarnation central to
Christian experience. In the Western
provinces of the
Roman empire there was an ancient conviction
that the body was a source of moral
danger. This appears in writings of Tertullian
Augustine and Jerome. This led
to overlooking the Eastern experiences, and
the West lacked the insights to participate
significantly in the debates of the 4th and
5th century on the doctrine of
Christ’s incarnation. At the Council of
Chalcedon (451) Pope Leo, the Bishop of
Rome to Eastern Christians, produced a facile
definition that satisfied the West,
but not the East: Christ had two natures,
human and divine, that were united in
one person and one substance. There was
essentially agreement to differ. The theosis,
the experience of
enhancement of humanity, was part of Eastern
theology – a position expressed by
Maximus the Confessor (580-662) saying Jesus
was the first human being to be
wholly “deified” – entirely possessed and
permeated by the divine _ and that we
could all be like him, even in this life.
Maximus agreed with Gregory (335-394)
bishop of Nyssa that scripture asserted the
unknowability of the divine. Basil (329-379)
bishop of Caesarea emphasized the importance
of “tradition” that accompanies
scripture that is a reflection of the
community’s on-going understanding of the
message. In Greek Christianity a “mystery” was
a truth that took people to the limits
of language but that could be intuited by the
ritual of the liturgy: for example,
the Trinity. The doctrine of Trinity was
formulated by Basil, Gregory and their
friend Gregory (329-90) bishop of Nazianzus.
They distinguished the one essence,
a single divine self-consciousness –
unknowable, unspeakable, unnameable - from
three external qualities – source of being
like Brahman, something of the
unknowable divine essence in the “son” Jesus,
the immanent divine presence in
each of us that scripture calls “Holy Spirit”.
Nobody was asked to “believe”
this. It could be discerned as an experience
from a rite. Jerome fled
the barbarian invasions
of fourth century Europe, established a
monastery in Bethlehem and translated
the Hebrew Bible into Latin, which remained
the standard text in Europe until
the 16th century. His friend Augustine
(354-430) bishop of Hippo established
the historical context of the biblical
writings, found that morality was conditioned
by history and perceived the “spirit of
charity”. That is, scripture should be
interpreted so as to establish a reign of
charity. Irenaeus (130-200) bishop of
Lyons had suggested a “rule of faith” –
scripture was to be interpreted so as
to point to Jesus. Augustine could only take
that so far, and followed his view
that scripture was pointless if it failed to
lead to compassionate thoughts and
deeds. Augustine grew to understand that a
humble approach to scripture was
required with allowance for the fallibilities
of the humans writing it. Quarreling
about the bible was destructive since
scripture aims to provide a common bond.
The diversity of possible interpretations
should unite Christians whose views may
otherwise differ. No theologian apart from
Paul has been more influential in
the Western world than Augustine. He focused
on the literal and historical
sense, but was no inflexible literalist. His
principle of accommodation dominated
Western biblical interpretation into modern
times. He thought God adapted a revelation
to the cultural norms of the community that
received it. Augustine found that if
the literal meaning of scripture clashed with
reliable scientific information,
the interpreter must follow the science. In Augustine’s
last years, vandals
besieged Hippo, his home town, and western
provinces of the Roman empire fell
to invading tribes, beginning a Dark Age that
was to last some 700 years. Augustine’s
doctrine of original sin was conceived in this
context. Adam’s fall had
condemned all descendants to eternal
damnation. For Western Christians there
was no prospect of deification and no delight
in the body or the senses. He
thought Adam’s sin was through the sexual act
– irrational pleasure in each
other rather than in God. The Byzantine
theologians thought this was mistaken. Maximus
argued that every human being was free to turn
towards the good and that Jerome’s
translation was “everyone has sinned”. This
impacted baptism. In the West, baptism
wiped out the sin of Adam. But for Augustine’s
contemporary, Theodore of Cyrus,
a newborn was without sin and baptism was a
promise of future deification. Some of the
rabbis thought the
Tower of Babel was humanity’s first sin.
Others argue original sin occurred
when sons of God looking at the daughters of
men saw they were pleasing. Yet
others saw human weakness as a fact of life –
but with positive potential. On
the last day of creation, God said his work
was very good but by then had created
the evil inclination. That could be good
because it contributed to human
creativity, progress and endeavour. Labour or
skillful work comes from rivalry
between one man and his neighbour! Western
Christianity is unique in the view
of Adam’s sin. It has an indelible guilt that
the Buddha would have called “unskilfull”. In the 5th and
6th centuries Rabbis
in Palestine and Babylonia each produced a
Talmud as Jews continued to shift
from the Hebrew Bible. The Tosefta, or
supplement, was to the Mishnah, not the
Bible, and the Talmuds continued that trend
heightening the importance of the
Rabbis’ oral tradition. The Jerusalem Talmud,
Yerushalmi, was produced around
400 CE. It is the smaller, likely reflecting
the insecurity of Jews in
Palestine now that Jerusalem was a Christian
city and anti-Jewish laws came
from the Roman emperor. Revelation was ongoing
every time a Jew’s mind was
applied to the Torah. Rabbinic teaching was a
living dialogue with sages past. The
other Talmud, the Bavli, was completed around
600 and, as a result of links
with the Palestinians, the two resemble each
other. But the ruling Iranian Parthans
gave the Jews some self-government so that the
Bavli is the more confident – leading
to its becoming the key text of rabbinic
Judaism. Like the Yerushalmi, the
Bavli uses the Bible to support the oral
Torah. But the Bavli reverses some of
the Mishnah and Written Torah legislation.
They felt they were the prophets of
their time! The Bavli is an interactive text
involving debates among the
Rabbis, Prophets and Moses on the same page. In China,
merchants and monks had brought
Mahayana Buddhism that some considered a
religion of barbarians. Confucians
found the treatment of families and
reincarnation contrary to their own teaching.
But there was also Daoism. In the period of
disunity following the end of the
Han dynasty Buddhism attracted people
interested in mystical techniques who saw
similarities with Zhuangzi Daoism. Thus in
China Buddhism became a creative
synthesis. During the 5th century a
large-scale translation of Buddhist
scriptures made them more widely available.
Two Chinese disciples of an overseas
translator, Kumarajiva, active 401 to 413,
developed ideas that became central
to Buddhism in China. Shengzhao (384-414)
wrote two essays blending crucial Buddhist
teachings with Daoism. His fellow student
Daosheng (d.434) was brilliant and
radical.
He laid the foundations of Chan
Buddhism, know as Zen in Japan, that developed
in the 9th century. One key doctrine
was that enlightenment did not grow gradually;
it came in a flash, because nirvana
does not come in parts – it is a whole. Ideas
of Shengzhao and Daosheng also
influenced Confucianism. The Analects
make clear that ren or
human heartedness was fundamental to humanity.
It was indefinable, transcendent
but near at hand – rather like nirvana.
Chinese Buddhism shows how
similar the religious and spiritual experience
of human beings is. “In the case
of Chan/Zen Buddhism no scriptures are
necessary because the capacity for
transcendence
is already implanted in the human mind.” It is
not hidden in a spiritual world.
It is inherent in our humanity; all we have to
do is cultivate it. Chapter 10
Recitation and
Intento. The
scriptural revolution in the Middle East that
began
in the CE with Mishnah and the New Testament
in 610 gave rise to the Quran. Muhammad,
a merchant of Mecca in a mountain cave
experienced words of a new Arabic
scripture pouring from his lips. There had been
reports a century
before of Arabs discovering Abraham’s
monotheism and Arabs were said to be
descended from Ishmael. Abraham and Ishmael
were said to have rebuilt the cube
shaped shrine, Kabah, in the middle of Mecca.
There were Jews and Christians in
Arabia as well as pagan Arabs. All gathered
annually to perform ancient rites
during the month of the hajj
pilgrimage. The Quraysh, Muhammad’s tribe,
had serviced foreign caravans and now ran
their own. They had negotiated special
peace arrangements with Beduin tribes around
Mecca and the Kabah to facilitate
trade and arrangements when other markets were
held. The Empires had little
interest in the barren desert, so the Quraysh
could develop a market economy
there. Trade taught a toleration of other
views not found in the Hebrew Bible
or New Testament and an exclusive religion was
an alien concept in the desert. Allah
was the high God for the Arabs and became
identified with the God of Abraham. The first word
God gave to Muhammed
was “recite”! The revelations were
consolidated into what is called the Quran –
“recitation”. The revelations marked the end
of two processes: the scriptural
revolution; and the Arab view that religious
ideas of others were works in
progress rather than hard line doctrines. The
rapid spread of Islam speaks to widespread
if undeclared dislike of the hard-line state
orthodoxy developed by Byzantium.
The Quran states that it is a scripture –
although memorized and recited. It is
in Arabic, a language with a history of poetry
– albeit featuring honour,
prestige, violence and retribution. The Quran
was different, but it had a
similar resonance with its Arabic listeners.
The context was competition and greed
in the Quraysh, and endless war between
Byzantium and Persia. The response was –
surrender (Islam) to Allah and express it in
compassion: treat each other with
justice and equity and distribute wealth
fairly. Living in such a community ummah
would put them in line with the way things
ought to be and bring intimations of
the divine. For Muslims, religious pluralism
was God’s will. The Quran claims
to be nothing new and all Muhammed aims to do
is “remind them”. There was
resistance and
persecution in Mecca so the ummah moved
to Medina. The community
supported itself there by the traditional way
of raids on settlements and
caravans. But they faced attacks from Quraysh
troops. Over time Muhammed built
a coalition and prevailed on account of the
power of the Quran when “performed”.
It does not impart facts but rather induces a
different state of consciousness.
For centuries Muslims experienced the Quran as
what Christians call a sacrament
– a breaking through of the transcendent into
the mundane. The Word the
Christians experience is present in the sound
of the Quran recited in Muslim community
worship. The “Five Pillars” that form the
practices of Islam involve bodily as
well as mental disciplines. On the sound of
the call to prayer, they determine the
direction of Mecca and position themselves – a
reminder of their true orientation.
They recite verses of the Quran bowing
forward, sitting on the backs of their
legs and touching the ground with their
forehead – symbolizing the “surrender”
to God. The Ramadan fast reverses the usual
sequence of things: austerity - the
fast - is by day; communal celebration is by
night. The ritual walking around
the Kabah in Mecca enacts centring life around
the transcendent. After
Muhammad’s death in 632, the
confederacy broke up and his successor Abu
Bakr fought the defecting tribes and
restored the Pax Islamica. Upon his death Umar
al-Khattab (r. 634-44) decided
peace required an outward offensive. There is
nothing in the Quran to authorise
world conquest but Muslims are forbidden from
fighting each other so the Arabs
turned on the exhausted armies of Byzantium
and Persia. Within 25 years of the
Prophet’s death, the Muslims had a huge empire
including Mesopotamia, Syria,
Palestine and Egypt. Only Byzantium remained
with a rump of its empire. The Arabs
adopted Persian and Byzantine land tenure,
taxation and government. As in
Persia, the “people of the book”, Jews,
Christians, Zoroastrians became
protected subjects. Squaring the systemic
inequity of the agrarian state with
the Quran was a problem. The physical copy of
the Quran was an issue too by the
reign of the third Caliph, Uthman (r. 644-56).
A copy had been prepared in the
successor wars by reciters, but another copy
was preferred in Iraq. Uthman
established a council to compile an authorized
text. Copies of that were kept
in Medina, Kufa, Damascus, Basra and Mecca
with an official reciter. Other copies
were to be burned. Uthman’s version became the
standard. For its first 400 years,
it was written in Kufic script rather than the
later cursive Arabic. Like
Hebrew, Kufic script lacks vowels which must
be added by the reciter. Also some
consonants were similar. As a result, some
variations developed but without major
problems for meaning. In 656 Uthman
was killed during a
mutiny and a traumatic civil war broke out
that shaped the Muslim community. It
was between Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and
son-in law and Muawiyyah, son of one
of the Prophet’s enemies. Arbitration went
against Ali, who was deposed and
murdered. Most Muslims wanted to preserve the
unity of the ummah, they would
follow the Sunnah or customary practice of the
Prophet and became Sunni Muslims.
Others called themselves the Ahiah i-Ali or
partisans of Ali, who became known
as Shiis, who claimed that blood descendants
of the Prophet should lead the
ummah noting Ali’s death was symptomatic of
political life. In 681, Ali’s son
Husain with family and companions were
“slaughtered” by troops of Caliph Yazid,
Muawiyyah’s son and successor. Muawiyyah had
moved the capital from
Medina to Damascus and founded a dynasty of
what became a typical agrarian state
with aristocracy, unequal distribution of
wealth and a standing army for expansion.
Muslims continued to reflect on the morality
of imperial rule. An ascetical movement
developed reacting against the luxury of the
aristocracy. Like the Prophet, the
ascetics wore the coarse woolen clothing of
the poor. They became known as
Sufis. Shiis also developed a piety of protest
insisting that only a relative
of the Prophet could be a leader, withdrawing
from political activity and,
some, militarily opposing the cruelty and
injustice of imperial life. Another
development was law, fiqh. In the
early days, jurists had collected news
and reports, hadith, about what the prophet
and close followers had done in
various circumstances. Hadith became important
for fiqh and also provided
support for new forms of pietism in opposition
to Umayyad imperialism. The hadith
were promoted by Ahl al-Hadith or the hadith
people. Some of the
terrorism of today has
been linked to Muslims and the Quran. However,
the Quran is not a violent work.
Jihad relates to struggle or striving
but in almost all cases the
struggle is to overcoming innate selfishness
so as to achieve the “surrender”
to God. The war Muhammad had with Mecca
involved fighting, but jihad
also involved giving to the poor in times of
personal hardship. In sum, the Quran
jihad is associated not with warfare,
but with non-violent resistance. The
hadith that militarised jihad originated
in imperial circles. Some
of these argued that fighting wars is
more precious than praying beside the Kabah,
or suggested that in paradise the
martyr will wear silk clothes, drink wine and
enjoy the sexual delights forsaken
when joining the Umayyad army. These hadith
were traditionally judged “weak”. “Aggressive
interpretations of jihad
became more pronounced under the Abbasids
who defeated the Umayyads in 750 and
moved the Muslim capital to Baghdad”. But note
that the aim was not to convert
subject people because Islam is viewed as one
of several divinely guided
communities; the aim was to extend Quranic
values to the humanity that was
under the tyranny of worldly principles. And
the Abbasid division of the world
into two hostile camps, the “Abode of Islam”
and the “Abode of War” is an imperialist
ideology, not a Quranic teaching. This
aggressive trend took stronger hold when
the Muslims were surrounded by hostile
enemies. In India a new
type of scripture was
emerging from devotion to a deity – the purana
– ancient tales recited
at festivals that were an extension of the
mantra tradition in which meaning played
a role beyond the sound alone. There are 18
Great Puranas that were edited 400 –
1000. A purana supposedly covered five topics;
primary creation; secondary
creation – destruction and renovation of
worlds; the genealogies of gods and
patriarchs;
the reigns of the Manus – the fourteen
primordial kings; and later history. The
early Puranas covered these topics, but later
ones did not cover them
significantly The Puranas are self-consciously
written material and, unlike
Vedas that were passed on to priests alone,
Puranas were for everyone. Copies
could be made and passed on as an act of
charity. A devotee acquired merit
worshipping the scripture in the home. The
whole book was revered as a manifestation
of the deva it celebrated so that the
book that celebrates Vishnu’s love
for a devotee is imbued with Vishnu’s presence
and the devotee must find the divinity
beyond the physical reality. The format of
Puranas is question and answer between
the narrator and the audience. The narrating
of Krishna’s story in the Bhagavata
Purana to King Parikshit is not an
edifying instruction or a foreboding
epic, but
acts like a holy communion. In
the Bhagavad Gita Krishna described bhakti
as an austere yogic discipline,
but in the Bhagavata Purana bhakti has
taken on the wilder spirituality
of southern India, and the aristocratic yogic
concentration has become a classless
ecstatic and intimate love. The primordial
person of the Rig Veda,
Purusha, was thought to be incarnate in
Krishna/Vishnu, so that Krishna was the
fulfillment of the Veda and indeed was the
Veda in human form. The lore of the
Brahmins had blended with the yearnings of
ordinary people in ecstatic union
with Krishna. Krishna represents a different
kind of divine - imaginative, rich
and creative activity that is spontaneous and
free. This is a divinity that
needs no pomp and sycophantic praise, does not
govern the world from a majestic
throne, and neither needs nor desires
elaborate rituals. Instead, the divine
transcends
human conventions and class divisions and
invites us to question them. Krishna
invites men and women to a realm of beauty and
carnival. In China, the
Song dynasty 960-1279
developed the world’s most advanced economy of
the day, but the northern
territories suffered repeated barbarian
invasions. The Song lost 16 prefectures
south of the Great Wall. Reforms were
essential. Some thought the problem went
beyond military and fiscal. Northern
Confucians believed that only if people were
aligned to the fundamental principle would
their affairs line up with the way of
heaven. The Buddhist goal of peace of mind was
not the priority, but the Confucian
path to self-fulfillment called for an active
struggle for the welfare of the
general population. By the 10th
century the Confucians were
turning to the Great Learning that
called for illuminating virtue and
treating the people with affection. Its
program began with self-cultivation but
ended with world peace – and this involved
everyone from the ruler to the
ordinary people. Another chapter of Rites also
became important: Doctrine of
the Mean (Zhongyong). In contrast with
the Daoists and Buddhists, the Mean,
like Confucius, insisted that we need each
other to achieve full humanity. These two
scriptures were important
for the 11th century Confucian reformers in
northern China. Zhang Zai was uncle
and teacher of the Cheng brothers. In the
state curriculum of the five Confucian
Classics the spirituality of Confucius and
Mencius had been lost. Cheng Yi claimed
his doctrine of li (Principle) was
the lost teaching of the sages. After
long study, Chung (should this be “Cheng”
all the other surnames in this
paragraph are Cheng. I
gather they are brothers) Hao found a way to
become a sage. He decided to work for the
restoration of the original cultural
tradition. Beyond the state curriculum
sagehood was possible for everybody. The
Chengs called their philosophy Daoxue (Dao
Learning). The Western
provinces of the Roman
empire were under constant attack by Norse,
Magyars and pirates, so that monasteries
were oases of tranquility. John Cassian (c.
360-435) had founded monasteries in
the tradition of the Egyptian desert monks as
far as Southern France – introducing
Origen’s spirituality based on memorization
and repetition of scripture. The
exegesis involved having the scripture say
something new, relevant for actions
in the current circumstances. Paul wrote of
building on the foundation of Jesus
Christ – the corner stone. In all traditions
scriptural study led to personal
transformation. Origen’s three senses –
literal, moral or typological and
allegorical expounded by Pope Gregory the
Great (540-604), meant that the
literal sense of scripture was only the
foundation. Monasteries in the West
were not desert outposts. They served to
educate the youth. Benedict of
Nursia (c.480-537) aimed
to create communities of obedience, stability
and reverence when civil society
in Italy was collapsing. His rule provided
physical rituals to restructure emotion
and interior humility. This disciplina
appealed to the Frankish King Charlemagne
(r.772-84) who restored order in northern
Italy, Gaul and central Europe. He
became the Holy Roman Emperor. He and his
followers knew that their success was
due to highly disciplined troops and they
promoted Benedictine monasticism to reform
Europe in an educational curriculum based on
scripture. Monasteries joining the
reform got a book of biblical excerpts for
monastic liturgy and the Divine Office
which broke up the work day. In the Divine
Office the Benedictines chanted the
entire book of Psalms interspersed with
scripture readings every week. In the Night
Office, the whole biblical canon was supposed
to be recited each year. But as an
English reformer confessed that goal required
reading the Bible through meals –
as was in fact done! The use of Gregorian
chant gave psalms and anthems an
emotional character like Indian mantras. But
the chants did not give up the
meaning and the meaning was enhanced. The monks
dramatized biblical
stories such as the Passion and the Easter
morning encounters. A monk would
spend 2-3 hours of meditation or divine study
each day. Meditation included
suspense, vigour, urgency -- giving the
peaceful rumination a forward practical
momentum. Biblical scholarship was undertaken
in the monasteries. Each book of
the Bible was a manuscript prefaced by a
commentary by one of the “fathers” of the
church – whose views differed. In the
12th
century a group a French monks attempted a
standard set of commentaries – with a
standard format inserting brief explanations
with fuller explanation in the
margin. This “Ordinary Gloss” became popular
in monasteries. At the Abby St.
Victor in Paris, exegesis became more daring
and forward looking, adding a
fourth element to Origen’s 3 – meditation –
which could call to compassionate
action leading to a better future. At this
time Jewish communities in the north
of France and in particular Rashi (d.1105)
were taking exegesis in the opposite
direction – focussing on the literal. And this
literal approach was adopted by
Andrew at the St. Victor Abby who did not
follow the earlier Christian assumption
that Hebrew scripture had to anticipate Jesus
of Nazareth. For example, he
agreed with Rashi that Isaiah had prophesied
that a young woman, not a virgin,
would give birth to Emmanu-El. And the
“suffering servant” referred to the
whole community of Israel. The chapter
ends with a critique of
a shift in the West illustrated by some works
of Anselm of Bec (1033-1109). True
he was a product of the spiritual regime, yet
he produced a proof of God using the
new metaphysics. God is defined, and God can
be explored by logic alone. There
is nothing about this in scripture. There is
use of proof texts to deduce why
God became man, but in the reasoning God is
made to think and reason as a human.
Gone is the transcendent indescribable
mystery. Although Augustine’s original
sin was not yet dominant, Anselm’s prayer on
the topic shows the danger. The prayer
is full of remorseful references to “my sin”
and to “I”, “I”, “I”. The effect
of the distraction of “my sin” is that “I”
take centre stage. The spirituality
of kenosis – losing the self in all
the religious traditions - is blown
away. There is little room for compassion and
empathy and seeking greater justice
when “I” pull in the pity. Chapter
11, Ineffability, shows
the Christian thinkers like Thomas Aquinas
wrestling with the logic of
Aristotle and science, and at the same time
Denys the Areopagite pointing to
the limitations of language – with reference
to what God is and is not - and
Bonaventure who pointed out that scripture
pointed beyond itself. One had to
recognize what one could not know. Things were
shifting in Europe.
Cities were developing wealth at the expense
of the aristocracy. Benefits went to
merchants and bankers developing a much
greater disparity between the rich and
poor in the cities, as well as poor peasants.
Yet scriptures spoke of social justice
and equality. The wealth of the aristocratic
clergy stood out. The Cathari were
the result of a Lyons businessman’s giving all
his wealth to the poor. They
recreated the early Christian society of
sharing everything in common. Pairs of Cathari
were visiting major cities throughout
north and central Italy, Languedoc and
Province. Pope Innocent III approved the
Order of Friars of St Francis of Assisi (c.
1181-1226). Francis and his
followers dedicated themselves to the poor in
the cities. The Benedictines had invited
people into their monasteries but the
Franciscans went to the cities and so did
the Dominicans, the order of preachers
established by Dominic Guzman (1170-1221)
who went to Southern France and Spain. Sound biblical
knowledge became a premium.
The friars wanted what Peter Abelard
(1079-1142) called theologia or
“discourse
about God”. The friars became a force in the
new European universities. They
composed commentaries on scripture drawing
from Rashi and Andrew of St. Victor
and seeking to draw on the science from Muslim
Spain. Muslims had discovered Aristotle
and that had stimulated a movement called falsafah
– that provided a new
way of life. The faylasufs wanted to live in
accordance with rational laws that
integrated their scientific knowledge with
Quranic teachings. Faylasufs purged
their view of God of anthromorphism so that
Muslim scholar Avicenna (980-1037)
differed from Anselm of Bec. He argued that
divine unity meant Allah was
perfectly simple, had no attributes distinct
from essence and so analytic
reason had nothing to say. The discovery
of Aristotle was
exhilarating to the friars. Translations from
the Arabic into Latin appeared in
university libraries. Here was an intellectual
vision that included theology,
cosmology, logic, ethics, physics, metaphysics
and politics. Oxford and Cambridge
added medicine, law and theology, training
physicians to tend the sick, lawyers
to administer justice and pastors to teach the
faith. Bonaventure, a Franciscan
and Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican, approached
Aristotle so as to nuance his definition
of God as “First Mover.” Thomas insisted that
theologians remain aware that
words were inherently inadequate because what
we call God is transcendent. Thomas
admired Denys on the limits of language. Yet
in his major work Summa Theologiae
Thomas listed 5 proofs of a Prime Mover.
In the end he made clear he viewed
God as an insoluble mystery. Thomas insisted
that Christ, God’s revelation, did
not make God more understandable. He urged
readers to take care that they did
not believe that they could understand the
incomprehensible. A generation
after Thomas Aquinas
and Bonaventure, Europeans were beginning to
think of everything, including
God, in terms of reason. John Duns Scotus
(1265-1308) believed like Plato that reasoning
powers could take us anywhere including to
understanding God, on the other hand
William Ockham (c.1285-1349) a Franciscan,
insisted that the doctrinal
statements were literally true and should not
be subject to rational investigation.
However, the medieval scholars failed to
appreciate that knowledge obtained
from the natural world differed from knowledge
from texts. Eventually scientists
would sneer at Aristotelean science.
Ironically, it was their grounding in
Aristotle’s
work that had enabled them to produce their
science. Islamic
mysticism focused solely on
the Quran. Shiis revered the great great great
grandson of the Prophet, Jafir
al-Sadiq (d.765) as the true leader of the ummah.
He developed a mystical
exegesis key to Sufi mysticism – intuiting a
hidden wisdom in a Quranic verse.
Shiis believed that Quranic interpretation
needed prophetic insight that had
been passed on by Mohammed to relatives and
each had passed it on to their
successor. Only imams with this knowledge
could find the hidden meanings. After
Jafar’s death came a rift. Most Shiis revered
a succession of 12 imams derived
from Ali. As Abbasid power waned the Caliphs
did not allow the imams to remain
at large so the 10th and 11th were imprisoned
and died. But the 12th
disappeared and was said to have gone into
“occultation”” to return before the
Final Judgement to establish a rule of
justice. Other Shiis, unlike the “Twelvers”,
believed Jafir’s line ended with his eldest
son Ismail who predeceased his father. An important
Ismaili scholar, Abu Yaqub
al-Sijistani (d.971) developed an exercise
that produced a sense of the
transcendent of the divine in the reciter.
Sufi mysticism was tied to the
Quran. They emphasized mercy and love in
practices enabling everyone to experience
some awareness of the transcendent. A key myth
of Islamic Mysticism is the
story of Muhammad’s night journey from Mecca
to Jerusalem and his spiritual
ascent to God’s throne – an allegory of a
return we all must make to our source.
This required the annihilation of the ego.
The Quran was God’s speech
and thus infinite and unconfined to a single
interpretation. Sufi reciters
imagined themselves ascending to heaven as the
Prophet had done when he
transmitted the Quran in Mecca. Some objected
to this Sufi exegesis. Persian
scholar Fakhr al-Din ar-Razi (d.1210) thought
exegetes should accept the most
obvious reading of a difficult verse. But the
greatest theologian of the day, Abu
Hamid al-Ghazzali (d.1111), gave Sufism its
imprimatur. The Sufi masters tapped
an authentic and essential dynamic in the
Quran, and Sufism was a popular movement
whose key practices were adopted by ordinary
people. Sufi orders were created
and even some critics like Ahmed ibn Taymiyyah
(d.1328) were initiated. Until
the 19th century Sufi practices were the main
way Muslims experienced the
Quran. Persian Poet
Jalal al-Din Rumi
(c.1207-73) founded the Sufi order “Whirling
Dervishes” that made more complex Sufi
ideas accessible to ordinary Muslims. Rumi
cited the Quran more than any other
Sufi poet, often clarifying its meaning.
Revelation is not confined to the
past. This idea was central to Spanish Mystic
Muid ad-Din Ibn al-Arabi (d.1240):
“the Quran is perpetually new for those who
recite it”. Ibn al-Arabi emphasized
the divine mercy. But others could not extend
that view to the Crusaders from Europe. In 1099
Crusaders descended on
Jerusalem, where Jews Christians and Muslims
had lived in harmony for over 400
years, and slaughtered 30,000 in 3 days. The
Franks set up small kingdoms and
principalities
and the Muslims made alliances and dealt with
them. There was no concerted Muslim
offensive against the Franks for 50 years. The
massive armies of the second
crusade in 1148 caused some concern, but it
took Nur ad-Din (d.1174) and Salah
ad Din (d.1193) 40 years to create enthusiasm
for a religiously inspired war.
Jihad had been all but dead, and it took a
sustained assault to resurrect it. While the
Muslims in the Levant
faced the crusaders, Mogul armies were
conquering vast Muslim territories in
Mesopotamia,
Iranian mountains, Syr-Oxus Basin and the
Volga region. Rulers who failed to
surrender saw their cities levelled and
populations massacred. The Mogul
advance was finally checked by the Mamluk
Muslim army at Galilee in 1250. Verses of the
Quran on war became
interpreted more aggressively. Writing in
Spain where Christians were expelling
Muslims, Al Qurtubi (d.1278) argued that the
order to make peace with enemies
was offset by the reference to “many
monasteries, churches, synagogues and
mosques” that would be saved by a show of
force. The Quran emphasised defense rather
than attack and only in a particular historic
context in the Prophet’s lifetime
allowed killing wherever the enemy was
encountered. Now Al-Qurtubi set aside
the context and argued Muslims must fight
unbelievers whether they attacked
first or not. Since the Prophet’s death, the
Quran had not been interpreted as
prescribing a duty to fight. But ar-Razi
interpreted it to say that fighting was
a general obligation on Muslims, like Ramadan.
Al-Qurtubi agreed. A Quranic verse
advocating violence in the context of the
Prophet’s fight with the Quraysh when
they broke a pact was now interpreted by
ar-Razi to be of general application. There
was no change to the Quranic obligation on
Muslims to live peaceably with
non-Muslims. There had
always been a mystical
part of rabbinic Judaism. When Jews studied
the Torah, they repeated the Sinai
theophany in which God revealed his glory and
Presence to the people. The
mysticism increased after the Muslim conquest
of Palestine. Meditation began on
the cosmic role of the Torah. The Pesikta
Rabbati produced in Palestine
in the 7th century claimed the Torah was
identical with Wisdom, God’s craftsman
in creation. An 8th century work saw the
letters and script as having cosmic
powers. Jews in the
Islamic empire created
their own version of falsafah and
they too had difficulty accepting
Aristotle’s Prime Mover with the God of the
Bible. Spanish born Maimonides (1185-1204)
was aware of the difficulty but concluded that
because the divine essence was ineffable
it could only be expressed in rational
abstractions of falsafa and arcane
symbolism of mysticism. Maimonides argued it
was better to use negative terminology
such as: “God does not not exist”. He
argued
it was not possible to share such insights
with the ordinary people – the
thinking of those times. Yet he produced a
kind of creed for the unlettered. A
similar creed was produced by Muslim falasuf
Averroes (1126-97). Neither
had an impact because religious truth was
chiefly experienced and expressed in
ritualised action. Maimonides himself saw
Judaism as cumulative and dynamic in
which the intense discussion of rabbis
grappled with problems of the
post-temple world when old norms no longer
applied. He did not subscribe to the
divination of the Hebrew language. He relied
on the rational language of falsafah
to throw light on biblical ambiguities. In the
late 13th century a group of
Jews in Spain pioneered a mystical discipline
called Kabbalah that was transmitted
from teacher to pupil. It was based on the
bible. It used an exegesis that
looked like the Christian one based on four
senses: literal, allegory, moral
and mystic or sod. But the first 3
were considered earlier so that the
Kabbalists presented sod as the only
safe way to encounter the divine. They
created a powerful synthesis drawing on
mystical elements from the rabbinic
tradition, and falasuf cosmology.
Creation was a timeless process in
which we all participate. Scripture was
critical for the Kabbalists. The reader
descended into the text and into herself. God
and scripture were inseparable.
The rabbis sought God’s will there; the
Kabbalists sought God’s Presence – God could
be experienced, if not known. They called
God’s inmost essence En sof,
the personalized God of the bible. The nothing
from which creation occurred was
within En sof and creation began with
a series of emanations from God.
The Kabbalists explored different levels of
scripture in the same way and at
the same time as they contemplated layers of
divinity. The Zohar
(“Book of Splendour”)
ascribed to Moses of Leon is a novel set in
2nd century CE in which one of the
early rabbis wanders around Palestine meeting
companions to discuss the Torah. The
process of descending into the text takes the
form of an allegory of a
beautiful maiden in a secluded palace who has
a lover wandering down the street
looking for her. She finds ways to give
glimpses. The mythos of Kabbalah took
on reality by rituals, vigils, fasts and
self-examination. Crucially, Kabbalists
lived together in fellowship, repressing
selfishness and egotism. Kabbalah
began as a small group, but it was to expand
into a mass movement in Judaism. The Chengs had
stirred something in
Confucianism by suggesting anyone could become
a sage, but their movement was
marginal before Zhu Xi (1130-1200) grounded
their quest for “principle” in scripture.
His neo-Confucianism was to dominate until
1911. Like the Chengs he believed Confucianism
had lost sight of some essential teachings.
His commentary on Doctrine of
the Mean points out that it was written
out of concern that teaching the “learning
of the Way” not be lost. Reclaiming the Way, DaoTong,
needed the
dedicated effort of several inspired
individuals. Zhu always insisted that the
neo-Confucian quest for the “principle of
Heaven” was inseparable from morality
and dedicated action in society. He distanced
Confucianism from Chan (or Zen) Buddhism.
Enlightenment was not a pre-condition for
serving the world. True self-realisation
and spiritual freedom came from practical
service to others. Zhu wanted
learning to be orchestrated
– the Four Masters should be read in a
certain order and alongside a few
basic texts like his Reflections on Things
at Hand. His Reflections
was revolutionary in that its focus was on
modern writers. Zhu produced other
scriptures for students to precede their work
on the Five Classics. As a
government official, Zhu took an interest in
education, founded nine academies
and taught in others. He aimed to encourage
disinterested learning. He did not
want students to inject their idea and force
the text they were examining to
conform to it. Nanak was born
in 1469 and had a
divine revelation in a Village near Lahore in
the Muslim Mughal empire and chose
to follow God’s path in a world of Hindus and
Muslims. After his revelation, he
travelled reaching Assam and Mecca reciting
his inspired poetry and conversing
with Hindus and Muslims. On his return in 1519
Guru Nanak as his disciples called
him founded a community at Kartapur. Through
this community, Nanak became
founder of the Sikh tradition. Sikh doctrines
combined themes found in other scriptures:
ineffability of the divine; God cared for all
men and women of all castes;
human life was full of sorrow from which the
religious quest was release. Nanak
passed on his message in hymns of great beauty
that he claimed came from the
holy word. Sikhs passed time in community
singing, chanting the divine name in
a mantra – not dissimilar to Muslim dhikr.
When he died in 1539 he
appointed a successor, founding a lineage that
lasted 170 years, but he left no
scripture. Sikhs were instructed to hear the
divine word in the inner ear –
words pressing towards new insights.
Transcendence depended on practicing
compassion and a sense of the interdependence
of humanity, the natural world
and the cosmos. Chapter
12, sola scriptura – scripture
alone looks first at Europe. By the 16th
century there was enthusiasm
in Europe, with renaissance buildings and the
discovery of two new continents. But
there were fears too. Between 1347 and 1350
the Black Death had killed 1/3 of
Europe’s population. In 1453 the Ottoman Turks
had extinguished the Byzantine
Empire and were moving into European
territories. The Great Schism 1378-1417
had the spectacle of 3 competing claimants for
Pope, alienating many from the
church. Italy was harassed by invasions and
internal wars. Renaissance
humanists rediscovered Europe’s
past and delved into the beginnings of their
faith using the Bible in its original
languages. Jerome’s translation was found
wanting. Erasmus (1456-1536), a Dutch
humanist, produced the Greek text of the New
Testament with a polished translation
into the Latin. Thanks to the printing press
this became widely available so
that other scholars could comment and improve.
Paul’s writing was clear and
bright in the new translation and enjoyed a
renaissance among the humanists. In times of
innovations and inventions,
the piety and ritual of the last century
seemed out of kilter and there was
concern with the openness of clerics to
bribery and corruption. Some wondered
if the world’s end was near. Martin Luther
(1483-1546), professor of scripture
and philosophy at the University of
Wittenberg, caught the concerns of the
times. He also feared death and in his concern
perceived that Christ could
transfer his own righteousness onto a sinner
“though faith”. Faith here means a
commitment and trust rather than belief in a
list of doctrines. This is an
exegesis, but with a difference. Here there
was no kenosis or emptying of the self.
It was all about Luther, says Armstrong. [Here
Armstrong downplays rather too
much the significance of the church situation
and the need for reforms that
Luther triggered. Although Luther’s insight
can be tied to personal needs of
Luther, it became an insight for many others.
It led to action, and the action
that followed addressed serious injustices in
the church community. It was
political. That seems compatible with themes
of major religions. At the same
time, he provoked a revolution in church/state
affairs that brought some
terrible consequences – years of war
throughout Europe.] The Protestant
Reformation began October
31, 1517 when Luther nailed his 59 theses on
the door of the castle church of Wittenberg.
They challenged the penitential and
sacramental practices of the Roman church.
Two years later, Luther adopted the doctrine
of sola scriptura. The
Roman church argued that only popes and
bishops could interpret scripture.
Luther argued that a simple layman armed with
the scripture is to be believed over
a pope or council without it. The ideas spread
with unprecedented speed
becoming a first mass movement. Some Swiss
reformers were more
interested in moral reform, but Zwingli
(1484-1531) agreed with Luther on the
power of scripture alone. But scripture could
not settle disputes. And the
reformation fragmented on disputes about
interpretation, for example on the matter
of the bread and wine sacramental “supper”
memorial of Jesus. There was a shift
to “left hemisphere” logic from the
metaphorical. The medieval
“transubstantiation”
doctrine was never accepted by Greek
Christians. At its best, Catholic ritual
was metaphorical allowing participants to
tacitly glimpse the unity of reality.
Another disagreement was with the Anabaptists
around infant baptism that is not
scriptural. Then there was Luther’s
marginalization of the Epistle of James and
the importance of good works. Finally,
scripture has a political dynamic since
injustice, inequity and oppression of the
state are matters of sacred import.
That came to a head in the Peasant’s Revolt in
southern and central Germany against
centralising policies of their princes that
stole their traditional rights. In
the spring of 1525 lawless bands of peasants
looted and burned church
properties. Here Luther had no sympathy – they
must obey the Gospel and turn
the other cheek. Luther then argued they were
in the hold of Satan and that killing
rebels was an act of mercy liberating them
from Satan. In the 1530s
there was Protestant pull
back! The Magisterial Reformation following
Luther and Zwingli ruled that only
Christians fluent in Greek, Hebrew or Latin
could read the bible. The rest must
get biblical teachings through “filters” like
Luther’s Lesser Catechism
(1529). French reformer John Calvin (1509-64)
later agreed, and his Institutes
of the Christian Religion (1559) became
the standard Protestant guide. He
viewed Hebrew scriptures as more important in
themselves for Western Christians
than they had been seen before. At the Council
of Trent (1545-63) the
Roman Church affirmed its traditional
conception of scripture – refuting sola
scriptura, affirming the Vulgate bible
and ruling that no one could publish
a commentary unless vetted by his/her
superior. The Roman Church issued “filters”
and catechisms, putting a brake on innovative
interpretation and exegesis. In Spain,
Teresa of Avila (1515-82)
radically transformed monastic life for women
in her reformed Carmelite order,
ensuring women were properly educated in
scripture and the psychology of
mysticism. John of the Cross (1542-91)
described a transition the mystic must
make – a disciplined withdrawal from the
dominance of left hemisphere. But this
did not abandon works. Prayer was not for
enjoyment but to fit one for service.
Another Spanish reformer, Ignatius Loyola
(1495-1556) founder of the Society of
Jesus wrote Spiritual Exercises to
inspire his Jesuits to action -
by missionary work they would gain
enlightenment. And because he was also a man
of left hemisphere, Jesuits were equipped to
be leading figures in the development
of early modern science. The
Reformation produced hostility between
Catholics and Protestants that became
magnified by so-called Wars of Religion.
Scandinavia
and North Eastern Germany were Lutheran, but
England, Scotland, northern Netherlands,
Rhineland and southern France were Calvinist,
and the rest remained Catholic. The
German princes wanted sovereign states like
England and were suspicious of the
Hapsburgs who ruled the German territories,
Spain and southern Netherlands. Catholic
emperor Charles V (r.1519-56) wanted an
Ottoman style hegemony across Europe. The
Catholic kings of France sought to stop
Charles V in military campaigns for 30
years until the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.
That peace agreement declared the religion
of the ruler determined the faith of his/her
subjects. The French Wars of
Religion (1562-98) segued into the Thirty
Years War (1618-48) that killed a
third of central Europe’s population. For
participants, these wars were all experienced
as life-and-death Protestant/Catholic
conflicts despite the fact that Catholics
fought alongside Protestants and vice-versa. French
philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
served as a gentleman-soldier in the Thirty
Years War and came up with an
alternative to sola scriptura – sola
ratio or reason alone. Starting
from a nub of certainty – cognito ergo sum
“I think therefore I am” –
Descartes proved the existence of God and the
reality of the external world. Descartes
had no qualms calling God the first and
sovereign being. It was science’s job to
dispel the awe and reverence for the natural
world that scripture had wanted to
inspire. The Age of Reason would bring
spectacular advances in science,
philosophy and technology. But it transformed
the way Western people experienced
their scriptures. While theology
and scripture in the
West were increasingly a matter of rational
logic that was alien to them, music
like that of Bach and Handel could put
scriptural text in an appropriate
context and the magnificent prose of the King
James Bible lifted sacred language
above mundane speech. Some poets and artists
used scripture to address current
issues and could effect personal
transformation of the reader. Such was John
Milton
(1608-74) a blind English poet, and his epic
poem Paradise Lost. A humanist and
child of the Protestant
Reformation, Milton refused to accept faith to
the detriment of good works. Faith
must be a living faith, and faith has its own
works, and the greatest of these
is politics. He was involved in the English
Civil War (1642-49), served in the
government of Cromwell’s republic, and
published essays on political theory.
Following the restoration of the monarchy,
Milton devoted himself to poetry –
including Paradise Lost. He had read
the Bible in its original languages
yet he chose to take liberties with the text
to introduce new elements into the
story of the Fall because he felt inspired by
his celestial muse like the biblical
authors! It is therefore a work of midrash.
It suits conditions in
England after the Civil War and Restoration.
And it is a classic epic. Its
subject is Augustine’s doctrine of original
sin. The Eastern Church never
adopted that doctrine and the arrival of the
doctrine of predestination further
muddied the waters. Milton would have neither
of these. His most developed
character and the most human is Satan – a
marginal character in the Bible. In the epic’s
last two books, archangel
Michael tells Adam and Eve of a “paradise
within” and shows Adam the future of
humanity and that catastrophe leads to
rebirth, transformation and regeneration.
The suffering and death of the Son is not
critical to this redemptive process.
Adam’s enlightenment comes from his
compassionate response to the distress of his
fellow humans. But a spiritual transformation
is not enough. The insight must
be expressed in good works. The paradise
within cannot be a private inner
serenity. Armstrong is positive about Milton’s
midrash until she considers
Milton’s God – in 3 separate parts with a
callous, self-righteous and uncompassionate
Father! In 1492 the
Christian armies of
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain reconquered
the south of Spain. Within months the
rulers issued an edict for Jews: be baptised
or be expelled! Some 80,000 went
to Portugal and 50,000 fled to the Ottoman
empire. In 1499, Muslims were given
the same choice. Jewish communities mourned
and worried about fragmentation of
the Torah. Maimonides produced Mishneh
Torah, “Second Law”, a summary of
the whole Oral Law. Joseph Karo (1488-1575)
prepared a similar summary, Shulkhan
Arukh, “Prepared Table”, for daily
readings to make sure there was one
Torah in times of the printing press. In
Poland Rabbi Moshe Isserles produced a
comparable code for his students. Yet there
were immediate objections to these
summaries because they restricted innovation
and creativity in a new situation.
Uniformity of opinion was not welcomed as the
rabbis had an instinctive
appreciation of the forward dynamic of
scripture. Discussion reported in the
Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) avoids definite
answers and preserves the variety of
approaches. In France, the rise of Talmudic
learning had produced a falloff in
studies of the Bible. So Mishnah had recorded
Oral Torah, then produced a written
Torah and then the Tosefta clarifying the
Talmudic debates. It is regrettable
that the Bavli minimised the study of the
Bible – the foundational written
text. And there were arguments as to whether
the Bavli could be studied
alongside falsafah. Some Jews in
the Ottoman empire,
Sephardi Jews, found Safed in Palestine where
Isaac Luria (1534-72) had
developed a form of Kabbalah that spoke to
their predicament. Here the Bible was
interpreted mythologically and saw creation as
a kenosis – a self-emptying,
with a creation myth in which divine sparks
fell into the vacuum of emptying
ending up in the wrong place and wandering the
world to reunite with the godhead.
By 1650 Lurianic Kabbalah had become a mass
movement supported by rites. Islam had
movements of islah, reform,
and tajdid, “renewal”. For example,
there were efforts to reform shariah
law for Muslims under Mongol rule by going
back to the source – the Quran. Gunpowder
allowed rulers to build larger more
centralized states. Three new Islamic
empires emerged: Safavid in Iran; Moghul in
India; and the Ottoman in Anatolia,
Syria, North Africa and Arabia. All had a
particular form of Islam. Safavid had
Shiism; Mogul falsafa and Sufism; and
Ottoman implemented Shariah law. Shah Ismael
conquered Iran in the early
16th century and set about establishing a Shii
state in an area of Sunnis that
had little link to Twelver ideology and
suppressed Sufi Orders. They held the ghuluww
extremist theology then prevalent on the
fringes of Mongol territory. Shah
Abbas I (1588-1629) realized the extremist
theology was not viable and expelled
all ghuluww officials and imported
Shiis from Lebanon to instruct on
Twelver orthodoxy. This created a dilemma for
the Shiis who traditionally regarded
any government as unjust but now found
themselves running the state educational
and legal system, which was funded by the
shahs who also built fine madrases
(schools). They refused official government
posts and made clear they represented
the Hidden Imam but their wealth compromised
the egalitarianism of the Shii. Some behind
the Shii reformation
relentlessly persecuted any Sufis, supressing
falsafah and pressuring
the ulema to focus on jurisprudence, fiqh.
Shiis had long staged processions
lamenting the martyrdom of Husain, the
Prophet’s grandson at the hands of
Caliph Yazid at Karbala. By the 16th century
these were more elaborate, but instead
of urging participants to fight tyranny like
Husain, they were to treat him as
a patron who could help their access to
paradise. During the 17th century, most
Iranian Shiis followed the Akbaris that tried
to oppose the growing power of
the ulema by turning to the source –
the Quran – as interpreted by the imams.
In the process scripture lost its mystical
component and was reduced to
explicit directives. Around 1620,
Mir Dimad (d.1631) and
Mulla Sadra (d.1640) started a new school of
mystical philosophy that blended mysticism
with the rationalism of falsafah. Both
emphasized the role of the
imagination and unconscious. The ulema
drove Mulla Sadra from Isfahan and
he spent 10 years in Qum where he worked out
his philosophy. He believed humans
could, by great effort, be transformed and
embody a measure of divinity by
embodying attributes of God. The mystic must
return to political life working
to create a more just society. In The Four
Journeys of the Soul Mulla
Sadra described such progress with a final
task of preaching God’s word,
finding new ways to implement the Quran and
reorder society in accordance with
God’s will. For Sadra, justice and equity
could not be reached without mystical
and religious underpinning. There was a
later Islamic reform in
Arabia in the 18th century as the Ottoman
empire was unravelling around its
edges. It returned to Islam’s sources: the
Quran and Hadith. The reformers
called Muslims to discover what the Quran and
hadith had meant. Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Wahhabi (1702-91) was a reformer
opposed by conservative ulema
and accused of promoting violence. His jihad
“struggle” began with education:
fighting could only be a last resort. His
attempt to ally for protection failed,
but Wahhabi ideas spread. All Muslims were to
study scripture for themselves – concentrating
on clear direct Quranic teachings – and
studying the Five Pillars. Beginning
with putting God first, then the five prayers,
followed by almsgiving and concluding
with work for a just and compassionate
society. Wahhabi interpreted jihad
verses in their historical context - limiting
warfare. More aggressive Wahhabi
followers sided with Ibn Saud in his effort to
carve a large kingdom in Arabia. India was
becoming less sectarian. The
third Moghul emperor Akbar (1542-1605) founded
a House of Worship where scholars
of all traditions could discuss spiritual
matters and a Sufi Order dedicated to
divine monotheism. Akbar made a visit to the
Fifth Sikh Guru and it may have inspired
Guru Arjan to edit hymns and writings of his 4
predecessors plus 2,000 of his
own hymns. This created a Sikh scripture. It
reveals many values that are expressed
differently in other traditions. Ultimate
reality is beyond human comprehension
and humans need to become aware at their
deepest core of the law of life and
death. And that leads to respect and fellow
feeling for all living things
interconnected by sharing a common fate. After Akbar’s
death the Moghul
empire began a slow decline. Akbar’s son
Jahangir (r.1605-27) put down one
rebellion after another. Guru Arjan was
charged with sedition, tortured and executed
in 1606. His successor Guru Hargobind was
imprisoned. Political and military
conflict shaped the 17th century and the 9th
Guru Tegh Bahadan was executed in
1675. His son, Gobind Singh added the writings
of his father to Adi Granth.
Shortly before his death he terminated the
line of personal Gurus and declared
that their scripture would be the Sikhs’
eternal Guru with the name Guru
Grath Sahib so that Guru became not only
a teacher but the spirit that had
inspired all the Gurus. And the Sikhs consult
the book – opening at random – to
seek the advice for the moment, a wedding, an
initiation, naming a child. The
scriptures have power only if recited as by
the Gurus. Late in the
16th and early 17th
century China had an openness to new ideas and
a drop in sectarian hostility.
Late Ming Confucians usually affirmed the
Three Teachings (Confucianism, Daoism
and Buddhism) as complementary. Recently it
has been held that Confucianism had
an aptitude for scientific thinking from the
start. A critical attitude was
evident in Zhu’s commentary on the Doctrine
of the Mean. The Chinese
were becoming more pluralistic. Jiao Hong
(c.1540-1620) believed in the Three
Teachings, regarded Buddhism as a commentary
on Confucianism and was influenced
by Daoism. He insisted that the Way is a
dynamic process beyond the reach of words,
doctrines and texts. Verbal teachings are only
traces and images to suggest the
Way but can never fully express it. Jiao urged
students to study the Five
Classics without relying on standard
commentaries – a return to the source with
a difference. Commentaries had made Confucian
scholarship more superficial. And
later commentaries had expounded ideas of
their own. Jiao pioneered scientific
textual criticism that was to gain importance
in the 19th century. He was a
prolific author. He collected ancient editions
and compiled a monumental work
on Chinese bibliography. Fang Yizhi
(1611-71) studied the
classics, widely read philosophy; with doubts
about joining
public life he became tutor to the
emperor’s third son. When Manchu Qing troops
converged on the capital in 1644, Fang
had himself tonsured as a Buddhist monk and
lived as one for his last 20 years.
His writings minimise differences from
Confucianism. Fang was influenced by
Jesuit missionaries who catered to a growing
interest in European mathematics,
astronomy and natural philosophy. Zhu Xi had
adjusted scripture so that the
extension of knowledge lies in the
investigation of things. But Fang regarded
the understanding of “things” as too narrow.
For Fang, “things” included
everything in the world physical as well as
spiritual – and he saw understanding
as a communal effort. Fang was open to
learning from the West – he absorbed the
astronomical ideas of Copernicus and Tycho
Brahe. But he questioned Western
philosophy which he found detailed in material
investigation, but deficient in
comprehending seminal forces. Fang took the
astronomical observations and
deductions, but left a tenth heaven home of an
inadequate “God” the Jesuits
called “Lord of Creation”. The Jesuits had a
“God” Thomas Aquinas would have regarded
as an idol. Chapter
13, Sola Ratio. The
Spanish Jews forced to become Christian during
the Spanish Inquisition, conversos,
known also as Marranos (pigs), became the
first free thinkers and atheists. They
never wholeheartedly became Christian. In
Portugal Jews were given asylum and immunity
from the inquisition for 50 years. But their
understanding of Judaism
attenuated and the Catholic education filled
them with Christian symbols and
doctrines so they ended up with a hybrid that
was neither. Francisco Sanchez (1550-1623),
a converso, was rector of the College
of Guyenne in south western France
and was the first modern thinker to reject the
notion of authority that
insisted on submission to ideas of an author –
Aristotle in Physics or Galen in
Medicine. He insisted he would follow only the
reason of nature. A similar
voice was that of Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) who
was the first scholar to study
the Bible scientifically and who managed to
live beyond the reach of religion
in Europe. When his parents were permitted to
leave Iberia at the end of the 16th
century they had settled in Amsterdam. The
Dutch Republic had solved the
problem of denominational tensions – it
separated church and state. It supported
the Reformed Protestant Church, but it did not
oust Catholic clergy because
that would upset Catholic states with which
the Republic hoped to trade. As a
result, the Dutch became prosperous and world
leaders. They extended this
religious freedom to Jews. However, Spinoza
was unable to welcome the return to
Torah and rituals. There were contradictions
in the biblical texts which could not
be of divine origin and revelation was a
chimera since “God” was simply the
totality of nature. At this date there were no
secular alternatives in Europe.
It was almost impossible to live without
belonging to a religious community.
Spinoza went further than Isaac La Peyrene in
applying Sanchez’s scientific method.
Supreme authority in interpreting religion is
lodged with the individual because
it concerns individual rights. Since
interpretation belongs to every man, the
rule for interpretation should be nothing but
the reason which is common to all. Christians
looked to science after
the debates of the Reformation. Isaac Newton
(1642-1727) pulled together
Cartesian physics, Kepler’s laws of planetary
motion and Galileo’s laws with
gravity holding planets in orbit. Newton
argued this intricate system required counsel
and domination of an intelligent and powerful
Being. This is not Luria’s self-emptying
En Sof or the kenotic Word of the New
Testament. God was now a scientific
explanation. God was present in the laws “he”
devised. Who needed scripture?
Newton also wrote The Philosophical
Origins of Gentile Theology. Newton’s
account was a story of deviation and return to
a religion of reason. All Newton’s
religion required was an intellectual
acceptance of doctrine. This was a god in
Newton’s own image. During the
18th century a theism
based on reason and Newtonian science emerged
aided by Matthew Tindal
(1655-1733), Voltaire (1694-1778), Benjamin
Franklin (1706-90) and Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826). Like Spinoza, John
Locke (1632-1704) denied any need for
revelation or allegory so that biblical
accounts of Creation and Fall are factual
and express a need for redemption. There must
be no figurative exegesis. Locke
sanctioned Luther’s separation of religion and
politics. Religion was a private
search. However, religion had always been a
call to social and political
action. Those who could not accept the
historicity of biblical narratives could
believe that the truths of Christianity were
spiritually important said
Gotthold Lessing (1729-81). Locke’s friend
Anthony Collins
(1676-1729) dismissed the notion that the
prophets predicted the life and death
of Jesus saying they were ordinary human
beings and so could not foretell the
future. Semleer, in an essay 1775 argued that
the Bible was not the Word of God
and that the canon was a human creation. The
use of reason in the Enlightenment
made scriptural exegesis a lost art. There was
debate about the historical
reliability of biblical stories especially in
England and Germany. History was
changing as scientific methods
uncovered a picture of the past that was
backed by empirical evidence. Classical
Greek and Roman historians were widely read.
This left biblical accounts with
outlandish tales and questionable phenomena as
not factual. In earlier times
they were myths valued for their meaning.
Discussion focused on Creation, the
Fall of Adam and Eve and the miracle stories
in the gospels. There was a pietistic
movement which placed importance on Bible
study which led to interest in the
bible as a written document in Germany. In England
scepticism grew about
the biblical text. Most scholars were
concerned about factual reliability.
Surprisingly,
no one thought of a possible relationship with
the new literary genre - the novel
– in which fictions claimed to relate to
actual happenings yet were not
historical. They explored profound truths
about the experienced human condition
and were discussed seriously. The difference
being that the biblical stories
told of “humanity’s experience of
transcendence in the tragedies and
vicissitudes
of history”. The novel explored the impact on
ordinary individual lives of the social
and political changes going on in England and
France. However, German Poet Johann
Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) argued that the
only way to understand the bible
was to identify emotionally with its
characters, although he too was committed
to the historical truth of the Bible. German
scholars of the Higher
Criticism applied scientific analysis to old
manuscripts of the Bible. They
found that various authors with different
styles contributed to the Pentateuch.
It was not the work of Moses alone. There were
duplicate stories by different
authors – for example of creation. One thought
Genesis contained two documents,
others thought numerous fragments were
assembled by an editor. By the
nineteenth century there was agreement that
the Pentateuch was built from four separate
sources – two that referred to God as Elohim
(E1, E2), one referred to God as
Yahweh (J) and Deuteronomy. Wellhausen
realised that each of four had been
added to before combination, and that document
E2, a work of priests, was
likely the last. Such historical criticism has
increased understanding of how
the Bible was put together, but the focus on
text has reduced the transcendent experience
of scripture. The cooperation of the scholars
has been impressive. European
theologians were unable to
agree on basic matters of faith so Europeans
turned to Descartes’ sola ratio
for common ground. The Declaration of
Independence was based on Locke’s human
rights with a twist of his right to “property”
into “the pursuit of happiness”.
Were human rights “self-evident” as the
Declaration supposed? Anderson says
there was no unity or incontrovertible
rationale for human rights. But I note
that human rights have served as a gathering
point internationally for
compassionate and empathetic responses,
presumably because they resonate with concerns
for the human other found in the various faith
traditions. Locke argued
that liberty and
equality were fundamental rights. Thomas Hobbs
(1588-1679) felt humans left
alone without strong government would seek to
destroy and subdue one another. Rousseau
(1712-78) concluded human nature is good but
that political institutions made
people bad. In Critique of Pure Reason German
philosopher Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804) argued that ideas are subjective
because they arise from a view of
the world that is subjective. The
Enlightenment was a leap to take history under
human administration – a creature of the left
hemisphere reasonings. Jefferson
in particular wanted to free politics from
control of God’s representatives and
put under human control. Jefferson could not
appreciate the role of mythos. But
Jefferson realised that a federal constitution
would never get support from
states if it made any single Protestant
denomination the official faith.
Separation of religion from government, as
Locke said, was needed for a peaceful
society. The American Declaration had said all
were created equal, but there
was none of it for Native Americans, slaves or
poorer Americans on the frontiers. Americans
could not share the rational
ethos of the founders. Ritual had helped
people deal with turbulence in their lives.
Lurianic Kabbalah guided Sephardic exiles
through their trauma. Calvinist Jonathan
Edwards (1703-58) believed the First Great
Awakening in North Eastern America introduced
the less educated to “the pursuit of
happiness”. But the emotional excesses
differed
from yoga and Buddhist enlightenment. The
dangerous surrender to the subconscious
was all about the individual – “my
repentance, my salvation, my
damnation. The Second
Great Awakening in the
1790s was a rebellion of poorer frontier
Americans against rationalism – the radical
teachings of the New Testament were emphasized
rather than teachings of their
aristocrats. And
these new prophets put
modern ideals of democracy, equality, free
speech and independence into a
biblical idiom. Torchlight processions and
gospel songs transported crowds –
rocking and shouting for joy in a manner that
became a hallmark for American
Christianity. During the 1840s Charles Finney
(1792-1875) brought this
spirituality to the middle classes. By the
mid-nineteenth century, Evangelical
Christianity was dominant in the US. In the
northern states the ideal of human rights
became a biblical mandate against slavery and
liquor, for penal reform and for equal
rights for women. Premillennialism,
the creation of the
Englishman John Nelson Darby (1800-82) took
root in the US in the late
nineteenth century claiming that Christ would
return to earth before he established
the 1000-year reign promised in Revelation. It
is a literalistic interpretation
that borders on insanity. Yet it offered the
elect avoidance of the End Time
ordeals. A “Rapture” would lift true
Christians to heaven, leaving the rest
behind. This is cruel and divisive with a
drastic loss of transcendence: God becomes
a sadistic, vengeful, human. The Scofield
Reference Bible, 1909, was a best
seller with its notes explaining this awful
dispensation. Yet this was
strangely in tune with nineteenth century
scientific and political thought. Hegel
(1770-1831), Marx (1818-83) and Darwin
(1809-82) all argued that development
came as a result of conflict, with history
divided into eras. Scripture, an art
form, had to be as rational as science. Hodge led an
attack on Darwin in
1873, but at this time Darwin was not a big
issue. Of particular concern to
Evangelical Protestantism was the Higher
Criticism of the Bible after Anglican
clergy produced Essays and Reviews in
1860 making it available to the
public and causing a sensation. Hodge
published a Systematic Theology in
1873 claiming one must not look beyond the
words of the Bible – every word was
divinely inspired. The exegete was confined in
a cocoon of circular argument. The
woes of the world were blamed on Higher
Criticism as foundations were
established to “educate” clergy in opposition
and “fundamentalism” was born. Similar
movements have emerged in other faiths. Fundamentalisms
are embattled spiritualities
that view a political struggle as a cosmic war
of good and evil. They often
withdraw and form a counter-culture. They
refine “fundamentals” to provide the
faithful with a plan of action. “It usually
takes the form of cultural, ritual
and scholarly riposte”. Scripture plays a part
usually in “proof texts.” A key “threat”
was the Scopes Trial that involved a challenge
to southern US laws that
outlawed teaching evolution – as Scopes did.
The trial became religion against
science, involving support from the American
Civil Liberties Union. In 1925
science won. The press had a field day.
Fundamentalists were the enemies of science.
But fundamentalists created their own
churches, schools, universities,
publishing houses, broadcasting stations,
Bible colleges. By the 1970s they felt
strong enough to return to public life to
convert the nation. In the beginning,
Hodges was well aware that the world was older
than the Bible states, but over
the years positions hardened. The Scopes case
and its publicity was a mistake.
Attacking a faith deemed in error can end up
making it more extreme. Yet despite
all this, the US remained a religious nation
centred on scripture. Europe was a
different story – one of
loss of faith. Scientific rationalism was the
new religion calling for conversion
and commitment, said Englishman Thomas Huxley
(1825-95). German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900) proclaimed the death of
God. Like the Jewish Marranos who
relied on sola ratio Europeans found
religion as arbitrary and lifeless
and the scriptures incredible. Karl Marx
believed the abolition of religion would
liberate humans from the injustices of
capitalist society. Nietzsche
believed God was dead so
that society had no founding principle. Unless
a replacement could be found, the
scientific civilization of the West could
become unhinged. However, in summer
1882 he had a spiritual and mental crisis that
he experienced as a revelation.
He felt invaded by feelings of freedom,
absoluteness, power and of divinity.
This right hemisphere emotional ecstatic union
resulted in his masterpiece Thus
Spoke Zarathustra (1883-91). This was,
first, a parody -- likely of the New
Testament. It pushes a Christian reader to
reassess some of the familiar mores
of Christianity - like compassion. Secondly,
it provides a new New Testament –
an alternative to the ascetic life-denying
Christian faith. Third Nietzsche
calls it a tragedy because the tragic hero,
Zarathustra, overcame by just saying
yes to all life’s experiences of sorrow and
desolation. Contradictions are
harmonized and incompatible things can be held
together by an affirmation. Now that God
is dead, human beings
must step into the vacuum developing a super
human as replacement. There was to
be no kenosis, self-emptying. With an
incarnation of its will to power,
the super human would force the species to
evolve into a new phase when
humanity would become supreme. Although
scripture was the product of an
aristocracy, it had always held a concern for
the “little people” and for
equality. Nietzsche would have none of it.
There is no return to the marketplace
in Zarathustra. Just a final proud
assertion of ego. It was written in a
lush overblown poetic style with no logos – no
sustained arguments or rational
explanations. Readers were transported! Before
Nietzsche the English Romantic
movement had reacted differently. William
Blake (1757-1827) believed humanity
had been damaged by the Age of Reason and that
religion had been overtaken by a
false science that alienated people from
nature and themselves. A God of
fearful symmetry, like Blake’s tiger, remote
from the world in distant deeps
and skies. Newton recoiled from mystery. The
Romantic poets revelled in the
indefinable and so recovered a sense of the
transcendent. Nature was a source
of revelation – not an object to be
manipulated. William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
saw a meddling intellect that murders to
dissect, pulling reality apart for analysis.
He learned to watch and silently wait. He
learned to look on nature and
discover a presence there – a sense sublime.
This was what Indian rishis had called
rta, and others “Being Itself”. John
Keats (1795-1821) was ready to
plunge into a cloud of unknowing. He seems to
have achieved a measure of “no
self”, a transcendence of self-preoccupation
that was essential to true
insight. The Hasidim
emerged in Jewish communities
in Poland at about the same time as the Great
Awakening in America. The poor
felt overtaxed and abandoned by their Rabbis.
Popular preachers took up their cause
and “Besht” appeared in 1735. He was Israel
ben Eliezer (1700-60) who gathered
40,000 followers in his life, and by the late
nineteenth century Hasidism
dominated most Jewish communities in Poland,
Ukraine and east Galacia and was
well established in Russia and Romania. Hasids
had to be open to the Torah text,
looking beyond the literal to the divine. They
were to look through the surface
of the natural world for an indwelling
Presence. Hasidic prayer was wild noisy
and emotional. And prayer was more important
than Torah study – a revolutionary
idea. Their
spirituality followed Luria’s
mythical creation story of divine sparks
trapped in matter, then adapted it to
celebrate the presence of God everywhere.
Besht rejected egalitarianism per se because
ordinary Jews could not achieve union with God
directly, but in the person of a
righteous man. The Hasidic Rebbe did not
embody the Torah like the rabbinic
sages, but an incarnation of the divine,
rather like an avatar in India. Yet
Hasidism was democratic in its outreach to the
common people. Kabbalist Dov Ber
(1710-72) became Besht’s successor. There was a
rift with the Misnagdim
movement at the rabbinic Academy of Vilna,
Lithuania, whose head, “the Goan”,
was appalled by the lack of Torah study.
However these groups came together in
resistance
to the Jewish Enlightenment, Haskalah, founded
by Moses Mendelssohn (1720-86).
He wanted to be part of German Enlightenment,
but as a Jew could not be part. He
wrote Jerusalem, Concerning Religious
Authority and Judaism (1783) arguing
God had revealed a law rather than doctrines
on Sinai so that Judaism was suited
to Enlightenment modernity. This was anathema
to more orthodox Jews, but
attractive to those seeking to leave the
ghettos. During the
nineteenth century two
movements developed in Germany to resist the
tendency of Jews to convert to
Christianity. One attempted a reformation of
Judaism – like Protestantism.
Israel Jacobson (1768-1828) founded a school
in Seesen where students were
taught secular as well as Jewish subjects. He
opened a “temple” as opposed to a
synagogue, with choral singing and sermons in
German instead of Hebrew. Temples
were established in Hamburg, Leipzig, Vienna
and Denmark. Reform Judaism became
popular when it was exported to America.
During the 1840s, scholars and rabbis
influenced by Kant and Hegel formed a school
known as Science of Judaism where
modern critical methods were applied to Jewish
scripture and modern
historiography was applied to the history.
This was balanced with traditional teaching.
There was concern the reformers were losing
track of emotion. The rituals like
that of Yom Kippur had developed a sense of
awe. Reform Jews saw the wisdom in
this thought and reinstated a number of
traditional rites. In eastern
Europe, newly-emancipated
but traditional Jews continued to live as if
in a ghetto, studying Torah and
avoiding gentiles. In 1803 Rabbi Hayyim
Volozhiner (1749-1821) founded the Etz
Hayyim yeshiva in Lithuania. Similar ones were
founded in Mir, Telz, Slobodka,
Lomza and Novogrudnok for study of Torah and
Talmud. Logical consistency was
ensured, but with room for ekstasis.
Learning was rote in a monastic
style setting. Like Biblical institutes in the
US, these bastions of orthodoxy
provided a counter-culture alternative to
modern society. The aim was not battle,
but steeping [?] students in the traditions of
the premodern world. Less
drastically, in 1851, some traditionalist Jews
near Frankfurt, where Reform was
ascendant, got municipal permission to form a
separate community and invited
Samuel Raphael Hirsch to be rabbi. Hirsch
founded modern neo-Orthodox
elementary and secondary schools with both
secular and Jewish subjects. Jews had
played a role in the sciences in the past and
had nothing to fear from other
cultures. They should embrace many modern
developments without losing the past
to the extent of the reformers. Their laws and
practices served as reminders of
important truths. In the
17th and 18th centuries the Chinese
experienced something different from
enlightenment. In the early 17th century
Confucian Gao Paulong described his
path to enlightenment in Kanxue Ji (“Recollections
of the Toils of
Learning”). He had experienced a transforming
illumination (wu) and he
seemed to merge with Dao, the ultimate
reality. Returning to the rhythms of
life, the natural world blended with his mind
to create a state of consciousness
known as “quietude” that could become habitual
- a reverence in which the mind
is ‘without affairs’. Other neo-Confucian
scholars achieved it. It seems to resemble
the Buddhist “emptiness” and the Cheng-Zhu
goal of having “no mind.” It enabled
a thorough objectivity that in the Qing
dynasty (1644-1911) led to scholarly
study of scripture not unlike Higher Criticism
of the Bible. The dynasty was
sympathetic to Chinese culture and the first
2/3 of their long reign was of
peace and prosperity. Neo Confucians
remained at the heart of government, but a
reaction against Cheng-Zhu led
scholars to prefer Hanxue (“Han
learning”) and favouring Han
commentaries. Huang Zongzi (1610-95) felt
Confucius had put a priority on
practical action that benefitted the people
rather than sages and mystics working
on forms of consciousness. China needed people
who worked to transform society.
With Ming Xuean Huang went further – a
critical study of the significance
of ideas in the Ming period. The evidential
research of the Enlightenment had
arrived. Rigorous scholarship became the
priority rather than mystical
spirituality. But for Han scholar Dai Zhen
(1723-77) scientific investigation
was rigorous but also a religious matter.
Others turned their attention to the
material world and interest in sagehood became
as distant as sainthood.
American scholars nonetheless pointed out that
Qing study remained about concrete
reality infused with divine meaning, giving a
sacred dimension to Chinese
investigations of things. The
industrialized West embarked on colonialism.
By the mid 19th century Britain
controlled most of the Indian subcontinent and
had deposed the last Mogul
emperor. The ease of subjugation was
disturbing to Indians. They had not seen
themselves as a nation. As Westernisation took
hold their hierarchical society had
to move towards a broad casteless identity.
The British created Hinduism in
their likeness thereby creating a
sectarianism. Hindu had referred to
the
“native” population as opposed to the Muslim
rulers of the Mogul era and that
was a mix of cults and sects rather than a
specific religion. Hinduism became
real when leaders of Muslim, Sikh and the rest
vied for British favour. New
reform movements developed that adopted
Protestant norms and distorted local
traditions. The Arya Samaj was founded in 1875
by Swami Dayananda (1824-03). He
tried to revive Vedic orthodoxy and create a
scriptural canon. It formed
schools and colleges in the north of India
growing to 1.5 million members by
1947. Along the way, Dayananda fell under the
influence of a guru and Sanskrit
scholar who led him to focus on a canon of
scriptures before the Great Battle. In
his modernizing, Dayananda was asserting the
superiority of Indian tradition and
so distorting it. Traditional rituals took on
simpler form, scriptures were
available to all castes, purification rites
were held for low caste groups –
popular in the 1929s and 30s. Arya Samaj also
served the needs of the Hindu
diaspora. As violence escalated between
Muslims and Hindus in the 1920s, Arya
Samaj became more militant founding a military
cadre, the Ayra Vir Dal (“Troop
of Aryan Horses”). Like its rival Rashtriya
Singh (“National Volunteer Organization”)
founded in 1924 it fell into the problem of
nationalism – intolerance of
ethnic, religious and cultural minorities.
Dayanda’s book Light of Truth derided
Christian theology, abused Prophet Muhammad
and dismissed Guru Nanak as an
ignoramus. Previously, Sikhs had faced
persecution by Muslims but had enjoyed
good relations with the Hindu
majority. The increasing derision by Arya
Samaj provoked as aggressive assertion of Sikh
identity – building Sikh schools
and colleges and producing a flood of
polemical literature. A Sikh fundamentalism
developed that interpreted their traditions
selectively, emphasising martial
teachings and ignoring the earlier more irenic
ethos. Fundamentalism
is associated with fear of annihilation by a
majority and for the Sikhs there is
a case. In 1919 a British General ordered the
machine gunning of a peaceful
crowd in the Golden Temple killing over 300
and injuring 1,000. After 1947 independence
Hindu abuse of Sikh peasants in the
Punjab grew and some turned to
extremism demanding a Sikh state. In 1984 The
Indian army stormed the Golden
Temple – the home of the Sikh sacred scripture
- to dislodge militants. The rise
of new elites fired by the new Hindu
nationalism means Sikhs who do not tow the
line are increasingly marginalized. Older
forms were replaced by exclusivist
innovations – Punjabi as the sacred language
of the Sikhs, cleaning shrines of
Hindu icons and idols. There is now zero
tolerance for any critical
interpretation of scripture. A Sikh
fundamentalist told a Sikh audience they had
a moral obligation to kill anyone who showed
the slightest disrespect for the Guru
Granth Sahib. This
is not unique. In 1989 the Iranian government
issued a fatwa against British
Indian author Salman Rushdie whose novel The
Satanic Verses had presented
a blasphemous portrait of Prophet Muhammed and
suggested the Quran had been
tainted. A vast majority of the Islamic
Conference condemned the fatwa as
un-Islamic. But there were riots in Bradford,
UK, and Pakistan where the novel
was ceremonially burned. Those supporting
freedom of speech hurt their cause “by
denouncing Islam in the British press as an
‘evil’, ‘bloodthirsty’ religion and
Muslim society as ‘repulsive’. The Bhagavad
Gita that has enjoyed a new popularity
challenges the separation of humanity
and divinity because in the person of Krishna,
God is an aspect of the human. The
Gita took on high status more
recently. It spoke to the predicament of
people of India in the period leading up to
their struggle for independence
from Britain. It also addressed problems of a
post-colonial society. It put war
at the centre of debate about India’s future,
forcing India to face fighting
the British. And this is like the fratricidal
war of the Mahabharata in
which brother fights brother because the
British were not a distant faceless
enemy but often friends and colleagues. The Gita
was a revelation to
Western people because it challenged the
notion of “passive spirituality” that
they often applied. It also challenged Locke’s
separation of religion and politics.
Yet nobody could understand its meaning.
Meanwhile the printing press made it
widely available and it became a national
symbol. The
biggest debate was between Mahatma Gandhi
(1869-1948) and Aurobindo Ghose
(1872-1952) who were divided on fighting the
British. Gandhi believed human
beings shared the same sacred core so that
fighting violated the basis of the
universe. He believed in non-violence,
soul-force and self-rule. Aurobindo argued
that Krishna’s approval of the violence in the
Gita reflected the grim
facts of life - nations would fight and
destroy one another. Moreover, Gandhi’s
non-violence had caused as much bloodshed by
the British response to his
non-violent campaign. Most
interpreters believed the Gita had a
single meaning. But American scholar
Laurie Patton pointed out that since the Rig
Veda, Indian poets had not seen
meaning as either/or but rather both/and. The
debate is on a battlefield. There
is a call to battle but there is also a call
to self-control to avoid
succumbing to atrocity. There may be an
advantage in assuming that this is not
a complex text with a simple meaning but
rather a complex text with a complex
meaning to be teased out of it. Muslims were a
major global power
for a millennium but in the twentieth century
most Muslims were under European colonial
rule that showed disdain for Islamic religion
and culture. As for fundamental
Christians, the sense of humiliation pushed
some into conservative theology.
After the colonialists, the Muslims ended up
led by dictators Reza Khan (1921)
in Iran, Abd-Shishak (1949) in Syria and Jamal
Abd al-Nasser (1952) in Egypt. They
modernized superficially and violently.
Attempting to secularize, they starved
the clergy financially and robbed them of any
power. Mustafa Ataturk (1881-1938)
founded modern Turkey, abolished the
caliphate, the chief symbol of Sunni
power, closed the madrasas and forced Sufi
orders underground. Ulema jurists
were made state officials. These Muslim
leaders created the sense that Islam
was in danger of being overcome by foreign
norms. The West regarded Islam as a
backward religion that was never reformed. But there are
modern thinkers with
innovative approaches to the Quran who have
promoted the egalitarian and
compassionate ethos. Drawing on the explicit
wording and the precise context, these
scholars argue past Muslim jurists and
theologians often did not grasp the full
significance of their scripture. And the need
for a more critical approach was
recognized in India during the decline of
Mogul rule. For example Shah Wali
Allah Dihlawi (d.1762) called for replacing
imitation of past practice in law
with independent judgment and replacing the
unreliable hadith that jurists
relied upon with the more trustworthy Sunnah –
the customary practice of the
Prophet. Today’s reformers share these
concerns. To release the
authentic Quran,
scholars must have a creative dialogue with
the past, understanding the problems
the Quran addressed in the 7th century. Fazlur
Rahman (d.1988) Pakistani-born
Professor of Islamic law at the University of
Chicago, agrees with Dihlawi concerning
the Sunnah. An uncritical reverence for the
Hadith had promoted ideas with no
scriptural basis. And the early Muslims had
been cautious in their use. Yet
Rahman was not suggesting removing the body of
hadith. It was reliance on “weak
hadith” that undermined the Quran – like the
death penalty for apostacy. And the
Quran holds a religious pluralism as God’s
will. Acceptance of Islam is not
essential to salvation. During the
1980s women exegetes began
to challenge the patriarchal ethos that male
jurists had foisted on their scripture
over the centuries relying on “weak hadith”.
Women were shown respect in the
Prophet’s life. And the Quran gave men and
women the same status and responsibilities
– although eighth century jurists managed to
dilute this. It went further:
women could inherit and compete with men for a
share in an estate; an orphaned
girl could not be married to a guardian
against her will; the dowry (that came
from her family) remained her inalienable
property – the husband could not
claim it in divorce. True, it took two women’s
testimony to match one man’s,
but this was the seventh century, and this was
then more egalitarian than other
traditions. Incidentally, the Quran shows no
interest in the hijab or veil for
women; it simply encourages men and women to
dress modestly in public. Rahman, like
other current
scholars, maintain that the Quran came from
what we call “God”, but recognizes that
Muhammad played a role. The Spirit was some
power, faculty or agency in the
prophet’s heart and his role was to release
that in the Arabic language to change
the world. Armstrong points out that from
Muhammad’s account, there was no
clear divine voice issuing directions from out
there. “Allah was to be heard by
looking within” she notes. Armstrong has
written on links
between religion and wars and she comments on
whether the Quran inspired
terrorist crimes. There is no systematic
Quranic teaching on the conduct of
war. But Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), a Muslim
Brother imprisoned by Nasser, wrote Milestones
which has been called the Bible of Muslim
extremism. This is based on the
Sunnah, not the Quran. And it misrepresents
the Sunnah by ignoring the Prophet’s
non-violent peace initiative at Hudaybiyyah
which early biographies suggest had
been the true turning point for Islam. Unlike
the early Muslim exegetes, Qutb insisted
that jihad through the sword was, and always
would be, an essential preliminary
to any other form of striving in the path of
God. Hamas does not
associate jihad
verses with respect to Palestine, but urges
Palestinians to follow the eighth
century practice as guardians of the
frontiers. The ancient volunteer practice also
inspired the recent Islamic State that
appeared following the US invasion of
Iraq in 2003 to restore the ancient caliphate.
The religious motivation of the
terrorists who committed the atrocities of
September 11, 2001 is written in a
document found in the luggage of Mohamed Atta,
the leader. The Quran serves as
a magical talisman rather than a book of
wisdom. The hijackers had recorded
farewell videos. These call on Muslims not to
hold back from the fight – citing
Russian massacres of Muslims in Chechnya,
massacres by Hindus in India, by Jews
in Palestine and by Americans in Iraq. And of
course, religions call on our
empathy and compassion. But scriptures insist
we cannot confine our benevolence
to our own people, we must include the
stranger, the whole world. And this attack
killed 3,000 innocent people. That said,
despite the criminal and shuttered
vision of the hijackers, the farewell videos
suggest that recent policies of
the West and others may well have inspired
considerable dismay in the Muslim
world. The book ends
with a single chapter-sized
conclusion called Post Scripture that gives
something of a review, generally laments
the role of scripture today, but offers a few
hopeful signs. Scripture now
is not used by people
seeking transformation, but seeking support
for their views. And scriptures are
read in a literal manner – so Christian
fundamentalists insist that Biblical
creation accounts are word for word true. The
Quran has been said to pre-empt
the Big Bang theory! However scripture never
gave clear unequivocal messages. From the
beginning scripture was within
a ritual, dramatized so participants could
embody it. Music cuts the analytical
and allows a more mysterious dimension of
reality that transcends the mundane.
It evokes wonder, respect and reverence for
the cosmos and other human beings. This
context is an essential dimension. Both India
and China had ceremonial rituals.
Ezra introduced his torah with the
ritual of Sukkoth. Christians used a
ceremonial meal to remember Jesus’ horrific
death. Later the Byzantine liturgy
transformed the participants’ perception of
Christ and themselves with drama, music
and incense. The Quran is called “The
Recitation” – and recitation is an art
form of the Islamic world. Sometimes a
scripture forces the shock of unknowing onto
participants – as does the Mahabharata. Scriptures
were never the last
word. Since the Rig Veda, later texts were
grafted onto older scriptures. In
China Confucians read their ideas into
Confucius’ words, in India the sages
reinterpreted
the mystical experience of the old rishis. In
Babylon one or more editors
recast the ancient traditions of Israel and
Judah in the Hebrew Bible. Rabbis
developed the midrash. New Testament
authors scoured the written Torah
to create their exegesis that predicts the
life death and resurrection of
Jesus. Some Muslim jurists interpret the Quran
literally, but Shiis in very
early times read their beliefs into certain
verses and some mystics insist that
every time a Muslim recites a verse of the
Quran it should be something
different to her. Unlike
science, scripture has a
moral dimension that summons compassionate,
altruistic action. Its purpose is
not to entrench the listener’s opinions; it is
to transform the listener. Scripture
issued positive practical action: in India – a
sacrificial ritual to support the
cosmic order; in China, the Mandate of Heaven
to deal compassionately with the “little
people”; the Buddha sent monks to help the
suffering deal with their pain. The
monotheistic traditions were dedicated to the
ideal of social justice: Jesus
urged ministering to the needy and despised,
feeding the hungry, caring for the
sick and visiting those in prison. Paul urged
Christians to create a community
of radical equality. The Quran gave a divine
mission to create a just and
compassionate society with wealth shared
fairly and the poor and vulnerable
treated with respect. In the US, the Christ of
the gospels has become my personal
saviour – a kind of personal trainer focused
on my individual well-being. Religion’s
job is seen as to make people feel happy about
themselves and good about their
lives. God’s is to solve people’s problems and
make them feel good. The call for
charity has been eroded
by recent Muslim Salafi terrorism and by
Christian premillennialism that
exploits an end of time scenario in the book
of Revelation. Also, suspicion of
progressive inventiveness of the traditional
art of scripture has inspired a
perverse literalism. A slavish return to the
past would have Christians adopt
slavery, execute homosexuals and stone
disobedient children. Similarly, Wahhabi
ideology would have Muslims revive 7th century
Islamic punishments. Privatisation
of faith is just as worrying. Making religion
a private search has subjectivized
it and trivialized it. Secularization, the
separation of religion and politics,
that could have freed religion from the
bondage of the state, has not created a
prophetic critique of society. Inequality is
at the root of many
modern problems. Thousands of migrants in
flimsy boats from Africa and the
Middle East are literally dying to get into
Europe. In the US a disturbing
number cannot get adequate healthcare. Old
aristocracies could see peasants in the
fields, those in the modern West never see
those who manufacture goods we are
pressured to buy, and who slave in substandard
conditions in distant
impoverished countries. Social justice is
crucial to monotheistic scriptures
and compassion is not just for one’s own group
– it is Mozi’s jian ai, concern
for everybody, stranger, foreigner, even
enemy, across all tribes and nations.
Yet there are retreats to national ghettos
like the Brexit vote and the Trump “America
First”. In all the
religions considered,
despite the striking differences, the art of
scripture has been similar, suggesting
that it tells something important about the
human condition. None could remove
the systemic violence of the agrarian state,
but they offered an alternative
ideal, acting as a reminder of what should be
done. In the past, scripture
always moved creatively to address new
challenges. Unless that can be done today,
scriptures will be made irrelevant. Theologians
have tried to deal with
this situation. Jewish philosopher Martin
Buber (1898-1965) has emphasised the
divine presence. The Bible is a live voice of
human encounters with the divine.
On Sinai a divine presence was disclosed
rather than a law. Hans Frei (1922-88)
Episcopalian priest and professor at Yale
pointed out that although scriptures
were always seen as historical, readers had
reached beyond to address the
issues of the day. During the Enlightenment
the Bible began to be read as a modern
history. Christians had to read the gospels
with all the critical tools available
for them and interpret their own time with all
the critical tools available for
that – the bible and the newspaper were to be
side by side. The gospels’ ideas
about God, justice, equality, compassion and
suffering must be laid against our
mundane circumstances by readers daily
transforming the meaning of the world
they live in and acting accordingly. American
theologian George Lindback
(1923-2018) would agree. The sacred text is
the paradigm. However our moral
world is qualified by other texts: King
Lear; Middlemarch; War and Peace
as well as the Bible. We have a multi-text
view of reality. An interpreter like
Thomas Aquinas or Augustine had the task of
extending the meaning of scripture
to include the whole of reality. That was also
done in Islam, Buddhism and Hindu
traditions. Christians went further. Their
interpretation attempted to
incorporate Hebrew Scriptures into the New
Testament and to then move them into
current developments. David was a type of
Christ who in turn became a model for
Charlemagne who became a model for future
European kings like Charles V. However,
after the Enlightenment, scripture became the
focus of study rather than a tool
for study. Lindback felt scripture should be
read in a literary manner. Genesis
1 should not be read as an account of the
origins of life. Leviticus is a legal
text. The entire Bible is brought together by
“God”. What do these
interpretations do for other faith tradition?
Lindbeck thought they should re-describe
in their own idioms the social and
intellectual worlds in which their adherents
live. German
novelist Thomas Mann
(1875-1955) felt scripture should address the
contemporary world. He wrote 4
novels based on the stories of Joseph, the
great grandson of Abraham, as his
response to Hitler and WWII. Mann understood
the mystical appeal of the Bible.
In the biblical story when Joseph’s brothers
finally realise who he is they are
dumbfounded. The reconciliation that followed
then was one-sided. Jacob was
persuaded to settle in Egypt but the brothers
are still worried by Joseph. On
his deathbed Jacob blesses each son and he
appoints Judah as his heir. Joseph,
however, remains the favorite and Jacob’s
blessing of him evokes the unification
that Mann seeks for the world. Israeli
novelist David Grossman similarly made a
novella about the scriptural stories of
Samson. Both Mann and Grossman made these
ancient scriptural stories speak to the
political issues of their day. This makes
scripture relate to society, but the other
concern of scriptures was the cosmos,
such as the extreme weather of 2018. Confucianism also suffered
from
secular modernity. However, since the 1920s
a group calling themselves “New
Confucians” have undertaken a review of
their texts. Heirs of the Enlightenment
and its philosophers, they brought in those
insights and the concerns from Marx
and feminists. Human beings have evolved
from “Heaven” and are imbued with the
same vital energy as stones plants and
animals. To overcome the habit of
treating the earth as a mere commodity
requires self-knowledge, introspection
and deep reflection. They agree with the
Earth Charter. Rather than
using the “sign” verses
of the Quran, Muslim exegetes could show how
they speak of the sacrality of the
natural world. In the same way, Hindu scholars
could bring to the fore the Vedic
reverence and concern for the cosmos and
search for new ways of putting Prajapati’s
broken world together again. Religion is often
seen as irrelevant to modern
concerns. But it is essential for human
survival that we find ways to
rediscover the sanctity of each human being
and ways to re-sanctify our world. Perhaps
Armstrong is a little too
pessimistic when she talks of “post
scripture”. My 78 year lifetime is short on
the timescale of her study of 3,000 years of
scripture. Yet I have seen bursts
of life based on and around Christian
scriptures – hymns, anthems, songs, new
liturgies and new translations and
collaborations not just among church
traditions but among the faith traditions.
There have been very high cooperation
levels among faiths towards influencing
governments about social justice, equality,
poverty, climate justice and compassion. There
have been inter-denominational discussions
towards mutual understandings around things
like the memorial meal. A baptism by
one denomination is recognized across other
denominations. Vatican II released
a burst of songs in the vernacular, and
changes in the mass and sacraments.
Protestants have been producing songs and
hymns around scripture since Bach and
Handel and until Covid the Sing-along Messiah
in Toronto was an annual sell out.
Karen Armstrong’s books take a
comparative approach that reveals that
religions have considerable convergence
around key themes. Her recent The Lost Art
of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred
Texts, Vintage Canada, 2020 (paperback
edition) is no exception. It examines
the evolution of “scripture” in India and
China, and in the Jewish, Christian
and Muslim religions in the same historical
periods.
PART 1 COSMOS AND SOCIETY.
Armstrong takes us to the beginnings of
records of religion from Israel, India
and China.
PART 2, MYTHOS. This
part forms the bulk of the book. Each chapter
takes a historic period and examines
the developments of the religious traditions,
the key actors and the scriptural
products under one thematic title that
captures that period.
PART 3, LOGOS has
two chapters.
POST SCRIPTURE.