The great transformation : the beginning of our religious traditions / Karen Armstrong.

The great transformation : the beginning of our religious traditions / Karen Armstrong.

First edition.

9780739473085 (pbk.)
0375413170
9780375413179
0676974651
9780676974652

New York : Knopf, 2006.

English

xviii, 469 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

BL430 .A76 2006

200.9/014

In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Now, Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal "Axial Age" can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times. The Axial Age faiths began in recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. There was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. The traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma--all insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering.--From publisher description.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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