Download The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions AudioBook Free
From one of the world’s leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the bestselling A History of God, The Battle for God and The Spiral Staircase, comes a major new work: a chronicle of one of the most crucial intellectual revolutions in world history and its relevance to your own time.
In one astonishing, short period – the ninth century BCE – the peoples of four distinct parts of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity in to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Historians call this the Axial Age because of its central importance to humanity’s spiritual development. Now, Karen Armstrong traces the rise and development of this
transformative moment ever sold, examining the brilliant contributions to these traditions created by such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Ezekiel.
Armstrong makes clear that despite some variations of emphasis, there is amazing consensus among these religions and philosophies: each insisted on the primacy of compassion over hatred and violence. She illuminates what this “family” resemblance reveals about the religious impulse and quest of humankind. And she goes beyond spiritual archaeology, delving in to the ways in which these Axial Age beliefs can present an instructive and thought-provoking challenge to the ways we think about and practice religion today.
A revelation of humankind’s early shared imperatives, yearnings and inspired solutions – as salutary as it
is fascinating.
Excerpt from The Great Transformation:
In our global world, we can no longer afford a parochial or exclusive vision. We should learn to live and behave as though people in remote elements of the globe were as important as ourselves. The sages of the Axial Age didn't create their compassionate ethic in idyllic circumstances. Each tradition developed in societies like our own which were torn apart by violence and warfare as nothing you've seen prior; indeed, the first catalyst of religious change was usually a visceral rejection of the aggression that the sages witnessed all around them. . . .
All the great traditions which were created at the moment are in agreement about the supreme need for charity and benevolence, which tells us something important about our humanity.
From the Hardcover edition.
