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Title: God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism by Jonathan Kirsch ISBN: 0-670-03286-7 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 08 March, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Kirsch Is Usually Much Better
Comment: As a rule, I am a huge fan of Mr. Kirsch's books. He is a very provocative writer on religious issues and certainly has produced another interesting volume here. However, I wasn't as pleased with this one as I have been with his previous works.
In this book, Mr. Kirsch examines the triumph of monotheism over polytheism in the West beginning in the fourth century AD. In it, he takes through the period of Emperor Constantine and those that followed him, particularly Julian. He uses these two men to illustrate the competing factions of Christianity (Constantine) and "paganism" (Julian). And, in many ways, he succeeds in making an important point: that, despite what we would like to believe and often put in our histories, the triumph of Judeo-Christian monotheism was by no means easy or assured. As usual, it is a good point and one worth making.
On the other hand, this book has many flaws that I haven't seen in Mr. Kirsch's previous work. The most notable, and irritating, is the self-contradictory nature of his prose. He says that Christians were not persecuted that harshly as he goes on to describe a persecution; he says that pagans rarely made bloody sacrifices as he goes on to describe a horrific ritual; he says that sexuality was rarely part of pagan religion as he goes on to describe temple prostitutes. Though I believe Mr. Kirsch is probably right in his assessment of polytheism and his charges of Christian hyperbole, he didn't make his point very well.
Ultimately, there is a theme of comparative tolerance here; namely, that Christianity brought in a tyranny of cruel orthodoxy whereas the pagans were more generally accepting of diversity. Though this may be true on the face of it, Kirsch hits wide of the mark when he implies that the modern horrors of religious persecution and war would be absent in our modern world had polytheism triumphed. Certainly "religious" persecution and war would be less. But I suspect persecution and war would remain much the same. In fact, maybe Christianity and Islam have done something to lessen the impact at times.
Kirsch tries to save himself when he says in the very last paragraph of the book, "The dark side of monotheism, of course, is not its only side. The blessings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam far outweigh--and, we must hope, will long outlast--the curse of religious fanaticism that is implicit in the very notion of the Only True God." However, this is merely the largest and last contradiction in a book that has its best and most important points muddled by a mind that seems unsure as to whether he's really willing to make the leap his own work implies.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Legacy of Religious Tolerance
Comment: I read GOD AGAINST THE GODS for two reasons. First, I saw a lecture by Mr. Kirsch some years ago and I enjoyed his rather different but erudite perspective. But most of all, I love reading and learning about when cultures, societies, religions, and ideas meet. How they mix, how they borrow from each other, and how they come into conflict. The Greco-Roman period is one of my favorite periods. Both the empires of Alexander the Great and the Romans, because of conquest and expansion, contained diverse people as well as an incredible variety of religions. This book covers the idea of religious tolerance as largely practiced by the Pagans of the ancient world; the one trip into monotheism by an Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaton, and his worship of the sun disc, The Aton; the Jewish religion and how it changed over a vast period of time; and the beginning of the Christian religion until the death of the Emperor Julian in 363 C.E. He navigates the waters of history, to contrast the legacy of religious tolerance of the polytheistic world with the exclusion and intolerance that often comes with the practice of monotheism.
This book contains a prologue entitled The Everlasting Fire (The Dark Side of Monotheism, the Bright Side of Polytheism). It is then divided up into two books. Book One is called The God That Failed and contains four chapters. These chapters are: Chapter 1: Against All the Gods of Egypt (A Young Pharaoh's Experiment in Monotheism and Why it Failed); Chapter 2: What Did Pagans Do? (The Case Against Classical Paganism - And Why It Was Wrong); Chapter 3: Terror and True Belief (The Jewish King Who Reinvented the Faith of Ancient Israel); Chapter 4: Confessors and Traitors (Pagans and Christians Go to War in Ancient Rome). Book Two contains six chapters and an epilogue. The chapters are: Chapter 5: "In This Sign, Conquer" (The Curious Encounter of Christ and Constantine in the Struggle for the Roman Crown); Chapter 6: The Harlot in the Bishop's Bed (The War Within the Christian Church over the Divinity of Christ); Chapter 7: The Ruler of the Whole World (The Invention of the Totalitarian State by the First Christian Emperor of Rome); Chapter 8: The Orphans of Macellum (The Christian Prince Who Survived A Blood Purge and Struggled for the Restoration of Paganism); Chapter 9: The Secret Pagan (Gods, Empresses, and Julian's Unlikely Rise to the Imperial Throne); Chapter 10: "Behold, the Rivers Are Running Backwards" (The Pagan Counterrevolution of the Emperor Julian) and Epilogue: The Handless Scribe (The Price of Victory of the One True God). The book also contains a map of the empire of Constantine and Julian, a chronology, a list of major historical figures, notes, bibliography and an index.
Often what we get out of a book is what we bring to a book. This book is written in an easy, breezy style with provocative titles that are meant to shake readers out of their complacency. But the author did his research and cites such authors as Robin Lane Fox and Jacob Burckhardt, which ironically one reviewer refers others to read instead of this author. A couple of the previous reviewers of this book either did not read the whole book or decided before hand what it was about and that it was bad. And of course, one reviewer sees this book as part of some vast secular conspiracy. Considering the subject matter of this book, the irony of their opinions can only make me grin. "Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as an enemy, sometimes as a hostage; often as a captive and more often as a child; but knowledge has become of age, and religion must either renounce her acquaintance, or introduce her as a companion and respect her as a friend." - Charles Caleb Colton (Lacon, 1825 C.E.).
Nothing is black and white, and Kirsch does give examples of Pagan intolerance -- the very famous example of the Maccabees and the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Titus. He goes into the Jewish wars with the Romans. He also talks about the persecution of the early Christians by some of the Roman emperors. What is interesting to me is how one reviewer missed chapter six that talks about how Christians persecuted each other in the early years of the religion's foundation! This sad tendency has continued over the centuries to our present day.
As for Mr. Kirsch's hypothesis in regards to the Pagan legacy of tolerance, here are two quotes.
"What is god and what is not god, what is between man and god, who shall say?" -- Euripides (Helen, 412 B.C.E).
"What church I go to on Sunday, what dogma of the Catholic Church I believe in is my business, and whatever faith any other American has is his business." - John F. Kennedy (address, Washington D.C., 1960 C.E.).
This book will appeal to those who are interested in the history of religion and the possible legacy of religious tolerance and to those interested in the meeting of the Pagan world with the Jewish and Christian ones in ancient times.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Book with an Agenda -- Name One that Doesn't Have One
Comment: I had to write after reading the negative reviews below. It always amazes me how people can claim to have read a book, and then describe something that bears only a passing resemblence to the actual text.
Seth, for example, contends GAtG only covers the period of Constantnie to Julian. Since Constantine doesn't show up until page 119, I'm assuming he skipped ahead to the parts he wanted to complain about.
The book actually begins in ancient Egypt, when a Pharoh tried to remove the polythestic gods of his culture and set up the first monotheistic religion. It then moves on to Moses and the other Jewish prophets and their attempts to keep the sometimes straying Jews (golden calf, anyone), in line with the monothestic faith they wanted all their tribe to follow. It then discusses the waxing and waning fortunes of the Jewish faithful (and not so faithful) as their interactions with Romans (and polytheism), shift and move back and forth between rigorist monotheism and comprimise with the pagan, polythesitic culture of the classical age.
While all this is happening, Christianity is introduced, and we get the first case of a monotheistic faith battling a monotheistic faith -- Jews following Jesus against Jews who don't.
And so on, as Christianity spreds into Rome, but refuses to obey the laws of respecting ALL Gods -- which was considered a civic obligation of the Roman citizen. Constanine shows up after all this is clearly laid out.
Seth claim that this is a book "against" Christianity reflect his bias -- Kirsch clearly has it in for Monotheism in general, and that includes Judaism, and Islam. He admits up front that if there's going to be religion, he admires the accepting polytheism of classical Roma and Greece. Monotheistic faiths, he contends, don't just say someone who dosn't worship the right god is wrong, but that he must be "corrected" into believing the right way to believe, because all other beliefs are wrong. If that means torture or death on the path to redemption, so be it.
(By the way, Kirsch points out the ways the polytheists persecuted Christians and Jews. He suggests, though, that the persecutions weren't as horrific as Christian and Jewish historians wrote, and cites other historians as agreeing with him.)
Meawhile, Eric suggests that "secularist liberals will see it as a confirmation that religion is inherently evil and stultifying; the religious conservatives will see it as a distorted attack on the remaining source of morality in the modern world."
Um, no. I'm a liberal Catholic, and I found the book fascinating. I'm particularly fascinated by the way I can see a parallel between religion in the United States and the polytheism of classical Rome and Greece. These days, people in this country move between denominations, switch faiths as their desires and needs dictate, or add Yoga, crystals and horoscopoe readings even as they go to Church, Temple or a Mosque every week. I'd offer that this flexibility (as opposed to living under Islamic hardliners), is a blessing, and something I hadn't considered as an echo of ancient practices (a new polytheism), until I read this book.
It gave me a new way of looking at the world around me. Could I give it less than 4 stars? Nope.
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Title: Harlot by the Side of the Road by Jonathan Kirsch ISBN: 0345418824 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 03 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Freethinkers : A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby ISBN: 0805074422 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 05 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D. Ehrman ISBN: 0195141830 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Closing of the Western Mind : The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman ISBN: 140004085X Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Moses : A Life by Jonathan Kirsch ISBN: 0345412702 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 02 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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