Karen Armstrong is a former nun who renounced her vows and is now a prolific writer on the subject of religion. Some of her other works include A History of God and Islam: A Short History. Her work always display an incredible breadth of knowledge as well as very insightful analysis. While this results in books well worth reading, it often makes those same books difficult to read because of the sheer volume of information she puts into them. Her latest book, The Great Transformation, has both of those characteristics as well.
The title of "The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions" is, in short, what this book is about. To those who believe in a the literal truth of the creation story (whatever the religion), the answer to that is obvious, of course. However, in actual fact the great religions of the world, including those of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition as well as Buddhism and Hinduism, are really artifacts of ancient human make. However, they did not arise out of a religious vacuum, nor did they arise quickly. The questions this book seeks to answer are, what conditions did those religions arise out of and why did they arise?
Armstrong seeks to answer these questions in a chronological format, giving the history of the era (thus answering the first question) as she builds to an answer for the second. She covers the time, roughly, between 900 BC and 200 AD (although she chooses to use the contemptible CE terminology). The history of the era is one of great violence and turmoil. Peoples were on the move, and empires rose and fell, shattering the idea of permanence. To people who had belonged to state-centric religions, where the religion reflected and supported the "natural" order of kings, priests, and people, when the empire fell the religion was no longer valid. Without religion, they had nothing to affirm their existence, and needed a substitute. Animists, of course, wouldn't be troubled by this, but even most animist traditions relied on the idea of permanence.
Armstrong chooses to focus on four spiritual centers: Greece (more specifically Athens), Palestine (the land, not the country, obviously), India and China. While this seems simple enough, the picture is actually rather complex. Naturally, one may wonder what great religious tradition arose out of Greece. The answer is none. Their answer to the problems of the Axial Age was not religious in nature, although it was at times also spiritual and philosophical. The religions or spiritual traditions that did arise are quite numerous, more than the easily remembered Judaism, Buddhism or Confucianism. All were attempts to face the uncertainties of the world, and all attempted to find a way to live at peace with an un-peaceful world.
The bulk of the book details the developments of these religions in parallel with events in history. I felt that she made quite adequate arguments demonstrating how and why these developments were responding to outside events. That's one of the best reasons I could give for suggesting this book to readers. To my knowledge there is no other book that covers that territory for more than one religion, and it's quite enlightening to see them developing in parallel. It gives one a much more solid grasp to be able to place history in context than as an isolated incident.
The title might lead one to think that this book talks about the early days of each of these great religions. That's the last thing that she gets around to, and takes up the least time. I suppose many people don't know that religions don't just pop out fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head. The religion of the Hebrews in the Bible (or Torah) was nothing like the rabbinic Judaism of today. Armstrong takes much more time explaining to us the Judaism of the prophets than in describing rabbinic Judaism (presumably because the reader is either more familiar with it already or there are many worthy books about precisely that). Her concern is mainly the gradual mutation that ends in these final religions or philosophies, and she stops basically where they have become at least the rudimentary version of their final forms.
All in all I think the book is well worth reading. Although she makes an attempt to draw a conclusion at the end that the stale religions that focus on doctrine rather than understanding and which assert that only their knowledge is the correct knowledge are useless and detrimental, she really doesn't spend too much time on that theme either, although it is certainly a worthy and interesting assertion. And yet of a four-hundred page book, the conclusion is only ten pages long. Perhaps she's saving that for yet another book.
All in all, I say read this book. It's challenging, to be sure, but in the end quite rewarding as well.
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