Resumo de The Beginning Of Religious Traditions

Neither Tolkien nor C.S. Lewis could have devised a panorama of personages
and events more fantastic than the one which befell the human race at the dawn
of its recorded history. Starting around 900 B.C.E., four separate
civilizations experienced a spiritual transformation spanning some seven
centuries. The peoples in the regions now called Greece,
India, China and Israel developed ethical ideas so
consistent with each other that their independent evolution is a matter of pure
astonishment.

This cross-cultural axis of religious awakening was first discerned and
described 60 years ago by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, who believed
that history possessed both a clear origin and an achievable goal. Our
generation''s premiere historian of religious thought, Karen Armstrong, is
naturally less optimistic about humanity''s course, but she feels all the more
impelled to provide a direction through her own writings.

At the very outset of her monumental new book, The Great Transformation:
The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, Armstrong articulates the dire
necessity to recognize and recreate the Axial age of the first millennium
B.C.E. Her enterprise is so urgent?the global stakes could not be higher?that
it demands a structure both simple and tremendous: she composes a historical
symphony in four movements, one Greek, one Indian, one Chinese and one Hebrew.
But just as, from our perspective, the different trees of thought in these four
civilizations intertwine their branches, so too do the distinct movements of
Armstrong''s prose symphony insinuate themselves into each other, chapter by
chapter, under the headings of certain spiritual principles.

What are these radical principles of the Axial Age? First, the ability to
recognize the divine in both the other and oneself, along with a likening of
the other to oneself?an empathy later to be called The Golden Rule. Second, the
rise of introspection and self-discovery over external ritual and magic. Third,
the recognition of the inevitability of suffering and the development of spiritual
technologies for transcending it. Fourth, the capacity to see things as they
really are?a realism terribly undervalued in our own time. Fifth, the spread of
knowledge, beyond the confines of an elite, to ordinary folk. Sixth, an
awareness of the limitations of human knowledge.

In all four geographical regions of the Axial Age, these gospels were long
in coming and short in staying. What''s far worse, they are so familiar to us
these days?particularly through the sayings of that latter-day child of the
Axial Age, Jesus of Nazareth?that we can recognize neither the awesome
strangeness of their universality nor their potential to change the world.

The Buddha and Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah were foremost among the many
sages of those centuries. Could Armstrong be the first sage of a Second Axial
Age? It is literally up to the reader to decide.

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