A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

 

A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Karen Armstrong

This was a challenging book to read. It wasn’t necessarily difficult, but definitely challenging.  4,000 years is a lot of history to pack into one book, and at times I felt that this “book” should have been a college course instead of one book. There’s an awful lot to digest here and, after finishing, I almost wished I would have read this thing a lot slower and took copious notes.

If you happen to identify as a Jew, Christian, or Moslem, chances are you know an awful lot about God from your Holy Book, yet to get a bigger picture, it’s important to study sources from the outside looking in as well.  For some reason (at least for Christians, which I am and am most familiar with), this doesn’t bode well for many.  Often you hear Christians (angrily) shout “I read my Bible!  And that’s all I need to read!” This sentiment has always bothered me, and almost seems an excuse to cover up one’s ignorance.

So Karen Armstrong takes the reader through how these 3 faiths have always understood, or tried to understand, God.  This book is heavy on philosophy, and at times it was simply too much for me.  I don’t really get a lot out of hearing people argue about the nature of God when these arguments tend to go on and on and seem awfully repetitive.  It’s a little bit like listening to a 15-minute Blues song where the guitar player does nothing but noodle with his guitar for 12 out of the 15 minutes.  Sooner or later you want to shout: “Enough! Move on!”

But, this is the book that Karen Armstrong set out to write, and even if you don’t agree with many of her assessments and conclusions, you have to give her credit for her due diligence and research.  I learned a lot while reading, but there’s so much here, I felt like I only retained a few relevant bits by the time I finished.  Think of that game show where someone is in a booth with dollar bills being blown all around the person as they’re trying to catch and hold on to as many money as they can.  Once the time is up, the person is lucky to have come away catching only one or two bills even though there were hundreds flying around.

She does a good job dividing this book equally among the 3 religions as she goes all the way to the present day. Again, a separate book devoted to each religion would have been better. The author has a Christian background, yet doesn’t identify as a Christian. She’s not an atheist either.  I would say that a book such as this is advantageous in that aspect. It’s much easier when the author isn’t horribly biased in a particular way.

Her observations of the last couple hundred years is quite bleak, but when one objectively looks around at the state of the world (which I like to think I do, but I confess I don’t think many Christians do), I can’t argue with many of her conclusions.  I wish I could comment more, but again, so much of what I read I couldn’t retain in my brain because of the depth and volume.

I would recommend this book, but unless you’re a religious scholar, I advise you to go slow. There’s an awful lot here..  Although this is a good book knowledge-wise, you CAN really have “too much” of a good thing.