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

I read this book as a senior in college. For someone who has been struggling with religion, this book really helped me to establish the historical and sociological concepts of God as humans have created them since the dawn of humanity. It narrows its scope to the stories of the 3 monotheistic religions from their conception to present day. It is a magnificent read, and it beautifully parallels...more

I read this book as a senior in college. For someone who has been struggling with religion, this book really helped me to establish the historical and sociological concepts of God as humans have created them since the dawn of humanity. It narrows its scope to the stories of the 3 monotheistic religions from their conception to present day. It is a magnificent read, and it beautifully parallels any western civilization historical class. Karen Armstrong mostly speaks informatively which is a plus. She values all religions equally in what she says, and offers wonderful theological insights and questions that lead the reader to think. It is hard to start but if you can get to the Industrialization, Enlightenment and the birth of modernity, it picks up in its relevance to these religions today.   hide

This book is not at all what I thought it was going to be. It talked about Religion being mythology and God was created by man. To be fair I didn't get past the introduction and maybe I should, but it didn't happen now.

This was one of the most difficult books I have ever read. It completey changed my view of God and my approach to faith. We humans are great at creating narratives to explain ourselves and the universe. We belive that once we have a narrative we have found te truth. A History of God shows how our narrative about God changed with time and how the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Christ became...more

This was one of the most difficult books I have ever read. It completey changed my view of God and my approach to faith. We humans are great at creating narratives to explain ourselves and the universe. We belive that once we have a narrative we have found te truth. A History of God shows how our narrative about God changed with time and how the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Christ became more compassionate as human beings became more civilized. This book that set me on a non-theistic path that led me towards Buddhist psychology and philosophy. It took me two years to read this book.   hide

Read this at Gretchen's recommendation. Interesting stuff but VERY dense material. 4,000 years of background crammed in at a rate of about 1,000 years per 100 pages. Still, very interesting. Would like to read again some day just to see what else I can absorb from it.

Ms. Armstrong is one of my favorite writers, period. The fact that she's the metaphoric balls to tackle a topic as large as this...and then pull it off as well as she did is astounding to me. I gave this book only three stars because of one aspect. It is so loaded with facts that one cannot possibly the specifics of what you are reading, you can only learn the trends. But we should probably...more

Ms. Armstrong is one of my favorite writers, period. The fact that she's the metaphoric balls to tackle a topic as large as this...and then pull it off as well as she did is astounding to me. I gave this book only three stars because of one aspect. It is so loaded with facts that one cannot possibly the specifics of what you are reading, you can only learn the trends. But we should probably expect that since she tackles 4000 of history in 400 pages. Yes, that's 10 years a page. The most striking things I got from this book was the cycle of mysticism-realism and the cycle of those proclaiming religion/God as dead. It makes me laugh at books like "God Is Not Great."   hide

Very well writen, fascinating description of history and philosophy behind and beyond religions, well educated insight, lot of GREAT information! Enjoy!

I loved most of this book, except for its position on Christianity. why? The author insists that Jesus never claimed to be Divine while not citing any other theologian or religious scholar (or proof that she herself found). And when writing about early Christianity, anything asserting that Christ was in some way divine is phrased as "the apostle Paul MADE Jesus say..." and so on. I don't...more

I loved most of this book, except for its position on Christianity. why? The author insists that Jesus never claimed to be Divine while not citing any other theologian or religious scholar (or proof that she herself found). And when writing about early Christianity, anything asserting that Christ was in some way divine is phrased as "the apostle Paul MADE Jesus say..." and so on. I don't care about this from a merely religious perspective - if someone is going to assert something that contradicts 2 billion people's belief structures, she better be damn scholarly about it. other parts of the book were good, but the intellectual edge has been dulled (severely) by P.C. garbage.   hide

Superb detail with a very comprehensive look. The most important part is that the author synthesized and compared the different religious movements throughout history as the book went forward.

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