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Religion in the Axial Age
2/11/07, John Asenhurst


The Great Transformation: Part I


In 1949, Karl Jaspers, the German psychologist and philosopher, published The Origin and Goal of History, and coined the term the Axial Age to describe the period from 800 BCE to 200 BCE, during which, according to Jaspers, similarly revolutionary thinking appeared in China, India and the Occident. Jaspers saw in these developments in religion and philosophy striking similarities without any obvious direct transmission of ideas from one region to the other. Jaspers argued that during the Axial Age "the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently... And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today.” In the half century since Jaspers published his influential book a more detailed picture of the Axial Age has emerged. (paragraph above from Wikipedia entry on Jaspers)

Last year, Karen Armstrong, the prolific writer on the world's religions and their history, published “The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions.” Armstrong takes Jasper's insights as a starting point and then fills in the details as understood today about the development of religious thought and practice in China, India, Greece, and Israel during the Axial Age.

Two weeks ago, David Sarver talked about Chinese thought during the Axial Age, focusing especially on Confucianism and Daoism. And Ken Wood discussed Greek religion and philosophy during the Axial Age,

Today I'll talk briefly about what Armstrong calls monotheism, the Axial Age religious tradition that evolved into Rabbinic Judaism and also provided part of the foundation for Christianity and then Islam. I'll also look briefly at the evolution of religious thought in India during the Axial Age, especially as manifested in Hinduism and Buddhism.

And I'll try to make my main point early before I cause you all to doze off.

According to my reading of Karen Armstrong's book The Great Transformation the insights that represent what we today call liberal religion were created more or less simultaneously and independently about 2500 years ago in four different areas of the world: China, India, Greece, and Israel. The history of the last two and a half millennia has seen the continuous struggle between those who acknowledge and value those insights and those who may give them lip service but in fact have a much older and more confining concept of the nature of religion and therefore human life. Our Unitarian Universalism can be seen as a contemporary restatement of the core realizations of the religious geniuses of the Axial Age. Or in other words, what we practice using the name Unitarian-Universalism is not the invention of the last two centuries but an ancient, global, recurring, and particular religious and moral orientation to the world.

Now for some details.

Printed on the back of your order of service is a covenant, the most recent developed by the national Unitarian Universalist Association and affirmed, I think, by most of us. It isn't a confession of faith, creedal statement, or catalog of beliefs. It doesn't mention God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, sin, crucifixion, resurrection, redemption, Hell, Satan, the Bible, the Virgin Birth, or any of the hundreds of other terms and beliefs connected with Judaism and Christianity, traditionally the most common religious traditions in these United States.

We know that in the United States Unitarianism evolved out of the Congregational, originally Puritan, movement in New England. We also know that we can trace Unitarianism in one form or another to England and the emergence of science in the 17th century and to Transylvania in the 16th century where the Reformation manifested itself as religious tolerance. We can even look back to some groups of early Christians for whom the concept of the Trinity made no sense and who were declared heretics by the early Roman church.

Though Unitarian-Universalism evolved out of Christianity, now it is clearly not Christian, and some would claim not even a religion. Years ago a friend told me Unitarians were atheist who couldn't break the Sunday morning habit.

And today it's not even clear that religion is a good thing. All we have to do is read the newspaper to see how violent and hateful the religiously motivated can be. Some of us have recently read Richard Dawkins', The God Delusion, and wondered whether with Dawkins we should become militantly anti-religion or at least militant atheists. Sam Harris, in The End of Faith and more recently in Letter to a Christian Nation, points to the anti-rational, intolerant, and anti-life scriptural basis and practice of some, he would say all, American Christians. With Dawkins he feels that religion threatens the very survival of human race and perhaps all life on the Earth. It's not a pretty picture.

And yet. And yet.

Religion is often understood as a framework of beliefs relating to supernatural or superhuman beings or forces that transcend the everyday material world. But it can be more broadly understood as a system of beliefs and practices concerned with sacred things and/or symbols uniting individuals into a single moral community. The key concept here is a moral community.

So a religion, broadly understood, doesn't have to posit supernatural beings but it does have to represent a commitment to a particular moral perspective. With that definition, religion per se is not objectionable.

Until the Axial Age, religious belief and practice focused especially on rituals - special rituals that were intended to propitiate, influence, or control a god or gods to protect the family or tribe, bring rain, guarantee success in battle, and so on.

During the Axial Age migrations, urbanization, continuous warfare, the demise of tribalism and the rise of the individual, and other changes caused people to question the efficacy of their traditional religious practices and look for or create more appropriate alternatives.

In China, India, Greece, and Israel certain sages, prophets, or scholars independently all came up with similar solutions to the need for better religious answers. The religious traditions they created or influenced are alive and active today - as Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, philosophical rationalism, and monotheism.

Unfortunately, the actual practice of these traditions often fell away from the core insights of the Axial Age and represented just the opposite of what the sage or prophet had originally intended.  So for Armstrong and other reformers it is very important to continuously return to the Axial Age sources to make them alive and relevant to new times.

What are some of the insights common to the religious geniuses of the Axial Age?

Reciprocity, compassion, love, altruism, ending suffering for all human beings, all sentient life or perhaps all life is the proper central orientation of human life
Preoccupation with god or gods, metaphysics, theology, belief systems, or other esoterica is not useful
Right practice, actions, and intentions can lead to true religious understanding rather than the other way around
Emptying oneself, eliminating craving, giving up the need for control, opening one's heart, embracing the void, losing oneself in perfectly performed ritual, sensing the shared tragic in life through communal theater are all pathways to compassion and the extinction of ego
Each person must find her or his own religious truths; formulas, authority, tradition don't work
Diversity among people is natural and to be honored
The point of religion is therapeutic, practical, and about this world - not some other invisible world.

Now take another look at our covenant on the back of the order of service again. Do you see some correspondence between it and the insights of the Axial Age sages?

Before going on to talk about Axial Age insights in ancient Israel and India, I'd like to make a few more points about Armstrong's book. First, though it's not opaque - that is, it's possible to read and understand it, The Great Transformation is not an easy book. It touches on so many concepts, people, and places it's hard to keep track of them and the narrative thread. And Armstrong makes her points in bits and pieces all along the way. She doesn't provide a clear, succinct, comprehensive overview. The book is probably best not read so much as used as a staring point for study, perhaps by continuously accessing the Internet to get more background on what she discusses as one works through page by page.

On the other hand, I particularly appreciate the way Armstrong puts the development of these religious traditions in an historical context. She does comparative religion, in a way, but as dynamic developments, not as static, finished systems. So, for instance, you can come to understand why the Buddha followed the path he took and how his thinking emerges from the sages that preceded him. In my two readings I found myself saying “Ah ha!” regularly.

Monotheism and Ancient Israel

I'm no student of what we call the Old Testament and though I find some of Genesis, the Psalms, Job, and Ecclesiastes insightful and beautiful, so much of  the writing describes a wrathful god wreaking destruction on Israel's enemies and then on Israel itself, that I can't bear to read it. How can this tyrant God or his prophets provide examples of the kind of Axial Age insights Armstrong describes and we support?

It's a good question and I think that Armstrong finds it very difficult to identify Axial Age thinking in the Bible. The best she can do is point to the “P” layer added during the Babylonian captivity.

Let me explain.

By the late 18th century Bible scholars could clearly see how the Old Testament is the result of an editing process that took place in successive layers over centuries, each time perhaps as a response to current events that required new understanding or evolution of Judaism.

Scholars in late 18th century Germany noted that in most of the duplicated stories, one set described God using the Hebrew word Elohim (usually translated "God") while the other set tended to use God's four-lettered Name Y-H-W-H (usually translated "Lord," sometimes miscalled "Jehovah.") This gave rise to the theory that there were two different authors, one called E and one called J (German for Y), whose works were somehow combined to form a single text.

Later analysis of the grammar, vocabulary, and writing style provided evidence for two other authors--called P for the Priestly author (mostly Leviticus, and lots of the genealogy) and D for the Deuteronomist, since the book of Deuteronomy seemed different (grammatically and politically) from the earlier books. The multiple-author view has come to be called the "Documentary theory."

The four different books were later combined by an editor, called the Redactor. The Redactor sometimes put the different authors' stories one after the other (as with the creation stories) and sometimes interwove them (as with the two stories of Noah's Flood and of Joseph's mistreatment by his brothers). The Redactor also added comments like "Now it came to pass, after these things . . ." as a transition between sections.

Scholars differ on when the various authors wrote and when the Redaction occurred. No one today knows who the initial authors were--the predominant view is that many of the stories were handed down orally for generations before being written down. It's not clear which texts are older (although the Song at the Sea in Exodus 15:1-8 is usually acknowledged as among the oldest verses), or which author wrote which verses. Nor is there agreement on the gender of the authors. Some scholars believe the J-writer was a woman, as described in The Book of J by David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom (1990).

It is the “P” writings that Armstrong thinks show Axial Age insights. She points to the first creation story in Genesis where God creates by calm command, not as in the creation stories of many other religions through some kind of violent struggle.

She also points to Leviticus 19:33-34
33 " 'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. 34 The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

We can also note:
"Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD."

This is one of the most famous and oft-quoted principles from the entire Bible. While this statement sounds universal in its scope to modern ears, the term "neighbor" meant roughly "kinsman." Thus, it could be interpreted as relevant only in relations to other fellow Jews.

"Take heed to thyself, my child, in all thy works; and be discreet in all thy behavior. And what thou thyself hatest, do to no man."

Armstrong goes on to point out that the Axial insight moment didn't last long after the return of the Jews from captivity. The exclusivist, wrathful god was back with a vengeance.

I have a hard time being convinced that the Axial years were really an Axial Age for Israel. What do you think? Is Hawkins more perceptive than Armstrong about monotheism?

Hinduism and Buddhism in India
The Hinduism we know with lots of colorful temples for thousands of gods is a product of the post-Axial Age. Before that time religious practice was more sedate and perhaps conservative. Armstrong traces the beginning of the Axial Age in India to changes in Indian society after the Aryans from the steppes of Russia migrated to India and changed from being acquisitive warriors to settled farmers.  Traditional community animal sacrifice gave way to householder rituals. The concept of atman (eternal self) as an element of Brahman (the All) arose and expressed itself as the familiar “Thou Art That” teaching.  The concept of karma as ritual evolved into its being understood as all action and intention. And introduction of the idea of reincarnation helped make sense of the expanded idea of karma. The movement away from the warrior ethic and animal sacrifice led to the idea of ahisma or non-violence. Some individuals found society and contemporary religion so unsatisfying that they became renouncers and moved into the forests on the edge of society and sought wisdom and salvation through meditation and asceticism.

Mahavira, a predecessor to The Buddha and founder of the Jains said that non-violence was the only religious duty: “All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor driven away. This is the pure, unchangeable, eternal law, which the enlightened ones who know have proclaimed.”

Armstrong tells her version of the story of The Buddha's enlightenment and though less romantic than Herman Hesse's version, it is impressive and illustrative. A prince with a family, he found himself deeply unsatisfied with his life and became a renouncer and aesetic. He studied with two great teachers who each finally admitted that they had no direct experience of the theories they taught. After six years of study the Buddha came to understand the cause of suffering and how to cure it. He gathered a group of disciples and began to preach sermons and encourage his monk/missionaries to carry his teachings everywhere.  At one point Buddhism became the established religion of part of India but virtually disappeared from India by the 12th century and The Buddha was seen as just another Hindu incarnated god.

Buddhism is a very rich and complex tradition that I can't begin to understand much less report on. It is sometimes understood to be world renouncing but according to Armstrong it really isn't.  The Buddha doesn't proscribe pleasure, for instance, but the grasping after it.

I have a few readings from "The Buddha Speaks" (Anne Bancroft, editor) that might be of interest:

Grasping p. 75
Different teachings p. 80
Do it yourself p. 84
Past life p. 99
Awakening p. 7
Rich man p. 20
Love  p. 17