Quote:
Originally Posted by Superlucky
I just finished SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. If you read the first one (Freakonomics), then you'll like this one. It was a fun, quick read, if a bit too short.
Hey Kenny, have you read Karen Armstrong's A History of God? If so, how does The Evolution of God compare?
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OK, I'm not Kenny, but I have read both, although it's been around 15 years since I read Armstrong's book.
Both books are excellent, both cover similar ground, and both make use of modern scholarship. Both also believe that the various faiths of Abraham can co-exist peacefully, but for different reasons. Wright makes the case for what he calls "zero-sumness", which I suppose can be summed up briefly as seeking win/win outcomes. He believes that as our world gets smaller and as we recognize our shared humanity across an ever-expanding sphere of relations that tolerance across the board will increase. Some might argue that this is being Pollyannic, but he offers historical reasons for his optimism. Armstrong, on the other hand, looks to the mystical elements in all religions that seem to transcend the traditions in which they are rooted and unite the practitioners. She's a good scholar, in my opinion, but this aspect of her work strikes me as being somewhat in the New Age camp.
If I had to choose one, I would go with Wright; largely because the tone of his book is more agnostic (as am I). That being said; I think the former nun has the better writing style, and I always enjoy reading her works.
Here are samples from both on the topic of Yahweh's roots:
We can go further. It is highly likely that Abraham’s God was El, the High God of Canaan. The deity introduces himself to Abraham as El Shaddai (El of the Mountain), which was one of El’s traditional titles. Elsewhere he is called El Elyon (The Most High God) or El of Bethel. The name of the Canaanite High God is preserved in such Hebrew names as Isra-El or Ishma-El. They experienced him in ways that would not have been unfamiliar to the pagans of the Middle East.
— Karen Armstrong.
The History of God (1993).
It’s even possible that Yahweh, who spends so much of the Bible fighting against those nasty Canaanite gods for the allegiance of Israelites, actually started life as a Canaanite god, not an import.
— Robert Wright.
The Evolution of God (2009)
If that’s not a close enough link between Israelite religion and El, look at the word “Israel” itself. In ancient times names were often inspired by gods, and names ending in “el” typically referred to the god El. An especially intriguing biblical appearance of the word El is in the phrase El Shaddai, famously rendered in English as “God Almighty.” As it turns out, “Almighty” is a mistranslation; though the exact meaning of Shaddai remains cloudy, it seems to refer to mountains, not omnipotence—but that’s another story. For present purposes, what’s interesting is the way this name is used in the sixth chapter of Exodus, during one of Moses’s conversations with God. God says, “I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them.” Even Yahweh himself says that he started life with the name El!
— Robert Wright.
The Evolution of God (2009)