Dummy Boy Loc: Michigan

"The Battle for God" by Karen Armstrong.

The Axial Age was a historical period from 700 to 200 BCE that saw the rise of many of the major religions around the globe that are still with us today. Whereas h****r-gatherer societies had been largely egalitarian, the rise of agricultural societies brought the creation of a large and vulnerable peasant class that did not share in the new prosperity. This seems to have been a major impetus for the independent beginnings of Buddhism and Hinduism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in the Far East, and monotheism in the Middle East:

"There was a ... t***sitional period in the ancient world, lasting roughly from 700 to 200 BCE, which historians have called the Axial Age because it was pivotal to the spiritual development of humanity. This age was itself the product and fruition of thousands of years of economic, and therefore social and cultural, evolution, beginning in Sumer in what is now Iraq, and in ancient Egypt. People in the fourth and third millennia BCE, instead of simply growing enough crops to satisfy their immediate needs, became capable of producing an agricultural surplus with which they could trade and thereby acquire additional income. This enabled them to build the first civilizations, develop the arts, and create increasingly powerful polities: cities, city-states, and, eventually, empires. In agrarian society, power no longer lay exclusively with the local king or priest; its locus shifted at least partly to the marketplace, the source of each culture's wealth. In these altered circumstances, people ultimately began to find that the old paganism, which had served their ancestors well, no longer spoke fully to their condition.

The Philosophers of the "Axial Age": Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, and Zarathustra

"In the cities and empires of the Axial Age, citizens were acquiring a wider perspective and broader horizons, which made the old local cults seem limited and parochial. Instead of seeing the divine as embodied in a number of different deities, people increasingly began to worship a single, universal transcendence and source of sacredness. They had more leisure and were thus able to develop a richer interior life; accordingly, they came to desire a spirituality which did not depend entirely upon external forms. The most sensitive were troubled by the social injustice that seemed built into this agrarian society, depending as it did on the labor of peasants who never had the chance to benefit from the high culture.

"Consequently, prophets and reformers arose who insisted that the virtue of compassion was crucial to the spiritual life: an ability to see sacredness in every single human being, and a willingness to take practical care of the more vulnerable members of society, became the test of authentic piety. In this way, during the Axial Age, the great confessional faiths that have continued to guide human beings sprang up in the civilized world: Buddhism and Hinduism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in the Far East; monotheism in the Middle East; and rationalism in Europe. Despite their major differences, these Axial Age religions had much in common: they all built on the old traditions to evolve the idea of a single, universal transcendence; they cultivated an internalized spirituality, and stressed the importance of practical compassion."

pappadeux Loc: Phoenix AZ

So which 'God' are we talking about as there are so many of them. Surly the God of Abraham and the so called god 'Allah' can not be the same. Myself being a 'Deist' believe in a universal god of whom has little regard for organised 'religion.

Dummy Boy Loc: Michigan

As the author suggests, by the many religious groups, it is to recognize that it was in this time period that we started talking about God or Gods on a grand scale.

fiatlux

Very interesting and highly curious. It suggests that something else was going on as well or reveals an essence of our mind.