Spears Into Plows
Aslan looks at Gobekli Tepi and how the ruins there might provide us with some insight about our ancestors. He discounts the Atlantean and Alien theories of Erich Von Daniken and Graham Hancock and goes the route of religious community.
He discusses how we homonids gave up over 2 1/2 million years of hunting skills to turn our hand to farming about 12,000 years ago- we turned from foragers to farmers in the Neolithic Revolution. The popular theory for this is that as communities settled in one consistent area it had a huge impact on religious beliefs as the gods of the sky became immolated deities whose bodies made up the rivers, mountains, valleys etc. Mother Earth, the power of life within her womb, was the analogy for the life giving fertility of the soil and we see a rise in female deities across much of the world. However, Aslan considers the thoughts of many other scholars who look at Gobekli Tepi and wonder if religious sites, which often require a lot of labour and effort, were the reasons why communities settled in one place. Maybe they wanted to be near to God(s) and that's why communities undertook intense labour and hardship to be near this. He says that the fossil record shows that the change from a protein heavy to crop based diet heavily affected our physiology and we grew smaller by over 2 inches over the proceeding generations.
Whatever the theory, there is no consensus on what caused the Neolithic Revolution but there was a shift from primitive animism to organised religion within this period.
Lofty Persons
The tale of Sumerian figure Atrahasis is the oldest known written flood myth and may be the ur-flood myth from which all other that spread across the world with many variations including Noah/Nuh.
Ancestor worship (Manism) is also considered as there is evidence of the skulls of family members being placed around the family home in Jericho.
In Mesopotamia, a pantheon of gods with personality traits and powers was created and the ziggurat temples were their Earthly homes for when they came to visit from their celestial abode. An idol was placed at the apex and washed, clothed, fed and treated like it had the spirit of the god within. This is not the first case of idol worship but it would be the most prevelent and widespread as paleolithic figures of a plump woman with a distended belly were scattered around Europe and Asia.
Aslan then looks at how the use of hieroglyphics built upon the Mesopotamian pantheon and created its own version of the gods with their own personalities and traits, adding their animism heritage by often giving the gods animal features.
Aslan argues that the myth making of these gods resulted in Hinduism and later, the clearly flawed Greek gods who seemed very human-like in their follies and foibles. The constant psychodrama of this family and their sheer humanness made many to look for something greater, rather than a family a monad, the one true force, "One god, like mortals neither in form nor in thought," wrote Xenophanes. And lo, around 5000 BCE the Indo-Europeans spread the spiritual landscape from which the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) would arise with the concept one true god.
The High God
Pharaoh Akhenaten was husband to Nefertiti and during his life from 1356 BCE to 1336 BCE was the world's first recorded monotheist, turning away from the Egyptian gods to Aten, the Sun God. This change was highly controversial but was followed through by use of force against all polytheistic temples across the Egyptian Kingdom. After his death, he was seen as heretical and efforts were made to erase him from history, including his son changing his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun and his monuments and works being destroyed and defiled.
Then, around 1100 BCE, Zarathustra created Zaroastrianism, the unified deification of abstract concepts like Truth, Virtue etc into Ahura Mazda. It was highly ritualistic and Zarathustra became the first known Prophet to receive revelations from God, which he wrote down. The religion was not successful but was revived a few hundred or so years later ('in Pog Form' to quote Simpson-ish) by Cyrus the Great who spread it. The form was more dualistic and the concept of Heaven and Hell were added with your deeds during your life deciding your fate.
Aslan then considers why through the whole of human history, monotheism struggled to take hold until the past 3000 years and he thinks it may be due to the fact that monotheism is exclusivist; it considers all other faiths to be wrong except itself and, as such, other faiths must be ignored or crushed. Additionally, the concept that one single god could encompass all the facets of humanity like light/ dark, mother/ father, good/bad seemed quite difficult to reconcile and so the pantheon provided a much clearer version of these concepts. Henotheism allowed there to be a hierarchy of gods with an all-powerful god ruling over lower gods. As in Heaven, so on Earth and thus the politicomorphism of beauracratic order and hierarchies of Earth were applied to the Gods. This became the favoured form of religion across the world for centuries.
What is God?
This chapter looks at the rise of Yahweh and Israel. Tribes were linked to their gods and so, when empires fought it was thought to be based on the strength of their respective god(s) in a battle of monolatry.
Aslan, looks at the various innacuracies and inconsistencies within the Torah, including the story of Moses, the flood myth and even Adam and Eve. He cites various historians who say that the Torah was an amalgamation of four sources, the Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly and Deuteronomist. Aslan states that he believes the Elohist and Yahwist material was combined but that the traditions believed in different gods so the mashup wasn't smooth- thus the inconsistencies yet also similarities between the Canaanites and Israelites. El and Yahweh merged to become God, a singular deity that smooshed the two separate deities together, combining beautifully like peanuts and chewing gum (together at last) with the creation of Israel in 1050 BCE. Yahweh was not the only god, as there were other gods at the time, but he was considered the greatest god so it was not really monotheism or monolatry, he was more like a patron God of the Israelites.
When the Israelites were defeated by the Babylonians, they couldn't conceive that their god wasn't the greatest and so this led to a deeper consideration of their scripture and a hardened belief in monotheism. The defeat of the tribe meant their god was not all powerful and rather than face oblivion they recontextualised what had been there before and formed a solitary singular god with no form who made humans in his image, sharing many of their emotions and qualities, both good and bad.
God is Three
The deification of humans has been around for a long time, ever since the time of the Mesopotamian ruler Sargon the Great around 2350 BCE. The concept was easy as the King/ ruler was considered to have been a representative of God here on Earth. However, Jesus's deification was different as he was considered the sole human manifestation of the one and only God in the universe. This led to a quandary, was there one god or, if Jesus was who he said he was, were there two? This ditheism led to a philosophical conundrum as the old god of the books was vengeful and angry whilst Jesus's message was one of peace, love and forgiveness. What gives? Were Yahweh and Jesus enemies? Marcion, a rich philosopher thought so and argued this point, even creating a new text but it was ignored. However, his ideas spread much to the chagrin of the Romans who saw interest in their old gods falling. Emperor Diocletian wanted to rid the empire of Christians and the Great Persecution saw many of them killed. When Constantine took control in 312 CE, he stopped the bloodshed against Christians and had the slogan, 'One God, One Emperor.'
However, the nature of Christ was in dispute so the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE sought to clarify the situation. Tertullian came up with the idea of the trinity with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit based on the Greek philosophical idea that God was a 'substance'.
Matters were in a state of confusion until Augustine of Hippo clarified the theological position in the 5th century CE, and thus it has remained with a few tweaks along the way.
God is All
This chapter charts the rise of Islam, which saw off the Zoroastrians belief in dualism and Christianity's trinity to become the superpower with its belief that God was One. Aslan says that Allah was already known to the Arabs before Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) as he rose through the Arab pantheon ranks to be the divine animating spirit who had no form, thus no idols but, like Zeus and other religious pantheons, he did have daughters and sons. This was polytheism and the idols of the gods were the intermingling of Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Zaroastrian and other religious beliefs. However, the Prophet's message was that Allah was the divine force and all the others false idols; an anathema to the bustling, cosmopolitan centre of trade that was Mecca. Islam is aligned with Judaism in many ways including the singularity of Yahweh/ Allah, dietary practices and idea that He has no form so we were not created in his image. However, this tawhid is contradictory as if you are supposed to take the quran literally then how to account for the quran's mention of Allah's face, hands and his very human-like Beautiful Names? This has been the centre of theological debate for many centuries and Sufiism arose as a part of this contradiction.
I liked the broad overview of Sufiism and I know of it, and the poet Rumi (which is one my daughter's middle names) but not much else except the whirling dervishes and trances.
Conclusion
Aslan ends the book by discussing his research and personal journey to get to the realisation that he believes in Pantheism, meaning 'God is all, All is God'; God is in Everything so why stress about rituals, rites and practices as God knows your true soul. 'You are God' ends Aslan.
I loved reading this book as I learnt so much. As an Anthropology graduate, I loved the historical timeline about the evolution of human religiousity but on a personal and spiritual level, I've always been on a quest to know the divine. I've wondered is God the animating for that connects all living things, nature deified, an abstract force that permeates the universe, a personalised deity who acts and looks like a human or is God an actual physical being beyond our current scientific ken? In times of division and uncertainty, the notion of finding inner peace and guidance by looking inward resonates deeply. The concept of personal responsibility and a worldview that encourages universal connection, cultivates self-reflection and positive qualities like compassion and empathy.
So many questions and the answers are not forthcoming so Aslan's assertion that God is within us so we should look within and move forward with light in our hearts in just what I need. In this day and age where people are more stratified and seemingly divided, a message of unity and respect is one we all need to hear and spread. Peace.
