In the Shadow of the Sword
A vivid and detailed history of the Near East during late antiquity, culminating in the rise of Islam
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2022–2023years
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What Hacker News says
- I did read the Bible myself, which was one of the things that led to my final break with organized Christianity. It was a very useful exercise, and one that led me to see a huge contradiction between the ministry of Jesus--which was very critical of power and legalism over humanitarianism--and the reality of hundreds of years and dozens of variations of organized Christianity.
That caused me to question why I should consider the Bible as any more special than anyone else's religious book. From my perspective, it hasn't led to the creation of an exemplary Christian community at global scale. Rather, it has created a bunch of bickering, expansionist sects that are self-assured in their own righteousness of thought. My Christian upbringing gave me a humanitarian foundation, but it's largely secular influences that have pushed me beyond the points in which peoples' biblical interpretations come into conflict with humanitarian goals.
But the thing is, as the Catholics recognize, the Bible didn't come to us as an monolithic whole. Its composition has changed over the centuries as books have fallen in and out of favor. Much of this is part of Catholic history, which is a big part of why they don't prioritize it over the leadership of the episcopate. They see the apostolic succession as the place where spiritual authority and orthodox practice derive from.
And then I became really interested in the origins of the Abrahamic religions. The podcast History In The Bible (https://www.historyinthebible.com/) and the book In The Shadow of the Sword (https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Sword-Birth-Global-Empire/dp/0...) have been really fascinating in understanding secular theories of how these religions arose from their historical contexts. Secular historians argue that the core of these religions existed in largely orally transmitted forms, until they were adopted as state ideology in multiethnic polities (first the Kingdom of Judah, then the Roman Empire, then the Caliphate). Or in the case of Rabbinical Judaism, a way to knit together a people dispersed between empires, who had had their old religion decapitated with the destruction of the Second Temple. (I hope I have represented these theories in a way that is not offensive to adherents of these religions.)
Today, I'm intrigued by Christian history and, to some extent, Christian thought, but I don't feel any particular need to believe in Christian theology. I'm not exactly an atheist. More like an agnostic theist.
- Odyssey by Homer (just finished)
Master and Margarita by Bulgakov (just finished)
In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland
Started by quit:
Aeneid by Virgil (too much of Roman propaganda)
Catch 22 by Heller (had it on the list because of recognition but, disliked it 5-10% in)
