Imagine my Greek-centered surprise when I read in my local bookstore's occasional email that Karen Armstrong, popular religion writer, had written a book about the Greek Dark Age:
THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION by Karen Armstrong (Anchor $13.95). How the peoples of 9th century BCE created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day and how they speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own time.
This book was originally published in 2006 and is being newly issued in paperback, hence the notice in the email.
The 9th c. BC (or BCE for some) in Greece is still considered a kind of Dark Age, in between the Bronze Age civilizations of Mycenae and Crete, and before the flowering of Homeric epic and Greek civilization which led to the traditional Golden Age of Greece. We are learning a lot more about this time-- it is becoming less and less dark with each passing day. At Corinth, for example, excavator Guy Sanders has done some astonishing work.
Photo: Fulbright Seminar 2005 listens to Professor Sanders at the Corinth excavations.
But we know that it was a time of transition and gradual renewal, rather than a hot time of flourishing innovation.
So, I thought, this is a pretty ground-breaking idea that 9th c. BC Greece created any kind of religious or philosophical traditions.
Now, from a little investigation I did found out that Armstrong talks about Greece but much more about other places, including China, India, and Israel.
For the Greek part I was able to glean that she writes about the Succession Myth of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus, which may possibly have been in circulation in the 9th c. BC. More likely it was still known in its original forms, which come from Anatolia and Mesopotamia.
The Succession Myth is about the establishment of a grand god (for the Greeks, Zeus) who got to where he was by overthrowing his older male relative. Apparently Armstrong thinks the people who told this myth believed that enough was enough-- let's stop fighting and get down to making compassionate civilization. Here is a summary of Armstrong's argument from a Publisher's Weekly blurb:
"Crouched in his mother's womb, [Cronus] lay in wait for his father, armed with a sickle, and the next time Uranus penetrated Gaia, he cut off his genitals and threw them to the earth." ...the Greek myth of Cronus clearly illustrates Armstrong's main thesis, that the "simultaneous" development of the world's religions during what Karl Jung called the axial age, is a direct result of the violence and chaos, both physical and spiritual, of past civilizations.
To me, that's a serious misreading of the myth. Maybe another time I'll say why (including the motivation for the gross parts). But be that as it may, I just don't see the 9th c. BC (in Greece, at least) as a time of defining religious and philosophical traditions. If anything, it's becoming clearer that there was continuity on both sides.
Seems like a case of trying to make something fit that just doesn't.
Anyone who has read the book can abuse me of these suspicions. But this link to a very weird and troubling excerpt on the "Aryans" in this book makes me wonder what all in fact is in there.
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