The Price of Monotheism($17.69Value)

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Nothing has so radically transformed the world as the distinction between true and false religion. In this nuanced consideration of his own controversial Moses the Egyptian , renowned Egyptologist Jan Assmann answers his critics, extending and building upon ideas from his previous book. Maintaining that it was indeed the Moses of the Hebrew Bible who introduced the true-false distinction in a permanent and revolutionary form, Assmann reiterates that the price of this monotheistic revolution has been the exclusion, as paganism and heresy, of everything deemed incompatible with the truth it proclaims. This exclusion has exploded time and again into violence and persecution, with no end in sight. Here, for the first time, Assmann traces the repeated attempts that have been made to do away with this distinction since the early modern period. He explores at length the notions of primary versus secondary religions, of "counter-religions," and of book religions versus cultic religions. He also deals with the entry of ethics into religion's very core. Informed by the debate his own work has generated, he presents a compelling lesson in the fluidity of cultural identity and beliefs. "In The Price of Monotheism , Assmann answers his critics and thoroughly treats topics only alluded to in Moses the Egyptian , setting new intellectual standards for the study of religions of the ancient world and their contemporary sequels. His book should launch a sorely needed reflection on our relationship to our own religious, cultural, and spiritual inheritance." ―Guy Stroumsa, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem "The author makes a tightly reasoned argument.... Recommended."―L. A. Sinclair, Choice Jan Assmann is Professor Emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg. A prize-winning scholar, he has published extensively on religious history and ancient Egypt. Stanford published his Religion and Cultural Memory in 2006. THE PRICE OF MONOTHEISM By Jan Assmann STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright © 2010 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8047-6160-4 Contents Translator's Note.........................................................................................ixIntroduction..............................................................................................11 The Mosaic Distinction and the Problem of Intolerance...................................................8How Many Religions Stand Behind the Old Testament?........................................................8What Is Truth?............................................................................................12Intolerance, Violence, and Exclusion......................................................................15Constructions of the Other: Religious Satire..............................................................232 Monotheism-A Counterreligion to What?...................................................................31Monotheism Versus Polytheism..............................................................................31Akhenaten and Moses: Egyptian and Biblical Monotheism.....................................................35Monotheism as Anti-Cosmotheism............................................................................39Monotheism as Political Theology: Ethics, Justice, Freedom................................................43Law and Morality in the "Pagan" World and the Theologization of Justice in Monotheism.....................483 The Clash of Memories: Between Idolatry and Iconoclasm..................................................57The Legend of the Lepers and the Amarna Trauma in Egypt...................................................57Iconoclasm and Iconolatry.................................................................................67Prisca theologia and the Abolition of the Mosaic Distinction..............................................76The Tightening of the Mosaic Distinction and the Rise of Paganology.......................................804 Sigmund Freud and Progress in intellectuality...........................................................85The Jewish and Greek Options..............................................................................87The Trauma of Monotheism: Analytic Hermeneutics and Mnemohistory..........................................89The Ban on Graven Images as Progress in Intellectuality...................................................975 The Psychohistorical consequences of Monotheism.........................................................104The "Scriptural Turn": From Cult to Book..................................................................104Into the Crypt............................................................................................109The Invention of the Inner Self...........................................................................112Counterreligion and the Concept of Si