A History of God
Based on Karen Armstrong’s acclaimed book, this feature-length film guides viewers along one of humanity’s most elusive quests.
For over 4,000 years, adherents of the world’s monotheistic faiths have wrestled with the question of God. This extraordinary, feature-length film, based on Karen Armstrong’s acclaimed book of the same name, traces that elusive and fascinating quest.
A History of God examines the familiar images of deity as presented in the Bible and Koran and traces the evolution and interrelation of the various Christian, Jewish, and Islamic interpretations of the divine figure. Through balanced analysis of historic and holy texts and extensive use of ancient art and artifacts, we’ll follow the long road to today’s understanding of God and what the journey–and the destination–have to tell us about humanity and its never-ending search for meaning and comfort.
From the time of Abraham to the present, this is a thought-provoking look at the God at the heart of the world’s three great monotheistic religions. (Excerpt from bbc.co.uk)
Watch the full documentary now
Well researched as the book was, and given in an unbiased and scholarly way. A thought provoking and interesting documentary showing us that the way we look at God has continually changed throughout history and will probably continue to do so in the future too.
Is it just me, or is the voice talent reading scripture Gloria Foster (Oracle, from “The Matrix)?
This was a very nice, slow paced and understandable movie.
If you don’t happen to know much about the three big(gest ?) religions you should try it.
Really good, i feel an infoboost right now ;)
This was very good. A compelling summary and interpretation of monotheistic history. Well worth the watch.
I want to go to sleep and delay (for tomorrow insh’ALLAH) my comments over a multitude of chocking statements, pictures and so on in this doc ,but I have first to comment on the statement of Armstrong, it’s unbelievebal she said ” Muslims circle around ALLAH “(The kaaba representing ALLAH)” :this is absolutely wrong and she contradict early statement in this doc, it contradicts the most important thing in Islam; tawhid.
It’s shirk, which is a supreme sin, to worship object, persons, prophets …I think that there is a Hadith stating that The blood of a muslim is hollier then the Kaaba which is the direction towards we pray, but we don’t pray to the kaaba; we don’t ask it to grant us paradise or sucess in our life and so on because it is a building not GOD.
in fact it is one of the classical paganistic traps of distortion of the real message.
mnti do you know what kaaba is/(represent) in Islam?
Pretty factual!
Karen Armstrong asserts that the Kaaba was dedicated to [b]Hubal[/b], a Nabatean deity, and contained 360 idols which either represented the days of the year , and the embedded Black Stone was a further symbol of this as a meteorite that had fallen from the sky and linked heaven and earth.
The Kaaba was a shrine for the Daughters of God (al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat) and Hubal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaaba
religion is rubish .
Eons upon eons, every since the thoughts and imagination of humankind came to be expressed through art and language, communities of people have been mentally bound to shamans, prophets, priests, imams and others who invoke Divine credentials. The expression of thoughts, contrary to the invocation a particular conceptualizationof a divine personage, invariably encounters rejection without investigation. Intolerance is the norm as defenders of their respective religious bent resort to the recitation of text deemed applicable in their rebuttal.
Theist and atheist will probably find some interest in this documentary. However, the idea of a God, in a monoteistic context, has as its antecedent, an origin that originates in Kemet (Egypt). That being said, a balanced treatment in this regard is not possible.
Karen Armstrong drops more info bombs that Alex Jones on speed. Even the Rabbi has to concede on her analysis!
Semi related topic: I dont like the term atheist. It is a religous slur term that non religous have adopted, similar to black people adopting the n-word. Why? The prefix ‘a’ meaning without and theist meaning god. So in total without god, implying that god exists and you reject him. Using this language is akin to accepting the religous playing field. Its much better to be non-religous if you are that way inclined.
A very informative and unbiased documentary.
Islam is the true monotheistic religion. Islam recognizes all the Prophets in the Old and New Testaments (including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and John the Baptist) and upholds their message which is submission to the one true God and the creation of a society wherein there is justice for all.
Christianity is not monotheistic at all when it believes in the so-called divinity of Jesus. Jesus never claimed to be divine or a son of God or some manifestation of God Himself. It was what he was made some three hundred years after his death by people (Romans/Greeks of the Nicene Creed) who had been influenced for centuries by multiples gods and sons of gods and goddesses. It was convenient to present Jesus as son of God so that the new religion of Christianity would appeal to the pagan populations of the Roman Empire and beyond and they would relate to a new son of God.
Anyways, it was better for for the Romans and other pagans to believe in a distorted version of Jesus’s message/religion than to continue living their hedonistic lives and believing in their pantheon of gods and goddesses. In short, even though Christianity is not strictly monotheistic and Jesus’s message has been altered (eg. concept of salvation of mankind by Jesus’s death at the cross was never his message), it has done a lot more good in human history by teaching compassion, love, social justice to mankind.
Judaism can be said to be a truly monotheistic and Islam has borrowed more from Judaism than any other religion. The concept of ONE GOD is exactly the same in Judaism and Islam. The ancient Jews erred greatly in not propagating their religion and in being a closed society. Also far more emphasis was on rituals (sacrifice, worship) than on the real message of the Old Testament (i.e. doing good and belief in One God). They also did not believe in Jesus and prosecuted him and his disciples. Even today they are a closed society and have not truly grasped the real message of the scriptures.
Islam’s concept of God is:
“Say: He is Allah, the One and Only! Allah, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not nor is He begotten. And there is none like unto Him”. (Holy Qur’an 112:1-4).
The above is a very important Surah (chapter) from the Holy Qur’an because it proclaims the Oneness (Tawhid) and Absolute nature of Divine Essence. It declares that Allah is Eternal, i.e., He is beyond the bounds of time and space. It also describes that Allah does not give birth nor is He is given birth and then declares that Allah is beyond comparison. It directly supports the first declaration (shahadah) of Islam: “There is no god but Allah”. In this context, Islam is based on belief in One God (monotheism).
Damn it. That’s it!! Every thing I post gets hung up in moderation! I quit!!
The three mono religions covered here all involve desert people who had ‘prophets’ that claim to have experienced God in ‘miraculous’ circumstances. As expected in these cases, the revelations don’t imbibe in the followers because they were personal experiences. Consequently, later generations end up creating personality cults surrounding these prophets, messiahs, etc. The followers generally have little substantive spiritual knowledge or detachment and rely heavily on ritual, incantation, etc to make a show of spirituality.
But there is another monotheistic culture that was not covered at all in this history that dates its beginning to the creation of the universe. Rather than being dependent on the personal experiences of God by a handful of people, this culture’s philosophy was carefully handed down from teacher to disciple since the creation of the universe to the present day. This culture is known as Vaisnava or Varnasrama.
All in all this was a decent film, but I think its title should have been ‘A history of God from the Anglo viewpoint’.