Perspective

Karen Armstrong spent the early part of her life as a novitiate in a Catholic Convent. Disillusioned with her religious experience, she left and entered the secular life. This experience has not affected her perspective in writing about the three monotheistic of the Western world. Instead it forms a strong basis for her later studies of Muslim and Judaic religions.

A History of God is admittedly confined to the Judaic, Christian, and Muslim religions, though inevitably Armstrong makes some important comparisons with Buddhist and Vedic religions. Buddhism, is treated in some considerable detail. It would be difficult to justify the increased scope of the book beyond practical limits but the religious beliefs of the Egyptian dynasties which existed in the period of the emergence of the Hebrew nations and the beginning of the Judaic religion, are not addressed.

The History of God, as presented by Armstrong, is a...