Research Catalog

Title

The price of monotheism / Jan Assmann ; translated by Robert Savage.

Author

Assmann, Jan

Publication

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 140 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

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.

Uniform Title

Mosaische Unterscheidung, oder, Der Preis des Monotheismus. English

Alternative Title

Mosaische Unterscheidung, oder, Der Preis des Monotheismus.

Subject

• Monotheism > History
• Paganism > History
• Religion and culture > History

Genre/Form

History

Note

• "The Price of Monotheism was originally published in German under the title Die Mosaische Unterscheidung oder der Preis des Monotheismus, c2003, Carl Hanser Verlag"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The mosaic distinction and the problem of intolerance. How many religions stand behind the Old Testament? -- What is truth? -- Intolerance, violence, and exclusion -- Constructions of the other : religious satire -- Monotheism, a counter-religion to what? Monotheism versus polytheism -- Akhenaten and Moses : Egyptian and Biblical monotheism -- Monotheism as anti-cosmotheism -- Monotheism as political theology : ethics, justice, freedom -- Law and morality in the "pagan" world and the theologization of justice in monotheism -- The clash of memories : between idolatry and iconoclasm. The legend of the lepers and the Amarna trauma in Egypt -- Iconoclasm and iconolatry -- Prisca theologia and the abolition of the mosaic distinction -- The tightening of the mosaic distinction and the rise of paganology -- Sigmund Freud and progress in intellectuality. The Jewish and Greek options -- The trauma of monotheism : analytic hermeneutics and mnemohistory -- The ban on graven images as progress in intellectuality -- The psychohistorical consequences of monotheism. The "scriptural turn" : from cult to book -- Into the crypt -- The invention of the inner self -- Counterreligion and the concept of sin.

ISBN

• 9780804761598 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0804761590 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 9780804761604 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0804761604 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

• ^^2009014352
• 40017371753

OCLC

318100513

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library