Karen Armstrong

“Human beings have always been mythmakers.” So begins best-selling writer Karen Armstrong’s concise yet compelling investigation into myth: what it is, how it has evolved, and why we still so desperately need it. She takes us from the Paleolithic period and the myths of the hunters right up to the “Great Western Transformation” of the last five hundred years and the discrediting of myth by science. The history of myth is the history of humanity,...

“Human beings have always been mythmakers.” So begins best-selling writer Karen Armstrong’s concise yet compelling investigation into myth: what it is, how it has evolved, and why we still so desperately need it. She takes us from the Paleolithic period and the myths of the hunters right up to the “Great Western Transformation” of the last five hundred years and the discrediting of myth by science. The history of myth is the history of humanity,...

Hebrews marks a parting of the ways for Jews and Christians of the first century. It makes a case for the superiority of the new Christian 'faith' over old Hebrew orthodoxy and draws on the Old Testament for precedents for Jesus's ministry and to paint a picture of Jesus.

A raw, intensely personal memoir of spiritual exploration from one of the world’s great commentators on religion.After seven years in a convent, which she left, dismayed by its restrictions, an experience recounted in ‘Through the Narrow Gate’, Karen Armstrong struggled to establish herself in a new way of life, and became entrapped in a downward spiral, haunted by despair, anorexia and suicidal feelings.Despite her departure from the convent she remained within the Catholic Church until the God...

Due to the level of detail, maps are best viewed on a tablet.‘A History of Jerusalem should be read, not only by travellers and potential travellers in Jerusalem, but by all of us.’ Stephen Tummin, Daily TelegraphJerusalem has probably cast more of a spell over the human imagination than any other city in the world.Held by believers to contain the site where Abraham offered up Isaac, the place of the crucifixion of Christ and the rock from which the prophet Muhammed ascended to heaven, Jerusalem...

Through the Narrow Gate is Karen Armstrong’s memoir of life inside a Catholic convent in the 1960’s.With gentleness and honesty, Armstrong takes her readers on a revelatory journey that begins with her decision, at the age of seventeen, to devote her life to God as a nun. yet once she embarked upon her spiritual training, she encountered a frightening and oppressive world, fossilized by tradition, which moulded, isolated and pushed her to the limit of what she could endure.

From the bestselling writer of ‘The History of God’ and the widely acclaimed ‘Islam – A Short History’ comes Karen Armstrong's ‘Muhammad’.Muhammad was born in 570 C.E., and over the following sixty years built a thriving spiritual community, laying the foundations of a religion that changed the course of world history. There is more historical data on his life than on that of the founder of any other major faith, and yet his story is consistently misunderstood, and subject to much distortion and...

This edition does not include illustrations.Britain’s greatest religious historian chronicles the rise and rise of fundamentalism.One of the most potent forces bedevilling the modern world is religious extremism, and the need to understand it has never been greater.Focusing in detail on Protestant fundamentalism in the United States, Jewish fundamentalism from sixteenth century Spain onwards and Muslim fundamentalism over the last four hundred years, Armstrong examines the patterns that underlie...

Piibel on raamat, mis on kujundanud tervet Lääne kultuuriruumi ja ajalugu ning mille eri tõlgendustest on sõltunud riikide ja rahvaste saatused. Piiblit on tõlgitud rohkem kui 2000 keelde ning see on vaimseks teejuhiks igale kolmandale inimesele maailmas. Ometi on tegu keeruka tekstiga, mille kujunemislugu on pikk ja käänakuterohke. Briti kirjanik ja ajaloolane Karen Armstrong vaatleb, mil moel suuliselt levinud ja väga erinäolistest allikatest pärit pärimustekstid muutusid kirjapandud...