Reading Response 4

In Karen Armstrong's book, through chapters 5-7 she describes and gains detail using what we had learned from the previous chapters about religion and the quest/path to riotousness which very few according to historic script were able to achieve. The mentioning of Israelites and exiles was used to create a connection between modern Israel and the era of years from 400 to 800 AD. The exiles were both metaphorically and religiously lost during this time. They were thrown from their land spiritually and Armstrong makes a good point to make this clear in the first chapter of the reading. These many exiles were spiritually disconnected from the land that they had come to call home and praised. This lead to the continuity and connection of Noah and his journey on the ark. I thought it was interesting that Karen mentioned this. And not to question any one's belief in their own religion, but it is scientifically and historically inaccurate to say that the entire world was flooded and that Noah had to make a journey to save the animals of the earth. This was an intentional metaphor that Armstrong used to make a point about the exiles and the loss that they experienced. When they made the trip to Jerusalem, they found their city in ruins religiously for their god, "Yah-Weh." This, being the center fold of society caused a lot of distress within their society. Prayer was a hard gain in these ancient times as mentioned. IT was very difficult for someone to experience their faith and live it without a temple of worship . When the temples of Yah-Weh were destroyed (everyone of them) it created that sense of loss for the exiles that resembled that of Noah and his need to "save the earth." Karen, from what I read does a great job of making all of her chapters readable for most people. This is one of many issues though that I wish to address about her full knowledge of the history of Israel and Jerusalem. She does a great job using facts and history to clarify events. But as we were told from the beginning of the course, a lot of the history of Israel has been misconstrued and is not entirely accurate. She disposes of this and continues to cite information that may be false. The religious background of the site in terms of conflict and war may be accurate, but the articles she sites and uses to create the information she used in the book is controversial and often contradicted by another author. I verified this and read articles by other seemingly credible sources pertaining to information of the time period and it creates an annoying atmosphere for someone who might be educated of the subject that has also done the same as I have. I have come to the conclusion thus so far that uses few outside sources delineating from solely conflict and war, geographic maps, and other subject areas, and sources from religion based articles and novels. This disrupts the facts on a timeline and can irritate some readers like myself and is quite annoying. This is my take, and she would be wise to incorporate other sources if redone.