The narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Syrian desert produced the gods with whom the Hebrew Bible argues most bitterly: Baal, Asherah, Molech and the “host of heaven”. For most of the modern era these gods were…
Month: October 2026
Chapter 4. Egypt: Maat, Pharaoh and the Afterlife
Mesopotamia (ch. 3) gave the ancient world a pessimistic picture of the dead and kings who ruled as servants of the gods. Egypt gave it the reverse: a king who was himself divine, a cosmic order the king had to…
Chapter 3. Mesopotamia: Gods, Temples and Kings
Long before the Indo-Iranian tribes reached the plateau (see ch. 6), the plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates had a religion of cities, temples and written theology. Its first evidence comes with writing, around 3500 BC. It ended only…
Chapter 2. Before Scripture: Prehistoric, Shamanic and Archaic Religion
The religions studied in this book come with texts, but religion is far older than writing. For tens of thousands of years before the Rigveda or the Gathas, people buried their dead, painted caves, carved figurines and raised monuments of…
Chapter 1. Method and Sources: How This Study Reads the Library
Every chapter of this study rests on two decisions: which sources to read, and how to read them. The comparative history of religions has argued over both since the nineteenth century. Its founders compared religions across continents in search of…
Introduction: The Long Arc
This study follows a line of descent and contact that runs for more than three thousand years. It starts with the gods the Indo-Iranians shared before they split into Vedic Indians and Avestan Iranians, and it ends with two twenty-first-century…
Preface
This book is a study of religions, cults and the political orders that grew up with them. It begins with the Indo-Iranian world, the prophet Zarathustra and the god Mithra, and ends with two modern systems that claim to stand…