Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was by Iain Provan (PDF)

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The contemporary world has been shaped by two important and potent myths. Karl Jaspers’ construct of the “axial age” envisions the common past (800-200 BC), the time when Western society was born and world religions spontaneously and independently appeared out of a seemingly shared value set. Conversely, the myth of the “dark green golden age,” as narrated by David Suzuki and others, asserts that the axial age and the otherworldliness that accompanied the emergence of organized religion ripped society from a previously deep communion with nature. Both myths contend that to maintain balance we must return to the idealized past. In Convenient Myths, Iain Provan illuminates the influence of these two deeply entrenched and questionable myths, warns of their potential dangers, and forebodingly maps the implications of a world founded on such myths.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Humankind has often been held captive by pictures and stories concerning its own remote past. By revealing the misunderstandings and misrepresentations of ‘religion’ perpetuated by two such modern stories, this important book both liberates us from unhealthy and potentially damaging assumptions and opens the way for a fresh evaluation of the phenomena of religious faith and practice as we encounter them. Groundbreaking.”―Trevor Hart, Professor of Divinity, St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews”In Convenient Myths, Iain Provan not only challenges deep (and deeply mistaken) myths, but destroys them on the rocks of rugged history.”―Scot McKnight, Professor of New Testament, Northern Seminary”Iain Provan has a long track record of reliable, insightful interpretation. Now he brings his acute critical eye to consider familiar mantras that have served for popular religious interpretation. As Provan knows (and shows), these mantras have done a lot of damage through distortion and generalized misrepresentation. Provan makes clear that we cannot do our interpretive work by reliance upon such generalizations, but must go deeply into the particularity of religious traditions. His book is a summons to critical work that resists much of the facile interpretation now so widespread among us.”―Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary”Overall [Convenient Myths] makes a persuasive case, albeit often against popular writers, and offers a salient warning against the uncritical appropriation of cultural assumptions.―,”―R.S. Watson, Society for Old Testament Study”This is an important book to read, not just for those who are tempted to believe in the axial age or dark green golden age, but for any people who are tempted to disrespect their dead neighbors by distorting history to pursue a present agenda.”―Elliot Ritzema, All is Grist Review Humankind has often been held captive by pictures and stories concerning its own remote past. By revealing the misunderstandings and misrepresentations of ‘religion’ perpetuated by two such modern stories, this important book both liberates us from unhealthy and potentially damaging assumptions and opens the way for a fresh evaluation of the phenomena of religious faith and practice as we encounter them. Groundbreaking. — Trevor Hart, Professor of Divinity, St. Mary’s College, University of St Andrews About the Author Iain Provan is the Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies, Regent College. He lives in the Vancouver, Canada area. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Doing historical work is sometimes difficult, we would rather believe what we want to believe than do the hard work of finding out the truth.Although Provan acknowledges that he is stepping outside his area of expertise to confront some mythical memes that have taken hold in our culture, his research into these myths about the “axial age” and “dark green religion” is thorough but presented in such a way that this should be accessible to a popular audience.In his area of expertise, Provan counters a notion that often goes along with these myths that the Christian and Jewish Scriptures teach the dominance of human beings over the natural world. Provan rightly argues that such is not actually the case. Of course, he does this more fully in his other excellent book Seriously Dangerous Religion. These two works make excellent companion volumes.

⭐A good deal of prose refuting individual academics. Only about 20% of the book is a good read summarizing the author’s points. I got something from it, but I think the price does not justify what I was able to learn, Your evaluation might be better if you grasped the academic community the author is trying to refute.

⭐The study of the Axial Age is uniquely confused and incoherent. The reason this author understandably scratches his head. The source of the confusion starts with Jaspers himself, but his basic data is clearly pointing to something remarkable so the confusion springs from something deeper, but not hard to find: we can’t vizualize civilizations very easily, and we also can’t easily say what properties they have as with ordinary objects we use and touch.Jaspers we forget spoke of an ‘axis’ point, not just the Axial Age and went in search of other such points. The problem he had going backwards was to confuse an earlier civilization as a whole with ‘axis’ points, and going forwards, he confused the issue with religion and found none in the ‘secular’ period.The solution here is to attempt to define what we are dealing with and create a model that can elicit some of the properties in question.The author’s twin studies, Descent of Man Revisited, and World History and the Eonic Effect, provide this model and show how the idea of a series of ‘axis’ points carefully defined can resolve a lot of the confusion.http://www.amazon.com/Descent-Man-Revisited-World-History/dp/0984702903/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334574170&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/World-History-Eonic-Effect-Landon/dp/1450060234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277221437&sr=1-1

⭐Firstv, more later after I read some of the refernced material.This is a succinct look at the basis of the current eco,religions and their acolytes. They assume there is some Edenic past that we can return to by destroying the levil l civilizations g Western of course ) and the mainstream religions they claim have put us in some horrible and imminent crisis of worldwide destruction.Naturally the eco-gurus not only are the only true visionaries who , through their secret knowledge and brilliant but unrecognized insights , can save us all from our pitiable , blind , civilization-addicted selves.They base this on a supposed idyllic pre Axial age hidden in the mists of the Paleolithic era that , luckily for us , have managed to discover and comprehend through their almost supernatural powers of insight into pre-recorded time and the minds of the inhabitants of that dark green paradise.Only problem is , it never existed.The author does an excellent expose of the origins of the idea of the noble savages’ primitive paradise in the ninds of our purported saviiurs and shows how they are dead wrong.He sympathizers with their “save the planet” supposed goals but shows there is little basis for their belief in a “wisdom of the ages” that can only be brought about again through near annihilation of civilization. Some of it’s adherents (eco-cultism ) approve of violence to bring about this ” loving , compassionate ” world of pre-religion and earth worship. Since the destruction of industrialized societies would necessarily result in the deaths of billions and the abjectb mpoverishment of everyone else it puts the lie to any claimed benevolence of the eco-religion proponents and reveals the inescapable conclusion that they would literally do anything ,vsay anything and believe anything to bring back that utopia which never was and we , the civilized , are their targets.I know this was not the author’s intent but anyone who understands the inevitable result of allowing deluded , utopian fanatics to have their way should heed the warning signs here.The eco-cultists want to believe in a utopia only they are wise enough to discover even if it never existed.Eco-religion is spreading faster than any other and these utopianists have already made big gains in civilization desttruction through such current panic disinformation campaign as global warming , animal over human rights and business killing government “regulation” and activist theft of private property. Eco-cultism is just another form of gaining power through creating fake crises and then offering the wisdom of an elite to solve them. The cost would only be genocide , misery and oppression into a superstition based theocracy that truly has only false gods.Remember the Marxist “workers paradise” , the Nazi “super eace” and every other insane promise of utopia.They were all based in myth , the myth of the eco-cult is exposed here.However , how many times nust the abjuration “nust” be used by the cultists before we realize they really do want to re-educate and control us ?

⭐This is a good review of two ways of looking at the human past that are currently popular and in many ways well meaning, but sadly lacking any evidence that they are true…. It’s also a general challenge to be honest about what we know of human history, and critical of what “everybody knows.” I look forward to reading the next volume.

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