The axial age: the emergence of transcendental visions and the rise of clerics

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Human History ◽  
Karl Jaspers ◽  
Axial Age ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Irreversible Effects ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
The Revolution

Inthe first millennium before the Christian era a revolution took place in the realm of ideas and their institutional base which had irreversible effects on several major civilizations and on human history in general. The revolution or series of revolutions, which are related to Karl Jaspers' ‘Axial Age’, have to do with the emergence, conceptualization and institutionalization of a basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders. This revolutionary process took place in several major civilizations including Ancient Israel, Ancient Greece, early Christianity, Zoroastrian Iran, early Imperial China and in the Hindu and Buddhist civilizations. Although beyond the axial age proper, it also took place in Islam.

what is axial about the axial age?

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
robert n. bellah
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Causal Relation ◽  
Clear Indication ◽  
Karl Jaspers ◽  
Old World ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Axial Age ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
India And China

the idea of an axial age in the mid-first millennium b.c. has a long history but was crystallized by karl jaspers in his 1949 book the meaning and goal of history. since then, voegelin, eisenstadt and many others have contributed to clarifying the four cases of axial “breakthrough”, to use jaspers's term, namely ancient israel, greece, india, and china. a number of significant background conditions — economic, social, and political — have been identified that indicate dramatic social change all across the old world, but there is no clear indication of the causal relation of these changes to the emergence of strikingly new cultural-religious formations. this article uses categories derived from the work of merlin donald to argue that in all four cases “theoretic” culture was applied to the reformulation of basic cultural premises, though “mimetic” and “narrative” traditions that had been central in older civilizations continued to be significant, but reformulated in the light of the new theoretic understandings. the four cases, however, are far from homogeneous. they show such differences between them that we can speak of “multiple axialities”, as we have come to speak of “multiple modernities”.

Religious Autonomy and Religious Entrepreneurship: An Evolutionary-Institutionalist’s Take on the Axial Age

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Abrutyn
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Parallel Evolution ◽  
Human History ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
Axial Age ◽  
The World ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
First Time

AbstractThrough the first millenniumbce, religio-cultural revolutions occurred in China, Greece, Israel, and India. Commonly referred to as the Axial Age, this epoch has been identified by some scholars as period of parallel evolution in which many of the World Religions appeared for the first time and humanity was forever changed. Axial scholarship, however, remains in an early stage as many social scientists and historians question the centrality of this era in the human story, while other unsettled debates revolve around what was common across each case. The paper below considers the Axial Age from an evolutionary-institutionalist’s perspective: what was axial was (1) the first successful religio-cultural entrepreneurs in human history and, thereby, (2) the evolution of autonomous religious spheres distinct from kinship and polity. Like the Urban Revolutions that qualitatively transformed human societies 3,000 years prior, the Axial Age represents a reconfiguration of the physical, temporal, social, and symbolic space in irreversible ways.

Five Thousand Years of Foundations: A Typology from Mesopotamia to the usa

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Borgolte
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Near East ◽  
Karl Jaspers ◽  
Axial Age ◽  
The Usa ◽  
First Millennium

According to the written record, foundations can be traced back to roughly 3000 bce and were found in Babylon and Egypt. They originally served the cult, or more precisely the nourishment, of the gods as well as the provision of ancestors in the post-mortal state. Beginning from the time of the so-called Axial Age, according to Karl Jaspers around the middle of the first millennium bce, endowments involved people, that is the founder himself or beneficiaries designated by him in the spirit of philanthropy. The monotheistic religions of the Near East, which in this respect were perhaps influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism, developed an extremely successful type of foundation, namely the foundation for the salvation of the soul. This appeared alongside or replaced the older foundations for the soul, which were essentially meant to support one’s continuing survival in the afterlife and aimed at an enhanced and blissful form of existence through the mercy of or closeness to God. The second universal historical caesura for foundations was brought about by modernity, by removing the religiously-motivated motivation for the lasting purpose of the endowment. The “operative” or “provisional endowments” of the present, essentially an American innovation, have parted ways with a millennia-old interpretation, in order to meet the requirements of inexorable societal and cultural change.

Spatial Expressions of Ascetic Tendencies in the Qurʾan

Numen ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 499-523
Author(s):  
Mette Bjerregaard Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Karl Jaspers ◽  
Apparent Change ◽  
Surrounding World ◽  
Axial Age ◽  
Spatial Expressions ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Spatial Rhetoric ◽  
Stay Behind ◽  
Exegetical Tradition

AbstractIn this article, I propose viewing the early Qurʾanic movement as an expression of strong ascetic tendencies. More specifically, I suggest seeing aspects of Qurʾanic rhetorics as offering a specifically spatial expression to broader ascetic tendencies that characterized late antiquity as a whole, and which may be labeled “axial,” insofar as they can be traced back to the middle of the first millennium B.C.E., i.e., to the period coined by Karl Jaspers and others as “the Axial Age.” In the Qurʾan, rhetoric about striving for religious perfection takes on a spatial and horizontal expression, since the soteriological aspirations are formulated, to a certain extent, as a spatial ambition of “going out in the way of God.” As I suggest here, spatial imagery constitutes a prevalent theme throughout the Qurʾan and, based on an analysis of a number of examples, I argue that this spatial rhetoric indicates ascetic tendencies within the early Qurʾanic movement. The Qurʾan’s articulation of the tension between the believers and the surrounding world, including the tension between the muhājirūn (emigrants) and “those who stay behind,” is a prevalent theme throughout the text. This suggests that ascetic piety should be enacted spatially. In the last section of the article, I discuss the apparent change in semantics of two Qurʾanic terms that suggests the later Islamic exegetical tradition appears to favor an interpretation of these terms that allows for a more settled mentality and “stationary piety.”

scholarly journals Asia's Declining Death Penalty

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
David T. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Human History ◽  
Late Qing Dynasty ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Capital Crimes

For most cultures and most of human history, the death penalty was taken for granted and directed at a wide range of offenders. In ancient Israel, death was prescribed for everything from murder and magic to blasphemy, bestiality, and cursing one's parents. In eighteenth-century Britain, more than 200 crimes were punishable by death, including theft, cutting down a tree, and robbing a rabbit warren. China of the late Qing dynasty had some 850 capital crimes, many reflecting the privileged position of male over female and senior over junior.

scholarly journals A Systematic Assessment of “Axial Age” Proposals Using Global Comparative Historical Evidence

2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 596-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Austin Mullins ◽  
Daniel Hoyer ◽  
Christina Collins ◽  
Thomas Currie ◽  
Kevin Feeney ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Systematic Assessment ◽  
Axial Age ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Temporal Localization ◽  
Axial Transformation ◽  
Institutional Foundations

Proponents of the Axial Age contend that parallel cultural developments between 800 and 200 BCE in what is today China, Greece, India, Iran, and Israel-Palestine constitute the global historical turning point toward modernity. The Axial Age concept is well-known and influential, but deficiencies in the historical evidence and sociological analysis available have thwarted efforts to evaluate the concept’s major global contentions. As a result, the Axial Age concept remains controversial. Seshat: Global History Databank provides new tools for examining this topic in social formations across Afro-Eurasia during the first two millennia BCE and first millennium CE, allowing scholars to empirically evaluate the varied and contrasting claims researchers have put forward. Results undercut the notion of a specific “age” of axiality limited to a specific geo-temporal localization. Critical traits offered as evidence of an axial transformation by proponents of the Axial Age concept appeared across Afro-Eurasia hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years prior to the proposed Axial Age. Our analysis raises important questions for future evaluations of this period and points the way toward empirically-led, historical-sociological investigations of the ideological and institutional foundations of complex societies.

Grecja a koncepcja czasu osiowego w "O źródle i celu historii" Karla Jaspersa

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-164
Author(s):  
Michał Bizoń ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Change ◽  
Reflective Thinking ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Original Theory ◽  
Axial Age ◽  
India And China ◽  
Of Greece

In the paper I consider ancient Greece as a member of what Karl Jaspers called Axial civilizations. In his 1949 book On the Origin and Goal of History Karl Jas- pers developed the theory of the Axial Age. This refers to a supposed proces of intellectual and socio-political change that occurred in Greece, iIrael, Persia, India, and China (but nowhere else) in the period 800–200 BCE. The changes involve the development of critical and reflective thinking as well as a new sense of individuality. I first analyze Jaspers’ original theory in order ot extract criteria of the Axial Age that could be usef for testing whether a particular civ- ilization should be characterized as Axial. I suggest that such criteria may be found in the development of a universal, absolute ethics, based in a notion of transcendence that is opposed to and seeks to displace traditional beliefs and practices. Also, a further criterion can be found in the notion of an individual opposed to the wider community. I then apply these criteria to ancient Greece of the period 800–200 BCE. I conclude that while significant changes have occured in Greece in this period, not least the devlopment of philosophy, they do not support the classification of Greece as an Axial civilization.

scholarly journals ‘Salvation’ (Soteria) and Ancient Mystery Cults

2017 ◽  
Vol 18-19 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-282
Author(s):  
Theodora Suk ◽  
Fong Jim
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
The Other ◽  
Greek Religion ◽  
Important Concept ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

Abstract In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was often held that ancient mystery cults were ‘religions of salvation’ (Erlösungsreligionen). Such interpretations have been criticised by Walter Burkert in Ancient Mystery Cults (1987), who argued against the other-worldly character of Greek mysteries. Burkert’s work remains one of the most important studies of mystery cults today; nevertheless it does not examine the actual use of the Greek word soteria (‘salvation’, ‘deliverance’, ‘safety’), which is central for determining whether Greek mystery cults were indeed ‘Erlösungsreligionen’. This article investigates the extent to which Greek mystery cults could offer soteria (‘salvation’) in the eschatological sense. By examining the language of soteria in the best-known mystery cults in ancient Greece, it will ask whether Greek eschatological hopes were ever expressed in the language of soteria or in other terms. It will be demonstrated that, even when used in relation to mysteries, soteria did not mean anything other than protection in the here-and-now, so that what was offered was predominantly a this-worldly ‘salvation’. If early Christianity indeed derived its most important concept (soteria) from Greek religion, it was a derivation with a significant adaptation and change in meaning.

Paul and the “Tradition” of the Founder-Figures: A Response to James C. Hanges, Paul, Founder of Churches, 2011

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 284-291
Author(s):  
Vaia Touna
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Main Thesis

AbstractThe article is a review/response to James C. Hanges’s bookPaul, Founder of Churches. It presses further Hanges’s main thesis and challenges well-established traditions in the approach both to ancient Greece as well as Early Christianity.

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