138 Book reviews / Religion 40 (2010) 132–146

Let me be clear, however, that I raise these questions not as critique but as a request to one of my personal heroines to keep thinking, keep
writing and keep sharing her insights with her many admirers.

Susan Sered
Suffolk University (U.S.A.)
E-mail address: ssered@suffolk.edu

doi: 10.1016/j.religion.2009.10.008

Jan Assmann, Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism. Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, X D 196
pp., $55.00 (Cloth), ISBN: 978 0 299 22550 6, $26.95 (Paperback), ISBN: 0 299 22554 2.

In this very learned and highly engaging study, world-renowned Egyptologist Jan Assmann (emeritus professor of Egyptology at Hei-
delberg University) attempts to address one of the most impenetrable problems in biblical studies and in the history of religions gener-
ally, that is, the question surrounding the emergence of monotheism in Israel, Egypt and the ancient Near East broadly in the 2nd to 1st
millennia BCE. During the process of categorising the world’s religions – a process begun during the Enlightenment and marked by all of
the baggage traditionally associated with the Enlightenment project generally – scholars have often made sharp and programmatic
distinctions between ‘monotheistic’ (one god) and ‘polytheistic’ (many gods) religions; in this bipartite division, Israel was typically
identified as the original or sole ‘monotheistic’ religion in the ancient world. Studies of monotheism in the late 19th century became
increasingly complex, and Israel remained the focal point. The Dutch scholar Abraham Kuenen famously posited a tripartite evolutionary
development, from ‘fetishism’ to ‘polytheism’ to ‘monotheism’ as the process of religious development in ancient Israel, and similar
evolutionary schemes were adopted by many prominent thinkers well into the 20th century. Others, however, such as the mid-20th
century American scholar W.F. Albright, saw monotheism not in evolutionary terms but as a kind of revolution or radical innovation
(though not without some precedent) introduced onto the world stage by the Israelites – more specifically, by Moses and his multitude
of acolytes fleeing from Egypt.
Assmann’s study does not delve too deeply into this history of scholarship, but rather begins by introducing his readers to what he
calls ‘the Mosaic distinction’, a concept with which the author has been working for over a decade (see Assmann’s ‘The Mosaic Distinc-
tion: Israel, Egypt, and the Invention of Paganism’, Representations 56, 1996). Briefly put, the Mosaic distinction is ‘the idea of an exclu-
sive and emphatic Truth that sets God apart from everything that is not God and therefore must not be worshipped, and that sets
religion apart from what comes to be shunned as superstition, paganism, or heresy. This idea finds its clearest expression not in the
phrase ‘‘God is one!’’ but ‘‘no other gods!’’’ (p. 3). The words ‘exclusive’ and ‘emphatic’ seem to be important words here, since one
would otherwise be left with the (misleading) impression that there existed polytheistic groups across Egypt and the ancient Near
East who worshipped every rock and tree in sight, or that every ancient conception of divinity was tantamount to pantheism. At
any rate, Assmann’s study revolves around the central question of violence in monotheistic and polytheistic religions, and the author
claims that we ‘must distinguish between so-called pagan and monotheistic violence. Pagan violence stems from the indistinction
between state and religion’ (p. 29), such as in the situation in ancient Egypt. Monotheism, on the other hand, ‘implies a strict separation
between religion and state.Monotheistic violence.is directed against paganism – typically against the ‘‘pagan within’’ – and not
against political enemies’ (p. 29).
Assmann is especially instructive when discussing the ancient Egyptian religious situation. In Chapter 2 (‘Seth the Iconoclast’), we learn
of the fascinating transformation in the image of Seth (the ‘prototype of the sacrificial animal’, p. 36) and the political and religious trans-
formations within Egypt that prompted these changes. In the Egyptian conception, Seth murdered his brother Osiris, the King, for which he
had to be punished. Osirus’s son, Horus, avenged the murder, and thus the mythical act of overcoming Seth was later transformed into ‘the
moral principle of conquering death by leading a good life and avoiding evil’ (p. 36). This ‘evil’ was later politicized during a period of trauma,
when the Assyrian Esarhaddon subjugated Egypt briefly and the image of Seth became that of ‘an absolute devil’ (p. 43) and thus personified
the cultural trauma. Assmann is then able to fruitfully compare this situation with the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722
BCE by the Assyrians, though the comparison is not drawn out in great detail.
Chapter 3 (‘All gods are one’) discusses the issue of the ‘translatability’ between deities across national lines in the ancient world, and Ass-
mann concludes by noting that by ‘distinguishing between God and the world, revolutionary monotheism [.] severs the links between crea-
tion and sovereignty as well as between cosmic and political order [in contradistinction to the situation in ancient Egypt]’, and the ‘original
impulse of revolutionary monotheism [.] seems to me to consist in tearing apart the archaic unity of creation and domination, or cosmic and
political power, and to conceive of religion as a means of emancipation from the politico-cosmological power structure of the ancient world’ (p.
75). The discussion of the Axial Age concept in Chapter 4 is also particularly illuminating, as Assmann posits that the distinction between true
and false in religious terms ‘was the great innovation that transformed the ancient world in the form of an axial breakthrough’ (p. 84) and he
discusses the rise of Akhenaten’s putatively monotheistic cult during the Amarna period. Though ‘the separation between state and religion
(Herrschaft und Heil) can be identified both as the hallmark of biblical monotheism and simultaneously as ‘‘axiality’’’, Assmann is quick to point
out that ‘this revolutionary quality of monotheism has historically proven to be least stable’ (p. 89).
Worthy of note is Assmann’s attempt to ground his broader project in contemporary concerns; the shift of religion from the ‘opium of the
people’ to the ‘dynamite of the people’ (p. 5) has prompted a re-examination of monotheism. The topic is fraught with anxiety and peril, and
Assmann recounts that his earlier attempt to address the meaning of monotheism in his work Moses the Egyptian (Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press, 1997) was met with accusations of anti-Semitism and of degrading monotheism by calling it ‘counterreligion’. Assmann
returns to the modern contexts of monotheism and violence at the end of the book, arguing that since monotheism is, at heart, a rejection
of the ‘political’, that violence ‘belongs to the sphere of the political’, and that ‘a religion that uses violence fails to fulfil its proper mission in
this world and remains entangled in the sphere of the political’ (p. 145). This somewhat homiletical tone, which presumes to define what
 Book reviews / Religion 40 (2010) 132–146 139

‘religion’, ‘monotheism’, and ‘politics’ should or should not be in our contemporary setting, may not appeal to everyone, and indeed such
sermonising appears increasingly throughout the book. For example, Assmann seems to view all religions as having the same ultimate
goal, that is, ‘absolute Truth, which is the transcendent and necessarily hidden goal of every religion’ (p. 126), and claims that what ‘we
need is a form of ‘‘wisdom’’ that enables us to look past the surface forms of concrete religions, with their irreducible differences and distinc-
tions, and focus upon that transcendental point beyond these distinctions in relation to which true tolerance [.] becomes possible’ (p. 142).
These are fascinating statements on several levels; implicit in such assertions is an assumption that what counts as ‘surface forms’ of
a religion are basically obvious and self-evident categories, an assumption with which many scholars of religion – not to mention religious
adherents – would strongly disagree. However, it is very difficult to imagine how religions that have (or just profess to have) radically
different conceptions of key transcendental categories could meet together in harmony at the same imaginary, abstract transcendental
point. One could argue that such a move is politically necessary in this nuclear age, and there is a certain kind of humanism apparent in
any call to drop our differences, stop the violence, and just get along. At any rate, the ‘weak notion of truth’ (p. 145) that Assmann advocates
– which is now a stock part of virtually all postmodern discourse regarding religion – leaves one in a correspondingly weak position to
launch bold claims regarding religious normativity, even if that includes an a priori rejection of violence. One gets the distinct impression,
at points, that Assmann’s homilizing commentary on religion and violence is directed at Islam specifically (p. 5), though arguably the
critique works for Christianity as well (but not Judaism, according to Assmann).
Moreover, biblical scholars – an often contentious and territorial lot – may find themselves annoyed with several aspects of Assmann’s
presentation, including: the non-standard transliteration techniques for Hebrew words (pp. 3, 113, and so on); an overly simplistic
dichotomy between prophetic texts, which promote ‘justice’ and priestly texts that are concerned solely with ‘sacrificial cultism’ (contra
Assmann, see, e.g., Leviticus ch. 19) (p. 12); generalizing and misleading statements such as, ‘In the Bible sacred history (historia sacra) takes
the place of myth (historia divina)’ and ‘Many of the biblical books are pure historiography’ (p. 21); the questionable assertion that ‘religion’
and ‘politics’ really were (or could ever truly be) separated in ancient Israel (p. 85); un-argued assumptions about the dating of many biblical
materials (e.g. ‘Covenant theology (and monotheism) developed after the fall, first of Samaria and then of Jerusalem [.]’, etc.), when the
dating of the biblical texts is perhaps the most highly contested of the many contested issues within the field. More examples could be
adduced to this end, and yet it must be said that, in order for a study such as Assmann’s to succeed and move efficiently toward its stated
goals, an author must be given leeway to accept certain premises and proceed with the comparative project at hand.
Nevertheless, Assmann shows himself to be a savvy interpreter of biblical texts in his conclusion (see pp. 127–133), and his chapter on the
‘Five steps toward canonization’ (i.e., codification of law; the 587 BCE destruction; Persian authorisation of local law; the rise of an ‘enclave
culture’ as a textual community with libraries; and the rejection of idolatry) eloquently summarizes what many would agree to be key stages
in the canonization process. Although there is nothing particularly unique or disagreeable in Assmann’s five stages – except with regard to
the idea of Persian authorisation of local law, which is a disputed point in Achaemenid studies – Assmann’s formulation of these stages is
significant in at least two respects. First, Assmann’s comparison with the textual and cultural situation in Egypt provides some very instruc-
tive parallels and juxtapositions with Israel. Whereas the ‘principle of canonization [.] appears to be ubiquitous, natural, and self-evident’,
comparisons with the situation in Egypt show that the phenomenon of canonization is ‘a virtually inexplicable process resulting from an
unpredictable and improbable concatenation of events’ (p. 92). There ‘is no natural path leading from text to canonization. Impulses
must come from without, not from within’ (p. 93). Second, Assmann elucidates the connection between monotheism and canonization
in provocative and interesting ways. ‘Writing is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for transformations of ‘‘Axial’’ magnitude
and importance’ and ‘there is not a single monotheistic religion that is not based on a canon of holy writ’ (p. 90). Thus, there ‘seems to exist
a necessary connection between ‘‘revelation’’ and ‘‘canon’’, between ‘‘secondary religions’’ (i.e., religions based on the distinction between
true and false that reject every older and foreign tradition as falsehood or ignorance), and that specific form of written and highly normative
codification of cultural memory called canonization’ (p. 91). ‘Monotheism, therefore, is primarily a matter of memory’ (p. 92). Ultimately,
Assmann’s view of the rise of monotheism dovetails nicely with the recent formulation of Mark S. Smith in his Origins of Biblical Monotheism
(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001). Therein, Smith posits that ‘in the face of the great empires and then in exile, Israel stands at the
bottom of its political power, and it exalts its deity inversely as ruler of the whole universe’ (p. 165), and Assmann describes a similar
path toward monotheism in his assertion that covenant theology and monotheism emerged only ‘following the complete failure and break-
down of the kingdom [.] after the most traumatic series of experiences that could possibly befall a society in those times’ (p. 83).
Although it is appropriately admitted (in a cursory fashion) that ‘there is no such thing as ‘‘the’’ biblical monotheism, that the Bible
contains many different traditions and, correspondingly, many varieties of monotheism or monolatry, and that one is dealing here with
something rather special that may be called ‘‘Deuteronomism’’’ (p. 114; see also p. 139), Assmann is still forced to treat the biblical tradition
in an overly monolithic fashion in order to make certain points. For example, Assmann uses the categories of an ‘intrasystemic other’ and an
‘extrasystemic other’ to draw a distinction between the Egyptians and Assyrians who viewed the other intrasystemically, that is, essentially
as an other with whom one could communicate and whose deities could be translated into native vernacular, while the Israelites saw the
other extrasystemically, belonging to ‘a system with which such conditions of translatability are not given and are even impossible’ (p. 30).
In an intrasystemic system, the ‘enemy’ may ‘be integrated into one’s own political system without being forced to convert to a different
construction of reality. The ‘‘idolater’’ and the heretic, conversely, are extrasystemic others who can be integrated only through conversion
[.] The Assyrians act within the system, however violently, taking the gods of the enemy seriously, whereas the Hebrew prophets posit
themselves outside the system’ (p. 31). Indeed, most of the canonical Israelite prophets seem to have viewed themselves as outside this
‘system’, but there are a number of fairly clear texts that demonstrate the ancient Israelites could operate intrasystemically and accepted
the basic ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian view that the universe was populated with a plurality of deities (see, for example, Deut.
4:19-20, 32:8–9; Judg. 11:22–24; Mic. 4:5; Pss. 29:1, 82:1, 83:6–7, 89:5–7, etc.), even possibly during later periods in history.
Assmann concludes his study by asking the question of whether monotheism is inherently violent. Assmann’s answer is that a specific
kind of violence, ‘religious violence, meaning violence with reference to the will of God’, and which ‘stems from the distinction between
friend and foe in a religious sense’ is indeed the exclusive territory of monotheism (p. 144). At only 145 pages of text, one may rightly
complain that the work is too short, given the depth of insight Assmann is often able to produce – and there are many other scintillating
observations in this book that cannot receive comment here. Of God and Gods deserves to be studied carefully by all scholars and students of
the history of monotheism, and Assmann’s unique ability as a scholar of comparative religion and as an Egyptologist has allowed him to
140 Book reviews / Religion 40 (2010) 132–146

access the biblical texts with an insight and vigour mostly unmatched by those who have attempted to study the Hebrew Bible in isolation
on this very relevant topic.

Brian R. Doak
Harvard University (U.S.A.)
E-mail address: doak@fas.harvard.edu

doi: 10.1016/j.religion.2009.10.009

Donald S. Lopez Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2008). 278 pp., $25.00 (cloth),
ISBN: 978 0 226 49312 1.

With Buddhism and Science Donald S. Lopez wants to offer ‘A Guide for the Perplexed’, as the subtitle reads. The allusion to the famous
work of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides seems appropriate. Maimonides reached out to provide ‘a guide for the perplexed’ for those
‘whose studies have brought them into collision with religion’ (Michael Friedländer [trl.], Moses Maimonides, A Guide for the Perplexed, Mine-
ola, NY, 1956, p. 9). At least one of the Buddhist protagonists described in Lopez’s book, the extraordinary Tibetan scholar-monk Gendun
Chopel, saw himself exposed in just such a conflict-laden situation, in his case characterized by attempts to reconcile theories of science
with Buddhism. Yet, the title’s promise to offer guidance may be a little misguiding for readers who are mainly interested in recent encoun-
ters such as the discourse between specialists of Buddhist meditation techniques and neuroscientists, or the encounter between Buddhist
philosophy and quantum mechanics. Only a few pages are devoted to current strands of exchange. Instead, one of the five major chapters
deals with Buddhism and the ‘Science of race’ – a ‘science’ that fortunately neither for today’s scientific community nor in the recent public
discourse counts as a ‘science’. Since the question of the referents ‘Buddhism’ and ‘science’ seems to be crucial in this context, it is worth-
while to discuss them in detail at the end of this review. Right from the beginning Lopez stresses his position that his survey does not aim at
discussing the persistent claim that ‘Buddhism’ is compatible with ‘science’. Rather, his study seeks to explore the historical configuration
and persistence of ‘standard tropes’ of the Buddhism and Science discourse, such as: ‘Science describes the external [.] and Buddhism [.]
the internal world’ (p. 29). Beyond a historical portrayal of various ‘Buddhism and Science’ encounters, the book follows a certain agenda;
namely, to show the price one has to pay for the claim that Buddhism is ‘ever modern’ and ‘up-to-date with the latest scientific discoveries’
(p. 216). Lopez is eager to bring those elements of ‘Buddhism’ to mind which are ‘starkly premodern’. Although premodern, these elements
should nevertheless be defended, as ‘dimensions of the Buddha’s aura’ (p. 216). I will return later to this concept of the historian of Buddhism
as a ‘caretaker’ of the respective tradition.
The first chapter opens with a very interesting historical test case regarding the compatibility of the Buddhist world view and one
informed by science: the Buddhist cosmological account of Mount Meru. In traditional cosmology, this enormous peak marks the centre
of a flat earth. In a lively description Lopez demonstrates how the (disputed) existence of such a mythical mountain has been a point of
contention between Buddhist traditionalists and modernists, Christian missionaries and secular critics of Buddhism alike. As early as
1863, British missionary to Ceylon, R. Spence Hardy, published an anti-Buddhist critique of Buddhist ‘legends’. He championed the helio-
centric universe and declared that all the Buddha has said on the physical earth was ‘unscientific and false’ (p. 54). A decade later, in
1873, nearly 5000 people followed a public debate between Reverend de Silva and a scholarly Buddhist monk, Guna ratna. De Silva chal-
lenged the Buddhist cosmology by showing a globe and asking how it could be possible that the Mount Meru is nowhere to be seen. A some-
what paradoxical situation arose: many Buddhists in Sri Lanka, Tibet, China and Japan did not give up the ‘flat earth’ world view or other
elements of premodern Buddhist Abhidharma (‘metaphysics’). At the same time Buddhist missionaries, Western converts and academic
scholars spread across America and Europe the idea of Buddhism as a ‘Religion of Science’. An important part of the Western conception
of Buddhism was formed by European scholars of Pa li and Sanskrit, such as Eugène Burnouf or F. Max Müller. These pioneering scholars
construed a normative picture of a philosophical, modern, empirical and non-theistic – but in every sense ‘original’ – Buddhism. Living
Buddhist traditions and their religious practices were of no interest; more precisely, they showed signs of decadence and degeneration
of the ‘noble’ doctrine. In the same breath, textual sources with allusions to ritual relics, worship, magic, thaumaturgy, and so on were largely
ignored. Not surprisingly, debates in countries with Buddhist traditions focusing on Mount Meru were barely able to attract the attention of
Western scholars of Buddhism. It is therefore most interesting to learn from Lopez’s account the wide range of cosmological positions which
Buddhist actors actually held. Some were strict defenders of a literal understanding of the situation surrounding Mount Meru, such as the
Japanese apologetic Entsu  Fumon (1755–1834). Other scholars, such as the Japanese Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–1746), held moderate
reformist positions, declaring that the Buddha’s sole intention was to show his followers a way to salvation. Therefore, the Buddha’s cosmo-
logical explanations were purely conventional – he simply made use of prevalent cosmological teachings. The size and location of Mount
Meru is taught only as a kind of ‘skilful means’, an upaya, intended to illustrate the central teaching of the path to liberation. A third kind of
argumentation referred to the advanced abilities of Buddhist adherents – people with good karma can see Mount Meru. In his description of
the public debate in Sri Lanka, Lopez cites the witty interjection by a Buddhist monk: ‘Climb to the top of the tall tree described in your su  tra
and you will definitely see it’ (p. 42), meaning that a Christian may climb the Tree of Knowledge from the Biblical account in Genesis, and he
will be able to see Mount Meru! A contrasting position to this can be found in the ‘modernist’ interpretation of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama:
those accounts which, like the Mount Meru, contradict the modern scientific world view, should be altered or abandoned.
Chapter Two, on the ‘Science of race’, does not start with a definition of this ‘science’. Instead, it cites a letter of the ‘Leader of the
Buddhists in China’, T’ai-hsü, written in 1937 and addressed to Hitler. This letter establishes a connection between the ‘Arian race’ as the
promoter of a scientific civilization, and the ‘Aryan origin’ of the Buddha. Theories of a relationship and affinity between the Aryans of early
India and the ‘Aryans’ of 19th and 20th century Europe were shared by some Western Indologists, Asian scholars and political leaders alike.
In order to evaluate this discourse, Lopez turns to ancient India for an inquiry into early Buddhist sources that deal with the question of caste.