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tanya_the_spack's review against another edition
4.0
Enlightening. Chapters 4 and 5 are absolute must-reads, though the earlier chapters contained good info too. Chapter 4 has fascinating implications for Mormonism.
socraticgadfly's review against another edition
1.0
Horrible, like much of Stark
It's both ignorant and willful.
Two comments of his, one about Hinduism and one about Buddhism's fate in India, will illustrate these two points.
Calling Hinduism monotheistic is pure bullheaded willfulness, shoehorning to fit a preconceived theory. THe further south/nonAryan one goes in India, the dichotomy between the normally feminine household/village deities and the "received Hindu hierarchy" alone shows just how wrong this is.
The idea that Buddhism died out in India because it was too intellectual and did not offer a satisfying deity ignores several facts.
First is the Mahayana/Theravada division of Buddhism, developing in and around India long before Buddhism lost its position at the top in India. The division arguably weakened Buddhism in the face of a resurgant Hinduism, not to mention showing the metaphysical diversity of Buddhism already arising..
Which leads to the fact that Stark ignores a resurgent, indeed reformed, Hinduism as the primary reason Buddhism did not remain in India. Given the amount of pages he has written on Christian history, he should have easily seen analogies to the Catholic Counter-Reformation, but either failed to or chose not to.
Remember, or know, two simple facts about Stark before you read any of his books.
1. His academic training is as a sociologist; he is neither a trained historian nor a trained scholar of comparative religion.
2. When he leaves his academic speciality, he invariably makes some sort of right turn straight into evangelical Christian apologetics. (He now teaches at Baylor.) Every book he has written has at least some degree of that stamped on it.
It's both ignorant and willful.
Two comments of his, one about Hinduism and one about Buddhism's fate in India, will illustrate these two points.
Calling Hinduism monotheistic is pure bullheaded willfulness, shoehorning to fit a preconceived theory. THe further south/nonAryan one goes in India, the dichotomy between the normally feminine household/village deities and the "received Hindu hierarchy" alone shows just how wrong this is.
The idea that Buddhism died out in India because it was too intellectual and did not offer a satisfying deity ignores several facts.
First is the Mahayana/Theravada division of Buddhism, developing in and around India long before Buddhism lost its position at the top in India. The division arguably weakened Buddhism in the face of a resurgant Hinduism, not to mention showing the metaphysical diversity of Buddhism already arising..
Which leads to the fact that Stark ignores a resurgent, indeed reformed, Hinduism as the primary reason Buddhism did not remain in India. Given the amount of pages he has written on Christian history, he should have easily seen analogies to the Catholic Counter-Reformation, but either failed to or chose not to.
Remember, or know, two simple facts about Stark before you read any of his books.
1. His academic training is as a sociologist; he is neither a trained historian nor a trained scholar of comparative religion.
2. When he leaves his academic speciality, he invariably makes some sort of right turn straight into evangelical Christian apologetics. (He now teaches at Baylor.) Every book he has written has at least some degree of that stamped on it.