Battling the Gods by Tim Whitmarsh

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Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9780571279319
Published:
05 Jan 2017
Format:
Paperback
Number of pages:
304 pages
Dimensions:
198x127x20mm
Weight:
0.273kgs
Author:
Long before the European Enlightenment and the Darwinian revolution, which we often take to mark the birth of the modern revolt against religious explanations of the world, brave people doubted the power of the gods. Religion provoked scepticism in ancient Greece, and heretics argued that history must be understood as a result of human action rather than divine intervention. Tim Whitmarsh tells the story of the tension between orthodoxy and heresy with great panache, a story that ended - for the moment - with the imposition of Christianity on the Roman Empire in 313 CE.

How new is atheism?

Long before the Enlightenment sowed seeds of disbelief in a deeply Christian Europe, atheism was a matter of serious public debate in the Greek world. But history is written by those who prevail, so the lively free-thinking voices of antiquity were mostly suppressed.

Tim Whitmarsh brings to life the origins of the secular values at the heart of the modern state, and reveals how atheism and doubt, far from being modern phenomena, have intrigued the human imagination for thousands of years.

About the Author: Tim Whitmarsh is the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University. A well-known specialist in the civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome, he has appeared on BBC radio and TV, and written for the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books and Literary Review.

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