Living with the Gods: On Beliefs and Peoples

Today’s post is on Living with the Gods: On Beliefs and Peoples by Neil MacGregor. It is 488 pages long including notes and is published by Alfred A. Knopf. The cover is gold with a picture of a statue fragment on it. The intended reader is someone who is interested in the history of religion. There is no foul language, no sex, and only discussion of violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- One of the central facts of human existence is that every known society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions- a faith, an ideology, a religion- that goes far beyond the life of the individual. These beliefs are an essential part of a shared identity. They have a unique power to define- and to divide- us and are a driving force in the politics of much of the world today. Throughout history they have most often been, in the widest, religious.
Yet this book is a not history of religion not an argument in favor of faith. It is about the stories that give shape to our lives, and the different ways in which societies imagine their place in this world. Looking across history and around the globe, Living with the Gods interrogates objects, places, and human activities to try to understand what shared beliefs can mean in the public life of a community or a nation, how they shape the relationship between the individual and the state, and how they help give us our sense of who we are.
In deciding how we live with our gods, we also decide how to live with one another.

Review- This is a fascinating and thought-provoking look into humans, religion, and how they both have grown over the millennia. MacGregor takes the reader from around 33,000 years ago to the present day with religious artifacts and how we still interact with them. MacGregor, via the British Natural History Museum, travels the world, viewing the cultures and peoples from their religion. Beautiful full color pictures with descriptions of the objects then a deep dive into the object itself with its meaning in its place in time and what it means in the present day. MacGregor interviews experts from the different areas and religions to give insight into the objects and their meanings. If you are curious about religion and how it has changed over the course of human history then you need to read this book. I highly recommend this book.

I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.