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Thoughts?
Mapping the Spread of Religion
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January 21, 2008 at 14:45
Found it interesting that all of the other religious founders/leaders were noted with a “Birth of” preceding their name – except Jesus.
He was recorded on this map as “Death of Jesus”.
I found it interesting especially since Christians do not believe that Christ is dead.
Shouldn’t he have been noted on this map as “Birth of Jesus” or “Death and Resurrection of Jesus” ?
January 21, 2008 at 17:27
I think that’s pretty amazing. Unfortunately I don’t know my history well enough to know exactly how accurate it is. But one this is glaringly obvious – the 1040 window continues to be a challenging battleground for the Gospel.
January 21, 2008 at 17:55
I saw this about a year ago set to music on YouTube and still get the same kick out of it now. There is no historical evidence for a real person named Krishna, as such, Hinduism is founded on mythology. All subsequent religions are pseudo- or fully historically rational in nature. Then, how very cute:
-Muslim Conquests: Islam expands north, east and west…they seem to ignore that that expansion involved a great deal of war against the established religious communities there, e.g. Christianity and Hinduism respectively. Nor is it noted that the rapid spread of the green prior to the “conquest” points were quite violent in their own right.
-Reconquista and Crusades: oh, now we decide to say it’s Christianity vs. Islam, but the earlier Islamic Conquests weren’t? What a joke.
The creator of the animation assumes that all historical truth claims of religion are equal (e.g. that Krishna and Christ have the same veracity), when any half-baked historian knows better. It’s interesting to see the spread of religion, definitely, but it’s not exactly intellectually honest.
January 22, 2008 at 03:23
really interesting even though it WAY over simplifies things. But I really liked it. It is worth noting something it gets wrong though and that’s it’s spread of Buddhism, which did go north from Nepal through the Himalyans but very very slowly and it actually went south and took alot of the traditionally
Hindu lands, which the Hindu’s then retook a couple hundred years later. And it gets a little fuzzy around India but that’s just because when the British ruled India it was both Muslim and Hindu… not something easy to portray on a map I presume. Overall though, quite nice.
January 22, 2008 at 13:14
If the map were to be completely accurate, it would have to mark all the contigincies within each establishment (i.e., Christians in the far east).
Also, it’s a little hard drawing a line of distinction between Judaism before and Christianity. It is as if the faith did not exist before Christ’s death – and as K Bell so adequately pointed out His resurrection – when in fact those events were the actually the culmination of what we would call Old Testament Judaism.
Another thing, there is historical evidence that apostles went alot farther than the map gives the credit.
January 23, 2008 at 14:46
Reminds me of the playback you get after you retire from a game of [Sid Meier’s] Civilization or Alpha Centauri.
It really does oversimplify things though. I’m pretty sure there were many more wars over religion before the Israelites even got to Egypt. Didn’t Abraham raise an army to defeat an enemy? Then Israel and Judah were almost permanently at war. And Mohammed didn’t just start Islam in an atheistic vacuum. There was a thriving polytheism, or at least localised monotheism. And if you believe Homer, the Greeks went to war against Troy with their gods on their side. I’m sure there are many more examples.
January 23, 2008 at 15:55
Significant Eastern Jewish and Christian communities were left out? Jews have been in Yemen and Persia (Iran) for centuries; Christians have been in Egypt and South India since patristic times (and if Thomas actually went there, then since him), and the Crusader states may have been wiped out within 100 years but they did leave significant Christian communities in their wake. Far over-simplified and actually dangerous in encouraging a mindset among Americans that Asian countries are monolithic in their religion. While there is typically a predominant religion, the actual “situation on the ground” is much more of a patchwork. Christian brothers and sisters (even Nestorians, who understood the nature of Christ seriously wrong but still loved him) worked too hard to not be included on any serious ‘religious mapping’ project.