Additional Informantion
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Chapter 1: Introduction, First Part
Forthcoming
Chapter 2: On the Eve of Islam
Iran:
For the myth of the khwarr at the beginning of time see Boyce, Mary (1984) Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism. Manchester : Manchester University Press, pp. 29–30.
Yazata (or yazad). The word means “being worthy of worship” and is usually translated “god” but in Muslim times came to be understood as “angels”. (Boyce, Mary (1979) Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 179. Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, pp. 15, 47, 120).
Jewish Christianity:
Schoeps, Hans Joachim (1969) Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church, translated by Douglas R. A. Hare. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. (The fullest study of Jewish Christianity that I know of. Schoeps believes that Jewish Christianity influenced Islam in its earliest days though he cannot say precisely how. More recent writings along this line are not in English or not so accessible. See Böwering, Gerhard [2008], ‘Recent Research on the Construction of the Qur'an’, in The Qur’an in Its Historical Context, ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds, London, Routledge, see pp. 79–80 and endnotes.)
Gnostics:
Pagels, Elaine (1979) The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House and Beyond Belief(2003) New York: Random House. (Pagels is one of the leading academic writers on Gnosticism.)
Axial Age:
Geering, Lloyd (2001) Christian Faith at the Crossroads. Salem, OR: Polebridge. (Chapter two provides good discussion of the axial age. The rest of the book argues that we are currently in a second "axial age". Earlier versions of the same material are in Faith's New Age (1980) London: Collins and in Geering, Lloyd (1978) "Secularization and Religion", in Religious Studies in the Pacific, eds John Hinchcliff et al., Auckland, New Zealand: Colloquim Publishers, Auckland University, pp. 215–23.
Bellah, Robert (1970) “Religious Evolution” (or similar title), in Robert Bellah, Beyond Belief. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 20–50, and also Lessa, W. A. and Vogt, E. V. (eds) (1979) Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach. New York: Harper & Row.
Eisenstadt, S. N., ed. (1986) The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. (Chapters by different authors on various civilizations, not introductory but has much useful material. Read the introductory chapter and the others selectively.)
Armstrong, Karen (2006) The Great Transformation: The Beginnings of our Religious Traditions. New York: Knopf. (Has considerable information about all of the axial age civilizations but does not explore the concept of the axial age very deeply.)
The Wikipedia article on “Axial Age” has further references.