God: An Itinerary [Hardcover]

"As Debray has read everything that one should read on this subject, trust him. If you have forgotten the origins of the Tower of Babel, if you don't remember the travels of St. Paul, or if you don't know the historic structure of the Roman Curia, his book will get you up to speed. It is not even out of the question that it might make you reread that old unusable classic: the Bible. Because far from losing himself in the thicket of erudition, Debray knows how to touch on the essential." -- Le Monde "[Debray's account] is very well done, engaging, both impertinent and respectful ... Debray is without doubt the writer who best combines verbal brio with the demands of academic discourse." - Le Nouvel Observer "From beginning to end, Regis Debray's demonstration is dazzling." - Lire

God, who has changed the lives--and deaths--of men and women, has in turn changed His face and His meaning several times over since His birth three thousand years ago. He may have kept the same name throughout, but God has been addressed in many different ways and cannot be said to have the same characteristics in the year 500 bc as in 400 ad or in the twenty-first century, nor is He the same entity in Jerusalem or Constantinople as in Rome or New York. The omnipotent and punitive God of the Hebrews is not the consoling and intimate God of the Christians, and is certainly not identical with the impersonal cosmic Energy of the New Agers. Regis Debray's purpose in this major new book is to trace the episodes of the genesis of God, His itinerary and the costs of His survival. Debray shifts the spotlight away from the theological foreground and moves it backstage to the machinery of divine production by going back, from the Law, to the Tablets themselves and by scrutinizing Heaven at its most down-to-earth. Throughout this beautifully illustrated book, he is able to focus his attention not just on what was written, but on how it was written: with what tools, on what surface, for what social purpose and in what physical environment. God: An Itinerary takes the reader from the invention of a God for nomadic cattle herders to a world dominated by God's own moralizing 'cowboys'. In doing so, it links the history of the Everlasting with the history of the West, illuminating both in the process, and throwing light on contemporary civilisation itself.

Regis Debray teaches philosophy at the Universite de Lyon-III and is director of the European Institute of the History and Science of Religion at the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes. He is the author of a government report on the teaching of the history of religion in France's public schools, as well as many books including Critiques of Political Reason, Teachers, Writers, Celebrities and Media Manifestos all published by Verso.