Book description
At the time of Jesus's birth, the world was in ferment. Across
Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia - societies rife with
gods and messiahs, priests and warriors - the old certainties of
family, village and tribe were being overturned. Religion was becoming
the source of order and stability. And Man Created God takes the
reader on a dazzling journey across the empires of the ancient world
to reveal how emperors and kings manipulated religion to consolidate
their power. In Rome, Augustus was deified by his brilliant spin
doctors; in what is now Sudan, the warrior queen Amanirenas exploited
her godlike status to inspire her armies to face, and defeat, Rome;
while in China, the usurper Wang Mang won and lost the throne over his
obsession with Confucianism. In this riveting account of the interplay
of faith and power, Selina O'Grady answers the most urgent question of
all: how did the tiny Jesus cult triumph over more popular religions -
the goddess Isis, the miracle worker Apollonius, even the cult of
Augustus - to become the world's dominant faith?
Selina O'Grady has had a lifelong interest in history and
religious affairs. She was a producer of BBC1's moral documentary
series Heart of the Matter presented by Joan Bakewell, Channel 4's
live open-ended chat show After Dark and was also a producer on Radio
4's history series Leviathan. She has reviewed regularlyfor the San
Francisco Chronicle, Literary Review and Tablet, specialising in works
of popular history. She is the co-editor of two books: Great Spirits:
The Fifty-Two Christians who Most Influenced their Millennium (ranging
from Bach to Martin Luther King), and A Deep But Dazzling Darkness, an
anthology from Anglo-Saxon to modern times of the experience of belief
and disbelief.
