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The beginning of the sixth century B.C. is what Karl Jaspers calls the “Axial Period” in human history. The significance, according to Jaspers, was first noted by Lasaulx, who in 1851 wrote: “It cannot possibly be an accident that, six-hundred years before Christ, Zarathustra in Persia, Gautama Buddha in India Confucius in China, the prophets in Israel, King Numa in Rome and the first philosophers—Ionians, Dorians, and Eleatics—in Hellas, all made their appearance pretty well simultaneously as reformers of the national religion.” A strange movement of the spirit passed through all civilized peoples. The time was marked by a series of popular revolutions which everywhere saw the final overthrow of the old sacral kingship; the great social crises and world upheavals of the early second and middle sixth millennia B.C. had dealt shattering blows to the old sacral order, and the sixth century saw the completion of the process with what we might call the great Sophic revolution. With the passing of the priest-kings, people everywhere found themselves looking for some other principle of authority for the ordering of society; with oracles silent and priestly lines extinct, who would have the final word? Where could men turn for the voice of authority? What could now command their loyalty? [End of quote.]So, if “strange movements” could characterize 600 B.C., what about other times? How about the 19th Century A.D. of Joseph Smith?
This is just another question to ponder for those reading the interesting theories of Daymon Smith.*
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* http://daymonsmith.wordpress.com/
