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Niebuhr asserts that "Hebraic prophetism" is "the beginning of revelation in the history of religion" (NDM, 2:25). But, for all he ever shows to the contrary, the most he's entitled to assert is considerably less than this. He's justified in claiming only that "Hebraic prophetism" is "the beginning of revelation" in one particular branch of the history of religion -- namelyreligion–namely, the theistic/monotheistic/radical monotheistic branch that has been so significant in Western, as distinct from Eastern, culture.

With Hebraic prophetism, we do indeed experience the emergence of axial religion in a theistic/monotheistic/radical monotheistic context. But, as is now generally recognized, roughly the same historical period -- what period–what Jaspers calls "the axial period" -- witnessed –witnessed the emergence of yet other formally similar, if materially different, axial religions in yet other nontheistic branches of the history of religions. And each of them, also, may fairly claim to be "the beginning of revelation" in substantially the same sense, in its own religio-cultural context.

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