This is a LOT to digest. I considered sending the link to my sister but decided not to because I once made her cry when I tried to explain to her that I had issues with being raised to believe in a God and could not square God’s so-called omniscience and being an all loving God with innocent suffering.
Since we are on the subject of People of the Book, is there to be a corresponding series on Islam? Be interesting to follow that line and compare it to how Christianity and Islam diverge. The Flame and the Sword approach was certainly as effective as Christianity's method. And faster too.
The work that I have done in the Quranic space is much less, but I can deconstruct it, if enough people request that I do so, I just dont have the Arabic language sets to properly define certain concepts to do it. And I would likely fail in a few places.
I rummaged around in Wikipedia looking at pre-Islamic periods. That is a jigsaw puzzle I would leave on the shelf. Between the constantly shifting "empires" and a lack of much written documentation, the type of analysis you have been doing on Christianity most likely would take a lifetime of study to put together even if you were fluent in all the languages that crisscrossed the region. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Forget I even asked the question.
One interesting tidbit that I noticed was that Christianity was making inroads into the polytheistic religions by about 420 CE. Muhammad was born in 570 CE. Islam cranked up in 610 CE. I wonder if Muhammad saw the incursion of Christianity and decided to do something about it to short circuit a Hellenistic takeover in the region. He was a smart guy and by 610 CE he might have recognized the Christian roadmap as a useful tool for his own monotheism. Now there's a thought that could earn me a fatwa. :-))
None of all this would have meant a damned thing if it hadn't been for the replacement of human knowledge with divine revelation. If they had skipped that part, humanity could have sailed along on the path of true science (human knowledge) forever. Think how many lives would have been saved without the Church defending false divine revelation. And how much farther along towards acceptance and compassion humans would be.
As an aside, I'm guessing that the brilliance of Jewish and Christian synthesis would most likely be attributed to "divine revelation" rather than the brilliance of the scribes who did it. If that subject ever comes up.
Isn't there an underlying theme of the rising/dying year god as the green life of the world in it's yearly cycle, born of the earth mother & received back, her son & lover, as antecedent to the Mediterranean & near eastern religions?
Mesopotamian: The Sumerian-Babylonian cults of Tammuz (Dumuzi) and Inanna/Ishtar, where the shepherd-god descends to the underworld for half the year while the earth mourns and withers. You can almost hear the ritual lamentations echoing across the ziggurats.
Phrygian: The mystery religion of Attis and Cybele (the Great Mother), centered in Asia Minor, where frenzied priests would castrate themselves in imitation of Attis’s self-mutilation beneath the sacred pine.
Syrian/Phoenician: The Adonis cults that spread throughout the Mediterranean - particularly vivid in their ritual gardens of quickly-sprouting, quickly-dying plants that mimicked the god’s brief flowering and death.
Egyptian: Osiris, dismembered by Set and reassembled by Isis, becoming lord of the underworld and promise of resurrection. The annual flooding of the Nile was felt as his return, the black fertile mud literally his body.
Rats! I missed pts 1-3, but will happily backtrack to pick those up. I've never made those connections before & am a little forehead-slapping gobsmacked - duh!! on my part & a huge thank you for pointing out what I so obviously missed!! I have a master's degree in French lit so have integrated that knowledge, & as much as I loved the Roman & Greek God/desses mythology, that waaaaaaay bk in the beginning of high school (!!!) & therefore a little tricky to use that information (🙄). This was a wonderful article, beautifully written, articulate & intelligent explanations!
Wow, what a treatise! I have to save & re-stack for others to cruise this jam-packed mini-course in the ancient history of Western religion. Thanks for laying it out. All the parallels in all religious practice come down to just a few elements. How to find inner peace and love of self and others in a chaotic, unpredictable, unstable environment. More Pop Synthesizing is needed in this culture for the so-called Evangelical Second Coming and Kingdom of Heaven on Earth--they got it wrong. It's not coming down on one Man, it's coming down on everyone to incarnate the Good Gift Life or the Bad and Ugly Troubles so Fix, and Share it All. So Jesus still be on the streets out looking to reel in the followers of The Good old Perennial Wisdom Golden Rule still dragging his cross just so you remember what State cruelty looks like.
The breadth of the comprehensive list you provided is amazing! It reminded me of reading Joseph Campbell's, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". The Dead Sea Scrolls also had their impact. "The Gnostic Gospels", by Elaine Pagels, as well as other works by her and "The History of God", by Karen Armstrong have interesting perspectives on the development of Christianity.
I have read a number of your sources before but have not put them together in this way… thanks for doing so for us… It reveals things in a more logical and clear manner.
I believe the principal discussion focused on New Testament texts rather than the Old (& maybe this aspect of Judaic origin is covered in pts 1-3 which I haven't seen [yet !!]. Dumb algorithms!). Other thoughts, people?
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the crowning rituals of the kings and queens of England, to this day. Ghosts even of Hittite/Assyrian king-making rituals, but with the ruler's consort replacing the temple's female guardian. Including the biblical words of the anthem Zadok the Priest, which surely originate in much older rituals than Judaic.
This is a LOT to digest. I considered sending the link to my sister but decided not to because I once made her cry when I tried to explain to her that I had issues with being raised to believe in a God and could not square God’s so-called omniscience and being an all loving God with innocent suffering.
Since we are on the subject of People of the Book, is there to be a corresponding series on Islam? Be interesting to follow that line and compare it to how Christianity and Islam diverge. The Flame and the Sword approach was certainly as effective as Christianity's method. And faster too.
The work that I have done in the Quranic space is much less, but I can deconstruct it, if enough people request that I do so, I just dont have the Arabic language sets to properly define certain concepts to do it. And I would likely fail in a few places.
I rummaged around in Wikipedia looking at pre-Islamic periods. That is a jigsaw puzzle I would leave on the shelf. Between the constantly shifting "empires" and a lack of much written documentation, the type of analysis you have been doing on Christianity most likely would take a lifetime of study to put together even if you were fluent in all the languages that crisscrossed the region. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Forget I even asked the question.
One interesting tidbit that I noticed was that Christianity was making inroads into the polytheistic religions by about 420 CE. Muhammad was born in 570 CE. Islam cranked up in 610 CE. I wonder if Muhammad saw the incursion of Christianity and decided to do something about it to short circuit a Hellenistic takeover in the region. He was a smart guy and by 610 CE he might have recognized the Christian roadmap as a useful tool for his own monotheism. Now there's a thought that could earn me a fatwa. :-))
None of all this would have meant a damned thing if it hadn't been for the replacement of human knowledge with divine revelation. If they had skipped that part, humanity could have sailed along on the path of true science (human knowledge) forever. Think how many lives would have been saved without the Church defending false divine revelation. And how much farther along towards acceptance and compassion humans would be.
As an aside, I'm guessing that the brilliance of Jewish and Christian synthesis would most likely be attributed to "divine revelation" rather than the brilliance of the scribes who did it. If that subject ever comes up.
And the Old Testament stories are equally sketchy, with heavy borrowing from earlier sources (e.g. Hammurabi's Code).
Isn't there an underlying theme of the rising/dying year god as the green life of the world in it's yearly cycle, born of the earth mother & received back, her son & lover, as antecedent to the Mediterranean & near eastern religions?
Mesopotamian: The Sumerian-Babylonian cults of Tammuz (Dumuzi) and Inanna/Ishtar, where the shepherd-god descends to the underworld for half the year while the earth mourns and withers. You can almost hear the ritual lamentations echoing across the ziggurats.
Phrygian: The mystery religion of Attis and Cybele (the Great Mother), centered in Asia Minor, where frenzied priests would castrate themselves in imitation of Attis’s self-mutilation beneath the sacred pine.
Syrian/Phoenician: The Adonis cults that spread throughout the Mediterranean - particularly vivid in their ritual gardens of quickly-sprouting, quickly-dying plants that mimicked the god’s brief flowering and death.
Egyptian: Osiris, dismembered by Set and reassembled by Isis, becoming lord of the underworld and promise of resurrection. The annual flooding of the Nile was felt as his return, the black fertile mud literally his body.
Brilliant. Will these essays/assays be a book someday, or is this your doctoral thesis?
If I tap the w tire text it could take a year to pub it all
Not doctoral , no , but close
And yes I’ll eventually condense it down to bound paper
Rats! I missed pts 1-3, but will happily backtrack to pick those up. I've never made those connections before & am a little forehead-slapping gobsmacked - duh!! on my part & a huge thank you for pointing out what I so obviously missed!! I have a master's degree in French lit so have integrated that knowledge, & as much as I loved the Roman & Greek God/desses mythology, that waaaaaaay bk in the beginning of high school (!!!) & therefore a little tricky to use that information (🙄). This was a wonderful article, beautifully written, articulate & intelligent explanations!
The entire thing is 29 parts currently. If I tap the whole contingency. It’s possibly 59 parts.
Wow, what a treatise! I have to save & re-stack for others to cruise this jam-packed mini-course in the ancient history of Western religion. Thanks for laying it out. All the parallels in all religious practice come down to just a few elements. How to find inner peace and love of self and others in a chaotic, unpredictable, unstable environment. More Pop Synthesizing is needed in this culture for the so-called Evangelical Second Coming and Kingdom of Heaven on Earth--they got it wrong. It's not coming down on one Man, it's coming down on everyone to incarnate the Good Gift Life or the Bad and Ugly Troubles so Fix, and Share it All. So Jesus still be on the streets out looking to reel in the followers of The Good old Perennial Wisdom Golden Rule still dragging his cross just so you remember what State cruelty looks like.
Again if I do the whole thing it’s like 59 parts. It’s fairly large.
The breadth of the comprehensive list you provided is amazing! It reminded me of reading Joseph Campbell's, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". The Dead Sea Scrolls also had their impact. "The Gnostic Gospels", by Elaine Pagels, as well as other works by her and "The History of God", by Karen Armstrong have interesting perspectives on the development of Christianity.
I know those works
I have read a number of your sources before but have not put them together in this way… thanks for doing so for us… It reveals things in a more logical and clear manner.
My Tanahk and Talmud both are heavily used and annotated.
It's interesting that your lists and categories don't contain much Judaic origin.
I believe the principal discussion focused on New Testament texts rather than the Old (& maybe this aspect of Judaic origin is covered in pts 1-3 which I haven't seen [yet !!]. Dumb algorithms!). Other thoughts, people?
No I’m hitting the whole text , Tanahk. Talmud. Gnostics. Apocryphals, lateral texts. All of it.
Those are coming. The entire thesis is huge.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the crowning rituals of the kings and queens of England, to this day. Ghosts even of Hittite/Assyrian king-making rituals, but with the ruler's consort replacing the temple's female guardian. Including the biblical words of the anthem Zadok the Priest, which surely originate in much older rituals than Judaic.