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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Origins
Rick I am sorry you have to work so hard but I do understand about time constraints, having had those myself for a good few years. I'll go on through my book with the origin stories then.
The Hittite origin stories are missing but here is an interesting one about The Queen of Nesha who gave birth to 30 sons and, worried about this extraordinary number, puts them in baskets lined with excrement and floats them down the river (now where have we heard this story before - babies and rivers).
Hurrian texts are also lost but some of their stories reached the Greeks through the Hittites and deal mostly with biting off genitals and so on, funny but not about origin.
The mythology of the biblical creation is given under the Near East section, interesting that this author calls it mythology.
Ugarit: main deities are the creator god El who, like the Sumerian An, is divine authority and the father of all gods, and the father of mankind. His relationship to Baal is ambiguous, sometimes Baal is called his son, and other time Baal is the son of Dagan.
Persians: they came later than the other people mentioned above and were the ruling people in the area by 640 BCE. Their creation story is that the universe lasts 12,000 years with at first light with darkness and when a 9,000 year war between light and darkness is proposed, the god of light Ohrmazd falls back into the abyss.. After 3,000 years Ohrmazd (Ahura Mazda) creates the physical world, the primal bull and the first living mortal. Ahriman, god of darkness in order to destroy the good creation, smahes his way through the crystal vault of the sky, speeds through the waters, which turn bitter and salt, turning the earth into desert and mountains, sullying everything, killing plants, the primal bull and the living mortal whose sperm is taken to the sun and the bull's to the moon. From the moon comes new plants and life and from the sun an androgynous rhubarb, out of which step the first human couple. For the next 3,000 years good and evil mix after which the prophet Zoroaster is born bringing in the last period of 3,000 years. In this final period, a saviour is born from the sperm of Zoroaster, preserved in Lake Hamun where it fertilizes virgins. At the birth of the third saviour the last battle of heroes and monsters begins. Evil is defeated and the earth becomes flat again, the great renewal and the end of history.
This is very briefly summarized, I've left the names and a lot of the details out but i think you can get the idea of the stories that sound so familiar.
Gods and their sons, good and evil and magically fertilized virgins??
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8/30/2008, 3:31 am
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Origins
Egypt:
There are four accounts of creation in Egyptian mythology, each connected to a major city:
Heliopolis, Memphis, Hermopolis and Esna and a major god Atum, Ptah, Thoth and Khnum.
These are really interesting. I'll scan the actual text and reproduce it here.
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8/30/2008, 3:35 am
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Origins
I found the following explanation of Ra the Creator in my book: Egypt by Charles Freeman: It is a bit more comprehensive than the piecemeal version in the Mythology Encyclopedia:
quote: Like most early cultures, the Egyptians had several creation stories, originating in diffcrent cult centers along the Nile. All suggest, however, that creation was an ordered process. At the beginning of time, most agreed, the earth had been covered by dark and gloomy waters. Legend says that the sun initiated the first act of creation from this lifeless world from a mound which had risen from the Waters. According to one very ancient cult, the sun in this role of creator was Atum, "the all" or "he who came into being of himself', and the reappearance of the land from the floods each year replayed the original act of creation. Heliopolis, the center of the cult of Atum, claimed to be the original creation mound, and the benben (a pyramidical stone in the temple there) was the spot where the sun's rays first touched the earth. It was from Atum's semen that life was first born. He gave birth to Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture. They repre¬sented opposing qualities: air is dry and preserving, and Shu became associated with the cycle of life, renewed annually for eternity; moisture corrodes, so Tefnut was associated with unpredictable events that threaten to upset the ordered pattern of existence. The themes of order versus disorder, and preservation versus decay, pervade the Egyptian philosophy of life. Shu and Tefnut gave birth to Geb, the earth, and Nut, the sky. Shu lifted Nut into her place in the sky, and so the world took shape.
Other gods might also be credited with the act of creation. Ra, the sun-god, gradually became associated with Arum, "the all”, so that Ra - among his many other manifestations - was also seen as a creator-god.
In the Middle Kingdom (2040¬-1640 BCE), when Thebes became the political heart of the kingdom, its own cult god Amun, "the hidden one" - the force within the wind, for instance - became prominent and was given a role in creation similar to that of Arum. Ra was too closely associated with the power of the kings and too well established in the north of the country to be replaced entirely by Amun, and so Ra, the visible power of the sun, and Amun, its hidden force, were merged as the powerful god known as Amun- Ra.
The forces of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ and ‘chaos’ versus ‘order’ are found in every mythology.
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8/30/2008, 4:51 am
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Origins
Now here is one of the reasons why the dating of the writing of the Bible is important. Which story came first: the Ancient Greek Flood? The Flood of Gilgamesh or Noah's Flood? Of course it depends on your point of view.
from Greek mythology the most important accounts of the birth of humanity is that of the idea of the birth of the earth itself, autochthony. Zeus, enraged with mankind, sent a flood to destroy them. Prometheus managed to warn his son Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha who survived by building an ark. When the water subsided the made sacrifices to Zeus who sent the Titan Themis to help them walk along throwing stones over their shoulders. Those thrown by Decualion became men and those of Pyhrra, women. The Athenians regarded the autochthony as very important because it made them different to the rest of mankind who didn't have such a special relationship to the earth.
The believed that first there existed only chaos, from which Gaia (the earth was formed) together with Tartaros (the underworld, Eros (desire) Erebos (darkness of the underworld) and Night (the darkness) Night joined with Erebos to produce Aither (bright air) and Day. Gaia gave birth to Uranos (the sky) and together they formed the first divinities: 12 Titans, 3 Cyclopes, and 3 Hekatonchires. From these the gods were formed.
What is very interesting about Greek mythology today is that we are able to decipher the deductions they made about their world and what they found in it. As I said earlier, they thought the Titans existed because they found fossils of the dinosaurs and the prehistoric ancestors of 'modern' animals. They made deductions from what they found and because they couldn't imagine animals larger than man, assigned divinity to the proof that they had of very large creatures, thus Titans and Cyclopes etc.
I find this a very interesting example of rationalization and intelligent thinking.
I'll put in more origin stories after you've responded to what I've done today.
Gosh I really love ancient history. I really wish we could go back to before the time of the people of 5,000 years ago to see what it was like before history was written down. Fascinating.
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8/30/2008, 6:21 am
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Origins
quote: Morwen Oronor wrote:
Now here is one of the reasons why the dating of the writing of the Bible is important. Which story came first: the Ancient Greek Flood? The Flood of Gilgamesh or Noah's Flood? Of course it depends on your point of view.
Although scholars are uncertain as to whether Gilgamesh really existed, the Sumerian king list shows him as ruler of Uruk around 2600 BCE. The earliest surviving texts containing the Epic of Gilgamesh date to around 2150-2000 BC. So, it's fair to say that the story was first conceived, whether it was written down right away or not, between 2600 BCE at the earliest, and 2000 BCE at the latest.
In contrast, many apologetics websites claim Moses as the writer of the flood story, and the Talmud places the life of Moses at 1393-1273 BCE. Of course, this date would be based on a literal interpretation of the geneology listed in the OT which would make the universe only 6000 years old, so I assume that only young-earth creationists would subscribe to this date.
Does anyone know what the most currently accepted age of the Noah story is? The dating of the Gilgamesh Epic is easy, since there is a relatively small time frame between the possible reign of Gilgamesh and the scientific dating of the earliest known writing about it. But with the Hebrew version, there aren't any characters in the story that we can use to give it an "earliest" possible date, and can only rely on linguists who may or may not be biased to give us their opinion of when it was originally written.
I'm especially fascinated by the commonalities between ancient myths, where they originated, and who influenced whom. I know the Romans got many of their gods from the Greeks, but do you know who influenced the Greeks?
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8/31/2008, 12:59 am
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Origins
Looking at the similarities in the origin stories of the region (and I'll go on to other people in the ancient Roman Empire in a bit), by the time the Romans starting formulating their ideas, Greek was pretty much the dominant culture in the area, so for the Romans to follow their lead is logical and they did this. It is not even necessary to tell their story because their gods grew out of those of the Greeks, just with different names.
The similarity of gods appearing out of nowhere to create humans to do the dirty work is pretty much the theme of the entire Near Eastern world until the time of the events that became the basis of Christianity in the whole known world.
My feeling is that all thinking in the whole area was that the gods (no one could say where the original ones came from) created other gods to help them (the Jews only had one god but he had angels to help - same idea different terminology) and then created humans to help those gods, whether it was to populate the earth or to look after the animals or even to build mountains or clear up after a flood.
The story of virgin birth and a special hero - Hercules, Jason etc and Jesus is really all the same thing just again, different terminology. It's when a particular group of people claim that their god is real and the others aren't, and that their god has better powers than the others that the major religions have evolved into what we know today.
The more I read about the origins of religion, and the mythology of the world, and how the people in ancient times thought, the more convinced I become that the creation of gods was the way that the ancients explained their world. The sacrifices were real (very real) because they killed their best sheep or gave of their food to their gods, then they chose people among themselves to regulate the beliefs, these priests became the world's first politicians, finding that they could control the people if they claimed special connections with the gods. So it suited the priests to perpetuate the stories and to prey on the superstition of the people who looked to them for guidance.
From this grew their power to annoint kings and to define governmental policy, a power that still exists in modern society - for instance the control that the Archbishop of Canterbury holds in the UK and the Pope in the Catholic Church.
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8/31/2008, 2:06 am
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Origins
Just reading the Old Testament without any preconceived notions, the people are doing all the work, while the priests are reaping the benefits. The priests don't have to work all day in the fields or building homes, but the people have to feed and clothe the priests and build the temples. Later, it was the kings reaping all the benefits, because the people believed the kings were anointed by Yahweh.
That theme continues in the New Testament, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's." (Matthew 22:21) In context, the question was whether the Jews should pay taxes to the Romans who conquered their land.
quote: Wiki: Book of Matthew
The Early Christian tradition attributes the Gospel to Matthew, one of Jesus' disciples. Some scholars date back this tradition of authorship to the middle of the second century CE.
What does your knowledge of ancient history tell you about these dates in this context?
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8/31/2008, 2:47 am
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Origins
The Caesar reference would be correct for one thing. Julius Caesar, although never called 'emperor' was dictator when he was murdered and his great-nephew, Octavian became Princeps (First Citizen) after he won the civil war against Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, he was known as Caesar so to call subsequent Princeps "Caesar" was correct. They were given 'imperium' the power to make decisions over everything within the Principate and were not known as Emperors until around the end of the third century when Diocletian began to model his court on that of the Eastern Kings. So yes, calling him Caesar, puts in inside the 1st to 3rd centuries.
The Romans conquered Judaea during the 1st century BCE but never imposed their religion on the conquered people so the priests running things was correct and the priests wanting the money for the Temple rather than to Rome, puts it in the time frame.
I'll give you brief Jewish history from a historian's point of view in a moment. Just going to organise lunch then I'll type it out and post it.
Last edited by Morwen Oronor, 8/31/2008, 6:21 am
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8/31/2008, 6:21 am
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Origins
This is a bit long but it is interesting and pertinent to the discussion of the similarities between the ancient peoples and their histories and beliefs:
According to Max Dimont Jews, God and History, quote: Jewish History dates from around 4,000 years ago when Abraham reported an encounter with a God he called “Jehovah”. The first signs of civilization began cropping up around 4500 BCE with two civilizations both Semitic, one to the northeast of Palestine and the other southwest of it. These two only found out about each other after about 2,500 years. The one, two answer Petal’s question is known as Sumer and Akkad and the other, Egypt and they fought each other over the buffer land in between, Palestine.
In the 3rd millennium the king of Akkad, Sargon I conquered the Sumerians and formed the city-state of Babylon. In around 2100 a king and lawgiver named Hammurabi wrote the first code of laws, on stone, this stone or stele is preserved until today. He gave the law to the Akkadians as a present from heaven, much as Moses gave his law to his followers 1,000 years later.
The Jews were non-existent. In about the year 2000 BCE a new Semitic tribe, the Assyrians began to worry the hedonistic Babylonians who were used to soft living and dreaming of world conquest. A man named Terah took his son, Abraham, his wife Sarah and his grandson Lot (Abraham’s nephew) and emigrated from Ur, in Babylonia. The Bible identifies them as being descended from Shem, a son of Noah and he was most definitely not a sheepherder, because he was wealthy having lived in “one of the most sophisticated cities of the age”.
From here I will go on in my own words.
Dimont tells how Abraham told the followers that God spoke to him and told him to issue a law to his people, one law only, circumcision. Now use logic here. You are wandering in the heat of the desert after living in luxury in the city and sand flies get into all the most sensitive parts of your body. Circumcision make sense but you resist, so your leader says ‘Jehovah told me to tell you to do it”, so they oblige, because he tells them, God has said he will make their descendants his ‘Chosen people” and place them under his protection.
Again, common sense comes into play. You’ve lived with gods and their quirks all your life, you’ve walked away from civil war, settled in a reasonably decent place (the southern part of Turkey) and no one is interfering with you. You are about to establish your own city-state and your leader tells you that this new god is going to protect you and yours forever, so you oblige, after all what is a little skin compared to eternity of being protected by the god that has sent you to this great place.
Go on a few years from here and extrapolate on the way people move around, naturally the power of this god is strong and the family grows and a 1000 or so years later it has spread to a group of people living in Egypt, possibly even escaping famine.
Archaeology tells us that the story of Jewish slaves building the pyramids is simply not true. Firstly the great pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) was built around 2550 BCE and we’ve just read that Abraham left Ur in 2000 BCE, so the Jews couldn’t have built it. Secondly there is now unequivocal proof of villages having been occupied around all the pyramids where huge groups of people lived and records have been found of payments made to the labourers, so the idea of Moses leading the Jews away from Egypt after bringing down the plagues on the heads of the Egyptians is nonsense and pure mythology.
There is also no proof of 40 years of wandering around in the desert between Memphis and Jerusalem, nothing, not a single sign of people having travelled a distance that should take 10 days, over 40 years. There are signs of settlements, you would expect those with the amount of traffic and trade between east and west but no signs of thousands of wanderers walking around in circles through the desert.
All the mythology of Moses and the laws being carved in stone, as you can see from the history all ties into Hammurabi's code and other mythologies of the area.
Again think about it logically, thousands of people over 40 years would accumulate a lot of rubbish; bones from sacrifices, discarded furniture, clothing, dead bodies etc. Nothing has been found. Just think how many people would have died on the trip, how many babies would have been born, children would outgrow their clothes and of course the food. Yes we can claim the dew and the manna from heaven, but if you have ever lived with a large group of irate Jewish people, with their dietary rules and hygienic rules, where did the women, thousands of them take their monthly ritual baths and even the baths that are compulsory after every sex act. You may argue that all those laws came after the settlement in the land of Israel but that doesn’t make sense. If they had Moses serious laws telling them what they could and couldn’t do and he was up on a mountain long enough for them to make a huge calf out of gold, where is the trash from that long picnic.
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8/31/2008, 8:10 am
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Origins
To continue:
Why did they leave Egypt? Why did the Middle Kingdom of Egypt collapse and why did Egypt fall into its second Dark Age. The Sea people. No one knows who they were and where they came from that’s why the time is called a ‘Dark Age’ because there is no written or other evidence of who they were and where they came from and it is generally accepted in history that the Jews of Moses were people who fled from Egypt when the Sea People invaded.
Israel was a confederation of Semitic tribes, the early history of which can only be found in the Old Testament and I quote from my lecture notes here quote: because the OT is not a purely historical source, its information must be verified, corrected or supplemented by archaeological evidence. The early history of the Israelites was rooted in their traditions: the coming from Ur of the Chaldees (an anachronism because the Chaldean dynasty of Babylon did not yet exist in around 1850 BCE when this event is supposed to have taken place).
The Israelites settled eventually in the southern part of Canaan, known as Judah and the northern part known as Israel. They were not a united people, each tribe controlled its own affairs and the only united at times of great danger under a ‘judge’ or a chosen leader but only for a limited time. (Sounds like the Romans uniting under a temporary dictator in times of grave trouble). Because of pressure from outside, the Canaanites in the north and the Philistines in the south, they were eventually forced to unite under a king and for a short time they were a fairly strong power. In about 1050 the prophet Samuel anointed an elected king, a strong military leader (here again look at the correlation with the way the Roman emperors were chosen) Saul who united the Hebrews and defeated the Philistines. David succeeded him and Jerusalem became the capital. David defeated several smaller tribes (see Kings for the names) around 955-934 BCE to bring their political history to its peak. He embarked on large-scale expansion and built structures such as the First Temple (now this building has been authenticated as to the time of its building). The people revolted about the high taxes they were expected to pay to finance his building projects and even more under his son Rehoboam, the 10 northern tribes under Jeroboam rebelled and Israel was again divided into two states with Samaria as the capital of the northern state, Israel. The southern state, Judah, kept Jerusalem (the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin) and survived for another 200 or so years as a state. In about 722 Samaria fell to the Assyrians and Israel became an Assyrian province. Judah came under Babylonian rule, under Nebuchadnezzar (the Chaldean king) in 587 when the temple was destroyed. 50 years later they were allowed to return by Cyrus the Persian King, but it never became a power.
It fell under the Ptolemaic empire of Egypt after Alexander’s death in 323, and in 200 it was incorporated into the Seleucid kingdom ; their king Antioch IV tried to Hellenize the Jews and forbade their religious customs resulting in the Maccabean Revolt in 168/7 and a new independent state under Simon the High Priest in 142. Pompey the Roman general brought it under Rome’s protection in 63 and in CE 6 it became a Roman province under the rule of a procurator.
A lot of the early history above is taken from the Bible but because ancient history was handed down by word of mouth it is not disputed, only the feats of the people involved are. Also archaeology and external records of the outsiders involved have been able to confirm the dates for these events so they are accepted.
I apologise for being so long-winded but if you show an interest in my favourite subject, I promise I will be verbose but I will try not to be boring.
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8/31/2008, 8:12 am
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