Abrahamic Religion Discussion (from Great Quotes thread)

[Billy Underdog]

Well, yeah, i get why you made it a smiley, and it works fine for that purpose. Just had to point out there's a depth in the quote that's lost because of the modern use of that word.
And mostly it's because i HATE how that word is used, a huge simplification of Norse culture. It've become synonym with "evil" (and not only due to the net, but more how the "christian" church have vilified and misunderstood the Norse religion), but being a Jotun, it's part of the "chaos", as opposed to the Æse and Væne (the "gods") who represented order, and both are necessary in life. Yin/Yang.

[Zzzptm]

Well, to be sure, there was a lot of Christianity as a "new religion" wanting to flex its strength and overthrow its father - Judaism - as well as any uncles out there that stood in its path. If it could overthrow through syncreticism, so be it.

[Billy Underdog]

Ofcourse. Too many examples to mention, but one very obvious one is fact that we celebrate christmas, one of many syncretisms. That was basically what they did throughout the entire "pagan" world. Even the reason we know about these old religions is because christian saga writers wrote it down just to show how superior the cristian faith was.
But by putting it in the christian perspective of a "good vs. evil" they undermined and misunderstood a great deal of the old religions, including judaism. There isn't really any "good vs. evil" in Judaism either, He-Satan was originally a "necessary evil", if you like, but still doing the bidding of the allmighty.

[Zzzptm]

Well, the idea of Satan/Destroyer changes over time and culture. In Zoroastrianism, the Satan-figure, Ahriman, is in direct opposition and rebellion to Ohrmazd. Ahriman is not a necessary evil, but rather a power that amplifies the destruction and death already existant in the current universe. After the Persian overthrow of Babylon, there were many ideas of Zoroastrianism that made their way into Judaism. Some scholars hold the view that more ancient forms of Judaism had those ideas and that Zoroastrianism re-introduced those.

Within Gnostic Christianity, Satan is the force that created the world. In the Christianity that was used by the Roman Empire, particularly in the East, Christianity became a religious reason to observe civic duty, with Satan as an embodiment of rebellion. Outside the Roman Empire, the idea of Satan as a sort of supernatural anarchist, bent on overthrowing an imperial God, simply didn't exist. Satan was more a personal opponent.

But it was the Christianity of the Romanoi that became the dominant form in Europe, reinforced by things like Charlemagne's forced conversion of the Saxons and then the Crusades, with their attitude of "Kill them all, God will know his own." (Actually voiced by a Catholic clergymen when crusaders asked about storming a Christian city that had given refuge to members of the Catharist sect.) That Christianity very easily embraced a dualism that placed anything that opposed the king or church as being in direct opposition to God, with permission granted to violently excise that which would not repent.

[Billy Underdog]

I'm impressed. Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism aren't exactly religions that a novice would think of bringing up.

As for Zoroastrianism, yeah, they're considered the first monotheitic religion (and an inspiration to Judaism at that), but fact is that it's actually polytheitic, as was Judaism at the time. They were one of the first to have that one god more important than the others, though, a "main god" that was "allmighty". Something seen in other religions in Persia and Mesopotamia later on, where often one god become more important for a city state, and later grew into "the one god". Jahwe was the Kanaanite god who became the main god for Jerusalem.
But being polytheitic, they had both "good" and "evil" gods, not a "good vs. evil" but a "good AND evil", where both was important for life. That was the point i was trying to get across.

Gnosticism (as oppost to Gnostic Christianity) was in exictence before christianity, and most likely one of the many "mystery religions" Jesus studied. It's true as you say, that the physical world was created by an evil god or demiurge (Yaldabaoth, though also Satan, El and even Jahwe have been used, making it somewhat "anti-Judaism" in the view of some scolars), and that it's in the life after death we'll join up with the upper god Monad, basically the precursor for the christian idea of heaven (in Judaism we only find the realm of death, no heaven and hell).
Though they're also polytheitic, having a set of other gods under the upper one, that's probably one of the first places we find a "good vs. evil", another inspiration for Jesus' ideas. As nothing was written about Gnosticism before the syncretism of Gnostic Christianity it's hard to know what came into the set of believes at which point, but this is what's considered "most likely".

And, yes, the idea of the Devil (i use that name to differ it from the earlier ideas of Satan) and his effect on humans and the world varies within the different branches of christianity too, esp. before the Nicene creed, but the common denominator is still that it's something to be fought against or kept away from, and not accepted as part of life, as it had been before.

[Zzzptm]

Not polytheistic, but henotheistic. More than one god-like being, but one held to be pre-eminent among the others.

[Billy Underdog]

Nitpicker...

[Zzzptm]

Nevertheless, it's worth mentioning.

Another interesting mention is the popularity of Judaism in Spain and Southern France in the time between the collapse of Roman authority and the Moorish Conquest.

The Christianity of the day was very rudimentary while Judaism had well-established teaching traditions. Christianity also had the Trinitarian doctrine, which wasn't very easy to understand how three-in-one, one-in-three was monotheistic. The Jews had God, and... nope, that's it, just God. Monotheistic as in one God, no more, no less, no explanations about Jesus or the Holy Ghost. Judaism was actually growing in membership in those regions, in spite of the kings there being officially Christian and making insistence that their Christian subjects *stay* Christian.

This is where anti-Jewish laws began in Europe, as a means to halt the flow of membership from Christianity to Judaism. Laws forbidding Jews to farm, to live outside of ghettos, to restrict their contact with Christians, all started around this time in the kingdoms in Spain and France and rippled out from there. Even so, in Spain, there was still a great deal of popularity for Jews, so the Visigothic king around the start of the 700s was planning to exterminate all the Jews in his lands.

And that's when the Moorish Conquest started. Under the Andalusian Caliphate, the Jews may have been second-class citizens most of the time, but they had a well-defined place in society and were permitted to exist. When Christianity returned to power in Spain, those Jews were mostly expelled, killed, or forced underground. After settlement in America was opened up, many Jews moved to very remote parts of Mexico, where there was less risk of their crypto-Judaism being exposed.

[Billy Underdog]

Plus originally Muslims was supposed to respect and protect all "peoples of the book" (Christians and Jews) living under Muslim rule, acknowledging them as more "worthy" than pagans/heathens/disbelievers. Christians? Not so much, esp. after the politicization of Christianity after it became the state religion of the Roman Empire (when it really wasn't much true Christianity left).

The issues with the Trinity is one thing, but both Christianity and Islam should really be considered dualistic imo, given how much they focus on the battle between good and evil, giving the devil almost as much power as the lord, almost as a god himself, atleast in a pre christian view of what a god is.

There was one field Jews thrived under christian rule, though. As everything to do with dealing with money by large was considered a sin by Christianity (exept for the church and king, for some reason), it was often the Jews that had to deal with trade, money lending and banking, which ofcourse have given rise to the modern anti-Jewish view that Jews are greedy.
(And, yes, i know the true origins of the modern banking system was with the Knights Templar...)

[Zzzptm]

(This is where I split this off from the Great Quotes thread.)

Dualism is also emphasised in Manichean religion. It was considered heresy by both Christian and Zoroastrian monarchs, but nevertheless had some compelling ideas that permeated through the Christian west, particularly in the Bogomil/Cathar faiths.

The banking connection was actually forced upon the Jews by Christian rulers in order to finance state activities. Christians were forbidden to lend to other Christians (until Jean Calvin's comment to a friend was taken way out of context), so Jews were pressed into that service since the Law of Moses permitted lending to enemies of the Israelites. Interestingly, Israelites were not permitted to lend with interest to "strangers within their gates", meaning they could only lend with interest to people they were essentially at war with, as a means of their destruction.

In Andalusia, banking concerns were set up with Christians, Jews, and Muslims so that no one religion would be required to lend to its fellow believers and that there would always be at least two religions on deck when the third had a sabbath day, so as to be able to handle all possible customers.

[Billy Underdog]

Yeah, i was thinking we had started derailing a bit too much. And as it's not "just for fun" anymore, i moved it to the Life, The Universe & Everything area...

I really don't have a reply, anything to correct or add, though. We've covered alot of ground in 9 posts.

[Zzzptm]

Well, that's true. But if you want, we can cover even more... like the topic of the Khazars, the only kingdom to *convert* to Judaism...

[Billy Underdog]

How about the irony in that the true descendants of the biblical Jews are most likely todays Palestinians?

[Zzzptm]

How about the irony in that the true descendants of the biblical Jews are most likely todays Palestinians?

There's a very complicated question, there. Quite a few Jews lived in Arabia and the Levant prior to the advent of Islam and many converted to Islam, both at the point in time when the Arabs conquered Jerusalem as well as a natural conversion to the dominant faith over generations. So this is where the idea of Judaism as a culture, Judaism as a faith, and Judaism as a genetic designation all overlap.