In part that is because the early Jews did not have a moralistic concept of ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, that dualistic concept was an influence from the Zoroastrians.
You find many allusions to child sacrifice in the texts of the bible that are directed to YHWH because other Semitic cultures and forms of paganism accepted child sacrifice, but authors had a mixed view on it.
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I can’t even get rid of it xD
The Old Testament is the historical and ideological source of the ancient Jews, in which they described their ideology and relations with other nations.
Their beliefs are based both on their own polytheistic beliefs and on the beliefs of other nations around them (but, naturally, it all went through a long and interesting transformation).
In fact, Yahweh in the Old Testament represents justice in the way in which the ancient Jews saw it. But for us it already seems like something “wild” and “unacceptable”. The concept of good and evil as a whole is flexible, since under “evil” both certain peoples and their gods could act for the ancient Jews.
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I agree that Judaism is a very interesting religion, especially the Kabbalah.
Clearly, it was based on the Babylonian mysteries and to a lesser extent, the Egyptian ones. In that sense, it is one of the very few living religions that can trace its roots back to the very beginnings of human civilisation and organised religion. If you trace back the history and how it has changed over the millennia, you can sort of observe the change in human consciousness, how polytheism became monotheism and that sort of thing.
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Judaism looks more like a very trash religion not as interesting as some speak, a lot of stuff stolen from older religions. Like laws from the Code of Hammurabi, where Sumerian Sun God Shamash gave the tablet of the laws. And later turning the same Shamash into what we have today Azazel.
And the same Flood story, that has been taken from Gilgamesh. This story predicted the abrahamic account over 1,000 years maybe even more. That talks about the god “Enlil”, which has also been rewritten by them, by now having the “Beelzebub”, God of Philistines just demonised by them.
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But anyways I should be talking about demonisation in my other topic - https://forum.becomealivinggod.com/t/gods-getting-demonised-by-christians/137842?u=mar
That would be true of most religions out there. The Romans and Greeks were certainly as guilty of it as anyone else, as were the Christians, Hindus and Buddhists.
The Romans stole from the Greeks, who stole from the Babylonians and Egyptians, who stole from Assyrians, who stole from the Sumerians, etc…
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Well yes kind of, but you see the real problem I’m having with this religion is that it’s very aggressive actually, lets take polytheistic religions, it’s more like merging when they interact with other ones and so on, but yeah indeed some were too aggressive to merge but it still affected them in some way, adding things.
But when we have abrahamic religions, these are aggressively monotheistic, pushing out anything around just trying to erase deities and steal other religions’ stories.
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One must ask the question: what, in fact, provokes the “aggressiveness” of such religions? There are always social, political and economic reasons behind this. And, of course, the historical realities that contributed to their emergence. The formation of monotheistic religions, one might say, was a “requirement of the times” and developed on the prepared soil. After all, there are no consequences without causes. And this had both positive and negative consequences (history is generally a very ambiguous thing for assessments).
Hmm is it not because of such religions that humankind was having a hard time improving scientifically, because of their own fear of knowledge that they mostly called witchcraft, the work of the “deviiiillllll” ??? Well yeah maybe it helped to control the people more, but I still think it’s trash because of how much it fucks with the spiritual development.
These religions, like everything else, transform over time, acquire new meanings. If we take Christianity, then initially it was the religion of the oppressed and slaves. But, having become a religion of world significance, naturally, it has already acquired a new status, meaning and opportunities. Monotheistic religions, and religions in general, are always a difficult complex that was influenced by both the factors I have mentioned and certain individuals.
One can argue endlessly about the negative consequences of Christianity or other monotheistic religions on human society, but I prefer to look at its meaning and influence from different angles and points of view.
Religion is only a reflection of humanity. Every god and spirit we have record of is just a reflection of those many that interact with them. It is not the spirits or gods writing the records or books it is the people that are writing their perceptions and the reflections of themselves in those perceptions.
TheOld Testament at least the one of the Hebrew Bible is quite powerful and contains a good deal of good information in its original form but it is mostly in ciphers. For instance it contains the names of 72 angels and the keys to summon and command them and many other secrets. To judge a conception of a god that was never meant to be a anthropomorphic god is a bit foolish when you should instead judge the humanity behind it. Don’t discount a useful tool just because of how others put it to use.
Where the hell is that even written in that dusty book?
I believe the book of Exodus. Each Psalm has in it the name of the angel taken from I believe the first letter of each line which when you go through gives you the 72 angels of the Shemhamphorash which is why each angel of that order uses a specific psalm to conjure them. The names of God are themselves keys to different powers you can take upon yourself and assume or command externally. The psalms and passages alone when read in Hebrew possess different effects on reality when properly spoken and utilized mentally. It is one of those languages that can code reality fairly easily without training the mind to utilize the inner powers within yourself which makes it perfect for enhancing your work or awakening further powers in yourself to expand your consciousness even further.
The names of the 72 angels are based on the 72 names of god, which was extracted from the Hebrew of Exodeus 14:19-21, if i recall correctly. It is a similiar practice to my current work (the 42 letter name of god extracted from the kabbalahist prayer and the hidden names of gensis, which comes from gensis 1:1-4)
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ehh there are other good energies that give really good power.
What is aggressive about Judaism?
They don’t proselytize like Christians or Muslims do and mostly keep to themselves. Sure, they’re exclusionary, but so are Hindus for instance.
If you want aggressive, Christianity and Islam would certainly fit the bill, but Judaism? Hardly.
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yeah
To be fair Judaism didn’t really steal their ideas, I’d personally go on a limb and say they adopted it since Yahweh was part of the Canaanite religion and the followers of Judaism were a branch of that to begin with.
Yeah they altered it quite a few times from Yahweh being a minor God to being their chief God (while acknowledging his family) to completely removing them, the Canaanite lore kept the understanding that the Creator God of Canaanite’s religion gave to his sons parts of the region and Yahweh was given Israel in which to become his domain which for a while they kept belief in until later in which personally I can’t really figure out what caused the change if it was priests or an invasion, etc.
However, I never heard of Egyptians stealing their religion from another group.
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Not every polytheistic religion was peaceful and tolerant. The Romans had some views on others religions that could be considered very offensive and sometimes they were very destructive. Romans also had religious practices such as self-flagellation. They also had a very sexist view of Women at time (Ovid in his work ‘Ars Amatoria’ even suggests rape as a technique of seduction, referencing a religious tale if I remember correctly). But I don’t blame their Gods for that, much of it is the works of humans. I don’t believe all of the Poetic Edda are the works of the Norse Gods either, it’s poetry. Much of the bible is also complete fiction. Almost all of it (If not all of it) was written by anonymous authors (Some of which probably never meant for it to be taken literally). There’s absolutely no historical evidence that the Jews ever came out of Egypt, or that there ever was such a mass exodus (It would have completely collapsed Egypt considering the population, plus they would most definitely have written about it. And the authors don’t even know the Pharaoh’s name, they just call him “Pharaoh”). Judaism used to be a polytheistic religion too, but people changed that as well, only after the Babylonian exile at that. I don’t think YHWH agrees with much of it at all.
Similarly, under the Nazi regime many adopted Germanic Paganism with a very racist view (And there are many modern Neo-Nazi Germanic Pagan groups today), but you get Viking cults in Nigeria that work with the Gods without issue. More than you think is from humans.
Ancient Israel was actually quite technologically advanced its time for various aspects. Technology also continue to advance post-Christianization in the Roman Empire and later on in Europe. Many of History’s ‘Great Inventors’ and many scientists were Christian. A Christian astrologer in the Renaissance also discovered that the Sun revolved around the Earth after very complex calculations, followed by other scientists. The Catholic Church actually sponsored much of this research, it was mostly the Protestants who were against it (And Protestants have always had absolutely terrible theology at that).
Witch hunting was also a per-dominantly Protestant activity, and Protestantism formed just cause a guy wanted to divorce his wife lol. But it is true that those accused of Witchcraft were persecuted by Christians, just as they are persecuted in many African Pagans, and in various Hindu places, and all kinds of Polytheistic religions. But you also got many Christian Occultists, and Judaism and Christianity are the reason why the 72 Demons of the Goetia and beings such as Satan and Lucifer are worshiped today.
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