Welcome to the New Year – new challenges - in Congress, there is a battle brewing between the old and the new – and the government is still shut down. The border wall can be built, but it will be cut through with a simple bolt cutter, or a saw, which nobody in their right mind will ever attempt, right? Especially not drug dealers or terrorists because why would they have bolt cutters. Americans blame Trump and GOP for shutdown – 53% of us actually do so. And rightly so because he said he will take blame for it. So lets blame him for it. The FBI opened an investigation after Trump fired Corey to see if Trump was a Russian agent – what does that say about the president of the US of A that the agency, tasked with maintaining law and order opens an investigation into a guy because he does everything they can think of as activities of a Russian agent. John Bolton wants to bomb Iran (asking pentagon for military strike options)
Today’s topic: How monotheism hijacked paganism
A term originally coined by 4th century christians as a derogatory or pejorative description for people who were not soldiers of Christ – living mostly in rural areas and worshiping gods – as in multiple – as opposed to one god. During the Middle Ages, paganism was adopted to describe any non-Abrahamic religions – which helped define those who should be persecuted by Christian churches. It was justified by the notion that pagans, not believing in Jesus, were worshiping false gods and what better notion to kill human beings over than worshiping the wrong mythical, non-existent deity. In modern society, paganism is based on perceived old world style self-descriptor to describe someone who would be interested in worshiping other than Abrahamic gods , such as nature, but the world view could be pantheistic, polytheistic, or animistic and some are even monotheistic. It is ironic to note, that lots of christians today associate paganism with with hedonism, materialism, self indulgence and unconcerned with the future of humanity.
So how did monotheism hijack paganism?
By some accounts, and many scholars believe this to be true, but you can research for yourself, the origins of the modern Abrahamic religions is rooted to a large degree in Zoroastrianism. The conquest of the modern day so called “holy Land” by the Persians brought about the evolution of Judaism form Zoroastrianism. In the Abrahamic religion in the oldest biblical literature, Yahweh is a typical ancient Near Eastern Warrior or divine warrior, who leads the heavenly army against Israel’s enemies, he later became the main god of the Kingdom of Israel and of Judah and over time the royal court and temple promoted Yahweh as the god of the entire cosmos, possessing all the positive qualities previously attributed to the other gods and goddesses. By the end of the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE) the very existence of foreign gods was denied and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the true god of all the world. The oldest plausible recorded occurrence of the word Yahweh is “I am that I am” in the late Bronze Age. A place named Shasu of yhw (way)” in an Egyptian encryption from the time of Amenhotep III. (1402-1363 BCE). Ironically enough the word yhw (or way) translated loosely as “he blows”. The God of Israel is like a comic book character, Flash for example -The concept of Retcon – retroactive continuity.
