How ironic, if I’m right (and I think I am), that the very false idols the Moses era jews supposedly worshiped (the golden calf) where part of one of the religions most responsible for christianity: Hinduism.
Interesting observation. Any evidence to back it up?
Well my archeological sites are all closed down for bad weather, so…
Just the funny coincidence of the false idol being a golden calf.
Hinduism was started by a bunch of druggies. They drank the hallucinogenic drink Soma.
And what’s funny is : Excessive Soma drains out the urine. And devotees waited outside for the Masters to come out and relieve themselves with cup in hand … to get not only the sacred Soma, but the essence of the Master as well. A win-win situation.
Bull worship was common in the ancient world.
One could say that bullshit is still highly valued on internet forums. 
You know Phyllo, I’ve noticed that you have a bit of an inferiority complex regarding posting on the internet.
Maybe you should write a book?
How do you figure?
BTW the BS part was not referring to you. It was just a general observation.
Yes and no.
The calf was a common cultural following, somewhat like the Bull.
These areas swapped subtle similarities from each other because they mostly couldn’t help but get some dribble off of India considering the only real other rival early on was Egypt, but also because they all shared similar cultural developments and surroundings.
Calf’s were a part of many early cultures of the East Asian and South Asian areas.
It’s not even that it was just about India, though that doesn’t hurt much.
It’s more that the early Hebrew peoples were Canaanite highlanders.
When the diverse groups of “sea peoples” came along, the lowlands were basically destroyed for economics.
The herders moved to remaining up in the highlands, which, inland, stretches a very large part from north to south of the Levant region, and being up there had to then provide their own feeding and caring resources for their herds.
Previously, they would be able to rely on trade with farms in the lowlands, but now they had to form together an start making settlements to provide for their herds.
From these people arrive, at least a solid archaeological portion of, the Hebrew peoples.
Even after the accounts of golden calves, the Hebrew peoples reserved the the purest red cow (heifer) without spot, nor haven given birth, nor have been used for work, as a sacrifice for balancing their karmic scales of morality.
It makes sense for herding-origin societies to value, as sacred, the essential animal to which they are indebted to their life for.
Yeah, that sounds right.
I withdraw my hipothesis!
Thanks for that, I never put the early hebrews in quite such a neat sociological category before.
Probably because, up until recently, we’ve known very little on the first days of the Hebrew peoples archaeologically.
Previously, the best we could do was to know that at some point they at least developed language based on the Canaanite language.
But that’s all we really knew.
We weren’t certain what their societal format was like, or what their occupations were.
We knew a decent amount about their religious and spiritual beliefs and practices (not referring to the accounts in the Bible, but instead archaeological artifacts); that they had a few different gods and a goddess; that different groups in different areas valued different families of these gods.
These; sure, but not entirely much about why they lived where they did, what their resources were like, societal structure, organization, et. al.
Now we know the entire picture, generally.
At least; we know it better than we know the Hittite history (though, we’re getting better on that too now).
Now we even have an archaeological mapping of, not only their villages, but their entire, “empire” (for lack of a better word, as it’s debatable if a people are an empire when they have no contest, nor are fully unified … they were more like the very early Scottish tribal society…but instead of warrior-based; herder-based).
In that respect, it’s interesting that they ended up with such a value for absolute and violent desolation of the opposition being the appropriate counter measure to threats against them.
Just goes to show, I suppose; violence is not based on occupation and environment, but instead on compelling preservational motive.
Which…to wrap it around…the red heifer fits rather well into.
Interestingly, the early Vedic tradition didn’t hold cattle as exempt from sacrifice either. Instead, there were cattle sacrifices.
The correlation is largely related to a sign of monetary value, or value in general.
But it doubled over to religion in the usual way; relating to sacrifice for the value it has in livelihood - economics - money - crap that makes people go, “dammit!”, when they have to give it up.
No one is really certain exactly, but somewhere along the line before the 1800’s; the cattle switched up to being more protected.
In a way, if you could make a sort of J.R.R. Tolkien novel out of it; the idea of a utopic society so lavished that it has cattle, the very substance of survival (that’s it…they didn’t have a jungle; they had a cow), roaming the streets freely in great numbers, protected, is a radically tranquil and sweet concept in the mind.
In reality…meh…shit kind of stinks yo, and they be some inconsiderately large lazy bastards; cows.
The Calf was a common object of worship in the cult of Sin, a female moon goddess Pezer. Essentially, you can split the middle east into two axis, the northeast southwest axis of personal gods and Euphrates-tigris, and the southwest northwest route. More southwest you got outside of Egypt, the more impersonal the gods were… the arabs literally worshipped blocks. The more southeast, the more personal the gods… as in real characteristics… think ISKCON idols. Abrahamic and Islamic traditions carry migratory cues to what they took where. Moses was iconoclastic, closest we got was a giant car battery called the tabernacle that sparked like crazy and lit the dummy touching it without insulation onfire. This was egyptian priestcraft, its a documented phenomena… but he exppressed god personally from a earlier era. Islam was similar… they got rid of the idols of the moon god Allah, destroyed the 360 idols, but he tipped his hand in mentioning Elba and protecting the Sabians and Magicians… which still resided north of Elba, and practiced the religions of the southeast northwest cooridor exclusively. Arab tribes were known to travel and occupy this region down to arabia. Sin was a astrological god, and damn near the same as Allah prior to Muhammad. Sin was represented with a cresent, and we have many calves idols with cresents on their head.
The egyptians beat back the sea peoples invasion. They worship gods similar. Moses wasnt down with this though.
(Extremely) Interesting…
Why is it probable that the cows were pretty much common property?
By the way, maybe the reason they got so radical was precicely that they were ill equiped for skirmishes and such.
The cow = allah, but much earlier in terms of the evolution of the god than Mohammed encountered. Not Hinduism.
You want a Hindu influence on Christianity, google Plotinus and Vedanta.
XD The Cow = Allah 
Holy crap.
So the arabs, north of, say, the persians, were more into idolizing objects?? I had never heard of that.
Cows can be used in battles, usually in unorthodox strategies such as lighting their horns and tails onfire.
Cows were the icon of the Aryans, post Jain vegetarian influence on Hinduism. The cow was the basis of their economy. In the west, we once outlawed the eating of cows in parts of the roman empire for economic and agricultural reasons… they are good for the plow and therefor good for agricultural output and taxes. India… the soil kept getting eorst and worst after the river valleys dried up. The cow cult has a deep history to it, known on both ends of the indian ocean. In time, it won out. Any hooved animal other than cows can be eaten in hinduism by those who do eat meat.
I’d Take a Horse into Battle long Before i’d Take a Cow.
I’ve heard thant American Bison can Actually be trained as mounts, Wonder if the Natives would of ever got around to doing that.
Then again i’m off topic.
So can Caribou, but there was never a Eskimo Empire.
Cows were likely the creatures that pulled the ‘chariots’ of the sea peoples. And by chariots I mean wagons with wife and kids and the chickens on them. Likely the cat too. Just… yeah, they didnt act like a proper invasion force would.
I would accept a cow… pull my howitzer longer… and once it died, no qualms eating it.
Yes Pezer… Allah equals Cresent Headed Cow of Sin. Where do you think we get the term sin from? Same for Vedic and Zoroastrian Gods, the ones god was the others Demons. Moses was the typical Jew, coming off the mountain horrified to discover his people became Muslims the second he turned his back. That wasnt kosher of them. Literally, not kosher. Ten commandments were the first laws of god, but moses says ‘Oh Fuck no you idiots don’t’ was the beginnings of the kosher tradition.
I don’t know… The term “sin” has radically different verbal constructions in other languages, like “pecado” in spanish.
Pecado is the middle english word for bean eater. Hmmmmm
Naw… just means the Goths were quite aware they were sinful prior to Christianity.