Is Judaism a poor religious copy of both Zoroastrianism and ancient Egyptian Atenism historically? Discuss.
As a student of ancient history myself I find nothing unique about Judaism at all contrast to the other religions that came before it in history.
It cannot even be credited historically as the first form of religious monotheism.
Yes, that is the case to my knowledge. This is why we find old mythological figures, some renamed, scattered throughout the first Testament. Baal, for instance, was a Canaanite god mentioned in the story of Moses. He represented the cycle of life-death-rebirth as observed in agriculture. Lucifer is another name for Venus. Hadad, at the time, was the equivalent of Zeus. The consensus seems to be that the old testament describes a plurality of gods interacting both with people and each other. Instead of denying a polytheistic landscape, it advocates a monotheistic devotion. The humorous bit, to me at least, is that there are actual sections of the old testament dedicated to explaining how much better this God is than other contemporary gods of the time like a wrestling promo.
Something I find fascinating is the similarities between the Jewish moschiach and the Zoroastrian saoshyant.
It’s like the Jews stole Persian beliefs within Babylonian captivity passing it off as their own.
Then there is Akhenaten, Sigmund Freud and others have proposed that the real identity of Moses was Akhenaten where the whole Moses story is a complete fabrication. Atenism overtime becomes Judaism, Akhenaten becomes Moses.
The Jews later in Babylonian captivity steals Zoroastrian Persian belief structures assimilating it as their own.
(Later on out of all this Christianity and Islam is created out of Judaism afterward.)
I believe Judaiism may have been a response to Zoroastrianism and other Egyptian deities worshipped by those who fought and enslaved the Canaanite sect that evolved into the Jewish tradition. The Egyptians and Greeks were the architects of most of the mythos as nearly every prophesy, miracle, and story has a counterpart in prior religious traditions. Seems funny to me that THE God wouldn’t be something different entirely. Instead he looks like all of the previous gods condensed into one inchorent entity that feels and expresses human emotions.
