Yahwism preceded Judaism

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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Archaeological burial sites from over 50,000 years ago show that people were burying their dead with some sort of rite. Every day items of importance to the dead person were buried with them, and in all likelihood, these items were meant to be used by the dead person in some sort of afterlife. The evidence suggests that from very early in our humanity, there were intimations of immortality. A person cannot readily be conscious of his or her existence and envision a time when he or she does not exist.

Around 3200 BCE in the Fertile Crescent that lies in the land between two rivers in Mesopotamia a succession of ancient civilizations left their imprint on the region, their legends of the search for immortality and their relationship to God to later people. At roughly the same time, another people living along the river Nile we’re creating their own legends that would eventually influence those who lived in the Fertile Crescent.

More than 1000 years later, the religions that became Judaism began to take shape. The people of Israel absorbed the streams of thought, coming from Iraq and Egypt and later from relatively new civilizations and Persia and Greece.

By the first century CE, a confluence of diverse streams of thought into Judea from Mesopotamia Egypt, Persia and Greece were competing during the Second Temple period.

To put this into a time perspective, when the Greeks named the civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers ’Mesopotamia, that civilization was already 3000 years old. It’s only been 1889 years since the second temple was destroyed. A lot can happen in 3000 years. During that period the people of Canaan transformed from a kind of polytheism to monotheism.

The transformation to polytheism from whatever went before is even more obscure. But if animism means a perception that everything is alive and conscious with divinity, then one can find plenty of evidence for it in the archaeological record.

The Sumerians believed in an array of invisible and immortal beings possessing powers beyond those of mere mortals. These core beliefs were to extend to all of Sumer’s succeeding empires. In these beliefs, humanity was held to be powerless against the forces of nature personified by the gods, and was subject to death. The original Sumerian pantheon consist of four major creating gods:
An— The god of Heaven
Ki— The goddess of earth
Enlil— The God of air and storms
Enki— The god of water

These gods were therefore the rulers of the four substances that composed the world, heaven, earth, air, and water. Nana the God of the moon, Uru The God of the Sun, an Inanna, the goddess of love and war, We’re subordinate to them.

Among the other gods, Dumuzi later known as Tammuz is linked with Inanna in the understanding the people of Samaria had concerning the cycles of the season, the fertility of the land, the death of mortals and the relationship of the gods to the earthly king. Planters of the fields noticed that the cycles of nature brought forth new growth from under the earth in the spring of the year, and saw it decay into the earth in the winter. This cycle of dying and rising needed an explanation, and they developed the myths of a god of fertility who must die for part of the year and then live again in another part. When God was alive, the fields would flourish with life when dead. The vegetation would die too.

The story of Dumuzi Is that he was a mortal ruler who threw his marriage to the goddess of love, insured the fertility of the land and of the people. The goddessInanna, His wife decided to go to the netherworld to visit Ereshkigal who she somehow enraged. For her affront, Inanna Was condemned to die and remain in the underworld. In order for her to leave Dumuzi has to die and take her place. After six months he is allowed to rise again.

Throughout the ancient mythologies and religious systems of the world, the same images, the same themes are constantly recurring and appearing everywhere. These have been called elementary ideas, folk ideas, or ethnic ideas. Jung called them archetypes. Somewhere in the eighth and ninth century BCE a shift of accent takes place particularly in the East. Instead of simply representing the images, the images are interpreted. In the west, some philosophers begin to attack mythological ideas. But there was an undercurrent that became associated with gnosticism which positively translates the mythical images into verbal discourse. This mystical philosophy can be found throughout the world. It’s known as the perennial philosophy. This philosophy while suppressed by the exoteric Christian church and Judaism is the esoteric core of those religions as well as the other major religions of the world.

It’s called mystical because it’s based on experience not merely on faith.

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According to Mark Smith’s volume, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, Yahweh clearly came out of the world of the gods of the ancient Near East, so that kinship relations to these other deities are there from the beginning. The Ugaritic mythological texts largely feature the deities El, the aged and kindly patriarch of the pantheon; his consort and queen mother of the divine family, Asherah; the young storm-god and divine warrior, Baal; his sister, Anat, likewise a martial deity; and finally, the solar deity. The Ugaritic mythological texts largely feature the deities El, the aged and kindly patriarch of the pantheon; his consort and queen mother of the divine family, Asherah; the young storm-god and divine warrior, Baal; his sister, Anat, likewise a martial deity; and finally, the solar deity.

According to Wiki: “ Ugaritic [2][3] (/ˌjuːɡəˈrÉȘtÉȘk, ˌuː-/[4]) is an extinct Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycle.

The Ugaritic mythological texts largely feature the deities El, the aged and kindly patriarch of the pantheon; his consort and queen mother of the divine family, Asherah; the young storm-god and divine warrior, Baal; his sister, Anat, likewise a martial deity; and finally, the solar deity.

In Exodus 34: 11-16 projects the view of a conqueror:

“Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant
with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, lest it become a snare in the midst of you. You shall break down their altars, and break their pillars, and cut down their asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for Yahweh, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God), lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they play the harlot after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and one invites you, you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters play the harlot after their gods and make your sons play the harlot after their gods.”

This passage finds Yahweh absolutely at odds with the local gods but archeological evidence doesn’t support the view that this is the way it was.

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Echo cho cho co

Avoid these echo chambers my friend. First immerse in the positive view point, before taking on the negative in rebuttal of the positive.

Also note that two wrongs don’t make a right. Yes the Bible is horribly corrupted. It contains vestiges of the original light, keep these parts in mind. The rest is Pure and Applied Satanism e.g. marrying neices, raping young maidens and then marrying them if you pay their dad a few hundred $$$ in silver, massacring entire villages even the cattle, burning people alive. These are all forbidden by God. Allah revealed the Qur’an because this corruption had ruined the older scriptures. Bye.

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That’s good advice. Immerse yourself in light every morning. Then you can shine throughout your waking life.

Perhaps Mohammed was the first true monotheist. What do you think?

In the Hebrew Bible, God says “Thou shall have no other gods before me.”thus revealing that there are other gods. The Christian church appropriated the Hebrew Bible as part of their own which they interpret trinitarianly. Islam in a nutshell is “There is no God, but God and Muhammad is his prophet”. Right? Like it or not, that is pure monotheism.

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@felix dakat Hi there, not at all! All of the prophets were monotheist. Non-montheistic religion has no scripture. Sure there are Vedas but even those had monotheistic origins (all people have had at least one Prophet, l’m guessing the Greeks and Jews etc. had hundreds, but people tended to slander and murder them, including hanging multiple prophets in one day).

Adam (peace be upon him) was the first monotheist but l imagine even before him, a T-Rex that ruled the other so-called dinosaurs was himself a monotheist and maybe a prophet, but you know how it ends for most prophets, his people killed him, and so God told Lucifer to kill them all. So what l’m saying is, Muhammad (peace be upon him) was the last, not the first :slight_smile:

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Dogmatic monotheism explains the way all the historical evidence to the contrary. In the 10 Commandments, the God of Moses says there are other gods. In those days, every tribe had its own God. When one tribe defeated another, they desecrated their temple and destroyed their gods. Israel did it to other nations and other nations did it to Israel. When the Arabs were conquering didn’t the destroy the sacred icons in the cathedrals of Europe? How is that different? Perhaps he brought them pure monotheism for the first time. The philosophers educated the theologians of Europe. And the historians looked backwards and revised history accordingly. What do you think?

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The Prophet Muhammad did not enter Europe, though l think he wrote a letter to Heraclius of Byzantium.

The Prophet Muhammad forbade the descration of Churches and Synagogues, and made halal the food prepared by Priests and Rabbis (presumably in those days men of office would still do the blood work of ritual slaughter and meal preparation).

I was going to post this on your thread about the historicity of Muhammad - a charter of protection to a monaastery in the Sinai, now a Muslim pilgrimage site for people to see the Prophet’s handprint:

I haven’t read the entire article and l don’t want to - l read of the charter via alternative sources but l forgot where. Wikipedia is poisonous in all articles about Muslims, so be judicious.

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My friend, please, please, please: get a background in Islamic history from Islamic sources FIRST and foremost, before tackling the poisonous lies against Islam, l mean here you are thinking Muhammad came to Europe and chucked a brick through a stained glass church window or something 
? Please, do yourself a favour and re-set, start over with studying Islam (or any other religion) from the roots i.e. the religion’s own sources.

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Okay, I stand corrected. We can proceed on the Islam thread. Strictly speaking, a discussion of Islam is off topic here anyway.

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My friend, l strongly recommend that you try to test your theories against counterarguments to your amazing claims rather than make them in a vacuum.

The appalling sheer intellectual dishonesty of your anti-Abrahamic ideology is laid bare here: Islam: The Untold Story - #35 by BeingMuslim

You are clearly on a mission to undermine religion via:

  • Revisionism
  • Debunkery

These two things may have raised an eyebrow circa 1995-2005 but these days, this is known to be part of the panoply of red-jowelled hand-waving dismisive New Atheism. New Atheism will never accept Abrahamic monotheism. It will invent facts and resort to logical fallacies such as Argument by Omission i.e; handwaving, to overrrule religion’s case.

Case in point: There was no human civilisation 50,000 years ago, so that pulls the carpet from right under you. I know you will claim to have radio-dated evidence but closer inspection always reveals that you do not have the evidence you have read about. There were no human civilisations before circa 9000 BCE.

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 that we know of. Things are getting older all the time, despite attempts to hide them (see Göbekli Tepe). The earliest traditions state that they have their wisdom from others, but we say it is legend because we object to changing what we are comfortable with.

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Yes imagine, if you can, what kind of mind would design Golbecki Tepi almost 12,000 years ago. At what sacrifice did they build a shrine populated with images of the animal world? How was their society organized that they could build such a structure? What did they think of themselves? Who were their contemporaries?

Would any if them have thought those images to be idolatrous? Most think that idea came later. But, the record is incomplete.

Did Xenophanes influence the Israelites by criticizing anthropomorphism and moving toward monotheism or was it the other way around or did those developments emerge independently?

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The problem with the dogmas of modern religions is that history knows more about the past than religions are prepared to accept. For example, we know a lot about the timeline in which Judah and Israel are supposed to have had the influence that the Bible claims, but it doesn’t support the biblical narrative. We are also discovering parallels that suggest that documents were appropriated, such as the clay tablets that hold messages to the Egyptian Pharaoh from Canaanite governors, which read strangely like some of the psalms we know of.

This means we have to keep an open mind about what has gone on before. Imagining the minds behind Göbekli Tepe requires stepping into a world where we have assumed that settled agriculture was just beginning to emerge, and yet these people, hunter-gatherers or at best proto farmers, had the capacity to construct an elaborate ritual site with carefully arranged megalithic pillars adorned with intricate carvings of animals. We forget that the carbon dating of the site was of material used to cover it up. It could feasibly be even older.

It appears that the builders of Göbekli Tepe were deeply attuned to the rhythms of nature and the cosmos. The elaborate reliefs of predators, birds, and other creatures suggest a worldview in which animals were not merely part of the environment but participants in a sacred order. Perhaps they believed these beings to be ancestral spirits, totems, or divine manifestations—something akin to later animist or shamanistic traditions. This resonates with a theory that Owen Barfield put up, Original Participation, that at this time, the concept of people was that they were caught up in a cosmic drama, and they didn’t have the ability to step back and reconsider. That came later.

You just have to consider the ability to plan and execute such a construction, implying an abstract intelligence capable of long-term planning, coordination, and possibly even a rudimentary form of proto-writing or symbolic communication. They might have understood geometry and engineering at a basic level, at least enough to arrange massive limestone pillars into circular enclosures. They seem to have had a knowledge of astronomy, which guided their aspirations.

The effort to build Göbekli Tepe, the largest part of which has been covered with olive trees to prevent further investigation, would have required a massive, organized labour force. Given that there is no evidence of permanent settlement, this suggests seasonal labour, possibly linked to ritual gatherings. The “sacrifice” here could have been multiple:

  • Physical labour—hauling and carving stones with stone-age tools.
  • Food and resources—feeding workers in a time when we assume surplus food was rare.
  • Social hierarchy—did organizing such a feat necessitate leadership structures, or was it a more cooperative effort?

A structure of this scale suggests social stratification or at least a division of labour. While traditional hunter-gatherer societies are often seen as egalitarian, the existence of Göbekli Tepe suggests at least some individuals had specialized roles: carvers, planners, leaders, and perhaps ritual specialists. We tend to assume that this may have been a liminal moment in human history, where religious or ideological authority first began exerting control over communal labour, based on later experience.

It seems to blow up in the face of some scholars, who suggest that the construction of ritual sites like Göbekli Tepe itself led to agriculture, rather than the other way around. Yes, the need to feed workers and sustain large gatherings may have prompted early attempts at domestication, but do we believe that they started the project and suddenly realised their needs? The complexity of the site, even if the Turkish authorities have tried to hinder further investigation, suggests an ongoing work, each addressing a conceived new cosmic era.

They likely saw themselves as intermediaries between the local and the cosmic, between earth and the vastness of the sky. The emphasis on animals rather than human figures might, on the one hand, suggest a belief that humans were secondary to the forces of nature, and that identity was bound more to one’s totemic or spiritual affiliations than to personal individuality. On the other hand, it may be symbolism.

Of course, the idea of idolatry, as later understood in monotheistic traditions, was likely alien to them. The carved images were probably not representations of gods but manifestations of spiritual forces. The distinction between symbolic representation and divine presence was not yet drawn—these images were the sacred. It was only when humanity stepped back and revised the mythologies, our images and symbols, that we realised that they were not what they portrayed, but a representation.

In this way, Xenophanes critiqued anthropomorphism in Greek religion, arguing that if animals had gods, they would look like them. His move toward a more abstract, possibly monotheistic deity resonates with trends in Hebrew thought, and although the two traditions possibly developed independently, there were other influences in the world. Sumerian and Babylonian influences are already known, and I would also include the Indian and Persian influences on Hebrew thought.

Remember, early Israelite religion was not purely monotheistic—there are traces of polytheism (YHWH originally being one god among many). The shift may have had Near Eastern precedents, such as Akhenaten’s monotheistic reforms in Egypt (14th century BCE). So, if anything, both Greek and Israelite critiques of anthropomorphism probably stemmed from broader intellectual currents in the ancient world, possibly influenced by exposure to Babylonian, Persian, or Egyptian philosophical-religious thought.

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Nicely put. A plausible hypothesis for the ongoing research.

I do remember that. It’s related to the OP claim of this thread. Evidence I cited above suggests that Henotheistic Yahwism preceded Judaism and coexisted with it in the early centuries of the common era.

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@Bob Please try to also self critique on this issue. I’ll give some pointers:

  • You are going against traditional understanding (by saying idolatry wasn’t actually worship of many gods, but Qi, spirit of jaguar, kundalini, feminine primeval mega power, etc.), so you need to be stringent rather than strident.
  • Americanisation / Westernisation: Imagine a Bangladeshi archaeologist studying Roanoke settlement, maybe suggesting they were actually a continuation of the l’anse aux Meadows viking settlement, or maybe concluding they arrived in James I’s reign not Elizabeth I’s reign. There were signs the settlement practiced Gnostic Dualism, etc. etc. Not gonna happen, right? I mean you’d never take the guy seriously, what would a Bangladeshi archaeologist know?
  • Modernism in general: In the modern secular age, suddenly the ancients were spiritual, not religious. They were no dumb enough to worship stones, no, they mixed a bit of Hindu spiritualism with Celtic matriarchy, because you can see these things back to back on TV documentaries so you apply this metro melting pot retrospectively onto history. So that today, Hindus or Sarmatians never really worshipped a monkey or wolf or other animal, it was only a symbol that you too can conjure up during your 30 min pre-work meditation.

What l believe is:

  1. Monotheism came first, as pronounced by prophets.
  2. Once the prophets had died, people lapsed into materialism as that’s the most immediate truth to all of us/
  3. So, they needed a personal deity, one you could touch (c.f. Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus). JS Mill’s Utilitarianism was still far-off, but at least managed to create idol-intercessors, personal deities you could touch. And whether it was monotheism or polytheism, a clergy would pop up to keep the donations coming and the good luck flowing.

So my point is: Monotheism came first. Actually, even in the Qur’an there’s a record of it, it often states that when you ask “them” who created the universe and night and day etc, they will surely say “Allah” - yet they reject monotheism. Allah was first, then the extra deities accumulated around him as idol-intercessors.

The Qur’an also makes it clear that the polytheists believed in Allah as the master deity but denied the Hereafter, they ridiculed the idea that after death, we could be re-created, bodily resurrected. This shows that materialism was the driving force, splitting an initial Monotheism, into Polytheism - a polytheism where people only believed in what you could touch and see, and when they saw and touched a cold dead body and saw it decompose, they could not think of it ever resurrecting.

In those early days it was Deism, a god within the universe, a material deity, and this persists today in Rabbinic Judaism and Pauline Christianity.

Today, it’s come into its own as Atheism, full on, and frankly more honest than Deism.

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You seem very kind, but behind a Muslim call for self-critique is often a militant state threatening dissidents. There are no perfectly implemented religious traditions, so I’m not saying you are different to any other, but what I’m saying is that there are a) other traditions, and b) there was a world before Abraham.

As a 70-year-old, I don’t think of myself as strident, i.e. loud and harsh, but as in consideration of the many human beings I have met and their spirituality. Your misconception of what I say is due to your indoctrination, but the symbolism that was around 8800–7000 BCE cannot be judged by a tradition that came along up to 9500 years later, let alone possibly 11,600 years later. We observe and try to make sense of it, but we don’t call it idolatry.

I think you are being disingenuous here, because it is you that is making assumptions. Felix and I were speculating about what mindset would build such a structure (a large part of which an Islamic government has chosen to hide from the public). Islam is in many ways like medieval and fundamentalist Christianity in that it hides what it can’t cope with, and silences voices that contradict its teaching. Planting olive trees on the rest of the Göbekli Tepe structure is an attempt to hide the past.

Thank you for claiming that I am a documentary junky, and not having lived a life myself. If you want to know, I outgrew the Abrahamic traditions because I investigated what it means to serve and became a nurse with the dying. I realised that this is an aspect of life that is sorely missed in the Abrahamic traditions, whatever other blessings they may hold. What I did understand though, is that all religions have a mystical tradition, often suppressed by the mainstream, which often took on the care of the dying.

Following these traditions, whether the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or your own: Sufism, I discovered that as different the cultural influences are, there are similarities in their practise. Diversity is also present here, but in important issues, where love and compassion rules, there is understanding.

Well, I don’t. I am convinced by Owen Barfield’s ‘Original Participation,’ in which the earliest ‘religious’ aspirations were guided by the wonders of the night sky, and a realisation, that mankind, in our capacity to ponder on these things, was an intermediary between heaven and earth. Mankind saw the manifold influences in the world, many which they did not understand, and ascribed them to symbols, telling metaphorical stories that we call myths to remember what had been learned. Then things changed.

The period I’m referring to is called the Axial Age (c. 800–200 BCE), a term coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. During this era, major civilizations from China to the Mediterranean experienced a profound shift in thought, leading to the emergence of critical thinking, ethical philosophy, and new religious and philosophical traditions.

  • China: Confucianism (Confucius), Daoism (Laozi), and Legalism emerged, shaping Chinese philosophy and governance.
  • India: The Upanishads were written, Buddhism (Gautama Buddha) and Jainism (Mahavira) developed, emphasizing personal enlightenment and ethical conduct.
  • Persia: Zoroastrianism (Zarathustra) introduced ideas of cosmic dualism and ethical monotheism.
  • Greece: Pre-Socratic philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle laid the foundations for rational inquiry, democracy, and systematic philosophy.
  • The Near East: Hebrew prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah) reshaped Jewish thought, emphasizing monotheism and social justice.

The Babylonian Captivity (also called the Babylonian Exile) occurred from 597 BCE to 539 BCE, with a major deportation in 586 BCE when the Babylonians, under Nebuchadnezzar II, destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem and exiled much of the Judean elite to Babylon.

Many historians believe that during this period, key portions of the Hebrew Bible (especially the Torah and historical books) were compiled, edited, or finalized. This exile forced the Judeans to rethink their identity and faith, leading to:

  • The solidification of monotheism, moving away from older polytheistic influences.
  • The codification of oral traditions into written scripture (e.g., Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy).
  • The influence of Babylonian and Persian thought on Jewish theology and eschatology (e.g., the concept of Satan, apocalyptic visions).

So, I think it is obvious that I disagree with this:

It is a different storyline, and as much as I respect your belief in the inerrancy of the Qur’an, this is a discussion forum, and if you can’t take the heat, you had better leave.

Today, I see consciousness as primary, with physical existence serving as a localized manifestation that allows for unique, individual experiences. If the ‘soul’ is the body—or at least deeply intertwined with it through structures like the vagus-nerve—then what we call ‘spirit’ might be fluctuations in how we access the broader field of consciousness. The subconscious could be a mediator, occasionally revealing glimpses of a more expansive awareness when the brain’s inhibitory mechanisms loosen. Rather than seeing the soul as passive and awaiting animation, might it be more accurate to say that our embodied existence is an instrument through which consciousness experiences itself?

If the ‘soul’ is deeply tied to the body’s internal communication, then what we perceive as ‘spirit’ might be patterns of awareness emerging from the subconscious. The inhibitory function of the brain may occasionally loosen, allowing glimpses of what Aldous Huxley called the ‘Mind at Large.’ Rather than distinct entities, could soul and spirit be different modes of experience—one grounded in bodily reality, the other in broader, less consciously regulated perception?

So, there you have it. I disagree with you.

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Hi apologies, l misused the word strident.

Let me assure you l am not a country to the best of my knowledge.

My “indoctrination” as you call it, is Primary Evidence, there is no better record of a society where Monotheism and Polytheism met.

As l also say: the Qur’an clearly indicates a scheme of Deism and how it pertains to materialism, and it is reasonable to deduce that Monotheism came first. Polytheism produced no prophets, and thus started nothing.

I have no idea which Islamic government you refer to, but Turkey is a secular state and speaks as much for various Christian minorities as it does for the Alevis (syncretists like you, that you seem to be very unaware of, they are a massive population in Turkey, yet you call Turkey an Islamic state).

Please tackle what l wrote about the origin of polytheism as idol-intercessors. I can cope very well and l love this debate**. I hope you realise l love it.**

Re: olive trees, sorry but there’s the NIMBY (not in my backyard) and also complementary to it: the NIYBY (not in YOUR backyard) - they declare that poorer countries shouldn’t cut down trees, shouldn’t do mining, and now, even, shouldn’t GROW trees! Ha!

Re: nursing the dying: oh we do that too. Many of us die. We nurse them Am l missing something?

Re: Sufism: it’s not a sect, in case you wondered, l’m orthodox Muslim :slight_smile:

Re: other cultures and the Axial Age, l’ve no idea how this relates to what l wrote but surely you know that Islam teaches every nation had its prophets?

Re: Past epochs, there was definitely a myth making epoch, if you read about the Electric Universe (pseudo science but has truth in it) you’ll know

More later must dash

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SOrry for being rude btw hehe

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Yahwism, the early form of Israelite religion centred on Yahweh, was a precursor to monotheism, but its development was deeply influenced by broader religious traditions, particularly those that emerged or evolved after the Axial Age (c. 800–200 BCE). The Axial Age saw a profound transformation in religious and philosophical thought across Eurasia, giving rise to new ethical, metaphysical, and theological ideas. Yahwism did not remain static but absorbed, adapted, and reacted to these shifts. Here are some key influences:

1. Zoroastrian Dualism and Ethical Monotheism

  • The Persian Empire’s adoption of Zoroastrianism (from the 6th century BCE onward) introduced strong ethical dualism, where Ahura Mazda was the supreme god of truth, opposed by Angra Mainyu, the force of falsehood.
  • While Yahwism already acknowledged Yahweh as the supreme deity, exposure to Persian ideas during the Babylonian Exile (6th century BCE) may have reinforced a moral structure of divine justice, the afterlife, and cosmic struggle.
  • The Hebrew Bible, especially post-exilic texts like Isaiah 45, presents Yahweh as the sole divine force controlling both good and evil, echoing Zoroastrian influence.

2. Greek Rationalism and the Philosophical Turn

  • After Alexander the Great’s conquests (4th century BCE), Hellenistic philosophy introduced rationalist and universalist perspectives, leading to more abstract theological reflections.
  • The concept of God as an ineffable, transcendent being in later Jewish thought (e.g., Philo of Alexandria) reflects Greek metaphysical speculation about the “One” or the “Prime Mover.”
  • Some scholars argue that the shift from a personal, anthropomorphic Yahweh to a more philosophical monotheism was influenced by Greek ideas of divinity as ultimate rationality.

3. Buddhist and Hindu Influences on Universal Ethics

  • While direct interaction was limited, the Axial Age shift in India saw Buddhism and Upanishadic Hinduism emphasize universal ethics, moral law (Dharma), and transcendence.
  • The Jewish concept of a covenantal moral order, where Yahweh demands ethical behaviour beyond ritual sacrifice, parallels developments in other Axial Age traditions.
  • The Book of Job, for instance, presents a theodicy that questions divine justice, much like Hindu and Buddhist reflections on suffering and karma.

4. Egyptian and Canaanite Religious Syncretism

  • Before the Axial Age, Egyptian monotheistic experiments (like Akhenaten’s worship of Aten) and Canaanite traditions had already shaped Yahwism.
  • The rejection of polytheism in Deuteronomy and the Prophets may have been a polemical reaction to both Canaanite religion and broader syncretic trends in the Persian and Hellenistic periods.

5. The Apocalyptic Shift and Messianism

  • The influence of Persian and Hellenistic thought helped develop Jewish apocalypticism—ideas about the end of history, divine judgment, and messianic redemption.
  • Texts like Daniel (written in the 2nd century BCE) reflect Persian eschatology and Greek influences, depicting a struggle between divine and earthly forces that would culminate in Yahweh’s ultimate victory.

Conclusion

Yahwism was neither isolated nor static; it evolved through interactions with Persian dualism, Greek rationalism, Indian ethical thought, and Near Eastern traditions. The movement toward strict monotheism, ethical universalism, and a transcendent God reflects a global religious shift where ideas circulated across cultures during and after the Axial Age. This paved the way for later developments in Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.