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Morwen Oronor
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Interesting correlations in mythology
Lesa, I thought you would find the following interesting.
These are some observations from the first couple of weeks of looking into the earliest religious history in the Near East:
The creation story - from the earliest people and the Egyptians - all very similar
The flood story - three different ones apart from the Noah story
The baby in a basket - from the Hittites.
The new theory about the OT is that it was written during and after the exile in Babylon and reading these stories, I'm inclined to agree.
I think that the Jews might have had some laws, like circumcision and not eating pork and so on, but the actual writing of the OT, Genesis and Exodus, I think they are interpretations of these old stories from the era, made up with the Jews as the heroes. Also I want to do more research into other gods the jews had before Babylon, these new theorists are saying that the Jews copied the Persian Ahura Mazda (Ohrmazd) idea in the creation of their own single god idea. We know that the Egyptians tried monotheism under Thutmoses, and it didn't work but this was later and with more logic and intelligence, I think the people were beginning to see that the idea of a multitude of gods being responsible for everything was a bit far-fetched, so creating just one all-seeing, all-powerful god made sense, and also explained what was still inexplicable.
And the Persian religion spoke of 3 eras of 3,000 years, with the coming of a "messiah" like figure (Zoroaster)before the last 3,000 years and the end of the world, with a son of a son of Zoroaster being born in each of 1,000 years. So they even stole that one.
I think that the Exodus was written with the exile in Babylon on mind, but to give it credence to the people, it was told as belonging to a previous era.
Even the number of years - 40 years wandering the desert. They were in Babylon for 50 years - too close to be coincidence, they probably made a mistake in counting the years.
I don't think they imagined that people would be reading that crap 3,000 years later, anymore than I think anyone will read my writing in 3,000 years.
And of course because the people of the Dark and Middle Ages couldn't read the Egyptian hieroglyphs, they wouldn't have known that the Egyptians kept meticulous records and had not ever recorded the Jews' supposed story.
Using logic actually puts it all into perspective.
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The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.William Spencer Churchill
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7/26/2009, 7:30 am
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Interesting correlations in mythology
None of that surprises me; in fact, I've read some of that before, and it makes perfect sense.
The new theory about the OT is that it was written during and after the exile in Babylon and reading these stories, I'm inclined to agree.
I first read about that theory a couple of years ago, probably at ex-christian.net, and it does seem like the most plausible theory to me.
One theory I read about the change to monotheism is different than the one you relate, but I can't remember the details, and I'm afraid to even try to explain it because I'll probably get it wrong.  I think it had something to do with the man being the head of the household, but even that much could be wrong.
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7/26/2009, 10:37 pm
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Interesting correlations in mythology
Not at all it makes sense. There are no religions that actively encourage women to participate in other than a subservient role, and when they do, the men in the congregation are not very happy. I think men still prefer androgynous, preferably celibate priests in charge, also from Sumerian creation when Ninmah forms 6 creatures with physical defects, 3 with malformed genitals who Enki appoints as priests.
I think that one of the reasons that men participate in religion and encourage their wives and children to participate is because it is the last thing that men dominate. I have a feeling that the more that women take over in religion and push men into a lower role, the more likely it is that religion will lose its power.
In the Middle East, the obsession about religion is definitely because it is the only place where men can meet without the presence of women. I'm sure that in most of those places they might discuss what God/Allah would do, but mostly it's the men around the table with cigars and port syndrome, while the women take tea and natter about babies.
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The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.William Spencer Churchill
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7/27/2009, 11:52 am
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Interesting correlations in mythology
I always hate it when women agree that they should be subservient. Don't they have better self-esteem than that? 
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7/29/2009, 12:19 pm
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Interesting correlations in mythology
It really makes me mad, I have the inclination to slap them.
I'd like to see some guy try to make me walk ten paces behind him.
: 
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The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.William Spencer Churchill
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7/29/2009, 1:23 pm
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Interesting correlations in mythology
I'd be walking further behind him than that... in the opposite direction. 
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7/29/2009, 7:51 pm
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Interesting correlations in mythology
To add to this, continuing my search through mythology.
I've created a timeline, as you suggested Lesa with some interesting results, but more on that in a moment.
I have realised something very interesting that I want to get your input on.
Apart from the Near East and the Roman Empire, the religion of the Bible and the Koran, and the various religions of the area around the fertile plain, all of which eventually became the religions that we know and are familiar with today, all the stories from the mythology of the rest of the world, do not bear any similarity to the stories of the Near East.
For instance, all the civilizations that developed in and around Sumer and Akkad and Israel, Egypt, Assyria, the Hittites, Hurrians and Persians, had flood stories, similar creation myths and fantastic stories of shrubbery and spontaneous combustion and talking snakes etc. The Greeks were different to a point, until they came in contact with the Persians and the Romans sort of adopted the Greek pantheon and changed it to suit them and then adopted the religions of the Near East as well, making the religions around the Eastern Mediterranean very similar in a whole lot of respects. The creation myths of Greek and Rome were different but there are disaster stories and tales of giants and so on, but basically the effect is there.
But then comes the rest of the world, Northern and Central Europe, the Arctic Circle, the East, Oceania and the Americas and all the mythologies are different.
The Near East doesn't speak of giants and strange one-eyed creatures but the European people do, including the Greeks and Romans.
So this is my conclusion:
1. The people living in the desert didn't have strange extraordinary-looking creatures in their mythology because they didn't find fossils which the Europeans did, possibly because of the more fertile and colder climate of Europe being more conducive to the survival of pre-historic creatures, i,e, dinosaurs. And the giants, titans, cyclops etc, were derived from these fossils. (I'm still looking into whether there have been extensive fossil-finds in the desert).
2. Definitely, the Hebrews existed as an identifiable people only in the southern area of "Israel" i.e. Judah and they adopted monotheism only after the return from Babylon, where Mithra was emerging as the god of the then developing Persians.
Then a question, if God created man in his own image, and if man were created only at the time that the fertile plain developed, then why were there people living in China 10,000 years ago and why were there people in the Arctic circle even before that? And even more interesting that there is evidence of people in North America as far back as 60,000 years ago. And why didn't these people know about God?
Why are their religions and mythologies so very different from that of the people who created writing?
What is similar is that the people, as I've grouped them have the same mythologies, or similar, which is an indication that they either traded with each other or are descended from each other, and they live similar lifestyles.
Surely, if you believe that the God that modern man, including Islam believes is the only 'correct' one, you have to ask questions about why he appeared at least 75,000 years after people were living in other parts of the world.
Last revised by Morwen Oronor, 8/7/2009, 3:24 am
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The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.William Spencer Churchill
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8/6/2009, 11:26 pm
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Interesting correlations in mythology
Some creationists believe the earth to be about 6000 years old, while others believe 'day' didn't mean 24 hours and the earth is much older than that. There are still others, who believe the world to be around 10,000 years old. While I understand where the first and third belief came from -- the first being geneologies in the stories, with the 2nd acknowledging at least some of the facts -- I never knew where the 10,000-year-old belief comes from. Perhaps whoever came up with that number acknowledges the age of the older writings, due to real or imagined clues about the timeframe in those writings, while not acknowledging the usefulness of carbon and other such dating methods.
You have interesting thoughts about fossils inspiring the myths, and it makes a lot of sense. However, keep in mind that desserts were once lush and fertile, cold parts of the world were once hot, etc., thanks to plate tectonics and other factors.
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8/8/2009, 5:24 pm
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Interesting correlations in mythology
The confusion abut the dating comes in because of the invention of writing.
Even though there were settled people living all over the world, there was no need for them to write anything done.
Not when your trade goods are more or less of equal value. If you're trading a bear skin for a seal skin, it's a pretty fair transaction.
The problem arises when you are trading spices for gold, or when you want to hand over that gold to the people who are building your palace, then you want to record that you paid them.
So the Sumerians invented a way of keeping records on stone tablets in cuneiform which the Phoenicians improve on by making the shapes into the numbers that we use now.
The shapes that the Sumerians used on their tables were the basis of all writing that came after that, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, and eventually our own which came from the Roman version. And the shapes were angled at first because they were carving on stone. It's difficult to carve rounded shapes on stone.
The invention of vellum and papyrus sheets facilitated rounded letters but if you look at Roman letters they are still angled right into the first centuries of the current era, more clues that paper and vellum with difficult to come by so rounded letters were still the exception rather than the rule, more clues that the Biblical texts couldn't have been written as far back as bible believers think they were.
And the idea of people living in settled colonies 60,000 years before the people of the Bible did, it's just too big a number for uneducated people to fathom so they stick to a possibility of 10,000 years possibly.
Then to get them to understand that man as a humanoid as only been around for 150.000 years? And that the earth is millions of years older than that?
If you consider that we haven't quite hit a million days since Augustus became emperor, then a million becomes a really big number.
So they reduce it to numbers they can figure out and the 800,000-900,000 days since Augustus makes Jesus seem a really long time ago.
The mythology of Genesis can be put into perspective when you compare it with the mythology of Ur, Ugarit, the Hittites and the Egyptians and the idea of 7 days of creation then makes a lot more sense than making the days into longer periods. Because some mythologies claim that the god, An or Amun or whoever, created man to do the work of taking care of the creation, much the way god supposedly told Adam to take care of the plants and animals and to feed himself with them.
At this point my writing hasn't quite reached thesis proposal level, it's still very rough so I can't really show any of it yet. But if you don't mind my posting interesting observations here, it helps to put me in another direction of research.
I heard yesterday that I'm getting another book on mythology, one that concentrates on these correlations and a couple on Christianity and cults. all of which I'll cover eventually.
right now this observation about the writing and the dating of the bible is a bit of a "eureka" moment for me and I thought you were the right person to share it with.
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The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.William Spencer Churchill
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8/8/2009, 10:20 pm
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Interesting correlations in mythology
I'm honored, and glad that you're sharing it with me. 
...And the shapes were angled at first because they were carving on stone. It's difficult to carve rounded shapes on stone.
The invention of vellum and papyrus sheets facilitated rounded letters but if you look at Roman letters they are still angled right into the first centuries of the current era, more clues that paper and vellum with difficult to come by so rounded letters were still the exception rather than the rule, more clues that the Biblical texts couldn't have been written as far back as bible believers think they were.
That's an interesting observation that I've never considered before. Although I would expect the church to have papyrus and vellum at a time when they were hard for most people to obtain, I wouldn't expect round letters to make their way into the alphabet until the use of these materials became more common. So yes, this does seem to be another clue to suggest a later dating of the written stories.
It baffles me, the number of people who believe language and writing must have been instilled in humans by a creator from day one (as though there was even a day one to begin with), when it's clear by the evidence that humans developed these things over time. With language, we have some languages splitting off from others and evolving independently from there, and once they started writing things down, we see even more evidence in that writing. With writing, it's just like fossil evidence with so many intermediates to show its progression. But of course, these same people don't recognize the progressions in fossil evidence, so why should we expect them to see these progressions in writing styles?
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8/9/2009, 2:32 am
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