tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19936712.post9162034381893183473..comments2024-02-14T23:28:11.026-08:00Comments on FORGOTTEN PROPHETS: One of the Good False ReligionsJack Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04599425185005999225noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19936712.post-36836831009597677422007-07-18T23:07:00.000-07:002007-07-18T23:07:00.000-07:00Once upon a time I wrote a book dealing with the v...Once upon a time I wrote a book dealing with the very most ancient religions. The Serpent in Babel. Allow me to share here an excerpt, sans endnote numbers -- formating problems. It seems relevant, in a discussion of the truth in false religions.<BR/><BR/>******<BR/><BR/>Chapter One<BR/><BR/>The Lessons of Eden: the two religions<BR/><BR/>The evolutionary hypothesis about the development of religion pretends that a primitive belief in ghosts gave rise to faith in animism and fetishism, magical rites and local deities, nature gods, pantheons, and finally to a Supreme Being. But this hypothesis is flat-out falsified by the evidence. Putting aside the propaganda and bias which still and always shows up in textbooks, a competent survey of the actual customs and cultures of tribal peoples reveals that virtually all societies — most notably the most ‘primitive’ — retain a memory of the Supreme Being, without having moved through any ‘evolutionary’ stages. While there is usually a lower tier of unruly spirits which need to be placated, there is always the high god, the sky god, the god of heaven, the god who lives behind the sun or above the treetops. While the theological terms which nomadic peoples use may seem quaint to us, such descriptions have the effect of referring to the God who lives outside the universe.<BR/><BR/>We do not find an evolution toward monotheism, but rather a degeneration into polytheism. It is precisely the inversion of ‘evolution’ which anthropology reveals. “In proportion as we withdraw from the most primitive peoples and approach the semi-civilized ones, these three elements — magic, ghost worship and nature worship — take deeper root and finally overrun the ancient veneration of the Supreme Being to such a degree as to render it no longer visible.” Simple cultures have the higher concept of God, compared to more ‘developed’ societies. This purer memory attributes to God “the highest essential and moral character, and [is] well calculated to inspire the peoples that acknowledge and honor Him with the high value of active life and solemn moral virtue. Heaven is His dwelling place; in early times He was usually on earth among men, but went away from them on account of a sin of theirs. Thus He is a person in heaven.”<BR/><BR/>The post-Flood patriarchs were clearly monotheistic. For example, among the many rich finds recovered from the pre-dynastic tombs of Ur (which date very near the time of Abraham, by my reconstruction of ancient Babylonian history), no cultic objects have been identified. Several centuries later, in the 1700's BC, there were social sanctions in place against idolatry (Job 31:26-28): “If I beheld the sun, when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, and my mouth hath kissed my hand; this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge.” The debased cultic religions — centered around ghosts and totems and orgies and magic — certainly became the most prominent spiritual force in the ancient cultures, but they were not the sole force. Behind the demons of the pantheons, with their rivalries and blood lust, pockets of true, ethical monotheists manifestly survived.<BR/><BR/>What can be said of the Old World is true of the New World as well. In the pre-Columbian Americas, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from Inca to Eskimo, the same attributes are universally ascribed to the high god or sky-god. “We may safely presume that the concept of sky-god belongs to the most ancient period in the history of religious feeling . . . . [He is] always identical in essential definition. . . .neither the migrations of races nor the diffusion of myths and folk-lore affords the slightest justification of the fact.” The conclusions of ‘normal’ anthropology cannot reasonably account for this phenomenon. But the Bible explains the data superbly, if tersely.<BR/><BR/>If all mankind diffused from a single region, then it is reasonable to expect that some vestige of the universal culture should be found, even in the most remote regions of human habitation. We would expect all cultures to remember that deemed most important. As it turns out, what is remembered, above all else, is the presence and character of God. We find the evidence for this memory in a universal ‘morpheme’ — a smallest meaningful part of a word.<BR/><BR/>Now, the earliest written word for ‘God’, in Sumer, stood also for the concepts of glory ("brightness" or "day") and reverence ("king" or "hero"). It came to be read variously as El ("the Almighty"), JH ("the Eternal"), Anu or dingir ("the God of Heaven"), and even Ya-ti ("I am"). Most significantly for our purposes, it was also pronounced as Ti ("the Most High").<BR/><BR/>In this Ti, we find a universal name for God as He appears in the Bible. We find a form of it in the Hindu generic term for "god", deva, said to derive most directly from the Sanskrit div or shiv ("shine"); Aramaic, the language of Babylon, has the cognate ziv, "brightness or splendor." But deva may also derive from the Aramaic thav (tov, "good") — which itself derives from Ti. In any case, deo or deus, theos and zeus derive from one or the other; the ‘v’ is added in, as demonstrated in the Greek neos and the Latin novus, both meaning ‘new’.<BR/><BR/>The morpheme /ti/ or /di/ “is present as a complete word in isolating languages like Chinese and inflectional languages like English. It is found as a prefix, suffix, or infix in agglutinative languages like Finnish and Navajo and polysynthetic languages like Algonquin.” In Table 1, I have summarized Fraser's information. Even a cursory look must bring home the correspondences, where we find effectively the same words in Mesopotamia and in the Pacific Islands.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Not only is the lofty concept of "deity", and its very root, common to virtually all tongues, but so is even our familiar word, "God" (see Table 2). We can trace the root of this exact word in the migrations of its morpheme. In all the languages in which it appears, its meaning is everywhere precisely as we would expect.<BR/><BR/>In our quest for truth, we may hear any number of conflicting stories. The one we choose to believe is that in which we put our faith. Shallow thinkers may scoff at the idea of actually professing faith, but such ridicule may be dismissed as a symptom of adolescence. This is easily proven, when we consider that the alternative to faith is confusion. Do not be deceived: everything we believe is accepted not by knowledge, but by faith. This too is easily proven, with the simple realization that it is only faith which allows us to accept the evidence of our senses, only faith which allows us to accept the conclusions of our reasoning, and ultimately only faith which allows us to distinguish between waking and dreaming.<BR/><BR/>The point is that, while there certainly are unknowable things, certainly paradoxes, yet there is also truth and sure knowledge. This truth is independent of our agreement: it is true whether we believe it or not. We recognize it by the elegance with which it organizes the evidence, explains the mysteries, and fills in the blanks. If we should happen to stumble upon such a great truth, or have it revealed to us, well, good for us. But it is there, in any case.<BR/><BR/>[…]<BR/><BR/>Endnotes<BR/>.Wilhelm Schmidt, Primitive Revelation, trans. J.J. Baierl (St.Louis: R. Herder, 1939), p. 123; quoted in G.H. Fraser, "The Gentile Names of God," in A Symposium on Creation, Vol. 5, ed. D.W. Patten, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975), p. 14; dashes replace commas, for clarity.<BR/><BR/>.Schmidt, p. 125; in Fraser, p. 14. A new paragraph starts after ‘virtue’.<BR/><BR/>."Sky Gods, Universality and Antiquity," in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. J. Hastings (NY: Scribner's, 1908-1927), Vol. 11, p. 580; in Fraser, p. 16.<BR/><BR/>.Fraser, p. 23.<BR/><BR/><BR/>******<BR/><BR/>Good, isn't it. The whole of Chapter Two I have already posted, in another place, as "The Heavens<BR/>Declare." Well. That's all.<BR/><BR/>JJack Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04599425185005999225noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19936712.post-53070503321104567282007-07-18T20:08:00.000-07:002007-07-18T20:08:00.000-07:00This was a great post. Very thoughtful - a very en...This was a great post. Very thoughtful - a very enjoyable read. However, I have to say that my favorite false religion is the Alaskan Athabaskans. Check 'em out. They're a pretty interesting group - they're family oriented, they're conservationists, they're kind to animals. If I didn't have such an aversion to cold weather (and of course if I wasn't already worshipping the true God) I'd probably consider moving to Alaska and checking them out.Ms.Greenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15183086089026772805noreply@blogger.com