zoux posted:

If only they had known they are the same thing...

Thanks for the post lab, didn't mean to assign you a term paper lol

Fuschia tude posted:

It's interesting to note that his son was the famous pharaoh "Tut-ankh-amun", the Living Image of Amun, originally named "Tut-ankh-aten". After the old man ate it (followed by the very brief reigns of his brother and widow), he personally led the restoration of the traditional religion (or, considering he took the throne at age nine, was forced to for political reasons, to quell the societal unrest of the Atenist period), epitomized in his and his wife's own renaming.

Zopotantor posted:

As someone who recently binge-listened to the Amarna period episodes of the History of Egypt podcast, I have to point out that we don't actually know who Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten really were, and if/when they actually ruled. That's all due to those later generations who tried really hard to wipe out their traces.

Wikipedia posted:

The collapse of Atenism began during Akhenaten's late reign when a major plague spread across the ancient Near East. This pandemic appears to have claimed the lives of numerous royal family members and high-ranking officials, possibly contributing to the decline of Akhenaten's government.

Tulip posted:

A particular one to me is that people talk about how medievals got "bad at art" but I've seen medieval sculptural busts, they're often highly realistic and detailed. I fully expect in the future some people will think 21st century people got bad at art and cite the lack of realism in anime.

zoux posted:

*watching 100 filler episodes of One Piece* We believe these works had ceremonial purposes.

Nuclear War posted:

Checkmate, Atenists

Arglebargle III posted:

New thread title???

Grand Fromage posted:

It has been a while.

BrainDance posted:

Or that story about a sailor who washes up on a ghost island, then a giant jewel snake takes care of him. That stories another mystery, because I just cant figure out what the point of it all is.

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

The Shipwrecked Sailor, transcribed from, again, the third edition of Literature of Ancient Egypt, the long way this time because I don’t like how the photos look in the previous post.

[...]

Now, what is the point of this whole tale? Why did the sailor/now-retainer spend so much breath relating the story of the serpent back to the commander to strengthen his spirit, when there is a pretty noticeable defining difference between the end of the sailor’s tale and the end of the current tale (eg, the sailor came back with treasure; the commander seemingly this time has not)?

I would suggest we can once again say the story is, at least in part, about ma’at. In this case, it points to ma’at’s role as magical rhetoric in protecting a person from a social superior’s wrath. The commander is deeply anxious about explaining his failure to the Sovereign. The sailor tries to assure the commander that if he speaks with confidence, honesty, and elegance, all will be well, despite what seems like dire circumstance. The sailor expresses that he is certain good speech will protect the commander, because he knows that Divinity — and through that Divinity ma’at — still exists and is capable of affecting interactions within a modern world. He knows this not because he has merely been told so; he has experienced Divinity personally. He has spoken with and been saved by it himself. He has firsthand knowledge of its power. Trust in your wise speech, commander, he advises. Listen to my words; trust in what I have seen and have now told you.

BrainDance posted:

This is also incredibly satisfying. I would imagine you're right, it makes sense to me, a whole lot more sense than anything I had thought up which, being honest, was basically nothing.

But it's not obvious at all, right? And that's what earns it an exploration of what it could possibly mean. On the surface you get a story of a guy saying "look, don't worry because magic snake in a completely different scenario" that if taken as is seems pointless but is clearly written in a way where the point should be there.

And maybe that point is obvious to an ancient audience even if not to us?

When I first read Gilgamesh way back in college that's what really interested me in it. So many of the choices were treated as if they were obvious but to me made no sense. Maybe I've changed (probably, I've gotten more used to reading ancient texts) or maybe translations have gotten better because I reread it as a part of this "read everything from the ancient world, especially their religions" and it didn't seem as bizarre to me, but it's still there. Just more and more evidence of how they weren't dumber than us but they were very different.

quote:

well my big problem is they are both paywalled and I don’t have pdfs to share right now (maybe later, when my partner who is the one possessed of a JSTOR login returns home). But I am talking about Edward Karshner’s paper Thought, Utterance, Power: Toward a Rhetoric of Magic and Vincent Tobin’s paper Mytho-Theology in Ancient Egypt (this one is particularly interesting if you pair it with some of the thoughts theologians of modern religions have put out about the importance of myth and symbol in personal life and faith; I am thinking of the corresponding chapter in Paul Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith, particularly. “For there is no substitute for the use of symbols and myths: they are the language of faith.”). While I don’t have pdfs I have some very lovely printouts that I made, on colorful paper so they’re harder for me to lose



Here is the abstract for the former:

Thought, Utterance, Power: Toward a Rhetoric of Magic posted:

To the ancient mind, magic was a powerful force to be subjected to or to control. Egypt, more than any other early culture, stressed the importance of intellectual agency as the antidote to the imperfection perceived between foundational thinking and anti-foundational speaking. Just as rhetoric seeks to express the conceptual ideal pursued by philosophical inquiry, these earlier thinkers stressed magical language as the key to unlocking the power of the cosmos. This article will explore the Ancient Egyptian concept of rhetorical magic as a practical wisdom that allows an individual to function fully within the boundaries established by a perceived cosmic order. The Ancient Egyptians applied rhetorical magic to ease the dissonance felt between intellectual engagement and the semiotically saturated cosmology in which they dwelt. These same ancient rhetorical practices hold promise in assisting our own attempts to navigate a world inundated with information.

And the latter does not have an abstract but here is an excerpt that can provide a similar function:

Mytho-Theology of Ancient Egypt posted:

Egyptian religion was marked by an exceedingly high degree of freedom of belief, and, except for the short-lived Amarna period under the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, the concept of religious heterodoxy was totally unknown to the Egyptians. All of the symbols and expressions of the various local cults and traditions were regarded as valid and correct expressions of religious faith, and internal contradictions in articulation were seen as both acceptable and natural. Egypt’s complex mythological system has been aptly described as being “completely free of those logics which eliminate one of two contradictory concepts and press religious ideas into a system of dogmas.” [R. Anthes, “Egyptian Theology in the Third Millenium BC,” JNES XVIII (1959) 170.] Such an approach to the content of a religion can only be possible when it is quite obvious that the concrete expressions of that religion are indeed mythic and symbolic in nature and are not intended to be taken as factual dogmatic statements of a literal “truth.” Such a flexible approach to the realm of the spiritual appears to be the most positive feature of the religion of ancient Egypt, for this approach enabled it to encompass virtually any religious symbol as a valid expression of abstract reality.

For the purposes of this post I will focus on the Karshner paper. The Tobin one is a great companion for it but I have such a passion for this Karshner paper. It starts like this:

quote:

Going back as far as the Old Kingdom (2450–2300 BCE), ancient Egyptian speculative thinkers had already developed a complex understanding of the relationship between personal agency, power, and the role of magic. What is more, these early philosophers saw that this world (individual and social) and the other (cosmological) operated according to the same principles. The rules by which one secured power were the same whether one was a peasant or a god. Through perception, the heart/mind would design an idea, the mouth would speak it and, as if by magic, the task would be accomplished. Thoughtful, reasoned speech was the mechanism for reestablishing the order that was manifested in the reasoned creation of the universe. Power and magic were not mysterious or esoteric to the Egyptians. Instead, power and magic were a part of an individual’s very existence.

This paper explores the parallel epistemological roles magic and mysticism share with rhetoric and philosophy within the Egyptian metaphysical system.The rhetoric of Egyptian magic was based on the idea that deeper foundational truths were expressed in a highly figurative, mythical language as a means to avoid an antifoundational emphasis on language only. Truth and the expression of truth were not seen as mutually exclusive. Rather, to reconnect with the higher reality of truth, the Egyptians stressed, through the very structure of their complex symbol system, an intense, epistemic interaction with words and symbols as maps to truth— not truth itself.

I further illustrate that the ancient Egyptians understood the dissonance between foundationalist epistemology and antifoundationalist rhetoric. Yet they still believed that within this uncertainty a coherent order was to be found. Magic, operating as an epistemic rhetoric, sought to reconnect the practitioner, through reasoned speech, to the ethical truth of the universal mind. This reconnection was made possible by the ethical epistemology agents gained from a life spent seeking maat (truth) in every given situation. Through the full utilization of magio-rhetoric, an individual could arrange experience in such a way as to express ethical knowledge. Understanding, then, occurred epistemically through the close observation of the cosmos and through an accurate and rational articulation of the knowledge gained from that observation. In short, it was intense individual effort directed toward the apprehension and expression of the seemingly inaccessible realm of the mystical that elevated the profane word to sacred truth in the end.

You’re still with me? You follow this, it seems interesting? Okay, great. Just checking. I have shared this paper with a few friends now and the word “dense” appears in everyone’s reviews I don’t know if it’s helpful or interesting to keep in mind while reading that while this is a historic/academic paper, it is discussing components of a religion that is extremely real and present and alive for me. I have very much “spent my life seeking ma’at,” and I think this paper is just exceptional in its examination of this aspect of Egyptian religion and metaphysics. I am going to continue directly into the next section, titled “Mysticism as Philosophy: The Foundational Scene of Utterance.”

quote:

The most basic assumption of rhetorical discourse is that an utterance is a reaction to a certain exigency, directed toward a particular audience who is seen as being capable of mediating the exigency. This process of mediating disorder through discourse requires that the speaker and audience share a set of philosophical beliefs about a foundational order that is a priori to the recognized ontological order. Philosophy, as the foundational scene of rhetoric, represents a specific kind of knowledge and speaking that comes through close observation of and engagement with the world and other meaning-seeking agents. This experiential knowledge allows speakers to apply, in each case, a set of knowable contexts that not only express their worldview but speak to the specific worldview of the individual or group they hope to persuade. Rhetoric, then, is more than persuasive speech. It is also an expression of a linguistically constructed worldview.

In The Mind of Ancient Egypt, Jan Assman identifies this belief in the relationship between the perception and expression of existence as being characteristic of a “cosmological society.” He writes that a cosmological society “lives by a model of cosmic forms of order, which it transforms into political and social order by means of meticulous observation and performance of rituals” (2002, 205). According to Assman’s definition, a cosmological society creates meaning based on the close observation of foundational forms in a manner that closely references the original forms or order. Assman goes on to explain that meaning emerges from the ability to “adapt the order of the human world to that of the cosmos [and] to keep the cosmic process itself in good working order” (2002, 205). The cosmos itself becomes a heuristic revealing mystical knowledge that establishes the local, personal, and social order at the same time that the local, personal, and social order serves as a heuristic in establishing magical practices that maintain the cosmological order. In other words, while the agent is speaking from a social scene to a human audience, he or she is simultaneously addressing deities in the cosmological realm. The disputants and the discourse, then, speak from and to a complex, multilayered situation.

In magical utterances, there is an appeal to another set of circumstances outside the immediate scene of the agent. This rhetorical scene of magic is characterized by Mircea Eliade as a life lived “on a two-fold plane; it takes its course as human existence and, at the same time, shares in a transhuman life, that of the cosmos of the gods” (1957, 167). Symbolically, this twofold existence is represented by what Eliade terms a homology. Simply defined, a homology is a correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. It is within this homology that the relationship between mysticism and magic is made apparent. Kenneth Burke quotes James Baldwin in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology as defining mysticism as embracing “those forms of speculative religious thought which profess to attain an immediate apprehension of the divine essence or the ultimate goal of existence” (1969a, 287). In other words, mysticism is belief in and the desire to achieve what Eliade called the “transhuman life.” That is, mysticism expresses the human desire to identify with and articulate, through symbolic expression, the innate knowledge of the cosmos.

This rhetorical perspective suggests that a text not only expresses a purposeful and meaningful point of view but also provides the framework by which hearers and readers understand the function of that text. Mysticism as philosophy, from this perspective, reflects a foundationalist perspective. Scott Consigny writes that foundational rhetoric “maintains that there is an order or truth in the world that we may approach or apprehend if we use the appropriate faculty or are inspired and that we may communicate this truth if we speak in the proper manner” (2001, 63–64). Belief in a foundationalist context leads speakers to construct a text according to a mystical understanding in order to reflect that understanding using language. This epistemological stance requires ontological experience and, consequently, knowledge not just of the “proper manner” but an ability to speak in that proper manner. From the audience’s perspective, the apprehension of this truth likewise requires knowledge of the appropriate faculties. Speakers and audiences thus must have knowledge of a shared experience in order for the truth of rhetorical texts to be experienced, understood, and expressed.

The ancient Egyptians articulated this shared, epistemic experience through their highly complex and symbolic onto-cosmological narratives. An onto-cosmological narrative expresses the fundamental beliefs of its cultural background and reveals the ontological concerns of a group situated in a specific time and place. In short, the onto-cosmological narrative seeks to express what is possible and what is ideal and how what the group desires can be accomplished by it within the cultural paradigm (Berlin 1993, 148–49). These narratives create the essential rhetorical situation by explaining both philosophically and semantically “those contexts in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse” (Bitzer 1968, 1) in order to be fully involved with the creation and maintenance of a world.

Essentially, these onto-cosmological narratives are foundationalist in that mystical truth is presented as “an independent goal or starting point or origin that is ontologically, logically and temporally prior to human inquiry and knowledge; that is independent of the contingencies of human life, culture and language; and that serves as a criterion for claims to knowledge and meaningful speech” (Consigny 2001, 61). Because of the strong emphasis on all the metaphysical elements, creation stories stress an individual’s participation in the coming into being of knowing. Encoded in the narrative is the nature of truth as both goal and means. Once again, however, there must not be a hard distinction made between the cosmology of the gods and the ontology of human beings. What separates the cosmological truth from the ontological goal of truth is a mere matter of location.

Here we begin touching upon what smarxist and Squizzle were saying, and what the Tobin paper goes into much more deeply: onto-cosmological narratives and reflection of truth. Organizing what is perceived and experienced in the individual and social world in attempts to truthfully reflect and communicate the workings of the greater ontology and cosmology — and vice versa. Understanding the truth of the cosmos and the patterns that it takes over millenia of myth and exigency allows us to view the unfolding patterns of human social and cultural reality, because they are one and the same.

Let’s talk (or let Karshner talk) about language.

quote:

Over Egypt’s long history, many creation stories evolved to explain the onto-cosmological situation of those living on the banks of the Nile. Each creation story addressed the particular exigency of its area and people. What this myriad of stories share is that they are primarily etiological. An extraordinary exception is the “Memphite Theology”, a religious treatise that emphasizes the role of reason and language in constituting reality. In this story, Ptah emerges as the divine reason that creates and maintains the universe. Ptah is characterized as he “who has given [life] to all the gods and their kas through his heart and his tongue” (Lichtheim 1975, 54). The Ennead (the council of gods), according to this text, functions as the limbs informed by the intellect (heart) and performative speech (tongue). Likewise, while Ptah’s intelligent speech is formative, the gods, cattle, and humans (interestingly lumped together) function through their speech and actions as agents of definition. The Memphite text declares “thus all the faculties were made and all qualities determined, they that make all foods and provisions, through this word. … Thus Ptah was satisfied after he had made all things and all divine words” (Lichtheim 1975, 55). Humanity finds itself in a world of linguistic construction. Consequently, to participate fully in this reality, an action is required to determine one’s proper function in context. In other words, one exists only as fully as one’s “command of the word.”

To have command of the word, an individual must know the formative and performative power of speech reflected in the magical vocabulary that emerges from the onto-cosmological narrative. An illustration of the creative power of words is further revealed in the vocabulary of Egyptian magic. For the ancient Egyptians, the primary creative force in the universe was heka, usually translated as “magic”. According to the Coffin Texts (spell 261), heka is the first created force, and consequently, the divine force that “empowered the creation event” (Wilkinson 2003, 110). Heka, then, is not merely “hocus-pocus” but the vitality behind the process of invention and production that establishes the order of existence.

The power of heka was found in its close association with language. In fact, the whole of Egyptian mysticism and magic is encoded in the metaphysics of its linguistics. Therefore, before explicating the word heka, it is necessary first to clarify the complexities of the Egyptian writing system. Despite the philological advances in hieroglyph research, many lay people still believe that the ancient Egyptian writing system was purely pictographic. In reality, this system of writing was far more complex in that the signs used fall into three categories. First, signs could be used to represent consonant sounds. Here, the signs could further represent monoconsonant, biconsonant, or triconsonant sounds. Second, there was a group of ideograms that did function as picture writing. For example, a representation of the heart meant “heart” and carried with it the corresponding sound for “heart” (ib). These signs came with a strike mark underneath to show that they were being used as a word sign and not merely a sound sign. Finally, a type of ideogram called a “determinative” could be used in the writing of a word. This sign came at the end of a word to determine the meaning but did not have a sound value. In this case, the word “day” (hrw) is spelled with the monoconsonant signs for h, r, w and is followed by the determinative of the sun disk (aten) to determine the meaning of the word. This may seem like a complex or even convoluted writing system, but it gave the scribe great leeway in the way ideas were transmitted visually.

The sign for heka is made of three characters. The first is the pictograph of twisted flax. It is a unilateral sign for an emphatic h sound and is there purely for its phonetic value. The second sign is where this etymological dissection becomes really interesting. The Egyptians now insert the word sign for ka. They could have continued to use unilateral signs: a basket for the k sound and the vulture sign for the short a sound. Instead, they use the ideogram for ka which, in simple terms, is the word for the soul; however, the ka is a far more significant ontological concept. The ka represented the “essential self of an individual” (David 2002, 117). Moreover, the ka was the power of creation that allowed an individual to be an active agent in the physical world. Finally, the last sign in heka is the determinative representing a rolled scroll meaning “writing”. Essentially, the sign for heka could be translated as “soul writing”. Robert Ritner describes it better as “at the strike of a word, magic (heka) penetrates the ka or ‘vital essence’ of any element in creation and invests it with power” (1993, 25). In this case, the element is “writing” or the “word”, and heka reflects the creative power of the word. It is important to note that heka refers to the vital power of the word and not the word itself — that is, heka “resides in the word itself” (Ritner 1993, 17). A word possesses its own function and performative soul.

The powerful word that is conjured by the power of heka is hu. Within Egyptian metaphysics, hu is defined as the “authoritative utterance, that speech which is so effective that it creates” (Wilson 1977, 57). What imbues hu with effectiveness is heka, which, preceding it, imparts to hu the very creative vitality that structured the universe. James Henry Breasted links this idea of the creative word to the agency of creation “by which mind became creative force. … The idea thus took on being in the world of objective existence” (1933, 37). Both Wilson and Breasted link this to the concept of logos found in the Gospel of John. Like logos, hu manifests the intangible intent of the creative mind in the tangible world of existence — creative intent yields creative process yields created product. Each of these events is linked by the vital reasoning principle heka.

Hu is most often paired with sia. In a word, sia is perception. Within the context of Egyptian metaphysics, it is further defined as “the cognitive reception of a situation, an object or idea” (Wilson 1977, 56). In the words of the Memphite Theology, sia is that which has been “devised by the heart.” The connection between sia and hu is that hu “repeats what the heart has devised” (Lichtheim 1975, 52). Hu and sia combine to reflect a cognitive process that, through perception and expression, establishes order. John A. Wilson describes this process as “a system which employs invention by the cognition of an idea in the mind and the production through the utterance of creating order by speech” (1977, 56). This cognitive process that moves from perception to speech eventually leads to the knowable order of the universe brought into being through the essential power of heka.

This ability to determine function with speech reflects the power of the divine order. At the root of the power of speech, shared by creator and created, is the ability to reason. Articulated here is the idea of an epistemic rhetoric through which “man could know because he was identified with the substance of God, that is, the universal mind. From the universal mind (logos), man’s mind (logos) can reason (logos) to bring forth speech (logos). This wonderful ambiguity of logos retains the identity, that is, truth” (Scott 1994, 314). Deeper than language is the power of reason that connects humankind to the universal mind. The culmination of intelligent, articulated speech, rooted in perception, was manifested in the ability to form and influence reality. This magio-rhetorical process of reasoning is what links the universal participants together and situates the individual within the onto-cosmological homology.

Okay, but you can’t just willy-nilly say anything and have it fruit magic, right? Right. That’s because magic, heka, is the flip side of the foundational underpinning of the Universe: ma’at. Or, you know, the Source, the Ground-of-Being, All-That-Is, the Divine Spirit… ma’at is the essential nature of reality, and while it is personified at times as a Goddess it is a concept far vaster and more present and more necessary than mere divinity. It is order, justice, truth, balance, harmony, reciprocity, what is Right. If it is the waters that fill the panentheistic aquarium in which we the little fishies all swim, heka is recognizing and making use of currents and waves and whirlpools and eddies that we encounter there within it. But it is ma’at that creates this environment to begin with.

quote:

For the ancient Egyptians, the foundational truth that results from this cognitively created system was maat. Maat was the universal idea of order, justice, or truth. More fundamentally, maat was the onto-cosmological principle that connected the divine order of the cosmos with the social order of justice and the ethical reality of human beings. In short, maat, at once, can translate as both an ethical and a metaphysical concept. Henri Frankfort characterizes maat as “a divine order, established at the time of creation,” an order that “is manifest in nature in the normality of phenomena . . . in society as justice and . . . in an individual’s life as truth” (1961, 63). This natural, social, and individual order is manifested in one’s direct use of perception (sia), reason (heka), and articulation (hu). Just as Ptah in the Memphite Theology transformed chaos into order, the king was expected to preserve or reestablish justice within the kingdom, while the everyday Egyptian was to do “what was loved” (ethical) over what was hated (unethical) as had been established since the beginning of time.

For both gods and humans, maat was “the very basis of one’s speech and actions: ‘Do maat . . . speak maat” (Morenz 1992, 117). Another text declares “hu is in thy mouth, sia is in thy heart, and thy tongue is the shrine of Justice [Maat]” (qtd in Wilson 1977, 84). Order is the only true outcome of intelligence. What is perceived and spoken must reflect what is true. Just as word is a manifestation of mind, justice or truth is a product of them both. Their power is found in the articulate expression of concepts. When heart and tongue are in agreement, all faculties are “made and all qualities determined. … Thus justice is done to him who does what is loved, and punishment to him who does what is hated. Thus life is given to the peaceful, death is given to the criminal” (Lichtheim 1975, 54-55). The power of conscious expression is not just revealed in the metaphysical order but in the ethical order as well. The recognition of maat in the expressed order of the universe becomes the sia of the human/social order. The language of human beings must also express this order in a terrestrial sense. This is precisely why Ptah is in “every mouth of all gods and all men.” There is no cognitive difference between the maat of men and gods; the difference is one of location only.

Rosalie Davis nicely summarizes this cognitive, cosmological process: “The two divine principles of perception [sia] and creative speech [hu] are the rational forces by which creation is achieved, when the creator god first perceives the world as a concept and then brings it into being through this first utterance. To achieve this, the creator uses the principle of magic [heka], a force that, according to Egyptian belief, could transform a spoken command into reality” (2002, 86). Egyptian metaphysics was rooted in the idea of developing an awareness of concepts and then correctly expressing those concepts so as to create a “right dealing” and just order. At the most essential level, this cognitive process relied on the correct word and phraseology to reflect the idea that had the power to determine order.

Now, there are an additional ten pages of this paper to go and this is already a behemoth of a post. But since smarxist’s posted thoughts also brought up the Babel myth I will finish up this section, which touches on related ideas, before calling it quits.

quote:

While maat was the fundamental principle of order in the Egyptian cosmos, the Egyptian metaphysician recognized that order was not something created and fixed but rather something to be created and that consequently a break in the sameness of order was necessary for true action. Like their Hebrew neighbors, the Egyptians believed that the paradise of maat was threatened by an adversary determined to upset the reasoned, linguistic order that had been established at the beginning of time. Lurking in the netherworld of the Egyptian cosmos was the demon serpent Apophis. According to the mythology, Apophis was the “embodiment of the powers of dissolution, darkness and non-being” (Wilkinson 2003, 221). Essentially, Apophis was the nemesis of the sun god Re. In the “Book of Gates,” Re sails across the sky and through the underworld, governing the world as well as bringing it light and life. Apophis, as the enemy of order, threatens to overturn the divine barque at sunrise and sunset with the intention of preventing the journey that not only symbolizes maat but is the cosmic act of enforcing maat. Aiding Re on this journey is Heka.

In this myth, Heka is linked to Re as his protector. As Robert Ritner notes, “Heka protects the passage of the sun through the netherworld he defends the very created order itself ” (1993, 19). R.T. Rundle Clark underlines the importance of this pairing of Re and Heka, pointing out that “the solar barque is the centre of the regulation of the universe, so it is suitable that it should be manned by the personifications of intellectual qualities” (1959, 249–50). Re represents the agent of maat. As its agent, he must meet the challenges of disorder with the instruments of order. Without the intelligent awareness and proper utilization of Heka, he is helpless in the face of disorder. The agent of order (be it Re, the king, or the average Egyptian) must seamlessly match his or her intentions and actions to the metaphysical demands of cosmic order. The onto-cosmological narrative makes it clear that only intelligent action is true action.

This connection between rhetoric, heka, and Apophis is drawn even more clearly by Ludwig D. Morenz. In his essay “Apophis: On the Origin and Nature of an Egyptian Anti-God,” Morenz moves beyond mythology and netherworlds to explore the etymological meaning of the name Apophis. Morenz identifies two elements in this demon god’s name.The first element ‘3 means “great” and the second element, pp, translates as “roar, babbler, babble.” Morenz believes that pp is “an onomatopoeic word imitating the inarticulate or even nonverbal sound of this mythological water snake” (2004, 203). This construction is similar to the Greek root for barbarian— barbar, which is onomatopoeic for the inarticulate speech of foreigners.

Putting these elements together, Apophis comes to mean “great babbler,” an onto-cosmological concept for gibberish and confused speech. Morenz writes that Apophis is understood to be evil because “language endows meaning and relation, and Apophis is the negation of precisely these ideas” (2004, 204). Yet Apophis was more than a mere symbol of a distant, cosmic crisis. Assman sees Apophis as denoting a “danger that threatens life on all its semantic levels and can attack at any time and in any form” (1995, 54). Because the Egyptian cosmos was based on the intelligent articulation of perception, Apophis threatens it by confusing language and, therefore, wisdom. He is the very antithesis of reasoned speech and order.

In their onto-cosmological writings, the Egyptians clearly illustrate the role of rhetoric as defined by Burke:

quote:

Let us observe, all about us, forever goading us, though it be in fragments, the motive that attains its ultimate identification in the thought, not of the universal holocaust, but of the universal order—as with the rhetorical and dialectic symmetry of the Aristotelian metaphysics, whereby all classes of being are hierarchally arranged in a chain or ladder or pyramid of mounting worth, each kind striving towards the perfection of its kind, and so towards the kind next above it, while the striving of the entire series head in God as the beloved cynosure and sinecure, the end of all desire. (1969b, 333, emphasis his)

We all seek order rather than chaos, and then we desire to express that order in some way. Yet it is in chaos, or in the face of disorder, that the power of formative and performative speech is found. The desire to express order is secondary to the need to recognize possibility in the epistemological crisis. Therefore, reasoning- and language-using agents find themselves going from a situation in which “no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established” (Eliade 1957, 21) to one in which they “must consider truth not as something fixed and final but as something to be created moment by moment in the circumstances” that they find themselves in and that they must cope with (Scott 1994, 318). It is within this context of uncertainty that rhetorical magic becomes necessary.

The latter half of the paper is subtitled, “Antifoundationalist Rhetoric and the Demands of Ethical Magic,” so if anybody asks me to share with them what qualifies as demands of ethical magic I will post that half too. But this post is already uhhhhhhhhh of significant length, so despite my interest in demonstrating The Demands of Ethical Magic I must also tend to the demands of ethical posting and abbreviate the journey here to minimize the scrolling necessary for those uninterested in its contents. Also we are probably close to a page break by now and I should get this in at the bottom of an existing page rather than the tippy-top of a new one I hope that this was enjoyable and informative, typhus et al

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Okay I’m back.

quote:

The duality of language explored by the “Memphite Theology” and the Apophis legend clearly illustrate that the ancient Egyptians believed, like Kenneth Burke, that language was capable of both “putting things together and taking things apart” (1969c, 49). These onto-cosmological narratives also reveal Ptah as a symbolic representation of the foundationalist perspective that truth is objectively present in the world and can be apprehended and expressed through logocentric discourse. Apophis, on the other hand, shows that purposefully inarticulate language can hinder the movement toward truth. In both cases, Egyptians recognized rhetoric as a purposeful attempt to secure cooperation through words carefully chosen to appeal to a particular audience in a particular situation. While rhetoric must reference the truth (that is, must not be created from whole cloth), the goal of rhetoric is to construct a text that “directs the attention into some channels rather than others” (Burke 1969a, 45). A text is meant to reflect only what the speaker wishes the audience to perceive. Therefore, the text reflects exigency, not truth.

It is this dissonance between the apprehended and spoken truth that intrigued the ancient Egyptians. While they did not reject the idea of an objective reality (maat remains maat regardless of human attempts to thwart it), they clearly understood that a discourse about reality is “itself a human construct, articulate in a language that is inevitably situated in a particular time, place, and culture” (Consigny 2001, 64). This attitude, in fact, is not a departure from the “Memphite Theology” at all. The homology between the logocentric reasoning of Ptah and the tongues of “gods and men” shows that human speech, like divine speech, is capable of expressing order based on what is observed. The tongue speaks, after all, what the heart has devised. The heart, then, will base its thoughts on two sets of exigency: the desire of the agent and the particular situation of an audience.

Therefore, if the ancient Egyptians were foundational in their thinking about the epistemology of rhetoric, they were antifoundational in their attitudes toward the expression of that knowledge. An antifoundational position is skeptical about the existence of a one-to-one relationship between truth and the expression of truth. Consigny writes that antifoundationalists “characterize discourse as a form of social behavior in which words acquire meaning not by referring to independent entities in the world, but by playing a role in ... language games ... They thus reject the notion that any use of language is able to provide an impartial, unbiased account of the true nature of things” (2001, 64). The Egyptians never saw truth and language as synonymous. Truth was to be sought and a relationship with it maintained. Language, on the other hand, was to be scrutinized and controlled. So, language was not truth, but, rather, an attempt to express the multiple perspectives of truth.

This is precisely the rhetorical magic William Covino defines as “the practice of disrupting and recreating articulate power: a (re)sorcery of spells for generating multiple perspectives” (1994, 90). The articulate expression of multiple perspectives is the natural outcome from an utterance spoken from within a “two-fold plane.” As Robert L. Scott notes, rhetoric is epistemic because one must actively seek to know what “truth” is being presented for consideration. He writes that “at best (or least) truth may be seen as dual: the demands of the precepts one adheres to and the demands of the circumstances in which one must act” (1994, 318). Truth, then, emerges in two ways: cosmologically as foundational belief and ontologically as an antifoundational linguistic act. Both speaker and audience must be willing to discover the difference.

The ability to create the perception of being through language was the magic the Egyptians saw in rhetoric. Covino nicely summarizes magic’s rhetoricity as “the process of inducing belief and creating community with reference to the dynamics of a rhetorical situation” (1994, 11). Covino makes two points here. In the same way that rhetoric exemplifies the seeking out and demonstration of truth, magic represents the human means of discovering and expressing the divine truth of the cosmos. Further, just as rhetoric is the counterpart of the dialectic, so magic directly references mysticism. For while mysticism is clearly situated in cosmology and magic in ontology, both come together as apodictic speech when they establish the “definition of a phenomenon by tracing it back to ultimate principles, or archai” (Grassi 1980, 19). It is at this point that rhetoric and magic begin to converge. In the same way that rhetoric demonstrates truth, the magic reveals mysticism. In this manner, magic is the microcosm of mysticism’s macrocosm.

For the ancient Egyptians, the tension between mystical belief and magical expression was revealed in their mode of discourse. They made a clear distinction between the idea of truth and representations of truth. The mystical experiences that revealed truth were expressed through magio-rhetoric, a highly symbolic discourse filtered through social expectations and personal exigency. Truth was to be experienced in the cosmological realm of the gods and expressed to those in the ontological social realm. Magio-rhetoric, then, was the epistemic process of tracing an expression back to its foundational principles as revealed in the onto-cosmological narrative of a culture. These logocentric myths illustrate that, for the ancient Egyptians, the magio-rhetorical situation from which an agent spoke was marked by uncertainty. It is this imbalance between apprehension and expression that creates the exigency for rhetoric. Intuitively and linguistically, an agent knows that something is wrong. The question is, what can be done?

Again, the ancient Egyptians relied on myth to answer this question. Stories about the gods supplied a specific structure for converting uncertainty into meaningful action. Assman suggests that “regularity, recurrence, and predictability attained significance against the background of the contingent, unique, and deviant,” and that this was the means by which magio-rhetorical texts mediated onto-cosmological exigency (2002, 205). Just as Ptah created order from chaos through experience, inquiry, and utterance, so each speculative narrative supplied a heuristic meant to instruct in the mediation between mystical truth and magical expression. These narratives were not magical merely because they recounted the adventures of the gods but also because they supplied human beings with rhetorical strategies for investigating the elements of each unique rhetorical situation that made possible the expression of maat as revealed in isfet (disorder/chaos).

Mytho-theology, bitches. Let’s take a look at one of the most famous pieces of Egyptian literary mythology: The Contendings.

quote:

In Egyptian literature, this onto-cosmological exigency is explored in “The Contendings of Horus and Seth,” a story that recounts the events following Osiris’s murder at the hands of his brother Seth. According to this narrative, the murder of the great god king is followed by a less-than-epic eighty-year court case to determine who, Horus or Seth, will ascend to the throne of Egypt. The Ennead is split on who is the rightful heir. The Horus group sees the son as being the legitimate heir. Toth, the god of wisdom and writing, asks, “Shouldn’t we ascertain who is the imposter? Is the office of Osiris to be awarded to Seth even while his son Horus is still about?” (Wente 2003, 93). The group supporting Seth counters by asking “Is this office to be awarded to the lad even while Seth, his elder brother, is still about?” (Wente 2003, 95). This is political theater we easily recognize today. The rule of law, what is right, is being restructured and redirected to meet changing agendas and preferred outcomes. Both parties to the debate make their case in the means best suited to achieve their agendas. The Horus group bases its case on law and order. The god Shu reasons that “justice [maat] is a possessor of power. [Administer] it [maat] by saying ‘Award the office to [Horus]’” (Wente 2003, 92). Further, the Seth group is admonished for “exercising authority alone” (Wente 2003, 92). According to the “Memphite Theology,” thought and action (speech) must reflect maat. The Seth group’s claim is a mere exercise of authority, then, because it is devoid of an ethical position. Instead, its exigency is based entirely on a desire to pursue personal concerns and political agendas.

Not having the authority of maat, the group loyal to Seth use personal attacks in place of reasoned argument. The issue, the group claims, is not that Seth is a better leader but that Horus’s youth disqualifies him from the throne. As the “Universal Lord” tells Horus, “You are despicable in your person, and this office is too much for you, you lad, the odor of whose mouth is bad” (Wente 2003, 94). Thus although Horus is qualified for the throne because he holds the power of maat, his critics object to his kingship based on his age and his bad breath. These objections are absurd, but the politics of personal destruction is sufficient enough to cloud the issue. Through its satirical tone, “The Contendings of Horus and Seth” illustrates that the ethical demand of maat can be obscured by subjective interpretations and presentations meant to misdirect an audience from the issue of justice.

Despite clever arguments and wishful thinking, the reality of maat cannot be altered. Isis illustrates the essential nature of truth when she tricks Seth into evaluating the situation with maat rather than his ambition. Disguised as a beautiful young woman, Isis seeks an audience with Seth. Finding him alone, she testifies that “I was the wife of a cattleman to whom I bore a son. My husband died, and the lad started tending his father’s cattle. But, then a stranger came and settled down in my stable. He said thus speaking to my son, ‘I shall beat you, confiscate your father’s cattle, and evict you’” (Wente 2003, 96). Seth, distracted from his own agenda, responds to this intrigue with “Are the cattle to be given to the stranger even while the man’s son is still about?” (Wente 2003, 96). Isis then reveals herself and admonishes Seth, saying “Be ashamed of yourself ! It is your own mouth that has said it. It is your own cleverness that has judged you” (Wente 2003, 96). Isis shows that Seth’s mouth has expressed ethical knowing and, consequently, justified him.

This rebuke is taken directly from the “Memphite Theology.” The text instructs that “sight, hearing, breathing” “report to the heart, and it makes every understanding come forth” and that the mouth repeats what is in the heart” (Lichtheim 1975, 54).The heart takes what is seen and arranges that information in accordance with the foundational qualities of justice. Thoughts and words reflect justice only when they express maat. In fact, it is in the best interest of an agent to participate in the doing of maat. To ignore ethical justice is to step outside the established ontological framework. As “The Memphite Theology” states, only one who does maat actually lives.

“The Contendings of Horus and Seth” illustrates that maat is the natural consequence of reasoned thought. It actually takes effort and planning to distract one’s self and others from the reality of ethical justice. Magic, as epistemic rhetoric, functions to distract an agent from subjective, anti-foundational agendas in order and thereby refocuses the cognitive energies of him or her in such a way as to encourage the syncretization of his or her behavior with cosmic truth. When distracted from his own subjective position, even Seth responds with maat. The point of the story is clear. We cannot alter maat with the clever arrangement of words. Although humans possess, through reasoned speech, the power to create possibilities and explore them, these alternate views are not maat. Therefore, it is not maat that must be preserved or protected or maintained but rather one’s relationship to maat.

underlines last few words several times, circles, looks back up at you to be sure you are still paying attention.

Our relationship to the Source. We must remain guided by, and perform action in accordance to, Cosmic Truth and Justice, to be functioning members of onto-cosmological society.

quote:

The dualistic nature of discourse as illustrated in the onto-cosmological narratives manifested itself in the day to day lives of the ancient Egyptians. In everything from pharaonic victory steles to court cases to letters to the dead, this culture’s rhetoric struggled to apprehend and express truth, cosmologically to the gods and ontologically to each other, through a complex linguistic system. These complexities, however, were clarified through a speaker’s adherence to maat. Maat, rhetorically speaking, becomes an organizing principle a speaker follows in order to structure both the investigation of phenomena and the expression of the particular knowledge he or she arrives at. In the scheme of Egyptian magic, language not only expresses maat, but stresses that the most powerful speech is that which comes nearer to approximating the reality of maat. One knows maat by doing and speaking maat. Conversely, it is maat that an audience or reader will respond to in communication. Maat, then, is the preferred method of rhetorical arrangement.

For the ancient Egyptians, no single event characterized the need for maat as mode like the passing from life to death. The Egyptian funerary cult believed that the deceased required care in the afterlife just as the living did in life. Therefore, before death, an individual set out to establish an endowment for his/her mortuary cult that was “designed to perpetuate the owner’s name among the living and his divine status among the dead” (Ritner 1997, 140). Daily food and water offerings as well as prayers and the speaking of the dead’s name performed by a ka-priest or family member were required if one were to live forever. The real fear for the soon-to-be-departed was not the inevitability of death but the eternal death that would result should these rituals cease to be carried out. In “The Man Who Was Weary of Life,” the writer laments:

quote:

Even those who built with stones of granite,
Who constructed the magnificent pyramids,
Perfecting them with excellent skill,
So that the builders might become gods,
Now their offering stones are empty,
And they are like those who die on the river bank with no survivors.
(Tobin 2003, 181–82)

This passage clearly expresses the pessimism Egyptians felt regarding the possibility of an eternal life that relied on the devotion of a funerary cult. If the builders of the pyramids could be forgotten, what hope could there be for a simple farmer or fisherman?

Once again, the goals of magic and rhetoric converge. In the hopes of countering the forgetfulness of the living, the Egyptians relied on the logological precepts of their metaphysics to induce ontological action. Cosmologically, the magic of image and word was used to ensure that “the deceased would be provided with the full range of necessary items. Actual menus are often inscribed beside the altar within the tomb chapel, in association with the standard funerary prayer” (Ritner 1997, 141). When visitors entered the funerary chapel of the tomb, they would see the images of food, speak the name of the food and thereby “magically” transform the word back to the ideal form in the cosmological realm. The prayer would likewise contain the name of the deceased. By reciting the prayer and the name, the visitor would ensure the continued existence of the departed.

The problem, then, became enticing visitors into the tomb. Here, the Egyptians relied on the ontology of rhetoric. Ritner writes that “the elaborate decorations and inscriptions of the open chapel were intended to entice visitors, who might leave offerings, pour water, or recite the funerary prayer, thereby acting themselves as ka-priests and extending the life of the cult” (1997, 141). Because their mysticism was clearly metaphysical, the Egyptians were able to examine and express this cosmological scene ontologically with magio-rhetoric. As Kenneth Burke observes, what connects rhetoric and magic is the way both rely on symbols to “get things done.” He writes that “the realistic use of addressed language to induce action in people became the magical use of addressed language to induce motion in things” (1969b, 42). Within the scene of ancient Egyptian metaphysics, this world and the one beyond still operated under the same symbol system; therefore, by Burke’s definition, this magic, rather than being irrational, was actually quite realistic. By arranging language in the appropriate manner, speakers were able to identify and cooperate with the higher, intelligible order and persuade others to do likewise.

In “Rhetoric and Identity: A Study of Ancient Egyptian Non-Royal Tombs and Tomb Autobiographies,” Carol Lipson similarly characterizes tomb chapels not only as magical places but as rhetorical texts. She writes that “in the tomb, the owner created and presented a performance of the self in visual, textual and material form. The stylized performance presented the best self, not the full reality, but the version of the self one would want to live as forever[,] ... a self deemed to be worthy, by its actions in society, to warrant permanent existence in the afterlife” (2009, 95). She concludes her argument by observing that “such persuasion to influence attitudes and actions are fundamentally rhetorical” (2009, 121). In the textual performance of the tomb, the ancient Egyptians illustrated that magio-rhetoric functioned on two levels. On the one hand, the structure of the text reflected the epistemology that referenced what was so. That is, the tomb as text existed as a demonstration of maat in that it was seen as right and just to maintain an individual in his or her eternal retirement in the west (the ancient Egyptian euphemism for the afterlife). Construction of the tomb and the awareness of its purpose required knowledge of both the cosmological workings and an understanding of the necessity of the funerary cult. On the other hand, the presentation of the text sought to illustrate what was possible. Specifically, the deceased sought to illustrate through the complex rhetoric of temple construction (the appearance of the tomb and the wording of the mortuary autobiography) that he or she was indeed worthy of an elite afterlife.

However, like our own revisionist history, these mortuary texts only represent one possible reading of past events. The ultimate test of a worthy life rested on the visitors and their own reading and understanding of the tomb. History shows that even the most extravagantly decorated tombs were not persuasive enough to prevent desecration, defacement, or dismantling. Despite the artistic and rhetorically sound arrangement and presentation of a life, it was ultimately left to the discernment of the audience whether a departed individual would live forever in the west or simply cease to exist.

The final section is our conclusion. It is titled, Ancient Egyptian Magic for the Modern Rhetorical Situation.

quote:

This paper has examined the role magic and mysticism played in the onto-cosmological belief system of ancient Egypt. Egyptian speculative thinkers conceived the relationship between magic and mysticism in much the same way Aristotle conceived the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. Just as rhetoric serves as the counterpart to the dialectic in the demonstration of truth, so too magic functioned as a means to apprehend and express the mystical. In the course of this process, the universal mind and the human mind became one. Acting as a balance in the middle of this process was maat, the fulcrum of the onto-cosmological narrative. To discover what was possible, one needed to be able to epistemically fuse individually motivated action with what was morally right. Magic was no less than the apprehension and expression of the mystical realm through individual, ethical action.

It is clear that the ancient Egyptians took discourse about truth very seriously. Reason, language, and ethics were at the very heart of their metaphysics. In fact, “The Memphite Theology” goes so far as to portray reason as the ethical expression of the divine will. The seriousness with which they attended to onto-cosmological matters extended to the way they approached their epistemology as well. How “effective” one was was determined by his or her ability to not only speak the truth but also apprehend the truth (or lack thereof ) in the speech of another. Their magic was a practical, epistemic rhetoric meant to realign personal ambition with maat. In other words, as revealed in the essential narratives of their culture, magic was epistemic rhetoric in that it stressed the active pursuit of justice through thinking and speaking.

In my study of ancient Egypt, this emphasis on metacognition, semiotics, and ethics has intrigued me more than pyramids, mummies, or golden sarcophagi. Yet little attention has been paid to how the Egyptians expressed their metaphysics with rhetoric. Ancient Egypt was a culture that saw effective rhetoric as active rhetoric. Its rhetoric was a mode of discourse that stressed an interactive understanding of maat on the part of speakers and their responsibility to express maat through the construction of texts. In a highly stratified culture with a nearly incomprehensible bureaucracy, a subordinate, as Lipson rightly argues, could rebuke a superior with the ethical demands of maat using maat as function, form, and proof. Clearly, in a culture that had the same word for truth and justice, epistemic action was not only required but was also a moral imperative.

The greatest lesson these ancient metaphysicians have to teach is seemingly the most esoteric. Yet, like most aspects of Egyptology, the surface esotericism obscures a humanistic pragmatism that speaks across time to reveal the promise of our own existential exceptionalism. Whereas the Egyptians mystified discourse, our culture has demystified the use of language to the point where the matter of whose metaphysics is more primitive is debatable. We live in a world of information saturation rather than of semiotic saturation. Our situation should demand the same deep level of interaction that ancient Egyptian metaphysics required. Instead, what is “true” has been reduced to easy taxonomies and “-isms” that require only the belief in the belief of another. When a radio talk show host can promise his listeners “I think about this stuff so you don’t have to,” and those listeners respond with emphatic “mega dittos,” the ethical relationship to the truth has been clearly surrendered.

To be sure, the ancient Egyptians have a great deal to teach us. For me, however, it is their demand that talking points not be spoken until they have been fully investigated using the cosmological gift of reason given to all human beings, that one’s ethical loyalty and duty is to the truth not individuals or institutions, and, finally, that when confronted with isfet (the opposite of maat), we are required to speak—not in the shrill discourse of partisanship but in the calm, reasoned speech of justice (which is loved)— that teach us the most about how we can become vindicated souls.

quote:

James Herrick states that the major objective of rhetoric is for a rhetor to persuade (to alter) an audience's view to that of the rhetor; for example, an attorney uses rhetoric to persuade a jury that his/her client is innocent of a crime.[58] Maat in letters written to subordinates to persuade allegiance to them and the pharaoh; subordinates would evoke Maat to illustrate a desire to please.[59] To directly disagree with a superior was considered highly inappropriate; instead, inferior citizens would indirectly evoke Maat to assuage a superior's ego to achieve the desired outcome.[59]

quote:

State your business without concealing (anything),
Proffer your opinion in the council of your lord.
If you can speak fluently and easily,
It will not be difficult as an agent to give your account,
And no one will answer, 'What does he know of it?'
Even an official whose property has fared poorly,
If he thinks about reproachment concerning it,
Will be silent saying (only), 'I have no comment.'

quote:

Be painstaking all the time that you are speaking,
So that you may say things of importance.

Tree Bucket posted:

A Good Post.
We could start referring to ai-generated "art" as The Great Babbler

Ghost Leviathan posted:

The idea of truth and sincerity in word and deed is quite important to a lot of ancient culture, philosophy and religion. There's a lot said on the story of the shipwrecked sailor who makes friends with a snake, but it seems like a point of the ending is basically the captain assuring him that if he speaks the truth with confidence and conviction, then he'll believe him no matter how crazy it is.

Mad Hamish posted:

I think about this a lot. There's a mummy in the main gallery of the Royal Ontario Museum of a little boy who died when he was about 12, whose name was Nakht. He had been a weaver, and his family must have loved him enough to have had him mummified. He was, I believe, the first mummy to undergo a CT scan, because he was not considered historically important in the same way a king or priestess would have been. He probably did not have a monument, and if he did then it has not survived to this present time, but even so, through some accident of fate we know things about his life. The name of Nakht endures in the mouths of the living.

Wikipedia on "El Shaddai" posted:

El Shaddai (Hebrew: אֵל שַׁדַּי, romanized: ʾĒl Šaddāy; IPA: [el ʃadːaj]) or just Shaddai is one of the names of the God of Israel. El Shaddai is conventionally translated into English as God Almighty. (Deus Omnipotens in Latin, Arabic: الله عز وجل, romanized: ʾAllāh ʿazza wajal)

The translation of El as "God" in the Ugaritic and the Canaanite languages is straightforward. Shaddai may come from shad שד meaning mammary; shaddai שדי is a dual grammatical number[1] shaddayim שדיים is the typical modern (grammatically plural) hebrew word for human breasts.[2] The Deir Alla inscriptions contain shaddayin as well as elohin rather than elohim. Scholars[3] translate this as "shadday-gods," taken to mean none-too-specific fertility, mountain or wilderness gods. Discomfort over this is sometimes interpreted as controversy, leaving room for other suggestions, like a relation to the Destroyer aspect of God mentioned et alia during the Egypt affair[4] from shaddad שדד, though such an etymology appears less direct, or even "fanciful and without support."[5]

The form of the phrase "El Shaddai" fits the pattern of the divine names in the Ancient Near East, exactly as is the case with names like ʾĒl ʿOlām, ʾĒl ʿElyon and ʾĒl Bēṯ-ʾĒl.[6] As such, El Shaddai can convey several different semantic relations between the two words, among them:[7] the deity of a place called Shaddai, a deity possessing the quality of shaddai and a deity who is also known by the name Shaddai.[6]

quote:

Third in frequency among divine names,[8] the name Shaddai appears 48 times in the Bible, seven times as "El Shaddai" (five times in Genesis, once in Exodus, and once in Ezekiel).

The first occurrence of the name comes in Genesis 17:1, "When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am El Shaddai; walk before me, and be blameless,'[9] Similarly, in Genesis 35:11 God says to Jacob, "I am El Shaddai: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins." According to Exodus 6:2–3 Shaddai was the name by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In the vision of Balaam recorded in the Book of Numbers 24:4 and 16, the vision comes from Shaddai, who is also referred to as El ("God") and Elyon ("Most High"). In the fragmentary inscriptions at Deir Alla, shaddayin[10] appear (Hebrew: שדין; the vowels are uncertain, as is the gemination of the "d"), perhaps lesser figurations of Shaddai.[11] These have been tentatively identified with the šēdim "demons" (Hebrew: שדים) of Deuteronomy 32:17 (parashah Haazinu) and Psalm 106: 37–38,[12] who are Canaanite deities.

The name "Shaddai" is often used in parallel to "El" later in the Book of Job, one of the oldest books of the Bible.[13]

Genesis 6:2 - 5 posted:

God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.

Wikipedia on "Yahweh" posted:

The oldest plausible occurrence of his name is in the Egyptian demonym tꜣ šꜣsw Yhwꜣ, "The Land of the Shasu YHWA," (Egyptian: 𓇌𓉔𓍯𓄿 Yhwꜣ) in an inscription from the time of Amenhotep III (1390–1352 BCE),[29][30] the Shasu being nomads from Midian and Edom in northern Arabia.[31] The dominant view is therefore that Yahweh was a "divine warrior from the southern region associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman".[5] There is considerable although not universal support for this view,[32] but it raises the question of how Yahweh made his way to the north.[33] An answer many scholars consider plausible is the Kenite hypothesis, which holds that traders brought Yahweh to Israel along the caravan routes between Egypt and Canaan.[34] This ties together various points of data, such as the absence of Yahweh from Canaan, his links with Edom and Midian in the biblical stories, and the Kenite or Midianite ties of Moses,[33] but its major weaknesses are that the majority of Israelites were firmly rooted in Palestine, while the historical role of Moses is problematic.[35] It follows that if the Kenite hypothesis is to be maintained, then it must be assumed that the Israelites encountered Yahweh (and the Midianites/Kenites) inside Israel and through their association with the earliest political leaders of Israel.[36]

Wikipedia on "El Shaddai" posted:

The first occurrence of the name comes in Genesis 17:1, "When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am El Shaddai; walk before me, and be blameless,'[9] Similarly, in Genesis 35:11 God says to Jacob, "I am El Shaddai: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins."

Wikipedia on "El Shaddai" posted:

The Hebrew noun shad (שד) means "breast".[19] Biblical scholar David Biale notes that of the six times that the name El Shaddai appears in the Book of Genesis, five are in connection with fertility blessings for the Patriarchs. He argues that this original understanding of Shaddai as related to fertility was forgotten by the later authors of Isaiah, Joel, and Job, who understood it as related to root words for power or destruction (thus explaining their later translation as "all-powerful" or "almighty").[20]

quote:

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE HEBREW DEITY-NAME EL SHADDAI.

Some time ago my attention was directed to an article written by M. de Jassy, and printed in The Monist for January 1908, wherein the writer sets forth the somewhat novel theory that many of the proper names, as well as other words found in the Hebrew Bible, had their origin in the Sanskrit language. I make no pretensions to a knowledge of Sanskrit, but I take it for granted that M. de Jassy is correct in his showing that certain word-forms are alike or similar in Sanskrit and in Hebrew, though there seems to be little to support his theory that Semitic names may be derived from Sanskrit originals. Rather I should say that where these similarities occur they are both derived from a common source, as the Egyptian, or Akkadian. But be that as it may, I shall for the present endeavor to show that our author is mistaken in his derivation of the Hebrew deity-name El Shaddai. M. de Jassy would derive this from the Hebrew shadad, "to destroy," and says that shad in Sanskrit also means "to destroy," "subdue," "vanquish," etc. After a careful examination of this and similar words in the Hebrew I find nothing to show that there is any connection between shad or shadad, "to destroy," "spoil," "conquer," and shad, "the female breast," aside from the purely accidental one of similarity in form and sound. It would be just as reasonable to suppose a common original for two words which might happen to be alike in our English, as for instance "hail," frozen vapor, and "hail," to call; or "lay," a song, and "lay," to place in a recumbent position. The Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance shows that shad, "the female breast," occurs about twenty times in our Hebrew Bible, while shadad, together with the shorter form pointed to be pronounced shöd), "to spoil," "destroy," "vanquish," is found about eighty times. I think it probable that the root of Shaddai is to be found in the Egyptian, whence it passed into Hebrew. It occurs forty-eight times in our Hebrew text, and is always rendered "Almighty" in the English translation.

In six instances it is preceded by El, and rendered "God Almighty," though "God the Nourisher" or "Provider" would more nearly represent the sense of the original. In Gen. xvii. 1, El Shaddai tells Abram, he will make a covenant with him, and will multiply him exceedingly; in chapter xxviii. 3, Isaac, on the occasion of sending his son Jacob to Padan-aram to find a wife, prays: "El Shaddai bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people"; in chapter xxxv. 11, we are told that God said to Jacob: "I am El Shaddai, be fruitful and multiply; a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come from thy loins," etc. In Gen. xlviii. 3, Jacob, on his deathbed, repeats this last promise of El Shaddai to his son Joseph, and in chapter xlix. 25, the name of Shaddai is invoked as the giver of blessings from the heavens above, the depths beneath, of the breasts and of the womb. See also Gen. xliii. 14, and Ex. vi. 3. Thus the name of Israel's God as El Shaddai is shown to relate chiefly to the maternal function of nursing, and beyond the idea of strength derived from nourishment, potency or power is foreign to the sense of the original.

ON THE ORIGIN posted:

The earliest ideas of divinity seem to have been centered in the female as reproducer, whence the worship was gradually transferred to the male as generator, first in the stellar and lunar, and at last in the solar stage. Then the cast out divinity of one cult became, as frequently occurs in history, the diabolos of another, and in Deut. xxx11. 17 we find shedim rendered as "devils." "They (Jeshurun, meaning Israel) sacrificed unto devils (shedim), not unto God (Eloah) ; unto gods (elohim) whom they knew not," and in Ps. cvi. 37 we read: "Yea, they (Israel) sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils (shedim)." This last would seem to indicate that at some former period Israel was not above offering human sacrifices to their imaginary gods. The deity-name El Shaddai always occurs in connection with those of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and is said to have been the only name by which he was known to them (Ex. vi. 3), the name JHVH being made known first of all to Moses at a much later date. This would indicate that the feminine principle was recognized as a factor in the nature of the Hebrew deity at that early period, though it was almost eliminated by the later Biblical writers. For though shad expresses femininity alone, in the form Shaddai the masculine principle also is suggested, the yad (i) being regarded by those versed in Hebrew mysticism as the expressor of the male divinity. To quote Laurence Oliphant (Scientific Religion, p. 449) : "It is a well-known rule of Semitic philology that similar consonants may be interchanged, one with another, this interchange effecting certain modulations in sense. Thus sibilants may be interchanged with sibilants, dentals with dentals, gutturals with gutturals, etc. Now in the case of shad we have a soft sibilant, sh, and a soft dental, d. Corresponding to sh we have two hard sibilants, both equivalent to our English s. Corresponding to d we have also two hard dentals rendered by the English t, the latter sometimes modified into th. These sibilants and dentals may be consequently interchanged with each other, the conversion of the soft consonant into the corresponding hard having just this simple but important effect,—it inverts the sense, either partly or wholly, according to whether one only or both the consonants are changed. A remarkable illustration of this rule is afforded by the word 'shiddah,' "a virtuous wife," and 'sittah,' "a wife who has gone astray."

Thus according to Kabbalistic teachings Shad represents the feminine nature in a good or legitimate sense, while Sat, or Set, becomes the type of the cast out divinity, derived by the Hebrews from Egyptian originals. Set, Seth, or Sut became not merely the opponent of the good Osiris but the incarnation of evil after his expulsion from the Egyptian pantheon, as is shown in the typology of Sothis, the Dog-star, the "dog" which let in the universal "flood" by going to sleep when she should have been on watch.

Analogous to these word-forms the opponents of the good Shaddai become, by the inversion of the first syllable only, the partly wicked Siddim, but by the final substitution of s and t for sh and do the wholly evil Set, amplified at length into Satan.

El Shaddai: The God with Breasts posted:

Rooted in a very old poetic tradition, the divine name Shaddai occurs 48 times in the Hebrew Bible and has traditionally been translated as Almighty. The early Hebrew ancestors of Israel “worshipped the supreme god under various appellations, such as El (as among the North Canaanites of Ugarit), (El-) ‘Elyon, (El-) Saddai” (Albright, p.191). Perhaps the deity’s name is related to Shaddai, a late Bronze Age Amorite city on the banks of the Euphrates River (in what is now northern Syria). It has been surmised that Shaddai was the god worshipped in this area, an area associated with Abraham’s home. It is “quite reasonable to suppose that the ancestors of the Hebrew brought it [Shaddai] with them from northwestern Mesopotamia to Palestine” (Albright, p.193). The early patriarchs and matriarchs then would have perceived Shaddai as their chief god.

In the sections of the Bible believed to have been written by priests (“P”) who incorporated ancient stories, Shaddai is always the name of the God of the Patriarchs, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whose name was changed to Yahweh in the time of Moses. “The theophany of Sinai then represents the end of the domination of the Shaddai concept and the beginning of the rule of Yahweh” (Albright, p.193). One of the objectives of the priestly source P was to assimilate into Yahweh all of the patriarchal gods, including the Canaanite El, hence the compound name El Shaddai.

Omnomnomnivore posted:

Could be both. Lots of mountains named after boobs in the world.

El Shaddai: The God With Breasts posted:

Modern scholarship identifies Shaddai with the Akkadian word sadu, “mountain.” Again, Albright cautions us: “A direct identification is, however, hardly possible because of fatal phonetic obstacles” (p.183). Biale contends that if El Shaddai was thought of as a mountain deity, then “why is he not attached to any specific mountainous sanctuary in the biblical texts?… Some have suggested that the utter lack of location characteristic of El Shaddai is simply a result of the Priestly theology in which God is universal” (pp.242-3). Certainly Shaddai was never connected to specific mountains such as Yahweh’s Sinai, Horeb, Zion and Moriah.

Albright suggests, along with other scholars, that Shaddai is derived more directly from the Hebrew word shadayim, “breasts” which in turn was derived from the Akkadian shadu, “breast.” This semantic possibility does not preclude the connection to mountainous heights. “Words for ‘breast’ often develop the meaning ‘elevation, mound, hill, mountain’; mountains shaped somewhat like breasts are frequently called ‘breast, two breasts’ in Arabic” (Albright, p.184). In fact immediately following Jacob’s blessing of breasts (Gen.48:3-4; 49:25) the text speaks of the blessings of ancient mountains; bounty of everlasting hills.

Wikipedia on "El Shaddai," under "Ugarit" posted:

Ugaritic primer lists zd as breast.[21] There is a DN Athtart-šd in Ugarit.[22] There are references to DNs (indicated by the kbkb star divine name determinative) ydd.w šd (possibly "beloved[23] & breast") & šmm w thm ("heaven & abyss") in KTU3 1.179:11.[24]

From the God of your ancestor, who supports you,

from Shadday who blesses you:

the blessings of Heaven above,

the blessings of Abyss crouching below;

the blessings of Breasts-and-Womb,

the blessings of your Father, warrior Most High;

the blessings of the Everlasting Mountains,

[the blessings] of the outlying Eternal Hills.’

This song makes clear the breasts-mountains connection and is parallel to Deut 33 and Jacob's blessing for Joseph.[25][26]

Ghost Leviathan posted:

It's really not uncommon for gods to have multiple, seemingly random and even contradictory domains and traits while being clearly considered the same god, depending on where, how and why you're worshiping them.

It's even iirc used to date particular myths and put them in context, as the way a god is depicted can potentially be connected to a particular era and region.

FreudianSlippers posted:

The God of the Bible is actually three gods in a celestial trenchcoat.

Mister Olympus posted:

Had one of those dreams where there's a new popular meme that only makes sense in the dream and I had to recreate it before I forgot it

Ghost Leviathan posted:

While I haven't read it in a long while, feels like it could be the royal we. Or talking to His angels.

quote:

And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

euphronius posted:

Magic doesn’t exist ??

Edit

Sorry thought this was the ufo thread. 🙏

bob dobbs is dead posted:

and its gotta be sanctioned! that's the difference between religion and witchcraft!

quote:

book of job was written 6th century bc, during the last stages of the katamari damacy ball-rolling, where indeed they were having trouble rolling up the apotropaic demons because the demons were usually considered to be evil spirits you're buying protection off of, mob boss-style

quote:

Ha-satan, the source of our modern Satan, derives from the root Sin-Tet-Nun, to act as an adversary, and thus may be translated, "the adversary."' The most recent translations printed by the Jewish Publication Society rightly avoid rendering ha-satan by the proper name, Satan. Without the definite article, satan may be simply "an adversary." The italicized satan indicates a Hebrew accent, emphasizing that we are dealing with a key word in a foreign system of beliefs. Unlike the modern Satan, this adversary is not represented as an independent evil being, but rather names a variety of opposing forces. We learn this from the earliest occurrences of the word in Numbers 22:22 and 22:32, when God places an angel in the way of Balaam as a satan against him. This satan is an adversary or a power of opposition sent by God, and is clearly not independent of Him. The evolution of satan and ha-satan is worth following through Samuel, Chronicles, and Zechariah, but would lead us too far afield.

quote:

Who or what is ha-satan, the adversary? Depending on context, and even within a single passage, this key word may be interpreted on several levels. First, "the adversary" can be read as a metaphysical force of evil or reversal, fate or accident, or as an evil being that accuses men and women before God. But this literal reading of ha-satan comes dangerously close to positing a dualistic distinction between God and evil. Second, "the adversary" can be viewed as being embodied in false friends. Third, moving further from the pshat or literal level, "the adversary" may be a part of oneself, an enemy within, perhaps the irrational impulses of the id—or the tyrannical commonplaces of the superego. Finally, through rhetorical analyses which extend the conclusions of previous methods, "the adversary" may be understood to represent a form of misguided language. False questions and assertions oppose those who strive for a dialogical relationship to God. As satan is an aspect of God, rather than His antithesis, so misguided language forms part of language in general. Satan becomes associated with deceptive rhetoric, especially when it asserts too much, or raises misleading questions. To decide that encounters with the adversary are only encounters with language, with oneself, or with other human beings, would be a humanistic reduction. Instead, we should leave all four levels of meaning open.

Star Man posted:

Does anyone have any juicy sources on archaeoastronomy?

Amateur naked eye astronomy was my starting point to getting into classics. I had to memorize it all out of a book in the late nineties, and helped me get a handle on myths related to constellations, stars, and the planets. That knowledge base has made me the weird humanities kid among a group of amateur astronomers with STEM backgrounds in my local amateur astronomy group.

Which to my surprise makes me stand out as one of the few people at star parties that knows where anything is without reference, how any of it correlates to other nearby constellations, and anything outside of Greco-Roman myth. So I would like to know more about anything, whether it's Greek, Roman, anywhere else from Europe, Egyptian, Chinese, Native American, etc.

feedmegin posted:

Presumably not the accepted Jewish or indeed Muslim explanation, how do they handle it?

"Magic, Religion, Materiality," by Gustavo Benavides posted:

Astral Magic in Babylonia, Erica Reiner 1995: Introduction posted:

quote:

The nobles are deep in sleep,
the bars (of the doors) are lowered, the bolts(?) are in place-
(also) the (ordinary) people do not utter a sound,
the(ir always) open doors are locked.
The gods and goddesses of the country-
Samas, Sin, Adad and Istar-
have gone home to heaven to sleep,
they will not give decisions or verdicts (tonight).

And the diviner ends:

quote:

May the great gods of the night:
shining Fire-star,
heroic Irra,
Bow-star, Yoke-star,
Orion, Dragon-star,
Wagon, Goat-star,
Bison-star, Serpent-star
stand by and
put a propitious sign
in the lamb I am blessing now
for the haruspicy I will perform (at dawn).

One of the rare prayers from Mesopotamia that strike a responsive chord in a modern reader, this prayer, or rather lyric poem, is known among Assyriologists as 'Prayer to the Gods of the Night.' The Gods of the Night of the title is but the translation of the Akkadian phrase that appears in line 14 of this poem and in the incipit of various other versions of the prayer.

The Gods of the Night, as their enumeration in this poem shows, are the stars and constellations of the night sky. How prevalent is the appeal to stellar deities, and to what extent and in what circumstances are the gods and goddesses worshipped in Mesopotamia considered under their stellar manifestations, is the subject I wish to treat here.

Mad Hamish posted:

Look, no-one ever said that Ap/ep is smart.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Ah, sorry, I've got no idea myself, just observations. Just saying that there's a lot of potential reasons for what seem like incongruities to us, and I've always found the kind of domains and aspects of polytheism interesting.

Mad Hamish posted:

There's an entertaining bit in Pratchett's Pyramids where all the Gods who are the Sun God get into a big fight over the actual Sun, because it turns out that it being the Eye of Horus, the Aten, a flaming orb being pushed across the sky by a dung-beetle, Re in the Boat of Millions of Years, and gods only know what else, all at the same time, presents some logistical difficulties.

quote:

According to the Frankforts, "ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians"—the Frankforts' area of expertise—"lived in a wholly mythopoeic world".[7] Each natural force, each concept, was a personal being from their viewpoint: "In Egypt and Mesopotamia the divine was comprehended as immanent: the gods were in nature."[8] This immanence and multiplicity of the divine is a direct result of mythopoeic thought: hence, the first step in the loss of mythopoeic thought was the loss of this view of the divine. The ancient Hebrews took this first step through their doctrine of a single, transcendent God:

quote:

"When we read in Psalm 19 that 'the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork,' we hear a voice which mocks the beliefs of the Egyptians and Babylonians. The heavens, which were to the psalmist but a witness of God's greatness, were to the Mesopotamians the very majesty of godhead, the highest ruler, Anu. [...] The God of the psalmists and the prophets was not in nature. He transcended nature — and transcended, likewise, the realm of mythopoeic thought."[8]

The ancient Hebrews still saw each major event as a divine act. However, they saw the divine as a single being—not a myriad of spirits, one for each natural phenomenon. Moreover, they didn't see the divine as a will within nature: for them, the divine will was a force or law behind all natural events.

Some Greek philosophers went further. Instead of seeing each event as an act of will, they developed a notion of impersonal, universal law: they finally abandoned mythopoeic thought, postulating impersonal laws behind all natural phenomena.[7] These philosophers may not have been scientific by today's rigid standards: their hypotheses were often based on assumptions, not empirical data.[9] However, by the mere fact that they looked behind the apparent diversity and individuality of events in search of underlying laws, and defied "the prescriptive sanctities of religion", the Greeks broke away from mythopoeic thought.[9]

quote:

Religious scholar Robert Segal has pointed out that the dichotomy between a personal and an impersonal view of the world is not absolute, as the Frankforts' distinction between ancient and modern thought might suggest: "Any phenomenon can surely be experienced as both an It and a Thou: consider, for example, a pet and a patient."[7] Furthermore, Segal argues, it is "embarrassingly simplistic" to call the ancient Near East "wholly mythopoeic", the Hebrews "largely nonmythopoeic", and the Greeks "wholly scientific".[7]

Before Philosophy posted:

Enough has already been said about the central importance of the sun in this scene. Something must be said about his motive power on his daily journey. Most commonly he is depicted as moving by boat, and the bilateral symmetry which the Egyptian loved gave him a boat for the day and another boat for the night. Various important gods formed the crews of these two boats. This journey might not be all stately and serene: there was a serpent lurking along the way to attack the boat and presumably swallow the sun; battle was necessary to conquer this creature. This is, of course, the common belief in many lands that eclipses occur when a snake or dragon swallows up the sun. But a true eclipse was not the only phenomenon involved; every night an attempt to swallow up the sun was met and conquered in the underworld.

The sun might have other motive power. It seemed to be a rolling ball, and the Egyptians knew a rolling ball in that pellet which the dung beetle pushed across the sand. So a beetle, a scarab, became a symbol for the morning sun, with an afternoon counterpart in an old man wearily moving toward the western horizon. Again, the symbol of the falcon soaring in apparent motionlessness in the upper air suggested that the sun disc also might have falcon wings for its effortless flight. As before, these concepts were felt to be complementary and not conflicting. The possession of many manifestations of being enlarged the glory of the god.

To move the concept of the sun even farther from the physical, from the notion of a fiery disc which swung around the earth every twenty-four hours, we must here note other aspects of the sun-god, Ré. As supreme god, he was a divine king, and legend said that he had been the first king of Egypt in primordial times. He was thus represented in the form of a bearded deity with a disc as his crown. As supreme god, he loaned himself to other gods, in order to enlarge them and give them a primacy within geographical or functional limits. Thus he was both Ré and Ré-Atun, the creator god, at Heliopolis. He was Ré-Harakhte, that is, Ré-Horus-of-the-Horizon, as the youth- ful god on the eastern horizon. At various localities he became Montu-Ré, a falcon-god, Sobek-Ré, a crocodile-god, and Khnum-Ré, a ram-god. He became Amon-Ré, King of the Gods, as the imperial god of Thebes. As we have said, these separate manifestations enlarged him. He was not simply a solar disc. He had personality as a god. Here we revert again to the distinction between the scientific concept of a phenomenon as ‘It’ and the ancient concept of a phenomenon as ‘Thou’ given in chapter I. There it was said that science is able to comprehend the ‘It’ as ruled by laws which make its behaviour relatively predictable, whereas the “Thou’ has the unpredictable character of an individual, ‘a presence known only in so far as it reveals itself.’ In these terms the apparently antic and protean character of the sun becomes simply the versatile and ubiquitous reach possible to a very able individual. Surprise at this being’s many-sided personality may ultimately give way to an expectation that he will be able to participate in any situation with specialized competence.

Edward P. Butler posted:

Polytheism is essentially maximal diversity in maximal solidarity.

Wikipedia posted:

The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth is a book-length essay on the nature of poetic myth-making by the English writer Robert Graves. First published in 1948, the book is based on earlier articles published in Wales magazine; corrected, revised and enlarged editions appeared in 1948, 1952 and 1961. The White Goddess represents an approach to the study of mythology from a decidedly creative and idiosyncratic perspective. Graves proposes the existence of a European deity, the "White Goddess of Birth, Love and Death", much similar to the Mother Goddess, inspired and represented by the phases of the Moon, who lies behind the faces of the diverse goddesses of various European and pagan mythologies.[1] Graves argues that "true" or "pure" poetry is inextricably linked with the ancient cult-ritual of his proposed White Goddess and of her son.

zoux posted:

Is this just a byproduct of monotheism vs polytheism?

quote:

Other than Zoroastrianism, were there other monotheistic non-Abrahamic religions?

Orbs posted:

Not just the missionary impulse, but also the imperialist impulse, I think. Christianity getting wrapped up as the official state religion of Rome was one of the best (in terms of recruitment) and worst (in terms of the actual intended message and work) things that ever happened to Christianity historically.

SlothfulCobra posted:

I don't really know if anyone has really put together big theories for why specifically all that sprung forth from a relatively small place and group of people.

zoux posted:

The structure of mono- vs. polytheism would point to it, if you're part of a polytheistic tradition, and those guys over there say they worship a different god, your worldview allows for that. If you believe in one and only one God, well, those guys are worshipping demons. I just think it's weird that you don't have competing non-Abrahamic monotheistic religions, you don't see a lot of other monotheistic religions through history, period.

Gaius Marius posted:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monotheism/#MonOri

Just read this if you guys are interested. It's clear that this thread is totally out of it's depth on this.

quote:

Most mainstream Old Testament scholars believe that the religion of the early Israelites was neither monotheistic nor polytheistic but “monolatrous.” While the existence of other gods was not denied, Israel was to worship no god but Yahweh.

quote:

It is therefore no accident that polytheistic systems often end up elevating one god or principle to the supreme position, and reinterpreting the others as its agents or manifestations; they become, in other words, essentially monotheistic.

SlothfulCobra posted:

It's also not like polytheism totally prevents religious conflict either; while it sure is nice and convenient where everybody just decides that somebody else's gods are either different names for their own or distant members of the same pantheon that are being worshipped in a weird and funky way, that is not the only possible response, and there's plenty of room to cause offenses over taboos. There were five sacred wars over Delphi.

cheetah7071 posted:

if you define religious war narrowly as 'a war that is exclusively about religion' then they're quite rare yeah; but I think it's more useful, probably, to define them as 'wars that are at least partially about religion', or 'wars that the wagers conceive of in religious terms more than they do with other wars'