Religions merging?

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Edit:

I started this thread about the legend of 'Lilith', but other interesting points have been raised about various religions merging into others.

End Edit.

This is from a part of the 'Bashing Religions' thread.

To be honest I don't know much about this but it has been claimed that Lilith was distorted and used by anti-christian feminists to push their political goals.

Some websites claim that lilith is a type of demon so there are many liliths.

The invention of a German-Jew

Does anyone know more about this?

[ June 28, 2005, 16:04: Message edited by: Cesard the Fir Bolg ]

 

A friend of mine gave me a short scripture thematizing Lilith some years ago.

What I can recall of it was already mentioned by someone in the "Bashing Religion" thread -- Myth I think.

It was said Lilith was created to be Adam's wife, and like him God made her of clay. She seemed, for some undue reason , have a issues with being subservient to her husband, thereby rebelling against God's order and was banished from his good graces and cast out. Humble Eve then entered the stage.

For this act of rebellion against God Lilith was granted dominion over some realm in Hell by the Fallen Angels.

Nothing new, I suppose. Still, I find the idea of the Lilith character intriguing.

 

http://www.deliriumsrealm.com/delirium/mythology/lilith.asp

 

This is normal, after all every myth creates a different image of her, this image transforms and evolves from one shape to another thus gaining different features and functions. You know that there are many images of satan, as well as many demons which all initialy spring from one and the same heathen deity (like Baal, who was initialy a babylonian god of the rain, was taken by christianity and converted into a demon.) These metamorphoses are most often based on the hatred between the folks and on misunderstanding of foregin rituals - in the case of B(h)aal the judean people misunderstood the role played by infants in the worship ceremony and thus made up the story of the human-devouring demon, who wants infants as sacrifice. The same misunderstanding is with the purpose of the Ziggurat (spelling?) transformed into the famous babylon tower, and the worship of Ishtar, which gave birth to the christian vision of the travesty of babylonians. Examples could go on and on, but I think these are enough. With all this said I do not think that there is any priblem for Lilith to be both an assyrian deity, transformed into a christian demon and Adam's first wife - it's just two different paths of evolution for the same image. Plus, we have a later attempt of combining the demon and the wife into one with the legend of the unfaithful wife banished from heaven and punished by god.
As for the control over the lives of infants - this theme is also nothing too original.Ancient people always found the reason for illness and death in supernatural forces and so many chtonic deities were created feared and worshiped. In addition, those deities were mostly female, since (as you know) mythology is created by men, it more or less considers female nature a complete mystery, which bears both the positive mystery of birthgiving and the negative one of disaster (remember Pandora). Therefore sickness and death are most often female deities.
So, to draw the line, we have a sickness (the unstable condition of infants in the first days of their life), now we need a reason for this phainomenon, which is (of course) supernatural - a female deity and we need an identity, someone to take the responsibility and the power - an already existing deity - Lilith. Another feature is added to her portrait another role for her in mythology.

 

Yes it seems that a lot of Sumerian mythology makes its way into the Bible, but also Celtic mythology has made its way into the Catholic church with the 'GreenMans' image carved into the bricks and stones. I always thought this was strange as he was the fertility god and I did not know what this has to do with the Catholic Church.

 

I read somewhere that Yaweeh/Jehova himself is, in name and as a deity, the result of a merging of four older (assyrian, sumerian?) gods. Their combined names (or just their prefixes?) made up his name, their attributes rolled into one created him as a divine being. Or so his origins were explained.

Sadly, I cant find that site anymore.
Does anyone know more about this?

I hope you dont mind me asking this question in your thread, Cesard.

 

Not at all Dendri. I will change the name of the topic.

 

Are we talking about religions merging or deities merging? IIRC, the Catholic church has made some efforts to heal the schism between themselves and the Eastern Orthodox churches, uniting into the church that theoretically existed after the death of Christ. I say that any unifying force is likely to be a good thing -- it's better to bring people together than drive them apart!

On the topic of deities, most religious scholars note that the nature of God as described in holy texts changes over time, usually as the culture in question comes into contact with other cultures. It is my understanding that several Psalms are derived from the prayers of other religions. The writer just cut out the name of whatever deity was there and replaced it with "Lord" or some other reference to Yaweh.

In a similar vein, Christ was described in very martial terms when he was presented to Germanic and Nordic audiences, and in agricultural terms when presented to agricultural cultures. As Paul said, "I am all things to all men", which I interpret to mean that he was willing to use whatever teaching tool was necessary to get his ideas across to his audience.

 

So... this would not let me rest. The site I learned of this theory in the first place I could not find, but this will do:

Whether its reputable I cannot tell. Sounds interesting though.

Wikipedia has something on a levantine god called Yaw or Yam - the precedessor of Yahweh?

I would have linked to the pages, alas SP wouldnt permit it. Parenthesis in html tag or somesuch.

If there is something to it, I think it interesting we can track the jewish and christian religions back to mesopotamian/babylonian/assyrian/whatever gods and their cults.

 

I'm not sure if the idea of mutiny over submission to the husband isn't perhaps a reflection of poor understanding of scriptural passages about gender roles in marriage. In the New Testament, wives are called to submit to their husbands as the Church does to Christ but husbands are called to love them as Christ loves the Church, that is up to the point of dying for them, which is specifically articulated.

In short:

H: Submit, woman!
W: Get crucified, buddy.

 

Basically, Chev is right. The Husband presides over the home, but if he is out of line (abusive, adulterous, negligent, or otherwise unrighteous) the wife is obligated to call him on it. That's right, if the man's being an *******, the wife is obligated to get on his case about it!

 

@dendri
The name 'Jehovah' is relatively recent - it was created by adding the vowels of 'adonai' into the hebrew name for God - YHWH (hebrew writing does not use vowels). The name YHWH goes back to the time of Moses.
The Jewish religion predates the Assyrian empire, although Solomon introduced Ashtoreth worship to the Jewish community. Possibly the 'supreme male deity' is Baal - they were often worshipped together.

 

Im not even going to attempt to pretend I know anything in this area, but I think Dendri's quote identifies that YHWH as representing four 'beings' or gods. The name Jehovah came later as Elm rightly points out. Any ideas on where the name YHWH came from I'll respect that until I know better

I read somewhere (I think in the Hirem Key) that there was strong cause to believe that YHWH was a form of Seth (roughly Egyption god of war). However there are many different explanations on the subject and none of them may be right.

As for religions merging... well it happens. For a small sect to gain supporters, it needs to have an appeal to people already entrenched in their own religions. If it didnt then either it would have to be very very persausive or be enforced on the populations of any given area. For example, Christianity origianlly came in many different sects, quite a few of which had gnostic views, until the 'Catholic' sect gained influence with secular rulers and took a more literal interpretaion of their scriptures. They then suppressed other sects as heretics (originally meaning 'choice' IIRC) but I'm getting side tracked Catholcism adopted pagan holidays such as Christmas (25th Dec) and Easter (Good Friday and Easter Sunday) as a means of gaining more converts by using existing traditions. Thats one very obvious merging of religions.

I would like to hear if my supposed facts are incorrect... so if anybody has any info aaginst my post then please let me know

 

According to the old testament, YHWH was the name God gave to Moses when he asked who he should say sent him (Exodus 3:14). It means "I AM"
I don't know of any non-biblical evidence for this, however.

The suppression of other 'sects' started while Christians were still being persecuted - ie, before they had any influence.
The original evangelists were very persuasive - they were willing to (and did) die for their cause. It was only after Constantine was converted that pagan holidays/rituals were used - among other things which have been generally bad for Christianity.
Easter itself is believed to be around the time of Jesus death (around the time of Passover), although Christmas was originally a pagan celebration.

Sorry if we're getting off topic here.
Back on topic:
Apparently when the Jews were exiled in Babylon they incorporated parts of the Babylonian religion into their faith. It didn't change much of their outlook, as the Babylonians were essentially dualistic, not monotheistic, and the Jews didn't change the essential points of their belief.

 

Still abit but I was referring to YHWH possibly being based on Seth and not that the name means Seth

Well, the Easter holiday may be a purely Christian invention though I still think it was a pagan absoption.

As far as I know, you are right Christians were persecuted on the whole before official adoption of Christianity in the Empire. What I was referring to was that once one particular sect of Christians (that which eventually became the Catholic Church) had secular backing, they could enforce their own more literalist interpretation of the Bible (they even selected which gospels to use and banned others that had strong gnostic references, an example of such scriptures are the Nag Hamadi sp? scrolls). This included violent eradication of all other Christian sects that did not conform to Catholic doctrine. Yes they were persecuted by pagans before Constantine but the level of persecution of non-Catholic ones increased when they got 'into power'.

 

Easter adopted from Beltane (pronounced Bel-tan-na for non gaelic speakers) - an Irish holiday in worship of the god Bel or Belinus, which the fertility season to the celts - unfortuantely now celebrated by silly wiccans. Rabbits were considered the ultimate symbol of fertility (can anyone guess why?), so thats where the 'Easter bunny' comes form.

According to the 'Book of Invasions' the Celts are decended from Noah's 3rd son Japhet after the Great Flood, but this is probably just another Christianized piece of early Irish mythology.

Edit

Corrected by Myth - cheers
No offense to silly wiccans

[ July 01, 2005, 16:03: Message edited by: Cesard the Fir Bolg ]

 

Strange, I thought I read somewhere that Celts were the descendants of Japhet (the third son of Noah)... hmm.

About easter - it is clearly no christian invention. Christianity hardly invented anything (even the Holy Trinity), rather collected elements from many different ancient mythologies and combined them in the proper way. The whole resurrection thingie is nothing new either - anyone who has ever dabbled with Zoroastrism knows about the life death and resurrection of Ahura Mazda's prophet and "saviour" - Zaratustra. As a whole the religious image of Jesus Christ is based almost entirely on the myths about Zaratustra, so, as you see, he is by far not the first resurrector in the history of religion and mythology.
Going back in time we see the Eleusinian mysteries, based on the myth about Persephone's "resurrection" from the underworld - a celebration firmly connected to the rising of nature after a long winter and the growing fertility of the new spring. A celebration of mental and corporal cleansing and preparation for the new year for cultivatingthe earth.
Even further back we come to the myth about the murder and revival of Osiris again connected to the changing of seasons, and the egyptian festival based on it (sorry, forgot the name)
So, again we have a christian celebration, which descends from a long line of similar mythological events, all of them based on the resurrection of nature after winter, and the hopes and prayers for fertility in the new year.

What I find strange here is our local pagan ritual of colouring eggs in red, which, according to folklore, existed long before the christianisation of Bulgaria. According to it eggs are coloured in red only and kept for the whole year until the next celebration, when they are burried in the ground, or, more likely in the cultivated farmland. Again the purpose here is fertility and protection for the crops from evil forces. There seems to be a connection with the christian ritual, but on the other hand there is no certain evidence that the ritual I am talking about is THAT old. It is not certain whether christianity adopted it or bulgarians adopted the christian ritual in their pagan times. Anyway, it is curious.

 

@Malovae
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear on the persecution point. What I was referring to was the fact that many of the sects were made 'illegal' by mainstream Christian leaders well before they had state backing, although admittedly the Christian empire changed things a lot.

The time of the easter celebration is correct with Jewish passover. The easter bunny stuff I don't know about. It's not a Christian doctrine, although it's probably a Christendom tradition.