Real Polytheism

[Harel13]

The myth was written down in medieval times but the complicated meaning did not need to be written down anywhere. It is clear to anyone following this path today. It is not in isolation but interconnects with the mythology of the people created it. It connects with the archeology and the symbols we have. Something does not have to be written down to be true.

Excellent, you're proving my point. We don't have evidence of complexity of religion from the ancients (and yes, one could probably make the same argument about Judaism in Tanach. However, I don't think the same same argument can be said about Second Temple era Judaism, and that's still in times paralleling to some of the polytheistic religions I mentioned). My theory is that our seeing layers and layers of meaning stems from a mentality instilled in us from our abrahamic-monotheism-rooted culture. The want of deepness likely always existed everywhere - but that doesn't mean that such depths manifested in every religion. Because at the same time, not everyone had the energy or was interested in 'wasting' energy on going deeper. Some stories were just stories! I'm glad that you find deeper meaning in them (I think that reflects a certain positive thirst within mankind), but that doesn't mean that they were necessarily invented for that deeper meaning.

It is just not correct.

As I am welcome to mine, so too are you welcome to yours. I don't believe I have stated on this thread outright that you are wrong; only having questioned your views (I have always emphasized that this is a theory of mine, and here I am doing my best to defend it). I would expect the same courtesy, but I guess I expected too much.
Have a good day.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I don't believe monotheism evolved out of polytheism. According to Judaism, it was the other way around. However, this is less about how monotheism came about and more about the core of the "Abrahamic" religions, being that they revolve around texts that I think demand a more complex system of thought, whilst polytheistic religions - at least those that I first mentioned in this thread, namely the Greco-Roman, Egyptian and 'biblical' ones (Mesopotamian, etc) - do not.

I happened to be doing some random bible reading, and I came across Acts passage, which seemed possibly relevant

Acts 17:23 - For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

So in trying to figure out how biblical religion came to first spread , the kind of thing that apparently enters the picture might be this idea of an unknown, textless god actually, that apparently paul (or god) was hoping that people would come to discover more about through mere inference or intuition. So one can assume that for all of the idols or known gods discussed in the chapter, there probably was discourse and text, unlike what we get with this mysterious 'unknown god.'

This raises various concerns, since inference/intuition does not seem to have a textual root, despite the new christian world eventually being able to read the bible , and take some sort of instruction from it , and as well the fact that I can't see how the idea of a resurrecting son of God can be intuited. With much ease anyway. All this setting aside that fact that earlier in the chapter, the greeks apparently take paul to be preaching a form of polytheism

 

[amorphous_constellation]

As well , the whole idea of faith itself seems to have more congruency with the promotion of an unknown , textless god. The chapter notes that random people just up and followed paul after the discussion, having probably never having heard the name of moses , or any other biblical prophet. And so conversely, they left behind some known tradition of their own gods