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What God in each major ancient civilization is closest to the one supreme God?

Which ancient society had a concept of God closest to that of Israelite or Christian religion?

  • Egypt

    Votes: 3 27.3%
  • Sumer

    Votes: 2 18.2%
  • India

    Votes: 5 45.5%
  • China

    Votes: 3 27.3%

  • Total voters
    11
  • Poll closed .

Rakovsky

Active Member
civiliz1.gif

The four major oldest civilizations

800px-Silk_route.jpg


Topic Questions for each civilization


What was their civilization like in a brief summary?

Did they have technology that would be considered advanced by our current standards?

Did they or a major portion of them have a version of monotheism?

Which was their God who was most like the supreme Abrahamic one, and what was that God like?

What is the meaning or etymology for NTR, DINGIR, Brahman, Di/Tien, or their other main concept of God?

If they had more than one such God, which was the earliest?

What were their rituals for worshiping this deity?

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Next I will write a bit about the poll:
 
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jeager106

Learning more about Jehovah.
Premium Member
Awwwww. Really?
Your long and complicated question requires a long, researched, answer.
I ain't gonna.
 

Rakovsky

Active Member
For the poll:

I am really looking for basic monotheism in asking this question.

Egypt
The Egyptian word for God, NTR, according to some Egyptologists like EA Budge, NTR (the hieroglyphic for Neter) was sometimes used by itself in texts without identification with any specific god of the Egyptian Pantheon. Thus they propose that Egyptians not only identified "gods", but also had a concept of simply God Himself. There are several other evidences for the theory that many Egyptians were familiar with the concept of God Himself. In the Bible several times Egyptian pharaohs acknowledge "God", the indication being that they were aware of the true God. One instance was when a good pharaoh favored Joseph, in Genesis 41:
"And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art".

When Christianity came to Egypt in the first few centuries AD, the name for "God" in the Egyptian Christians' Bibles was the 1st century Egyptian word for NTR/Neter, which by that time had dropped the R and become Noute in 1st century Egyptian speech.

Justin Martyr in the 2nd century AD wrote about the monotheism of the Greek Pythagoras, refererencing Pythagoras' time in Egypt in connection with it:
And Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, who expounded the doctrines of his own philosophy, mystically by means of symbols, as those who have written his life show, himself seems to have entertained thoughts about the unity of God not unworthy of his foreign residence in Egypt.
http://st-takla.org/books/en/ecf/001/0010629.html

See also Justin Martyr's discussion on Moses teaching religion to Egyptians: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-hortatory.html

However, Egyptian religion in general involved idolatry and beliefs in many gods, even though there was a common belief that the gods were just manifestations of the one true God.

Sumer
There is a common theory that Israel's stories in Genesis about the Creation, the Flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah came from Sumerian and Babylonian mythology.
Yahweh's shorter name is simply "Yah", as he is called a few times like in Jeremiah. Yah was a Semitic deity that corresponded with the Babylonian deity Ea.
Also, "El", the Hebrew word for God correlates to the Babylonian El or Sumerian god "Enlil". In turn, the Babylonian religion's foundations was based in Sumerian mythology. Still, the Israelite monotheistic concept could be much different.

Indus Valley
Hinduism also has a monotheistic concept whereby the gods are manifestations of the one true God.
However, Hinduism also has idols and the legendary detailed earthly lives of the various gods sounds quite different than Judaism's monotheism. It's true that Christianity has a biography of Jesus on earth, but Jesus has a definitely different biography on earth than the Hindu gods.

China
This is interesting. Apparently statues of Shang Di or Huang Ti are rare, and were not in the main temple they used like at the Temple of Heaven. They had animal sacrifice there once a year to God, like the Hebrew temple. Some Christian missionaries to China find a close correlation between concepts of God in the times of ancient China and ancient Israel.

Next I will give my own try at answers to the questions in the OP.
 

Rakovsky

Active Member
Awwwww. Really?
Your long and complicated question requires a long, researched, answer.
I ain't gonna.

Jeager,

I understand. I posed the questions to help me organize thinking about the earliest civilizations in their understanding of God. It will help arrive at basic building blocks of thinking about God.

You do not have to provide any answers, or if you like you can just write about those that you are familiar with.
 

Rakovsky

Active Member
What, no Zoroastrian(Persian/Iranian) option? They were monotheistic as far back as 1500BCE. To put this in perspective, the earliest we can place Judaism with any confidence is around 1000BCE.
Nietzsche,
I know what you mean, so feel free to answer the questions using Iran/Persia as a topic. The ancient Greeks (Zeus) and Turkic peoples (Tengrism) could also be topics.

The latest civilization I mentioned in the OP was China, as the Shang Dynasty dates from 1500-1000 BC or so.

Zoroaster is considered to have lived in the period of 1000 to 500 BC who was a major reformer of the Persians' religion. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism#Classical_antiquity)
Before Zoroaster, there was a mythology of ancient Persia. That ancient period that preceded Zoroaster would be more what I am interested in for the OP.
 

jeager106

Learning more about Jehovah.
Premium Member
Jeager,

I understand. I posed the questions to help me organize thinking about the earliest civilizations in their understanding of God. It will help arrive at basic building blocks of thinking about God.

You do not have to provide any answers, or if you like you can just write about those that you are familiar with.

O.K.
I believe in a Higher Power. I call H.P. "God" as it's a simple term that everyone can
understand.
I'm also an alcoholic in recovery. A belief in a H.P. is essential to recovery from addiction.
Alcoholism can be an inherited trait and is most certain something that is apparent in
males in my family background. Booze led to early deaths in nearly all of them.
I'm in A.A. recovery and we pray before and after each A.A. meeting.
We are encouraged to find a "god" of our understanding. No one in recovery
will ever suggest one higher power as being greater or better than one's own conception
of such.
I pray daily and give thanks to H.P. for keeping me sober.
I'm now severely diabetic.
Drink = death.
PERIOD!
There are NO atheists in foxholes or recovery from the deadly disease of addiction.
 

Aštra’el

Aštara, Blade of Aštoreth
When it comes to Sumero-Babylonian mythology, Marduk in my opinion seems the most like the biblical YHWH. Not New Testament YHWH, but Old Testament YHWH. Destructive, bàdass YHWH.

In the Babylonian creation myth (The Enûma Elîs) Marduk becomes a savior of the gods when he sets out as their champion to do combat against their primordial predecessor, Tiamat, who was the monstrous embodiment of the primordial waters and primeval chaos. Marduk soars into battle in his "storm chariot", pulled by four powerful creatures, and defeats the draconic Tiamat. Order emerges triumphant over Chaos, and Marduk rearranges the cosmos and becomes the supreme god. In biblical myth, YHWH recounts how he destroyed the draconic Leviathan, who, like Tiamat, is associated with primordial waters and primordial chaos. In various Old Testament myths, YHWH soars through the sky in his "storm chariot", surrounded by four powerful Living Creatures. Genesis actually begins with YHWH arranging the cosmos and bringing Order to Chaos. Ever wonder what would have happened before that? Is it really "In the beginning", or could it be more along the lines of "In a beginning"?


 
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Rakovsky

Active Member
When it comes to Sumero-Babylonian mythology, Marduk in my opinion seems the most like the biblical YHWH. Not New Testament YHWH, but Old Testament YHWH. Destructive, bàdass YHWH.

In the Babylonian creation myth (The Enûma Elîs) Marduk becomes a savior of the gods when he sets out as their champion to do combat against their primordial predecessor, Tiamat, who was the monstrous embodiment of the primordial waters and primeval chaos. Marduk soars into battle in his "storm chariot", pulled by four powerful creatures, and defeats the draconic Tiamat. Order emerges triumphant over Chaos, and Marduk rearranges the cosmos and becomes the supreme god. In biblical myth, YHWH recounts how he destroyed the draconic Leviathan, who, like Tiamat, is associated with primordial waters and primordial chaos. In various Old Testament myths, YHWH soars through the sky in his "storm chariot", surrounded by four powerful Living Creatures. Genesis actually begins with YHWH arranging the cosmos and bringing Order to Chaos. Ever wonder what would have happened before that? Is it really "In the beginning", or could it be more along the lines of "In a beginning"?
Nice recounting.
The Babylonian myth of Marduk attacking Tiamat (blue above) includes the cutting of Tiamat into halves. Some scholars correlate this to the blue part below:

Genesis 1 begins:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 7 Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.
The story of Genesis was written generations before King David of 1000 BC. The Babylonian myth would have preceded that, I think. It would have been a common theme in Mesopotamian Creation stories. I think that the writers of Genesis were holding their own religious ideology distinct from and influenced by Sumerian and other Mesopotamian myths. In Genesis 1 there are no clearly described "gods" other than the one Gods (Elohim) himself.

My own impression is that they were "historicizing myth" as one scholar put it. In this explanation, the writers of Genesis did not believe that the waters of chaos had their own "goddess" named Tiamat, but rather that there was an element called the Deep, Tehom, like other elements that God divided or otherwise organized as you said.
The Three-Story Universe

From N. F. Gier, God, Reason, and the Evangelicals
(University Press of America, 1987),

...
In the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish, the sky is made from the body of Tiamat, the goddess of watery chaos. The victorious god Marduk splits "her like a shellfish into two parts: half of her he set up and ceiled it as sky, pulled down the bar and posted guards. He bade them to allow not her waters to escape."

In Genesis 1:1 we find the linguistic equivalent of Tiamat in the Hebrew word tehom ("the deep"), and the threat of watery chaos is ever present in the Old Testament. Evangelical F. F. Bruce agrees that "tehom is probably cognate with Tiamat," and Clark Pinnock admits that Yahweh also "quite plainly...fought with a sea monster" and that the model of the battle is a Babylonian one.(22) The psalmists describe it in graphic terms: "By thy power thou didst cleave the sea-monster in two, and broke the dragon's heads above the waters; thou didst crush the many-headed Leviathan, and threw him to the sharks for food" (Ps. 74:13-14 NEB; cf. Job 3:8; Isa. 27:1).

...When Dillow claims, and rightly so, that Moses wrote of a sovereign Yahweh completely in charge of a depersonalized nature, he is conceding that the Hebrew writers, as with our example of the Sumerian chronologies, were historicizing myth.
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/gre13.htm
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
Next I will write a bit about the poll:

Any. Every god, including Christian, Islam, and Judaism, are supreme god/s of their time (and what people believe today). Each are supreme in their own rights. So, what is there to compare it to when there is no supreme god over all? God is just god.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Indus Valley
Hinduism also has a monotheistic concept whereby the gods are manifestations of the one true God.
However, Hinduism also has idols and the legendary detailed earthly lives of the various gods sounds quite different than Judaism's monotheism.
The monotheistic concept in Hinduism is comparatively recent. We thought of Brahman (which is different from the Abrahamic Gods) perhaps around 1000 BC. The Vaishnava sects (including Hare-Krishnas, Vishnu as Krishna as the principal God and his avataras) thought came up not earlier than the beginning of the Christian era. The older systems Aryan or Indigenous were polytheistic and that is still the main-line Hindu thought.

As for your other questions:
What was their civilization like in a brief summary?: Agrarian localized economy.
Did they have technology that would be considered advanced by our current standards?: Sufficient appropriate technology. As advanced as any other civilization or more in Mathematics, Astronomy, Metallurgy or Medicine and Surgery.
Did they or a major portion of them have a version of monotheism?: No.
Which was their God who was most like the supreme Abrahamic one, and what was that God like?: We have a triad. Shiva, Vishnu and Mother Goddess. Each one is supreme for his/her devotees, Shivas, Vaishnavas and Shaktas. The existence of other God/Goddess is/was never denied.
What is the meaning or etymology for Brahman?:
Brahma means the universe, and Brahman is supposed to be its cause.
If they had more than one such God, who was the earliest?: All the three are very old, as old as any other God concept in the world. Vishnu was an Aryan Gods. He incorporated the indigenous Gods (eight avataras) into himself. Buddha was added later to make it nine. The tenth, Kalki, is prophesied to come 426,000 years from now. Shiva, the indigenous God, incorporated Aryan God Rudra into himself. No change in Mother Goddess concept.
What were their rituals for worshiping this deity?: In case of Hinduism - these deities. :) Invoke through prayers, honor through rituals, make your request, take their blessings (prasada) and thank them for their visit.
 
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Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
I'm with Nietzsche on this.

Although Mazda Ahura isn't all-powerful, he is all-knowing, the Creator and Sustainer, the Cosmic Final Judge, gave Zarathustra the revelation, no other Gods, has six Amesha Spentas (divine emanations) etc.


But don't worry, I'm not gonna abuse my mod powers to add 'Persia' into the poll ;)
 
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Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
Nietzsche,
I know what you mean, so feel free to answer the questions using Iran/Persia as a topic. The ancient Greeks (Zeus) and Turkic peoples (Tengrism) could also be topics.

The latest civilization I mentioned in the OP was China, as the Shang Dynasty dates from 1500-1000 BC or so.

Zoroaster is considered to have lived in the period of 1000 to 500 BC who was a major reformer of the Persians' religion. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism#Classical_antiquity)
Before Zoroaster, there was a mythology of ancient Persia. That ancient period that preceded Zoroaster would be more what I am interested in for the OP.
Don't trust Wiki for this. I'm pretty certain Zarathustra lived earlier than that. Like Nietzsche said, perhaps 1.500 B.C. Some people give an even earlier date.

We believe he wrote the Sacred Gathas , which puts him in the 14th or 13th century BCE, according to the script/dialect in which the Gathas are written. However, knowing the nature of writing and such, I'd be prepared to give these dates a little leeway.

Hardly anything is known about Zarathustra's life. For example, it is uncertain when he lived. The ancient Greeks speculated that he lived six thousand years before the philosopher Plato and several scholars have argued for a date at the beginning of the sixth century BCE. Other scholars accept that Zarathustra is the author of the Gâthâ's (a part of the holy book of the Zoroastrians, the Avesta), which they date, on linguistic grounds, in the fourteenth or thirteenth century BCE.

http://www.livius.org/articles/person/zarathustra/
 
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Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
The shorter five step puja in Hinduism:
1. Offer vermillion (Gandham samarpayami), 2. Offer flowers (Pushpam samarpayami), 3. Offer insence in front of the deity (Dhoopam agrapayami/samarpayami), 4. Plae lighted lamp in front of the deity (Deepam darshayami/samarpayami), 5. Offer fruit and sweets (Naivedyam samarpayami).
Then there is a 16-step puja and a 64-step puja.
Just for peoples' information. :)
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
We believe he wrote the Sacred Gathas , which puts him in the 14th or 13th century BCE, according to the script/dialect in which the Gathas are written. However, knowing the nature of writing and such, I'd be prepared to give these dates a little leeway.
The original Indo-Iranian lore (from which Avesta and Vedas came was not a book for a long-long time) could be as old as ice-age. Does not Avesta mentions a deluge by snow?

VENDIDAD, FARGARD II.

22. And Ahura Mazda spake unto Yima, saying, “O fair Yima, son of Vîvanghat! Upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost; upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall make snowflakes fall thick, even an aredvî deep on the highest tops of mountains.
23. And all the three sorts of beasts shall perish, those that live in the wilderness, and those that live on the tops of the mountains, and those that live in the bosom of the dale, under the shelter of stables.
24. Before that winter, those fields would bear plenty of grass for cattle: now with floods that stream, with snows that melt, it will seem a happy land in the world, the land wherein footprints even of sheep may still be seen.
25. Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground, on every side of the square, and thither bring the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds, and of red blazing fires.

Darmesteter

46. Then spake Ahura Mazda to Yima: “Yima the fair, the son of Vivanhâo,
47. Upon the corporeal world will the evil of winter come:
48. Wherefore a vehement, destroying frost will arise.
49. Upon the corporeal world will the evil of winter come:
50. Wherefore snow will fall in great abundance,
51. On the summits of the mountains, on the breadth of the heights.
52. From three (places), O Yima, let the cattle depart.
53. If they are in the most fearful places,
54. If they are on the tops of the mountains,
55. If they are in the depths of the valleys,
56. To secure dwelling places.
57. Before this winter the fields would bear plenty of country produced pasture; grass for cattle now with.
58. Before flow waters, behind floods that stream, with snows is the melting of the snow.
59. Clouds, O Yima, will come over the inhabitated regions,
60. Which now behold the feet of the greater and smaller cattle:
61. Therefore make thou a circle of the length of a race-ground to all four corners.
62. Thither bring thou the seed of the cattle, of the beasts of burden, and of men, of dogs, of birds, and of the red burning fires.

Spiegel
 

Rakovsky

Active Member
Indus Valley

The Indus Valley or Harappan civilization dated to 3300 to 1500 BC. It had a form of writing called Harappan which is not deciphered today. It was followed by Sanskrit in 1700 BC to 600 BC. The civilization made brick cities in Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, and along the Indus river in Pakistan and northern India. It is debated whether the Indus people were Dravidian or Aryan, what language Indus writing reflected, and when exactly the Aryans came to the region and became its rulers. The writing has similarity to Sumerian in style.

3501976.jpg


sat-view-indus.jpg

Satellite view of the Indus River Valley – irrigated areas are green.

Two of the more common claims about their ancient technology are high quality ironworking and that an A-bomb was dropped near one of their cities. The iron pillar of Delhi has a unique property of resisting corrosion. It is not known for sure when it was made, but may be dated to 900 BC - 420 AD (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi)

Note in the article below, Rajasthan, where the destroyed city was, and Bombay, where the crater is, are two different places.
A heavy layer of radioactive ash in Rajasthan, India, covers a three-square mile area, ten miles west of Jodhpur. ... For some time it has been established that there is a very high rate of birth defects and cancer in the area under construction. The levels of radiation there have registered so high on investigators’ gauges that the Indian government has now cordoned off the region. Scientists have unearthed an ancient city where evidence shows an atomic blast dating back thousands of years, from 8,000 to 12,000 years, destroyed most of the buildings and probably a half-million people.
...
The Mahabharata clearly describes a catastrophic blast that rocked the continent.
“A single projectile charged with all the power in the Universe… An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as 10,000 suns, rose in all its splendor… It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes an entire race. The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable...."
...
When excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro reached the street level, they discovered skeletons scattered about the cities, many holding hands and sprawling in the streets as if some instant, horrible doom had taken place. People were just lying, unburied, in the streets of the city. And these skeletons are thousands of years old, even by traditional archaeological standards. What could cause such a thing? Why did the bodies not decay or get eaten by wild animals? Furthermore, there is no apparent cause of a physically violent death.
...

mohenjodaro-11.jpg

Giant Unexplained Crater Near Bombay

Another curious sign of an ancient nuclear war in India is a giant crater near Bombay...

No trace of any meteoric material, etc., has been found at the site or in the vicinity, and this is the world’s only known “impact” crater in basalt. Indications of great shock (from a pressure exceeding 600,000 atmospheres) and intense, abrupt heat (indicated by basalt glass spherules) can be ascertained from the site.
http://www.indiadivine.org/8000-year-old-indian-city-irradiated-by-atomic-blast/

At the same time, I haven't read deeply into the arguments about an ancient atomic blast in the Indus Valley region. Otherwise, it is hard to find solid claims of ancient high technology among the Indus. One claim is that they had Vimana flying machines, but I heard that on closer analysis these referred to their temples founded on ground, not to UFOs.

Hinduism has many religious ideas and sects with their own philosophies. A major one is monotheism, in which the believers recognize only their own deity as the true one (eg. Vishnu worshipers only recognizing Vishnu), or else they consider the various gods to be avatars or manifestations of the one true God. The one true God they might consider to be Krishna or Vishnu, with the other deities being his avatars. I've also heard that some Hindus who are not as ritualistic or focused on religious observances refer to a general concept of God, simply calling him God, that is, Ishvara or Bhagavan in their language. Another common theory is that the Vedas in ancient Hindu religion include both ideas of monotheism and of beliefs in other gods.

Even the earlier mandalas (books) of the Rig Veda (books 1 and 9), which contain hymns dedicated to devas, are thought to have a tendency toward monotheism.[7] Often quoted isolated, pada 1.164.46 of the Rig Veda states (trans. Griffith):
"They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Agni, and he is heavenly nobly-winged Garutmān.
To what is One, sages give many a title — they call it Agni, Yama, Mātariśvan."
Vaishnavism is one of the earliest implicit manifestations of monotheism in the traditions of Vedas. Svayam bhagavan is a Sanskrit term for the original deity of the Supreme God worshiped across many traditions of the Vaisnavism as the source of all, the monotheistic absolute Deity.[10][11] [19] Within Hinduism, Krishna is worshiped from a variety of perspectives.[14] However, the Svayam Bhagavan concept refers to the Supreme Being of the Orthodox Gaudiya Vaishnavism,[15] the Vallabha Sampradaya and the Nimbarka Sampradaya, where Krishna is worshiped as the source of all other avatars (including Vishnu).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_views_on_monotheism

Another question is which Hindu God most resembles the Supreme Abrahamic one. In Hinduism, there is a concept of Brahman, or reality. Everything is Brahman. Along with that, there is Paratma, the Supreme soul. And along with the Paratma there is the supreme person, two titles being Bhagavan and Ishvara. Ishvara means Lord and Bhagavan means the munificent, benefited, or adored one. In Slavic, Bog means "God" and bogaty means many or wealthy, so these are slavic terms etymologically related to the Sanskrit "Bhagavan".

It is not clear whether the Hindu concept of God is pantheistic, such that the Abrahamic view of God is not pantheistic. A common view in Abrahamic religion is that God is everywhere. But is Hinduism different and does it propose that everything is God? That is, in Hinduism, is God fully and directly composed of everything, whereas the Abrahamic view sees God as only having his spirit within everything (eg. everything material), while the material is distinct from the spiritual?

Here is an example of a Hindu teacher explaining his understanding of the relationship between Brahman (reality) and Bhagavan (God):

Thus, one answer could be simply Svayam Bhagavan ("the Benefited one Himself") or Ishvara ("the Lord"). However, Ishvara/Bhagavan is identified by most Hindus with some particular deity like Vishnu. Vishnu means "the Pervasive One", and his followers believe that he pervades or rests in everything. However, unlike simply God as understood by a philosophical conception, Vishnu is described as having a certain biography by his followers, creating various legends about him.

An early fatherly figure in the Hindu pantheon is Dyaus Pita meaning "the heavenly father." Not only was he the father of the ancient central Harappan deity Indras, but he correlates with the main figure of the proto-Indo-European pantheon, Dyeus Pater, the sky father. This deity can be found as Zeus and as Jupiter in Greece and Rome. It shows Hinduism's origins in Indo-European religion just like Greek mythology's origins there.

brahma-symbolism.jpg

Another deity is Brahma (above), the male form of the neuter word Brahman. Brahma is the creator deity. One theory is that Brahman the ultimate reality was personified and deified by Hindus to make it into a Creator god, Brahma. The etymology of Brahman is to grow, expand, make strong, make firm.

Brahma, Vishnu (the maintainer), and Shiva (the destroyer) make up a Trinity in Hinduism called the Trimurti, reflecting three phases of the status of Creation. Each of the three Gods of Trimurti rules a different stage, in that order.

Another central deity is Vishvakarma.
Viśwákarma (Sanskrit for "all-accomplishing, maker of all, all-doer") is personification of creation and the abstract form of the creator God according to the Rigveda. He is the presiding deity of all Vishwakarma (caste), engineers, artisans and architects.[1] He is believed to be the "Principal Architect of the Universe ", and the root concept of the later Upanishadic figures of Brahman and Purusha.

Vishwakarma is visualized as Ultimate reality (later developed as Brahman) in the Rig Veda,[2] from whose navel all visible things Hiranyagarbha emanate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishvakarman

Purusha is the Cosmic man, who was sacrificed to make Creation as Prajapati, the Creator (or Pantocrator). Some Christian Indians see a mystical or visionary prophetic connection between the myth of Purusha Prajapati and the gospel of Jesus Christ, however there are major differences, such as the fact that in the myth Purusha Prajapati was sacrificed far before 26 AD or so in order to make creation occur.

This review leads to the question in bold above. Namely, (A) is the Abrahamic God a separate being from his creation, such that all that is physical (eg. the watery chaos) was made by God, while (B) the Hindu concept of God is a kind of pantheism whereby all that exists - including all physical matter - composes God directly and fully?
 
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GoodbyeDave

Well-Known Member
My own take on this is as follows.

Egypt
The old Egyptologists like Budge tried to make the Egyptians into monotheists because that was considered more respectable! But the Egyptians viewed reality as necessarily plural. They had no concept of creation in the sense of creation of the universe, as opposed to parts of it: things originally just emerged from chaos. The concept of a Supreme Being emerged later, probably under Greek influence, as seen in the Corpus Hermeticus.

China
Although the concept of a Supreme Being is generally absent from modern Chinese religion, it's clear that Shangdi "High Sovereign" and Tian "Heaven" originally referred to God. In the Han dynasty, Dong Zhongshu wrote "Tian is the ultimate authority, the king of Gods".

Mesopotamians
The Sumerians and western Semites had no concept of God: Apsu and Tiamat emerge from chaos, like the Egyptian gods.

Western Semites
They did have a concept of a Supreme Being, called simply Ilu "God", from which we get Hebrew El and Arabic Allah. He is called "Creator of the Earth" and "Father of mankind", while the gods are called the "Children of El".

Greeks
The Greeks developed the concept of a Supreme Being on philosophical grounds. Socrates started the Argument from Design and Aristotle the Argument from Causation. By Roman times, Maximus of Tyre could declare, with little chance of contradiction, "There is one God, the ruler and father of all things, and many gods, children of God, ruling together with him. This the Greek says, and the foreigner … the wise and the unwise."

India
I can't rival Aup on India!
 

Aštra’el

Aštara, Blade of Aštoreth
Mesopotamians
The Sumerians and western Semites had no concept of God: Apsu and Tiamat emerge from chaos, like the Egyptian gods.
Tiamat and Apzu were the chaos from which all other gods emerged. They were the primordial waters... the primordial chaos from which everything came into being.
 
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Rakovsky

Active Member
Indus Valley and Hinduism (continued)

Ritual observance in Hinduism includes animal sacrifice in some forms of Hinduism like Shaktism (worship of Shakti, the mother goddess), as well as meditation or prayer. This commonly involves Yoga, and some forms of Yoga are specially designed to connect with Bhagavan. Hindu prayers begin with the word "Om", a divine sound for the soul, or the supreme soul. Om may also resemble the meaning of "Amen" in Judaism:

The syllable means "affirmation" in the Aranyaka layer of texts in the Vedas. Aitareya Aranyaka, for example, in verse 23.6, explains Om as an acknowledgment, melodic confirmation, something that gives momentum and energy to a hymn,[7]

Om (ॐ) is the pratigara (agreement) with a hymn. Likewise is tatha (so be it) with a song. But Om is something divine, and tatha is something human.— Aitareya Aranyaka 23.6, [7]

Elsewhere in the Aranyaka and the Brahmana layers of Vedic texts, the syllable is so widespread and linked to knowledge, that it stands for the "whole of Veda".[11] The etymological foundations of Om are repeatedly discussed in the oldest layers of the Vedic texts, as well the early Upanishads.[15][16] The Aitareya Brahmana of Rig Veda, in section 5.32, for example suggests that the three phonetic components of Om (pronounced AUM) correspond to the three stages of cosmic creation, and when it is read or said, it celebrates the creative powers of the universe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om

In the early stages of Hinduism, it appears that temple worship was conducted in caves. I am not sure if the ancient cities of the Indus Valley civilization had temples (This website says that the city of Harappa lacked them: http://historicaltemples.blogspot.com/2010/01/harappa.html), but they did have ritual baths.

Hinduism also commonly involves idolatry. Many adherents believe that the idol's deity inhabits the physical idol itself directly, and so they dress and feed many idols. Flags are a symbol for a deity's presence at a location, which is interesting for me because flags are also the symbol for the Egyptian concept of God in hieroglyphics, NTR.
 

Rakovsky

Active Member
I am excited to receive so many thoughtful replies here.
Previously I asked people on the Graham Hancock Forum what they thought about these questions, but hardly got any responses. So I decided to ask the questions here on this forum, Religiousforums.com.

EGYPT

The phonetic spelling of God in hieroglyphics is
hiero_N35.png
hiero_X1.png
hiero_D21.png

N _ T _ R

This is commonly pronounced at Neter. Neter developed into Noute in Coptic Egyptian of a later era. I think that the name of Neter therefore may relate to the Egyptian goddess Nut, since the god of the heavens in Sumer was An, whose symbol, a star, was also the symbol for the word "God" in Sumerian. In other words, just as "God" in Sumerian was written as the symbol of the god of the heavens, An, it may be that "God" in Egyptian may be related to the name of the goddess of the heavens in the Egyptian pantheon.

nut-b1.jpg

Nut, goddess of the heavens

Here is some of what I wrote on the Graham Hancock forum:
Their civilization arose in Egypt in 5000 BC or earlier going back to prehistoric times. Their writing is dated to have begun around 3500 BC, although there are drawings from before then. Their religion lasted at least to their Christianization in about 350 AD. It was based very much around the Nile. It was connected more broadly to other parts of Africa like Sudan and Chad and North Africa.

pharaoh-egypt-tours-day.jpg


1_DW_2011-08-14_MG_7618kl1.jpg


Their most obviously mysterious advanced technology is the pyramids of Giza, and its still debated what they were used for and how they were made.
scan.jpg

Thermal imaging of the pyramid
For the rest of my answers about Egypt, please click here:
http://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,1049944,1049951,quote=1
 
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