Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Dave Hawkins · 07-09-2007, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucretius

Dave the term you say you were unfamilar with in the work you cited is

Title Asiatic Researches, or Transactions of the Society. Calcutta
Abbreviation Asiat. Res.
Publication dates Vols. 1-20, 1788-1839.

Oddly Harvard University has this stored in their "Herbaria" index of Botanical books

By the way the other "cryptic " reference you mentioned
Horat. Carm. lib. i. od. 3" is quite simple Horat = Horatius = Horace
Carm= Carmen Saeculorum = The Odes
and lib. i.od.3 is Book 1 Ode 3

Thanks.

To whoever it was who asked ... No, I have not read these sources. As I said, I have Faber's tome and got them from it.

My purpose on this thread is not to make a watertight case for the historicity of long lived patriarchs. You should gather that from the title. Note the question mark. My purpose is merely to discuss the topic and throw some data out there that you may not have encountered before. If this interests you, perhaps you will study it further.

The Evil One · 07-09-2007, 08:03 AM

So Langdon believed in original monotheism, not Petrie??? Colour me confused.

But what was Langdon's EVIDENCE for his opinion? Does Merrill mention that? I can't see it if he does.

Citing a load of old books who agree with you doesn't amount to much unless you can give EVIDENCE.

deadman_932 · 07-09-2007, 08:05 AM

Well, to be honest, Dave... and considering the "Burmese" passage you mentioned which I posted up in context...I can't imagine taking that as "Biblical" in any way. 1 million Earths? Five suns? Sounds suspiciously like myth to me, or maybe bad science fiction from the Hugo Gernsbeck 1920's.

I did ask you about the Chinese reference and the page number for that.

Lucretius · 07-09-2007, 08:07 AM

Quote:

Stephen Langdon believed that monotheism preceded polytheism. He made his point very clearly: "In my opinion the history of the oldest civilisation of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits. It is in a very true sense the history of the fall of man." Stephen Langdon continued to hold that view, five years later,in The Scotsman, November 18, 1936:

"The history of Sumerian religion, which was the most powerful cultural influence in the ancient world, could be traced by means of photographic inscriptions almost to the earliest religious concepts of man. The evidence points unmistakably to an original monotheism, the inscriptions and literary remains of the oldest Semitic peoples also indicate a primitive monotheism, and the totemistic origin of Hebrew and other Semitic religions is now entirely discredited."

I think that it is obvious that Stephen Langdon started from the premise that the "fall of man " was fact and then chose to believe that monotheism was the ideal and polytheism was a perversion of it .

Dean Anderson · 07-09-2007, 08:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

As usual, you imply that Petrie agrees with you when his quotes that you link to show the complete opposite.

Petrie's claim is that we get the following sequence:

1) Each isolated tribe - except those who stick with simple animism - invents its own 'god' to be in charge of things.

2) As tribes interact with each other, we get the system known as Henotheism, where each tribe has its own patron, although the gods of other tribes are acknowledged as existing (although inferior to their own, of course).

3) As tribes merge and become nations, they don't cease to believe in their own gods, they merely join them together to form national pantheons.

4) As time goes on, these multiple gods are sometimes merged - and seen as differing aspects of (or even simply different stories about) the same God, rather than separate gods.

This - that people started with belief in lots of gods and eventually end up with belief in one God - is the very opposite of what you want us to believe; which is that originally everyone in the world worshipped the same God but then their children and grandchildren suddenly developed sophisticated systems of Polytheism whilst their parents were still alive and worshiping the "true" God.

Interestingly, this system of Henotheism and merging of gods is exactly what the older parts of the Bible show, as the various Canaanite tribes started with their own gods, and then they formed a henotheistic pantheon - and stories of El and Yaw and Baal and Yah(weh) and Ashtoreth (and there are some of these stories still left the Bible, although later editors and translators do their best to hide their polytheism) started getting merged until you end up with the monotheistic tradition of the Hebrews as evident in the later parts of the Hebrew Bible.

No, Dean. You missed this part from Petrie ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Petrie

"Were the conception of a god only an evolution from such spirit worship, we should find the worship of many gods preceding the worship of one god ... What we actually find is the contrary of this, monotheism is the first stage traceable in theology ...

No, I read that part. But I also read what immediately followed it:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Petrie

"Wherever we can trace polytheism back to its earliest stages, we find that it results from combinations of monotheism. In Egypt even Osiris, Isis and Horus, so familiar as a triad, are found at first as separate units in different places: Isis as a virgin goddess, and Horus as a self-existent God.

"Each city appears to have had but one god belonging to it, to whom others were in time added. Similarly, Babylonian cities each had their supreme god, and the combinations of these and their transformations in order to form them into groups when their homes were politically united, show how essentially they were solitary deities at first."

(my emphasis)

Which shows that what I posted matches what he wrote, and that you are (as usual) badly misrepresenting his position by quote mining him.

deadman_932 · 07-09-2007, 08:19 AM

Quote:

The evidence points unmistakably to an original monotheism, the inscriptions and literary remains of the oldest Semitic peoples also indicate a primitive monotheism, and the totemistic origin of Hebrew and other Semitic religions is now entirely discredited

This is unusual. Sumerians started out Monotheistically? That would imply that the Sumerians knew of this fearfully crazed God that had already wiped out everything on Earth, but Sumerians suddenly forgot it and chose to directly insult The One God by raising up other Gods?

Quite an imaginative ..."interpretation" by Langdon. I wonder what inscriptions he was pointing to.

Strangely, The works I have by Noah Kramer disagree with Langdon. "The Sumerians," U. of Chicago Press,(1963) pp.113-114 specifically relates that the earliest Sumerian notions were polytheistic and near-animistic. "Operating, directing, and supervising this universe, the Sumerian theologian assumed, was a pantheon ....The great realms of heaven, earth, sea and air; the major astral bodies..atmospheric forces like the wind, storm and tempest...river, mountain and plain...each was deemed to be under the charge of [blah, blah, blah.. a god]." Let's see...Langdon..or the greatest Sumerian scholar of the 20th century...who to believe.

Dave Hawkins · 07-09-2007, 08:36 AM

Dean ...

Quote:

Which shows that what I posted matches what he wrote, and that you are (as usual) badly misrepresenting his position by quote mining him.

I don't know how you can sling mud at me like this when Petrie clearly states

Quote:

What we actually find is the contrary of this, monotheism is the first stage traceable in theology ...

Don't know how Petrie can be any more clear.

shirley knott · 07-09-2007, 08:38 AM

But dave, the problem is that in the cases where monotheism has been replaced by polytheism [care to find a case of this that is non-controversial? I thought not] --
there are internal traces and evidence.
that is the problem you must face -- why, with Noah and other living participants in the flood readily at hand, was there no sign of Yahweh or monotheism in the Egyptian pantheon?
That absence, coupled with the complete and total lack of physical geolgical evidence for the flood [remember, you've never told me which layer is the flood layer and can be found in the Yucatan, China, and Egypt. silence equals no evidence here] is sufficient to assign the flood to the status of myth.
Along with Yahweh and his putative offspring.

no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott

ericmurphy · 07-09-2007, 08:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

If you tell me that there is explicit proof that such beings as the ante-diluvians could not have existed, it would be interesting to see it.

And suddenly we have the burden of proof to show that humans who lived for centuries did not exist? When did that happen?

I, for one, would like to see actual empirical evidence that such beings ever existed. So far, such evidence has not been forthcoming. I generally do not believe in things for which there is no evidence.

ericmurphy · 07-09-2007, 08:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

I'm afraid that I simply can't get a grip on this thread, as it seems over the last 36 hours to have spiralled off into stock-rhetoric. So I think it's now done, which is annoying as there was some interesting stuff on sars and ners to be explored.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger, don't get discouraged. You will always have the nonsense to deal with. I believe that there is just no way that the mods will ever keep all the detractors and rule breakers in line. I think the only thing that can be done about this kind of thing is for the good posters to be very diligent about reporting such nonsense. The mods can't possibly keep up with it without our help.

Roger seems to be of the opinion that the existence of this mythical population of extremely long-lived humans is not subject to debate. Apparently he never read the OP here, because that is supposedly the topic here. He hasn't addressed that particular topic at all, other than to imply it's not worth debating because it's self-evidently true.

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07-09-2007, 08:03 AM	#302
The Evil One Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: England Posts: 2,561	So Langdon believed in original monotheism, not Petrie??? Colour me confused. But what was Langdon's EVIDENCE for his opinion? Does Merrill mention that? I can't see it if he does. Citing a load of old books who agree with you doesn't amount to much unless you can give EVIDENCE.

07-09-2007, 08:05 AM	#303
deadman_932 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Altadena, California Posts: 3,271	Well, to be honest, Dave... and considering the "Burmese" passage you mentioned which I posted up in context...I can't imagine taking that as "Biblical" in any way. 1 million Earths? Five suns? Sounds suspiciously like myth to me, or maybe bad science fiction from the Hugo Gernsbeck 1920's. I did ask you about the Chinese reference and the page number for that.

07-09-2007, 08:38 AM	#308
shirley knott Regular Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: Madison, WI Posts: 416	But dave, the problem is that in the cases where monotheism has been replaced by polytheism [care to find a case of this that is non-controversial? I thought not] -- there are internal traces and evidence. that is the problem you must face -- why, with Noah and other living participants in the flood readily at hand, was there no sign of Yahweh or monotheism in the Egyptian pantheon? That absence, coupled with the complete and total lack of physical geolgical evidence for the flood [remember, you've never told me which layer is the flood layer and can be found in the Yucatan, China, and Egypt. silence equals no evidence here] is sufficient to assign the flood to the status of myth. Along with Yahweh and his putative offspring. no hugs for thugs, Shirley Knott

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