mountainman

It is the top down path of the supreme military warlord who, having vanquished all enemies in his empire, and paying particular attention to the execution of any serious satirists, gets together a "Holy Writ" and sees that it is CANONIZED. This serves as the focal point for a centralized monotheistic state religious cult.

Muhammad had his precedents, and he knew all about them. Supreme warlords study supreme warlords and their methods and their propaganda techniques. Three hundred years earlier the supreme warlord Constantine implemented Christianity in the Roman Empire, and one hundred years earlier still, the Persian warlord and King of Kings Ardashir implemented Zorastrianism in the Sassanid Persian empire.

Doug Shaver

Yes, of course. It's so simple, and so obvious. It's almost beyond belief that there are so very few people in this world whose intellectual skills are keen enough to enable them see it.

mountainman

So Muhammad was not a warlord, Constantine was not a warlord, Ardashir was not a warlord. (Was Moses a warlord?) The fact that centralised monotheistic state religions based on canonized "Holy Writs" appeared in their respective EMPIRES, specifically during the epoch of their supreme military command, is just entirely coincidental? Really? It's almost beyond belief !!

War is a Racket (or via: amazon.co.uk). The Hebrew Bible, the Sassasanid Persian Avesta, the Constantine Bible and the Muhammadan Qur'an were each originally all products of war. The time was just right for a message from a monotheistic divine sponsor. How fucking convenient was that?

Back to the OP. The Quranic conceptions of Jesus do not appear to differentiate between the standard "christian" canonical and non canonical sources (as at the 7th century).

Toto

Not so fast there. How many warlords start their own religions? How many produce sacred texts?

War is a constant. So is religion. How are you going to find a statistical correlation?

Toto

I don't think this is the case. The Qur'anic Jesus was not orthodox, not of the same substance as the father, but also did not die on the cross.

Doug Shaver

Looks like you've swallowed what Heinlein called the "devil theory of sociology."

tanya

Unlike Constantine, Ardashir, or Mohammed, the greatest warlord of them all, the man who, in 25 years, captured more territory than did the Roman Empire after 400 years of conquest, Genghis Khan, accepted all religions with equal disinterest.

Question: Did Khan's empire expire, upon his death, because of failure to adopt an empire wide religion? Did Ardashir overthrow the Parthian empire because of lack of religious devotion in the latter?

How about Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire? Did Alexander demand any religious obligations? Did the Egyptians, enslaved by the Achaemenid empire, revolt against their masters because of religious intolerance by, for example, emperor Cambyses in 522 BCE, described by Herodotus as "ungodly"?

Was Alexander welcomed by the Egyptians, upon deposing the Persians, because, unlike Cambyses, Alexander tipped his hat to the Egyptian deities? Do we have any papyrus describing the reaction of Egyptian people to "liberation" from the Persians, by Alexander's troops? Did Alexander impose any kind of religion upon the Egyptians?

Did the tradition of confounding "Lord", i.e. kyrios, (adoni), with "God" , i.e. theos (yahweh) when referring to a supreme military commander, above all others, arise following Alexander's conquest and "liberation" of Egypt?

mountainman

I made specific reference to Planet Earth's two largest religions, namely Christianity and Islam. These two centralized monotheistic state religions appear to have been implemented by the warlords Muhammad and Constantine and both appear to be fundamentally reliant upon a canonized "Holy Writ".

The formation of the Sassanid Persian centralised monotheistic state religion under Ardashir c.222 CE was mentioned as a further example from the same epoch in the worlds history - the barbaric conditions of (late) antiquity.

The warlord theory of religion is only aimed at the two major religions as stated. Of course there were many warlords who did not make the attempt to create a centralised monotheistic state (i.e. spread over their military empire) religion. This is beside the point I have made.


Yes war is a constant. Before any known history was ever written, there were most likely territorial wars. The Greeks saw war as a part of natural life, like birth and death. Heraclitus mentions war in his exposition on the Logos.


But no, religion is not a constant because it comes and it goes. There are many extinct religions, such as Sassanid Persian Zoroastrianism mentioned above. The prominence of the planet's two religions Christianity and Islam is not a permanent phenomenom. Religions arise and fall away like the grass.

The rising of Islam and Christianity

The rising of the centralized monotheistic state Islam and Christianity coincide with the warlords Muhammad and Constantine obtaining a most complete and supreme military power in their respective empires. Both warlords appear to have manufactured "Holy Writs", and to actively promote their "canonisation". It is not difficult to perceive that these centralised state monotheisms were originally the product and outcome of war.

mountainman

Despite that authors use of Mars, it looks like you've swallowed science fiction for ancient history.

Doug Shaver

The credibility of any narrative, past, present, or future, depends on the writer's understanding of human nature, which was the same in the past as it is in the present and will continue to be for a very long time to come. Heinlein understood that when people do things we disapprove of, it is usually unparsimonious to seek explanations in the supposition that those people are significantly different from us.