Fascinating piece. The first question that pops to mind isn’t about the (excellent) content though - are there really that many pagans in Europe? From your tone, it sounds to an ignorant reader like paganism is a modern trend searching for a hold on Tradition - maybe along the lines of Evola?
As to the topic of “judeo-christianity” (as a fake term it doesn’t rate proper noun status), Paul and the Church Fathers were always battling against judaizing. St John Crysostom has an excellent collection out there, Adversus Judeos.
I can’t speak for Prots, but antisemitism and opposition to Judaizing were strong in the Church until Vatican II, when it succumbed to the Nuremberg Regime. (Yes, Jews were heavily involved)
Nevertheless, it is still common enough to find Catholics who hold at least a casual understanding.
But something went terribly, disastrously wrong among the American Prot “evangelicals”, who cannot be honestly said to be Christians at all. They worship Jews as a people and worship the United Nations entity of 1948, and they justify it through all insane manner of “sola scriptura”
That's some extremely interesting history, thanks for writing it all up.
To further complicate things, consider reading Mauro Biglino's "The Naked Bible", the Codex Oera Linda (makes some very interesting references to "Yesus" AKA "Buda"), and watch a few Thunderbolts Project documentaries on "Symbols of an Alien Sky".
Once you're done with that, check out Clif High's videos on space aliens & the El.
What's been presented to us as history is very intentionally muddled indeed...
Abraham is also the progenitor of Muslims, through Ishmael.
You have to remember that Judeo Christian is an early form of multiculturalism during WWI because there was replacement level immigration in America from 1850 onward. It was inclusive of Catholics, Protestants and Jews.
Before that, America was very racist against Catholics. Judaism works very differently from Christianity and has similarities to Islam. Christianity is belief based with a foundation in dogma and Judaism is practice and identity based with a foundation in debate. Christians seek to convert everyone and Jews do not.
This year, I've debated and seriously grappled with the implications of practicing either Christianity or Judaism. I decided to stay polytheist (originating in the Chinese perspective) and engage with these traditions from what is a neutral stance for me culturally. There is no reason a European polytheist should see Athens as necessarily being a rebellion against Jerusalem. Athens is just as much of a part of European history as Jerusalem.
There have been Neopagans in Christian societies since Proclus. No need to go as far as Julian the Apostate. The pagan impulse was rekindled during the romantic nationalist era of the enlightenment as people sought national mythologies, but during the Renaissance, people from all different societies worshipped the Greco-Roman and Egyptian gods.
"Rather, it appears no one in the classical era actually thought these religions were different, or that these stories were plagiarizations of each other."
Actually that is exactly what Julian the Apostate wrote in regards to Jesus. Other Hellenic philosophers did too and many other critics of Christianity might have written books that weren't preserved by the church or were destroyed like Celsus and Porphyry's writings, but knowing this would require you to have an understanding of actual, empirical history, instead of the myths (disproven by archaeology) peddled in the Book of Jewish fairy tales volume's 1 and 2.
It was a bit hard for people in late antiquity to make the plagiarism charge in regards to Genesis specifically as none of them had access to Akkadian or Sumerian.
You are ignoring the elephant in the room.
Christianity teaches people to abandon their national myths for myths (like Moses at Sinai) invented by Jews.
When inevitably it is discovered that the se myths were false, there is no way to return to the pre-Christian religion, leaving a culture with no real alternative to nihilism.
The fact that medieval Christians didn't like Jews ultimately doesn't matter, because no matter how much you dislike a group of foreigners, if you accept their sacred literature as supreme truth, you will always be influenced by them one way or another and it will always be a possibility for a Christian to become the next John Hagee.
Well in that case, if by "classical" which you don't define and can mean either the antique Mediterranean generally or more specifically post-Archaic, pre-Hellenistic Greece (I.e. sixth through fourth centuries), which I assume you mean then, there's simply not enough evidence to say what anyone thought about relations between Jewish gods and other gods of other peoples, and even the evidence of what Greeks (who were unaware of Jews at the time) thought about other national cults is very limited.
There's plenty of evidence. The Greeks adopted the Jewish god into their pantheon as Adonis, and the cult of his wife Ishtar as Aphrodite. The felt nothing wrong with just Hellenizing a foreign god. What you fail to grasp is that you place special importance on Jews because they rule over you. The Greeks didn't care if something was foreign. Only if it could be Hellenized.
How was Ishtar Jewish, are you getting confused with Yahweh's wife Asherah?
Ditto for the other deities you mention, the fact that some Jews did worship them doesn't make them "Jewish" in any real sense.
Nor does the fact that historically some Greeks identified Aphrodite with Ishtar mean that the Greeks had adopted Ishtar, this is putting the cart before the horse.
Your view of history is just too garbled and non-empiricial to bother discussing at this point.
"Where there be a hyphen, there be an agenda."
I want this in gold letters on an onyx slab.
Yep - that one hit me like a freight train
I wrote an article on this topic today, and was then recommended this by my friend Blood and Rain This is a fantastic piece.
Fascinating piece. The first question that pops to mind isn’t about the (excellent) content though - are there really that many pagans in Europe? From your tone, it sounds to an ignorant reader like paganism is a modern trend searching for a hold on Tradition - maybe along the lines of Evola?
As to the topic of “judeo-christianity” (as a fake term it doesn’t rate proper noun status), Paul and the Church Fathers were always battling against judaizing. St John Crysostom has an excellent collection out there, Adversus Judeos.
I can’t speak for Prots, but antisemitism and opposition to Judaizing were strong in the Church until Vatican II, when it succumbed to the Nuremberg Regime. (Yes, Jews were heavily involved)
Nevertheless, it is still common enough to find Catholics who hold at least a casual understanding.
But something went terribly, disastrously wrong among the American Prot “evangelicals”, who cannot be honestly said to be Christians at all. They worship Jews as a people and worship the United Nations entity of 1948, and they justify it through all insane manner of “sola scriptura”
That was one hell of an essay! Great work!
Btw, reading some more of it, great illustrations!
Excellent work.
The same old, tired crap. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis discredited the line of thought almost a century ago.
In my reading, both men confirm what I say.
This was brilliant. Simply brilliant. Wish I could write like this.
That's some extremely interesting history, thanks for writing it all up.
To further complicate things, consider reading Mauro Biglino's "The Naked Bible", the Codex Oera Linda (makes some very interesting references to "Yesus" AKA "Buda"), and watch a few Thunderbolts Project documentaries on "Symbols of an Alien Sky".
Once you're done with that, check out Clif High's videos on space aliens & the El.
What's been presented to us as history is very intentionally muddled indeed...
Well done. Appreciate the work that you put into this.
Good stuff. Research the original meaning of the biblical term “adopted” you quoted in your tome above. I think it adds to your points.
Based
Abraham is also the progenitor of Muslims, through Ishmael.
You have to remember that Judeo Christian is an early form of multiculturalism during WWI because there was replacement level immigration in America from 1850 onward. It was inclusive of Catholics, Protestants and Jews.
Before that, America was very racist against Catholics. Judaism works very differently from Christianity and has similarities to Islam. Christianity is belief based with a foundation in dogma and Judaism is practice and identity based with a foundation in debate. Christians seek to convert everyone and Jews do not.
This year, I've debated and seriously grappled with the implications of practicing either Christianity or Judaism. I decided to stay polytheist (originating in the Chinese perspective) and engage with these traditions from what is a neutral stance for me culturally. There is no reason a European polytheist should see Athens as necessarily being a rebellion against Jerusalem. Athens is just as much of a part of European history as Jerusalem.
There have been Neopagans in Christian societies since Proclus. No need to go as far as Julian the Apostate. The pagan impulse was rekindled during the romantic nationalist era of the enlightenment as people sought national mythologies, but during the Renaissance, people from all different societies worshipped the Greco-Roman and Egyptian gods.
"Rather, it appears no one in the classical era actually thought these religions were different, or that these stories were plagiarizations of each other."
Actually that is exactly what Julian the Apostate wrote in regards to Jesus. Other Hellenic philosophers did too and many other critics of Christianity might have written books that weren't preserved by the church or were destroyed like Celsus and Porphyry's writings, but knowing this would require you to have an understanding of actual, empirical history, instead of the myths (disproven by archaeology) peddled in the Book of Jewish fairy tales volume's 1 and 2.
It was a bit hard for people in late antiquity to make the plagiarism charge in regards to Genesis specifically as none of them had access to Akkadian or Sumerian.
You are ignoring the elephant in the room.
Christianity teaches people to abandon their national myths for myths (like Moses at Sinai) invented by Jews.
When inevitably it is discovered that the se myths were false, there is no way to return to the pre-Christian religion, leaving a culture with no real alternative to nihilism.
The fact that medieval Christians didn't like Jews ultimately doesn't matter, because no matter how much you dislike a group of foreigners, if you accept their sacred literature as supreme truth, you will always be influenced by them one way or another and it will always be a possibility for a Christian to become the next John Hagee.
I wasn't talking about the pagan criticism of Christianity centuries later. I don't feel you read the article
Well in that case, if by "classical" which you don't define and can mean either the antique Mediterranean generally or more specifically post-Archaic, pre-Hellenistic Greece (I.e. sixth through fourth centuries), which I assume you mean then, there's simply not enough evidence to say what anyone thought about relations between Jewish gods and other gods of other peoples, and even the evidence of what Greeks (who were unaware of Jews at the time) thought about other national cults is very limited.
There's plenty of evidence. The Greeks adopted the Jewish god into their pantheon as Adonis, and the cult of his wife Ishtar as Aphrodite. The felt nothing wrong with just Hellenizing a foreign god. What you fail to grasp is that you place special importance on Jews because they rule over you. The Greeks didn't care if something was foreign. Only if it could be Hellenized.
Well yeah it's the same for us, as Lakshmi was incorporated into the Chinese pantheon through Buddhism.
How was Ishtar Jewish, are you getting confused with Yahweh's wife Asherah?
Ditto for the other deities you mention, the fact that some Jews did worship them doesn't make them "Jewish" in any real sense.
Nor does the fact that historically some Greeks identified Aphrodite with Ishtar mean that the Greeks had adopted Ishtar, this is putting the cart before the horse.
Your view of history is just too garbled and non-empiricial to bother discussing at this point.
Lol
Thank you for this read. Much appreciated today. God bless.
A very interesting essay. Lots to process. Thanks!