Gods, Myths, and the Machinery of Society 7
Part 7
Semitic has influenced more than half of the world's population and its followers believe that their divine concept is from time immemorial, with their well-known gods, the world moved forward from the first man Adam to the present but the truth is that if you can build a time machine to go only three thousand years back, you will not find any trace of this concept. Neither will you find anyone who knew those gods...
Take only Moses, who is associated with Pharaoh, then no Moses will be seen in the history of Egypt... even though there is a record of the whole life of everyone from Menes to Ramesses and Merneptah. That means nothing will be found unlike the evidence of Vedic gods three to three and a half thousand years ago in Arabic poetry of Labi or treaty of Mitanni. You may find names of some kings who would be ordinary persons and not divine characters.
In order to understand this, when you go three thousand years back you will find four different concepts which had an impact on large populations and the Semitic concept was nowhere to be seen. Though there were thousands of divine concepts spread in small groups which have already been mentioned. There were two major concepts belonging to two branches of Aryans. One was the branch started by Zoroaster which dominated in Persia which can be called Zoroastrianism and the other which dominated towards India which can be called Vedic religion.
Both had opposite philosophies. Zoroastrianism recognized the good power as Ahura Mazda and the evil power as Angra Mainyu. Ahuras (also called Asuras) were the heroes here and they were the villains in Vedic religion, which was the other major religion of this branch. There was a contradiction in the concepts, but there were also many similarities, which are found from the texts to the method of worship. Similarly two big concepts existed on the shores of the Mediterranean.
One was in Greece with Zeus as the main deity (Indra's father in the Vedas was Dheyus and possibly they were the same characters) and many other deities for other functions. The second one was in Egypt, with many gods and goddesses namely Ra Aten, Osiris, Horus, etc. Although earlier there were many totem concepts like India, but if we talk about three thousand years ago, this had become the main concept. If we look at the two thousand years before Christ, Zoroastrianism was the first religion that expanded and flourished with power and conquests.
Then the Egyptians also expanded their reign and their concept spread, which went everywhere around the Mediterranean… After that, the Greeks established their supremacy, but after their fall and rise of Romans the concepts of both became one and then their religion spread from Persia to Europe. In the meantime, how did the Semitic come into existence? So a king or a chief in the past, Jacob/ Yakub aka Israel left Egypt and settled his group in Canaan (now Israel/Palestine) and these people further called Israelis.
It further expanded into a large state during the period of David and especially Solomon and after him it was divided into two separate states. The main population of Israel lived in the by then consecrated city of Jerusalem, which was conquered by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC and destroyed the city and brought the survivors as slaves to Babylon, where they remained for the next fifty years. Here these slaves did something that later changed the entire world.
Here they wrote their history by giving divine form to their kings, chiefs and great men (this was the custom of that time, the Indian gods are also created like this) which was a concept giving divine shade to the history from the beginning of the world till then. It was in the form of several books, the most important of which can be called the Torah and the Zabur, which are considered divine books.
Then Cyrus, the most powerful Sultan of Persia, conquered Babylon in 539 BC and freed the Jews from the slavery they had been suffering for decades. They were also allowed to take all their books with them and scripts and thus they settled back in Jerusalem. They flourished, were destroyed many times, settled again and spread to the surrounding countries... Then there were no borders like that of today, so there was no restriction for people coming and setteling anywhere.
Yet their main priestly class remained in Jerusalem. Then came the period of Constantine. Until then, Roman religion was dominant everywhere in Europe... Ignoring the actual story of Jesus, and focusing on the fact that much after his time (about 300 years), the Roman emperor Constantine had established Christianity and whatever may have been the reasons for this, its influence spread from Europe to the Middle East gradually.
Christianity went on to overtake Roman and Greek religion and with the dominance of the church, that concept was made a satanic concept. In Christianity too many books were written in which one was the main with the name Gospel (Injil) which was the third divine book. The Old Testament, was formed by the Jewish books, and the New Testament with all the books written later. They took everything that was in the Old Testament
But many things seemed outdated, or did not seem fit to adjust with the times, so they were edited... Take for example the character of Lilith or the angels called The Watcher. With the help of power, the Romans spread Christianity to the areas of their influence and it spread to the whole world in the later colonial period. Islam started four hundred years after Constantine and the fourth divine book came into existence. Christians had adopted the concept of Jews while editing some part of it.
They edited the content of the New Testament and took it entirely... things that did not suit the morality of the new age were removed. For example, Christians could write that the daughters of Prophet Lut had intercourse with him and gave birth to his child, but this couldn't be written now because it would become illegitimate for that era. After the Prophet's death, the first Caliph spread Islam across Arabia and the subsequent Caliphs spread it to the surrounding countries, while later the Ottoman Empire of the Turks spread Islam to far-flung countries.
How did it spread? Obviously with the help of power and conquest. Now consider few things... Where was this content written? In Babylonia... At that time Babylon was under influence from Egypt to Greece and Persia. We saw the example of a 1700 BC Arabian poet who knew about Vedas, Mitanni dynasty was established around the same location in 1400 BC which witnessed Vedic gods in their treaty.
The concept of monotheism in the form of Aten also came into vogue in the nearby Egyptian culture, and to their east the world's first ancient monotheistic religion was spread across Persia, which was led by a prophet Zoroaster and gave everyone the message of Ahura Mazda. It is obvious that those who were creating religious literature sitting in Babylon were aware of the names, deities, concepts, stories and traditions of the surrounding world...
So instead of finding reality in their stories, find similarities with the characters of other concepts. Find the similarity between Brahma and Abraham. Find the similarity between Noah and Manu and stories like the great flood which are found on both sides of the world and find if the Persians uses to recite Namaz or their prophets were flying to the heaven sitting on a flying animal. Or if the Allah of the Muslims came from the family of the Syrian moon god.
It is possible that you will understand a lot at once... At least try to find something out of the box. Let me tell you a story... Ashurbanipal's museum has a book named Gilgamesh which was engraved on stone bricks in Sumerian, in which there is a story related to the king of the same name in 3000 BC - who in his last days meets his ancestor Jiusuddu who built a big boat after being warned of a flood by god.
And by putting the pairs of every creature including animals, birds and humans in it, he saved them from the great flood. Now understand, one story is from Uruk and one story was written in Babylon, both are ancient cities of Mesopotamia, the third story was written with Manu. The writers may have been part of the same family who wrote the story of Jiusuddu... Don't you think the plot is common? So when you sit down to explore the old religions, their past, you will see names, traditions, beliefs and stories, many common things taken from each other...
For example, one religion believes a cow will take them to heaven and other believes a goat will help them cross the Sirat bridge leading to heaven.
Written by Ashfaq Ahmad
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