Spiritual defender: RELIGION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ITS EVOLUTION - Dr. Riccardo Privitera's column on Newsvine

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

RELIGION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ITS EVOLUTION - Dr. Riccardo Privitera's column on Newsvine

2 comments:

RAYLOKEAugust 14, 2012 at 12:34 PM
The myth of the stopping of the sun and moon by Joshua.

"Osiris, I am your son, come to glorify your soul, and to give you even more power." - Horus, (Book of the Dead, Ch. 173)

"Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once." - Jesus, (John 13:31-32)

This is impossible to ignore or deny Horus, though many Christian scholars and Apologist prefer to exclude this fact of history from their arguments regarding the history of Christian doctrine.

The ancient Greeks adhered to the religious principle of one major deity, Zeus, and twelve lower deities both male and female, each in charge of a specific aspect of nature or human life. So you had Mars the God of war, as you had Poseidon God of the seas, or Venus the Goddess of love. In the relation between man and the Gods, blood sacrifices of animals were required, and in some cases also human sacrifice was requested by these Gods. Another interesting aspect of Greek religious practice was the Gods worshipped by the average Greek, were in themselves not immune to the very frailties and weaknesses present in the humans, these Gods and Goddess argued and bickered amongst each other, there was jealousy, rivalry, sex, both amongst themselves but also, according to Greek Mythology, between Gods and the humans. Many sons and daughters were born out of the joining of Gods and humans; this of course perpetuates the “concept” of Son of God, typical in Christianity.

The early Romans started their base religion on the Homeric principle that Aeneas the son of Venus, and Trojan hero who survived the fall of Troy settled in the coast of Lazio with the survivors of Troy. Aeneas was credited to have brought with him the Palladium, a wooden statue of Pallas Athena that was considered a protection for the city, the Lares which were statues of protection of the family unity, and the penates which were domestic deities that became a most to all Roman families. The Myths of the founding of Roman religious foundation can be seen in the geology of the Kings of Alba Longa, as well as in the well-known allegorical legend of Romulus and Remo the two twins saved and raised by a she wolf.

As the Rome grew and started assimilating neighbouring cultures, it also assimilated their deities, instead of destroying them, this of course was also to guarantee certain stability to the conquered peoples and facilitate a less antagonistic attitude to Roman rule. Roman Religion offers no native creation myth; neither does waste time to explain the origins of the various deities. Priesthood was held by the ruling classes, and there was no real principle of separation of church and state. Their whole religious theology was based on the principle of “Do ut des” (I give so you might give), and religion was part of daily life in Roman culture. Animal and human sacrifices to the Gods were not uncommon in early Roman history.

The sheer variety of upper and lower deities that came to bear as Rome grew as a world power, were also seen as a cause of political stability for the various countries assimilated by Roman conquest. So it is not surprising when early Christians began preaching their theory of the one true God above all, that all men are equal, that the rich and the poor are equal before God, then it easy to see how this was considered extremely dangerous to the political stability of Roman hegemony, and the inevitable violent reaction towards these Christians, that were probably viewed then like we see Al Qaeda today.

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BruceJanuary 30, 2013 at 4:30 PM
http://rprivitera.newsvine.com/_news/2013/01/28/16739347-it-was-one-of-my-brothers-last-wishes

Dr. Riccardo Privitera passed away on January 11, 2013.
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