I think the Romans are responsible for Christianity’s problems. Judaism was and still is a very tolerant religion, and there are plenty of other gods in the Torah/Bible. Jesus sure wasn’t the cause of the exclusionism; he was a very kind and accepting person. No, I blame Paul and the rest of the Romans, for the evolution of Christianity into a culturally genocidal religion.
You take the Romans, who are used to converting barbarians into their religion, and you give them a henotheistic religion? They’re gonna change it into monotheism and demand that everyone convert or die. Syncretism created the slippery slope that lead to mass monotheism. Monotheism existed before the Romans, but it was the Romans who prosecuted it with such hate as to destroy European paganism.
I think the Romans are responsible for Christianity’s problems. Judaism was and still is a very tolerant religion, and there are plenty of other gods in the Torah/Bible.
… this the same Judaism whose main commandment is “Thou shalt not have any other gods before Me?” This the same Judaism whose holy book is full of ethnoreligious genocide? This the same Judaism which openly regarded the worship of any other god as worth murdering their fellow Hebrews over? This the same Judaism who regarded a minor heresy (Samaritanism) as worth a religious war over? This the same Judaism who massacred ‘pagans’ during the reign of the Maccabees before the arrival of the Romans? This the same Judaism who massacred pagans during the First Jewish-Roman War? This the same Judaism who massacred each other during the First Jewish Roman War, for following the wrong sect of Judaism?
Judaism only became a ‘tolerant’ religion because it lost all worldly power.
You take the Romans, who are used to converting barbarians into their religion,
… Romans weren’t used to ‘converting’ anyone into their religion. That’s not in any way a serious or realistic idea of traditional Roman religio.
and you give them a henotheistic religion? They’re gonna change it into monotheism and demand that everyone convert or die.
The trouble with that is that the Romans practiced numerous henotheistic religions before Christianity, and never did anything of the like that Christianity did with those henotheistic religions. Or, for that matter, that Christianity’s violence largely started outside of the Roman cultural heartland and before its adoption by the Roman state.
Syncretism created the slippery slope that lead to mass monotheism. Monotheism existed before the Romans, but it was the Romans who prosecuted it with such hate as to destroy European paganism.
In Exodus, the Egyptian priests summon snakes by praying to their gods. Then Moses summons a bigger snake by praying to Elohim. The implication is that Elohim and the Egyptian gods both exist, but Elohim is more powerful. That’s henotheism.
The first commandment isn’t “thou shalt have no other gods”, because that would be monotheism. The first commandment is “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”, which is explicitly henotheistic.
At the end of the day, any monotheistic Abrahamist is a fool who doesn’t read their own scripture, or even their own commandments.
In Exodus, the Egyptian priests summon snakes by praying to their gods. Then Moses summons a bigger snake by praying to Elohim. The implication is that Elohim and the Egyptian gods both exist, but Elohim is more powerful. That’s henotheism.
That doesn’t at all change the fact that that very same text forbade worship of any other gods. Does it matter if they believe other gods exist, if they regard worshipping other gods as grounds for murder?
At the end of the day, any monotheistic Abrahamist is a fool who doesn’t read their own scripture, or even their own commandments.
That doesn’t at all change the facts that Judaism, before the arrival of the Romans, even, was a deeply intolerant religion in practice, that Romans didn’t ‘convert’ others to their religion, that Romans practiced henotheistic religions before Christianity and didn’t spiral into fuckwit intolerant insanity with them, that Christianity largely rejected syncretism, and that Christian violence against non-Christians predates Roman acceptance of the religion and was largely centered in a Hellenized and Middle-Eastern context, rather than the Romanized areas of the Western Empire.
I unfortunately spent a lot of time reading the Old Testament in my youth, so I remember a lot of the… gruesome details.
… it contributed significantly to me leaving religion behind as I became old enough to reconcile my values and what I had been taught.
While Romans did sometimes clash with other religious faiths, mostly over practices they regarded as ‘odious’ (human sacrifice was usually the big one), largely, the opinion of Romans was that following the ways of one’s ancestors was a good thing. Romans respected ‘piety’ even if it wasn’t Roman piety - even the Jews, for example, were regarded positively in that they followed the ancient faith of their ancestors.
To the Romans, diversity was a good thing, precisely because the Romans regarded all peoples as having unique cultural practices which made them good at different things. The Romans regarded themselves as especially skilled at ruling and organizing (very conveniently for their imperial ambitions), but that also meant that they needed other people, who were better at things like artisanship, philosophy, academic law, even war, to both cooperate with Rome and preserve their own traditional ways.
Romans even largely allowed peoples in the Empire to follow their own traditional laws and power structures, so far as it applied to their fellow provincials. We often marvel in the modern day at the long-lasting assimilation of peoples in the Empire, but this was largely neither an active process, nor even necessarily intended. It occurred largely by passive means of coexistence and convenience, and included significant cultural influence on the Romans themselves from the provincials, even in the Italian heartland of Rome.
But the syncretism still makes the religious world so much smaller, by turning many different pantheons into one pantheon with many interpretations. That destroys a lot of diversity. And in some cases it’s comically incorrect, such as when the Romans tried to fit Odin into the Roman pantheon and decided he was Mercury.
Roman syncretism aided in the retaining of conquered territories by making the locals consider themselves to be religiously Roman. That destroys part of their individual identity and makes them less likely to rebel. Racism is unfortunately one of the best motivators for an oppressed people to rise up - see what Hamas has been up to - and the Romans exploited that by convincing people to see themselves as Roman.
The Romans turned all of the religious diversity across Europe into just one religion and one pantheon, with many (many) different cults. Then they turned that one pantheon into one god. I’ll never forgive them for all of that genocide.
But the syncretism still makes the religious world so much smaller, by turning many different pantheons into one pantheon with many interpretations. That destroys a lot of diversity. And in some cases it’s comically incorrect, such as when the Romans tried to fit Odin into the Roman pantheon and decided he was Mercury.
Interpretatio Romana was not meant as, nor imposed on, the conquered, but was a means by which the Romans themselves envisioned foreign faiths. The point was not to make the provincials ‘realize’ Wodan was actually Mercury, but to allow Romans to see why foreigners were actually righteous and pious, and not just worshipping scary, dangerous gods, as many pre-modern peoples believed. As I pointed out, even, Romans did not want to destroy or even modify native religious traditions.
Furthermore, isn’t Your hostility towards this syncretic, universalist view itself hostile to diversity? Your assertion here is effectively that Romans, by having their own beliefs about the divine, were innately destructive simply by believing in a faith which regarded others as equal and worthy of respect. Is Your view that diversity is only valid if the faiths in question refuse to acknowledge other faiths as having a place in the worldview, regarding all others as intrinsically alien and incomprehensible, apart from the divine order of their own view?
Roman syncretism aided in the retaining of conquered territories by making the locals consider themselves to be religiously Roman. That destroys part of their individual identity and makes them less likely to rebel. Racism is unfortunately one of the best motivators for an oppressed people to rise up - see what Hamas has been up to - and the Romans exploited that by convincing people to see themselves as Roman.
But as I pointed out, provincials weren’t assimilated into being ‘religiously Roman’. Roman religio was extremely different from native practices, not just superficially, but in terms of themes, mythology, pantheons, values, and actual ritual behaviors.
The Romans turned all of the religious diversity across Europe into just one religion and one pantheon, with many (many) different cults. Then they turned that one pantheon into one god. I’ll never forgive them for all of that genocide.
But that’s not even close to true. Nor, for that matter, is having a belief genocide. If someone starts believing what I believe, without me even so much as trying to proselytize, much less impose my beliefs by force, have I committed genocide??
I believe in a world in which all of us will one day believe wholeheartedly in the gods of all religions, regardless of our own preferences regarding worship or deference. I’ve personally had experiences involving Dionysus, Quetzalcoatl, and the Rainbow Serpent. Not to mention a variety of lesser-known gods. I wish that all people were as open minded.
The majority of pre-Roman europeans were not so open-minded as I am, but they did believe in the gods of other religions in a distant sense. This is the reason why it did not occur to the author(s) of Exodus to deny the existence of the Egyptian gods. That kind of thing simply did not cross many people’s minds until much later.
In the bronze age and the pre-Roman classical period, it was perfectly common to slaughter an entire people, without denying the existence of their gods. Religious denial was not an established means of warfare until the Romans pioneered it. The Romans invented a new kind of genocide. The Romans figured out how to exterminate a culture without shedding blood.
I think the Romans are responsible for Christianity’s problems. Judaism was and still is a very tolerant religion, and there are plenty of other gods in the Torah/Bible. Jesus sure wasn’t the cause of the exclusionism; he was a very kind and accepting person. No, I blame Paul and the rest of the Romans, for the evolution of Christianity into a culturally genocidal religion.
You take the Romans, who are used to converting barbarians into their religion, and you give them a henotheistic religion? They’re gonna change it into monotheism and demand that everyone convert or die. Syncretism created the slippery slope that lead to mass monotheism. Monotheism existed before the Romans, but it was the Romans who prosecuted it with such hate as to destroy European paganism.
… this the same Judaism whose main commandment is “Thou shalt not have any other gods before Me?” This the same Judaism whose holy book is full of ethnoreligious genocide? This the same Judaism which openly regarded the worship of any other god as worth murdering their fellow Hebrews over? This the same Judaism who regarded a minor heresy (Samaritanism) as worth a religious war over? This the same Judaism who massacred ‘pagans’ during the reign of the Maccabees before the arrival of the Romans? This the same Judaism who massacred pagans during the First Jewish-Roman War? This the same Judaism who massacred each other during the First Jewish Roman War, for following the wrong sect of Judaism?
Judaism only became a ‘tolerant’ religion because it lost all worldly power.
… Romans weren’t used to ‘converting’ anyone into their religion. That’s not in any way a serious or realistic idea of traditional Roman religio.
The trouble with that is that the Romans practiced numerous henotheistic religions before Christianity, and never did anything of the like that Christianity did with those henotheistic religions. Or, for that matter, that Christianity’s violence largely started outside of the Roman cultural heartland and before its adoption by the Roman state.
No^2.
In Exodus, the Egyptian priests summon snakes by praying to their gods. Then Moses summons a bigger snake by praying to Elohim. The implication is that Elohim and the Egyptian gods both exist, but Elohim is more powerful. That’s henotheism.
The first commandment isn’t “thou shalt have no other gods”, because that would be monotheism. The first commandment is “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”, which is explicitly henotheistic.
At the end of the day, any monotheistic Abrahamist is a fool who doesn’t read their own scripture, or even their own commandments.
That doesn’t at all change the fact that that very same text forbade worship of any other gods. Does it matter if they believe other gods exist, if they regard worshipping other gods as grounds for murder?
That doesn’t at all change the facts that Judaism, before the arrival of the Romans, even, was a deeply intolerant religion in practice, that Romans didn’t ‘convert’ others to their religion, that Romans practiced henotheistic religions before Christianity and didn’t spiral into fuckwit intolerant insanity with them, that Christianity largely rejected syncretism, and that Christian violence against non-Christians predates Roman acceptance of the religion and was largely centered in a Hellenized and Middle-Eastern context, rather than the Romanized areas of the Western Empire.
Yeah, maybe you’re right.
I unfortunately spent a lot of time reading the Old Testament in my youth, so I remember a lot of the… gruesome details.
… it contributed significantly to me leaving religion behind as I became old enough to reconcile my values and what I had been taught.
While Romans did sometimes clash with other religious faiths, mostly over practices they regarded as ‘odious’ (human sacrifice was usually the big one), largely, the opinion of Romans was that following the ways of one’s ancestors was a good thing. Romans respected ‘piety’ even if it wasn’t Roman piety - even the Jews, for example, were regarded positively in that they followed the ancient faith of their ancestors.
To the Romans, diversity was a good thing, precisely because the Romans regarded all peoples as having unique cultural practices which made them good at different things. The Romans regarded themselves as especially skilled at ruling and organizing (very conveniently for their imperial ambitions), but that also meant that they needed other people, who were better at things like artisanship, philosophy, academic law, even war, to both cooperate with Rome and preserve their own traditional ways.
Romans even largely allowed peoples in the Empire to follow their own traditional laws and power structures, so far as it applied to their fellow provincials. We often marvel in the modern day at the long-lasting assimilation of peoples in the Empire, but this was largely neither an active process, nor even necessarily intended. It occurred largely by passive means of coexistence and convenience, and included significant cultural influence on the Romans themselves from the provincials, even in the Italian heartland of Rome.
But the syncretism still makes the religious world so much smaller, by turning many different pantheons into one pantheon with many interpretations. That destroys a lot of diversity. And in some cases it’s comically incorrect, such as when the Romans tried to fit Odin into the Roman pantheon and decided he was Mercury.
Roman syncretism aided in the retaining of conquered territories by making the locals consider themselves to be religiously Roman. That destroys part of their individual identity and makes them less likely to rebel. Racism is unfortunately one of the best motivators for an oppressed people to rise up - see what Hamas has been up to - and the Romans exploited that by convincing people to see themselves as Roman.
The Romans turned all of the religious diversity across Europe into just one religion and one pantheon, with many (many) different cults. Then they turned that one pantheon into one god. I’ll never forgive them for all of that genocide.
Interpretatio Romana was not meant as, nor imposed on, the conquered, but was a means by which the Romans themselves envisioned foreign faiths. The point was not to make the provincials ‘realize’ Wodan was actually Mercury, but to allow Romans to see why foreigners were actually righteous and pious, and not just worshipping scary, dangerous gods, as many pre-modern peoples believed. As I pointed out, even, Romans did not want to destroy or even modify native religious traditions.
Furthermore, isn’t Your hostility towards this syncretic, universalist view itself hostile to diversity? Your assertion here is effectively that Romans, by having their own beliefs about the divine, were innately destructive simply by believing in a faith which regarded others as equal and worthy of respect. Is Your view that diversity is only valid if the faiths in question refuse to acknowledge other faiths as having a place in the worldview, regarding all others as intrinsically alien and incomprehensible, apart from the divine order of their own view?
But as I pointed out, provincials weren’t assimilated into being ‘religiously Roman’. Roman religio was extremely different from native practices, not just superficially, but in terms of themes, mythology, pantheons, values, and actual ritual behaviors.
But that’s not even close to true. Nor, for that matter, is having a belief genocide. If someone starts believing what I believe, without me even so much as trying to proselytize, much less impose my beliefs by force, have I committed genocide??
I believe in a world in which all of us will one day believe wholeheartedly in the gods of all religions, regardless of our own preferences regarding worship or deference. I’ve personally had experiences involving Dionysus, Quetzalcoatl, and the Rainbow Serpent. Not to mention a variety of lesser-known gods. I wish that all people were as open minded.
The majority of pre-Roman europeans were not so open-minded as I am, but they did believe in the gods of other religions in a distant sense. This is the reason why it did not occur to the author(s) of Exodus to deny the existence of the Egyptian gods. That kind of thing simply did not cross many people’s minds until much later.
In the bronze age and the pre-Roman classical period, it was perfectly common to slaughter an entire people, without denying the existence of their gods. Religious denial was not an established means of warfare until the Romans pioneered it. The Romans invented a new kind of genocide. The Romans figured out how to exterminate a culture without shedding blood.