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Re: poptarts with a twist of lennon

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, Don Smith wrote:

> > Before the advent of such religions, my hunch is that nations were
> > more interested in *dominating* other nations than they were in
> > *converting* them to their own faiths.
>
> It's more complicated than that.  Polytheism was often tied to places,
> and then of course there was the "divine right of kings".  So when one
> culture "dominated" another, one way in which they dominated was to
> force the people to worship *their* gods rather than the old ones.

Right ... the same way that they might force the people to pay taxes or to
pledge allegiance to their flags or whatever.  But I don't think the
nations were necessarily interested in going to war over *religious ideas*
... they just saw religious symbols as another extension of their
collective national ego.  So when Israel subjugated Moab, it was, from
Israel's point of view, because Yahweh had given the Moabites into their
hands, while, from Moab's point of view, it was because Chemosh was
punishing his Moabites ... but the underlying reasons for the conflict
were more political and economic than religious, I would think.

> The Babylonians destroyed the Jerusalem temple, where many Hebrews
> believed Yahweh dwelled, and hauled the intellectual elite off to
> Babylon, where they figured the exiles would assimilate and give up on
> their old beliefs, without access to the old holy places.  As you can
> see in the Psalms, this was not an easy transition: "How can we sing the
> Lord's song in a foreign land?".  They came up with the radical idea
> that their god was still accessible to them in Babylon, and more than
> that, he wasn't tied to any particular place at *all*!  Radical
> innovation.

Very!  Though it is a little more complicated than that.  The Jews didn't
let go of Jerusalem altogether; they continued to believe that Jerusalem
would be God's dwelling place again some day, and they *also* believed the
day would come when *all* nations would come to Jerusalem and worship
their God in that city.  Maybe they meant this in a purely symbolic way,
maybe not, but either way, for a people who had just seen their city
destroyed, it was a powerful, and defiant, belief to cling to.

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 If true love never did exist how could we know its name? -- Sam Phillips
          Happiness happens but I want joy. -- Marjorie Cardwell

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