Moderator
the source of religions
I really like all religions that condone ahimsa as opposed to 'blood sacrifice,' but it seems hard to see what the source of religions is. It is often said there is a 'golden thread' connecting a succession or tree or graph of them together to their source.
I guess there are four possibilities: African, Sumeria, China/etc., or India. HPB in her writings gives a fair amount of reasonable evidence that India is where people lived for longest or it is the nearest civilization to where people lived right after the destruction of the Atlanteans and the beginning of Vaivasvatu's people.
However, contemporary historians think they have disproven the 'Aryan invasions' theory about India and think that Sumeria had older civilization. They also have plenty of good evidence for this. I forgot what some of HPBs evidence was and I suspect I may have just been younger and less critical and that maybe the Sumerian theory is more reasonable. On the other hand I thought HPB was talking about things about Indian civilization that proved it must have been around about as long as people have been in Asia or even for the large part of the history of the human race.
Another idea I am considering, with Rosucrician (e.g. Max Heindel) ideas about the root-races is China could be older if the Asians around there and near are also part of the end of the Atlantean race.
Of course the Lemurians and their oral tradition are older. I am just curious what the oldest civilization and oral tradition recorded in ancient rather than modern literature is.
I guess there are four possibilities: African, Sumeria, China/etc., or India. HPB in her writings gives a fair amount of reasonable evidence that India is where people lived for longest or it is the nearest civilization to where people lived right after the destruction of the Atlanteans and the beginning of Vaivasvatu's people.
However, contemporary historians think they have disproven the 'Aryan invasions' theory about India and think that Sumeria had older civilization. They also have plenty of good evidence for this. I forgot what some of HPBs evidence was and I suspect I may have just been younger and less critical and that maybe the Sumerian theory is more reasonable. On the other hand I thought HPB was talking about things about Indian civilization that proved it must have been around about as long as people have been in Asia or even for the large part of the history of the human race.
Another idea I am considering, with Rosucrician (e.g. Max Heindel) ideas about the root-races is China could be older if the Asians around there and near are also part of the end of the Atlantean race.
Of course the Lemurians and their oral tradition are older. I am just curious what the oldest civilization and oral tradition recorded in ancient rather than modern literature is.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Susan Thomas on
-
Heindel and Blavatsky seemed to have a lot of the same information from independent appearing sources. Heindel was always reticent to speak of the masters that appeared to him, as I recall, though it has been many years since I read any of the literature. Overall, I tend to agree with Heindel regarding the area of China being a little older. I have found nothing older than the Lemurian traditions in about 30 years of searching. Speaking of which, did you ever hear of a man by the name of Dr. John Howard Zitko. He had a Lemurian study course, the name of which escapes me, but I will find it. In the mean time you might Google him.
-
Permalink Reply by Arthur E Gregory on
-
I've done some study on this myself.. not so much in a scholastic sense but more or less along the bits and pieces sense.. I think the area from the Punjab or Indus to the Nile would be the ancient mother land. We don't it seems know a lot about the Indus civilization but they traded with the Mesopotamian civilization.. then there's Zoroastrianism which I think was widespread and influential for centuries..
After Alexander burned down Persepolis and destroyed the library of the religion which contained leather scrolls with gold lettering it was also known that there was a cave in central Asia and in the far reaches of the empire that had a duplicate set.
Now I've often wondered if that set will ever be discovered and what a sensation it could cause.. maybe like the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Nag Hammadi scrolls.. anyway..
- Art
-
Permalink Reply by Katinka Hesselink on
-
According to my professors at Leiden university the oldest still living religion is Zoroastrianism, which has a common history with the early Vedas. The area where this civilization lived is, still, thought to be Central Asia. Not quite the Aryan Invasion theory, more like an Aryan migration theory.
-
-
Thanks for your post Katinka!
I think you're cortrect Katinka! The Ancient Vedic language and the Avestan language of the ancient Zoroastrian writings is so similar that they think that there is a common root.. The ancient Greeks also gave Zoroastrianism a very ancient beginning..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avesta
and this article also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster
On the destruction of Persepolis by Alexander see:
http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/History/hakhamaneshian/burning_persep...
- Art
-
-
Tero..
We should bear in mind that "pagan" was a term Christians used when they were urbanized and the older religions were more prominent still in the countryside..but yes they were more naturalistic also because they were living in the country rural areas..but check this out for how the word "Pagan" derives from:
late 14c., from L.L. paganus "pagan," in classical L. "villager, rustic, civilian," from pagus "rural district," originally "district limited by markers," thus related to pangere "to fix, fasten," from PIE base *pag- "to fix" (see pact). Religious sense is often said to derive from conservative rural adherence to the old gods after the Christianization of Roman towns and cities; but the word in this sense predates that period in Church history, and it is more likely derived from the use of paganus in Roman military jargon for "civilian, incompetent soldier," which Christians (Tertullian, c.202; Augustine) picked up with the military imagery of the early Church (e.g. milites "soldier of Christ," etc.). Applied to modern pantheists and nature-worshippers from 1908. Paganism is attested from early 15c.
Source:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pagan
- Art
-
-
Tero,
Thanks for sharing your material!
I've always enjoyed reading the English translation of the Kalevala by John Martin Crawford.. I have an 1888 edition.. but anyway.. I'll read more of Leo Nygren's The Master Plan through:
http://bocksaga.de/Library/leo.htm
- Art
-
-
Tero or other readers might enjoy reading this story of the "Var" or Enclosure that is a story of surviving the ice age found in Zoroastrian writings:
http://tenets.zoroastrianism.com/var33.html
It's intrigued me for some time..
- Art
-
Permalink Reply by Mark R. Jaqua on
-
Yes, it does sound like a shelter, with technology, to survive in the Ice Age - maybe like some of the shelters that probably exist today to survive a nuclear winter from a nuclear war. The guy says that it is "based on the Venidad" - so I don't know if that means a relatively close adaptation, or just a work of fiction. The author says: "Here are a few chapters from Section IV of the 'Saga of the Aryans' that I wrote based on this religious evidence in the Holy Vendidad. These chapters were published in the Jame-Jamshed some time ago."
-
-
Mark,
Thanks for your post!
The interesting thing is that the government of Norway has such a shelter a "Seed Vault" in Spitzbergen Island and it's purpose is to preserve seeds in the event of a mega disaster such as a nuclear winter..
The Norwegian government has built a "doomsday" seed bank to store seeds from as many of the world's plant species as possible. The bank was created by hollowing out a 120-meter (390 ft) tunnel on Spitsbergen cut into rock with a natural temperature of −6 °C (21.2 °F), refrigerating it to −18 °C (−0.4 °F), and then storing seeds donated by the 1,400 crop repositories maintained by countries around the world. The vault has top security blast-proof doors and two airlocks. The number of seeds stored depends on the number of countries participating in the project, but the first seeds arrived late in 2007. The point of this project is to save plants (wild, agricultural, etc.) from becoming extinct as a side-effect of crop gene manipulation, or due to a global catastrophe such as climate change (the tunnel is 130 meters or 430 feet above sea-level) or nuclear war.[8]
This is the story of the 'Var" in the Zend Avesta where Jamshid is also called YIma:
http://www.avesta.org/vendidad/vd2sbe.htm
Yima (Jamshid) would be an Adam-like being who Ahura Mazda has instructed to build the shelter just as Manu, Noah and his Sumerian counter part. I was going to compare the dimensions of the Yar with the Ark of Noah and the Ark mentioned in the Sumerian archives but haven't gotten around to it as yet.. maybe someone here with some interest could do this and we can make it a group study..
'In the largest part of the place thou shalt make nine streets, six in the middle part, three in the smallest. To the streets of the largest part thou shalt bring a thousand seeds of men and women; to the streets of the middle part, six hundred; to the streets of the smallest part, three hundred26. That Vara thou shalt seal up with thy golden seal, and thou shalt make a door, and a window self-shining within.'
We could call it the "Var group"..
- Art
-
-
This is the Chaldean account of preparing for the great flood and I'm including the Chaldean measurements for the "ark" ship here:
24. The ship which thou shalt make,
25. 600? cubits shall be the measure of its length, and
p. 265
26. 60? cubits the amount of its breadth and its height.
27. . . . into the deep launch it.
28. I perceived and said to Hea my lord:
29. The ship making which thou commandest me,
30. when I shall have made,
31. young and old will deride me.
32. Hea opened his mouth and spake and said to me his servant:
33. . . . . . . thou shalt say unto them,
34. . . . . . he has turned from me and
35. . . . . . . fixed over me
36. . . . . like caves . . . .
37. . . . above and below
38. . . . closed the ship . . .
39. . . . the flood which I will send to you,
40. into it enter and the door of the ship turn.
41. Into the midst of it thy grain, thy furniture, and thy goods,
42. thy wealth, thy woman servants, thy female slaves, and the young men,
43. the beasts of the field, the animals of the field all, I will gather and
44. I will send to thee, and they shall be enclosed in thy door.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/caog/caog19.htm
-
-
Here are the measurements of the ark from the Torah (Bible) with accompanying commentary which I found interesting:
Do the height, length, and width of Noah's ark (300 by 50 by 30 cubits: Gen.6:15)represent the letters of the word "lashon"?
A different numerical interpretation is given in the Sermons of Rabbi Joshua Ibn Shuaib, who lived in Spain in the late 1200's: The "shin" stands for the Divine name Shaddai; the "nun" stands for the 50 gates of wisdom; and the 10's (the heights of the three levels of the ark) stand for the "Yod" of the Tetragrammaton. Still another numerical intepretation, given in the commentary of R. Menahem Zioni (1500's), is that the dimensions of the Ark are products of the letters in the Tetragrammaton: 50 = 10 x 5 (Yod x He); 300 = 50 x 6 (Yod x He x Vav); 30 = 6 x 5 (Vav x He).
Source:
http://www.torah.org/qanda/seequanda.php?id=151#
It would appears the Chaldean ark was larger..
- Art
-
-
Here are 3 articles on Zoroastrianism by Alexander Wilder, for those that might be interested in it:
- Attachments:
© 2024 Created by Theosophy Network.
Powered by
