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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (30044)	9/28/2001 1:03:19 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I am afraid I am drawing a blank on the wide divergence of ideas. I have read the Eddas, the Vedas, Hesiod and Homer, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, collections of Native American myths, all kinds of stuff, and I do not see the significant variety you are talking about. Some of it, of course, is merely childish, like the idea of the world being on the back of a giant turtle. Some of it is distressingly amoral, like Zeus screwing everything in sight. But it is not until later, when the Upanishads or Stoic philosophers tried to allegorize and provide a rational underpinning, that there is much in the way of ideas. Judaism and Christianity both have elements of what I would call "natural religion" in them, like the idea of ritual sacrifice, so I would not deny that there are aspects which are primitive and "pagan". The interesting thing in Judaism is the development of the idea of monotheism, including the choosing of a people through whom the whole world can one day be sanctified. Prophetic universalism is something new under the sun, moving from a merely tribal deity to the Master of the Universe, who will one day draw together all nations in a reign of peace and abundance. The interesting thing in Christianity is the particular way the Messianic idea is worked out: that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, and so forth......