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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (41827)	9/18/2013 5:45:23 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Its an emergent property of world opening up that religion along with other cultural forms, manners, goods & ideas are the exchanges, this has been going on for 10,000 yrs. One adopted Islam when they swept in, one accepted Hellenization when they swept in, religion is always a curious part of the deal, look at Rome and all its cults coming & going, Christianity invents a great centralized story, a simplification to polytheism & a wonderful after life promise & a stability. It could have gone another way, we just dont know, interesting thing about Mithraism, the far older version goes back 1400bc, Indo Aryan "Mitra" means "Covenant" ...very interesting dont ya think? Forget the Mithra Dec 25th birthday, this is far older story.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (41827)	9/19/2013 7:16:08 AM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

"Christianity has been growing like a weed in the third world for some time now." Your choice of words--lol

To: Brumar89 who wrote (41827)	9/19/2013 7:40:02 AM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

You think the Jewish "covenant with god" idea was all their own, guess again. Here we see the evolution of religious ideas & memes crossing civilizations down from the great peaceful Indic cultures that were singing collected hymns to the god Mitra & Varuna far back to 2400bc, who's name means "covenant". Though far distinguished thru time to the far later Roman "Mithra" we find an influence again with the earlier Indo Persian-Iranian Zoroastrian "Mithra", where you got that great dualism, all the angels , God of Light, good & evil. Mitra, they were singing hymns to this God of Covenants 2400BC when the God of Abraham wasn't even a zygote, speck of sperm or an egg, nearly 2000yrs later we know about the major influence of Persian Cyrus the Great liberating the Hebrews from Babylon 600BC so if you think you are original, think again. en.wikipedia.org MITRA God of Covenants The Indo-Iranian word *mitra-m means "covenant, contract, oath, or treaty", and only later on, "friend" (retaining the original neuter gender, mitram). The second sense tends to be emphasized in later sources, the first sense in the Veda and in Iranian. The word is derived from a root mi- "to fix, to bind" (Indo-European Hmei), with the "tool suffix" -tra-* (compare man-tra-), a contract is thus described as a "means of binding." [1] In the Vedas[ edit source \| editbeta] Vedic Mitra is the patron divinity of contracts and meetings. He is a prominent deity of the Rigveda distinguished by a relationship to Varuna, the protector of ?tá. Together with Varuna, he counted among the chief Adityas, a group of deities with social functions. They are the supreme keepers of order and gods of the law. The next two in importance are Aryaman (who guards guest friendship and bridal exchange) and Bhaga (share in bounty, good luck). Varuna and Mitra are the gods of the blood oath and tribal contracts, often twinned as Mitra–Varuna (a dvandva compound). In the Vedic hymns, Mitra is often invoked together with Varuna, as Mitra-Varuna. In some of their aspects, Varuna is lord of the cosmic rhythm of the celestial spheres, while Mitra brings forth the light at dawn, which was covered by Varuna. Mitra together with Varuna is the most prominent deity and the chief of the Adityas in the Rigveda. Though being Asuras, Mitra and Varuna are also addressed as devas in Rigveda (e.g., RV 7.60.12), and in the only hymn dedicated to Mitra, he is referred to as a deva (mitrasya...devasya) in RV 3.59.6. The pairing with Varuna, a god unknown in Iranian religion, is very strong already in the Rigveda, which has few hymns where Mitra is mentioned without Varuna. RV 3.59 is the only hymn dedicated to Mitra exclusively, where he is lauded as a god following ?ta, order and stability and of observances (2b, vrata), the sustainer of mankind (6a), said also of Indra in 3.37.4c) and of all gods (8c, devan vishvan). 3.59.1 Mitra, when speaking, stirreth men to labour: Mitra sustaineth both the earth and heaven.Mitra beholdeth men with eyes that close not. To Mitra bring, with holy oil, oblation. (trans. Griffith)