Near Eastern Religions and Zoroastrianism
I. Primal Concepts in Art and Ritual
A. The meaning of “primal”
1. Not “primitive” or “unintelligent” but “closer to the source” (tied to place and location)
B. Sympathetic magic: power through imitation
1. Masks and dance
2. Contemporary examples
C. Contagious magic: power through contact
1. Miracle stories of Jesus, et al.
2. Contemporary examples
D. Psychic affinity: animals
E. Animism: nature at large
F. The earth as source/womb (“before the divorce of Mom and Dad”)
1. Earth as Mom
2. Where did Dad go?
II. The community vs. the Individual
A. The group as the womb
B. The inner circle (covens, priests, apostles, the ones with the PIN numbers)
C. Self consciousness: the tension of belonging vs. alienation
D. The “hero:” what is he/she like?
E. The myth of the “return”
1. The hero’s journey is a rite of passage: he dies to his former self and is born anew; reflected in the seasonal cycle
2. From the heroic to the divine: death and resurrection
III. Mesopotamian Cultures
A. The “Fertile Crescent: “land between the rivers.”
B. The river-as-goddess
IV. Sumeria, ca. 3500 - 2027 BCE
A. The revolutionary transition from Paleolithic to neolithic: ca. 9000 BCE
B. Metallurgy
1. Copper: ca. 6000 BCE
2. Blends amd alloys (e.g., copper + tin = bronze): ca. 3000 BCE
C. Written language: cuneiform (L. cuneus, “wedge”)
1. Pictographs to wedges (faster, more convenient)
2. Most common evidence: business/commerce records
D. Role of religion
1. The gods “own” the kingdom/land
2. King is priestly intermediary
3. Temple or ziggurat: a “mountain” of god
4. Divine symbology: anthropomorphic
E. Fine arts
1. Sculpture, esp. fig 1.8 (“eyes!”)
2. Literature: The Epic of Gilgamesh
a. Earliest elements, ca. 2500 BCE; earliest coherent form as we know it today,
ca. 7th c. BCE
b. Compare to Genesis 6.9-9.17 in Hebrew scriptures (“Noah and the Ark”)
c. What does each story reflect about the human experience of the divine?
V. Babylon, ca. 1900 - 1550 BCE
A. The Code of Hammurabi: 1792 BCE
1. United warring city states under one rule, one law
2. The Stele of
Hammurabi (sculpture): depicts Hammurabi as receiving law from sun god,
Shamash
3. Casuistic law: “If... then..."
4. Compare to Exodus chapter 21 in Hebrew scriptures:
From Hammurabic Code: If a man has destroyed the eye of a free man, his own eye shall be destroyed. If he has destroyed the eye of a plebeian, or broken the bone of a plebeian, he shall pay one mina of silver [one mina = approx. one lb. of silver]
From the Hebrew Covenant (Exodus 21.26): When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free for the eye's sake. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, he shall let the slave go for the tooth's sake
5. Apodictic law, e.g., the Hebrew Decalogue: “Thou shalt not...” (Exodus 20.1-17)
VI. Assyria, ca. 1550 - 612 BCE
A. Noted primarily for its
military exploits. The curse of a culture that runs on imperialism and
colonialism is that it must
assume that it is always on the brink of war
B. First conqueror of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) in 722 BCE
VII. Neo-Babylon, ca. 604-562 BCE
A. Conquered the Southern Kingdom of Israel (Judah) in 586 BCE
1. The Hebrews were
carried off into slavery and exile for approximately 50 years. The
experience of exile plays a major role in later Judaism, as the greatest threat
to Judaic
identity is that of assimilation
B. Babylon was a huge
cosmopolitan center-- for this reason, both Judaic and Christian
literature/theology have
traditionally used the name “Babylon” as a metaphorical reference to
any decadent or immoral place
or culture
C. The Ziggurat of Marduk-- some
biblical scholars tie this to the Hebrew story of
“The Tower of Babel” (Bab-il,
an early form of the name “Babylon;” the Hebrew verb balal
means “to confuse”)
VIII. Canaanite Religion
A. The Ugaritic Texts
1. Ugarit: ancient Canaanite city state located in Syria during 2nd
millennium BCE,
discovered in 1929.
2. Thousands of texts uncovered and translated, both secular and religious materials.
3. Much revealed about the nature of Canaanite religion.
a. The Hebrew biblical record of “the Canaanites:” wholly negative (why?)
b. But in fact a significant amount of the biblical language/literary form re:
the God of
Israel (nature, power, etc.) comes directly from Canaanite tradition
c. “By origin and by birth, you are of the land of the Canaanites” (Ezekiel 16.3)
B. The Primary Canaanite Gods
1. El: the original patriarchal figure; father of the gods; “god of the
mountain;” both proper
name and the general designation for “god” (cf. Arabic allah)
2. Baal: the young and powerful upstart, god of the storm (cf. Vedic god Indra);
fertility,
virility; mountain dweller
3. Asherah: El’s consort; the feminine creative force; mother of the gods
4. Anat: Baal’s sister and wife; source of fertility; mountain dweller w/Baal;
can be violent
and deadly (cf. Hindu goddess Kali)
5. Mot: god of death and the underworld; Baal’s antithesis and adversary:
sterility, drought,
famine
6. Kothar: the master craftsman (of foreign origin, reflected in the derivative
nature of
Canaanite art)
C. The Hebrew Parallels
1. “El” revealed as YHWH: “God [Elohim] spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am
Yahweh. I
appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai (God of the Mountain), but
by my
name Yahweh I was not known to them’ (Exodus 6.2-3)
2. “God [Elohim] has taken his place in the assembly of El, in the midst of the
gods [elohim]
he holds judgment (Psalm 82)
3. Psalm 29: “Hymn to the God of the Storm”
4. Parallels in structural motifs in Canaanite and Hebrew poetry
5. Transition from nomadic “tent” to sedentary “house” (patriarchal to
monarchical)
cf. II Samuel 7
IX. Persia, ca. 539 - 330 BCE
A. When Cyrus conquered Babylon
in 539, he allowed the Hebrews to return to Jerusalem
and rebuild their temple, which
had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE
B. Early Persian (pre-Zarathustrian) religion
1. Mithras, god of the sun
2. Anaita, goddess of earth and fertility
3. Haoma, the “bull-god,” whose blood, if ingested, would confer immortality
a. The intoxicating juice of the mountain haoma herb, used in priestly
rituals (cf.
Vedic soma)
C. Zarathustra (ca. 10th-6th c. BCE) was a prophet who rejected the polytheism of earlier Mesopotamian cultures and instituted a kind of monotheistic dualism
1. His Greek name: Zoroaster (could not bear patiently the orthography of
the
“barbarians”)
2. He sought to “clean up” these nature deities by proclaiming that Ahura
Mazda, the
Lord of Light and Heaven, was
the one true god—all others are but physical
manifestations or qualities of
the One (the physically material to the spiritually abstract)
D. The primary scriptural text: The Avesta
1. Likely from the Aryan root vid, “to know” (cf. Aryan/Hindu Vedas; English video)
2. Due to language parallels (some literal) and other structural similarities,
the Avesta
may have been highly influenced by the earlier Vedas
3. In turn, the Avesta bears similarities
to portions of the Hebrew scriptures (example
from Hebrew Khetuvim “writings”: Job)
E. Ahura-Mazda
1. Seven aspects or qualities: Light, Good Mind, Right, Dominion, Piety,
Well-Being,
Immortality
2. The traditional polytheistic mind (popular religiosity) tended see these as
persons (the
Amesha Spenta, “immortal holy ones”), just as later Christianity tended
(and tends) to
personify the qualities of the Trinity
3. In addition, spiritual guardians or angels for each and every human being
F. A monotheistic conception of “the Good” seems to necessitate a supernatural anithesis, personified in Angro-Mainyus, or Ahriman, the Lord or Darkness
1. Dualism: the creative (or antagonistic) tension of opposites, e.g., between
“good”
and “evil”
2. In mirror-like fashion, Ahriman also aided by seven qualities, interpreted by
the
popular mind as demons, always tempting humankind to sin and darkness
3. The Persian legacy to late Judaism and Christianity: the Satan, or “adversary”
G. Other Zoroastrian doctrinal teachings and concepts
1. The physical world in which we all live is the setting for the ongoing cosmic
struggle
between good and evil, while the human soul is the micro-cosmic battleground for
beneficent and maleficent spirits
2. Human beings are not pawns of this war, but agents of free will: we are
responsible for
the choices that we make
3. Piety being the greatest human virtue, the first duty of life is worship of
god with
purification, sacrifice and prayer
a. As an agent of purification, fire itself worshiped as Atar, a son of Ahura
Mazda,
the Lord of Light
b. The heavenly sun itself worshipped as the Undying Fire of the Skies
(cf. Egyptian Akhenaten)
4. Judgment after death: “hell” as no mere Hades or earlier Greek religion
(i.e., a
nondescript netherworld to which all of the dead, both good and evil descended
for at
least some time), but a place of darkness and terror in which the condemned will
suffer
until the end of the world (but in differing degrees)
a. But there is an “end:” at the end of the current 3000-year epoch (beginning
with
the birth of Zarathustra), the dead, both good and evil, will rise again, in a
physical
world that is free from evil and corruption
b. Again, a strong influence upon sub-sequent Judaic and Christian theology
c. Disposal of the dead: the practices of cremation and burial are both seen as
polluting-- the corpse must be left exposed outdoors in a "tower of silence" (a
high place beyond the reach of animals of prey, other than birds, and where
rainwater cannot gather); also, the corpse must be secured in place so that
the remains cannot be carried off by birds, etc.
H. Later Zoroastrianism
1. Under the guise of the “official” text is always the “popular” praxis: the
cults of Mithras
(god of the sun) and Anaita (goddess of vegetation and fertility) rise again
2. Just as Canaanite Baal overcomes El, a youthful Persian Mithras ascends to a
superior position over Ahura Mazda
3. Even into the 1st century CE, the cult of Mithras (along with those of
Dionysus and Isis)
continued to be very popular (cf. the mysterion, "the mystery religions," to be
discussed
later)