Clues On Early Judaism

[directionless]

This may only be interesting to me, but I think there are several examples of animism in Judaism. (I don't know much about animism or Judaism, so I may have some details wrong.)

 

(1) True names: In Genesis, God allows Adam to give every animal a name. Also Jews never pronounce the true name of God. Animism and similar religions thought that the true name gave magical powers.

 

(2) No afterlife: Animism believes the spirit world and the physical world are projections of each other, so the spirit decays along with the body.

 

(3) Living stones: When the Israelites cross the Jordan they set-up stones as witnesses of their covenant with God. Also Jewish altars were required to use uncut stones. Animism believes that stones have a spirit.

[gall]

Oh…. and mythology. Mythology has tons of clues about how people thought… and common themes in their culture/age. Egyptian, Persian, Zoroastrian, Mesopotamian, Canaanite, etc… anything before 800 BCE is good. You will notice, for example that Lions/eagles were very popular motifs.. and then cattle, bulls and calves were the predominant theological symbols up until a certain time… then we were Rams and sheep/lambs… this crosses most cultures in the area… Good historians before the common era are a great source (though you have to kind of understand they weren't quite like historians today) Learning about the various conquests and battles.. who controlled what areas when.. that's important too. Artwork is invaluable, as is architecture and pottery/trade goods.

 

Nothing happens in isolation.. which is why the multi-disciplinary approach is really the only way to understand the past.

 

That is assuming that anything that far back is accurate at all. We may have a completely scewed understanding based on misinterpretation and missing information. It is interesting to see how different researchers interpret the data and what they make of it when there is no real data other than myth. While most myth has a basis in reality the farther back you go the less grounded it is in reality it seems.

 

I would love to traverse to a place about 7-8 thousand years ago and really see what was going on. Although I would want to be invisible so I didn't end up getting sacrificed lol.