There was a time when Western classicists and metaphysicians searched high and low for the primordial or original religion: Ur-monotheismus. The thinking was that the original religion was monotheistic and that all non-monotheistic religions had degenerated from the pristine original.
This is of course precisely backwards but it has not stopped the search. While Ur-religionists chase [...]
Tags:Abraham·monotheism·original religion·polytheism·primordial religion·Sumerian·Ur·Urmonotheismus·ziggurat
Unlike living organisms, cultural formations do not “evolve.” Evolution, sensu stricto, is a biological process and not a cultural one. Despite this fact, some scholars have fruitfully deployed evolutionary ideas — as analogy and metaphor — to analyze cultural history.
In 1964 the sociologist Robert Bellah did just this in his classic paper, Religious Evolution. Taking [...]
Tags:animism·Arabs·Black Stone·Christianity·cult practice·cultural evolution·Eric Voegelin·Eugene Stockton·Ingela Bergman·Islam·kaaba·landscapes·modern religion·multilinear·Norse·objects·pagans·pantheism·Phoenician·polytheism·primitive religion·religious evolution·religious stages·Robert Bellah·rocks·sacred·Sami·shamanic·stones·symbol systems·typology·unilinear·varro muorra·veneration·Vikings·wood
Over at The Stone, the primatologist Frans de Waal asks whether we can act “morally” without being “religious.” I quote-bracket these terms because they are not without complication, and we should be careful about using them in the context of such discussions. Regardless, de Waal poses some questions for which we have historical answers. For [...]
Tags:altruistic·Bart Ehrman·chimpanzees·Christianity·ethics·ethnohistory·evolution of morality·Frans de Waal·implicit ethics·Islam·Judaism·Misquoting Jesus·monotheism·Morals Without God·Native Americans·norms·polytheism·primates·primatologist·prosocial·religions of the book·right conduct
The British government has, after a lengthy vetting process, recognized Druidism or Druidry as a religion and granted it charitable status. The commissioners in charge of such decisions apparently had a hard time getting their collective heads around the idea that not all religions are monotheistic, textual, dogmatic, priestly, hierarchical, institutionalized, or systematic.
As the Toronto [...]
Tags:Anglican·animism·animist·anthropomorphic deities·Celtic·Charity Commission·city-states·deism·divine kings·Druidism·Druidry·Druids·Gallic·Great Britain·human sacrifice·megalithic structures·Melanie Phillips·nature worship·neo-pagan·Neolithic Revolution·pagan·polytheism·Stonehenge·United Kingdom
Over at MSNBC Science, a report on a rich temple find in Jordan:
The Jordanian antiquities department announced Wednesday the discovery of a 3,000-year-old Iron Age temple boasting a trove of figurines of ancient deities and circular clay vessels used in religious rituals.
The sanctuary and its artifacts — hewn from limestone and basalt or molded from [...]
It was with great sadness that I read a recent article in the New York Times documenting the pillaging and destruction of Mesopotamian archaeological sites in Iraq. Although these Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian sites — and previous excavations — receive scant attention outside small groups of antiquities scholars, they are of critical importance to our [...]
Tags:Akkad·Akkadian·anthropomorphic deities·anthropomorphism·Babylon·Babylonian·Christianity·city-states·cosmology·earliest religion·Enlil·heavenly order·Iraq·Islam·Judaic·Judaism·Mesopotamia·Mesopotamian·monotheism·Muslim·polytheism·Samuel Noah Kramer·Sumer·Sumerian·Sumerian pantheon·temples·The Sumerians·Ubaid·Ubaidian·Ur·ziggurats
Based on keyword searches leading people to this blog, it appears that many are interested in religious syncretism. With this in mind, I thought some comments would be in order. To kick things off let’s take note of two recent articles, each of which sheds some minor light on syncretism.
In the first, Lois Solomon of [...]
Tags:Christian yoga·ecumenical·group level selection·monotheism·polytheism·sex·syncretism·tantras
As the new and organized forms of religion associated with the Neolithic Revolution matured and proliferated, various forms of polytheism spread throughout Mesopotamia, the Levant, the Mediterranean, and Europe. A diverse pantheon of gods and goddesses spawned a remarkable array of religious cults and practices that today are called “pagan,” the best known forms of [...]
Tags:cults·mythology·pagan·polytheism
