Anthology of Ideas

The mythopoeic religions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece all shared similar characteristics: the concept of Cyclical time, an animate universe, and large pantheons of human-like — as in flawed — gods. In contrast, the ancient Israelites believed that time was linear, the universe was inanimate, and that there was one perfect god who was omnipotent, omnipresent and all-seeing. Judaism was revolutionary because it affected all aspects of life including history, food through dietary laws, marital and and societal laws. It also was the first major religion to promote monotheism — or henotheisism depending on how you read it. While anyone can follow the Greek, Egyptian and Mesopotamian religions, Judaism was as much a culture and descent as it was a religion.

Cyclical time is based on the idea that for everything there is a season, and that every outcome happens repeatedly. This theory is based on the ancient’s view of the cycle of the seasons and the cycle of life and death. For the ancient Greeks, Mesopotamians and Egyptians it seemed obvious that if the sun, moon, seasons, life, and history all have cycles, then time and the universe itself must also cycle in an endless loop of creation and destruction. The Greek festival of Demeter — the goddess of harvests — took place yearly to celebrate the changing of winter to spring; while in this case there is a reason for a yearly repeat — every fall Demeter’s daughter must descend into Hades for three months — other similar festivals such as the Egyptian celebration of the resurrection of Horus by Isis had no natural reason for the yearly repeat. While the Israelites (historically, the Jewish people are considered Israelites before they returned to the area after the Babylonian empire conquered Israel) also celebrated yearly events, these were considered anniversaries of the event itself rather than the mythopoeic view that the same event actually occurred over and over. This is revolutionary because it removed history from the cycles of nature, and declared that history is a single line from beginning to end. This had two major effects. History itself became far more important because events no longer happened in a cycle, and since they occurred only once individual events were worth remembering because — as the second effect — by remembering and studying one could then predict the future because all of history was controlled by one being, and by studying the past actions of this being one could predict the beings future actions.

As you can tell this leads us directly into Judaism’s second innovation: monotheism. (As an aside there is no direct evidence that Judaism itself is monotheistic (a single god) — many times it is considered to henotheistic (one god above all others.) This distinction is made because in the most well known parts of Torah — Judaism’s main religious texts — it never says that there are no other gods just that none should be held higher. Aside from the evidence in the texts themselves , at the time it was very common for there to be personal or familial gods; these two combined leave the distinction a little murky, but even still here we will assume the popular view.) Not only is the monotheism important in and of itself, but also, the Judaism’s god was theoretically perfect in all ways; unlike the gods of the mythopoeic religions which exhibited human like traits such as love, jealousy, anger, lust, and desire. Of course one can argue that Judaism’s god was also imperfect –as exhibited through acts of anger, but this is not how the Israelites themselves saw him. The Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians all saw their gods as slightly better versions of humans. In fact, in one of the Babylonian myths all of the gods worked together to destroy mankind and almost succeeded surprising even themselves of their own power; not only this, but the gods were also ashamed of what they did and regretted it later. Because the mythopoeic religions had human-like gods it showed that humans themselves are not that imperfect, and the separation beyond god and human was very thin; as a result, the gods were able to affect one’s life, but because of their human-like nature they were fickle which explained the seemingly randomness of life. In contrast, the Israelite’s god was much more powerful than a human being, which distanced them from his actions. The randomness in life was not explained as god being fickle, but rather that god has some plan that is beyond human understanding. This ties in with the single strand of time because every event that occurs was part of the Israelite’s god’s plan, and thus, by remembering past actions in this plan one could predict his future plans.

Finally, in mythopoeic religions the universe is animate or alive, and is a central tenet of most mythopoeic religions. Usually this idea evidences itself in the worship of animals and objects alongside gods because these animals and objects also have spirits that must be appeased. However, ancient Judaism declared that everything, aside from their god, is dead and nothing, aside from humans, has a spirit, and in doing so show that humans are meaningless beyond being puppets in gods show, but are still held above other creations because the are the only creation with a spirit.. This idea combined with the tenant that humans were created from the dirt contrasts with the mythopoeic view that all of creation were created from parts of the gods, and thus, humans are only slightly better than animals and slightly less than gods.

Overall ancient Judaism was revolutionary because it tied together all the facets of life, Unlike many cultures the Israelites saw their culture, history, laws, customs, and religion as one thing bound together making separation nearly impossible. This also worked to tie the group together in a whole because the cohesion of the parts made it impossible to be and Israeli without each of these parts which has made Judaism one of the most resilient religions in the world. in contrast the mythopoeic religions lasted for many generations in each of their cases, but each died out in time because in the end, unlike Judaism, they were not unified nor practical in the long term.