Indeed, the two are often confused with each other and I've run roughshod over both so as not to bog down the thread Epi. My apologies.

(November 11, 2011 at 2:13 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Euhemerism?

Correct!
Only that Euhemerus did not have the knowledge and the information we now have.
The key figure in the gods-men-giants issue is the giants, the forefathers of the gods.

Compare the life story of the giants with that of the Neanderthals and you will be having the id of the giants.
The gods (in the case of the Hebrew tradition the men) meet the giants, enslave them, rape their women and finally exterminate them.
Homo sapiens meet the Neanderthals, mate with them and drive them to extinction.
Neanderthals were built naturally as Arnold Schwarzenegger. They were shorter than the Hss but an adult Neanderthal could lift an Hss over his head and throw him a few meters away.

(November 11, 2011 at 2:13 pm)Rhythm Wrote: The virgin mary is definitely not the plump little booby doll used as a fertility idol.

Neither Venus was.
But where did the story of the virgin who bears the son of a god comes from?

5,000 years ago it was said of the King, and of the layman as well, that he was not born by a common mother. That his mother was the mother that could give birth to gods.
Those born by common mothers ran the risk to be considered animals and be executed.
The plump little booby doll, as you call it, it was an image of the Mother anyone wished to have in order to survive Judgment.
For the ordinary mother nobody cared!

By calling the figurines of the Mother fertility idols (I am referring to scientific community) they get rid of the problem but not of the shame. The makers of the sculptures were passing from generation to generation along with her figurines the story of the Mother until it was written down.

Those who happened to read the cuneiform and hieroglyphic texts cannot be fooled by anyone.

Let us consider the fashioning of people by the God.
In Egyptian theology people are fashioned by the god Khnum in a potter’s wheel.
In Egyptian tradition people are made by the two above mentioned mothers: the ordinary mother and the Mother who gives birth to gods (as Virgin Mary did).
In the Sumerian tradition when the gods decided to fashion people called the Mother of the land and ordered her to produce the people. The Mother, in order to comply, summoned some Mother-wombs and asked them to create the people.
The people were then created by these Mother-wombs.
No nonsense about males producing people without help from females.

(The Mother-wombs were raped by the gods but that’s another story)

In order to evaluate myths one has to dig very deep!

Hehehe, giants or cyclops figures have another interesting theory behind them. Ever seen a mammoth skull sans tusks? So, were they neanderthals or mammoths? You can assert whichever you want because the authors aren't here to explain. Again you're discounting the role of storytelling as though our ancestors couldn't even conceive of the notion of fiction, or metaphor. They could and did. You're making some case about these figurines being connected to judgement, but I don't know why you believe that the people that carved those idols believed in "judgement" in the way you're leveraging it. It's unsurprising that there are similarities between Sumerian and Egyptian culture. Take a look at a map. There are northern european myths of man and woman being created from trees, and the father figure as the "nurturer". Seems they didn't get the "communal experience" memo. It seems to you that myths are all about rape, and mothers stories to their children, but to me this seems to be a fairly strange way to distill the entirety of mythology.

(November 11, 2011 at 5:40 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Hehehe, giants or cyclops figures have another interesting theory behind them. Ever seen a mammoth skull sans tusks?

Do you have to offer, as an example, a recorded incident of some people who found large animal bones and made stories of giants out of them (giants who produced gods who produced humans!!)?
Definitely not, because there are no humans that stupid.

Who were those who met normal people a little bit taller than themselves and produced a story of giants?

Wikipedia Wrote:The Patagones or Patagonian giants are a mythical race of people, who first began to appear in early European accounts of the then little-known region and coastline of Patagonia. They were supposed to have exceeded at least double normal human height, some accounts giving heights of 12 to 15 feet (3.7 to 4.6 m) or more. Tales of these improbable people would take a hold over European concepts of the region for some 250 years, until they were substantially debunked at the end of the 18th century.

Venus, as well as Freya and Ishtar, do not belong to the race of the gods, they are giantesses: Venus is a Titan, not a goddess, Freya is not pure goddess, she is not Aesir she is a Vanir and Ishtar (Inanna) was judged by the gods found not to be pure and was executed.

The Great Mother did not belong to the race of the gods (Virgin Mary does not, too)!

(November 11, 2011 at 5:40 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You're making some case about these figurines being connected to judgment, but I don't know why you believe that the people that carved those idols believed in "judgement" in the way you're leveraging it.

The oldest texts of the humanity, and for that reason the most sacred of all archaic texts, are the Pyramid Texts (2400 to 2200 BC). The main and only subject of these texts is the judgment of living people, of people alive, by the gods.

The Mother depicted in the idols, she produced gods and non-gods, she herself being a non-god. The gods who fathered her children were judging them at a certain age and those found to be not as expected, were exterminated.
That is what is written in the texts, when you read the texts literally and not between the lines.

Your line of thinking is the line of thinking of the Egyptologists who insist on believing what the ancient Greeks taught them about Egyptian theology and refuse to read, to actually read, what is written in the Egyptian texts which we today can read but the ancient Greek philosophers could not.

Do you know how the Egyptologists were punished for being that stubborn? They keep translating a single text for decades now –the count must be around 50-60 official translations by now- but they are unable to decide what the text is about.
(“The dispute of a man with his Ba” is the title of the story. Look it up, it will be worth your time).

(November 11, 2011 at 5:40 pm)Rhythm Wrote: It seems to you that myths are all about rape, and mothers stories to their children, but to me this seems to be a fairly strange way to distill the entirety of mythology.

Well, that is the hard core of mythology. Legends handed down to us from peoples of all races and all continents.

The Vanir themselves are elevated to dieties in many western european myths with the Aesir being demoted to giants. Balor Baldur, Loki Lugh. "The Great Mother" is a blanket term that ended up becoming incredibly popular these last few decades. It's not strictly speaking accurate, as many "goddess figurines" have entirely different mythologies and purpose behind them. Many times the do look alot alike, there's only so much you can do with stone and soft metal tools. I think you may be focusing one one thing that does present itself often in mythology (rape) and through that lens the rest of it can be made to re-enforce that single-issue narrative. No surprise that people wrote about rape, and it's no surprise that good literature (mythology) can be interpreted many ways. You jumped right back into egyptian myth and judgement, but we're talking 50k year old fertility idols aren't we? The egyptians pantheon (and artwork) is a little beyond that. That there are points in epygtian culture where it would seem that they believed the world of the gods and ourselves to be one and the same (ergo gods judging living men) should not surprise you either. For many people across the world there is (or was) no separation between our world and theirs. You're reaching very hard to make these fit into the same mold of some long forgotten event. I'm really starting to wonder what you believe this event was at this point.

Just paraphrase whatever theory you're referring to, who was Ra?

(by the by, yes, people are that "stupid", then and now. It's a little more complicated than just (or even)stupid but hey whatever, if all myth is rape than the source of myth or legend can be stupidity while we're at it.)

(November 12, 2011 at 5:49 am)dtango Wrote: .

Hi sir

What do you think about Pharaoh Akhenaten (Akheneton) ? Can you think of Abraham the prophet Akhenaten?

IMO was the ancient Egyptian and Sumerian polytheist. The idea of ​​one God emerged with the Pharaoh Akhenaten. With the figure of Moses, the Jewish faith has occurred. Canaan destroyed by the Babylonian, and Assyrians, Jews settled in monotheistic belief.

The Arabs took the Jewish faith, mixed with pagan and Sumerian myths. Created and Islam.

What do you think?

Ahhhh yes.

The EVOLUTION of our deities!!

If it can evolve, you know it isn't divine. Reminds me of that old saw about shooting 'em all and letting god sort 'em out. In this case, more like, "shoot all the gods, and let man sort 'em out."

(November 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: The Vanir themselves are elevated to dieties in many western european myths with the Aesir being demoted to giants. Balor Baldur, Loki Lugh.

Surely you know Ragnarok, the final, valiant battle. The opposing forces there were the Aesir, Einheriar and Vanir on one side and Loki with his minions, the flame giant Surtr and the frost giants on the other.
No Aesir ever was demoted to giant. If there is a myth where the term “Aesir” is naming a giant, it is because the wickedness of the gods was attributed to the giants by applying to the giants the name of the wicked gods.
Demon in ancient Greek means god, today it means devil.
Asura in the older Vedic hymns meant god today means also devil, giant, monster.
The Iranian tern Daeva which once meant god (deva in Sanskrit means god) came to mean devil as well.

Yet, you are right about the Vanir, they were elevated to deities after fighting with the Aesir (as it happened with the Igigi and Anunaki in the Near East).

(November 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: "The Great Mother" is a blanket term that ended up becoming incredibly popular these last few decades.

Because it is during these last decades that the most famous figurines were found. The Venus of Hohle Fels which is between 35k and 40k years old was found in 2008.

(November 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: It's not strictly speaking accurate, as many "goddess figurines" have entirely different mythologies and purpose behind them.

You mean entirely different interpretations because the only source available for learning what mythologies were related by those fashioning the figurines are the archaic texts. The texts have only one story to tell!

(November 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You jumped right back into egyptian myth and judgement, but we're talking 50k year old fertility idols aren't we?

Correct! However, figurines from Kostenki, Avdeevo and Willendof (roughly 25ky old) wear blindfolding hoods. In the Pyramid texts (roughly 5ky old) the Mother is described to have pendulous breast and to wear a head cloth. The term used to name that head cloth “afnt” derives from the verb “afn” which according to the Wörterbuch means:

umhüllen = wrap (in mist, fog, etc), shroud.
verhüllt sein = covered, disguised, masked, veiled, shrouded.
besonders von den verbundenen Augen = especially because of blindfolded eyes.

It is obvious that the woman depicted in the figurines lived in the Near East. The Cro-Magnon kept the memory of her from the time they were living in the Near East.
As to the reason they had for worshiping her, the texts leave no margin for doubt: She was revered for having making them humans and not animals.
Believe me, it is sacrilegious to call the figurines of the Mother fertility idols.

(November 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: The egyptians pantheon (and artwork) is a little beyond that. That there are points in epygtian culture where it would seem that they believed the world of the gods and ourselves to be one and the same (ergo gods judging living men) should not surprise you either. For many people across the world there is (or was) no separation between our world and theirs.

Quite right! It is practical experience we are dealing here with.
The gods of the ancients are based on empirical ideas. How does philosophy explain this phenomenon? That is, transcendental ideas to be expressed by means of empirical ideas?
“The ancients were incapable of transcendental thinking and whatever they thought they described in terms of empirical thinking”, say the philosophers!

Final conclusion: the gods of the ancients are concepts based on experience.

Unanswered question: why do we insist in transforming empirical ideas into imaginary ones?

(November 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You're reaching very hard to make these fit into the same mold of some long forgotten event. I'm really starting to wonder what you believe this event was at this point.

Forced interbreeding between Homo sapiens sapiens and Neanderthals.

(November 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: …who was Ra?

That’s a question easy to answer!
Ra is Jupiter, Odin, Yahwe. Only the names are different. The essence is the same: Ra is he (according to a unique passage in Chapter 93 of the Book of the Dead) whose phallus turned aside and destroyed the unnaturalness which, in millions of years, created through Baba the traits of the savages.
Baba is Seth, the god who represents the savages. The passage informs that it took millions of years for the savages (hominids) to be created and then came the phallus of the gods, turned aside the traits of the savages and created humans.

When was it that we, moderns, acquired that knowledge?

Btw, do not expect to find the above passage translated as above in any of the official translations available.
The well-known Egyptologist Faulkner translates as follows:

O, you phallus of Re, this which is injured by uproar, whose inertness came into being through Babai.

It was translations as that of Faulkner’s above that shaped the minds of scientists for decades and thus… we came to see the figurines of the Mother as fertility idols.

(November 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: (by the by, yes, people are that "stupid", then and now. It's a little more complicated than just (or even)stupid but hey whatever, if all myth is rape than the source of myth or legend can be stupidity while we're at it.)

The kid that was taught that the soul leaves the body goes around the universe seeking salvation and then reenters a body, or that an out-of-the-universe being planned and created the universe, is not a stupid kid.
He who first had these ideas and managed to persuade grown ups to believe in them, was stupid as well as his country men.
Only that nobody produced these ideas. They are both products of misunderstanding combined with the deterioration of the key word.

We all were taught to be stupid. Actually we are not!

So, would forced interbreeding with neanderthals explain scientology, mormonism, or cargo cults? We'd just have to find ourselves a case of neanderthal perpetrated rape in the last few hundred years in Camden New Jersey, Western New York, and the Southwest Pacific Islands. Strange because in each case there is a great deal of documented information available, none of which leads us to believe that roving bands of neanderthals were raping women; to plant the "seeds of mythology". It's absolutely plausible that some myth could be attributed to what you're theorizing. It's a bit narrow and nearly ludicrous to suggest that all myth is thusly accounted for.

Did you just explain who the nebulous Ra figure was by reference to other nebulous "gods".... Yes, I understand that they are all "gods". It's a bit more than the names that are different, unless you're very focused on ignoring large swaths of material which disagree with your point; in order to find the lines that agree.