(April 30, 2017 at 7:26 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Legend has it that 10 000 witnessed the death of Cú Chulainn, roughly contemporaneous with the Christian resurrection myth. I place no more stock in the one that the other. Claims of eyewitness accounts which can be neither verified nor corroborated my be safely dismissed as ahistoric and non-evidential.
Boru
Like I said in a prior post, in both polytheism and monotheism in antiquity worldwide, numbers even in mere entertainment were often used to convey the importance of a story. Most humans outside the ruling class, the bigger the number was the more "awesome" the story became. There was a false perception of the magical power of numbers, even like 7 or 12 or 40. But when conveying battles and witnesses to things be it a play or a religion the numbers were unimaginable to the layperson.
Even today people are superstitious worldwide with different numbers, in Japan for example, most buildings don't have a 4th floor. If you are aware of more of world's history of superstition you can see it isn't limited to religion and religion used those numbers just as in entertainment to draw the reader/listener in.
