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Yahweh did not come from Brahma, Brahma did not come from Yahweh. Likewise, Osiris, Odin, what-have-you. The undisciplined Vedic, Norse, and Greek pantheons do
by ncmncm 4y ago
Yahweh did not come from Brahma, Brahma did not come from Yahweh. Likewise, Osiris, Odin, what-have-you. The undisciplined Vedic, Norse, and Greek pantheons do trace to proto-Indo-Europeans in the Caucasus. The elevation of a chief god out of the pantheon, whether Marduk, Yahweh, or Brahma, is probably associated with political consolidation. Your king-of-kings naturally wants a god-of-gods, and is in a position to get one. Even the Egyptians dabbled.
It is likely there was an enormous corpus of Harappan literature on media that turned to dust without having being transcribed. Very likely, the oldest Harappan settlements are now deep underwater, offshore of India and Pakistan, inundated by meltwater from ice-age glaciers.
People insisting the Vedas came from the Harappans completely neglect that the Vedas are fundamentally martial, while the Harappans had nothing at all like an army. There is plenty of evidence of Harappan violence -- mostly blunt-force trauma -- but by context it more resembles banditry, civil strife, mob violence, or feuding, anyway without any hint of soldiery.
- mathieuh 4y agoI don't know anything about this really but I would have thought it would have been the opposite: emperors who hold power over many disparate cultures would want a polytheistic religion so they can subsume other cultures' gods into their own pantheons, therefore saying "all gods are real, we just didn't know about yours until we conquered you" Which would also fit in with why Jews and Christians were discriminated against: being monotheists isn't conducive to unity across an empire if you have one group of people claiming their god is the real one and all the others are not only fake, but it's actually a sin to believe in them
- ncmncm 4y agoYou have correctly identified where pantheons come from. The term for these religions is "syncretist". Each tribe, village, city-state has its god or gods that join in, or are merged into others already there (some get lots of names). Then when the emperor wants to solidify his power, he replaces local kings with his own people, and identifies himself with a chief god. Akhenaten, Tut's father, tried it in Egypt, with Aten as big cheese god. It didn't work out (probably) because the priesthood turned out still too powerful. But that goal probably is a big part of why Rome went Christian.