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The Fall of Civilizations podcast has an interesting episode about Assyria. The cities in Mesopotamia were polytheistic and each city has its own deity. Apparen

The Fall of Civilizations podcast has an interesting episode about Assyria. The cities in Mesopotamia were polytheistic and each city has its own deity. Apparently the way they viewed their deities was similar to how we view sports teams. There was an expectation that if you traveled to another city, you should sacrifice to its god. They viewed inter city warfare as the gods competing in heaven.

zppln 1y ago
I can recommend this episode as well. If I don't mix things up they gave some very good examples of how everyday life wasn't that much different from what it is now. Amazing how stuff like that can be communicated through identations on pieces of clay.
bee_rider 1y ago
Polytheism seems to make a lot more sense that way. Cities (and personal trajectories as well) have ups and downs. If you understand it as a competition between various gods, it makes sense that they’d have a lot of back and forth going on. If there’s only one god, it must have some preposterously convoluted plan, it just seems a bit silly.
- atoav 1y ago
  Well also in polytheism gods were displayed as incredibly flawed.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    A common-sense and straightforward extrapolation of human behavior. And also an obvious solution to the “problem of evil.”
- dragontamer 1y ago
  Monotheism elevates godhood in many regards. In Polytheistic culture, gods fight and gods die. Zeus eats his (and thus kills) his father Chronos. Thor dies in Ragnarok. In Monotheistic culture, the one true God is above all else. As it turns out, different Monotheistic cultures can then cooperate as it's an argument over what this one true God believes (Catholics vs Muslims). Then we get into weird blends like Hindu and their many avatars of Vishnu (who'd argue that Jesus probably existed and could do those things because he probably was that time's Vishnu). ---------- Polytheism is likely flawed as an organizational concept because it's clear that gods were creations of man. Monotheism flips it and makes God the master of the universe while man struggles to understand the nature of God. --------- But yes. As the sibling comment points out: the gods of most polytheistic cultures are NOT omnipotent or omniscient. They are more powerful or smarter than humans but they are still able to be killed or destroyed. Maybe back when cities and religions would get wiped out by warfare, it was more common to see religions die out (and thus those old gods die with those religions/cultures). It makes you wonder about the nature of human belief systems and how humans lived differently back then.
  - octopoc 1y ago
    Polytheistic religions have more room for multiple worldviews than monotheistic religions. Polytheists have internalized the fact that there can be different paths that are right for different people. That’s why you get so much division in monotheistic religions. In polytheistic religions, you still get infighting, but it isn’t considered virtuous. Put another way, monotheism is polytheism except with a single title, Lord of the Universe, that all the gods/theologies/denominations have to compete for in order to be legitimate. That competition of different gods/worldviews is the essential innovation that monotheism brings. That competition, that need to justify one’s beliefs, provides a drive that monotheists have and polytheists lack. And that is why monotheism prevailed in so many areas.
    - toasterlovin 1y ago
      > that need to justify one’s beliefs, provides a drive that monotheists have and polytheists lack FYI, before the monotheists fully suppressed the polytheists in the Roman Empire, it was the polytheists who were suppressing the monotheists.
      - sapphicsnail 1y ago
        Early Christians seemed weird to a lot of the people of the Roman Empire. Sort of how Christians now think of gay and trans people. It was deviant and socially upsetting. Modern Christians would probably not get along with early Christians.
        toasterlovin 1y ago
        I don't know enough to argue the merits of your point, so instead I'll just point to Hindu nationalism in present day India.
      - griffzhowl 1y ago
        As far as I know the history, the Roman religion was pluralistic in the sense that you could worship whatever gods you wanted, but you also had to pay respects to the Empire's gods. The monotheists refused to do that for the obvious reason, and that was the primary cause of conflict
jollyllama 1y ago
The Hebrew view may not have been so different [0] and in turn this view is congruent with Christian teaching, depending on the theology. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council#Hebrew/Israelite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council#Hebrew/Israelit...
- jschveibinz 1y ago
  This is most likely correct. I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Many scholars trace the earliest worship of Yahweh to the southern Levant, possibly Edom, Midian, or Seir which were outside of traditional Canaanite (early Hebrews) centers. Inscriptions from 800 BC refer to “Yahweh of Samaria” and “Yahweh of Teman,” implying a localized deity. So given that Assyria is in the same geographic region as the Levant, the comment makes sense in context.
  - mlinhares 1y ago
    Catholicism maintains it somehow by having "patron saints" and every city picking one up. Most cities in highly Catholic countries will have their own specific saint that they will have a special relationship with.
    - jollyllama 1y ago
      Can't have a power vacuum on the Divine Council, gotta put one of your guys in when you take over!
    - lo_zamoyski 1y ago
      One difference is that saints are not deities, even if there may be a similar psychological need (for protection, help, etc) in play. Saints do not possess power of their own accord. They function as intercessors. They are still human beings, albeit in an elevated spiritual state or plane, so to speak (a saint is anyone who is saved from hell and in heaven; canonized saints are simply those who are known to be saints and thus formally acknowledged). Pagan gods are personifications of natural forces, hence Thales's famous remark that "the world is full of gods". They are beings like you and me, in some sense, with powers that we may not possess. God, on the other hand, is not a personification of a force of nature or one being among many. In that sense, the distinction between monotheism and polytheism can be misleading, because it's not a matter of how many gods you believe in, but a profound difference in understanding of what divinity even means. God here is the Ipsum Esse Subsistens, or self-subsisting Being; the verb "to be". This makes God prior to any particular being and the cause of the be-ing of anything and everything at all times. Whatever the history of the development of theological ideas and beliefs, these must be distinguished from the philosophical substance of the beliefs.
zdragnar 1y ago
I have vague memories from college about China having something similar during the dynasties. The hierarchical government on earth, with the emperor on top down through layers of bureaucracy down to officials in villages was a mirror of the organization of the heavens. Villages would have their own deities and might go so far as to replace them after bad years of flooding or other weather. That was more of an outlier, though, as usually the emperor or government got the blame first.
cogman10 1y ago
Some of this is visible in the Bible. For example, Moses needing to keep his hands up to win a battle (Ex 17). Or his battles with the Egyptian gods. From what I've read, it's believed that the Hebrews emerged from multiple people's groups combining and unifying their beliefs. El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. That's why some of the biblical stories like the creation and the flood have earlier references from older people's groups. The evolution of monotheism was much more about keeping a large diverse people group united. You can see a historic parallel to how that played out with the formation of the Roman pantheon. Mostly stolen stories and ideas from the Greek pantheon tweeked to fit the empire.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  I don't think this is quite true about either group but it's dangerously close if you know what I mean. How & why genesis specifically shares so much content with other stories from the region is an extremely interesting subject in itself and still under active developing scholarship but I'm not qualified represent it well. That's definitely a misunderstanding of the roman pantheon though. It was already a fully formed syncretic religion at the time of acculturation of the greek gods into it, having regularly adapted to & adopted nearby belief systems as it encountered them. Some of the greek gods were fully syncretized with similar-enough roman gods, some only partially, some greek gods were adopted more completely because there was no near enough equivalent, and then some roman gods continued in more or less their previous form, for example janus who the greeks had nothing comparable to. But even a lot of the pre-greek exposure "roman" gods were themselves adopted from other cultures, and/or already syncretized with indigenous ones. In any case it wasn't "mostly" stolen from any one place, it followed a pretty typical pattern for syncretic religions. The acceptance & merging of the greek gods was only one event in what was at the time already a venerable and dynamic religious system. You also need to be careful about timelines. The greek cultural influence here is at like 800bc, predating the roman republic much less the empire. It arguably predates anything you could reasonably call rome at all, this is in the distant past that was already mythological to the roman republic. This was always part of their cultural essentially.
  - 1y ago
detourdog 1y ago
Thought it was more an ancestral teams. Each city marveling at the founding families.
marcellus23 1y ago
> There was an expectation that if you traveled to another city, you should sacrifice to its god. This was pretty common in the polytheistic world I think. In the time of the Roman empire (pre-Christianity of course) there was a similar idea. And although Roman gods might be imported, they were often identified with the local gods, rather than replacing them.
pfdietz 1y ago
That was a great episode; the ending was haunting.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpAphcaVJIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpAphcaVJIs
bentley 1y ago
> There was an expectation that if you traveled to another city, you should sacrifice to its god. The Bible even has the example of Naaman the Aramean, who after being convinced of the might of Israel’s God, asked for a gift of two mule‐loads of Israeli earth so he could worship Him after returning home. (2 Kings 5:17)

zppln 1y ago

I can recommend this episode as well. If I don't mix things up they gave some very good examples of how everyday life wasn't that much different from what it is now. Amazing how stuff like that can be communicated through identations on pieces of clay.

bee_rider 1y ago

Polytheism seems to make a lot more sense that way. Cities (and personal trajectories as well) have ups and downs. If you understand it as a competition between various gods, it makes sense that they’d have a lot of back and forth going on. If there’s only one god, it must have some preposterously convoluted plan, it just seems a bit silly.

atoav 1y ago
Well also in polytheism gods were displayed as incredibly flawed.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  A common-sense and straightforward extrapolation of human behavior. And also an obvious solution to the “problem of evil.”
dragontamer 1y ago
Monotheism elevates godhood in many regards. In Polytheistic culture, gods fight and gods die. Zeus eats his (and thus kills) his father Chronos. Thor dies in Ragnarok. In Monotheistic culture, the one true God is above all else. As it turns out, different Monotheistic cultures can then cooperate as it's an argument over what this one true God believes (Catholics vs Muslims). Then we get into weird blends like Hindu and their many avatars of Vishnu (who'd argue that Jesus probably existed and could do those things because he probably was that time's Vishnu). ---------- Polytheism is likely flawed as an organizational concept because it's clear that gods were creations of man. Monotheism flips it and makes God the master of the universe while man struggles to understand the nature of God. --------- But yes. As the sibling comment points out: the gods of most polytheistic cultures are NOT omnipotent or omniscient. They are more powerful or smarter than humans but they are still able to be killed or destroyed. Maybe back when cities and religions would get wiped out by warfare, it was more common to see religions die out (and thus those old gods die with those religions/cultures). It makes you wonder about the nature of human belief systems and how humans lived differently back then.
- octopoc 1y ago
  Polytheistic religions have more room for multiple worldviews than monotheistic religions. Polytheists have internalized the fact that there can be different paths that are right for different people. That’s why you get so much division in monotheistic religions. In polytheistic religions, you still get infighting, but it isn’t considered virtuous. Put another way, monotheism is polytheism except with a single title, Lord of the Universe, that all the gods/theologies/denominations have to compete for in order to be legitimate. That competition of different gods/worldviews is the essential innovation that monotheism brings. That competition, that need to justify one’s beliefs, provides a drive that monotheists have and polytheists lack. And that is why monotheism prevailed in so many areas.
  - toasterlovin 1y ago
    > that need to justify one’s beliefs, provides a drive that monotheists have and polytheists lack FYI, before the monotheists fully suppressed the polytheists in the Roman Empire, it was the polytheists who were suppressing the monotheists.
    - sapphicsnail 1y ago
      Early Christians seemed weird to a lot of the people of the Roman Empire. Sort of how Christians now think of gay and trans people. It was deviant and socially upsetting. Modern Christians would probably not get along with early Christians.
      - toasterlovin 1y ago
        I don't know enough to argue the merits of your point, so instead I'll just point to Hindu nationalism in present day India.
    - griffzhowl 1y ago
      As far as I know the history, the Roman religion was pluralistic in the sense that you could worship whatever gods you wanted, but you also had to pay respects to the Empire's gods. The monotheists refused to do that for the obvious reason, and that was the primary cause of conflict

jollyllama 1y ago

The Hebrew view may not have been so different [0] and in turn this view is congruent with Christian teaching, depending on the theology. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council#Hebrew/Israelite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council#Hebrew/Israelit...

jschveibinz 1y ago
This is most likely correct. I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Many scholars trace the earliest worship of Yahweh to the southern Levant, possibly Edom, Midian, or Seir which were outside of traditional Canaanite (early Hebrews) centers. Inscriptions from 800 BC refer to “Yahweh of Samaria” and “Yahweh of Teman,” implying a localized deity. So given that Assyria is in the same geographic region as the Levant, the comment makes sense in context.
- mlinhares 1y ago
  Catholicism maintains it somehow by having "patron saints" and every city picking one up. Most cities in highly Catholic countries will have their own specific saint that they will have a special relationship with.
  - jollyllama 1y ago
    Can't have a power vacuum on the Divine Council, gotta put one of your guys in when you take over!
  - lo_zamoyski 1y ago
    One difference is that saints are not deities, even if there may be a similar psychological need (for protection, help, etc) in play. Saints do not possess power of their own accord. They function as intercessors. They are still human beings, albeit in an elevated spiritual state or plane, so to speak (a saint is anyone who is saved from hell and in heaven; canonized saints are simply those who are known to be saints and thus formally acknowledged). Pagan gods are personifications of natural forces, hence Thales's famous remark that "the world is full of gods". They are beings like you and me, in some sense, with powers that we may not possess. God, on the other hand, is not a personification of a force of nature or one being among many. In that sense, the distinction between monotheism and polytheism can be misleading, because it's not a matter of how many gods you believe in, but a profound difference in understanding of what divinity even means. God here is the Ipsum Esse Subsistens, or self-subsisting Being; the verb "to be". This makes God prior to any particular being and the cause of the be-ing of anything and everything at all times. Whatever the history of the development of theological ideas and beliefs, these must be distinguished from the philosophical substance of the beliefs.

zdragnar 1y ago

I have vague memories from college about China having something similar during the dynasties. The hierarchical government on earth, with the emperor on top down through layers of bureaucracy down to officials in villages was a mirror of the organization of the heavens. Villages would have their own deities and might go so far as to replace them after bad years of flooding or other weather. That was more of an outlier, though, as usually the emperor or government got the blame first.

cogman10 1y ago

Some of this is visible in the Bible. For example, Moses needing to keep his hands up to win a battle (Ex 17). Or his battles with the Egyptian gods. From what I've read, it's believed that the Hebrews emerged from multiple people's groups combining and unifying their beliefs. El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. That's why some of the biblical stories like the creation and the flood have earlier references from older people's groups. The evolution of monotheism was much more about keeping a large diverse people group united. You can see a historic parallel to how that played out with the formation of the Roman pantheon. Mostly stolen stories and ideas from the Greek pantheon tweeked to fit the empire.

giraffe_lady 1y ago
I don't think this is quite true about either group but it's dangerously close if you know what I mean. How & why genesis specifically shares so much content with other stories from the region is an extremely interesting subject in itself and still under active developing scholarship but I'm not qualified represent it well. That's definitely a misunderstanding of the roman pantheon though. It was already a fully formed syncretic religion at the time of acculturation of the greek gods into it, having regularly adapted to & adopted nearby belief systems as it encountered them. Some of the greek gods were fully syncretized with similar-enough roman gods, some only partially, some greek gods were adopted more completely because there was no near enough equivalent, and then some roman gods continued in more or less their previous form, for example janus who the greeks had nothing comparable to. But even a lot of the pre-greek exposure "roman" gods were themselves adopted from other cultures, and/or already syncretized with indigenous ones. In any case it wasn't "mostly" stolen from any one place, it followed a pretty typical pattern for syncretic religions. The acceptance & merging of the greek gods was only one event in what was at the time already a venerable and dynamic religious system. You also need to be careful about timelines. The greek cultural influence here is at like 800bc, predating the roman republic much less the empire. It arguably predates anything you could reasonably call rome at all, this is in the distant past that was already mythological to the roman republic. This was always part of their cultural essentially.
- 1y ago

detourdog 1y ago

Thought it was more an ancestral teams. Each city marveling at the founding families.

marcellus23 1y ago

> There was an expectation that if you traveled to another city, you should sacrifice to its god. This was pretty common in the polytheistic world I think. In the time of the Roman empire (pre-Christianity of course) there was a similar idea. And although Roman gods might be imported, they were often identified with the local gods, rather than replacing them.

pfdietz 1y ago

That was a great episode; the ending was haunting.

pfdietz 1y ago
The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpAphcaVJIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpAphcaVJIs

bentley 1y ago

> There was an expectation that if you traveled to another city, you should sacrifice to its god. The Bible even has the example of Naaman the Aramean, who after being convinced of the might of Israel’s God, asked for a gift of two mule‐loads of Israeli earth so he could worship Him after returning home. (2 Kings 5:17)