Islam is what you get - barring the influence of Arabic culture - if you remove Jesus from Christianity. That's about the simplest way to describe the tonal and modal differences.
Thanks to the mythology surrounding the Christ (a figure that was prophesised by a host of faiths in the Levant from about 200BC onwards, Mithraism and the soldiers' religion of Sol Invictus especially - there's the suggestion that it was an idea of second coming of Alexander the Great or his true successor that was the kick-off) as an intercessor between human and god: any god, but since Jesus was born a Jew the myth became conflated with the Jewish myth of Messiah, and thus basing the idea of God the god on the Jews' interpretation of Babylonian and Assyrian and other Levantine/Near Eastern Storm Gods and patrirchs of their respective pantheons.
(If you read the stories that can be gleaned from the Ugarit pillars, they too contain the story of a divine mortal interceding for the sake of humanity letting himself be killed by the God of Death, so that humanity as a whole may be spared.)
Another big difference is that since Christianity grafted itself onto the body of the cult of Jupiter Optimus, it came to possess and be of a centralised authority, for good and ill: the schism between the original Eastern cults of Jesus [and the Ethipoian and other African ones pre-dating Rome becoming Christian] is due to a) the Papacy not having the military power-via-proxy to root out the heretics, as per Arianism or the Cathars and b) said heretics' ability to point to the word of Jesus and ask "Where did he say 'Let's have a pope'?".
With a central authority came the ability to change with the times and also trying to change the times: since the Pope speaks for God on Earth, all of the faith must listen and adhere (and argue about what the Pope meant and if he's "the real Pope" - which drives development, sometimes in a Darwinist fashion). Islam, lacking that, cannot change at all. Even Judaism is more malleable to times changing, though in its case it has more to do with malleability and adaptability was a survival trait for the Jews during the Roman occupation and the Diaspora.
Islam is much closer in spirit to nazism (esp. if you know what "Führer-prinzip" meant and how it was implemented) and Stalinism; there's no redemption, no forgiveness between men, and no intercessor, and no grace or mercy. At the core, Islam is simply "Obey or die" with extra trimmings (hence the reference to nazism and Stalinism).
Damn, but I miss lecturing some times! Hope the tone doesn't offend; my wife likes to point out that it's impolite to go on in an* Hectoring fashion as if others don't know nothing.
"It’s a bit like the taunt in a kids’ playground..." Again, 'Conan the Barbarian' summed up philosophy much better than most. Watch the scene in the movie when Subotai and Conan is talking about their respective gods. Conan talks about Crom's bleak attitude and indifference to the plight of men; Subotai on-ups him by stating that his god is "the Everlasting Sky" and that Crom lives underneath him. Implied: Subotai's god is more powerful.
And then they share a laugh.
I'd also like to draw a lance for the Norse, the Celts, the Tuatha Dé Danann, Finnish, Baltic and Slavic pre-Christian pantheons, and the Sámi one too.
No "holy" wars. No jihad or crusades or "do unto the seventh generation" or anything. No concept of sin either, leaving humans both free of mind and spirit as well as forcing them to stand stark naked before the consequences of their actions: there's no saying "Crom Cruach or Horagalles or Svantevit made me do it" nor is there any "Oden/Teutatis/Perun demands XYZ" - any myth where a god claims something of a mortal makes it clear that both are beholden to rules and laws in their interactions. And honour, and fairness and justice.
There's no "obey god or die". There's no "god is always right", nor is there any more respect for a deity than it is able to elicit from proving itself to its human tribe. The ancient Thracians were even claimed to threaten their deities directly, by shooting arrows at thunderclouds, to show their gods they did not fear them.
And fear is one of the three root problems with all the Abrahamic faiths: they all build on fear, violent domination, and cruelty. Kill the unbeliever or god will punish all the people (and who gets punished and what god says is in the mouth of the priest caste, of course - a good grift).
A far cry from the Jesus-inspired ethics expressed by the skald as "Be just, and fear not".
The Christian mythology that emerged definitely has suspicious links to earlier mythologies from elsewhere, but I think the question, for me, is "what would the people at the time understood his message to have been?"
I used to be fascinated by this question having been brought up as a Catholic and finding that some of what they were trying to teach me just didn't 'gel' properly. I read a lot of scholarly and semi-scholarly books and formed the opinion that Jesus was just a guy, a Jew, saying nothing that took him 'out of' Judaism - and indeed much of Jesus' actual teaching can be traced back to the great Rabbi Hillel.
Super god boy wonder? Hmmm - not sure I can buy into that
"And therein lies the first major problem. I know hundreds, if not thousands, of followers of that religion who are definitely in the “NOT ALL” group. They’re great people, and just like most of the rest of us - kind, hard-working, decent, family-oriented etc etc."
This can be said of ANY set of humans bound by varying degrees of affiliation with some closed-system narrative. This is why an affiliation with the secular/liberal (old liberal definition)/scientific point-of-view is mostly harmless in the LONG RUN; i.e., by its basic, guiding principles it admits to eventual rectification. (Damn, we are an awkward, clumsy, and slow-witted species.)
Yep. The vast majority of Germans did not care one way or the other about 90% of Der Führer's rants. And if even 1% of Russians were actually communists, that's a first.
But the 10% employed enough of the 90% to make the rest comply.
Islam is the same. Step out of line? The imam will rally the congregation against your entire family tree if that what it takes to make you bend (or break).
Islam is what you get - barring the influence of Arabic culture - if you remove Jesus from Christianity. That's about the simplest way to describe the tonal and modal differences.
Thanks to the mythology surrounding the Christ (a figure that was prophesised by a host of faiths in the Levant from about 200BC onwards, Mithraism and the soldiers' religion of Sol Invictus especially - there's the suggestion that it was an idea of second coming of Alexander the Great or his true successor that was the kick-off) as an intercessor between human and god: any god, but since Jesus was born a Jew the myth became conflated with the Jewish myth of Messiah, and thus basing the idea of God the god on the Jews' interpretation of Babylonian and Assyrian and other Levantine/Near Eastern Storm Gods and patrirchs of their respective pantheons.
(If you read the stories that can be gleaned from the Ugarit pillars, they too contain the story of a divine mortal interceding for the sake of humanity letting himself be killed by the God of Death, so that humanity as a whole may be spared.)
Another big difference is that since Christianity grafted itself onto the body of the cult of Jupiter Optimus, it came to possess and be of a centralised authority, for good and ill: the schism between the original Eastern cults of Jesus [and the Ethipoian and other African ones pre-dating Rome becoming Christian] is due to a) the Papacy not having the military power-via-proxy to root out the heretics, as per Arianism or the Cathars and b) said heretics' ability to point to the word of Jesus and ask "Where did he say 'Let's have a pope'?".
With a central authority came the ability to change with the times and also trying to change the times: since the Pope speaks for God on Earth, all of the faith must listen and adhere (and argue about what the Pope meant and if he's "the real Pope" - which drives development, sometimes in a Darwinist fashion). Islam, lacking that, cannot change at all. Even Judaism is more malleable to times changing, though in its case it has more to do with malleability and adaptability was a survival trait for the Jews during the Roman occupation and the Diaspora.
Islam is much closer in spirit to nazism (esp. if you know what "Führer-prinzip" meant and how it was implemented) and Stalinism; there's no redemption, no forgiveness between men, and no intercessor, and no grace or mercy. At the core, Islam is simply "Obey or die" with extra trimmings (hence the reference to nazism and Stalinism).
Damn, but I miss lecturing some times! Hope the tone doesn't offend; my wife likes to point out that it's impolite to go on in an* Hectoring fashion as if others don't know nothing.
"It’s a bit like the taunt in a kids’ playground..." Again, 'Conan the Barbarian' summed up philosophy much better than most. Watch the scene in the movie when Subotai and Conan is talking about their respective gods. Conan talks about Crom's bleak attitude and indifference to the plight of men; Subotai on-ups him by stating that his god is "the Everlasting Sky" and that Crom lives underneath him. Implied: Subotai's god is more powerful.
And then they share a laugh.
I'd also like to draw a lance for the Norse, the Celts, the Tuatha Dé Danann, Finnish, Baltic and Slavic pre-Christian pantheons, and the Sámi one too.
No "holy" wars. No jihad or crusades or "do unto the seventh generation" or anything. No concept of sin either, leaving humans both free of mind and spirit as well as forcing them to stand stark naked before the consequences of their actions: there's no saying "Crom Cruach or Horagalles or Svantevit made me do it" nor is there any "Oden/Teutatis/Perun demands XYZ" - any myth where a god claims something of a mortal makes it clear that both are beholden to rules and laws in their interactions. And honour, and fairness and justice.
There's no "obey god or die". There's no "god is always right", nor is there any more respect for a deity than it is able to elicit from proving itself to its human tribe. The ancient Thracians were even claimed to threaten their deities directly, by shooting arrows at thunderclouds, to show their gods they did not fear them.
And fear is one of the three root problems with all the Abrahamic faiths: they all build on fear, violent domination, and cruelty. Kill the unbeliever or god will punish all the people (and who gets punished and what god says is in the mouth of the priest caste, of course - a good grift).
A far cry from the Jesus-inspired ethics expressed by the skald as "Be just, and fear not".
*"An" because the aitch in Hector is silent.
Please lecture me more Rikard!
The Christian mythology that emerged definitely has suspicious links to earlier mythologies from elsewhere, but I think the question, for me, is "what would the people at the time understood his message to have been?"
I used to be fascinated by this question having been brought up as a Catholic and finding that some of what they were trying to teach me just didn't 'gel' properly. I read a lot of scholarly and semi-scholarly books and formed the opinion that Jesus was just a guy, a Jew, saying nothing that took him 'out of' Judaism - and indeed much of Jesus' actual teaching can be traced back to the great Rabbi Hillel.
Super god boy wonder? Hmmm - not sure I can buy into that
"And therein lies the first major problem. I know hundreds, if not thousands, of followers of that religion who are definitely in the “NOT ALL” group. They’re great people, and just like most of the rest of us - kind, hard-working, decent, family-oriented etc etc."
This can be said of ANY set of humans bound by varying degrees of affiliation with some closed-system narrative. This is why an affiliation with the secular/liberal (old liberal definition)/scientific point-of-view is mostly harmless in the LONG RUN; i.e., by its basic, guiding principles it admits to eventual rectification. (Damn, we are an awkward, clumsy, and slow-witted species.)
Yep. The vast majority of Germans did not care one way or the other about 90% of Der Führer's rants. And if even 1% of Russians were actually communists, that's a first.
But the 10% employed enough of the 90% to make the rest comply.
Islam is the same. Step out of line? The imam will rally the congregation against your entire family tree if that what it takes to make you bend (or break).
I can agree. Until a small faction gets a taste of the precious, the sweet lingering aftertaste of power, and then the wheels fall off again.
We humans always screw up when we try to organize the vast varieties or irrational human being.