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Isaiah 6:5
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
MAGA MAN (01-20-2021)
Phantasmal (01-20-2021)
No doubt the word of the Bible, taken literally, would be laughed out of any science lab.
I am acknowledging the historical context of the religion.
The Roman Empire in the second century was a cruel place. A slave economy based on patriarchy, misogyny, economic oppression. The Roman pagan Gods were extensions of the Empire's glory, and were not intended to speak to the needs of the oppressed.
The fact that Christianity appealed to slaves, women, the poor, the lower working class is a credit to the religion, if for no other reason that it gave the oppressed some measure of emotional and spiritual solace.
There were not many religions in the second century which advocated for the oppressed.
Buddhism and Hinduism had greatly influenced the ancient Greeks due to Alexander's contact with India and the exchange of ideas. Celsus opines that Christianity's beliefs are a pale imitation of eastern ideas, and that the Christian belief of resurrection is only a bastardization of reincarnation.
It is possible that there are cultural and religious connections between the Vedic traditions of the subcontinent, and the Christianity of the Roman world which go all the way back to the proto-Indo European Aryan peoples of the Eurasian steppes.
There is probably no doubt that Judeo-Christianity was influenced by the beliefs and practices of Zoroastrianism in Persia.
I give Buddhism credit for appealing to the lower economic classes. The spiritual liberation preached by Buddhism was more widely accessible and proto-democratic compared to the elitism of the Vendic Brahmanistic tradition.
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