Re: Religion

Glen asks

> We can either go with foolish John and say that Sumerians and

Europeans both

> _independantly_ happened to develop a very unique and

characteristic

> triaspectual Goddess religion or...

Glen, for Gods sake (or should I say Goddesses sake), the threefold
nature of a woman's life as pre-menstrual, menstrual and post
menstrual was not something that occurred only to Europeans. It is
built into female biology and so is repeated all over the world, not
just as diffusion from a single "Old Eropean" source. You are
needing a course in modern archaeology and comparative religion!

> ...succumb to the obvious: The Sumerians were affected by a

bicultural

> mythology created three thousand years previous in the

technologically and

> economically red-hot Balkans of that period.

There is little evidence of the effect of technologically Red Hot
Balkans on the equally technologically Red Hot Mesopotamians of the
same period. In fact regiously the two zones were almost entirely
separate until the rise of "orientalising" features from the Late
Bronze Age and archaic classical period. Glen, your linguistic
reconstructions may be plausible. Your mythologies verge on the
fantastic.

Glen again

> By the way, there was something I left out that is very important

to FULLY

> understanding how the Semitoid and European religions ended up

reconciling

> their severe differences.
>
> I had said that the Semitoids, and the later Semitish, viewed red

as the

> color of blood, fire and the underworld (Need I remind the ancient

concept

> of Sheol which contradicts John's claims that this fire actually

comes from

> heaven originally). White was viewed as that of order and the sky,

a concept

> paralleling Steppe beliefs.

Glen, pre-exilic Sheol was not associated with the colour red.
Rather it was the "shadow lands" associated with the absence of
light, not with the presence of fire. The association with fire only
came after contact with the Iranians.

> In European mythology, there is an opposite relation. Red equals

life and

> creation, the color of blood. White is the color of bone, the

symbol of

> death and destruction.
>
> What's more, the sex of the deities in both cultures are opposite,

not to

> mention the contrast between monotheism and polytheism. How did

they get

> along religiously speaking?

Do tell. Monotheism was a creation of the Jewish religion only after
the Babylonian captivity. Before then they were as polytheistic as
the next person. No evidence of Monotheism in Akkadian, Eblaite,
Canaanite or Aramaean areas Glen.

> The way it was resolved was to "marry off" two of the aspects of

the Goddess

> (Creatrix and Destructrix) to the male Semitoid gods of the two

realms, as

> has already been alluded to by Marija herself. Therefore, red was

still seen

> as a symbol of fire, destruction, war and the now _watery_

underworld but

> the European "red" and _creative_ aspect of the Goddess (aka.

Inanna, Venus,

> etc) was married to the Semitoid god of the Underworld, sometimes

known by

> his epitaph as "Fire-born" associated early on with the red planet

Mars

> (aka. Ares, Baal, etc) due to simple colour association. By

contrast, the

> old "white" hag, the Destructrix, married the "white" and

_creative_ Sky

> (aka Anu/Enlil, Jupiter, Zeus).

Baal was never a "God of the Underworld". Rather he was a weather
god, (eg. "a thunderbolt weilder") son of El (Semitic father god).

> Ever wonder why Hera is jealous and exacts "destructive" punishment

to

> anyone that oppose her whims while Zeus goes on wild "(pro)

creative" sex

> sprees? Ever wonder why Venus is connected with water, the war god

and the

> Underworld even though she's obviously a goddess related with

creation?

Glen, others have come up with even more plausible explanations of
this. Read Kerenyi, or Graves for that matter.

To my point

> John:
> >The Gods show a primary tripartite
> >division between Anu (Sky), Enki (Earth) and Enlil (Air).

Glen writes

> But what John doesn't grasp is that SumeroAkkadian myth was already
> developed out of the SemitoEuropoid religions. Sumerians had a bi-

partitive

> system too, between earth and sky from what I can tell.

So not only do you have Semitics going to Europe with the spread of
neolithic cultures, but you have them coming all the way back again
to spread religious myths to the Sumerians too! Glen, please, please
read some serious middle Eastern comparative religion and neolithic
archaeology. All I can ask (as I keep repeating here) is "where is
the evidence"!

Glen continued

> John continues his outright dillusion:
> >If this is so, by comparison, Enlil could have been the
> >consort of a still more ancient Goddess Lil (faint memories of this
> >Goddess are found in the Goddess Lilitu = the Hebrew Lilith). She
> >was a fearsom divinity indeed. Inanna called Gilgamesh to drive

the

> >demoness Lilitu from the Hulupu tree where she had made her home.

[...]

> >The source of this tripartite division is difficult to discern. It
> >may not even be Sumerian and may in fact be proto-Ephratean in
> >origin. [...] Certainly there is evidence of a Maiden-Mother-Crone

tripple

> >goddess underlying Hurrian beliefs, and it may also be found at

Catal

> >Huyuk too. But this is only speculating on the thinnest of evidence
> >(I'll leave that up to Glen).
>
> John amazes me. Now, doesn't this Lilith sound alot like the "old

hag"

> married to a sky god to the rest of you fine thinking people? What

solidly

> proves it, and what John desceptively leaves out, is the fact that

this same

> myth is laced with European animal symbolisms of the Goddess
> (serpent=Destructrix and bird=Creatrix). I could also swear that

Inanna is

> in this myth too. She is in reality just a mirror image of the old

hag,

> Lilith, pictured as a beautiful young maiden of creation. These are

all

> European symbolisms.

Glen, you should study some of the modern studies of Lilith that have
been made. Rather than an "old hag" she was in fact an incredibly
beautiful young maiden, capable of seducing all men in their sleep.
Lilith was never portrayed as an old hag in either Sumerian or later
Hebrew icinigraphy. Rather that is something that only happened in
the medieval period in a syncretism with the Germanic "night-mare"
who appeared in men's dreams producing "nightmares".

It would seem that Lilith was "demonised" at the time of the rise of
patriarchy as a repository of all of those female aspects that the
patriarchs wished to repress and supress in their "uppity"
independent women of the old cultures in the Middle East (a la
Jezebel, Maacah, Alithiah, Delilah etc).

Come on Glen, please start talking about real research, based on
evidence and sources rather than fanciful reconstructions based on
god knows what (is Winnapeg too cold for Columbian crops?)

Regards

John