The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

That's the thing, the King James bible does have use as a scholarly text, given what it says about how the Bible was viewed in the 1600s.

Likewise the Prose Edda is valuable on its own merits as a 13th century text. Later manuscripts are just as valuable as older ones for comparisons across centuries.

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 11th 2024 at 6:35:31 PM

I admit, I keep mixing the two up when it comes to the Norse and Classical.

I guess religion's more the actual ceremonies and rules that come with being a follower of a faith, while the mythology's the various narratives associated with them.

Tbf, that was kind of my point.

Edited by M84 on Mar 11th 2024 at 5:36:12 PM

There can be a world of difference between the construction of a mythological framework and everyday religious practice, yeah.

As mentioned before, Amaterasu may have been head of the Heavenly Kami and one of the most important deities in Japan, but the most popular deity, the one whose shrines dotted the landscape of the entire country, was Inari Okami.

In the Kojiki, Izanagi and Izanami are forever separated. In many temples across Japan, Izanagi and Izanami peacefully retired, together, and now live in Amaterasu's palace in Takamagahara.

Is like in fiction the separation of lore or story(all the event that influence something) and the plot(the element that happen in sequence in the text as in now).

I will said the idea of legit or ilegimate we often follow is a idea born of abraham religions who very much carry the idea of what it is and what it isnt(like the word canon this forum and site love so very much).

Edited by unknowing on Mar 11th 2024 at 5:50:00 AM

I think you’re confusing illegitimacy for lack of importance and significance, both culturally and academically.

The post-Christianization works are illegitimate irrespective of anyone’s say on the matter because the stories were undeniably altered by Christian elements. That doesn’t at all equate to that being a bad thing or not mattering to anyone.

It just means that those stories should be taken with a much bigger grain of salt than the ones where those elements are either nonexistent or less prevalent, except where they overlap.

Basically what Red Savant said.

Edited by Angelspawndragon on Mar 11th 2024 at 2:54:31 AM

Couldn't the differences be explained through regional variations. It is not like even mythological framework for a religion is necessarily consistent throughout a region, nevermind sect. I am not sure they should be completely different as every religious practice/ festival tends to have an explanation or inspiration behind it in one local myth or another. For example who is the elder brother between Ganesha and Karthika/ Murugan is different in North and South India. South India has an extra son of Shiva (Ayyappa), a myth behind it and some temples that are all non existent in North Indian variations etc.

Edited by xyzt on Mar 11th 2024 at 6:05:37 PM

Well, it's more that I don't really think it's up to a bunch of people on a forum to decide historical/mythological legitimacy when we're talking about works that are still over eight hundred years old themselves. The Christianized elements of the Prose Edda are part of a process of those beliefs changing; if there's evidence that Sturluson invented those aspects wholesale and they were never part of widespread belief either before or during his time, then sure, we can call them illegitimate as one author's creations, but we're talking about a culture that was still in flux at the time.

Unless I miss my mark, there are theories that the Vanir and Aesir were originally from different religious and cultural traditions and were merged together by cultural conflict and eventual merging; we can't really say that myths that involve both gods are illegitimate compared to a hypothetical mythological framework from before that time, surely?

It's true that Christianization in Scandinavia in particular was a process of sublimating existing beliefs into a more palatable framework, and that's important to keep in mind when looking at primary sources. But I don't think legitimacy is a super useful metric when it comes to syncretization alone, if that makes sense, and I'm a bit wary of searching for the "uncorrupted truth" when, frankly, a lot of times that doesn't exist anymore. We can theorize, or rather, people who are much smarter and better-read than me can theorize, but in the end it's only supposition.

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 11th 2024 at 8:19:27 PM

We don't actually know this. There's an inference that this is what happened due to the fact that the war between Æsir and Vanir occurs in the Eddas, but that's like saying the people who worshipped the Theoi must have usurped a previous civilization that worshipped the Titans because that's a founding myth of Classical mythology. The evidence that the Æsir and Vanir were gods worshipped by different ethnic groups in conflict is, to my knowledge, pure speculation.

Regionalism does matter and a lot of everyday religious practice is informed by myth, but you can't necessarily infer ritual from mythology alone.

Edited by math792d on Mar 11th 2024 at 12:46:56 PM

See, I didn't know this. Much appreciated, thank you.

But that's exactly why I'm wary of claiming we can spot what's "real" or "true" about these things, since without evidence it comes down to making gut inferences that are at best unsupported by evidence and at worst, used for things like pagan revivalist movements that are just white supremacy in a runic hat.

I don't think there is such a thing as the "original form" of any mythological tradition. They all go back in an unbroken chain of oral transformation and innovation all the way to when an early human told the first story.

Agreed—Christianization is simply something that happened to the storytellers, and it affected the stories much as any other change in condition might have. To call it inauthentic or "illegitimate" is begging the question, because myths and folklore are always changing along with the culture that birthed them. Dionysus and Adonis were overtly new & foreign cults that affected the telling of Greek myths within recorded history—if something like Christian interpolation in Beowulf is to be rejected, then so are they.

Pretty much, yeah. That said, I do think it's valuable to trace identifiable parts of stories backwards and get as much context on how traditions changed and where they came from as possible. I just don't think 'legitimacy' comes into that process in most cases.

I still think there's bits of the Prose Edda that you can basically ignore though.

Because, I'm not kidding, the stuff like Super-Asgard and the thing about the all powerful god that's gonna just kinda wander in and take over after Ragnarok is extremely jarring and out of absolutely nowhere in context. The Super-Asgard thing doesn't even connect to anything, it's just like...randomly brought up in the middle of an unrelated thing and then it gets forgotten. The obvious reference to the Christian God is in a relevant spot, but it's in a prophecy bit that kinda stops and then just picks right back up again for that bit, and it never comes up again.

I’m surprised this wasn’t mentioned in Cock-a-Doodle Dawn. I read somewhere that we have Ares to thank for why roosters crow in the morning.

As the story goes, Ares wanted to spend a romantic evening with Aphrodite. But he remembered what happened the last time, so he hired a mortal man to stand guard outside their room so they could have their fun in private. Unluckily for them, the man literally fell asleep on the job, which resulted in Helios walking in on Ares and Aphrodite while they were doing their naughty stuff. In his anger, Ares turned the man into a rooster, which to this day never forgets to announce the arrival of the Sun.

Well, often my interest in a particular myth or legend to to try and gain some subjective insight into the culture that produced it. So when elements of the culture that I am naturally more familiar with creep into the only written documents we have, yeah that can be annoying.

So here’s a question: Are berserkers exclusively claimed by Odin, or does he still have to split them with Freyja like the other Norse warrior dead?

Apparently boar berserkers were a thing (though there’s not much on The Other Wiki specifically for them as opposed to bears and wolves) that were intended to honor the Vanir twins, so it’d track that they at the very least would be Freyja’s alone to claim.

Would that then leave the bear and wolf berserkers for Odin, or does it mean they split the bear berserkers while Odin keeps the wolves (since wolves are his thing)?

Quick question.

Are there any other 'original humans' stories outside of the Abrahamic ones with Adam and Eve?

Edited by Snoketrope on Mar 21st 2024 at 12:25:51 PM

It depends on how specific you want to be but yeah, there are plenty of stories how humans came to be.

Paging all Gnostics & Gnostic experts: the Complete Monster thread is seeking a rewrite of Yaldabaoth’s entry.

I’m watching The Lost Kingdom of the Yeti with my parents, and it got me wondering. Why do large half man and half ape creatures show up in mythology and folklore a lot? We got the Yeti, Bigfoot, the Skunk Ape, and a few others.

Edited by Demetrios on Mar 24th 2024 at 6:37:28 AM

Sasquatch is also mentioned a lot.

I thought Sasquatch was a nickname for Bigfoot.

Just speculating off the cuff, I'd say that they likely evolved from stories of just regular humans who were more animalistic in their behavior and appearance.

Like lets say a lone individual takes up residence near a tribe's territory. He has no common language, very different mannerisms, wears roughly assembled furs, maybe gets into a few fights with the locals but they never actually get their hands on him. Even after he moves on or dies, the tribe tells stories of the wild man in the woods, and over the generations the story gets added to and exaggerated and eventually they lose track of him being a man at all.

Bigfoot is relatively new. There's claims that he appears in Native American mythology, but these claims are actually pretty dubious.

People bringing preconceived notions or actively trying to create a universal mythology by sanding down local myths and legends of their uniqueness to 'find' a bigfoot in indiginous stories and the rest of the original myth being disguarded.

Eg the Yowie is usually described as the Australian Bigfoot but seems to have been the name of a Kamilaroi spirit that gained bigfoot characteristics as the story was told and retold be Europeans.

I've read one theory that the Yahoos from Gullivers travels might have led to Europeans creating stories of wild hairy men on their travels and/or looking for them in the stories of natives.