The truth is that everything that ends in el is male including names. The female counterparts are say for example an archangels counterpart is called an archeia. All heavenly beings have wings to include god himself. Michael for example isnt just a messanger he is literally gods firstborn son of the heavenly kingdom and is an elohim.
The truth is that everything that ends in el is male including names. The female counterparts are say for example an archangels counterpart is called an archeia. All heavenly beings have wings to include god himself. Michael for example isnt just a messanger he is literally gods firstborn son of the heavenly kingdom and is an elohim.
sorry for the doublel post...archeia are eloher. The only time you see el is at the beginning of this for a female....shows its a goddess.
bob x
Well-Known Member
Rome is STILL called Roma by the people who live there. But Italians don't get all upset because people who speak languages other than Italian pronounce it without the final "a". The name originally derived from Etruscan ruma "province" where the "u" was probably pronounced like a German u-umlaut; but most certainly I have never heard of an Italian who DEMANDED that we all use that archaic pronunciation, which no Italians have ever used either, and gotten all offended if we use the standard pronunciation that everybody has been using for centuries.
No, you don't know what's best for Irano-Afghans. Trying to change the meaning of the word "Aryan" to denote Irano-Afghans to the exclusion of Indics is hopeless, stupid, and dishonest. It is hopeless because the word "Aryan" is already fixed in the language with a number of usages, and that is not going to change. It is stupid because many of those usages are very unfortunate associations. It is dishonest because that particular pronunciation is not one that has been current even among your own people. I have found where this came from: the ethnic name tochik "Tajik" is Turkic in origin and just meant "non-Turk" so, understandably, now that Tajikistan is independent they would like some better ethnonym, and ~2006 the President of Tajikistan started this project to get everyone to say "Aryan" instead. It was a bad idea, and it won't get anywhere.
Why would I bother to show you AGAIN when you didn't respond the first time I showed you, or the second time, or the third?
What in the Gathas would suggest that Amesha Spenta were any kind of "messenger"?
This is the kind of thing that has me tearing out my hair about you. You apparently know nothing whatsoever about the role angels and demons in the Abrahamic folklore-- except that you are certain it must be identical to Zoroastrianism, whatever it is.
No, "angels" were not simply emanations of God, like the Amesha Spentas; they were creatures with their own free will. Traditionally (this is not actually in any NT scripture, but medieval Christendom took this for granted, and the Qur'an tells a version of this) two-thirds of the angels choose to serve God, while one-third rebelled, and became the "demons". Unlike Angra Mainyu, who is conceived in Zoroastrianism as being co-eternal with Ahura Mazda (who did not make him), Satan is one of the angels, created by God, but allowed to go his own way when he chose evil.
The best-preserved manuscript, in fact, for the Book of the Dead is the copy from the tomb of Ani, a minor bureaucrat. The illustration in the Wiki article shows the "judgment" scene, where the heart of the deceased is questioned about possible dishonest and immoral behaviors. It is from seven centuries before Persians existed, but of course is far from the oldest example. The point here is: you keep claiming that nobody in the world could possibly have been thinking about ideas like a soul distinct from the body, which survives after death, or whose afterlife fate depends on a moral judgment, unless Iranians taught them how; well, that's not just wrong, it's insanely wrong. And I mean that very seriously: you should know, without having to be shown, that people other than your own have been thinking about the big questions for a long time, without depending on you, and it requires a serious mental aberration for you not to understand that.
English spelling uses a/e/i/o/u in very non-standard ways. In practically any other language that uses Roman alphabet, or in transcriptions into Roman alphabet from languages that use other scripts, they should be pronounced "ah" / "eh" / "ee" / "oh" / "oo"; a diphthong like "ai" means "ah" plus "ee" slurring together into the "eye" sound, so Avestan Airyene is "Ire-YEH-neh". The "ay" diphthong like in English "air" would be written "ei" since it is a slurring of "eh" plus "ee"; the Sassanian Eran might have sounded like "AIR-on" or maybe just "EH-ron".
And why are you taking dictation from the Greeks???
They spelled it a.ri.ya. in a syllabic cuneiform script in which every consonant had to be followed by a vowel; this meant that extra vowels sometimes had to be thrown in, but usually that would be "a" so we would expect "arya" (if that was how they pronounced it) to be written a.ra.ya. It possible that the pronounciation was "airya" (IRE-YAH) like in Avestan, and that the ri. character is being used for ir.
I have no idea what you mean by a "short diphthong"; a diphthong is a double-vowel, long by definition.
Another of your Iranian chauvinist sites which claims that everything in the world must have come from Iran? I can find no substantiation of your claim here; the origin of the word "bank" within Renaissance Italy is straightforward and well-known.
Only in an exceedingly indirect way. Once, the only bodies which issued written notes standing for sums of money were governmental treasury departments, often called (and in England still called) something like the Exchequer because accounting was done on checker-boards, doing addition and subtraction by moving counters around on boards divided into units / tens / hundreds / etc. columns each with slots for 1 to 9. The names checkers and chess (old form better preserved in French echecs) derive from the exclamation check! (old form better preserved in German Schach!) which you are required to say when you threaten the opponent's king (Persian shah). "Checkers" of course is an older game than "chess"; before its modern name (derived from the "checker" board) it was also called (sometimes still called in England) draughts, and that word too was sometimes used for the counter-board; so an exchequer note was also called a draught, and this is the source of "check" and "draft" for monetary promissory notes.
I don't see why. Cultural expressions, like technologies, are freely borrowed all around, and always have been. You cannot find traditional stories in any nation anywhere which do not recycle ancient folklore motifs that are also found elsewhere all over the world.
And here we come to the nub of it. The Irano-Afghans have had a terrible time organizing themselves: the Zoroastrian ideology for whatever reason was just not very capable of serving as the basis for a durable political and social structure; the Islamic ideology has displaced it, and created a political culture of brutality and corruption. Well, that's not my fault. It's nobody's fault but your own.
The truth is that you have no idea what you are talking about. The word El in Hebrew is the short form of Eloah "God" and occurs in many personal names, whether male or female: Jochebel the mother of Moses and Jezebel the wife of Ahab are two female examples. The "im" suffix on Elohim is the plural; this has nothing whatsoever to do with the English pronoun him, and so that form "Eloher" that you concocted is extraordinarily funny.
No, literally the name is Mi-kha-el "Who is like God?" It is a rhetorical question that is obviously supposed to be answered "Nobody is like God." It is a variant of the older name Mikhayahu "Who is like YHWH?" similarly asserting the utter uniqueness of YHWH. The older name is transcribed "Micah" in the book of the Twelve Minor Prophets (this Micah was a little older than Proto-Isaiah) and "Micaiah" in the second book of Kings (this Micaiah was a contemporary of Elijah).
M
mojobadshah
Guest
According to the OED Latin Rominus is what people used to call what we call ancient and modern Romans today just like the Irano-Afghans and any sane individual would call the ancient and modern Airya (Irano-Afghans) Aryans today.
And you think you know what would be better for the Tajiks than the president of Tajikistan? I'm telling you you're just setting yourself up for failure. Sure here, in the U.S., the textbooks, pop culture, and the media is mostly in the charge of non-Irano-Afghans, and FOR SOME REASON, they like to keep facts as to how the Irano-Afghans are the Aryans in the original sense of the term out of the books. But OVER THERE -> in the Irano-Afghan zone, the Afghans, Iranians, Tajiks, Kurds, etc... are all very aware of their ancestral cultural heritage and their Aryan identity, especially considering, they still live on part where the Aryan homeland was/is. Their textbooks do not keep the facts of their national ancestral identity out of the books.
Because I don't buy what you're saying. You've provided you're translation:
Shema Yisrael, YHWH Eloheynu, YHWH echad means "Hear O Israel, YHWH is our God, YHWH is singular."
You claim that Elohim is a plural respect. But I see no reason to believe that Elohynu or Elohim just simply doesn't translate to plurality of gods. Pretty much all the sources out there point to the first sign of a strict monotheism in the OT beginning in Deutero-Isaiah. Moreover, you said that the Jews of today have thrown out everything other than the Torah, but the only monotheistic statement in the Torah is in Deuteronomy and it's a redaction from the same period as Deutero-Isaiah. You want to show that the development of Jewish monotheism was independent of the Aryans (Irano-Afghans) when it's well established that the Jews were not monotheist from their beginnings and for a very long time thereafter, whereas the Aryans (Irano-Afghans) on the other hand were monotheists in an more advanced sense than even that of the Jews when their form of monotheism became apparent, and have been since long before the development of Jewish monotheism. I think there's something very selfish about you and all the others like you who want to show that the Jews developed their version of monotheism independent of the Aryans (Irano-Afghans).
I don't give a rats ass if you think people were thinking up the same ideas independently. In the context of modern day IP law it don't mean didly squat whether they were or not. What matters is that they can prove that they came up with the idea before all the other contenders out there. Yes, in this case I already told you I wouldn't be surprised. Yet the Egyptians didn't incorporate this idea within a monotheistic framework. And the Jews didn't believe in the idea of a "soul," or a "spirit" and they still don't today.
If they were creatures with their own free will then you are clearly mistaken because the concept of Free Will was fundamental not just to Aryan (Irano-Afghan) religion but Aryan culture in general. The Gathas specifically state that Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu the twin Spirits or "Angels" CHOSE good and the evil, respectively. Ahura Mazda created individuals with free will. Cyrus promoted religious tolerance which translates to what we would call "freedom of religion or belief" today.
bob x
Well-Known Member
Right. They have never used the original Etruscan pronunciation "Ruma" (whether that's "oo" or like the German u-umlaut, Italians have never used either). Now, coincidentally "Romanians" do sometimes shift that pronunciation to "Rumanian" and you sometimes see it written that way; but it's never been said or written that way in Italy.
That would be like calling the people of Rome "Rumans" (particularly with an umlaut), or insisting on calling all Italians "Rumanians", even though nobody in Rome or Italy has ever said that, and "Rumanian" suggests some other people altogether. Any SANE person would call Iranians "Iranians" whether you pronounce that first syllable "EE" as it's been for the last couple thousand years, or "EYE" as it was in Avestan times; it would be insane to pronounce it "AH" when that pronunciation has never been used among your people, but does occur among the Indics, whom you're trying to distinguish yourself from (and of course, was used for you by the Greeks, whom you loathe). Now, there's nothing insane about your preference for "Irano-Afghan": I can see why you would want to make it clear you are not speaking only of the inhabitants of the political state which latched on to the "Iran" name in 1935.
Uh, George W. Bush was president of the US, but was exceedingly stupid when it came to what was best for the US; Putin and Sarkozy are much less stupid than Bush, but I wouldn't take them to be infallible about what is best for Russia or France. Propaganda that may work well domestically to rally people around the President (who is always going to be principally concerned about what's best for himself) may be very bad for the nation, making outsiders think everybody in the nation is crazed and/or dangerous (Bush certainly made a lot of non-Americans wonder about whether Americans were all crazy and dangerous).
Trying to get everyone to call you "Aryans" has the effect of making people think you are just like Nazis: apparently, like them, you think there is some Master Ethnic Group responsible for creating every good idea there has ever been in the history of civilization, because nobody except the Masters is smart enough to think of anything; and the only reason the Masters don't rule the world is because they were too soft-hearted, and tolerated those non-Masters treacherously attacking them. The only differences between you and the Nazis are 1) of course, you disagree about who the "Masters" are, claiming that it's you instead of the Germans, and 2) that you haven't gotten around to declaring the need to start stamping out all the non-Master ethnicities, although that seems to be the direction your ideology tends toward.
The reason being that it isn't true. The "Arya" name was changed into something else, "Iran", among your people as long ago as your people existed at all as a distinct ethnicity, and persists only among the Indics.
The reason is that it is used with singular pronouns, and singular verbs. The reason you don't see this is because you refuse to see anything that you don't want to see; it is not from any failure on my part to show you.
You refuse to look at "all the sources": what the Jews themselves have to say about the history of their own texts is not something you are willing to look at. You will only look at two "angry atheist" sources; of them, Karen Armstrong isn't so bad (though I disagree with her on many points), but Wright is just terrible. You don't seem to have any standards at all for distinguishing a good source from a bad one, except whether it suits your propagandist needs of the moment: you have often cited utterly absurd raving-lunatic sources without showing a shred of awareness of how this makes you look.
I never said that. The Torah is one of three parts of the Tanakh, and there is extensive literature besides the Tanakh (have you ever heard of the Talmud?) What I have said, however, is that the Zoroastrian-influenced literature which we can find in the intertestamental period has not had any continuing acceptance.
There are multiple monotheistic statements in Deuteronomy, none of which are from the late-added chapters which could be dated to the Deutero-Isaiah period. We have been over this before.
In the days of Abraham, we see more "henotheism"; and in Moses, we see more "monolatry"; but in the prophets (Proto-Isaiah as well as Deutero-Isaiah, and the prophets earlier than Isaiah) we see monotheism proclaimed, although it is not concealed that the populace was largely not going along (same as in the Avesta, for that matter).
I regard it as a cruder sense (the ease with which pagan deities were re-introduced is my point here), but regardless of one's value system, it is a different ideological formulation, because it is the product of a distinct history.
SELFISH??? I am not Jewish. I have no sympathy with Abrahamic religion. I have no dog in this fight. I am just looking at what is. YOU are the one trying to build up your own self-importance.
Nor do you give a rat's ass that any sane person would understand, without needing to be told, that all peoples all over the world have been thinking about the big questions, all by themselves, without needing the Aryan Master Race, the only intelligent people in the world apparently, to instruct them.
Once an idea is more than decades old, it don't mean diddly squat who came up with it, in the context of any law anywhere.
Akhenaton had monotheism-- a different concept of it, of course. What's your point? That Zoroastrians don't have to pay the Egyptians for ideas like "soul" and "afterlife" and "moral judgment" if they didn't borrow the whole package intact, rather with some alterations? Well if so, then nobody in the world owes anything to the Zoroastrians either.
Right. They had their own ideology, which went in a different direction.
No, Spenta Mainyu is an emanation of Ahura Mazda, not an independent being. Angra Mainyu on the other hand was not created by Ahura Mazda at all; the two are co-eternal, each creating different things in the universe. No, Spenta and Angra Mainyu are not "twins": a later theologian proposed that Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu were twins, both created by an even higher power Zurvan, but this was considered a horrible heresy and was stamped out by the authorities (Roman Mithraism, in which Mithra creates two lesser gods pointing up and pointing down, may have been like Zurvanism, according to that source on it you linked to). And of course, the Gathas never speak of "angels" (a Greek word); and although I asked you for anything in the Gathas that would justify calling any of the emanations "messengers" or any other word with a meaning like the Greek angeloi, you didn't come up with anything.
No "freedom of belief" existed in Achaemenid Persia. You were subjected to the religious authorities of the community you were born into and had no choice about it.
M
mojobadshah
Guest
The Acheamenids used the form Ariya which almost identical the Sanskrit form Arya. Obviously neither of them used the form Aryan verbatim. The Avestans use the form Airyanam and Airyene. The Sanskrit used the form Aryanti which all come close but not close enough. Though I still have to look into Encyclopedia Iranica and CAIS's justification for their Parthian form Aryaan. But my point was the textbooks here not only identify Sanskrit as the language of the Arya, but the Vedic people as the original Aryans to the exclusion of the Iranians. And I DOUBT very much so that if the politicians knew that everyone else knew that the Irano-Afghans were the original Aryans that they would only think once about threatening to bomb their lands. Also my point is the if Aryan is a recent form its application as an ethnic identifier should be no different than how Roman is used to identify the Rominus. And I have actually come across Italians who come from the city of Rome who call themselves Romans.
But the Tajiks know that it is better that the world know that they are the Aryans in the genuine sense of the term and not the Nazi sense of the term so people become aware that there actually was an Aryan national identity in history that had nothing to do with Nazism and racial superiority. And the same goes for the Afghans, Iranians, and Kurds.
You're blowing my point way out of proportion. Racial superiority is not my point whatsoever. But there is something about 1. the antiquity of the Aryan (Irano-Afghan) language, it being the oldest IE. language that lives on, and its significance as the Great Great Uncle of all the living IE. languages, and 2.) the antiquity of the Aryan/Zoroastrian expressions and their influence on the Abrahamic faiths 3.) the Aryan/Persian Empire being the first and largest empire in proportion to the British Empire and most multicultural empire to date
The Indics never called themselves Aryan verbatim so it persists among the Irano-Afghans no differently than it does among the Indics. The only difference is is that the Irano-Afghans are the first ones two have used the form Aryan cf. Airyana as a national designation. Only recently has this Tagiri fellow begun to put forth that Aryan was used as a national designation. Moreover, the Indics do not live on part where either Airyana or the latter attested Aryavarta was centered whereas the Irano-Afghans do.
The reason is that it is used with singular pronouns, and singular verbs. The reason you don't see this is because you refuse to see anything that you don't want to see; it is not from any failure on my part to show you.
Are you using later text to justify that Elohim was plural respect? When were these texts dated to? Also even if it was singular in respect how why would Elohim have signified God rather than god amongst other gods given that Genesis was attested when the Jews were still henotheists?
That's what I meant. And the clearest monotheistic statement in Deuteronomy was a redaction identical to Deutero-Isaiah that was added during the post-Exhilic period when the Jews were living with the Zoroastrians.
Like where? You mentioned monotheistic statements in Proto-Isaiah which is not very clear, and its obvious that it if there is evidence of monotheism it wasn't even clear to the Jews themselves because they had to make it clear in Deutero-Isaiah and make additions to Deuteronomy for the same reason.
The Zoroastrian system describes a benevolent supreme being. The Jewish system describes a God that is responsible for both good and evil that is not much different from the other gods before they developed their monotheism. It's actually more like Zurvanism.
It's selfish because the Jews so obviously were strangers to monotheism, but you and others like you want to make a point about its development having been independent so that you can defend your Judeo-Christian heritage and justify the proselitization of it. But if the law were truelly just in this world, that would never have happened in the first place, and it would not be allowed to continue at least in commerce. The rights to this particular expression would go to the communal representatives of that TCE and TK and the world would be a better place. There would be no more lies as to who's who in the world.
Akhenaton is another case where people are always trying to use to justify an alternate origin of monotheism and is just as unclear as the Jewish system, and no way near as widespread as the Zoroastrian (Aryan) system. There are two other uncreated gods that preexisted in earlier mythology named in the Great Hymn to Aton, Maat and Ra.
Yeah, but you try telling a Christian that. Not you and all you're smrti-manu friends. Random ones.
Spenta Mainyu was a Mainyu. Angra Mainyu was a Mainyu. The Yasnas clearly distinguish the "twain Mainyus" from Mazda Ahura, though Spenta Mainyu is also associated with Mazda as his Spirit comparable to the Holy Ghost in the NT.
You're full of pro-Greek propaganda. Don't forget that Herodotus was also known as "The Father of Lies" for good reasons. And anytime someone needs an enemy they will do anything to discredit them including LIE. Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes they were all on good terms with the Jews, and they were able to establish and maintain the first world empire or the most multicultural empire to date. The Greeks were not able to do better. Moreover pre-Islamic faith of the Irano-Afghans was Zoroastrianism and culturally the idea of worshipping a benevolent God was a far more advanced than the Greek practice of worshipping amoral gods. It took the Greeks another 500 years before they caught on the Christian hybrid of Zoroastrian expression. And Free Will was at the core of their ideology. It's where democractic ideology began to take shape. The Zoroastrians believed that the only good leader was one who was selected by the people who he led. And the Persians instituted democratic council systems which you like to call electoral monarchy.
bob x
Well-Known Member
Why do I bother talking to you? The cuneiform alphabet used for Old Persian does not indicate pronunciation with great reliability, and I tell you for at least the third time, without any sign that you have heard me at all, and with very little expectation that you will hear me this time either, that the best guess for how the spelling a.ri.ya. was pronounced is "airya" like the Avestan.
Because plain -n is just the adjectival ending tacked on in English. The Indics did, and still do, use arya either verbatim or with various grammatical endings, often including "n"; the Iranians never have, using forms like "Iran" with either the "EE-ran" or the "EYE-ran" pronunciation, for thousands of years, which is why it is the standard form, and will remain so, regardless of your inane repetitious ranting. I have told you this before.
Where that vowel spelled "ai" by careful linguists is what English generally spells as long-i. The pronunciation is like the EYE-ran pronunciation of "Iran". I have told you this before.
They don't give one. The "Parthian" script with no vowels marked coexisted with scripts which do mark the vowels, and tell us it was pronounced eran "AIR-an" at the time. I have told you this before.
Which is correct.
Which is also correct.
WTF???
Are you saying that the Aryans are the Master Race, and nobody would dare to bomb the Masters? Otherwise I cannot imagine why you think anybody should give a rat's ass even if it were true that once upon a time Iranians pronounced their name with an "ah": what in the world would have to do with whether we want you having nuclear bombs?
Not "Rominus": the Latin was Romanus. The people who live there have pronounced that vowel "OH" for the past few thousand years, and NOBODY thinks we should start using an "OO" or umlauted vowel there, pronunciations which occurred in more ancient languages but were never used by the Italians. The application of "Aryan" should be strictly for the people who have pronounced that vowel "AH" for the past few thousand years-- that would be the Indics. The application of "Iran" should be for those who have pronounced the vowel "EYE" or "EE"-- and that would be you.
Not "Rumans"? Then why would you insist on calling them by some name that nobody from there has ever used? Wouldn't it make more sense to call them by the name that they have always used for thousands of years?
WHAT, exactly, is the "genuine" sense of the term? I would have thought that it is "genuine" to use that term for the people who have actually called themselves that, in India, and not to use it for the people who have never actually called themselves that.
Sure it is. You are continuously claiming that nobody could possibly have come up with religious ideas unless YOUR RACE taught them, and now you have added that nobody would dare think of attacking you if everybody knew you were "real Aryans"; what in the world are you trying to say?
EVERY living Indo-European language is exactly as old as every other, since all humans have been speaking languages for as long as they have existed. The Irano-Afghan languages of the present day "live on" in forms which are significantly mutated from what they were in the present past-- the same way that every other language lives on. Do you mean that AVESTAN lives on? Is that what you are trying to say? If so, I would not call it a "living" language any more than Sanskrit or Latin, but if what you are trying to claim is that Avestan is the oldest IE language from which we have preserved texts, you are simply wrong.
The influences of Zoroastrianism on Abrahamic faiths are what they are, and are not what they are not. If you wanted to be proud of what the influences are, that would be one thing, but you constantly have to exaggerate and distort.
Yeah, yeah, you were really big once. It was a long time ago. Get over it.
Among the Indics, they say arya; among the Iranians, they say Iran. That's why everybody else says "Iran" too. You have a legitimate bone to pick with Reza Khan for hijacking the name "Iran" in 1935 for the state formerly called "Persia"; if you want to use "Irano-Afghan" to stress that you are not limiting yourself to inhabitants of that state, fine, it's a useful clarifying term.
False. In the Vedas it generally means a member of the ethnicity.
False. It has been understood that way by European Sanskritists since the 1600's.
False. The core of that area, where "Airyana" and "Aryavarta" overlap, is the Indus Valley and surrounding valleys (currently almost 100% Indic).
It's that way in ALL the texts.
Liar. We went through what sections were tacked on to Deuteronomy in the post-exilic period; none of those sections are where the monotheist statements are from. It is exasperating enough to me when I have to tell you things over and over and over again and you do not even hear; it is much worse when at one point you did acknowledge, but now go back to what you earlier admitted was wrong. That sounds much more like intentional dishonesty than error.
What don't you find clear about it? At least, I have to give you credit for acknowledging that I have mentioned this to you before: that took long enough; would it be too much for you to explain why you do not find it sufficient?
Oh, well then OBVIOUSLY Zoroaster was not a monotheist, or at least it wasn't clear to any Irano-Afghans, because you wrote Younger Avestan texts that state monotheism again.
They made additions to Deuteronomy to provide an introduction to the assembled text, and to clarify some legal issues which had not been ruled upon in earlier periods. These additions have no relevancy whatsoever to the issues we are talking about, as you acknowledged earlier.
The Jews believe, in other words, that THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD, while Zoroastrians accompany Ahura Mazda with others.
WTF??? Obviously they had a purer monotheism than your people.
I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN. I DESPISE CHRISTIAN PROSELYTIZERS. I HAVE TOLD YOU THIS BEFORE.
The world would be in the Stone Age.
Right. It is a completely independent development, in of course a different direction.
Try telling a Christian WHAT? That Jews, Zoroastrians, and Atonists were different? I don't think anybody, except you, has any difficulty understanding that. My "smrti-manu friends"??? What are you even talking about??? "Random" is hardly the word for this particular gibberish of yours.
Yeah, they're both "spirits" (or "minds", however you want to translate that). Spenta Mainyu is a spirit emanating from Ahura Mazda. Angra Mainyu is independent from Ahura Mazda, not created by him in any way.
Cite? I have no idea what you are talking about. How could they be called "twins" when their origins have nothing in common?
WTF??? I wasn't talking about Greeks at all.
WTF??? I never mentioned Herodotus at all.
Yeah, I wouldn't deny that. That wasn't the subject. You were claiming that there was "freedom of belief" when there was nothing of the kind: if a Jew (by birth) did not feel in his heart that he truly believed in Judaism, even if he believed in Zoroastrianism he did not have the right in the Achaemenid Empire to "stop being a Jew". What they did was to delegate local judicial authority to religious figures, and which religious figures you were subjected to was fixed by birth; the same system that we still found in the Ottoman Empire, with traces of it in Middle Eastern countries to this day. Now, certainly this was a step forward from the Assyrians or Babylonians, but no, it is nothing like individual liberty.
The "council" was a half-dozen or so, heads of powerful families. The "people" were not represented at all. This was a crude oligarchy, of the kind that the Greeks had moved past long earlier. This, also, is one of those things that I have had to tell you over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, without any sign that you even hear.
If you are going to respond to this, take some time to think before you hit Submit. If you just want to repeat things that I already argued against, without the slightest acknowledgment of what I had to say, much less any counter, why bother? This was the worst post I have seen from you, and I have to question what is the point of talking to you any further.
M
mojobadshah
Guest
I'm saying that if people really REALLY knew what "master" implied in relation to the Aryan (Irano-Afghan) language and the expressions contained in Aryan literature and even in terms of Empire rather than only what they know from elementary and highschool history classes, and pop culture, that "western" nations and the Aryan (Irano-Afghan) nations would be on much more respectful terms than they are today. We wouldn't see the constant demonization of the Aryan (Irano-Afghan) culture by "westerners" as it has been since ancient Greek times, and we would start to see a more balanced portrayal of Aryan (Irano-Afghan) culture. What we would come to realize is that in virtually all respects the Aryan (Irano-Afghan) people and the people of the "west" are not as different as they are made out to be.
No you continue to insist that I"m claiming that. My issue isn't a black vs. white issue. Are all Latinos morena? It's a this language-group vs. that language-group issue. But now that you mention it even in this day and age sometimes I wonder whether people do need to be taught how to be good.
The Anatolian languages are the oldest preserved texts according to convention, but I question whether that its seemingly archaic nature may have been due to non-IE. influences like Hurrian. Nevertheless what language-group is going to lay claim to Anatolian heritage. The language-family has been dead for thousands of years. What I'm saying is that Avestan is a living language in the same sense that Sanskrit or Latin is, but that Avestan is the oldest living IE. language in this sense.
The way I recall it you were telling me about how Deuteronomy where the statement that "the Lord is God and there is no other" is more ancient than Deutero-Isaiah where the same strict statement appears again when the Jews were living with the Persians, due to the archaic language, but then I showed you my source in addition to wikipedia which put forth that this strict monotheistic statement was added to Deuteronomy later around the same time the Deutero-Isaiah was written in a redaction. Ontop of all the atheist authors who put forth similar arguments I just don't agree that these so-called monotheist statements that you have pointed out are truly monotheistic, but rather their interpretation as monotheistic are back-projections from the post-Exilic period.
What don't you find clear about it? At least, I have to give you credit for acknowledging that I have mentioned this to you before: that took long enough; would it be too much for you to explain why you do not find it sufficient?
Yeah, it's Elohim "Els ~ gods." So what indication do you have that it didn't just mean "Els" or "gods" and from what period do you get this indication?
Yeah, but you also told me that you were of Prestbyterian heritage at one point.
That's a very extreme view. You're obviously not up to date on TCE and TK. It's like you want to say its ok to defraud, extort, exploit, and defame a people's culture and their identity to justify quicker technological advancement in the world.
No. Try telling a totally random bystander that is of Christian heritage that the Jews don't believe in "the Holy Spirit," "Angels," "the devil," "demons," "the Messiah/Christ," "The Living Word," "the Soul" "Heaven," "Hell," "The Resurrection," and "Judgment Day," and that they worship both God and the Devil rolled up into one. Whereas their predecessors the Zoroastrians like the Christians incorporated into their ideology a benevolent "God," "The Holy Spirit," "Angels," "the devil," "demons," "the Messiah/Christ," "The Living Word," "the Soul," "Heaven," "Hell," "The Resurrection," and "Judgment Day."
Listen, to save you some aggravation on these points you don't have tell me why what I'm saying here is false, just tell me where you agree.
Enough with the distortions already. It's not totally complex. Ahura Mazda was the creator of both the Spirit Spenta Mainyu and the the Spirit Angra Mainyu. Ahura Mazda was the Spirit Spenta Mainyu. Spenta Mainyu chose to create everything that was good. Angra Mainyu chose to create everything that was bad. Ahura Mazda is all-mighty. Angra Mainyu is not. In the end Ahura Mazda will destroy Angra Mainyu.
Now the two primal Spirits, who reveal themselves in vision as Twins, are the Better and the Bad, in thought and word and action. And between these two the wise ones chose aright, the foolish not so. - Yasna 30.3
Please cite.
I know you were saying it was a monarchy because the elect essentially possessed absolute power and was a despot, but the fact that these "half-dozen heads" were involved in this elective process is democratic, especially, in contrast to no heads but the monarch. It's not absolute democracy per se, but it's very primitive democratic council system. Boyce even speaks of how the Aryan (Irano-Afghan) system of having kings and even "high kings" was integral to their survival.
bob x
Well-Known Member
Yes, you had a huge empire, a long long long time ago, and people know that, and don't care much. No, Iranian languages are not "master" languages, if you mean closer to PIE than anything else, but even if that was true, nobody would care. Nobody gives Greeks a pass on their fiscal wastefulness because Aristotle used to live there, or Italians because of Julius Caesar.
Most of the time, "Persia" has been a romantic, exotic place in the western imagination. "Iran" didn't start becoming stereotyped as the home of dangerous whackos until Khomeini and the 444 days, and Afghanistan didn't really have any place in the western imagination (QUICK! Tell me what comes to your mind when I say "Cameroon") until the Soviet invasion.
Could you translate this into English?
Do you know anything, anything at all, about Hurrian??? Can you give any coherent reasoning why any borrowings from Hurrian would make a language look "archaic"???
Yes, I know you keep saying that. It's just false. You have no reason whatsoever for claiming it, either. You look at the evidence, and try to force-fit it to the conclusion that you start from, which is the reverse of proper procedure anyway. But it's particularly bad when you don't understand the subject at all, and are totally unwilling to be educated.
No, your sources do not say anything of the sort. They said the redactional touches to Deuteronomy after the Babylonian Captivity consisted of a reworking of the introduction, and a few additions to the legal code. I hadn't heard that any additions had been made to Deuteronomy that late, but OK, if recent scholarship ascribed a handful of minor edits to that period, so be it. None of it has anything whatsoever to do with what we are talking about.
"ALL"? You mean two. Armstrong isn't so bad, but Wright is totally clueless, about ancient thought on any subject, or about poetic writing from any period. My basic problem with their arguments, however, is that they start out with the desired conclusion, that the Bible really isn't that important, just like you start out with your desired conclusion, that Iran is super-important, and then they work backwards to fit the evidence to what they want to see.
Just saying NUH-UHHHH! isn't an argument. Again:
bobx said:
FOR THE FOURTH TIME, AT LEAST: the pronoun used to refer to Elohim is the singular "he" rather than "they"; the verbs are put in the singular, not the plural, form. When the word is used to mean "gods", the pronouns and verbs are plural.
EVERY period.
Some of my great-grandparents, yes. Another of my great-grandparents was a Marxist, but I don't much approve of Marxist proselytizing either.
That ideas which have been around for decades should be freely exchanged? I would have thought it was a UNIVERSAL view, until I met you.
WTF are TCE and TK???
Jews do have the phrase ruach ha-qodesh "the Holy Spirit"; and of course they not only BELIEVE in "the Messiah", they INVENTED the term (although they do not mean quite the same thing as Christians do). They do not believe any of the other things you mention, and I think that is completely common knowledge.
They believe that God created all things, good and evil. They do not believe in a "Devil" at all.
The Zoroastrian God is "benevolent" in the sense of not having created evil, which is not like the Christian God, who like the Jewish God created all things.
Spenta Mainyu can easily be translated that way, although the Hebrew conception is a more likely source for the Christian conception.
Zoroastrian, certainly, although the Christian conceptions have somewhat mutated.
Not Zoroastrian, although the Zoroastrian "Saoshyant" certainly influenced the mutation of the "Messiah" into the Christian concept.
Christians have, rather, the "Word Incarnate", who did not learn the truth, but IS the truth, and has been from all eternity.
Zoroastrian, yes.
Not from Zoroaster. Some late Zoroastrian texts apparently did incorporate such notions, but since other late texts still contradict them, they appear to be Islamic borrowings.
False. Ahura Mazda had nothing to do with Angra Mainyu.
Spenta Mainyu is one aspect of Ahura Mazda.
No, those who obey Ahura Mazda will spend eternity with him. Those who obey Angra Mainyu will spend eternity with him. Both are eternal.
The two referred to are Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, who are both "primal" since they have existed forever.
How can I cite what ISN'T THERE? It is up to you to cite positive evidence that anything in the Cyrus Cylinder or any other Achaemenid text you can find granted any right whatsoever to an individual to abandon his native religion: that just wasn't a concept back then.
That's what "monarchy" means, yeah.
No. If there was anything genuine about the "elections" (which there really wasn't), it would be OLIGARCHIC to have elections with such a small number of participants.
M
mojobadshah
Guest
Yeah, your view is the typical "western" view the only difference is that you and the select few have actually heard of Zoroaster and Cyrus the Great for example, whereas the vast majority of "westerners" have not, but if you mention Aristotle, or Julius Caesar they'll not only be familiar with they're names but they'll know about them. Now you say that people "don't care much," but they're not caring much is contingent on the FACT that it was not only a huge empire but larger than the Greek empire, for one, and their propragandisic approach to telling history. In other words the people who could do something about it care so much about these facts (no sarcasm implied) that they have consciously chosen to omit these pivotal points from the history textbooks shortchanging the history and detracting reasons behind why the average person should care.
"Master" in the sense that I'm using the term applies to primal Empire, language, and expressions and bears no racial connotation like White or Black but instead applies to language-groups and national identity like Latino or American. If one is Latino or American does that mean that they are associated with a particular race like "white" or only "black" or only "brown" etc..? No. So unless you are intentionally trying to blow my point out of proportion stop trying to make me out to be a racist.
Not much. Just that it's not an IE. language. But from what I understand the Hittites were also influenced by a lot of Semitic elements too.
I think you misunderstand me. When I say "old" I mean more ancient in the sense that the language was attested at phase earlier than other languages. I don't mean "old" in the sense of more archaic: a language that preserves features that resemble the common ancestor more so than other language. For one thing we can't even be sure what the common ancestor really looked like for certain because it was never attested. The two best candidates for the most ancient attested and living IE. language comes down to the Irano-Afghan and Indic language-group.
This scholarship you are talking about claims that Deuteronomy Chapters 4 which includes the strictest monotheistic statement was added during the post-Exilic period. Deuteronomy 6:4 on the other hand may not have been added, but it's very iffy. I think this source says that Deuteronomy 6:4 was a new addition, but I don't know how knew. The social meanings of sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible: a study of four writings
But what I'm wondering is if recent scholarship has shown that some of the chapters are new additions and it would appear that they're not basing their reasons for this on morphological archaisms in the language then couldn't that imply that these archaisms that you mentioned have appeared much more recently too?
And on top of the atheists, the literal and even non-literal translations of the OT could be read like Yahweh of Israel is the only Yahweh and not the only God. But this argument that Elohim actually just means "gods" without any plural respect has been around for quite a while at least since the early 1900s.
This is your translation:
Shema Yisrael, YHWH Eloheynu, YHWH echad means "Hear O Israel, YHWH is our God, YHWH is singular."
You say that we know Elohim was plural respect because of the context in which the term is used. Give me an example just like above.
And while we're discussing this what do you know about this: "...Scholars have puzzled on the fact that they can find no documented sign of Moses in Judaism before the Babylonian Captivity, and that some cynics actually believe that the Jews taken to Babylon were fascinated by and so simply latched onto the Moses Legends there and brought them home to Judah later after their Persian Liberation (it would explain the scriptural references to finding “Lost” scrolls after the return from Babylon… it may have been the first time that these ‘People of David and Solomon’ had ever heard of Moses)." Zoroastrianism, The Sufi Religion, The World’s Best Religion
And it doesn't look like consider yourself an Aryan either.
Since the 18th century tradition was associated with the uncivilized and non-western too. Does that sound sane too you?
Traditional Cultural Expressions and Traditional Knowledge.
Spenta Mainyu can easily be translated that way, although the Hebrew conception is a more likely source for the Christian conception.
Does that expression appear in the OT? Because I thought that the OT doesn't make any references to the spirit or soul.
Also Qodash are Iranian khodash "his self" related?
How is evil not the Devil?
If you think about it the Jews actually worshipped the Devil considering Yahweh was responsible for evil (and good).
False. Ahura Mazda had nothing to do with Angra Mainyu.
No there are plenty of distinctions between the two Mainyus Spenta and Angra and the Ahura Mazda in the Gathas.
Zoroaster's arrival was preordained according to the Gathas too, and Jesus didn't know everything God did either according to the NT.
I don't see the contradiction. In one text it states that the spirit will end up in heaven in the other it elaborates and says that it will take 3 days for this to happen.
The two referred to are Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, who are both "primal" since they have existed forever.
Spenta Mainyu is both identified with an distinguished from Ahura Mazda. Ahura Mazda created Spenta Mainyu and Spenta Mainyu created the other Amesha Spentas.
The good will see a good place, and at the end of creation the Devil will be powerless and there will cease to be evil.
You're the one who stated that the Persians did not permit conquered peoples to worship outside of their culture's tradition.
I thought oligarchy meant "rule by more than one ruler." That is not what happened in the case of the Persian councils. And that's why I say very primitive democracy and others have described it as quasi-democratic, and I hear you on elective monarchy, but it's probably one step away from representative democracies.