God Is Dead #8

[superboyprime]

"In fact, I did a lot of reading of texts like Ovid and Gylfaginnig. The idea, for me at least, was to try and coalesce a reasonable interpretation of what kinds of personalities these Gods would have based on their mythological records and the kind of relationships their worshipers had with them." - Mike Costa

Comments

[majingojira]

The first chapter or so of "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong covers it decently enough. It peters off in interesting things about the Canaanite Pantheon soon after that.

The thing is, Canaanite had to be reconstructed and pieced together because of how things went. Not much survived, but more than, say, the Mississippi Mound Builders.

There are two videos (in a series describing the author's research and eventual journey into Atheism) which describes the important parts of that text, as well as going into detail on which parts of the bible were influenced by the Canaanite religion.

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlnnWbkMlbg

Part two doesn't cover it that well, so don't bother with it, but he does express there the same feeling I got. Even as a 'for masses' read, "A History of God" is pretty hard to get through after a while.

I'd watch the video then read the book. It goes into details on things like how the divine was viewed in the Ancient Near East that really are fascinating. "Be Not Afraid" was not just a thing angels and other divine beings said on a whim.

Also, the wikipedia on the subject isn't bad, it's just Wikipedia.