Do you consider paganism to be a new modern religion or a old world tradition religion?
Mostly new, with the illusion and romanticism of being old, or based on something old, though I think most of that is more likely just wishful thinking.
Not sure I buy the authors reasons, but I come to the same conclusion.
No one really knows what existed before christianity because they basically weren't literate cultures. Certainly ritual existed long before even judaism. And we know many cultures have been polytheistic. Most of the rest is really just conjecture. It might be popular conjecture, but it's still just a guess.
The popular conjecture is that animism preceeds polytheism preceeds monotheism. Personally, I don't think that necessarily follows. And I think we need to include "science" as a form of religion because really, it's just another method for forming beliefs, complete with it's own clergy, adherents, and doubters.
Also, technically, "pagan" really just means "non-christian". So whatever the romans ran into or over as they expanded was dubbed "pagan". Paganism certainly wasn't any cohesive or organised form of religion. If it had been, like islam or any of the extant major eastern schools of thought, it's likely that christianity may have had more trouble spreading.
Treating "paganism" like a religion in the past that preceeded christianity would be like treating hard vacuum as a different planet. Certainly it's a different place. But it certainly doesn't qualify as a planet at all.
Mostly new, with the illusion and romanticism of being old, or based on something old, though I think most of that is more likely just wishful thinking.
Not sure I buy the authors reasons, but I come to the same conclusion.
No one really knows what existed before christianity because they basically weren't literate cultures. Certainly ritual existed long before even judaism. And we know many cultures have been polytheistic. Most of the rest is really just conjecture. It might be popular conjecture, but it's still just a guess.
The popular conjecture is that animism preceeds polytheism preceeds monotheism. Personally, I don't think that necessarily follows. And I think we need to include "science" as a form of religion because really, it's just another method for forming beliefs, complete with it's own clergy, adherents, and doubters.
Also, technically, "pagan" really just means "non-christian". So whatever the romans ran into or over as they expanded was dubbed "pagan". Paganism certainly wasn't any cohesive or organised form of religion. If it had been, like islam or any of the extant major eastern schools of thought, it's likely that christianity may have had more trouble spreading.
Treating "paganism" like a religion in the past that preceeded christianity would be like treating hard vacuum as a different planet. Certainly it's a different place. But it certainly doesn't qualify as a planet at all.
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