Polytheism
Polytheism is defined as a multiplicity of
individualistic divinities having human and/or
animal forms and feelings. According to Islamic
traditions, the first idols on Earth were
during the time of Noah (Pbuh i.e. Peace be upon him). Noah was the tenth
grandson of Adam (Pbuh). The names of these idols were Wadd, Sawaa, Yaguth,
Yauq, and Nasr.
They were
righteous people, and everyone used to love and listen to them. When Wadd
died, his
followers missed him, and became very sad. Satan encouraged the people to
make a picture
of Wadd so they can keep it in their places, and remember this spiritual
leader. They
accepted Satan’s offer and became heavily involved in the pictures. When
Satan saw what
they did, he extended his offer to give them a statue of Wadd. Once
again, they
accepted Satan’s offer. Their following generation saw how their parents
glorified
those statues. Eventually, those statues were treated as gods, and during
Noah’s time there were five idols.
This story explains how Satan takes the human being step by step
towards every sin,
even when the intention, of the people that accepted the pictures,
might have been
sincere. That is why the Islamic laws prohibit all actions that
may lead to major sins.
Moreover, this story indicates that Man did not invent polytheism
out of nothing.
Adam believed in One God. His children followed satanic steps, and
converted
monotheism to polytheism. As time passes, religious beliefs and
traditions were
adulterated and contaminated from one generation to another. That
is why most
polytheistic beliefs or philosophical notions still have some
elements of the monotheistic
religion.
Many gods as well as the embodiment of Gods in human
form (incarnation)
characterize polytheism. Because of their human forms
and the multitude of gods, they
usually fight with each other, and they marry and get
children who are also gods. Since
the beginning of time, knowledge and wisdom were always
transmitted from parents to
children. Thus, the ancient relationships of gods to
humans were as close as fathers and sons.
Babylonian Mythology
Babylon,
one of the most important cities of the ancient world, whose location today is
marked
by a broad area of ruins just east of the Euphrates River, 90 km (56 mi.) south
Baghdad,
Iraq. Babylon was the capital of Babylonia in the second and first millennia
BC.
This dynasty reached its high point under the powerful king Hammurabi in 1730
BC.
In
1595 BC Hittites captured the city, and shortly thereafter it came under the
control of
the
Kassite dynasty (1590-1155 BC). The Kassites transformed Babylon the city-state
into
the country of Babylonia by bringing all of southern Mesopotamia into permanent
subjection
and making Babylon its capital. The city thus became the administrative center
of a large kingdom. Later, probably in the 12th century BC, it became the
religious center as well. During their peak days, the priests filled the
temples to recite Enuma Elish, the most famous of the ancient Near East poem. The purpose of
the epic poem was to praise Marduk, the main god of Babylon and to celebrate
the victory of Gods over chaos. The story begins with the creation of the gods,
and three gods emerged: Apsu (the ocean), his wife Tiamat (the salty sea), and
Mummu (the womb of chaos). These gods begot the successive generations of the
gods, and then tried to destroy them.
The
plan failed, and the wise Ea (the Earth god) slew Apsu and locked Mummu away.
Ea with his goddess wife Damkina produced their perfect son Marduk (the sun
god). According to Enuma Elish, Tiamat created monsters and married their chief Kingu. Marduk
conquered Tiamat and Kingu, the dragons of chaos, and thereby gained supreme
power. Marduk fashioned the first man from the blood of the slain Kingu, and
then, established Babylon as his dwelling place. Acknowledged as the creator of
the universe and humanity, the god of light and life, and the ruler of
destinies, he rose to such eminence that he claimed 50 titles.
Eventually, he was called simply Bel, meaning
“Lord.”
The
people of Canaan (near the Mediterranean Sea) were influenced by the myth
of
Ea (the god) and Marduk (the son of god). Later, Christianity adopted this
concept of
god
and son of god into its doctrine.
Egyptian Mythology
The religious beliefs of the ancient
Egyptians had a major influence in the development
of their culture. However, a true
religion, in the sense of a unified theological system,
was never recorded. The Egyptian faith
was based on an unorganized compilation of
ancient myths, nature worship, and
innumerable deities. In the most significant and
famous of these myths, a divine
hierarchy was developed and the creation of the Earth
was explained. The supreme deity of
ancient Egypt was Ra, (the sun god), which was
represented by a man with the head of a
hawk, crowned with a solar disk.
According
to the Egyptian account of creation, only the ocean existed at first.
Then
Ra came out of an egg (a flower, in some versions) that appeared on the surface
of the water. Ra brought forth four children, the gods Shu and Geb and the
goddesses Tefnut and Nut. Shu and Tefnut became the atmosphere. They stood on
Geb, who became the Earth, and raised up Nut, who became the sky. Ra ruled over
the entire universe and humans.
Geb
and Nut later had two sons, Set and Osiris, and two daughters, Isis and
Nephthys.
Osiris succeeded Ra as king of the Earth, helped by Isis, his sister and wife.
Set,
however, hated his brother Osiris and killed him. The powerful charms of Isis
resurrected
Osiris, who became king of the underworld, the land of the dead. Horus was
believed to be the son of god Osiris and goddess Isis. Horus later defeated Set in a great battle and became king of
the Earth.
In
the fourth dynasty, the Egyptian king Snefru declared himself as the
incarnation
of the living sun god Ra. Cheops, his son and successor and the builder of the
great pyramid of Giza, followed his father’s royal footsteps, and took the
title son of the god Ra. Later, all Egyptian Pharaohs assumed the title god as
well as the son of god Ra.
Ancient
Egyptians believed in many articles of monotheistic faith such as: the
hereafter,
Day of Judgment, hell and paradise. Pyramids were their resurrection
machines,
with The Book of Dead, written on the walls of the deceased’s chamber,
described
the safe passage to paradise. It has been suggested that their original
monotheistic
belief came from Osiris, who was actually Enoch
of the Old Testament, and Prophet Idris in Islam. Notice the similarity
of the names Osiris and Idris.
Greek Mythology
The
legends of ancient Greece are more familiar because they have become so
permanently
embedded in literary traditions of Western civilization. Herodotus believed
that
the ancient Greek religion had been derived from the Egyptians. However, there
was no worship of animals or of gods in animal form, as there was in Egypt.
Greek gods and goddesses were pictured as being much like men and women. The
term for this is
anthropomorphism,
meaning "in the form of a human." Greek conceived the gods to be
more
heroic in stature, more outstanding in beauty and proportion, and more powerful
and
enduring than humans. They were nevertheless endowed with many human
weaknesses.
They could be jealous, envious, hateful, and trivial.
During
the Hellenistic period (about 323-146 BC), ancient Greeks became
exposed
to the Egyptian and Asian myths. A great poet called Homer brought many of
the
ancient stories together in a long poem of heroic adventure, called Iliad and Odyssey.
These
epics revealed much about the religion of the Greeks of that time. They
believed in gods and goddesses who had many human traits and often took part in
the lives of the people. These gods and goddesses, who often laughed, ate,
drank, loved and hated, were said to live above the clouds of Mount Olympus in
northern Greece. Each god or Goddess had some power over the forces of nature
and the humans. For example,
Aphrodite
was the goddess of love, Athena was the virgin goddess of wisdom and war,
Sofia
goddess of wisdom, and Apollo was the god of the sun, poetry, and music. At the
head of the divine hierarchy was Zeus, the spiritual father of
gods and men. His wife was
Hera, queen of heaven and guardian of the sanctity of marriage.
Hindu Mythology
Hinduism
is a collection of religions, which has evolved over 4000 years on the Indian
subcontinent.
Hinduism is a major world religion, not only by virtue of its many
followers
(estimated at more than 900 million) but also because of its deep influence on
other
religions during its long history. The word Hindu is derived from the Sanskrit
word
sindhu,
“river.” The Persians in the fifth century BC called the Hindus by that name,
identifying
them as the people of the land of the Indus. Hindu beliefs are so diverse; it
has been suggested that "Hindu religion" does not exist. There are,
however, some basic beliefs that are shared among the Hindus:
• Belief in the unity of all things in the world. The Hindus
believe that there is one
spirit that runs through all humans, animals, and
plants. The Hindus call this unifying
spirit Brahman.
• Belief in reincarnation of souls. They believe that when a
person dies, he or she will
be reborn in another life form. For example, the
soul of dead animal might move to a
newborn child.
• Belief in the Karma, which is the spiritual law of the universe
that has great power,
even though we cannot see it or touch it. It records
the good and the bad deeds that a
person does while alive and determines where the person
should go in the next life.
Being reborn as a Hindu of the high caste might be
the reward a good person. An evil
person may be reborn as an animal.
• Belief in the non-injury of any living creature. Since the
Hindus believe that the same
spirit unites all humans, animals, and plants, many
of them do not kill animals or eat
meat.
• Belief in many gods and goddesses who are different forms of
Brahman. The trinity
in Hinduism involves Brahma the creator, Vishnu the
preserver, and Shiva the
destroyer. Vishnu is also worshipped in the form of
a number of “Avatars” - avatar is
the descent of a god to Earth in human form, more
generally used of a person who is
believed to embody or incarnate the divine. Shiva is
said to have appeared on Earth in
various human, animal, and vegetable forms. The
great river goddess Ganga (the
Ganges) is said to be a wife of Shiva. The goddess
of music and literature, Saraswati,
associated with the Saraswati River, is the wife of
Brahma. Some scholars suggested
that this Hindu form of trinity was the model
adopted later as a Christian doctrine.
• Belief in working without worrying about results.
Many minor gods are associated with the great gods
or with their children and
friends. Hanuman, the monkey god, appears in the
Ramayana as the cunning assistant of Rama in the siege of Lanka. Skanda, the General of the Army of the gods, is the son of Shiva and Parvati.
Ganesha is the elephant-headed god of scribes
and merchants, the remover of obstacles, and the object of worship at the
beginning of any important
enterprise.
It is interesting to note the close resemblance between the names Brahman, the
Hindu unifying spirit, and Rahman, one of the Names of God in Islam. This may
suggest that Hinduism had monotheistic
origin.
Buddhism
Buddhism
is closer to philosophy than religion. It was founded in northeastern India by
Siddhartha
Gautama (560 - 480 BC), who is known as the Buddha, or Enlightened One.
He
was born near the present Indian-Nepal border. He was the son of the ruler of a
small kingdom. He had everything that he wanted, but was disturbed by the
sorrow and
suffering
of some of the people in the kingdom. Therefore, at the age of twenty-nine, he
left
the palace, his wife and his son, to search for the cause and the solution of
suffering.
He
meditated underneath a bodhi tree, near what is now Nepal, until he attained
the
enlightenment
for which he had been searching. Once having known this ultimate truth,
the
Buddha underwent a period of intense inner struggles. He began to preach,
wandering from place to place, gathering a body of disciples, and organizing
them into a monastic community known as the sangha. In this way he spent the
rest of his life.
Buddha
means the enlightened one. This title applies to any person who has
attained
the ultimate realty “nirvana.” but it is often used for the founder of
Buddhism.
The
original teachings had little ritual and downplayed the importance of deities.
Legends surrounded the Buddha's life quickly turned into miracle stories, and
after the Buddha died (from eating a poisoned meal) his bones and teeth were
spread far and wide as holy relics. The Buddha was an oral teacher; he left no
written body of thought. Later followers arranged his beliefs. The original
Buddhism seems to present a moral and philosophical way of life rather than a
religion. Although never actually denying the existence of the gods, Buddhism
denies them any special role. Their lives in heaven are long and pleasurable,
but they are in the samecondition as other creatures, being subject eventually
to death and further rebirth in lower states of existence. They are not
creators of the universe or in control of human destiny,and Buddhism denies the
value of prayer and sacrifice to them. The deities are so preoccupied by their
own pleasures that they lose sight of the need for salvation.
Enlightenment
is possible only for humans, and not for gods.
The Four Noble Truths: At the
core of the Buddha's enlightenment was the
realization
of the Four Noble Truths:
1. Everything in life is suffering. It is a statement that, in its
very nature, human
existence is essentially painful from the moment of birth to the
moment of death.
Even death brings no relief, for the Buddha accepted the Hindu idea
of life as
cyclical, with death leading to further rebirth.
2. All suffering is caused by ignorance of the nature of reality and
the craving,
attachment, and grasping that result from such ignorance.
3. Overcoming ignorance and attachment can end suffering.
4. The means to achieve nirvana lies in the Noble Eightfold Path of
right views, right
intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right
effort, right mindedness,
and right contemplation. These eight are usually divided into three
categories that
form the cornerstone of Buddhist faith: morality, wisdom, and
concentration.
Nirvana: is the ultimate
goal of the Buddhist path in life. To achieve this goal is to
reach
nirvana, an enlightened state in which the fires of greed, hatred, and
ignorance have been extinguished. Not to be confused with total annihilation,
nirvana is a state of
consciousness
beyond definition. After achieving nirvana, the enlightened individual may
continue to live, burning off any remaining karma until a state of final
nirvana is attained at the moment of death.
The
ethic that leads to nirvana involves cultivating virtuous attitudes, known as
the
Palaces of Brahma: loving, kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and patience.
The ethic that leads to better rebirth, however, is centered on fulfilling
one's duties to society. It involves acts of charity, as well as observance of
the five ethics that constitute the basic moral code of Buddhism. The ethics
prohibit killing, stealing, harmful language, sexual misbehavior, and the use
of intoxicants. By observing these ethics, the three roots of evil—lust,
hatred, and delusion—may be overcome.
