<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This type of thinking arose specifically within the context of the greco-roman rule. That it was a jewish pagans who were thus transformed is just a coincidence, it could very well have been caananites, manasehites, or any any group in the euro-semitic contact zone.. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Aaahh.
Dhu, I think I am finally starting to see what you are saying. With stress on 'starting'.
<b>ADDED:</b> Before moving on, I want to say I think I agree with what you're saying there. The rest of this post is merely to explain that <i>I think</i> it was one specific part of Greco-Roman Religion/Philosophy that had the potential to cause such transformations as you mention.
Can I ask what the mindset of the majority of the influential Greeks and Romans was at this stage? I believe they were already quite a while in the philosophy stage - some expertimental philosophies.
Stoicism or Neo-Platonism and some others. Stoicism was certainly a moralistic philosophy.
Were the older kinds of Hellenes and Romans (like most of the villagers would still have been just before and during christianity's formation) of the same view? Because when one thinks of it, Hellenismos had many animal and plant spirits: dryads, satyrs, naiads, fauns. Their Faunus was God of all animals. Surely then, the Old Religion recognised that animals had a meaningful part in the Divine? (One must also take into account that Hera, the wife of Zeus, was additionally represented as a Sacred Cow.)
The place given to animals might have changed with the ascendance of philosophy as the new interpretation of the Religion among some artistocrats.
From the bits I've read, it seems that even in Constantine's time <i>some educated</i> Roman writers referred to the Old Religion as being of a different age: that their slow evolution had left certain parts of it behind.
And in that poem to Zeus that Porphyry referred to (I've pasted it in the Samskrit thread), I think Porphyry spoke of the ideas expressed therein almost as if they were from an older form of the Religion: old interpretations, poems written from the old viewpoints. (Even if Porphyry appeared to admire the expressions of the Old Religion, rather than think them quaint.)
I should make one thing clear: at no point did even the majority forsake the Old Traditions in favour of philosophy. Women and men, some even highly educated, still went by the Old Religion. Certainly all those in villages and the rural countrysides of the Empire. It was only christianity that wiped it out in the end.
Though Christians and historians long argued that the old religion was 'dying', that christianity merely took over a void (as christians argue even today about replacing Buddhism left hollow by communism in China) - this is not true. Philosophy might have edged out the more traditional views of the old religion, but the philosophers who were not easily able to understand the Old Religion were trying to re-interpret it so that it made sense to them. This is what created a kind of Reformation in their world. It had been going on for centuries, although only in parts of the affluent, educated circles - which was the only place philosophy appealed as a <i>replacement</i> for tradition.
I think this Reformation (or Evolved Religion) is what led to historians wrongly concluding that the Old Religion had died and left a void. (It is known christianity genocided both philosophers as well as full-fledged pagans of the Old Religion, so there had been no void.)
I think the same philosophical outlook is what gave rise to the new ideas of morality such as where they just ignored nature and animals.
As you yourself provided an example earlier in another IF thread: Homer and even other traditions about the Olympic Gods were re-read to get new allegorical meanings out of them rather than see them with the traditional meanings. I think you also posted how some Greek came up with the idea that religion and ideas of Gods (like Nature Gods) arose due to to early man's fear and non-understanding of Nature. His opinion is of course all mere backward-projecting onto long gone people - nothing more than speculation (based on how he could explain religion and belief). Speculation also describes much of the philosophers' ideas about the Old Traditions. They tried to understand them from their more modern viewpoints.
Might this not explain how people now interpret that it was <i>since Homer's time</i> that the natural world was disregarded when it came to considering morality:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Ever since Homer, it has been a rather characteristic trait of Western thinking that moral phenomena pertained only to the domain of human intercourse.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Animals didn't seem to play as great a part in the Illiad as they sometimes did in stories about the Olympic Gods, but it might have merely been the <i>theme</i> of the Trojan War itself that made Homer leave out animal kind.
<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Apr 13 2007, 10:37 AM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Apr 13 2007, 10:37 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->in christian theology animals don't have souls and don't go to heaven and so there's no point in 'converting' them).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Husky, this is not christian theology per se, rather it is a greco-roman conceptualization ( which is what I have been trying to say over the past few threads).[right][snapback]66892[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Christianity may have, need not have, inherited it from some of the philosophies floating about in the Roman Empire. After all, when christian apologists are of a mind to admit it, they like to claim Stoicism shared many similarities with christianity. (Christians are flattering themselves - Stoics were very upright, ethical people; christians of the same time were the very opposite. Proof for difference in ideology right there.)
My point in saying that animals don't have souls in christian theology is just that: christianity doesn't recognise that animal and human souls are of the same kind. I wasn't even considering whether christianity inherited it from late evolved form of Greco-Roman Religion/understanding and Philosophy or not.
Since its earliest times, the terrorist ideology insisted animals had no souls. See for instance the movie 'Chocolat' where there's an old man and his old dog. The catholic priest repeats christian doctrine to the unhappy man: his well-loved dog won't be there in heaven. In the film, the priest softens up and later tried to smooth it over I think, but only by going against fundamental, implacable christian belief.
Apologies for any repetition in this huge post, I don't think I can look over this one and prune out duplicate statements.
Dhu, I think I am finally starting to see what you are saying. With stress on 'starting'.
<b>ADDED:</b> Before moving on, I want to say I think I agree with what you're saying there. The rest of this post is merely to explain that <i>I think</i> it was one specific part of Greco-Roman Religion/Philosophy that had the potential to cause such transformations as you mention.
Can I ask what the mindset of the majority of the influential Greeks and Romans was at this stage? I believe they were already quite a while in the philosophy stage - some expertimental philosophies.
Stoicism or Neo-Platonism and some others. Stoicism was certainly a moralistic philosophy.
Were the older kinds of Hellenes and Romans (like most of the villagers would still have been just before and during christianity's formation) of the same view? Because when one thinks of it, Hellenismos had many animal and plant spirits: dryads, satyrs, naiads, fauns. Their Faunus was God of all animals. Surely then, the Old Religion recognised that animals had a meaningful part in the Divine? (One must also take into account that Hera, the wife of Zeus, was additionally represented as a Sacred Cow.)
The place given to animals might have changed with the ascendance of philosophy as the new interpretation of the Religion among some artistocrats.
From the bits I've read, it seems that even in Constantine's time <i>some educated</i> Roman writers referred to the Old Religion as being of a different age: that their slow evolution had left certain parts of it behind.
And in that poem to Zeus that Porphyry referred to (I've pasted it in the Samskrit thread), I think Porphyry spoke of the ideas expressed therein almost as if they were from an older form of the Religion: old interpretations, poems written from the old viewpoints. (Even if Porphyry appeared to admire the expressions of the Old Religion, rather than think them quaint.)
I should make one thing clear: at no point did even the majority forsake the Old Traditions in favour of philosophy. Women and men, some even highly educated, still went by the Old Religion. Certainly all those in villages and the rural countrysides of the Empire. It was only christianity that wiped it out in the end.
Though Christians and historians long argued that the old religion was 'dying', that christianity merely took over a void (as christians argue even today about replacing Buddhism left hollow by communism in China) - this is not true. Philosophy might have edged out the more traditional views of the old religion, but the philosophers who were not easily able to understand the Old Religion were trying to re-interpret it so that it made sense to them. This is what created a kind of Reformation in their world. It had been going on for centuries, although only in parts of the affluent, educated circles - which was the only place philosophy appealed as a <i>replacement</i> for tradition.
I think this Reformation (or Evolved Religion) is what led to historians wrongly concluding that the Old Religion had died and left a void. (It is known christianity genocided both philosophers as well as full-fledged pagans of the Old Religion, so there had been no void.)
I think the same philosophical outlook is what gave rise to the new ideas of morality such as where they just ignored nature and animals.
As you yourself provided an example earlier in another IF thread: Homer and even other traditions about the Olympic Gods were re-read to get new allegorical meanings out of them rather than see them with the traditional meanings. I think you also posted how some Greek came up with the idea that religion and ideas of Gods (like Nature Gods) arose due to to early man's fear and non-understanding of Nature. His opinion is of course all mere backward-projecting onto long gone people - nothing more than speculation (based on how he could explain religion and belief). Speculation also describes much of the philosophers' ideas about the Old Traditions. They tried to understand them from their more modern viewpoints.
Might this not explain how people now interpret that it was <i>since Homer's time</i> that the natural world was disregarded when it came to considering morality:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Ever since Homer, it has been a rather characteristic trait of Western thinking that moral phenomena pertained only to the domain of human intercourse.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Animals didn't seem to play as great a part in the Illiad as they sometimes did in stories about the Olympic Gods, but it might have merely been the <i>theme</i> of the Trojan War itself that made Homer leave out animal kind.
<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Apr 13 2007, 10:37 AM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Apr 13 2007, 10:37 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->in christian theology animals don't have souls and don't go to heaven and so there's no point in 'converting' them).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Husky, this is not christian theology per se, rather it is a greco-roman conceptualization ( which is what I have been trying to say over the past few threads).[right][snapback]66892[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Christianity may have, need not have, inherited it from some of the philosophies floating about in the Roman Empire. After all, when christian apologists are of a mind to admit it, they like to claim Stoicism shared many similarities with christianity. (Christians are flattering themselves - Stoics were very upright, ethical people; christians of the same time were the very opposite. Proof for difference in ideology right there.)
My point in saying that animals don't have souls in christian theology is just that: christianity doesn't recognise that animal and human souls are of the same kind. I wasn't even considering whether christianity inherited it from late evolved form of Greco-Roman Religion/understanding and Philosophy or not.
Since its earliest times, the terrorist ideology insisted animals had no souls. See for instance the movie 'Chocolat' where there's an old man and his old dog. The catholic priest repeats christian doctrine to the unhappy man: his well-loved dog won't be there in heaven. In the film, the priest softens up and later tried to smooth it over I think, but only by going against fundamental, implacable christian belief.
Apologies for any repetition in this huge post, I don't think I can look over this one and prune out duplicate statements.