Paraphrased from Joseph Campbell:
Anthropologists recognize that throughout the mythologies and religous systems of the world, the same images and themes are constantly recurring. These have been called Elementary Ideas and Archetypes.
It is also recognized that wherever they occur, these ideas and images appear in different costumes with different applications and interpretations. These provincial differences are know as Folk or Ethnic Ideas which vary according to "time and tribe".
One can approach the study of comparative mytholgy and religion looking either at similarities or at differences.
Following Aristotle, there was a period of attack on mythological ideas, and criticism in the West tended to seperate itself from the elementary ideas, but the continuities that we can recognize in myth have come over into Western thinking associated with Gnosticism, Alchemy and all manners of "discredited" thought that carry on this interest in what might be called Perennial Philosophy. The principle interest of these systems is the elementary not the ethnic. [You may note that the principal stress in the Bible is on the ethnic rather than the elementary aspect of the message.]
The gods are of two orders: those that represent the powers of nature, which operate in the universe and within ourselves, and those that are the specific patrons of the tribe. In most mythologies, the tribal patron deities are secondary to the nature deities; but in Semitic mythologies, the role is reversed. Among the Semites the tribal deity is the top deity.
The Romans and the Greeks before them could see that the gods of other people were the same gods that they worshipped, because those gods are personifications of energies that shape and maintain the Universe. Caesar recognized Krishna as the counterpart of Herakles, and Indra as the counterpart of Zeus; so there was a recogniton rather than "missionizing".
But you could not possibly say, "He whom you call Ashur we call Yahweh or Allah", because for the Celtic tribes and the desert peoples the principal deities were ther tribal gods, patron's of the tribe.
These two mythological perspectives are in total contrast; one being exclusive and the other being syncretic.
From: THE GOD OF ABRAHAM: A Mathematician's View:
http://www.meru.org/GodofAbe/onegdpix.html
When we examine the spiritual beliefs and cosmologies of ancient as well as modern cultures, we find that they all include excellent models of certain essential qualities of life - albeit each in its own cultural context with its own particular perspective, emphasis and physical analogs. All cultures model the same processes of the overall unity of the natural world and using different physical examples to do it.
Each and every culture has made accurate and effective models of the cyclic, self-propagating and self-referential nature of all life in terms appropriate to its needs and experience. These different cultural embodiments of the same universal principles underlying all life are referred to as "idols of metal and stone and wood." These "godlet" cultural paradigms are honored (and, literally, stone statues of these "idols" are worshipped) by the society that makes use of them.
[The "idols" of a sophisticated person are not, literally, stone effigies and statuettes. These "idols" are the cultural,political, social, and scientific paradigms comprising the world-views of the societies in which they (and we) live.]
Abraham, seeing through each model to a Singular archetype, Defined the One-God as the Unity (or Unit) underlying all of them. Abraham, in this view, acts as a mathematician, postulating a meaningful and functional definition of Unity. This mathematician's model makes use of none of the "garments" of the many different cultural embodiments. The model, MUST be understood as a complete abstraction without physical embodiment- an Idea in the terms of Plato, or Notion ala Hegel.
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[In the view of the Kabbalists, all individuals are contained in species, and all species in genera,
and all particulars in a Universal, which is an Idea, abstracted from all consideration of
individuals; not an aggregate of individuals; prior to any individual, containing them all, and out
of which they are all in sucession evolved. This Univeral Idea known as the One in Greek Emanation Philosophy is a postulate, just as the Point, which has no parts and no magnitude is a geometrical postulate. It is the God of Mystical Theology, the Unconditioned; That Which remains when the anthropomorphic notions of Deity have been removed, and which, as such, transcends conditional existence.] |
But most people can not worship a mere abstraction, and require some outward from in which to clothe their conceptions, and invest their sympathies. Idolotry consists in, confounding the symbol with the thing signified, the substitution of a material for a mental object of worship, or a preference for a sensual conception of God.
We want to think about God. God is a thought, a name, an idea; but its refrence is to something that transcends all thinking. The Ultimate Mystery of Being is beyond all categories of thought. Kabbalists speak of the Abyss- the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered, because it is a mystery that transceds all human thought.
Since the consciousness of the individual reveals itself alone, our knowledge cannot pass beyond the limits of our own being. That is our knowledge of other things and other beings are only his conceptions, and are not those things or beings in themselves ("ding an sich" - Kant).
The Deity is thus not an object of knowledge, but of faith, and not to be approached by the understanding. What God is in Himself, it is not given to man to comprehend.
No symbol of deity can be appropriate or durable except in a relative sense, since we cannot exalt words that have only a sensuous meaning, above sense. The most abstract expression of Deity, which language can supply is but a sign or symbol for an object beyond comprehension. Any affirmative idea or conception that we can , in our own minds, picture of the Deity, must be infinitely inadequate. We can avoid sensuousness only by resorting to simple negation. The negative notion of God, which consists in the abstracting the inferior and finite is the only way in which it is possible for man to apprehend the nature of God.
This perspective suggests why the Abrahamic faiths absolutely prohibit "graven images" of God. Any graven image would be a physical representation of only one culture's iconography during one historical period - it could never be a timeless model of a universal underlying Unity.
Once we understand this mathematician's idea of God as a Definition necessary for universality we can see how and why it is possible that the Abrahamic faiths' insistence that God is the ONLY-GOD could be literally true, and not just the chauvinistic religious puffery of these faiths - and in a way that does not deny the validity of other religions. The definition of Unity is in no way prejudicial to any other view.
Further, although the particular details and depth of understanding of the idea of an explicit definition of the Unity of God may have been most fully developed by the Abrahamic faiths, the principle was known and considered fundamental in other cultures as well.
In Pharaonic Egypt (as also in India), Neter Netru, the one and only God who is unknowable, is an idea derived by logical conclusion. It is evidence of considerable philosophical sophistication on their part that the sages of the ancient world were apparently aware of the necessity of identifying the One-God with an abstract definition of Unity.
Likewise, from Albert Pike:
Among all the ancient nations, there was one faith and one idea of Deity for the enlightened, intelligent and educated, and another for the common people. To this rule the Hebrews were no exception. The mass of Hebrews did not believe in the existence of one and only God until a late period in their history. Jehovah, to the mass of the people, was like the gods of the nations around them, except that he was the peculiar God, first of the family of Abraham, of that of Isaac, and that of Jacob, and afterward the National God; and as they believed, more powerful than the other gods of the same nature worshipped by their neighbors- "Whom among the Baalim is like unto thee, O Jehovah?"- expressed their whole creed.
Such were not the ideas of the intellectual and enlightened few among the Hebrews, who possessed a knowledge of the true nature and attributes of God, as the same class of men did among the other nations; but their doctrines on the subject were esoteric, and they did not communicate them to the people at large, but only to a favored few, as they were communicated in the greater mysteries, to the Initiates.
To communicate true and correct ideas in respect of the Deity was one of the chief objects of the mysteries. The Supreme, Self-existent Creator and Preserver of the Universe was the same by whatever name he was called, to the intellectual and enlightened people of all nations. The different names used were nothing, if not a symbol and representative hieroglyph of his nature and attributes.
[It was Pike who rewrote the degrees of the Scottish Rite into symbolic dramas that drew upon the myths and symbols of various spiritual traditions, some of them esoteric. He was a strong believer in what has been called the "Unity Concept", which held that there was a fundamental unity in the belief systems developed during the early history of mankind. These belief systems, often called religions, all basically subscribed to the idea of one powerful overarching Deity Who transcends all idolatry and man's ability of expression.
Pike found this esoteric idea echoed in Masonry's insistence that the believers of different religions could share a brotherhood, despite their theological differences - as long as they believed in God, Who was neutrally called the Great Architect of the Universe.]
The Divine Nature is a theme on which man is little etitled to dogmatize, yet it is here that man most dogmatizes, classifying and describing God's attributes and making an inventory of God's qualities, feelings, impulses and passions; and then hangs and burns his brother who, as dogmatically as he, makes out a different map or inventory.
Perfect truth is not attainable anywhere. We are all of us mistaken. The person who thinks that he has found the ultimate truth is wrong. The cherished dogmas of each of us are not the pure truth of God, but simply our own form of error, our guesses at truth. Since every man's conception of God must vary with his mental cultivation and mental powers, God is, as man conceives Him, the reflected image of man himself.