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xiphiasSo, one of the people on my friends list was in a discussion on someone else's journal, about the nature of religion, and was mentioning the discussion, and I figured I should jump in and offer my 2 cents. And as long as I offered them there, I figured I could offer them here.
(As it turned out, my input wasn't actually useful, because people just sort of ignored it and said, "Well, despite all historical evidence and theological study which shows that I'm wrong, I still think I'm right." I eventually had to say, "Oh yeah? Well, YOUR definition of religion is WRONG, and mine is RIGHT, and I know this because people pay me $90 a week to teach their kids what religion is." I hate using "arguments from authority." I just kinda got frustrated. . . )
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jehanna, as this is a subject we've talked about before, and, as a Hebrew School teacher, this is one of the things which I teach.
Throughout history, there have been several "sea changes" in the idea of what constitutes a religion, which makes the definition difficult, since there remain religions which were created and continue to exist under previous definitions.
The earliest definition of religion of which I am aware (and that doesn't meant it's the earliest -- just that it's the earliest I've personally studied) could be defined as "a collection of tribal beliefs, taboos, and rituals personal to and particular to a specific tribe and location."
If you are a member of the tribe, living in an area, you have specific tribal identifiers and customs which you share. If someone else marries into your tribe, that person adopts your identifiers and customs.
If you conquer another area, you bring your gods with you. If you are conquered and become part of another culture, you adopt those gods, customs, taboos, and beliefs.
There can be synthesis and syncretism, absorbing and integrating other subcultures, making a larger religion, but your fundamental ideas of gods, and religions, being localized and personal are the earliest forms that I've studied.
The first sea-change happens around the mid-sixth century BCE, in several places around the globe. Before that point, you did have some theologians who were considering the notion of syncretism, and wondering whether gods, localized and personal, could all be projections and expressions of some form of uber-god. Both Hindu and Greek philosophers and theologians had considered this notion, but it wasn't a major part of day-to-day religious belief or experience -- while it was a notion that theologians and scholars might have played with, your average guy-on-the-street wouldn't be familiar with it, and would have just had his or her localized, personal, and familial gods.
Around the mid-sixth century BCE, that began to change. The Buddha started teaching a set of philosophies and beliefs that were universal. At the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, the Hebrews, scattered throughout the Babylonian Empire, redefined their localized god of the Ark of the Covenant to be a universal god, who could be worshiped from anywhere in the world, and who, in fact, had dominion over the entire world, thereby changing their existing Hebrew/Israelite religion into something new called Judaism.. And, in the Persian Empire, Zoroastrianism taught of a universal creator god, Ahura Mazda, opposed by a god of evil, Ahriman, who created all things in the universe and had dominion over all things.
These religions, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism brought forth the ideas of universal religions, religions that could be followed from anywhere in the world by any people, regardless of tribal affiliation, family, or location. Add to this the philosophical schools of Confucianism and Taoism, and, fifty or a hundred years later, the flowering of Greek philosophy which also brought forth the ideas of unknowable universal gods of which the known gods were syncretic projections (a variation of this teaching is what Socrates was executed for), and you have a huge, amazing shift in the concepts of what gods are, and what religion is.
One obvious change is that you now have the ability to have missionaries. Now that you've decoupled the notion of "religion" from the notions of "place" and "tribe", you have the ability to have people go out and tell other people about your religion, and see if you can't convince them to be part of your religion. That wasn't possible before, and the ability to have large-scale syncretic religions, I think, allowed for the creation of more culturally-homogeneous larger empires.
The next major change happened with Jesus, or, rather, with Paul.
Paul's innovation was to create a kind of religion decoupled not only from "place" and "tribe", but also from "culture", "taboo", and "ritual" (although ritual was put back later by other people). And to add in a new component to replace them: "belief".
Each religion which has been created since Paul has, so far, more-or-less followed this model: it's a system of belief, in which the IMPORTANT thing is "how you believe", which has certain rituals and behaviors associated with it, but those behaviors and rituals are PART of the religions rather than BEING the religion. Each (major) religion created since Paul has not been restricted to a tribe, or to a culture. At least officially.
The problem is, of course, that we humans evolved as tribal creatures. Thus, even though new religions like Christianity and Islam have no racial or tribal component, we still assign racial and tribal identifications to them. You say "Muslim", and most people think "Arab", even though there's no such connection in the religion.
So, those are three models of religion that have existed: the "tribal/cultural/personal" model, the "universal/cultural/ritual" model, and the "universal/belief" model.
It's important to note that these models all flow into one another, without any hard dividing lines -- and that none of them are extinct. Religions built on each of these models exist today.
And that's one of the problems that, for instance, Christians and Muslims have in understanding other religions. They are looking at other religions from their framework, and therefore totally misunderstand religions built on other frameworks.
(As it turned out, my input wasn't actually useful, because people just sort of ignored it and said, "Well, despite all historical evidence and theological study which shows that I'm wrong, I still think I'm right." I eventually had to say, "Oh yeah? Well, YOUR definition of religion is WRONG, and mine is RIGHT, and I know this because people pay me $90 a week to teach their kids what religion is." I hate using "arguments from authority." I just kinda got frustrated. . . )
I was pointed toward this discussion by
jehanna, as this is a subject we've talked about before, and, as a Hebrew School teacher, this is one of the things which I teach.Throughout history, there have been several "sea changes" in the idea of what constitutes a religion, which makes the definition difficult, since there remain religions which were created and continue to exist under previous definitions.
The earliest definition of religion of which I am aware (and that doesn't meant it's the earliest -- just that it's the earliest I've personally studied) could be defined as "a collection of tribal beliefs, taboos, and rituals personal to and particular to a specific tribe and location."
If you are a member of the tribe, living in an area, you have specific tribal identifiers and customs which you share. If someone else marries into your tribe, that person adopts your identifiers and customs.
If you conquer another area, you bring your gods with you. If you are conquered and become part of another culture, you adopt those gods, customs, taboos, and beliefs.
There can be synthesis and syncretism, absorbing and integrating other subcultures, making a larger religion, but your fundamental ideas of gods, and religions, being localized and personal are the earliest forms that I've studied.
The first sea-change happens around the mid-sixth century BCE, in several places around the globe. Before that point, you did have some theologians who were considering the notion of syncretism, and wondering whether gods, localized and personal, could all be projections and expressions of some form of uber-god. Both Hindu and Greek philosophers and theologians had considered this notion, but it wasn't a major part of day-to-day religious belief or experience -- while it was a notion that theologians and scholars might have played with, your average guy-on-the-street wouldn't be familiar with it, and would have just had his or her localized, personal, and familial gods.
Around the mid-sixth century BCE, that began to change. The Buddha started teaching a set of philosophies and beliefs that were universal. At the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, the Hebrews, scattered throughout the Babylonian Empire, redefined their localized god of the Ark of the Covenant to be a universal god, who could be worshiped from anywhere in the world, and who, in fact, had dominion over the entire world, thereby changing their existing Hebrew/Israelite religion into something new called Judaism.. And, in the Persian Empire, Zoroastrianism taught of a universal creator god, Ahura Mazda, opposed by a god of evil, Ahriman, who created all things in the universe and had dominion over all things.
These religions, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism brought forth the ideas of universal religions, religions that could be followed from anywhere in the world by any people, regardless of tribal affiliation, family, or location. Add to this the philosophical schools of Confucianism and Taoism, and, fifty or a hundred years later, the flowering of Greek philosophy which also brought forth the ideas of unknowable universal gods of which the known gods were syncretic projections (a variation of this teaching is what Socrates was executed for), and you have a huge, amazing shift in the concepts of what gods are, and what religion is.
One obvious change is that you now have the ability to have missionaries. Now that you've decoupled the notion of "religion" from the notions of "place" and "tribe", you have the ability to have people go out and tell other people about your religion, and see if you can't convince them to be part of your religion. That wasn't possible before, and the ability to have large-scale syncretic religions, I think, allowed for the creation of more culturally-homogeneous larger empires.
The next major change happened with Jesus, or, rather, with Paul.
Paul's innovation was to create a kind of religion decoupled not only from "place" and "tribe", but also from "culture", "taboo", and "ritual" (although ritual was put back later by other people). And to add in a new component to replace them: "belief".
Each religion which has been created since Paul has, so far, more-or-less followed this model: it's a system of belief, in which the IMPORTANT thing is "how you believe", which has certain rituals and behaviors associated with it, but those behaviors and rituals are PART of the religions rather than BEING the religion. Each (major) religion created since Paul has not been restricted to a tribe, or to a culture. At least officially.
The problem is, of course, that we humans evolved as tribal creatures. Thus, even though new religions like Christianity and Islam have no racial or tribal component, we still assign racial and tribal identifications to them. You say "Muslim", and most people think "Arab", even though there's no such connection in the religion.
So, those are three models of religion that have existed: the "tribal/cultural/personal" model, the "universal/cultural/ritual" model, and the "universal/belief" model.
It's important to note that these models all flow into one another, without any hard dividing lines -- and that none of them are extinct. Religions built on each of these models exist today.
And that's one of the problems that, for instance, Christians and Muslims have in understanding other religions. They are looking at other religions from their framework, and therefore totally misunderstand religions built on other frameworks.