quote:
Then was neither non-existence nor existence: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
Death was not then, nor was there anything immortal: no sign was there, the Day’s and Night’s divider.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that One.
translation from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...nvironment/hinduismbeliefsrev1.shtml
Phat raised the issue of eastern religions like Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and their ancestor sources possibly having something to do with Biblical creation ideas.
The Hindu Rig Veda is interesting because it is of an undisputed pre-1000 BCE date.
Historians seem to see the Indian subcontinent beliefs/texts as being fairly far removed from the Middle East, for reasons I can't understand.
There seems to be a sluggishness among historians in recognizing the contributions India made to the Biblical belief system. It is a clear bias IMO. (perhaps the dearth of written records in the archaeological record might have something to do with it, plus the inability to read/decipher so much of what has been discovered)
I won't have much to say on this topic (honestly), but any thoughts?
EDIT
I found something interesting.
A Zoroastrian scientific text from around 900 C.E.
http://www.avesta.org/denkard/dk4.html#v46See book 4 verse 46
Here is the quote
quote:
46. How is existence brought about? Just as one substance is evolved out of another according to its own laws and in the finite time (fixed for it.)
Here is the Iranica article on this text
D‘NKARD — Encyclopaedia Iranica
quote:
DNKARD (lit., Acts of the religion), written in Pahlavi, is a summary of 10th-century knowledge of the Mazdean religion; the editor, durbd mdn, entitled the final version The Dnkard of one thousand chapters.
....
Book IV is the shortest, presented as a selection of sentences from the ʾn-nma, a text dealing with customs, arts, and sciences. ...the function of created beings is defined, which provides an occasion for speculations on time, fate, and action, that is, on determination and free will, on music, and on the more abstract concepts of metaphysics. De Menasce thinks that this mixture of metaphysics and history resulted from dislocations occasioned by condensation of a more detailed work, such that the original can no longer be reconstructed.
Interesting and I wish we have more documents (for sure).
Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.
Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.
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