@JessTheUnstill Religious studies scholars bust through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man to debate “mythology” vs “legend” vs “folklore” vs “oral history”

@JessTheUnstill

@JessTheUnstill

Better yet, "Southwest Asian Mythology"!

@JessTheUnstill
And it's a sequel! Start with the Talmud and finish the trilogy with the Qur'an.

@JessTheUnstill

Sigh. I'm a Christian - myths are just the stories of beginnings. I swear it's embarrassing how many stupid people are attracted to religion. Of course it's middle eastern mythology.

@JessTheUnstill Oooh that's up there with refering to sports fanatics as "football nerds" I like it.

@JessTheUnstill a dear friend who lapsed from Mormonism to paganism referred to those religions as the 'palestinian heresies'.

@JessTheUnstill nice... the judges give that an 8/10 in the trolling with facts category

@inthehands @JessTheUnstill The myth versus legend thing I'm pretty clear about. I think that distinction is useful in various contexts.

Things like the creation stories (there are 3-4 of them in the bible) are categorized as 'myth', meaning they have no correlation to actual historical events. They are extended metaphors, useful for shared cultural reference, like Star Trek or Tolkien.

Things like the David stories are probably 'legends', in the sense that there likely was a local warlord named David whose area of control was around Jerusalem, but all of the details are hugely inflated and/or completely fabricated. A large chunk of this is political propaganda.

Calling it collectively Middle Eastern Mythology is still a good choice though, and hints at the fact that none of it should really be evaluated without comparing it to the related stories being told by other contemporaneous authors/sources.

@JessTheUnstill I think the average agnostic coastal liberal has no idea quite how much time and money is dedicated to churches. And how much influence they have over a captive audience. Like if I had to listen to an hour of propaganda 2x per week, you could probably eventually convince me of anything.

@JessTheUnstill I like this.

@JessTheUnstill @tuban_muzuru
"Except that passage, that's not meant literally"

@JessTheUnstill

Hogwash. The real rituals are known to have been wiped out about a thousand years ago. Before that a group of Pagans tried to reinvent their gods as "saints" and fought to supplant all other European and Middle Easterly religions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

@JessTheUnstill
Oh, for sure. There are nuances to all these terms that are beyond me, and I expect that scholars argue over how best to categorize specific texts, authors, and even individual passages.

@mavnn @dr_a @Federation_Bot
Blessed be the poor ... Oh wait, that says Fuck the poor, for they are lazy and worthless leeches on society.

@[email protected] @Federation_Bot @[email protected] "and they shared everything together, except their money, and health insurance, and..." ​

@JessTheUnstill Reading the list of major schisms makes you realize how absolutely silly most of it is.
I don't think this was the original list I read, but it's close enough.

https://listverse.com/2019/12/05/10-of-the-most-important-religious-schisms/

@JessTheUnstill @mavnn the deliberate association with some marginalized folks, or the direct teaching on dealing with money changers.