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General Why did the Ancient People worship gods?

Julia Mykaele said:
We see in the Old Testament that people worshiped various gods. But why did they do this? there has to be some reason why so many people did this.

Here is a guess of mine.

We see cases of famine in the Old Testament. If they were starving, then they were having problems with infertile soil. Of course.

I believe that the most revered gods were the goddesses of fertility and agriculture, because they represented the main problems they had.

They believed that the goddess of agriculture would bless them with fertile soil and that the goddess of fertility would bless the women with milk for the baby. It was prolonged breastfeeding that helped to decrease infant mortality.
Click to expand...
Good insight: so in a sense their worship was self-serving.
I wish the idols in my life were as obvious as some ostensibly external "goddess of fertility."
 
Thread about marriage in ancient Greece and Rome:

nitter.hu

𝘚𝘏I𝘕I𝘕𝘎𝘊A𝘚7𝘓𝘌 (@shyningcstIe)

Marriage in Ancient Greece and Rome: The sacred institution of marriage was the foundation upon which the ancient Indo-European world was built. It was also very different to what passes as marriage for us today Let's take a look at the ceremonial rites and what it all meant🧵
nitter.hu nitter.hu
 
Maybe I'm the only one here but I'm pretty sure the pagan gods were real. It talks about them in the OT and they are referenced in the NT. After the Tower of Babel, Yehova dispersed the people and put angels (elohim) over them. Some of those angels chose to fall and allowed the people in their care to worship them as gods.

Psalms 82:

God standeth in the congregation of the mighty (elohim in Hebrew); He judgeth among the gods. How long will ye judge unjustly, And accept the persons of the wicked? Selah. Defend the poor and fatherless: Do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: Rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither will they understand; They walk on in darkness: All the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; And all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth: For thou shalt inherit all nations.

^^So God stands in the council/congregation of the gods.^^

The idea of the divine council definitely makes sense given that all peoples on the planet have a belief in either Yehova, something very close to Yehova (The Great Spirit in the case of some native peoples), or other gods. I'd take their word for it instead of assuming that they're making it up. Especially since it would appear to be biblical.
 
Phaedrus has an important point. Whether it is remote villages in Africa in the present day or the ancient Arameans, people are not fools. They believed in (and experienced) a spiritual power that had a name, and usually a sacred place (grove, river, ocean or temple). Where modern westerners typically place the idea of "god" in an abstract and non-experiential private and internal category called "religion" most people in the majority world (as well as the ancient world) would not have done so. Reading western categories of "immaterial" religion back into ancient cultures is likely due to our modern western bias.

Also, as Phaedrus mentions, the scriptures are not silent about those who "accidentally" worship the true God . . . even in absence of the Abrahamic covenant: particularly Job and Melchizedek. Perhaps even more stunningly Abraham, the father of our faith, was called from Ur and therefore would have come from a background of their pantheon of gods.

I agree with the bulk of the discussion of "modern idolatry" by way of analogy, but this can also get into interesting spiritual ramifications (i.e. are modern "secular religions" merely "empty" theologies or are there spiritual powers that are beneath these modern idolatries?)
 
I believe the pagan 'gods' existed... nephilim!

They'll be back in physical form and be part of the great deception. ..
 
When you are a diplomat, you dwell within a foriegn sovereignty. Within the diplomatic compound the laws of the surrounding land do not have any authority. Yes, there are evil spirits who have dominions of this world. It is oppressive that they have so much power, but I am so thankful that there are limits placed not just on their authority, but also their power.
 
Julia Mykaele said:
We see in the Old Testament that people worshiped various gods. But why did they do this? there has to be some reason why so many people did this.

Here is a guess of mine.

We see cases of famine in the Old Testament. If they were starving, then they were having problems with infertile soil. Of course.

I believe that the most revered gods were the goddesses of fertility and agriculture, because they represented the main problems they had.

They believed that the goddess of agriculture would bless them with fertile soil and that the goddess of fertility would bless the women with milk for the baby. It was prolonged breastfeeding that helped to decrease infant mortality.
Click to expand...
Because it worked. Demons are more powerful than we give credit.
 
For everyone's interest, I might be slow but I had been wondering what this "nitter" site is that @MemeFan keeps linking to, and why are there so many people talking there. I thought it must be some European social network I had never heard of.

Turns out Nitter is a front-end for Twitter, that allows you to read Twitter posts without being logged in and without being tracked.
www.inverse.com

Nitter is a new front-end for Twitter that helps hide you from advertisers

The service redirects Twitter links to an alternative site that doesn't track your activity.
www.inverse.com www.inverse.com
Now you can all tell me you knew that already.
 
Lecture from book "The Ancient City" by Coulanges:

Piped

An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube frontend which is efficient by design.
piped.kavin.rocks piped.kavin.rocks

Covers political, societal and religious changes from human prehistory till about late Roman Republic. Starts with religion because it drives rest of society.

Piped is privacy fronted for Youtube, analogous to Nitter for Twitter.
 
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Julia Mykaele said:
We see in the Old Testament that people worshiped various gods. But why did they do this? there has to be some reason why so many people did this.
Click to expand...
Lots of informed commentary in here.

But the bottom line is: They still do. For the same reasons.

And it's true they've been 'mixed in' to most of the world's religions, and many today don't even know (much less admit) what they 'worship'.

Finally - just watch the 'ChatLGBT' phenom...it's another example that Solomon was right:
Ain't nuthin' new under the sun.
 
Origin of name of Sky- Father:
starkeycomics.com

Dyēus Phter: The Original Sky-Father - Starkey Comics

The Greek, Roman, Irish, Slavic, Baltic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Hindu sky-father gods are (probably) all connected, and descended from an ancient sky-father god worshipped 6000 years ago. Okay, maybe “The Original Sky-Father” is a bit of an overstatement. Patriarchal gods of the sky are found...
starkeycomics.com starkeycomics.com

So all Indo - European have believed in father of all. It is mark of lost memory of our Creator.
 
It also interesting that word king comes from words meaning "to straighten" and "to give birth".

starkeycomics.com

Dizzying Doublets - Starkey Comics

Have you ever wondered why the word ‘language’ sounds so similar to the word ‘tongue’? Probably not, because those words sound totally different. So you may be surprised to know that both come from the same origin, a word used around 6000 years ago in a language called Proto-Indo-European (PIE)...
starkeycomics.com starkeycomics.com

So king is firstborn of common ancestor or someone who corrects. And correction is done by giving rules/law. So this was role of pater families in ancient times.
 
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