Posted by Not so quick... [GLamotta] on April 04, 1999 at 10:53:47 {th2VaRoznYMRXA6xmpscboLUiPtahc}:
In Reply to: Apocalypse When? posted by Ginny Tosken on April 03, 1999 at 15:43:27:
Hi Ginny,
Greetings to you. I always enjoy your posts.
I just want to say that sometimes when there are similarities to beliefs one presumes that one influenced the other. But my experience suggests that is not always the case.
For instance, the Babylonians are generally credited with the lunisolar calendar invention and they think the Jews adopted it from the Babylonians. But according to scripture, the wisest persons in Babylon were the Daniel and other Jews. The Jews thus truly were the wise men of Babylon. So it could be that it was the Jews who got the Babylonians into a regular or specific lunisolar calendar out of their strict practice of that calendar which was always a part of their culture. But they are not given credit.
Likewise, per the Bible and the Flood concept, even the pagan religions have a common belief in a global flood. But some will perhaps claim that the pagans actually influenced concepts of the Jews, when in fact, lots of tradition in various cultures might have had a common origin.
Specifically what I had in mind was the very ancient concept of "Virgo" who is based upon ancient Ishtar. In the zodiac she is holding onto a stalk, or a branch which represents her "seed" and thus her "son." But if Noah was the father of all, and the original curse in the Garden of Eden involved the prophesied conflict between Jesus and his seed and the "woman and her seed" then the woman and her seed, Ishtar, represents the feminine personification of Satan and his/her seed which would be in opposition to true worship.
Thus one should be careful to assign origins of certain distorted general concepts and beliefs from one culture to the next when in many cases, the similarities more often than not, especially in the case of the Jewish culture, simply point to a common origin of these beliefs.
The great war between Satan and Jesus and the crushing of Satan and his world by the Messiah is fundamentally an extrapolation of what was prophesied in the Garden of Eden and that common belief, spread via Noah, is likely the true origin, however, adtapted of these "apocalytic" concepts.
Just a thought on how simplistic comparisons are not always what they seem.
Nice post!