Hungry gods

Discuss the world of the Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, and Egyptians.
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Clive
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Hungry gods

Post by Clive »

What do the monotheistic gods eat? Are sacrifices the gods eating?

When, according to the Jewish stories, did humans first eat?

Why does the christian god have himself eaten continually?
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Huon
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Re: Hungry gods

Post by Huon »

Clive wrote:What do the monotheistic gods eat? Are sacrifices the gods eating?
Yesterday, the god of some killers acting in Tunis needed not less than twenty souls...
Clive wrote: When, according to the Jewish stories, did humans first eat?
Eve and an apple, no ?
Clive wrote: Why does the christian god have himself eaten continually?
The souls of witches, arians, catholics killed by protestants, protestants killed by catholics, unbelievers killed by protestants or catholics, Jews killed in Jerusalem during the first crusade, etc... etc..
Huon
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Re: Hungry gods

Post by Huon »

Today, I am Tunisian !
Clive
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Re: Hungry gods

Post by Clive »

It seems eating, debt, sin, guilt, sacrifice and freedom are intimately connected!

Jubilee!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05447pc
Anthropologist David Graeber explores the ways debt has shaped society over 5000 years. In this episode, he examines the moral power that debt holds over us.

David argues that whenever we think about debt we end up in a deep moral confusion. We resent the "deadbeats" who fail to pay us back and yet many of us believe that people who get us into debt - money lenders - are immoral if not downright evil.

Gangsters like Don Corleone frame what they do in terms of debt. They do so in the knowledge that debt is a powerful tool for taking even pure extortion and making it seem like it's the debtor who is in the wrong. We can't help but believe Don Corleone when he tells us we owe him one.

It's not just gangsters who utilise the moral power of debt. Over the course of history commanders of foreign armies, wealthy landlords, corrupt officials, and local thugs have been able to tell their victims that those victims owe them something. If nothing else, they "owe them their lives" (a telling phrase) because they haven't killed them.

For most of human history, most human beings have been told that they are debtors. In this series, David examines the human consequences which have profound implications for the politics of the present day.

Producer: Max O'Brien
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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JPCusickSr
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Re: Hungry gods

Post by JPCusickSr »

I realize this is dragging up an old thread ~ but I am a new member so I am backtracking: :thumbup:
Clive wrote:What do the monotheistic gods eat? Are sacrifices the gods eating?
The sacrificing was done to show people how to eat, as in the sacrificial rituals told the people to gut the animal and to burn the fat and to cook the meat.

Otherwise the barbaric people would eat animal flesh raw and unclean.

Making cooking into a religious ritual of a sacrifice improved the quality of life and advanced humans into a more civilized culture.

Eating of animals is still barbaric, but cooking the flesh makes it a little less barbaric.
Clive wrote: When, according to the Jewish stories, did humans first eat?
The old Hebrew stories are not really Jewish stories (see Titus 1:14).

So according to the Bible in Genesis 3:21, God gave Adam and Eve "coats of skins" which means he gave them a physical body of flesh, and so at that point after they sinned then they started to physically eat, including that sinners eat animal meat.

Eating from the trees of knowledge were spiritual foods.

That story is intended to be metaphor and symbolic and not literal - but the message is still pronounced and significant.
Clive wrote: Why does the christian god have himself eaten continually?
In some Christian Churches like Catholicism they claim to really eat the body and blood, but that was not the intended message from the Gospel.

The message of having His (Christ) body and blood as a "remembrance", Luke 22:15-20, was done at the Passover to replace the killing of a lamb (a sheep) and replace the violent food with bread and wine, and it was done to "REMEMBER" and not to keep eating human flesh and blood.

The body of Christ (the bread) was a symbol of physical presence and the blood (the wine) was a symbol of the spiritual, telling to REMEMBER that in later times we would find the Gospel broken and spread out into all corners of humanity.

:popcorn:
iskander
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Re: Hungry gods

Post by iskander »

JPCusickSr wrote:I realize this is dragging up an old thread ~ but I am a new member so I am backtracking: :thumbup:
Clive wrote:What do the monotheistic gods eat? Are sacrifices the gods eating?
The sacrificing was done to show people how to eat, as in the sacrificial rituals told the people to gut the animal and to burn the fat and to cook the meat.

Otherwise the barbaric people would eat animal flesh raw and unclean.

Making cooking into a religious ritual of a sacrifice improved the quality of life and advanced humans into a more civilized culture.

Eating of animals is still barbaric, but cooking the flesh makes it a little less barbaric.
Clive wrote: When, according to the Jewish stories, did humans first eat?
The old Hebrew stories are not really Jewish stories (see Titus 1:14).

So according to the Bible in Genesis 3:21, God gave Adam and Eve "coats of skins" which means he gave them a physical body of flesh, and so at that point after they sinned then they started to physically eat, including that sinners eat animal meat.

Eating from the trees of knowledge were spiritual foods.

That story is intended to be metaphor and symbolic and not literal - but the message is still pronounced and significant.
Clive wrote: Why does the christian god have himself eaten continually?
In some Christian Churches like Catholicism they claim to really eat the body and blood, but that was not the intended message from the Gospel.

The message of having His (Christ) body and blood as a "remembrance", Luke 22:15-20, was done at the Passover to replace the killing of a lamb (a sheep) and replace the violent food with bread and wine, and it was done to "REMEMBER" and not to keep eating human flesh and blood.

The body of Christ (the bread) was a symbol of physical presence and the blood (the wine) was a symbol of the spiritual, telling to REMEMBER that in later times we would find the Gospel broken and spread out into all corners of humanity.

:popcorn:
The world of spirits seem to require food in some religions.
For example in Buddhism there is the good habit of caring for the ghosts of the departed ,for example in Buddhism.

" those who feel sympathy for their dead relatives
give timely donations of proper food & drink
— exquisite, clean —
[thinking:] "May this be for our relatives.
May our relatives be happy!"


Tirokudda Kanda: Hungry Shades Outside the Walls
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html
Hungry gods?
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JPCusickSr
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Re: Hungry gods

Post by JPCusickSr »

iskander wrote: The world of spirits seem to require food in some religions.
For example in Buddhism there is the good habit of caring for the ghosts of the departed ,for example in Buddhism.

" those who feel sympathy for their dead relatives
give timely donations of proper food & drink
— exquisite, clean —
[thinking:] "May this be for our relatives.
May our relatives be happy!"


Tirokudda Kanda: Hungry Shades Outside the Walls
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html
Hungry gods?
My point was to view that from the view of God down onto humanity.

To view that from the view of humanity up to the God(s) seems senseless to me.

So yes there are and have been many people who believe that they must feed the spirit(s) - and they are just wrong or misguided and some people are rather stupid.

The world of spirits do not require food nor feeding, but that is just from the higher view.

For some religious person(s) to feed their deceased relatives (or idols) seems very similar (IMO) to putting cookies and milk out to feed Santa Clause.

:confusedsmiley:
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Hungry gods

Post by neilgodfrey »

I don't know the answer but I can remark on some related points:

Eating with departed ones was (still is in some places, I think) a way to continue to share fellowship with them.

One thing is clear, at least from observations of various religious practices I have seen in South-east Asia today, the physical food or items are not themselves thought by the offerers to be physically consumed or used. Everyone can see that the birds come along and eat the food offered and no-one chases them away for fear they are stealing from the spirits or deities. Sometimes small offerings are placed on footpaths were they are soon trodden over by passersby. The act of worship has already been accomplished with the placing of the offering so it does not matter that it is walked over, but I cannot imagine anyone deliberately removing or playing with what has been piously offered -- except the persons cleaning up the rubbish in the wee night hours.
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Stuart
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Re: Hungry gods

Post by Stuart »

neilgodfrey wrote:I don't know the answer but I can remark on some related points:

Eating with departed ones was (still is in some places, I think) a way to continue to share fellowship with them.

One thing is clear, at least from observations of various religious practices I have seen in South-east Asia today, the physical food or items are not themselves thought by the offerers to be physically consumed or used. Everyone can see that the birds come along and eat the food offered and no-one chases them away for fear they are stealing from the spirits or deities. Sometimes small offerings are placed on footpaths were they are soon trodden over by passersby. The act of worship has already been accomplished with the placing of the offering so it does not matter that it is walked over, but I cannot imagine anyone deliberately removing or playing with what has been piously offered -- except the persons cleaning up the rubbish in the wee night hours.
This is very true. My wife is Chinese, and when we visit her family branches in the Philippines or China, or even twenty five miles north in San Francisco :cheeky:, We have to go through the ritual of leaving burning paper money (its just cheap paper made from pulp), bowing with incense and leaving a prized fruit behind. In the Philippines, where Chinese have combined with the Catholic city of the dead above ground* and they have a small house for the family dead -- kind of cool. (It was kind of cool to find out her great uncle was in the resistance against the Japanese.) Only her Singapore relatives don;t do that, because they are Muslim (one of her uncles married a local Chinese girl and converted).

Neil, there is no expectation that you no disturb things. It's a much more casual setting, Kids running around, people spilling stuff, joking, what not. If somebody is really grieving you do the hush routine. I too tended to project the Western silence and reverence in worship thing, but discovered it was sort of a casual setting, not terribly different than when friends are over on the patio.

From what I have learned, pretty much all religion started as reverence for the dead. Leaving them money, whether placing a coin in their hand to pay the ferryman of Western lore, or the piles of rocks above the bones of an ancient deceased family member where you pour some beer down the hole for them to drink. No doubt ritual grew up around this. But I think the harsh formalism is a more modern invention.

* being Scot ancestry, I must admit to the predominantly protestant cemetery in Glasgow where all the great leaders if Scottish Protestantism are buried. The necropolis is pretty cool to wander through; you take a bridge from the Cathedral to walk up the hill. I can see how that would have made an impressive procession back in the day.
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
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