What if Turkey is really the root of ALL civilisations?

originally posted by: michaelbrux
History of Herodotus Book II

Phrygia would be known as Turkey today......

.... hereupon he learnt that "becos" was the Phrygian name for bread. In consideration of this circumstance the Egyptians yielded their claims, and admitted the greater antiquity of the Phrygians.

I heard that before, but forgot it until just now.... Thanks.

If we can trace all religious memes back to one source,
then knowing that source would be most enlightening.

If we posit that the region known as Turkey/Syria is where the "Monotheistic Memes" of Jewish antiquity were nurtured; then we can study how those memes also gave rise to Christianity and Islam.

In short, all of monotheism can be traced back to the myths of ancient Turkey and Syria. Before you reject this out of hand, you should know that archaeology is revealing that the Israelites were merely nomadic Canaanites, and there is much evidence that they were originally polytheistic. Indeed, Yahweh was only one of the gods in their pantheon, but being their national god he became the prominent figure and eventually the only one to survive in the Jewish tradition.

All this was mere speculation on the part of a few “conspiracy theorists” until eighty-seven years ago.

In the 1928 a Syrian farmer was plowing his field when his plow struck a slab of stone. Though initially assuming it to be a flagstone, he noticed that it had square corners. Upon extracting it from the soil, he discovered a huge, underground vault containing vases, jugs, tablets, gold, silver, and pieces of ivory. Unknowingly, he had unearthed the ancient Canaanite city-state of Ugarit. What was found there has become of utmost importance or those who study the Old Testament and indeed monotheism in general.

Before that, and even to this day, the vast majority of Christians look to the Hebrew scripture as their authority and thus their single source of faith. Even those who uphold the authoritativeness of “Holy Writ” will admit polytheism in Israelite history had a long run until under Hezekiah and then later Josiah destroyed the temples, idols and altars of other gods. Josiah’s reign is one of monolarity pushing towards monotheism which doesn’t fully take root until after the Jewish exile.

The Biblical word for God is “EL” and that word is not Jewish in origin, but rather it traces back to older Levant (Canaanite) religion. The patriarch Abraham is known as the father of the world’s three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For centuries his faithfulness to one god (at a time when people worshiped many deities) has been regarded as a monumental break with the society around him. However, an archaeological discovery known as the Ugaritic texts is opening a window onto a different cultural context for Abraham’s story and it is turning most assumptions about “god” on their head.

EL is the supreme creator god of the Canaanites who lives with the other gods on Mount Zaphon (similar to Mount Olympus of the Greeks but located at the mouth of the Orontes river near the border between Turkey and Syria). He is the father of all the gods and men and is often addressed as such by the Canaanite gods. He is the god of the earth and the air who is represented by a bull. He is derived from the Sumerian god AN. In the Bible EL is translated as God. Elohim is the plural form of EL yet in most places in the Bible it is used in the singular sense so it is also translated as God instead of gods. Strict monotheism was not fully developed in Israelite thought until their exile to Babylon. Before then Yahweh (translated as Lord in the Bible) was the god of Israel and Judah (officially their only god) whose principle power and characteristic was that of justice and righteousness. Because he judged other peoples and gods he soon came to be seen as the supreme God (the equivalent of EL), and finally as the only God for all people.

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