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Mesopotamian history is fascinating and deserves a lot more attention. It is the oldest root of human civilization itself and gives us insight into the most fundamental aspects of what civilization is today.
War is not the only means of conquest. Vietnam was manufacturing and drinking Coca-Cola in the 1960s, and as mentioned here, Germanic religion was interwoven with Christian culture during the Roman conquest of Europe.
One interesting and obscure connection is the origin of the words "hell" and "hall", as "hall" means "covered place" and "valhalla" means "hall of the dead" from Old Norse.
However, the original Hebrew and Greek is often "גֵּיהִנּוֹם" or "γέεννα" meaning "the valley of Hinnom." This is a physical place near Jerusalem where bodies denied a proper burial were burned, and some suggest it was even a region where human sacrifices took place.
You may be very surprised at what you find when you look into the origins of things that are taken for granted. Everything has some sort of origin, and historical roots can run very deep. Without looking at things on a deeper level, you are at the mercy of the surface-level understanding from your surrounding culture.
> One interesting and obscure connection is the origin of the words "hell" and "hall", as "hall" means "covered place" and "valhalla" means "hall of the dead" from Old Norse.
It's not clear what connection you have in mind. You could make the case that "hell" and "hall" are connected to each other through their ancient ancestry, but "hell" is no more closely related to "valhalla" than it is to "hall". "Valhalla" is just a word that includes "hall".
Valhǫll in Old Norse comes from valr and hǫll -- literally "hall of dead warriors". Hǫll is reconstructed in Proto-Germanic as hallō, itself from the Proto-Indo-European root ḱel, meaning "to cover".
Consider the Norse Hel (both the underworld and the name of the deity ruling over it). Compare with Old English hell, from Proto-Germanic haljō, from Proto-Indo-European ḱelnó, "room", in turn from the root ḱel -- "to cover".
That's interesting! My personal folk-etymological conjecture had long been that "val" had had a proto-germanic sense of "big", leading to to other modern words like Walroß or Walfisch.
Your comment sent me on a brief etymological excursion and the words sadly are indeed utterly unrelated.
I still can't tell what point you want to make. English hell and Norse Hel are the same thing. But Norse Hel and Norse Valhalla aren't, unless you want to trace them back to proto-Indo-European *kel. There's not a connection between hell and Valhalla.
Consider that languages don't develop in isolation, and both the pre-conquest inhabitatns of the Isles and the Saxons had regular interactions with the Norse, where its religious/spiritual connotations could very easily have just become a cognate.
That have any relation to the word Armageddon as well?
Yes ancient cultures are fascinating and should be more relevant in the zeitgeist; especially in respect to their knowledge and sophistication in thinking.
Armageddon comes from "Har Megiddo," an actual place of strategic importance and hence the site of many battles named before the name took on apocalyptic connotations.
to add to wl's comment, armageddon took on the meaning of an apocolyptic battle because it was mentioned in the Book of Revelations as the site of the final battle.
"Apocalypse" is also a great word. It means literally "the lifting of the veil" or removing the covering, so you can see what is underneath.
True story: I was once on vacation in Greece, and saw a strip club called Apocalypse. Based on the signage, they meant that in the sense of revealing hidden pleasures rather than some final battle, but I could also see some ways that visiting that club could lead to a nasty showdown.
It's exactly the same as "revelation". That word also comes from re-, "to strip back", and "veil". The strip club being called "revelation" also has the same double entendre.
A strip club being called "αποκάλυψη" would bring to mind, literally a revelation of something.
> "Apocalypse" ... means literally "the lifting of the veil" ...
You have just made weddings vastly more entertaining.
I realize I’m in the minority here but as a Christian (Catholic) I’d like to draw a distinction between folk customs and the actual religion. For example, with Easter, if we are to believe the Venerable Bede, the word comes from Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon celebration and goddess. Many customs we associate with the holiday also come from them. But to say Easter the holiday comes from Eostre and is just Christian syncretism is highly Anglo centric. The celebration of the resurrection in Christianity is called Pascha and similar names in other languages, clearly associating itself with Passover just as the story of the Passion does.
Likewise other cases, such as with various saints, often it is not that local gods were changed to be saints and kept as such, but the folk practice was redirected towards something more suitable for Christianity. Sometimes this did result in a lot of old folklore sticking around. I know this might sound 90 percent the same to many, but the 10 percent I would like to be clear on.
In my understanding of ancient society, there was much less of a distinction between "religion" and "folk custom" than we have today.
Depends on what you call "ancient society", if there's such a thing. There were highly organised forms of religion in Rome or Egypt, with clear boundaries as to what was part of the state religion and what wasn't.
This is true for Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or any other religion that has happened to be caught in the political machinations of the enterprising state.
I am reminded of St. Brigit [1], who was a Celtic goddess who was co-opted by the Catholic Church. Her pastoral associations have stayed intact, with the cultural 'need' for the deity protected, the co-opting makes a lot more sense.
Mughal Emperor Akbar's effort to synthesise Islam, Hinduism and other Indic beliefs to great Din-i-Ilahi [2] is yet another prominent example of hegemonic powers using their social clout to increase soft power by co-opting the beliefs of the locals.
The Millet system of Ottoman Empire [3], was geared towards 'respecting' local customs, personal law and protecting local systems of authority in lieu of their support to the Ottoman yoke. This was later adopted by the British in India and their other colonies, where they went to great lengths to establish Madrasas (Islamic education centres) [4] and Sanskrit colleges [5] to further this.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brigit [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Din-i_Ilahi [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millet_(Ottoman_Empire) [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliah_University [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Hastings#Governor-Gener...
Seems a bit like Christians coopting local religions; making Christian saints from local deities, and integrating local rituals (Yuletide!).
Yes, this went both ways: it was not uncommon when an army lost a battle to ask the other guys who their god were and to add them to your collection in the hope it would help next time.
In the 9th century or so the catholic church cracked down on a number of these practices. They forced the priests to speak Latin rather than the vernacular (to reduce the doctrinal drift: local priests would adapt their message and anyway many priests had been illiterate) and adopted other practices to make the experience a bit more magical (facing away from the audience etc). And they really enforced the "no gods before me" bit, though not the ban on images.
And in a battle you often caused the loser to chuck out their gods and use only the christian one, or were the tables turned you were not to add to your collection of one god.
This issue came back from the dead a few times; notably, the Jesuits tried (unsuccessfully, in the end) to convince the Vatican that veneration of ancestors, as practiced in China, was compatible with Christianity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Rites_controversy
(Modern Catholicism _does_ allow this, but that came much later)
My understanding is that this kind of assimilation of religion is known as "syncreticism" (which I learned from Crusader Kings) and happens often in history, for example Christianity adopting aspects of pagan religions (i.e. Thursday = Thor's Day) or when the Greeks ruled Egypt and invented interpretations of the Egyptian gods in the form of their own (Ptolemy's Egypt, which I learned about from Assassin's Creed)
Several years ago I watched this interesting documentary about how Christianity had incorporated stories into their religions.
Stories that we think of as "Christian", such as the star of Bethlehem, the 3 wise men and other stories from the life of Jesus, were based on stories that predated the birth of Jesus.
I think we underestimate how different people were compared to what we are used to today. When we tell a story today, we base it on facts. People back then might have a different view. They essentially re-used mythology and these stories to "prove" the credibility of Jesus. Basically confirming that he must be the "one", because these holy events have also happened to him.
Kind of makes sense: they used symbolic logic, where everything was a symbol for some higher thing, and the two highest things were the good (god) and the bad (satan).
So you can reason out a whole system of thought based purely on a couple of known symbols, even if they are completely unconnected in time and space. (Eg, there were three wise men and god is a trinity therefore it fits)
Cause-and-effect thinking came along later, with the Enlightenment, and relies on facts. Some people are still caught up in symbolic thinking to this day.
> for example Christianity adopting aspects of pagan religions (i.e. Thursday = Thor's Day)
Is this something that ever happened? There are many documented cases of Christians railing against the names of the days of the week. They just didn't have the power to change them. When Christians did get to name the days of the week, in China, they named them "one", "two", "three", "four", "five", "six", and "day of worship".
Nunday, Oneday, Twoday, tweblesday, foursday, fiveday, Sixurday
German "Mittwoch" (the middle of the week) was constructed precisely to remove Wotan/Odin's from the calendar.
Weren’t both Easter and Christmas non-Christian holidays originally?
The only source that discusses the name of Easter tells us that the holiday is named after the pagan goddess it honors, so "no" may be a little strong.
The name "Easter" is an outlier. It's Πάσχα ("Pascha") in Greek, Pasqua in Italian, Pâques in French, Pascua in Spanish, Pasen in Dutch, Påske in Norwegian. It's only in German ("Ostern") and English we name the festival after the old month name ("Esoturmonath") it tended to occur in. The Venerable Bede says the month was named after the goddess Eōstre. That's the sum of the information we have on the goddess. That doesn't make Easter an originally pagan holiday.
Yes, most religions have a midwinter festival of rebirth (e.g. Sol Invictus -- the sun gets weak but is reborn) and a spring fertility festival.
I find it odd that the Christians reversed them though: easter is a death/rebirth festival (hence the bunnies, chicks, lambs etc -- people want their fertility symbols at that time) which would make more sense in the midwinter and their god's birth festival is in the middle of winter for some reason.
In early Christianity, Easter was _by far_ the more significant holiday (Christians didn't even celebrate Christmas until a few centuries AD) so Christmas probably got whatever slot was left.
Interestingly, in Islam, Jesus is usually considered to have been born in the Spring or Summer.
Greek religion didn't come from nothing either: proto-Greek society was simply following certain gods that they considered important for them (fish-god/soil-god), and then when one area managed to invade another area they reconciled their religious allegiance by assuming the god of the invader was simply "stronger" than the other one.