HOW OUR RELIGION BEGAN (Part 1)

The following information can be read more extensively (also free of charge) at:

http://www.archive.org/stream/MN40194ucmf_0#page/n0/mode/2up

Here I have summarized (and will continue to do so in successive posts with this title) the information provided by Edna M. Baxter in her great book:
How Our Religion Began.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam can trace their roots back to the ancient Hebrews and their neighbors. During that time, people tried to explain birth and death, the growth of trees and plants, the reasons for floods and  for disasters, the causes of sickness and disease, and many other things. The answers given were connected with "the gods" or with "spirits."

As time passed and scientific discoveries became known, peoples' answers to these questions kept changing. At the same time as their ideas of the world changed, their customs of worship and their ideas of God slowly changed.

Thus, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions find the beginnings of their religion in and near the great Arabian Desert. Thousands of years ago the people who lived around this desert were called Semites. In the Old Testament of the Bible references are made to such people as Canaanites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Ethiopians, and Hebrews; but, as they settled in different places, they came to have different names. Thus, the Arabian Desert is the center from which the Semites spread. Also among the Semites were Aramaeans and Arabs.

Judaism is a religion of which the members are commonly called Jews. Most of the people we know today as Jews are Hebrews. They are also descendants of the early Semites who wandered about the desert with their flocks and lived in tents.

Four or five thousand years ago, when the ancestors of the Hebrews were nomads in the desert, they did not have books or schools or libraries or teachers or scientists. It was necessary for them to discover everything about the world and about religion for themselves. Sometimes they learned from their neighbors in Babylonia and Egypt. However, everywhere at that time, people were answering questions regarding nature by using their imaginations rather than science.

For example, before there were any scientists to help people to explain natural occurrences, the Semites thought that breath was the spirit inside of people. They believed that when people died or even when they had dreams, there was a living spirit which left the body and visited distant places. So they came to think that ghosts were superior to people and they feared and honored them as superhuman beings.

The Semites called them by the name el. El is the oldest name we know meaning god to the Hebrews. An ancient name for the Hebrew nation is Isra-el, which (in the Bible) means "He has striven with God."


Just as they thought that there was a ghost or spirit living in people, so they began to believe that there were spirits living in trees, rivers, wells, stones and mountains. Everything that moved or had life seemed to show the power of a god. In Canaan where the Hebrews later came to live the people called these spirits by the name "ba'al," which means "owner." The plural of this word is baalim. There was a ba'al of the frost, a ba'al of the dew, a ba'al of the thunder, a ba'al of the storm, a ba'al of the trees, a ba'al of springs, a ba'al mountains, and a ba'al of stones--a ba'al for each. All of these things in which a god or ba'al was thought to dwell were called "beth-el," which means "house of deity."

The movement of the sun, moon and stars, the floating of clouds, the crash of thunder, the flash of lightning, the rustle of leaves, the flowing of water, were believed by these early people to be alive and to possess a spirit.

Here is what the ancient Babylonian neighbors of the Hebrews said about their gods:

The highest walls, the thickest walls, like a flood they pass.
From house to house they break through,
No door can shut them out, no bolt can turn them back.
Through the door like a snake they glide,
Through the hinge like a wind they blow.