Allah, Odin, and Thor: Mythical Gods of War, Not of Love
Americans have a naïve view of religion. The religious freedom that is so ingrained in our tradition — and our Constitution — has morphed beyond tolerance to a sort of anthropomorphic acceptance of pretty much anything.
In other words, in order to prove how tolerant we are, we take our basically Judeo-Christian view of what religion and God should be, and assume all other religions share the same goals, have the same values, and are just differing manifestation of the same loving and just God.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, the God of the Bible is unique in the history of the world’s religions. From Baal to Zeus, from Jupiter to Allah and Odin, the gods of paganism are capricious masters, not loving fathers. Control is their goal — when they think of humans at all — not justice or peace.
But saying so is sooooo judgmental!
Marvel Comics master storyteller Stan Lee took the most interesting of the Norse gods, Thor, the God of Thunder, and made him a crusader for truth, justice, and maybe even the American Way… or at least Western values.
But think of it from the view of the Vikings — what could be more capricious and destructive than the god of the weather?
But of course, a self-centered destructive superhero who loves war and longs to be worshiped would make for a crappy comic book.
On the serious side, though, a misunderstanding of a leading world religion has serious implications for most of the current world conflicts.
Even George W. Bush mouthed the diplomatically convenient canard “Islam means peace.” Yes, and Pravda means “truth.”
A non-rebellious slave is at “peace” with his master, too.
The god of the Bible didn’t become “unique” until the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
Before that, there were kings that were little more than highly organized land pirates who said they derived the rights for their piracy directly from god, and the church backed them up.
We booted the church out of that poker game and they became “unique” and tolerant.
By law.
That’s just a plain silly argument. The God of the Bible informed the Pilgrims, a vast majority of the Founders, and was the basis for most of our laws, not the other way around.
The Pilgrims initially created a socialist state. They ended it only because they were facing starvation.
The Pilgrims, and the other settlers of Massachusetts, then created an exclusionary religious dictatorship. Because of the oppression of that dictatorship, the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island exist. The dictatorship ended only because Unitarianism arose in the region, bringing other doctrinal and political changes.
The Pilgrims, and the other settlers of Massachusetts, held witch trials. As part of those trials, they employed torture to secure confessions. By their law, torture could only be employed if someone entered a not guilty plea, in order to coerce testimony. If someone refused to enter a plea, they could not be legally tortured. They were instead . . . tortured, by being crushed under weights, until they entered a plea, and so could be legally tortured, or they died due to the torture. The reason someone would endure such torture unto death was because if they did not enter a plea their property could not be seized by the government. That ended only when Canon Law was separated from Secular Law, and Common Law principles of innocence, immunity to coercion and coerced self-incrimination, and other concepts gained dominance.
Are you sure you want to advance the argument that all those perversions of justice are to be blamed on the Bible?
Sam, Rhode Island was actually founded by Roger Williams in order to PROMOTE religious tolerance, so that’s WAYYYY off. Yes,the Pilgrims self-corrected. So what? Besides, the capitalism of the various religions here was not the question. And the Pilgrims were far far different than the Puritans of Boston. In fact, they had very good relations with the Indians, for instance.
Yes, I know why Rhode Island was founded – because the Pilgrims of Massachussetts were intolerant, and Roger Williams left to start a colony that was not intolerant. My statement is thus spot on.
Yes, the Pilgrims had good relations – with one group of Indians. So did the Puritans of Boston. Both had exceptionally poor relationships with other groups of Indians. Of course those Indians had both good and bad relations with each other, which is why the European settlers were drawn into them, so that is a complete wash.
And so we are back to understanding that the “silly” argument is yours, predicated on idolizing the Pilgrims and Puritans and others, ignoring the severe flaws they embodied, and disparaging the changes required to produce our modern system.
Sam, you are the only ones conflating the Purtitans of Boston and the Pilgrims of Plymouth. I said nothing flattering about the former. Try to keep up.
Actually David, you said the Pilgrims and the vast majority of the Founders.
I guess the Puritans of Boston don’t count among the Founders for you, huh?
Of course it also overlooks that both the Pilgrims and Puritans were Calvinists, both had issues with other dissenting sects, and both participated in the major wars against the Indians.
Certainly it makes a nice pretense that the Pilgrims were somehow “different” from the more politically active in England Puritans, but other than that the groups were identical.
Of course these are not Biblical laws (Biblical/Rabbinic law requires so much evidence that it is almost impossible to convict anyone of anything criminal) but this is also not normal Puritan practice. There were a set of incidents in Plymouth Villiage (not Plymouth proper) in which about twenty people were killed, and almost everyone realized that it was a horrible act of madness. Compare that to Europe at the time. It was specific to witch trials; there were – and are today – other incidents in which panicked people misuse legal procedure (State’s evidence, anyone?)
It was not specific to witch trials.
The witch trials were held in courts of law. It was an appeal to other religious leaders to get involved that STOPPED the witch trials in America after 27 were killed.
Meanwhile, THOUSANDS were killed by secular courts in European witch trials.
Fun to listen to your intellectually dishonest accounting that conveniently omits critical facts to support your own secular-humanist ideology. The same ideology that oversaw mass killing at a time that Christian belief was ending the killing at less than 30.
I’m not even Christian, but I’m so tired of the propaganda-by-omission.
Christian leaders begged the governor to end the trials with pleas to the old testament concepts of trial by jury and being able to face your accuser.
Or perhaps by the simple admonition:
“Let he who without sin, cast the first stone?”
Burton fail.
Actually the western tradition separated church from state right from the beginning, Jesus’ famous “render” statement, and the struggle between the church and state all through the middle ages.
James’ novel sounds amusing, but any parallels between Norse mythology and Arab/Islam, are pretty thin. Odin welcoming suicide bombers, feh. Stan Lee’s Thor is a bit refurbished, but some elements of – chivalry – are deep in the Norse legends, at least as ideals.
Christianity may not be entirely a matter of love, but it is of mercy, and that’s more so than any major challenger.
As a Jew who knows his history, I would say the if Christianity is a religion of mercy, one wonders what cruelty would be like. Even more so than under the Muslims, Jews under Christinity suffered murder, rape, lotting, expulsion (often to their deaths and of course loos of properlty), horrific tortures, and about every indigity the diabolical mind could envision. And everyone, from Pope to peasant, at least agreed that the Jews as a whole were guilty and should be actively persecuted.
I’m not knocking Christinaity; at least some parts have renounced those earlier views. But history is what it is, as mercy is the last thing I would asso0ciate with it.
By denying that you are knocking Christianity, while knocking Christianity, you dissipate your authority. The tortured history of Jews and Christians is an open book. That history in no way blunts Christ’s message, it demonstrates that we are still the descendants Cain.
You don’t understand that the teaching of the Bible and some human being’s behavior are different, or you don’t accept the difference? Which is it?
I’m no Christian, but I’ve read the Bible. I can see that some Christians’ behavior obviously deviates from the teachings. You can’t?
As a Jew, do you accept responsibility for the behavior of every Jew who’s ever lived? I must ask, because that’s logical based on your own statements.
This article seems pretty bent on identifying Allah with Islam. But guess what? The Eastern Orthodox in the Arabic-speaking nations also call Him “Allah”. They can be heard saying “insh’Allah”, meaning “God willing”. They read the beginning of their Bible by saying, “Fee al-badi’ khalaqa Allahu as-Samaawaat wa al-Ard.” (That’s Genesis 1:1.)
Stop conflating Islam and Arabs. Not everyone who uses the name “Allah” natively is a Muslim.
The author here was using Allah specifically as the God as imagined by Muslims. One must of course distinguish the use of the word “Allah” as a translation for God from the specifically Islamic conception of God. My father’s mother, a Jewish woman born and raised in Syria who spoke only Arabic, would wish me “Allah ma’ak” (God be with you) before I went on a journey. She clearly wasn’t referring to the Allah of Islam that considered her an infidel to be subjugated as a “non-believer”.
Apropos, there’s a move in some parts of southeast Asia (including Indonesia) to prohibit non-Muslims from using the name “Allah” when referring to God in their sacred texts – actually to make it a criminal offense!
Thank you for making this point. I was always annoyed when people would say “Allah is not God”. Jews for centuries wrote in Arabic and used “Allah”.
The fact is the allah of islam is not the God of the Jews or Christians. No more so than calling Odin, God, makes him the same as the Christian or Jewish God. Allah is used by the middle east as the name of God, but Jews, Christians, and muslims are not talking about the same being.
Except that this is not, in fact, a fact. In Islam, there is one God, and all the ‘people of the book’ know Him. They believe that their God is your God, and that Christians and Jews worship Him incorrectly….as Jews believe that Christians and Muslims worship Him incorrectly….as Christians believe that Muslims and Jews worship Him incorrectly.
And as the uncountable schisms within each faith believe that each other schism and each other faith worships Him incorrectly.
And it pains each to see the worship of their loving God perverted in such ways.
Such is the price of monotheism.
“Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the Book?” – Sogoyewapha, “Red Jacket,” Seneca
The author of this review knows next to nothing about Norse mythology or history and an obvious hatred of it. Every paragraph of this thing has glaring errors.
As for the novel it describes, Neil Gaiman did it first and better in “American Gods.”
This has got to be one of the stupidest and most ignorant articles that ever appeared on PJMedia. Most of the stupidity seems to have originated with Mr. Cherry.
I’ll start with a small but nasty error – the conflation of “Vikings” with “Norse”. This is like using “Mandarins to mean “Chinese”, or “Bankers” to mean “Swiss”. The Norse were the medieval inhabitants of Scandinavia. “Vikings” were Norsemen who went on sea-borne raids.
Then there’s the claim that “Vikings” were “terrorists”. This is rubbish. Vikings were barbarians after plunder. Lindisfarne was nothing to them except a place to loot. The very idea of “terrorism” is absurd when applied to an era of near-total illiteracy and very limited communications. “Terrorists” in the present sense have existed only since the development of mass communications over large areas – so that an act of terror will be publicized to a large population and intimidate it.
Then there is Cherry’s absurd conflation of Valhalla and Paradise. The former is the household of Odin, nothing more. Warriors are brought there who died bravely in battle – it matters not where or why. There is no requirement of “sanctified violence”. Everyone else goes nowhere in particular. The dead were mostly thought of as resting in their barrows. Thus the grave goods buried with them.
Paradise (in both the Christian and Moslem versions) is the reward after death for all persons who lived righteous and virtuous lives. Death in jihad is considered a supreme virtue, but hardly something that the average Moslem can expect. It is not included in the “Five Pillars of Islam” (declaration of faith, prayers, fasting, charity, and the pilgrimage to Mecca).
The attempt to equate the valkyries of Norse myth with the houris of Moslem Paradise is equally absurd. Valkyries have widely varying roles in various Norse texts – but nearly always as warrior spirits. Sometimes they are said to intervene in battles. They are also said to serve ale to the warriors in Valhalla. Houris exist only in Paradies, and only as companions to the Moslems admitted there.
What else? There is no particular evidence for anti-Christian religious campaigning by Vikings; they were just as likely to loot other pagans, and they don’t seem to have cared what rituals Christian slaves practiced. Some converted to Christianity, and went right on raiding and looting.
On the other hand, there is considerable evidence of conversions by the sword to Christianity in Scandinavia (see the careers of King Olaf Trygvesson and St. Olaf). Norse paganism was completely suppressed. (Unlike the pre-Moslem Christian populations of the Middle East, which have survived in considerable numbers down to the present, only to be threatened with destruction by Wahhabist influence.)
Thanks for the point-by-point rebuttal; you only hit some of the absurdities, but it’s enough to show how idiotic this whole thing is.
The equation of the Norse Valhalla with the Christian and Muslim heaven or paradise is an absurdity on one side. The equation of Hel with the Christan Hell, as a place where souls are tormented, is another. Hel is simply the abode of the dead — neither paradise nor the “loving Father” Christian God’s torture chamber for the unsaved.
I think the author learned what he knows of Norse mythology from the back of a cereal box, and then forgot half of it.
I meant to mentionthis before… The article’s subhed is: “Brian James’ novel Ragnarok brings the brutality of the Viking Apocalypse to the modern world.” … because the Christian apocalypse is all bunnies and hugs?
First of all you kind of defeat your own point. If Odin chooses those who join him at his “home” in Valhalla, then obviously there was something special these people did to get there. You also ignore the fact that “Valhalla” literally means “Hall of the Slain”.
That seems to give away who the hall existed for.
Now you also are wrong about everyone else who dies “going nowhere”. Odin’s own son, Baldar, dies is a rather silly manner and is denied the golden ticket to Vahalla. He instead goes to Hel, a place that is not a realm of fire and brimstone, but rather (according to the myths) seems like a boring, uneventful place where the major activity is doing nothing. Deals are made where if everything agrees to cry for Baldar, he will be released from Hel, but Loki (in another form) kind of screws the deal and Baldar remains in this sort of purgatory. Even if you were right that all other deaths resulted in going nowhere (non-existence?) then wouldn’t be chosen to spend the afterlife in gods home be a preferable alternative?
As far as Christian persecution, the Christians of the time certainly seemed to think that they were being persecuted (if you actually read the writings of the era). Also the reputation of the Norse preceded them, and their hit, kill, and leave tactics did create an air of terror. Once again, you need to actually read the writings of the day instead of just posting an oddly angry rant. If you are right, then a world without Fox News, MSNBC, and the internet is world where every event occurs in a vacuum. So in your world, in a time without a mass media, every monastery and population center that the Norse attacked greeted the Vikings with the questions of “Who are you and why are you here?” That seems unlikely. The documented history seems to bear out that the reaction to them was generally “Holy Crap….Northmen…run!!!!!” The fact that Vikings were often hired as mercenaries to defend communities against other attacking Vikings seems to indicate that their reputation was well set in the culture of the time.
Actually, most myths point to Freya and Odin splitting the spoils of the warrior dead, and if enough dead spirits gathered in a place, I should think the name would reflect it, don’t you?
As for Baldur’s fate, there are two schools of thought that predominate. One, that the fact of Baldur was set by the Norns to end up in Helheim to protect him from Ragnarok (notice he emerges after the battle to help rebuild the world), or that the entire Ragnarok story is a bastardization of Christian Apocalypic and Norse myths. The Eddas where the story is found was only written over a century after Iceland was declared Christian, and written down by a Christian to boot! Kind of makes one want to question the source, doesn’t it?
Christians weren’t being persecuted, they were easy targets. The entire purpose of the raids weren’t terror, but plunder. Fear is a decent weapon for any warrior, but you’re confusing a tool for a purpose.
@ RR
Warriors are brought there who died bravely in battle
In Valhalla the fallen warriors (friend and foe together) were assumed to feast for eternity.
“The very idea of “terrorism” is absurd when applied to an era of near-total illiteracy and very limited communications. “Terrorists” in the present sense have existed only since the development of mass communications over large areas – so that an act of terror will be publicized to a large population and intimidate it.”
False: The first terrorist were the Hashishans. muslim assassins high on hash. The word assassine comes from that.
Vikings were terrorists, and in fact were in best with muslims, providing slaves to the middle east.
” Paradise (in both the Christian and Moslem versions) is the reward after death for all persons who lived righteous and virtuous lives. Death in jihad is considered a supreme virtue, but hardly something that the average Moslem can expect. It is not included in the “Five Pillars of Islam” (declaration of faith, prayers, fasting, charity, and the pilgrimage to Mecca).”
False: Jihad is a requirement. And Jihad means war.
The only way, and I mean ONLY way a muslim can guarantee himself a place in paradise is in by dying in jihad.
Okay sorry for the double post, but I missed something. The conversion of the Scandinavian lands by the sword was not an invading culture imposing their will on the Norse countries and saying “Accept Christ or Die oh sinful Pagan.” The Conversion by force was Norsemen to Norsemen. A Norse ruler would convert to Christianity and then, by force, suppress the pagan worship of Odin. This is completely consistent with the mentality of Norse Pagan ruler suppressing Christianity with the sword. The method and persecution was the same, the deity was just different. I think Jesus would agree that this made them bad Christians though.
Actually Dale, there’s not much evidence of Norse pagan suppression of Christianity. In Iceland, in fact, the two co-existed relatively peacefully for nearly a century before a fully Christianized Denmark threatened a complete trade embargo unless they fully converted.
Lastly…Odin was technically a “Psychopomp”. This is a god of the dead. To take this discussion back to Forsmark’s point (instead of the ramblings that expose how little people know about Norse myth), as a god who is associated with death, Odin would have absolutely adored the jihadists. Most cultures base their religion/myth around what is important to their society. That is why the mythological world is lousy with rain gods and sun gods. The Norse are one of the very few cultures that had a death god as their chief god. This tells you what was culturally important to them. They did have a lot going for them, advanced nautical engineering, a form of Democracy with their “Things” and “Allthings”, and being massively prolific traders, but only someone with only a two-dimensional view of history can look at their assault on Europe and not call it an early form of terrorism.
Dale,
To correct your corrections… the mythology holds that Odin takes men slain in battle to join him in Valahalla to train to fight at Ragnarok. Not all who die in battle go there, true, but the more important point is that Valhalla is in no way the equivalent of heaven. It is NOT a paradise. Hel is where the majority of the dead end up, and it seems to be a continuation of existence in an ordinary realm, neither paradise nor torment. But those there do enjoy eternal fellowship with friends, ancestors and descendants, so it’s not bad.
“the Christians of the time certainly seemed to think that they were being persecuted” The Christians of any time seem to think they’re being persecuted.
The Viking raids were indeed brutal. But the Vikings were the pirates of their day; they were not representative of the Norse in general. Forsmark and Cherry apparently are unaware of this, which makes one wonder why they think they are qualified to comment on Norse history at all, let alone write a self-published trilogy on it.
“as a god who is associated with death, Odin would have absolutely adored the jihadists”
A psychopomp does not love death; a psychopomp fulfills a necessary duty given that death happens. You might as well say that funeral home directors love jihadists — the statement would be no more nonsensical.
“In fact, the God of the Bible is unique in the history of the world’s religions. From Baal to Zeus, from Jupiter to Allah and Odin, the gods of paganism are capricious masters, not loving fathers. ”
Which God are you talking about? The Old Testament version who flattened entire cities, tormented a single man on a bet, and condoned slavery and stoning?
Or the New Testment version?
I am really tired of this “Old/New Testament” idiocy. “Love you neighbor as yourself”, even if it is a bit of a mistranslation, is from Leviticus. You could look at the actual law of the Pharisees (as opposed to the de facto pagan Herod); see Josephus. Chrisitnaity not only condoned slavery (see Philemon) but it would have been nice if Christians would have followed “Old Testament” rules like executing masters who killed their own slaves.
God does not have emotions; he no more loves and hates than he has hands and arms; that is all allegorical. But he created this workld to enable people to earn their reward; “loving father” (and “our father in heaven” is a Rabbinic term) is a good description.
Having read both the Old and New Testaments, they are two different religions. Jesus is a reformer of Judiasm, much like the Buddha is a reformer of Hinduism. No shame in that.
“Odin would have adored warriors who killed thousands of their enemy by crashing an airliner into a building. Dying during the act would have assured their place in heaven.
Huh? It only posted half of what I wrote. Crappy comment software.
“Odin would have adored warriors who killed thousands of their enemy by crashing an airliner into a building. Dying during the act would have assured their place in heaven.”
Bullpuckey. You know nothing of the Norse culture and ways of war. Dying in battle was done gloriously, and added to the honor of one’s name and house. Killing indiscriminately wasn’t the Norse way in war.
Huh? It only posted half of what I wrote. Crappy comment software. Only posts comments about half the time and even then it doesn’t post it all.
“Odin would have adored warriors who killed thousands of their enemy by crashing an airliner into a building. Dying during the act would have assured their place in heaven.”
Bullpuckey. You know nothing of the Norse culture and ways of war. Dying in battle was done gloriously, and added to the honor of one’s name and house. Killing indiscriminately wasn’t the Norse way in war.
I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree on what terrorism is. I would classify pirates as terrorists. Jihadists don’t represent a nation, but an ideology. Pirates didn’t represent a nation, but the pursuit of other peoples wealth. They would show up off the bow of somebody else’s boat, murder many of those aboard, take the money and some prisoners and run. People lived in fear of their attacks. One of the first acts of the US Marines was to end the threat of the Barbary pirates. So if you don’t think that is terrorism that is fine, and simply your opinion. I am guessing a lot of people would classify piracy as terrorism. As far as Odin and Funeral Home Directors go, I doubt a funeral home director plies his trade for free. He profits from financially from the act and last time I checked, nobody was forced to be an undertaker by against their will. So while I doubt they walk up to the grieving and smile and say “I love death!” I doubt they cash the checks with the words, “I do this only because it serves a necessary service.” In the myths Odin clearly enjoyed battle. He didn’t do it with a guilty conscience or claim he was serving a necessary service. Other gods had even taken jabs at him for tipping the scales occasionally. Now not everyone who disagrees with you is “nonsensical” or “stupid”, so when you dismiss Christians feeling persecuted, you kinda miss the reality that they are usually right. Even today, after Muslims killed thousands of Americans, somehow the government and culture sees Christians as the problem. Ask the director of a Catholic church or hospital about how they feel the government is currently upholding their freedom of religion, or talk to the Christian group at the University of Michigan that was booted off campus for not allowing Non-Christians to have positions of leadership in their club. It is not your place to tell anyone else when or when they should not feel persecuted.
Lindisfarne a terrorist attack? Not much booty to be had? Seriously, where do you get your information?
Lindisfarne was
1) not the first Viking attack, not by a longshot. Vikings had been around raiding for at least a century prior. But it was nicely positioned in terms of tale-telling for the Church. And never forget that the guys writing the books in those days were working for the Church. They would naturally play up Lindisfarne despite the fact that it was far from the first and far from the worst.
2) yes, there was booty to be had at Lindisfarne. Churches had lots of movable loot; relics, golden knick-knacks, altar decorations, books, even flocks of sheep. The Vikings may have been illiterate but they weren’t stupid. Books were valuable to the people who bought the loot from the Vikings.
3) it was no terror attack. Terrorism, by definition, “The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”, is not what the raid was about. The raid was about loot. There was no goal beyond that.
To back and some Gwynn Jones for clarification. Norse activity goes back as far as the Romans (can we all agree that the word Viking is a verb that has mistakenly become a noun?). The monastery attack is the start of what is referred to as the “Viking Age” of their culture.
As far as terrorism, by that definition 911 is not terrorism because jihad is about religion not politics.
“As far as terrorism, by that definition 911 is not terrorism because jihad is about religion not politics.”
Huh? Have you never read OBL’s manifesto? He clearly had a political purpose in his attacks. Not only do you lack credibility on Norse topics, now you compound it with cluelessness about 9/11 and OBL.
“911 is not terrorism because jihad is about religion not politics.”
No. Jihad is as much about politics as in religion in Islam. Its aim is to impose Islam upon the world politically, religiously, culturally, socially, legally, and militarily. It is all about striving for Allah, seeing to that all the world and peoples are to be submitted and subordinated to Allah, as Mohammed commanded from the Qur’an, or to be killed if resist. What happened on 9/11/01 was clearly a terrorist attack with political implications, as it was to send a message to the Muslim world: the world of kafirs (disbelievers of Allah) can be overwhelmed, cowed, and defeated or killed no matter how long it is to take to do so. That was OBL’s intent, plain and clear. The politics of the West (democracy, pluralism, capitalism) are incompatible with the politics of Islam (fundamentalist theocracy and Islamic socialism).
The great struggle of civilizations continues.
Sorry for the typo. It should have read “Go back and read some Gwyn Jones for clarification”.
“I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree on what terrorism is. I would classify pirates as terrorists. Jihadists don’t represent a nation, but an ideology. Pirates didn’t represent a nation, but the pursuit of other peoples wealth.”
Again you miss the more important point. Forsmark wants to argue that the Vikings did these things with the blessings of the Norse gods. Forsmark reaches this conclusion because does not understand the distinction between “Viking” and “Norse” (or he does understand and hopes his readers don’t.) Most Norsemen were tradesmen and merchants, not raiders.
“can we all agree that the word Viking is a verb that has mistakenly become a noun”
Yes, we can agree on that.
Then it is like anything else. The Muslim engineer sitting in the office of a Silicon Valley design firm is probably extremely unlikely to fly a plane into a tower (and there are more of that person then there is the jihadist), but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t agree that the actions of the terrorist is sanctioned by Allah. When you read the history and saga stories, those who did go a Viking did so with the belief that they did so with the blessing of Odin. Look up the legend of King Harald who participated in a battle simply so he could die in warfare and go to Valhalla. The fact that his desire also meant the death of many of his own men, along with those soldiers his men killed, was immaterial (of course they would go to Valhalla as well). But this belief permeated their culture just as the jihad cannot be separated from the Muslim belief. Both heap rewards on those who violently support the cause. We can disagree respectively, but you can’t say there is no path that leads to that conclusion. You just took another path and came to a separate conclusion. That’s what makes these discussions fun and interesting.
Well…interesting to the sort of complete geek who knows there way around a heroscape board..
Harald died in a battle over territory, part of a long running struggle between Sweden and Denmark and fought against a willing opponent. It’s hardly the same as a Viking raid on peaceful and unsuspecting citizens of a faraway place.
Yes, the ancient Norse fought a lot of wars — ALL ancient peoples fought a lot of wars and all placed great importance on courage and fighting skill. Including the Jews, who gave rise to the Christianity that the authors here want to say is so very different and unique from everything else.
“…who gave rise to the Christianity that the authors here want to say is so very different and unique from everything else.”
Christianity IS different and unique from all other religions, including Judaism.
Name another religion in the world where the son of God came to the world, became mortal, accepted all sin, died and was resurrected, so all could go back to heaven.
It’s a ‘scapegoat’ faith. They are not uncommon.
Dumizi dies and is resurrected
Osiris dies and is resurrected
Dionysus dies and is resurrected
This is also not uncommon.
Nor is god made flesh.
So?…… G_d was made flesh and came down to earth to live with men more than once. Maybe one time, somebody finally got what it was about…..’>………
Azathoth
Nonsense.
Dumizi, Osiris, Dionysus did not resurrect themselves.
Over 500 people witnessed a resurrected Jesus.
Jesus was the son of God, who brought to earth the plan of salvation, and carried out
necessary trials so that it could happen.
Comparing that to myths is asinine.
Harald Wartooth fought so he would not die of his advanced age in bed and be robbed of a trip to Valhalla. There is simply no seperating the violence committed by Norse raiders with their religion. It was woven into their cultural identity. I understand you don’t seem to like Christians and in the end want to throw them into the conversation as exactly the same as both Muslim and Norse, but that won’t work out for you in the short of this conversaion and will have some really bad repercussions for you in the long term. The aversion to Christianity may be a position you want to research and re-think.
Btw…Gaimen also turned Tori Amos into a cartoon character in one of his graphic novels…awesome…
Dale, no, I have nothing against Christians. My beef is with people like Brian Cherry and David Forsmark who seek to advance Christianity by slagging off on a bygone culture they obviously understand almost nothing about.
Yes, Harald wanted to die in battle so he could go to Valhalla. No one disputes that. I do dispute the idea that fighting in a war and taking part on a raid are in any way equivalent…especially when you realize that the Vikings were NOT trying to die in battle. They were trying to kill others and survive to enjoy their plunder.
I would note that Harald Wartooth was a legendary king, which is a nice way of saying he was fictional. According to the sagas, he was 150 when he fought his last battle, and any statement of his intent to die in battle to go to Valhalla is fictional as well.
Sure, some guys wanted to die in battle to go to Valhalla. Just like some of the knights who went on the Crusades wanted to get into heaven by dying in battle.
But to ascribe that mentality to everyone – Norse or otherwise – is pretty poor logic.
Looking south on the continent of Europe, Charlemagne was busy consolidating the kingdom of the Franks on the backs of the Saxons through warfare and forced conversions culminating in a symbolic outrage by calling for the destruction of the Irminsul in 772 AD. Followed by the very real outrage in the Massacre of Verden in 782. The sack on Lindesfarne in 793 was at least informed by these events – an act of war in answer to another. Let’s not trivialise this as a casual act of looting and buggery, this does respect to no one……
You beat me to it. The pagans didn’t start to holy war in the north, Charlemagne did. After their 9-11, the Massacre of Verden (with almost exactly the same death toll), the Vikings went after Christians like.. Vikings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Verden
Very few people actually want to die, but the Norse created a culture that (very much like the Muslims) rewarded death in battle with a bright, shiny afterlife. To earn their way to this afterlife they actually had to die fighting. This gave them an incentive to remain in a constant state of war. In life they got to take other people’s possessions and rape the women of their enemies, and if they were killed in these pursuits they were rewarded by Odin. If you were familiar with the writing of Dumezil, you would read that this particular scholar hailed Eirik Blood-Axe and Hakon Siguardarson among Odin’s most loyal and enthusiastic followers. These were the prototypical, excessively warlike “I will honor Odin with the blood of the innocents” Norsemen. He is also described Odin as “the god of the gallows, god of war, god of occult knowledge, and master of the dead”. All this is consistent with the Forsmark piece and the comparison to Allah. While you are emotionally invested in your opinion presumably because of your feelings about Christians, it doesn’t change the recorded history and the piles of work from noted scholars on the nature of the Viking age Norse.
This book maybe unrealistically priced. I will not pay close to $10 for a poorly/non edited ebook.
I downloaded the book and really liked it. I found it extremely entertaining. I just don’t know what it has to do with a discussion of Muslims. They are never mentioned.
You have to understand that everybody was violent in those days. The Vikings were really no more or less so than others of their time.
Adam of Bremen reported that Hungarians — not Norse, Swedes or Danes — were “burning churches, butchering priests before the altar, and with impunity were slaying clerics and laymen or leading them into captivity” in Germany.
There were at least 30 attacks on churches in Ireland before the first Viking ever got there, raids conducted by other seafaring peoples.
Christians were as prone to this violence as anyone. In 1002, for example, the English Christian King Aethelred II issued an edict that every Dane in the country should be rounded up and killed — every man, woman and child. And the Danes (Vikings) living in England at the time were themselves Christian. That this edict was carried out is evidenced by a later proclamation in which Aethelred pledged to rebuild a church that the people had burned down in pursuit of Danes who had fled there.
And in Ireland in 807, a fight between the monks of Cloufert and those of Cork led to “an innumerable slaughter” of the churchmen of Cork, according to the Irish Annals.
Those are just a few examples. This was not a peaceful time, and singling out the Scandanavians for particular scorn is not justified.
I was going to post a rebuttal to this, since it’s riddled with factual inaccuracies and logical fallacies, but ended up turning it into a post on my own blog.
As for Jehovah being any more “real” than Odin, Thor, or Allah; the more you insist that other Gods don’t exist, the more you demonstrate your own insecurity. Yours is the jealous God. It seems he has much to be jealous of.
That’s a mistranslation; it should be “Zealous”.
Yes, because ‘zealous’ and ‘jealous’ are, amazingly separated by one letter in ancient Hebraic languages, just as they are today in English.
“As for Jehovah being any more “real” than Odin, Thor, or Allah; the more you insist that other Gods don’t exist, the more you demonstrate your own insecurity. Yours is the jealous God. It seems he has much to be jealous of.’
Ridiculous comment.
Dale: “Very few people actually want to die, but the Norse created a culture that (very much like the Muslims) rewarded death in battle with a bright, shiny afterlife. To earn their way to this afterlife they actually had to die fighting. This gave them an incentive to remain in a constant state of war. In life they got to take other people’s possessions and rape the women of their enemies, and if they were killed in these pursuits they were rewarded by Odin.”
False. The halls of Vahalla are for warriors worthy of fighting alongside the gods at Ragnarok. Slaying defenseless women, children and clergymen hardly qualifies. The warriors who fall on the battlefield, fighting the best of the enemy’s men with courage and perseverance, those are the ones that Odin seeks.
“Vision” also makes a good point above … almost all the lore on Ragnarok comes from Snorri Sturlson’s Prose Edda, written a couple of centuries after Christianization. Snorri was a churchman himself who had no sense of reverence for the old gods. It is at least possible that Ragnarok was completely invented, drawing on the Christian apocalypse, as a way to explain the death of the old religion and its replacement by the new, for any remaining pockets of heathen resistance to Christianity’s advance.
allah’s fake but his very real followers are sure a lot of trouble to the world. Moses predicted this. In Genesis 16:12 it says of Ishmael, “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” This pretty much sums up Ishmael’s descendants.
Where are the vikings now that we need them?
Last I heard they were in Minnesota.
Don’t be so anxious for vikings. The vikings were in bed with the islamic slave trade. Stealing people from europe and selling them in the middle east.
Don’t be so anxious for the vikings. The viking slave trade was in bed with islam. Steeling people from europe and selling them in the middle east.
Several books have been written covering this subject.
try: Mohammed and Charlemagne, Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited, Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins of Europe.
“The religious freedom that is so ingrained in our tradition — and our Constitution — has morphed beyond tolerance to a sort of anthropomorphic acceptance of pretty much anything.”
Our Founding Fathers were not so morally corrupted; they understood that free people should be intolerant of an evil religion which is the enemy of rightful human liberty.
“In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and, both by precept and example, inculcated on mankind. And it is now generally agreed among Christians that this spirit of toleration, in the fullest extent consistent with the being of civil society, is the chief characteristical mark of the Church. Insomuch that Mr. Locke has asserted and proved, beyond the possibility of contradiction on any solid ground, that such toleration ought to be extended to all whose doctrines are not subversive of society. The only sects which he thinks ought to be, and which by all wise laws are excluded from such toleration, are those who teach doctrines subversive of the civil government under which they live [Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution].” Samuel Adams
“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” Proverbs
Do Allah and and the Norse Gods cosign all of “unbelieving” human beings after death to eternal conscious torment for the crime of being born and acting according to a sinful nature they were born with? Only the Jew/Christian God is that monstrous.
According to the Christian religion God provides a path to eternal life despite the sinful nature we are born with. This Divine Grace is the mark of God’s goodness rather than monstrous evil. Yes, faith in God is required, but the alternative is faith in an eternal un-created universe, so choose your faith.
Apparently you don’t understand the plan of salvation.
I understand it and I despise the One who made it even though I have submitted grudgingly to his Lordship. My resentment is based on the notion that half of my ancestors are in hell, while the other half are supposedly “saved” through no merit of their own. Those in Hell were no worse people than those in Heaven. In many cases they were better people. Both groups sinned, however, only one group was forgiven. He is obviously capricious and capable of forgiveness only for select people. I acknowledge His supreme power and follow His rules like a bitter, ungrateful child, with visions of patricide in my head though I have humility to know I am capable of nothing more than spitting in His face. Ultimately He doesn’t care about my objections any more than He cares about Satan’s objections. Still, I can’t wait to get to Heaven and spit in the face of the tormentor of my Jewish ancestors!
Touche! Someone’s been reading their Nietzsche!
In the Old Testament, God plays a vicious and pointless prank on Abraham by telling him to sacrice Isaac. In the New Testament, Jesus plays the greatest prank of all on everybody: salvation through faith. Since is faith is necessarily different from knowledge, you can’t know what the rules are until you’re in Hell and it’s too late.
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/PranksAndGodsPolReg.html
Isn’t being dead too late? Even in Hell you can say you’re at least not that…..’>>…….
That’s right. Scholars, for centuries, have marveled at rotating populations taken in by the prank played on Abraham by god. Right.
To be so willfully ignorant of the meaning of that story, that God neither wanted nor would accept human sacrifice in his name, sets the Judeo-Christian tradition apart because of its explicitness.
Read history. Understand the scourge of human sacrifice as it had been practiced since time immemorial. I’ve told my kids, the best thing that ever happened to Mexico were the conquistadors.
The aztecs make islamists look like your dream nanny.
As for faith vs. knowledge, what can any person have more of?
You’re right. The real but hidden meaning of the story is the successful revolt of Abraham against child sacrifice. The literal meaning is the tale of a nasty prank.
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/Abraham.html
God never forgave the Jews for ending child sacrifice. He has been an embittered anti-Semite ever since.
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/AfterTheBinding.html
The notion that G_d is a schizophrenic; half mad and half sane, divided against Himself, is only a step removed from the standard manichean heresy. Standard argument and rebuttals apply….’>…….
At least you are honest about your hatred of God. I haven’t encountered Theophobia to this degree in some time.
“I long to take vengeance on the One Who rules from above.” Karl Marx
moronic nonsense.
The King James version of the Bible was a good faith effort by, you guessed it, King James I, to address the plethora of scriptural content from primary sources.
Dozens of scholars were employed to find out just what the original Greek, Hebrew, and Latin texts actually said. Certainly, there were errors. My gist is that a LOT of what people think is in the Bible, isn’t. And a LOT of what institutions say the Bible means is anything but a slam dunk.
Much of what came down through the early church and became dogma was built on a priori reasoning, or a type of scholasticism which was long on premises and rationality and lower on fact.
Give yourself and you ancestors a break and just take a look at the actual KJ version (or for something REALLY cool, a translated Greek version) of the Bible.
There’s a whole lot less ‘hell’ in there than you may have been led to believe.
Personally, I like the idea of a deeper aristotelian approach to God and Christianity in this way; that by examining our lives more fully we are able to apprehend our motivations. If we can do that, we are in a better position to know if our actions are on the right path. Life is a gift, and it would be a small ‘god’ that would take it away, or require unending servitude.
This is meant for Markus @#38. I really hate the lack of edit capability on Pj’s.
nonsense.
Excellent! I enjoyed that! When the hysterics who ruled europe could no longer sustain the christian fraud, they invented new, secular con games of redemption:nazism, communism, welfare state -ism, and multiculturalism. All they produce4d,(and will produce) are monumental heaps of corpses, proving that, since pagan times,a will to suicide has ruled in europe.
Actually there is a lot of serious scholarship which indicates that the “Viking Era” was instigated by the policies of the Court of Charlemagne.
At the end of the 8th century, the Carlolingian Empire expanded into Saxony. Saxony borders Demark and the indiginous population were pagan….norse pagan. Charlemagne forced Christianity and executed any and all resistance….somewhere between 4-5000 heads rolled.
This holocaust greatly alarmed/offended the Scandanavians/Danes/Fresians….their marine mastery enabled rapid movement of news…perhaps the most efficient in Northern Europe. This incited/inspired anti-Christian purges in Scandanavia and a unifying anti-Christian Crusade by the Norse.
The proceeds of the subsequent raids were incentive to further raids. The rest is history.
Any similarity between the Norse Odin religion and Islam is balderdash. On the one hand is a pantheon of Gods (similar in many ways to Greco-Roman politheism) and one the other hand a monotheistic religion/racial/political movement.
Don’t think that there is much to debate, if the reviewer starts with assumption that
“In fact, the God of the Bible is unique in the history of the world’s religions. From Baal to Zeus, from Jupiter to Allah and Odin, the gods of paganism are capricious masters, not loving fathers. Control is their goal — when they think of humans at all — not justice or peace.”
Looking up the ten commandments, and considering the first three
1. I am the LORD your God:
you shall not have
strange Gods before me.
2. You shall not take
the name of the LORD your God in vain.
3. Remember to keep holy the LORD’S Day.
before moving on the basics of civil behaviour
would suggest a controlling father, no?
Then there is the view from those on the receiving end . . .
“The Jews are a nervous people.
Nineteen centuries of Christian love have taken a toll.”
~ Benjamin Disraeli
This is what is strange. here we have had world war 1 Christian murdering Christian by the millions. World war 2 is still too fresh to reason on. Here we have our own nation with bread and circus and great pleasures have murdered 55 million innocent babies in mommy’s womb. How do you get your arms around that number? Why no shame for your yourself and your nation?
Pray God have mercy and forgiveness for our own nation and get your evil mind and heart off blaming poverty stricken people driven mad by hunger sleeplessness and hopelessness or who know God may ask you to put this skin on for 7 years and you see how it is for yourselves but that is not my wish but healing the scale fall of your eyes free of this great deception
“Odin and Allah both seemed to have a major problem with Christians. ”
Really, I wonder why. “But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols” Rev. 9:20. Satan is the prince of this world, and wants the worship that is rightly due to God. Thus it is fairly clear that Baal, Thor, Allah, and the rest are actually either Satan or one of his minions under different names.
It would amuse me, were it not so sad, that Christians do not understand that there was a time when theirs was the invading middle-eastern faith, forcing conversion and destroying history.
The Norse had every right to try to stop you.
Perhaps those who cling to the shreds of the old ways–all that Christendom left of the old faiths–still do.
Nature religion Saxons and nominally converted Franks were at tribal war with each other. Christianity is a mystery religion that’s difficult to understand and at odds with the habits of mind and personal tendencies of natural men. Natural men like killing over an insult and taking advantage of others if it isn’t too dear. That is the lamentable state of man you should….. lament…..
To me no God is as evil as the Christian god as He is perceived by all of the traditional Christian confessions. A God who requires the human sacrifice of His “son” in order to placate His own rage at His own creation. I’m not keen on contemporary secularism, and I don’t celebrate a Godless universe, in many ways its a tragic situation. However, humanity awaits a much less disturbed Creator than the one described in scriptures.
If there truly is NO alternative to this God, and every knee shall in fact bend before Him, because He is REAL…then I guess mine shall bend while I still have the chance. In fear and submission, like a slave submits to his evil master from whom he cannot escape. I shall bow down in awe of His power and His boundless wrath at His unsaved creation, whom He will never forgive.
I say this on behalf of all of my dead Jewish and gentile ancestors, whose lives were filled with good deeds as well as sin, the latter which according to doctrine they had no choice given their fallen nature. Now they are supposedly burning in hell forever, and I am urged to have faith in Christ’s saving power for MYSELF while remaining utterly indifferent to their plight. Or perhaps even to take pleasure in their plight, as in Dante’s Divine Comedy, where he describes those in Paradise entertaining themselves by looking down at those in the Inferno.
The King James version of the Bible was a good faith effort by, you guessed it, King James I, to address the plethora of scriptural content from primary sources.
Dozens of scholars were employed to find out just what the original Greek, Hebrew, and Latin texts actually said. Certainly, there were errors. My gist is that a LOT of what people think is in the Bible, isn’t. And a LOT of what institutions say the Bible means is anything but a slam dunk.
Much of what came down through the early church and became dogma was built on a priori reasoning, or a type of scholasticism which was long on premises and rationality and lower on fact.
Give yourself and you ancestors a break and just take a look at the actual KJ version (or for something REALLY cool, a translated Greek version) of the Bible.
There’s a whole lot less ‘hell’ in there than you may have been led to believe.
Personally, I like the idea of a deeper aristotelian approach to God and Christianity in this way; that by examining our lives more fully we are able to apprehend our motivations. If we can do that, we are in a better position to know if our actions are on the right path. Life is a gift, and it would be a small ‘god’ that would take it away, or require unending servitude.
Thanks. Others have also told me that less familiar strains of Christianity, particularly eastern orthodoxy, exist with very different views of heaven, hell, atonement and justification than I may have heard of from the protestant evangelicals I have spoken with. I will keep my mind open. I do recall reading in Genesis that Abraham was not reproached for questioning God when He reveals plans to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham gets Him to admit that He would spare those cities in their entirety if even a single righteous man could be found there. At least He didn’t rebuke Abraham for asking.
To me you cannot have a perfect creator without a perfected creation, and you cannot have a perfected creation as long as hell remains, and as long as the Devil remains unreconciled with God. And I keep remembering what an evangelical told me when I said this, “why should God care about your definition of justice or perfection?”
“To me no God is as evil as the Christian god as He is perceived by all of the traditional Christian confessions. A God who requires the human sacrifice of His “son” in order to placate His own rage at His own creation. I’m not keen on contemporary secularism, and I don’t celebrate a Godless universe, in many ways its a tragic situation. However, humanity awaits a much less disturbed Creator than the one described in scriptures.”
You are one mixed up dude.
You have it totally wrong.
BRAVO MARKUS! The Christian and Jewish frauds are both marked by sadistic blood sacrifices(Jesus and Isaac) and yes, I know Isaac was spared, though what kind of father-son relationship he had with his murderous fatherafter their ittle incident,was probally, to put it kindly, problematic.Thank god (irony) thre are alternatives to these virulent anodynes, for example, sex, wine, and nature worship.as Nietzsche said, It’s Dionysus vs. the crucified;give me Dionysus every time!
‘And I keep remembering what an evangelical told me when I said this, “why should God care about your definition of justice or perfection?”’
Thank you, Markus. I’m the last guy you’d ever want to ask about the Bible. You sound like any other rational person who has good motivations for wanting to sort things out. What higher compliment can I offer?
The thing that brought me back to the ‘God and Jesus table’ was when our children were born. The fact of them made me go outside my comfort zones. In
two words, love and fear. The straight libertarian line wouldn’t cut it. And after very quickly realizing, through the experience of fatherhood, how much more they (and my wife) deserved and how ill-equipped I was to deliver it, I prayed. That’s it.
Anyway, when the boys were somewhat smaller, we talked about the Creation story,
Adam and Eve. It’s actually a great story. I love the way it sets the table, by basically saying, okay, you’ve eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and here are the consequences. They aren’t necessarily bad consequences. The fact is, Adam and Eve would not have been able to stay sane in the Garden after eating the fruit. God says ‘you’ll be going, now.’ It’s just a fact, because they’re going to want to meet challenges and DO stuff and there’s nothing that NEEDS done in the Garden. So, now they have the knowledge and they’re going to have to do EVERYTHING. But praying seems to work as a guide for what I should do and it relieves me of pressure when I don’t have answers.
A little wordy, I know. You seem like a person who can sort it out. Good luck.
It’s a crying shame that the Vikings were unable to extirpate the Christian nihilism bacillus in its, monastery incubators, before this virulent fraud infected the European mind.Christianity, and its secular bastard redemption frauds whichevoved from it: Nazism, Communism, and Welfare-State ism,killed , and will kill, millions more people, than the Norsemen did.
David F.,
You write “In fact, the God of the Bible is unique in the history of the world’s religions. From Baal to Zeus, from Jupiter to Allah and Odin, the gods of paganism are capricious masters, not loving fathers. Control is their goal — when they think of humans at all — not justice or peace.”
Obviously you are either ignorant of the torah and/or the talmud and halacha, OR you are just writing for attention.
For starts, it was the god of abraham that asked him to sacrifice his son to prove loyalty to him; how sick and psychopathic that is.
Thousands more vile examples one could find in the “old” testament.
The related (derived) religions of christianity and islam only had to take a few parts from the bible to become as violent and vile.
In case you are not aware, allah is a derivative of el-och from your bible.
NOTHING KILLED MORE HUMANS THAN ORGANISED RELIGIONS, AND THEY STILL DO.
To the contrary, the Hellenic Pantheon gods [you called them pagans, but the pagan is you] did not order everyone and their dog killed when they were “mad” but individuals only AND the Pantheon WAS NOT organized religion but an individual human/god relationship.
That is why the ancient Hellenes were able to create a civilization second to none up until judeo-christianity took their brains to the cleaners, to date.
In addition, abraham’s father and uncles were believers of the Hellenic Pantheon, if you do not already know the story.
Lastly, YOU SHOULD READ “HEBREW IS GREEK” by Prof. Joseph Yehuda if your people did not destroy it already.
David, wake up; THERE IS NO GOD! IT’S ALL POPULATION CONTROL, LIKE HOLY KINGDOMS AND HOLY STATES AND HOLY PEOPLE AND NOW ONE-WORLD-ORDER AND BS LIKE THAT…
God was invented by humans (that is why he “looks” like them) due to fear of elements and once it became “organized” by the smart ones, brainwashing went into overdrive…