• DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      The Romans were supposedly in the habit of executing prisoners with captured lions in their arenas. When Christianity was still a minor cult it was at one point technically treason to deny the Emperor was a god, and so being a Christian was technically a crime against the state by default. In these arena matches you’d throw some ill-equipped criminals against something they had no hope of beating and call it justice when they get mauled to death in the “trial by combat.”

      Anyways, the Christians with persecution complexes really like focusing on these few centuries of history with their millennias old church. This is a joke about both sets of prisoners signing up for the for “match” like it was a casual sporting event.

      • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        You can be a Christian and still believe in other gods. Those people chose to deny the emperor’s kintype, if they really did so at all.

        • Flax@feddit.uk
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          5 months ago

          No. The Bible makes it clear that you can only believe in one God and the first line of the Nicene creed is “We believe in one God”

          • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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            5 months ago

            The Old Testament does makes it fairly clear that there are other gods, because it started as a polytheistic religion, Jehovah is just supposed to be your favorite (or he’ll kill you).

            It’s the modern interpretations that decided to interpret that as monotheism, but that includes Christianity.

            • Flax@feddit.uk
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              5 months ago

              There’s no evidence for your claim. And the old testament does not. Yes, it refers to other gods as concepts but not as literal Gods

              • kofe@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                The first commandment is literally “you shall have no other gods before me.” If you look at different historical translations and viewpoints, it is well accepted that Judaism experienced a shift from polytheism to monotheism, and there is more evidence of that in the Old Testament. Passages referring to Yahwehs wife, waging war to defeat other gods, etc.

                • Flax@feddit.uk
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                  5 months ago

                  It’s talking about concepts, and the false gods existing as a concept. You could even have something like money, etc, be your god. What’s your source on “Yahweh’s wife” apart from the Church itself being His bride? (Which still doesn’t make the Church a god)

                  • kofe@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    There’s verses in Kings, Judges, and I’ll look back over my Jewish Studies course notes from last semester for more academic sources tomorrow. Notably the worship of Baal and Asherah are present, and iirc Asherah was associated with some Israelites to be Yahwehs wife. We’re talking pre-Greek and Roman time periods where Gods were considered much more physical - as we see with Genesis with Yahweh referred to as walking in the garden.

                    The concepts of gods being more etherial didn’t come about for a few more centuries after, maybe by the time Christianity started popping off (again, gotta go to sleep but will check dates if ya need tomorrow). See also the Cyprus Cylinder for comparison and reference to conquering of the Israelites, orders that allowed them to continue to worship as they pleased, while still essentially talking shit and saying “Our God is stronger than yours.”

                    May be worth asking chatgpt. The Bible has been rewritten so many times to adjust for major cultural shifts, but there’s definitely evidence within it and other historical writings.

              • KoboldOfArtifice@ttrpg.network
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                5 months ago

                Their claim does have support in so far that the early testament contains a lot of work written by polytheistic people that later in would become the monolatrists and even later monotheists that we know as Jews, further branching off into what today are Christians.

                This does not mean that Christians in any sense are not purely monotheistic. Not only are they so, it’s one of the most critical parts of their beliefs, to the point where even believing that their one god has in any way shape or form some kind of tangible division is considered strict heresy from trinitarian churches which form the mainstream of Christianity and have done so for hundreds of years.

                Edit: There is a great video by Alex O’Connor interviewing Esoterica on that topic in particular and they talk about the evidence that supports the viewpoints.

          • kofe@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            And the first one is to have no other gods before Yahweh. Not to have no others, period

        • YarrMatey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          No, Christians believe in only one g*d. They would be extremely offended at the notion of other people declaring belief in other g*ds or themselves a g*d. It’s the best way to piss off both an atheist and a christian at the same haha, at least according to me (atheist) and a (Mormon) friend I have. Before there were Christians, you had people believing there were multiple g*ds and then the Christian g*d clearly says he is a jealous g*d and he is the only one that can be worshipped according to Moses and the ten commandments.

          • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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            5 months ago

            They’re differentiating between belief in a god and worship of a god.

            Also, put a backslash before asterisks and it won’t make italics.

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            The ten commandments don’t say no other gods. They say “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. It’s absolutely fine to have other gods behind Deus, or equal to Him. Just no worshipping other gods more than Deus if you’re a christian.

            Monotheism isn’t an essential part of christianity, it’s a pointless and harmful choice that assholes decided to justify by hiding behind the abuse of their own supposed religious beliefs.

            • Flax@feddit.uk
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              5 months ago

              1 Corinthians 8:6, Deuteronomy 6:4, 1 Timothy 2:5, Isaiah 44:6, James 2:19, John 17:3 would disagree with you.

              Need any more?

              • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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                5 months ago

                You got any pre-roman sources or are you just going to trust what the Romans made up about Christianity after Jesus died?

                • Flax@feddit.uk
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                  5 months ago

                  Deuteronomy and Isaiah are Pre-Roman.

                  And the New Testament was not written by the Romans, but by first Century Christians

                  • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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                    5 months ago

                    If you think the Romans didn’t modify those to suit the Capital C Church based in Rome… Well, it doesn’t matter that much to the discussion because Jewish belief at the time was firmly monotheistic and that is in fact a primary grievance for the Jewish rebellions that happened at the time.

        • psud@aussie.zone
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          5 months ago

          That seems unlikely in mainstream, especially pre-protestant, Christianity. Typically festivals survived a culture turning Christian, but not the gods

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            “unlikely” “typically”. Yeah, I’m not saying it was normal for christians to be tolerant of others, I’m saying it’s normal for them to CHOOSE to be exclusionary. Being put to death isn’t a proportional response, but it’s not that much worse than they deserved. Look what happened when we put the monotheists in charge and let them do whatever they wanted; the crusades and the genocides in the new world. Monotheism is dangerous and you need to stamp it out. With violence if necessary. There is such a thing as polytheistic christianity, and it is the only good form of it.

            • Flax@feddit.uk
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              5 months ago

              Did you just call Christians exclusionary and then tried to justify executing monotheists… Which makes up like a quarter of the world’s population?

              • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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                5 months ago

                No, I didn’t justify executing them, I mitigated it. I justified a more general call to violence against monotheists. Pay attention.

                Monotheism is a choice. It’s not an essential part of any belief system unless you count being a dick. It’s violent, and it deserves a proportional response.

        • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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          5 months ago

          I feel it’s pretty clear from context that it means to not put other gods before their god rather than acknowledge the existence of a god.