Ostroeuropa wrote:Aelbica wrote:
All in all, it's really the same level of analysis that goes for the Epic of Gilgamesh (I personally know professors of ancient Meditteranean/Near Eastern studies.) People interpret the theological meanings differently because they believe it as still scripture.
People in the ancient world were, more or less, as smart as we are today. The only difference is the level of information they had access to. Also saying that people weren't using complex metaphors then is akin to saying that indiginous cultures don't do the same with their oral traditions; which is untrue as well when you look into the past century or so of anthropological analysis.
I'm not Christian, but I think it's important to recognize the level of secular analysis of these texts, and texts and the concept of "text," in general before you make what really are rash judgments.
The thing is, we have proper diets now.
They kinda didn't back then.
Do you know what malnourishment in early and mid development does to your intelligence?
Couple that with the fact that water was practically toxic so they essentially drank lots of alcohol which deadens braincells...
So yeh. They really were stupider than we are today. AND they had access to less information.
And that's before you even bother factoring in the evolutionary evidence that our brains are still developing.
It makes it all the more hilarious that religion spreads during the period where malnourishment is commonplace, and now we actually have food it's kinda falling backward.
Yeah, I do but at the same time any basic archaeological evidence shows that's not entirely true for all the population. The people who wrote these works knew what they were doing. They were most likely fed well. Just because some people were illiterate doesn't mean all are.
Any society that left religious texts clearly had a social class of scribes (both religious and secular). There was a "middle class," in a sense back then - trade happened. People in ancient times had access to varities of food from across the world.
And the "only drinking alcohol" bit was really more of a thing in medieval Europe than the rest of the entire world's history. There really is more to history than just what you learn from one specific region of the world. I'd suggest you to learn about this from a non-Eurocentric perspective.