i would chat on discord, i’m a transfemme with some nerdy interests, but it’s mostly fringe shit like esoteric religion, religious studies more broadly, language, and stuff most people, even weirdos, find uninteresting, but it’s crack to my autism so vOv
I would be down to chat about religion and religious studies stuff too! I miss that about reddit, to be honest, I used to spend a lot of time on r/AcademicBiblical. It’s a very old and persistent interest of mine and was part of my studies in university. My main interest are usually Jewish and Christian religions because I know them best, and connect to them personally, but I’m interested in and studied many others. Always happy to chat about it. It’s nice to find comrades that are open to and interested in religion.
I love the history aspect of religion especially. The founders of some of these religious traditions are fascinating when you try to look closely at what the lives of these mortals were like who’s ideas have won the adherence of billions today. How can I relate to and reflect on the contexts that these people lived through hundreds of years ago? The quest for the historical Jesus and Muhammad are two topics that especially fit her, though there are probably others who are interested in the lives of figures like the historical Buddha.
That’s cool! I like reading about the history of the development of religious thought and currents too. It helps me contextualize how we at least narrowly understand religious ideas. For example, how Judaism (and consequently Christianity and Islam) became monotheistic and how we now rationalize pre-monotheistic Judaism to suit the fundamentalist idea that it was always that way. I am religious but it helps understand how these ideas formed and its flaws and space for interpretation. But I kinda stopped reading too much into the historical X-person, for the most part so much is conjecture. Is there a book you like?
I think the origins of Judaism and the peoples of Israel and Judah is a fascinating topic. So much of the world looks back to figures like Moses, David, and Solomon, who are shrouded in both myth and the opaque political landscape of the Levant following the Bronze Age Collapse and the end of Egyptian hegemony in the region. I listened to a video exploring that topic with archeology, I’ll share a link to it for you:
It always fires my imagination thinking about the origins of this people being amongst a time of adaptation to imperial withdrawal. I find post-Roman Britain similarly fascinating for similar reasons. I’d like to start with people like Israel Finkelstein’s popular stuff on the topic.
I’d like to start sitting down with the text of the Bible itself and look at it alongside some sort of commentary on the origin of the text. I’d like to find a good Bible for that. I never really studied it through any religious tradition that I was brought up in, as my mother, despite having her personal religious beliefs, never really invested me in any formal church during most of my childhood. It’s amazing that we have the letters of Paul, someone who was so close in proximity to the founder of Christianity.
I’ve listened to a lot of lectures from Bart Ehrman on the history of early Christianity. I’ve particularly enjoyed learning about the historical Jesus. I’ve come to read Ehrman’s historical Jesus through a leftist lens as a figure who resisted imperialism through an apocalyptic/messianic religious movement. It’s really made me reflect on how groups of people respond to the daily reality of oppression in their lives, and what outlets of action they might take. Sometimes I’ve found myself comparing my reading of Ehrman’s Jesus to other examples I see as apocalyptic religious movements against imperialism, such as the Taping Rebellion in China or the Mahdist Revolt in Sudan.
For Islam, I tried several years ago to look for popular historical-critical scholarship on the origins of it’s holy text or life of its founder, only to discover that that’s apparently harder to come by as that kind of scholarship is not as well explored as in the other Abrahamic religions. I’ve had some better luck recently after Ehrman pointed his viewers to a scholar he’s doing a joint seminar with who’s trying to explore those questions. I’ve been able to find a couple of good channels that talk about that stuff pretty well. The stuff about the Alexander romances inspiring some Quran passages sounds fascinating.
And, yeah, Bart Erhman is good! I also, among other reasons, really grew to re-embrace Biblical Christianity through analyzing Jesus through a Leftist lense as well as philosophically through an existential understanding through people like Paul Tillich. His ‘Systematic Theology’ is excellent but massive, his other works are just as rewarding too.
If you’re looking for a good book of Scriptures, I recommend the Jewish Publication Society’s Jewish Study Bible. And Harper Collins’s Study Bible. I never learned Hebrew so I can’t comment on the Jewish Study Bibles’ translation, although it reads and seems great. But I did study ancient Greek and the Christian scriptures in Greek specifically and I really recommend the NRSV translation, none are perfect but it’s excellent.
If you’re interested in reading probably the only critically academic book I’ve read on the Qur’an that comes from a Shi’a perspective, which I personally sympathize with, I really recommend Stephen Shoemaker’s Creating the Qur’an! Ehrman also had him on for a guest post on his blog which seems to summarize his book if you want to read that.
That’s a cool thing to be interested in. I’ve always found looking at a religion’s history to be fascinating. Just seeing how it changes over time is cool to look at. Plus stuff like trying to reconstruct the life of the founders using historical-critical criteria. So far, this has just been restricted to the Abrahamic religions for me.
I’ve had religious experiences and I’m into the technical aspects of mystic traditions, things like divination - especially approaches that are complex and syatematic - looking for an understanding of these subjective experiences in my past and present, it has been humbling to let my guard down and approach these subjects without the biases and hostility most people approach them with, while also avoiding apologetics and polemics, and generally i am disinterested in material analysis - the confluence of religion and power is almost over explored and given far too much weight by most leftists for example, and i find those approaches boring at best and actively harmful at worst.
There is so much going on in esoteric philosophy that gets ignored because protestants and enlightenment philosophers hated mysticism so every philosophical tradition in their shadow inherits that hostility to its detriment - there are fascinating and brilliant things to be found and I really wish esotericism could have more mainstream penetration than it does
I’ve heard that each religion has its own mystic traditions. I’ve enjoyed hearing about them as part of a broad survey of history and comparative religion. In all honesty, I’ve felt myself become more agnostic over the years, as opposed to being sure that materialism has explained everything about the world. Maybe it’s not there yet. Maybe there are some new frontiers to be explored that the old teachers had some insight to. I try to keep a more open mind than I dId in the past.
That’s good! An open mind is fruitful, and anybody passing off certainty on these matters is selling you ideology or bullshit. I don’t have good answers, I try to stay restrained compared to a lot of woo-ey folks, because I genuinely think going too far into uncritical belief is thought terminating brain poison the same way materialist reductionism is. It’s a delicate balance, and a critical but open mind is key.
To keep it simple - lots of traditions have mysticism lurking somewhere near, but usually underneath the mainstream - in Islam, there are ‘Sufi’ traditions - in Judaism there is Merkavah/Hekhalot literature and Kabballah - Christianity is messy, and some ‘mainstream’ groups are openly mystical - my initial interest came from the fact I was deeply involved in charismatic/pentecostal christianity when i was in my late teens and early 20s - but there is also a (mostly medieval) mystical undercurrent to some movements aligned with catholicism. I think of the Beguines and other women who would end up burned as heretics, martyrs in my opinion, like Margueritte Porette. Within western esotericism, theosophy, hermeticism, etc. is a consistent mystical undercurrent of variable value - they’re all fascinating in their own right and understanding even one of these academically can be an extremely deep rabbit hole. Often times the philosophy underwriting something like Theurgy has shockingly mainstream roots - often times you can trace those movements back to greek philosophers that are often taught in a context with their mysticism stripped out - Plato gets kind of held up as this pre-enlightenment rationalist, but that’s pretty god damn far from the truth. The way he’s taught more or less deliberately omits this material at the undergrad level and below, so it’s not surprising most people aren’t aware, but it is a real tragedy.
Descartes - one of the progenitors of the modern scientific method - developed it via dream visitations lol. The mystical is often imminent where humanity makes large leaps forward in thought; it would not shock me to some day find out Marxism is no different.
I’ve been dipping my toes - I recently got a copy of the Tao Te Ching and, given that it’s poetry, has been joyous to read. I’ve also been learning how to meditate and practice mindfulness via some Buddhist content creators, as well as some literature from the late Thich Nhat Hanh, whose books, “The Miracle of Mindfulness”, and “No Mud, No Lotus” affected me deeply.
The thing about meditation for me has been that it lets me step outside the storm of my own mind - I begin to step out of my thoughts, they become vivid hallucinations - the things that I experience as thoughts when I’m not meditating take on visual and auditory form - even hearing a fractional moment of it used to jar me out of my meditative trance, but lately i’ve been able to stay detached, and it becomes a window into my own internal processes.
I’ve been slowly reading from an English translation of the Quran, and at first i had a difficult time dealing with its accusatory tone and rampant misogyny, but I began to kind of understand the deeper points of its parables and the purpose of its structure, and it has begun to affect me as well.
I am not overly familiar with Shinto outside of a few bullet points on its cosmology, and the broadest overview of the belief structure and metaphysics. I feel pretty ignorant of the religious landscape of Japan more generally, and my understanding of ‘eastern’
religion outside of a narrow buddhist and taoist context is nil
Shinto is kinda like if pagan rituals in Europe had been allowed to grow alongside Christianity rather than being wiped out. It’s a nativist religion, and an animist religion. It’s also considered by many Japanese people to not be a religion, despite it totally being one. Shinto shrines are cool as hell. It’s a very long history, but to very briefly summarize, in Shinto certain trees, rocks, and other things are said to be little gods themselves and are worshiped as such. You go to the tree shrine to pray for success on entrance exams, the love shrine to pray for success in love, etc. Shinto has also been used by nationalists and one core component of Shinto is that the Emperor is supposedly a descendant of the most powerful god, Amaterasu. You can see how this might create problems and lead to catastrophic events like for example, WWII.
i would chat on discord, i’m a transfemme with some nerdy interests, but it’s mostly fringe shit like esoteric religion, religious studies more broadly, language, and stuff most people, even weirdos, find uninteresting, but it’s crack to my autism so vOv
I would be down to chat about religion and religious studies stuff too! I miss that about reddit, to be honest, I used to spend a lot of time on r/AcademicBiblical. It’s a very old and persistent interest of mine and was part of my studies in university. My main interest are usually Jewish and Christian religions because I know them best, and connect to them personally, but I’m interested in and studied many others. Always happy to chat about it. It’s nice to find comrades that are open to and interested in religion.
I don’t use Discord though.
I love the history aspect of religion especially. The founders of some of these religious traditions are fascinating when you try to look closely at what the lives of these mortals were like who’s ideas have won the adherence of billions today. How can I relate to and reflect on the contexts that these people lived through hundreds of years ago? The quest for the historical Jesus and Muhammad are two topics that especially fit her, though there are probably others who are interested in the lives of figures like the historical Buddha.
That’s cool! I like reading about the history of the development of religious thought and currents too. It helps me contextualize how we at least narrowly understand religious ideas. For example, how Judaism (and consequently Christianity and Islam) became monotheistic and how we now rationalize pre-monotheistic Judaism to suit the fundamentalist idea that it was always that way. I am religious but it helps understand how these ideas formed and its flaws and space for interpretation. But I kinda stopped reading too much into the historical X-person, for the most part so much is conjecture. Is there a book you like?
I think the origins of Judaism and the peoples of Israel and Judah is a fascinating topic. So much of the world looks back to figures like Moses, David, and Solomon, who are shrouded in both myth and the opaque political landscape of the Levant following the Bronze Age Collapse and the end of Egyptian hegemony in the region. I listened to a video exploring that topic with archeology, I’ll share a link to it for you:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SSXmf0fnhMU
It always fires my imagination thinking about the origins of this people being amongst a time of adaptation to imperial withdrawal. I find post-Roman Britain similarly fascinating for similar reasons. I’d like to start with people like Israel Finkelstein’s popular stuff on the topic.
I’d like to start sitting down with the text of the Bible itself and look at it alongside some sort of commentary on the origin of the text. I’d like to find a good Bible for that. I never really studied it through any religious tradition that I was brought up in, as my mother, despite having her personal religious beliefs, never really invested me in any formal church during most of my childhood. It’s amazing that we have the letters of Paul, someone who was so close in proximity to the founder of Christianity.
I’ve listened to a lot of lectures from Bart Ehrman on the history of early Christianity. I’ve particularly enjoyed learning about the historical Jesus. I’ve come to read Ehrman’s historical Jesus through a leftist lens as a figure who resisted imperialism through an apocalyptic/messianic religious movement. It’s really made me reflect on how groups of people respond to the daily reality of oppression in their lives, and what outlets of action they might take. Sometimes I’ve found myself comparing my reading of Ehrman’s Jesus to other examples I see as apocalyptic religious movements against imperialism, such as the Taping Rebellion in China or the Mahdist Revolt in Sudan.
For Islam, I tried several years ago to look for popular historical-critical scholarship on the origins of it’s holy text or life of its founder, only to discover that that’s apparently harder to come by as that kind of scholarship is not as well explored as in the other Abrahamic religions. I’ve had some better luck recently after Ehrman pointed his viewers to a scholar he’s doing a joint seminar with who’s trying to explore those questions. I’ve been able to find a couple of good channels that talk about that stuff pretty well. The stuff about the Alexander romances inspiring some Quran passages sounds fascinating.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Thanks! I’ll check out that video!
And, yeah, Bart Erhman is good! I also, among other reasons, really grew to re-embrace Biblical Christianity through analyzing Jesus through a Leftist lense as well as philosophically through an existential understanding through people like Paul Tillich. His ‘Systematic Theology’ is excellent but massive, his other works are just as rewarding too.
If you’re looking for a good book of Scriptures, I recommend the Jewish Publication Society’s Jewish Study Bible. And Harper Collins’s Study Bible. I never learned Hebrew so I can’t comment on the Jewish Study Bibles’ translation, although it reads and seems great. But I did study ancient Greek and the Christian scriptures in Greek specifically and I really recommend the NRSV translation, none are perfect but it’s excellent.
If you’re interested in reading probably the only critically academic book I’ve read on the Qur’an that comes from a Shi’a perspective, which I personally sympathize with, I really recommend Stephen Shoemaker’s Creating the Qur’an! Ehrman also had him on for a guest post on his blog which seems to summarize his book if you want to read that.
That’s a cool thing to be interested in. I’ve always found looking at a religion’s history to be fascinating. Just seeing how it changes over time is cool to look at. Plus stuff like trying to reconstruct the life of the founders using historical-critical criteria. So far, this has just been restricted to the Abrahamic religions for me.
I’ve had religious experiences and I’m into the technical aspects of mystic traditions, things like divination - especially approaches that are complex and syatematic - looking for an understanding of these subjective experiences in my past and present, it has been humbling to let my guard down and approach these subjects without the biases and hostility most people approach them with, while also avoiding apologetics and polemics, and generally i am disinterested in material analysis - the confluence of religion and power is almost over explored and given far too much weight by most leftists for example, and i find those approaches boring at best and actively harmful at worst.
There is so much going on in esoteric philosophy that gets ignored because protestants and enlightenment philosophers hated mysticism so every philosophical tradition in their shadow inherits that hostility to its detriment - there are fascinating and brilliant things to be found and I really wish esotericism could have more mainstream penetration than it does
I’ve heard that each religion has its own mystic traditions. I’ve enjoyed hearing about them as part of a broad survey of history and comparative religion. In all honesty, I’ve felt myself become more agnostic over the years, as opposed to being sure that materialism has explained everything about the world. Maybe it’s not there yet. Maybe there are some new frontiers to be explored that the old teachers had some insight to. I try to keep a more open mind than I dId in the past.
That’s good! An open mind is fruitful, and anybody passing off certainty on these matters is selling you ideology or bullshit. I don’t have good answers, I try to stay restrained compared to a lot of woo-ey folks, because I genuinely think going too far into uncritical belief is thought terminating brain poison the same way materialist reductionism is. It’s a delicate balance, and a critical but open mind is key.
To keep it simple - lots of traditions have mysticism lurking somewhere near, but usually underneath the mainstream - in Islam, there are ‘Sufi’ traditions - in Judaism there is Merkavah/Hekhalot literature and Kabballah - Christianity is messy, and some ‘mainstream’ groups are openly mystical - my initial interest came from the fact I was deeply involved in charismatic/pentecostal christianity when i was in my late teens and early 20s - but there is also a (mostly medieval) mystical undercurrent to some movements aligned with catholicism. I think of the Beguines and other women who would end up burned as heretics, martyrs in my opinion, like Margueritte Porette. Within western esotericism, theosophy, hermeticism, etc. is a consistent mystical undercurrent of variable value - they’re all fascinating in their own right and understanding even one of these academically can be an extremely deep rabbit hole. Often times the philosophy underwriting something like Theurgy has shockingly mainstream roots - often times you can trace those movements back to greek philosophers that are often taught in a context with their mysticism stripped out - Plato gets kind of held up as this pre-enlightenment rationalist, but that’s pretty god damn far from the truth. The way he’s taught more or less deliberately omits this material at the undergrad level and below, so it’s not surprising most people aren’t aware, but it is a real tragedy.
Descartes - one of the progenitors of the modern scientific method - developed it via dream visitations lol. The mystical is often imminent where humanity makes large leaps forward in thought; it would not shock me to some day find out Marxism is no different.
Any interest in eastern religion? I think Shinto is interesting and is a land of contrasts.
I’ve been dipping my toes - I recently got a copy of the Tao Te Ching and, given that it’s poetry, has been joyous to read. I’ve also been learning how to meditate and practice mindfulness via some Buddhist content creators, as well as some literature from the late Thich Nhat Hanh, whose books, “The Miracle of Mindfulness”, and “No Mud, No Lotus” affected me deeply.
The thing about meditation for me has been that it lets me step outside the storm of my own mind - I begin to step out of my thoughts, they become vivid hallucinations - the things that I experience as thoughts when I’m not meditating take on visual and auditory form - even hearing a fractional moment of it used to jar me out of my meditative trance, but lately i’ve been able to stay detached, and it becomes a window into my own internal processes.
I’ve been slowly reading from an English translation of the Quran, and at first i had a difficult time dealing with its accusatory tone and rampant misogyny, but I began to kind of understand the deeper points of its parables and the purpose of its structure, and it has begun to affect me as well.
I am not overly familiar with Shinto outside of a few bullet points on its cosmology, and the broadest overview of the belief structure and metaphysics. I feel pretty ignorant of the religious landscape of Japan more generally, and my understanding of ‘eastern’ religion outside of a narrow buddhist and taoist context is nil
Shinto is kinda like if pagan rituals in Europe had been allowed to grow alongside Christianity rather than being wiped out. It’s a nativist religion, and an animist religion. It’s also considered by many Japanese people to not be a religion, despite it totally being one. Shinto shrines are cool as hell. It’s a very long history, but to very briefly summarize, in Shinto certain trees, rocks, and other things are said to be little gods themselves and are worshiped as such. You go to the tree shrine to pray for success on entrance exams, the love shrine to pray for success in love, etc. Shinto has also been used by nationalists and one core component of Shinto is that the Emperor is supposedly a descendant of the most powerful god, Amaterasu. You can see how this might create problems and lead to catastrophic events like for example, WWII.