Religion in the middle east

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Middle East region is a religion that includes Western Asia and Northern Africa. The term is referred to be Eurocentric and used as a synonym for Near East, in disagreement to Far East. Religion on the other hand can be referred to as a crucial set of beliefs and practices which are agreed upon by a number of sects or persons. When one looks at religion in the middles east, one realizes that the middle is much diverse. It is believed that many of the religions originated from the Middle East, Islamic religion is known to be the largest as it is the overwhelming with the majority of people. Although Islamic region overpowers other religions, Christianity and Judaism are also crucial since they have some followers. There are also other minority religions like Gnosticism, Yazidism, mandean, and bahai among others. This paper seeks to look at religion in the Middle East as well the goddess religion in the Middle East.
Middle East religion has been one of the alarming issues that people don`t understand well up to date. It is believed that most researchers have accepted the fact that modern humans invented in Africa about 200,000 to 250, 000 years ago. From this era till 8000 BCE, our ancestors organized themselves into hunter-gatherer societies. At this point, humans had developed awareness that their life ware predetermined and they thought that they would al die. Due to this trepidation, they decided to develop primitive religious belief.
Since their societies involved hunters and gatherers, those who relied mainly on hunting, developed hunting gods and on the other hand, those who relied on gathering created vegetative goddesses. This arouses the importance of fertility in crops, wild animals, domestic and animals, where they found them fundamental in their daily lives. During this era, the female life-giving principle was considered godly and it was believed that some goddess status still survive even in the modern days (Klotz, 1995).
The origin of goddess worship could be retrieved from archeological era, this is because most of the several carvings in the European culture stressed on the female carvings. In this era, female figures were found in several things which were curved which illustrated the beginning of the goddess worship. It was still noticed that male sculptures were not found and therefore most people said that female statues must have been the oldest European cultures, reason why goddess culture established most in the Middle East.
The Middle east religion was believed to have a culture that existed .for tens of thousands of years, and they all lived in peace where they were united by archeological believe that their society was matrilineal and children took their mothers names, time was experienced as a repetitive cycle and it as also based as on lunar calendar and this are some of the believes that united them under a single culture (James, 1960).
Though people in the Middle East were united by different culture in which they fitted in, several academics believed that the suppression of Goddess worship in the Middle East like Europe happened few thousand years BCE. They believed that during this era, the Indo-Europeans assaulted Europe from the East and while doing that they brought with them some modification of modern civilization. For instance, they brought with them horses, believes in male Gods, exploitation of nature and war which were not there before. As male worship emerged and started to be familiar to the Middle East people, goddess worship was progressively combined with the worship of the male Gods which resulted in a pagan polytheistic religion.
Middle East religion is a religion with uniqueness since beliefs and practices are different from each other. As mentioned earlier, little was known on the Middle East religion till 19th and 20th century when religion literature was uncovered by excavations. After this excavation, it was noticed that several religious shared many beliefs and concepts and it`s still from it that the root of the three major religions in the world: Islam, Judaism and Christianity developed.
The Gods
Mesopotamia religion is said to be the most crucial religion in the Middle East. It complies of the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Sumerians. This people besides spreading their power, they absorbed contributions of the Hittites, the Phoenicians and the Phrygians. In this region, they entrenched worship of the sky as well that of high places. Later on, they absorbed new gods into a pantheon after they come into contact with the Semitic and the Sumerian. In their worship, everything be it a tree, a fish, a bird, a stone, prominent person during those times and even an abstract idea had a particular significant in the universe.
Goddess religion had a chord of authority which comprised of several gods:
Anu-this was the sky god
Enlil-The storm god
Ea or Enki-the water god
The second triad arose and it also comprised of some gods:
Sin- The god of the moon
Shamash The sun god
Ishtarthe goddess
HadadThe weather god
As Babylon rose to preeminence during the 2nd millennium B.C, the local god Marduk became fundamental and later he was replaced by Ashur of Assyria. During this era, deities were strong-minded by the political subjugations a well as by interchange. A steady growth among the eastern culture towards the belief in supreme gods was noticed and one of the most widespread is cults. Cults were believed to be that of mother goddess (Ishatar). She was considered to be more kindly disposed towards humans than any other deities but she was as well capable of cruelty and vengefulness (Leeming, 2004).
The role of humans
According to the beliefs of the Middle East people, they were created for the benefits of gods and therefore they were to survive and obey, provide food, shelter and clothing`s to the gods as well as offering them respect. They also believed in the personal gods who were protective of the individual and they believed that the individual gods linked them with the great goddess. It is believed that some gods had uninformed and abusive behavior an act which was not embraced by the Mesopotamian peoples and they sympathized with such gods.
According to Leeming, (2004), discussion on the ancient religion has opened a path for the perpetual philosophy, talking of human culture and consisting of cluster of ideas, view point, insights, and attitude towards life are the basic concept of goddess religion in the Middle East and every other part of the world where the same religion is practiced. As mentioned earlier, goddess has several images associated with her. In most c...