What do scholars says about religion?

Answer 1

Many scholars continue to research the religions of the ancients and of modern believers. They will continue to learn new facts as ancient documents, monuments and other evidence are uncovered. And they will continue to analyse the material that we already have, refining their knowledge of the facts.

In the view of Richard Leakey (The Origin of Humankind), religious activity began around 30,000 years ago in Europe. Evidence from Australia suggests that it could be even older.

The most important areas of religious study are in early Judaic and pre-Judaic beliefs, and in early Christianity. Famous finds of the twentieth century include the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi documents, but much of the important scholastic work comes from apparently uninteresting material.

Some scholars now believe that Judaism had its origins in the destruction, by the invading Assyrians, of the northern Hebrew kingdom of Israel (around 720 BCE). Of those who avoided imprisonment, many Israelites fled south as refugees into the much smaller Hebrew kingdom of Judah, resulting a a massive increase in population. King Hezekia of Judah needed a religion to unify the country and instituted many reforms, including an attempt to impose monotheism. However, Hezekiah's reforms were undone by his descendents, who continued to permit the old polytheism. A few generations later, the Shiloh priesthood are thought to have written a law code more favourable to them, and conspired with King Josiah to have it be 'found' in the Temple, so that he could reinstitute the Judaistic reforms.

They say that the first five books of The Bible, the Pentateuch, were not written by by Moses, rather by at least 4 authors in the first millennium BCE:

• The J (Yahwist) source, who always used 'YHVH' as the name for God and presented tradition from the point of view of the southern kingdom, Judah, using archaic Hebrew. J was a gifted storyteller who was especially interested in the human side of things and had his own characteristic vocabulary. J referred to Moses' father-in-law as Reuel or Hobab.
• The E (Elohist) source, who always used 'Elohim' as the name for God and presented tradition from the point of view of the northern kingdom, Israel, using archaic Hebrew. E referred to Moses' father-in-law as Jethro, a mistake that Moses himself could not have made.
• The D (Deuteronomist) source, who emphasised centralisation of worship and governance in Jerusalem, and used a more modern form of Hebrew. The Deuteronomist wrote during reign of King Josiah ( about 640-609 BCE) and was also responsible for the Deuteronomic history (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings).
• The P (Priestly) source, who used both Elohim and El Shaddai as names of God and focussed on the formal relations between God and society. He also used a late form of Hebrew, with a rather turgid style.

Heaven and hell, as places of reward and punishment, were not part of Judaic belief prior to the Babylonian Exile. Even in the post-exilic period, not everyone accepted the concepts of immortality, as shown by Ecclesiastes 9:5: 'For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten'. Even as late as the first century CE, the major Sadducee sect of Judaism did not accept the concept of heaven and hell. The concepts had always been part of Zoroastrian belief, and many scholars now say that the Jews took these beliefs back with them from Babylon after the Exile.

Scholars are continuing to research the origins of Christianity. The Nag Hammadi documents not only showed that early Christianity was more diverse than may have been thought, they also provided new information on the beliefs of Gnostic Christians.