:Intro to Religion Blog

I learned a lot about Judaism in class yesterday, I started off knowing mostly nothing so I could only go up from there. We learned that it is a monotheistic religion, textual religion, religion of the land, and ritual oriented religion.

Being a monotheistic religion there is one personal God named YHWH. One of the commandments is to not take God’s name in vain, so in the Bible they take the vowels of Adonai which means lord and puts them in the word YHWH as a clue to not say God’s name in vain. I thought this was a very creative way of reminding people to not say God’s name in vain. The textual part of the religion is the Bible, the story I learned about while talking about this part is the story of Abraham and how he had two wives, and each had one child. Through his wife Hagar they had a son named Ishmael, and the religion that came through him was Islam. Through Sarah, Abraham’s other wife, they had a son named Isaac (which means gigglesJ) through him came the religion Judaism which later came Christianity. The ritual oriented part of the religion I thought was very interesting all the different things they do and the things that can’t eat. They can’t eat shell fish, pork, and they can’t mix milk and meat. Also they can’t touch, or touch anything that a menstruating woman has touched. I found this very odd, I feel there’s no harm that comes from doing such a thing.

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In the center of the world part of the Sacred Space reading, I thought it was interesting the way they perceived the world, heaven, and the underworld. What connects all these worlds is an axis mundi, which in this case I think the easiest one to visualize is a ladder. Using objects such as mountains or trees are good because these are all objects you are able to climb and the whole point of a pilgrimage is movement, and the journey someone takes.

The ladder starts on earth in the center of the world, or the naval. After reading all the sections of the Sacred Space, I realized there is a naval or a center of the world to almost everything you’re involved in within your life. We talked about in class, in the home a family room or fireplace is an example of the naval of the home, in a church the front of the church with the alter is the naval. What I got out of this reading is that the naval can be where ever you want it to be, it is always surrounded by things that are important to you.

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What I got out of the article we read about Frazer is that he believed that magic cam first, and when magic didn’t work the society moved to religion, and he believes that when the society believes that religion has failed us we will move to magic. Some of me believes that this has a possibility of happening, science is a big part of today’s world. Religion also it, but instead of praying for things to happen we have the technology to make things happen. Most people would find this a lot easier because they were in control of what was happening and a lot of people like control.

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