I have been thinking about how the fact that the temple had a fire might give us the clue into what brought about religion in the first place. It goes like this;
Picture yourself 60K maybe even 600K years ago, there was something that had a veneration of fire instilled in our bones as a process of Natural (or self) selection. Here you have a tribe of primates (hominoids) who goes out to the field and fines charred and cooked carcasses of what ever animals got caught in the naturally caused brush fire. The taste them, they eat them. They say, damn, that was tasty, and they then try and chase the next fire and preserve the flame and then cook the animals they hunted. (remember, these humanoids cant speak, so all this is communicated in a primitive grunt/push language.)
Language seems to have evolves somewhere around 200,000 years ago.
So as I was saying, these hominids or sapians are starting to attempt to keep the fire alive. Maybe they succeed for a few days. It rains, they come to the guy who was in charge and he says damn, we shoulda put it indoors., the next time, if they remember, they do put it into a cave, then when it blows out form a wind they devise better ways to protect it. Eventually they'll go as crazy as building a temple and putting vestal virgins in charge of keeping it alive who if fail, get buried alive. The point I am making is that there was a genetic evolutionary advantage to be a freak who can figure out crazy ways to keep the fire alive, even if you are not even sure why exactly they were doing it.
It's like with the experiment of five monkeys who end up not knowing why they are beating up the new monkey who wants to climb up and grab the banana. (they all got sprayed with freezing water if one attempted to climb the latter and grab the banana. Then they were switched out one by one till even when they were all new and never experienced the cold spray, they did know that the custom of the place is that if one wants to climb up to grab a certain banana, everyone gangs up on him, beats him up and prevents him from climbing. Or like the roman society ganged up and killed the vestal virgin who let the fire out. or like they all gang up on a Mekoshesh Eitzim, and stone him to death and they don't even know why.
So here's the clue as to what motivated man to believe in god. Once you are figuring out rituals of how to keep a flame lit and you don't even know why, a belief in it will make you survive. Will make you keep fire alive. Those who weren't as obsessed with keeping it lit simply died out because at some point they lost their fire and they had a hard time relighting it, maybe they even forget that they were trying. Don't forget, they are way less focused than us. They simply aren’t intelligent enough to make sure the fire is kept on. And since they lack the obsession they die out because their descendants won't be necessarily coming across a fire, and those who do won't necessarily get lucky enough to eat the burnt meat. And those who do probably won't be able to keep the fucking fire alive.
So let's go back to ones who are obsessed. They are building shrines etc. now they have a fire running and they say to themselves there is a spirit in that flame. Heck, it looks nothing like most things we usually see.
Remember, no language for another 400,000 years!
When people ask; why did people start believing in god? The answer I almost always hear is; they were looking for ways to explain what was around them.
Excuse me? what exactly is the evolutionary advantage of that? Besides the fact that it was way too early for them to be asking such questions.U dont see chimps doing that. And if there isn't an evolutionary advantage, the trait wouldn't have survived. So what is the evolutionary advantage of believing? It gives you the freaks who assign rituals to keeping a flame alive because it had a living part of soul in it and then your descendants survive do to the fact they are eating a more nutritious cooked diet.
Seriously, how long a period lied between the time when primates knew how to prefer and when they are able to create for themselves cooked meals? It was a long long time. I'd guess 50 to 150 thousand years. Think about how long that is in today's terms. how little advancement took place over that period of time. that's how slow evolution is. Now picture how long your descendants would survive if you were not eating the rich diet that cooked food provides. Just how much less they'd develop than those of you fire obsessed cousin. Then, his descendants, although with this minor pyromaniac tendencies but otherwise intelligent cousin's children out-survive your Neanderthal progress and the homosapian cousin takes over your territory, access your resources, eventually causing your extinctions from the planet. All because you didn't believe in fake ritualistic meaning.
Even if your ancestors were reasonable ones who simply said, we will pay top dollar to have the top most reliable group of people who will keep our flame alive. They'd still have to tuck a death penalty in there to boot, just because those who didn't DIED OUT. And with all their reasonableness and all, what do you think the 3rd generation after them would think? or 10th gen? (As it is the they can barley think) They'd see serious strictness and a ritual which works. He's not going to change it. It's working.
They come to revere the ununderstandable. And that, in a sentence, is religion….
Next after that comes up the question of how to punish the one, why would it be so important to actually kill the person? Well, you may not understand it, but it upset something you don't understand. The unundersandable, GOD himself…
This person goes about the day accepting this. It helps his survival!!!
Now, some, or many of us, are starting to shed that layer and step out and say; yes, I want to really understand where we came from. I would like to not have it affected with this gene we inherited that gave us the preference of ununderstandable over the understandable.
Maybe mekoshesh aitzim had something to do with this too. It seems to be the earliest skilla; Killing without it making sense.The priests at the time were well above messing with the flame. The whole ritual is long set up. If they even messed with it god would kill them immediately, like nadav and avihu. Who brought, and I quote, 'A foreign fire', before god. By they way, this is a good time to mention that also a certain Israelite king named Yeravam ben Nevat coincidentally had two sons who died young, allegedly as a punishment from god for putting up the two golden calves in Dan and Beit El. Their names were.... Nadav and Aviah!!!
Since there is much more contemporary writing to Yeravam than to 'Aaron', I'll say the biblical story of Aaron was written based on the true story of Yeravam.
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