Rhyan Harrison Where do we get the idea of hierarchy?
When studying religion, especially the Abrahamic traditions, we notice almost immediately that the one monolithic God is greater than all of creation. This is because, for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and the creator of everything. If we go back and look at older traditions, such as mythology, we see less of this. In the Abrahamic traditions, God is unquestionably higher than man. However, if we look at Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, and plenty of other mythologies, we see the gods differently. Here, they have human qualities that make them imperfect. They get jealous, mad, sometimes even banished and punished by other gods. In some ways here, we could say that humans are not equal to say, but definitely more equal to the mythological gods than to the one Abrahamic God.
If we go back even farther, to other traditions, we see certain humans exalted to god levels such as pharos, demigods, kings, war generals, etc. In that way, great humans are EQUAL to the gods. This makes me think, if the farther we go back, the less of a divine hierarchy we see, then in primal religions, is the divine systematically and unquestionably greater than man? We know that we see the divine differently in primal religions, but is it higher up the "cosmic hierarchy" than man is? Are they equal? Is it significantly higher such as the Abrahamic God? Are they equal but different? Can one be elevated to divine status?
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