What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

[jgk3]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

Observations or not, when presented without sources cannot be considered as fact, and thus, should be clearly noted to be "personal opinions"

Is this what you do levon when you make an observation?

[levon]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

If you read him carefully, you'll understand jgk3 is not taking sides really, only stating a number of observations.

Observations or not, when presented without sources cannot be considered as fact, and thus, should be clearly noted to be "personal opinions"

[jgk3]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

quote
If you mean destroyed the pagan religion, I think all churches did that.
unquote
with a small nuance, they destroyed the temples but instead kept and adopted a lot of uses which can't be found in the new testament, such as blessing water, grapes, traditions like pouring water (on the vartevar) etc,

Of course, and Christmas trees and Easter Bunnies aren't exactly from the New Testament either

[vasbourakan1]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

quote
If you mean destroyed the pagan religion, I think all churches did that.
unquote
with a small nuance, they destroyed the temples but instead kept and adopted a lot of uses which can't be found in the new testament, such as blessing water, grapes, traditions like pouring water (on the vartevar) etc,

[jgk3]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

I'm done arguing, it's pointless. I just want to share articles that describe the reasons for western academia's uneasiness to just believe everything "Movses Khorenatsi" wrote in his annals, but also why they don't consider the entire work to be untrustworthy:

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Moses_Of_Chorene

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10598a.htm

I would like to highlight that this "doubt" is not a recent phenomenon:

Down to the 3rd century it is proved by the contemporary Graeco-Roman annals to be utterly untrustworthy - but even for the times of Armenian Christianity it must be used far more cautiously than has been done, for example, by Gibbon. The worst feature is the confusion in the chronology, which, strange to say, is most hopeless in treating of the contemporaries of Moses himself. What can be thought of a writer who assigns to Yazdegerd I. (399-420) the eleven years of his predecessor Bahram IV., and the twentyone years of Yazdegerd I. to his successor Bahram V. (420-439)?

I unfortunately am not an Armenologist, dedicated to reading manuscripts of Armenian authors from our classical period, and comparing them to the contemporary Syriac, Greek and Roman records (all three of which I cannot even read). But I could cite articles such as these that demonstrate the findings and explanations of scholars who can, and explain why I think they make sense, since the conventions of this sort of inquiry might be unfamiliar to you. Just let me know about any points of confusion.

[levon]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

The are parts that I agree with you but there are parts that I want to know what really happened. To give an example, let's look at the legend of Haik that is told today and some people accept as the truth. That we come from Babylon after god destroyed the tower. I now want to know how did the proto-hay call themselves? What was their society like? These are the things I want to know. The church has destroyed so many parts of our history that it's not funny, it's very sad to be honest. If we followed the myths told by the church would we have discovered that civilization started with us and moved to Mesopotamia? Or that our alphabet is much older than we thought?

There are many points in ancient history that aren't well documented and are essentially extracted from myth and other kinds of stories. They are not all myths created by Christianity. It's a completely another subject to look at myths and find truth in them. No one in Armenia seriously considers the fact that Armenians descended from noah. Everyone regards the legend of Haik as a legend, however, that doesn't mean that there isn't some truth in the legends. Calling our current history as myths is entirely different from saying there are some parts of our history that aren't well documented and we must rely on some legends to form some opinion of what happened.

Greek mythology is a good subject to look at. There are many things in the mythology that cannot be true, such as being half-god, but that doesn't mean that there necessarily never was a person named Hercules that was incredibly strong, or a warrior named Achilles who was an extremely skilled fighter. Furthermore, is it a valid assumption that the Trojan war never took place since almost every element of the Iliad contains an impossibility? One cannot say with certainty.

When stories are re-told, new elements are almost always added,and as a result a story can easily become a legend and be regarded as a myth. That doesn't mean that there wasn't truth in the original story, but the trick is to extract fact from myth.

[hyem]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

I didn't realize it was that extreme.

I also didn't know Noah was from Babylon, to be honest I don't know the tower destruction story probably forgot, just the flood and the ark happened to land on Ararat.

Again if this is a myth is because it's what I was told/taught.... I think majority of Armenians are taught this. Personally I don't believe in 100% everything since history isn't reliable.

But I don't think Hayk was god, revered like a king or leader but not a god. I also don't believe in any of the Armenian gods. They are all mythological based on planets and stars (like the Greeks etc) whereas Jesus was a real proven person to have existed. Zeus or Greek/Romain/Armenian equivalent were not real.

[KarotheGreat]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

I never heard of Armenians coming from Babylon. I've heard that Hayk was the great grandson of one of Noah's children.

What church myths are you referring to? Why would the church destroy Armenian history?

If you mean destroyed the pagan religion, I think all churches did that. What pre-Christian religion remains in any part of the world? It's all gone.

It was not only the religion that was lost but so much more. Libraries that were burned down because they weren't Christian, temples that we will never know how beautiful they were were burned down.

And you give the example yourself of one of the myths of the church, Hayk is a descended of Noah, he lived in Babylon when the tower was been built and after the destruction of the tower he moved to Armenia.
I really want to know the real legend, what was Hyak to the ancient Armenians? A god or something else?

[hyem]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

I never heard of Armenians coming from Babylon. I've heard that Hayk was the great grandson of one of Noah's children.

What church myths are you referring to? Why would the church destroy Armenian history?

If you mean destroyed the pagan religion, I think all churches did that. What pre-Christian religion remains in any part of the world? It's all gone.

[KarotheGreat]

Re: What do the Armenian neopagans believe in exactly?

Rewriting history is a hard task. In order to succeed one must first bring doubt to the currently accepted events. This is usually done by exposing small holes in the chronologies. It's rather easy to do as holes exist in chronologies of histories of all nations. Once the holes are there, one works hard to entice the reader to connect the following dots: if there are holes in the story then then parts of the story must be wrong. As soon as this is established, one then continues on to say that since parts of the story are untrue, then the whole story must be untrue. Logically it may not make sense, but most people don't bother to examine the logic of the claims, but merely accept it as fact without question. Of course, once it is established that the old version was incorrect then the new version is at least as credible as the old version.

Turks don't need to re-write Armenian history. All they need is enough doubt so that most people won't truly believe either version.

This is why it's extremely important that when we, Armenians, speak of our own history, we don't just state opinions as if they were facts.

The are parts that I agree with you but there are parts that I want to know what really happened. To give an example, let's look at the legend of Haik that is told today and some people accept as the truth. That we come from Babylon after god destroyed the tower. I now want to know how did the proto-hay call themselves? What was their society like? These are the things I want to know. The church has destroyed so many parts of our history that it's not funny, it's very sad to be honest. If we followed the myths told by the church would we have discovered that civilization started with us and moved to Mesopotamia? Or that our alphabet is much older than we thought?