Well the whole ceremony is eerily similar to the jewish one. There's the standing up in front of the officiator, the officiator, giving a ring. Obviously, exchanging rings is a modern modification. I've always assumed, and I still believe, that it's a straight-up rip off of jewish weddings by christians. Before judaism there wasn't such a thing as marriage. Practically, it was the same as marriage, but I don't think there was a legal (and certainly not a religious/spiritual) bond, aside from no messing with another guy's mate. Back then there weren't other religions. Then came the christians, who were jews at first, and adopted many jewish things including the idea of a religious/spiritual bond. In order to show that something is religious, in general it requires a formal sanctioning as well as symbolism. As with many other things, they adopted ostentatious aspects, and integrated them as "necessary" parts of the ritual. In this case, the officiator.
I think there were concepts of marriage (and definitely no messing with another's man's woman!) but perhaps they were more casual affairs. There were priests of various deities, and some sort of ceremony was made invoking those gods or goddesses.
Probably, such ceremonies were reserved for the prominent, not for the sheepherders.
True there were clergy members, but they only did the "services". People had their idols then, but it's not like they had whole religions beyond the scope of worshipping the idols.
7 comments:
broken link alert. I always assumed this was the case with the whole aisle shpiel.
Ooooh, thanks GIL! It has been corrected.
As for the aisles - meaning they ripped it off us or vice versa?
I think they got it from us. I'm not sure what the source is, but I can't imagine chareidim using it if it's a non-jewish thing.
You'd be surprised.
Well the whole ceremony is eerily similar to the jewish one. There's the standing up in front of the officiator, the officiator, giving a ring. Obviously, exchanging rings is a modern modification. I've always assumed, and I still believe, that it's a straight-up rip off of jewish weddings by christians. Before judaism there wasn't such a thing as marriage. Practically, it was the same as marriage, but I don't think there was a legal (and certainly not a religious/spiritual) bond, aside from no messing with another guy's mate. Back then there weren't other religions. Then came the christians, who were jews at first, and adopted many jewish things including the idea of a religious/spiritual bond. In order to show that something is religious, in general it requires a formal sanctioning as well as symbolism. As with many other things, they adopted ostentatious aspects, and integrated them as "necessary" parts of the ritual. In this case, the officiator.
I think there were concepts of marriage (and definitely no messing with another's man's woman!) but perhaps they were more casual affairs. There were priests of various deities, and some sort of ceremony was made invoking those gods or goddesses.
Probably, such ceremonies were reserved for the prominent, not for the sheepherders.
True there were clergy members, but they only did the "services". People had their idols then, but it's not like they had whole religions beyond the scope of worshipping the idols.
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