@ChristineM ,
@nPeace,
@Bree,
@Vee
I think most posters on RF, believe the Flood is myth: not based on evidence. But a few here accept the Flood as a literal, global event.
Anyway, let me get to these “Festivals of the Dead”. Is there a link? I’m sure that people would consider the Global Flood as described in the Bible and in many myths, whether believed or not, as unique in killing more humans than any other Event. It would be the greatest cause for remembering the dead!
The following is from “Worship of the Dead” by John Garnier, published 1904, containing many references, which are included here...block parentheses [] I’ve added, to clarify, and
bold type &
italics are mine, to highlight. (I didn’t highlight the ubiquitous nature of the Flood myths):
“Chapter 1
Introductory — the Deluge
There are some modern writers who have represented the various religious superstitions and idolatries of different nations as being the spontaneous invention of each race, and the natural and uniform outcome of human nature in a state of barbarism. This is not the case; the theory is wholly opposed to the conclusions of those who have most fully studied the subject. The works of [George Stanley] Faber, Sir W[illiam] Jones, [Dr. Richard] Pococke, [Alexander] Hislop, Sir [John] G[ardner] Wilkinson, [George] Rawlinson and others have indisputably proved the connection and identity of the religious systems of nations most remote from each other, showing that, not merely
Egyptians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans, but also the
Hindus, the Buddhists of China and of Thibet, the Goths, Anglo-Saxons, Druids, Mexicans and Peruvians, the aborigines of Australia, and even the savages of the South Sea Islands *A*, must have all derived their
religious ideas from a common source and a common centre.
Everywhere we find the most startling coincidences in rites, ceremonies, customs, traditions, and in the names and relations of their respective gods and goddesses. [***This is discussed in detail in this book***]
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*A*Mr [John Dunmore] Lang quotes Sir Stamford Raffles and [William] Marsden as stating that there was one original language common to the South Sea islands and to Sumatra, New Guinea, Madagascar and the Philippines. He says the language of the Polynesians has also a remarkable resemblance to that of the Chinese, and that their religious customs are similar to those of the Mexicans, Peruvians, Phoenicians and Egyptians, the name even of their Sun god being “Ra”, as in Peru and Egypt. (Lang’s “Polynesia,” pp. 19,20,41-44. See also Taylor’s “New Zealand” and Gill’s “Myths of the South Pacific”.)
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There is no more convincing evidence of this fact than the common tradition in all these nations of the Deluge, as collected by Mr. Faber, and more lately by the additional traditions of the Mandan and other north American Indians, in Mr. [George] Catlin’s interesting work on those tribes *B*, showing that, with the exception of the Negro races, there is hardly a nation or tribe in the world which does not possess a tradition of the destruction of the human race by a flood; and the details of these traditions are too exactly in accordance with each other to permit the suggestion, which some have made, that they refer to different local floods in each case. Now Mr. Faber has exhaustively shown in his three folio volumes that the mythologies of all the ancient nations are interwoven with the events of the Deluge and are explained by it, thereby proving that they are all based on a common principle, and must have been derived from a common source.
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*B*Faber, Pagan Idolatry, book iii. chap. vi. vol. ii.; Catlin, “North American Indians”. A general summary of these traditions has also been collected by Sir H. H. Howorth in his work, “The Mammoth and the Flood.”
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The force of this argument is illustrated by the fact of
the observance of a great festival of the dead in commemoration of the event, not only
by nations more or less in communication with each other, but by others
widely separated, both by the ocean and by centuries of time. This festival is, moreover,
held by all on or about the very day on which, according to the Mosaic account, the Deluge took place, viz., “The 17th day of the second month” — the month nearly corresponding with our November.
[See Genesis 7:11]
The
Jewish civil year commenced at the autumnal equinox, or about September 20, and the 17th day of the second month would therefore correspond with the fifth day of our month of November; but as the festival was originally, as in Egypt, preceded by three days’ mourning, it appears to have been put back three days in countries where one day’s festival only was observed,
and to have been more generally kept on November 2nd.
Mr. [Robert Grant] Halliburton says : “
The festival of the dead, or feast of ancestors, is now, or was, formally
observed at or near the beginning of November by the Peruvians, the Hindus, the Pacific Islanders, the people of the Tonga Islands, the Australians, the ancient Persians, the ancient Egyptians and the northern nations of Europe, and continued for three days
among the Japanese, the Hindus, the Australians, the ancient Romans and the ancient Egyptians.
“Wherever the Roman Catholic Church exists, solemn
Mass for All Souls is said on the 2nd November, and on that day the gay
Parisians, exchanging the boulevard for the cemetery,
lunch at the graves of their relatives and hold unconsciously their “feast of ancestors” on the very same day that savages in far-distant quarters of the globe observe, in a similar manner,
their festival of the dead. Even the Church of England, which rejects All Souls as based on a belief in purgatory and as being a creation of Popery, clings devoutly to All Saints.” *C* Again, with reference to the Peruvian festival of the dead, Mr. Haliburton writes:—“The month in which it occurs, says Rivers, is called ‘Aya Marca,’ from ‘Aya,’ a ‘corpse,’ and ‘Marca,’ ‘carrying in arms,’ because they celebrated the solemn festival of the dead with tears, lugubrious songs and plaintive music, and it was customary to visit the tombs of relations, and to leave in them food and drink. if it is worthy of remark that
this feast was celebrated among the ancient Peruvians at the same time and on the same day that Christians solemnize their commemoration of the dead —2nd November.” *D*
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*C* ”The Year of the Pleiades”, by R. G. Haliburton;—from “Life and Work at the Great Pyramid”, by [Charles] Piazzi Smith(sic)[Smyth], vol.ii, pp. 372-373
*D* Ibid, p.388
[Related to this topic, “
the Corsicans slaughtered oxen at the grave, giving the meat to their neighbours in honour of the dead. Bread, wine and meat were thus distributed, whilst in modern times bread and wine are served to the poor in this manner on the anniversary of the death of those who can afford to do so, and
particularly on the feast of the dead, November 1st.”
CHAPTER XIII IN MEMORIAM - Page 14 - Cemeteries & Crematoria Association. ]
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Again, speaking of the festival of agriculture and death in Persia, Mr. Haliburton says, “
The month of November was formally called in Persia ‘the month of the angel of death.’ In spite of the calendar having been changed,
the festival took place at the same time as in Peru;” and he adds that
a similar festival of agriculture and death, in the beginning of November, takes place in Ceylon.**(Ibid, p.390)**
A like ceremony was held in November among the people of the Tonga islands, with prayers for their deceased relatives.**(Ibid, p.387)**
The Egyptians begin their year at the same time as the Jews, and
on the 17th day of their second month commenced their solemn mourning for Osiris, the Lord of the Tombs, **(Ibid, pp.382-391)** who was
fabled to have been shut up in the deep for one year like Noah, and whose supposed resurrection and reappearance was celebrated with rejoicing. *E* The death of the god was the great event in Paganism, as we shall explain later, and all the religious rites were made to centre round it.
——————-
*E* [Alexander] Hislop, “[The] Two Babylons,” p.136; Plutarch, “De Iside et Osiride,” vol.ii, p.336 D.
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In Mexico “the festival of the dead was held on the 17th November, and was regulated by the Pleiades. It began at sunset, and at midnight, as that constellation approached the zenith, a human victim, says Prescott, was offered up to avert the dread calamity which they believed impended over the human race. They had a tradition that, at that time, the world had been previously destroyed, and they dreaded that a similar catastrophe at the end of a cycle would annihilate the human race.”
———————-
**Haliburton, from “Life and Work,” vol.ii, p.390**
———————-
In Rome the
festival of the dead, or “Feralia,” called “Dii Manes,” or “the day of the spirits of the dead,”
commenced on February 17th, the second month of their year.
In more ancient times, the “
festival of the spirits,” believed to be the souls of deceased friends, was called “
Lemuria,” and was
held on May 11th.
This also was the 17th day of the second month of the year at that time; for the old Latin year commenced April 1st, which month consisted of 36 days, so that May 11th was exactly the 17th day of the second month. **Ibid, p.396, and Hales, “Chronology,” vol.i, p.44**”
This is all I have so far.
If one can be objective about this, laying their bias aside, the force of this evidence alone leads to several conclusions..... one is that Noah (or ?) recorded the date & passed it on to his offspring.
More to come...
