Lauri Friberg, Mon Dec 23 19:19:21 2019 (Edited on the Christmas Eve the 24th
of December 2019 at 5:40PM-7:18PM. This text is Creative Commons and copyright
by Lauri Friberg 2019). Editing continues the 26th of December, at 03:56AM.
Editing continues on the 26th (Tapaninpäivä, St. Stefan's Day) of December at
6PM:

This is a short essay I wrote about Middle Eastern religions (Zoroastrianism,
Hinduism, Paganism (yes - Paganism originated in the Middle East, believe it
or not), Christianity (birth of Christ), Judaism and Islam (an Abrahamic
religion with its roots in the Arabic world, has some of its own rituals,
beliefs and traditions and some are common with Judaism and Christianity).

I wrote the essay about Christmastime ("Yuletide", "jultid", "joulun aika"),
on the 23rd and 24th of December 2019. Judaism is also mentioned as the
religion of Jesus Christ of Nazareth and of the folk (the people) and of the
Jews (also known as the Hebrews).

THE ASTROLOGY IN "ZOROASTRIANISM":
Interestingly enough there is astrology in Zoroastrianism, as supposedly is or
at least was in Hinduism. Zoroastrians had a god, called "Tishtrya" that is
the Northern Star - "Tish"="Taivas" and "Trya" is "Tyr" (one-handed
Scandinavian-Germanic god), and "Tir" (Persian name for "arrow", the "archer
in the sky", the sky-star-god). It would be "Taivaannuoli" in Finnish, and the
equivalent for it in Finnic Paganry and Shamanism is "Taivaannaula" ("the Nail
of the Sky"), aka "Pohjantähti" ("The Northern Star"). Zoroastrianism competed
with Vedaism that became Hinduism later.

THE THREE WISE MEN IN THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT OF THE BIBLE, THE
BIRTH OF JESUS - THE INTERSECTION OF THE RELIGIONS "ZOROASTRIANISM",
"JUDAISM", AND "CHRISTIANITY":
I had a Christian book that claimed that the Three Wise Men who came to
Bethelehem to behold the birth of Jesus Christ of Nazareth were Zoroastrian
astrologers - Zoroastrian mages, that competed with the religion "Judaism"
that still exists to these days, especially in Israel, the nation-state of the
Jewish folk/people.

WHO WAS *THE* "JESUS CHRIST" OF NAZARETH?
Jesus was an Aramaic Jewish person who was a teacher to Jewish and non-Jewish
(Pagan, Hellenic, etc.) people; he was born about 3 B.C. - 1 A.D. and he died
about 30-33 A.D. Jesus was 30 years of age when he died under shady
circumstances. He was also a Prophet, according to the New Testament and
according to some Islam's writings, perhaps the Koran or some such. I am not
that interested in Islamic writings - one can Google Islamic writings or not,
they are not a very interesting nor important topics in my humble opinion,
although some of the Islamic (Muslim) texts make a lot of sense, like the one
that one should not fast (one should eat and drink) if one is travelling
(wandering).

WHO ARE THE JEWS (ALSO KNOWN AS THE HEBREWS) AND WHO WERE AND ARE THE SEMITES?
WHO ARE THE CAUCASIANS? WHAT ARE THE LANGUAGE FAMILIES IN MOST PARTS OF THE
WORLD? WHAT IS THE INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGE FAMILY AND ITS SUBSETS THE INDIC
LANGUAGES AND THE IRANIC LANGUAGES? WHAT ARE THE "INDO-ARYAN" LANGUAGES?

The Jews are a people - a folk - who have a Jewish nation-state called
"Israel" in the Middle East, West Asia. The Jews are also known as the
Hebrews. They are a Western Aramaic branch of the Bedouins of the Middle East.
Some Jews came from Ur (Uruk, Iraq) of Caldea (Kaldea), and some from Egypt.
There are lots of historical and mythical stories about the wanderings of the
Jews who are considered mainly a religion, but also a people who may speak
various languages, but have regained Hebrew as their main mother tongue in
Israel.

About the Semitic Caucasian people:
The Jews were not the only "Semitic" people since there were the Semitic
Sacae, the Semitic Saxons, the Semitic Persians (Iranic), the Semitic
Aramaics, the Semitic-Hamitic Canaanites (who are considered Hamitic in the
Jewish and Christian Bible), the Semitic Amhari, the Semitic Ethiopians, the
Semitic-Hamitic Arabs, etc. Also the land called Syria is known in Arabic as
Al-Sham ("The Land of 'Shem'"). I discussed the matter with a Jewish person on
the Internet and he said that the Ethiopians are Caucasian as well, as I have
read the U.S. American definition of Caucasian meaning "having Caucasoid
features of the human physique".

The Semitic Caucasians, the Hamitic people, etc:
The Semites are Caucasian, as are some of the Hamitic people - not all - some
of the Hamitic people are Negroid. The Nordic people - including me - are
considered North Caucasian or North Germanic by our features - the
light-colored eyes, the white skin and the hair that changes colour according
to how much sunlight and testosterone affects the scalp of the person. The
Americans call people like me White Caucasian or White, but there is another
definition - "Europid", "Euripid" - "having European-like features".

About the Nordics, the Indo-Aryans and the sons of Noah following the big
flood occurring when the Ice Age ended:
Not too long ago, about 80-150 years ago people like me were considered Nordic
Aryans, but nowadays "Aryan" means a language family that is spoken in the
Caucasus region, and the complete name of the language family is "Indo-Aryan",
and a subset of it is "Indo-Iranic", and its subset is "Iranic" - the other
being "Indic". The Japhetic (Yepphetic) people are probably Nepalese, Tibetan,
Mongolic, Tungusic, Turkic, Chinese and the Japanese - unless the Europeans
are considered Japhetic. The division into the various families of "Sons of
Shem", "Sons of Haam", "Sons of Yepphet" are Old Testament Biblical narrative
about the sons of "Noah" who supposedly built an ark - a big ship (boat) - to
save the animals and himself and his wife and his offspring from the big flood
that is mentioned in probably all of the world's religions that are known
today. The story might have its source from the fact that there was a big
flood when the Ice Age ended. The complete name of the language family of most
of the "lingua francas" of various world parts - including French, English,
German etc. is "the Indo-European language family" in which the "Iranic" and
the "Indic" languages are only a part. On the other hand Finnish is a Finnic
language, Uralic, of the Altaic-Uralic language family. There are other
language families like Afro-Semitic languages, and various language isolates
with no known other members of the language family left in the world, like the
Basque language (Euskadi, Eusker) and the Japanese (Nipponic, Yaponic)
language. The Korean language is an interesting one and I can sometimes read
what it means based on Indo-European - especially English. The Chinese
language is of the Sino-Tibetan language family. There are lots of dialects of
Chinese - the main ones being Mandarin Chinese and the other one I forgot, as
there are of the Arabic language. Sanskrit is an Indo-European Indic language,
it can be considered Aryan but I would not call it "Iranic" though, as Persian
is "Iranic", and the Persians considered themselves "a
 Semitic folk". Hindi is an Indic language, not Iranic - could be considered
Aryan even though the term Aryan was obsoleted when Germany lost World War 2.

ABOUT THE RELIGION CALLED "ISLAM" AND ITS VARIOUS SECTS:
Islam is on the other hand a religion that has spread all over the world, as
has Christianity, and there are a lot of sects in Islam. The main ones being:
"Sunna" and "Shia". There is also something called Sufism, and then there is
Alawite Islam, and Sunna (Islam) and Shia (Islam) also are dispersed into
various cults and sects, of which Salafism (a part of Sunni Islam) is one, and
Wahhabism can also be considered a part of Salafism. Some Islamic writings
make a lot of sense, like what I read in a flea market Islamic book: "One
should not fast if one is wandering." Islam is a collection of very big
religions with various pieces of texts, writings, and the so-called oral
traditions also known as the Hadiths, etc. Google is your friend, or if you
are really interested (I am not very interested, I have studied Islam since my
childhood from 1990's and I know quite a lot about it for a Christian
Westerner) you can go foraging the flea markets and second-hand book shops
(antiquaries, also known as "divari" and "antikvariaatti" in Finnish) and the
public book libraries.

WHO ARE THE ARABS?
The Arabs are various folks and people who speak Arabic as their mother
tongue, and most Arabs are (Sunni) Muslims, although some may be Christians,
Jews, etc. The land called Saudi Arabia used to inhabit Bedouins, but became
the de facto land of the Arabs, when they stroke a deal with some Western
countries about their oil fields.