Its called syncretism. The Greeks and Romans have been doing it since the time of Alexander the Great.
Turns out, culture isn't a singular thing you can just have. People everywhere all the time are picking up bits of things to do, things to say, things to believe in, and borders, no matter how fluid they are, only exist in the aggregate.
And not just with the classic Greek/Roman Gods. The similarities between Pandora and Eve, the Flood myths[0] like Deucalion and Noah; there are so many appropriated stories in the Abrahamic religions (probably others, but most familiar with Greek and Abrahamic ones) I don't even understand how these days religion is taken seriously given the historical pattern of appropriation and cleansing of the more fantastical shape-shifting, creature, magic-spell type bits.
In Bible we have stories, songs, history (that cruel part), teachings, prophecies and straight jurnalists like researched relations of Someone life and words.
Think about that: Church know that some stories are older myths and did not removed them from official books. Why ? Becouse religion is much serious thing that some industrialized system. At least for Christians. And "history" can only help to true seekers - why censor the truth, what someone did ? Learn in what "context" things was done and how it looks on others doings background and what was later and what you can learn from all of that. But someone with bad intensions can't be bothered to think much...
And about shape-shifting :) a) if omnipotent God exists than He can do miraculous things, right ? b) that magical creatures are usually described in books that are stories or prophecies not historical one. In case of doubt look a) ;)
Anyway: there is _insane_ amount of wisdom in Christianity teachings, even for atheists.
And if God is True then finally everything He done will be explained as good and just - logic :) There is 'if' there because faith is important. IMO without faith there is no free will - humans are not like angels that just know and decide only once...
It wasn't syncretism, it was systematic eradication. Syncretism is more akin to reconciliation of different views.
Mexico is interesting because it is a certainly a different catholicism than what is practiced elsewhere. Tell a devout old world European catholic about say Day of the Dead traditions and they will probably think its blasphemy. There is a lot of what amounts to local diety worship still as well, although they just label them as some patron saint of somesuch to preserve the veil of monotheism.
It’s worth noting that “monotheism” is a modern word. It was not a word used by theologians of the pre-modern era. The Bible is insistent that God is in some sense “one” or “alone,” and that you don’t offer sacrifices to other gods. People just thought that other gods were demons. It made a big difference to this point of view whether a sailor was asking St. Nicholas to help him get home safely or asking a demon for help, in the same way it makes a big difference whether you call the local mob or the municipal police when you have a problem. The latter are quite analogous to an angel/saint because police don’t have power or make laws in their own right, they are just servants of a higher authority (ultimately, the constitution). The mob, like the demon in the Christian point of view, are in disobedience to that higher authority or in direct competition/rebellion against it. There’s a really big difference even if both paths end with armed men with guns coming to solve my problem.
One point I wanted to make in my original comment was that monotheism vs polytheism is not a helpful object category when talking about 2000 year old religions as their adherents understood it. This analytic category is a fairly recent invention. You can make this distinction if you want, but it will be of precious little use for actually understanding the people of the past.
It’s also not helpful to back-project contemporary understandings of Judaism back into the religious context of the 1st century. The idea that the messiah would be in some sense divine, or even that he would be YHWH Himself, is not purely an invention of the Christians, but was present in Jewish groups prior to Jesus. I would argue this has not even been entirely purged from all strands of modern Orthodox Judaism. This doesn’t even get into stuff like the Zohar/Jewish mysticism where you have 12+ special flavors of God.
All of these groups would have insisted that there’s one true God, but they would also have insisted that he had more than one hypostasis.” Romans at the time also believed that a single God could have different hypostases.* Nevertheless despite this agreement they accused the Christians not of being monotheists but of being atheists because the Christians alone refused to pay respect to any of the hypostases of any of the recognized gods.
The idea that Jesus is depicted as having some kind of separate agenda from His Father is also a very bizarre reading of the New Testament. Jesus’ relationship with The Father seems to be much more complex than that since he says The Son can do nothing Himself and that He only does what the Father is doing, that He and the Father are one, etc.
There nonetheless seems to be some kind of distinction between Them, hence the two thousand years of theological debate. If you want some sources on this type of thought prior to and parallel to Christianity, you can read the book Two Powers in Heaven.
If you pay any attention to Christian history, you would know that this goes back to the very founding instead.
Just want to correct a couple errors of fact here, by quoting from the sources that you're misunderstanding.
"And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, 'Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.'" - Luke 22:41-42 (copied from https://biblehub.com/esv/luke/22.htm)
He doesn't want to suffer and die on the cross. Yet he chooses to serve the Father's agenda, not his own.
"I and the Father are one." - John 10:30 (copied from https://biblehub.com/esv/john/10.htm)
And note that, if you read just a few more sentences, you discover that this statement caused the Jews listening to him to pick up stones to stone him (for anyone who doesn't know, stoning was a method of execution: they intended to kill him). He asks (verse 32) why they want to stone him, and they reply (verse 33) that it's for blasphemy — "because you, being a man, make yourself God."
Finally, I want to address one other point in what you said:
> Christianity, if you ask anyone besides a christian, is polytheistic.
It's true that if you ask most people who are not Christians, most (not all, but most) will tell you that Christians worship three gods. But consider this: if you want to find out about Buddhist teaching, who would be a better source for explaining it to you correctly, a Buddhist, or a non-Buddhist? If you want to find out about Jewish teaching, who would be more informed about it, a religious Jew, or a non-Jew? (The word "Jew" is ambiguous, referring to both a religion and an ethnicity — so I use the term "religious Jew" to distinguish people who follow the religion from people who are ethnically Jewish but don't follow the Jewish religion). If you want to be well-informed about Islam, who would explain it to you better, a Muslim, or a non-Muslim? And if you want to understand what Christianity actually teaches, who's more likely to be correct about it, a Christian or a non-Christian?
P.S. To explain just a little further, the teaching of the Trinity is indeed one of the most complex teachings of Christianity to fully grasp, and there have been countless arguments and debates about it over the centuries. The council at Nicaea in AD 325, which formalized the Nicene Creed, did not completely settle that — some people continued to argue over the doctrine later — but it pretty well cemented the official church position. That the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ("Holy Ghost" in older English texts, but "Holy Spirit" in modern English) are both three and one. The modern English translation of the Nicene Creed is probably worth quoting here (at least the relevant bits) so people can see what the actual teaching is:
"I believe in one God, the Father almighty ... I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial [which means "of one being, of one nature"] with the Father ... I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified ..." (Source: https://www.usccb.org/prayers/nicene-creed, though there are multiple translations, e.g. the translation I'm most familiar with says "of one being with the Father" rather than "consubstantial with the Father").
And before I quit writing this P.S., I want to mention one kind of awesome story about the council of Nicaea. Which is the story about what St. Nicholas allegedly did there. (Yes, the St. Nicholas whose life inspired the story of Santa Claus). Sadly, the story is probably not true, since Nicholas's name does not appear in any of the lists of attendees that have survived... but it's an awesome story anyway. The story goes that Arius was standing in front of the council arguing his position, which was that Jesus had not existed eternally, but was created by God the Father at one point. (The famous phrase is "There was a time when he was not".) That part is certainly historically true. What is likely not historical is the rest of the story: that Nicholas got so mad at Arius's denial of the divinity of Jesus that he got up and slapped (some sources say "punched") Arius in the face.
Which leads to this historical-humor variation on a famous American Christmas carol:
He knows when you are sleeping,
He knows when you're awake,
He knows when you've denied the divinity of Christ,
So if you're an Arian, DUCK!
There are plenty of unique Christian traditions too that didn’t come from surrounding culture. The veneration of relics and body parts of saints in particular was considered grossly alien and offensive to the pagans of the time. It was deeply countercultural to have such veneration for pieces of a dead body and to go so far as to build your places of worship around them, to kiss them, etc. And as far as we know the Christians didn’t get this idea from contact with anyone else, they came up with it themselves. It’s deeply myopic to treat ancient people as devoid of creativity or agency.
Want to make a Catholic mad? Tell them saints are just minor gods of the Christian pantheon.
That’s the whole idea though:
“God became man so that men might become gods,” -St. Athanasius
I'm old enough to remember being taught how America was settled by expanding into the vast wilderness of the continent, and that sometimes they had skirmishes with natives but they found them new places to live.
It turns out it wasn't quite as neat and tidy as suggested.
My sense is that in the US and Canada settlers found a great deal of "apparently" uninhabited land, largely a result of the diseases that had swept through because of earlier contact, decimating the existing population.
My guess is that had disease not done its work, the European settlers would have found it much harder to displace the existing inhabitants.
"...in the realm of religion, it specifically denotes a more integrated merging of beliefs into a unified system, distinct from eclecticism, which implies a selective adoption of elements from different traditions without necessarily blending them into a new, cohesive belief system."
"It provides an opportunity to bring beliefs, values, and customs from one cultural tradition into contact with, and to engage different cultural traditions."
We're talking about adopting cultural practices in a selective and transfigurative way. If a cultural practice doesn't conflict with the Church's teachings and would be beneficial, then it could be embraced as such. A cultural practice may also be transfigured and adapted into something that maintains a certain resemblance, but has a changed and elevated meaning. For instance, having encountered a culture that practices ancestor worship, it might take that practice and transfigure it into a restrained expression of filial piety that moves it away from idolatry. Pagan harvest festivals are another example where the symbolic meaning is changed.