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Stargate mythology

JarodRussell

JarodRussell

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In the Stargate universe, we had aliens acting as Egyptian Gods and Norse Gods. Now all polytheistic religions have been fought be the monotheistic ones, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Is the ONE God, and his representatives like Jesus and Mohammad, also supposed to be a powerful alien?

Any reasons why they didn't do it? The fight between polytheism and monotheism is one of the most interesting aspects of our culture. The idea that there was an alien who fought the Goa'uld "gods" and mercilessly slaughtered anyone who believed in them would have been interesting to pursue. Also the idea that he picked a certain special subgroup of humans and didn't care for anyone else who didn't believe in him.
 
They should have gone there, but Stargate was never about being controversial, so they didn't.
 
They had a Goa'uld who took on the persona of Satan, Sokar I think, and I seem to remember that they hinted at one being connected to christianity who was still living on Earth leading a cult or something.

But that's as far as they could go. I would bet TPTB would never allow them to risk alienating (pun intended) the majority of their viewers.
it's easy to ridicule false gods by making them into belly slug aliens, but not if it's actually your own deity.
 
I would have certainly been interesting, but yeah, Stargate was never about that kind of heavy story. It was too much of an action/adventure show to do something so controversial.
 
In universe, polythesisim was the thing when the goa'uld came to earth, also works better when there is more than one goa'uld still running around. In reality, they probably wanted to avoid controversy.
 
I would think that the Goa'uld would be incapable of impersonating Jesus, because His nature - self-sacrifice, compassion and brotherhood - would be incomprehensible to the Goa'uld.

On the other hand, Satan - being the father of lies - would be absolutely in line with Goa'uld nature. It was obviously easy for Sokar to impersonate the devil, because the Goa'uld basically act like that all the time anyway. But the things that Jesus preached? Those would be foreign concepts to the Goa'uld.
 
i always saw the last two seasons with the Ori as their take on Christianity.
 
If Jesus was a Tok'ra, then his Father must have been the Tok'ra queen. If she started life like any other Goa'uld and only "reformed" due to some mysterious event, it would go a long way towards explaining the difference between God in the Old and New Testaments.....

Just sayin'.
 
I would have made Jesus and Buddha ascended beings. The concept of ascension has a lot of similarities to enlightenment, nirvana, etc.
 
The mythology of the show has always been a bit murky on the point as to whether the Goa'uld were the source of the "old gods" in human culture, or if they simply posed as deities that primitive humans were already worshipping.

I suppose it could be a mixture of the two since Ra's initial arrival appears to pre-date what we know of most ancient religions by several thousand years and yet it seems that other System Lords were active here in much later periods.

As for what the show could have done with monotheistic religions...I think it'd mostly have to be centred around the Alterans and Lantians, ascended and otherwise. That said, given their MO, I can't see any ascended being actively posing as the Judo-Christian-Islamic all powerful creator of the universe. Of course an Ori probably would, but we know they had no knowledge of or influence in this galaxy until recently. Plus even on their own turf, they always presented themselves as a multitude, not a singular. Probably because there's no way any of them would tolerate another trying to rise above the crowd. They'd see it as a threat and wipe out any followers.

There are some things they could do; like for example the story of the virgin birth, the resurrection and the philosophy of Christ in general has all the hallmarks of an ascended ancient trying to bypass the rules in an attempt to guide humanity towards enlightenment.
Artefacts like the staff of Moses and the Ark of the Covenant could quite easily be interpreted as pieces of ancient (possibly malfunctioning) technology. IIRC the latter's "supernatural" capabilities supposedly included being able to push back the waters of the river Jordan (not the Red Sea--different slightly later story) being deadly to the touch, or even striking dead a whole town of people that looked inside the box.

So maybe a force shield generator with an exposed (and highly radioactive) power source? Not really much of a story there, though I suppose one might cast Moses himself as either a "descended" ancient, a surviving Lantian (maybe even Moros himself) or a disciple of Oma. In this version of course Oma would be the messenger that met Moses atop Mount Sinai.
 
When they met the Tolans, Jackson says something about the Middle Ages and religion pausing technological progress for centuries.
 
^I don't think that's quite what he said. IIRC it was more along the lines of "if it weren't for the Dark Ages we'd be colonising space by now". What happened in the Dark Ages was a massive technological regression across Europe caused (by and large) by the collapse of the Roman Empire and the final death throws of Byzantium.

While it may have been a contributing factor in a social context, the spread of Christianity in the west and Islam in the middle east and north Africa was more a symptom of that collapse than a direct cause. They were basically filling a void left by the old religions. Indeed, it was thank to the Islamic nations that a lot of Greek and Roman knowledge was preserved while we were busy burning witches and playing musical thrones (think musical chairs, but with more beheadings and less music.)
 
Reverend said:
^I don't think that's quite what he said. IIRC it was more along the lines of "if it weren't for the Dark Ages we'd be colonising space by now". What happened in the Dark Ages was a massive technological regression across Europe caused (by and large) by the collapse of the Roman Empire and the final death throws of Byzantium.

While it may have been a contributing factor in a social context, the spread of Christianity in the west and Islam in the middle east and north Africa was more a symptom of that collapse than a direct cause. They were basically filling a void left by the old religions. Indeed, it was thank to the Islamic nations that a lot of Greek and Roman knowledge was preserved while we were busy burning witches and playing musical thrones (think musical chairs, but with more beheadings and less music.)
Click to expand...


It is important to note that both Christian Europe and Islamic Middle East was built on on pagan Greek and Roman achievements as their territories covered these once pagan areas. In Islam's case, you have to include Zoroastrian Persian's culture and architecture .

For example, the dome you see on most mosque, that is actually a Zoroastrian and Byzantine architecture feature. It predates Islam by thousands of years. Russian churches have some similarities with mosques because both have Byzantine influence. The ancient Zoroastrian fire temples had huge courtyards and the Muslims copied that for their mosque design as well.

The famous crescent and star symbol is also originally an imperial Sassanid Persian symbol. When the Arabs conquered Persia in the 7th century, they adapted many aspects of the great Persian culture.

The Zoroastrian Persians also originated the concept of angels which the Jewish, Islamic and Christian mythologies later copied and modified.

As we all know that the age of enlightenment happened when we all got less religious. Religion was responsible for the Dark Ages negative effects.
 
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