The Hindu Bully

i love evangelical christians. they are so very sweet. i have had several dinners with them--which they very graciously hosted-- in which they helped answer my questions on christianity.i am confident about my beliefs, and so i was immune to any kind of propaganda, subtle or overt. (This included someone leaving a copy of the Bible in my study desk.)

Anyways, i have this really sweet colleague at work and she was teaching me about Christianity. I listened to her for some time and then decided to do some teaching on my own. I told her that the Rig Veda--the oldest hindu text--has been placed around circa 1500-1400 BC by western scholars and that some traditional hindu scholars push the date back even further. She had a kind of flabbergasted look on her face when i said this.

I also clarified her misconception about hinduism being a polytheistic religion. I told her that according to the Upanisads there is only one God although there are many different manifestations of the One God.

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From the wikipedia entry on Rig Veda:

The Rigveda's core is accepted to date to the late Bronze Age, making it one of the few examples with an unbroken tradition. Its composition is usually dated to roughly between 1700–1100 BC.[24] The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (s.v. Indo-Iranian languages, p. 306) gives 1500–1000 BC.[25] Being composed in an early Indo-Aryan language, the hymns must post-date the Indo-Iranian separation, dated to roughly 2000 BC.[26] A reasonable date close to that of the composition of the core of the Rigveda is that of the Indo-Aryan Mitanni documents of c. 1400 BC.[27] Other evidence also points to a composition close to 1400 BC[28][29]