Dynasties Of The God Myth And Cultural Change

God myths of the Hsia, Shang and Chou Dynasties, the main social role of which were to mediate potential contradictions between hereditary rights and the moral dominations. This function was mainly manifested in providing legitimate explanations for the continuation or replacement of the Dynasties. The alternations of Hsia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties resulted in cultural conflicts and fusions among different nations, which brought lots of new myths. The fusions of old and new myths and the absorptions from the myths of the surrounding nations made the Hua-xia nationality culture constantly enrich. This process of cultural changes has given birth to humanities in the pre-Qin, which was indispensable driving force of the Axial Age civilization. The main research method of this paper is the method of dual evidence, and the other research method is from the early myths studies of Levi Strauss. Then this paper involves in the fields of Mythology, Cultural Anthropology, Religious and Philosophy, etc. Mainly based on the Pre-Qin documents and literatures and "Records of the Grand Historian", "The Book of Rites", etc, and on Bone Inscriptions, JinWen, bamboo and silk manuscripts, etc.The Introduction of this paper addresses two main issues. One is discussing the origin of the Supreme God beliefs through analysing the Original meaning of the word "Di" and the primitive religious beliefs. The other is the evolutions of the title of the Supreme God. This paper's view is that the Supreme God beliefs have formed in the primitive tribes unification period, and this was the result of the integration among the Worship Gods in tribes. The Supreme God before the mid-Shang Dynasy was called "Di." Since the late Shang Dynasy, the title of "ShangDi" was called the Supreme God, and this title was extensively used in the Zhou Dynasty. However, the title of " Tian" or" TianDi " were used in the period of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which referred to the same Supreme God. Therefore, to facilitate the formulation, "Di", "ShangDi" and "TianDi" are all defined as the ancient Supreme God, no longer setting them out.The first chapter mainly elaborates the Supreme God beliefs in the Hsia Dynasty before and the Hsia Dynasty. This paper's view is that the tribal amalgamations in the Pre-Hsia period also led to the cultural fusions, and the idea of Supreme God was initially formed in this time. There have been a unified belief of the Supreme God in Hsia. the God in Hsia had the uppermost status, and the important events of the emperors must have been permitted by the God.Chapter II mainly expounds the God myth and the rule characteristics of Shang Dynasty. This paper'view is that the God in the Shang period was the ruler of both the nature and the world, and was the numen of the rulers of Shang Dynasty. The rule features of Shang Dynasty was God politics, there was a rank of Shaman who mastered divine right. Emperors were the highest shaman. Divine right was fading in the late Shang Dynasty.Chapter III is mainly about the God myth in the Western Zhou Dynasty and the idea of God. This paper's view is that the rulers of the early Zhou Dynasty retained certain God belief of the Shang Dynasty, while they argued that the God is not a numen of exclusive tribe, but who sheltered the moral people. The supreme God was also titled "Tian" in the early Zhou Dynasty. The ethical concepts was connected with the God consciously by the people in Zhou Dynasty. Meanwhile, the humanistic spirit began to be Consciously awakened.Chapter IV mainly elaborated with the conflicts and integrations between faith and reason in the Eastern Zhou period. In this paper, the point is that the changes between human and gods resulted from the decline of royal family, The rise of rationalism has made no longer a mysterious God, the auguries for the will of God tended to be auxiliary positions. Reverence for gods has been raised with the purpose of moralizing people. Cosmology followed Creation Myth, philosophical conceptions were derived from the development of abstract thinking.Chapter V is mainly based on the foregoing analysis about the supreme god myths, discussing the myth thinking pattern and religious concepts of ancient supreme god myths, and analyzing special religious character of ancient Chinese culture, to further explore the different trends and traditions of the ancient Chinese cultural development. Conclusion is to be briefly summarized this paper.