I read the Analects of Confucius. It's a good one because like Gilgamesh it was created outside of the constant necessary glorified warfare world of the Old Testament and the Iliad and the Odyssey. There's so much conflict and war culture interwoven into everything in the west it's hard to figure out that that's not all there is to public life. Eastern religion, even Confucius who is seen as more conservative and hierarchical, is far more serene.
I don't understand the remark about Gilgamesh (or really, about the analects...).
The epic of gilgamesh came from mesopotamia, the land of a hundred city-kings perpetually at war with each other. Look at what Sargon is famous for. All of our records of mesopotamia come from their clay tablets. Clay will last a long time if you fire it, which the people of the time did not do. Generally, the reason we have a tablet is that it was accidentally fired when a conquering king burned its city to the ground. How does all this say "outside of the world of constant necessary warfare" to you?
Similarly, Chinese history records orderly transitions from one dynasty to the next for political reasons. If you count it up, I believe China spent nearly as much time in a state of several-conflicting-governments as it did under a unified one, up until the modern period.
Ignoring the fact that China was at a near continuous state of war during the time of Confucius, with many huge and bloody battles as the various Chinese states tried to conquer each other.
> Still the warfare in ancient China didn't result in Chinese thinkers creating "jealous rules-giving God"
I would suggest that what they did create to successfully end the constant warfare (which Confucianism failed to do), Legalism, was even more horrifying than any monotheism. Have you ever read, say, the Book of Lord Shang?
Apparently the times of legalism were around 3rd century BCE, and then "In later dynasties, Legalism was discredited and ceased to be an independent school of thought."
I don't claim that it was all rosy afterwards, but let's also not forget that it were the British that were literally drug dealers to the Chinese, that even started the war once the Chinese weren't ready to accept it anymore:
> Apparently the times of legalism were around 3rd century BCE, and then "In later dynasties, Legalism was discredited and ceased to be an independent school of thought."
Thankfully. Once the empire was united, there wasn't as much need for Legalism and it was beaten out by the much nicer Confucianism.
> I don't claim that it was all rosy afterwards, but let's also not forget that it were the British that were literally drug dealers to the Chinese
I don't see how that's relevant. The British didn't invent opium because they were monotheists, they did it for economic reasons.
