Bhava doesn't mean 'becoming'

[Sunyo]

Hey,

I opened another thread for this discussion about rebirth beliefs in society at the Buddha’s time:

Rebirth is absent in the Vedas. How prevalent was it at the Buddha's time?

A recent thread on the meaning of bhava developed into a discussion on the place of rebirth belief in the Buddha’s society. Instead of discussing it there, I decided to open a new thread about it. (@Jayarava and @Vaddha) It is commonly assumed that the Brahmanical religion always was about rebirth, and this assumption was also present in the other thread. But, as Bronkhorst wrote, “The tendency to look for the origin of the theory of karma and rebirth in the Vedas, once popula…