I have always looked in vain for someone to discuss the Bible with who actually knows the Bible.
People who know the Bible come in two flavors: fundamentalists and theologians. The theologians have heard it all and look down upon me from a lofty peak.
Another problem is that professional theologians are all psychopaths. They answer whatever they need to answer.
When I ask a basic question, fundamentalists go bananas.
Now that I have Hardison and some other rational people who know the Bible, I would like to discuss some stuff.
One thing that occurs to me is that the writers of the Old Testament are a lot more honest than modern Jehovists. Genesis does refer to “elohim,” meaning “the gods,” in one case, and modern Jehovists simply tossed that out of the translation.
One major oversight modern Jehovists made was replacing the Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” with the Moslem declaration, “There is one God, and He is God.”
Is there a particular point in the Bible where monotheism began. I have a feeling it was from Zoroastrian influence when so many Jews were in Persia. They were very grateful to Persia and the Persian emperor Cyrus was, I believe, the only gentile inthe Old Testament who was said to be “doing the work of God.”
Today we have a hard time believing in God at all. But in those days, I think they had a different problem. It was hard for any people to believe that the gods of Egypt or Sumeria or even the Greeks did not exist, and they had the only one.
Note that, in the Commandment, there are THREE words the modern Jehovists should have deleted. They are capitalized below:
“THOU shalt have no OTHER gods BEFORE me.”
That could have been a commandment from the Egyptian god Amon to the Egyptians. That could have been a commandment from Zeus, the Father-God, to the Greeks.
At this point, the fundamentalist would be shrieking at me. I had to get a blog going to find some logical people to talk this over with.
#1 by Elizabeth on 12/11/2004 - 7:03 pm
Zoroastrianism is a monotheisation of Mazdaism, which had a hierarchy of gods. (I think I remember correctly: I’m too tired to look it up right now.)
There were Egyptian monotheists. Pharaoh Akhenaten (Nefertiti’s husband) is pretty well known, but there was at least one before he lived.
I had an argument with a black guy back in the mid-80s: he was trotting out that ridiculous Afrocentrist/du Bois nonsense about Cleopatra being black. I expressed my _polite_ skepticism and asked him why didn’t he mention Akhenaten, who had some Nubian ancestry? Nah. He’d rather conjure up fantasies about Cleopatra as a mighty black Queen.
#2 by mark on 12/11/2004 - 8:22 pm
Most of my fellow Christians take the term Elohim used in the Old Testament to be the same concept as the Christian belief in the trinity Father , Son and Holy Ghost or as they were referred to in the Old Testament The Lord , the Word of the Lord and the Spirit of the Lord.
#3 by Don on 12/12/2004 - 10:36 am
Can we also discuss “The Emperor’s New Mind” by Roger Penrose?
#4 by Peter on 12/12/2004 - 7:09 pm
You are right that the early religion of the Old Testament was a form of polytheism. New finds from the Dead Seas confirm what was already in the Septuagint (which the Eastern church still uses), which was conveniently changed for us in the newer Masoretic (which the Western church uses). Deut. 32:8-9, from the old Septuagint or the Deaed Sea scrolls can be translated literally:
When El the Most High alloted to the nations their patrimony, when He segregated Adam’s sons, He set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of El’s Sons.
And His people Jacob became YHWH’s portion, Israel his inheritance.
If you read this version closely, Bob, you will find a cute definition of “Chosen” as in “chosen people.” Chosen = stolen. Think about it.
According to these two verses, the biological races were created by El. “Jacob” was stolen from the gods’ respective inheritances.
I did some reading about the texts the Germans dug up from Ugarit. There you find that El is the Father God, the Creator. The gods are his sons and bear his name as the “Els” (elohim). The Eldest El is the Lord (Ba’al=”the Lord,” only priests were allowed to utter his name, Haddad). The Lord was the cosmic Prime Minister, who ruled the world under the El the Most High. The so-called names of God that we read of in the Psalms — such as the El Shaddai, Adonai (= Greek Adonis, the Greeks tell us they adopted the myth of Adonis from the Levant), the god Salem/Shalom/Solomon — are in Ugarit “Els” (elohim) and “El’s Sons.”
YHWH is not part of the heavenly pantheon which assembled on Mount Tsephon, which is a cognate to Mount Zion. He is in Ugarit known as Yau/Yaw and Yam, a deity of the death-dealing chaos of the stormy seas. He is closely associated with the World Serpent — Leviathan — who is either his pet or is another embodiment of Yau himself. He hates the Lord, and wishes to kill him and take over his Lordship. Yau indeed does kill him, but the Lord is resurrected. The Lord, in turn, defeats Yau, and cuts up his body, and disperses him.
These Ugaritic texts pre-date the New Testament.
Does this ring any bells, Bob? The symbolism here is uncanny.
I admit I boiled down a whole lot of material here. But I hope I whetted someone’s curiosity.
If nothing else, it is a curious bit I put together, don’t you think?
#5 by Don on 12/13/2004 - 7:36 am
Not serious on that one. I do like the book, however.
#6 by Peter on 12/13/2004 - 6:48 pm
Sorry about the excessive bold face above. It looks like I forgot to put in an “end bold” thingymajiggy after “and disperses him” as I meant.
#7 by Richard L. Hardison on 12/15/2004 - 7:44 pm
Hi Whit! I’m just back from North Carolina and catching up.
The descendents of Abraham did not become monotheistic until the exodus. There is one passage where Moses asks God what he should say if the people ask him which God sent him. God’s reply “I am that I am” is the starting point. Abraham had a problem sheding his polytheistic past and those gods were passed on to his posterity, never fully passing from their memory until well after the conquest of the territory that would house the state and nation of Israel. A statement, made during the exodus (which includes the wandering period) was “hear O Israel, the Lord they God is one!”
Calvinism, in this country at least, has had a consistent problem with unitarianism (and that isn’t the only theological problem they have, but that’s another story). The hotbed of Calvinism in this country was in New England, particularly Massachussetts. It was a Puritan pastor, Chauncy, that played a large roll in ending the great awakening. In 1745 he had strong unitarian leanings, and by 1785 was a complete Unitarian and Old Brick, the church he pastored for years had become a Unitarian congregation. Universalism is a common heresy of Calvinism as well, also getting its strong start in the US in the same area of the country. It is interesting to note that Garrison, a leading abolitionist, was a Unitarian and played a large part in driving true christianity out of the anti-slavery movement. Finney, for example, refused to work with them because he could not stomach their heresies or their hateful manners.
The usual accepted meaning of “elohim” refers to the trinity known by christians (even the oneness Pentecostals believe in a form of the trinity and are not, in that sense, unitarians as are the Unitarians or Moslems). Israel, of course did not understand this, and had serious problems accepting Christ as “son of God,” which was tantamount to declaring himself God in the real sense they understood.
The term “El” is simply “God” and was used, at times, in the same way as “Adonai,” or “Lord.”
#8 by Peter on 12/15/2004 - 10:15 pm
Richard L. Hardison:
You are right how some reinterpret “elohim.” It is difficult to say how Judaic theology foreshadowed the Trinity; elohim grammatically means “gods.” In the local myths, they are called elohim because they are the literal sons of the father god El, whose eldest son was called the “Lord.” Indeed, the names of these gods from the western Syrian pantheon are found in Psalms (written long after the exodus) and in other parts as well.
#9 by Richard L. Hardison on 12/16/2004 - 10:02 pm
Peter, you will never get a serious Hebrew scholar to agree with you. The thesis you posit is not new, and was debunked long ago. There were a few minor attempts at syncretizing Judaism with other relgions, but generally it was the non-Jew that did it. One must realize in those days the God(s) of the victors were regarded as the more powerful God(s) and the “less” powerful God(s) often saw their following evaporate. Major exceptions to this were the Greeks and Romans. The Greeks adapted Egyptian gods, under different names, and the Romans, who were heavily influenced by the Greeks (the Latin alphabet was actually one of several Greek alphabets) adopted Greek gods and renamed them (i.e. Ares vs. Mars the god of war).