The Biblical God is THE God of all, UNCREATED, and therefore never a pagan god, which by definition is a CREATED being.
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surely the biblical god was perverted by a few pagan tribes. think of the three golden calves in the bible. think of the samarians.
I'm only aware of one golden calf, and of course it was a perversion of the religion, it was a reversion to the old pagan mentality, and it is clearly repudiated as false, because the true God is not a created being.
ok, now change the word "bible" to "qu'ran" and "god" to "allah" and re-read your own statement. why is this a valid answer for your religion, but not islam?
You keep changing the subject. I am answering your accusations about Biblical religion, I am not addressing Islam, and you keep coming back to this as if I think Islam were a polytheism. It is not and I never said it was.
Maybe because this is a stupid idea -- concretistic thinking I believe is the term for it. "El" meant "god" and described all kinds of gods, including the wind god as well as the Lord of hosts when it was used in the Bible.
and muslims see your assertion as equally stupid. they don't worship the moon god, and it's not THEIR fault that some earlier pagans also called thier god "god."
I never SAID they worship the moon god. Good grief. Even if Allah DERIVED from the moon god I have NEVER said they NOW worship the moon god.
yes, and there is historical evidence that the biblical tradition has roots in polytheism. and that el/yahweh is a member of a pantheon.
Yahweh was never a member of a pantheon, and all you have offered in support of this is some words that have a similar sound in other languages. You are going to have to do better than this.
Huh? We KNOW Elohim is the plural of El, it's discussed in Bible studies all the time as an indicator of the Trinity in its use in Genesis.
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*sigh* what did i tell you about taking a hebrew class instead of a bible study class? elohim is NOT a plural word, unless the grammar indicates it.
You are a FIRST YEAR HEBREW STUDENT and you have your nerve! What unbelievable arrogance. A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT Bible authorities explain the plural use of Elohim and I'm sure THEY know when the grammar warrants it.
seriously, faith. this is relatively simple hebrew grammar. no hebrew-speaking person with a third grade education would make such a claim. it is simply being used to read a preconcieved interpretation into the text. one that is not there.
Words fail me. I am not a Hebrew student but Hebrew EXPERTS over the centuries disagree with you. You are quite a case, thinking you and you alone, with your few months of Hebrew, can judge the entire history of Biblical translation. Why anyone should even have to answer to such adolescent arrogance is beyond me. But that's the democracy of the internet.
interesting you would ignore that plural in Genesis, which is theologically one of the many trinitarian references in the Old Testament.
i was ignoring it because it's an obvious point. but fine. if you wanna play trinity, that's polytheism. muslims consider christians polytheists because of it.
No it is not polytheism. Are you a Mormon? A Jehovah's Witness? They think it is polytheism. They are wrong.
What on earth is your point here? I simply cannot follow your whole section on this topic. Perhaps you would be so kind as to try to put it more clearly for this ignorant fundie to follow? I know it supposedly feeds into your next comment but you lost me completely and I have a response to the next comment anyway:
i think you missed the important point. according to deuteronomy, the sons of god watch over the other nations, one per nation. israel is the lord's portion. we have one divine being per country. that's the same exact idea as a patron god. they have their gods, we have our god. only their gods have been taken down a rank.
Where are you getting "watch over?" God has the tribes of Israel represent the nations and you are making this into something else that makes no sense. Stepping stone from polytheism? I doubt it seriously. Sometimes God shows the TRUE meaning of things that had previously degenerated into polytheism from their original meaning. I don't know if that applies in this case.
my point is that it clearly demonstrates a step in the progress from polytheism to monotheism.
Seems to me it is considered to stand for all time, therefore it doesn't have anything to do with polytheism. It has some other meaning in relation to the one true God that I have not studied.
Arach, you are very confused about something and I'm not sure what. Nobody ever said there weren't all these other "gods" around. Where did you get that idea?
how many gods are there now? how many do you believe exist? one? or many?
Didn't I just say "all these other" gods?
I understand there are millions of "gods." Hinduism alone has millions.
No comment on your Azazel reading except that it sounds very weird and I'll look it up sometime.
knock yourself out. azazel pops up in the book of enoch as one of god's angels (who falls).
You are going to have to spell out your case better than this. I can't read your mind. You seem to think if you merely state a name it carries some complex meaning known only to you.
Didn't I answer you sufficiently on the other thread? I had ALREADY mentioned myself that Abraham's family were polytheists. His family owned household idols. They became an issue in the time of Jacob when Rachel brought the family idol with her to her marriage with Jacob.
ok, so we have a family of polytheists (terah and co). from them, abram is called by the one true god -- a god who was concievably known the his fathers. after all, adam knew god, and the sons of adam called on the name of god. so yahweh was one very likely of their many gods. but he chooses abram to be the father of his chosen people, calls him out of ur, and gives him a bunch of land and a new name. he also reveals to him the (monotheistic) truth.
now, let's contrast this with the claim you're making about muslim's polytheistic origins, where one god is chosen from a group of many, and claimed to be the one true god. how exactly is it different?
The difference is in the historical facts. Mohammed chose Allah from the pantheon and elevated him to the one god of Islam, eliminating all the rest.
The Bible says clearly that Yahweh himself called Abraham, taught him and his family about Himself, and guided the entire development of the history of His own people. He did not derive from any pantheon. I'm sure that in Ur the people DID have the same vague memory of the one true God that all peoples had, but He had been lost in the pantheon because of the Fall.
He Himself rectified that with Abraham and his descendents. Many centuries later, Mohammed followed the example of Biblical religion and turned Arab polytheism into another monotheism. Different history, entirely different.
see, i think you've got a bit of a problem here. yahweh, granted, is the one true god all along. but if he's worshipped as part of a pantheon before judaism is established (i'll be generous here) by abraham, then judaism came out of polytheistic religions. whether or not its the true religion.
Yes it came OUT of polytheistic religions, but NOT IN THE SAME SENSE as Allah did. Yahweh was not known as part of a pantheon -- you have claimed this but not proved it. Whatever god in the pantheon of Ur represented the creator God, it would not have had the name Yahweh. And it was Yahweh who initiated the training of Abraham.
you are applying an immense double standard here. your one god from many is real to you, and you believe in him
The God of the Bible is presented entirely differently from the God of Islam. These are objective matters, not matters involving my faith. The God of the Bible is NOT "a god from many." He is the God of all things who pre-existed all the lesser gods who came as a result of the Fall, and He Himself is absolutely removed from all of them.
, therefor the "out of many" part doesn't matter to you.
Yahweh is not one out of many. Any idol that ever represented him was never a part of the development of Biblical religion.
why then can it be used against a muslim who feels the same way about his god? to him, allah was the one true god all along. and those other pantheists who happened to worship him are of no consequence, because it's the revelation to muhammed that matters. just like, to you, it's the revelation to abram, moses, and jesus that matter, not what abram's polytheistic family believed.
I have no idea what you think I'm arguing. You are always answering some straw man I don't recognize. My argument has been to compare the characteristics of the two concepts of God and show that they contradict one another and therefore cannot be the same God. That is not what I am arguing here. I am simply answering your absurd claim that Yahweh CAME OUT OF polytheism. He did not.
No such historical connection pertains to the Biblical God.
yes, you're right. because it's in the bible, and the bible is not history.
Actually it is history.
That is a story of polytheists GIVING UP their own polytheism in stages as they embrace the one true God who is never represented by an idol and who speaks directly to His chosen ones.
whoa, whoa. never represented by an idol. oh, wait deja vu. check those golden claves again from the beginning of this post. i think you'll find that the people who made them claimed them to be the god of abraham, isaac, and jacob (according to the bible).
Falsely and clearly identified as false. They were always reverting to paganism even as God was trying to teach them true worship.
but you'll find that the god of the bible (which was written after those events, not before) is quite abhorrent of idolatry. allah, in qu'ran, is also quite abhorrent of idolatry -- so much so that the entirety of islamic art is geometric and does not depict anything. why do you think muslims got so offended over muhammed cartoons? it's against their religion to depict their god, their prophet, or anything at all. how can you possibly use claims of idolatry in the name of allah against them, when their commands against it? is your god a golden calf because someone once sculpted one and called it god? or would you laugh at that claim (as well you should)?
I am NOT ACCUSING THEM OF IDOLATRY. For heaven's sake READ WHAT I HAVE WRITTEN.
You have to do better than find a mere linguistic clang association for evidence. Prove that this Yah/Yaw has ANYTHING to do with Yahweh.
I have no idea what that is supposed to prove.
hey, remember those golden calves? guess what el is portrayed as. and guess who's son yaw is. when the hebrews screw up and depict their god, why do you think they keep screwing up in this particular way? clearly, even they were confusing the two.
No doubt they are reverting to a generic idol god. So what? Historically that idol god had nothing to do with the revelation of the character of the true God it may have vaguely tried to represent. Historically Abraham did not take that idol and make it the center of a religion of his invention. But that is what Mohammed did. (And again, I am not saying that Islam is NOW a polytheism. Sheesh.)
This message has been edited by Faith, 05-02-2006 10:15 AM
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