Origins of the Judeo-Christian god and religion

Googling on Finegan I found this site. It's a light hearted not so scholarly but intelligent look at the pagan roots of Christianity. Worth a click and quick look.POCM > Getting Started > ancient religion for dummiesThe site does include Finegan's book in their recommended introductions; lfen

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The power of this book is that it isn't aimed at proving a connection between paganism and Judeo-Christianity -- so you're sure the author isn't skewing things to fit that argument. Yet you'll read about flood and creation myths paralleling Noah and Adam, about pre-Christian ideas of the immortality of the soul and life after death, and about lots and lots of Gods who die and are reborn.

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i find it highly ironic and amusing when a book sets out to prove its point, sticks to its guns, but accidently proves the other guy's point in the process to any reader with a brain. this only seems to happen in religious debates and apologistics -- when fact doesn't matter; only belief.once, i saw a webpage explaining why leviathan had to be a dinosaur -- but it spent most of the article comparing leviathan to lothan/tiamat, and other mythical dragons. the conclusion came as complete non-sequitor; like whoever wrote it hadn't even read the rest of the article.

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Yes, as CS Lewis pointed out, there were plenty of half-starts toward Jesus Christ before He, the Real Thing, arrived.The similarities are there but really they are very thin compared to the Read Thing.And there's a fallacy involved in this, the implication that if it predates it, it therefore influenced it.

Just in case you misread something, which I think you did, this paragraph is not in Finegan's book, it's on the website, which is not a Christian website, in fact it's an ANTI-Christian website.And by the way, I've been skimming the book, and it's clear from my marginal notes that it's not a fundie book to say the least.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-06-2006 03:12 PM

It's also in II Chronicles 15:3 regarding Israel's departure from the true god, hardly a latter text, being sometime in the nineth century BC. Jeremiah is only about three centuries later. Check out I Timothy 4:1, which addresses the incidence of seducing demonic spirits relative to false doctrines. This clearly implicates also the false gods of those false religious doctrines.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW

Hardly. How did you get that out of waht I said? It's ALL true.

Good observation. (post-hoc).(The name of the fallacy for readers)

yes, i know it's not in the book. i just find it funny when someone presents all of the overwhelming evidence for the other side, makes a weak argument, and declares victory even though it's very apparent they failed to make their case. that seemed to be what this review was saying the book did. i've seen one camp of fundies turn against another camp's books. i saw a book once about dinosaurs in the bible -- and the review on amazon lambasted it because it wasn't young-enough earth creationism.but honestly, it does not sound like a pure academic work, it sounds like a book written to further an agenda.

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Having not read the whole thread, I'm not fully apprised on what's been covered. I'm wondering if the credibility of the Biblical record has been addressed relative to the topic title and OP.After all, the origin of the Judeo-Christian god and religion hinges a lot on the credibility of that Biblical record. Though there are debates on some of this history, much of the Biblical record has been verified by archeological discoveries. The more verifications, the more credible the history. Thus the more info we have as to the question posed in the topic.Of course, the prevailing secularist agenda in academia has the natural tendency to promote their agendas. The remarkable discovery of the chariot wheels, et al in the Gulf Of Aqaba, which has been debunked by secularists even though secularist scientists have thus far declined to even research the site along with the corroborating evidence in the region is a classic example of this bias.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW

how? by paying attention.

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the cultural context of the time and place influenced the terms used to describe it all and that Abraham was not devoid of cultural and linguistic reference points by which to understand and describe his experiences of God's speaking to him

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you wrote that abraham would have understood god in polytheistic terms, or that god would have presented himself in terms a polytheist could have understand. you have also time and time again presented the idea of continuing revelation: the jews were right, but now they are not.how can it ALL be true if god keeps making corrections? the only way i can see is if god himself is doing the changing. which can't be the case if the bible is all true:

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Mal 3:6 For I [am] the LORD, I change not;

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reducto ad-absurdum. logically, your initial assumption must be false.

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you don't want to get into it. go pick up the current issue of smithsonian magazine. it's got an articles abotu biblical archaeology. there's a few great gems in it detailing the circular logic at work in "verification of the bible."for instance, they tend to ask the local bedouins for the traditional arabic names of places, and match them up with the bible -- forgetting that fact that in the 50's when israel was establishing itself, many people went around re-naming places with biblical names to establish israeli identity. they're not getting names 2000 years old, they're getting traditions their grandfathers set up with no actual archaeological knowledge.they also describe how many sites are dated using the bible, and then their dates are used to back up the bible. this is simple unacceptable in terms of verification. much of the "verified" discoveries are very, very questionable, and many disprove certain aspects of the bible. like the fact that jericho was abandoned more than a century before joshua would have gotten there. chez wyat.it doesn't prove anything. it means egyptians, at some point, were in the gulf of aqaba. since BOATS are relatively common things...

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i'm not so sure about your timing. chronicles is later than sam/kings. i don't know how it relates to jeremiah -- but i doubt they are three hundred years different. chronicles was finalized (iirc) right after exile. jeremiah was a contemporary of that period. still doesn't say "all." which i'm not sure is even the argument, but we're making progress. if it becomes apparent that this is the standard message of the bible regarding other religions, faith might have a point. (i don't know)but it doesn't sit easily with the abscence of such statements regarding ba'al in the old testament.

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And that is only IF they even can find chariot wheels.As I recall the one Wyatt claimed to have found was entrusted to the care of some curator and then both the wheel and curator went missing. I don't think anyone had heard of the curator or Wyatt couldn't recall his name something like that. Another one of Wyatt's flimsy lies.The photos are of clumps of coral that with the help of overlays could possibly be chariot wheels. But you could do the same thing with photos of clouds.in brief, Wyatt among his many claims claimed to have found chariot wheels. He never produced the Ark of Covenant, Noah's Ark, Chariot wheels and I forget what all. What he produced were movies that he sold.I actually think Buz is probably a very nice human being but I've given up talking with him. As long as it fits his pre judgements there is no evidence too flimsy or riduculous for him and on the other hand he will bend, cut, and mutilate any argument to get it to fit his foregone conclusion. In short Buz knows what he knows. Knows how to repeat it ad nauseum over the course of years. That is sum total his concept of evidence, logic, and argument.Wyatt of course was a complete flim flam artist. I should open up a website and start selling peices of the true cross, worked for Ron!lfenABE: Thinking about the chances of being prosecuted for fraud I realized Ron's genius. Con people in securities, land, etc. can get prosecuted, but all of Ron's victims were more than happy to pay money for his fraud and let's say they became discouraged, since it was matter of faith was there even a crime involved? Seems religious scams are the safest to pull off and with such a large group of people to prey on potentially very lucrative.This message has been edited by lfen, 05-06-2006 01:11 PM

"there are enough splinters of the true cross in europe to build noah's ark." and tax-free.

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What agenda? The one you're defending maybe. Or jar's. To judge by my marginal notes. Not my agenda. You jumped to a wrong conclusion about the book and the review of it too. Reread it. You missed the boat.