Origins of the Judeo-Christian god and religion

Perhaps this is the source of your "evidence" that I just asked you to point me to on the other thread, so maybe I can deal with it here. The Biblical God is THE God of all, UNCREATED, and therefore never a pagan god, which by definition is a CREATED being."Aspects of the name and titles existing in the cultures' polytheistic religions" only proves that the followers of the Biblical God used the terms of their culture to describe their new conception of God, it does not mean that these terms describe the same old polytheistic concepts, as clearly, from the context of the Bible itself, they did not. 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. "Elohim" is also sometimes used in the bible to refer to multiple "gods" or angels. No, the connection with the moon god, or even another god in the polytheistic pantheon, was a HISTORICAL thing, not a mere linguistic connection which would be meaningless, just as it is in the Biblical connection you are trying to make. There is HISTORICAL evidence of Mohammed's choosing to promote the head god of the pantheon to the object of sole worship in Islam. 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 among other things. Interesting you would ignore that plural in Genesis, which is theologically one of the many trinitarian references in the Old Testament. 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: Your point is? 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? Somewhere in Deuteronomy it is even revealed that those who worship them are worshiping demons. They certainly exist and nobody denies it.{ABE: Here's the reference: Deu 32:17 They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new [gods that] came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. } Of course. What else is new?No comment on your Azazel reading except that it sounds very weird and I'll look it up sometime. 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. This is true.The difference here is the HISTORICAL connection of Mohammed's specific use of the main god in Mecca as the one and only God. And perhaps this was legitimate in the sense that Allah was considered to be the creator God above all gods already, and what Mohammed did was eliminate all the OTHER gods, and did in that way make Islam more of an approximation to a worship of the true God.No such historical connection pertains to the Biblical God. 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. This is not a moving of an old image into a new God as it was in Islam, this is the complete supplanting of the old conception by the new. 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.By the way, your link is wrong. It should be: your original post. and my answer to it, which I have elaborated above.{Edited to add Deuteronomy reference to worship of demons/devils.}This message has been edited by Faith, 05-02-2006 01:31 AM

I'll deal with your whole post tomorrow. Right now I just want to comment on this. For heaven's sake, of COURSE there was a TON of pagan influence among the people of God. They were saturated in polytheistic culture -- the God of Abraham was still a new thing to them. When they sinned they made idols of the sort the heathen tribes made. AND YAHWEH PUNISHED THEM FOR IT because He was teaching them the truth about His nature, that He cannot be known under an idol, that the heathen religions were false, that they must learn to know Him as the one and only invisible God over all things.You seem to have a problem rightly dividing the word of Truth. You are always getting things backwards. The Bible reports on the actual situation of the times, it doesn't whitewash anything. It shows the idol worship of the times, and it CONSISTENTLY teaches that this sort of worship is false, that the true God cannot be worshiped in images, and in fact that those who worship idols are really worshiping demons or devils.The idea that a religion so absolutely totally consciously committed to overthrowing polytheism and every false religion could still be polytheistic unbenownst to itself takes a degree of confusion or cynicism or hubris hard to comprehend.

Do you know what a clang association is? It's finding nonexistent meanings in random similarities such as sounds, rhymes, etc. That is what you are doing with language. You are playing word games.You have to show that any of those terms you are referring to have some REAL connection to Yahweh, something, anything. Your thinking that because they look like or sound like "Yahweh" they must somehow BE connected to Yahweh is about as bogus a bit of logic anyone could come up with.What do these terms MEAN in their respective cultures and languages and their association with particular gods. Funny you don't seem interested in that. You just like the clang association.Basically, Arach, you are babbling nonsense.ABE: We KNOW that Mohammed designated the god "Allah" from the pre-Islamic pantheon as the one true God to be worshiped in Islam, though I am no longer convinced this was a moon god, but rather perhaps a god more along the lines of the Greeks' "Unknown God" that Paul preached about, that represented the creator God. Whichever, this transformation of an existing god to the God Allah is a historical fact. This is not a clang association. It actually happened in history.You on the other hand have simply made up a story out of nothing -- a lot of disconnected circumstances -- to pretend Jehovah had a similar origin.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-02-2006 02:22 AM

You are not reading carefully. I have not said that Islam is NOW polytheistic EVER.They are certainly adamantly anti-polytheistic.

No, according to the historical religion, and according to the documents of that religion. This is an objective matter. What we are doing here is determining what the religion IS, among other things and that is an objective matter. Whether you believe the documents is irrelevant.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-02-2006 09:29 AM

Huh? I correct your false accusation that I believe Islam is polytheistic and you give me this lecture about my beliefs?

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. No it is not polytheism. Are you a Mormon? A Jehovah's Witness? They think it is polytheism. They are wrong. 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. 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. Didn't I just say "all these other" gods?I understand there are millions of "gods." Hinduism alone has millions. 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. I am NOT ACCUSING THEM OF IDOLATRY. For heaven's sake READ WHAT I HAVE WRITTEN. I have no idea what that is supposed to prove. 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

The only historical record in this case is the Bible, and Arach answered you correctly. God spoke to Abraham to teach him about Himself and initiate true worship -- or really reinstate the true worship that had been lost at the Fall.

All you have are words and you are trying to build some kind of history out of mere words, all out of your own imagination. The words show only the cultural context in which the concepts are being presented, you cannot claim history from them.Abraham did not pick up the idol El or Yah from the pantheon in Ur and make it into the one and only God. That is simply not what happened and you have no evidence whatever that anything of the sort happened. That such concepts existed in the culture nobody would dispute. That God Himself spoke to the people in concepts they were familiar with would only make sense.But Abraham did not originate his religion, God Himself did, and again, since this no doubt rubs unbelievers the wrong way simply to believe what the Bible reports about such a supernatural intervention in the affairs of human beings, I emphasize: there is NO historical evidence to the contrary.Mohammed on the other hand did apparently historically factually designate the god Allah in the Meccan pantheon as the one true God and eliminated all the other gods.In the process he created a monotheism and overthrew the old polytheism. Islam now worships a concept of the one true God. But its history is different and crucial teachings of Islam contradict Biblical teachings, so that Allah cannot be the same God as Yahweh nevertheless.But I do not say Allah is the moon god and I do not say that Islam is polytheistic, despite this particular history.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-02-2006 10:43 AM

That is an interesting parallel but you gloss over the differences. Abram and Paul heard from God Himself, Mohammed heard from an "angel" and an angel who in fact contradicts what the Bible said, although it was the Bible in which we first hear of this angel, if he were in fact that same angel, so by that we know he wasn't.

It depends. Now it is, but originally it referred to any god in the pantheon. "el" has the plural "elohim" which in the Bible sometimes refers to multiple deities or multiple angels. The Bible says clearly that those who worship other gods are worshiping demons. There is absolutely nothing in the Bible that suggests anything else but that all other gods are false gods. Certainly He was tied to a particular area and people, but even the heathen nations acknowledged Him as the one true God from time to time.

You couldn't be more wrong. If Jesus is not God incarnate Yahweh's nature is utterly changed and there is no Christianity at all. Ishmael IS the father of the Arabs. Nobody denies that. The point of Isaac's being the father of the Jews is that the Jews were God's Chosen People -- and ONLY Chosen People, the people through whom the Messiah, the Savior of the World, God Himself With Us, was to come -- and did come, whose people, those who believe in Him, are His own people. Islam doesn't just say that Ishmael was the father of the Arabs, they say he was the chosen heir of Abraham, thus falsifying the entire claim of the Jews -- and ultimately the Christians. God never sent an angel to inaugurate a great move of the Spirit. He He did it Himself. "Gabriel" isn't even presented as "sent by Allah" in anything I've read, and since "Gabriel" contradicts the Bible, in which he originally plays a part, Mohammed's "Gabriel" is simply not the Bible's Gabriel.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-02-2006 11:53 AM

The Bible itself is the only historical record there is of the events it recounts. Extra-Biblical sources do not relate to these events. Much is made of this or that archaeological find to refute the Bible AS history, but there is nothing that directly refutes anything in it. There is in fact NO other information about Israel and Judaism from the ancient time period. There is archaeological evidence of various other peoples that is sometimes used either for or against the Bible, just as often for, but there is nothing at all directly about the Biblical events. Yes, and I've answered a great deal of his claims already. They are circumstantial and indirect and to use them as he does directly contradicts the actual written account without any warrant whatever, just imaginative reconstruction. There is no valid parallel. The fact is that there ARE plenty of actual historical records about Mohammed and the early years of Islam. There simply are not any about the time period of Abraham and Moses. There are bits and pieces of stuff that fanciful interpretations may cling to, but nothing direct. There is plenty of direct historical knowlege of Mohammed and his times.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-02-2006 12:29 PM

It doesn't matter what anyone believes. The Bible presents God as the uncreated Creator.Allah is also presented the same way by Islam.

Let me put it this way. I don't care which one you believe, but you can't believe both. If you really believe that Islam is right and the Bible is corrupted fine. But Allah is not Jehovah no matter what you believe or I believe. ABE: Edited to change not the same religion to Allah is not JehovahThis message has been edited by Faith, 05-02-2006 06:18 PM