Origins of the Judeo-Christian god and religion

I have not switched anything. I've said all along that some gods are merely invented.The reason there is no point in arguing with you is that your arguments are emotional. It all comes down to a matter of who sees what in the Bible and there's no way to argue that. And you are belligerent.

Yes I've read a lot of that. I also just found, in the process of unpacking some boxes I had in storage, a book about "the pagan religions of the Biblical world" that has my notes all through it. I'd forgotten I had it. But it's not written from the viewpoint that is popular on this thread, this unsupported belief that any of it influenced the God of Israel in some substantial way, though I would assume there are incidental cultural similarities.The reason there is no point in arguing is that the tone has turned nasty and the "arguments" are unsubstantiated empty prejudice.

How ridiculous and sad, but of course it does happen -- because Christians aren't given a solid grounding in such things. I just mentioned in a previous post a book I read years ago about the pagan religions, after I was a Christian in that case, and I also started out reading in Hinduism and Buddhism and various cults, so there's nothing in the mere facts that is a problem for me.The problem is the attitude of my opponents and their dogmatic insistence on some supposed equivalence between all religions, or influence from these pagans to the Biblical God -- dogmatic, aggressive and belligerent but unsupported in any substantive way.In the ways that matter the Biblical God shows Himself to be the true God, and the others are mere approximations at best, and mere human inventions or complete counterfeits and usurpers at worst. Focusing on incidental cultural similarities misses the point. C.S. Lewis wrote something to the effect that it would only make sense that there would be many half-right conceptualizations of the Real Thing in the world before the Real Thing appeared.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-06-2006 09:46 AM

I thought I'd answered this post last night, but I guess not. I never said ALL the gods are demonic. Some are human inventions. I think it's Isaiah in particular who has the sarcastic passage about how men will cut down a tree and use it for various things including wood for burning, and also carve a god out of it to bow down to and worship. You have to read the Bible as a whole rather than judge any passage only on the way it strikes you in itself. First of all Yahweh is presented throughout the Bible as the Creator God who rules over ALL THE EARTH, not just a local God. This in itself makes all other gods false in the sense at least of being counterfeits and usurpers of the true God's position.Then from the Bible as a whole I get the impression of people believing in powers they think are God but aren't, even though they carve the god themselves to represent them, and in the end these may turn out to be backed by the powers of demonic usurpers.Extra-Biblical sources also demonstrate some deep human wisdom associated with various religions or metaphysical ideas, which to my mind shows that humanity still retains much of the image of God however distorted -- but the Biblical God is nevertheless the source and fulfillment of this wisdom.

no, faith, not bible-study-books-about-other-cultures. ancient literature. not interpretative works that attempt to apologize for and explain away the blatant similarities, the original works themselves. are you capable of forming a thought yourself? or does some person you consider an authority have to think it for you first?surely, you remember the thread where we compared the wordings of gilgamesh and genesis, to determine why one was being called history and the other myth? surely, you must remember how blatantly similar to two texts were in that particular story. the arguments on your side have always been unsubstantiated empty prejudice. that's the point you don't seem to get -- you believe in your god. not allah. you are looking at the same evidence two different ways, and your "facts" boil down to a difference of opinion.

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a solid grounding in denying the obvious? when one reads the bible as literal fact, the word of god, because they see it as special and set apart -- and then they come upon another dozen books that read exactly the same way, it can cause problems.the solid grounding should be in a rational, realistic reading of the bible. i don't think hinduism and buddhism count as cults, but i'm not sure that's what you mean. not equivalence. similarities where there are similarities. no one is maintaining that islam is the same thing as judaism. they're not. clearly, they believe differently. ...and if this argument is valid for christianity, it's valid for islam. they believe they have the "Real Thing" and that everything before was at best half-right conceptualizations. you see their belief as invalid, because you believe differently.

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Why the nasty tone, ohnai?Again, no I haven't changed my mind about anything, and I never called the other gods "utter fiction," and I don't know where you got that.The other gods are ENEMIES of the God of the Bible, far from willing to "exist under the dominion of" the true God. If they are demonic, as certainly some are, they are in the service of Satan's ambition to be worshiped in the place of the true God, and if they are man-made they are distorted by fallen nature into shrunken ideas of God that amount to misrepresentations of Him.

people like to say this for hard-to-defend propositions. now, a change in the personality of god takes the whole bible to see the picture -- but you can defend it with specifics. can you defend this with (multiple) specifics? except for the earlier parts of the bible, which we've already quoted, that portray him as a localized god. whether or not he is (and i don't believe he is) that's how he's portrayed by a few passages. to say that some other passage or interpretation changes the meaning of that is to say the bible contradicts itself, and you like one particular section better than another. are you willing to do that? i'm fine with gods being false. i'm just curious where the "demonic" bit comes from. simple question. was there a demon behind the three golden calves? or the bronze serpent? i think these are the most prominent idols early judaism fell prey to.you might be able to argue that ba'al is a demon -- but it never shows ba'al having any power at all. it'd be easier to argue that he doesn't really exist.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 05-06-2006 10:34 AM

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Well, your attitude certainly leaves something to be desired. At what point did you decide not to deal honestly with my arguments and treat me like this?I'm not a scholar of ancient religions so I can hardly be expected to "think for myself" in such an area without the work of scholars for help. In other words, I'm not like you, refusing to trust in the work of others.The book in question is a scholarly study from a "professor emeritus of New Testament history and archaeology at Pacific School of Religion and Graduate Theological Union" in Berkeley, California, name of Jack Finegan, well researched and documented with 18 pages of bibliographic notes, and the table of contents covers "Mesopotamian Religion, Egyptian Religion, Zoroastrian Religion, Canaanite Religion, Greek Religion, Roman Religion, Gnostic Religion, Mandaean Religion and Manichaean Religion." For all I know he has a liberal Christian perspective I wouldn't agree with, but I see no reason to doubt his scholarship. Perhaps I could reread the book and discuss it with you on another thread.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-06-2006 10:39 AM

I see the Bible as building upon itself, progressively unfolding new revelations of the character of God and the world. What you call contradictions I recognize as facets of the whole. Nowhere are any of them contradictions except in your own mind. Anyone who reads the Bible out of context will fragment it.Perhaps I overlooked your quoted evidence for this idea that the Biblical God is a local god in the early chapters of the Bible? You say you don't believe this but yet you believe the basis on which such ideas are held. Does that make what you believe simply irrational then?This is one thing that makes such discussions as this thread a lost cause. If you refuse to read the thing in context there is really nothing to discuss, as we start from unreconcilable premises. And you even ridicule those who do read it in context as simply trying to avoid the difficult stuff of some descriptions you personally find problematic, not grasping that perhaps that's your own problem caused by your methods. This is hardly a civilized context in which to debate. And then you accuse me of cowardice if I take this position I'm expressing here as well. You are quite willing to descend to low methods of debate it appears.I'm not interested in trying to figure out which of the foreign gods may or may not be demonic. I think the Biblical revelation avoids such ideas in general because people are not really prepared to face them. It merely gives hints here and there. It isn't until Jesus comes that the demonic realm is revealed as pervasively present and active in the world.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-06-2006 10:58 AM

Not wanting to come over emotional or belligerent, I do humbly have to ask you to re-read your post (#200, of this thread) You clearly state that “ . people DO invent gods, all the others”. To me, at least, this is a clear statement that you believe all gods other than your own are inventions. Then in #220 you call your god ”God of Gods” and give him jurisdiction “over all the gods of earth”, this is a clear statement that you believe that these other gods exist.So which is it?

Sorry if I misspoke. In some sense all the other gods are inventions however, yet some are also backed by demonic powers. I don't regard the distinction as too crucial but I guess that can lead to confusion. The "other gods" are never considered actual gods in the Biblical context rightly understood. They are all false in one way or another. Sometimes the Bible says they don't exist, but this simply means they aren't really gods, not that SOMETHING doesn't exist that people are worshiping, whether a demon or a false idea of God of their own invention.Thank you for quitting your insulting tone. I appreciate it.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-06-2006 11:20 AM

It's about the "Origins of the Judeo-Christian god and religion".Can folk try to head back towards that subject?

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your arguments are not honest. there is no way that i can deal honestly with dishonest arguments -- they are based entirely on your subjective opinion and belief. no, faith, it's not that. gilgamesh is a pretty available book. go down to barnes and noble and buy a copy. or go to the library and borrow one. it's not difficult to read for yourself.this is the same kind of argument that brought on the dark ages. how would you react if someone told you "don't read the bible, just trust what we have to say about it?" because he's very obviously writing with an agenda, from the title. i can't think of any time i've heard the word "pagan" applied to other semitic religions -- it usually connotates greek and roman pantheons, not the religions of places like ugarit and samaria, and it's barely applicable to babylon. only someone with a christian agenda calls these religions pagan, because to them everything but their particular sect is pagan.and anyone who can write a book with chapter headings on egyptian religion, and greco-roman religion should not be trusted. my mother got her masters in classics -- so she has entire bookshelf relating to greco-roman mythology and literature. even some of the books on it are condensed overviews.would you trust someone to tell you all about the entire history of christianity and judaism in one chapter of one book written to explain why islam is superior? or would you want to read the bible, the talmud, the midrashim, augustine, aquinas, etc?

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and the earlier revelations, being told in terms the crude polytheists could understand, are less accurate then? well, evidently, we ran into one in this thread. you say seth's line is called "godly" but joshua says they were idolators. do you see this as a problem? (i don't, btw. i believe in a forgiving god, and i think it's rather consistent with the mood of the old testament) anyone who reads it in context will realize that it's a book composed of fragments. between the henotheistic tendencies of the patriarchs (no challenges to the local authorities of other gods) and the polytheistic-sounding reference in deuteronomy, and the comparison of god's council in job to the, well, exact same thing in ugarit, and the fact that israelites are commanded by god to give sacrifice to something other than god -- i don't think you overlooked it. you said "i don't understand" a few times and then kind of forgot, or waved your hands and didn't listen.and if you don't see a marked shift the portrayal of the characteristics of god, especially just how jealous he is, between genesis and any other book, you're just not reading very closely. faith is by definition irrational. that's what separates it from knowledge, or trust, or understanding. it's belief -- it's emotional. i understand, from the evidence, that judaism is closely related to (and probably derived from) the religions of the neighbouring tribes and city-states. however, i also believe that the god of the hebrews is the true god, and they were the closest to getting it right at the time.i don't see a problem with this. you may think it's a contradiction, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest. i justify it just the same way you do -- those other tribes may have had a hint of truth to their religions, but they were innaccurate renderings. no, faith, the difference here is that i AM reading in context. you're just reading the bible, in isolation. you refuse to read anything about the surrounding religions. you do not acknowledge the cultural context the bible was written in, nor do you acknowledge the context of the family of religions related to the bible. instead, you contend that the bible is the 100% inerrant word of god, directly dictated to some scribes and totally unlike anything anyone else has ever written. and this claim is patently false -- to even suggest requires a gross, gross ignorance of everything surrounding the history of the bible, and the location and culture it was written in. i see nothing problematic about the bible. examined from your perspective, inerrancy, i see lots of problems. but as a human document, a collection of 1000 years worth of writing, culture, history, and literature, i see no problems whatsoever. it looks and reads exactly how i would expect it to read. reasoning and evidence don't work. don't get me wrong, faith. i'm not trying to be insulting or condescending. we are more alike than you would care to think. when i talk of faith, and fear of questioning, these are things that i have learned in my personal walk with christ. i have seen attitudes like yours cripple people emotionally, and spiritually, and result in terrible, terrible fallings out of faith. once this weakness is exposed, and the assumptions fail, the faith comes toppling down from on top of them. few ever regain it. i have seen it happen, and i've heard of it happening numerous times.the faith you need to protect with dishonesty and sheild from question is a weak one -- i would rather have a strong faith, and i would rather you have a strong faith.christ said "seek and you will find, ask and it shall be given." i don't think he meant us to hide from questions. in the bible, god appears to moses from a burning bush. then, he kills every first born in egypt, and leads the israelites through the desert with a pillar of fire and smoke. when they get to a certain mountain, god personally delivers his commandments, audibly, to every man woman and child in the israelite encampment. then he leads them on a holy war to conquer the promised land.and we're not ready to hear about a few measly pitiful demons? surely, you can find more than one then?

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