Origins of the Judeo-Christian god and religion

Yes, Buz, and Isaiah too is full of declarations: I am God and there is no other etc.

Scripture says it straight out that they had other children. You'd be contradicting scripture:

Deuteronomy 32:15. Message 199This has also been corroborated by some missionaries who have encountered belligerent demonic powers who don't want their human slaves set free in Christ.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-05-2006 11:28 PM

The whole Biblical story is OBVIOUSLY counterculture. If that isn't obvious to you when you read it I guess I can't convince you.

I don't think these things because I believe; I believe because I'm convinced they are true.But there's no convincing anyone who sees things the other way around. And this thread was originally intended to be about extra-Biblical information.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-06-2006 01:28 AM

There's no point in arguing this with you. The God of the Bible is different, totally different, God of Gods over all the gods of the earth, judges all the other gods, and all the rest of them are similar to each other -- yes, millions of them really. I think this is obviously the point of view of the Bible, whether anybody believes it or not. Throughout the Bible Yahweh is presented not as just some tribal God but as the God over the whole earth. Take it or leave it.

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.

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.

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

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

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.