the jews began by telling us that we were made in the image and likeness of God...but what could that mean? do the elohim have arms, legs, heads? do they care about their bodies in feeling pain and pleasure? do they worry about their self images? do they have goals and duties? apparently according to the bible they are much like us, only with the ability to leave the earth and fly around in celestial chariots... they had sex with the daughters of man [the book of enoch spells this out] and could manifest bodies just like ours only with super powers... but they ate and drank and fornicated... who were they exactly? certainly no first cause as the abstract theological god.. Jehovah was obviously just their leader, one of them, not their maker, unless he was their forefather...but he too apparenlty lived a life in some realm or planet much like our own... more and more it seems obvious that the bible god was either an alien or the first real attempt at a more intellectual sci fi story than some of the neighbors had.
RE-mythologising "God"?
by Narkissos 21 Replies latest jw friends
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Narkissos
M.J.
JWs also happen to insist that Jehovah has a localized body, is not omnipresent, and is not omniscient.--i.e., He relies on observation to find out how people play things out in his "world" experiment and reacts accordingly. With such an outlook the JW member feels elevated to the status of castmember in the story! "Jehovah" is brought down to the level of an identifiable, comprehensible character.
Very insightful.
Interestingly, those "naive" traits (from a monotheistic standpoint) are prominent in the so-called "Yahwist" ("J") tales (e.g. the Eden story in Genesis 2:4--3, the tower of Babel in chapter 11, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in chapters 18--19). The Yhwh character in such stories leaves more room for interaction than the overwhelming "God" who has set everything "before the founding of the world". Otoh the latter is more reassuring, especially once "eternal destiny" (which was well beyond the Yahwist's scope) comes into the picture.
Tdd: I think it is impossible to gather a consistent portrait of "the bible god" (or even the OT god, for that matter). In some stories (cf. above) Yahweh is really no more sophisticated than Baal, Marduk or Kamosh. In others (e.g. Deutero-Isaiah) he comes close to "God". But it is not a simple, linear "evolution," as if Yhwh 2.0 could replace Yhwh 1.0. Something is lost in the upgrade which customers keep asking for.