El, Baal and JHVH

by Doug Mason 18 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Crazyguy

  Its a Giant cluster trying to find out exactly which Pagan god the Jews worshiped. Evidence seems to indicate they worshiped for a time El, Baal Hadad, Asherah, maybe a god named Shulmanu. There are references in the scriptures that they worshiped gods of Egypt and even clues that they took on the gods of Babylon. The stories of Genesis are Babylonioan and so are the gods. So maybe what really happened is the people who were putting together the bible were like "I don't know what god the writer is refuring to here so i'm going to just put YHwh.

  Its also interesting that the word Elohim is used in most scritpures which means Gods. People have said this use of the plural word just means that the Hebrews used it in away to denote greatness or somethong similar. Yet Hebrew lingwists state that they can find in no other writings this idea of using a plural context of a word to denote anything other then, more then one. So could it be that the Hebrews-Jews-Israelites, were never Monothiests or atleast not until much later in thier history. I just want to finish by signing off by praising the god of the jews, so praise Yah, I mean Baal, or is it Asherah, Ra, Dagon, Yamm, Anat, El, Ea, Marduk, Enlil, Yarik, etc. etc. etc.
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  Finkelstein

  Wiki has some interesting information on the names or titles of Gods used within Judaism.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism
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  DeWandelaar

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/259249/1/researching-polytheism-of-the-Jews

  i researched the same about El etc. What really is interesting is the golden calf worship in the desert which means that for some reason it was normal to pray to El... JHWH had to take over there (or at least the jews wanted it to be).
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  Crazyguy

  Actually there is references to the fact that the Israelites worship a God likened to a bull. In the exodus story Aaron after making the calf said tomorrow we will have a festival to yhwh denoting the calf with this god. Later when a king made temples north of Jerusalem so the people of Israeli didn't have to go to Jerusalem to worship these idol were also bulls. The scriptures seem to condemn this but condemns that these idols were made out of metal and put where they were put but not necessarily that they were bulls.
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  HowTheBibleWasCreated

  That Yahweh was represented by a bull is interesting as El was as well. Here is a funny referance for you:

  1 Kings 22: 10-12: 10 Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah were sitting each on his throne, arrayed in their robes, in an open place at the entrance of the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets were prophesying before them.11 Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made himself horns of iron, and said, “Yahweh says, ‘With these you will push the Syrians, until they are consumed.’”12 All the prophets prophesied so, saying, “Go up to Ramoth Gilead, and prosper; for Yahweh will deliver it into the hand of the king.”

  Zedekiah connected Yahweh to a bull in this story.
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  Doug Mason

  "Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan", by John Day

  "The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistsic Background and the Ugaritic Texts", by Mark S. Smith

  "Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel", by William G. Dever

  "The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel", by Mark S. Smith

  "The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood", by Irving Finkel
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  nancy drew

  Enki and Enlil
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  EdenOne

  When you read someof the Qumran scrolls from the Essenes, an ultra-fundamentalist jewish sect, who was furiously keen on the "purity" of worship before Yahweh, you will see that they have no bones in admitting that there are other gods in the heavenly realm. Only Yahweh is to be worshipped, but there ARE others whose divinity status is reckoned by the Essenes. Thus, the Jewish religion was never monotheistic [ony one God exists], but rather Henotheistic [several gods exist, but only one is to be worshipped]. Apparently, only after the return from the exile in Babylon, with the fundamentalist heroes Ezra and Neemiah, the myth of monotheism was retrospectively forced into the written history of the Jews. However, this was a feature of the urban elites that were somehow related to the Second Temple establishment. In the countryside, the ahm-harets, the country folk, were still very much attatched to the polytheistic / henotheistic worldview. It was ony later that, as a reaction to the hellenistic opression from the polytheistic Seleucid rulers in the 2 centuries BCE, that the monotheistic ideology of Yahweh became the norm in Judea.

  Eden
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  Bugbear

  Doug

  Thank you we need more of the stuff you have brought up, to bash the JW org.

  Bugbear