Exactly what is the HISTORIC view of the DIVINE or of what being GOD meant long ago?

by TerryWalstrom 67 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Viviane

  doesn't the fact that religious authorities made prohibitions against worshiping angels show that they saw a distinction between deity and divinity they sought to correct?

  No.
  
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  Viviane

  The religion of the hebrews sprang from encounters with God. In their efforts to conceptualize for themselves Who this God they encountered was, what He did, what He would do etc. they drew on local mythologies to express themselves.

  That's a theological argument, NOT a historical argument.

  
  

  The God they encountered is creator of earth, God of the earth and He chose the hebrews. Some of these actions in time resemble actions attributed to a local god named Yahweh...that NAME and what it means is a perfect expression of who their  one God is. That's how Yahweh can pre-date the semetic religion from which he sprang.

  No, what that means is that actions attributed to El were LATER attributed to Yahweh, not that Yahweh exists before he existed.
  

  one reason I think that the commandment to worship no other God before Me means in my presence or in front of me (instead of your interpretation, worship Me as the highest God of many gods you can worship) is in the israelite sacrificial system itself.

  Not worshiping other gods in Yahweh's presence also allows for worship of other gods. Either interpretation admits and allows for worship of other gods.
  
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  Jonathan Drake

  There are reasons the Greek ohrase was unique to Christ. 

  
  

  Also your reference you quoted said the exact same thing I said. So I'm glad we agree now, but it was a very long journey getting here. 
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  Viviane

  There are reasons the Greek ohrase was unique to Christ.

  Such as?

  Also your reference you quoted said the exact same thing I said. So I'm glad we agree now, but it was a very long journey getting here.

  So you're now saying that Yahweh and El were distinct except for later Hebrew religions where El was transformed into Yahweh?
  
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  Jonathan Drake

  Your reference does not say they were distinct, it says they were the same and that it was Abrahams God. This is what I said, and that is what history seems to suggest. It is this God el, who later became yahweh. Still the same God, different name. 

  As far as how the Greek expression is different, just google it. I've already put my books away from earlier and I really dont want to go get them back out. 

  Actually I did it for you, this quote is confirmed by literally everything. Spend as much time as you want with Google, by as many books as you want - if they are credible sites and sources they will agree:

  The New Testament features the indefinite "a son of man" in Hebrews 2:6 (citing psalm 8:4), and "one like a son of man" in Revelation 1:13 and 14:14 (referencing Daniel 7:13's "one like a son of man").[7] The four gospels introduce a totally new definite form, the awkward and ambiguous "ὁ υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου", literally "the man's son."[1] In all four it is used only by Jesus (except once in the gospel of John, when the crowd asks what Jesus means by it), and functions as an emphatic equivalent of the first-person pronoun, I/me/my.[8] Modern scholarship increasingly sees the phrase not as one genuinely used by Jesus but as a one put in his mouth by the early Church.[9][need quotation to verify]
  

  
  
• 

  myelaine

  "Not worshiping other gods in Yahweh's presence also allows for worship of other gods. Either interpretation admits and allows for worship of other gods."...

  your interpretation allows for worship of other gods however the premise of monotheism does not. 
• 

  Viviane

  Your reference does not say they were distinct, it says they were the same and that it was Abrahams God.

  Ah, I see. The problem is that you are seeing what you want to see. No, it doesn't. It specifically says that Yahweh evolved from EL. Remember, Evolved from and change into with a different name and divorced from his wife by the time of the Israelites isn't at all "the same as". It's quite plain to see, from yours and other reputable references, that the Israelites worshipped Yahweh as we as other gods, Yahweh have evolved over centuries from a local minor God to have taken on the properties of EL, with writers eventually merging the two. 

  In the rest of the Semitic peoples religions, however, El and Yahweh remained distinct. That merging and evolution was a later event that only happened within the Hebrew culture (Abraham wasn't Hebrew, BTW).

  Actually I did it for you, this quote is confirmed by literally everything. Spend as much time as you want with Google, by as many books as you want - if they are credible sites and sources they will agree:

  OK, let's see what it says...Modern scholarship increasingly sees the phrase not as one genuinely used by Jesus but as a one put in his mouth by the early Church.

  So, by your own source that you cite as reputable, to the point that any reputable source would agree, it's a phrase used by Jesus but a lie later added by the Church. I would absolutely agree, that does make it unique and different from other OT uses.
  

  
  
• 

  OrphanCrow

  Jonathan, Vivane's position is supported by evidence.

  The discovery of the Ugarit tablets in 1928 has shed much light on the cultures that influenced the Old Testament writings.

  http://www.theology.edu/ugarbib.htm

  The Ugaritic Pantheon.
  The prophets of the Old Testament rail against Baal, Asherah and various other gods on nearly every page. The reason for this is simple to understand; the people of Israel worshipped these gods along with, and sometimes instead of, Yahweh, the God of Israel. This Biblical denunciation of these Canaanite gods received a fresh face when the Ugaritic texts were discovered, for at Ugarit these were the very gods that were worshipped.
  El was the chief god at Ugarit. Yet El is also the name of God used in many of the Psalms for Yahweh; or at least that has been the presupposition among pious Christians. Yet when one reads these Psalms and the Ugaritic texts one sees that the very attributes for which Yahweh is acclaimed are the same for which El is acclaimed. In fact, these Psalms were most likely originally Ugaritic or Canaanite hymns to El which were simply adopted by Israel, much like the American National Anthem was set to a beer hall tune by Francis Scott Key. El is called the “father of men”, “creator”, and “creator of the creation”. These attributes are also granted Yahweh by the Old Testament.
  For instances, read KTU 1. 2 I 13-32 and compare it to many of the Psalms. Also, read Ps 82:1, 89:6-8mn!).
  In 1 Kings 22:19-22 we read of Yahweh meeting with his heavenly council. This is the very description of heaven which one finds in the Ugaritic texts. For in those texts the “sons of god” are the sons of El.
  Other deities worshipped at Ugarit were El Shaddai, El Elyon, and El Berith. All of these names are applied to Yahweh by the writers of the Old Testament. What this means is that the Hebrew theologians adopted the titles of the Canaanite gods and attributed them to Yahweh in an effort to eliminate them. If Yahweh is all of these there is no need for the Canaanite gods to exist! This process is known as assimilation.
  Besides the chief god at Ugarit there were also lesser gods, demons, and goddesses. The most important of these lesser gods were Baal (familiar to all readers of the Bible), Asherah (also familiar to readers of the Bible), Yam (the god of the sea) and Mot (the god of death). What is of great interest here is that Yam is the Hebrew word for sea and Mot is the Hebrew word for death! Is this because the Hebrews also adopted these Canaanite ideas as well? Most likely they did.
  One of the most interesting of these lesser deities, Asherah, plays a very important role in the Old Testament. There she is called the wife of Baal; but she is also known as the consort of Yahweh! That is, among some Yahwists, Ahserah is Yahweh’s female counterpart! 
  ....
  ....
  As had already been mentioned, one of the more important lesser deities at Ugarit was Baal. Baal is described as the “rider on the clouds” in KTU 1.3 II 40. Interestingly enough, this description is also used of Yahweh in Psalm 68:5.
  In the Old Testament Baal is named 58 times in the singular and 18 times in the plural. The prophets protested constantly against the love affair the Israelites had with Baal (cf. Hosea 2:19, for example). The reason Israel was so attracted to Baal was that, first of all, some Israelites viewed Yahweh as a God of the desert and so when they arrived in Canaan they thought it only proper to adopt Baal, the god of fertility. As the old saying goes, “whose land, his god”. For these Israelites Yahweh was useful in the desert but not much help in the land.
  There is one Ugaritic text which seems to indicate that among the inhabitants of Ugarit, Yahweh was viewed as another son of El. KTU 1.1 IV 14 says:
  sm . bny . yw . ilt
  “The name of the son of god, Yahweh.”
  This text seems to show that Yahweh was known at Ugarit, though not as the Lord but as one of the many sons of El.
  Among the other gods worshipped at Ugarit there are Dagon, Tirosch, Horon, Nahar, Resheph, Kotar Hosis, Shachar (who is the equivalent of Satan), and Shalem. The folks at Ugarit were also plagued by a host of demons and lesser gods. The people at Ugarit saw the desert as the place which was most inhabited by demons (and they were like the Israelites in this belief). KTU 1.102:15-28 is a list of these demons.
  One of the most famous of the lesser deities at Ugarit was a chap named Dan’il. There is little doubt that this figure corresponds to the Biblical Daniel; while predating him by several centuries. This has led many Old Testament scholars to suppose that the Canonical prophet was modeled on him. His story is found in KTU 1.17 - 1.19.

  
  

  
  
• 

  Jonathan Drake

  @ Viv

  
  

  The part that needs a citation is the assertion that the church invented it. The undisputed fact, is the part where the phrase is only used by Christ to refer to himself.

  
  

  as far as El being the Ugarit pantheon father. This was never disputed by me. Fact: this God was Abrahams God known as Elshaddai. The God was later known as yahweh. The changing of the name does not constitute a new God, it's the same God with a different name. That is in fact what all these references are saying. Did the worship of the God evolve in Israelite religious practice? Yes it did. Does this make it a different God? No it doesn't.

  a way you can see this in the bible is in numbers. This God had at least one prophet he spoke to who wasn't in the tribe of Israel. In numbers 22 balaam lives in Pethor. This suggests that the God had other prophets in the area who weren't Israelites. so it would seem there were others besides Israelites who accepted the God El as their God. Just because the gods worship was changed or evolved does not make it a new God. 

  any further argument on the subject is to argue theology and not history. As an example, I would argue that this God elshaddai, called el, became a different God only at the hands of the surrounding nations and that the true worship of the God was preserved by Melchizadek and passed on to Abraham and his descendants. In arguing this I would submit that the surrounding nations evolved the God into something completely different from its original preserved by Melchizadek. So that THEY took on a new God, while Israel preserved the original. 

  But this is a theological argument, not a historical one. From history we can assert that El was Abrahams God, that Melchizadek was this gods priest and this priest blessed Abraham. Then Abraham passed the worship of this God alone onto his descendants. As I said above, did the Ten Commandments and mosaic law constitute a change to this gods worship at least in terms of making it a standard? Yes. Does this make the God different from el Shaddai mentioned by Melchizadek? No. It only standardized the practices of worship. Did this differ from how the surrounding nations worshipped this God? Probably. Does it make it a different God? No. 

  
  

  Modern day example:

  catholics worship differently. Jehovah's witnesses worship differently. Protestants worship differently. Do they worship the same God? Yes. 

  
  

  So what we are really arguing isnt whether it was same God, but which manner of worship was the right one. Therefore it's a theological arguement, not a historical one. 
• 

  Viviane

  your interpretation allows for worship of other gods however the premise of monotheism does not. 

  The Bible shows that, at most, the Israelites and Hebrews were henotheistic. Monotheism was a much later addition. Hence why they had many gods, a continuum of divinity, men becoming god and gods becoming me.