by frankiespeakin 35 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Yes, if we think of God as a "Transcendant" above everything and then when we think of the Biblical Jehovah, we come up short 51 cards of a deck of 52.
He is so human,,,, come on,,,,, that to me is proof enough of the preposition that he is just the:
"Figment of the Jewish imagination"
and later many others like us, at one time imagined as well.
Perhaps the label of "Israeli" is a misnomer.
Jewish in origin? Definatly. So much is documented in the Jewish Scriptures (read, old testament).
I strongly disagree. Why would the Jews create a god who would give them so much grief? Destructions, exiling, annihilations, plagues, pestilences, frequent punishments, even Holocausts?
One could just as easily read the Old Testament to say that Jehovah didn't like the Jews very much. Or rather than God being in man's image, man is in God's image.
Ok, Frankie, now I look 'tupid! LOL
But what if history (the OT) was written after the fact by religious types who truly believed in a special Jewish god?
This is my suspicion. You can add god in wherever, to condemn or exhonerate according to your wishes.
It seems to me that explainations were given to what is now perfectly logical questions (i.e. creation, etc),
Followed by a copy-cat book of law to live by
Followed by published dissent that society was acting contrary to "god" (the prophetical books)
all the while, the jewish religion was all about physical sacrifices until some animals understandably became rare and valuable, and only the rich could afford them.
Followed by Jesus, a contemporary man who saw unjustice in that only the rich and famous could afford the luxury of appeasing this god.
And he called for an end to sacrificial religion, and tried to make us all equal in the eyes of god reguardless of the ability to pay.
Just my take.
IMHO Israel's Yhwh was quite a decent god (mind the lower case). Benevolent and righteous king to his own, fierce warrior to their enemies.
The ultimate fate of every national god in history eventually happened to him: he was defeated. But then something unexpected occurred in the minds of his priests and scribes: instead of fading away as every good god does in such circumstances, he became God (mind the capital). The Only One. The One actually responsible, not only for the fall of Jerusalem, but the victory of Nebuchadnezzar, and Cyrus -- and eventually every event in the world, and the world itself. He was not prepared to that. In this new position he felt quite ashamed of his old mythological accomplishments -- when he was just a god playing with his peers and humans. Now he was just too great to play. He was condemned, as a lifelong sentence, to a desperately serious, boring and lonely task: theology to death.
Nark, one of Jehovah's shortcomings was that he wasn't aware of a world outside of the Fertile Crescent and Rome. The rest of the world simply didn't exist suggesting the god created idea has considerable merit. I've no problem with the Creator inspiring people to set down stories and moral traditions. That's a far cry from Him directing the details of the stories and equating them with absolute truth. With the great civilizations of Chrishna and Buddah, totally unmentioned in the OT and the glorious civilization of Zoroaster without mention, how "universal" could the great Jah be?
carm
Carmel: I guess Zoroaster, although never mentioned in the O.T., was indirectly instrumental in Yhwh's becoming God. After all, most of the OT was written or rewritten under Persian rule. Only over against Zoroastrian dualism the first and last emergence of real monotheism in Second Isaiah makes sense (45:7):
I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe;
I Yhwh do all these things.
I wrote "first and last", because Jewish monotheism soon fell back into practical dualism in the Persian mood, with the constitution of Satan as an anti-God (very similar to the Persian Angra Mainyu), culminating in the radical opposition of the "spirit of light" and the "spirit of darkness" in the Qumran texts (actually, the previous Persian innovation appeared as defensive orthodoxy under the new cultural threat of Hellenism).
Aside from that, I agree that a very large part of the world remained "God-free" to this very day, and this remains the biggest challenge to monotheism.
Sorry Little witch I wanted to wait to post because, I was a little busy, so I just made the correction first while I had time, and then latter post with thanks for the correction. So thank for the correction, for I do think it more correct, perhaps I was being a tad to political in my choice of words.
Not at all Frankie did I insinuate anything. I find your question relevant and important and not to be confused with a modern political discussion. (If I were correct in your meaning)
For those who don't realize, the thread originally said "Israeli" instead of "Jewish". Thus my comment and clarification.
That being said, I do believe that the modern "jehovah" is a take off of YHWH, of whom the originators of worship refuse to pronounce.
Christianity (reformed Jews) call YHWH Jesus, in the new testament, and jw's call YHWH "Jehovah". (Which is Greek for YHWH)
But distinguish the name and being of YHWH as different from Jesus, making them a split off of Christianity.
And if that made any sense at all to you, then we both need another beer!
So, Jehovah, is as real as the black dots; now what?
j
