Is Jehovah an invention of Jewish imagination??? The fact seem obvious! (page 2)

Satanus

Jews may have fleshed him out and enlarged yhwh, but the people of a town called ugarit had him first. Did they create him, or inherit him from somewhere else? Where is goddess leolia when she is needed?

SS

little witch

JT, that's so cool! (and the meaning is not lossed).

Good post.

Narkissos

JamesThomas, my eyes hurt, but this is excellent!

Reminds me of Exodus 33:18ff:

Moses said, "Show me your glory, I pray." And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, 'Yhwh'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But," he said, "you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live." And Yhwh continued, "See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."

SaintSatan:

On Yhwh and Ugarit, cf. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/62692/1.ashx

patio34

This is my uneducated, but heard from scholars, possibility of what happened.

The Jews needed a national god different from other nations. The heads of state needed to control the people and rally them for war. The other nations had a pantheon (?) of goddesses along with their gods. The Jews were the 1st to get rid of all goddess worship and have only a male god (a "manly god of war," as the Bible says).

The other nations tended to be more agricultural and settled at the time, but the Jews were herders and nomadic and aggressive against others they ran up against.

The fact that they had only a male god made them more fierce according to Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth guy).

The stories of the Old Testament are easily documented as being from older sources and changed a bit and put into the Bible. The Sumerians had a lot of the stories centuries before the Jews did.

Patio

little witch

LW is nodding in agreement with Patio.

Phantom Stranger

No...they ripped him off from the Canaanites...

As noted before, in Mesopotamia the patriarchs worshiped "other gods." On Canaanite soil, they met the Canaanite supreme god, El, and adopted him, but only partially and nominally, bestowing upon him qualities destined to distinguish him and to assure his preeminence over all other gods. He was thus to become El 'Olam (God the Everlasting One), El 'Elyon (God Most High), El Shaddai (God, the One of the Mountains), and El Ro'i (God of Vision). In short, the god of Abraham possessed duration, transcendence, power, and knowledge. This was not monotheism but monolatry (the worship of one among many gods), with the bases laid for a true universalism. He was a personal god too, with direct relations with the individual, but also a family god and certainly still a tribal god. Here truly was the "God of our fathers," who in the course of time was to become the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

Narkissos

Patio,

Against your scenario I would hold that:

1) the "nomadic" was at best a minor element in the historical formation of Israel (if not a completely literary creation);

2) the cult of Asherah as consort of Yhwh was not eliminated before Josiah's reform (622 BC).

patio34

Thanks Little Witch.

Narkissos,

Okay--I'm easy on that one. I was just parroting Joseph Campbell as I remember him on PBS, haha. And I don't really care that much about it. So thanks for what you posted.

Patio

little witch

Narc,

'Scuse me? Did you just say that the "Nomadic" feature was minor in the history of the Jewish people?

If so, I beg to disagree. Remember "40 years of Roaming"?

Either you said something debatable, or I misunderstood.

Scully

You know how Genesis says that "God made man in his image"?

I've often thought that the opposite is true: Mankind makes gods in their own image, after their own likeness. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/26696/1.ashx

Love, Scully

Is Jehovah an invention of Jewish imagination??? The fact seem obvious!

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