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And God made man....

Venom

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I listened to a Genesis podcast a while back by Dr. Robert M Price. It was a fascinating subject, as is the Bible as a whole actually. One thing that intrigued me most was the theory among some critical scholars (and one that Dr. Price supports) that the words "..let us make man in our image..." refers to a pantheon of gods and goddesses since the following text reveals the creation of the man and woman.

He didn't stick too long on that, but my question, to any of you more educated folks on the subject, is who could the early Jewish writers have been referring to when they had "God" speak to the other deities.

He also considers other instances of referring to oneself in the plural in the Bible, but he says that they do not disprove the polytheistic interpretation.
 
I've always figured there was a belief in many gods in those times. And that would explain why "God" would demand that there be know other god before him, and why he was a 'jealous' god, etc etc.
 
There was a rather insane poster a few years back that dug up some information on how the Jewish religion started. It started out as a subset of another religion, with their god being one of a pantheon (the Jewish god was specifically an auroch, not an uncommon type of deity in that region at that time). The poster's conclusion was that we should refer to Christians as cow-worshipers, and I believe he left the forum over the fact that most of us have more sense than that. However, the historical aspects of it are true; when the Jewish religion started their god was one of several. That's made clear by the inclusion of the Jewish god in numerous religious paintings from that earlier religion, who's name I can't recall. I believe (based on, admitedly, little research on the topic) that the references to other gods in the Old Testament are leftovers from that.

The Christian interpretation, I believe, is that God was talking to Jesus at the time. Pure nonsense, of course--no one was there to record it, so at best it's God saying He spoke to His Son, and there's no reason to assume He was 100% factually accurate. For one thing, there's no reason to assume that a Trinity need communicate with words.
 
Dinwar said:
The Christian interpretation, I believe, is that God was talking to Jesus at the time. Pure nonsense, of course--no one was there to record it, so at best it's God saying He spoke to His Son, and there's no reason to assume He was 100% factually accurate. For one thing, there's no reason to assume that a Trinity need communicate with words.
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The True Believer™ doesn't mind anachronisms. :D
 
There's no doubt in my mind that the Jewish religion started as a cult dedicated to Yahweh, one of many gods in Babylonian times. It's also pretty clear that the creation myth found in the bible predated Judaism in one form or another. So I'm not surprised that the beginning of the Genesis still has things confused.

For that matter, Genesis has two creation stories. It tells it, and then it tells it again. It's just debris left over from cutting and pasting two many documents onto each other.
 
Remember, Yahweh says to Moses, "I am the god of thy father, Abraham."

He didn't say, "I am God, the one and only" but had to clarify which god he was. He wasn't the neighboring tribe's god, he was the god of Abraham's clan.

Makes sense, of course. Every group had their own god. The god of Abraham won out, as that group took over and therefore was able to attribute their success to their god.
 
Canaan had many deities. Many subregions or cities of Canaan had their own favorite god which they revered exclusively, while acknowledging the existence of the other gods - a practice called monolatrism. Yahweh also had a consort Asherah. Solomon's temple likely had a statute for her as well.

The redactors of the Hebrew Bible (esp. Torah) tried to shove this all under the carpet, but the odd reference to Asherah can still be found, as well as language which hints to the existence of other gods. For instance, the various references to Baal in fact acknowledge that Baal exists, not that he's a figment of his worshippers' imagination.
 
Loss Leader said:
For that matter, Genesis has two creation stories. It tells it, and then it tells it again. It's just debris left over from cutting and pasting two many documents onto each other.
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ddt said:
The redactors of the Hebrew Bible (esp. Torah) tried to shove this all under the carpet, but the odd reference to Asherah can still be found, as well as language which hints to the existence of other gods. For instance, the various references to Baal in fact acknowledge that Baal exists, not that he's a figment of his worshippers' imagination.
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Now that sophisticated WYSIWYG editors are available why doesn't god come back and fix the whole mess? There's even automated foot-noting and end-noting. :)
 
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SezMe said:
Now that sophisticated WYSIWYG editors are available why doesn't god come back and fix the whole mess? There's even automated foot-noting and end-noting. :)
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What Loss Leader refers to is known as the Documentary Hypothesis. There are many doublets in the Torah. The explanation is that there are multiple original sources, in particular one tradition from the Northern Kingdom (Israel/Samaria) and another from the Southern Kingdom (Judah).

As to your remark, some claim that God came back to add end-notes. The Jewish canon was closed around the 1st Century AD, but there was a Jewish rabbi whom some claimed to be the Son of God, and his followers added four biographies of him and some of their letters to the flock. Then 6 centuries later, Gabriel gave Gods further instructions to an Arab caravan trader. And in the 19th Century, God had another angel deliver golden plates to an American preacher with further holy books. I may be missing some other instances that God added end-notes.
 
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SezMe said:
Now that sophisticated WYSIWYG editors are available why doesn't god come back and fix the whole mess? There's even automated foot-noting and end-noting. :)
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Why not? The "Church" of $cientology has been doing this for years now.

See: http://scientologistsfreezone.com/changes.shtml

Eventually poor old LRon will be written right out of existence. And the offices maintained for him at each of their outposts can be converted into boot closets. :covereyes
 
Evid3nc3 created an interesting video on the subject a few years ago:



It all makes a lot more sense when certain parts aren't edited or omitted.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Why not? The "Church" of $cientology has been doing this for years now.

See: http://scientologistsfreezone.com/changes.shtml

Eventually poor old LRon will be written right out of existence. And the offices maintained for him at each of their outposts can be converted into boot closets. :covereyes
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What if someone showed up and claimed the office? How could they show you aren't L Ron come back just like he said?
 
tsig said:
What if someone showed up and claimed the office? How could they show you aren't L Ron come back just like he said?
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Because he won't have the super powers of a Clear as described in Dianetics: Stories by a Raving Lunatic?

Oh. Wait. :eek:
 
According to "The Early History Of God"...

If we allow the use of ancient writings by the Hebrews' cousins from Canaan to Ugarit, then we can go a step better than just inferring other gods from a handful of oddities of the Old Testament. We even know the names of several major members of the Semitic pantheon and their personality traits and godly roles.

Yahweh: Discipline, justice, responsibility/righteousness, & orderliness, including imposing them by controlled violence if necessary; invoked for rain in one case, but that was specific to a treaty between two kings which called for either king's properties to be destroyed by a powerful storm if he were to violate the treaty

Ba'al/Hadad: Productivity, prosperity, fertility, celebration, happiness, growth; if you invoked this god for rain, you were asking for gentle showers that let life be lush and abundant without doing damage; also apparently originally king of the pantheon, whose name (Hadad) was not to be spoken by non-priests, so others called him "ba'al", the word for "master/lord", which was also sometimes applied to supernatural beings in general or individual high-ranking humans, but also came to be used as a name for Hadad, sorto like what happened with our word "god"

Anat: chaotic, uncontrolled violence; maniacal bloodthirst; often described as having enemies'/victims' blood dripping from her hands and mouth; this is why they didn't have just one "god of war"but different gods for different types or aspects of war, including Yahweh

Mot: Death, underworld, drought, decay; there's always one of these:rolleyes:

'El: Favorite god of one of the two kingdoms when Yahweh was the favorite of the other, until they came to be considered two names for the same entity; 'El would then shift in meaning from a name to "power" or "the powerful one(s)", thus "god(s)", the plural form of which, Elohim, would later shift back to an alternate name for the unified single god otherwise known as Yahweh that is still sometimes used today​

Starting from a list of at least a dozen gods, they gradually whittled it down, discontinuing the worship of some entirely and merging others by accumulating multiple gods' earlier traits to a dwindling remainder. Once it was down to just a few left, those who favored Yahweh (or 'El) deemed the others and their followers threats and turned to treating them as enemies. Not only were practices associated with the others banned, but new negative traits were invented for them and even mentions of them were deleted or obscured. That's why the Bible has a verse telling people not to decorate trees (associated with worship of Asherah, Yahweh's wife), "Ba'al" ends up as the root of "Be'elzebub", and a Biblical character originally named "Jeruba'al" gets renamed "Gideon".
 
ddt said:
As to your remark, some claim that God came back to add end-notes. The Jewish canon was closed around the 1st Century AD, but there was a Jewish rabbi whom some claimed to be the Son of God, and his followers added four biographies of him and some of their letters to the flock. Then 6 centuries later, Gabriel gave Gods further instructions to an Arab caravan trader. And in the 19th Century, God had another angel deliver golden plates to an American preacher with further holy books. I may be missing some other instances that God added end-notes.
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Ah, the Jewish Adventures Desert Trilogy.

And it's nice to see you've included part IV, although it sounds like a crappy fan fiction compared to the earlier books. :)
 
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Dinwar said:
I've heard at least one person argue that it was evidence that Christianity was true, the Jews just didn't see it.
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Well, that's rather mainstream theology ever since Paul. The whole idea was that God left a ton of cryptic references to Jesus or even to Paul or his congregations. (Read: phrase fragments taken out of context that might sound that way if you have delusions of reference.) And, yes, somehow that escaped everyone who wasn't a Christian.

Generally no two xians agree on exactly what is the set of such references, or even how many there are, but there seems to be some leaway for those who found a different set but still think it exactly proves jesus.
 
Dinwar said:
The Christian interpretation, I believe, is that God was talking to Jesus at the time. Pure nonsense, of course--no one was there to record it, so at best it's God saying He spoke to His Son, and there's no reason to assume He was 100% factually accurate. For one thing, there's no reason to assume that a Trinity need communicate with words.
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I'd like to add that this isn't even something that originated with Christians, but with Philo, who made the Logos ("word of god", very inexactly translated) be a second god, the anthropomorphic one (hence, humans are created in HIS image), the celestial high priest of god, and the one who did the work there. Christians later just made that Logos be Jesus, and ripped off Philo's ideas about it.
 
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