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Well folks, I'm new here - but religious debate, discussion and pontification have always been interests of mine. The topic above is controversial such that this might draw some small amount of attention to itself. But disregard it since you're looking. It's relevant, but not quite tonally appropriate . . .

It turns out, as I've been doing some research into ancient Jewish culture (and as I'm sure many of you are aware) that there was a point when proto-Judaism was actually polytheistic. When you think about it, that "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me." commandment makes a lot of sense in a culture where there was competition among the various deity-worshipping cults. You don't really need to have such a commandment unless you have some legitimate competition. A truly supreme being wouldn't have to worry.

But it gets more interesting. If one reads the old testament, one finds a deity that can only be characterized as psychotic. Here we see the genocide of entire cultures ordered down to the children and animals. Here we see insane religious customs involving stoning a man to death for gathering sticks on the wrong day of the week. Here we've a god who overreacts to the most careless of mistakes of his "chosen people". If, as Mormonism has said, Christ and God are one in purpose - it really begs the question: How can there be such a difference in the respective temperaments of both?

The answer: Yahweh (YHWH) was originally a war god among a pantheon of others. When you look at the history of the old testament and the direction that Jewish civilization was going - it's very consistent with how one might imagine a War God directing His culture. Over time, the priests of YHWH slowly began to make this deity less of a nasty pill to swallow and God's temperament began to soften.

Here's the funny thing, even with that said - that YHWH was a sort of Ares / Mars whose priests created a faith that lasts today and whose domain has changed . . . it's still hard for me to see that figure in entirely mythic terms. In other words, looking at the Judeo-Christian myths as merely myths (even when I don't believe the veracity of them) is very difficult to do. Perhaps it's a matter of being in a place that practically swims with people who believe them as fact. Perhaps it's a matter of being raised within them. Who knows?


So, not really knowing where to post this, I figured off-topic would serve the best until the community could decide a better place for it.

My views echo yours.

I might add, however, that (in my opinion) later Hebrew redactors played "clean up" by ascribing the genocidal tendencies of their forebears to Yaweh. As a way to assuage their guilty consciences, if you will.

Ethé-Ra wrote:It turns out, as I've been doing some research into ancient Jewish culture (and as I'm sure many of you are aware) that there was a point when proto-Judaism was actually polytheistic. When you think about it, that "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me." commandment makes a lot of sense in a culture where there was competition among the various deity-worshipping cults. You don't really need to have such a commandment unless you have some legitimate competition. A truly supreme being wouldn't have to worry.

I can actually understand the Old Testament when I remember that prophts filter God's words through their own worldview. What we see in the Old Testament is a series of prophets/men who filtered their thoughts about God through a worldview as primitive and pagan as the civilizations ariound them. Just because the book says God spoke those words doesn't mean God actually spoke those words. Men believe(d) he did, but that doesn't make it so.

Joseph did the same thing.

harmony wrote: I can actually understand the Old Testament when I remember that prophts filter God's words through their own worldview. What we see in the Old Testament is a series of prophets/men who filtered their thoughts about God through a worldview as primitive and pagan as the civilizations ariound them. Just because the book says God spoke those words doesn't mean God actually spoke those words. Men believe(d) he did, but that doesn't make it so.

Joseph did the same thing.

And then there's the more realistic explanation which is that god didn't have anything to do with any of it and what we're reading is just the scribbling of assorted primitive people. No reason to unnecessarily complicate things.

Dr. Shades wrote:My views echo yours.

I might add, however, that (in my opinion) later Hebrew redactors played "clean up" by ascribing the genocidal tendencies of their forebears to Yaweh. As a way to assuage their guilty consciences, if you will.

I agree.

That's interesting. Was Yahweh a pagan god?

I've often thought that the invention of Jesus was a way to soften religion. Jesus was a liaison between us and the cruel, mentally unstable God of the Old Testament.

I think the pre-history of Israelite religion and the cult of Yahweh does more damage to LDS theology than to traditional Christianity because in the LDS faith, it is a doctrinal position that Jesus is Yahweh, separate from a Father named Elohim.

There is no evidence that "elohim" was the personal name of the father as it is taught in the LDS temple. Elohim simply meant gods but frequently was used to refer to just about anything that happened to be divine, even spirits of dead humans. The real High God was El Elyon, which is not what's taught in the LDS temple. So LDS apologists grasp onto ANE evidence on in as much as it serves their purposes, and then downplays or flat out ignores all the undermining evidence.

Apologists like Bokovoy want to focus only on preceived parallels, like the fact that Yahweh was believed to be married. They don't address the fact that this would mean Jesus was married to Asherah, not the high God El as taught in the Ugaritic texts. Asherah was never considered a wife to anyone named elohim.

A few months back a FARMS newsletter misrepresented Margaret Barker by saying she was teaching how the ancient Isrealites believed the High God El weas married to asherah. I used a sock puppet at MADB just to point out that this was false, and that FARMS had misrepresented Barker. Zakuska got pissed and started a new thread challenging my claim, but Kevin Christensen came in and admitted I was correct, giving it a charitable "sloppy" verdict.

This just went to show that Mormons generally don't even know what the hell Barker is really saying. They just get ideas, understand what they want to understand and make faith-promoting assumptions. Even the person writing this blurb couldn't get it right.

Oh, if you believe the Raeliens, The Elohim were an advanced alien race that created humans. They are returning soon, so donate to help build the spaceport!!

dartagnan wrote:This just went to show that Mormons generally don't even know what the hell Barker is really saying. They just get ideas, understand what they want to understand and make faith-promoting assumptions. Even the person writing this blurb couldn't get it right.

That's because they view the world through a certain color lense, the LDS lense. Getting it right isn't what's important. Making it LDS is what's important.