NO Mormons are not Christian!

[_Themis]

How are those little green gods of yours doing? Any visits lately? I think we all know who is mentally deficient here.

Are the characters in the old and new testament also mentally deficient for claiming to see Gods?

[_maklelan]

Once again, you miss the point, and are covering up your blatant lying.

I'm not covering up a thing. Continue to quote me all you want. Everyone here will see how ridiculous your misreadings are.

I don't know what YOU believe about the Deity you might or might not believe in or worship and I could care less. I said that by claiming that the God of the Israelites was a conflated storm god, which you ACTUALLY personally believe (you said so)

No, I said that I believe that's what they believe. I make no judgments whatsoever regarding any actual deity that may or may not have existed.

that you are claiming that the Mormon God is a conflated storm god, since the Mormons, by Joseph Smith and every other "prophet", claim to worship the same God that you are calling a conflated storm God.

And here's where you force an inference onto me that I do not accept.

This is simple logic.

Whatever you're doing is not logic in any sense of the word.

(Something that obviously escapes you). Do the math. The fact that you would espouse such speculation is deplorable, if you claim to be a Christian in any way at all.

What's deplorable is your belligerent ignorance and refusal to acknowledge your own simple mistake. That's what being a fundamentalist is all about, though, isn't it?

I don't know if you are a Mormon or not. You may CLAIM to be, but that doesn't mean a thing. Your agenda in denigrating Christians, is right in line with your? Mormon "prophets". You are the one reading things into what I'm actually saying. You are reading it wrong, as usual. You can deny that you are claiming this, but it is what it is. Anyone who believes that the Ancient Hebrews invented their God, poisons their own well if they claim to be a Christian. You don't seem to be able to comprehend this.

No, I understand perfectly the sectarianism and the naïvété that compels you to believe that. I just think it's petty and uninformed.

This is only petty to you, who of course would call it such, because you got caught lying. You said you DIDN'T believe that YHWH was a conflated storm god, then reversed yourself when you saw the evidence that you did say that you did. Then you tried to redefine what the conversation and questions were all about.

No, you just can't distinguish between an academic position and a faith one. Saying I believe the Israelites had belief X does not mean I believe belief X.

And your opinion that Jesus did not claim to be YHWH is laughable. He absolutely did.

So show me.

So whatever you believe in, you destroy the very premise that Mormonism is based on, that the God of Israel was a real God, not a made up conflated god of modern speculation. Here is what your speculation does to your own? religion, as written by someone VERY FAMILIAR with the speculations that you espouse:

By 560 B.C. when the Exodus story in its present form was written in the Exile (cf. 2 Kings 25:27), the narrator was evidently unaware that his God, Yahweh-Elohim was an amalgum of earlier pagan Late Bronze Age gods from Sumer, Syria (Ugarit & Mari), Canaan and Egypt (the Hyksos' Baal-Zephon/Baal-Hadad, assimilated to the Egyptian god Set/Seth).

That's not my position at all.

Professor Kramer, as noted earlier, pointed out the Bible's indebtedness to motifs found in Sumerian literature of the 4th-3rd millenniums B.C. (which would equate with Canaanite Early Bronze Age).

No, Sumeria had nothing to do with Canaan.

He noted that Enki the Crafty God, is alive and well today, his feats and epithets having been ascribed and assimilated to later gods. Many of Enki's motifs appear in Genesis, ascribed to Yahweh-Elohim. Still later, Christianity ascribed Enki's motifs to Christ, claiming that the God of the Old Testament was none-other than Christ himself as Logos ("The Word"). Then came Islam, understanding that the God of Abraham was Allah, and thus to Allah was ascribed Enki's motifs.

Today millions unknowingly honor Enki/Ea/Ayya, "the trickster god" in his "new guise" as Yahweh/Ehyeh, Christ and Allah.

And,

It follows that if the Israelite Yahweh is really a recast Yaw of the Ugartic myths,

Nope, not my position.

that the Hebrew meaning of his name, revealed suppossedly to Moses at Mt. Sinai, ehyeh asher ehyeh "I am that I am," is false, and is probably a speculation from a late period.

As this writer, who is FAMILIAR with all the literature writes,

Nothing is "lock-tight provable," _all_ is _speculation_ for scholars, myself included. I understand that Yahweh is an almagam of MANY gods and goddesses, Mesopotamian, Hittite, Syrian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Canaanite.

Not my position.

I feel it is a useless methodology to "nit-pick" and stress "the differences" and IGNORE the similarities shared by the various dieties. For me the Hebrews are _not_ attempting to preserve ALL the characteristics of any given god or goddess, they omit what they have no interest in to build their case for there being only one God. So I accept in essence many gods and goddesses as being amalgamated into Yahweh and I DO NOT WORRY about "the inconsistences" which some scholars view as "cancelling-out" identifications. Gods fused into Yahweh's persona are the Sumerian Enki (Akkadian/Babylonian Ea), Enlil (Ellil), An (Anu), Utu (Shamash), _and_ the Egyptian Hyksos' god Baal Saphon (Baal Hadad) as well as Seth (Seth/Set being assimilated to Baal Saphon) and Sopdu of Egypt, said Egyptian gods surfacing in altered form in the Exodus traditions (said associations being made in "other" articles at my website).

I googled this just to see what kind of scholarship you're looking at, and this isn't scholarship at all. It's the lunatic rantings of some dude with an MA in education. Stop pretending this is scholarship.

Professors Graves and Patai (1963) on the Hebrews borrowing the epithets and achievements of the pagan gods and ascribing them to Yahweh:

"The titles and attributes of many other Near Eastern deities were successively awarded to Yahweh Elohim...Prophets and Psalmists were as careless about the pagan origins of the religious imagery they borrowed, as priests were about the adaptation of heathen sacrifical rites to God's service. The crucial question was: in whose honour these prophecies and hymns should now be sung, or these rites enacted? If in honour of Yahweh Elohim, not Anath, Baal or Tammuz, all was proper and pious." (p. 28. Robert Graves & Raphael Patai. Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis. New York. Greewich House. 1983 reprint of 1963, 1964 editions)

This is your world, Daniel.

No, this is an ignorant sampling of various layers of pseudo-scholarship mixed with one very eccentric outdated piece of actual scholarship.

Good luck defending it and calling yourself a Christian (if you even do).

I can defend anything I've said quite well. You haven't actually challenged me to defend anything, though, you've just barked ignorant about me being a liar because you misunderstood me. Again, not being able to engage my arguments and trying to find rhetorical trap doors so you can escape the argument is what fundies do, so I don't fault you there.

I'm not buying your speculation, your labels, skewed exegesis or anything else that comes out of your keyboard. You can't win an argument you can't prove. And if you think I'm trying to win an argument to PROVE Christianity, think again. How many Mormons who believe what you write about the Ancient Hebrews will leave the Church because they won't believe they worship a real God anymore? My, my, now isn't that an interesting thought...

No, an interesting thought is how you manage to function without constant adult supervision.

[_Bazooka]

1. maklelan does not believe YHWH is a storm god.
2. Some biblical authors believed YHWH was a storm god.
3. maklelan believes the evidence supports the conclusion that some biblical authors believed YHWH was a storm god.

There are no contradictions, here. If you insist that there are, then this is probably where I back away slowly trying not to make eye contact.

My take is the same as Bret's.

[_grindael]

I can defend anything I've said quite well. You haven't actually challenged me to defend anything, though, you've just barked ignorant about me being a liar because you misunderstood me. Again, not being able to engage my arguments and trying to find rhetorical trap doors so you can escape the argument is what fundies do, so I don't fault you there.

You are a liar and a bigot.

[_cognitiveharmony]

This is an interesting thread. I would be very interested in how Mak extricates the Mormon God from the conflated Israelite version in his PERSONAL belief system considering his professional perspective. It seems pretty messy to me with many hoops that need to be jumped through to keep consistency considering the LDS teaching that Christ is the Jehovah of the old testament. I would personally find this very difficult and not worth the time it took to navigate this maze. I mean in all honesty, how many restorations in the end are actually needed? Do we need another one now? Or has the LDS church finally "developed" the correct perception or concept of deity and managed to maintain it for the past.....uh....well.... I guess they haven't really maintained it as theirs seems to have been in flux through their existence also. But maybe more importantly, if so MANY people had it so WRONG for most of the existence of the earth(according to many religions) is it really that important to actually get it right? Institutionally that is...

[_Molok]

I can defend anything I've said quite well. You haven't actually challenged me to defend anything, though, you've just barked ignorant about me being a liar because you misunderstood me. Again, not being able to engage my arguments and trying to find rhetorical trap doors so you can escape the argument is what fundies do, so I don't fault you there.

You are a liar and a bigot.

Lol, why in the world would you bump this thread? Do you imagine that you come off well in your exchange with Mak or something?