Christians, how do you reconcile that there is only one god, but your god was originally part of a pantheon of gods? Why was your god ok with worshipping other gods for so long?
Orthodoxy teaches that the OT was revealed incrementally to pave the way for Christ. Serving the whole thing up on one plate would have been unpalatable to the early Jews, who were probably polytheists as you say.
>>421531
So God lies to make his message more palatable? How can an immutable morality from such a source be trustworthy?
CHRISTIANITY IS NOT JUDAISM
Seriously why do you people have so much trouble understanding that?
>>421388
This question certainly is an interesting one. I come from a mystical perspective and have personally met Jesus and aspects of God. I've always been curious about the root of Jewish belief system. Not only that but it also seems the NT is steeped in ancient myths.
The Christian God is very real to me but I'm not sure what to make of the bible and all the texts that predate it and yet hold very similar stories.
>>421833
Yes, because Christianity had nothing to do with Judaism. Two totally unconnected narratives.
>>421833
>CHRISTIANITY IS NOT JUDAISM
Yeah, it split from Judaism.
>>421531
>OT
WTF is OT? Original toaster? Olfactory therapy? Occupational theft????
>>421531
Is there any source for this explanation within the Torah or New Testament? Or did the clergy just decide this was true?
>>421388
Christianity has one of the weakest philosophical basis of all religions.
inb4 kneejerk faggots defend their weak shit
>>421388
I just don't care about religion.
>>421897
>Old Testament. The parts of the Bible before the Gospels and the Epistles.
That makes soooo much more sense now.
>>421902
if you ever actually attended a theology lecture or read the Bible instead of pretending you have and talking out your ass you might learn something, m8o
>>421902
The fact that you're unable to understand it should teach you some humility.
>>421911
>The only thing it has to do with Judaism is that it was started by a guy who happened to live in Judea.
Who was raised a Jew, who knew Jewish law well, who probably followed Jewish law for most of his life, who then rebelled against certain Jewish laws (but not all of them), who was then killed by Jews. Christianity is the original reform Judaism.
>>421911
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity
>The first Christians, as described in the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, were all Jewish, either by birth, or conversion for which the biblical term proselyte is used,[1] and referred to by historians as the Jewish Christians
>The earliest followers of Jesus composed an apocalyptic, Second Temple Jewish sect, which historians refer to as Jewish Christianity.
>>421916
Oh come on, not even him, but it's very clear from even a cursory reading of Deuteronomy that you can't "fulfill" the Mosiatic Covenant and have it done away with.
Christianity is based primarily on reading OT stuff out of context and talking very quickly.
>>421916
I know more about the Bible and the history surrounding it along with the political atmospheres in which the various books were written than you might think.
>>421388
Same way I can reconcile that Newton was right about a few things and wrong about others but still a smart man and worth respect. He had a limited understanding of his world and used what he had at his disposal to make use of it and try to reach conclusions about it.
Ancient people used polytheism to explain shit they didn't understand. Eventually this reduced itself to just a singular God. Now its further reduced out to Monotheistic Deism.
>>421917
>The fact that you're unable to understand it should teach you some humility.
your reaction is entertaining
>>421833
>>421897
Let me put this another way: the story of Christ is supposed to be the fulfillment of Jewish messianic prophecy. Whether Jesus was this messiah, or if OT morality applies to NT is irrelevant. The fact is that Christianity is impossible to exist without the narrative of Judaism. Christians must accept that their god is the Jewish god within the context if their religion.
It is also true that the god described in Judaism was originally a lesser national god who was part of a pantheon.
So Christians must accept that for years, their god was worshipped as part of a pantheon.
>>421930
>hurr Christianity is dumb
Yeah real insightful and well researched viewpoint, we must be fools for doubting such educated views.
>>421922
>>421923
Like I just said, it just happened to have been founded by a guy in Judea. Jesus could just as easily have been a Persian or a Roman or a Gaul or a Chinese or an Indian, and Christianity would have been the same, just told in a different language. Absolutely nothing from Judaism was required to build Christianity.
>>421943
Except for the fact that the OT does not in fact describe god as being a "lesser national god part of a pantheon", that is derived from non-scriptural study of similarities with Cannanite religions that Judaism was almost certainly derived from and working from there.
Ergo, Christians do not have to accept anything, just deny the conclusions of non-theologians.
Furthermore, Christians ignore quite a bit of the Old Testament that runs counter to their message, so what's a bit more?
What do you mean by "originally a part of a pantheon of gods?"
If we take the Hebrew bible for example, it is clear that YHWH is *not* "OK" with worshiping other gods. They are given derogatory names like Pieces of Wood, and Stones. Making rude stone idols of what is really an unimaginably potent force is, at the very least poor craftsmanship, and at worst Blasphemy.
Now, I suppose you want to defend your viewpoint that El, one of the names of God in the Hebrew bible, originated among a pantheon of canaanite deities (mostly exported from Mesopotamia). Surely, the etymology of the word comes from these places. However, no Biblical scholar worth his or her salt would fail to see the broad distinctions that developed between the bull-god El and the God of the Hebrews.
In fact, one can say that the Monotheism that we have inherited (though much changed from what it was) sprung out of a hostility between those two beliefs. One can see this in comparing the Enuma Elish with the Genesis accounts of creation. What is, in Mesopotamian religion, a processional of the Gods is reduced (sometimes even using the same word-formulas) into the acts of a Single God. So, from the beginning, this process of creating a monotheistic religion in the midst of a polytheistic world was one that was willed and self-conscious; the yahwist purposefully subverts the poetry of Babylon for his/her own purposes in showing the uniquely Single God.
>>421956
>Absolutely nothing from Judaism was required to build Christianity
You know what the word 'christ' means, right?
>>421928
Christianity is not Judaism.
>>421956
>Absolutely nothing from Judaism was required to build Christianity.
This is a highly uninformed statement to make. There is so much more that you need to learn.
>>421961
Yes, and?
>>421962
Precisely. And it's not really based on Judaism in any significant way, either. It's more based on a kind of strawman Judaism.
>>421930
Great, why don't you pour some knowledge on us?
>>421928
The Old Testament to Christians is little more than historical context for our faith. Most Christians (again, except for some retarded evangelicals) realize that the Old Testament was passed down orally for too long of a period for everything in it to be exact. The stories in it are generally realized to be either metaphors or at best basic summaries of events.
>>421967
Content-less post.
>>421956
Except someone claiming to be the Son of Jupiter would just be a demigod to a massive Roman Pantheon.
Claiming to be the Son of Yahweh puts you in a much stronger power level, basically omnipotent since Trinitarian views have Jesus be a third bit equal aspect of God himself.
>>421968
Then you should know it's wrong to say absolutely nothing from Judaism was required to build Christianity
>>421959
Again, another idiot who knows nothing of Christianity yet feels qualified to run his mouth about it. The Old Testament does not apply to Christians. It was well established at the Council of Jerusalem that the Old Testament is more a less a historical context for our God and not the laws we have to follow now. The whole point of the New Covenant was to get rid of the old and open up Heaven to the Gentiles.
The only thing from the Old Testament that is necessary for Christians to follow is the Mosaic Law, which are basic things like don't murder people, don't steal, don't cheat on your wife.
>>421972
Which I guess is why the theological parts are ignored, and the messianic prophecies are mangled to hell and back in order to make Jesus fit them.
It is impossible to have a productive discussions with most Christians regarding their religion. They are charged emotionally and they are usually grossly uninformed historically. There are many books left by ancient historians that shed so much light on Christianity but they choose to ignore those. Most Christians don't even read the Bible, they just regurgitate what they hear others preach.
>>421931
But the narrative of Christianity isn't that people make incremental improvements in accuracy on the nature of God and that these guesses are all true until a new one comes along. It's that there is one god who revealed himself as the one true god to Moses. That's their truth. No guesswork. God is singular and almighty.
So to believe this, one must also believe God was ok with worshipping him in a pantheon for years because that's how Moses' god was worshipped.
>>421979
What uniquely Jewish element do you think was required?
>>421960
Plus doesn't the OT itself describe plenty of times where Jews worshipped polytheism against Yahweh wishes?
>>421981
And funnily enough, the Mosaic Law says, among other things, to not listen to people coming along saying you should change it, even if they bring signs and wonders and miracles. Deuteronomy, chapter 13.
Funny how The Council of Jerusalem just kind of skipped past that on their way to founding a new faith.
And it's also quite amusing to see the rush to drop non-law aspects, like when You have Moses, supposedly speaking for God, saying that yes, you can in fact fulfill the Covenant, even though it's hard. But of course, you can't have the fundamental assumptions of Christianity alongside that, so they too, had to be dropped.
Which is again why I say that Christianity is based on a kind of StrawJudaism as opposed to actual Judaism, and the two aren't really connected.
Christ is the Hebrew Messiah. He teaches the Law of the Hebrews.
Not one jot or title is done away with.
>>421983
>I'm right and your dumb. No I won't explain why!
fag
>>421975
Christianity might have been more difficult to explain in a polytheistic universe, but it's still possible.
>>421997
you reaction is entertaining me so much
>>421995
Then how is he simultaneously a sin and paschal offering?
And aren't lambs as sin offerings supposed to be female?
>>421983
Could you share some good Christian/Jewish history books?
Especially books that connect history with other ancient religions.
>>421988
precisely. All of our Archaeological researched have backed this up: it seems that that ancient Palestine was never, before the Maccabean period, primarily monotheistic, except for in a few places and among certain elites. Now, undoubtedly there seem to have been points of greater centralization around a single cultus -- like that of Jerusalem during the "great reforms" of Josiah, but these are more aberrations as opposed to the norm. After the destruction of the temple, I imagine there must have been a lot of scrutinizing past indiscretions concerning idolatry.
>>421987
How about the Messianic prophecies, that Jesus is claimed to have fulfilled.
>>422014
Read the 4 books of Livy to give you a idea of how Rome became an imperial shit hole. Read The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius and pay special attention to the chapters on Vespasian and Titus. Also read Josephus Jewish Wars and The Siege of Jerusalem. Those things all have a great effect on the rise of Christianity. It doesn't hurt to read Tacitus' Annals because he actually mentions the execution of Christ. These are just a start.
>>422014
If you're interested in the overlap between Christian religion and others I'd highly encourage you to read about the early Christian Gnostic sects. They are a superb example of a kind of syncretic christian religion that was all-but-squashed by 500AD by the emerging Orthodoxy centered around the cult of Rome.
Bentley Layton, Elaine Pagels, and Hans Jonas are great places to start.
>>421960
Didn't YHWH worship begin as part of the Caananite religion? I thought it went like this:
> YHWH is our national god, so we worship him, but believe other gods exist
> Moses is commanded by YHWH to worship no other gods (but this is not to say that other gods don't exist, just that you can't worship them)
> Jewish clergy later retains the whole thing, saying that there were no other gods, and it's only been YHWH.
>>421833
Pretty much this. Even though it split off, Christianity is as distant from Judaism as Buddhism is from Hinduism.
>>422063
*retains was supposed to be retcons
>>422031
An element of that fulfillment is undoubtedly the result of later interpolation. One can imagine that the early Jewish christians were attempting to convert Jews on the basis of a fulfillment of prophecy in very objective ways: the birth narrative in Luke, for example. How can Jesus be from Nazareth when the anointed one was to come from Bethlehem? Well, Luke tries to sort that out.
>>422031
Who cares? It has nothing to do with Christianity, that shit is only relevant to Jews.
>>421988
But there was a period of time where YHWH was being worshipped along with other gods, but he waited for Moses to lay down the law.
So I guess the question is why would he allow polytheism, and specifically polytheism in which he is described as a lesser god, to go on for so long? Why wouldn't he put an end to it sooner?
>>422105
That's a question for Jews, not Christians.
But to answer it anyway, for the Jews it's about the Covenant. Yahweh is their chosen God, and the Jews are his chosen people. He doesn't give a shit what others worship.
>>422105
God is Transtemporal.
>>422063
Well, that's where we get into a lot of speculation (which I think of as the really fun stuff).
Essentially, yes: YHWH was the National God, from probably the time of Tribal Confederation if not before. However, unlike Marduk or any other God that exercises in favor of a single city or nation, the Hebraic God is one that rules EVERY nation-- at his presence all of nature trembles, he is a God that has power not only over the Israelite King but all Kings.
Most of the ancient population of Israel probably did not believe him to be the only God, but he viewed him perhaps as the RULER of the heavenly "assembly" (see the Job c1&2 et al).
Now, it certainly seems that prophetic and priestly traditions where at odds with the popular folk religions of the people. One can imagine even in the time of David and Solomon that many homes still had altars to the household gods.
How far back can we trace a real distinct "monotheism" in Hebrew history? Is a good question, and not one that is easily answered. However, it does seem that the national insistence upon ONE God made them stand out among the nations.
>>422117
>Transtemporal.
I wonder...what does that word mean. I googled it and according to the Merriam Webster it means "crossing the temporal lobe of the cerebrum" and somehow I don't think that is what you mean by your use of it.
>>422110
But according to Christians, isn't their god the same as the god of the old testament? Shouldn't the Christian POV be deeply concerned with the origins of YHWH?
>>422129
Not him, but he means that God exists in all times simultaneously, instead of a linear perception of time like we have.
The Tetragrammaton, usually rendered in English as "Jehovah" or "YHWH" is quite literally formed in Hebrew by plucking letters from the words "Was", "Is", and "Will be" and mashing them together.
>>422090
That's not *exactly* true. In fact, considering that Christians have preserved the Hebrew Bible (though rearranged and now called the Old Covenant or "Testament"), it is hard to ignore the interplay between them. This interplay has influenced the course of both religions (especially Christianity).
>>422117
I take you to mean that God is "outside" of time.
That just changes the question to why God choose to assert monotheism so late in the human timeline? Why is he ok with the perception that worship of him looks like it was derived from polytheism, rather than a universal truth that stands on its own.
>>421986
Except God wasn't ok with it. His own commandments state "There is no one above me" and acknowledges that others did worship other gods.
Early narrative of Christianity/Judaism is rather polytheistic. There's stories of angels and demons worshiped. The trend is that Yahweh is above them all. It's consistent in maintaining his authority as ruler of Heaven. Singling him out as the sole occupier is a relatively modern conception.
>>422172
But it's not until Moses that he actually says anything about it. So pre-Moses YHWH just let people worship him along other gods.
One would expect that if his moral law forbids worship of other gods, it would have been asserted earlier.
>>422182
Pre-Moses (And in fact most of the Old Testament) God seems to be markedly unconcerned about what everyone besides Abraham's descendants are doing.
Unless you majorly crossed the line a la Sodom, you didn't really register. It's only really a problem for the "Chosen people", who have a shitton of new rules specifically for them.
Here is an excellent video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlnnWbkMlbg
He goes over the history of how the Old Testament was written in relation to how gods were viewed at the time, and why. Basically, from wiki:
>In the oldest biblical literature, Yahweh is a typical ancient Near Eastern "divine warrior" who leads the heavenly army against Israel's enemies;[6] he later became the main god of the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) and of Judah,[7] and over time the royal court and temple promoted Yahweh as the god of the entire cosmos, possessing all the positive qualities previously attributed to the other gods and goddesses.[8][9] By the end of the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the true god of all the world.[9]
>>422192
Do Christians accept this as historically accurate? Or is this a case of Satan hiding dinosaur bones?
>>422182
First of all, if your source is the Hebrew Bible (which it appears to be?) then most definitely YHWH did not just "allow" other people to worship him along other gods? In fact, no one could even worship YHWH back then because he had not revealed himself to the nations, but only to a few individuals he would terrify in the night with visions, and whom he saved through acts of grace: the Ark, is one example.
>>422192
>>422203
Generally it's best to disbelieve almost anything you hear from "YouTube videos"-- they are not reliable citations...
>>422204
But historically the concept of YHWH predates Moses, unless modern Christians/Jews just assume it was a huge coincidence that there was another god in the area going by the same name.
Are other foreign gods ever get mentioned as having influenced the material world or the Abrahamic god at all? Like an angel of baal appeared and wrestled with Micheal.
Or are they all facets of the devil?
>>422210
It's just a video version of the book "History of God" written by a famous historian and former nun
>>422271
Predates Moses? Do you have any sources on that? The god that would have been going by that name would likely have been El, the mesopotamian god that I mentioned in my first post in this thread.
>>422276
Job is the closest thing. However, Ha-Satan (the first time he's given a name and a personality) was more like a Court-Sanctioned Prosecuting attorney.
>>422276
Further, Satan tempting Christ in the desert. the Book of Revelation could count as well, but that's a slippery slope...
>>422276
There are a number of other totally-not-gods-because-that-would-be-blasphemy-onii-chan that show up in apocryphal texts here and there but virtually nothing in the mainstream - the church didn't fuck around when it came to divine competition.
>>422192
Damn, Christianity is a sham built on lies
>>421897
There's no Judaism in the OT until Ezra.
Simple.
Exodus 6:3 "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty (El), but by my name the LORD (Yahweh) I did not make myself fully known to them."
>>422276
The fuck are you on about? It was Jacob who wrestled with the angel.
