striderlives

The cruelty thread I started has exposed me to another topic of interest - the assertion that Yahweh is simply one of the 70 sons of El, the Mac-Daddy of the Ugaritic Pantheon.

All the searching I've done so far hooks up with sites that basically deal with the textual issues in Deut. re: whether the MT or LXX has the correct interpretation (sons of 'God' vs sons of 'Israel').

The upshot there is that accepting the LXX simply acknowledges that Yahweh presided over a 'host' of angels - and that the believer need not worry about these silly allegations that 'Yahweh was the author of polytheism'....

MY understanding is that in FACT the ancient semites were polytheistic, that the ancient hebrews initially adopted the Canaanite/Syrian Pantheon, that prior to Moses they clearly worshipped El, and that a parsimonious reading of Deut. as well as Ps. 82 clarifies that El assigned Yahweh to look after the IsraELites, while his brothers looked after other groups.

Some here have indicated that clearly Yahweh was a son of El. Can someone link me to this info?

Thanx!

Sheshbazzar

Yo! Loomis? your on.

Atheos

A quick treatment of this is found in an online "lecture" at theology.edu titled "Ugarit and the Bible".

-Atheos

Dirac_Delta

Interesting site. Though i think this is easier to understand in the light of the "Bible Unearthed" by Finkelstein and Silberman. If the Israelites were Cannanites to begin with it is only logical that they had the same panteon at some time. Heck! Even the Bible says multiple times that they were worshiping other gods in the temple, though that's presented as bad behaviour. But that they were worshiping other gods there's no doubt.

John Kesler

You may want to read these threads:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=126864
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=157773
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=154302

Loomis

I was really ragging it. Wasn’t I?

Nobody mention Dr. Richard Elliott Friedman and we’ll all get along just fine.



Yea. Read those threads. :thumbs:

Loomis

I’m no expert. But I know enough to see that he clearly was, and he clearly wasn’t. It just depends on which verses you are talking about. And even then, many verses are just ‘neutral.’

It looks to me like the folks who wrote the OT did not share a common unified opinion about who or what “God” was. It looks like they were just borrowing a lot of imagery and characters from earlier stories. I’m not sure that they even believed that these gods were REAL.

The tendency – even among atheists, is to think, “The god in the bible is Yahweh.” Or to think that, “Yahweh was the god of Israel.” But if you take the time to examine the names of the gods in question, you will see that many ‘bible episodes’ don’t mention Yahweh at all. A lot of them are just about good old ‘El’ and his pantheon.

Loomis

But in some stories it’s presented as bad behavior while in other stories it’s presented as acceptable behavior.

That’s the hilarious part.

The “Baal is a good god/ bad god” issue is a great example.

There are plenty of episodes where Baal worship is dissed, but in other episods Yahweh appears to be Baal in Yahwist clothing. Yahweh does all the things Baal did. The ‘rider of the clouds’ stuff, and the Yam/ Leviathan/ Lotan stuff are a cases in point.

The “Let’s toss our kid into the fire to make God happy” issue is another example. :devil3:

Jedi Mind Trick

Try this search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

Read the wikipedia link to get a good overview.
-John

Anat

Loomis, maybe a better way to put it would be "Yahweh became the god of Israel" (or more accurately Judah, and then the Jews, who also were the heirs of Israel)? The Hebrew Bible contains layers and layers of content, reflecting beliefs from different periods, but unlike an archaeological site the older layers don't lie burried by the newer ones, but become reused (by means of reinterpretation) by later generations with different beliefs and are interspersed with later materials.