Ahriman

By that I don't mean, did he give Odin a bloody nose but rather, were his followers successful conquerors.

Turns out I'm rather ignorant about Jehovah's involvement in military campaigns; before his change of heart when he sent his son to die for our sins, yadda yada, and became the love bundle that Xtians point to when they say "God is love". I don't even know who the hell it was that the people of the OT prayed to, since there appear to be so many different names for him. Yahweh, Adonai, Elohim, etc. .

I remember reading Beowulf and thinking the deity the narrator portrays, although being authored well into the second half of the first millennium, doesn't sound like the current interpration of the Xtian god. He sounds more like a bloodthirsty Warrior God of "Amalekite-fame", one one would call upon at dawn before a great battle, to "bestow strength upon one's sword arm" and to "make invincible one's armour" or whatever. Beowulf is about a warrior, of course, and is thus rather one-sided in its portrayal of god, but the way the narrator panders to the beliefs of his readers (and listeners?) made me wonder what their view of god's nature was and whether He had always been as ... supportive to His fighters as he was then.

So, I'd like to know whether anyone knows more about the "bc" part civilization's (military) history, or knows good (online) resources to check out about the time when Donar clashed with Mars and Ba'al sent Hannibal over the Alpes. Did He ever stand up to Marduk?

BH

Well, Assur of the Assyrians sure gave Yahweh a whippin when his followers conquered Samaria.

The god of the Babylonians must have kicked Yahweh's butt when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem.

Jupiter must have been more powerful than Yahweh, because the Romans whipped the Jews three times.

The problem, however, is that the followers of Yahweh or any other god will claim that they lost a war because their god was somehow mad at them, and not because their god was a wimp.

the IBble says this often---the Jews were introuble and getting smacked around by their neighbors because Yahweh was mad at them and refused aid. Look up the Moabite Stele on the internet. The king of Moab said that Israel oppressed his nation many years because Chemosh (the Moabite god )was angry at them.

BH

How do you edit your posts?

David B

There should be a little edit button by a recent post - it stays there for an hour.

Hit the edit button, your post comes up in a window, make changes, press the save button.

It doesn't stay indefinitely - it's there for changes of mind, correcting typos and stuff.

If it did stay indefinitely someone malicious could make succeeding posts look very silly.

David B

rob117

Actually, the idea of blaming the loss on the people's sins rather than the god's loss of the battle is only attested in the Iron Age Levant. Yahweh of Israel and Chemosh of Moab both follow this pattern; the gods of Mesopotamia do not- the Babylonians did not blame Sennacherib's destruction of their city on their own sins.

BH

What did they blame it on then if you don't mind sharing?

oudis

Wasn't he thwarted by iron chariots?

gstafleu

IIRC the history of the Israelites is one of repeated being invaded, conquered, deported, reinvaded, reconquered, kicked out of their country again etcetera and so on. So in that sense J isn't a particularly successful god.

But in another sense he is successful: the Israelites, or their descendants, are still around, which is quite surprising if you consider the amount of effort the world has invested into grinding them into a fine dust.

Of course this time around they are doing some grinding of their own, with the help of some people who, hold for it, hope that in The End a final grinding will be applied to the Israelites' descendants, but that's a different story.

Conclusion: so far J is more successful than, say, Zeus or Quetzalcoatl.