Loomis

Maybe the best answer is yes and no. Maybe Yahweh “evolved out of Baal” or maybe Yahweh “was appended on top of Baal,” or “substituted for Baal.” Why else would they both be “riders of the clouds?” - And don’t give me any of this “polemic” bullshit (pun intended).

The biggest stumbling block is the unnecessary requirement that there has to be a coherent definition of “Yahweh” and a coherent definition of “Baal” so that we a can compare them.

These are just stories. And Yahweh and Baal are just characters.

They are just stories that are poorly written & recorded.

They are just stories that are smeared out over time.

They are just stories that are smeared out over distance.

They are just stories that evolved, split apart, and then re-combined, hundreds of years later.

If you want to understand the bible you have to face facts: The various authors did not share the same opinion about who or what “God” was. They were kissing ass and borrowing from earlier stories, and making new shit up as they went along.

Since we’re talking about cruelty consider the bullshit (pun intended) at 1 Kings 18, where Elijah humiliates the 450 prophets of Baal and then kills them.

Q) Why was the author so down on Baal worship?

A) Because his readers recognized the similarities between the two gods.

It’s like the “I am Yahweh, but your fathers knew me as El Shaddai” bullshit (pun intended). The story is evidence of the very thing it is trying to deny.

Yahweh was not always El Shaddai. Yahweh was (at least in part) Baal.

No Robots

Jahve is the term for the wholly abstract principle of the Absolute. It literally means "Being" and has the same sense that it does in modern philosophy. The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) correctly translated reads:

Loomis

I agree it’s interesting. But the thing I object to is the false dichotomy:

Yahweh either (1) is Yam, or (2) is not Yam.

Yahweh either (1) is Baal, or (2) is not Baal.

Yahweh either (1) is El, or (2) is not El.

They are just stories. Parts are borrowed from everywhere. Think “Frankenstein.”

The stories do not have to agree with each other.

Loomis

Can’t Deut 6:4 be translated as follows?

No Robots

Err, sure, but it would be WRONG!

Loomis

But Hitler killed my ancestors.

Doesn’t that count for anything?

My mum and dad were good folks and they believed this shit for years. :notworthy:

Doesn’t that count for anything?

Also, I’ve decided to give my translation a name to add to its credibility.

I’ve decided to call it the Scema.

What do you think?

Now is it RIGHT? :wave:

No Robots

Here is quotation from Constantin Brunner's Our Christ, p. 157:

Jahveh ehad, cried Moses: "Hear O Israel, Being is our god, Being is one" (Deut. 6:4).

Yet this quotation provides precisely the historically monstrous example of how Israel hears and how the truth is straightway transformed into superstition in Israel's ears. For this magnificent saying is at once a hymn of exultation and a wrathful protest against idol worship of any kind; but despite this protest, it now signifies—in the conception of Israel, the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Israel—the well-enough known, imbecilically wrong translation: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our god is the only God!"

Loomis

Why was such a decree necessary?

What was the source of the confusion?

How come the Israelites couldn’t identify their god?

How come the Israelites couldn’t agree on who their god was?

No Robots

Brunner was a Jew writing in Germany in the twenties, working to warn his compatriots about what was about to unfold. Here's what he wrote in 1921:

Wickedness needs to combine with the right kind of nonsense, otherwise it will not achieve the right result: the God, the God who was different—there was a thing! And today it is the race, the race that is different; there's a thing that will prove fateful again for the Jews—and this is one case when we really can hear the grass of history growing. (Our Christ, p. 388)

It's childhood's end. It's time the truth comes out.

Quite a gamut: rage to pathos to mockery. I must have hit a nerve.

No Robots

It wasn't a decree: it was a declaration, an insight into the fundamental truth of existence.


Because most people instantly distort abstract truth into the mundane, material reality that they are accustomed to deal with.