Dharma

Unfortuneatly in my hurry, I have not cross checked with the original Hebrew, so correct me if I'm wrong anywhere:

Counting the Gods:

1)Elohim
2)Abraham called Elohim : Gen. 23:5,6
3)Moses called Elohim:Ex. 7:1
4)Yah - a sky God as in HalleluYah, similar to Jupiter.
5)weh - earth , together Yah-Weh forms the yin/yang...however they are two separate dieties who are unified.
6)Isaac "Fear of He who Laughs"...
7)Jacob
8)Esau

Jacob and Esau are very similar to the Egyptian Gods Horus and Seth...very similar stories.

Anyone care to add to this list or contradict this count?

Chris Weimer

um... no? to 2-the end.

spin

The Hittites called Abraham a prince (nasi) of Elohim.

The closest parallel is in Jer 1:5
I have appointed you as a prophet to the gentiles

Ex 7:1
I have appointed you as elohim to Pharaoh

Yah, Yao, Yahu, Yahweh are all forms of the same, just as Adad, Haddad, Addu, Oded are of a different god.

And where do you imagine "Weh" is earth in Hebrew?

I don't believe you. Besides Horus is the son of Osiris. Seth kills Osiris and Horus kills Seth.

That wasn't hard. Why don't you contemplate:

1) Yahweh
2) El (as in Bethel)
3) Elohim
4) Asherah (Yahweh's consort, and is she the Queen of Heaven?)
5) Mot
6) Anat
7) Shemesh (as in Bethshemesh)
8) Ashteroth (as in Ashteroth Karnaim
9) Baal (seen in Jewish names like Ishbaal, Jerubbaal, Meribbaal)

(and who are the hosts of heaven? and are they the hosts of the Lord of hosts?)

Just to give you something to think about.


spin

Anat

Dharma, why don't you learn Hebrew, so you don't have to rely on creative translations? The Bible is colorful enough without those.

In Genesis 23:5-6 Abraham is called 'adoni' - translated 'my lord', IOW sir. It's just a respectful address.

Exodus 7:1 is a metaphore about the way Moses and Aaron should address Pharaoh.

What is the basis of your derivation of Yah and weh as separate entities?

God is sometimes named 'pahad yitzhak' - Isaac's fear - I like A.B. Yehoshua's interpretation of this name - think of Isaac lying bound on the altar, his father bringing the knife to his neck - and then YHWH speaks - and saves him. It is the god that Isaac was scared into believing.

Where do you get Jacob and Esau being gods?

Other names for God are Adonai Tzvaot, El Shadai.

Celsus

Don't forget Elohim appealing in the adat el before the bene elyon in Psalm 82.

Hey spin, have you seen my Rise of God? Would you critique it if you have the time?

Joel

Dharma

hmm, I'm not too sure that Abraham was just a "prophet" as traditional bible interpretors would like to believe:

Haftarah Lech Lecha
5 Vayikach Avram et-Sarai ishto ve'et-Lot ben-achiv ve'et-kol-rechusham asher rachashu ve'et-hanefesh asher-asu veCharan vayetze'u lalechet artzah Kena'an vayavo'u artzah Kena'an.
Avram took his wife Sarai, Lot, his brother's son, all their possessions they had acquired, and the souls that they had made in Charan, and they set out to go to the land of Kenaan. They came to the land of Kenaan.

Also several Kabbalah books (Sephir Yetsirah) state that Abraham in fact was successful in creation...and Ur actually means fire.

Gershon Winkler, I think his book is called "returning the Shamanic in Judaism"...

it would make sense, since it is "halleluYAH" praises Yah not "halleluYAH-WEH" . One would think than that it is in fact, originally, 2 separate dieties, joined together.




a book called "101 Myths of the Bible" which compares the stories of Horus and Set and Jacob and Esau. They have SIMILAR stories. Esau means "red", Set too was described as red of hair.



Of course if Abraham and Moses are indeed dieties, this would make

1) Sarah
2) Hagar
3) Rebekah
4)Ishmael - would also be some "lowly" God...
and a few other females the goddess'...

Chris Weimer

Just because they may share thematic similarities doesn't make them exact parallels. In now way is Moses or Abraham ever alluded to being gods.

Dharma

again, both Moses and Abraham are referred to as Elohim in the passage I mentioned above-- the same diety that said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT"... this is more than just a respectful title. Just because many scholars who are biased towards an unwavering monotheistic interpretation of the Bible like to think of Abraham and Moses as prophets, doesn't mean that they are. These same "scholars" have been quite wrong in their interpretation of many things...including the biblical passage where Abraham is supposed to have "created souls" in which Abraham is specifically attributed with the "creative" faculty especially in the Sephir Yetzirah which pretty much states clearly, "and Abraham was successful in creation"...

Ur means fire, that means Abraham was born in fire, again implying a mythological God figure.

Dharma

Sefer Yetizrah 6:7

And when Abraham our father, may he rest in peace, looked saw, understood, probed, engraved and carved, HE WAS SUCCESSFUL IN CREATION, as it is written, "and the souls they made in Haran" (Genesis 12:5)

Anat

The word elohim has more than one meaning. (For example, it also means judges, but that is not the context.) I disagree that Abraham or Moses were called gods in any of the places you quoted. Abraham was just addressed in respect and Moses was told he should talk with authority. Abraham did not create anyone, he just had people joining his clan. (And that doesn't even imply those people shared his beliefs.) Oh, and BTW Abraham isn't considered a prophet anywhere but in Islam.

The belief in the story of the patriarchs came rather late, when the Hebrew faith was approaching monotheism anyway. For your thesis to be correct the stories had to be of early origin.