Pilate

Judge, I believe me and you can carry serious conversation. Therefor I will try to give you my "two bits."

This is an quotation From Andrew Benson's book The Origins of Christianity and the Bible.
Chapter Title " The Origins of 'the Word of God."
(FYI I run Mr. Benson's website)
"According to the Logos (the Word) doctrine, the creator god directed a secondary god (the Word) to create the world. This doctrine was not part of Judaism. The Jews believed that God alone created the world: “Thus says the LORD ... I am the LORD who makes all things; who stretches forth the heavens alone; who spreads abroad the earth by myself.� (Isaiah 44:24 KJV) To this day, Jews believe that God is one person, and he alone created the world.
The Logos doctrine appears for the first time in the Akkadian text The Creation Epic, in which the high god Marduk planned and the secondary god Nudimmud created: “That work was beyond comprehension; As artfully planned by Marduk, did Nudimmud create it.� It also appears in the Egyptian text The Theology of Memphis in a passage which says that god Ptah created through his secondary gods the universe and all living beings.
"
As you can see, the Logos doctrine has a long history.

Amaleq13

This is untrue. Nothing substantive has been removed from your posts. Everything removed has been irrelevant to a rational discussion of the facts.

This is misleading if not untrue. Nothing has been removed from your posts that exposed anything stated by spin as inaccurate or false. Removing inflammatory language from your posts in no way prevents you from offering contrary evidence or rational arguments against claims. Frankly, I would welcome such a change in your posts and I look forward to you making the attempt.

Please let this be the last discussion of moderation in the thread. As I've indicated several times already, start a Complaint thread if you want to complain about moderation.

Amaleq13, BC&H moderator

judge

this is interesting.
I am not sure that I really have much of an intellectual grasp of these things.

I know when I read about the egyptian, maat I thought it too had possible parrallel with miltha.

Loomis

There is speculation that that may be a polemic against the first creation account in Genesis 1.

That the author was a strict Yahwist who was familiar with the El creation story and didn't like it one bit.

The bottom line being that the bible authors did not agree with each other on who or what god was.

Pilate

Ignoring moderator requests is an excellent way to get in trouble and a really poor way to continue to participate in discussions here. Attempts to continue inappropriate discussions in this forum will be deleted.


Amaleq13, BC&H moderator

Pilate

Loomis,
I agree to a certain degree with what you wrote. The writers "did not agree with each other" on many things. But this dissagrements were not because they chose to disagree. As a rule, and rules have exceptions, disagreements are not tolerated in the theocratic system. Most of those disagreements are due to the eternal evolution of religious beliefs. As people advanced intellectually, their idea about God evolved. The problem they faced is this: they wrote down their first ideas and since they claimed that those ideas are given by God, they were stuck with them to a great degree. So when newer ideas arose, they tried to patch the old with the new.
Scholars who specialize in early Judaism, have deciphered the god of Abraham from the god of Moses.

Pilate

Note: This quote belongs to the Hellenist Jews. They brought about today's Christianity. The Hellenist Jews are a breed appart from the "Old Fashioned" Jews, who adhered to the Old Time Religion of Judaism.
The center of the Hellenist Jews was Egypt, especially Alexandria. There were more Greek speaking Jews in Alexandria, than all the Jews of Judea. Now, there were many Hellenist Jews in Decapolis (an area of ten cities). Herod the Great (an Idumean, turned Jew) was the leader in Hellenism (he introduced the Greek ways). For this reason the most Palestinian Jews hated Herod.
All Palestinian Jews were affected to some degree by the Greek civilization and religions, even the conservative Essenes of Qumran. However, the conservative Jews were resisting the "landslide." But they never gave up the idea that God is one person, who was personally involved in the creation of the world. The conservative Jews did not develop the idea of "Logos" as a secondary god.

Pilate

Guru, have I insulted you? If I did let me know. Be specific. You can communicate your wishes with me directly. I can be as considerate to your feelings as you want me to be.

Pilate

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Going back to the "Aramaic problem," from which you can't run away.
Here is a quote:
"A great number of the textual variants between 1QIsaa and the MT are purely linguistic. These are due to the influence of late 2d -century B.C. Hebrew on the text of the book of Isaiah. More precisely, 1QIsaa contains a deliberate linguistic updating of the text, carried out at a time when Aramaic and Greek were spoken alongside Hebrew in Palestine.
Kutscher, E. Y. 1974. The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa). STDJ 6. Leiden. "
This quote implies that Hebrew was spoken in Palestine when the 1QIsaa was written (or edited): at the end of 2nd. Century BCE. Hebrew was spoken by the elite Jews, who also usually spoke Greek. The vast majority of the Jews were not wealthy, because their wealth went to the Romans (plus 10% went to the Temple). It takes money to become educated.

<off topic and content-free material deleted by mod to keep thread on track>

Pilate

comment about moderation deleted to keep thread on track