Marduk

"Amenhoteb IV is thus credited as the first person to come up with the one god concept, according to scholars."


Oh how I love to be picky! The Egyptians always had a monotheistic strain, Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Achnaten (sp?), it seems was the only person in Egypt who was bothered by the fact that Egypt's religious heritage embraced a pile of beliefs that were mutually exclusive, one God, many gods who are one, many gods, many different creation stories etc.
The Egyptians never canonized their religion, just kept adding on and on. Achnaten found this annoying and thought they should pick one and stick with it, monotheism seemed to make the most sense to him. There is also a political element involved, isn’t there always. The Priests of Ammon were gaining power in Thebes (or Heliopolis, memory fails here) He packed everyone up and moved the capitol to a city he built called Amarna.
None of this went over very well with the rest of Egypt BTW.

PTET

Dever doesn't claim to be an atheist. He describes himself as an "informed agnostic".

<a href="http://dreamwater.net/ptet" target="_blank">PTET</a>

[ August 08, 2002: Message edited by: PTET ]</p>

Toto

Do you have a source for this? In particular, that someone who does not believe in G*d can convert to Reform Judaism? There are separate branches of Humanistic Judaism for those who do not believe in God, which are not Reform Judaism.

I think if you examine a lot of Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, and other liberal Protestants, you will find lots of closet atheists, who just don't talk about their lack of belief, or say things like "God is love". Some of them may even be in the pulpit. Atheists are always "welcome" to religious events.

But this is just a sign that religion, in particular Christianity, has become intellectually bankrupt and only survives as a social institution.

Amen-Moses

Almost, Amen was the original creator god and Ra was the Sun god (presumably Amen as creator of everything was responsible for creating Ra!), somewhere along the way Akhenaton (or -aten, they used both words interchangeably) tried to incorporate both deities into one - i.e the Aten (or Aton).

Although the revolution failed Amen-Ra survived and the cult flourished.

Amen means "who is hidden" btw and Amen-Ra is often depicted in exactly the same way as the early depictions of JC, i.e as a man with a sun orb (or halo) behind his head. The Aten was purely depicted as the orb itself, usually above the head of the royal family.

The other completely separate cults of Osiris, Set and Isis (and hundreds of other junior dieties) were marginalised by Akhenaton and his refusal to deal with worldly problems such as invasions on the eastern and southern borders resulted in his overthrow.

Shortly after Armana was deserted and the Aten followers disappear from Egyptian writings, some have conjectured that the followers left egypt and continued their cult in Caanan, probably mixing their beliefs with those of the Baal and other cults. It is further conjectured that Moses (which mean "son of") was a member of the royal family, possibly the son of Akhenaton and his foreign (hittite?) wife. (if he had managed to gain the throne his throne name may very well have been Amen-Moses, hence my monicker )

Amen-Moses

(btw, Amun, as in Tut-Ankh-Amun (or "given life by the Amen") Ammon and Amen are all the same character. i.e they are all the same universal creator god of the earliest Egyptian religions. Interestingly he started out with a wife but she was dropped sometime just after the Pyramid building age.)

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Amen-Moses ]

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Amen-Moses ]</p>

Radcliffe Emerson

The source for the info on Reformed Judaism is in my first post, <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com." target="_blank">www.beliefnet.com.</a>

My comment earlier about TBU and the Israelites being outsiders simply says the writings indicated they were outsiders, while the evidence does not support that statement.
I think that's been touched on earlier in this thread.

I'm sure there is info available around the net on Reformed Judaism.

Radcliffe Emerson

Nonetheless, the evidence indicates the Israelites had no monotheistic beliefs until the Egyptians started emphasizing it.

Toto

Could you be more specific? There's a lot of fluff on that site.

Radcliffe Emerson

Select 'quizzes' at the top of their main page, then take the "What's your faith?" quiz.
I answered 'unsure or unimportant' on the theological questions. Here are my results:

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Secular Humanism (97%)
3. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (82%)
4. Liberal Quakers (81%)
5. Nontheist (81%)
6. Theravada Buddhism (66%)
7. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (52%)
8. Neo-Pagan (52%)
9. Bahá'í Faith (40%)
10. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (40%)
11. New Thought (40%)
12. New Age (38%)
13. Taoism (35%)
14. Reform Judaism (33%)
15. Jehovah's Witness (31%)
16. Scientology (29%)
17. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (26%)
18. Mahayana Buddhism (24%)
19. Orthodox Quaker (16%)
20. Sikhism (16%)
21. Eastern Orthodox (0%)
22. Hinduism (0%)
23. Islam (0%)
24. Jainism (0%)
25. Orthodox Judaism (0%)
26. Roman Catholic (0%)
27. Seventh Day Adventist (0%)

And once the list is displayed, you can click any of these and get a summary.

Oh, and my Spiritual Type results:

What's Your Spiritual Type?

You scored 36, on a scale of 25 to 100. Here's how to interpret your score:
25 - 29
Hardcore Skeptic -- but interested or you wouldn't be here!
30 - 39
Spiritual Dabbler -- Open to spiritual matters but far from impressed
40 - 49
Active Spiritual Seeker – Spiritual but turned off by organized religion
50 - 59
Spiritual Straddler – One foot in traditional religion, one foot in free-form spirituality
60 - 69
Old-fashioned Seeker -- Happy with my religion but searching for the right expression of it
70 - 79
Questioning Believer – You have doubts about the particulars but not the Big Stuff
80 - 89
Confident Believer – You have little doubt you’ve found the right path
90 - 100
Candidate for Clergy


And I realize this is not the place for this posting, so if anyone else pursues the quizzes, we should move that topic to another forum.

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Radcliffe Emerson ]

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Radcliffe Emerson ]

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Radcliffe Emerson ]

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Radcliffe Emerson ]</p>