Syro-Palestinian Archaeology

[kbs2244]

If I remember right, in Dune, the name of the hero, if spoken loudly enough, would knock down walls.

[rich]

hmmm - has anyone questioned if the god in Eden had warned them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, why would that same god then give them the law? Doesn't the law teach you of good and evil?

Same god or a different one? I hate to say the implications there.

Or did he change his mind?

[kbs2244]

My understanding has always been that Elohim was a generic term for “gods”, (lower case “g”.) In other words, spirit creatures. Super human creatures. Depending on the context, it may or may not refer to Yahweh.

Yahweh was the personal name of “the Almighty” god. Even in the KJV of the bible we have versions of the word “god” with the “g” in upper or lower case to indicate if “Yahweh, a word they would not use, was meant.

Yahweh was “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob“, when the family went into Egypt. But Egypt is a pretty overpowering environment. (Just ask the Ptolemy’s.) So, on leaving Egypt (after how many years?) the concept of monotheism was probably pretty weak in the common people. A group that had grown well beyond the sphere of a single family, influenced by a single patriarch.

A good example of that would be Moses own brother making a “golden calf” while Moses was up on a mountain “talking with God.” (Yahweh?) Calf worship was, I believe, pretty common in Canaan but I do not know about it in Egypt.

[kbs2244]

Rich:
You are defiantly getting into theology here.
The Law, as given in the wilderness, was, on purpose, perfect. As such, it was impossible for an imperfect human to keep. Everybody would break some part of the Law at some time.
Except a perfect human, of course.
So the real reason behind the law was not the day to day, keeping everybody in line, idea It’s purpose was to remind everybody that they were imperfect and would need some outside help to achieve “God’s grace.”

[rich]

Possibly KB, but I was more pointing out that it points to 2 different entities as gods - one that would warn you not to learn of it and the other that gives you to eat of it.

[Forum Monk]

the god in Eden had warned them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, why would that same god then give them the law? Doesn't the law teach you of good and evil?

Same god or a different one? I hate to say the implications there.

Or did he change his mind?

Same God. "Don't eat" was a law with a consequence.

[Ishtar]

Rich:
You are defiantly getting into theology here.
The Law, as given in the wilderness, was, on purpose, perfect. As such, it was impossible for an imperfect human to keep. Everybody would break some part of the Law at some time.
Except a perfect human, of course.
So the real reason behind the law was not the day to day, keeping everybody in line, idea It’s purpose was to remind everybody that they were imperfect and would need some outside help to achieve “God’s grace.”

KBS - You sound here as if you are preaching what you've been taught as if it's proven fact.

Yet, imho, this is a typical type of mental acrobatics that Christians make in order to twist some of sort of interpretation out of a story that was never intended to be taken on literal level. You are attributing motives to a 'God' none of us know or have ever met or, if some Christians are right, are never likely to meet.

But if you think logically about it, your interpretation could never be true of a God who's supposed to be Love.

What sort of 'God' would create a law for humans that 'He' knew they'd never be able to keep? One who wanted to manipulate us into always feeling inferior perhaps?

[Ishtar]

Yahweh was “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob“, when the family went into Egypt. But Egypt is a pretty overpowering environment. (Just ask the Ptolemy’s.) So, on leaving Egypt (after how many years?) the concept of monotheism was probably pretty weak in the common people. A group that had grown well beyond the sphere of a single family, influenced by a single patriarch.

A good example of that would be Moses own brother making a “golden calf” while Moses was up on a mountain “talking with God.” (Yahweh?) Calf worship was, I believe, pretty common in Canaan but I do not know about it in Egypt.

KBS - There's no evidence that there ever was a Moses or an Exodus, or even that they were in Egypt (apart from a small group of Canaanites called the Hyksos). In fact, all the evidence points to the contrary.

Also the story about when the Hebrews knew their god as Yahweh is contradictory. The J writer says that they always knew him as Yahweh, right from the beginning of creation, whereas the E writer says it was only during the Exodus that he revealed himself as Yahweh. Both these stories are given equal prominence in the Pentateuch.

There is, however, evidence of a Canaanite god called Yahweh.

[Minimalist]

An interesting article from TIME from 1990 on this subject.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 43,00.html

Says Harvard's Lawrence Stager, the dig director: "I'm an old farm boy and recognized it as a bull calf immediately." Judging from the style of other pottery in the temple, he dates the figurine to about 1550 B.C. Because that is up to several hundred years before the escape from Egypt, Stager thinks the object might well have been a prototype for the calves mentioned in the Bible. It also supports the belief that the Israelites took some of their religious practices from other Canaanites.

[kbs2244]

Ish and Rich:

First, what I have come to believe is not “what I have been taught.”
It is what I have learned. Much of it on my own. And to me it is fact. It is what I believe. Until proven beyond a doubt otherwise.

Second, The reason I prefaced my statements as “getting into Theology” was to say I was going to give the Bible’s version. “Theology” assumes doctrine and a “Theos,” and thus, in most cases, a “Holy Book.”

So no, the Law does not teach good and evil. It has some basic “law and order” parts like “no murder” and “no theft.” And is also has some moral parts like “honor you mother and father.” But almost every society of humans has those same expectations of it’s citizens.

So, the reason for the Law to be perfect and unable to be fully obeyed was to remind everybody that they “owed their life” to God. And that the day would come when he would provide someone that could obey it in full and thus free them from their ‘inherited sin.”
And, yes, he did intend for humans to remember that we are inferior to him.
Christians use the term “undeserved kindness” in the same sense and for the same reason. Even though “faith without works is dead” there is no way some one can “earn” salvation. It is a “gift” that is given, not earned.

It is very possible for even a human to be loving and at the same time dominate. Many of us have had a parent like that. It is not a ability I would put past a god.

Now we, and many others, have hashed over whether Moses and the Exodus ever existed or happened. Lets just say I am going to take the Bible’s version until proven otherwise.
I am flexible here. For example, I am now open, due to some pretty well dated and dispersed data, to the idea of the Flood not being truly planet wide. That is not an opinion I had a few years ago.

But it doesn’t matter when they learned his name. Even if they didn’t know his name, the patriarchs knew who they worshiped.
It is like the redundant cry of the Moslem’s that, “There is no God but Allah.“
The Bible accounts were written long after the events for an audience that already knew the basics from histories passed down orally. The writer didn’t bother with saying “the God we now know as Yahweh.” He just said “Yahweh.”

And Rich, yes, there were two different “gods” in the garden of Eden.
(See my understanding of the word “Elohim” above.)
One said “Do not eat of it.”
And the other said “Is it true he told you not to eat of it?”
Ever since then we have a common term for that kind of personality.
We call them a “snake in the grass.”

[Ishtar]

So....I'm having trouble following you KBS ....you're saying God is a snake in the grass?

Also ...correct me if I'm wrong...that you don't personally believe in the dogma that you repeated in your earlier post?

Have I got this right?

I do sometimes find it difficult to understand you, but then, I expect some people find it difficult to understand me!

[kbs2244]

Ish:

Yes there was a “god” (sprit creature, super human creature, demon, whatever) as well as “God” (the creator) in Eden. The small “g” god was the “snake in the grass.”
Not two different side of the same guy. but two different guys.

Also, I am dancing around on some of my personal beliefs, because they are just that, my personal beliefs. Some of them may have more evidence then others to support them, so I will, on occasion, hide behind the “conventual wisdom” curtain. But my basic inclination, as I said, is to believe the Bible’s account until proven otherwise.

So, to put it in a bottle, I am a “Christian” in the sense that I follow what I think Christ taught.

My major “Holy Book” is the Greek Scriptures (New Testament) but I do see it as a theological continuation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament.) The vast majority of it was written by Jews for Jews. So, even though most of it was written in the Greek language, it has to be looked at from a Jewish perspective.

But I am far from a “conventual Christian.”

The major branches of Christianity have strayed far from what was taught in the first century. Edwin Hatch, (The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church - 1891) showed it the best, but I feel he made some mistakes also.

My major difficulty with conventual Christianity is the Trinity. There is just no way Christ, or any of the first century followers, taught it or believed it. Followed by the Trinity is the concept of Hell Fire and eternal torture for the same reason.

These are, in my mind, the classic examples of Christianity’s leaders twisting history for a preconceived end such as you and Min like to assert happened on other instances.

[Ishtar]

KBS

I'm quite impressed that you've managed to stay true to something that others like myself have proved to be so faulty and self-contradictory, and not to mention that we've also made quite a good case for the roots of it being embedded in the very so-called 'paganism' that the Yahwists tried to stamp out. and following that, the early church.

But it's not the purpose of this board to attack or even examine each others' personal beliefs, and so I will respect yours.

However, you may want to examine how the serpent, which is an age old motif that is an integral part of others (pagan, if you like) mythologies, is regarded in those other stories, and the qualities attributed to it. You might find it enlightening and it may give you a new slant on the Eden story - one of the oldest in the Bible.

[kbs2244]

Proved to youeselves, Ish.
Not to me.

[Ishtar]

Perhaps 'proved' is too strong a word for it, KBS. But I think we have raised a pretty big question mark in various discussions all over this board. Yet it's all quite fragmented, and so perhaps it might be a good idea to attempt some kind of pull together conclusion of where we're at with it, thus far.

For me, what's interesting is not to try and prove that Jesus didn't exist, or God doesn't exist, although I do tend to get involved in those kind of discussions. But what I've been doing the past 10 years, through my research, is tracing a line, a development of an idea, from the ancient shamanic way of life, once practised all over the world, through the Mystery schools and on into religion. In doing this, I can see how one idea led to another, led to another, led to another, and how the political landscape at each juncture fed into and informed the prevailing collective view about who God was.

There is enough evidence in mythology to show that, if you go back far enough, people lived in a symbiotic partnership with the spirits, each person having their own connection with their own guiding spirits as well as the spirits of nature. After some time - we don't know how long but probably with the advent of agriculture and, thus, each person developing their own skills - this gift of communication became more specialised into one or two people in each tribe and, in Siberia at least, these people were known as shamans.

The earliest records we have of shamanic practice are the Indian Vedas, and also some of the Sumerian literature that was inscribed on tablets in cuneiform letters, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Descent of Ishtar. We can date these works to around 3,000 BC.

After that, the next layer of sacred literature - the Vedanta, the Buddhist sutras, the Tao etc - seems to be another step away from each person having their own relationship with the sacred. The spirits become more god-like, more remote, and a new way of relating to gods/God came into being. No longer was the shaman asked to go into the causal dimensions to sort out any problems experienced by the tribe. Now, the doctrine of karma (or what the Christians call 'original sin') came into being. So then the only way to a happier life was to pay back what you owed by good works in the hope of a better afterlife or next life, depending on whether your religion included reincarnation in its doctrine.

A thousand years or so later came the Mystery religions, where adepts were taken in and sworn to secrecy through complex initiations and then revealed the 'divine secrets'. This was across Mesopotamia, Middle East, Egypt, Greece and Rome. For the main part, the connection with the spirits was totally lost by now, and so the secrets consisted of the by-products of that former relationship with them, such as astrology and mathematics, and an awful lot of superstitious claptrap thrown in besides. By now the 'gods' (who remember, were originally our partners) had been petrified into statues on plinths and were the objects of worship of us 'lesser beings' who could "never even dream of reaching such heights of divinity -- but don't forget the collection bowl on your way out!"

This gradually morphed into religions, who in the main, took the myths and stories of the shamanic and the mystery rites, and made them into their own for, most probably, political purposes. For instance, Yahweh was originally a god in the Canaanite pantheon. He had some sort of small role, but the real hero was Ba'al and the king was El. The Hebrews, being originally Canaanites, had these stories in their blood, in their race memory, and so for reasons which we've been discussing but cannot really prove, took Yahweh out of this pantheon and promoted him to the supreme Godhead. In Exodus, Moses tells the Children of Israel that their God, who used to be known as El, should now be called Yahweh. Elijah also supports this move by calling for the deaths of the priests of Ba'al, the hero of the Canaanite pantheon.

Along those lines, there is also a Canaanite Dani'il who was rewarded by the king for his dreaming prophecies. This story dates at least a thousand years earlier than Daniel in the Bible.

So it's easy to see now why the 'Children of Israel' kept falling back into being polytheists - it was who they really were.

Anyway, this is a bit of a 'history of the world in five minutes' and I've missed out loads, and probably generalised too much, but it's just to show the progression. (And I haven't even mentioned Zoroastrianism as its date of origin is too contentious - my own view, though, is that it's almost entirely derived from the Vedas, or at least an earlier mythology that was common to both the Indians and the Persians.)

But this progression shows that religions are the result of a common, worldwide collective consciousness that developed over thousands of years more or less simultaneously in every country, in every civilisation - well, certainly in Mesopotamia and the Middle East, anyway, where the wandering story tellers and traders were the carriers and planters of the seeds of these stories.

So this is why I said to you that you might want to look at how the serpent is regarded in other myths. This is because, for so long, the history of Israel has been treated in isolation from other similar civilisations in the area - because of the treading on eggshells around religious sensibilities. But that time has passed, and the archaeology and sacred literature of the Hebrews is now being treated in a much more egalatarian way. It is now being studied in context with the whole geographical area, and from that, with their roots revealed, the Biblical stories take on a whole new light. The Garden of Eden story, thought to be the oldest in the Bible, can now be seen in context with other civilisation's stories that are centred round what is loosely labelled as 'The Fall'.

To conclude, my view is that by studying in this way, by coming out of the silo thinking promulgated by the Church over thousands of years, one can better appreciate the stories in the Bible, which are mainly written in metaphor as myths always are, and thus enhance and deepen one's spirituality, one's relationships with the guiding spirits and the spirits of Nature - who, by the way, are dying to get down from their plinths!

As you can see, I'm not an atheist!