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How the God of Israel Was Born

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Re: How the God of Israel Was Born

#21

Post by ecshafer »

everdrive wrote: post #8
dekervin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That conclusion come from unknowingly defining monotheism as a religious tradition that is close or can be related to the israelite tradition. It's tautological. In reality many human societies throughout the ages have been monotheists.

What are some of the other ones?

Ancient China had a monotheistic religion where they worshiped Shang Di, a monotheistic God without idols, who could not be drawn, and they made yearly sacrifices to at a single Temple.

There are schools that say Hinduism is monotheistic, where Para Brahma is God, and the different "Gods" like Shiva and Vishnu are different avatars of Para Brahma. But there are a lot of schools/philosophies of Hinduism and I only have a surface level understanding.

Re: How the God of Israel Was Born

#24

Post by beardyw »

dragontamer wrote: post #11
everdrive wrote: post #5

I've done a lot of reading on this topic lately. What originally grabbed my interest was reading R. Crumb's "The Book of Genesis Illustrated." It's a comic that attempts in a relatively flat way to draw the events of Genesis without any interpretation. Of course, some interpretation and error is inevitable, but it's not a book that attempts to paint things aggressively in one light or another, and people expecting an…

Catholic here. We don't actually place that much emphasis on Genesis or the Bible in general. A lot of Catholic traditions are outside of the books: the sacraments, the assumption of Mary, the Apostles and their connection to the Bishops (and Bishop of Rome/The Pope), etc. etc. Some Christians overemphasize the written word of the Bible. But just gonna toss this out: Biblical Literalism is not part of the Catholic tr…

Yes, it is a shame the Bible became "a book", taken to be homogenous, when it should be approached as it is, a large collection of books which should be considered individually.

Re: How the God of Israel Was Born

#25

Post by [deleted] »

andsoitis wrote: post #2

There are 3 major strands of monotheism: a) Atenism in Egypt (c. 1350 BCE) b) Israelite / Hebrew c) Zoroastrianism in Persia While some scholars (like Freud) have proposed a link between (a) and (b), it remains contested and unproven. What is, however, likely, is a link between (c) and (b), specifically that Zoroastrianism likely influenced Second Temple Judaism during the period of Persian rule over Judea, particula…

[deleted]

Re: How the God of Israel Was Born

#26

Post by forlorn_mammoth »

everdrive wrote: post #5

I've done a lot of reading on this topic lately. What originally grabbed my interest was reading R. Crumb's "The Book of Genesis Illustrated." It's a comic that attempts in a relatively flat way to draw the events of Genesis without any interpretation. Of course, some interpretation and error is inevitable, but it's not a book that attempts to paint things aggressively in one light or another, and people expecting an…

hey, if you really are interested in the tower of babel story and what it is doing in there, I highly recommend this podcast:

https://literatureandhistory.com/episode-001-the-tower-of-ba...

Scholarly work, not preachy.

by "Doug Metzger finished his Ph.D. in literature in 2011. His chief scholarly interest, following his dissertation work, continues to be 19th-century realism and postbellum American philosophy."

Re: How the God of Israel Was Born

#27

Post by [deleted] »

ecshafer wrote: post #21
everdrive wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some of the other ones?

Ancient China had a monotheistic religion where they worshiped Shang Di, a monotheistic God without idols, who could not be drawn, and they made yearly sacrifices to at a single Temple. There are schools that say Hinduism is monotheistic, where Para Brahma is God, and the different "Gods" like Shiva and Vishnu are different avatars of Para Brahma. But there are a lot of schools/philosophies of Hinduism and I only hav…

[deleted]

Re: How the God of Israel Was Born

#28

Post by dragontamer »

RhysU wrote: post #18
dragontamer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catholic here. We don't actually place that much emphasis on Genesis or the Bible in general. A lot of Catholic traditions are outside of the books: the sacraments, the assumption of Mary, the Apostles and their connection to the Bishops (and Bishop of Rome/The Pope), etc. etc. Some Christians overemphasize the written word of the Bible. But just gonna toss this out: Biblical Literalism is not part of the Catholic tr…

Except that original sin thing is pure Genesis. It's what introduces the entire need for salvation throughout all Nicene Christianity. The Gnostic Christians who rejected the Old Testament entirety had to insert some other reason to require Christ. My favorite mechanism is how Marcion handled it, purely because his was more interesting than "everyone starts broken." But yes, generally Catholics are not sola scriptura…

I'll admit that my only understanding of Gnostics are the random anime references to the Demiurge or other Gnostic concepts (and nearby Wikipedia pages). It is an utterly fascinating viewpoint of the early church and the different ideas circa the 1st and 2nd century AD.

It's important for any Catholic to study that IMO, and what led us towards the Nicene Creed / council of Nicaea. So it's definitely on my todo list of historical facts to look up.

And point on the Genesis ideas like original sin. We do take from Genesis just not as much as some other churches.

-------

The debate and back and forth of the Gnostics with regards to the nature of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are hugely important and the very reason why the Creed was created in the first place.

So much Catholic tradition is a continuation of the decisions of our early leaders recorded in the 300s AD and onward. (And the big gap between 30 AD when Jesus likely died and 300ish AD is simply oral traditions and barely written down outside of the Gospel and Paul's letters.)

Re: How the God of Israel Was Born

#29

Post by everdrive »

forlorn_mammoth wrote: post #26
everdrive wrote: post #5

I've done a lot of reading on this topic lately. What originally grabbed my interest was reading R. Crumb's "The Book of Genesis Illustrated." It's a comic that attempts in a relatively flat way to draw the events of Genesis without any interpretation. Of course, some interpretation and error is inevitable, but it's not a book that attempts to paint things aggressively in one light or another, and people expecting an…

hey, if you really are interested in the tower of babel story and what it is doing in there, I highly recommend this podcast: https://literatureandhistory.com/episode-001-the-tower-of-ba... Scholarly work, not preachy. by "Doug Metzger finished his Ph.D. in literature in 2011. His chief scholarly interest, following his dissertation work, continues to be 19th-century realism and postbellum American philosophy."

Thanks, I'll check this out -- it looks really interesting.

Re: How the God of Israel Was Born

#30

Post by andsoitis »

trikko wrote: post #3
andsoitis wrote: post #2

There are 3 major strands of monotheism: a) Atenism in Egypt (c. 1350 BCE) b) Israelite / Hebrew c) Zoroastrianism in Persia While some scholars (like Freud) have proposed a link between (a) and (b), it remains contested and unproven. What is, however, likely, is a link between (c) and (b), specifically that Zoroastrianism likely influenced Second Temple Judaism during the period of Persian rule over Judea, particula…

Fair point and thanks. On Persian influence: Demons are probably more directly Babylonian than Persian. Judah got that exposure during the Exile itself, not under Persian rule. Lilith (Isaiah 34:14) is the Mesopotamian Lilitu, and Babylonian demonology (Lamashtu, Pazuzu, the utukku) was already rich on its own. Where Zoroastrian influence is a stronger case is angels as named individuals with defined roles (Michael,…

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