₦airaland Forum

Pastor AIO:
Krayoooooo, so this guy, you still dey.  I miss you o!

mazaje:
Krayola ! Its very nice to have you back, how have you been doing?. . . . .

The final editors of the Hebrew canon were fervent monotheists, but a remnant of the polytheistic basis of the pre-Mosaic religion can still be detected. Albrecht Alt has shown that divine titles such as 'El Bet' el (Gen. 31:13; 35:7); 'El 'Olam (Gen. 21:33); and 'El Ro'i (Gen. 16:13); 'El 'Elyon (Gen. 14:18); and 'El Saddai (Gen. 17:1); all later taken to be one God (Yahweh) after Moses, were all originally separate gods worshipped by the early Hebrews.3 The Catholic scholar Bruce Vawter concurs with Alt. According to Vawter, none of the available English translations does justice to the original Hebrew of Genesis 31:13, which quite simply reads "I am the god Bethel" ('El Bet'el), who was a member of the Canaanite pantheon along with the rest of the above.4 The original meaning is therefore quite different from the traditional understanding: this god at Bethel is not the universal Lord who appeared at Bethel but just one god among many – a local deity of a specific place.

In the mutual swearing of Jacob and Laban (Gen. 31:51f) it is clear that two distinct gods are referred to.5 The work of later editors is clearly evident in this passage. As Alt states: "Was it not plain paganism for the ancestor of Israel and one of his relations to swear by two different gods? This dangerous sentence had to be rendered harmless by an addition or alternation."6 In Judges 11:24 Jepthah recognizes the authority of the god Chemosh, at least for the Ammonites in their own land.

The popular notion that Moses was the original monotheist is a thesis that has very little support. As we shall soon see, Moses probably was not even a monotheist, but even if he was, there was monotheism in Egypt a generation before Moses, most likely under the heretic king Akhenaten of the 14th century B.C.E. In his insistence on the worship of Yahweh alone, Moses was a henotheist, i.e., he believed that Yahweh was the greatest among the gods, the king of gods.

The traditional belief that Yahweh revealed himself solely to Moses, and that no people except the Hebrews worshipped Yahweh, is also becoming more tenuous. Several scholars have pointed out evidence of Yahweh worship among several pre-Mosaic eastern cultures.7 For example, the controversial tablets at Ebla, dating back into the 3rd millennium B.C.E., speak of a god by the name of "Ya," who is linked to the Yahweh of Moses by some Ebla scholars.8

Contrary to popular understanding, the First Commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me," does not deny the existence of other deities. In his commentary on Deuteronomy Anthony Phillips maintains that "there is here no thought of monotheism. The commandment does not seek to repudiate the existence of other gods, but to prevent Israel from having anything to do with them."9 The ontological status of other gods besides Yahweh can be explicitly seen in Deut. 32:8, where we find Yahweh setting the boundaries of nations according to the "number of the sons of God." The RSV follows the Septuagint text, which has been reinforced by the copy of Deuteronomy found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Cave 4 at Qumran. . . .

mukina2:
Stop speaking catalan trrash

Start speaking yinglish