2Dbunk wrote:
Exodus 20:5
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
The above is strong stuff. In a land that cherishes the choices Capitalism has provided us with, and Freedom beyond "free will," we Americans welcome competition. But the Abrahamic God would proscribe that right and, in the face of our Constitution, punish offender's children thru the 3rd and 4th generation. IMO that's a bit harsh for children to suffer for something they had no say or control about. IMO this, alone, points to human authorship of the Bible, as flawed as this command is.
1) Is it necessary for God to be jealous in light of the fact he has given us free will and has access to everything there is anyway?
2) Is it necessary for God to be jealous at all?
According to modern Jewish belief, Christian belief and Muslim belief, there is no God but God. God, being fully omniscient, is necessarily fully aware that He is the only Divine Being that exists. For Him to be jealous of Beings which He fully knows do not even exist, would make Him just a little bit more then completely psychotic, wouldn't you agree?
Now, it's true that in the Old Testament God is described as being a "jealous God." In those early days of Judaism God had other God's to compete with. The reason for this is because in ancient times when the books of the OT were being written, the Jews were not monotheistic. They were henotheistic.
Wikipedia
Henotheism
Henotheism (Greek henas theos "one god") is the belief in and worship of a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities that may also be served.
Canaanite religion and early Judaism
Rabbinical Judaism as it developed in Late Antiquity is emphatically monotheistic, but its predecessor, the various schools of Hellenistic Judaism and Second Temple Judaism, and especially the cult of Yahweh as it was practiced in ancient Israel and Judah during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, have been described as henotheistic.
For example, the Moabites worshipped the god Chemosh, the Edomites, Qaus, both of whom were part of the greater Canaanite pantheon, headed by the chief god, El. The Canaanite pantheon consisted of El and Asherah as the chief deities, with 70 sons who were said to rule over each of the nations of the earth. These sons were each worshiped within a specific region. Kurt Noll states that "the Bible preserves a tradition that Yahweh used to 'live' in the south, in the land of Edom" and that the original god of Israel was El Shaddai.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." -- Albert Einstein -- Written in 1954 to Jewish philosopher Erik Gutkind.
