Is Yahweh the first Non-Contingent god?

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

The Jewish tradition was the first to posit the notion of a non-contingent God.

It is granted that today many followers of Abrahamic religions view Yahweh to be non-contingent. However, biblical scholarship, archaeology and other scholarly disciplines have shown that originally ancient Israelite was a polytheistic/henotheistic culture, with a deity that formed the world from a preexisting chaotic state (see Genesis 1). This was typical for the major deities of that place and time period.

Questions for debate:

What year, approximately, can it be shown that Jews began to view their god as non-contingent?

Can it be shown that this view of god as non-contingent predates other, similar notions, such as those posited by Greek philosophers (ie. Aristotle)?

[GiddyUp]

Delete

[biomystic]

The Jewish tradition was the first to posit the notion of a non-contingent God.

It is granted that today many followers of Abrahamic religions view Yahweh to be non-contingent. However, biblical scholarship, archaeology and other scholarly disciplines have shown that originally ancient Israelite was a polytheistic/henotheistic culture, with a deity that formed the world from a preexisting chaotic state (see Genesis 1). This was typical for the major deities of that place and time period.

Questions for debate:

What year, approximately, can it be shown that Jews began to view their god as non-contingent?

Can it be shown that this view of god as non-contingent predates other, similar notions, such as those posited by Greek philosophers (ie. Aristotle)?

How can YHWH be "non-contingent" when he had a history within the Canaanite pantheon prior to Israelite modification?

[AquinasD]

As a historical question, this is kind of messy. Ultimately, do we think that the Jews influenced the Greeks, or the Greeks influence the Jews? Our timeframes have some gaps, not to mention that our exegesis of Biblical passages are open to the possibility of different interpretations the Jews would've held or even redacted.

Isaiah is a very "monotheistic" text, though it is comprised of at least two, possibly three, texts that were put together later, and of course there's no way to know that the Jews widely understood it as being a monotheistic text, even if its writers were proposing a monotheistic understanding of God.

Of course, there is always the understanding of God presented in Exodus, where God tells to Abraham that He is I AM THAT I AM, which is obviously monotheistic, but then later Abraham goes up the mountain and "sees God's backside," whatever the flying-hey that's supposed to mean. It's probably the result of redaction and later editing of separate texts together, much like what we have with the Creation account in Genesis.

I would reckon that Yahweh was the first God definitely reckoned to be a necessary being and worshipped as such. Even if the Greeks were the first to understand God as a necessary being around 400 BC, they didn't worship this being.

[biomystic]

One has to ask the question, How do you get a monotheistic god by melding polytheistic gods together and artificially eliminating their original group context? You accidentally put Abraham in Moses' place but to me Abraham too, the whole Abraham and Sarah story is more of the same man-made artifice this time Judah remaking Vedic sun god Brahma and river and Wisdom goddess Sarasvati into "Hebrews", Abraham and Sarah, with another northern India river name, the Ghaggar-Hakra as the main tributary to the Sarasvati river before it dried up about the time frame of Abraham, 2000 BC, and forced the ancient Brahmin community out. These ancient Brahmins went south into the rest of India and west towards Iran and the Middle East, which is where the ancient Hebrews picked up the "Abraham" mythology and converted to their own purposes, the clincher that destroys any accidental "coincidence" of similarities of names used is Ghaggar-Hakra becoming Hagar. The chances of three Vedic deity cognate names showing up in a Jewish myth of origin are astronomically against. And coupled with ample evidence of Jewish borrowing from other ancient pagan religious sources without ever giving attribution and the late arrival of Jewish texts compared to ancient ones all point to a great cover-up of how Judaism evolved into its present day claim to be a "monotheistic" religion. Judaism, like Christianity has the ancient's solar 12 month cycle embedded in their myths of origin, 12 Tribes of Israel for Judaism and 12 Disciples for Christianity, Christianity coming about partially because Judaism lost its original knowledge of the purpose of the solar cycle with the Lost Tribes of Israel, a broken solar calendar while the 12 Disciples mythos is still going strong.

Yahweh can't be a non-contingent god, not with all the historical baggage Yahweh's carrying except to those who chose to ignore historical facts and go with the traditional religious mythologies.

[bernee51]

One has to ask the question, How do you get a monotheistic god by melding polytheistic gods together and artificially eliminating their original group context? You accidentally put Abraham in Moses' place but to me Abraham too, the whole Abraham and Sarah story is more of the same man-made artifice this time Judah remaking Vedic sun god Brahma and river and Wisdom goddess Sarasvati into "Hebrews", Abraham and Sarah, with another northern India river name, the Ghaggar-Hakra as the main tributary to the Sarasvati river before it dried up about the time frame of Abraham, 2000 BC, and forced the ancient Brahmin community out. These ancient Brahmins went south into the rest of India and west towards Iran and the Middle East, which is where the ancient Hebrews picked up the "Abraham" mythology and converted to their own purposes, the clincher that destroys any accidental "coincidence" of similarities of names used is Ghaggar-Hakra becoming Hagar. The chances of three Vedic deity cognate names showing up in a Jewish myth of origin are astronomically against. And coupled with ample evidence of Jewish borrowing from other ancient pagan religious sources without ever giving attribution and the late arrival of Jewish texts compared to ancient ones all point to a great cover-up of how Judaism evolved into its present day claim to be a "monotheistic" religion. Judaism, like Christianity has the ancient's solar 12 month cycle embedded in their myths of origin, 12 Tribes of Israel for Judaism and 12 Disciples for Christianity, Christianity coming about partially because Judaism lost its original knowledge of the purpose of the solar cycle with the Lost Tribes of Israel, a broken solar calendar while the 12 Disciples mythos is still going strong.

The syncretic nature of the emergence of Judaism and its related mythos is, I would have thought, so well evidenced as to be a non-issue. the flood, the garden, and the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve (Atman and Jiva!)

Yahweh can't be a non-contingent god, not with all the historical baggage Yahweh's carrying except to those who chose to ignore historical facts and go with the traditional religious mythologies.

The "I AM THAT IAM' posited by AquinasD as being the 'first god reckoned to ba a necessary being and worshiped as such", may have been so in Judaism, but even that looks to me to be a badly understoond syncretism from th Vedic tat twam asi

[Cathar1950]

Is Yahweh the first Non-Contingent god?

The Jewish tradition was the first to posit the notion of a non-contingent God.

It is granted that today many followers of Abrahamic religions view Yahweh to be non-contingent. However, biblical scholarship, archaeology and other scholarly disciplines have shown that originally ancient Israelite was a polytheistic/henotheistic culture, with a deity that formed the world from a preexisting chaotic state (see Genesis 1). This was typical for the major deities of that place and time period.

Questions for debate:

What year, approximately, can it be shown that Jews began to view their god as non-contingent?

Can it be shown that this view of god as non-contingent predates other, similar notions, such as those posited by Greek philosophers (ie. Aristotle)?

As a historical question, this is kind of messy. Ultimately, do we think that the Jews influenced the Greeks, or the Greeks influence the Jews? Our timeframes have some gaps, not to mention that our exegesis of Biblical passages are open to the possibility of different interpretations the Jews would've held or even redacted.

Isaiah is a very "monotheistic" text, though it is comprised of at least two, possibly three, texts that were put together later, and of course there's no way to know that the Jews widely understood it as being a monotheistic text, even if its writers were proposing a monotheistic understanding of God.

Of course, there is always the understanding of God presented in Exodus, where God tells to Abraham that He is I AM THAT I AM, which is obviously monotheistic, but then later Abraham goes up the mountain and "sees God's backside," whatever the flying-hey that's supposed to mean. It's probably the result of redaction and later editing of separate texts together, much like what we have with the Creation account in Genesis.

I would reckon that Yahweh was the first God definitely reckoned to be a necessary being and worshipped as such. Even if the Greeks were the first to understand God as a necessary being around 400 BC, they didn't worship this being.

Both EduChris and AquinasD are wrong while AquinasD adds error to error as he confuses and diverts.
What does Isaiah’s monotheism have to do with non-contingent? Of course it is Moses not Abraham where Yahweh makes himself know as Yahweh and it is Moses that sees His backside.
“I Am that I Am is better translated as “I will be that which I will be�.
Then he tries to qualify his error with being worshiped as a non-contingent being.

The non-contingent being would be Aristotle’s unmoved mover (Zeus), not Yahweh.
I suppose we are going to be told that the Greeks didn’t worship Zeus either.
While Philo made attempt to understand his religion through Greek thinking, he would have been more Platonic.

[ThatGirlAgain]

The Jewish tradition was the first to posit the notion of a non-contingent God.

It is granted that today many followers of Abrahamic religions view Yahweh to be non-contingent. However, biblical scholarship, archaeology and other scholarly disciplines have shown that originally ancient Israelite was a polytheistic/henotheistic culture, with a deity that formed the world from a preexisting chaotic state (see Genesis 1). This was typical for the major deities of that place and time period.

Questions for debate:

What year, approximately, can it be shown that Jews began to view their god as non-contingent?

Can it be shown that this view of god as non-contingent predates other, similar notions, such as those posited by Greek philosophers (ie. Aristotle)?

Genesis 1 shows a non-contingent transcendent God, creating an orderly world from chaos with no origin given for this God and apparently none needed. The Documentary Hypothesis has Genesis 1 written by the Priestly source during or shortly after the Babylon exile, with a date range of 571-486 BCE. (Ref) (If you want to have Moses write Genesis, then it is even older.)

As I have argued elsewhere, Genesis 1 was written in opposition to Babylonian mythology, stressing Hebrew theology including a single supreme creator not dependent on or subject to anything else.

It is not known how far back in Jewish history the idea of a non-contingent God goes, but it looks like we can assign a latest date of 486 BCE.

By contrast Aristotle, supposed originator of the non-contingent deity idea, was not born until 384 BCE.

[AquinasD]

By contrast Aristotle, supposed originator of the non-contingent deity idea, was not born until 384 BCE.

You don't think it would be Xenophanes (c. 570-475)? He's close enough to make it grey.

[ThatGirlAgain]

By contrast Aristotle, supposed originator of the non-contingent deity idea, was not born until 384 BCE.

You don't think it would be Xenophanes (c. 570-475)? He's close enough to make it grey.

The god of Xenophanes could be described as non-contingent. But the OP referenced Aristotle by name so I did the same. It is not impossible though rather unlikely that the ideas of Xenophanes, who lived in Sicily, reached Babylon in time to influence Jewish thought. But the independent imagining of a single transcendent incorporeal deity while embedded in an anthropomorphic polytheistic culture that one feels estranged from is not at all unreasonable.