Over sixty valid deities in the OT

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Willum
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Over sixty valid deities in the OT

Post #1

Post by Willum »

So I knew there were other gods listed in the Torah/OT, but I didn't realize there were over sixty!

Sixty deities spoken about as if they were, to spout the phrase, "living gods."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category: ... brew_Bible

How can the OT claim to be monotheistic, when Asherah (Ha-Sarah), is Yahweh's wife, and so many other deities are part of the narrative?

We all thought Judaism was monotheistic, but it has as many gods as any other religion.

Can anyone explain this?

If you are Judaic, is it OK to worship one of the less bloodthirsty ones? Dagon, god of grain and the oceans, seems nice.

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Re: Over sixty valid deities in the OT

Post #71

Post by Willum »

[Replying to post 70 by tam]
Yes, but that is the God I am referencing; the God of Israel.
And ignoring the god of Ur, the gods of Egypt, and all the other gods with as much evidence and proof as the god of Israel.

They are all equally no-shows.
Or all equally valid, as far as anyone, even you can say, particularly SHOW.

So why do you select the god of 2nd century BCE goat herders instead of Krishna, or Guan-Yin?
They are still very pronounced religions.

So why that particular no show?
Is it all his bloody practices?
Numbers 31:17-18
Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
Or his promotion of rape?:
Deuteronomy 22:28-29
28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[a] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
Or slavery?

Just what makes this particular creature so much better than the other existing gods?
I doubt you are of the 12 tribes, they don't exist anymore, and the God of Israel was the god of Israel, not yours, so, what's the deal?

I think the personal choice to support a bloodthirsty, cruel and abhorrent god, says a great deal about an individual.

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Post #72

Post by otseng »

Willum wrote: No, this is a decent into madness trying to rescue those who are already mad.
Figuratively speaking.
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Post #73

Post by Willum »

And this has the advantage of explaining the classic paradox of why "God" refers to himself as plural in Genesis.

Because the hosts were the pantheon of the Hebrew myth.
I will never understand how someone who claims to know the ultimate truth, of God, believes they deserve respect, when they cannot distinguish it from a fairy-tale.

You know, science and logic are hard: Religion and fairy tales might be more your speed.

To continue to argue for the Hebrew invention of God is actually an insult to the very concept of a God. - Divine Insight

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Re: Over sixty valid deities in the OT

Post #74

Post by Willum »

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #40]

Great claim. Quoting someone else saying it too, great.
It doesn't say anything however.

The Hebrew used to worship many gods, despite the bastardization and editing of their Torah.

The Ugaritic text tell us what and who they used to worship.
How do you trust a people who destroy their own works about gods?

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Re: Over sixty valid deities in the OT

Post #75

Post by Diagoras »

Question for debate (from the OP):
How can the OT claim to be monotheistic, when Asherah (Ha-Sarah), is Yahweh's wife, and so many other deities are part of the narrative?
The main claim (quoted above) appears to have been only partially rebutted so far. While evidence for Asherah being Yahweh’s wife is slim, we have multiple concessions by those arguing the negative that the OT is essentially polytheistic. Examples:

JehovahsWitness (Post 13):
Yes, the bible does speak of many pagan god's worshipped by the people in ancient Palestine and surrounding territories.
BJS post 16:
At any rate, polytheism did exist at various times throughout Israel’s history, and it was repeatedly condemned throughout the biblical text as being false.
Tam (post 17):
As to the rest (though there is overlap among the false gods on that page as well, such as asherah pole and asherah) there is no question that people worshiped multiple gods; including Israel.

Now, one post from a now-banned user which intrigued me was this one:

Post 22 (StuartJ):
At some stage in Jewish history, the faction that worshipped the mythological Yahweh gained control of Jewish society ...

... and rewrote the "scriptures" to install Yahweh as the only lower-case god the Jews were to worship.
While there was no supporting evidence for this claim in the post, I then followed the first link from Post 42 (Willum), claiming Asherah was God’s wife – partially quoted here:
Mentions of the goddess Asherah in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) are rare and have been heavily edited by the ancient authors who gathered the texts together," Aaron Brody, director of the Bade Museum and an associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion, said.
Asherah as a tree symbol was even said to have been "chopped down and burned outside the Temple in acts of certain rulers who were trying to 'purify' the cult, and focus on the worship of a single male god, Yahweh," he added.
The ancient Israelites were polytheists, Brody told Discovery News, "with only a small minority worshiping Yahweh alone before the historic events of 586 B.C." In that year, an elite community within Judea was exiled to Babylon and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This, Brody said, led to "a more universal vision of strict monotheism: one god not only for Judah, but for all of the nations.
This suggests the destruction of Solomon’s Temple marked a distinct shift from polytheism to monotheism. We should then be able to examine any books of the Old Testament known to have been written after 586 BC (are there any? I’m not a biblical scholar) to check whether there’s a noticeable decrease in references to gods other than Yahweh – which would be in keeping with these claimed revisionist practices.

Although sparse and incomplete, on the available evidence, we can tentatively conclude that the OT was polytheistic, as claimed in the OP, but the later appearances of being monotheistic can be attributed to mundane (i.e. human influenced) revisions, rather than from divine command. Asherah’s claimed relationship to Yahweh is probably the least supported part of the OP, but importantly, if removed, would still leave a sound argument which hasn’t been refuted.

Acknowledging polytheism existed still leaves open any question of how and when these other gods were created, but the OP didn’t make any claims about that.

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Re: Over sixty valid deities in the OT

Post #76

Post by JehovahsWitness »

Diagoras wrote: Tue Aug 18, 2020 12:19 am Question for debate (from the OP):
How can the OT claim to be monotheistic, when Asherah (Ha-Sarah), is Yahweh's wife, and so many other deities are part of the narrative?
The main claim (quoted above) appears to have been only partially rebutted so far. While evidence for Asherah being Yahweh’s wife is slim, we have multiple concessions by those arguing the negative that the OT is essentially polytheistic.


Are you arguing that the Hebrew bible promoted and endorsed the worship of multiple gods including Eshtoreth or that the Hebrew system as expressed through the Mosaic law approved such worship?




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Re: Over sixty valid deities in the OT

Post #77

Post by Willum »

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #76]
Are you arguing that the Hebrew bible promoted and endorsed the worship of multiple gods including Eshtoreth or that the Hebrew system as expressed through the Mosaic law approved such worship?
Rather definitional don't you think?
It wasn't the Hebrew Bible until it was changed from the Ugaritic Bible to the Hebrew Bible, no? So the Bible the people who would become Hebrews venerated certainly promoted multiple gods. But the subsequent bastardized Bible, the Hebrew Bible, did not endorse the worship of other gods.
It simply acknowledged the existence of other gods, and claimed their god was superior. Which is the point of the post.
Well, he may be superior, but in a way that is as provable that Superman is superior to Green Lantern. Ho-hum.

You know, come to think of it, didn't people who would become the Hebrew seem to run into a long spate of bad luck, after they made those changes? Ho-hum.

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Re: Over sixty valid deities in the OT

Post #78

Post by Diagoras »

JehovahsWitness wrote: Sun Aug 23, 2020 1:35 am Are you arguing that the Hebrew bible promoted and endorsed the worship of multiple gods including Eshtoreth or that the Hebrew system as expressed through the Mosaic law approved such worship?
No, I'm not. As already posted immediately above, Willum posted out that "It simply acknowledged the existence of other gods". The OP was quite specific, and there's already been acknowledgement that 'other gods' are part of the narrative in the Old Testament.

I did ask about whether any OT books were written after 586 BCE. Do you happen to know?

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Re: Over sixty valid deities in the OT

Post #79

Post by JehovahsWitness »

Diagoras wrote: Sun Aug 23, 2020 5:07 pm
JehovahsWitness wrote: Sun Aug 23, 2020 1:35 am Are you arguing that the Hebrew bible promoted and endorsed the worship of multiple gods including Eshtoreth or that the Hebrew system as expressed through the Mosaic law approved such worship?
No, I'm not. [...]It simply acknowledged the existence of other gods". The OP was quite specific, and there's already been acknowledgement that 'other gods' are part of the narrative in the Old Testament.

Fair enough. The bible acknowledges the existence of other "gods" in a similar way to how many atheists I know "acknowledge the existence of gods" ie it recognises that humans have invented "god's" in their imagination and built up systems of worship around such so-called god's which in reality do not exist anywhere but in the imagination of believers.
1 CORINTHIANS 8:5 NWT

For even though there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords,”
DEUTERONOMY 4:27-28

Jehovah will scatter you among the peoples, and just a few of you will survive among the nations to which Jehovah will have driven you. There you will have to serve gods of wood and stone made by human hands, gods that cannot see or hear or eat or smell.
JEREMIAH 2: 28 - BLE

where are your gods you made for yourself? let them stand up if they will save you in your time of trouble, for your gods are as many as your cities, Judah.
PSALMS 97:7

Let all those serving any carved image be put to shame, those who boast about their worthless gods.




JW





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Re: Over sixty valid deities in the OT

Post #80

Post by Willum »

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #79]
Fair enough. The bible acknowledges the existence of other "gods" in a similar way to how many atheists I know "acknowledge the existence of other gods" ie it recognises that humans have invented "god's" in their imagination and built up systems of worship around such so-called god's which in reality do not exist anywhere but in the imagination of believers.
Except your god also interacts with these gods. The only way your god could interact with non-existent deities is if he were non-existent himself.

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