Theology and Volcanoes!

[Thomas123]

I am bewildered by Paul, at the moment!
Help me with this theological point!

The volcano is beside the village.
It has caused death and mayhem in the past!
It broods ominously over the peoples lives.
The people are called from within themselves to respond to this volcano.
They do ritual offerings, they do sacrifice, they do doctrines and supplication.

Question!

Are they engaging with the volcano or the God behind the volcano?

There is a theory that despite amazing similarities between Summerian Polytheistic Creation Myths and the Jewish/Christian Genesis1 ,that the second of these,(ie Genesis), is an affront and a correction to the first.
Genesis, according to this theory, elevates the divine as superior and diverse from the material, unlike the earlier Sumerian, approach of having Godly action mixed inseparably with natural occourences in Creation.

Paul is always going back to God's Divine plan being preordained since the start of time, even to the extent of grooming him and his followers to accept and to be accepted by Christ,in the 1st Century??

Ephesians 1
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love

...........

Help me please, my head is about to erupt!

What do you think?

[bjs1]

Hi bjs1, you are completely incorrect, ...read the material and the history that is freely available out there..eg




So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them

Against Enki's wish, the gods decide to slay Kingu, and Enki finally consents to use Kingu's blood to make the first human, with whom Enki always later has a close relationship, the first....

Kingu was sub-God...etc ,etc,etc, and it goes on ,and on ,and on!

.Sumerian religion heavily influenced the religious beliefs of later Mesopotamian peoples; elements of it are retained in the mythologies and religions of the Hurrians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other Middle Eastern culture groups. Scholars of comparative mythology have noticed parallels between the stories of the ancient Sumerians and those recorded later in the early parts of the Hebrew Bible



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki

Among ,many many ,others!
Thanks

Not at all. Scholars have noted the similarities between The Eridu Genesis and the biblical account in Genesis chapter 6 – 9. Certainly both stories follow a universal archetypes. This thread wildly overstates the connections to the first chapter of Genesis.

Now if the comparisons are like the example give in in post 10, where the theme, context, message and details are all divergent and the only similarity is that they are creation stories with the addition that a god takes an interest in what he created, then I don’t disagree. However, if you want to take such vague similarities to argue a concise connection, then you are going to have to provide more evidence than just saying “many, many others.”

[Thomas123]

I am not going to waste time, attempting to educate the educated,...that is not what this is about,bjs1

Now you concede that they may be ' universal archetype origin myths. That is just a platitude to my quotation that you used.

Now, your point about, "theme context ,message, details" is equally disingenuous to my quotation used ,by you.
YES....Enki's man is older than Adam
YES...Enki is spelt differently than Yahweh

YES...the theory ,used as illustration in the OP suggests an affront and a correction to both message and theme, by Genesis 1 to Sumerian Myths.

I am saying that this theory quote (that you use) is attempting to get Genesis1 off a Summerian hook.(unsucessfully)

Let us 'cut to the chase', here bjs1.

Look at this submitted earlier...

So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them

Against Enki's wish, the gods decide to slay Kingu, and Enki finally consents to use Kingu's blood to make the first human, with whom Enki always later has a close relationship, the first....

God is making man.
God is making man from God.
The premise has been established!

Factually, instinctively, we place ourselves as the most accomplished .
Presumptiously,we bind ourselves uniquely to this Creator commodity. eg above quote.

There is an historic succession of 'evolvements ' around this fundamental core, starting with Sumeria,...down through Judaism, down through to the baloney which is Paul ,as per the OP. What started as allegorical naturalism has been whittled and manipulated through a succession of religions into the cartoon popup, that is the Christian Man/God tag team.

Presumptiously, we are now 'good mates ',with God...( at least some of us are)???
Apologies for length of post.
Thanks

[TRANSPONDER]

Hi bjs1, you are completely incorrect, ...read the material and the history that is freely available out there..eg




So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them

Against Enki's wish, the gods decide to slay Kingu, and Enki finally consents to use Kingu's blood to make the first human, with whom Enki always later has a close relationship, the first....

Kingu was sub-God...etc ,etc,etc, and it goes on ,and on ,and on!

.Sumerian religion heavily influenced the religious beliefs of later Mesopotamian peoples; elements of it are retained in the mythologies and religions of the Hurrians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other Middle Eastern culture groups. Scholars of comparative mythology have noticed parallels between the stories of the ancient Sumerians and those recorded later in the early parts of the Hebrew Bible



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki

Among ,many many ,others!
Thanks

There is little room for doubt that the Mesopotamian Flood and Ark story and the Biblical one are linked. The Ark size is the same (or so I recall), though not the shape. The floodis the same story though in the Bible on a larger scale. But the kicker is the release of birds tosee whether there is dry land. That is no coincidence.

The only thing to debate is which is the first. Bible believers will insist that Genesis is less primitive and therefore more likely to reflect a real world flood, while one can also say that the bigger Genesis flood is a development of an earlier primitive one.

For me, the number of variants of the Mesopotamian version from Sumer to Babylon and even an Assyrian version shows which was the original and no version of the Genesis Flood outside of Hebrew writings. It is the noting of Babylonian element sin the Exodus - story that makes me see the first two books (or chapters) of the Bible as origin - stories that the Hebrews had to write and use Babylonian marteriel as a help,and i even suspect an Exilic authorship when the Jews were struggling to maintain their identity.

Apart from that, I have never seriously doubted that the Mesopotamian flood -story was the original and the Bible just adapts it.