Origins of Christian God- Through Cultural, Historical, Anthropology lens

[zeek]

Originally Posted by awareness

The ascension was written back when they knew nothing about the real cosmos, back when they pictured the earth like a three-layered cake. In that conception, heaven wasn't very far up ; close enough for Jesus to levitate to heaven.

Of course reality didn't and doesn't match that conception. Where Jesus went we don't know.

Here's in an alternative symbolic view. According to the traditional view of reality there is a hidden world behind the world of appearance. So in the story of Christ's Ascension he disappears into a cloud as he rises. And that is the case that he is present to the believer he is nevertheless invisible.

Now the heavens are the source of spiritual truths and powers. Each planet represents a concentric sphere of truth and power. The resurrected Christ rises above them all to the place of preeminent power at the right hand of God. Thus he is said to have conquered the principalities and powers and encompasses them. His way of life and his mode of being--the way of love and sacrifice--are thus symbolically shown to be the highest possible pattern of human life.

[SerenityLives]

Originally Posted by zeek

Now the heavens are the source of spiritual truths and powers. Each planet represents a concentric sphere of truth and power. The resurrected Christ rises above them all to the place of preeminent power at the right hand of God. Thus he is said to have conquered the principalities and powers and encompasses them. His way of life and his mode of being--the way of love and sacrifice--are thus symbolically shown to be the highest possible pattern of human life.

I would like to read more on this.. it’s no wonder the planets in our solar system are named after greek gods and goddesses.

[zeek]

Originally Posted by SerenityLives

I would like to read more on this.. it’s no wonder the planets in our solar system are named after greek gods and goddesses.

I was attempting a symbolic reading of the event. Obviously the New Testament writers weren't thinking of things according to the modern cosmology. In Romans 8:38 Paul refers to principalities and powers. The Greek word translated principalities is transliterated as archon. It has the same root as the word archetype. In the ancient cosmology the planets had archetypal significance. In other words they were considered divine beings. The biblical term "principalities and powers" the principalities maybe considered to correspond with the pagan gods and the powers with their spheres. The seven planets are those that are visible to the naked eye and include the sun and the moon. The Earth of course is not included because in the ancient symbolic cosmology it's not considered a planet.
In Revelations 5:6 the lamb that receives the book with the Seven seals has seven horns and seven eyes which are the spirit seven spirits of God sent out into all the Earth. The seven eyes signify the seven planets. The names of the planets designate the spirits incarnate in them as their intelligence. By ascending beyond them, Christ overcame their power and incorporates they're positive character into himself symbolically. This idea shouldn't be totally foreign to local church people as it is related to the all-inclusive Christ as preached by Nee and Lee.

[Boxjobox]

Originally Posted by zeek

Here's in an alternative symbolic view. According to the traditional view of reality there is a hidden world behind the world of appearance. So in the story of Christ's Ascension he disappears into a cloud as he rises. And that is the case that he is present to the believer he is nevertheless invisible.

Now the heavens are the source of spiritual truths and powers. Each planet represents a concentric sphere of truth and power. The resurrected Christ rises above them all to the place of preeminent power at the right hand of God. Thus he is said to have conquered the principalities and powers and encompasses them. His way of life and his mode of being--the way of love and sacrifice--are thus symbolically shown to be the highest possible pattern of human life.

So, would you say that the Christian thing is just for our galaxy? Aren’t we still trying to determine how many planets there actually are in our galaxy? Symbolism has its place- the gospel of John was full of it. Matthew end with Jesus up on the mountain- closer to heaven? Mark has him go up to heaven, Luke same, John has him eating fish on the sea shore- except he does talk earlier to Mary Mag about ascending.

Heaven plays a major concept in the whole bible and I suspect, up until the Wright brothers, it was still somewhat assumed that heaven was just beyond the clouds, just out of sight. Today, heaven is as nebulous to Christians as 6000 years creation. To say “ Oh, they just didn’t have a full view of the cosmos” or the Bible really wasn’t giving a scientific view of creation, kind of leaves us with a what else is not real- the flood, David, a real Jesus, resurrection? Heaven is one of those things that lost importance, as did discussing creation.

Symbolism doesn’t seem to account for the activities in the book of Acts.

[SerenityLives]

Originally Posted by Boxjobox

Symbolism doesn’t seem to account for the activities in the book of Acts.

How do you explain how Act’s emphasis on the Holy Spirit and the event of the Pentecost as not being symbolic?

[SerenityLives]

Originally Posted by Boxjobox

So, would you say that the Christian thing is just for our galaxy? Aren’t we still trying to determine how many planets there actually are in our galaxy?

You may be unto something; maybe there’s whole other worlds out there. Watch this video- our sun is just a speck and we are a microspeck. maybe there are alternate worlds/humanoid species that do not have any concept of what Christianity or even religion is.

https://youtu.be/3mnSDifDSxQ

[SerenityLives]

I copied and pasted this whole article here for you guys’ convenience, since you have to subscribe in order to view the whole article-

How the Jews Invented God, and Made Him Great
The God of the Old Testament started out as just one of many deities of the ancient Israelites. It took a traumatic crisis to make him into the all-powerful creator of the world.
Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in a single, omnipotent deity that created the heavens and earth. But if he was and is the only god, why would God need a name?
The Bible explicitly tells us that God has one, which indicates he had to be distinguished from other celestial beings, just like humans use names to identify different people.
What that name might be is another matter. The Jewish prohibition on speaking God’s name means that its correct pronunciation has been lost. All we know is that the Hebrew Bible spells it out as four consonants known as the Tetragrammaton – from the Greek for “four letters,” which are transliterated as Y-H-W-H.
The existence of a proper name for God is the first indication that the history of Yhwh and his worship by the Jews is a lot more complicated than many realize.

In gods we trusted-
Modern biblical scholarship and archaeological discoveries in and around Israel show that the ancient Israelites did not always believe in a single, universal god. In fact, monotheism is a relatively recent concept, even amongst the People of the Book.
Decades of research into the birth and evolution of the Yhwh cult are summarized in “The Invention of God,” a recent book by Thomas Römer, a world-renowned expert in the Hebrew Bible and professor at the College de France and the University of Lausanne. Römer, who held a series of conferences at Tel Aviv University last month, spoke to Haaretz about the subject.
The main source for investigating the history of God is, of course, the Bible itself.

When exactly the Jewish holy text reached its final form is unknown. Many scholars believe this happened sometime between the Babylonian exile, which began after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE (some 2600 years ago), and the subsequent periods of Persian and Hellenistic rule.

However, the redactors of the Bible were evidently working off older traditions, Römer says.Biblical texts are not direct historical sources. They reflect the ideas, the ideologies of their authors and of course of the historical context in which they were written,” Römer explains.

Still, he notes, “you can have memories of a distant past, sometimes in a very confusing way or in a very oriented way. But I think we can, and we must, use the biblical text not just as fictional texts but as texts that can tell us stories about the origins.”

What's in God's name

The first clue that the ancient Israelites worshipped gods other than the deity known as Yhwh lies in their very name. “Israel” is a theophoric name going back at least 3200 years, which includes and invokes the name of a protective deity.

Going by the name, the main god of the ancient Israelites was not Yhwh, but El, the chief deity in the Canaanite pantheon, who was worshipped throughout the Levant.

In other words, the name "Israel" is probably older than the veneration of Yhwh by this group called Israel, Römer says. “The first tutelary deity they were worshipping was El, otherwise their name would have been Israyahu.”

The Bible appears to address this early worship of El in Exodus 6:3, when God tells Moses that he “appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai (today translated as "God Almighty") but was not known to them by my name Yhwh.”

In fact, it seems that the ancient Israelites weren't even the first to worship Yhwh – they seem to have adopted Him from a mysterious, unknown tribe that lived somewhere in the deserts of the southern Levant and Arabia.

The god of the southern deserts

The first mention of the Israelite tribe itself is a victory stele erected around 1210 BCE by the pharaoh Mernetpah (sometimes called "the Israel stele"). These Israelites are described as a people inhabiting Canaan.

So how did this group of Canaanite El-worshippers come in contact with the cult of Yhwh?

The Bible is quite explicit about the geographical roots of the Yhwh deity, repeatedly linking his presence to the mountainous wilderness and the deserts of the southern Levant. Judges 5:4 says that Yhwh “went forth from Seir” and “marched out of the field of Edom.” Habbakuk 3:3 tells us that “God came from Teman,” specifically from Mount Paran.

All these regions and locations can be identified with the territory that ranges from the Sinai and Negev to northern Arabia.

Yhwh’s penchant for appearing in the biblical narrative on top of mountains and accompanied by dark clouds and thunder, are also typical attributes of a deity originating in the wilderness, possibly a god of storms and fertility.

Support for the theory that Yhwh originated in the deserts of Israel and Arabia can be found in Egyptian texts from the late second millennium, which list different tribes of nomads collectively called "Shasu" that populated this vast desert region.

One of these groups, which inhabits the Negev, is identified as the “Shasu Yhw(h).” This suggests that this group of nomads may have been the first to have the god of the Jews as its tutelary deity.

“It is profoundly difficult to sort through the haze of later layers in the Bible, but insofar as we can, this remains the most plausible hypothesis for the encounter of Israelites with the Yhwh cult,” says David Carr, professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

The many faces of god

How exactly the Shasu merged with the Israelites or introduced them to the cult of Yhwh is not known, but by the early centuries of the first millennium, he was clearly being worshipped in both the northern kingdom of Israel and its smaller, southern neighbor, the kingdom of Judah.

His name appears for the first time outside the Bible nearly 400 years after Merneptah, in the 9th-century BCE stele of Mesha, a Moabite king who boasts of defeating the king of Israel and “taking the vessels of Yhwh.”

While Yhwh’s cult was certainly important in the early First Temple period, it was not exclusive.

“Jeremiah speaks about the many gods of Judah, which are as numerous as the streets of a town. There was certainly worship a female deity, Asherah, or the Queen of Heaven,” Römer told Haaretz. “There was certainly also the worship of the northern storm god Hadad (Baal).”

The plurality of deities was such that in an inscription by Sargon II, who completed the conquest of the kingdom of Israel in the late 8th century BCE, the Assyrian king mentioned that after capturing the capital Samaria, his troops brought back “the (statues of) gods in which (the Israelites) had put their trust.”

As the Yhwh cult evolved and spread, he was worshipped in temples across the land. Early 8th-century inscriptions found at Kuntillet Ajrud probably refer to different gods and cultic centers by invoking “Yhwh of Samaria and his Asherah” and “Yhwh of Teman and his Asherah.” Only later, under the reign of King Josiah at the end of the 7th century BCE, would the Yhwh cult centralize worship at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Nor, in ancient Israel, was Yhwh the invisible deity that Jews have refrained from depicting for the last two millennia or so.

In the kingdom of Israel, as Hosea 8 and 1 Kings 12:26-29 relate, he was often worshipped in the form of a calf, as the god Baal was. (1 Kings 12:26-29 explains that Jeroboam made two calves, for the sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan, so the people could worship Yhwh there and wouldn’t have to go all the way to Jerusalem. Ergo, in northern Israel at least, the calves were meant to represent Yhwh.)

In Jerusalem and Judah, Römer says, Yhwh more frequently took the form of a sun god or a seated deity. Such depictions may have even continued after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Exile: a coin minted in Jerusalem during the Persian period shows a deity sitting on a wheeled throne and has been interpreted by some as a late anthropomorphic representation of Yhwh.

Römer even suspects that the Holy of Holies in the First Temple of Jerusalem, and other Judahite sanctuaries, hosted a statue of the god, based on Psalms and prophetic texts in the Bible that speak of being admitted in the presence of “the face of Yhwh.”

Not all scholars agree that the iconography of Yhwh was so pronounced in Judah. The evidence for anthropomorphic depiction “is not strong,” says Saul Olyan, professor of Judaic studies and religious studies at Brown University. “It may be that anthropomorphic images of Yhwh were avoided early on.”

The God of the Jews

In any case, many scholars agree that Yhwh became the main god of the Jews only after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, around 720 BCE.

How or why the Jews came to exalt Yhwh and reject the pagan gods they also adored is unclear.

We do know that after the fall of Samaria, the population of Jerusalem increased as much as fifteenfold, likely due to the influx of refugees from the north. That made it necessary for the kings of Judah to push a program that would unify the two populations and create a common narrative. And that in turn may be why the biblical writers frequently stigmatize the pagan cultic practices of the north, and stress that Jerusalem alone had withstood the Assyrian onslaught – thereby explaining Israel's embarrassing fall to Assyria, while distinguishing the prominence and purity of Judahite religion.

Religious reforms by Judahite kings, mainly Hezekiah and Josiah, included abolishing random temple worship of Yhwh and centralizing his adoration at the Temple in Jerusalem, as well as banning the worship of Asherah, Yhwh’s female companion, and other pagan cults in the Temple and around the capital.

The Israelites don't keep the faith

This transformation from polytheism to worshipping a single god was carved in stone, literally. For example, an inscription in a tomb in Khirbet Beit Lei, near the Judahite stronghold of Lachish, states that “Yhwh is the god of the whole country; the mountains of Judah belong to the god of Jerusalem.”

Josiah’s reforms were also enshrined in the book of Deuteronomy – whose original version is thought to have been compiled around this time – and especially in the words of Deut. 6, which would later form the Sh’ma Yisrael, one of the central prayers of Judaism: “Hear, O Israel, Yhwh is our God, Yhwh is one.”

But while Yhwh had, by the dawn of the 6th century BCE, become “our” national god, he was still believed to be just one of many celestial beings, each protecting his own people and territory.

This is reflected in the many biblical texts exhorting the Israelites not to follow other gods, a tacit acknowledgement of the existence of those deities, Romer explains.

For example, in Judges 11:24, Jephtah tries to resolve a territorial dispute by telling the Ammonites that the land of Israel had been given to the Israelites by Yhwh, while their lands had been given to them by their god Chemosh ("Will you not take what your god Chemosh gives you? Likewise, whatever Yhwh our god has given us, we will possess.")

Snatching God from the jaws of defeat

The real conceptual revolution probably only occurred after the Babylonians' conquest of Judah and arson of the First Temple in 587 B.C.E. The destruction and the subsequent exile to Babylon of the Judahite elites inevitably cast doubts on the faith they had put in Yhwh.

“The question was: how can we explain what happened?” Römer says. If the defeated Israelites had simply accepted that the Babylonian gods had proven they were stronger than the god of the Jews, history would have been very different.

But somehow, someone came up with a different, unprecedented explanation. “The idea was that the destruction happened because the kings did not obey the law of god,” Römer says. “It’s a paradoxical reading of the story: the vanquished in a way is saying that his god is the vanquisher. It’s quite a clever idea.

“The Israelites/Judahites took over the classical idea of the divine wrath that can provoke a national disaster but they combined it with the idea that Yhwh in his wrath made the Babylonians destroy Judah and Jerusalem,” he said.

The concept that Yhwh had pulled the Babylonians' strings, causing them to punish the Israelites inevitably led to the belief that he was not just the god of one people, but a universal deity who exercises power over all of creation.

This idea is already present in the book of Isaiah, thought to be one of the earliest biblical texts, composed during or immediately after the Exile. This is also how the Jews became the “chosen people” – because the Biblical editors had to explain why Israel had a privileged relationship with Yhwh even though he was no longer a national deity, but the one true God.

Over the centuries, as the Bible was redacted, this narrative was refined and strengthened, creating the basis for a universal religion – one that could continue to exist even without being tied to a specific territory or temple. And thus Judaism as we know it was established, and, ultimately, all other major monotheistic religions were as well.

[Boxjobox]

SerenityLives- I would say your long article reinforces what I said: The Bible is the hub of all the discussion concerning God. The presentation was not dissimilar to that style W Lee used: make suppositions based on small fragments, expand those suppositions, and then proceed as if the suppositions were gospel truth, and then pat yourself on the back as being wise.

Scripture presents the good, the bad and the ugly concerning Israel. The main thing about the scripture is it presents the Living God as opposed to idols that represent mythical gods and contrived practices. I actually find it fascinating to follow the development of the interaction of the God of Israel with what started with one nomadic person. And they still exist today, and are in the center of world events- good, bad and ugly! And that not unpredicted!

I do think you are doing yourself a disservice chasing after the ugly and associating your thinking with those who do likewise. But, have at it, and I’ll leave off interfering with your posted goals.

Peace,

Boxjobox

[SerenityLives]

Originally Posted by Boxjobox

SerenityLives- I would say your long article reinforces what I said: The Bible is the hub of all the discussion concerning God. The presentation was not dissimilar to that style W Lee used: make suppositions based on small fragments, expand those suppositions, and then proceed as if the suppositions were gospel truth, and then pat yourself on the back as being wise.

Scripture presents the good, the bad and the ugly concerning Israel. The main thing about the scripture is it presents the Living God as opposed to idols that represent mythical gods and contrived practices. I actually find it fascinating to follow the development of the interaction of the God of Israel with what started with one nomadic person. And they still exist today, and are in the center of world events- good, bad and ugly! And that not unpredicted!

I do think you are doing yourself a disservice chasing after the ugly and associating your thinking with those who do likewise. But, have at it, and I’ll leave off interfering with your posted goals.

Peace,

Boxjobox

Why are you commenting on this thread if you already know what the origin of God is and you’re just shoving the bible in our faces?

[Boxjobox]

Originally Posted by SerenityLives

Why are you commenting on this thread if you already know what the origin of God is and you’re just shoving the bible in our faces?

Note- I was not comparing you to WLee, but the style and approach of the writer of the article you presented ( unless, of course, you wrote the article).

I comment, because your presentations are so full of holes, and missives, and false conclusions, and it is a public forum talking about the Christian God, and I am a Christian who has skin in the game. You seem to reject the God of Jesus, and seek a substitute. If you are going to tear down the God of Jesus, and rebuild an edifice of your own choosing and liking, then you are creating your own scripture, religion, rules.

[zeek]

Originally Posted by Boxjobox

So, would you say that the Christian thing is just for our galaxy? Aren’t we still trying to determine how many planets there actually are in our galaxy? Symbolism has its place- the gospel of John was full of it. Matthew end with Jesus up on the mountain- closer to heaven? Mark has him go up to heaven, Luke same, John has him eating fish on the sea shore- except he does talk earlier to Mary Mag about ascending.

Heaven plays a major concept in the whole bible and I suspect, up until the Wright brothers, it was still somewhat assumed that heaven was just beyond the clouds, just out of sight. Today, heaven is as nebulous to Christians as 6000 years creation. To say “ Oh, they just didn’t have a full view of the cosmos” or the Bible really wasn’t giving a scientific view of creation, kind of leaves us with a what else is not real- the flood, David, a real Jesus, resurrection? Heaven is one of those things that lost importance, as did discussing creation.

Symbolism doesn’t seem to account for the activities in the book of Acts.

No. I was interpreting the Ascension according to the biblical cosmology. You seem to be thinking in terms of the modern scientific cosmology. The ancient writers didn't have access to that. Their symbolism was based on what they could see with the naked eye.
It seems to me that speculating about whether it was real or not real in terms of the modern scientific cosmology leads one down a bottomless rabbit hole. On the other hand reading the text symbolically one may answer the questions what does it mean and what higher truth does it embody in terms of the texts themselves? That would seem to make it relevant to everybody who is conscious.
I'm not sure what you mean about symbolism not accounting for the activities in the book of Acts. Can you explain what you see as the problem?

[SerenityLives]

Dear Box, How am I associating with the ugly? You can call everything you disagree with “ugly”, that wont get you anywhere. Maybe your small mind cant take the fact that God is a concept. And thanks for comparing me to Witness Lee. Unlike Witness Lee, I’m having a discussion here about how “God” originated, culturally, historically and not claiming it to be true or not, but the evidence sure piles up one way.
You should look at yourself. You are doing detrimental service to yourself by claiming that God is biblically based when it is not. The bible is used to understand the origins of God but not the only source. The bible gives clues to other pagan practices and ideas at the time. It seems like you want the bible to be the only source, discounting that the bible had its own sources as well. Dont tell me what I can and cannot express on this thread.

Dont misunderstand, I’m not making this thread gospel truth, just presenting ideas that may/may not be true. Very ironic for you to claim that the deities are idols, you have your own gosepl truth too.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by Boxjobox

So, would you say that the Christian thing is just for our galaxy? Aren’t we still trying to determine how many planets there actually are in our galaxy? Symbolism has its place- the gospel of John was full of it. Matthew end with Jesus up on the mountain- closer to heaven? Mark has him go up to heaven, Luke same, John has him eating fish on the sea shore- except he does talk earlier to Mary Mag about ascending.

Heaven plays a major concept in the whole bible and I suspect, up until the Wright brothers, it was still somewhat assumed that heaven was just beyond the clouds, just out of sight. Today, heaven is as nebulous to Christians as 6000 years creation. To say “ Oh, they just didn’t have a full view of the cosmos” or the Bible really wasn’t giving a scientific view of creation, kind of leaves us with a what else is not real- the flood, David, a real Jesus, resurrection? Heaven is one of those things that lost importance, as did discussing creation.

Symbolism doesn’t seem to account for the activities in the book of Acts.

Bro zeek is just offering an alternative way to interpret the Bible, that makes it more palpable to modern minds.

Today, with science explaining most everything, it doesn't make sense that the man Jesus just lifted off the earth into a cloud, and vanished, and end up on high sitting at the right hand of his Father.

In truth it does need to be spiritualized. After all, maybe they could watch Jesus rise up to the cloud, but how could they see him at the righthand of God? (Not to mention that God has a right and left hand, and sits His ass on a throne -- how's that for both a Christian and Jewish God? -- it was Christian Jews writing the NT books - don't claim Luke wasn't a Jew - they were anonymous).

So spiritualizing all the fantastical stories allows us to get the ethical values in the NT. Bro zeek is just creating a different method of making the Jefferson Bible -- not having to cut them out, leaving them but spiritualizing them.

It is an alternative way of reading the NT ... howbeit, not the traditional Christian way.

[zeek]

Originally Posted by awareness

Bro zeek is just offering an alternative way to interpret the Bible, that makes it more palpable to modern minds.

Today, with science explaining most everything, it doesn't make sense that the man Jesus just lifted off the earth into a cloud, and vanished, and end up on high sitting at the right hand of his Father.

In truth it does need to be spiritualized. After all, maybe they could watch Jesus rise up to the cloud, but how could they see him at the righthand of God? (Not to mention that God has a right and left hand, and sits His ass on a throne -- how's that for both a Christian and Jewish God? -- it was Christian Jews writing the NT books - don't claim Luke wasn't a Jew - they were anonymous).

So spiritualizing all the fantastical stories allows us to get the ethical values in the NT. Bro zeek is just creating a different method of making the Jefferson Bible -- not having to cut them out, leaving them but spiritualizing them.

It is an alternative way of reading the NT ... howbeit, not the traditional Christian way.

Not true. It is a traditional way of reading the Bible that goes back at least as far as Philo who was a contemporary of Jesus and has been practiced by many Christian theologians including Origen and Augustine of Hippo to name only two examples.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by zeek

Not true. It is a traditional way of reading the Bible that goes back at least as far as Philo who was a contemporary of Jesus and has been practiced by many Christian theologians including Origen and Augustine of Hippo to name only two examples.

And by using a metaphorical method they are doing midrash, and rewriting the Bible. Just as you are doing.

[zeek]

Originally Posted by awareness

And by using a metaphorical method they are doing midrash, and rewriting the Bible. Just as you are doing.

The use of symbolism has a long and ancient history. What makes you think the biblical writers weren't using symbolism in the first place?

[SerenityLives]

Originally Posted by zeek

The use of symbolism has a long and ancient history. What makes you think the biblical writers weren't using symbolism in the first place?

I agree with zeeks statements that the bible was meant to be read symbolically.

[UntoHim]

SerenityLives is the thread starter.

Boxjobox and others: Please respect that she is the thread starter, and thus gets to guide the discussions. Please refrain from injecting things into the conversation that she has explicitly asked not to be injected.

Even though this is the wild, wild west of Alternative Views, I still would expect everyone to behave and interact with each other as adults. I think the subject matter is relevant for Alt Views. If I were you guys, I would let SerenityLives and zeek lead the dialogue. SerenityLives because it's her thread, and zeek because of his comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter.

In any event, please keep the temperature down. Let cooler heads prevail. Don't be like us conventional Christians over on the main forum who can't seem to get through 2 posts without spewing out ad hominems and flaming each other.

"Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt"
-

[Boxjobox]

Originally Posted by awareness

Bro zeek is just offering an alternative way to interpret the Bible, that makes it more palpable to modern minds.

Today, with science explaining most everything, it doesn't make sense that the man Jesus just lifted off the earth into a cloud, and vanished, and end up on high sitting at the right hand of his Father.

In truth it does need to be spiritualized. After all, maybe they could watch Jesus rise up to the cloud, but how could they see him at the righthand of God? (Not to mention that God has a right and left hand, and sits His ass on a throne -- how's that for both a Christian and Jewish God? -- it was Christian Jews writing the NT books - don't claim Luke wasn't a Jew - they were anonymous).

So spiritualizing all the fantastical stories allows us to get the ethical values in the NT. Bro zeek is just creating a different method of making the Jefferson Bible -- not having to cut them out, leaving them but spiritualizing them.

It is an alternative way of reading the NT ... howbeit, not the traditional Christian way.

Throughout my life, I have attended 1000s of Christian gatherings of all sorts- I would say most contained a large element of spiritualizing scripture- from traditional denominations to little home gatherings of reading a passage and asking “ what did you get out of that”. I would say that permanent gatherings centered around a common interpretation or interpreter. The LC was a typical model of this, a commonality many of us observed in its beginnings and evolution into what it has become today. In this case, the interpreter was and is the center, because people bought into WL’s interpretations. Spiritualizing the scripture is not a new thing. But the coming about of the N T writings, unless you think some 3rd century think-tank cranked them out, were recordings of a new phenomenon in relation to the idea of God and God’s work. If you take scripture as just some like thinking fellows that decided to create a new religion, then Christianity is in the same category as Islam. But the writings of the NT, and the accounts given in them, particularly in the book of Acts, show not a think-tank religion, but a new phenomenon of where, apart from the established Hebrew religion ( which at the time definitely had squabble over tradition vs interpretation and spiritualizing- consider the Pharisees vs the Sadducees vs the Herodians vs the Gnostics vs all the others), and that new phenomenon came out of people who were with Jesus, saw him die, saw him in resurrection, and saw him ascend. The also had the element of the phenomenon called the Holy Spirit, which was ( not interested here to get into a discussion of Holy Spirit which is definitely subject to interpretation) . The people who saw, with the people who believed their account, began to meet together, sans a “Bible” or NT and I don’t think they were meeting according to spiritualizing some scripture, but in “real time”.

This is the Christian foundation and the Christian God! To bounce back to early Semitic settings and occurances, culture, history, etc., and to then set up an image of a Christian God, is an exercise in foolishness- it is creating your own personal myths, or if there is some agreement- group myth. It really is, I think, an attempt to discount the phenomenon that occurred with the coming of Jesus and the recorded events that followed.

The problem, as I see it today, is the missing Holy Spirit. I would say, missing because of strange interpretations, practices, spiritualizing, and a whole lot more that departed from the actually of the Christian belief of the foundation of the church, which changed into a interpretation business for self gain and self aggrandizement. I think NT writings came about to preserve that which was from the beginning so we would have a good benchmark to compare and contrast with current practices.

[SerenityLives]

Originally Posted by Boxjobox

This is the Christian foundation and the Christian God! To bounce back to early Semitic settings and occurances, culture, history, etc., and to then set up an image of a Christian God, is an exercise in foolishness- it is creating your own personal myths, or if there is some agreement- group myth. It really is, I think, an attempt to discount the phenomenon that occurred with the coming of Jesus and the recorded events that followed.

The entire thread is supposed to be an exercise of “foolishness”. Thats why I asked you, why are you here? To merely point that out? Sure it can be myth, but it can also be true. The things I presented have as much evidence, if not more, than what you claim to be evidence. Stop it with your Christian talk on a thread that is exploring the history and culture of the Jews before the Bible was in diapers.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE TRYING TO PUSH THEIR CHRISTIANITY ON ALT VIEWS WHEN THE TOPIC ISNT EVEN ABOUT IT? GO DO THAT IN THE MAIN FORUM

Your interpretation on the title of this thread is a misunderstanding that you should seriously look at.

If you post anymore, I’m not going to reply. I am just going to add to awareness and zeek’s interpretations.

[Trapped]

This is a long article, maybe prohibitively long, but I wonder if it is more in line with what you have in mind? Or at least, it might be a middle ground between the spectrum of what is being said here. It doesn't discount the Bible, but it delves into many other lenses also.....kind of a pull-back, wide-range view.

https://www.bu.edu/arion/archive/vol...d_get-started/

As an aside, the irony of the phrase "origins of Christian God" is that it is itself an oxymoron. The Christian God has no origins. To speak of the Christian God otherwise means it's not the Christian God.

[SerenityLives]

Originally Posted by Trapped

This is a long article, maybe prohibitively long, but I wonder if it is more in line with what you have in mind? Or at least, it might be a middle ground between the spectrum of what is being said here. It doesn't discount the Bible, but it delves into many other lenses also.....kind of a pull-back, wide-range view.

https://www.bu.edu/arion/archive/vol...d_get-started/

As an aside, the irony of the phrase "origins of Christian God" is that it is itself an oxymoron. The Christian God has no origins. To speak of the Christian God otherwise means it's not the Christian God.

Maybe the Christian God had origins. Or at least the Jewish God. I meant it as in historical and cultural development of the concept of God by humans, not the concept that God has no beginning, a concept developed later by humans too.

Love the article, I sped read it, exactly what I was getting at with Boxy. For some reason, he’s not understanding what I’m trying to get at.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by Trapped

This is a long article, maybe prohibitively long, but I wonder if it is more in line with what you have in mind? Or at least, it might be a middle ground between the spectrum of what is being said here. It doesn't discount the Bible, but it delves into many other lenses also.....kind of a pull-back, wide-range view.

https://www.bu.edu/arion/archive/vol...d_get-started/

As an aside, the irony of the phrase "origins of Christian God" is that it is itself an oxymoron. The Christian God has no origins. To speak of the Christian God otherwise means it's not the Christian God.

Hey Trapped, hope you are well. Great article. Thanks.

Okay, God has no origin. But when did the concept of the Christian God originate? And is the Christian God God? Then why differentiate?