Foundations of early Hebrew religion and relations to Cannite deities

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We can go further. It is highly likely that Abraham’s God was El, the High God of Canaan. The deity introduces himself to Abraham as El Shaddai (El of the Mountain) which was one of El’s traditional titles. Elsewhere he is called El Elyon (The Most High God) or El of Bethel. The name of the Canaanite High God is preserved in such Hebrew names as Isra-El or Ishma-El. They experienced him in ways that would not have been unfamiliar to the pagans of the Middle East.
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While this is true, I think it misses a crucial point. If one reads accounts of Catholic missionaries entering new cultures for the first time and learning heretofore unfamiliar languages, the issue of the name of God always comes up. Conceptually, the God which Catholic missionaries bring is always quite different from the deities they are displacing, but because of limited vocabulary, the name of God is inevitably borrowed from a pagan deity. This is a precisely the situation, for example, with the Jesuit missionaries in China and the eventual decision by Rome that God would be known by the title “God of Heaven” in Chinese Catholicism, even though the ‘God of Heaven’ had a religious identity before the Catholics came. This happened with the American Indians, Vikings…it’s an old story. This is probably what is going on in early Judaism. The Jewish God is conceptually different, but has to take borrowed names for necessity.
 
Ok, so you have this great revelation that has been given to you.No one around you believes in anything but polytheism which had been around a heck of long time.You are the first and only-so how would you express yourself? You have nothing else to compare with no other way of expressing religious concepts except that which has been around for thousands of years and what!? your supposed to come up automatically with new terminology and philosophies? That’s just not plausible… Not culturally, not socially, not historically. Progress is made step by step, and the culture you may have come out of cannot be cast aside simply because you know of no other way to express your idea of God than the ones that surround you…
sacrificial altars of Canaanite and Israelites look almost exactly alike. So? What else would they have they known? Terms For God like El Shaddai or El or whatever proves nothing more than the Israelites had not developed a lexicon for their evolving beliefs. Only God can create something out of nothing. All the rest of us grow and evolve a little at a time. You can see the evolution of the Israelite concept of God and society if you read the Hebrew scriptures carefully. It’s in there, if you look carefully.
 
TankGirl said:
While this is true, I think it misses a crucial point. If one reads accounts of Catholic missionaries entering new cultures for the first time and learning heretofore unfamiliar languages, the issue of the name of God always comes up. Conceptually, the God which Catholic missionaries bring is always quite different from the deities they are displacing, but because of limited vocabulary, the name of God is inevitably borrowed from a pagan deity. This is a precisely the situation, for example, with the Jesuit missionaries in China and the eventual decision by Rome that God would be known by the title “God of Heaven” in Chinese Catholicism, even though the ‘God of Heaven’ had a religious identity before the Catholics came. This happened with the American Indians, Vikings…it’s an old story. This is probably what is going on in early Judaism. The Jewish God is conceptually different, but has to take borrowed names for necessity.
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Good point, you might be interested in the link I posted in this thread start under Scott Hahn that mentioned this and the similarity between that and Paul’s use of theos to the greeks.

However I think it misses the point because I think if that were the case wouldn’t it speak of when el is used as a general semetic word for god but it doesn’t. Thats why I think the answer is a good possibility but I would want to see reasoning why to reject the Canaanite interpretation (given by many sources here).
Ok, so you have this great revelation that has been given to you.No one around you believes in anything but polytheism which had been around a heck of long time.You are the first and only-so how would you express yourself? You have nothing else to compare with no other way of expressing religious concepts except that which has been around for thousands of years and what!? your supposed to come up automatically with new terminology and philosophies? That’s just not plausible… Not culturally, not socially, not historically. Progress is made step by step, and the culture you may have come out of cannot be cast aside simply because you know of no other way to express your idea of God than the ones that surround you…
sacrificial altars of Canaanite and Israelites look almost exactly alike. So? What else would they have they known? Terms For God like El Shaddai or El or whatever proves nothing more than the Israelites had not developed a lexicon for their evolving beliefs. Only God can create something out of nothing. All the rest of us grow and evolve a little at a time. You can see the evolution of the Israelite concept of God and society if you read the Hebrew scriptures carefully. It’s in there, if you look carefully.
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See my response above as well. But this does nothing to reject the Canaanite interpretation it just gives another one, at this point though you have many sources (posted above) that endorse it for certain reasons and this is why I was hoping to fine some good resources that deal with why another interpretation is better.

Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut!
 
tanachanswers said:
Then you have jumped the story of the tower of Bavel. They were or were not building a physical tower, but they were all working together to try and overthrow G-d. At this time all family gods became pagan gods except for the G-d of Shem and his family.
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I’ve never heard that before. That makes a lot more sense to me than the traditional reading… Can I ask where that comes from. It sounds like a source I’d like in my library.
Thanks!
 
juliamajor said:
Ok, so you have this great revelation that has been given to you.No one around you believes in anything but polytheism which had been around a heck of long time.You are the first and only-so how would you express yourself?
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This is a widely held misconception by most people. Prior to Judaism most nations did not have a polytheistic belief system. In fact, science has shown that 90% of the nations were monotheistic.
 
juliamajor said:
I’ve never heard that before. That makes a lot more sense to me than the traditional reading… Can I ask where that comes from. It sounds like a source I’d like in my library.
Thanks!
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It is, as i remember, a mixture of Rashi and Cabala.
 
This is a widely held misconception by most people. Prior to Judaism most nations did not have a polytheistic belief system. In fact, science has shown that 90% of the nations were monotheistic.
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Please post sources because most critical academic sources and archaeology (as many of the links and things I have posted here) find monotheism to be a relatively recent invention and that it is much more likely polytheism was common.
 
tanachanswers said:
Then you have jumped the story of the tower of Bavel. They were or were not building a physical tower, but they were all working together to try and overthrow
G-d. At this time all family gods became pagan gods except for the G-d of Shem and his family.
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So what? This does nothing to disprove what MOST biblical scholars view as something that NEVER happened. Stop posting bullsh** and provide actual scholars that hold that view today. Otherwise it is an unjustified anecdote with NO ACTUAL EVIDENCE.
 
Zimm3r said:
Please post sources because most critical academic sources and archaeology (as many of the links and things I have posted here) find monotheism to be a relatively recent invention and that it is much more likely polytheism was common.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotheism
Monolatrism can be a stage in the development of monotheism from polytheism. Three examples of this are the Aten cult in the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, the rise of Marduk from the tutelary of Babylon to the claim of universal supremacy, and the rise of Yahweh from among the Israelite gods to the sole God of later Judaism.[11]

In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda appears as a supreme and transcendental deity. Depending on the date of Zoroaster (usually placed in the early Iron Age), this may be one of the earliest documented instances of the emergence of monism in an Indo-European religion.

In the cities of the Ancient Near East, each city had a local patron deity, such as Shamash at Larsa or Sin at Ur. The first claims of global supremacy of a specific god date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten’s Great Hymn to the Aten (speculatively connected to Judaism by Sigmund Freud in his Moses and Monotheism). However the historicity of the Exodus is disputed. Furthermore it is not clear to what extent Akhenaten’s Atenism was monotheistic rather than henotheistic with Akhenaten himself identified with the god Aten.

Currents of monism or monotheism emerge in Vedic India earlier, chiefly with worship of Lord Krishna, which is full-fledged monotheism, but also with e.g. the Nasadiya Sukta. In the Indo-Iranian tradition, the Rigveda exhibits notions of monism, in particular in the comparatively late tenth book, also dated to the early Iron Age, e.g. in the Nasadiya sukta.

Ethical monotheism and the associated concept of absolute good and evil emerge in Zoroastrianism and Judaism, later culminating in the doctrines of Christology in early Christianity and later (by the 7th century) in the tawhid in Islam. In Islamic theology, a person who spontaneously “discovers” monotheism is called a ḥanīf, the original ḥanīf being Abraham.
 
Zimm3r said:
So what? This does nothing to disprove what MOST biblical scholars view as something that NEVER happened. Stop posting bullsh** and provide actual scholars that hold that view today. Otherwise it is an unjustified anecdote with NO ACTUAL EVIDENCE.
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Rashi, Rambam, Ramban, Ben Ish Hai, ect. … How many hundred or thousand would you like.
 
tanachanswers said:
Rashi, Rambam, Ramban, Ben Ish Hai, ect. … How many hundred or thousand would you like.
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How many of those are from before the 18th century? 17th century? 16th century? 15th? Because clearly they can then take into recent archeological and other discoveries such as Ras Shamra etc.
 
Zimm3r said:
So does anyone know of any good resources …
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You might want to look at Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament, Bernhard Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament. and Denis Baly, God and History in the Old Testament.
 
levinas12 said:
You might want to look at Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament, Bernhard Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament. and Denis Baly, God and History in the Old Testament.
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Thanks for the information!
 
Zimm3r said:
How many of those are from before the 18th century? 17th century? 16th century? 15th? Because clearly they can then take into recent archeological and other discoveries such as Ras Shamra etc.
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All but the Ben Ish Hai.
 
tanachanswers said:
All but the Ben Ish Hai.
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And many of them are earlier then that. So most of them could have never taken advantage of the major increase in critical scholarship that started with Spinoza and the archeological evidence of Albright, Welhausen, Cross, Denver, etc.
 
About the Yahweh and El problem

As Michael Heiser would put it:

Yahweh was the name of God for the Israelites.

But the word Elohim is different.The word Elohim was used by the Israelites as the word for God they used.But their own God was Yahweh.

Why does this distinction come up since Israelites believed in only one type of God and only one God?

Because in the far past,the Israelites likely held to a belief in which multiple Elohim were part of a council of entites.

However,Yahweh was the prime God,the creator God,the first eternal one.

He is the one who created the Elohim entities in the first place.

Yahweh was the eternal being,who created a council of entities called Elohim.

But sure enough,after multiple revelations and many other factors,the Israelites saw the error of their Elohim council thesis and completely rejected it.

Now I do not know if Heiser’s own interpretations are against Catholic teaching or not,but they offer an explanation…

Now,Yahweh was a name revealed to Moses…at least to my knolwedge.

The word El has been turned to other words such as Elohim or Eleinu

These words adress God without adressing his name.

If you want to learn more about whether Judaism started out as Monotheistic or Polytheistic,read this:

michaelsheiser.com/TheNakedBible/2011/11/did-the-religion-of-the-biblical-writers-evolve-from-polytheism-to-monotheism-a-paper-and-response-to-thom-stark/

But keep in mind I myself do not know if all of the things he says are acceptable by Catholics…
 
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