Reddit Reddit reviews The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (The Biblical Resource Series)

We found 34 Reddit comments about The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (The Biblical Resource Series). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Books
Christian Books & Bibles
Christian Church History
Christian Ministry & Church Leadership
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (The Biblical Resource Series)
Check price on Amazon

34 Reddit comments about The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (The Biblical Resource Series):

u/TooManyInLitter · 81 pointsr/DebateReligion

How about the evolution of Yahweh/Allah as a second-tier God in a large henotheistic polytheism into a straight monotheism where there is only one God, where that God is Yahweh/Allah?

Here are some references on the growth of monotheistic Yahwehism from a historical polytheistic foundation to the development of the henotheism/monolatry, and then monotheism of early Biblical Israelites:

u/GOB_Farnsworth · 21 pointsr/latterdaysaints

The ancient Semitic pantheon (which included 70 sons of El, including Baal) was widely believed in across the region. What made Judaism unique was its eventual push toward monotheism, although traces of the old pantheon are still in the Hebrew Bible.

Mark Smith has put out some good scholarship on the topic:

https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X

Asherah was originally a wife of the father God El, although later Yahweh was brought in (possibly from contact with Edom) and El and Yahweh were eventually merged.

This interesting convergence tends to be brought up in apologetic literature but I haven't seen it from church leaders. The Deuteronomic Reforms removed "pagan" altars and gods from Hebrew worship, including the worship of Asherah. Is it the LDS position that those reforms were correct? Incorrect? Somewhere in between? There isn't an official position as far as I know, but if Asherah is to be associated with Heavenly Mother it might be necessary to take one.

It's an interesting area of LDS theology that hasn't really been explored much.

u/WastedP0tential · 20 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

You wanted to be part of the intelligentsia, but throughout your philosophical journey, you always based your convictions only on authority and tradition instead of on evidence and arguments. Don't you realize that this is the epitome of anti – intellectualism?

It is correct that the New Atheists aren't the pinnacle of atheistic thought and didn't contribute many new ideas to the academic debate of atheism vs. theism or religion. But this was never their goal, and it is also unnecessary, since the academic debate is already over for many decades. If you want to know why the arguments for theism are all complete nonsense and not taken seriously anymore, why Christianity is wrong just about everything and why apologists like Craig are dishonest charlatans who make a living out of fooling people, your reading list shouldn't be New Atheists, but rather something like this:

Colin Howson – Objecting to God

George H. Smith – Atheism: The Case Against God

Graham Oppy – Arguing about Gods

Graham Oppy – The Best Argument Against God

Herman Philipse – God in the Age of Science

J. L. Mackie – The Miracle of Theism

J. L. Schellenberg – The Wisdom to Doubt

Jordan Sobel – Logic and Theism

Nicholas Everitt – The Non-Existence of God

Richard Gale – On the Nature and Existence of God

Robin Le Poidevin – Arguing for Atheism

Stewart Elliott Guthrie – Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

Theodore Drange – Nonbelief & Evil



[Avigor Shinan – From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827609086)

Bart Ehrman – The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings

Bart Ehrman – Jesus, Interrupted

Bart Ehrman – Misquoting Jesus

Burton L. Mack – Who Wrote the New Testament?

Helmut Koester – Ancient Christian Gospels

John Barton, John Muddiman – The Oxford Bible Commentary

John Dominic Crossan – Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

Karen Armstrong – A History of God

Mark Smith – The Early History of God

Randel McCraw Helms – Who Wrote the Gospels?

Richard Elliott Friedman – Who Wrote the Bible?

Robert Bellah – Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

Robert Walter Funk – The Gospel of Jesus

u/samreay · 17 pointsr/DebateReligion

Sure, so apart from a lack of reason to accept those extraordinary claims I listed before, I would also defend the statement that we have firm evidence that Christianity is a human invention, a simple product of human culture.

This should not be too outlandish a claim, as even Christians can probably agree that most of the worlds religions are creations of our changing society (after all, Christians probably would disagree that Hinduism, paganism, Nordic, Hellenistic, aboriginal religions were divinely inspired/authored).

By looking back into the origins of Christianity, and the origins of the Judaic system from which it is derived, we can very clearly see changes in religious deities and stories, as the religion began incorporating myths from surrounding areas and as general patterns of beliefs changed. From what we can currently understand, it appears the the origin of Christianity started as a polytheistic pantheon with at least Yahweh, El, Baal and Asherah. It then moved slowly from polytheism to henotheism to monaltry to monotheism, as was relatively common in the Axial Age.

All of this points to the religion not representative of singular divine inspiration, and instead being representative of being a product of human culture, changing along with society.

This is a rather large topic of course, and if you want further reading, I recommend:

u/bee_vo · 13 pointsr/exmormon

The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities of Ancient Israel by Mark S. Smith is a fantastic book with (too many?) references that really paints the picture of Judeo-Christian God as just another iron age mythology, no different than any other.

Edit: link

u/Irish_Whiskey · 12 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

Sorry, I'm being way too wordy here, and I'll try to keep future responses shorted. I divided the answers into "Biblical accuracy" and "Morality" for the sake of clarity. Thanks for the considered responses and the patience to read it.

>My Reasons to Believe in Christianity: As I mentioned before, this is not the time for me to respond to your comments regarding my reasons to believe (although I would really love to another time) lets stay focused.

I should have earlier said something which is a standard caveat in theistic debates:

I care whether my beliefs are true. I accept that not everything I believe is true, and want to change accordingly. I do not wish to compromise knowledge of truth with that which is convenient, easy, or even may lead to otherwise positive outcomes. If any argument rests on favoring such factors over truth, it's not one I can accept.

In addition while I'm willing to not question further your reasons for believing that means any point you make which rests on assuming your belief, is essentially an empty noise, because I'm still ignorant as to why I should consider it true. I can understand your position, but without that knowledge I can't agree with it.

>If that were true that the core beliefs changed sure I would agree, I'll have to ask you for a source as well on this these claims

Sure, here's the wiki on Yahweh which, of course you shouldn't just assume true, but contains the relevant links for each statement, as well as books by Karen Armstrong, Mark Smith and others. Studying the history of the Hebrews show people who integrated stories from different cultures they assimilated with, ideas of gods changed over time, bits of which were then taken by later groups to be the only unchanging truth, even when we know that isn't the case.

That's the reason the God of the Old Testament is obsessed only with one tribe, fails in his goals repeatedly and has limited powers, why the earlier versions of the texts don't mention a Christian Satan or hell, and talks about not worshipping the lesser gods. Because while it was rewritten to conform to later beliefs, it was born from a polytheistic tradition.

>Again if you can prove significant changes to the texts of the Bible only then you would have a case here, if you cannot, identifying how it spread does not seem to have any relevance.

The story of casting the first stone isn't found in any earlier copies of the Bible, nor is handling snakes, as I said. Much of Mark's story of Jesus' death, and most of Paul's letters, were written by later scribes. The delineation of the trinity only shows up in one passage, and was discovered during the time of Erasmus, an admitted forger who said scripture and documentation should be based on providing 'medicine' for the people rather than truth, and who was called out as a fraud by fellow Christian historians of the time. It probably wasn't Erasmus himself who came up with it, but rather the faction of theologians pushing the trinity. Earlier scholars such as Origen mention nothing about it, even when discussing the concept. And then of course there's the King James Bible, a book written with flawed methods based on inaccurate sources with a political agenda in mind.

Also NaphtaliC is bang on. It's simply absurd to call any book translated between two languages 99.5% accurate that's longer than two pages. For several languages across many centuries? It's impossible and easily proven untrue by anyone whose read the earlier versions. If I pick up two copies of the Bible in the store today by different publishers, they aren't 99.5% accurate with each other, let alone ones from thousands of years ago in different languages.

>however the point remains that they are extremely accurate given the time span of its existence and given the comparison to the accuracy/# of copies of other ancient texts we have.

Right, hopefully you can step back for a moment before we get into details, and think about this as if the Bible weren't a book you believed in, and were trying to analyze objectively.

We have no originals, or copies of them. What originals did exist came only after decades of oral transmissions. Which means we could have 5 billion copies of first editions, and they would be reliable only as to their content, not as to reality.

This whole thing about 'given the time span' and 'in comparison' is completely irrelevant to the question. In a court you can't say "Well it's less hearsay than that hearsay" to make it reliable.

It is used because historians do often have to work with unreliable materials, and that's fine. But when we question the Bible more than other ancient works, it's not because there's a double-standard, it's because historians admit those other works are also not reliable, we just work with the best we have.

In addition the textual accuracy compared to other books ignores two key points:

  1. We can prove many parts of it aren't true. There are factual claims as to events and geographic details which are wrong, because they weren't written by people who were there. Textual accuracy is an indirect way of trying to prove what factual accuracy directly disproves.

  2. The nature of the writings impact reliability. Paul was a self-confessed lunatic and murderer who had visions and claimed to bring people back from the dead himself. The gospels of John and Matthew were a few among many competing political/religious factions of Christianity trying to define the growing religion. For any other religion, you'd agree it's obvious such sources can't be treated as reliable without independent confirmation. Yet for all the contemporary historians examining Judea in that time, there is no record of Jesus. Something which is plausible if he was a very minor figure, but not with the accounts of mass miracles and turnouts and political turmoil that the gospels claim of him.

    Every argument you've made for the Bible's accuracy better fits the Quran and the Book of Mormon. They were better recorded sooner in time from known sources. But they also aren't true.

    >Homer's Illiad is commonly cited as the next runner up in terms of this criteria and frankly does not hold up quite as well as the Bible did.

    Thanks for proving my point. Homer's Illiad isn't true. It's a story of gods, possibly inspired by real events, that was written after oral transmission. So even if we had a first edition signed by the author, 100% word accurate with our copies today, no one would pretend this made it accurate history, unless they were a Greek worshipper looking for justifications for belief, rather than a historian.

    >http://carm.org/is-the-bible-reliable

    Yeah, I knew Carm would be cited because they're the main source for this stuff. Carm is unapologetic about putting the Bible first, and facts seconds as needed to get people to believe the Bible. Their numbers have been examined, and it's all based on arbitrary standards as needed to manufacture impressive statistics. That there were thousands of references to Christianity in the mid-1st century proves Christianity existed, it's not at all the same as proving the stories from the time were accurate, or that those stories match the accounts we have now, except where we have surviving fragments from that time, of which we have very few.
u/markevens · 11 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

Mark Smith has some good texts on the topic.

This is a book of his written more for the layman

https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X/ref=la_B001H6IMK6_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481614235&sr=1-1

And this is a book of his written more for the serious student.

https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Biblical-Monotheism-Polytheistic-Background/dp/0195167686/ref=la_B001H6IMK6_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481614235&sr=1-2

I would highly recommend watching the semester of Yale videos on Intro to the Hebrew Bible with Christine Hayes

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyuvTEbD-Ei0JdMUujXfyWi

u/ziddina · 10 pointsr/exjw

Might want to take a look at the "Names of God" bible, esp. the one on biblegateway:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+32&version=NOG

>When Elyon gave nations their land,
when he divided the descendants of Adam,
he set up borders for the tribes
corresponding to the number of the sons of Israel.

>9 But Yahweh’s people were his property.
Jacob was his own possession.

El Elyon is a totally different deity from Yahweh.

From: http://contradictionsinthebible.com/are-yahweh-and-el-the-same-god/

>Recent archaeological, biblical, and extrabiblical research has led scholars working in the area of the origins of Israelite religion to assert rather boldly and confidently that the original god of Israel was in fact the Canaanite deity El.1 Just exactly how has this come about you ask?

>First, the name Israel is not a Yahwistic name. El is the name of the deity invoked in the name Israel, which translates: “May El persevere.”2 This suggests that El was seen as the chief god in the formative years of Israel’s religious practices. In fact, the etiological story explaining the origin of the name Israel occurs in Genesis 35:9-15, where Jacob obtains this name through the blessing of El Shaddai, that is “El of the Mountain.”

From: http://www.evolutionofgod.net/question_israelite

>...Some scholars who have used the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint to reconstruct the authentic version of the verse say that “children of Israel” was stuck in as a replacement for “sons of El.” With that lost phrase restored, a verse that was cryptic suddenly makes sense: El—the most high god, Elyon—divided the world’s people into ethnic groups and gave one group to each of his sons. And Yahweh, one of those sons, was given the people of Jacob. Apparently at this point in Israelite history (and there’s no telling how long ago this story originated) Yahweh isn’t God, but just a god—and a son of God, one among many.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_(deity)#Hebrew_Bible

>Before El's revelation with the name of Yahweh, it is said in Genesis 14:18–20 that Abraham accepted the blessing of El, when Melchizedek, the king of Salem and high priest of its deity El Elyon blessed him.[24] One scholarly position is that the identification of Yahweh with Ēl is late, that Yahweh was earlier thought of as only one of many gods, and not normally identified with Ēl. Another is that in much of the Hebrew Bible the name El is an alternate name for Yahweh, but in the Elohist and Priestly traditions it is conceived as an earlier name than Yahweh...

>In some places, especially in Psalm 29, Yahweh is clearly envisioned as a storm god, something not true of Ēl so far as we know (although true of his son, Ba'al Hadad)....

>According to The Oxford Companion to World Mythology,

>It seems almost certain that the God of the Jews evolved gradually from the Canaanite El, who was in all likelihood the 'God of Abraham'... If El was the high God of Abraham—Elohim, the prototype of Yahveh—Asherah was his wife, and there are archaeological indications that she was perceived as such before she was in effect 'divorced' in the context of emerging Judaism of the 7th century BCE.

You might want to read:

https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X

I found that book to be well-written, & prefer it over Armstrong's "A History of God" - she incorrectly refers to the history of Judaism as being 4,000 years old (in the title), whereas the oldest bit of the bible in existence is only around 3,000 years old.

[edit to toss in links to a few relevant, older comments]

https://www.reddit.com/r/religion/comments/40zvle/living_between_worlds_between_the_world_of/cz2co52

https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/3kibqx/manipulative_wording_in_new_bible/cuy5ec7

u/witchdoc86 · 8 pointsr/exchristian

Mark S Smith - The Early History of God
(warning - a bit more scholarly than the other more populist books below)

https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X

Avigdor Shinan - From Gods to God

https://www.amazon.com/Gods-God-Debunked-Suppressed-Changed/dp/0827609086

The Bible Unearthed - Israel Finkelstein

https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/0684869136

Who Wrote the Bible, and The Exodus - Richard Friedman

https://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353

https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0062565249

u/Samantha_Cruz · 7 pointsr/atheism

You can get a decent high level overview from [the article on the Ancient Canaanite religion from wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Canaanite_religion)

An extensive review of the Canaanite religion is available in "Canaanite Myths and Legends"

a shorter review of the topic is available in "The Ancient Canaanites: A Captivating Guide to the Canaanite Civilization That Dominated the Land of Canaan Before the Ancient Israelites"

another good (and extensive) overview of how the Canaanite religion shaped early Judaism "The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel"

u/Dr-Wonderful · 7 pointsr/Reformed

Any standard work on the subject, whether literary or archeological, would point away from the basic framework of your interpretation. (The best evidence, of course, is always the Bible, properly interpreted in its context, itself).

The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195167686/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_TbmWBbGQ5HYF1


The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (The Biblical Resource Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/080283972X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_9dmWBbD268FCN

Stories from Ancient Canaan, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0664232426/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_BemWBb5ADVYJF

The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures https://www.amazon.com/dp/019060865X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_5fmWBb77Z4SP3

The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions (Oxford Handbooks) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198783019/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_KgmWBb7AE7EC5

History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226204014/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ahmWBb97P6K64

Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Harvard University Press Reference Library) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674015177/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_.hmWBbFMA52Z7

None of these propose an exact duplicate of this simplistic model, but they triangulate to something very similar.

u/Ike_hike · 6 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

If you want to read extra-biblical sources, you can start with something like Old Testament Parallels., which has excerpts arranged by their possible similarity with the OT canon. For more comprehensive coverage, look at Outside the Bible (3 vols).

Heiser has his defenders on here, but from a historian's perspective my view is that his approach to those ancient texts has been unduly shaped by his theological agenda. You can compare his approach with the work of some others, including David Penchansky, Twilight of the Gods, Mark Smith, The Early History of God, Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan, Adam Kotsko's The Prince of This World, and Thomas Römer, The Invention of God.

On Enoch and the Apocalyptic tradition in particular, look at John Collins's The Apocalptic Imagination, and Anathea Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire.

Now that I type this out, these would make a kick-butt course syllabus. Hmmm...

u/Warbane · 6 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel by Mark S. Smith is a good resource. Densely references primary sources but still accessible to an interested non-academic audience.

u/OtherWisdom · 4 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

Besides Michael S. Heiser's work as mentioned by /u/DivineCouncil in your previous post I'd recommend reading The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Dieties in Ancient Israel by Mark S. Smith.

u/mediainfidel · 3 pointsr/DebateAChristian

>> “Elyon”, translated “the Most High”, is probably a separate god from “Yahweh”
>
> Why?

You act as if Basilides has simply pulled all this out of thin air, as if no biblical scholar in their right mind would think Yahweh was originally one of many sons of El in the ancient pantheon. But this theory is not as off-the-wall as some believers might think.

While such an idea might seem outrageous to you as a believer, try to withold your contempt based on unwarranted certainty. There's a whole world out there beyond the believers perspective. Embrace it.

u/Erra-Epiri · 3 pointsr/pagan

Šulmu, /u/KlingonLinux! I gotchoo on "Canaanite" and Israelite (they were more or less the "same" people religio-culturally for most of Antiquity, and definitely genetically/ethnically) and Punic/Phoenician (Iron Age Levantine ["Canaanite" and Israelite peoples and so on] peoples abroad throughout the Mediterranean as far West as Southern Spain/the island of Ibiza and North Africa) sources, awīlu.

Some necessary clarification : I routinely put "Canaanite" in scare-quotes, because there was no definitive, proto-national much less national identity for so-called "Canaanites" in the way that Israelites and Judahites eventually had by the 1st millennium BCE, and the people of Syro-Palestine during the Middle to Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age would overwhelmingly identify and operate by clan, by tribe, or by city-state before calling themselves and operating as Knaʿni (Ugaritic, meaning "people of Canaan"). "Canaanite" religious forms consonantly varied quite noticeably by city-state, in ways that, say, Egyptian ones did not, even taking into account "alternative" (but not competing) Egyptian local theologies and so on. Speaking in perhaps excessively general terms, there was a State religion overarching the regional ones in Egypt which, in effect, bound them together as a cooperative dynamic unit. "Canaan" as such had no such large-scale, cohesive "religious infrastructure" of Egypt's much less Mesopotamian Kingdoms' and Empires' like, and it didn't "help" that the exceptionally powerful Egyptian Empire of the Late Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom Periods and contemporaneous Mesopotamian and Hittite Empires were constantly vying for control of the North Sinai and Syro-Palestine. The economic centers of "Canaan" were, indeed, frequently subservient to Egypt throughout Bronze Age history, with Egyptian Kings investing governors and mayors of its own throughout "Canaanite" territories following the Thutmosid Conquest, much to the personal danger of said governors and mayors (who were neither particularly liked nor trusted by their Levantine subjects nor by Egyptian officials) and much to the cantankerous chagrin of the Levantine peoples living under Egyptian Imperial rule. Which is to say nothing of Egyptian-mandated relocations of restive Levantine people and so forth.

Furthermore, Hebrew Biblical literature intensely confuses what "Canaanite" even means in a religio-cultural sense, using the term simply to inveigh against religious beliefs and conventions, regardless of actual origin, Deuteronomic Jews did not wish to see carry over from their ancestral religion(s)/culture(s) and from neighboring religions/cultures (e.g., Mesopotamian and Egyptian religions/cultures. See Leviticus 18, Deuteronomy 7, and Ezekiel 23 as but three illustrations of the aforementioned) into newly-minted Judaism and what had then become the Israelite-Judahite "national" identities (primarily in politically-motivated defiance, it should be noted, of their later Master, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which had made of the internally-fractured Kingdoms of Israel and Judah satellite states through rigorous opportunistic military conquest and serious economic and political strong-arming, beginning with the great and cunning King Tukultī-apil-Ešarra/"Tiglath-Pileser" III). A few scholars and especially many would-be Revivalists not academically-trained frequently, unwittingly hang their understanding of "Canaanite" upon all this confusion -- and the latter not in anything like a Jewish context nor through a Jewish hermeneutic, either, while still treating iffy Jewish accounts embedded in Scripture entirely too literally, which makes it an even more weird and defunct confusion.

Now, it's very important to form a baseline understanding of the historical circumstances of the Near East concerning "Canaan," what came out of it, its influential neighbors, and religio-cultural receptors. I know it feels like unnecessary drudgery to many people, but the religious tidbits don't make much sense and their use in/continued relevance to Modernity can't be adequately evaluated without learning and understanding their historical contexts, which is where a lot of would-be Revivalists go very wrong, in my opinion -- especially since "Canaanite" and other non-Kemetic ANE religious Revivals are still very much in their formative stages and aren't being led by people with necessary, thorough backgrounds in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. For this, I recommend beginning with Donald B. Redford's Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, Marc Van De Mieroop's A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000 to 323 BC, Amanda H. Podany's Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East, and Mark Woolmer's Ancient Phoenicia: An Introduction. They're not short texts, apart from Woolmer's that is, but they will give you a decent, fairly comprehensive understanding of the circumstances of the ANE.

Concerning "Canaanite" and Israelite, etc., religious details and developments, just about anything by Mark S. Smith, Rainer Albertz (namely, this massive text he co-authored with Rüdiger Schmitt), Daniel E. Fleming, and Dennis Pardee are quite sound.

Stories from Ancient Canaan, 2nd Edition edited by Mark S. Smith and Michael D. Coogan is probably where you're looking to start vis-a-vis "Canaanite" religion(s), as most people like to get at the mythic material first and foremost. After that, I would definitely recommend picking up The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series), along with Pardee's Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Writings from the Ancient World) and Nicolas Wyatt's Religious Texts from Ugarit -- there should be a free PDF of the latter still floating around the nets somewhere.

While William Foxwell Albright has since become outdated in areas, his works are nevertheless necessary, now "classic" reads. Of particular use and importance is his Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: An Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths

Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan by John Day and the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Second Edition are handy, but relatively scarce and expensive.

Tryggve N. D. Mettinger is a much-beloved scholar of mine, though be aware that in The Riddle of the Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East -- one of the very few decent and comprehensive texts in ANE "comparative religious studies" -- wherein he addresses a few major Levantine Gods like Ba'l-Hadad, he unfortunately demonstrates a very poor comprehension of Greek, so if you ever pick that title up please do remember to take his interpretations in the chapter concerning the Phoenician God Melqart with a metric ton of salt.

Aaron J. Brody's Each Man Cried Out to His God: The Specialized Religion of Canaanite and Phoenician Seafarers was a short, widely-accessible, and enjoyable volume; he covers quite a few lesser-known and under-explored elements of Levantine religions therein.

It sounds like a lot, I'm sure, and there's so much more to read and discuss beyond all these, but hopefully this will provide a decent springboard for you into the crazy, wonderful world of Levantine religions.

I hope this helped, and if you need anything else on this, or concerning Mesopotamia and Egypt, feel free to ask anytime.

u/franks-and-beans · 3 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

Can you recommend a specific work by him? I'm particularly interested in the various gods worshiped in Palestine and and how they relate to YHWH. Like this one?

u/DeadnamingMissDaisy · 3 pointsr/nottheonion

Well, since you've made a massive edit, allow me to correct your error.

Yes, there are numerous examples of the iron age bible lifting wholesale bits of poetry from bronze age Ba'al texts. One example is the famous "lift up your heads, oh gods" which became, nonsensically, "lift up your heads, oh gates" in Psalm 24:7. (Hint: gates don't have heads, at least not the ones in ancient west semitic cities)

This is clear example of outright theft by hebrew priests.

It doesn't mean that the Canaanite god Hadad was ever syncretized with Yahweh. We do know that El was, however.

Sources:

The Early History Of God by Mark S Smith

Stories from Ancient Canaan, Second Edition edited by by Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Neil Asher Silberman

u/otakuman · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

I believe I answered this question in an earlier thread one year ago.

How did polytheism transition into monotheism?

EDIT: Just FYI, I'd recommend reading "The origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Text" by Mark S. Smith. Perhaps you should also read the prequel, "The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series)".

u/extispicy · 2 pointsr/Christianity

> Deuteronomy 16:21 just came up in my reading. Awesome.

I love it! I love seeing the connections and getting a peek behind the curtain to get a sense of what things would have meant to the original audience!

Another on-topic book that is on my wishlist is The Early History of God by Mark Smith.

For getting your feet wet in OT scholarship, the go-to references are Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible?" (did I see someone else recommend that one?) and Kugel's "How To Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now". Those are the only general topic books that come to mind. Scrolling through my Amazon order history, everything else seems pretty specific . . . and random. Let me know if there is a specific area you are interested in

I cannot stress enough how fantastic the Yale lectures I linked to before are. If you can sit through those 24 lectures, you will have all the background you need to explore whatever area catches your eye.

As an aside, since you say you are in an exploration phase with your faith. I would double recommend James Kugel's book above. In the epilogue he comments that he is often asked how he is able to remain a devout Orthodox Jew knowing what he knows about biblical history. He says he reads the bible as the record of an ancient people trying to understand their god and to make sense of their place in the world, and to him it doesn't matter if the stories are true because he understands they are a product of their culture. (I'm tired, does that sound preachy?)

u/YourFairyGodmother · 2 pointsr/gaybros

I have eclectic tastes and always have several things going simultaneously.

Nut Country Right-wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy.


>On the morning of November 22, 1963, President Kennedy told Jackie as they started for Dallas, “We’re heading into nut country today.” That day’s events ultimately obscured and revealed just how right he was: Oswald was a lone gunman, but the city that surrounded him was full of people who hated Kennedy and everything he stood for, led by a powerful group of ultraconservatives who would eventually remake the Republican party in their own image.

>In Nut Country, Edward H. Miller tells the story of that transformation, showing how a group of influential far-right businessmen, religious leaders, and political operatives developed a potent mix of hardline anticommunism, biblical literalism, and racism to generate a violent populism—and widespread power. Though those figures were seen as extreme in Texas and elsewhere, mainstream Republicans nonetheless found themselves forced to make alliances, or tack to the right on topics like segregation. As racial resentment came to fuel the national Republican party’s divisive but effective “Southern Strategy,” the power of the extreme conservatives rooted in Texas only grew.

>Drawing direct lines from Dallas to DC, Miller's captivating history offers a fresh understanding of the rise of the new Republican Party and the apocalyptic language, conspiracy theories, and ideological rigidity that remain potent features of our politics today.



After the Saucers Landed

>UFOlogist Harold Flint is heartbroken and depressed that the aliens that have landed on the White House lawn appear to be straight out of an old B movie. They wave to the television cameras in their sequined jumpsuits, form a nonprofit organization offering new age enlightenment, and hover their saucers over the streets of New York looking for converts.

>Harold wants no part of this kitschy invasion until one of the aliens, a beautiful blonde named Asket, begs him to investigate the saucers again and write another UFO book. The aliens and their mission are not as they seem.

>Asket isn’t who she seems either. Tracking down her true personality leads Harold and his cowriter through a maze of identity and body-swapping madness, descending into paranoia as Harold realizes that reality, or at least humanity’s perception of it, may be more flexible than anyone will admit.

>After the Saucers Landed is a deeply unsettling experimental satire, placing author Douglas Lain alongside contemporaries like Jeff VanderMeer and Charles Yu as one of his generation’s most exciting and challenging speculative fiction voices.


The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel

This one's a slog, albeit a fascinating slog. It is NOT written for a general audience so there's like three times per page I have to go to the Intarwebz to look up / research stuff.


The Master and Margarita

Been meaning to get around to this one for quite a while. Finally did, just yesterday.


u/Uncanevale · 2 pointsr/atheism

Read the OT, along with some history of the region before starting the NT.

A couple of good source books are "The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel" and "Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times" They cover the back story of the bible so you can understand the context better. Don't know if either are available for free though.

u/chipfoxx · 1 pointr/DebateAChristian

I am not discriminating against Christians by describing what the followers do. I am not denying them services, freedoms, or liberties. If I tried to do that, it would deny the liberties that I enjoy as well. There are major Christian organizations (AFA, AIG, FocusOnTheFamily, LivingWaters, Pat Robertson, etc...) that are perfect examples of what I'm describing. Yes it's obvious that not all Christians do this but I am upset by those that do because they believe it's in Yahweh's best interests.

Anthropologists and archaeologists generally believe the Israelites were once part of the Canaanites and often continued sharing culture and beliefs. There is a lot written on the subject in ancient anthropology in books that can present the findings better than me. I had assumed you already had heard about where Yahweh likely originated, just like the borrowed Sumerian & Babylonian flood and creation myths in the Bible, [Yahweh in the bible also has origins elsewhere.] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33hIs38-NPE) There are resources explaining the [deities of Canaan and their origins.] (http://amzn.com/080283972X) These might be a little more advanced for armchair anthropologists, but they are informative.

u/Hraesvelg7 · 1 pointr/news
u/trwayblahblah · 1 pointr/exjw

Wikipedia yahweh has some info. This book has references to his historical info sources. : http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/080283972X?pc_redir=1411222551&robot_redir=1

u/agnosgnosia · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

Maybe they weren't united politically, but that's not the only way people can have a connection. Roman Catholics in Rome answer to a different political leader than Roman Catholics in the U.S., but that doesn't mean there is no connection between those people.

Check this book out if you think there aren't any connections between them.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Early-History-God-Biblical/dp/080283972X

u/Derbedeu · 1 pointr/atheism

>Well, have you actually read War and Peace in Russian? Then your argument just fell fell apart. The nuance in good literature can have vastly different meanings, depending on the reader.

Whether someone reads it in English or Russian, the story is the same and so are the themes. They don't change just because the language is different.

>Let’s review a few reasons why that’s ridiculous! At least 194 Jews and people of half- or three-quarters-Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize,1 accounting for 22% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2015.

How many grew up in a shtetl? How many were religious? Why don't you have any Jewish Nobel Prize winners coming out of the pale of settlement?

Religion literally has nothing to do with intelligence, unless it is to retard it. You also seem to have an obsession with race/ethnicity, two concepts that literally don't make any sense biologically. We're all homo sapiens sapiens As Richard Feynman put it, "To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory."

>Shabbat, a day of rest – origin – yes, the Jews.

?

People today get the weekend off (i.e. two days off), weekend being a British concept. Even that has been found to be insufficient though, as 50 hour work weeks are deemed to be too much by many psychologists and sociologists and lead to a decrease in productivity.

But what does that have to do with anything though? Also, where do you see a culture that hasn't had some sort of impact one way or another? All cultures do, because that's how cultures work, they're effusive.

>Washing hands to avoid disease – a practice started a long, long time ago.

The Celts practiced the same thing, using soap. Again though, what does hygiene have to do with anything? Especially as hygiene practices varied worldwide back then.

>Biblehub is a Christian site, btw.

With translations from numerous publications that are translated by numerous philologists in turn. Besides, the other two aren't and lo and behold, their translations are the same.

>And to liken Judaism to a cult? I have no problem with what you think about Scientology and the Mormons, but you have some huge problem in your cerebral connections to associate Judaism with a cult.

How is Judaism NOT a cult? It literally started off as a cult of Yahweh. Here are some books and papers you can read on the matter:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Early-History-God-Biblical/dp/080283972X

http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Biblical-Monotheism-Polytheistic/dp/0195167686/ref=la_B001H6IMK6_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1339523114&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Religions-Ancient-Israel-Parallactic-Approaches/dp/0826463398/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339523840&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/The-Religion-Ancient-Israel-Library/dp/066423237X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339523840&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339523372&sr=1-1

http://www.michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/BBRMonotheism.pdf

http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=pomona_theses

This isn't even mentioning that Judaism today exhibits many cult characteristics. There are elitist tendencies (chosen ones); proscribed and identifiable clothing; barring of intermarriages with those outside of the group; kashrut laws encouraging members to only mingle with other in-group members; an elite class charged with authority and leadership within the group (rabbis); demands of immoral actions such as genital mutilation; a closed social system that frowns upon any deviation; end-time revelation; concept of mesirah; etc.

Judaism is a cult just as every other religion is.

>Oh, by the way, don’t bother to reply, I tire of your weak,
wandering responses,

ok

u/arachnophilia · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

> Also, monolatrism was present in a number of belief systems throughout Europe and the Middle East. Its not a stepping stone to monotheism.

evidently it can be. monotheism is not necessarily the terminal state of religious evolution, and you don't necessarily have to have monotheism come from monolatrism. for instance, in greece, monotheism seems to have come from a philosophical tradition unrelated to the polytheistic/henotheistic/monolatrist cults. in egypt, monotheism very briefly existed rather suddenly when one pharaoh just rejected all the other gods, with no monolatrism in between.

however, in the ancient near east, there was already a tradition of monolatrism across just about every canaanite culture in the bronze age, with similar traditions in babylonia/sumeria/akkad. the israelites were monolatrist because the people they descended from were monolatrists.

> Now how did Judaism become monotheistic? Probably conquest and forced conversion.

that's, uh. i don't even know what you mean here. but it wasn't the answer to the question i was asking. of course there was probably some conquest involved, as one monolatrist cult became monotheist and struggled for power against the other cults. this may have happened under the reign of josiah of judah, shortly prior to the babylonian exile of 586 BCE. it's also possible that something similar happened around the return from exile a few years later, when the more persian influenced jewish aristocracy came back with some new ideas. this is the generally accepted model in academia. it's also possible that the babylonian invasion effectively eliminated the non-yahwist cults in judah. hard to say. but what nobody in academia doubts is that prior to being monotheist, the tradition that led to judaism was monolatrist, with yahweh as the patron god.

we don't doubt this because we have the stuff they wrote down about it.

> The obvious fact that they've directly stolen from their neighboring religions demonstrates the invalidity of their claims.

uh, okay. and? religious traditions borrow from others all the time. the israelites/judeans were canaanites, they have mythology similar to other canaanites, yes. not a surprise here. it's just that instead of worshiping hadad, or melqart, or hammon, whom other canaanite cultures called "baal" (lord), they worship yahweh, whom they call "adonai" (my lords).

> You continue to insinuate deeper meaning, as if the conclusions of monothiests are true and obvious, but if they are... prove it. Support your statement. Don't insinuate false knowledge.

i'm not sure what you think i'm arguing, but i suggest starting at the top again, and re-reading my posts. this time, don't assume i'm defending some particular religious tradition, and note that i say things like "we have no reason to" "take religious traditions at their word", and that i'm arguing for a relatively late shift towards monotheism around the time of persian contact.

> Prove this. Prove that they were yahwists.

kay.

>> אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִים: לֹא-יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים, עַל-פָּנָי.

>> we are yahweh your god, that brought you out of egypt, from the house of slavery. do not have yourself other gods in my presence.

the person who wrote this is a) a yahwist (see the name יְהוָה there?) and b) monolatrist (see how he says not to have other gods, rather than that there are no other gods?) this text was compiled around the time of the babylonian exile, 586 BCE, or shortly after from component sources that antedated the compilation. the components are probably in the range of 800-700 BCE for J and E, 600 BCE for D (probably written specifically for josiah), 500 BCE for P, and all over the place for R.

> You keep citing yahwist monolatrists, but that was never a thing.

they literally left us a book about yahweh and monolatrism. we know they existed.

> You're inventing history to satisfy your need for deeper meaning.

i am not!

> But it's a blatant fabrication, and when directly addressed, you simply refute a semantic misinterpretation as if that's a valid rebuttel instead of supporting your claim with evidence. All red flags.

would you rather i throw the books at you?

  • https://smile.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
  • https://smile.amazon.com/Origins-Biblical-Monotheism-Polytheistic-Background/dp/0195167686/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

    > I genuinely don't understand how people can purport deeper meaning from these belief systems.

    i... really don't care? that's not what i'm trying to do here. i was trying to present a model for how persian zoroastrianism influenced early judaism-proper, but you came in an objected to the fact that used the term "monolatrist yahwist" as if such a thing didn't exist, because... you think i'm looking for some deeper meaning here? defending christianity? what? i don't think you've read my posts to carefully, and i don't think you're at all familiar with iron age ii mythologies or cultic systems...

    > The stories of the Abrahamics are shared by older polytheistc religions.

    no, older monolatrist religions. the enuma elish, for instance, from babylonia, is a monolatrist text heralding marduk above the other gods. it has some things in common with the later israelite creation myth. the canaanite baal cycle is a monolatrist text heralding baal above the other gods. it has some things in common with several later biblical texts. we generally lump "monolatrism" in with "polytheism" in some discussions, so it's unclear why you're objecting to it above as it i meant "monotheism". the ancient greeks, for instance, were generally divided into different monolatrist cults, but we consider greek mythology in general polytheistic.

    > To this day they are filled with numerous historical inaccuracies,

    it's much worse than simple inaccuracies, i assure you. much of it is outright mythology.
u/autonomousgerm · 1 pointr/atheism

Realizing that Yahweh, the god of the bible, began as the Canaanite god of war until the Israelites leveled him up to "the one true god".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

From there, you begin to realize that there is an actual history to how this "god" came to be. It's quite illuminating.

Basically, reading this.

https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523463490&sr=8-1&keywords=the+early+history+of+god

u/nightshadetwine · 0 pointsr/occult

>Judaism didn't "merge" different gods and goddesses, they rejected them. Christianity merged them in the New Testament, but they eliminated the divinity of the goddess.

The Israelites were polytheistic at first but over time became more monotheistic. You still find traces of polytheism in the bible. In ancient Egyptian religion the creator uses the word or speech to bring everything into existence. This word or speech was called Hu by the Egyptians and was considered a deity. In Genesis you find god creating everything using the word or speech but instead of the word or speech being a god like in ancient Egyptian religion it's just Yahweh. So the Israelites just had Yahweh taking over the roles other gods had in pagan religions. Yahweh also had a Goddess consort called Asherah. This book is about the polytheism of the Israelites.

As for Mary, the idea of a mortal woman being impregnated by a god is something you find in pagan religions. It represents spirit(the god) "impregnating" matter(the woman). Gender in religion/mythology is symbolic for the two forces that the divine had to split itself into in order to "create" life.

>Divine femininity was downplayed due to the subjugation of women. Gender inequality is a feature, not a bug, of Abrahamic religion. Beginning with Adam and Eve, the Old Testament firmly established an ontological foundation for women's second class citizenship: Men were subservient to God, and women were subservient to men. The patriarchal hierarchy was upheld in the New Testament, notably by the treatment of Mary (both Theotokos and Magdalene), the exclusion of certain Gnostic gospels, and the inclusion of misogynist social commentary from Peter and others.

>I agree that the divine isn't male or female like humans. But religion is primarily a tool for social control. A rise in religiosity is always accompanied by the threat of fundamentalism, and all it takes is a couple years of violence and chaos to a century of legal and social progress. As a woman, supporting the resurgence of Christianity would make me complicit in my own dehumanization.

I completely agree with all of this.