Did you read the screenshots? Abraham recognizes Melchizedek’s God as an older tradition in line with his. Not tribal, hence the “all peoples” promises.
However, he does not accept anything from Bera, king of Sodom, even though he helped him defeat the other kings. He had discernment.
There is no syncretism there. That’s part of why Israel clashes with folks throughout history—they try to impose their religion or messed up culture on Israel. It’s also why Israel clashes with God—syncretism does creep in, along with its practices, and he has to deal with it.
Some of what you said I’m not addressing, because it would take time to … do it justice. It is done elsewhere.
This is a story being told by Hellenized, diaspora Jews like Philo of Alexandria or the apostle Paul. It is revisionist history if it can be called history at all. Judaism wasn’t a unified religion even in the first century as is reported in the works of historian Josephus himself a first century Jew who himself fought the Romans in Galilee and then switched sides and became a Roman citizen. The gospels support his view. There are Pharisees and Sadducees, Zealots and the followers of John the Baptist. Josephus also tells of the Essenes. Scholars speculate about the relationship between the Essenes and the Jesus movement. That messianic apocalyptic movement was probably closer in character to Jesus‘s movement than the subsequent Christian church that developed.
1 Like
MagsJ
(..a chic geek -all thoughts are my own-)
23
.
That near-all religions proceeded/evolved from/borrowed from [an]other religion[s] doesn’t make them suspicious or evil, it’s when that religious-vehicle is used for bad, that does.
Right. It’s when religious adherents claim that they are superior because only they possess the Truth and damn the rest of humanity that the problems start.
MagsJ
(..a chic geek -all thoughts are my own-)
25
.
Religion, being used to bolster ego… why does that have to be accompanied by death and destruction of ‘the other’ though?
When did religion become a vehicle for war? …or has it always been, just discretely and localised.
Why? The ego is a product of ignorance and “exists” once removed from the reality which is the ground of its being. That gap appears infinite in the imagination severed from its source. Into that space enters the terror of annihilation. Existential insecurity , blindness to the divinity in the other, fear, rage, blood lust, all manner of evil rush in to fill the vacuum.
Among the ancients, worldviews were essential religious. Wars were fought between the gods. And it’s still that way today for those who believe God has picked them and is on their side against the enemy.
I don’t have anything to add to my last post. It’s easy to make up a claim without supporting it. Some of the claims may be true, some of the claims may be half true, some of the claims may be totally distorted from reality. Do I have time to address every one of them? If I address even one of them, more multiply in their place. It’s not a true discourse. If someone wants to know the truth, they can do the homework I did over the years so much that I became confident enough to forget all of it. Now it’s your turn to apparently give opportunity for someone else to do their homework. And they’ll probably forget all of it too. Do you know what I won’t forget? When I was wallowing in the mud and he lifted me out of it.
This thread is about how contemporary archaeological and critical research is revising the origin of Judaism and what went before it. It isn’t intended to undermine your faith.
The relationship of the Biblical texts to historiography is a complex one… Ancient people didn’t write histories the way it is done today. Indeed they couldn’t because they lacked the technology we have to record it.
My experience is that at the core of the world’s great religions is an esoteric spiritual core. There are many paths up the mountain but a single peak at the top.
So syncretism seems to be part of the evolutionary process of religion when societies encounter one another. Other parts are war, exclusivism and wars.
Evangelicals resist admitting the human factor in the the Bible’s composition by viewing it asthe absolute“The Word of God” despite evidence of it’s human authorship. I have frequently asked Evangelicals (I was once one myself) to explain how divine Bible inspiration worked. The answers seldom get beyond the verses Timothy 3:16-17:
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” which explains nothing.
It is quite possible that what we know as the first five books of the Old Testament were not written (or compiled and redacted) until shortly before the time they were they were first translated into Greek in the third century BCE. This correlates roughly with the archeological findings of Yonatan Adler who has argued that there is no surviving evidence to support the notion that the Torah was widely known, regarded as authoritative, and put into practice, any time prior to the middle of the 2nd century BCE. (Wikipedia, origins of Judaism).
Can novels contain truth? What about dreams? Pure myths are stories that never happened that are always true. In the Bible often history is made to tell an ideology packed story. Which is which involves textual archeology. It’s not an exact science in most cases. Often natural plausibility is the standard because statistical probability is not possible. Still, it is relatively free from the authority of sectarian dogma though not altogether free from its influence.
And yet the Talmud didn’t begin to be composed until around 200 CE after Yahwism and Second Temple Judaism. Are you saying that the earlier religions must be interpreted in light of the Talmud? In what sense?