What is the lineage of god the father
Posted on: December 28, 2009 - 8:59pm
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What is the lineage of god the father
What I want to uncover is the true lineage of the christian god the father. Where does he come from? How far back can we trace him? We know the jews had a single god who magically morphed into 3 when the romans tried to shoehorn multiple cults together to manufacture christianity but just where did this one jewish god come from? Did the jews bring him back from Anatolia where over time he supplanted baal and various local gods? Can we trace him back any further than that? Just who the hell is this aggravating god guy, anyway?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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So my cursory reading suggests that the first reference to one single god was Aten - specifially the life giving component of the Sun/Ra. The jewish god appeared either 2000 years ago or possibly solidified from multiple local gods between 200CE and 400BC depending on who you're reading. FurryCat and JohnPaul - does this work for you. Not for you Furry, I'm sure. Damn. I'm going to have to go the library and into the 'Religion' section...
That whole period is just a chaotic mess with kingdoms and gods all over the place.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
In a strictly general sense it is not hard to explain.
Humans don't exist in a vacuum. So when employing Occam's Razor you have a needlessly complicated assertion. And provable history.
1. There really is an invisible brain floating in the cosmos interfering in the affairs of humans.
OR
2. The long history of once believed god(s) falling into the rightful category of myth.
So while it is true we cant directly, for example, trace the miracle motif of Jesus curing blindness in the bible to the Egyptian god Thot curing the blindness of Horus, we can conclude that the MOTIF got filtered down through muliple cultures until the story morphed into the bible with new characters and details.
Jews and Christians constantly claim that Yahwey was not the Canaanite god, and they are right. But that misses the point. It confuses new details as being original, when the inspiration had to come from somewhere. El, Elohim, Baal, Yahweh and Asurah are all names used in the Canaanite pantheon. Certainly different than what the Jews interpret them as, but the inspiration didn't magically pop into their heads.
If you look at religion, it is merely a matter of successful marketing, like Coke vs Pepsi. Coke comes out with a Cherry soda and Pepsi looks at it and says "I like that idea(motif). I'll change the color of the can, change the name, tweak the flavor".
In religious history you are not always going to find direct connections from one MOTIF in a prior culture to a newer culture. But the fact that a MOTIF exists prior to the newer ones can only lead a reasonable person to conclude that there was no magical epiphany, but that the MOTIF exchanged hands and cultures until it made it's way into newer cultures.
If one thinks about all the people they meet in their entire life in passing that they will never see again, it is easy to accept that there will not always be a record of exchange of stories or culture.
So you only have two choices.
1. A magic man exists.
OR
2. People like the idea of a magical super hero and pass this MOTIF down to the next generation which changes it slightly and over enough time it is still the same MOTIF but just has different characters and names and details and over time the connections are so far removed from each other there isn't a direct line between them that can be found.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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My research into this subject agrees with this. Pharaoh Amenhotep IV even took on his name as Akhenaten. Aten was originally an aspect of Ra/Horus/Aten perhaps the 1st 3 in one god concept? However the worship of Aten as the single creator god seemed to decrease and disappear with the death of the Pharaoh.
It's very hard to place an exact date on when Yahweh morphed from a Canaanite god into the single deity described in the DSS or Hebrew Bible. I'd go with the period between 200 and 400 BCE as very likely based on the Maccabean War and the 1st contacts with Rome around the same time. The development from the Canaanite/Egyptian/Babylonian connections obviously would have taken some time, several hundred years or more at least and they seem to be more or less solidified by around 200 BCE.
The Jewish god as propagated by the DSS was likely worshiped at the time of the Maccabean revolt mid 2nd century BCE. Since this god is invisible and making a likeness of him was taboo there is little in the way of artifacts prior to this period to substantiate exactly what the people that are considered Jews actually worshiped. That Yahweh was not the only god worshiped is clearly attested in the OT in many places. Throughout Palestine figures of Asherah the 'Queen of Heaven' and in many traditions Yahweh's consort or wife have been found. Worship of her is mentioned especially by Jeremiah who clearly condemns it. She is also sometimes called Athirat and asherah (no caps) is simply any consort or wife of a god.
On the other hand. Yahweh may be the same god that is mentioned in Ugaritic myths and perhaps is the same or a morphing of Ba'al. Ba'al simply means lord, so one needs to understand that throughout ancient Palestine virtually every city or town had their ba'al. Specifically Ba'al refers to the the god as in the Ba'al Cycle of Ugaritic origin. He was as Yahweh, a storm god, a god of war and volcanoes. His true name was never used as with Yahweh. He was also called Rider of the Clouds, Thunderer, Master of the Earth, and Prince. Possibly he is the same deity as Hadad in Sumerian/Akkardian or Babylonian mythology. Gods of Palestine have many connections with both Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia.
That's for sure. God worship in ancient times was a blending of cultures and many varieties of myths.
I think you have the right idea in further investigation at the library. See list I gave Caposkia in my OT thread for some ideas though there may be a lot more today.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
I haven't looked at this in detail for a few years but here's a few links I found today.
Interesting article by Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfield y de la Torre
http://www.bibleorigins.net/YahwehYawUgarit.html
Yahweh article by Ilil Arbel Ph D
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/y/yahweh.html
An article by Subhash Kak - He mentions the inscription I was discussing regarding Yahweh and his consort that is dated to about 850 BCE that says, "I bless you through Yahweh of Samaria, and through his Asherah" And also from another inscription "Uriyahu, the king, has written this. Blessed be Uriyahu through Yahweh, and his enemies have been conquered through Yahweh's Asherah.” from El Qom about the same time period.
http://www.orientalia.org/article293.html
A book by Frank Moore Cross titled Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Specifically see pp44 -76 See here for Google preview.
____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Cheers Brian and thanks for those links PJ - it's an interesting topic the birth of god. And there must have been one - in a figurative sense. How about the idea that the roman empire led to a concept of a global community, a global community needed a single global/imperial god? Sure am not first to think this but occurred to me last night during beer.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
As an aside, Ra is the only god I'm aware of that makes any sense at all, in any context. Too bad they had to anthropomorphicise him. They were pretty well dead on as giver of life and the day, even if it's a very rough generalisation.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.