Formal Debate Peanut Gallery- El and Yahweh Are Separate Gods Redacted Into One

[MarkRohfrietsch]

After a brief pause the debate has resumed; next post is up: #4

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Another post is now up #5

 

[ChetSinger]

Interesting debate. I was drawn to this question:

Do we believe that Baal is a real god? What about Molech? Are these real divine creatures living beyond the cosmos? If not, then why should we accept Yahweh or El? And if we do not accept that Yahweh and El are real gods, then why should we accept that their supposed human son, Yeshua, had any sort of supernatural power? It would be akin to believing in Hercules' divinity while accepting Zeus as a myth.

Here's a response that perhaps BlueLightningTN wasn't expecting: I've read orthodox literature that proposes that some of the ancient gods may indeed have been actual spiritual beings. Specifically, some of them may have been among the seventy angels that God set over the nations after the dispersal at Babel.

Here's the event as described in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan:

And the Lord said to the seventy angels which stand before Him, Come, we will descend and will there commingle their language, that a man shall not understand the speech of his neighbour. And the Word of the Lord was revealed against the city, and with Him seventy angels, having reference to seventy nations, each having its own language, and thence the writing of its own hand: and He dispersed them from thence upon the face of all the earth into seventy languages.

And here's the event again, described in the Song of Moses:

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.

Two of these beings seem to be referred to in Daniel, described as the princes of Greece and Persia.

Their authority over the nations was revoked after Jesus' resurrection:

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."

There's an increasing amount of Christian scholarship on this subject. Here's a starting point: The Divine Council.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

We have another post up: #6

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Another post is up... #7

 

[Anto9us]

We call upon THE GREAT ELOHIM to resolve this matter -- as well as

EL ELYON The MOST HIGH

we even call upon EL SHADDAI

and the mighty Yahweh!!

We even call on Jehoveh Jireh and Jehovah Rapha

we will call on God til we will be answered by sheer NUMBER OF NAMES!!

 

[ChetSinger]

I was quite disappointed in BlueLigntningTN's post #7. He's composed a long personal attack not just against his opponent, but against anyone who believes in the resurrection.

 

[Targaryen]

I was quite disappointed in BlueLigntningTN's post #7. He's composed a long personal attack not just against his opponent, but against anyone who believes in the resurrection.

That's his MO when "debating" and his debate points don't hold up well without his skewing off into personal attacks. I've seen it in other debates of his.

He'll claim he's won the debate as well at the end without even listening to the critcism against his points raised as well...just you watch.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Another post is up: #8

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

We have another post: #9

 

[Targaryen]

Post#9.

Ummm...wow, not only extremely offensive to GCC but to all people of faith,not just Christians. and he owes GCC and apology, for his irrational rant, speaking of true irrationality when he was actually called on to DEBATE THE TOPIC GIVEN.

He also owes MoreCoffee and apology for taking a quote out of context and applying some sort of "the opposite of what is said is actually being said" kind of thing on that statement.

He's trying to out contrary Hitchens in his tone towards the subject and the debator opposite, which would be interesting if his facts were totally wrong.

GCC ends his last post by returning to the discussion about Yahweh and El being separate gods redacted into one deity. I'll respond to each of his objections quickly before ending my round four contribution with a message to the Peanut Gallery.

And here I have to insist that we stop playing this game where we all pretend BLTN is a credible authority on the Ancient Near East.

It doesn't matter if I am a credible authority... I can cite credible authorities whenever you wish.

Why haven't you then? It's really telling that GCC has and you have not BLTN. No one should have to ask you for your sources in a formal debate, you provide them. I learned that in 9th grade debating.

I'll leave the actual good point you made concerning Deut:32-8-9 alone till GCC can comment on it as that is the actual meat of the debate and the only thing in the entire post that wasn't based off of false data or shaded ad hominems.

However you turned right back into sheer fantasy with your next comments:

Now, finally, I’m calling him out: “Ba’al, Molech, Ashterah, El, Yahweh, Yam, etc.” are NOT Babylonian deities. Ashterah is the closest you can get, and she’s the West Semitic version of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar.

Because Babylon controlled Canaan off-and-on throughout ancient times, I sometimes refer to the Canaanite deities as being Babylonian. Technically that's true, but it isn't as specific as I should be. The readers can take a look at the Canaanite deities here (including Yahweh): Canaanite religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

False, explictly false. The Babylonian captivity of Judea lasted from the siege of Jerusalem after the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC till Persian ruler Cyrus the Great reign and his subsequent take over of Babylon in 539 BC, however the land was still under Persian authority, not Babylonian.

But funnily enough, the question of the Canaanite gods comes into the region with proffs found in the way of household god idols and other archaeological finds between the 14th and 12th centuries BC. That's somewhere in the region of 500 to 700 years prior to the Babylonian Empire's control of the lands of Judea, Canaan and Phoenicia.

History of ancient Israel and Judah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not a wise policy for a so-called and so-claimed educator to get facts totally wrong.

But even if I were going to accept this nonsense as a valid historical reconstruction of proto-Israelite religion, it still wouldn’t matter because if the creator-God of the universe at some point revealed himself to the Israelites in the form of their native creator-god, altered their worship of that god, changed the mythology of that god, and eventually came to his people in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, then the proto-history of Israelite religion is no more disturbing to Christian faith than Boyle's alchemy to chemistry or Newton's astrology to astrophysics.

And that sort of does it, right? No matter what evidence exists or may be discovered against the ancient Hebrew god(s), your belief is based completely on Yeshua. And though we've found out your once touted third quest for Yeshua no longer concerns you, you still have that existential encounter with the living Jesus that sustains your belief. By apologizing to someone not named Jesus, by hearing someone who isn't Jesus tell you good news, and by eating a grape-liquid and a cracker, you know that a 2,000 year old Jewish man died, floated above the clouds, and is waiting on you. It begs the question:

If no information can affect your belief, why did you want to debate information?

There is no address of the point raised in counter to your statements in the post prior, you just went off on a schpiel and started playing the ad hominem game and started attacking everything else cause of the simple point of Yeshua ben Meshiach's name being raised gave you the outlet to diverge from your fact proving in order to play at Christopher Hitchens and at that poorly once again.

 

[BL2KTN]

Update: I have re-formatted the latest post so that it is easier to read (Mark had helped me edit the post so that it would be unoffensive to Christians, but whatever program he used caused the formatting to be off).

Also, LiberalAnglicanCatholic, please stop private messaging me with messages that instruct me not to message back. I'll be happy to address your thoughts in the peanut gallery once the debate is over... just like I did in my debate about rape victims being required to marry their rapists (according to the Hebrew bible).

 

[RevelationTestament]

I haven't seen BlueLightningTN establish anywhere that YWHW was the name of a god anywhere other than for the Israelites, so this whole debate seems superfluous to me. El seems to be just a semitic base/root for god or power. YHWH is a name which the Bible says came from Him.

It is somewhat surprising to me that no one has really discussed the textual roots of Deut 32:8-9 or the Qumran fragment which seems to show that here YHWH was given inheritance of Jacob by Elyon, the Most High El, as a son of Elohim. While I agree that orthodox Judaism takes the view that only El Elyon is YHWH, and so the masorites may have slightly revised Deut 32, no one has talked about the other verses of the Tanakh in which the Branch will be called YHWH and that Jerusalem will be called YHWH. These verses seem to refute the position of BlueLightningTN that only El Elyon is YHWH, which seems to be a necessary conclusion of his position.

 

[ChetSinger]

I haven't seen BlueLightningTN establish anywhere that YWHW was the name of a god anywhere other than for the Israelites, so this whole debate seems superfluous to me. El seems to be just a semitic base/root for god or power. YHWH is a name which the Bible says came from Him.

It is somewhat surprising to me that no one has really discussed the textual roots of Deut 32:8-9 or the Qumran fragment which seems to show that here YHWH was given inheritance of Jacob by Elyon, the Most High El, as a son of Elohim. While I agree that orthodox Judaism takes the view that only El Elyon is YHWH, and so the masorites may have slightly revised Deut 32, no one has talked about the other verses of the Tanakh in which the Branch will be called YHWH and that Jerusalem will be called YHWH. These verses seem to refute the position of BlueLightningTN that only El Elyon is YHWH, which seems to be a necessary conclusion of his position.

Hello! I'm with orthodox Jews on this one, believing that to the Israelites the Most High and YHWH were one and the same. How could the Israelites have considered YHWH one of the Most High's 70 sons if they didn't consider themselves one of the 70 nations?

 

[Targaryen]

I haven't seen BlueLightningTN establish anywhere that YWHW was the name of a god anywhere other than for the Israelites, so this whole debate seems superfluous to me. El seems to be just a semitic base/root for god or power. YHWH is a name which the Bible says came from Him.

It is somewhat surprising to me that no one has really discussed the textual roots of Deut 32:8-9 or the Qumran fragment which seems to show that here YHWH was given inheritance of Jacob by Elyon, the Most High El, as a son of Elohim. While I agree that orthodox Judaism takes the view that only El Elyon is YHWH, and so the masorites may have slightly revised Deut 32, no one has talked about the other verses of the Tanakh in which the Branch will be called YHWH and that Jerusalem will be called YHWH. These verses seem to refute the position of BlueLightningTN that only El Elyon is YHWH, which seems to be a necessary conclusion of his position.

Yes, I noticed that as well, but I was waiting for GCC to make that point. but that's a fair assessment of the lack of address.

 

[RevelationTestament]

Hello! I'm with orthodox Jews on this one, believing that to the Israelites the Most High and YHWH were one and the same.

Just to be clear on my position, Deut shows the Father is YHWH in Chp 17. But the one He will send in his name - the one Jacob is given to - appears to be addressed in Deut 32 as YHWH. I believe the Bible shows both the Father and the Son are YHWH Elohim. It is possible the Masoretes were disturbed by this reading and redacted it to sons of Israel rather than sons of Elohim. The Septuagint shows angels of Elohim, suggesting that the Qumran fragment is probably the original reading in this instance.

How could the Israelites have considered YHWH one of the Most High's 70 sons if they didn't consider themselves one of the 70 nations?

They didn't?

 

[ChetSinger]

Just to be clear on my position, Deut shows the Father is YHWH in Chp 17. But the one He will send in his name - the one Jacob is given to - appears to be addressed in Deut 32 as YHWH. I believe the Bible shows both the Father and the Son are YHWH Elohim.

Cool. I agree with you that both the Father and the Son are YHWH Elohim. Sometimes they're distinguished in the text, sometimes not.

It is possible the Masoretes were disturbed by this reading and redacted it to sons of Israel rather than sons of Elohim. The Septuagint shows angels of Elohim, suggesting that the Qumran fragment is probably the original reading in this instance.

I believe that's becoming the consensus view, and is now reflected in translations such as the ESV and NET.

They didn't?

They considered themselves the 71st nation. The 70 are listed in Genesis 10 and Israel isn't among them, because the dividing took place prior to the calling of Abraham.

 

[FreeinChrist]

MOD HAT

This thread is closed for staff review.

As a reminder, this is Christian Only (orthodox and non-orthodox Christian) area.

Please see:
UDD Statement of Purpose

Welcome to Unorthodox Doctrinal Discussion. UDD is a forum for all discussion of unorthodox theology and fellowship. This is a Christian only area, however both orthodox and unorthodox Christians are welcome to post here. This is a statement that identifies the purpose of this forum and delineates how the rules will be applied here.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

MOD HAT...

Where do I start?

1. Please forgive me; I started this thread in a forum that was unsuitable for not only the topic but unfair to the participants. I have therefore moved it in to the Controversial Topics peanut gallery, where there is a bit more latitude regarding topics and participants.
2. There was a ship-load of flaming in this thread; these posts have been removed.
3. Until the Formal Debate is finished and closed, neither participant will be allowed to post in this peanut gallery thread.
4. Like the Formal Debates, this forum is also Moderated, so each and every post will be invisible until it has been reviewed and approved. As the moderator of this forum, I reserve the right to edit posts as required.

I expect that everyone will stay on topic here will treat everyone with respect. If we can not do this, then this thread will be closed for good.


OK, Reopening.


Mark
Area Supervisor

 

[pshun2404]

The El's were a generic form of speaking about the "gods", Abraham notes that one in particular was the highest of the Els (El-shaddai means most high God) who was the all mighty God (creator of all the lesser gods or angelic spirits worshipped by men) so also called Him El-Elyon (the All Mighty God) and in the fullness of time this Highest God of all the gods (the beni elohim fallen or otherwise), the LORD of lords revealed to Moses His name was YHVH.

Before that no one knew His personal name thought the Semitic Akkadians (sons of Shem, sons of Noah) called Him "EA" (pronounced ee-Yah)