Original Sin?

First we have to remember that we are dealing with historical realities and God's revelation. Nothing is made up. If you are asking could God have saved us some other way, I reckon He could but the reality of our salvation is the only thing we can really address.

The situation is that God created the universe and all that exists freely. The crown of all this creation are human beings whom He makes in His image and likeness. We share in God's gifts of reason, intelligence, and in freedom. This last gift was in particular so we can love. Love God and love others. This is situation created, pretty awesome and perfect. However, true freedom means that we can also hate. So we rebel against our creator and desire to make our own reality. We want to control our lives, what is good and bad, we basically want to be God. What follows is disaster. We turn on each other and sin runs rampant causing all the suffering and death in our world.

What follows is eventually God uniquely revealing Himself to His chossen people through Abraham. The Law is established where to return to where we originally were we need to follow perfectly the Law of God. Covenant after covenant is made and broken by humanity. Slowly we begin to see that we cannot fulfill God's Law. Here God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is born into the world. He perfectly fulfills the Law - yikes gotta run, look at the time! To be continued

Quote: FrGamble

First we have to remember that we are dealing with historical realities and God's revelation. Nothing is made up.

So are you claiming these gods were real,
then?

"Features of Baal, El, and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahweh religion, Asherah possibly becoming embodied in the feminine aspects of the Shekinah or divine presence.."

You're saying all the pagan gods
that Yahweh, the one and only
supposed god of Israel, and the
god Jesus is supposed to be, were
not made up fantasies, but real?

Quote: Evenbob

So are you claiming these gods were real,
then?

"Features of Baal, El, and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahweh religion, Asherah possibly becoming embodied in the feminine aspects of the Shekinah or divine presence.."

You're saying all the pagan gods
that Yahweh, the one and only
supposed god of Israel, and the
god Jesus is supposed to be, were
not made up fantasies, but real?

I don't know where you are getting that strange quote about Yahweh being a combination of lots of other gods but it is wrong. Nothing about Yahweh is the same as the other entities you mentioned.

Of course God is real and so is the Incarnate Son of God Jesus Christ.

Quote: FrGamble

I don't know where you are getting that strange quote about Yahweh being a combination of lots of other gods

It's everywhere, I've known this
for 40 years. It's hugely well
documented where Yahweh
came from, the origin of the
god of Israel. Here's a link to
a very long article and I can
provide a dozen more if you
like. Are you saying they never
covered this in seminary? Good
grief.

"Yahweh, according to Amzallag, was transformed from one god among many to the supreme deity by the Israelites in the Iron Age (c.1200-930 BCE) when iron replaced bronze and the copper smelters, whose craft was seen as a kind of transformative magic, lost their unique status. In this new age, the Israelites in Canaan sought to distance themselves from their neighbors in order to consolidate political and military strength and so elevated Yahweh above El as the supreme being and claimed him as their own. His association with the forge, and with imagery of fire, smoke, and smiting, worked as well in describing a god of storms and war and so Yahweh’s character changed from a deity of transformation to one of conquest."

https://www.ancient.eu/Yahweh/

Yahweh is the one God and only God the Israelites worshiped. If you remember Judaism is a monotheistic religion. Abraham and the other patriarchs of Judaism only worshiped the one true God, YHWH. Many you think because everyone around them worshiped many gods you think that the Jews did as well, but that is wrong. They did of course at times fall into polytheism or idol worship always to be condemned by the prophets and others. I don't see any reason why you or anyone think that the Jewish people just combined all the many gods around them into one. Have you noticed how radically different the God of the Bible is to every other so called god of the region. You seem to be grasping at straws here.

Quote: FrGamble

I don't see any reason why you or anyone think that the Jewish people just combined all the many gods around them into one.

Because they did it! I cannot believe this.
Did you not go to the link I posted? Yahweh
was a minor pagan god among many. The
early bronze age Jews got tired of a god
for every little thing, so they promoted
Yahweh to the 'all one god' position. How
have you avoided knowing this all this time?

There's an incredible amount written
on this subject. Where did you think
Yahweh came from, thin air?

"The Israelites initially worshiped Yahweh alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal. In the period of the Judges and the first half of the monarchy, El and Yahweh became conflated in a process of religious syncretism. As a result, ’el (Hebrew: אל) became a generic term meaning "god", as opposed to the name of a worshipped deity, and epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, diminishing the worship of El and strengthening the position of Yahweh. Features of Baal, El, and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahweh religion, Asherah possibly becoming embodied in the feminine aspects of the Shekinah or divine presence, and Baal's nature as a storm and weather god becoming assimilated into Yahweh's own identification with the storm. In the next stage the Yahweh religion separated itself from its Canaanite heritage, first by rejecting Baal-worship in the 9th century, then through the 8th to 6th centuries with prophetic condemnation of Baal, the asherim, sun-worship, worship on the "high places", practices pertaining to the dead, and other matters."

The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel Smith, Mark S. (2002)

Pre-exilic Israel, like its neighbours, was polytheistic, and Israelite monotheism was the result of unique historical circumstances. The original god of Israel was El, as the name demonstrates—its probable meaning is "may El rule" or some other sentence-form involving the name of El. In the early tribal period, each tribe would have had its own patron god; when kingship emerged, the state promoted Yahweh as the national god of Israel, supreme over the other gods, and gradually Yahweh absorbed all the positive traits of the other gods and goddesses. Yahweh and El merged at religious centres such as Shechem, Shiloh and Jerusalem, with El's name becoming a generic term for "god" and Yahweh, the national god, appropriating many of the older supreme god's titles such as El Shaddai (Almighty) and Elyon (Most High).

A History of Israelite Religion, Volume I: From the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy.
Albertz, Rainer (1994)


"The worship of Yahweh alone began at the earliest with Elijah in the 9th century BCE, but more likely with the prophet Hosea in the 8th; even then it remained the concern of a small party before gaining ascendancy in the exilic and early post-exilic period. The early supporters of this faction are widely regarded as being monolatrists rather than true monotheists; they did not believe that Yahweh was the only god in existence, but instead believed that he was the only god the people of Israel should worship. Finally, in the national crisis of the exile, the followers of Yahweh went a step further and outright denied that the other deities aside from Yahweh even existed, thus marking the transition from monolatrism to true monotheism."

Exploring the Religion of Ancient Israel: Prophet, Priest, Sage and People.

Chalmers, Aaron (2012)

I think I see the problem. You may be conflating the religious history and practices of the people surrounding those who descended from Abraham. You and the scholars correctly note that the process from polytheism, which everyone practiced, and the novel idea of only one God of monotheism was a development. I will grant you that. However, the process of becoming monotheists was a direct and constant path for the Israelites. Still the call to many gods was strong and the Bible is full of moments of back sliding and idol worship on behalf of the Jewish people. Like everything in the Old Testament you have to see a pedagogy of God slowly but surely teaching and correcting His people. Scholarship of the early books of the Bible can tell the school of thought of the person writing by how they address God such as "Elohim" or "Yahweh". Yet again it is wrong to say that the Israelites were worshiping a pagan God or that they were polytheistic. They were a new religion based on God's revelation to worship the only and one and true God.

Quote: FrGamble

it is wrong to say that the Israelites were worshiping a pagan God or that they were polytheistic.

Yet all these books by scholars say
otherwise. Huge advances were
made in the 20th century, such as
an entire Canaanite town was dug
up in the MidEast that dated to the
13th century BC. All the evidence
is showing that Israel was very
much a polytheistic society in
the beginning. Don't you think
it odd that one of Moses rules
was not to have any god before
Yahweh.

After a century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists the consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel.There is no indication that the Israelites ever lived in Ancient Egypt, and the Sinai Peninsula shows almost no sign of any occupation for the entire 2nd millennium BCE (even Kadesh-Barnea, where the Israelites are said to have spent 38 years, was uninhabited prior to the establishment of the Israelite monarchy). In contrast to the absence of evidence for the Egyptian captivity and wilderness wanderings, there are ample signs of Israel’s evolution within Canaan from native Canaanite roots

"Bitter Lives: Israel In And Out of Egypt". Redmount, Carol A. (2001) The Oxford History of the Biblical World.

Also Moses is most probably a mythical
figure that dates to before monotheistic
worship of Yahweh. So Jesus meeting
with Moses in the NT is just more made-up
stories by ignorant uneducated story
tellers.

I think to look at Jewish history you have to begin fresh from Abraham. There begins monotheism and the worship of the one true God. From him the Jewish people start an unbroken growing evolution led by the strong monotheistic patriarchs and prophets to abandon polytheism. The God of the OT who reveals Himself to Abraham, Issac, and Jacob and who gives His name to Moses is radically different than any of the so called gods before Him. A cursory glance at Scripture makes this clear even if archaeology doesn't.

Quote: FrGamble

Judaism is the first religion to believe that God is in love with us. Before that like you said it was made up stories about gods more egotistical than anyone and demanding all kinds of things without a care for humanity.

My reading of the old testament is much like that, a god "demanding all kinds of things without a care for humanity. " The OT is full of stories of god creating natural disasters and wars to punish us. The story of Noah and the ark is a good example.