dbrandt

That was a pretty well thought out post but answered NONE of my questions about the places in the bible where God mentions other Gods

Out of curiosity, what defines a being as a "god"? If to be a god means you have power over life and death, does that not make humans gods in the eyes of the animals we slaughter for food etc? If in say 50years we perfect technology to the point where we are able to create entirely new species of creatures using genetic engineering, does that not fit with the definition of "power over life and death" aka: "god"?

Said better than I could dbrandt.

What is God? By Merriam Webster:

Pronunciation: 'gäd also 'god
Function: noun
1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the universe

For me I like to use the Omni (universal)words: omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent. God is, was, and will always be.

hey "Saint4God" and others on this thread:

Actually, your "definition" of "god" refers to a more "monotheistic" (one god) approach--which is fairly late in coming---in fact not in existence until Pharaoh Ankhenaten, and even then he had other Egyptian gods to put under ATEN his sun-god.

Judaiesm did not come into recogniseable form until after the time of EZRA (cf: the Shema'q of Deut chapter 6: "hear o Israel, YHWH is your clan-god, YHWH alone !" was the mantra after BC 480 when the harder lined post Exilic YHWH priests FINALLY came back from exile---and they didn't brook any opposition).

Most translations blur this translation of the Hebrew over to cover up the fact that other gods were being referred to (see my previous posts) :

(KJV: "Hear o Israel, THE LORD our god, THE LORD is one" which makes no grammatical sense in English and covers up the original meaning of the words..since ECHAD means ALONE as well as "singular")

Most of the ancient world when the various competing texts of the so-called "Bible" (i.e. the OT) was being re-written by Ezra in the 5th century BC was POLYTHEISTIC and NOT monotheistic, although several city-states throughout Greece, Anatolia and Canaan had a rough kind of MONOLATRY in place with one particular god and goddess at the top and a bunch under neath, generally seen as relatives in the divine family....

("Let us make ADAM in OUR LIKENESS, and after OUR Image...so MALE AND FEMALE ELOHIM (lit. the gods but governing a SINGULAR VERB bara, to create as one group) CREATED HE THEM...AND HE CALLED THEIR NAME ADAM (Gen 5:1)---no Hayyah (or EVE) in the Hezekielite Priestly Myth (Gen 1:1 to 2:4a + 5:1 to 5:6 etc.) of Creation, with all those BABYLONIAN SEVENS...!

Several languages express "invisible powers" in terms of the "gods" in the plural.

"Neter" in ancient Egyptian means "power" and it's symbol is the AX or HATCHET (power of the King to cut off a head for example). The plural NETERU would be "gods".

In Canaan EL seems to also have been something equivalent to "mighty" or "powerful" ("benei Elim" can be roughly translated into English as "sons of the Powerful" or variously, "sons of the EL..." or "sons of the gods" which during the PERSIAN period when the idea of Intermediary Angels and Daemons was introduced into Palestine by the invaders, "sons of God" i.e. "angels"etc.

Typically in most pantheons ("all the gods") there are sets of 3 gods (Isis-Osiris-Horus or Amun-Khonsu-Ra, Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu etc) or other sets (like the PAUT of 9 gods in Egypt).

The Canaanites (from which the Israelites stole, or more politely, adapted their own religious systems before the Exile, seem to have had several PAUTs of their gods, generally with EL at the top of the list: eventually settling on 7 gods representing the moving "planets" from Babylonian-Assyrian astrology which were visible to the naked eye:

(SUN + MOON + MERCURY + VENUS + MARS +JUPITER + SATURN = 7 Eyes of EL, which became the 7-EYES OF ELOHIM in Zechariah and the Book of Revelation:

cf: the SEVEN FOLD PEAL OF BAAL, read Psalms 29 for an echo of a Canaanite-Baalite Psalm in which some clumsy priest of YHWH at a lter date decided to adapt for the praise of his own local god, and went and changed the name of the Cannanite god BAAL to the Syrian desert god YHWH :

PSALM 29:1 HaBU BA'al BEnei Elim : Give Praise to Baal, o ye SONS of EL ! which was changed, rather unpoetically since it ruins the BBB alliteration:
to:

HaBU LeYHWH BENEI ELIM... (Praise YHWH ye sons of the gods) or "sons of the mighty" since later Jews disliked the idea of being reminded where they got their religioin from...i.e. the Canaanites at first, and later mixed in with Egyptian (primitive laws of Moses taken from the 47 Negative Confessions, or the cult objects e.g. the Ark, the Urim ve Thummim dice and High Priests Vestments in general including the brestplate etc. ), Assyro- Babylonian (more developed Laws of Moses, Creation myths, Astrology) Persian (Angles, Resurrectin, Last Day Judgement) and Greek ideas (book of Ecclesiastes, or the post Greek tradition of reclining at Passover on a couch)etc.

Of course Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome were the INVADERS into Palestine between 721 BC and AD 70, so Israel was OCCUPIED by gentiles throughout most of its history, who brought the religious-societal ideals and values with them...

And don't forget what our word HIERARCHY means: Greek: Hieros = shrine + ArchE =order, or Beginning) = i.e. the Order of the Gods in the pantheon on the Tableau on the wall (who's on top, who's in the middle, who's at the bottom)

No wonder we use that term to describe "the chart of all the Bosses at our jobs"...they certainly act like little "gods" sometimes !!

plus ca change...










[edit on 18-10-2004 by Amadeus]

Originally posted by Jamuhn
So you are saying that the Egyptian wizards got their power from the "only God"? And used it against the jews who were protected by the "only God"?

God allowed them to imitate up to a certain point. The first thing they did was make their rods snakes too. But Aarons snake ate their's proving God power is supreme. Next the magicians did water to blood and brought additional frogs. As far as they used it against the Jews, they didn't. They brought more bloody water and more frogs onto the land of Egypt. They couldn't rid the land of blood or the frogs so they made the problems twice as bad. That wasn't too intelligent. On the 4th plague they confessed to pharoah that this was the hand of God.

Hi DBrandt:

I definitely DO NOT "ADD things" to the text, but I sometimes try to bring the original force of the Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek word into modern English, which your kindergarten translations you read in American English leave out or do not understand.

Raphael UO:

"lephney" in Hebrew is a compound expression. Let me break it down literally, and then you can decide what best works for you in modern English:

le = "to" + phanim = lit. "faces" (plural like so many Hebrew words that can "change form" or expression like MAYIM (waters) or ELOHIM (gods) or CHAYYIM (life or lives) + ani (me or "my" or mine or I) =

LE + PHANIM + ANI = (to + faces + my) = "LEPHNEI"

The term can mean: "in front of my faces" "in front of my face"

or more loosely, it could mean something like: "in front of me" or more loosely, "before me" "before my presences" "in my orbit" "near me" "anywhere close to me" etc. etc.

I chose the literal rendering of LePHNEI (before my faces) to bring out the fact that it is grammatically plural----and to emphasis the fact of its outdated language has NO PLACE on a US government building, since there is supposed to be a theoretical if not actual SEPARATION OF CHURCH and STATE in the US....


Why not quote from the Qu'ran and put that on government buidlings, or the RG VEDA for that matter? or the I CHING? Why always the mangled texts of the supposedly ancient "Torah" of the Jews (whose texts are contradictory anyway) constantly being hammered into the fabric of our 21st century culture who does not any longer recognise angy local clan gods who want all the Amalekites genocided?

Amadeus, so who's your God.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

gods, is always denoted as a false god or something man made.

The bible, states that moses was to be the peoples god and aaron to be his prophet.

Israel is stated to be gods amongst, the people. Whom, didn't know the true GOD.

There is only one True God.

Originally posted by dbrandt
Amadeus, so who's your God.

Strange, I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with the topic. At least, I don't see anything about who Amadeus worships in the title or opening post.

So why are you bringing it up?

I think God is talking about things like money and status symbols.

These days it seems that many people in the Western world treat money and status symbols such as their car, their house etc almost as 'Gods'. If you think of it, they even have their little rituals - "Thou shalt wash thy car on Sunday, for verily the birds of the sky hath shat upon it".

Originally posted by Amuk
Amadeus

Very few dig a little deeper than what there sunday school teacher told them and think the Bible was handed as is, in english, to us and dont understand that it has been handed down, rewrote, books put in and taken out, etc for several hundred years.

I couldn't agree more. There's so much mixed up in translations and the many times the Bible has been translated, along w/ all that's been left out (part of that being that they just weren't able to translate it) and what's been added to make some of the contradictory statements w/in seem to match - It's just hard to understand EXACTLY what the Bible is talking about. I do believe there are alot of hidden truths in the Bible and that it may even be written in a way that needs further translation.
I think that it was left up to us to decide who our own Higher Power is and when we discover that, things start to make a little more sense.

no, Amadeus may not "add" things, but he does take things out of context a lot of time, and creates presumptions by taking it out of context that otherwise are untrue. But take it as you will, i know he knows more about religion than me, in terms of what each religion is about, who started it, and what happened, but i know i know more of the true god than he can ever hope for. Amadeus, i will not go into them as it will be a useless battle, it is apparent that me and you will NEVER see eye to eye on this topic, i just wanted to give some people a little heads up, so this post, in which you are going to try to discredit me on, is over. I will not respond to you or any personal attack you lay upon me... one thing though that needs to be cleared up with you is when Jesus says when someone slaps you across the cheek turn the other cheek, i know this isn't the direct quote but that is basically all that needs to be said, it isn't said in order for one to be deviant, it is said for one to be peaceful. If someone hits you, and you turn the other cheek, the person more than likely won't hit you again, and by doing so you have already won the fight through peace. Jesus wasn't preaching hate, he was preaching peace, but you totally misunderstood it, but i better stop talking about this.

Originally posted by Majic

Originally posted by dbrandt
Amadeus, so who's your God.

Strange, I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with the topic. At least, I don't see anything about who Amadeus worships in the title or opening post.

So why are you bringing it up?

I know he doesn't believe in Jesus Christ, I want to know what he believes.

Originally posted by dbrandt
I know he doesn't believe in Jesus Christ, I want to know what he believes.

The U2U feature makes that easy enough to do without public fanfare or off-topic digressions.

Attempting to switch the topic to a personal expose is precisely what people do when they are unable or unwilling to deal with the topic at hand. Doing so is called an ad hominem attack, and it is poor form in any discussion.

While I can't know your true motives, I don't think you are being honest with me about them. Attempting to change the subject is not the honest thing to do.

Amadeus is challenging your assumptions. Why would you rather talk about Amadeus than what he has posted?

But on that note, let's get back on-topic, since pointing out a digression on your part is also a digression on my part. Shame on me.

Who is God talking about? Is Amadeus right or wrong? Where you disagree with him, why do you disagree with him, and on what basis?

The identity of God seems important enough a topic to address honestly.

i actually created a thread just asking Amadeus what he believes in, i believe it is entitled, Question for Amadeus!

Originally posted by Amuk
In the First Commandment God says "Thou shalt have no other Gods Before Me"

Who was he talking about?

Probably other gods, seems reasonable. I thought it was generally accepted the the ancient hebrews weren't monotheists but rather 'henotheists', meaning that they knew there were other gods runnign around, but that this one, their god, had chosen them and was doing stuff for them. Hence there being other people on earth even tho this god only created adam and eve.