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posticon Ugarit and the Bible


While I've seen many parallels in the past between Abrahamic religions and some of the religions that preceeded them, I've long wondered how these beliefs made their way into the religion of the ancient Hebrews. Well, I think I've finally stumbled upon their most direct influence.

The Ugarits were Canaanites who worshipped Ba'al-Hadad and Asherah, among other gods.


From wikipedia:

Though the site is thought to have been inhabited earlier, Neolithic Ugarit was already important enough to be fortified with a wall early on, perhaps by 6000 BCE.


Wow, 6000 BCE. There goes that 4004 BCE Creation date.


From Ugarit and the Bible:

Ugarit was at its political, religious and economic height around the 12th century BCE and thus its period of greatness corresponds with the entry of Israel into Canaan.


Ugarit must be one of those places that God told the Israelites not to destroy so He could test them... or was it the fortified walls that saved the inhabitants of Ugarit? After 4000+ years of having fortified walls, I'm sure they must have had a decent military by then.


From Ugarit and the Bible:

All of the tablets found at Ugarit were written in the last period of its life (around 1300-1200 BCE). The kings of this last and greatest period were:

1349 ‘Ammittamru I
1325 Niqmaddu II
1315 Arhalba
1291 Niqmepa 2
1236 ‘Ammitt1193- Niqmaddu III
1185 ‘Ammurapi


From Ugarit and the Bible:

In the period 1200-1180 the city steeply declined and then mysteriously came to an end.

Must've been magical trumpets and shouting that did them in, or maybe those 4000-year-old walls finally started to give way...


From Ugarit and the Bible:

Ugarit experienced a very long history. A city was built on the site in the Neolithic period around 6000 BCE. The oldest written evidence of the city is found in some texts from the nearby city of Ebla written around 1800 BCE. At that time both Ebla and Ugarit were under Egyptian hegemony, which shows that the long arm of Egypt extended all along the west coast of the Mediterranean Sea (for Ugarit is located in modern day Syria roughly dead east of the NE coast of Cyprus on the coast of Syria). The population of Ugarit at that time was roughly 7635 people. The city of Ugarit continued to be dominated by the Egyptians through 1400 BCE.

Egypt, home of Horus. Well, Horus doesn't make his way into the Bible until the New Testament, but I thought it worthy to note.

Anyway, here's a sneak peek into the Ugarit religion. See if any of it sounds familiar to you.

From Ugarit and the Bible:

In 1 Kings 22:19-22 we read of Yahweh meeting with his heavenly council. This is the very description of heaven which one finds in the Ugaritic texts. For in those texts the “sons of god” are the sons of El.

Other deities worshipped at Ugarit were El Shaddai, El Elyon, and El Berith. All of these names are applied to Yahweh by the writers of the Old Testament. What this means is that the Hebrew theologians adopted the titles of the Canaanite gods and attributed them to Yahweh in an effort to eliminate them. If Yahweh is all of these there is no need for the Canaanite gods to exist! This process is known as assimilation.

Besides the chief god at Ugarit there were also lesser gods, demons, and goddesses. The most important of these lesser gods were Baal (familiar to all readers of the Bible), Asherah (also familiar to readers of the Bible), Yam (the god of the sea) and Mot (the god of death). What is of great interest here is that Yam is the Hebrew word for sea and Mot is the Hebrew word for death! Is this because the Hebrews also adopted these Canaanite ideas as well? Most likely they did.

One of the most interesting of these lesser deities, Asherah, plays a very important role in the Old Testament. There she is called the wife of Baal; but she is also known as the consort of Yahweh! That is, among some Yahwists, Ahserah is Yahweh’s female counterpart! Inscriptions found at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (dated between 850 and 750 BCE) say:

I bless you through Yahweh of Samaria,
and through his Asherah!
And at ‘El Qom (from the same period) this inscription:

Uriyahu, the king, has written this.
Blessed be Uriyahu through Yahweh,
and his enemies have been conquered
through Yahweh’s Asherah.


That Yahwists worshipped Asherah until the 3rd century before Christ is well known from the Elephantine Papyri. Thus, for many in ancient Israel, Yahweh, like Baal, had a consort. Although condemned by the prophets, this aspect of the popular religion of Israel was difficult to overcome and indeed among many was never overcome.


Blasphemy! God wasn't married.... or is that how "He" was originally imagined by the ancient peoples? emoticon

For the rest of this very informative article about the people who most likely had the greatest direct influence on the first Abrahamic religion, visit Ugarit and the Bible.

For a direct translation of some of the Ugaritic texts, see The Battle of Ba´al and Yahm.

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5/2/2007, 11:48 pm Link to this post PM Lesigner Girl Read Blog
 
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Re: Ugarit and the Bible


I wasn't familiar with this before. It's not the only thing that suggests a non-literal interpretation of Tanakh and the New Testament might be appropriate, either. Take, for example, the flood story of Gilgamesh, a story some 1,500 years earlier than the Noah story with remarkably similar details, recorded on a clay or stone tablet. Like the Noah flood story, it includes pairs of animals, an ark, a dove and a rainbow. It's clear the Noah story remembers the major details of that Babylonian story, changing minor details over the centuries to tailor it for the Hebrew people.

My core beliefs are fairly mainstream Evangelical in that I absolutely believe in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and his resurrection. I am hesitant to put those words together in the same sentence because they have been used so often that they have become cliché and impotent. I keep great distance between myself and the majority of the Falwelian styled 'religious' right, the screechingly loud but immoral minority.

You ask good questions and make good points. Christians need to hear, really hear such questions and become more introspective about their world view and behavior. A radical change needs to occur in western Christianity (Christians in the Global south have a very different world view, very different). I fear it will not ever happen; American Christians are often arrogant with a cavalier attitude towards other cultures and our globe and sometimes just simply think poorly, preferring to be told how and what to think, instead. Introspection will not come easily. Image

Fundamentalism in religion of any sort scares me as much as any other sort of terrorism. History exemplifies what happens when tyrants in Christian masquerade gain power (the crusades, the inquisition, the first Gulf war); history as recent as the period beginning in 2003 and ending with the moment I type the last period of this post. For this reason, I believe so strongly in the complete and total separation of church and state; keep the church out of government and keep politics out of the pulpit. Image

You mention the age of the earth. It's a preposterous notion to try to put a creation date on the earth by using Torah to try to pin-point that. That evolution occurs and has occurred is irrefutable. Driving through a cut in a mountain pass in which one can see clearly the directions the geology of the strata has been pushed, bent & sometimes violently shoved into another layer over tens of millions of years; fossil evidence of sea creatures on mountain tops; the changes animals are undergoing on the Galapagos and Madagascar as compared to their counterparts on the mainland from which those islands were separated not long ago in geological time...and then there is the incomprehensible expansion & vastness of space; these things don't suggest a recent creation and do suggest slow changes over time. Imagining Mr. & Mrs. T-rex on the ark just cracks me up.

Evolution and God are not mutually exclusive, however, though the words in the phrase "creation science" may be in some contexts. The evidence for the so-called big bang include the fact that the universe is still expanding, that is, that stars are still moving away from each other at an accelerating rate. I heard it said in an astronomy show on Discovery that if you held a pea at arm's length up to the night sky, it would conceal, on average, over 100 galaxies the size of the Milky Way.

Hubble can see vast numbers of galaxies and Hubble images are available all over the internet (start here: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/). Put another way, they also said there are more galaxies than there are grains of sand on every beach on the shores of every ocean, in every desert on earth. In context; big bang theorizes that all matter, all the material of those galaxies, exploded from nothing in one instantaneous moment. And that excludes a creator-being, a God, in what way?

The deist believes that okay; God did start everything and that by God's creative energy, all that is was made. Then, God sat back and watched. That view is seductive in a number of ways. It's hard to imagine a God who would allow so many things to happen under his name. It's hard to imagine a God who would allow people to hurt children, to allow hundreds and hundreds of people to starve to death everyday, to allow poverty, to allow war and more covert forms of genocide... A God who created and watches, okay, this makes a little more sense.

But then I have to deal with Jesus in my mind. Few people, believers, agnostics or atheists, take seriously any doubt that this man existed. The questions surround things like the virgin birth (or how a virgin was defined at that time, at least...it's interesting that Jesus' ancestry was also traced through Joseph's lineage as well as Mary's back to David), the miracles, the 30 odd Gnostic gospels, and the resurrection.

Of those, the resurrection matters the most and all of the canonical N.T. writers are in agreement on this point, perhaps a principal point which made the writings canonical in the first place. I've already said where I stand on that but since no one can prove as fact either that there was or was not a resurrection, any discussion would have to be based on reason or experience. Religion and reason do not always the best lovers make; experience is easy to dismiss unless it is one's own and even then, ought to be questioned and evaluated.

Someone will read this one day and say "how heretical". No, to the contrary. What is heretical is to look at the myriad of places in the entirety of what we Christians call the Bible that are about taking care of the poor, the aging, those in prison & those who can't take care of themselves, call oneself a Christian, and walk to the other side of the street when they hear the news about Darfur or S. Philly or see a homeless person propped against a wall, panhandling. Nowhere do we read about anyone asking them why they were poor or in need; we were told to take care of them, not to splnter the church over same sex unions or women ordination or other such non-issues to avoid looking at the log in our own eyes.

My voice is not alone among moderately orthodox Christians who's eyes are open and we will probably not find a lot to bicker about, Lesigner Girl, but the core of our belief systems are based on entirely different, equally unprovable premesises. I serve my God gladly but I am dissatisfied with my community's behavior in the world, now and throughout history. I know almost nothing about Islam and a bit, but only a bit about Judaism, though it fascinates me.

I much appreciate hearing Jewish perspectives on the world, Northern Africa and on my beliefs. Our small city's only Rabbi occasionally comes to my house on Saturday evenings for our beer and theology group. Rabbi David suffers Christians well and he enjoys good discussion and micro-brew; beer is Kosher, he assures me, and I suppose it must okay to visit goyim on a Sat. night...it no longer being the Sabbath and all. :LOL: Image

I shall not ever belittle you for your core belief system and I have not felt belittled by you for mine. I look forward to talking with you occasionally.

Dave emoticon

(edited for clarity)

Last revised by Forestelves, 5/13/2007, 8:11 pm


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5/13/2007, 7:13 pm Link to this post PM Forestelves
 
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Minerva
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Re: Ugarit and the Bible


Thank you for that insightful post, Dave. emoticon Even with our differing theological views, it seems apparent that we share many of the same core values, as well as the drive to seek different perspectives for our answers, rather than having them all handed to us by a single source. emoticon

I only discovered the Ugaritic texts recently myself, while browsing an ex-Christian message board, and am actually surprised that I hadn't come across them before. Most people I know seem to believe in one God, creator/judge of the universe, so learning about these texts should probably prompt many people to either (1) re-examine their beliefs and/or (2) deny that the Biblical stories evolved directly from the Ugaritic texts, which evolved from previous beliefs, etc.

I agree that it's not possible to prove either the existence or nonexistence of a god or gods, at least not with our current (lack of) evidence or technology. I also admire you for obviously upholding the values that seemingly most Christians I've ever had experience with only claim to have... But I'm still perplexed as to how you can see the same errancies in the Bible that I see, and picture God as a creator that created and just sits back and watches (which does make more sense than the literal Biblical interpretation, imo), yet still believe in "the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and his resurrection." If the Force that created our universe just sits back and watches, does that mean It doesn't judge? If It doesn't judge, then what was Jesus redeeming us from? Since you're not expecting me to believe as you do, I won't expect you to explain or try to justify it. I just can't help being curious.

I'm glad you brought up Gilgamesh. It's true, that story is much older than the Noah story and contains many of the same details. Except in Genesis, a raven is sent out first and returns, then a dove sent out and returns, then a dove again, which brings an olive branch; in Gilgamesh, a dove is sent first and returns, then a swallow which returns, then a raven is sent out and never comes back. So not only do both stories have a dove going out to find dry land, but a raven as well, and I'll repeat what you and I have both already said... the story of Gilgamesh is much older than the Noah story.

Interestingly enough, the raven is prevalent in quite a few ancient "holy" stories, just like many of them have a "Tree of Life" and many other similarities. There are so many similarities between Christianity and various other religious traditions, in fact, that it would probably fill several books, so I'll try to stick with some that are somewhat on topic...

Many pagan gods were considered different aspects of the same deity (some where the father is his own son, others involving many gods as being a single entity), and there were many virgin birth and other "fathered by a god" myths, concerning both real people and gods, before the one created by "The Church" regarding Jesus...

• Romulus and Remus (born c.771 BCE)
• Plato (born 428 or 427 BCE)
• Hercules (born c.1264 BCE, died and deified c.1226 BCE)
• Perseus ("ancestor of Persia", "great grandfather & half-brother of Hercules")
• Alexander the Great (born in 356 BCE)
• Augustus Caesar (born in 63 BCE)
Horus (see quote below).
• Divine birth stories for Pharoahs were also common.

Meanwhile, Kneph was said by Plutarch to have been understood by the Egyptians in the same way as the Greeks understood pneuma, meaning spirit, and so it was that Neith became pregnant [with Horus] by the actions of the holy spirit, like Mary does in the Christian story. Thoth himself was identified by the Greeks, due to his association with healing, as Hermes, and consequently, in the Hellenic era, Thoth was considered the messenger of the gods. This role was taken by the Archangel Michael in Jewish thought, and so if the Christians copied the tale, it would have been Michael, not Gabriel, who made the annunciation to Mary.


That kind of brings new meaning to this:

"Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me."

~ Hosea 13:4, King James Version

At this point, many fundamentalists would accuse me of taking that line out of context. But look at the first verse of Hosea 13 and who is mentioned? In light of the Ugaritic texts, some might say it's Yahweh's rival for Asherah's affections. emoticon

Like I said, the parallels are too numerous to fit into one post, so I'll stop there with the theology for now. But I do want to re-post your link to the Hubble site because it has some really extraordinary pictures:
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/

I also want to add these:
Wiki: Gliese 581c
Newsweek

Dave, in case you haven't already heard about it, I hope you'll find this as fascinating as I do. As for the fundamentalists who take the whole book literally, I wonder if they will believe this discovery to be trickery inspired by Satan. But anyway, here is a summary of the discovery; for more information just click on the above links.

The discovery of Gliese 581c was announced on April 24, 2007 (just a few weeks ago). It is about 20.5 light years away, in the 87th closest star system. Its mass is 5 times that of Earth, and estimated to be about 1½ times Earth's diameter. The most fascinating thing about this planet, in my opinion, is its estimated temperature, between 0-40°c (32-104°f)... That's a warmer low and a cooler high than temperatures I've experienced right here Michigan.

Much is yet to be learned of this planet. After all, it was only discovered last month. But if they find the same elements that they've found on other planets and moons in our own solar system, then it could very well have water on it, and could very well have life similar to that on Earth. The Gliese 581 system is estimated at around 4.3 billion years old, a bit younger than our own solar system which is estimated at around 4.57 billion years old. I'm not sure what this would mean in evolutionary terms, since there are several factors involved, but it would be very interesting to find out. I also can't help but wonder if the intelligent life on that planet (if there is any) believes they were created for a special purpose and the universe evolves around them.

Of course, this is all speculation, since we don't even know what the planet is made of yet. But it does make a point... Considering how close this planet is to us in relation to many other things that have been discovered out there and things yet to be discovered, one would have to ignore an awful lot of evidence to believe that humans are the only intelligent life forms in the universe, whether we were created by an intelligent designer, or through mindless abiogenesis.

Goodness! emoticon I wasn't expecting to make such a long post (it just kinda happened), and I've managed to stay up past my bedtime again, lol. I guess I should go to bed now, so good night/day to anyone reading this.

And Dave, thanks again for your post. I've never known a Christian with your particular beliefs, and I'm fascinated by your take on the subject. emoticon

emoticon

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5/15/2007, 3:11 am Link to this post PM Lesigner Girl Read Blog
 
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Re: Ugarit and the Bible


I think I didn't make one thing as clear as I meant to; while I said the Deist's position was seductive to me, it's not mine precisely. It would be easier to envision a God who created, then sat back and watched for the reasons I gave and others, but the character and being of Jesus and who I believe he was and is doesn't fit with that complacent God. So, either I look at Jesus only as a foolish, probably mentally ill man with the ability to persuade a lot of people that he was God (there were dozens of Messianic cult leaders at that time, among them, John the Baptist though we don't have record he made any claim to be God), that his words were made more grand after his death, or that he spoke the truth. I believe he told the truth and that the people who reported what they said saw were also telling the truth.

It's not troubling to me to try to flesh out how religion evolved from it's very earliest stages to where it is now. For as long as we've been in the process of becoming more human, we've been practicing religion. We started burying our dead with objects to comfort them in the afterlife, or to feed them, or to carry them to the next life, or to remind them of someone they left behind. Sometimes, objects of great tenderness as a fetish of a mother and infant bear carved of stone, other times, objects of great value as jewelry made of shells from a shore thousands of miles away.

Later, religious rites involved art. In the caves in southern France and Northern Spain are paintings and the deeper into the caves one delves, the more sophisticated are the paintings. By sophisticated, I mean that the animals and hunters show more animation and their forms are less flat, more dimensional. It was thought for many years that these paintings came much later and when I was in school studying art history in the late 70s, this was what was taught. The thinking now, though, is that the paintings were made at relatively the same time but that the deeper into the cave, the more sacred the space because the closer to Doni, one (obviously contemporary) name given for the earth-mother goddess.

In my mind, all contemporary religions evolved from these earlier, primal, essential religions. There are still remnants or vestiges of them remaining in Christianity. Look, for instance, at the ancient chalice imagery; it is found in our baptismal fonts, holy water stoups and communion chalices. We still bury our dead with things that were important to them or the living left behind. Our religious holidays are frequently based on the dates of European pagan solstice celebrations and even Christianity's highest holiday, Easter, derives it's name from Eostre, a Celtic goddess.

Does any of this make Christianity any less valuable, meaningful or potentially true? I don't think so, well, not necessarily so, at least. I don't think our understanding of God is anything near complete now, so I don't think he revealed himself in the way a light switch turned on, either. It's looking to me like it's been a gradual process of illumination.

Side note: I'm neither fully comfortable nor uncomfortable using the personal pronoun "he" to refer to God. In Hebrew, the men who wrote about God lived in a male dominated society and thus, chose names which carried male gender to describe God. But I've wondered; if God is male and not sexless, does he have a penis (or a vagina)? In any case, English has no gender neutral personal pronoun (without a negative connotation) and trying to find a substitute becomes contrived and awkward so in this case, I usually bow to convention and use 'he"; "she" or "s/he" is no more accurate and "it" sounds disrespectful.

There are surely two sides to the Character of God as he is described in Tanakh and the New Testament (the Bible for the sake of simplicity). Many Christians concentrate on the loving God, the forgiving God, the God who welcomes back his people again and again, who wants redemption for his people, who wants to be in communication with his people. This God is not hard to find.

There are a number of others, though, who have given themselves and all of us a black eye by concentrating on the angry God, the vengeful, judgmental, jealous God who will "have no other gods before me". Idolatry is a big Biblical theme and most Christians get it, that idolatry isn't just about the golden calf. They talk about fear, about a burning hell, demons and the power of Satan on this earth. Yet in another group still it astounds me that Pastor Dollar (no kidding) and many others like him preach the so-called "prosperity doctrine" from his FL pulpit, on the telly, and radio.

I believe there are essential truths in Christianity but that they have become diluted by that kind of thing, by charlatanism, by fraudulence and by people who, with good intentions perhaps, try to "help God along" by faking things like miracles, speaking in tongues and other such like. I've never been in a situation where I have witnessed something that I could say was indisputably a miraculous act of God. I can say that relatively slow, internal changes have happened in my life and that of my son's that were not of our own making. I can't speak for Will, but in my case, these were things for which I did not work nor even think about but for which I am grateful.

There are so many more things about who God is, about who Jesus is, about Trinitarian theology (evolved in the 3rd c. CE), about Biblical theology, about modern Christian theology as it relates to the accounts Luke relates in Acts in which he tells how those earliest Christians behaved; was that descriptive or prescriptive text...or both, I wonder. Acts is a most important book to Christians yet I see little evidence of contemporary lives led by it.

For example; when the young rich man asked Jesus what he had to do to be saved, Jesus answered him, "sell all that you have, give it to the poor and follow me". We're told that the young rich man walked away sad. Early in Acts, Luke gives the account that on one day after Peter preached, 3,000 were saved; they and the other Christians sold all they had, gave the money to the poor and spent the rest of the day rejoicing. Luke followed that teaching of Jesus, understanding it as prescriptive yet from our pulpits, I hear it preached as descriptive, money being dismissed as that young rich man's idol or some other excuse not to obey that particularly difficult saying of Jesus. I don't know what to think about it all but I haven't sold anything yet.

Jesus said other difficult things: "No man comes to the father but by me". I think I know what that means. It's troubling. I don't want to think about it. I don't like to go there. I don't want to deal with it and it's something I don't really have to deal with. I didn't say it and it's not my decision to make. In a like way, I'm a registered libertarian and I fit there in many ways but I sometimes vote for a dem. and have occasionally voted repub. I don't always agree with libertarians nor with libertarianism's elevation of big business nor of it's modern incarnation's unwilling mentor, Ayn Rand (though I've read more of her writing than I've missed) nor with her less abrasive "intellectual heir" Leonard Piekoff.

I was brought to a good place. This Episcopal church where Will (my son) and I are so involved (a key word because mere attendance would not be of much interest to me) was a serendipitous accident. For most of my adult life, I worked as a potter. The small, made-by-hand company I worked for went belly-up and I was without a job. (wah) I worked as a substitute teacher for a few years (I have a certification to teach but no master's degree and no strong interest to teach, anyway) then found a job in 1999 as the electrician with a commercial construction company. We contracted with Trinity Episcopal when they were planning their new church building. I was there from near the start of the construction to the very end. Then, we built another church.

While there, I met quite a number of church members, mostly the older folk who came up during the day to see how their money was being spent. I liked them, a lot. I liked my boss who went to Trinity, as well as the project manager, also a member. These were all bright, thinking people who didn't mind (even seemed to welcome) my skeptical, pointed questions. I wanted nothing to do with God and especially not with church people. They didn't care that I had long hair, a beard, that I liked getting high every night nor that I am a celibate queer (that's a long story in itself, painful bits still, the details of which are not an internet conversation).

I helped the sound sub-contractors wire the building for sound and that was really fun for me. Much lighter weight cable which was easy to run, new connectors to me, and soldering made that very interesting work. When the soundboard, speakers and other equipment came, I felt a huge sense of sadness that was almost overwhelming; our job here was almost finished. There was a lump in my throat at one point.

Late that day, I asked the project manager if they had anyone in mind to operate the board on Sunday mornings yet; nope, no one. I'd been working at a radio station 30 miles away; public radio, 1 night a week, volunteer, and wasn't intimidated by a 24 channel, 200 w. mixing board. I found myself volunteering several days later and I've never missed a Sunday, funeral or wedding. One woman said a few years later, "Dave and Will came with the building" and that felt nice. Will's now on his way to seminary. He did a huge amount on the building with wood finishing; there is a lot of oak.

Over time, I've felt more comfortable with the unanswered questions. Many are still unanswered. In the theology forum on our 2 month old board are many questions I've asked, most if not all of them are not questions I've asked for the fist time. I know they are questions without answers and trite attempts would annoy me. In the end, I'm okay with more questions and few answers. I like these people better than any other group of people with whom I've ever spent time. When one of our seniors die, it affects me in a way that quite surprises me. I am especially close to our seniors.

My priest is the finest leader I've ever known and I've watched her with intimate closeness for 6+ years. She has a heart for people, takes her job (but not herself) seriously, is socially conscious, and takes an orthodox view of the Bible. I mean, if you're going to play a game, it seems silly to me to think you get to make up the rules as you go along just because you don't like one in particular. Admit you don't like it, deal with it and move on is my view. She does that.

If you want for me to tell you how I deal with all the hard places in the Bible, I can't do that. Well, I can tell you that I ask questions constantly occasionally get answers that satisfy and keep asking questions when they don't. As to Christianity and why I've chosen to follow this path and to follow it so closely, that's not so difficult; it's because I believe the Gospel story and I am grateful. The basis for my belief is evidenced by the lives of the people I see around me and by the metamorphosis of things in my life that have made me feel less like I have to fight everyone so much of the time, like everything is a struggle, like I'm really an acceptable person after all.

So in the end, I don't know if there is one God, this God, or if Jesus died for my salvation and was resurrected but I feel a more genuine love than I felt from my birth family (parents, 3 siblings) since I come out to them many, many years ago. These people attribute that love to God and I'm in no position to dispute or even to question that. Over time, it has proved to be consistent.

Am I now among the brainwashed? Maybe, but if so, I sorta don't mind because I'm more content, happier even, and for the first time ever, I don't feel marginalized. But I have been watchful of that potential of being brainwashed because I used to think all Christians were either stupid or brainwashed or both, usually both. Jesus talked about that agape love a lot but one time he said, that's how they'll know you follow me, by your love. I'm not willing to throw out what I have and observe and feel because of people like Ted Haggard (for whom I feel a degree of both empathy and contempt for what now ought to be obvious reasons), Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton, Pat Robertson, little Geo. Bushie or any of the others who cross the Christian / political boundaries for personal gain at the expense and lives of others.

I can go on, can't I?

Dave emoticon

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5/15/2007, 1:47 pm Link to this post PM Forestelves
 
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Re: Ugarit and the Bible


you both can and thankyou! enlightening conversation...

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5/16/2007, 1:15 am Link to this post PM toxiczen
 
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Minerva
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Re: Ugarit and the Bible


I'm glad you're enjoying it, toxiczen. emoticon I'm enjoying it too! emoticon

Dave, I'm sorry I misunderstood what you meant when you were describing others' beliefs.

I read your post, but I won't have time to reply to it tonight without going way past my bedtime again (it's already a few minutes past it now), so I'll respond to it tomorrow. I will say this tonight, though. I'm glad you have what seems to be a wonderful supportive group of friends. emoticon

Have a great night! emoticon


Edited because I can't remember my own code for a hug emoticon, lol.

Last revised by Lesigner Girl, 5/16/2007, 2:21 am


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5/16/2007, 2:20 am Link to this post PM Lesigner Girl Read Blog
 
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Citizen

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Re: Ugarit and the Bible


Drat; I typed a brief "thanks for joining this wind-bag discussion" earlier but I think I must have forgotten to hit submit after I went into preview. I could tell other folk were reading but I'm glad someone finally spoke up. I promise I won't bark or bite if someone disagrees with me, even strongly. It's no fun with LG; she's too damn agreeable. emoticon

Hey, LG...if you keep responding everyday, cimineee; I'm never gonna get anything done! emoticon

Dave emoticon

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5/16/2007, 9:16 pm Link to this post PM Forestelves
 
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Citizen

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Re: Ugarit and the Bible


trust me on this forest I'm the last person to worry about how someones going to react if i disagree with them... i used to post on a very conservative, pro-war, message board just to have discussions with folks who disagreed with me. emoticon
you sound like you have an understanding of the path your walking, without being fundamentalist or especially dogmatic about it, and that's wonderful!

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5/16/2007, 9:30 pm Link to this post PM toxiczen
 
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Minerva
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Re: Ugarit and the Bible



Dave said:

It's no fun with LG; she's too damn agreeable. emoticon

Sorry about that, Dave, but I already typed up the following post before reading that. emoticon I'm always up for a good debate if you really want one, though. emoticon

Hey, LG...if you keep responding everyday, cimineee; I'm never gonna get anything done! emoticon

Sorry again. emoticon About that offer to debate, my debate posts can be even lengthier than my agreeable posts. emoticon

I was going to draft up a list of questions for you, but that'll have to wait for another day because this post is long enough (sorry again). emoticon

Normally when someone makes a post on this board (and other non-Christian boards) professing their belief in the God of the Bible, I'm compelled to point out inconsistencies in the Biblical stories, complete with links and quotes, many from the Bible itself. It's different in this case, however, and here's why...

When a Christian goes to a board that's run by an atheist and is full of freethinkers, it usually seems like they're trying to recruit (I'm sure toxiczen will know who I'm thinking about in particular as he reads this). In the process, many of them tend to show their church-endorsed biases and bigotries, and demonstrate how much they want congress to pass laws "respecting" their particular "establishment of religion."

But you're not like those fundamentalists who try to dictate how others should live, and you've already stated your wish to keep religion out of politics and vice versa. Further, your intelligence and good sense of morality are apparent in your posts and I don't see you ever buying into the strawman "scientific" arguments that many fundamentalists buy into, so I highly doubt you will ever turn into one of those raving fundamentalists.

Further, it sounds like the people in your church have given you a good support system who let you know how important you are and give you a feeling of love that you never experienced from your own biological family. Considering your own values and the fact that you still feel so close to your church "family" after 6+ years, they must be pretty kind, non-judgmental, and moral themselves, so I wouldn't want you to lose that relationship with them.

But if you lost your beliefs, you probably would lose that relationship with most of them, slowly but surely. First, you might start to feel strange about worshiping a God you either don't like anymore, don't believe in, or aren't sure exists, but you may continue going to church for that feeling of family. After a while, you might start to feel as though you're living a lie, and you may or may not want to tell your friends about your skepticism. You may even decide eventually to stop going to church and hope to spend time with your "family" outside of church, but eventually drift apart. Even if I can, I wouldn't want to do this to you, not that your beliefs couldn't change without my help anyway.

That said, I don't see how your particular beliefs or how you follow them could negatively impact society in the way that Christianity and other religions have been known to do; in fact, I think it could actually benefit humanity if more Christians shared your beliefs and values, and especially if they lived by them.

I'm sure we both know how so many people are taught to believe in the Christian God from the moment they come out of their mother's womb, so that is all they know. For those who are not born into the religion, many are lured into Christianity because they're in a low point in their lives or have always felt an emptiness, and they join a church because its members promise them something more. They're promised love, a purpose, an afterlife full of bliss, you name it. When they join their church, many of them are told that not only is abortion wrong, but contraception is a major sin as well. They're told that theirs is the right religion and anyone who doesn't worship Who or how they do is going to hell. They're told that homosexuality is immoral, that abstinence until marriage is the only "option," and that they must support politicians who uphold their religious "values." Based on their newfound beliefs, many of them will hold protests against humanitarian groups, petition lawmakers to ban things they don't agree with... and some of them even bomb family planning clinics, killing doctors, teenagers, people who are there to hold their scared friend's hand even if they don't agree with their choice, and maybe even a pregnant woman or two who was only there for a prenatal checkup and had no intention of aborting her baby.

These are the people whose beliefs I would like to change, because the way they act on them is detrimental to society. But you, my new friend... you and others like you can offer them a better way without leaving the feeling of emptiness that religion fills for them. The ancient Hebrews and Romans did it pretty successfully; combining existing religions of the area into one religion, adopting different aspects of each one so people would convert more easily to this new religion, and choosing/editing/rewriting the texts to best serve the leaders of the empire. But in this case, we would just be trading one form of Christianity for another, which could be an easy transition for some people, and it would be done to benefit The People. Heck, I like this idea so much that I would try it myself, but I have to be true to myself and I would only be lying if I professed a belief in any god, much less the God described in the Bible, whose existence I have personally ruled out completely.

It's funny how the religious right is always accusing all liberals of being atheists (as though that's a bad thing), but I know there are a lot of Christians and people of other religions who vote for more liberals than conservatives, so that obviously isn't true. On a side note, since only about 11% of people in the United States are atheists, one would have to wonder how Democrats won the majority in 2006. But at any rate, there is something that fundamentalist Christians have in common with republicans, and which agnostics, atheists, and moderately religious people have in common with liberals/democrats. This commonality is their outspokenness and involvement in politics.

You see, liberals have more of a live-and-let-live mentality, just like agnostics, atheists, and moderately religious people. For this reason, many of us are perfectly willing to let whatever will happen to happen, leaving it up to everyone else to make their own decisions, not realizing that this complacency can also result in the loss of their freedom to live and let live. Republicans and fundamentalist Christians on the other hand, want to make sure things go their way, so they're out making the speeches and holding the rallies, petitioning members of congress, and whatever it takes to achieve their goal. Many republicans do it for the tax cuts, while fundamentalist Christians are out there causing a big stink about !@#$ that shouldn't even concern them, but since they are the most vocal and are more compelled to vote (if that even makes a difference), they are the ones our lawmakers want to appease.

It's the very vocal fundamentalist Christians spouting off about family values (while they put everyone else down and live very immoral lives) that are drawing more people into their crusade with their promises of purpose and eternal bliss, claiming that you can only gain God's favor and achieve eternal bliss if you live as they say and condemn those who don't.

This all needs to change. Those of us who "believe" in everyone's right to live as they see fit – as long as they follow the very basic ethic of reciprocity – need to take an active role in bettering society, so we can live and let live, which we're not even able to do right now.

Wow, I never expected to make a post actually encouraging religious people to recruit others into their fold, lol. But I'm looking at the lesser of two evils here (pardon the pun), and there's no fighting the fact that some people just feel the need to believe in something more. Don't get me wrong, though; I don't want anyone converting atheists or people who aren't sure, lol. The fundamentalists, those are the ones who need "saved" by a much more tolerant belief system, and people like you can provide that.

So, what do you think, Dave? emoticon Are you up for a little recruiting? emoticon

Toxiczen, you might have a good chance of filling a few voids yourself with your own beliefs. I'm not sure how many fundamentalists would adopt them, but if you happen to meet anyone who might be drifting off in that direction, it couldn't hurt to try a little intervention. emoticon

toxiczen said:

i used to post on a very conservative, pro-war, message board just to have discussions with folks who disagreed with me. emoticon

I would've loved to see that! emoticon

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5/17/2007, 12:06 am Link to this post PM Lesigner Girl Read Blog
 
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Re: Ugarit and the Bible



LG said: I highly doubt you will ever turn into one of those raving fundamentalists.



I haven't well developed this notion but I kind of have the idea that fundamentalism is both based on as well as perpetuated by both fear and a very subtle superstition to which no fundamentalist would admit. If I start whittling away at literal aspects of the Bible and make metaphors of them or take away some power from them by talking about them as literary styles rather than as though by God's hand, then where is the line drawn, where does it end? For example, I don't believe that the first 3 chapters of Genesis are important because they tell about how, in a journalistic way, the universe and all that is came to be. I believe they are important because they relate that humans are out of communion with God.

Likewise, the books Revelation and Daniel have some very strange and fiery language that is not easy to understand. It's apocalyptic language, it wasn't intended to be taken literally, I don't think, and I have little real understanding of them. The great theologian N.T. Wright likens apocalyptic Biblical literature to a statement like, "the fall of the Berlin wall was an earth shattering event". Obviously, we know the earth didn't shatter and we understand, by contextual, modern use of that phrase, what 'earth shattering' means.

Fundamentalism feeds on fear, often fear of a misunderstanding of hell (the hell people picture is largely not described outside of Dante and Saturday morning cartoons but it is certainly not Biblically based unless you insist on taking every word in the Bible literally and even then, you're not going to find red demons with horns). A more accurate Biblical picture of Hell is probably the separation from and the absence of God; it is not a dump outside of Jerusalem, however one of it's names may have been derived.

The superstition enters when people wonder if asking questions will jeopardize their salvation, if asking questions is somehow asking to challenging the authority of God. People like Falwell encourage that thinking but there is antithetical Biblical evidence to this. Tanakh has many examples of God's people who didn't just pray "Dear God...", pretty bedtime sorts of prayers; they shouted, cried out & wailed sometimes; they were passionate. David, the psalmist, the king, the slayer Goliath, the conqueror of Israel's enemies; David the murderer, the rapist...David can be seen to implore of God in one Psalm, "why have you taken your love from me, why do you not speak to me", in another, "create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me" and in another, songs of great adoration and praise of God.

If one could take the fear and superstition away slowly and encourage questions, I'm not sure that every fundamentalist would be willing or able to ask even one. Have you ever taught anything to a room full of people? Maybe you planned a period of time to allow for questions and answers and you ask for some. You face that room full of people with their hands in their laps and dull stares. People aren't taught that it's okay to ask questions and probably are taught the opposite. That's hard to un-teach.


But if you lost your beliefs, you probably would lose that relationship with most of them, slowly but surely.



Yes. That's a good point. There's one scenario in particular I can think of that might bring on something like what you suggest. If I lost Will, that would be the hardest thing I can imagine happening; I would withdraw from most everything. I can't say, in the long term, what would happen to my faith in God. I know how my Church family would want to respond; they would want to surround me. But I would want to be alone except for two or three of the people with whom I'm closest and would push anyone else away. I don't know how long I would want to recluse myself but eventually, slowly, people would stop trying.

I've wondered, on occasion, about another possible scenario. I'm not in a domestic relationship and haven't been for a while before I started on this path but if I met someone I liked and wanted to spend more and more time with him, I'd have some things I'd have to deal with that I can avoid except on an intellectual level right now. My dilemma is that I have a number of pieces of a puzzle but an important one of those pieces is that I don't want to walk a compromised walk juxtaposed with another piece; I am not very sure how to know what God's heart and mind is because of my way of viewing the Bible. I can see and am sometimes marginally envious of why fundamentalists view the Bible as 100% literally the words of God, given to individuals to write. These sorts of difficult questions just don't arise in their lives.


You see, liberals have more of a live-and-let-live mentality



That's true. Liberals also tend to be more socially conscious, like Jesus was, a lot more likely to steward the planet and less likely to poop in my punch bowl. I'm quite sure Jesus would not align himself with any political party today any more than he did 2000 years ago but he seems more like a socialist to me than a democrat or a republican or a libertarian.


Wow, I never expected to make a post actually encouraging religious people to recruit others into their fold, lol.



It would please me because I believe God would be pleased, if Christians started asking a lot more questions, started trying to understand why they believe what they say they believe and then set their lives to the order of practicing the professions of belief with increasing integrity; I think that would be contagious. I know I want more of all of that. I want to know more about God, to know him better as that's possible, if it is. I read about the intimacy other people know with God; I'd like to know that if it's possible without becoming a drip about it, or another walking cliché. I wonder how many people there are who ache to ask questions and feel they can't, or are held back, or ask and are given lousy, poorly reasoned, trite answers rather than, "good question, I'm not sure, let's try to find out together"...as compared to those who are empty of questions altogether.

So the question: how does one salt the feed?

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5/17/2007, 12:10 pm Link to this post PM Forestelves
 


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