Of Hurricanes, God and Power

Today I ventured to the "Thinking Christian" website and came across a blog post in which the author who was in the midst of a hurricane, seemed almost tempted to venerate the gods of nature and humble himself to their powerful forces.  Interesting.  He obviously is unaware of the fact that his god Yahweh is in fact, a storm/war god.  Yahweh IS a nature god--just as most, if not  all the ancient gods and goddesses were.

 But that was not the best part of the post. That came later.  When I read the following, I literally laughed out loud:

"I said I could almost appreciate the urge to deify nature. Skeptics will often tell you that monotheism evolved out of nature religion or other primitive forms of polytheism. I seriously doubt it. When it first sprang up in the Hebrew tradition, it sprang up whole, in remarkably advanced form.  Plato and Aristotle reasoned from first principles to something vaguely resembling one God, but the Hebrews beat them to it by centuries. They ascribed personality to their God, including holiness and love. This is not what springs immediately to mind when I look out the window this morning." 

In my previous post, I mentioned some of my favorite texts, one of which is "Materialist Approaches to the Bible."  This book explains the ideologies of the people in question, and how their social/religious/political lives developed.   In the case of the monotheism of the Jews, when Moses said that Yahweh said to "put no other gods before me," this did not mean that they believed there was only one god in existence and no others.  As the statement implies, and the bible notes, their claim was that there were many gods and goddesses, and that this one particular god Yahweh, would become their supreme being.  It is not the case that they were monotheistic, and their journey to monotheism was not "remarkably advanced" at all.  In fact, the first religion to say that there is one god and no other god was Zoroastrianism.  Furthermore, in most tribal religions, there was one supreme god who ruled over lesser gods and goddesses--which made them monotheistic and polytheistic at the same time.

The Jews were polytheistic, and each tribe of Israel had their own pantheons of gods and goddesses, and when David merged the tribes of Israel, the tribes were forced to give up their supreme god in favor of David/Solomon's supreme god in order to assimilate the traditions of the northern tribes with the southern tribes.  The scriptures actually begin with Solomon, and the narration and succession of David (2Sam 9;20; 1Kings 1:2) are said by many scholars to be some of the very first written texts of the bible.*  The "J documents" of the scribes of Solomon portray their god as "Yahweh" as opposed to the "E documents" of Moses where "elohim" or "gods" is used.  In making a single god out of the local divinities and giving him the name Yahweh, the J document assimilated the traditions of the northern tribes with the southern tribes  and reinforced the political power of Solomon by basing it on a unified religious ideology that, thus idealized, would give him a better grip on power. **

It was all about power, and how to gain and maintain it, but that is not what made me laugh.  What made me laugh was the faux pas the author made when he said, "THEY (the Jews) ascribed personality to their god, including holiness and love."  Yes, folks, he admitted that the Jews gave their god certain attributes--god had nothing to do with it!!  I'm still laughing......  This is no different than what other groups did with their gods.  Zeus is a storm god,  just like Yahweh, and he too was "ascribed his personality" by his followers.  This can be said for any god or goddess, as people create them in their own minds.  And some Christians it seems, can finally admit that.

Finally, I wanted to point this out to him, but he blocked me quite a while ago.  It is obvious that apologists that claim to "defend the faith" can't/don't do a very good job of it.

*Materialist Approaches to the Bible p. 13
**Ibid. p. 25