I’m not sure why such an adverse reaction towards a simple answer to the poster
It's a reaction to sweeping generalizations about people with certain beliefs.
Yes and continue to do so.
What historical scholars are you currently studying? Not my business but you did accuse someone of not digging. It's not really digging if you just read apologetics over and over. Which I do subject myself to. Notably Mike Licona and Johnathan Sheffield.
I’m not sure how this applies to the post. Are you asking for a certain historical knowledge?
No but you are accusing someone of not digging and I get the impression you don't study the historical knowledge of your religion. Which is fine, but you can't tell others they are not digging and then not dig yourself.
I’m sorry it came across that way. Certainly wasn’t attempting to do so.
That is a bit hard to believe -
Of course there is the catchall phrase of Bigfoot, fairies, unicorns and Spaghetti Monster because they really don’t care and don’t really want to delve deeper. Perhaps because they won’t like what they would see in themselves if they looked? Perhaps because they love darkness more than having their lives in the light? Perhaps because of horrible things that have happened in their lives and they blame God by denying HIs existence?
Those "perhaps" sound rhetorical, this is a judgment. No?
I’m not sure how this applies to the post. YAHWEH, according to my signature, was from the beginning. It would stand to logic that it would have some semblance in all religions (in lieu of my signature)
Well he wasn't. He was a subordinate of EL who was the supreme Canaanite deity. An early Hebrew version of Deuteronomy
"When Elyon gave the nations as an inheritance, when he separated the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of
the sons of God (bny 'l[hym]). For Yahweh's portion was his people; Jacob was the lot of his inheritance".
But in this time Gods were all part of a pantheon, they didn't exist alone yet.
If you go back before Canaanite religion there are far older gods but they are certainly not Yahweh.
A hymn to Inana by Enheduana is a completely different type of theology than late Hebrew ideas about God. Early Hebrew worship included a consort to Yahweh, Ashera. Thousands of Ashera idols are found at temple digs as well as other goddess imagery. None of this tracks with all ideas of God being the same. It does track with made up ideas of god changed over time.
As it changed in the NT with adding Hellenistic concepts.
But how does it apply? I'm digging. A PhD in early Hebrew Bible literature.
Francesca Stavrakopoulou , God: An Anatomy, her new book goes over some of this.
I’m sorry… not sure of the relevance. Another subject and thread?
The relevance is I mention Bigfoot, fairies, unicorns and Spaghetti Monster sometimes as a comparison, and that is a historical study on the NT I just read. You made a sweeping generalization, I'm saying it's not always true. But it might be a little true in reverse.
I find that to be opinions and personal interpretations.
Perfect, this makes my point. You don't know. How do you know Hebrew theology? You read scripture. Do you know how we know Hellenistic theology? Same. Hellenism goes back to around 300 BC, there are multiple ways to date these religions, dating techniques, historians of the time mention them, they mention current events, even Justin Martyr confirmed they pre-dated Jesus and were extremely similar. They happened in centuries before Christianity and the NT ideas are imported from Greek theology.
The NT moves away from OT theology and uses all Hellenism and Platonic philosophy.
Death & Afterlife: Do Christians Follow Plato rather than Jesus or Paul?
Dr James Tabor
this video is all timestamped but this is for just this - the basic comparison between the two.
47:15 Hellenistic Greek view of cosmology
Material world/body is a prison of the soul
Humans are immortal souls, fallen into the darkness of the lower world
Death sets the soul free
No human history, just a cycle of birth, death, rebirth
Immortality is inherent for all humans
Salvation is escape to Heaven, the true home of the immortal soul
Humans are fallen and misplaced
Death is a stripping of the body so the soul can be free
Death is a liberating friend to be welcomed
Asceticism is the moral idea for the soul
49:35 Genesis view
Creation/body very good, procreation good
Humans are “living breathers”, akin to animals, mortal, dust of the earth
Death is dark silent “sleeping in the dust”
Human history moves toward a perfected new age/creation
Salvation is eternal life in the perfected world of the new creation
Humans belong on earth
Resurrection brings a new transformed glorious spiritual body
Death is an enemy
Physical life and sensory pleasures are good
There are many scholarly works that cover sources such as:
The Religious Context of Early Christianity
A Guide to Graeco-Roman Religions
HANS-JOSEF KLAUCK
or you can read it in a respected old-school Christian work,
Encyclopaedia Biblica : a critical dictionary of the literary, political, and religious history, the archaeology, geography, and natural history of the Bible
by
Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly), 1841-1915;
Black, J. Sutherland (John Sutherland), 1846-1923
"We must conclude with the following guarded thesis. There is in the circle of ideas in the NT, in addition to what is new, and what is taken over from Judaism, much that is Greek ; but whether this is adopted directly from the Greek or borrowed from the Alexandrians, who indeed aimed at a complete fusion of Hellenism and Judaism, is, in the most important cases, not to be determined ; and primitive Christianity as a whole stands considerably nearer to the Hebrew world than to the Greek."
So this is obviously an apologetic work and they are not going to admit it's taken from Hellenism, even that they said this speaks volumes.
It isn't an opinion or interpretation, you were just never told about this. In Jesus Interrupted, Bart Ehrman talks about how in seminary schools it's touched on in history classes but NEVER spoken about again by the students who graduate to become church leaders. He's done lectures at churches of students he graduated with and members often ask him why they are not told these different facts. It doesn't make sense to shake up the beliefs of a congregation but what's told to people doesn't represent the entire truth.
So beautiful. I pray that God would indeed shine His light on you. We (Christians) understand He is the light of the world and there is no darkness in Him.
No, that is wrong.
[7]
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
I would argue there is quite a bit of darkness in the OT. But yes, I understand the Platonic view of God that emerged and was again revised in some Christian churches seems to focus on light and love. That doesn't track with the Bible.