Yahweh is Dead!

Christians do not believe in God, you see. The God they're supposed to believe in, Yahweh, is dead. He was a mean tribal cultural god who died a long time ago.

There are other gods in the Christian tradition who are dead. They die and are reborn down through the ages. Now in our generation we have a different one. But with further reflection in future generations this god will be numbered among the other dead gods of the past. Why? Because cultures evolve and grow as they clash, just like morals do. I'm sure that as the western god clashes with the eastern god in the coming decades a new god will arise and the old ones will die.

26 comments:

Papalinton said...

Hi John,
You know the old saying, 'god is made in man's image'. I am quite amazed at how the bible can so easily accord with your own personal views. It is remarkable how a particular standpoint of a believer, either the good kind or the fire,hell and brimstone kind, is confirmed by the bible. Yes, I think the OT god is dead. And of course you know that Marcion of Sinope, even in the 2ndC, thought there were two different gods in early christianity because they were so unalike in character between the old and new testament. Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament. Although he was an early christian theologian of much influence, he was branded a heretic by Polycarp of Smyrna and Irenaeus, and as I understand excommunicated.
It's funny isn't it, what goes around comes around. Marcion would be quietly smiling now. A prophecy fulfilled.

Cheers

busterggi said...

Yahweh isn't dead. He's just pining for the fjords.

The Blogger Formerly Known As Lvka said...

Has it ever occured to you that you might've been mistaken on the reasons behind God's actions?

BeamStalk said...

So now that we have declared that YHWH the earth god is dead, what do you think of El the sky god? :)

Lazarus said...

I shall behold the new god.....and call him Cecil.

Paul said...

Papalinton, its obvious that maricon was a heretic as the bible says no such thing.

I doubt he would be smiling as this article bares no reference towards true faith in Christ at all.

There has and will always be a true remnant that God/Jehovah has called through His Son.

Cultures and moral will change, thats true but the standard of Gods word has always been the same even if man and I mean Christians deviate from it.

You cannot focus on man, culture and mans laws and try to discount Christianity becuase as Christ said "Before Abraham was I AM". He always was and will always be while men try to go aroung Him.

He stands alone!

Lazarus said...

Paul tried to say :

"There has and will always be a true remnant that God/Jehovah has called through His Son."

I should know better by now than to ask, but what on earth (or above) can such a statement mean?

zenmite AKA Marshall Smith said...

"Cultures and moral will change, thats true but the standard of Gods word has always been the same..."

Always the same? So we should stone our children if they decide to become hindu? That's not some changing cultural standard, it's right there in god's word...you know, the one that doesn't change.

When I decide to sell my daughters into slavery should I follow the exact instructions set forth in the unchanging word of god?

My wife has taken up wicca, should I suffer her to live or just smite her now as the unchanging word of god instructs?

Saint Brian the Godless said...

"Cultures and moral will change, thats true but the standard of Gods word has always been the same..."
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Always the same? So (...)
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Excellent points about the horrors of Leviticus and the OT God, but surely you 'know' that the Cheistians all say that Jesus coming 'fulfilled' all the old laws and made them obsolete...
...just as long as it's convenient, of course. They also frequently *quote* those semfsame laws when they support their views.

So we can't win. Either way, they've got it 'covered.' As long as you can ignore the hypocrisy in how they do it. Which they can, and we cannot, of course. But they don't need to convince us, they only need to convince the faithful that their argument is as good as ours or better, and those ignoramuses will buy anything.

Saint Brian the Godless said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
GearHedEd said...

busterggi said,

"...Yahweh isn't dead. He's just pining for the fjords."

He's NOT 'pining for the fjords. And I found the only reason he was still on his perch was that he had been nailed there...

Saint Brian the Godless said...

Papalinton, its obvious that maricon was a heretic as the bible says no such thing.
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The Bible doesn't *say* it, it *shows* it.

Didn't you pay attention in Bible Study? You've never noticed the differences between Yaweh and Jesus?

Yaweh had the morality of a sadistic psychotic mass-murdering amoral egomaniac without even a shred of humility who demonstrated His love for us by threats of punishment and damnation, and Jesus was 'gentle, meek and mild' and this eludes you somehow?

How is a man blinded like you are? Please tell us... Is it FAITH?

Faith is just another word for nothing left to learn, my friend. It's the biggest scam in the world, and you're just another poor rube.

GearHedEd said...

Paul said,

"...Papalinton, its obvious that maricon was a heretic as the bible says no such thing."

Personally, I thought Maricon was an asshole...

Saint Brian the Godless said...

Personally, I thought Maricon was an asshole...
----------------
No, he's gay.

GearHedEd said...

I stand corrected.

Now that I think about it, I already knew what it meant.

GearHedEd said...

I waas thinking "pendejo"...

busterggi said...

Touche' Ed!

Lvka, has it ever occurred to you that you might've been mistaken?

Breckmin said...

Yet Lvka's non-belief has no real eternal consequences.

OTOH, IF you reject Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, God and Rightful King there are indeed eternal consequences. IF you say "reject Allah, etc" you are ignoring the fact that this is the same Infinite Creator = The Abrahamic God. Belief structures that stem from the Abrahamic God can easily be discussed internally based on competing assumptions and revelation.

The fact is there are eternal consequences for rejecting the God of Abraham (regardless of the offshoots of heresy that stem from false religions that flow from it).

The real issue is Jesus Christ. If you lose sight of Christ...

you lose your eternal life because you will enter eternity with no forgiveness (for violations against a Holy God) and objective guilt of His Law which He knows better than you do (because of His Omniscience).

Lvka has nothing to fear if he trusts in the Sacrifice of Christ.

Those who do NOT trust in Christ are engaged in a wager which is infinitely more serious that the straw man that Pascal never argued correctly.

GearHedEd said...

Breckmin,

What are you? DM's less evil twin?

"The fact is there are eternal consequences for rejecting the God of Abraham..."

Nope. Not a fact. Just what you believe.

zenmite AKA Marshall Smith said...

"IF you say "reject Allah, etc" you are ignoring the fact that this is the same Infinite Creator = The Abrahamic God. Belief structures that stem from the Abrahamic God can easily be discussed internally based on competing assumptions and revelation."

How very inclusive of you. By this you apparently think all believers (jews, muslims and all manner of christians) will all go to heaven.
So you don't reject allah, you just think he has a son. Why stop there? Just insist that Thor was really yahweh as is brahma, ahura mazda or any creator god throughout all history. Why not include the Flying Spaghetti Monster too?

A guy named Ralph could declare he is the true creator and if you reject his teachings you will go to eternal torture. Would you lay awake at night worrying about going to his hell for not believing in him? Do you worry about the bad karma you are creating by rejecting hinduism or eating meat and all the eons you might spend in the hell realms of hinduism or buddhism?(though to be fair these aren't eternal like the christian monstrosity)

In the same way I do not worry about going to your imaginary hell for not believing in your imaginary deity.

Harry H. McCall said...

Part 1
Is God (θεός) Himself an Atheist?

Let’s first get a working definition an atheist: Noun, One who denies the existence of God.
(Since this definition is based on the Western concept of monotheism, we might expand it to include the Hindu religion or one who denies the existence of any gods.)

What is clear from the growth of the theological tradition in the Biblical text is that the early God of the Hebrews was one of many Semitic gods found in the pantheon usually located atop a high mountain peak such as the Biblical mountain such as Sinai or Horeb. It is in the context of this polytheistic society that the first Commandment of listed in Exodus 20 was written.

In the early epic cycles in the Hebrew Bible, not only in J and E in Genesis and Exodus, but also as redetected in the Tribal League epics in the Deuteronomistic History of the Tetratuch, the concept of the deity of the Hebrews / Israelites moves from a local god who is but one member of a pantheon of gods which create the world (הארץ) for his people to a latter universal single monotheistic deity of the LXX drawn from the Classical Greek concept of θεός.

This plural form of god is emended in the Old Greek and carried in to the LXX as:
εν αρχη εποιησεν ο θεος τον ουρανον και την γην

(Note: אלהים the plural masculine of אל or singular for god (see: Marvin Pope excellent comments in his classical study: El in the Ugaritic Text, EJ Brill 1955; pp. 1 - 21 and for a more up to date study see: John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)

Genesis 1: 1 clearly states that the world of the Hebrews was formed by a polytheistic assembly of gods just as just as one would expect in the Semitic cuneiform text of the ancient Near East such as the Enuma Elish.

How in the hell does אלהים יהוה equal κύριος ὁ θεός? I would emphatically state that during Israel’s evolution from polytheism to monotheism has totally eclipsed the Semitic etymology here in favor of the non-Semitic Greek.

Harry H. McCall said...

Part 2

Since Yahweh demands the Hebrews / Israelites put him first over all the other gods (please notice: Nowhere does Yahweh say these other gods don’t exist, but rather that only he alone wants to be their god-king). Thus, it is plainly obvious that Yahweh himself believes in other gods just a these other gods also believed in him or (to put it another way; Yahweh is not an atheist). Thus, under the Josiah’s reforms, all other Beth El’s or other god houses must be destroyed, thus cutting off their food and leaving only Israel’s leading god’s (Yahweh) temple in Jerusalem alone honored with sacrifices.

In conclusion, when we come to the LXX and the New Testament (which is based on the LXX, and not the MT) we do not find Yahweh as simply another god fearing other deities of the Israelites anymore (or even the name Yahweh itself), but we find a God / Theos who himself no longer believes in any other living deities of the past or present, but considers all other forms of competing gods simply worthless and dead idols (See just such theologies towards other gods in the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul’s theology). Put another way, the Theos of the New Testament is now fully an atheist when it comes to belief in any other god or gods!

Here are some closing questions to consider:

A. When did Yahweh lose his faith / belief in other Gods?

B. Why does the atheistic New Testament Theos (θεός) feel that the religious belief of the Semitic Yahweh was wrong?

C. Does the atheistic Christian Greek God not only deny the existents of the ancient Semitic gods, but even the religious (faithfully believing) Yahweh himself?

D. Can the Biblical text reconcile the New Testament atheistic Theos with Yahweh’s faith in the other ancient gods? (Can the LXX and its later sibling (the New Testament) ever be really reconciled with the MT text? (As I have already pointed out, to say that אלהים יהוה equals κύριος ὁ θεός is simply etymologically apologetic crap!)

Anonymous said...

Marcion predates the Bible. The Bible was written in response to him. He was the first Christian to make a canon, and it was one gospel and ten of Paul's epistles. His Pauline epistles were shorter than the Catholic ones that even Prots accept today. They contained no positive uses of the Old Testament and no predestination. In response to him the proto-'orthodox' created the canonical gospels, interpolated Paul's epistles with all manner of Old Testament twistings, and wrote/editing the rest of the New Testament books some of which obviously began as subcanonical Marcionite works. Parts of 1st Peter are clearly Marcionite as is most of the Gospel of John, even though neither of these was ever part of the Marcionite canon.

Anonymous said...

By Bible above obviously I just meant the New Testament.

Anonymous said...

By the way some of the more moronic comments above betray an inability to spell. Its Marcion not maricon, and in Greek its spelled Markion and should be pronounced with a K sound.

GearHedEd said...

Beowulf,

I knew you were serious, but I was having fun with Paul's misspelling:

"Papalinton, its obvious that maricon was a heretic as the bible says no such thing."