Use of Elohim in the Bible (and in Fantasy Versus!)

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I have no problem with that, if you don't mind me making a bit of restructuring of my own, so as to make this more productive? Let us first agree on at least a select understanding. My point about the angels being a translation of Malak was not to trap you or trick you--it was to simply get an answer from you. And your answer was more or less what I expected it would be, as I suspect that this is the core issue if misunderstanding.

The point isn't that Angelos was a translation of malak, or messenger--and therefore they aren't celestial beings. My point was that the areas where the Bible specifies Malak, they are referring to celestial beings--whose job it is to carry messages. Just as Cherubs are celestial beings, but whose job it is to guard the throne of El Elyon. Both are celestial beings, but they have different jobs. What I am asserting, is not that these were not celestial beings, these malakim, but that malakim was conflated into a generic term for one of his divine servants.

Of these celestial beings, there are those who are treated as princes in the heavenly order. Those who are essentially ranked as you might find in a royal family. Whether this is literal or figurative, is unimportant. All that matters is that there was a hierarchy. And within that hierarchy, there are those who act as ministers, as princes, as accusers, as mediators, and as messengers. Some who act as soldiers and others who act as guardians. All part of a heavenly governing body.

So then, I take you back to where it all began. What is a god? What defines a god? Is it that it is worshipped? No, because not all deities that were ever imagined were deemed as something to worship. Is it power? No, because deities can range from ancestor worship to the Zeus. The key point on what a deity is, is that it is a spirit that can have a negative or positive impact upon the world.

So, a deity is not an explanation of one's nature, it is what one does. That is important, because without that key understanding, we'll be at odds. Now, I need to stress that simply because a spirit takes on the role of a deity, that does not equate it to El Elyon. For while a spirit is immortal, it does so at the sufferance at El Elyon. And it exists because it was created in the image of El Elyon, just as we were. (though in a different way) And El Elyon is eternal, because El Elyon has no creator. El Elyon is the originator of all things.

And that is what they are. For the Watchers did more than just bang a few women; they taught humans magic and forbidden knowledge. The Nephilim, thus being part celestial, part mortal--is a demigod. That is not a stretch of the word by any means. They were giants, yes--but then so were a set of gods in Norse Mythology, so that does not indicate a lack of divinity.

I am aware of that, am I not? Do you imagine that the Jews existed in a vacuum? The point of denouncing the Nephilim so strongly, is believed to have been commentary on the apkallu scholars, who claimed such ancestry to bolster their own reputations.

Yes, as you've told me several times. And for some reason, you seem to think you're the only one. I might remind you that, I am not the one who threw forward some half-ass, pagan BS about El Elyon being defeated by a mere lesser power? By butchering the biblical texts? By ignoring scripture that came before it on El Elyon's supreme power--and then imagining the immense stupidity of Jewish leaders not being able to spot the contradiction? Neither of us did that.

Shock as it might be to you, I also read the bible. And it was apparent to me, even when I read it at a young age, that El Elyon had a divine council and he had other beings who did his bidding and at times, engaged in debate with each other at El Elyon's behest. The revelation that these rival gods were originally members of El Elyon's own council who had gone rogue, elevates the scripture and the supreme power of El Elyon, it does not take away from it.

The point was never that there was no spirit named Baal Hedad or Chemosh--the point was that they were lesser to the One True God, El Elyon. YHWH.

Isaiah 45 NIV

And I think again, this is where the misunderstanding is. There are three divine rebellions against El Elyon.

There was the serpent, who brought death into the world and deceived Adam and Eve.

There were the Watchers, who took human wives, had bastard children, and taught men sorcery.

And there were the Elohim, the spirits that El Elyon had put in charge of the other nations--but instead of guiding them back toward El Elyon, instead of looking over them, they abused their positions and seduced men into worshiping them. (they, who were false)
I can't help but notice that you snipped out all the counterarguments and then simply reposted your claims again as if they weren't already knocked won. I spent a great deal of effort and multiple lines of reasoning firmly establishing that the divine council were human judges, and you just snipped that from any reply and go back to claiming they're gods without providing a shred of counter-argument. The same is true of your claims about the Watchers, they are not biblical at all and you can't back up any of your claims about them without drawing on Mesopotamian mythology as if it were in the Bible, but you don't address any of those points, instead you snipped those arguments out, failed to provide any reply, and just went back to stating your previous claims as facts. Do you plan to actually engage in the debate?
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Am I seeing people trying to translate Hebrew?
Don't we have an Isreali here?

Modern Israeli Hebrew is not the same thing at all as the language that was spoken by Moses. Words change their meanings subtly over time. Ever tried reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales? And that's far less distance in time from us.

Mind you, Hebrew was technically a dead language for a long time. What the Israelis speak today was reconstituted from dusty old parchments and DNA preserved in amber in the late 19th, early 20th centuries. But now that it's out of the vat and in the wild, it will change over time like any living spoken language.
 

The Original Sixth

Well-known member
Founder
I can't help but notice that you snipped out all the counterarguments and then simply reposted your claims again as if they weren't already knocked won. I spent a great deal of effort and multiple lines of reasoning firmly establishing that the divine council were human judges, and you just snipped that from any reply and go back to claiming they're gods without providing a shred of counter-argument.

Yes, and I appreciate that. And yet at the same time, I also realize it's a great deal of effort to explain why you're wrong. The easiest way is to simply explain the concept of what a deity is, in its plainest terms. The second is the more grueling effort of explaining why your argument not only fails within the greater Mesopotamian context, but also within the context of the Bible itself.

To draw from the book, the Unseen Realm:

Psalm 89:5-7 explicitly contradicts the notion of a divine council in which the elohim are humans.

"And so the heavens will praise your wonderful deed, O YHWH, even your faithfulness, in the assembly of the holy ones.

For who in the sky is equal to YHWH?

Who is like YHWH among the sons of God, a God feared greatly in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all surrounding him?"

God's divine council is an assembly in the heavens, not on earth. the language is unmistakable. This is precisely what we'd expect if we understand the elohim to be divine beings. It is utter nonsense if we think of them as humans. There is no reference in Scripture to a council of human beings serving YHWH in the skies (Jews or otherwise).

What Psalms 82 and 89 describe is completely consistent with what we saw earlier in Job 38:7--a group of heavenly sons of God. It also accords to the sons of God as plural elohim:

"The sons of God came to present themselves before YHWH (Job 1:6;2:1)"

"Ascribe to YHWH, O sons of God, ascribe to YHWH glory and strength. Ascribe to YHWH the glory due his name (Psa 29:1-2)"

Do these references describe a group of Jewish leaders, among whom (in the passage from Job) YHWH's greater adversary appears, leading to Job's suffering? the conclusion is obvious.

PLURAL ELOHIM DOES NOT MEAN POLYTHEISM

Many scholars believe that Psalm 82 and other passages demonstrate that the religion of ancient Israel began as a polytheistic system and then evolved into monotheism. I reject that idea, along with any other explanations that seek to hide the plain reading of the text. In all such cases, the thinking is misguided. The problem is rooted in a mistaken notion of what exactly the word elohim means.

Since elohim is so often translated God, we look at the Hebrew word the same way we look at capitalized G-o-d. When we see the word God, we instinctively think of a divine being with a unique set of attributes--omnipresence, omnipotence, sovereignty, and so on. But this is now how a biblical writer thought about the term. Biblical authors did not assign a specific set of attributes to the word elohim. That is evident when we observe how they used the word.

The biblical writers refer to a half-dozen different entities with the word elohim. By any religious accounting, the attributes of these entities are not equal.

  • YHWH, the God of Israel (Thousands of times--eg, Gen 2:4-5; Deut 4:35)
  • The members of YHWH's council (Psa 82:1)
  • Gods and goddesses of other nations (judge 11:24, Kgs 11:33)
  • Demons (Hebrew: shedim--Deut 32:17)
  • The deceased Samuel (1 Sam 28:13)
  • Angels or the Angel of YHWH (Gen 35:7)
The importance of this list can be summarized with one question; Would any Israelite, especially a biblical writer, really believe that the deceased human dead and demons are on the same level as YHWH? No. The usage of the term elohim by biblical writers tells us very clearly that the term is not about a set of attributes. Even though we see "G-o-d", we think of a unique set of attributes, when a biblical writer wrote elohim, he wasn't thinking that way. If he were, he'd never have used the term elohim to describe anything but YHWH.

Consequently, there is no warrant for concluding that plural elohim produces a pantheon of interchangeable deities. There is no basis for concluding that the biblical writers would have viewed YHWH as no better than another elohim. A biblical writer would not have presumed that YHWH could be defeated on any given day by another elohim, or that another elohim (why not any of them) had the same set of attributes. That is polytheistic thinking. It is not the biblical picture.

We can be confident of this conclusion by once again observing that the biblical writers say about YHWH--and never say about another elohim. The biblical writers speak of YHWH in ways that telegraph their belief in his uniqueness and incomparability:

"Who is like you among the gods [elim], YHWH?" (Exod 15:11)

"'What god [el] is there in the heaven or on the earth who cna do according to your works and according to your mighty deeds?'" (Deut 3:24)

"Oh YHWH, God of Israel, there is no god [elohim] like you in the heavens above or on the earth beneath" (1 Kgs 8:23)

"For you, O YHWH, are most high over all the earth. You are highly exalted above all gods [elohim]." (Psalm 97:9)

Biblical writers also assign unique qualities to YHWH. YHWH is all powerful (Jer 32:17, 27; Pss 72:18, 115:3), the sovereign king over the other elohim (psa 95:3; Dan 4:35, 1Kgs 22:19), the creator of the other members of his host-council (Psa 148:1-5, Neh 9:6; cf. Job 38:7; Deut 4:19-20; 17:3; 29:25-26; 32-17, Jas 1:17) and the lone elohim who deserves worship from the other elohim (Psa 29:1). In fact, Nehemiah 9:6 explicitly declarers that YHWH is unique, there is only one YHWH. ("You alone are YHWH")

The biblical use of elohim is not hard to understand once we know that it isn't about attributes. What all the figures on the list have in common is that they are inhabitants of the spiritual world. In that realm there is a hierarchy. For example, YHWH possesses superior attributes with the respect to all elohim. But God's attributes aren't what makes him an elohim, since inferior beings are members of that same group. The Old testament writers understood that YHWH was an elohim--but no other elohim was YHWH. He was species-unique among all residents of the spiritual world.

This is not to say that an elohim would not interact with the human world. The bible makes it clear that divine beings can (and did) assume physical human form, and even corporeal flesh, for interaction with people, but that is not their normal estate. Spiritual beings are "spirits" (1 Kgs 22:19--22; John 4:24; Heb 1:14; Rev 1:4). In a like manner, humans can be transported to the divine realm (eg, Isa 6), but that is not our normal plane of existence. As I explained earlier in this chapter, the word elohim is a "place of residence" term. It has nothing to do with a specific set of attributes.

The author goes on to ask the question, "what does God need with a council?". His answer is that of course the Most High does not need a council, but that it is clear he has one. And it begs a second question; "What does God need with people?". The answer is the same; God does not need people. God does not need our worship. Yet, it is clear that God desires humanity, he desires a relationship with humanity, and he grows angry when worship is direct elsewhere. And again, any denial of a council of gods that serve the Most High also asks why the Most High would need messengers, angelic or otherwise. Yet, he uses them.

We can look more to the Unseen Realm to see how the culture around the region can bring us enlightenment about how the ancient Israelites thought.

ARE THE ELOHIM REAL?

Those who want to avoid the clarity of Psalm 82 argue that the gods are only idols. As such, they aren't real. This argument is flatly contradicted by Scripture. It's also illogical and shows a misunderstanding of the rational of idolatry. With respect to Scripture, one need look no further than Deut 32:17.

"They [the Israelites] sacrificed to demons [shedim], not God [eloah], to gods [elohim] whom they had not known."

The verse explicitly calls the elohim that the Israelites perversely worship demons (shedim). This rarely used term (deut 32:17; Psa 106:37) comes from the Akkadian shedu. In the ancient Near East, the term shedu was neutral; it could speak of a good or malevolent spirit being. These Akkadian figures were often cast as guardians or protective entities, though the term was also used to describe the life force of a person. In the context of Deuteronomy 32:17,m shedim were elohim--spirit begins guarding foreign territory--who must not be worshiped. Israel was supposed to worship her own God (here, eloah; cf. Deut 29:25). One cannot deny the reality of the elohim/shedim in Deuteronomy 32:17 without denying the reality of demons.

Scholars disagree over what kind of entity the shedim were. But whatever the correct understanding of shedim might be, they are not pieces of wood or stone.

"NO GODS BESIDES ME"?

Another misguided strategy is to argue that the statements in the Old Testament that have god saying "there is none besides me: mean that no other elohim exist. This isn't the case. These phrases do not contradict Psalm 82 or others that, for example, say YHWH is above all elohim or is the "God of gods [elohim]."

I've written a lot on this subject--it was a focus of my doctoral dissertation. These "denial statements" as they are called by scholars, do not assert that there are no other elohim. In fact, some of them are foun din chapters where the reality of other elohim is affirmed. We've already seen taht Deuteronomy 32:17 refers to elohim that Paul believed, existed. Deuteronomy 32:8-9 also refers to the sons of God. Deuteronomy 4:19-20 is a parallel to that passage, and yet Deuteronomy 4:35 says there is no god besides YHWH. Is Scripture filled with contradictions?

No. These "denial statements" do not deny that other elohim exist. Rather, they deny that any elohim compares to YHWH. They are statements of incomparability. This point is easily illustrated by noticing where else the same denial language shows up in the Bible. Isaiah 47:8 and Zephaniah 2:15 have, respectively, Babylon and Nineveh saying "There is none besides me." Are we to believe that the point of the phrase is to declare that no other cities exist except Babylon or Nineveh? That would be absurd. The point of the statement is that Babylon and Nineveh considered themselves incomparable, as though no other city could measure up to them. This is precisely the point when these same phrases are used of other gods--they cannot measure up to YHWHW. The Bible does not contradict itself on this point. Those who want to argue that other elohim do not exist are at odds with the supernatural worldview of the biblical writers.

EXAMINING THE LOGIC

The denial that other elohim exist insults the sincerity of biblical writers and the glory of God. How is it coherent to say that verses extolling the superiority of YHWH above all elohim (Psa 97"9) are really telling us YHWH is greater than beings that don't exist? Where is God's glory in passages calling other elim to worship YHWH (Psa 29:1-2) when the writers don't believe those beings are real? Were the writers inspired to lie or hoodwink us? To give us theological gibberish?

To my ear, it mocks God to say, "You're greater than something that doesn't exist." So is my dog. Saying, "Among the beings that we all know don't exist there is none like YHWH" is tantamount to comparing YHWH with Spiderman or Spongebob Squarepants. This reduces praise to a snicker. Why would the Holy Spirit inspire such nonsense?

MISUNDERSTANDING IDOLTARY

The biblical prophets love to make fun of idol making. It seems so stupid to carve an idol from wood or stone or make one from clay and then worship it. But ancient people did not believe that their gods were actually images of stone or wood. We misread the biblical writers if we think that.

What ancient idol worshipers believed was that the objects they made were inhabited by their gods. This is why they performed ceremonies to "open the mouth" of the statue. The mouth (and nostrils) had to be ritually opened for the spirit of the deity to move in and occupy, a notion inspired by the idea that one needs to breath to live. The idol first had to be animated with the very real spiritual presence of the deity. Once that was done, the entity was localized for worship and bargaining.

This is easily proven from ancient texts. There are accounts for example, of idols being destroyed. There is no sense of fear in those accounts that the god was dead. Rather, there was only a need to make another idol.

Paul's warning in 1 Corinthians 10:18-22 alluded to previously reflects this thinking. Earlier in the letter, he told the Corinthians that an idol had no power and was. in and of itself, nothing (1 Cor 8:4). While Gentiles had other lords and gods, for believers there was only one true God. But in chapter 10, he clarifies that he also knows that sacrifices to idols are actually sacrifices to demons--evil members of the spiritual world.

The author goes on to explain that part of the confusion is with Jesus; that he was declared the "only begotten son". He explains that this was an unfortunate translation issue; stemming from the Greek word monogenes. It was thought to have derived from two terms Monos )only) and gennao (to beget, bear). Scholars later discovered that monogenes does not come from the Greek verb gennao, but rather from the noun genos (class, kind). The term literally means "one of a kind" or :unique: without connotation of created origin. The author proves his point with this:

The validity of this understanding is borne out by the New testament itself. In Hebrews 11:17, Isaac is called Abraham's monogenes. If you know your Old Testament you know that Isaac was not the "only begotten" son of Abraham. Abraham had earlier fathered Ishmael (Gen 16:15; 31:3). The term must mean that Isaac was Abraham's unique son, for he was the son of the covenant of promises. Isaac's genealogical line would be the one through which Messiah would come. Just as YHWH is an elohim, and no other elohim are YHWH, so Jesus is the unique Son, and no other sons of God are like him.

The same is true of your claims about the Watchers, they are not biblical at all and you can't back up any of your claims about them without drawing on Mesopotamian mythology as if it were in the Bible,

...You do realize that Israelites engaged with Mesopotamian culture and ideas, right? You realize that the Bible takes more than its fair share of pot shots against Mesopotamian beliefs, right? The Seraphim themselves were inspired by ancient Egyptian Cherubs; sacred throne guardians. A result of increased trade between the two nations, which I think was in the 9-8th century BC. The bible did not come to exist within a vacuum. Israel was fully engaged with Mesopotamian culture. Because they were outright rejecting it and therefore constructed criticism.

And this is something I simply don't understand with you. As if engaging in study of Mesopotamian mythology is somehow degrading to the Bible. It provides context. Who is Ba'al from the bible? A study of Mesopotamian mythology brings us Ba'al Hedad. We know that his cult was closely located to Israel. We know that El of the Mesopotamian mythologies had seventy sons. This is mirrored within the Bible.

When Elyon divided the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he established the borders of the nations according to the number of the sons of the gods. Yahweh’s portion was his people, [Israel] his allotted inheritance.

- Deuteronomy 32:8–9 (Dead Sea Scrolls)

What most people are familiar with however, is the KJV, which--after centuries of friction and drift from its original source and language. Keep in mind, you would have needed to of translated this from Latin, which was translated from Greek, which was translated from ancient Hebrew. All things considered, the KJV Bible is accurate in most of the important stuff, but not having access to the original Hebrew, having suffered centuries of social drift, and working from two other languages that likewise would have suffered drift from their sources--it comes out just fine. But it has lost its nuance. And that creates what appears to be contradictions to most readers, because it goes up against Christian traditions and we lack the cultural knowledge and references to understand the meaning behind the statements.

When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

- Deuteronomy‬ 32:8-9‬ (King James Bible)

The KJV, to be blunt, is talking utter nonsense. Remember that the context of this is that the Most High did this after he and his council had descended to Babel to confuse the languages of the people, to prevent them from disobeying him. God was sending the other nations of humanity into exile. To keep watch over them, he assigned a member of his royal house to look after them. High ranked spirits known as elohim.

This leads us to Psalms. In which, we see that the Most High is judging the elohim to which he had entrusted the other nations for corruption and rebellion. He has declared that they will be defeated and die. And these elohim deserve it; Israel was to be a nation of priests; its purpose was to bring the other nations back to the Most High by setting the example. This did not work both because of Israel's disobedience and because of rival elohim who were rebelling against the Most High, having desired to become like God himself.

Abraham's descendants would come to inherit all nations. Not through military conflict, but through religious revelations. If Israel could not complete the Covenant with God, then God himself would complete it on behalf of Israel and all the nations of the world. The arrival of Jesus to our world was not just about God bringing all the Sons of Adam back into the fold, but it was also a spiritual war against those who had rebelled against the Most High. Jesus didn't just caste out demons for the sake of charity, he did it to provoke Satan and the other rebels into plotting his death. Satan attempted to persuade Jesus to accept Satan as the true ruler of the world, declaring that he would restore the Children of Adam to Jesus (and thus, to God) if Jesus would simply worship him. To pay him homage as an equal to be bargained with.

Jesus specifically went to locations associated with the Watchers and Ba'al. After he had drawn together his 12 disciples, mirroring the 12 tribes, he also then anointed 70 more, which is a direct reference to the 70 elohim who he had put in charge. And they went out to the nations to preach and banish demons (the evil spirits of the Nephilim that had lost physical form).

but you don't address any of those points, instead you snipped those arguments out, failed to provide any reply, and just went back to stating your previous claims as facts. Do you plan to actually engage in the debate?

I do, but the problem is that in order to address your argument, I have to establish a wider set of context, both within and without the Bible, in order to untangle the mess that humans have created over the course of centuries. And it's rather difficult to take your anger too seriously when you dismiss out of hand, other Mesopotamia sources that can grant us greater insight into Scripture. Do you not see how arrogant it is, for churches to assume that we understand all the intents of the Bible, without the ancient context in which it was written?

That the Bible having YHWH declare that it was he who had defeated the Leviathan? Not Marduk or Ba'al Hadad? That it was he who tamed the forces of chaos? That it was YHWH, by mere command, created the sky and the sun and light itself? Whereas other gods had to perform great manual labor in their creation stories? How do you expect to understand the depths of the bible if you will not even immerse yourself in the ancient Hebrew context? Are the writers of the Bible heretics?
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Yes, and I appreciate that. And yet at the same time, I also realize it's a great deal of effort to explain why you're wrong. The easiest way is to simply explain the concept of what a deity is, in its plainest terms. The second is the more grueling effort of explaining why your argument not only fails within the greater Mesopotamian context, but also within the context of the Bible itself.

To draw from the book, the Unseen Realm:

The author goes on to ask the question, "what does God need with a council?". His answer is that of course the Most High does not need a council, but that it is clear he has one. And it begs a second question; "What does God need with people?". The answer is the same; God does not need people. God does not need our worship. Yet, it is clear that God desires humanity, he desires a relationship with humanity, and he grows angry when worship is direct elsewhere. And again, any denial of a council of gods that serve the Most High also asks why the Most High would need messengers, angelic or otherwise. Yet, he uses them.

We can look more to the Unseen Realm to see how the culture around the region can bring us enlightenment about how the ancient Israelites thought.

The author goes on to explain that part of the confusion is with Jesus; that he was declared the "only begotten son". He explains that this was an unfortunate translation issue; stemming from the Greek word monogenes. It was thought to have derived from two terms Monos )only) and gennao (to beget, bear). Scholars later discovered that monogenes does not come from the Greek verb gennao, but rather from the noun genos (class, kind). The term literally means "one of a kind" or :unique: without connotation of created origin. The author proves his point with this:

...You do realize that Israelites engaged with Mesopotamian culture and ideas, right? You realize that the Bible takes more than its fair share of pot shots against Mesopotamian beliefs, right? The Seraphim themselves were inspired by ancient Egyptian Cherubs; sacred throne guardians. A result of increased trade between the two nations, which I think was in the 9-8th century BC. The bible did not come to exist within a vacuum. Israel was fully engaged with Mesopotamian culture. Because they were outright rejecting it and therefore constructed criticism.

And this is something I simply don't understand with you. As if engaging in study of Mesopotamian mythology is somehow degrading to the Bible. It provides context. Who is Ba'al from the bible? A study of Mesopotamian mythology brings us Ba'al Hedad. We know that his cult was closely located to Israel. We know that El of the Mesopotamian mythologies had seventy sons. This is mirrored within the Bible.
You're using Motte and Baily Fallacies here. Your statement was that the Biblical Nephilim gave birth to Mesopotamian Apkallu, that the Sons of God who fathered the Nephilim in the bible were the Mesopotamian "Watchers." Then when called on it you retreat to "well, they engaged with that culture" as your bailey, you've done it multiple times in this thread. You might as well claim Thor's chariot was pulled by Kelpies, then when called on such ludicrous BS retreat to "Well, the Danes engaged with Celtic culture..." But you can't establish your actual claims at all.

As for the rest, you are so ludicrously wrong in your reasoning, as is your source, that it's exceeding hard to take it seriously. Who was Baal indeed? Ha ha! Baal isn't a person in the bible at all, Baal is the ancient Hebrew word for owner, master, or husband (In modern Hebrew, it's used almost entirely for Husband). There are a great many people called Baal in the bible. Heck, one of David's sons was Baal-Merib.

Abraham is called Sarah's Baal in Genesis 20:3. The guy who owns an ox is called its Baal in Exodus 21:28. In Jeremiah 37:13 the captain of the guard is called the guard's Baal. At 1 Chronicles 8:30 we even see an Israelite named Baal, presumably for being a complete Chad, I guess, there're actually several more Israelites named Baal in there so calling your kid the equivalent of "Overlord" may have just been a popular choice.

But wait, there's more! Even when referred to as a god, the bible makes quite clear there are many Baals.

Judges 2:11 (New American Standard Bible)
Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals,

1 Kings 18:18 (English Standard Version)
And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the LORD and followed the Baals.

Jeremiah 2:23 (New International Version)
“How can you say, ‘I am not defiled; I have not run after the Baals’? See how you behaved in the valley; consider what you have done. You are a swift she-camel running here and there,

Baals, plural, multiple times.

Numbers 25:3 (English Standard Version)
3 So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.
The Baal of Peor is a specific Baal, in context a god of the Moabites.

At 2 Kings 1:2 we see another Baal, Baal-Zebub (Likely this name was corrupted over time into Beelzebub). Baal-Zebub is a Philistine god in context. There are several other specific Baals called out in various scriptures that are the "Baal" of a specific city or ethnic group.

This failure at understanding basic scripture is quite ironic given your rant in the next paragraph about the KJV and translations, because you have such a shallow understanding of the scripture, most likely from looking at poor translations as anybody who looks at their original Hebrew or does the slightest bit of study into the words would have known better. Heck, even having read the bible should have twigged you from the many points the "Baals" are mentioned as plural even in translations. What you've posted is as foolish as going to a football fan and trying to explain that you know who the player named "Coach" is and telling them he was pulled around by horses.

Of course, your characterization of Baal as one of El's seventy sons is also wrong. You have the nasty habit of taking one of several conflicting theories and confidently presenting it as an established truth instead of a house of cards. In fact, the bible takes the stance that Baal and El are the same person, which makes perfect sense because in the bible whoever is in charge is Baal, and El was the head god of that group. As a result some translations will translate it El, others Baal.

Judges 9:46 (New International Version)
On hearing this, the citizens in the tower of Shechem went into the stronghold of the temple of El-Berith.

Judges 9:46 (New Living Translation)
When the leading citizens who lived in the tower of Shechem heard what had happened, they ran and hid in the temple of Baal-berith.

Further, El didn't have seventy sons, he sometimes had seventy-seven, or sometimes eighty-eight depending on which version you go with. Claiming as fact that he had seventy and ignoring the rest is just an attempt at drawing a connection to Yahweh that isn't there. And, of course, even scholarly sources don't claim as fact that Baal was El's son, most consider Baal and El one and the same.

Wikipedia said:
Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deities but inscriptions have shown that the name Ba'al was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations.[10]
The Hebrew Bible includes use of the term in reference to various Levantine deities, often with application towards Hadad, who was decried as a false god. That use was taken over into Christianity and Islam, sometimes under the form Beelzebub in demonology.

...

El[edit]
Main: El
The Phoenician Baʿal is generally identified with either El or Dagan.

source
But yeah, Baal's this one guy who was just El's son. Sure.
When Elyon divided the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he established the borders of the nations according to the number of the sons of the gods. Yahweh’s portion was his people, [Israel] his allotted inheritance.

- Deuteronomy 32:8–9 (Dead Sea Scrolls)
Here's a nice example of how you keep lying by omission. This, you say, is a Dead Sea Scroll version. But it's not, is it? No, this is specifically one of the portions, specifically a broken fragment of scroll 4Q37, but scroll 4Q45 is the older, paleoDeuteronomy and what's it say? "Children of Israel." Even the Dead Sea Scrolls are split on the statement with the older one disagreeing with you, but you quietly left that part out and just present your own slanted version and call it "Dead Sea Scrolls." And to show just how utterly bullshit this claim is, let's take a look at the portion of 4Q37 you're hanging your argument on.

Picture11.png


Yeah, so very intact, we clearly have all the context we need to come up with massive revisions to the scripture right there.

What most people are familiar with however, is the KJV, which--after centuries of friction and drift from its original source and language. Keep in mind, you would have needed to of translated this from Latin, which was translated from Greek, which was translated from ancient Hebrew. All things considered, the KJV Bible is accurate in most of the important stuff, but not having access to the original Hebrew, having suffered centuries of social drift, and working from two other languages that likewise would have suffered drift from their sources--it comes out just fine. But it has lost its nuance. And that creates what appears to be contradictions to most readers, because it goes up against Christian traditions and we lack the cultural knowledge and references to understand the meaning behind the statements.

The KJV, to be blunt, is talking utter nonsense. Remember that the context of this is that the Most High did this after he and his council had descended to Babel to confuse the languages of the people, to prevent them from disobeying him. God was sending the other nations of humanity into exile. To keep watch over them, he assigned a member of his royal house to look after them. High ranked spirits known as elohim.
Multiple times you've gone off on your rants about the KJV but that's just blowing a smokescreen, I haven't been relying on the KJV for any of my points, have used multiple translations, and even went back to the original Hebrew where needed. So I have to presume this is just another strawman on your part.

This leads us to Psalms. In which, we see that the Most High is judging the elohim to which he had entrusted the other nations for corruption and rebellion. He has declared that they will be defeated and die. And these elohim deserve it; Israel was to be a nation of priests; its purpose was to bring the other nations back to the Most High by setting the example. This did not work both because of Israel's disobedience and because of rival elohim who were rebelling against the Most High, having desired to become like God himself.
Ah, there you did it again. We already went around on what the Divine Council was and I showed why it was human Israelite judges, both in scripture, from Jesus own words, and going over the original Hebrew word for word to establish that they used the same word used for congregations of humans but never for actual divinity. You snipped the whole thing, never addressed the arguments against it, and here you've gone back to blithely claiming it was a divine council of gods after waiting a few days for people's memories to fade.

Abraham's descendants would come to inherit all nations. Not through military conflict, but through religious revelations. If Israel could not complete the Covenant with God, then God himself would complete it on behalf of Israel and all the nations of the world. The arrival of Jesus to our world was not just about God bringing all the Sons of Adam back into the fold, but it was also a spiritual war against those who had rebelled against the Most High. Jesus didn't just caste out demons for the sake of charity, he did it to provoke Satan and the other rebels into plotting his death. Satan attempted to persuade Jesus to accept Satan as the true ruler of the world, declaring that he would restore the Children of Adam to Jesus (and thus, to God) if Jesus would simply worship him. To pay him homage as an equal to be bargained with.

Jesus specifically went to locations associated with the Watchers and Ba'al. After he had drawn together his 12 disciples, mirroring the 12 tribes, he also then anointed 70 more, which is a direct reference to the 70 elohim who he had put in charge. And they went out to the nations to preach and banish demons (the evil spirits of the Nephilim that had lost physical form).
Bullshit.

Mark 1:12,13
12At once the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, 13and He was there for forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and the angels ministered to Him.

Matthew 4:1,2
1Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry.

Luke 4:1,2
1Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,a 2where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He was hungry.

There's no BS about Jesus going on some fairy tale journey to seventy significant locations and no references to Watchers anyway. That's entirely more of the crap you pull out your backside and blatantly claim to be fact, with zero references.

I do, but the problem is that in order to address your argument, I have to establish a wider set of context, both within and without the Bible, in order to untangle the mess that humans have created over the course of centuries. And it's rather difficult to take your anger too seriously when you dismiss out of hand, other Mesopotamia sources that can grant us greater insight into Scripture. Do you not see how arrogant it is, for churches to assume that we understand all the intents of the Bible, without the ancient context in which it was written?

That the Bible having YHWH declare that it was he who had defeated the Leviathan? Not Marduk or Ba'al Hadad? That it was he who tamed the forces of chaos? That it was YHWH, by mere command, created the sky and the sun and light itself? Whereas other gods had to perform great manual labor in their creation stories? How do you expect to understand the depths of the bible if you will not even immerse yourself in the ancient Hebrew context? Are the writers of the Bible heretics?
I'm not the one having trouble with the most basic context, I know a great deal of it. The vast gulf between Mesopotamian mythology and the bible is the best proof the admixing you claim never happened. Where their creation story is a veritable reality TV show of shifting alliances, betrayals, and backstabbing with body parts used to craft the universe, the bible shows a vastly different picture of a single, Almighty God who wills all things into being from a state of absolute supremacy and awesome power.
 

Janus

Well-known member
Can I just say I didn't see any rules against necromancy.
Also, just because if God is not necessarily the Creator of these other Elohim, that doesn't mean that he isn't omnipotent. His power doesn't come from the fact that he made everything, although that's true, his power comes from his own inner nature of being God.
 

King Arts

Well-known member
Can I just say I didn't see any rules against necromancy.
Also, just because if God is not necessarily the Creator of these other Elohim, that doesn't mean that he isn't omnipotent. His power doesn't come from the fact that he made everything, although that's true, his power comes from his own inner nature of being God.
Just because someone is the creator does not mean they are the strongest either. Who says the creation can’t surpass the creator? Why can’t an imitation or copy beat the original?
 

Janus

Well-known member
Just because someone is the creator does not mean they are the strongest either. Who says the creation can’t surpass the creator? Why can’t an imitation or copy beat the original?

That's also logical. In Christian theology, however, God is omnipotent.
 

mandragon

Well-known member
Both the Egyptian and Greco-Roman pantheons exist within Faurun and Yaweah has already defeated both of these. The Egyptian during Exodus and the Greco-Roman by taking thier worshipers and making them into his own core worshipers. Its also a cannon thing within the older D&D materials that the Egyptian and Greek gods are at least on par with the fictional pantheon. Furthermore even if you were to argue that Exodus isn't a real historical event,Yaweah striping the Greeks of their core body of worshipers indisputably is. So at the very least we have absolute proof that Yaweah is more powerful then Zeus and Co. Who are on par with or possibly even more powerful then the gods of Faurun. Since within books like Deities and Demigods from previous editions pantheons such as the Greco-Roman. Are stated to have worshipers in multiple prime material planes as opposed to the Faurun gods. Who have worshipers on only a single prime material plane this is cannon old cannon but still.
 

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