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Goodbye Jesus

Many gods in Bible


wadori

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There doesn't seem to be a good category for this question.  This seems to be as close as any.  Please forgive me if I chose poorly.

 

I am writing an "Unholy Bible", basically a collection of quotes from the Bible that Christians would rather weren't in there (i.e. "ammo" to use if you should feel like wasting your time arguing with a Christian over the Bible).  I am trying to find a specific passage that I recall seeing in the past but can't seem to find.  It is a passage, I think somewhere in the Psalms, that talks about god interacting with other gods, kind of like a meeting of the gods.  That's all I can remember about it.  I have searched BibleGateway.com and all over the internet, but I cannot seem to find this passage.  Do any of you folks who come from a religious background and are familiar with the Bible know the passage that I am talking about?  If you know where it is found or any of the specific wording of it so I can search for it, that would be helpful.

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Could it be Psalm 82? 

 

1God presides in the great assembly;

he renders judgment among the “gods”:

2“How long will you a defend the unjust

and show partiality to the wicked? b

3Defend the weak and the fatherless;

uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.

4Rescue the weak and the needy;

deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

5“The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.

They walk about in darkness;

all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

6“I said, ‘You are “gods”;

you are all sons of the Most High.’

7But you will die like mere mortals;

you will fall like every other ruler.”

8Rise up, O God, judge the earth,

for all the nations are your inheritance.

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Don't forget John quote mining Psalms 82 out of context, like Matthew did to Isaiah. The NT writing period was full it. It's good to read this after first looking at the context of Psalm 82 being about the other gods, not god calling the people of Israel gods. It's a transitional time when the other gods were being put down in the mythology in favor Israels national god. He's telling these gods that they'll be sent to sheol for their mismanagement. And die like mere mortals, further establishing that he's talking to immortal gods when he says, "you are gods." 

 

The writer of John, oblivious to that context by the time he was writing in the late 1st or early 2nd century CE, skims the old scriptures thinking that he's found a clever passage saying that god call the "people" of Israel gods. And then uses it as a way of excusing the jesus character in the story from allegations of blasphemy, claiming to be god. Or one with god in the mystical sense. The book of John seems to be the case of trying to use mystical gnostic symbolism to bring the mystics into the orthodoxy. So there's some purpose behind the quote mining. He's trying to make the mystical seem valid within an orthodox context. But that's not even what Psalms 82 is about. Not even close. 

 

 

29 My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than everyone else, and no one can tear them away from my Father. 30 The Father and I are one.”

31 The Jews had again brought some rocks to stone Yeshua to death. 32 Yeshua replied to them, “I’ve shown you many good things that come from the Father. For which of these good things do you want to stone me to death?”

33 The Jews answered Yeshua, “We’re going to stone you to death, not for any good things you’ve done, but for dishonoring God. You claim to be God, although you’re only a man.”

34 

Yeshua said to them, “Don’t your Scriptures say, ‘I said, “You are gods” ’? 35 The Scriptures cannot be discredited. So if God calls people gods (and they are the people to whom he gave the Scriptures), 36 why do you say that I’m dishonoring God because I said, ‘I’m the Son of God’? God set me apart for this holy purpose and has sent me into the world. 37 If I’m not doing the things my Father does, don’t believe me. 38 But if I’m doing those things and you refuse to believe me, then at least believe the things that I’m doing. Then you will know and recognize that the Father is in me and that I am in the Father.”

 

 

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11 hours ago, Stargazer95 said:

Could it be Psalm 82?  

 

Yes, that's it.  How did I miss it?  I must have been tired last night.  Thanks, Stargazer95.

 

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10 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

Don't forget John quote mining Psalms 82 out of context, like Matthew did to Isaiah.

 

I suppose it is all subject to interpretation, especially given that the Psalms are poetry.  I like your interpretation.  It seems reasonable.  The Christians, of course, will apply their own interpretation, but I will include it in my "Unholy Bible".

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How about the first commandment? "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

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"And God said let us make man in our image, after our likeness"

 

"And God said, now that man has become as one of us to know good and evil"

 

Genesis chapters 2-3 from memory.

 

Some say this is a royal "Us" but study shows in line with the Pslams verse above that the passage is referring to the pantheon in which El is the chief god and there are other gods under him. This making man like "us".  

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On 11/19/2018 at 5:30 AM, Stargazer95 said:

Could it be Psalm 82? 

 

1God presides in the great assembly;

he renders judgment among the “gods”:

2“How long will you a defend the unjust

and show partiality to the wicked? b

3Defend the weak and the fatherless;

uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.

4Rescue the weak and the needy;

deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

5“The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.

They walk about in darkness;

all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

6“I said, ‘You are “gods”;

you are all sons of the Most High.’

7But you will die like mere mortals;

you will fall like every other ruler.”

8Rise up, O God, judge the earth,

for all the nations are your inheritance.

 

I said, you are Elohim

You are all sons of El-Elyon

But you will die like mere mortals

you will fall like every other ruler

Rise up, o Yahweh, judge the earth

for all nations are your inheritance.

 

 

This passage makes no sense. Being sons of the Most High God meant that they were immortal. 

 

It also clearly shows that Yahweh was conceived of as one of the sons of El-Elyon. Yahweh was the "son of God."

 

 

 

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     There's Deuteronomy 32 (the LXX and DSS versions which are considered superior to the Masoratic):

 

8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
    when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders[a] of the peoples
    according to the number of the sons of God.
9 But the Lord's portion is his people,
    Jacob his allotted heritage.

 

     This is supposed to reference the Tower of Babel.  Which is why the Masoratic variant that references Israel is considered inferior since it becomes anachronistic.  The division is the Tower of Babel which is divided by the number of the sons of god and then YHWH gets Jacob/Israel as his portion.  It makes no sense if things are divided by the number of the sons of Israel and then YHWH takes Israel after that.  Basically all the sons of god each got a nation which makes perfect sense.

 

          mwc

 

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On 11/21/2018 at 11:51 AM, mwc said:

     There's Deuteronomy 32 (the LXX and DSS versions which are considered superior to the Masoratic):

 

8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
    when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders[a] of the peoples
    according to the number of the sons of God.
9 But the Lord's portion is his people,
    Jacob his allotted heritage.

 

     This is supposed to reference the Tower of Babel.  Which is why the Masoratic variant that references Israel is considered inferior since it becomes anachronistic.  The division is the Tower of Babel which is divided by the number of the sons of god and then YHWH gets Jacob/Israel as his portion.  It makes no sense if things are divided by the number of the sons of Israel and then YHWH takes Israel after that.  Basically all the sons of god each got a nation which makes perfect sense.

 

          mwc

 

 

 

Does that refer to the Tower of Babylon? I thought it was just a general statement. 

 

Once again, modern English translations are garbage for passages like this because they conflate "Most High," "God, and "Lord," which makes it incoherent. 

 

Most High = El-Elyon, the father of all the gods

God = Yahweh, one of the sons of El-Elyon

 

So Deu 32 is mixed up. It seems like it should say, "according to the number of the sons of El-Elyon," rather than "sons of God (Yahweh)." 

 

El-Elyon was the god with sons, not Yahweh, until New Testament imagineers conceived of that idea. 

 

So for this passage to be coherent, the original probably said something like, "according to the number of the sons of El-Elyon / but Yahweh's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage."

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5 hours ago, Blood said:

 

 

Does that refer to the Tower of Babylon? I thought it was just a general statement. 

 

Once again, modern English translations are garbage for passages like this because they conflate "Most High," "God, and "Lord," which makes it incoherent. 

 

Most High = El-Elyon, the father of all the gods

God = Yahweh, one of the sons of El-Elyon

 

So Deu 32 is mixed up. It seems like it should say, "according to the number of the sons of El-Elyon," rather than "sons of God (Yahweh)." 

 

El-Elyon was the god with sons, not Yahweh, until New Testament imagineers conceived of that idea. 

 

So for this passage to be coherent, the original probably said something like, "according to the number of the sons of El-Elyon / but Yahweh's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage."

     I thought I mention that I don't know why what I posted has bold since I didn't do that.

 

     There's an interesting article here that covers some of what you're saying.

 

          mwc

 

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@Blood

 

Great reference. I heard Robert M. Price mention this a few times, but I always forgot the passage.

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3 hours ago, mwc said:

     I thought I mention that I don't know why what I posted has bold since I didn't do that.

 

     There's an interesting article here that covers some of what you're saying.

 

          mwc

 

 

Good article, despite the unedited OCR scanning making nonsense of non-English word patterns. I didn't quite understand why "Elohim" is rendered as "Myhilox."

 

I was jolted when I reached this passage:

 

"What logical correlation was Moses making when he wrote in verse 8 that God "set the bounds of the people according to the number of the chil-

dren of Israel" and then made the concluding observation in verse 9 that "the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance" (NIV)?"

 

The author believes Moses wrote Deuteronomy? You don't see that assertion made in the scholarly literature very much these days. The author must be a fundamentalist. 

 

The article says, "Michael S. Heiser is a Ph.D. candidate in Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison." So, fundamentalists who believe Moses wrote the Torah are not just limited to Southern Bible colleges. 

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9 hours ago, Blood said:

 

Good article, despite the unedited OCR scanning making nonsense of non-English word patterns. I didn't quite understand why "Elohim" is rendered as "Myhilox."

 

I was jolted when I reached this passage:

 

"What logical correlation was Moses making when he wrote in verse 8 that God "set the bounds of the people according to the number of the chil-

dren of Israel" and then made the concluding observation in verse 9 that "the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance" (NIV)?"

 

The author believes Moses wrote Deuteronomy? You don't see that assertion made in the scholarly literature very much these days. The author must be a fundamentalist. 

 

The article says, "Michael S. Heiser is a Ph.D. candidate in Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison." So, fundamentalists who believe Moses wrote the Torah are not just limited to Southern Bible colleges. 

     Yeah, it's not a perfect article but it is interesting.  My attitude when dealing with biblical studies is that you've kind of got to take what you can get.

 

          mwc

 

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22 hours ago, mwc said:

     Yeah, it's not a perfect article but it is interesting.  My attitude when dealing with biblical studies is that you've kind of got to take what you can get.

 

          mwc

 

 

Yes. The article has some good information, despite the author's bias. That's true of a lot of historical writing by Christians. 

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On 11/21/2018 at 12:51 PM, mwc said:

8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
    when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders[a] of the peoples
    according to the number of the sons of God.
9 But the Lord's portion is his people,
    Jacob his allotted heritage.

 

When El-Elyon gave the nations their inheritance, 

when he divided mankind, 

he fixed the borders of the the peoples

according to the number of the Elohim. 

But YHWH's portion is his people,

Jacob his allotted heritage. 

 

The above is how Robert Price reads it accordingly. And it makes perfect sense because the most high god is El-Elyon and the sons of god number some 72 nations, each with their gods of the Elohim pantheon. YHWH's people are the Israelites. That's how he explains what the number of the sons of god means. He also goes into Psalms 82 as an example of how you can follow this polytheism, to monolatry, to monotheism right through the OT and see it changing. 

 

In Psalms 82 it marks a change where the other gods are being cast down for their mismanagement, and sent to Sheol where the stumbling in the darkness shakes the earth. They're being demoted from immortal gods to dying like any regular mortal man. It's very Greek mythology-like. Price did some video on this content. 

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4 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

 

When El-Elyon gave the nations their inheritance, 

when he divided mankind, 

he fixed the borders of the the peoples

according to the number of the Elohim. 

But YHWH's portion is his people,

Jacob his alltted heritage. 

 

The above is how Robert Price reads it accordingly. And it makes perfect sense because the most high god is El-Elyon and the sons of god number some 72 nations, each with their gods of the Elohim pantheon. YHWH's people are the Israelites. That's how he explains what the number of the sons of god means. He also goes into Psalms 82 as an example of how you can follow this polytheism, to monolatry, to monotheism right through the OT and see it changing. 

 

In Psalms 82 it marks a change where the other gods are being cast down for their mismanagement, and sent to Sheol where the stumbling in the darkness shakes the earth. They're being demoted from immortal gods to dying like any regular mortal man. It's very Greek mythology-like. Price did some video on this content. 

 

OK, that makes sense. "According to the number of Elohim."

 

The idea was that there were 72 nations and El-Elyon had appointed one god for each nation. Unfortunately, no list of the 72 god names survives, as far as I know. I'm not sure Yahweh would have even been conceived of yet during the late Bronze/early Iron Age period when this theology was formulated. 

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3 hours ago, Blood said:

OK, that makes sense. "According to the number of Elohim."

 

The idea was that there were 72 nations and El-Elyon had appointed one god for each nation. Unfortunately, no list of the 72 god names survives, as far as I know. I'm not sure Yahweh would have even been conceived of yet during the late Bronze/early Iron Age period when this theology was formulated. 

 

I can not find the video. It was Price on the Infidel Guy's show. The topic was polytheism in ancient Israel. Price was saying that there must have been around 72 of the Elohim because of the 72 nations. Each would have had a national god. Israel was a very late development, so I'm sure YHWH was too. In those documentaries like The Bible Unearthed they go on to show how late a development Israel was and how the people seem to have been nothing more than the old serfs and slave class of the Canaanite's that rose up after the breaking up of the city state system. And some how YHWH got brought into it. It's all speculation based on archaeology as far as I know. But the little bits and pieces tend to point that way. 

 

 

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