The beginning of monotheism.

sharon · Nov 18, 2012

Psalm 82

A psalm of Asaph.

1 God 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?
3 Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
4 Rescue 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.’
7 But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler.”

8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.

spanky · Nov 18, 2012

Huh?

.....

sharon · Nov 18, 2012

spanky said:
Huh?

.....

Psalm 82 seems to be the beginning of monotheism.

Here:

spanky · Nov 18, 2012

sharon said:
Psalm 82 seems to be the beginning of monotheism.

Here:

The first elements of monotheism exhibited itself in Zoroastrianism, Vedic and Egyptian (Aten) religions and to a lesser extent Baalism. Judaism and by extent Christianity, are just patchwork religions who derive their beliefs from dozens of others culled from various pre existing beliefs.

RGacky3 · Nov 19, 2012

spanky said:
The first elements of monotheism exhibited itself in Zoroastrianism, Vedic and Egyptian (Aten) religions and to a lesser extent Baalism. Judaism and by extent Christianity, are just patchwork religions who derive their beliefs from dozens of others culled from various pre existing beliefs.

Zoroasterism came in the 500s BC ... way after Judaism, baalism wasn't really monotheistic neither was Aten religions, Judaism was generally diametrically opposed to Baalism, came way before Zoroastrianism, had little or no contact with Vedic religions, and was nothing like Aten religions that were based around sun worship.

sharon said:
Psalm 82

A psalm of Asaph.

The Asaph that the psalm is attributed to lived after King Davids time, when monotheism was well established, at least officially, if you look at the verse, its using the term god for human rulers, as it is used many times elsewhere, (like refering to Moses as a god), and making a distinction between them and YHWH.

spud_meister · Nov 19, 2012

spanky said:
The first elements of monotheism exhibited itself in Zoroastrianism, Vedic and Egyptian (Aten) religions and to a lesser extent Baalism. Judaism and by extent Christianity, are just patchwork religions who derive their beliefs from dozens of others culled from various pre existing beliefs.

:lol: Zoroastrianism came about in 200 BC, Vedic religions were polytheistic up until the 15th century, when Sikhism arrived, and Aten worship was culled from pre-existing beliefs.

Of course, I would now like you to list for me the other indigenous religions in the Levant that Judaism formed its "patchwork" from.

Rainman05 · Nov 19, 2012

Ah... judaism was the first monotheistic religion.

Zoroasterism was politheistic, so were the Vedic ones and all other...

Penderyn · Nov 19, 2012

Rainman05 said:
Ah... judaism was the first monotheistic religion.

Zoroasterism was politheistic, so were the Vedic ones and all other...

Well, it's been argued that it developed in Egypt, as a natural copy of the monolithic pharaoh state, and that Moses borrowed it. An empire seems a more likely place for such an idea, I think.

spanky · Nov 19, 2012

The title of the thread is "The beginnings on monotheism" and everything I stated is correct. The concept of monotheism was an evolutionary religious idea that grew out of polytheism if for nothing more than to establish superiority of one god over others.

The first recognizable stand alone state sponsored monotheism was Akhenaton's sun deity, the Aten, from around 1500 BC. Zoroastrianism established around 500BC was a religious movement that grew out of much earlier efforts to establish Ahura Mazda as the preeminent deity of which all others were manifestations of the one.

Judaism was also an evolutionary religion that borrowed heavily from religions around them but also from the religions of their captors, in particular the Egyptians, Babylonians and Persians. Judaism was not the first monotheistic religion but it can be said it was the first to stand the test of time although the still exiting Zoroastrians may disagree. But even in the time of Moses the Hebrews worshiped several Gods, and did so for some time, as evidenced by the #1 commandment, "Thou shall have no other Gods before me". It didn't say there were no other gods, just that Yahweh was first. Another Hebrew name for Yahweh was Elohim, a word that can be used for either a singular or multiple gods, and was derived from the Canaanite god El, the supreme god, father of all gods and humankind. Later, Baalism attempted to elevate Baal, the son of El, to supreme deity in which all other gods were, as many others attempted to do, simple manifestations of the one.

RGacky3 · Nov 20, 2012

spanky said:
The title of the thread is "The beginnings on monotheism" and everything I stated is correct. The concept of monotheism was an evolutionary religious idea that grew out of polytheism if for nothing more than to establish superiority of one god over others.

The first recognizable stand alone state sponsored monotheism was Akhenaton's sun deity, the Aten, from around 1500 BC. Zoroastrianism established around 500BC was a religious movement that grew out of much earlier efforts to establish Ahura Mazda as the preeminent deity of which all others were manifestations of the one.

Judaism was also an evolutionary religion that borrowed heavily from religions around them but also from the religions of their captors, in particular the Egyptians, Babylonians and Persians. Judaism was not the first monotheistic religion but it can be said it was the first to stand the test of time although the still exiting Zoroastrians may disagree. But even in the time of Moses the Hebrews worshiped several Gods, and did so for some time, as evidenced by the #1 commandment, "Thou shall have no other Gods before me". It didn't say there were no other gods, just that Yahweh was first. Another Hebrew name for Yahweh was Elohim, a word that can be used for either a singular or multiple gods, and was derived from the Canaanite god El, the supreme god, father of all gods and humankind. Later, Baalism attempted to elevate Baal, the son of El, to supreme deity in which all other gods were, as many others attempted to do, simple manifestations of the one.

Aten worship wasn't real monotheism, it wasn't that there wasn't other living and real Gods, its that they only worshiped Aten the Sun God, that is much different than those who believed that the transendant YHWH was the ONLY living God, the only true God and all other gods were dieties were dead ones.

Whether or not it was the first monotheistic religion is neither here nor there, but to claim it was just a offshoot of Aten worship is rediculous, Aten was a sun God, not monotheistic and nothing like YHWH.

You're right that Hebrews worshiped several gods, But the actual religion of Yawehism demanded exclusive devotion and a recognition that YHWH was the ONLY LIVING GOD, and early on Yawehists claimed that all other gods were fakes, or dead gods, not real, just gods of stone and so on.

The word Elohim was not derived from a Canaanite god El .... The Canaanite God was just called God ... The word Elohim is also used generically as well.

spanky · Nov 20, 2012

RGacky3 said:
Aten worship wasn't real monotheism, it wasn't that there wasn't other living and real Gods, its that they only worshiped Aten the Sun God, that is much different than those who believed that the transendant YHWH was the ONLY living God, the only true God and all other gods were dieties were dead ones.

Whether or not it was the first monotheistic religion is neither here nor there, but to claim it was just a offshoot of Aten worship is rediculous, Aten was a sun God, not monotheistic and nothing like YHWH.

You're right that Hebrews worshiped several gods, But the actual religion of Yawehism demanded exclusive devotion and a recognition that YHWH was the ONLY LIVING GOD, and early on Yawehists claimed that all other gods were fakes, or dead gods, not real, just gods of stone and so on.

The word Elohim was not derived from a Canaanite god El .... The Canaanite God was just called God ... The word Elohim is also used generically as well.

Aten (also Aton, Egyptian jtn) is the disk of the sun in ancient Egyptian mythology, and originally an aspect of Ra. The deified Aten is the focus of the monolatristic, henotheistic, or monotheistic religion of Atenism established by Amenhotep IV, who later took the name Akhenaten in worship and recognition of Aten. In his poem "Great Hymn to the Aten", Akhenaten praises Aten as the creator, and giver of life. The worship of Aten was eradicated by Horemheb.

Thus Ra-Horus-Aten was a development of old ideas which came gradually. The real change, as some see it, was the apparent abandonment of all other gods, especially Amun, and the debatable introduction of monotheism by Akhenaten.[4] The syncretism is readily apparent in the Great Hymn to the Aten in which Re-Herakhty, Shu and Aten are merged into the creator god.[5] Others see Akhenaten as a practitioner of an Aten monolatry,[6] as he did not actively deny the existence of other gods; he simply refrained from worshipping any but the Aten.

There is a possibility that Aten's three-dimensional spherical shape depicts an eye of Horus/Ra. In the other early monotheistic religion Zoroastrianism the sun is called Ahura Mazda's eye.

Aten - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amenhotep IV initially introduced Atenism in Year 5 of his reign (1348/1346 BC), raising the Aten to the status of supreme god, after initially permitting the continued worship of the traditional gods.

In Year 9 ( 1344/1342 BC ), Akhenaten strengthened the Atenist regime, declaring the Aten to be not merely the supreme god, but the only god, a universal deity, and forbidding worship of all others, including the veneration of idols, even privately in people's homes—an arena the Egyptian state had previously not touched in religious terms.

Atenism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

.........

spanky · Nov 20, 2012

Mark S. Smith said that the notion of divinity underwent radical changes throughout the period of early Israelite identity. Smith said that the ambiguity of the term Elohim is the result of such changes, cast in terms of "vertical translatability" by Smith (2008); i.e. the re-interpretation of the gods of the earliest recalled period as the national god of the monolatrism as it emerged in the 7th to 6th century BCE in the Kingdom of Judah and during the Babylonian captivity, and further in terms of monotheism by the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism in the 2nd century CE.[4] A different version was produced by Morton Smith. Despite the -im ending common to many plural masculine nouns in Hebrew, the word when referring to the Name of God is grammatically singular, and takes a singular verb in the Hebrew Bible.

The word is identical to the usual plural of el meaning gods or magistrates, and is cognate to the 'l-h-m found in Ugaritic, where it is used for the pantheon of Canaanite Gods, the children of El and conventionally vocalized as "Elohim" even though this is a speculation as Ugaritic as a consonantal written language only recorded consonants

Elohim - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RGacky3 · Nov 22, 2012

spanky

Ok, Aten was treated as officially the only God for about 20 years ... But I hardly think you can believe that 20 years of Atenism was the basis for Hebrew monotheism. Also Aten ... As a god is NOTHING like YHWH.

The beginning of monotheism.

Veni, vidi, dormivi!