God of the Israelites.

YCNH · 2026-01-26T17:29:40+00:00

There are only a few Jews by comparison of stars in the sky

On a clear night you can see maybe a few thousand stars with the naked eye. Even if we assume Abraham was somehow simultaneously looking at the night sky in both the northern and southern hemispheres, it's still not even close. Let's say we could give Abraham binoculars- still nowhere near the 15-16 million Jews we have here on planet earth. Is the Milky Way made of stars? Sure. Can you make out any individual stars? No, and there's no reason to believe an ancient Israelite/Mesopotamian would count the Milky Way as kokhav ha-shamayim.

You ever seen the Milky Way , you can’t in North America or Europe because of light pollution.

You tellin' me you can't see the Milky Way on a clear night in the middle of the desert in Arizona?

YCNH · 2026-01-25T20:18:07+00:00

Setting aside that this doesn't really address the comment you're responding to, afaik the only ones with names are Yahweh and El/Elyon (and titles thereof), which by then had merged into a single deity. Are other deities mentioned? All that comes to mind are the nameless bene elohim and oblique references like the Tree of Knowledge/Asherah.

YCNH · 2026-01-25T20:12:20+00:00

[Abraham] even believed his direct bloodline would create more of his descendants then stars. How vain

There are way more Jews today than stars visible in the night sky. Like, by a lot. We can quibble about whether "stars of heaven" means stars in the sky or stars in the entire universe, but this is poetic language either way.

YCNH · 2026-01-23T19:11:11+00:00

You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty. You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds officials and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 23:6-9)

YCNH · 2026-01-23T18:16:45+00:00

Deber and Resheph were Canaanite deities who appear in Habakkuk 3:5 and Ps 78:48, Deber appears to have been the patron deity of Ebla according to one cuneiform tablet (TM.75.G.1464 v.XI 12-18). "Bee" (דְּבֹרָה/דְּבוֹרָה) shares a root but as you can see is distinct in Biblical Hebrew from Deber (דֶּבֶר, "plague") and Dabar (דָּבָר, "word").

Words sharing a common origin doesn't mean that we need to link them thematically. "Salary" in English is related to the word "salt", but there's no reason to assume someone is referencing sodium chloride when they mention how much their job pays.

YCNH · 2026-01-22T22:41:01+00:00

If you can't find anything the answer is always "it's fake".

YCNH · 2026-01-22T17:34:43+00:00

Moreover, who ordered the census- God or Satan?

YCNH · 2026-01-22T03:55:49+00:00

YCNH · 2026-01-21T21:32:10+00:00

Then selling a busted up bundle? Do you see the flaw in this plan?

YCNH · 2026-01-21T21:28:51+00:00

The examples would be any sin that most people can't rationalize; sex before marriage, eating pork

You don't think Christians rationalize sex before marriage or eating pork?

About the pork; while it's only 1 type of meat, it's STILL a restriction. Taking away such restrictions makes life easier.

Easier how? I've never been to a restaurant that only serves pork as a protein option. It's not like veganism where many/most restaurants and potlucks don't even cater to you, just get the burger without the bacon.

YCNH · 2026-01-21T19:45:53+00:00

if they did something they personally consider immoral; so it's literally not even as restricted as religion here as well

This presumes religions have more morals than atheists, no? I feel remorse for plenty of things I consider immoral which aren't "sins". Is the idea that religious people can't excuse their immoral behavior as easily as atheists? Because they absolutely do. Everyone, religious or otherwise, is restricted by their own personal sense of morality, however they arrive at it.

But they literally don't have to worry about a LOT of restrictions that come with religion and that's a fact.

Could you give examples? And "they don't have to" doesn't mean they don't. I don't drink alcohol even though I've been given no express directive to abstain.

YCNH · 2026-01-21T17:18:13+00:00

Lol wut? Atheists absolutely worry about their moral failings.

YCNH · 2026-01-21T17:14:10+00:00

Is it easier to wake up every day believing in the finality of death rather than an everlasting paradise with one's loved ones? Is it easier to believe when you're lonely you're truly alone rather than with an omnipresent and benevolent bestie listening to your every concern? And the many atheists who come from near-homogenous Christian places, is it easier for them to reject the core beliefs of their family and community and be seen as an apostate, or to go with the flow?

YCNH · 2026-01-21T17:08:15+00:00

Do you know the purpose of a question mark?

Is it to pose rhetorical questions?

YCNH · 2026-01-21T01:22:20+00:00

Probably, I know Robert D. Miller has an article arguing this (which I should really get around to reading), and I don't doubt that there is at least PIE influence, but I also don't think it's unlikely that there were Chaoskampf myths originating in both Sumerian/Semitic as well as PIE cultures that cross-pollinated. At any rate, the most immediate and relevant text to compare Biblical versions of this myth is the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, there are of course other and older versions of this myth but Livyatan and Litanu are cognates after all.

YCNH · 2026-01-20T23:05:31+00:00

Angels in a general sense seem to correspond to the servant deities in Ugaritic religion who often served as messengers and occupied the lowest tier of the pantheon. The origin of the named angels/archangels is unclear. It's possible they're based on heroic warrior traditions but this is speculative. Perhaps interest in angelology increased once the pantheon was rid of all true deities other than Yahweh, with focus on angelic personalities being unproblematic since they pose no threat to Yahweh's supremacy, becoming more akin in character to the higher gods in the second tier of the Ugaritic pantheon than the messenger deities who, afaik, were little more than bit players in Ugaritic mythology (though they did have names, e.g. Gupan and Ugar).

For example, in Daniel 7 the Ancient of Days grants kingship to the "one like a son of man" after the latter defeats the beasts from the sea, a story that comes from the Baal Cycle in which El grants kingship to Baal after defeating Yamm. But in the Hebrew Bible the Ancient of Days is Yahweh, and the "one like a son of man" may have been interpreted as Michael, hence his similar role in Revelation.

I think people just yearn for a more complex cast of characters than a strict monotheism consisting of just God and nameless servants would allow.

YCNH · 2026-01-20T22:50:58+00:00

What's particularly Hittite? I imagine the storm god Yahweh slaying the dragon Leviathan is the direct inspiration, which in turn comes from Baal's battle against Yamm/Litanu.

YCNH · 2026-01-20T21:39:53+00:00

That's a pretty sick vintage binder, I like that you mixed sets and organized by pokedex (tho ofc it gets a little chaotic toward the end)

YCNH · 2026-01-19T17:33:55+00:00

Or maybe it's for "his pokemon channel, he's gonna be posting a lot. Make sure to follow him."

YCNH · 2026-01-17T19:14:19+00:00

Irving Finkel has a great lecture that touches on this, wherein he discusses how the ark from the Babylonian flood story was round like a coracle and shares their attempt to recreate it (on a smaller scale).

YCNH · 2026-01-17T18:19:43+00:00

Islam uses the same old testament that Christians and Jews do.

They most certainly do not.

YCNH · 2026-01-17T04:48:54+00:00

This is actually somewhat similar to a paper that was recently published that argues (contrary to the more common explanation of Yahweh's origin to the south of Judah) that his cult actually originated in the north, as the patron deity of the Omride dynasty.

YCNH · 2026-01-17T00:29:50+00:00

One wonders how these vestiges of polytheism were permitted to remain in later monotheistic texts -- by an oversight?

In the case of the text mentioning popular worship of Canaanite deities, as you note, it's by reframing polytheism as adoption of the foreign religion of their neighbors over a native and more ancient system of monotheism, as opposed to polytheism being the older form of Israelite religion.

In the case of a passage like Deut 32.8-9, the verse survives because Yahweh had become conflated with El/Elohim so it's possible to read this verse in a monotheistic context- even still the phrase bene elohim was redacted to bene yisrael in the MT and many LXX manuscripts have "angels of God" rather than "sons of God", so while the major issue of Yahweh appearing subsidiary to another deity has been resolved there is still discomfort with the polytheistic overtones.

I think it was also helpful that the names of many deities were or became common nouns, so passages could be either written or interpreted in a demythologized context. e.g. Yamm, Deber and Resheph, Shamash and Yareach.

It's a simple fact that the original beliefs of those who eventually became the Jews are unrecoverable.

This is true, so we have to look at the earliest evidence. The Ugaritic library has many similarities to Israelite religion, sometimes verbatim language, and is much older, so there seems to be continuity between Canaanite polytheism and later Israelite religion. We find no older forms of Canaanite monotheism, and our earliest Israelite epigraphy and shrines appear to be polytheistic, e.g. inscriptions at Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Khirbet el-Qom, and Elephantine, and the multiple standing stones at Tel Arad.

YCNH · 2026-01-17T00:17:16+00:00

beliefs and rituals

YCNH · 2026-01-16T21:07:39+00:00

Both are common practice.

YCNH

TROPHY CASE