No Other Gods Before Me?

[Cego_Colher]

Well, every Christian has to cherry-pick, but some don't admit to it. there is a book my boyfriend wants to read. The Year of Living Biblically

I am sure there are a lot of wonderful religious people out there, but we are on an atheist forum and we tend to question people's beliefs. I'm not quite sure everyone is "bashing" though, making fun of probably. I'm not sure where I'm going here, anymore. It's too late for me, but the book looks interesting. I'm going to stop rambling, apologizes.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

@Skeptisma

Judaism was not monotheistic until well after the alleged exodus.IE it was NOT monotheistic when Moses or whoever stole many of the commandments from the Hammurabic code.


An easy way to upset a fundy: look at the implications of the statement "--- I am a jealous god". You'll be told,in essence that the Bible means what it says except when it doesn't and this is one of the times it doesn't.

The Bible describes Yahweh as the one true God who delivered Israel from Egypt and gave the Ten Commandments: "Then God spoke all these words. He said, ‘I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you lived as slaves. You shall have no other gods to rival me.’”[2] Yahweh revealed himself to Israel as a jealous God who would not permit his people to make idols or follow gods of other nations[3] or worship gods known by other names, "I am Yahweh, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, or my praise to idols."[4] Yahweh demanded the role of the one true God in the hearts and minds of Israel, "Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is one: and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might."[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

PS: there is no evidence the Jews were slaves in Egypt,nor in fact that Egypt was slave based society such as Rome. Public works in Egypt were almost certainly built by levied labour.

[Minimalist]

It doesn't sound any less absurd in another language, you know?

[Tiberius]

PS: there is no evidence the Jews were slaves in Egypt,nor in fact that Egypt was slave based society such as Rome. Public works in Egypt were almost certainly built by levied labour.

Indeed, there is more evidence that the workers made substantial demands to the Pharoahs for more money when times were tough. They also spent a lot of their time carving their own tombs, some of which are more lavishly decorated than the Pharoahs'.

[Skeptisma]

PS: there is no evidence the Jews were slaves in Egypt,nor in fact that Egypt was slave based society such as Rome. Public works in Egypt were almost certainly built by levied labour.

I totally agree. Not only that, however, but the Egyptians were very astute with keeping records of nearly everything that went on in their territories. It is quite baffling to think they would have left out something so grand as an exodus of thousands of people. Of course, theists claim that the reason the Egyptians did not keep an account of this was that they were embarrassed.

Sigh.

[Quest of knowledge]

Judaism was not monotheistic until well after the alleged exodus.IE it was NOT monotheistic when Moses or whoever stole many of the commandments from the Hammurabic code.

As I stated earlier, the whole Judaic religion was born in Babylon. The Babylonians brought the religion well packaged to create acceptance amongst the Palestinians (Philistines) who converted to it. It had the double effect of also making the converted Palestinians (who called themselves Jews) fight against the non-converted Palestinians for the benefit of the Babylonians. The converted Palestinians now believed that their mythological forefather Abraham was born in Ur, Babylon (modern day Iraq). That meant to them that the Babylonians were related to them and that the rest of their own people (Philistines) were really their enemies.
The Torah was written in Aramaic, the language spoken by the Babylonians. That language is still spoken by the Assyrians and Kaldanis (Caldeans in the Bible) of Iraq. Of course, the Hammurabic code, which was Babylonian, was an integral part of the philosophy of that religion, which included the “eye for an eye" system of justice.

[Minimalist]

The Torah was written in Aramaic

The earliest example of the torah for which we have any fragments is written in Greek. Which is not to say that it did not exist as an oral tale before the Greeks wrote it down.

Who started the idea is relatively unimportant. Where it matured (with all the David and Solomon shit) was under the Hasmonean kingdom in the late 2d century.