RE: God Yahweh Allah was a volcano.
July 30, 2011 at 10:38 am
(This post was last modified: July 30, 2011 at 10:43 am by Hannah.)
Oh dear....I seem to be spending more time justifying my right to make my claim than people seem to be spending on assessing its validity. I'm not an expert and I'm sure most of you will have more knowledge than do I, but I have this hunch so please bare with me.
Ok...so imagine the Bible was completely ficticious and should not be used to determine any historical events. Fine. We don't need it to do that. Our aim is to establish whether or not Yahweh is real. The best thing we can get from the Bible is a look inside the heads of the people who inspired its stories to determine whether it was potentially divine or meerly supersticious.
When you read Exodus (plus other verses throughout the Bible) you realise it was the mountain of god that first got them started. As you read it, with their naivity in mind, you see that they didn't realise what they were looking at. They describe it but they never use its name. It was way outside of their mental vocabulary. This thing was so profound it inspired a revolutionary religion to be established and the people who followed it lived very differently to the people who did not. It instilled a sense of fear like no other god, it gave the impression of being all-powerful and all-knowing (omni-present came later), it's wrath was visible daily, its dissenter could be seen being devoured by fire, it raged and fumed and talk of the lake of fire created meekness like never before. Animals were sacrficed to the devouring fire in front of the congregation. Compare that to the sacrifice of animals (and sometimes babies....Molak) in manmade fires of the pagans. It doesn't compare. The tabernacle was, I believe, positioned over a lava river/vent and only Moses could enter the 'Holy of Holiests' and came out flushed red.
The thing is, if it was all completely made up it still exposes the authors' belief that there could be something divine about a volcano and its vents and gas leaks. The Bible paints the picture of people who believed in lots of pagan gods and performed different practices but who came together when they worshipped the volcano.
The timings, the places, the names, etc, are not important. Getting into their minds is.
Ok...so imagine the Bible was completely ficticious and should not be used to determine any historical events. Fine. We don't need it to do that. Our aim is to establish whether or not Yahweh is real. The best thing we can get from the Bible is a look inside the heads of the people who inspired its stories to determine whether it was potentially divine or meerly supersticious.
When you read Exodus (plus other verses throughout the Bible) you realise it was the mountain of god that first got them started. As you read it, with their naivity in mind, you see that they didn't realise what they were looking at. They describe it but they never use its name. It was way outside of their mental vocabulary. This thing was so profound it inspired a revolutionary religion to be established and the people who followed it lived very differently to the people who did not. It instilled a sense of fear like no other god, it gave the impression of being all-powerful and all-knowing (omni-present came later), it's wrath was visible daily, its dissenter could be seen being devoured by fire, it raged and fumed and talk of the lake of fire created meekness like never before. Animals were sacrficed to the devouring fire in front of the congregation. Compare that to the sacrifice of animals (and sometimes babies....Molak) in manmade fires of the pagans. It doesn't compare. The tabernacle was, I believe, positioned over a lava river/vent and only Moses could enter the 'Holy of Holiests' and came out flushed red.
The thing is, if it was all completely made up it still exposes the authors' belief that there could be something divine about a volcano and its vents and gas leaks. The Bible paints the picture of people who believed in lots of pagan gods and performed different practices but who came together when they worshipped the volcano.
The timings, the places, the names, etc, are not important. Getting into their minds is.
