God Yahweh Allah was a volcano.

[Hannah]

You're asking me why fiction contains elements of fiction? God was omnipresent in the very first words of the bible, if you choose to believe it as a literal creation epic. He was at least powerful over every aspect of the lives of believers, if you choose to interpret it as a metaphor. By the time Exodus became a narrative, people already believed in the God of Exodus. They had for a very very long time.

These are all facts Hannah, and had you clicked on a single link that many of us have attached, you would already know this. Don't argue with me, argue with the evidence.

Had you read all my comments then you would know I believe Genesis is entirely fabricated to fit the story, make Yahweh omnipresent and give a happy ancestral past to a bunch of gypsy-type vagabonds. It packaged everything up. The Books of Moses all being written at the same time allows for fact to be weaved into fiction very neatly. Genesis is like an introduction and, like all introductions, was written restrospectively. If I'm wrong then how come Yahweh goes from being omnipresent in the first book of the Bible to not omnipresent in the second? The Books of Moses will have been written around the time of the Exodus and the journey to Israel, by which time Yahweh HAD to become omnipresent because there are no volcanoes there. Yahweh starts off omnipresent in the Bible, becomes site specific in the early OT and then becomes omnipresent again later on. Yahweh in the early Bible, after Genesis, is described as the god who brought Israel out of Egypt and that gave them the law. He is not described as a loving or forgiving god. In the early OT, he is to be honoured because of what he did for them.....in their minds rescued them from Egypt. He materialised while they were in Egypt and just before they left. They only started to worship him when they stood in front of him and Moses got the law from him...supposedly. That is when the deal was struck.

If you only answer one question...answer this one. If the Hebrews had been worshipping Yahweh for ages and ages before the supposed Exodus date, why is it that the Bible states Moses asked him what his name was on Mt Sinai? If Judaism started prior to this moment, whether it be ficticious or not, why set the starting point at this moment? They may have been influenced by previous 'pagan' gods prior to coming together and arriving at 'the most high' but none of those previous gods were Yahweh and all of them were wiped out by the worship of Yahweh.