Creatio Ex Nihilo - Forming Something out of Nothing?

[Mudhammam]

Well, no, that isn't what I meant, but you are certainly free to put it that way if you like! But I'm confused. I thought the authors of the bible were iron-age, myth-making idiots who thought the sky was really a dome of water and that the earth was a giant disc and made up irrational stories about a god to make sense of the world? Now they are philosophizing myth-making idiots who borrow ideas from other cultures? What a promotion! =)

Seriously though, I only meant to suggest that god, as the monotheistic traditions present him as having revealed himself, has this trait.

Ah, you didn't understand; my apologies if i wasn't clear. You seem to think that the Bible makes a declarative statement about the monotheistic deity of later tradition that philosophical arguments, as you say, can be stated so as to be made compatible with. That's probably the lens through which you read the texts. However, the ancient Hebrews didn't dispute that there were other gods for other nations, they just didn't believe that these gods were comparable to their own---Yahweh---who had chosen them. Monotheism was later adapted, the arguments for such being molded by the philosophers, and utilized by the myth-makers whose deity began to appear less anthropomorphic and more of the detached metaphysical monster that the "intellectual theologians" advocate today.

When I said "ancient" I'm pretty much referring to everything prior to the Dark Ages, or about the sixth century. Your Christian monotheism (which the Muslims rightly say isn't really) looks very different from your Jewish monotheism, and your Jewish monotheism looks very different when the Bible is first starting to be written in the 8th century B.C.E. Western philosophy began with Thales in the 6th century and I presume Eastern philosophy slightly predates that (can anyone confirm or deny?).

But no doubt the authors of the Bible were iron age goat-herders who borrowed from other cultures; and they certainly weren't all that philosophical, which is why people have to bend over backwards to explain all the ridiculous tales while feigning respectability for their "arguments"---what they usually only want to discuss.