Here we go ...

[arewethereyet]

DUH! There's a revelation.

[Justin Case]

And your point, if you have one?

People live in a delusion.

[arewethereyet]

And your point, if you have one?

People live in a delusion.

Not all people.

[The Grand Nudger]

People don't and have never needed to copy gods to believe in gods. Gods are just one of many examples of multiple independent construction. The abrahamic god arose from a yahwist cult.

[Nay_Sayer]

I was hoping for more ghost stories.

I have a good one if the op doesn't deliver

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

So much for akenaten being that one man.  Would you like to offer another candidate or is this done?

You can argue with the scholars ... it was the first version of monotheism - it replaced the polytheism in Egypt - yes. it pissed the people off but there was nothing they could do until he was dead. A bigger connection is tied to the Zoroastrians and Zarathustra's "experience" that started this much deeper picture.

There's no way around it ... the Hebrew GOD was a copy of a copy.

There are fairly strong and well-reasoned arguments among Egyptologists that Atenism was closer to henotheism than to monotheism.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

IMO, the reason that people have believed in the idea that atenism and judaism were related is down to it presenting narrative continuity with magic book. Magic book asserts that judaism was shaped, somehow, by egypt. Trouble is, that never happened.

We could, if we wanted to, assume that atenism was monotheism and that the hebrew god is a copy of a copy..but even if those two things were true, it's still the case that the early yahwists were completely unaware of atenism and centuries removed from it. So removed..case in point, they got their entire picture of egypt and their history with it fundamentally wrong in magic book.

If, in fact, atenism is monotheism and yahwism is monotheism, then just as independent examples of the set they demonstrate your thesis wrong. Do you still think that correcting innaccurate views is important Justin?

[Justin Case]

People don't and have never needed to copy gods to believe in gods.  Gods are just one of many examples of multiple independent construction.  The abrahamic god arose from a yahwist cult.

The idea is, these gods (plural) or god (singular) do not exist. They were an interpretational explanation of either something that exists that they didn't understand, or, the ENTIRE picture is made up. If you look at the Egyptian and Sumerian afterlife picture, they were both different explanations. Was the idea of the afterlife right to start with, and these explanation were all made up? We come from thousands of years of natural hallucinogenic drug use, and what these people saw while tripping could be the foundational picture behind everything talked about. Then too, between studies on NDEs (as long as they were shown to be flat line brain dead) and the subject we call the paranormal, there definitely seems to be SOMETHING going on, and the "GOD" idea was just an ancient interpretation of this known about picture.

[Justin Case]

IMO, the reason that people have believed in the idea that atenism and judaism were related is down to it presenting narrative continuity with magic book.  Magic book asserts that judaism was shaped, somehow, by egypt.  Trouble is, that never happened.

We could, if we wanted to, assume that atenism was monotheism and that the hebrew god is a copy of a copy..but even if those two things were true, it's still the case that the early yahwists were completely unaware of atenism and centuries removed from it.  So removed..case in point, they got their entire picture of egypt and their history with it fundamentally wrong in magic book.

If, in fact, atenism is monotheism and yahwism is monotheism, then just as independent examples of the set they demonstrate your thesis wrong.  Do you still think that correcting innaccurate views is important Justin?

Atenism was only the start. It was the later Zoroastrian religion that had the influence on the Semites. Yes, the dating issue is a problem, but as said, even the Zoroastrian end times information wound up in the Jewish religion.

[The Grand Nudger]

Dating isn't your problem, it's just another thing you get wrong. Your problem is that your claim is both internally incoherent and demonstrably wrong.

As for z syncretism, that's a much better claim on it's own - but it doesn't help your claim even if true, just like the rest. It may actually be the case that judaism came to be monotheistic due to it's influence, but they already had their own god to add those syncretic elements to. OFC, that influence would have had a hell of a lag, as..again, judaism as we know it arose around 150bc - when the local potentates broke free of direct hellenistic control.