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Were Hebrews/Jews originally pagan? If so what were there gods?

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    #16
    Re: Were Hebrews/Jews originally pagan? If so what were there gods?

    I've read the arguments that the Hebrews, like their other semitic cousins, were initially polytheists. The Caananite El is direct cognate to one of the common Hebrew names for God, and the Hebrews clearly were once accustomed to worshiping Asherah, or "The Queen of Heaven".

    The Christian and Jewish story is that these traditions were borrowed from foreign peoples, yet we know from linguistics that many of these "foreign" peoples came from a very similar cultural background, and even had similar religious terminology. At some point in recent history, they had ancestors in common. So maybe they weren't so "foreign" after all. It doesn't seem that their Gods were perceived as foreign either; Why would there be so many people who thought it was alright to worship Yahweh along with other deities, unless this had been going on for some time before monotheism was implemented?

    In Jeremiah 44, the Hebrews even say that they and "their fathers" used to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and then they were forced to stop. This sounds less like Hebrews adopting trendy new Gods from foreigners (as the Christians would have it) and more like an ancient and deeply rooted tradition.
    If you want to be thought intelligent, just agree with everyone.

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      #17
      Re: Were Hebrews/Jews originally pagan? If so what were there gods?

      Originally posted by spartacandream View Post
      I don't dispute that for the hebrews, but for the phoenicians it was a little bit different. Kind of like how Anat is the wife of Hadad for the phoenicians, but not the wife of Adad for the Assyrians, but instead Anu.
      Ah! I see where you're coming from now.

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        #18
        Re: Were Hebrews/Jews originally pagan? If so what were there gods?

        As many posters have said, there is a lot of scholarship out there about how Hebrew religion might have been born from polytheism. The Pulitzer Prize winning book God: A Biography written by an ex-Jesuit gives some credence to this and points out a theory held by many theologians: the Elohist/Yahweist distinction. Certain works of the Hebrew scriptures primarily refer to God as Elohim (which is in the plural) and others as the four letter name of God that gets turned into Yahweh and eventually (in Latin) Jehovah. The interesting thing is that the books that refer to God as Elohim primarily and the books that primarily employ the four letter name of God are markedly distinct and seem to show two concepts of God (or perhaps two different gods) that have been merged together over time. God: A Biography also shows how the serpent in Eden could be a rival god such as the dragon of the waters in Mesopotamian myth. The serpent is never identified as Satan (Ha-satan, simply: the adversary or the accuser in Hebrew) in Genesis. Ever. It's a later interpretation. It seems that Jewish writings made a distinction between Ha-satan as mentioned in Job, for example, and the serpent of Eden.

        Overall I think it is very likely that the Hebrews were henotheists who adopted a warrior or father god as a primary focus of worship and it was gradually turned into a strictly monotheistic view.

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