toejam wrote:I'm currently reading Mark S. Smith's "The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel", which sounds like a similar kind of thing. Fascinating.
I need to add that book to my wish list too.
I just finished "From Gods to God" and the later chapters were more interesting to me than the earlier chapters. I think the title is a little bit misleading, because it barely touches on the origins of Judaism.
An example might explain best: Isaac sends a servant to find a wife for him among his relatives in Haran. The servant returns with Rebekah, but when Rebekah sees Isaac she fall off her donkey and puts on a veil. The authors show how that scene covers-up various other stories about actual or insinuated infidelity of Rebekah that are alluded to in extra-biblical Jewish writings.
I think this would be more interesting for people who understand Hebrew and have studied Judaism, but even a novice like myself can enjoy the book.
slow-learner wrote:I'm reading a book "From Gods to God" by Avigdor Shinan and Yair Zakovitch (translated by Valerie Zakovitch).
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I think a book like this poisons the well so to speak, for someone new, who does not understand all the credible points of views and opinions from much more credible people.
Tom Holland Persian Fire is fascinating, especially about how Darius won an empire. I would argue that Judaism might have been playing with the idea of one God but it is actually a key result of the marriage of traditions by the rivers of Babylon.
If you want to run an empire, one god is a core component.
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
I find it amusing that the direct connections between Cyrus, Darius, Marathon, Plato, the Jewish exile, the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple, and the fact that the main regional empire at the time had a religion with one god, are not obviously continually made.
Where did the idea of one god come from?
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Clive wrote: I would argue that Judaism might have been playing with the idea of one God but it is actually a key result of the marriage of traditions by the rivers of Babylon.
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You would not argue it well.
Its s fact many traditions were merged during the Babylonian exile.
But you really need to get into why King Josiah had his monotheistic reforms, to understand monotheism.
You also need to understand El and Yahweh were compiled together, long before the exile by some cultures circa 800 BC.
You also need to understand monotheism did not really take hold until 200 - 400 BC despite the reforms made by King Josiah.
The conspicuous monotheism of Zoroaster’s teaching is apparently disturbed by a pronounced dualism: the Wise Lord has an opponent, Ahriman, who embodies the principle of evil, and whose followers, having freely chosen him, also are evil. This ethical dualism is rooted in the Zoroastrian cosmology. He taught that in the beginning there was a meeting of the two spirits, who were free to choose—in the words of the Gāthās—“life or not life.” This original choice gave birth to a good and an evil principle. Corresponding to the former is a Kingdom of Justice and Truth; to the latter, the Kingdom of the Lie (Druj), populated by the daevas, the evil spirits (originally prominent old Indo-Iranian gods). Monotheism, however, prevails over the cosmogonic and ethical dualism because Ahura Mazdā is father of both spirits, who were divided into the two opposed principles only through their choice and decision.
