Big fan of what you guys are doing. One request/complaint: could you please add citations for the scholars you mention. I had to scrub through this a dozen times looking for complete names and picking up the twenty dollar words in the titles of some of those papers. Great strategy to get people to rewatch the video though 😅. Anyway, so much great information I wanted more, citations would be helpful. Thank you!
Well, this was great. First time watching y'all, very glad I did. This is basically where I've ended up, much to my surprise, even though I got there through close reading of different texts than any of the individual ones brought up here. I'm really glad to find out that there are modern scholars who've come to the same realizations. Glad to see what else your channel holds. Oh, and if there's any way y'all could link to some of those papers or people you mentioned, that'd be rad, i don't see them in the description.
Shinto is the living proof of that. They often say that there's a god for everything you can think of, including companies, mountains, locations, trees, etc.
Kudos to your effort to make this work "accessible." I also work in genomics and there is no way the general public will ever accept the facts and discoveries, eg, covid. In fact, wider communications of new knowledge in biology creates immediate hostile attacks and backlash. Oh well.. Good work for you folks.
52:10. If you watch carefully, the Prince of Egypt does NOT show the magicians turning their staffs into snakes. There is a flash of light, and then they are holding snakes, implying it was just a trick. This is even more obvious with the plague of blood. They just put some red colored material into a bowl of water. Even though the original text says they could reproduce the same effects as Moses and Aaron, the movie is even more monotheistic, portraying the Egyptians as just using slieght of hand
And this is the way it was taught to me even before that movie came out. The Egyptian prophets were portrayed as illusionists and charlatans... And if there were real "miracles" it was the demons that have very limited spiritual powers
Are you familiar with the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky? In his book Behave he goes a bit into monotheistic and polytheistic societies. You might find it interesting.
Towards the end they discuss this a bit, about how “monotheists” look down on polytheists, consider their gods false and imaginary, often tinged with racism.
Interesting how English speaking Muslims have reclaimed the word monotheism to translate _tawhid_ considering that it was used to exclude them at one time.
Intriguing discussion. I would argue one way for critical scholars to stem both the scholarly and popular assumptions regarding monotheism (of whatever faith) is to stop referrring to 'God' and call the specific deity by the name they are called in the text. 'God' is a common noun that has become a sort of false proper noun within the monotheistic faiths. For millions of Xians (in the world I grew up in), God and Jesus are used interchangeably. This use of the word 'god' allows apologists, scholars, and lay readers alike to avoid the polytheistic nature of their belief. Say YHWH when the deity is called this. Name the god, don't use the term god as a proper noun. The internal contradictions within a faith like Xianity then become much more obvious. Imagine reciting the Apostle's Creed with proper nouns instead of common nouns. "I believe in YHWH, and in YHWH's son, Yeshua, etc..." The trinity magic looses its magic with proper nouns.
In regard to Gen.31:53 it's not even ambiguous as far as context. The verb 'judge' in Hebrew is plural so both their gods judge between them and in the LXX they changed it to a singular verb precisely because of this problem. Even in the larger context we know that Laban was a polytheist. And in Ex.6 we know that Abraham did not worship El Shaddai let alone by the name YHWH - he and his family worshiped other 'gods' on the other side of the Euphrates - see Ex.6 and Joshua 24:1-2 and 14-15.
Monotheism is an ethical stance, not really an ontological stance. It considers that all humanity should be under the rule of one God, and this will make their ethics correct. This is what monotheism meant to "the Unitarians", and it is why the dictionary provided that definition. The Unitarians simply consider that the God of any religion that aspires to universal morality is the same entity as the monotheistic God. That's what monotheism means today, and in this context, Judaism and early Christianity were monotheistic, even though their metaphysics wasn't the same as modern monotheism. Hinduism is monotheistic in this sense also.
For me, Monotheistic does not mean there are no other gods, it just means I serve/worship only one, and I believe my God to be the original Creator, the one who spoke the Universe into being.
it doesn't make sense to say that your God is the creator of everything, and then also believeing that there are other Gods. if anything, other Gods are lower beings, such as demons, or they don't exist.
@@pikapi6993 Not really. Most, if not all, polytheistic religions have a hierarchy of gods; the title of 'god' does not mean every god has the same power.
@@winnebagotrout1997 which god in polytheism is the creator of everything that exists? Polytheist gods have hierarchies, but nall of them share different powers. There is no almighty, omnipotent, all knowing god in paganism, but each has its own role. This is absent in Monotheism. Only one God who has it all. So how can any other being be compared to him?
@@pikapi6993 Incorrect. In Platonic cosmology, and in the religious movements that sprouted from it (e.g. Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, both extremely popular belief systems in the Roman empire), there is one creator god who is both omnipotent and transcendent, and creates lesser gods and the world. Other polytheistic religions have comparable beliefs about a creator god, but I would have to do some research before I can talk about those.
In the story Terah, Nahor and Abram lived in Ur, the god of Ur was Suen (Moon, Wisdom). the three men traveled and two lived on in Haran, whose patron god is the same god. BTW this is the same god as Nabonidus, the last Babylonian ruler. When Abram leaves Haran to wander in Canaan, outside of the cities the high god is ‘El, the most high (let’s not get into detail about what this is because it meant different things to different people). But the general meaning is that he was the father of the gods and head of the divine council. So if you understand the history of Mesopotamia as some Yehud would come to learn, you would have to leave the phraseology ambiguous. But there is a deeper problem. Nabonidus went to Arabia with a secret intent to learn the wisdom of the sages in a place with Jewish sages, but he does not come out Arabia saying flow Yahweh, or Ea but follow Suen. So either he is conflating the wisdom gods, or the people who are teaching the wisdoms don’t think the distinction is all that important. The DSS folks in Qumran appear to be aware of this, since they have a poem about Nabonidus that is apparently derived for the book of Daniel. So this story was known about.
@@Agryphos why? If you believe that your God is the creator of everything, it means that other Gods aren't actually Gods, but some other type of lower beings. Or they don't exist.
@@pikapi6993 That would be a misunderstanding of how they used the term elohim - you just failed the whole point of this discussion. If elohim could only have been used of the Creator God (your - 'actually God') then the whole OT is full of your standard.
I would like to give my alternative take on this, when it comes to wisdom in these ancient literatures there is no single isolated strand in the ancient near East. We can argue maybe Mages are different from Sages, but in the context of Mesopotamia and Canaan, these wisdoms of the sages are all kind of muddled together. And let me make this clear how this came to be. During the dynastic period, there are two major wisdom cults, Ea-ism and Suen-Ism. But the rise of at least self-promoting god wannabes like Shulgi and Naram-Sin and these dynastic disasters that followed sent at least some of these sages packing. We see this inferred by the legends of the Apkallu as coming from the Red Sea or in different stories the Mediterranean. We know the sages were in Yehudah , because its major settlement was originally named Beit Lahmi according to the Egyptians this name persisted until the late Bronze Age collapse. So it’s not surprising at all the Genesis has so many stories that were originally about Ea. But more than that, I think that Yathrib region that Nabonidus spent his decade in is the region near the Red Sea that the Apkallu legends are referring to. This appears to be a place where sages of different wisdom cults hung out and exchanged ideas. Yahweh was big in Yathrib, Suen the next town over. It would be kind of like Greek philosophy before the Greeks. When we look at the Hebrew Bible we need to understand that it is not a single perspective. Ideas that seem brilliant in one text look silly in the next. Our first glimpse of what people thought was Deuteronomistic texts, which today seem highly legendary, but for 1400 years these are the only text that preserved at least some portion of the history. And we see that while Judges got the context wrong, it was capturing the atmosphere of the LBAC. In first Samuel waxing romantically about the ‘god’ of the early judges which we now understand was completely polytheistic. It’s not just the archaeology, it’s because we now know what certain proper names mean, the polytheism is encoded in the text itself, veiled but for only the most studied to see. And I think that was the intent. Many people say these are fictions, and there is that component, but with fiction you don’t need to try to hide the inconvenient, you can just use proper names that support your theology. What it was is that the magick of the early Iron Age was popular in the late second temple period, we see this in Jeremiah’s discussion of the Queen of Heaven. As a consequence you cannot throw out a popular song, saying or story, so you try to recontextualize it such that it supports your god. At the pinnacle of this refactoring Deborah from bethel, but actually it’s Luz, which is also a nickname for Asherah, sits beneath a palm tree and judges. The Asherah pole of Luz, at least one variant looks surprisingly like a menorah. Samuel was handed to Eli, who has a son with an ‘El theophoric, follows Yahweh, but there’s no evidence of Yahweh in Israel at this time, the Ark of the Covenent, which is supposed to be a magick item of Yahweh, disappears about the time items to El and Asherah are professed to be thrown out of the temple. God is what powerful priests and kings wanted it to be, this was true in Mesopotamia starting with Lugal Zagasi, Sargon booted An from his temple and replaced him with Ishtar, Nathan-Sin declared himself god, Nehemiah began the great purges and Yosiah went to Luz (Bethel) and destroyed the alters. Indeed he destroyed alters in Judea to Yahweh, probably an impetus was they had adjacent standing stones to Asherah. But more importantly it was a way of concentrating political and theological power in Jerusalem. And so we see the reason why the Yahwist of the pre-exilic period had to veil their history, if not there god appears to be a recent invention which they are just using to usurp power, so you edit Yahweh into the history. But I want for a moment deal with a tangential issue, why is the Bible the way it is. One step back and we have individuals book that we think associate with Israel, but how could such a text get so many details wrong, and yet the people don’t seem to protest (actually Job is kind of a protest, but that’s in the wisdom literature, not meant to be historical). First off, there were no histories and when it came to gods, supernatural embellishments were just a part of the language of describing natural events. It’s just like certain Christian’s say praise god when something happens that pleases them. You want to say something that makes your favorite god seem special, unique, or able (powerful). In the same ways kings want to promote themselves, they took on the great army, and they soundly defeated them to the last man (but didn’t). It’s done in the same way the US generals were telling the leaders that we were winning in 1960s Vietnam. If you find two accounts then you find different stories. In the Bible there are at least two accounts, those from the northern kingdom’s perspective and those from Judea’s perspective. But these common ways historiological events are portrayed does not make the Hebrew Bible what it is. When we look at the refined perspectives in the Hebrew Bible we need to look at the work of Jonathon Adler and Israel Finkelstein. Together they paint a picture of a rather isolated and insular monoaltristic cult living largely on the temple mound (prior to Herod). This particular cult was being funded by the Persians essentially to restore their past, elements that they did not understand in their context or lost. So that they fashioned what they had into a story attempting to preserve as much as they could (but at the same time losing the source texts). Again because this is a small insular environment, there are not a whole bunch of scribes and history critics running around to question them. In the period that followed the knowledge of the text increase because of the falling of the Hellenistic world and the rise of the Maccabeans who forcibly converted bunches of people. And so now we have a remote insular text as part of the definition pieces for a widely practiced “religion” that was not elective.
Good show. The myth of monotheism feeds the myth of the trinity, forcing the monotheists to put Jesus, a legitimate God, somewhere within that one God of monotheism.
@@sentientflower7891 I assume they mean anything that would qualify as a god but for any social conceits which seek to define away godhood through semantic silliness i.e. angels, saints, particularly robust forms of ancestor veneration etc. Though, given their capitalization of "God", anything is possible.
@@sentientflower7891 a legitimate God/god is one who actually does what a God/god does, but only in a relative, limited sense, and is referred to in the Scriptures as "theos" or "elohim." The Greek word "theos" means "placer." Jesus is truly a "placer" (John 20:28), as is the Adversary, aka Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4, the god of this eon). Paul even calls the bowels a god "theos" in Philippians 3:19. And he says, "there are those being termed gods, whether in heaven or on earth, even as there are many gods and many lords" (1 Cor. 8:6). Though all of these are legitimate Gods/gods (Placers/placers), none are "the only true God" the Father of Jesus. He alone is the absolute source of all placing in His creation, the One out of Whom all is (Romans 11:36).
34:00 When you talked about preserving the ambiguity, you kind of half-laughed as if that was a bad thing. But, why would that be? If the text is ambiguous, why not translate it as ambiguous?
But isn’t odd Paul does not use proper nouns, like Adonai, Elohim he uses the word Father. If I where to put this in an 8th century BCE context this would be ‘El, though I don’t think Paul is referring to this, but if it was, we know ‘El to be a separate god from Yahweh and El was widely known to have a wife and sons, and Urushalim was named after one of the sons, let’s take a look at what Paul says in 1 cor 8, Paul is using a language for god that is familiar to pagan Theos ho Pater, let’s look up the Etmology of Jupiter, Djeus Pater, “sky father” of Heavenly Father, But cross cultural the Djeus means to shine, either referring to the sun in the day or stars at night, this is the original meaning of the word theos. In the global context this literally can refer to a whole collection of syncretic gods starting with An and proceeding with El, Shamesh, and Suen but also including Ouranos, Cronos and Zeus as well as Lucifer (which early Christian’s equated with Jesus)., So why does Paul not refer to Theos ho Pater more explicitly in the Jewish context? Why do Christian’s in their text avoid the explicit identification of the Jewish god? If the text we’re referring to their god by different proper names that is ambiguous, but they are uniformly using the word father in an almost Unitarian manner.
Here we go again. Everything being defined by how it is used. I agree with Dan Beecher. The word monotheism seems as simple as it gets for a word. Belief in one god. It shouldn't have anything to do with any characteristics. Belief in there only being one god and that god only being in control of rain would be monotheism. It's too bad all this scholarly work has to be done in a way that is defined by attempting to correct that which has been imposed. It shouldn't have to be apologetic to the imposition. There needs to be a word for the concept of the ultimate God. What is the taxonomic value of the concept? I would say the ultimate God concept transcends taxonomy. There is a difference between the ultimate God concept and the "my God is the most powerful of all gods" and my God is defined by text or religious authority. There is no getting around the ultimate God concept. The ultimate God who wants something to exist is the only concept that secures existence. Belief in such a God revolves around the desire to exist or not cease to exist. Appeasing the ultimate God? Getting in on its good side? Doing everything one can to get the God to want one to exist? Behaving in a manner where the God is going to be nice? Petitioning the God to help one vanquish one's enemy? Determining the criteria that makes all of it possible? Now we're talking belief taxonomy? Systemic belief? Insisting the God has the criteria in this text? The God is speaking through that guy over there? These are all things separate from the concept or belief in the concept. No. The belief in an ultimate God does not have to result in such things. Like everything else, it can certainly be used for such things. I would argue that applying systemic belief to belief in the ultimate God is nonsense. Once one starts applying attributes to the ultimate God, not defined by text or systemic belief, the God is beyond measure. That simple fact whisks away relativity. There is no measure. Take away measure and systemic belief simply doesn't equate. Here's the way it works with the ultimate God concept... If we found ourselves knowing a god or gods, living in their realm, and they posed any threat to us, be it temporal or ceasing to exist.... some of us would believe in a better god or gods and be looking to those god or gods. So we might as well skip the formalities and believe in the best God we can believe in. If being the best we can think of is the criteria, then I don't see where systemic belief gets a foot in the door.
@@rainbowkrampus I said what I said. It's still right there. You are the one negotiating with the text to suit your purposes. We are all defining per our particular use case. And yes, I am an advocate of defining per our own use case instead of those dictated to us by an authoritative source per it's "group" use case, which is what they are referring to. I am in total agreement with them. Belief systems designed for group identity. I'm not a fan of sectarian ideology. I'm a pluralist who is more into individuals cooperating with other individuals instead of sectioning off in competing groups. It's not just a view that applies to spirituality and religion. It also applies to social structure.
@@schen7913 You people eaten up by agenda are comical. It has nothing to do with anything I want. Simply addressing the ultimate God concept. You want to make a religion out of it, go ahead. 🤣
I think autonomous natural forces secure existence just fine and things don't exist just because we can imagine them. Yeah, we can imagine a maximally perfect or ultimate God, and we can even say such a God would have to really exist (even be the root of existence itself) to be truly ultimate. That still doesn't make it real. Naturalism has been the most reliable position for understanding the world; that's why it's a part of nearly every academic field outside of theology.
Monotheism is an advance over previous stances on the divine, because it means that the people you battle in war or capture, or enslave, aren't "others" but the sons/daughters of the same God. This is the evolutionary advance that monotheism makes, that you don't value others lives less because they are a different clan, or a different ethnicity, they are all part of one entity.
@@annaclarafenyo8185Nah. The theology of black inferiority and their employment as slaves shows that under monotheism, you can value others' lives less. You just need to establish a "place" and "reason" for them to die. Non-Christians still go to hell; if they refuse to convert, they may need to be mistreated to "teach" them to convert.
I don’t think you guys understand God. There’s not more than one divine. Other than the divine everything else is created and has a span. People can choose not to believe that, and they can say gods, but it’s meaningless if they use the word incorrectly.
@@huttj509 no i diddent say that,...Thor is real,...(Thunder) You can hear it some times, in bad weather...Loke hmmm no, maby there is someone who called themselves academic scholars of North mythology, i never heard of it,. But this is one way of many to try to know what was happening at a time whit no written words,...
Dan’s motto seems to be ‘I know what I know’ if you know what I mean. Perhaps it’s not his fault that Islam and monotheism wasn’t in 18th century dictionaries.
On how "Monotheism" should be easy to define: They struggle with "Atheism" too. A - Without Theism - Belief in a deity Yet, somehow they convince themselves that it means "Antitheism" or belief that there is no God and they'll argue with you for an hour over how we're trying to change the definition. No! You guys have ALWAYS been wrong.
You do realize the meaning of words can change over time. Sometimes, it just happens. Sometimes, it's because people didn't understand the original meaning or it changed with purpose. I'm not really sure I understand what exactly what you are trying to portray. This is why you will see multiple definitions. So, what are you saying these "athiest" are saying exactly? Or are you talking about Dan?
Well, there is a question here about what people have believed at various times, but I don’t think you can actually sweep Urmonotheism (Wilhelm Schmidt) under the carpet and claim that no one believed it until 200 CE. In Islam, it’s the ‘primordial religion,’ or the religion of the human without social conditioning (fitra).
@joefilter2923 I don't know a huge deal about Islam (just the basics.) So, you are saying there is an idea in the texts (in Islam?...) is that there is this basic idea about Elohim (or whichever name you use) that gets corrupted by huma s?
I'm with you but as Dan likes to point out, there is no such thing as "the" definition of words. The actual definition of the word is the use the speaker is applying. Just like your use of the word "they". I know it is defined by those who do what you said they do. I pull up theist in most of the dictionaries and I'm going to see multiple definitions. The best thing to do is determine at the onset the definition being applied by the speaker and make it clear I am applying a different definition. Which definition is the official definition doesn't have to be an issue. The person speaking could be applying theist 1 and I'm applying theist 2. If we want to talk about the same thing, we have to choose one or the other or we could talk about both. The classic example is someone referring to a fertilized egg as a baby, while speaking to someone who thinks it's insane to refer to a fertilized egg as a baby. The two people are obviously not talking about the same thing. Same with God in the Christian world. Some believe that God tortures people for eternity in a burning lake of fire. Others believe such a thing is insane. The notion they are talking about the same God is absurd. Definitely not the same God.
Big fan of what you guys are doing.
One request/complaint: could you please add citations for the scholars you mention. I had to scrub through this a dozen times looking for complete names and picking up the twenty dollar words in the titles of some of those papers. Great strategy to get people to rewatch the video though 😅.
Anyway, so much great information I wanted more, citations would be helpful.
Thank you!
I just finished Prof. Christine Hayes’ lecture series on the Hebrew Bible and she also does a great job covering this topic and the complexities of it
is it still up to date though? i wanted to watch it but 11 years is a lot of time in scholarship
As an agnostic who flirts with both Christianity and polytheism, I found this discussion incredibly fascinating. So glad I found your podcast.
Well, this was great. First time watching y'all, very glad I did.
This is basically where I've ended up, much to my surprise, even though I got there through close reading of different texts than any of the individual ones brought up here. I'm really glad to find out that there are modern scholars who've come to the same realizations. Glad to see what else your channel holds.
Oh, and if there's any way y'all could link to some of those papers or people you mentioned, that'd be rad, i don't see them in the description.
This was more exciting than usual. Great guest.
Hahahahaha
Just found this podcast. Been binging it! So glad there is a back catalog of episodes to go through. Great stuff.
Thank you all. This was wonderful. I just love the scholarship on these subjects.
The fun part about gods is that the concept is so poorly defined that it can point to just about anything.
Shinto is the living proof of that. They often say that there's a god for everything you can think of, including companies, mountains, locations, trees, etc.
Wow, what an episode!
Excited to see these papers published! Sounds fascinating! Let us know!
Thank you for such an amazing episode. This has been my favorite so far.
I’m from RI and I’m so bummed I missed out on this. I wish I could have seen this conference!
Imma need that Dr Emma's paper "pantheon polemics and intellectual pressures " I didnt catch her last name because it does explains a lot
How did I not discover this channel earlier doc?? I never would have imagined you had another channel
Interesting, thank you.
Kudos to your effort to make this work "accessible." I also work in genomics and there is no way the general public will ever accept the facts and discoveries, eg, covid. In fact, wider communications of new knowledge in biology creates immediate hostile attacks and backlash. Oh well..
Good work for you folks.
Anyone who had read Unseen Realm of Michael Heiser would not be surprise by this podcast
Where can i find Deborah scoggin's paper?
52:10. If you watch carefully, the Prince of Egypt does NOT show the magicians turning their staffs into snakes. There is a flash of light, and then they are holding snakes, implying it was just a trick. This is even more obvious with the plague of blood. They just put some red colored material into a bowl of water. Even though the original text says they could reproduce the same effects as Moses and Aaron, the movie is even more monotheistic, portraying the Egyptians as just using slieght of hand
And this is the way it was taught to me even before that movie came out. The Egyptian prophets were portrayed as illusionists and charlatans... And if there were real "miracles" it was the demons that have very limited spiritual powers
How do we get the recording of the conference?
Are you familiar with the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky? In his book Behave he goes a bit into monotheistic and polytheistic societies. You might find it interesting.
Is it going to be a continued trend to move parts of the broadcast show to Patreon only content?
I don't know where the patron page is.
I'm not sure what a "value judgement" is in regards to the word "monotheism". Does Dan explain what he means somewhere?
Towards the end they discuss this a bit, about how “monotheists” look down on polytheists, consider their gods false and imaginary, often tinged with racism.
Interesting how English speaking Muslims have reclaimed the word monotheism to translate _tawhid_ considering that it was used to exclude them at one time.
Intriguing discussion. I would argue one way for critical scholars to stem both the scholarly and popular assumptions regarding monotheism (of whatever faith) is to stop referrring to 'God' and call the specific deity by the name they are called in the text. 'God' is a common noun that has become a sort of false proper noun within the monotheistic faiths. For millions of Xians (in the world I grew up in), God and Jesus are used interchangeably. This use of the word 'god' allows apologists, scholars, and lay readers alike to avoid the polytheistic nature of their belief. Say YHWH when the deity is called this. Name the god, don't use the term god as a proper noun. The internal contradictions within a faith like Xianity then become much more obvious. Imagine reciting the Apostle's Creed with proper nouns instead of common nouns. "I believe in YHWH, and in YHWH's son, Yeshua, etc..." The trinity magic looses its magic with proper nouns.
This one is for my friends struggling through dating apps right now:
Ethical non-monotheism 👬😹👭
What cruise line do we look up to find your tour in October?
In regard to Gen.31:53 it's not even ambiguous as far as context. The verb 'judge' in Hebrew is plural so both their gods judge between them and in the LXX they changed it to a singular verb precisely because of this problem. Even in the larger context we know that Laban was a polytheist. And in Ex.6 we know that Abraham did not worship El Shaddai let alone by the name YHWH - he and his family worshiped other 'gods' on the other side of the Euphrates - see Ex.6 and Joshua 24:1-2 and 14-15.
Data, Dogma, Dan Beecher, Dan McClellan, and David Burnett all begin with a "D."
Coincidence? I think not.
Monotheism is an ethical stance, not really an ontological stance. It considers that all humanity should be under the rule of one God, and this will make their ethics correct. This is what monotheism meant to "the Unitarians", and it is why the dictionary provided that definition. The Unitarians simply consider that the God of any religion that aspires to universal morality is the same entity as the monotheistic God. That's what monotheism means today, and in this context, Judaism and early Christianity were monotheistic, even though their metaphysics wasn't the same as modern monotheism. Hinduism is monotheistic in this sense also.
If anyone is interested, there are contemporary polytheistic platonists now, such as Dr. Edward Butler, Professor Antonio Vargas, and Steven Dillon.
Prince of Egypt and veggietales 😂
For me, Monotheistic does not mean there are no other gods, it just means I serve/worship only one, and I believe my God to be the original Creator, the one who spoke the Universe into being.
Technically, that's not monotheism, but monolatry
it doesn't make sense to say that your God is the creator of everything, and then also believeing that there are other Gods. if anything, other Gods are lower beings, such as demons, or they don't exist.
@@pikapi6993 Not really. Most, if not all, polytheistic religions have a hierarchy of gods; the title of 'god' does not mean every god has the same power.
@@winnebagotrout1997 which god in polytheism is the creator of everything that exists? Polytheist gods have hierarchies, but nall of them share different powers. There is no almighty, omnipotent, all knowing god in paganism, but each has its own role. This is absent in Monotheism. Only one God who has it all. So how can any other being be compared to him?
@@pikapi6993 Incorrect. In Platonic cosmology, and in the religious movements that sprouted from it (e.g. Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, both extremely popular belief systems in the Roman empire), there is one creator god who is both omnipotent and transcendent, and creates lesser gods and the world. Other polytheistic religions have comparable beliefs about a creator god, but I would have to do some research before I can talk about those.
You guys should do a Bible Jeopardy.
In the story Terah, Nahor and Abram lived in Ur, the god of Ur was Suen (Moon, Wisdom). the three men traveled and two lived on in Haran, whose patron god is the same god. BTW this is the same god as Nabonidus, the last Babylonian ruler.
When Abram leaves Haran to wander in Canaan, outside of the cities the high god is ‘El, the most high (let’s not get into detail about what this is because it meant different things to different people). But the general meaning is that he was the father of the gods and head of the divine council.
So if you understand the history of Mesopotamia as some Yehud would come to learn, you would have to leave the phraseology ambiguous.
But there is a deeper problem. Nabonidus went to Arabia with a secret intent to learn the wisdom of the sages in a place with Jewish sages, but he does not come out Arabia saying flow Yahweh, or Ea but follow Suen. So either he is conflating the wisdom gods, or the people who are teaching the wisdoms don’t think the distinction is all that important. The DSS folks in Qumran appear to be aware of this, since they have a poem about Nabonidus that is apparently derived for the book of Daniel. So this story was known about.
Yeah, get Robyn Faith Walsh on here
What about "adonai echad"?
I think that's better understood as monolatry than monotheism
@@Agryphos well of course you would. But the clear meaning is also clear in Islam.
@@Agryphos why? If you believe that your God is the creator of everything, it means that other Gods aren't actually Gods, but some other type of lower beings. Or they don't exist.
@@pikapi6993 That would be a misunderstanding of how they used the term elohim - you just failed the whole point of this discussion. If elohim could only have been used of the Creator God (your - 'actually God') then the whole OT is full of your standard.
I would like to give my alternative take on this, when it comes to wisdom in these ancient literatures there is no single isolated strand in the ancient near East. We can argue maybe Mages are different from Sages, but in the context of Mesopotamia and Canaan, these wisdoms of the sages are all kind of muddled together.
And let me make this clear how this came to be. During the dynastic period, there are two major wisdom cults, Ea-ism and Suen-Ism. But the rise of at least self-promoting god wannabes like Shulgi and Naram-Sin and these dynastic disasters that followed sent at least some of these sages packing. We see this inferred by the legends of the Apkallu as coming from the Red Sea or in different stories the Mediterranean. We know the sages were in Yehudah , because its major settlement was originally named Beit Lahmi according to the Egyptians this name persisted until the late Bronze Age collapse. So it’s not surprising at all the Genesis has so many stories that were originally about Ea.
But more than that, I think that Yathrib region that Nabonidus spent his decade in is the region near the Red Sea that the Apkallu legends are referring to. This appears to be a place where sages of different wisdom cults hung out and exchanged ideas. Yahweh was big in Yathrib, Suen the next town over. It would be kind of like Greek philosophy before the Greeks.
When we look at the Hebrew Bible we need to understand that it is not a single perspective. Ideas that seem brilliant in one text look silly in the next. Our first glimpse of what people thought was Deuteronomistic texts, which today seem highly legendary, but for 1400 years these are the only text that preserved at least some portion of the history. And we see that while Judges got the context wrong, it was capturing the atmosphere of the LBAC. In first Samuel waxing romantically about the ‘god’ of the early judges which we now understand was completely polytheistic. It’s not just the archaeology, it’s because we now know what certain proper names mean, the polytheism is encoded in the text itself, veiled but for only the most studied to see. And I think that was the intent. Many people say these are fictions, and there is that component, but with fiction you don’t need to try to hide the inconvenient, you can just use proper names that support your theology. What it was is that the magick of the early Iron Age was popular in the late second temple period, we see this in Jeremiah’s discussion of the Queen of Heaven. As a consequence you cannot throw out a popular song, saying or story, so you try to recontextualize it such that it supports your god.
At the pinnacle of this refactoring Deborah from bethel, but actually it’s Luz, which is also a nickname for Asherah, sits beneath a palm tree and judges. The Asherah pole of Luz, at least one variant looks surprisingly like a menorah. Samuel was handed to Eli, who has a son with an ‘El theophoric, follows Yahweh, but there’s no evidence of Yahweh in Israel at this time, the Ark of the Covenent, which is supposed to be a magick item of Yahweh, disappears about the time items to El and Asherah are professed to be thrown out of the temple.
God is what powerful priests and kings wanted it to be, this was true in Mesopotamia starting with Lugal Zagasi, Sargon booted An from his temple and replaced him with Ishtar, Nathan-Sin declared himself god, Nehemiah began the great purges and Yosiah went to Luz (Bethel) and destroyed the alters. Indeed he destroyed alters in Judea to Yahweh, probably an impetus was they had adjacent standing stones to Asherah. But more importantly it was a way of concentrating political and theological power in Jerusalem. And so we see the reason why the Yahwist of the pre-exilic period had to veil their history, if not there god appears to be a recent invention which they are just using to usurp power, so you edit Yahweh into the history.
But I want for a moment deal with a tangential issue, why is the Bible the way it is. One step back and we have individuals book that we think associate with Israel, but how could such a text get so many details wrong, and yet the people don’t seem to protest (actually Job is kind of a protest, but that’s in the wisdom literature, not meant to be historical). First off, there were no histories and when it came to gods, supernatural embellishments were just a part of the language of describing natural events. It’s just like certain Christian’s say praise god when something happens that pleases them. You want to say something that makes your favorite god seem special, unique, or able (powerful). In the same ways kings want to promote themselves, they took on the great army, and they soundly defeated them to the last man (but didn’t). It’s done in the same way the US generals were telling the leaders that we were winning in 1960s Vietnam. If you find two accounts then you find different stories. In the Bible there are at least two accounts, those from the northern kingdom’s perspective and those from Judea’s perspective. But these common ways historiological events are portrayed does not make the Hebrew Bible what it is.
When we look at the refined perspectives in the Hebrew Bible we need to look at the work of Jonathon Adler and Israel Finkelstein. Together they paint a picture of a rather isolated and insular monoaltristic cult living largely on the temple mound (prior to Herod). This particular cult was being funded by the Persians essentially to restore their past, elements that they did not understand in their context or lost. So that they fashioned what they had into a story attempting to preserve as much as they could (but at the same time losing the source texts). Again because this is a small insular environment, there are not a whole bunch of scribes and history critics running around to question them. In the period that followed the knowledge of the text increase because of the falling of the Hellenistic world and the rise of the Maccabeans who forcibly converted bunches of people. And so now we have a remote insular text as part of the definition pieces for a widely practiced “religion” that was not elective.
Yes, but the more pressing question is:
Does Dan McClellan have baloney in his slacks?
So, Jesus is a hypostasis in the Trinity?
Were the other gods created by God?
Fan duh see-yeck’l - you’re welcome 😉
Osiris. When dealing with a construct many aspects are created. Remove time, and chaos becomes monotheistic.
So Zoroaster was right.
When you see what is supposed to be William Lane Craig's library, you don't see any crates of Loebs; that is how you know WLC knows nothing.
Good show. The myth of monotheism feeds the myth of the trinity, forcing the monotheists to put Jesus, a legitimate God, somewhere within that one God of monotheism.
What is a legitimate God?
@@sentientflower7891 I assume they mean anything that would qualify as a god but for any social conceits which seek to define away godhood through semantic silliness i.e. angels, saints, particularly robust forms of ancestor veneration etc.
Though, given their capitalization of "God", anything is possible.
@@rainbowkrampus it is a bizarre phrase, not encountered previously. Sort of like saying: Caspar was a *legitimate* ghost.
@@sentientflower7891 One does wonder what examples there might be of illegitimate gods.
@@sentientflower7891 a legitimate God/god is one who actually does what a God/god does, but only in a relative, limited sense, and is referred to in the Scriptures as "theos" or "elohim."
The Greek word "theos" means "placer." Jesus is truly a "placer" (John 20:28), as is the Adversary, aka Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4, the god of this eon). Paul even calls the bowels a god "theos" in Philippians 3:19. And he says, "there are those being termed gods, whether in heaven or on earth, even as there are many gods and many lords" (1 Cor. 8:6).
Though all of these are legitimate Gods/gods (Placers/placers), none are "the only true God" the Father of Jesus. He alone is the absolute source of all placing in His creation, the One out of Whom all is (Romans 11:36).
34:00
When you talked about preserving the ambiguity, you kind of half-laughed as if that was a bad thing. But, why would that be? If the text is ambiguous, why not translate it as ambiguous?
But isn’t odd Paul does not use proper nouns, like Adonai, Elohim he uses the word Father. If I where to put this in an 8th century BCE context this would be ‘El, though I don’t think Paul is referring to this, but if it was, we know ‘El to be a separate god from Yahweh and El was widely known to have a wife and sons, and Urushalim was named after one of the sons, let’s take a look at what Paul says in 1 cor 8, Paul is using a language for god that is familiar to pagan
Theos ho Pater, let’s look up the Etmology of Jupiter, Djeus Pater, “sky father” of Heavenly Father, But cross cultural the Djeus means to shine, either referring to the sun in the day or stars at night, this is the original meaning of the word theos.
In the global context this literally can refer to a whole collection of syncretic gods starting with An and proceeding with El, Shamesh, and Suen but also including Ouranos, Cronos and Zeus as well as Lucifer (which early Christian’s equated with Jesus).,
So why does Paul not refer to Theos ho Pater more explicitly in the Jewish context? Why do Christian’s in their text avoid the explicit identification of the Jewish god? If the text we’re referring to their god by different proper names that is ambiguous, but they are uniformly using the word father in an almost Unitarian manner.
Here we go again. Everything being defined by how it is used. I agree with Dan Beecher. The word monotheism seems as simple as it gets for a word. Belief in one god. It shouldn't have anything to do with any characteristics. Belief in there only being one god and that god only being in control of rain would be monotheism.
It's too bad all this scholarly work has to be done in a way that is defined by attempting to correct that which has been imposed.
It shouldn't have to be apologetic to the imposition.
There needs to be a word for the concept of the ultimate God. What is the taxonomic value of the concept? I would say the ultimate God concept transcends taxonomy. There is a difference between the ultimate God concept and the "my God is the most powerful of all gods" and my God is defined by text or religious authority.
There is no getting around the ultimate God concept. The ultimate God who wants something to exist is the only concept that secures existence. Belief in such a God revolves around the desire to exist or not cease to exist.
Appeasing the ultimate God? Getting in on its good side? Doing everything one can to get the God to want one to exist? Behaving in a manner where the God is going to be nice? Petitioning the God to help one vanquish one's enemy? Determining the criteria that makes all of it possible? Now we're talking belief taxonomy? Systemic belief? Insisting the God has the criteria in this text? The God is speaking through that guy over there? These are all things separate from the concept or belief in the concept.
No. The belief in an ultimate God does not have to result in such things. Like everything else, it can certainly be used for such things.
I would argue that applying systemic belief to belief in the ultimate God is nonsense. Once one starts applying attributes to the ultimate God, not defined by text or systemic belief, the God is beyond measure. That simple fact whisks away relativity. There is no measure. Take away measure and systemic belief simply doesn't equate.
Here's the way it works with the ultimate God concept...
If we found ourselves knowing a god or gods, living in their realm, and they posed any threat to us, be it temporal or ceasing to exist....
some of us would believe in a better god or gods and be looking to those god or gods. So we might as well skip the formalities and believe in the best God we can believe in. If being the best we can think of is the criteria, then I don't see where systemic belief gets a foot in the door.
So... you're saying you want to define a concept of god by your particular use case.
Great. Pot, meet Kettle.
@@rainbowkrampus I said what I said. It's still right there. You are the one negotiating with the text to suit your purposes. We are all defining per our particular use case. And yes, I am an advocate of defining per our own use case instead of those dictated to us by an authoritative source per it's "group" use case, which is what they are referring to. I am in total agreement with them.
Belief systems designed for group identity. I'm not a fan of sectarian ideology. I'm a pluralist who is more into individuals cooperating with other individuals instead of sectioning off in competing groups. It's not just a view that applies to spirituality and religion. It also applies to social structure.
Eh. You want folks to believe in a God that imposes nothing, but secures existence. Might as well just go with Deism, then.
@@schen7913 You people eaten up by agenda are comical. It has nothing to do with anything I want.
Simply addressing the ultimate God concept.
You want to make a religion out of it, go ahead. 🤣
I think autonomous natural forces secure existence just fine and things don't exist just because we can imagine them. Yeah, we can imagine a maximally perfect or ultimate God, and we can even say such a God would have to really exist (even be the root of existence itself) to be truly ultimate. That still doesn't make it real. Naturalism has been the most reliable position for understanding the world; that's why it's a part of nearly every academic field outside of theology.
Monotheism is an advance over previous stances on the divine, because it means that the people you battle in war or capture, or enslave, aren't "others" but the sons/daughters of the same God. This is the evolutionary advance that monotheism makes, that you don't value others lives less because they are a different clan, or a different ethnicity, they are all part of one entity.
That is a nice thought, but that is not how it’s been deployed throughout history.
@@0923docfig If you look more closely, you will see that this is how it's been deployed throughout history.
@@annaclarafenyo8185Nah. The theology of black inferiority and their employment as slaves shows that under monotheism, you can value others' lives less. You just need to establish a "place" and "reason" for them to die.
Non-Christians still go to hell; if they refuse to convert, they may need to be mistreated to "teach" them to convert.
I don’t think you guys understand God. There’s not more than one divine. Other than the divine everything else is created and has a span. People can choose not to believe that, and they can say gods, but it’s meaningless if they use the word incorrectly.
I dont understand an Academic..... It is a fairy tale...what can be academic about the bibel...??
@@Grauenwolf two of them is real, and yours is Steel a fairy tale....
@@hjalmarolethorchristensen9761 Thor and Loki are real? You can absolutely have academic study of Norse mythology.
@@huttj509 no i diddent say that,...Thor is real,...(Thunder) You can hear it some times, in bad weather...Loke hmmm no, maby there is someone who called themselves academic scholars of North mythology, i never heard of it,. But this is one way of many to try to know what was happening at a time whit no written words,...
Dan’s motto seems to be ‘I know what I know’ if you know what I mean. Perhaps it’s not his fault that Islam and monotheism wasn’t in 18th century dictionaries.
Where does Dan talk about Islam? Time stamp?
On how "Monotheism" should be easy to define: They struggle with "Atheism" too.
A - Without
Theism - Belief in a deity
Yet, somehow they convince themselves that it means "Antitheism" or belief that there is no God and they'll argue with you for an hour over how we're trying to change the definition. No! You guys have ALWAYS been wrong.
You do realize the meaning of words can change over time. Sometimes, it just happens. Sometimes, it's because people didn't understand the original meaning or it changed with purpose. I'm not really sure I understand what exactly what you are trying to portray. This is why you will see multiple definitions.
So, what are you saying these "athiest" are saying exactly? Or are you talking about Dan?
Well, there is a question here about what people have believed at various times, but I don’t think you can actually sweep Urmonotheism (Wilhelm Schmidt) under the carpet and claim that no one believed it until 200 CE.
In Islam, it’s the ‘primordial religion,’ or the religion of the human without social conditioning (fitra).
@joefilter2923 I don't know a huge deal about Islam (just the basics.) So, you are saying there is an idea in the texts (in Islam?...) is that there is this basic idea about Elohim (or whichever name you use) that gets corrupted by huma s?
I'm with you but as Dan likes to point out, there is no such thing as "the" definition of words. The actual definition of the word is the use the speaker is applying. Just like your use of the word "they". I know it is defined by those who do what you said they do.
I pull up theist in most of the dictionaries and I'm going to see multiple definitions. The best thing to do is determine at the onset the definition being applied by the speaker and make it clear I am applying a different definition. Which definition is the official definition doesn't have to be an issue. The person speaking could be applying theist 1 and I'm applying theist 2. If we want to talk about the same thing, we have to choose one or the other or we could talk about both.
The classic example is someone referring to a fertilized egg as a baby, while speaking to someone who thinks it's insane to refer to a fertilized egg as a baby. The two people are obviously not talking about the same thing.
Same with God in the Christian world. Some believe that God tortures people for eternity in a burning lake of fire. Others believe such a thing is insane. The notion they are talking about the same God is absurd. Definitely not the same God.
That’s not at all how this works