Re: Harvard's intellectual culture discourages identification with Christians...

In a message dated 4/24/2006 10:05:23 AM Eastern Standard Time,
rich.blinne@gmail.com writes:
You see sodom and gomorrah and the tower of babel but you can't make the
biblical connection. It's the old covenant at work. You are arguing a young earth
and ID and can't see that the God of the Hebrew bible is a god of fertility
and war.
Did Kemosh have a consort? Although the Bible describes the Moabites as the “
people of Kemosh” (Numbers 21; Jeremiah 48) most scholars think that the
Moabites were not monotheistic. Moabites at least acknowledged the existence of
other gods (henotheism), and it may be that during some periods they were
polytheistic like the Canaanites. A passage in the Mesha inscription has been thought
to imply that Kemosh had a female counterpart; the passage refers to Mesha’s
divinely-mandated destruction of Nebo:
And Kemosh said to me: ‘Go! Take Nebo against Israel.’ And I went by night
and fought against it from break of dawn till noon. And I took it and slew all:
7,000 men, boys, women, girls, and pregnant women, because I had devoted it
to Ashtar-Kemosh. And I took thence the altar-hearths of YHWH, and I dragged
them before Kemosh.
This, we should note, is the oldest known reference to the Israelite god
Yahweh (YHWH) in any text. But who is Ashtar-Kemosh? Compound names could be used
to denote divine couples. (A controversial inscription from the Sinai even
links Yahweh with a consort, “Asherah.”h) If Ashtar is Kemosh’s divine consort,
then she could be related either to the Mesopotamian goddess of war and
fertility, Ishtar, or to the West Semitic fertility goddess Astarte. The Moabites
may have represented this female deity with the numerous clay figurines that
have been found at cult sites like the one described in the accompanying article,
a couple miles from Khirbat al-Mudayna. Other scholars think it is more
likely, however, that Ashtar may refer to the god Athtar or Attar (best known at
the time among Arabs and Aramaeans), in which case the compound name could
simply signify that these two deities—Ashtar and Kemosh—were seen as one and the
same.
King Solomon of Israel respected the deities of foreign peoples and even
erected a high place to Kemosh, but the Moabites and Israelites often saw their
respective gods as rivals. Yet there were many strong parallels between the
religions of Moab and Israel: High places were erected to Kemosh, as to Yahweh,
and like Yahweh, sacrifices were made to him. As we now know from Khirbat
al-Mudayna, sweet-smelling substances were burned in Moabite temples—again, a
feature common to Israelite worship. More importantly, the Mesha Stele and Biblical
sources both acknowledge that Kemosh was actively involved, like Yahweh, in
the affairs of his people—particularly when it came to matters of territory and
warfare. The Mesha Stele is clear evidence that the Moabites attributed their
military successes to Kemosh in much the same way that the Israelites
attributed theirs to Yahweh; again and again, Kemosh sends Mesha on the march in the
same style as Yahweh commanded Joshua or Gideon. The inscription also shows
that, like Yahweh, Kemosh seems to have ranged from gladness to displeasure in
his feelings for his people at various times; the Israelite oppression that Moab
had previously endured was due, Mesha explains, to the fact that “Kemosh was
angry with his land.”
http://members.bib-arch.org/nph-proxy.pl/000000A/http/www.basarchive.org/bswbB
rowse.asp=3fPubID=3dBSBA&Volume=3d28&Issue=3d1&ArticleID=3d16&UserID=3d0&

Kemosh and Yahweh are very similiar, although Yahweh probably lost the
consort (the fertility god) when the religion grew heavily patriarchal. The function
is maintained, however, in the fundamental story of Abraham who forbids
infanticide (increasing fertility).
It is also obvious that present day orthodox Jews practice a fertility
religion, their birth rates are the highest in the world and Israel has more
fertility clinics than any other nation on earth.

The war function is memorialized throughout the hebrew bible but most
obviously in the old covenant:

 No: you shall demolish their altars, smash their sacred pillars and cut down
their sacred poles Exodus 34 (10-14)

The community that ignores the Levitical prohibitions is destroyed by God
(Sodom and Gomorrah)in the bible. The non-biblical communities that ignore the
levitical prohibitions even TODAY see their birth rates plummet.

In the bible, the diverse communities that are divided by language cannot
build the tower to reach heaven (the tower of babel). If your population is
fragmented, you cannot focus on a single goal. The bible recognizes this fact when
we read:
“You will become a horror, a byword, an object lesson to all the peoples
amongst whom the Lord disperses you.” Deuteronomy 28:37

The hebrew bible is anthropologically correct. If you ignore the levitical
prohbitions your birth rates drop.

But I can see why it would not be easy to see these facts in the current
reality and perhaps to assume that the bible is no longer relevant or perhaps even
historically and anthropologically incorrect.

What was true then is not true now, I guess is what YOU are saying. We can
ignore the bible in these regards.

rich faussette
Received on Mon Apr 24 12:57:25 2006