seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from TĆ¼rkiye
seen from United Kingdom
seen from China
seen from Italy
seen from Singapore
seen from China
seen from Austria
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from China
seen from Spain
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United States
I seriously donāt understand why more people arenāt talking more about this. I think itās interesting!
https://academia.edu/resource/work/122323191
#AddsContext
(Academia.edu = #academic papers)
#CanaaniteReligion, #UgaritReligion, #El, #Yahweh, #polytheism, #monolatry, #monotheism, #HistoryOfReligion
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
i practice witchcraft and want to work with eros (a greek deity), but i've also been wanting to work towards converting to judaism for a long time. would i be allowed to convert if i believe in other deities other than god as long as i don't consider the other deities to be gods?
Mod here. Please be gentle chaverim. Anon is thinking and asking, not doing. If you donāt have the time or energy to answer, someone else will, and this past ask covers somewhat similar ground.
Much thanks! (Todah rabah!) Ā !×ŖÖ¼×Ö¹×Öø× ×ØÖ·×ÖøÖ¼×
I was able to link that ask due to the Frequently Asked Asks archive page. I do my best to add asks with (a) quesetions that I see coming up regularly, (b) that have particularly thorough answers, or (c) that I think future readers may find useful or interesting. If you think an ask belongs there, just send me a link! I have a limited perspective in determining what belongs on the page and am a human being who sometimes forgets to add posts that I even mentally flag as belonging on the page.
eliannaeldari replied to your post āHow can you come from a monotheistic family and have a deep...ā
(1/7) Um, no, we never ever ever believed in the validity of multiple Gods as an aspect of our religion, though paganism was definitely a problem for us in biblical times. There are multiple stories of god breaking idols, etc, but that's intended to demonstrate that they were just "ivory and wood, silver and marble", "eyes that do not see, lips that do not speak, and ears that do not hear". This whole thing is seriously misguided, I'm sorry. Taika seems to have followed
(2/7) A charachterization closer to that described in the eddas than in the comics, but that's probably due to him just going ahead and reading the eddas. They aren't all that hard to get a hold of.Ā
(3/7) I know very little about Islam, but while in Judaism god is described as jealous, it's never "of other Gods", it's more like possessive. According to Judaism, there are no other Gods, and large factions of Judaism don't believe in any non-god supernatural forces whatsoever. Christianity is mostly only considered monothiest by Christians, and while some Jewish sages say that it is, plenty say that it's polythiesm, especially Catholicism and any involving the Trinity or
(4/7) Saints. We aren't even allowed to pray in a church- aren't even really supposed to go in them, though many people are lax about that. Mosques, on the other hand, we're allowed to pray in- though are not supposed to take part in Muslim services. We have hymns and descriptions and poetry and legal writings from before Jesus was even a glimmer in his parents' eyes about the oneness, unity, and lone existence of god. That doesn't mean that Jews back then followed the
(5/7) Mitzvot/rules any more than they/,we do now, but that's entirely different than claiming that *as a matter if religion* we acknowledged foreign Gods.
(6/7) We say, three times a day, (plus it's supposed to be the last thing we say before we die) "hear Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one".Ā
(7/7) God absolutely doesn't want us wasting our time and efforts worshipping God's that don't exist, instead of following his commandments. That's made pretty damn clear. Now, to be honest, *I believe in a "clockmaker" god, and am no longer orthodox*. But I couldn't let this lie, as it's very misinformed and misleading. I assume that OP simply didn't have as much information, and was writing in good faith, but that doesn't mean that the analysis is based in fact.Ā
OK, first of all, @eliannaeldari -- I am Jewish. Not religiously, anymore, but by heritage and upbringing. But I grew up Reform Jewish, in a family and a congregation that respected secular academic scholarship... and of course Iām in academia now, studying a period in history when secular Biblical scholarship and history was a relatively new thing that was (along with Darwin) contributing to Europeās religious crisis.
My information -- coming from the cantor at the synagogue where I grew up, as well as from interacting with scholars of Jewish history in religious studies departments -- is that very early Judaism embraced monolatry, the worship of only one god, rather than monotheism, the belief in the existence of only one god. I was under the impression that that was the scholarly consensus. The Jewish Virtual LibraryĀ concurs; the Wikipedia article on monolatryĀ cites a number of scholars who defend this thesis; My Jewish Learning, a site for prospective converts, teaches the controversy (so to speak), but only cites two scholars who hold that Judaism was monotheistic from the beginning.
So no, I was not claiming that we everĀ ābelieved in the validity of multiple Gods as an aspect of our religion.ā It is not clear whether by validity you meantĀ āactual existenceā orĀ āworth and acceptable worship.ā The concept of monolatry indicates that there is an important distinction. The idea is that while there are other gods, they are other peopleās gods, not ours. Itās fine if those other people worship them; we are not allowed to.
Some poking around suggests that I was mistaken about the timing of the shift from monolatry to monotheism, so thanks for questioning me on that. The various sources Iāve come across all seem to put the date around the time of the Babylonian exile, so 6th century BCE (hereās another one thatās clearly written). Deuteronomy, in which the text of the Shāma is found, was mostly composed in the 7th century BCE, and partly during the exile. Thereās some speculation that monotheism developed as a response by the educated elite to the cataclysm of exile, and some that Persian Zoroastrianism may have been a relevant influence.
It must have been a trend: Greek religion was also showing monotheistic drift by the time of Plato and Socrates (5th century BCE); many gods were still officially recognized, but Zeus was definitely expanding in importance and starting to take on those omni- characteristics that predominate in philosophical monotheism. I was aware that Greek philosophy influenced the early development of Christian theology, and I had thought that was where principled monotheism had come from; it looks like monotheism was an earlier development, and it was more philosophical theology -- issues like the problem of evil, which may or may not have originated with Epicurus -- that came from the Greeks. And that might have entered Judaism directly, without being mediated by Christianity.
I donāt want to get into the issue of whether Christianity isĀ āreallyā monotheistic with the trinity and the saints and all that. Syncretism, appealing to local pagans, whatever. The moral landscape of Christianity is distinctively monotheistic: there is one source of goodness and power, and any conflicting forces are (a) evil and (b) ultimately subordinate. The pagan worldview recognizes multiple competing forces, and while different groups of people may have different divine allegiances, itās not really a matter ofĀ āgoodā vs.Ā āevil.ā The Trojan War as related in the Iliad is a case in point: different gods took different sides, and the Trojans were still regarded as noble and heroic, even though the perspective was Greek. One thing Judaism has in common with various pagan religions (and some but not all forms of Zoroastrianism, apparently) but not with Christianity and Islam is the absence of proselytism. It is kind of unusual for a monotheistic religion to be tribal rather than universalistic... but I guess since Judaism doesnāt really have a concept ofĀ āsalvationā it might not matter that much.
So, many books in the Bible like the Book of Judges and the prophetic books, tell us of how many Israelites gave into polytheism. When Israel split into two, the northern kingdom was largely polytheistic, right? However, I've seen some secular sources claim Israel wasn't monotheistic until after the Babylonian Exile?
Hey there! This is an interesting question, and the exact history of the idea of monotheism is something that is very hard to pin down. Letās go over what we know for sure first.Like you said, many Israelites were polytheistic. In fact, it is very likely that the majority of Israelites were polytheistic. You mention that the northern kingdom worshiped many gods, but that is true of the southern kingdom of Judah as well. We can look at archaeological evidence, like the Asherah poles, as well as written evidence in the Bible itself; Solomon is supposed to have introduced the worship of many pagan deities to Jerusalem through his marriages, Manasseh sacrificed a son to Moloch, and (as you said) the prophets were constantly harping against engaging in the rites of the Canaanites. We also know that by the time of the Maccabean Revolt, several centuries after the Babylonian Exile, the idea of even identifying YHWH with another god (let alone worshiping another god) was enough to be considered grave sacrilege.In one of my courses dedicated to Classical Judaism, the instructor (a grad student) suggested that the Israelites were a predominantly polytheistic society, with a small but very vocal minority (which he referred to as āYahwistsā) who condemned this general polytheism and advocated for exclusive worship of the national God. He suggested that this minority became the majority in light of the fall of Jerusalem, when the Jewish people were attempting to piece together a theology of what exactly had happened to them.In ancient societies, human conflicts were assumed to be paralleled by conflicts between their divine patrons. The gods of the side that won the war were believed to be stronger than the gods of the people who were defeated. This was not acceptable to the Israelites, who had started to see their God as the Lord of all Creation. Then you have to keep in mind the policies of the Babylonians, who would conflate the gods of conquered peoples with their own gods in order to facilitate assimilation into Babylonian culture.The Jewish people were able to avoid assimilation by negating both of these presumptions; first, their God was like no other god, and YHWH could not be identified with any of them. Second, God was the only god. The Israelites had lost not because the Babylonian gods were stronger than God (they didnāt exist), but because God had used the Babylonians as His instrument in punishing His Chosen People for not being faithful to Him.Now itās my turn to make a speculation; if exclusive monotheism became mainstream as a result of the Babylonian Exile, and before that was limited to thisĀ āYahwistā faction, it is possible that the Israelites were never monotheistic in the sense that we moderns think of. Abrahamās descendants may have been monolatristic: while acknowledging the possibility of other gods, they promised their exclusive worship to their tribal-national God.
Hey there! (I've tried to search the tags but have so far been unsuccessful) I'm interested in/have been delving into Kemeticism, but I've had trouble figuring out if it's a monotheistic or polytheistic religion? Ive always viewed it as polytheistic and having actual gods but I've heard so many people say it's monotheistic and I'm very, very confused. Help?!
The easy version of the answer is, yes, Kemetism IS polytheistic :) TheĀ āmonotheisticā bit probably comes from the Kemetic Orthodox, which teaches a particular form of polytheism called monism, in which there are distinct Gods/ Godesses, which are all eminations from one complete creation power (this is also based on the fact that our Gods and Goddesses have a habit of merging and synchronising and taking on each others attributes). This is not, however, the same thing as monotheism.Ā
(Note - to further complicate things, the Kemetic Orthodoxy officially states that it is a monolatry, which is defined asĀ āthe worship of one god without denial of the existence of other gods.ā This is a little misleading, as it suggests that only a single deity is worshiped.)
> Smudge
Kemeticism throughout the times has been hard polytheistic, soft polytheistic, monolatristic etc. One specific Pharaoh (Akhenaten) tried to have his kingdom primarily worship Aten, with all the other Netjeru being seen as nonexistent or only a facet of Aten. The worship he attempted to force his kingdom into was seen as monolatristic, henotheistic, and some even view it as quasi-monotheistic.
But for the general modern Kemetic, the religion is either hard or soft polytheistic. Kemetic Orthodoxy is a revivalist temple (under USA protection as a legit religious group) that uses monolatry in its ideology, however. But KO certainly isnāt the end all be all of things Kemetic.
- trueriptide
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
FOR: theistic reform and conservative: I'm considering becoming a conversion student. One thing that's popped up for me while doing my research is Jewish opinions on other deities. Does theistic Judaism allow for the existence of many deities while worshiping only one? Or is Jewish monotheism just that, that only one god exists? How does Judaism account for the worship of other gods?
Mod here. While anonās ask is theoretically within the scope of the past ask
Can you convert to Judaism if your spiritual beliefs are monolatrous? Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā
Iām inclined to let the conversation continue here; anon has asked some more specific questions that I donāt think the other ask sussed out.
Since these lines of question are popular, Iād like to open it up to FORs beyond those anon has set. However, please specify your FOR. Especially if you arenāt answering from one of anonās requested FORs ("theistic Reform and Conservativeā).
Much thanks! (Todah rabah!) Ā !×ŖÖ¼×Ö¹×Öø× ×ØÖ·×ÖøÖ¼× Ā Ā
So many faiths describe a primal chaos/void before the Earth was made, and gods that were created from it. Could G-d be the Creator who made them? Not as gods on the same level as him, but like a lower tier of creation-- like gods as opposed to God--hopefully this makes sense?
Mod here. The notes of this question will be much, much easier to parse if everyone contributing gives an FOR relevant to how they look at text/Hashem. This could be denominationally, or more along the lines ofĀ āatheist,ā āMoses received the Torah on Sinai,ā etc.
Can you convert to Judaism if your spiritual beliefs are monolatrous?
