Tag: El
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God’s Life Story (ii)
A previous post noted that the first Israelites were Canaanites, and so their chief god was called El or Elohim (as in the name Isra-el). How many other gods and goddesses did they follow? The answer is, lots! Unsurprisingly, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t go into details, but frequently denounces Israelites who followed the weather/fertility god…
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God’s Life Story
When people give thought to the word ‘God’, they may well have sophisticated notions about its meaning, and might use such words as infinite, eternal, all-powerful and so on. But let’s step back a bit, and focus on the Jewish-Christian God. If we journey back in time, we discover that he has a ‘life history’…
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‘Once Upon a Time’ (iv) El and Baal
As I noted in my 1st post on this theme, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament contains many echoes of far older, interesting and amusing creation myths, flood stories and epic poems which, because used to train scribes, were widely spread in location and time across the ancient near east. The Hebrew writers/editors used a number of…
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Genesis 1 – A Critique (iii)
When we read Genesis 1, we should bear in mind that the ancient Israelites, like the peoples around them, had a different world-view from ours. Their universe was very small, and our world was at the centre of it. God, whose throne was above the sky, was close at hand, and well able to keep…
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