When did God first reveal himself to humans?

[Jimbone]

So someone who presents facts and evidence is
automatically an atheist? Quite the hasty generalization
you guys got there.

You're not an atheist?

 

[Agricola]

So someone who presents facts and evidence is
automatically an atheist? Quite the hasty generalization
you guys got there.

Some of your responses and replies are typical of atheists, even the initial original post smells of atheism.

 

[iamsoandso]

and I was in hopes he would say that extraterrestrials,fallen angels or something was the correct train of thought,,but from his post an alien or fallen angel creating us would still equal an "god/creator",,the atheist thing is rather boring so is there a different assumption we should make,,,better yet in the next post will you just "spill the beans and state what you believe"

 

[Celsus]

My beliefs are none of your business and are
irrelevant to the evidence and facts I've presented.

 

[Jimbone]

In that case neither are ours then, Nor is how any of us interpret the evidences you've provided any of your business what so ever, which makes this whole discussion irrelevant. Don't get upset just because we won't conform to your rules man, it was just an honest question. Here's one for you, why do you care what anyone else believes about the evidence you've provided? Is your own life so boring that you just sit around getting angry at others "stupidity"? Then get on Christian Chat to show us how dumb we are for your own amusement? If so that sounds like a very noble life. I do like you here though, you could visit worse sites and I think deep down something draws you to Him. Any way God bless you man, keep on being a role model.

 

[twotwo]

My beliefs are none of your business and are
irrelevant to the evidence and facts I've presented.

Personally, I found that the provided evidence and facts were very interesting and well referenced.

Like it or not, at some point, churches will have to deal with such evidence and facts.

This should give birth to a stronger Christianity resting on clearer truth.

As it is written: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”.

 

[Kerry]

To the OP it was God that killed animals to give them clothes of skin.

 

[Kencore]

Celsus is a muslim! Whenever someone comes at you with Jesus faked his own death, he's a muslim. Watch all the muslim apologists they all say that Jesus faked his own death. I'm going out on a limb here but as lowly educated as the apostles might have been on some things. I'm going to guess that they and professional roman soldiers knew what a dead guy looked like period.

 

[Tintin]

Seeing this is a bible discussion forum/Christian that would mean that the vast amount of us/those then believe that Noah's arc settled at Ararat. Now from three sons then the world was repopulated,Shem,Ham and Japeth, so if we take a compass and draw a circle about every 100 miles from Mt. Ararat and bare in mind that these three then had children who then spread out farther and farther from Ararat then by the time they made it to Egypt they were several generations removed from Shem,Ham and Japeth so wouldn't it be unlikely that the gr.gr.gr.gr.gr.children were the beginnings of religion? that would be like us saying that in the year 2014 we the children who are alive today taught our fathers who lived in the year 1300,so if Egypt and the other nations came (after) those who first multiplied after the flood,then the beginning point would be Ararat and those people,then they divided and drifted away from God. So If we believe that there was a flood,and mankind then spread out from Ararat,this is the post-flood contact made by god to man and should be looked for as closely as possible to point A=Ararat.

Close. The Genesis account of Noah mentions the mountains of Ararat, not Mt. Ararat itself. But yes, it's Shem, Ham and Japheth's grandchildren (and possible some of their children) instigated the first false religions.

 

[Bowman]

What's "cray cray" is believing a warrior-storm god invented by cattle herders around 3500 years ago somehow created the universe 13.8 billion years ago
and picked a favorite planet out of trillions then picked a favorite part of that planet along with a favorite tribe of people. Then instructed these people to slaughter the neighboring tribes, take slaves, and sacrifice goats to him. Only later to show the entire world that he loves them by coming down to earth and faking his own death for 3 days just to come back to life and become the king of heaven.

Trumped the pagan moon god, allah...

 

[Bowman]

As all acknowledge, the basis for both the miraculous feeding stories in Mark’s gospel is the story of Elisha multiplying the twenty barley loaves for a hundred men in 2 Kings 4:42-44. There is in all three stories the initial assessment of how much food is available, the prophetic command to divide it among a hopelessly large number, the skeptical objection, puzzled obedience, and the astonishing climax in which not only all are fed, but they had leftovers as well! As Helms notes (p. 76), John has gone back to the source to add a detail. He has made the servant (paidarion) of Elisha into a boy (paidarion) whose five barley loaves Jesus uses to feed the crowd (John 6:9).

But there are more elaborate details in Mark’s stories which do not come from 2 Kings. They come from the Odyssey 3:34-38, 63-68; 4:30, 36, 51, 53-58, 65-68 (MacDonald, pp. 89-90). The reason Mark has two feeding miracles is to emulate Homer, who has Odysseus’ son Telemachus attend two feasts, and Mark has borrowed details from both. For the first feast, Telemachus and the disguised Athena sail to Pylos where King Nestor is presiding at a feast in honor of Poseidon. It is a sailors’ feast, so only men are present. Four thousand, five hundred of them are seated in nine units of five hundred each. Everyone ate to satiety and there were leftovers. In Mark’s first feast story, Jesus and his men also sail to the site of the meal. They encounter a group of five thousand men, andreV, males (no explanation is offered for this, a simple vestige of Homer). Jesus has them sit in discrete groups. After the Elisha-style miracle, everyone eats and is filled, and leftovers are gathered.

Homer’s second feast witnesses Telemachus going overland to Sparta, just as in Mark’s second episode, Jesus and the disciples walk to Galilee, where he meets the crowd of four thousand. This time, in both stories, there is no restriction to males. A servant of King Menelaus bids him send Telemachus and his companion away unfed, but the king will not, just as a disciple urges Jesus to send away the hapless crowd, and he will not. Everyone sits down to eat, in both cases, and in neither is there any mention of the elaborate arrangement of the diners as in the first feast scene. All are filled; leftovers are gathered. Mark has seemingly cast Jesus as Telemachus in both stories until the hero arrives at the banquet scene, whereupon he switches roles, having Jesus take the place of the hosts, Nestor and Menelaus.

You're plagiarizing.....again...

 

[JaumeJ]

According to the Word, Adam first knew God, but all men from Adam's time knew God, perhaps not on a conversational level, but they knew their origin. It was then man drifted away from God in favor of false gods, things made with their own hands. Abram was one of the last of the men who still honored God, and he was chosen from among them to be the father of all believers, that is, in the faith. This is all written in the Book.

 

[Tintin]

My beliefs are none of your business and are
irrelevant to the evidence and facts I've presented.

The nerve of some people! How dare they question you to better understand where you're coming from!

 

[JimmieD]

The earliest evidence we have of Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is from the Shasu and they
were "cattle nomads"

It should be noted that it's not exactly clear who/what the Egyptians were refering to when they talked about the "Shasu" and there is some degree of ambiguity of what they meant when they associated the Shasu with "Yhw." It's not automatic that it's refering to a deity. If it were me, I wouldn't use them to form an arugment about theology or deity identification based on the lack of information.

Or, if we are going to use the Shasu in an argument of some sort about Israel and Yahweh, I'm going to argue that the Israelites were included in the Egyptian's references to the Shasu. Not because I think they actually were, but because the issue isn't clear and the needed information is lacking. If we're allowed to go beyond the evidence, we could build any story we want and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

I think you would agree that if the roots of the tree are false then everything that
grows/develops afterward is necessarily false as well. Yahweh was originally
a warrior-storm god so what sets him apart from the other deities that were
worshipped in the Ancient Near East?


"Even though the theophany texts depict
Yahweh primarily as a warrior storm-god,
there are elements in their description
which seem to assume that Yahweh is a
solar deity." Pg. 917 DDD

So is your argument that the texts refering to Yahweh as controller/power-over-the-storms are the earliest texts about Yawheh, therefore making him a storm-god? I doubt that can be substantiated with any degree of confidence. The only solid text you might have is Psalm 29, but I think you would have serious trouble substantiating the claim that (a) it is one of the earliest texts, (b) that it identifies Yahweh as a storm god (rather than being intentionally polemical or just plain poetry), or (c) that if it was one of the earliest and identified Yahweh as a storm god, that this was the only view of the Israelites at the time.

There is probably reason to believe that some of the earliest texts (assuming everyone here buys into the Documentary Hypothesis and forms of higher criticism, which I'm sure isn't a good assumption) do refer to Yahweh in warrior terms (eg: Deut 32, Jdg 5), where it's usually associated with his protection of and blessings/curses on Israel. I'm not sure why this is supposed to be significant though, other than just noting history. Yahweh was spoken of in terms of a divine warrior in some of the earliest texts and is relied on by Israel for protection and victory. Ok...nice.

Two of the best treatments of solar aspects of Yahweh have been done by JG Taylor and Steve Wiggins; Taylor being for the identificaiton and Wiggins being against.

http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/faculty/thomas/classes/rgst116c/taylor.pdf

http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/faculty/thomas/classes/rgst116c/Wiggins.pdf

 

[Tintin]

The Documentary Hypothesis is not only a load of bollocks, it's also a poor excuse for academia.

 

[Celsus]

The Documentary Hypothesis is not only a load of bollocks, it's also a poor excuse for academia.

That's false. They may teach that at evangelical seminaries but in real world scholarship at least some form of the DH is the consensus view. Again, you're providing no evidence for these fanatic claims. Why do I have to keep reminding you? Current thought about the Documentary Hypothesis | Richard Elliott Friedman

 

[jdbear]

*When did God first reveal himself to humans?

When He created Eve...humans...plural.

 

[JaumeJ]

I would like those who believe in consensus views, conclaves or just plain voting to tell this to God. I would not dare, but if and when you do, please post His reply.

 

[JimmieD]

The Documentary Hypothesis is not only a load of bollocks, it's also a poor excuse for academia.

Maybe it's wrong, but at least in my opinion, the arguments can be pretty compelling. The best counter-arguments to the DH probably come from Cassuto, Rendtorff, Whybray, and Van Seters. However, traditionalists (ie, Moses was the author of the entire Penteteuch) might dislike their ideas on authorship even more. Whybray is probably the closest to a traditionalist.

And there are plenty of scholars who analyze the Penteteuch without resorting to the Documentary Hypothesis; Kugel and Alter come to mind. The DH is pretty much the consensus view, though being the consensus view doesn't automatically equate to "TRUE" or make it the only possible view on authorship.

That's false. They may teach that at evangelical seminaries but in real world scholarship at least some form of the DH is the consensus view. Again, you're providing no evidence for these fanatic claims. Why do I have to keep reminding you? Current thought about the Documentary Hypothesis | Richard Elliott Friedman

I never realized Friedman had his own webpage.

You should check out Joel Baden at Yale too: Baden | Yale Divinity School His writings are a little more detailed while Friedman usually writes to a broader audience. Baden is one of the most recent to argue in favor of the DH.

 

[Celsus]

It should be noted that it's not exactly clear who/what the Egyptians were refering to when they talked about the "Shasu" and there is some degree of ambiguity of what they meant when they associated the Shasu with "Yhw." It's not automatic that it's refering to a deity. If it were me, I wouldn't use them to form an arugment about theology or deity identification based on the lack of information.

Or, if we are going to use the Shasu in an argument of some sort about Israel and Yahweh, I'm going to argue that the Israelites were included in the Egyptian's references to the Shasu. Not because I think they actually were, but because the issue isn't clear and the needed information is lacking. If we're allowed to go beyond the evidence, we could build any story we want and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

It's not automatic, but scholars have reason to believe that it is referring to Yahweh.
One strong piece of evidence is the Shasu and Edom connection. Read here
at the bottom of the page reference #22 pg. 96-98
God in Translation: Deities in Cross-cultural Discourse in the Biblical World - Mark S. Smith - Google Books

For Van Der Toorn's hypothesis linking Saul with Yahweh read here pg. 281-286
Family Religion in Babylonia, Ugarit and Israel: Continuity and Changes in ... - K. Van Der Toorn - Google Books

Of course, there's a lack of information but based on the information that we do have
it is reasonable to come to these conclusions without being committed.

So is your argument that the texts refering to Yahweh as controller/power-over-the-storms are the earliest texts about Yawheh, therefore making him a storm-god? I doubt that can be substantiated with any degree of confidence. The only solid text you might have is Psalm 29, but I think you would have serious trouble substantiating the claim that (a) it is one of the earliest texts, (b) that it identifies Yahweh as a storm god (rather than being intentionally polemical or just plain poetry), or (c) that if it was one of the earliest and identified Yahweh as a storm god, that this was the only view of the Israelites at the time.

There is probably reason to believe that some of the earliest texts (assuming everyone here buys into the Documentary Hypothesis and forms of higher criticism, which I'm sure isn't a good assumption) do refer to Yahweh in warrior terms (eg: Deut 32, Jdg 5), where it's usually associated with his protection of and blessings/curses on Israel. I'm not sure why this is supposed to be significant though, other than just noting history. Yahweh was spoken of in terms of a divine warrior in some of the earliest texts and is relied on by Israel for protection and victory. Ok...nice.

It's not just my opinion that Yahweh was originally a storm deity. It's the scholars! I've provided
many references. The DDD is a good place to start.
A lot of the storm language used for Yahweh comes from the god Baal in the Ugaritic texts.The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel - Mark S. Smith - Google Books

Some parallels between Yahweh and Baal:

• Yahweh, like Baal, is depicted as a storm deity (cf.. Ex 19-20; 1 Kgs 18; Ps 29, Jer 14:22).

• Yahweh like Baal, has thunder as his voice (cf. Ex 19:19, 20:18, 24:12; Deut 5:21, 33:2; Judg 5:4; Ps 18:13; 1 Sam 7:10; Isa 30:27; Am 1:2; Ps 29:3; Job 37:5;
38:34).

• Yahweh, like Baal, hurls the lightning as like a spear or shoots it like an arrow (cf. Ps 29:7; Job 37:12-13; 38:25; etc.).

• Yahweh, like Baal, is designated as a rider of the clouds (cf. Ps 18:13; Isa 19:1).

• Yahweh, like Baal, is depicted as a son of El (cf. Deut 32:8-9?; Job 1:6?).

• Yahweh, like Baal, defeated the serpent Leviathan (Ug. Lotan) (cf. Pss74:14; 89:11; Job 26:12; Isa 27:1).

• Yahweh, like Baal, had a conflict with Yam (the sea) (cf. Ex 15:1-12; Pss 89:10, 104:7, 136:13; Job 38:10-11).

• Yahweh, like Baal, is sometimes depicted in the form of a bull/calf (cf. Gen
49:24; Ex 32:4; 1 Kgs 12:28). University of Pretoria etd – Gericke, J W (2003) 235

• Yahweh, like Baal, is often referred to as Elyon, “Most High” (cf. Gen 14:18, Num 24:16).

• Yahweh, like Baal, has a divine cosmic mountain in the far north (Zaphon) (cf. Ps 48:3; Isa 14:13).

• Yahweh, like Baal, is depicted as victorious over Mot (death) and is designated “the living God” (cf. Isa 26:19; Sam-Kgs passim; Ps 42:3; etc.).

• Yahweh, like Baal, is called "Lord" (Baal/Adon) (cf. 2 Sam 4:4; 1 Chron 8:33,34; 14:7 and OT passim).
http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-03192004-135203/unrestricted/05chapter5.pdf

Two of the best treatments of solar aspects of Yahweh have been done by JG Taylor and Steve Wiggins; Taylor being for the identificaiton and Wiggins being against.

http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/faculty/thomas/classes/rgst116c/taylor.pdf

http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/faculty/thomas/classes/rgst116c/Wiggins.pdf

I'd also like to add Mark S. Smith's
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel - Mark S. Smith - Google Books

Who concludes "Both writers overargue an extreme view in my opinion, although Taylor's discussion better
captures what may have been a "popular" view of Yahweh as solar in the Iron II period."

and John Day's, if you're interested Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies): John Day: 9780826468307: Amazon.com: Books

From the Wiggins link you provided pg. 99 John Day notes:

"Wiggins rightly points out that 'sun' would be metaphorical, but fails to note that
'rampart' is a more probable translation." pg. 159

Also, on page 100 Wiggins states "The parallel word hwpy' (hiphil of the root yp'),
'he shone', lends no support to a solar connotation, since it is used almost
exclusively of Yahweh, and never of the sun."

John Day points out "Wiggins is incorrect in saying it is never used of the sun"
"It is clearly used in connection with the light of the sun in Job 3:4." pg. 159