Thanks, fellow Earther!

Funny, I just read through a summary of that in Karen Armstrong’s “A History Of God”, although she didn’t mention a similarity between Hillel and Jesus. The next chapter is on Christianity, though, so we’ll see. Any references on that specific topic you’re aware of?

It is interesting to see how many gods became one. So effective was the transformation that most do not see it even though traces of it remain and can be seen if one does not read the texts assuming monotheism.

Why all the different names for God in the Hebrew Bible? The following passage from Exodus addresses the problem:

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

And God said unto Moses, aI AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, `The LORD, the God of your fathers--the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob--has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.

(Exodus 3:13-15)

The gods of their ancestors are unified into one nameless God of Israel. But the god of Israel is not the only god:

thou shall have no other gods before me

(Exodus 20:3).

An interesting point in itself from a 'scientifically rigorous' standpoint. This is the kind of 'mistake,' that we find all over religious fables, that helps confirm their status as folklore. There is no sunset or sunrise. It looks like there is to us but it's actually Earth's rotation that causes this effect. — universeness

Just about everyone today calls when the sun comes up sunrise and when it goes down sunset, even though we all know the sun is not moving and the earth is rotating. 1,600 years ago in Rome, people did not know the Earth rotates.

I took a quick look and did not find an etymological connection between the Spanish 'el' and the deity El. Nor did I find a connection between the English 'the' and the Greek 'theos' from which we get such terms as theology. But yes, 'el' translates to 'the'.

Or like one of my favorite itinerant preachers once put it: to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, to God what belongs to God. — Olivier5

I think this to be connected to such things as the advent of the messiah, the kingdom of God or Heaven on Earth, and teachings from the sermon on the Mount such as:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

(Matthew 6:19-21)

and:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

As to the political situation - its complicated. With Paul it is clear that there was an expectation that the world was about to end. The promise that the kingdom of God is at hand has been understood in both a geopolitical sense and in a non-political sense the of a new life for those who are saved.

It is interesting to see how many gods became one. So effective was the transformation that most do not see it even though traces of it remain and can be seen if one does not read the texts assuming monotheism. — Fooloso4

Gotta run, but one thing I want to explore is what exactly it means that gods "became one". The literature I've read and am reading seems to assume a certain willful, conscious decision to equate gods or discard certain ones out of convenience. I feel that I'm reading modern scholar's inherent modern, secular biases in their accounts. I think we have to try to put ourselves in their shoes as best we can in order to attempt some grasp of how these things were changing. I guess I'm asking a question of ancient psychology, which is impossible to answer. I assume through their lived experience, the ancients felt (maybe intuitively?) that they had unlocked a key to reality when these syncretic moments happened. More later.

she didn’t mention a similarity between Hillel and Jesus. The next chapter is on Christianity, though, so we’ll see. Any references on that specific topic you’re aware of? — Noble Dust

Ok, you asked...

An interesting question that crops up when you consider Jesus as a historical man rather than as the son of God, is the question of his sources and influences.

As was amply commented on, the Qumran sect aka the Essenes were probably a major influence, traceable through the bread and wine sharing ceremony and other things e.g. the ideological proximity with John the Baptist. The Essenes were a sect, ie the core group lived in the desert, outside of society, and hated the temple establishment. Though there might have been people living in cities and villages, in society, that had essenian sentiments.

So there were other groups than the rabbis -- it's complicated -- but to make it clear, the rabbis were teachers (and students) of the Law, both in its written and oral tradition. So they teach. When Jesus is addressed as "Rabbi", it means "Teacher".

During his education, however short, it is natural to assume that Jesus would have been taught scripture by a rabbi or another, or several, each with his own interpretations and inclinations. He would have been exposed to these arguments and disputes between rival rabbinical schools. These issues are described in some length in the Talmud, although very little original material from Hillel himself has been preserved (destruction of Jerusalem etc.). But we have a reason able idea of where the fault lines with Sammai were.

And so, apparently when Jesus in the Gospels is asked a question by a Jew who is not from his entourage, a random passerby, another rabbi, etc., oftentimes the question can be traced back to the opposition between Hillel and Shammai -- it is as if the questioner was trying to position Jesus on the Hillel-Shammai axis, which structured the rabbinical world at the time, by using the main issues debated among them.

By comparing the Talmud and the Gospel, we can surmise that Jesus was influenced by Hillel. Because he nearly always come down on the side of Hillel on this type of questions (except on divorce where he sides with Shammai in forbidding it).

For another indication, one of the very few quotes by Hillel preserved by the tradition, from Pirkei Avot (Teaching of the Elders, a Talmudic section) is:

"My humiliation is my exaltation; my exaltation is my humiliation."

Compare with Matthew 23:12 - For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

I guess I'm asking a question of ancient psychology, which is impossible to answer. — Noble Dust

This made me think of something I've come across in a couple of places. The first is from Jaynes' "The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind." Jaynes contends that people in the ancient world were not self-aware in the way we are. He explicates the stories in the Iliad and Odyssey as evidence of this. I find it unconvincing, although there is some interesting stuff. The second is the work of Christopher Lasch, a social critic who had a Freudian slant on human sociology and psychology. I remember being struck by his idea that the structure of the family has a strong influence on the structure of our minds. As families changed as we went from an agrarian society to an industrial one, our minds also changed.

What these two sources have in common is the idea that we can't necessarily assume we can understand what and how people in the past thought or felt. Understanding how other people think requires us to try to put ourselves in their shoes. This can be a more and more difficult task the further we get from their time and culture.

Out in the streets, handing tickets out for God.

I feel that I'm reading modern scholar's inherent modern, secular biases in their accounts. — Noble Dust

I think that what we find in the modern Bibles are versions of older stories that have been altered and edited to reflect beliefs that differ from their sources. The bias is not that of contemporary scholarship but that of those editors and compilers who selectively changed older mythologies to comply with their beliefs.

Religion and politics go hand in hand. Many of the stories in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) come from the Ugaritic/Canaanite stories. YHWH was originally a minor god, subordinate to El, the high god. YHWH, the god of the Israelites, subsumed and supplanted him. It is telling that the land promised to the Jews in Exodus is Canaan.

We should also look at how a corporeal God is reinterpreted, so that the parts of the body, and significantly the sex organs, become merely metaphorical expressions of an incorporeal God. A recent book on this: "God: An Anatomy", by Francesca Stavrakopoulou. The book is written for the general public but the scholarship is reliable. A couple of short reviews give some sense of what the book is about:

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2021/10/god-an-anatomy.html

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5869/book-review-god-an-anatomy

Since you are reading Armstrong: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/books/review/god-francesca-stavrakopoulou.html

And for those who prefer videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx9Gj67r1Dc

I think this to be connected to such things as the advent of the messiah, the kingdom of God or Heaven on Earth, and teachings from the sermon on the Mount s — Fooloso4

Yes. The distinction made between the things (or share) to be paid to Caesar and the things (or share) to be paid to God, stems from a cosmology where this world, the kingdoms of men, is seen as deeply corrupt, and put in opposition to the Kingdom of God.

Of course God cannot tolerate the corruption of a world He created, so ultimately, any time now, the big kaboom on the end of days ought to happen. That's basically the messianic script.

In the meantime, we have to tolerate the world as it is, and pay our taxes. There is a share to be paid for Caesar -- perhaps seen as the devil's or the demiurge's representative on earth, or simply as the most powerful and most corrupt king in a corrupt world -- and a share for God.

If you want to live in this world, you must pay Caesar's share.

If you want to be on the right side of things when the big kaboom happens, and live forever, you must pay God's share.

This is a probable mythical or metaphysical exposition of the saying but in summary the idea is that religion should be about a search for spirituality, not about whether or not taxes should be paid to this guy or to that guy. It's about making the distinction between temporal and religious matters, be it as it may be a religious view point / argument for it.

I am in agreement with what you say. I see this as a belief or hope or expectation that stems from powerlessness. It is a shift away from earlier views of the power of our god to protect us from and vanquish our enemies. When our side lost it was because we lost god's favor and had to restore it. Some saw the messiah as a warrior. But here it is the weak who will inherit the earth. It is an acknowledgement of powerlessness against the forces of Rome. The battleground has shifted to heaven from earth.

Some saw the messiah as a warrior. But here it is the weak who will inherit the earth. It is an acknowledgement of powerlessness against the forces of Rome. The battleground has shifted to heaven from earth. — Fooloso4

I agree. There's a rather thick book I once read about the way the messiah concept evolved and diversified prior and after Jesus: The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Johnny J. Collins. The thesis is that it all started as you say from the hope for a Davidic Mesiah, i.e. a rightful Jewish king successful in battle, restoring the fame and glory of Israel in the faces of nations. This is a long-sought situation in the Bible: rightful king, rightful people, success in battle granted by God in exchange.

The problem is that he never came. Most kings after David were disappointments, and the rare and few who were walking in the path of God often lost spectacularly and tragically all their holy wars...

It's always the same story: a prophet exhorts a Judea or Israel king to be holly and revolt against the heathens, God will surely help! And the king listens (the fool) and gets devastated in battle and/or siege, losing much blood and treasure to the Babylonians, the Arameans or the Romans in the process, if not his head...

It's the time of empires. Judea is a small place, it cannot hope to remain independent for long from some tutelage or another.

God is neutral now, He doesn't seem to hate the heathen so much after all.

The time of empires means that the 12 tribes must mix up with the nations, with heathens, make business with them goyim, often live under their rule even, and pay taxes to them.

And the Torah says very little about how to deal with that. Moses didn't foresee the problem. We're in uncharted halakhic territory. Basically the Torah prevents a good Jew from mixing up (marrying, eating, etc.) with goyim, so as to preserve his purity.

So the situation is a scandal. Force never worked. A new paradigm appears: what Collins calls the Priestly Mesiah: a saint messiah, a holly man or perhaps not quite a man, who would be able to summon the angels to fight against them goyim.

Collins traces the figure of a priestly messiah to Daniel, who calls him the one like a son of man (Daniel 7.13). It's a different expectation from the Davidic Messiah, and Collins' thesis is that the "Son of Man" in the Gospel is close to this kind of priestly messiah figure.

By comparing the Talmud and the Gospel, we can surmise that Jesus was influenced by Hillel. Because he nearly always come down on the side of Hillel on this type of questions (except on divorce where he sides with Shammai in forbidding it). — Olivier5

Thanks for the info. I was looking for specific sources, though, from the literature; some books if they exist. Or is this your own surmise?

I find it unconvincing, although there is some interesting stuff. — T Clark

What didn't you buy about it? If the physical world is evolving, I assume consciousness is as well (and I'm not a materialist).

What these two sources have in common is the idea that we can't necessarily assume we can understand what and how people in the past thought or felt. Understanding how other people think requires us to try to put ourselves in their shoes. This can be a more and more difficult task the further we get from their time and culture. — T Clark

Yes, this is what I'm getting at.

The bias is not that of contemporary scholarship but that of those editors and compilers who selectively changed older mythologies to comply with their beliefs. — Fooloso4

Surely both parties here have biases. There's no debating that fact. How can we know what it felt like, mentally, emotionally, at the time when different gods were being combined with one another? What I'm saying is that religious leaders weren't having summits where they agreed on who to combine with whom. Sometimes the literature reads that way (a crude characterization on my part, but you get the idea).

Religion and politics go hand in hand. Many of the stories in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) come from the Ugaritic/Canaanite stories. YHWH was originally a minor god, subordinate to El, the high god. YHWH, the god of the Israelites, subsumed and supplanted him. It is telling that the land promised to the Jews in Exodus is Canaan. — Fooloso4

Yes, I've just recently read up on this stuff.

Two further complications with Christianity:

First, if Jesus was the messiah, the promise was broken. He died.

Second, the messiah comes to be regarded not as a man sent by God, but God.

At first it was believed that the promise would still be fulfilled in that generation. Then the next generation believed it was the one. Eventually the idea of a second coming at some unspecified time took root.

That their god had dies was in stark contrast to the older notion of the power of god to vanquish the enemy. But the claim arose that this was all part of the divine plan, like the kid on the playground who says he wanted to loose the fight.

With Paul the battleground shifted to to an internal struggle against sin. As political circumstances changed power and wealth once again regained prominence; although a powerful clergy with a great deal of ostentatious wealth still paid lip-service to the virtues of the weak and poor.

was looking for specific sources, though, from the literature; some books if they exist. — Noble Dust

Many such sources exist, the connection between Hillel and Jesus was first noted in the academic literature at the end of the 19th century and it's now a well-researched topic. It was already mentioned in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1913?). I was pointed at it by a rabbi.

Eg:
Halakic (legal) controversies between Bet Hillel, Bet Shammai and Jesus, by Bradford, Johnnie Edgar
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/30177

(Haven't read it, but that's the kind of thing I am talking about)

Surely both parties here have biases. — Noble Dust

Yes, but the issue is whether, the biases of scholars altered the original sources as found in the Bible, or if the Bible is an alteration of its sources. For some this may make no difference. They are guided by what inspires them, but others are interested in the history and development of Jewish and Christian religion.

What I'm saying is that religious leaders weren't having summits where they agreed on who to combine with whom. — Noble Dust

I cannot cite examples but it is not unreasonable to think that certain beliefs became the norm through the work of priests and scribes. We do see in several places in the Hebrew Bible different accounts bound together, sometimes more skillfully than others. Consider, for example, the two stories of the beginning. In the story of the flood we are told both that there are two of each kind on the Ark and seven. More recently we find the Midrash on the Torah, Pirkei Avot, for example, which includes sayings of Hillel. The rabbis debated together and recorded what was said. The Councils at Nicaea were summits that establish orthodox Christian theology.

the biases of scholars altered the original sources as found in the Bible, — Fooloso4

No, I'm asking whether the scholars are projecting modern ways of thinking unto the ancient past, and questioning whether that's an appropriate projection.

The problem here is it feels like us modern secular and atheistic readers are imagining the whole of ancient religion to be some sort of farce wherein the religious elite were crafting ways to maintain control over their population with full knowledge that it was all bullshit. I don't think this was the case; I think this is the modern projection we engage in too often.

What didn't you buy about it? If the physical world is evolving, I assume consciousness is as well (and I'm not a materialist). — Noble Dust

I came to the book skeptical. It seems like a pretty radical proposition. But I was willing to be convinced. His use of the Iliad and Odyssey as evidence for the ancient lack of self-awareness associated with what he called a bicameral mind. To me, it's a weak argument. What I call a Malcolm Gladwell argument. (That's not a good thing.)

What these two sources have in common is the idea that we can't necessarily assume we can understand what and how people in the past thought or felt. Understanding how other people think requires us to try to put ourselves in their shoes. This can be a more and more difficult task the further we get from their time and culture.
— T Clark

Yes, this is what I'm getting at. — Noble Dust

If I remember correctly, you made a similar comment about understanding the Tao Te Ching. Wasn't that you? I don't think my awareness of the difficulty of understanding minds from different times and cultures means that we can't succeed.

No, I'm asking whether the scholars are projecting modern ways of thinking unto the ancient past, and questioning whether that's an appropriate projection. — Noble Dust

No, I don't think so. Their claims run counter to modern ways of thinking, but it may be that we can never free ourselves from time and place.

The problem here is it feels like us modern secular and atheistic readers are imagining the whole of ancient religion to be some sort of farce wherein the religious elite were crafting ways to maintain control over their population with full knowledge that it was all bullshit. — Noble Dust

That is not the impression I get from what I read. I do think the problem of rule and leading the people, but I don't think they thought of the mythology they created as bullshit. It was, rather, a way of making sense of things.

Maybe I'm reading my own biases into what I'm reading. My interests aren't purely historical either, so that may be part of it. "A way of making sense of things", yes, but I'm still not satisfied with that. I guess I'm trying to incorporate a more general philosophy of religion angle, which is not easy when you're dealing with ancient peoples. I need to re-read some other auxiliary material to try to synthesize the thoughts I'm having.

08:20 am. God and its supernatural pals fails again. Perhaps they were all too busy entertaining themselves watching dying children in Yemen and Afghanistan. Seems like, when they combine all of the power they have in the Universe, it's not enough to silence this single atheist.

Just about everyone today calls when the sun comes up sunrise and when it goes down sunset, even though we all know the sun is not moving and the earth is rotating. 1,600 years ago in Rome, people did not know the Earth rotates. — T Clark

I think you are missing the point! God should know! It's supposed to be omniscient, so you would think it would teach its prophets a little bit of science so they wouldn't make so many mistakes.
But I suppose it cant because it does not exist!

The problem here is it feels like us modern secular and atheistic readers are imagining the whole of ancient religion to be some sort of farce wherein the religious elite were crafting ways to maintain control over their population with full knowledge that it was all bullshit. I — Noble Dust

This is precisely the problem I see with the mythicists: they want us to believe that the authors of the Gospels were liars, insincere, manipulative. I don't think so. To me the evangelists tried to write accurate accounts, by and large. They made mistakes no doubt, they exaggerated many things, but they didn't sit every morning at their desk saying: "Hey, I'm gona bullshit a few more naïve readers today."

I took a quick look and did not find an etymological connection between the Spanish 'el' and the deity El. Nor did I find a connection between the English 'the' and the Greek 'theos' from which we get such terms as theology. But yes, 'el' translates to 'the' — Fooloso4

Yeah, your correct. There is no etymological evidence. It's the same for the claim some people make that Evil and Devil come from Eve. The suggestion was that evil simply means to act like Eve and disobey god. Devil was simply a supporter of Eve(women getting the blame again). But the etymological evidence for the origin of the word evil does not support these claims. However, I don't think etymological evidence offers a complete picture of the origin of every word. I have often read things like 'is thought to have originated from....'
But I accept that without etymological evidence such claims are pure conjecture.

Perhaps I am just not following the 'irony' of your chosen handle or your choice of representative Icon.
You suggest a god that has no self-belief and you use a Hollywood actor in a bad film as your profile pic.
Then you seem to defend theism.
Go figure! — universeness

I just calls them as I sees them. I don't have a dog in the fight. Or maybe I do; I am an atheist. However, I have spent an entire lifetime as an internal auditor for a bank, and if it helped me in honing any of my faculties, it is the ability to spot errors.

That is my calling on this forum: to point out errors in reasoning. I very much work on eradicating erroneous reasoning and false argumenting. Whether it helps the atheists, the theists, or the environment, or cockroaches, is not my domain of worry. My domain of worry is to point out false reasoning, that's all.

And by George, this website is a gold mine for doing just that.

I think you are missing the point! God should know! It's supposed to be omniscient, so you would think it would teach its prophets a little bit of science so they wouldn't make so many mistakes.
But I suppose it cant because it does not exist! — universeness

That's quite a stretch for an argument.

Also, @Ciceronianus's reference was not to the Christian God, it was to Mithra, a Persian god with many followers in Rome.