Mesopotamia / Israel

Under Construction

It is very interesting how  Christians demand so much evidence for evolution, but can provide Nothing for their God or the multitude of claims about their God.

Israel
It is generally accepted among modern scholars that the narrative of Israel’s history found in the biblical Books of Kings is not an accurate reflection of the religious world of Iron Age Judah and Israel, and that Israelite monotheism was the end result of a gradual process which began with the normal beliefs and practices of the ancient world.

The religion of the earliest Israelites, c. 1200, was based on the cult of the ancestors and the worship of family gods, especially El and Baal. This changed with the emergence of the monarchy in Israel: the king promoted his own family god, Yahweh, as the god of the kingdom, and the Exodus narrative as a national charter myth. The destruction of the Israelite kingdom c. 721 meant the end of both the Israelite state religion and of family religion; their place was taken by a national religion and personal devotion. The key group in this transformation were the Deuteronomists, an intellectual and religious movement based in the prophetic tradition of Israel. Moving to Judah after the fall of Samaria, they introduced sweeping reforms in Jerusalem which declared illicit the forms of traditional religion, centralized worship in a single national Temple, and promoted worship of one god through the Law.

Yahweh was the national god of both Israel and Judah. Despite the Canaanite origins of the Israelites, he was not a Canaanite god; he seems to have originated in Edom and Midian to the south, and may have been brought north to Israel by the Kenites and Midianites, although the matter remains speculative.  He subsequently assimilated the older Canaanite god El.
From Wikipedia: http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_israel_and_judah

Ganj-e Dareh is a Neolithic settlement in Iranian Kurdistan; it is located in the east of Kermanshah. The site dates back to ca. 10,000 years ago and yielded the earliest evidence for goat domestication in the world. It was excavated by Canadian archaeologist, Philip Smith during 1960’s and 1970’s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganj_Dareh

Advertisement