smotpoker86 : Check your context surrounding that verse. The verse is talking about how God split the 12 tribes of Israel according to the number of Israelites. You can check back on the Hebrew that the verse is talking about Israel. NRSV is the only Bible translation that would translate "sons of Israel" as "gods." The reason why is unknown to me, but you can be sure that the verse is not talking about the number of gods, but the number of people in the tribes of Israel.

And also, Israel has always been monotheistic. However, they were also shaky in their faith. We see a trend in the Old Testament that shows how the Israelites enter the cycle of following God, then worshiping Idols, then get oppressed by other nations, then beg God for help, then a leader appointed by God saves Israel, then they followed God, and then do it all over again. But they have always been monotheistic.

As for the Flood similiarities, this is actually good support that such a story actually happened bacause of the similarites of such a tale in different civilizations.

play4fun :   I was looking at the context of that verse.  My second paragraph directed you to a site showing other versions of the verse. The NRSV isn't the only one to say these things, it just depends where each version is getting its translation from. Most bibles in English are based off of the Septuagint and not the older or more accurate Hebrew books. That is why there are newer versions of the bible that try to be more accurate to the original scripture. Other English versions that say very similar things to the NRSV version are the NLT, ESV, NET, and MSG , with more possibly.

One thing that all version have in common is they say either sons of Adam, sons of man, or mankind were divided. Does it even make sense to say that mankind was divided into the 12 tribes of Israel? As there were many more nations than just Israel in the time period this doesn't make any sense to me.

Most versions in Deuteronomy 32:9 say "for the Lord’s portion is his people. Jacob, the lot of his inheritance."

This basically says that Yahweh inherited Jacob or Israel. In Hebrew scriptures Elyon translates to "the most high"  and Yahweh is referred to as either "the Elohim Yahweh" or " the Lord of Israel". Elohim means 'son of El' or 'son of Elyon' .  There is a clear distinction between "the most high" and "the Lord" even in traditional English versions.

"Israelites enter the cycle of following God, then worshiping Idols, then get oppressed by other nations"
You are right, that is a common theme found in the bible. My personal opinion on the matter is that it makes more sense for them to be conquered by other nations and then start to worship those other nations Idols or Elohim. But I realize that is not how it is portrayed in the bible.

What I mean when I said that Israel used to be polytheistic is that previous to the creation of the Second Temple, Israelis recognized that the Lord of Israel Yahweh was one of many Elohim. After the building of the temple, they attributed stories related to El or Elyon to Yahweh. I am not entirely sure why this occurred but perhaps it was to stop them from worshiping false idols. I mean you can't worship something that doesn't exist, even if it is just an idea that exists. This is why I said they were Monolateral Polythiests, they thought there were multiple Gods but only worshipped Yahweh as he was the Lord of Israel.



As for Mesopotamian text supporting biblical stories, I would have to disagree. First of all , in the Babylonian / akkadian versions , there are multiple gods that are planning to wipe out humans with a flood, but one of them feels sorry and tells Utnapishtim to build a boat to preserve life. When the other gods find out about this they get mad at the god who betrayed their plan. There are many other gods in that culture who weren't even a part of the flood plan. As I stated in my original post the god Enki that saved humanity is also the same god that created humans out of clay. He originally created humans to be servants so gods wouldn't have to work, basically. Although there are similarities it is drastically different than Biblical Genesis.

Scholars who study the links between Genesis and Mesopotamian stories , often find that the biblical versions change parts of the story 180 degrees, and are often seen as satirical or making fun of Mesopotamian gods and beliefs. It should be pointed out that Genesis wasn't written until after Israel had been conquered by Assyria and exiled into Babylon , and this is most likely when and where they got these stories.

Arceaologists have found evidence of a big flood that predates the Gilgamesh stone tablets by only a couple centuries, but there is no evidence of it being a global flood. Sediments are only found in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, or as it would be called by ancient Babylonians, Edin.
 

Consider this, what if life and death are only perceptions of reality. And in turn the gods/ deities we serve are simply a higher form of that perception. With that said, I'd like to make a few key points that agree with some of the other posts made. For one if you look at Taoism and christanity both have a "heaven" and a "hell"  the only real difference between the two are one exists in the body "the crown and base chakra" and the other exists on other plains of existance that can only be acessed after death. What if ultamatly the persuit of religion "god" is simply the persuit of enlightenment "paradise or damnation" whats harder then remaining ignorent for enirnity? What if we could never learn to walk or speak, how much harder would life be? The answer is we would not any form of civilazation or for that matter most likely have been removed from the face of the earth. And please let me know what you think of this theory.

smotpoker86 :
Deuteronomy 32:8-9 Issue
NRSV is the only one that says "gods." The rest of them said "sons of Israel", "heavenly court" or "sons of God". The dispute here is whether the text is talking about the Israelites or angels, but never about gods. I think the possibility of NRSV just saying gods is because it would just sum up "sons of God" with just one word, but it is not suppose to mean "gods" Neither the Septuigent or the Masoretic text plainly used "god" in the text. If you translate the Septuigent word for word, it is translated "angels of God." If you translate the Masoretic text word for word, it is translated "Sons of Israel." None of these state anything about different gods.

When I say context, I meant the entire chapter or surrounding chapters...anything that can give you a background of determining the subject of your specific verse. In this case, Chapter 32 is a song by Moses to remember whenever they were to become unfaithful to God, reminding them of who God is from what their forefathers told them and what were to happen if they rebelled against God. It is in this verse (Deut. 32:8-9) that Moses reminds during the time when God divided all of mankind, he created the boundaries based on the number of "Angels" or "Sons of Israel". (I made a mistake here earlier, because when I reread the entire chapter, I realize that this is before they entered the Promised Land)This verse is basically saying that Israel was protected as the "chosen people of God." It basically talks about how God is in control of the nations and the people since the very beginning (I think this is specifically talking about the dividing of lands between the 3 sons of Noah)

Simply put, this verse is not saying that they believed that more than one gods exist and they worship one God. In fact, the rest of Chapter 32(context) goes AGAINST that idea. (emphasis added below)

(Vs. 17) "They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God—
gods they had not known,
gods that recently appeared,
gods your ancestors did not fear."

(Vs. 21) "They made me jealous by what is no god
and angered me with their worthless idols.
I will make them envious by those who are not a people;
I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding."

(Vs. 39)"See now that I myself am he!
There is no god besides me.
I put to death and I bring to life,
I have wounded and I will heal,
and no one can deliver out of my hand."

These are just a few that God declares that He is the only God, and that all others are false gods, that are not eternal, are worthless, and that if they worship other gods, they are worshipping "what is no god"

Elohim
You do understand that when they use Elohim for Yahweh, they are using it as the name of God, right? When talking about gods in general, elohim was used as a general word, but the word "Elohim" is also used as the name of God. Since He is the only God, "God", "The Lord", "Elohim", etc, are not used as general terms or titles, but the names of God Himself.

Flood and Genesis
So are you arguing that these similar stories are about the same event, or are you arguing that they are different?

And FYI, most scholars affirm that Genesis was written during the time when Moses and the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, which is way before the Babylonian captivity. (Moses is the author of the first 5 books of the Bible: Genesis-Deuteronomy)

lefthandman : This idea would sound more true to Buddhism, but not to Christianity, where it does not pursue enlightenment, but salvation and grace, and to become true worshippers of God rather than living a life of rebellion against the one who gave you life.

play4fun : Moses most definetly did not write the Torah. I am not sure where you get the idea that most scholars think Moses wrote the bible. Here is a quote from http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/moses.html , which if you read the entire article , takes more of an apologetic approach and basically says this viewpoint is biased because they didn't believe in God. One could argue the exact opposite thing about apologetics in general.

"Religious studies courses at most universities teach that the Pentateuch is a composite work consisting of four literary strands. The four strands have been assigned the letters J, E, D, and P; each representing a different document or source that was woven into the fabric of the Bible."

If this is taught in most universities religious studies, I would assume that it is the consensus of scholars.
This is commonly called the Documentary Theory, and it puts the authors of each strand in different time lines. The J (Yahwist) time period is 950 BC, E (Elohist) is dated to around 750 BC, D (Deuteronomist) is dated to 650 BC, and P (Priest) is dated to approximetly 580 BC. This theory also suggests that these different sources weren't compiled until around 400 BC.

One idea that is continualy gaining momentum is that the "law" was compiled at Persia's request. Persia had conquered Babylon in and gave the Israelis an ultimatum. They were allowed to continue practicing their religion but only if they created a written document of their law. I am not sure how to verify this, and it should be noted there is over 100 years difference between when Persia freed the Jews and when the Torah is dated to have been compiled.

Let me get into some detail of how they come up with the dates of the different sources. First I should say that the 'D' source includes the books of Deuteronomy through to the Book of Kings. The Book of Joshua is a part of the 'D' source. Joshua, is the successor of Moses, and leads the Israelis into the promised land to take over Caana. Here is where the problem lies, the cities that are mentioned in Joshua did not exist during the 13th-12th centuries when the exodus supposedly took place. Also many of the cities were abandoned during the 6th century. There was only one time period when these Caananite cities existed at the same time and that was during the 7th century (BC) during the reign of Josiah. This means that Joshua could not be the author of the book titled after him and it wasn't written until after these cities and towns were founded.

Here is a quote from a book written by two people who studied the archeaology of these areas.

""This basic picture of the gradual accumulation of legends and stories- and their eventual incorporation into a single coherent saga with a definite
theological outlook- was a product of that astonishingly creative period of literary production in the kingdom of Judah in the 7th century BCE. Perhaps most telling of all the clues that the book of Joshua was written at this time is the list of towns in the territory of the tribe of Judah, given in
detail, in Joshua 15:21-62. The list precisely corresponds to the borders of the kingdom of Judah during the reign of Josiah. Moreover, the placenames mentioned in the list closely correspond to the 7th century BCE settlement pattern in the same region. And some of the sites were occupied only in the final decades of the 7th century BCE."
(p.92. "The Conquest of Canaan." . Israel Finkelstein & Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York. The Free Press. 2001. ISBN 0-684-86912-8)

Now they don't usually use archeaology to date the books of that are supposedly written by Moses, but instead analize how the books are structured and look at themes and words used.  The differences are compared to Judaic and Caanan traditions, and changes in tradition to date when they were written.

To put it simply, religions evolve over time. Look at the practices and what the Church ( particularly the Catholic Church) preached hundreds of years ago and compare it to now.

Deuteronomy 32:8-9

I was just trying to point out that some versions of the bible some what supported warmakers topic. I clearly pointed out the most versions don't agree wtih this. In general it works like this : masoretic based texts say sons of Israel, septugaint based texts say angels or "those from the heavenly court" , older Judaic texts say "sons of god".

I have heard the theory that it is talking about the sons of Noah, but I don't really see how that fits into the context of the verse. When the highest god created nations  he divided them by the sons of Noah, and Jacob inherited Yahweh? That doesn't make any sense to me, especially if you switch sons of Noah to what any of the versions say. The two timeframes don't go well together.

Compare the 3 types or versions when they say Yahweh inherited Jacob's people. Lets use the ESV as the basis.

"When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage."

Clearly Yahweh's portion (this means he is the Lord of Israel) is Jacob. In this version he is a son of God or a son of Elyon. Now if you change sons of Gods to angels, Yahweh is just an angel or member of the heavenly court. If you change sons of God to children of Israel....well basically it doesn't make any sense. I don't understand how he can be the Lord of Israel yet be a son of Israel. Again it says portion, which doesn't agree with a monotheistic viewpoint and is also why Lord of Israel is found in masoretic texts.

Apologetics often will say that borders means the territories of the tribes of Israel, but this doesn't make any sense when it says he divided mankind, not the sons of Israel. If you could tell me how mankind = tribes of Israel , I would be very glad to hear it.

You need to understand that the majority of Deuteronomy was written after the return from Babylon, when there was a strong push from priests and kings to become a montheistic religion. I am not denying that only one God is recognized now but I am pointing out that it wasn't always that way. This is similar to our debate about Pagan origins of holidays. It may not matter if they only recognize one god now, but that doesn't mean it was always that way. If you look at Judaic traditions prior to the second temple period there is a lot of differences to what they practice today. They incorporated a lot of Canaan traditions , after all they never completely erradicated the Caananites and eventually lived peacefully with them.


Elohim
This heavily ties in to what I was saying about Judaism borrowing Canaan traditions. In Canaanite tradition, El was the highest god and the father of other gods such as Baal and Yam (sometimes simply called YW, as seen in Ugaritic text / cuniform). A different name would be El Elyon, or sometimes just called Elyon. El translates to God and Elyon translates to "the highest" , often Elyon is said in the bible to describe mountains or high walls around cities basically describing anything that is high. In Canaanan and early Judaism Elohim meant son of God. In hebrew -im is a suffix often put on words to add a a plural form of a word. In this case Eloah is son of God, and Elohim means sons of God. Sometimes in just changes the form and doesn't imply a plurality , such as bethula means virgin, and bethulim means virginity. Since El was the father of gods he had a wife and that was Athirat or later called Asherah. In early Judaism, they would build shrines , create special poles are plant special trees in honour of Asherah. During and after the Second Temple Period , Jews destroyed the shrines and cut the poles and trees because they became monotheistic ,  Yahweh having a wife didn't fit the direction their religion was heading. One thing I noticed when writing this article , if you rearrange the letters of Elohim, you get him o El . This doesn't neccessarily mean anything , just thought it was interesting. I will look into the uses of masculine words in Hebrew , maybe I am on to something haha.

In my previous post I said stories and themes attributed to El were eventually attributed to Yahweh. To the best of my knowledge this is how they did it, thourgh text anyways. Previous to the writting of the Septugaint, there were two forms of the word god.  One form had a capital G and the other had a lower case g. The differences between the two meanings is that God = El Elyon and god = a son of god or Elohim. When the Septugaint (greek old testament) was written they changed most of the usage of the word god to God. This changed Israels son of God , Yahweh from being a god ( or angel / member of the heavenly court) to becoming God himself. Critical works of the Septugaint often call the book "G", which symbolizes the almalgamation of the words god and God. A good example of this difference between God and god can be seen in psalm 82:1. Here is a couple different versions to compare the differences.

"God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods." KJB
"God presides over heaven's court; he pronounces judgment on the heavenly beings"  NLT
"God takes His stand in His own congregation; He judges in the midst of the rulers." NASB
"God hath stood in the company of God, In the midst God doth judge." ESV    what the heck does that mean? He stood in the company of himself and then judged himself?

Most versions say "gods" like the KJV. Check out the parralel bible comparision at http://bible.cc/psalms/82-1.htm
I also find the differences in Psalm 89:6 interesting, even if most of them don't say god with the lower case G.

"For who in the skies can be compared to the LORD? Who among the heavenly beings is like the LORD?" ESV
"For who in the skies is comparable to the LORD? Who among the sons of the mighty is like the LORD?" NASB
"For who in the heaven can be compared unto the LORD? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD?" KJB
"For who in all of heaven can compare with the LORD? What mightiest angel is anything like the LORD?" NLT
"For who is there in the heavens in comparison with the Lord? who is like the Lord among the sons of the gods?" BBE

There is clearly a similarity between gods, angels, heavenly beings, and some uses of LORD. It just depends on what version the bible you chose is based off of. However the earliest sources are sons of God.


Flood and Genesis

"So are you arguing that these similar stories are about the same event, or are you arguing that they are different?"
To be honest, I am saying both they are the same, yet they are different.  They obviously arn't exactly the same, yet they talk about the same event. If you understand that Genesis wasn't written until after being freed from Babylon, you may too understand where they picked this origins story up. Likewise, if you understand the push for monotheism you will understand why the story is changed. I don't see how it is possible for Moses to write about the origins of humanity and quote what Adam/Eve/Talking Snake said.  As an atheist I don't see any religion being correct, I was just pointing out the similarity between modern religions and ancient ones.



I would hope that all of what I have typed in this thread portrays how Judaism and Christianity have borrowed from other religions. My original intentions were to support the thread topic by showing a bible verse that suggests why there are different religions aswell as proving NotJon : right when he said the bible borrows ideas and themes from other religions. I aplogize if any one thinks this post is off topic , but to some degree it is still on topic because it shows similarities between religions.

Thank you for reading my wall of text, and if you didn't read it all shame on you thanks anyways!

*Note - I mispelled such words as Canaan ( I said Caanan) and Septuagint ( Septugaint). So if you are looking up anything I said, please account for possible spelling errors.

smotpoker86 :

"Moses most definetly did not write the Torah. I am not sure where you get the idea that most scholars think Moses wrote the bible. Here is a quote from http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/moses.html , which if you read the entire article , takes more of an apologetic approach and basically says this viewpoint is biased because they didn't believe in God."

Yeah a single article isn't going to prove that Moses didn't write the Torah -
here's one that supports him writing it:
http://www.apologeticspress.org/apPubPage.aspx?pub=1&issue=537&article=22
:|

I chose that source because it is said by a Christian, yet he still says Scholars today say Moses didn't write the bible. "Religious studies courses at most universities teach that the Pentateuch is a composite work consisting of four literary strands. "

This is a quote from the site you linked "It is becoming increasingly popular to believe this theory. For example, not long ago we at Apologetics Press received an e-mail “informing” us that “the documentary theory is accepted by almost all scholarly interpreters.” "


Scholars in a Christian school might teach that Moses wrote the Torah, but in a secular school's religious class, they teach that he didn't write the Torah. I am not arguing (in this thread) that those events never took place or that Moses never said what is recorded. Instead I am saying that the bible changed from a mostly oral tradition (there are no texts that physically date back to that time, there is a good chance he would have written them in stone during that time) to a written doctrine well after his death.  If you would like to discuss parts of the article you linked, please point out which ones. It ranges from saying that scholars don't believe camels existed in Moses time to saying that scholars believe writing didn't exist at that time , both of which can be proven wrong very easily.

If you could tell me how Moses wrote / knew about the origins of mankind and what happened after his death, I would be more than willing to read it.
Also, If you want to base this argument over the number of links and articles I would be more than willing to send more links, although most of them won't be from Christian sources.