Even Ehrman agrees that there's basically only 1 verse in the entire NT that might have it's meaning changed by a variant. Your "edited and redacted" claim is not based on actual textual scholarship. It's based on popular level tripe and sheisters trying to sell books to rubes like you

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My best explanation as to why there’s so much polytheism in the Bible is that they just didn’t get it all

What's crazy is that you don't see how your own admission pulls the rug right out from under the insane assertion. How in the world could they have been SO bad at it despite having HUNDREDS of years to accomplish it. This is strictly coming from your emotional committment to your need for Christianity to be false. It has ZERO basis in actual history, facts and textual scholarship

You still have not answered the question of HOW the revisionists were able to brainwash an entire culture of their most foundational religious beliefs. You haven't given ANY specifics whatsoever and I have outlined the basic impossibilty of that happening. No reasonable, unbiased person could buy that laughable idea

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the books were basically locked and widely distributed prior to them going “monotheism”

So polytheism was "locked" into the books yet somehow, an entire ethnic population just ignored them for centuries and went in the complete opposite spiritual direction.

Step back and look at how insane that is. It's absurd and comical

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there’s literally no monotheism in the Bible

Except for the hundreds of citations I mentioned just in the Psalms alone

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Over hundreds of years of people skinning goats and turning them into parchment, the worn out scrolls had to be re-written

But wait, you claimed the polytheism was "locked in" to the texts. Would you make up your mind. You can't be serious with this

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Opportunities presented to make changes when copying texts

Except that didn't happen and we know this from extant manuscripts. There are entire books written on the subject of theological consistency in the manuscripts and every variant is known in the extant texts. Here are a couple of resources for you to get started on an actual, real education

The Origin of the Bible

textual history

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it’s true and you haven’t

You are still wrong.
1. Pagan gods are powerless idols: The Old Testament prophets frequently mocked and condemned idol worship by pointing out the utter futility and powerlessness of the physical gods carved from wood or stone. (Jeremiah 10:3-5; Psalm 115:4-7; Isaiah 44:9-10)
2. Pagan gods characterized as demonic powers: In contrast to the material idol being nothing, the Bible strongly suggests that the actual worship and sacrifices made to pagan deities are directed toward real, malevolent spiritual entities—demons or fallen angels. These beings have some degree of spiritual influence, deception, and power in the world, but they are not true gods. (Deuteronomy 32:16-17; 1 Corinthians 10:19-20; 2 Thessalonians 2:9). Your stupid Ephesians 6:12 reference is about "powers of this dark world" and against the forces of evil.
3. The verses you cited were misunderstood and full of eisegesis
4. You haven't explained how the perpetrators were able to brainwash an entire culture despite their neighbors being likeminded spiritually

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Posted by somethingdifferent

Member since Aug 2024

1940 posts

Posted on 11/9/25 at 11:29 pm to Squirrelmeister

quote:
presupposes there are other gods they could be listening to

Again, that is eisegesis and ahistorical. You can keep repeating it, but it's a juvenile misunderstanding of a simple concept. It's doesn't mean that they thought the "gods" were real in the same noumenal sense as YHWH, except for when they characterized them as demonic and not to be worshipped. You are wrong on this just like everything else

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not to do their will

List the verses

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it’s not a translation difference. The source texts are different

Prove that the authors of the ESV ("all gods") and the NASB ("you nations") are quoting "different source texts" of Deuteronomy 32:43 as opposed to the more parsimonious explanation that they are merely referring to the same thing - pagan "false" gods and people of other nations which also matches meaning found elsewhere in scripture. You're actually trying to assert that conservative evangelical textual scholars are quoting a DSS manuscript for the express purpose of describing polytheism while all of the other textual scholars are quoting the MT in order to preserve monotheism.

You are off your freaking rocker. Where are you getting this crap, the loons at skeptics annotated bible?

And BTW, the "older" extant text is not always the accurate one. The Essenes were considered deviant and eccentric. That's why it's not helpful to quote a strictly Essene characterization for Judaic theological purposes without acknowledging they were outside the mainstream. That's likely why the MT clarifies the phrase so there's no confusion. Well, at least among rational people, not you apparently. And it doesn't matter anyway because:

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the Dead Sea scrolls and from the Septuagint talk about the gods in the skies

Now you're getting into variants which I'm almost 100% positive you don't understand. This is out of your academic depth.

?????? ???????? is NOT "gods in the sky." As I have already corrected you on this, it means sons of God which is equivocal to sons of Israel. Two references to the same people.

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The Masoretic Text, which is much younger has been edited to remove some of the polytheism

No and I just explained this so you can stop saying this stupidity. The Samaritan Penteteuch also agrees with the MT so that is even more corroboration

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They relocated / exiled parts of the populations of every people group they conquered

Not specifically in the Levant and you're once again being disingenuous. There was a short Assyrian campaign into Tyre and Byblos starting in 745 and then there was another tiny excursion into Sidon in 671. Guess what happened between that? 30 years of exiling the Israelites. Babylon was essentially the same with 3 waves of deportations happening over 3 decades.

So the question remains - if the Jews were just another small Canaanite tribe that looked essentially like all the other tribes, why did the mighty Assyrian and Babylonian empires focus so heavily on the Jews for such a long time with multiple deportations through both empires? How were the Jews so distinct for that to happen? It makes no sense and is ahistorical. The Assyrians pretty much only cared about Tyre and the Babylonians pretty much only cared about breaking Egyptian influence. Since those were the military objectives, why focus so much on the insignificant, little ole Jews who ostensibly had no influence in the area?

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You’re presupposing those prophetic works are all ancient and historical

There we go! "Wah. If I don't like what it says, it was made up and fake."

So you're basically saying the strict monotheism of the prophets which predates any of the alleged polytheism and is completely historical is LESS believable than your fantastical speculations which matches basically nothing from history?

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They were a spec of sand on the beach in terms of their religious behavior

Kings had them as close advisors. They carried massive, huge theological, practical, social and even military weight. You have this 180 degrees wrong.

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Everyone else around them were worshipping all the gods of heaven

Not everyone

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They worshipped all the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. That is an archaeological fact

What you're not telling the court is that not everyone did this and it didn't happen all the time. I have pointed this out to you already but you keep repeating already refuted assertions

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That never happened

You said "no scholars" and I gave you a list of scholars. I proved you wrong

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Do you see any irony or hypocrisy there?

No. I proved you wrong. Did you even bother to study their works so you could learn how you are wrong or did you just continue to be ignorant? Clearly the latter. Does it bother you that you are ignorant of competing scholarship that refutes your stupid ideas?

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I don’t even believe those “prophets” were real historical people

Because you are a delusional person. That is called cognitive disonance. You are emotionally ignoring something that falsifies your worldview. It's the mark of an intellectual loser and a mental midget.

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that polytheism came first, and still exists in the Bible is a fact

This farce has been torn to shreds itt.

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Posted by Squirrelmeister

Member since Nov 2021

3704 posts

Posted on 11/10/25 at 9:12 am to somethingdifferent

quote:
some of the prophets had been preaching conservative, traditional Judaism a thousand years before that.

Revisionist history using fictive characters.

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1 Cor 15:3-5 blows this nonsense right out of the water. NT Christology was established going all the way back to the empty tomb itself

Blows what? Those verses are Paul saying he knew of Jesus’ death and resurrection only according to what was revealed to him in visions and in scripture. And only after the resurrection did Jesus appear to Peter. This is the celestial Jesus I’ve been telling you about.

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This is Dan Brown level stuff

The council of Nicaea in 325 was when they used coercion and threats to silence a large portions of Christians in support of Arius who asserted Jesus was a second god (consistent with church fathers such as Origen and Eusebius and even Philo of Alexandria) who was created by God and was subservient to God. They “reinterpreted” all the NT verses about Jesus being created, the firstborn of creations, having no will himself (but doing his Father’s will), praying to God, not knowing stuff only the Father knows, having no powers except what his Father granted, etc. The Roman “winners” claimed Jesus was uncreated and was of the same substance as the Father.

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I refuted your assertions with facts.

I don’t think you’ve ever stated a fact.

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Even Ehrman agrees that there's basically only 1 verse in the entire NT that might have it's meaning changed by a variant.

Well it’s obvious you’ve never read his books and are parroting some nonsense you heard on YouTube of some apologist.

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Your "edited and redacted" claim is not based on actual textual scholarship.

False

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What's crazy is that you don't see how your own admission pulls the rug right out from under the insane assertion. How in the world could they have been SO bad at it despite having HUNDREDS of years to accomplish it.

They didn’t need to edit out all the polytheism. They just had to reinterpret it and create new dogmas and teach new rationalizations as to why the text doesn’t mean what it says, and you eat it up.

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This is strictly coming from your emotional committment to your need for Christianity to be false.

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You still have not answered the question of HOW the revisionists were able to brainwash an entire culture of their most foundational religious beliefs.

I’ve answered you a half dozen times on this.

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So polytheism was "locked" into the books yet somehow, an entire ethnic population just ignored them for centuries and went in the complete opposite spiritual direction

Yes and you and they are still doing it. You don’t respect the scripture and you impose your dogma onto it and you tell it what it is allowed to say and to mean.

quote:
quote:
there’s literally no monotheism in the Bible
Except for the hundreds of citations I mentioned just in the Psalms alone

Except that never happened and you are lying.

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Pagan gods are powerless idols: The Old Testament prophets frequently mocked and condemned idol worship by pointing out the utter futility and powerlessness of the physical gods carved from wood or stone.

No one during the OT or even NT times believed the idols carved of wood or stone were divine beings. They used those idols as a way to invoke their deity, to invite the presence of their deity to enter the idol so they could worship the deity in the physical presence of their deity. The Israelites did the exact same practices with the golden bulls, the standing stones, and the ark of the convent with Yahweh, and the way they went about summoning or invoking Yahweh was by burning incense, boiling and burning “clean” animals, and singing. They didn’t believe the idols themselves had any power at all. Surprise! The gods that they would call or invoke into the idol had the actual powers.

quote:
Pagan gods characterized as demonic powers: In contrast to the material idol being nothing, the Bible strongly suggests that the actual worship and sacrifices made to pagan deities are directed toward real, malevolent spiritual entities—demons or fallen angels. These beings have some degree of spiritual influence, deception, and power in the world, but they are not true gods.

Hey I’m glad you have admitted this. It’s a good step in the right direction? Spiritual being? Check. Influence and power in the world? Check. Those are “Elohim” - gods - that you just don’t want to call “gods” because using the word makes you uncomfortable. You have reserved the use of that world for only one of the gods, that you call “God”. So all the gods of Psalms 82 and 89 you now understand that those are real gods, but you just don’t want to call them “gods” so you will call them “demons”?

quote:
Your stupid Ephesians 6:12 reference is about "powers of this dark world" and against the forces of evil.

Not against flesh and blood, but against the archons, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Those are deities dude. Gods. Call them whatever you like if it hurts your wittle feewings.

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Posted by Squirrelmeister

Member since Nov 2021

3704 posts

Posted on 11/10/25 at 10:04 am to somethingdifferent

quote:
quote:
not to do their will
List the verses

quote:
4“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me

quote:
14You shall not go after (walk behind) other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— 15for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.

Serving them and walking with them implies their existence and that they have a consciousness and will that can be served. This is not simply worshipping them or bowing to them but doing what the other deities want them to do.

quote:
Prove that the authors of the ESV ("all gods") and the NASB ("you nations") are quoting "different source texts" of Deuteronomy 32:43 as opposed to the more parsimonious explanation that they are merely referring to the same thing - pagan "false" gods and people of other nations which also matches meaning found elsewhere in scripture

Damn you are a lazy sack of shite.

Start with the ESV footnotes printed on the page of Deuteronomy 32. Do your own research. This is not even controversial and is well established and the organizations that do the translations publicly print what they are using as source texts.

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You're actually trying to assert that conservative evangelical textual scholars are quoting a DSS manuscript for the express purpose of describing polytheism while all of the other textual scholars are quoting the MT in order to preserve monotheism.

Again do your own research instead of parroting retarded shite you heard on YouTube. The ESV translators are quoting the DSS version because they believe it to be more original, rather than the obviously edited MT. Despite the dogmas they hold, they have a desire to provide the scriptures in the most accurate and original light as possible. NASB translators don’t care about being accurate and true to the more original scriptures.

quote:
Where are you getting this crap, the loons at skeptics annotated bible?

I bought one thinking it was going to be insightful but it was trash.

quote:
And BTW, the "older" extant text is not always the accurate one. The Essenes were considered deviant and eccentric. That's why it's not helpful to quote a strictly Essene characterization for Judaic theological purposes without acknowledging they were outside the mainstream.

That’s why the ESV also considered the same verses from the LXX which wasn’t an Essene text. The LXX done by Egyptian Hellenistic Jews and the DSS of the Essenes match each other and are also both way older than the MT.

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Now you're getting into variants which I'm almost 100% positive you don't understand. This is out of your academic depth.

And I’m positive you’re an idiot.

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is NOT "gods in the sky." As I have already corrected you on this, it means sons of God which is equivocal to sons of Israel. Two references to the same people.

So the sons of Israel are in the divine council in the sky ruling unjustly the other nations, and are immortal? So the sons of Israel came down to earth and raped some women and made a race of superhuman giants?

quote:
So the question remains - if the Jews were just another small Canaanite tribe that looked essentially like all the other tribes, why did the mighty Assyrian and Babylonian empires focus so heavily on the Jews for such a long time with multiple deportations through both empires?

You’re a fricking idiot man. I think you’re stupider than rogertheshrubber. Open up a history book.

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