re: Interesting how "Evangelicals" are separating themselves from "Protestants".

As a public service announcement for anyone who thinks that somethingdifferent actually understands what he’s talking about, below is the bio of someone whose book somethingdifferent thinks is “stupid”.

Of course it’s “stupid” because it offends somethingdifferent’s religious sensibilities. What basis does somethingdiffernt have to call it “stupid”? It certainly isn’t a comprehensive understanding (or even basic understanding) of linguistics.

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Mark S. Smith is the Helena Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary. After obtaining master’s degrees from Catholic University of America, Harvard University, and Yale University, he earned his PhD at Yale. Prior to coming to Princeton Seminary, he served as the Skirball Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University, and also taught at Yale and Saint Joseph’s University. A Roman Catholic layman, Smith also served as a visiting professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Smith specializes in Israelite religion and the Hebrew Bible, as well as the literature and religion of Late Bronze Age Ugarit. He is the author of 15 books and more than 100 articles. His current research includes a commentary on the book of Judges co-authored with Elizabeth M. Bloch-Smith, which is to appear in the Hermeneia commentary series.

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Of course not. It made your statement problematic

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This is the customary juvenile response from you. Your statement didn't do anything and I explained that. But I get that you don't understand it. Get an adult to help you.

Sure, liar.

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Jude doesn’t merely quote from 1 Enoch. He calls it a prophetic work

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First, he does not say it's a prophetic work and he doesn't even mention the book. He quotes Enoch himself. Second, even if he did cite the book, citing a quotation from another source does not indicate that the entire work is inspired. Third, I asked you why we don't see apochryphal books quoted anywhere else in scripture. If this book was so canonical, how could it have escaped being quoted by other Apostles? The rest of the NT talks at great length about the gospels. Same for the Patristics.

You need help

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Third, I asked you why we don't see apochryphal books quoted anywhere else in scripture.

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Hebrews 11:35 is an indisputable reference to 2 Maccabees 7

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Islam was thoroughly biblically monotheistic from the beginning.

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The Satanic verses say otherwise, but go ahead anyway. You’re a liar and bullshite artist about everything else. May as well do the same thing about Islam.

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the Israelite religion is simply an evolved Canaanite religion

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No it is not and you keep repeating an easily refuted assertion. Just because the Jews occasionally dipped into idol worship, and were then chastised by their own prophets, doesn't mean they were an offshoot of an eariler Canaanite people. That's nothing more than circumstantial evidence and it's guilty of post hoc, ergo propter hoc

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Do you even know what that means? Maybe you do, but if you do, then that’s all the evidence I need to know that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

It’s not some logical fallacy. It’s not an assumption. The Israelite culture was continuous with the earlier Iron Age Canaanite culture in terms of weaponry, textiles, pottery, agriculture, language, writing/alphabet, religious texts, and more. This is established historical fact, not even to be debated. The Israelites took the older Canaanite gods of El, Asherah, Anat, Nehushtan, Baal, and more, and introduced Yahweh sometime in the 9th century BC from Sinai or Arabia.

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Then why were there times when they smashed all the idols?

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There’s you fallacy. You assume because it was written in an ancient book that it actually happened and was historical. Maybe it did really happen, but no one can know for sure.

My point is that the vast majority of the Israelite and Judahite kings for the vast majority of the existence of the two kingdoms were pure polytheistic. Maybe 1% of the kings really did smash the Asherahs, maybe… again we do not know, but even if that were true, the religion during that time period was still polytheistic save for a couple decades at the most.

All the writings about how bad the kings were because they were filthy polytheists were written after the Babylonian exile, and they were written by scribes beholden to a new king - Cyrus the messiah (Isaiah 45:1) - and they needed to write a tail of excuses as to why the Jews could not have a Jewish king anymore. The Persians seem to have this figured out worshipping a single god, and historically conquered peoples tended to adopt the beliefs and traditions of their conquerors.

The part about the kings all being polytheists was probably true, but it was the scribes who blamed those practices for the reason why Israel and Judah were conquered that was the lie. They inserted verses into there literature of prophets advocating for Yahweh exclusive worship so that they could point to the kings as being bad people. But not their new king (Cyrus the Persian).

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Polytheism is at the root of Judaism

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Completely the opposite. The Jews by nature hate everything pagan. It's in their DNA.

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You should read some non fiction history books. Jewish DNA is Canaanite DNA. That’s another continuous thing with the earlier Canaanite Bronze Age culture too. Archaeologists dug up a bunch of dead people from 3500BCE to the Roman period and the genetics are continuous - no big population shifts. No real difference in genetics from Canaanites in 1500BCE to the Roman period, and they can’t even tell the difference between the genetics of Moabites and Israelites and Phoenicians and Ammonites.

The biggest influx of peoples and change of genetics believe it or not is the Philistines and the tribe of Dan, both of whom were genetically Mycenaean Greek populations that the Egyptians called the Peleset and Danuna - they were seafaring invaders and marauders that the Egyptians eventually defeated and they relocated those peoples to Gaza and Ashkelon and that area. And the clothing, textiles, pottery, inscriptions, language, etc are not continuous with their neighboring Canaanite groups called the Judahires and Israelites. The Danuna assimilated into the Israelite coalition and they came up with a fictive history for insertion into what became the Bible. The Peleset didn’t assimilate.

Now even in theological seminaries they teach Moses and the exodus from Egypt is ahistorical. But even if you ask Foo Lane Craig when Moses was suposed to be leading his people out of Egyptian slavery, during that time period the Egyptians actually owned and managed Canaan. The writers of exodus in the Persian period didn’t realize that and didn’t realize we’d be able to prove their story a myth thousands of years later.

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Almost never and when they did the prophets were all over them or there were severe consequences from God himself which totally blows up your addled fictions

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You assume a mythical story, a fictional narrative, is historical without any evidence.

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That doesn't prove three different authors. It could very well prove three different scribes or the author going through different literary styles which is completely common.

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You fall into the same trap as Foo. “Is it possible that the least likely thing could be true?” Yeah, sure, and you’d have to also assume Isaiah was a real guy, a prophet who really could see the future. Just google Isaiah failed prophecies. The truth is that the three sections of Isaiah were each written centuries apart but later redacted.

Imagine if a story was written about America in three parts. The first part was written by John Smith of Jamestown. The second part by Thomas Jefferson, and the third part by Clarence Thomas. Just by the syntax and vocabulary, you’d be able to tell not only that it was written by three people but people not even in the same time period. That’s what the experts who made it their life’s work in Philology and Textua Criticism have figured out and that’s how they know Isaiah was written during three distinct time periods hundreds of years apart.

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Mohammed had visions that led him to what he thought was YHWH (via Gabriel)

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So if you believe that, you must also believe Joseph Smith talked with the angel Moroni and really dug up some golden plates in upstate New York written on them by ancient Israelites.

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So if you believe that, you must also believe Joseph Smith talked with the angel Moroni and really dug up some golden plates in upstate New York written on them by ancient Israelites

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Joseph Smith was called a prophet dum dum dum dum dum. And that's how the Book of Mormon was written dum dum dum dum dum.

South park nailed that and scientology

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Mohammed had visions that led him to what he thought was YHWH (via Gabriel), as in monotheism.

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I didn’t even notice this statement until Squirrel pointed it out. I didn’t realize that you were an adherent of Islam too.

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Joseph Smith was called a prophet dum dum dum dum dum. And that's how the Book of Mormon was written dum dum dum dum dum.

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South park nailed that and scientology

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And Charlie Kirk.

And a lot of other stuff. Like Macho Man Randy Savage becoming a woman.

One of my favorite episodes was an old one called “Faith +1” for its Christian content but my favorite part is that Token doesn’t realize he has a bass guitar or that he can play it well just because he is black and cartman gets pissed off at him for continuing to doubt himself.