re: Question for Devil Worshippers about Satan

any time.
thanks.

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The notion that the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah) may have had related-but-different monolatrist religions and scriptures?

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The J and E source material is pretty interesting to parse through to try to see the differences in their first temple / pre-Assyrian exile theology. The Israel (worshipping El Elyon) theology had Noah putting two of every animal on the arc. El didn’t demand blood sacrifice. The Judean Yahwist theology had Noah putting 14 of every clean animal on the arch so that YHWH could sweet aroma of burning meat. Similar but not the same. Did they start the compilation and redaction into a single set of scrolls back in Babylon or did they do if after returning to Judah with their Babylonian governor Zerubabbel and Persian cash? Perhaps a little if both, with further edits and redactions all the way to medieval times.

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Cyrus’s regime as a possible substantive contributor to the actual scriptures?

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Cyrus funded the building of the new second temple. The divine kings of the first temple period had to be transformed into flawed characters unworthy of ever having ruled tbe kingdoms. The new order was the order of the priestly class backed by Cyrus. Hell, David and Solomon should’ve never been kings, Samuel the priest should have led Judah- at least that’s the vibe I gather. The god Kings of the past were no more because Cyrus was the king. They had to change their religion to suit their masters’ wishes. Tear down all the mountaintop shrines and altars… thou shalt bring all offerings to YHWH to the temple priests because they were the only ones worthy. Of course they’d take a small tithe for their service. (Reminds me of Catholicism requiring one to go to priests for reconciliation rather than individuals asking God for forgiveness directly.)

Side note: there were a shite tonne of scrolls and tablets found in an old site called Ugarit. Many of those explain in detail the Ugaritic theology which very closely aligned with pre-Assyrian Israel theology. They explain the pantheon of El Elyon, Baal Hadad, Asherah, Dagon, Mot, and more. All of those are in the Bible of course too.

After Cyrus’ second temple theology took official form, the first temple pre exile religion lived on in many rural groups. They worshipped the father El Elyon, son YHWH, and mother Asherah aka Ruach Elohim aka Holy Spirit. After they wrote Enoch and then Acension of Isaiah and Christianity was formed. Pre exile religion didn’t have the idea of “chosen people”. Anyone could worship YHWH. They intermarried. Look at Abrahams wives and concubines. It was the second temple that brought about the “chosen people” idea. At that point the second temple adherents didn’t intermarry and they didn’t accept converts. It was the Christians who descended from pre exile polytheism that welcomed converts (the gentiles).

Sometime around 200-100BCE the first temple adherents seemed to have adopted some of the Persian influence they tried for hundreds of years to avoid. They adopted “the devil” from the evil spirit of Zoroastrianism.


I tried having a conversation with a devout Catholic family member not long ago. What if by some chance there were really 4 gods - the father the creator and almighty, Jesus his son who sacrificed his life for our eternal life, his mother the Holy Spirit, and a less powerful evil god Satan. Basically everything a Catholic believes but without the Trinity. I was told that didn’t make any sense and was given a nonsense response. Yeah you’re right, what was I thinking? Another beer? Some folks don’t do well at all if you challenge a deeply-held belief.

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quote: God doesn’t murder. God creates murderers. God creates Jihads. God creates wars God creates weapons of wars God creates cancer God murdered(s) every single person on the planet, and ever single person that's ever existed.

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Is it rational for a child to blame his parents for the actions of his siblings? Are we not born with free will, and the knowledge of good and evil?

The Bible is basically CNN news of the ancient world. If covid and Pfizer existed back then, it would say that god said Fauci is science and men can have babies.

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The Bible is basically CNN news of the ancient world. If covid and Pfizer existed back then, it would say that god said Fauci is science and men can have babies.

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I believe the Bible is the very inspired word of God. God isn't like CNN.

I am curious about something.

Does reformed Presbyterianism still consider the US Constitution to be invalid, because it does not acknowledge Jesus as the King of Nations?

Do your church courts still punish congregants who vote or who serve on juries?

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What if by some chance there were really 4 gods

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What if by some chance there were no gods, we're all a cosmic accident, so killing a toddler is not "evil" any more than uprooting a plant is evil. And we can't have free will because that requires the supernatural, so you're just a bio-machine responding to inputs, and killing the toddler wouldn't have really been up to you anyway.

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Certainly they wouldn’t have only borrowed the Phoenician alphabet, but other aspects of their influential culture as well.

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without going back and cross referencing dates, my best recollection is that the Ugarit finds date sometime around the beginning of the Bronze Age Collapse in Greece (post-Mycenaean and pre-Archaic), and the Greek adoption of Phoenician culture followed that event …again to the best of my recollection.

I do not recall the full classical Greek Olympian pantheon existing prior to the Archaic Period, but there was evidence of a proto-Zeus and a proto-Poseidon at some Mycenaean sites. Phoenician origin?

Was the Olympian revolt against the Titans historically actually a replacement of Mycenaean gods with Phoenician gods during the Greek dark ages?

Interesting discussion. I’m hitting the hay. Good night.