re: This isn’t a great look for the pentagon. They appear to claim Mormons aren’t Christians

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There are definitely Christians like that

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This site is filled with them. Hey I’m glad you watched that video. Thanks

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I think more Christians should watch things like that- to get a better understanding of the atheist position, and to guard themselves against this type of behavior.

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Complete whackadoodles like Foo, Narax, somethingdifferent, etc. simply can’t process the atheist position that is a genuine disbelief in their deity or deities.

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But do you really think that you are like that atheist? And that I am like that Christian?

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I’m not like that. I know better than to come “out” as an atheist to a Christian. Absolutely nothing good can come of it. They simply can’t handle it. It makes them angry and sets off their amygdala. They become irrational and hateful. It’s much easier to just go along with the delusion externally. I’ve had Christians state out loud that “we” should kill all atheists that otherwise were kind people.

I don’t think you are like the Christian in the video.

I didn’t send you the link with the intention of linking you to that Christian - more to the likes of the completely irrational ones like Foo who can’t feel their own hypocrisy when it bites them in the arse.

Earlier in the Moby Dick meme I thought you intended Moby Dick to be Foo before I realized you meant the analogy to be Moby Dick was God.

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The streets don’t change; but maybe the names (GnR). There really and truly is nothing new under the sun (Solomon)

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Only one of those quotes is attributed to a real historical people/person.

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They/I have a legitimate excuse- we are retarded for Jesus

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You are constantly attacking Him. You don’ have a good reason. You’re just retarded for no reason at all.

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I like to spread my evangelical atheism so that more people will reject God so that they won’t be saved.

I have a good reason for real. Just like all of you I’m on this site to see what other people think about stuff and to spread my own thoughts, opinions, and facts. Like these little known facts - Solomon was named for a west Semitic deity of the sun, and shares a namesake with king Absalom (“Shalmon is my father”) and the Assyrian king Shalmonessar.

I think other people would benefit from the knowledge I’ve picked up and I think the world would be a better place without religious crutches. People like Foo think people deserve eternal conscious torment for not believing the exact same thing as he does about an unverifiable invisible man. He thinks it is good that the Israelites murdered innocent women and children and genocided whole people groups. He might actually be a good, moral person if his dogmas didn’t cloud his judgement. Without God, there is no atrocity that can’t be justified. Have you read Mein Kampf?

I’m just like you. I’m on this site for entertainment, to learn new things, and to share knowledge. It’s entertaining and sometimes challenging.

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You’re literally arguing for nothing. Think about that. We’re legit retarded. You’re LARPing as a retard. Willingly. Devoting this much (a lot)?of yourself to debunking Dungeons and Dragons- by LARPing.

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I don’t see it that way.

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Do you see how passive he was? And how aggressive you are? You’re actually more like the strawman Christian than you are the atheist in this cartoon.

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I’m pretty laid back until I see people attempt to justify the mass slaughter of babies while telling my I deserve to burn forever in hell while also telling me I am a liar - that I really do believe in Jesus but just want to sin and reject him. I feel like I respond in kind. If my “opponent” is condescending and aggressive, I’ll return the favor. In Matthew 7:12, “Jesus” tells his followers to treat others the way they want to be treated.

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I appreciate that. I try not to be that guy. I’m not always successful. I just see you a little differently. I’m not threatened by your aggressive stance. I welcome it.

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I don’t think I’m that aggressive towards you or other Christians like Champagne who aren’t aggressive themselves. I simply respond like in kind. Key word “respond”. I can only respond on religious topics. If I were to create a thread the way the Christians on this site do every day, I’d get banned again.

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That should tell you something about yourself.it cracks me up how much alike you and Foo are. Y’all are a theistic laurel and harty. You’re both such staunch rigid fundamentalists!

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Hey I’ve explained to you I don’t have a dogma. I’m open-minded and capable of critical thought. The opposite of fundamentalism.

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Shalim wasn't a sun god, he was a Ugaritic god of dusk, so the "little known fact" starts wrong.

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While Shalim was the Ugaritic god of dusk, he was also a southern Canaanite god and Assyrian god. Shalim was in fact a sun god who helped another sun god Shemesh (Shapash in Ugaritic) who actually carried the sun across the sky. Shalim helped Shemesh get the glowing red (Hebrews considered the color of the sun to be red) sun orb from the sky, across the western horizon through a gate, so that the sun could go under the earth to pop up through the eastern horizon the next day (think biblical flat earth cosmology). So my little known fact isn’t wrong, I just didn’t explain it and you didn’t know.

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More importantly, sh-l-m is one of the most common roots in Semitic languages: peace, wholeness, completion. Solomon comes straight from shalom

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You are presupposing Solomon came from shalom. The scholarship I’ve read is convincing to me that the concept of peace and completion came from the deity, not the other way around. All tonight the west Semitic cultures, the sunset god and the concept of peace and completion are derived from consonants S-L-M.

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and the Bible itself makes the point: David the man of war, Solomon the king of peace.

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Right, and we can be sure the Bible is authoritative on things like that because the Bible does not contain any Jewish apologetics.

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Absalom is "my father is peace." No deity required

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Have you ever read Deuteronomy 32:8-9? Are you familiar with the concept of the kings of the world (in ancient times) being the embodiment of the patron deity of their land/culture? Remember in fifth grade when we learned how Egyptians believed the Pharoah to be a god? In ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures, the king was the embodiment of their chief god in some form. Either their god incarnate or a son of their god normally. Rameses and Tuthmoses were the sons of Ra and Tuth respectively. Shalmanessar was the embodiment of Shalim. So was Solomon. And AbSalom “Shalim is my father”. Yahwistic rulers had Yahweh in their name too - Josiah, Hezekiah, etc. (“yah” suffixes). Other rulers like Nebuchadnezzar had theophoric names for Nebu, another god that the Canaanites and later Israelites also worshipped. The Canaanites worshipped the same deity - in fact Moses was standing atop Mount Nebo when he viewed the promised land from the east side of the Jordan. It was far more than common, it was normal, expected, and pretty much required for a king to have a theophoric name, and that name gave him legitimacy to the people. Saul and David are outliers, but most secular scholars don’t think those were historical people and were ginned up later.

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Shalmaneser is an Assyrian name built on their god Shulmanu. That tells you about Assyria, not Israel.

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Shalmaneser and Solomon are west Semitic cognates. The relationship is stronger than you realize.

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The only part with real scholarly support is Jerusalem possibly meaning "foundation of Shalim" pre-Israel. Cities keep old names.

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Very good, but it’s stronger than that. If you strip out the dogmatic/confessional scholars and look at the unbiased secular scholars, it’s much stronger than “possibly”.

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Mainstream critical scholars don't read Solomon's name as theophoric. J. J. Stamm's classic study took Shlomo as "his replacement,"

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That is one legit scholar. JJ Stamm connects Solomon with Shalom - “peace” instead of Shalim. Those words are identical though. S-L-M. No vowels. Other scholars make compelling cases for “peace” to be derived from the deity.

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a name for the child born after Bathsheba's first son died

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Well that is mythology, not history

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The Shalim reading has been floated, but it remains a minority view.

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Fair enough, and I’m glad you acknowledged that point. However let’s discuss your “minority view”. The Shalim source becomes stronger once you strip out dogmatic confessional scholars, which are the majority of scholars. Look at the unbiased secular scholars to see what they have to say.

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If you are going to portray yourself as the open minded, well read atheist guy who has done the research dumb Christian’s haven’t. Please at least frame your arguments honestly. Something like “Mainstream scholars don’t agree with me but I find one of the minority views of scholars on Solomon to be compelling.”

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That’s too much work. But… if the theists on here will make arguments like “science has shown this idea to be false and non-historical, but I find this idea of this dogmatic apologist to be convincing…” then I’ll consider beating around the bush more.

In the end there are no hard historical facts. Historians can only point to the most likely thing being historical based on supporting evidence. So for me, Solomon being a theophoric name of the Canaanite deity Shalim is a fact - it’s as factual as it can be. Is it technically possible Solomon’s name could be derived from “peace”? Sure. But it’s extremely unlikely. Powerful kings evoked the name and power of a deity in those ancient times. Solomon may not even be a historical figure, but he probably was a Canaanite king from Jerusalem - foundation of Shalim.

For a parallel - research the Assyrian city Assur. Assur was the capital city and contained the temple to Assur. Kings were named after the deity, such as Assurnasirpal and Assuruballit. So there is established prior probability in the region for a capital city to be named for a deity and for the king in that city to have a theophoric name for that deity.

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You did.

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Nope. I explained this. I referred to church history due to the broad acceptance within the Church to show just how fundamental and how ubiquitous the doctrine is to orthodox Christianity. It wasn't an appeal to tradition over Scripture. I'm just not going to waste my breath defending the Trinity in a debate with you.

If you want something to read, try this. I'm not going to type everything out, myself, because you don't really care anyway: Defending the Trinity

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Curious to see if you can show us an unedited example of your post where you’ve ever once admitted someone else was right.

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All I can say is that it's happened several times over the years. I'm not searching through over 40,000 posts to find some examples for you, though. If you want to fact check me, go do the work yourself.

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Marcionism was the most popular and widely spread form of Christianity in the second century. They didn’t even believe the Jewish god was Jesus’ father. Face it, the only reason you believe what you believe is the Roman Catholic authority enforced by the Roman Empire.

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Marcion was excommunicated as a heretic for his teaching almost immediately after he started teaching. The Church knew what was what early on.

Your claim is an exaggeration that the evidence doesn't actually support. Marcionism was certainly the most popular rival to biblical Christianity, but the evidence doesn't suggest it was the "most popular and widely spread form of Christianity".

As usual, you sprinkle in some truth with your lies to sound more credible. Satan does the same thing.

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Paul constantly uses metaphor and talks of gentiles being the seed of Abraham and even of Jesus being the son of Hagar but when he was resurrected became the seed of Sarah. Paul never mentioned Mary, because he did not know of that tale because it hadn’t been ginned up yet. Paul uses metaphorical language about so and so being the seed of such and such. You want to argue his meaning is literal when it fits your preconceived biases, and you want to argue it’s metaphorical when it fits. In some cases like being the seed of Abraham and Hagar/Sarah that’s obviously metaphorical. Wouldn’t it have been nice if Paul would have written Jesus was the literal seed of or begotten by Mary? Too bad.

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Paul didn't have to mention Mary's name at all, as it really isn't important to what Paul was teaching. What was important was the Jesus was the biological offspring of a woman to show Jesus' human nature.

And no, I'm not picking and choosing literal vs. metaphorical arbitrarily. I'm following historical biblical hermeneutics which interprets the Bible based on its context, just like we do with any book. If "seed" has a range of meaning, you have to read the context to understand how it is being used. What you're doing is ignoring that entirely and interpreting the word based on an already-established conclusion in your mind that Paul was talking about some sort of literal seed in heaven. You are either ignoring the contextual evidence within his writings, or twisting them to try to fit that conclusion you already have. That's why it's nonsensical, because Paul's writings don't actually support what you are claiming.

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Here’s two possible meanings of Paul’s letters.
1. Literal - Jesus’ body was created of the sperm of David (exactly as the myth of the Zoroastrian savior was created).
2. Figurative - Jesus’ body was created of Jewish Messianic substance.

Either way, Paul believed Jesus had a real body made of real Jewish fleshly substance.

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Or you an just use the language that I already explained: that Paul was saying Jesus was of Jewish (Abrahamic) biological lineage through a woman (Mary--who he doesn't name specifically). There's no need to use language like "Messianic substance" when he's simply referring to being born with a Jewish human nature.

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He definitely 100% did not mean Jesus literally was born out of a human female vagina, and never mentioned Mary, and always used the word for “made” and never “born”.

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And yet you're wrong. I've already shown how your interpretation is incorrect, and Christians from the beginning have understood what Paul was writing about.

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I'm just not going to waste my breath defending the Trinity in a debate with you.

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Most learned long ago to avoid debate with this guy. There is not a thing in the world that would cause him to change his stance other than a Revelation to him that you can't give. But you know who can. Turn it loose and he can end up as the tares bundled up and tossed into the fire. You can only pray for him but you would be insulting his intelligence. Sad!

Still no source for the sun-gate story after two tellings. Which tablet? Give me a KTU number. The only real Shalim text is KTU 1.23, and there's nothing in it about helping Shemesh haul a red orb through a western gate. That gate imagery comes from Mesopotamian Shamash iconography. You've bolted Ugaritic characters onto Babylonian scenery and called it a little known fact.

Your embodiment theory dies on your own examples. You listed Josiah and Hezekiah as parallels. So was Hezekiah Yahweh incarnate? Of course not. A theophoric name honors a god. The king stays a man. Shalmaneser means "Shulmanu is preeminent," which tells you what the Assyrians thought of Shulmanu, same grammar as Hezekiah. And Assyrian kings ruled as vice-regents of Ashur. Divine kingship was an Egyptian thing you're dragging into Mesopotamia and then into Israel.

The etymology runs the wrong direction. Shalamu, be whole or be well, is an ordinary verb in every branch of Semitic, including Akkadian. Saying the whole root came from one dusk god is like saying the English word dawn came from a goddess named Dawn. And if no vowels makes words identical, then Suleiman and Islam are theophoric for Shalim too. You don't believe that, so drop the argument.

Here's the bigger problem. If Shalim had a Jerusalem cult big enough to name the dynasty's greatest king, where is he? The prophets rail against Baal, Asherah, Molech, Chemosh, Tammuz. Never Shalim. Not one Shalim name in the Hebrew inscriptions either. A cult important enough to name Solomon but invisible to every prophet and every ostracon exists only in your post.

Also, "most secular scholars think David was ginned up" is just wrong. After the Tel Dan stele even Finkelstein accepts a historical David. Full denial is the Copenhagen school, an actual fringe. You're doing exactly what you accused me of.

As for "unbiased secular scholars," name one. I gave you Stamm, Cogan, and Sweeney. All three are critical scholars, zero apologists among them, so that dodge won't stick. You've cited nobody. And the whole idea of an unbiased scholar is a fantasy anyway. Everyone brings assumptions to the evidence, religious and secular alike. Dropping religion just swaps one set of priors for another. Which is fine. The only real check on anyone's bias is citations other people can verify. I've given you names you can check. Give me one. And cite the tablet.

Step back and look at your method. One respectable finding, Jerusalem as foundation of Shalim, buried under a stack of speculation: Shalim becomes a sun god, kings become gods, a pan-Semitic root becomes his invention, David becomes fiction. Confidence goes up each layer while evidence goes down. Challenged, you disqualify every scholar who disagrees and promote the result to "as factual as it can be." A young earth creationist runs the same play and you'd laugh at him for it. A fact comes with a source. Two posts in and you still haven't produced one.

You just refuted yourself. Your whole argument was that the king embodies the patron deity, so Solomon embodied Shalim. Now you tell me the Judahite king was the incarnation of Yahweh. Pick one. If the Davidic king embodies the dynasty's god, and that god is Yahweh like you just said, then by your own framework Solomon embodies Yahweh and the Shalim theory is dead. You killed it, not me.

The Shalim silence gets worse for you, not better. The biblical writers hated Solomon's religion. 1 Kings 11 indicts him by name for Ashtoreth, Milcom, and Chemosh, and for building a high place for Molech. Writers listing Solomon's foreign gods one by one somehow forgot the god he was named for and embodied? That's silence in the exact spot where the evidence had to show up. And Ahura Mazda proves my point. The prophets ignore him because Persian religion only matters post-exile and Persia was the friendly restorer, Isaiah 45 calls Cyrus God's anointed. Chronology explains that silence. Nothing explains yours. Shalim would have been a local Canaanite god in Jerusalem itself for the entire monarchy, the exact category the prophets attacked hardest.

On the sun-gate story, "maybe so, but it's all the same shite" means there is no tablet. The specific story you told twice exists in no text from either culture. If Ugarit and Babylon were interchangeable you wouldn't have needed to borrow Babylonian scenery in the first place. Also Shapash is a goddess and Shamash is a god, which is the kind of detail "same basic religion" flattens.

Beyt DWD as a temple to a god named DWD is the Copenhagen line from the 90s and the field buried it. Assyrian records call Israel bit-Humri, House of Omri. Was Omri a deity too? House of X means dynasty of X all over the ancient Near East, and the Tel Dan context is a king boasting about killing kings. And notice your own retreat: last post it was "most secular scholars" think David was invented, this post it's "hardly conclusive but the best evidence." That's you conceding the point without saying so.

"What was the subject?" The subject was your claim. You said the Shalim reading gets much stronger once we look at the unbiased secular scholars. Three replies now. Zero names. At this point I'll lower the bar all the way: give me one source for any of it. One tablet, one scholar, one book, one page. Any single claim you've made, your pick. You've written a thousand words of little known facts and cited nothing but your own confidence.

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I’m not getting in whatever this chat is about, but I thought I’d interject on the quote.
I have a hard time excepting this, otherwise why would they white-wash the David story through Samuel, Kings and Chronicles?
David is a gangster in Samuel, but by chronicles he is the very model of the Davidic messiah.
Especially in light of the fact that editors often seemed unwilling to alter scripture and instead would just layer new material into the body of the narrative.

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Squirrelmaster is a moron. You can discount nearly everything he says about the Bible.

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You just refuted yourself. Your whole argument was that the king embodies the patron deity, so Solomon embodied Shalim. Now you tell me the Judahite king was the incarnation of Yahweh. Pick one. If the Davidic king embodies the dynasty's god, and that god is Yahweh like you just said, then by your own framework Solomon embodies Yahweh and the Shalim theory is dead. You killed it, not me.

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Sorry if I wasn’t clear. Solomon may have been a historic figure based on him being a king with a theophoric name of the Canaanite god of dawn. At a point around 800-900 BC the patron deity became Yahweh, but they had all these stories of the badass king of Jerusalem named Solomon - named after another Canaanite deity. They co-opted him. Yeah he was “really” a Yahwistic king but they had to deal with the memories of Solomon worshipping other gods. So they wrote a story of him being selected by Yahweh as a divine king but that he was a filthy idolater.

They did something similar with Nehushtan, the god shaped like a snake with the power of healing. They co-opted it, because they couldn’t delete the memory of a giant bronze snake in the temple, so they wrote a story about Yahweh commanding Moses to make it.

In the religion they had before the exile for several hundred years, the king of Jerusalem was considered the incarnation of Yahweh their patron deity.

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The Shalim silence gets worse for you, not better. The biblical writers hated Solomon's religion. 1 Kings 11 indicts him by name for Ashtoreth, Milcom, and Chemosh, and for building a high place for Molech.

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Correction. The Deuteronomist who wrote Kings hated Solomon’s religion. And he didn’t make a high place for Molech, who was not a god. You won’t find that anywhere in the Bible, except one misprint where it should have been Milcom not Molech.

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Writers listing Solomon's foreign gods one by one somehow forgot the god he was named for and embodied?

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They wanted to claim Solomon as a good king even as they criticized him. Can’t do that if his name is a theophoric name of another deity. They didn’t forget. They were intentionally rewriting their history.

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The prophets ignore him because Persian religion only matters post-exile and Persia was the friendly restorer, Isaiah 45 calls Cyrus God's anointed.

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So because they encountered Ahura Mazda post exile, they suddenly don’t care to talk shite about other deities?

Cyrus is called the Lord’s messiah. The Jewish kings before him were also messiahs.

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Nothing explains yours. Shalim would have been a local Canaanite god in Jerusalem itself for the entire monarchy, the exact category the prophets attacked hardest.

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Unless he was not worshipped in the Iron Age when they were talking shite about Milcom and Chemosh and Dagan.

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Beyt DWD as a temple to a god named DWD is the Copenhagen line from the 90s and the field buried it. Assyrian records call Israel bit-Humri, House of Omri. Was Omri a deity too? House of X means dynasty of X all over the ancient Near East, and the Tel Dan context is a king boasting about killing kings. And notice your own retreat: last post it was "most secular scholars" think David was invented, this post it's "hardly conclusive but the best evidence." That's you conceding the point without saying so.

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Neither of us know with certainty.

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"What was the subject?" The subject was your claim. You said the Shalim reading gets much stronger once we look at the unbiased secular scholars. Three replies now. Zero names. At this point I'll lower the bar all the way: give me one source for any of it. One tablet, one scholar, one book, one page.

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John Gray. The Legacy of Canaan: The Ras Shamra Texts and Their Relevance to the Old Testament. 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill, 1965

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The fact that the names of two of David’s sons, Absalom and Solomon, should both contain the element Slm, which appears again in the name of the city itself, suggests the probability that Salem was the local god of Jerusalem domiciled there since the time of the Egyptian Execration Texts at least, which cite the name of the city Uruslum.

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You listed Josiah and Hezekiah as parallels. So was Hezekiah Yahweh incarnate? Of course not. A theophoric name honors a god. The king stays a man. Shalmaneser means "Shulmanu is preeminent," which tells you what the Assyrians thought of Shulmanu, same grammar as Hezekiah. And Assyrian kings ruled as vice-regents of Ashur. Divine kingship was an Egyptian thing you're dragging into Mesopotamia and then into Israel.

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Let me respond specifically to this because I think I glossed over it earlier.

Can we agree that the pharoahs were believed to be divine? A god? Not “the” God. Not Ra, but the son of Ra. Ramoses (Rameses). Not Thut, but the son of Thut. Thutmoses. Not Iah, but the son of Iah. Iahmoses.

Do you recognize this?

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You are my son; today I have begotten you.

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Psalm 2:7. The coronation of the Davidic king. The same king who is the son of Yahweh. Christians later applied the same line to Jesus, another son of the same deity.

Recognize this?

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I will be his father, and he shall be my son.

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In 2 Samuel Yahweh says the heir of David will be his son.

You think the Jewish king was just a dude? Not divine? If so, you are mistaken. Check Psalm 45. When the king is anointed - made messiah - God makes the king an elohim - divine.

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6Your throne, (elohim), is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness; 7you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore your God has anointed you (elohim) with the oil of gladness beyond your companions; 8your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia. From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad; 9daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor; at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.

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Well this is interesting. David will be Gods firstborn son. I know of another story of a firstborn son being a messiah…

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20I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him, 21so that my hand shall be established with him; my arm also shall strengthen him. 22The enemy shall not outwit him; the wicked shall not humble him. 23I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him. 24My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him, and in my name shall his horn be exalted. 25I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers. 26He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’ 27And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth

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I like this psalm too.

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A Psalm of David. 1The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” 2The LORD sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! 3Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. 4The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

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I know another story of a certain someone who will also sit at God’s right hand and will also be a priest forever on the order of Melchizedek.


The only reason someone would argue that the davidic kings were not thought to be a divine representative or embodiment of Yahweh would be due to lack of research or just ignorance.

ETA from the NET Bible translation notes of Psalm 45:

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Psalm 45:6 tn Or “forever and ever.”sn O God. The king is clearly the addressee here, as in vv. 2-5 and 7-9. Rather than taking the statement at face value, many prefer to emend the text because the concept of deifying the earthly king is foreign to ancient Israelite thinking (cf. NEB “your throne is like God’s throne, eternal”). However, it is preferable to retain the text and take this statement as another instance of the royal hyperbole that permeates the royal psalms. Because the Davidic king is God’s vice-regent on earth, the psalmist addresses him as if he were God incarnate. God energizes the king for battle and accomplishes justice through him.

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So the NET translators admit that the psalm is calling David a deity - Yahweh incarnate even, but that many others don’t like that the text seems to elevate the davidic king to divine status (because it conflicts with their dogmas).

As smart as these guys are, they are clueless about the ancient Israelite religion of deifying their earthly king.