Divine Revelation and Religions in the Bible
QUESTION: From our continuous studies of the bible, you have theologically taught that “El” is an Elohist understanding of God where God was among the league of gods. What then is Jesus’ theology of GOD if He too cries out Eloi, Eloi at the cross instead of YHWH YHWH? Was Jesus an Elohist not a Yawehist? Peter Carlveland Sserubidde.
RESPONSE: Thank you brother Peter for the question. Allow me to start with what I have taught before.
The Revelation of God
Believers in God as the primary source and cause of everything (right and good) have insisted that there was once a standard from which man fell (Psalms 14:1-3; 53:1-3; Romans 3:10) and it is that standard that both man and God have desired to restore. God directly and intelligibly intends to restore that standard while man unknowingly and unintelligibly, in all his endeavours seeks for the same (“for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: (Acts 17:23). It is from this angle of ‘hide and seek’ (Genesis 3:8-10) that we are alerted of the initiative of God to reveal himself to a man whose initiative within his fall was to seek the very God but in a confused way of hiding from what he is seeking.
Since time immemorial, God has been in the business of revealing Himself to man and man has insisted on misunderstanding his revelation and translated it otherwise. Nevertheless, this very God has been patient with man given his (man) perceptual abilities. God from the beginning has revealed himself through the WORLD (creation= Romans 1:20) but man has worshipped the world instead of the God of the world (Animism). In these last days, he has revealed himself in the WORD (being= John 1:1-3 and Concept = Mark 12:24; Mathew 22:29).
We now wrestle with understanding the word so that we can tell how our forefathers both got right and in some incidences misunderstood his revelation. The chronological revelation of God through the world and word is word and world, not world and word (the difference will be for another day). He has spoken to the worship instincts of man yet man since ancient days has appreciated the creature instead of the creator.
The Religion of the Patriarchs
The Patriarchs are not restricted to the Bible Patriarchs, when we talk about patriarchs we are discussing your patriarchs, not just the Patriarchs to the Israelites. When we talk about the religion of the patriarchs most people quickly think of the patriarchs recorded in the Bible. Patriarchal religion, however, starts with how your patriarchs in your ethnic group in your various geographies. How was God (gods) perceived? All these we have castigated as occultism was originally a divine revelatory initiative gone wrong.
God was in the business of revealing Himself to the Patriarchs long before there was a people we know as the Habirus/Hebrews. Habirus/Hebrews are descendants of Eber (Genesis 10:21-25; 11:16-26) who later became the Israelites (Genesis 49:28). Habirus means Nomads or those who cross over, it is not a specific ethnic group as Israelite is. All Israelites are Habirus but not all Habirus are Israelites. Abraham was not an Israelite but a Habiru (Genesis 14:13) but Jacob his grandson was an Israelite. This information is relevant in underscoring how each group of these related people separated in time understood the revelation of God.
In understanding the self-revealing activities of God you need to dwell so much on your culture compared to other cultures and see how they have addressed the issue of worship and the gods. There are way too many revelatory acts of God in the history of your cultural worship as there is in your Bible. You need to stop assuming that ancient worship endeavours are pagan and therefore destined to dismiss altogether without detecting the involvement of a helpless God who dared present himself in nature and humanity worshipped and venerated nature instead.
A proper study of biblical patriarchs will indicate no difference in their perception of the same God from the extra-biblical patriarchs in your cultures. While today the revelation of God has grown to monotheism (worship of one God) our forefathers entertained a pantheon of gods to which the technical term is polytheism (worship of more than one God concurrently). It is against this background that we address what I taught about Elohim in the Bible.
The El Religion
An earnest Bible study will demonstrate that there are four religions in the Bible and all these religions need to be understood properly for they frame the world from which Christianity is born. These five religions are:
- Animism ‘Religion’
- The El ‘Religion’
- The Yahweh ‘Religion’
- The Baal ‘Religion’
- Judaism ‘Religion’
These are the five religions in the Bible. Animism (the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even words—as animated and alive- Wikipedia) is primitive worship of all civilizations in the world. Almost in every culture, animism has been exercised historically (Job 12:7-8; 31:26-28; Isaiah 1:29; Jeremiah 2:27; 3:9; Ezekiel 8:16).
The next three (El, Yahweh, and Baal) are also found in the Old Testament (OT) however, one thing to note these religions serve as a modification of Animism. The worshipper gradually shifts from worshipping the Oak as a god (Isaiah 1:29) and identifies the god in the Oaks, worships that god in the Oaks, through the Oaks but not the Oaks (Genesis 18:1). That Kind of Animism still exists even today. The fifth (Judaism) derived from El and Yahweh religions, nurtured in the inter-testamental period and it is largely present in the New Testament (NT). It is the religion that both Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus wrestle until they are killed by it.
These are the five religions in the Bible am calling them ‘Religions’ for conventional purposes but practically these were in essence cults by definition and practicality. Secondly, these were stages in the development of divine revelation understanding by humanity. Professor Oesterly and Robinson in their co-authored book ‘Hebrew Religion: It Origin and Development’ P. 56 write:
“If it be asked what religion the Patriarchs had, the answer cannot for a moment be in doubt, since the tradition knows only of the El- Religion, but not of the Yahweh-Religion as in the time of Moses and Baal-Religion, as among the Canaanites.”
The El-Religion was the belief system of the ancient near east people as well as the immediate ancestors of the Hebrews pre-Mosaic times. It was Moses who introduced either a new name of the same god or a different god altogether after his theophany at the burning bush.
Daniel O Maclellan writes:
“The proper name of the Israelite deity is Yahweh (YHWH; yod-heh-vav-heh), which the exodus tradition suggests derives from the Hebrew root h-y-h, “to be” (Exodus 3:14) and was unknown to the patriarchs (Exodus 6:3). Some scholars believe immigrants from that region in the south brought their deity north with them to Israel’s hill country (Deuteronomy 33:2, Habakkuk 3:3). According to this theory, the God (Yahweh) of Israel was originally a storm deity, frequently conceptualized as a fierce warrior who manifests his power through violent weather (Judges 5:4-5, Ps 18:6-15). Titles like “Yahweh of Hosts” (Jeremiah 32:18) and “Mighty One” (Psalm 45:3 Hebrew, 45:4]) reflect aspects of this imagery.”
However, this is the Mosaic God (a new revelation about God to Moses). When God introduced himself in his essentiality, that ‘I AM’, Moses like other people including ourselves couldn’t appreciate divinity in its Ontological essence so a new development took place. This is what God said to Moses next when he met him: “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty (El-Shaddai), but by My name LORD (Yahweh) I was not known to them. (Exodus 6:3 NKJ). So the Patriarchs knew no Yahweh but El.
Yahweh is a deuteronomistic/wilderness god but El was the original understanding of who God was. Discussing each of them and demonstrating them in the scriptures as well as establishing whether they are religions or cults will be for another day for now let me turn to the second one which is Elohim.
God bless you,
I invoke TRUTH, WISDOM and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)
Priest M.I.T White (+256-775 822833)
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