The God Of Israel : A Paradoxical Mystery

In today’s society, both Christianity and Judaism are two of the most practiced religions by people all over the world. Both religions have some similarities, they both value the ten commandments. Also, some religious practices used in Christianity such as baptisms were derived from Judaism (Brodd 2016). Although society sees these two religions as similar, they both have vastly different ultimate goals. In order to help believer’s attain these goals, Jesus helps Christians and Moses helps the Jewish fully understand these goals.

There is a close relationship between Christianity and Judaism both from a theological and historical perspective. The similarities between these two religious platforms emanates from the notion that Christianity arose and protested from Judaism. However, it is worth noting that Christianity is not a continuation of Judaism as some people perceive. Both Jesus and most of his disciples, who pioneered the earliest Christian churches, were Jews. Particularly, Jesus’ family practiced and followed Jewish beliefs, and He frequently referenced the Hebrew bible. On the contrary, the disciples believed that Jesus was the one and only Messiah, which is predicted in the Jewish Bible. While the creation narrative is still mysterious to many people, most individuals are still obsessed with the attempt to discover how everything came to existence. The primary purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the basic ideologies of Christianity and Judaism (Neusner, 76).

The Hebrews served a monotheistic God, who they called Yahweh. He is an all-powerful and non human like being. They believed he made them in his image and gave them dominion over the earth. Their God was unlike any other gods at the time because he was friendly, compassionate, forgiving and all-powerful. God gave the Hebrews structure, a background, hope, and purpose. Every society needs rules to protect and keep the community in line. God gave Moses the ten commandments which they lived on.1 The Hebrews created the Bible a sacred book containing their lives and relationships with God. The Bible gave the Hebrews an understanding of how the world and humankind emerged. They also believed in an afterlife. Heaven for people who lived a righteous life and Hell for people who lived an unholy life in the eyes of God. So the Hebrews had a set of laws follow and hopes to believe in. This unified the Hebrews because they had the same goals, beliefs and obligation to suppress their desires for the well being of God and their society.

Evolutions of civilizations can occur because of differences in people’s religion, culture, or geographic setting of the settlement. The relationship between the world of the gods and that of men was perceived differently by the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Hebrew ancient civilizations. This is demonstrated by the way each group viewed the process of creation. They had different thoughts on the creation of their gods, the universe and of man. This essay will discuss the relationship between humans and their gods in three different ancient civilizations: Sumerian, Egyptian and Hebrew.

Joseph M. Bolton RELS 103-02 Online Old Testament Studies Spring Semester 2011 Session E May 8, 2011 to July 2, 2011 The Old Testament TimeLine Creation & Primeval History The Creation: * God creates the Heavens and the Earth * God creates man in his image. *

A person both is and is not identical with God and in this way must be both possessed of a capacity to know Him and equally must be beholden to the laws that He lays down for behaviour and worship. The simultaneous closeness and distance is present in the idea of that people are made in the image of God. This paper will consider the breadth of the Hebrew Bible in order to show the consequences of this seeming contradiction that a person is an incomplete replication and possesses a separated, although potentially bridgeable relationship to Divine. To begin with it will argue that, while prior

Many connections can be made between the Jewish people and Americans. These connections date back to before common era (BCE), extending to present day. Both histories are able to be paralleled and influence their cultures differently. These influences contributed to a significant influence on the perception of God amongst their populations.

An examination of Israelite theology goes beyond finding similarities and differences, it should articulate the relationships which existed and clarify the cultural context. Otherwise, the mere interpretation of text may lead to interpretation with a theological significance based on our understanding.

Author John N. Oswalt begins The Bible Among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature? with a concise and well-written introduction that whets the reader’s appetite, compelling one to continue reading. He begins by informing the reader that his novel has been in the works dating all of the way back to the 1960s, when he attended the Asbury Theological Seminary. Oswalt quickly points out that one of the main points that the book will focus on is determining if “the religion of the Old Testament [is] essentially similar to, or essentially different from, the religions of its neighbors.”1 Oswalt is swift to acknowledge a major difference between the Old Testament and the religions of the Israelites Near

Ancient Israel has always been polytheistic, the people have always believed in multiple gods. The Deuteronomist would want his readers to believe otherwise. The worship of one god is fairly new. Especially, in comparison to how worship had gone in Canaan for centuries before hand. In addition to worshiping this new god Yahweh they worshiped him alongside Baal, Asherah, and many other gods alongside them. The origins of Yahweh have been under speculation for years by biblical scholars and archaeologist. No matter the origins even the Deuteronomist who tries so hard to erase the residue of the other gods and mark them as evil he, cannot keep all his readers in the dark. “Books of I and II Samuel and I and II Kings demonstrates that the worship of Yahweh 's wife, Asherah, did not die out but remained a part of ritual and cult throughout the monarchies and until the conquest of Judah, that is, from circa 1000 to 586 B.C.” Many scholars such as William H. Dever would like to argue that Asherah was somewhat as Yahweh’s wife or consort.

God’s goodness and mercy far transcends the comprehension of the most brilliant human mind! He “who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth”(Psalm 113:6).Yet in His infinite love for us He stoops down to reveal Himself to us by a multitude of illustration, types, and shadows, so that we may learn to know him. This paper will describe what is meant by the Kingdom of God; examine the religious philosophy of the various sects of Judaism during the Second Temple period: Pharisee, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots, describe the religious philosophy and political philosophy of each sects, it will also describe how the Messianic expectation differ from the Messianic role that Jesus presented, and include an exegesis of

Yahwism, the devotion of Yahweh amid the early Jews, had changed subsequent to the exile.8 It had endured ceasing of illustrative customs and developed as it secured its holy writing. One scholar had maintained that the Jews cleansed their devotion when they returned from exile. According to him, Jewish monotheism was finally secured.9 The antiquarian and text-based evidence maintains pentateuchal Yahwism as the approved, standardizing faith that the mainstream observed, although a few existent illustrative Persian-period depictions that need more thorough debate. The Persian period appears to be the era when the ban on Yahweh’s representation was mostly extensive. Pentateuchal Yahwism flourished and turned into the standard that Judaism and the two other main, worldwide faiths, Christianity and Islam, would

John H. Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible is broken up into fourteen chapters. Those fourteen chapters are each part of one of five sections. This book also contains over twenty historical images. Before the introduction, the author gives readers a full appendix of all images used in this published work. The author then gives his acknowledgements followed by a list of abbreviations.

To speak of the Hebrew Scripture is to speak of story, a story stretching from the very beginning of time to only a few centuries before the beginning of the Common Era. It is to speak of richness of content, of purpose and of reality and to engross oneself in an overarching narrative that, depending on your personal convictions, continues to the present day. Within this richness is found a wide variety of different events and experience, told through a series of genre ranging from foundational myth to apocalypse, law giving to poetry, genealogy to wisdom and many more. Within this diversity however, three broad sections can be discerned that speak to a shared purpose and content, these are the sections of Law, Prophecy and Writings. It

Many argue that the Bible especially the Old Testament is not the inspired word of God because of the command to destroy the Canaanites. Many use this as a basis of their argument that the scriptures are not inspired by God because they wonder how could God, a God of non-violence, mercy and goodness command such a thing. The focus of this paper will be “how is one to respond to this accusation that the Old Testament is not inspired because of commands to destroy people such as the Canaanites? This paper will attempt to answer this question by offering contrary evidence, will argue that when God’s nature is properly understood, the command for destruction of the Canaanites is not against God’s nature and that God had justified reasons in this command. This paper will provide proof of the goodness, mercy and moral nature of God, as well as the accountability that God demands from all people. It will then show the justified reason for such commands not only for the Canaanites but other nations as well. This paper will show that in spite of the commands of destruction from God that Scripture is indeed inspired by God.