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Today, in a symbolic act, Iranians set fire to the flags of Israel and the United States, as well as an obelisk and a statue of Baal—which they described as a symbol of Satan—in various cities across Iran in response to the release of the Epstein documents.
Isn't there evidence that the Canaanite gods El and Ba'al were merged into Yahweh, who remains to this day the Christian god and the Islamic Allah? These people are burning their own god
Edit: My Lemmy client is messing up and won't let me respond to comments. Just wanted to add that yeah, the Muslim Allah is the same Abrahamic God that Christians and Jews worship. In fact, the name "Allah" is directly derived from the god "El":
El, Ba'al, Yahweh, God, and Allah are all wrapped up in each other
It's likely better to think of baal and yahweh as effectively the same deity for rival regional clans. Many psalms etc in the Bible are directly plagiarized from baal.
Saying that polytheism and monotheism are actually the same thing and therefore they're burning their own god is quite a large stretch.
I didn't say that. Yahweh used to be a part of a polytheistic religion and over time became the only god. That doesn't make polytheism and monotheism the same thing, but it does make Allah and God the same god as the Yahweh from the original polytheistic religion.
Linguistically they seem to use a word for "God" but that is about where the similarities seem to end. A quick search shows your theory being a prominent Quota answer which usually isn't a great indicator of truthfulness, but also it claims Baal and Yahweh being two entirely different polytheistic gods and then Yahweh winning out over time (at least according to some rando on Quota). So even following that line they aren't the same and Iran isn't "burning their own God."
YHWH was originally the Caanite desert warrior and storm God, according to YouTube Esoterica, run by Dr. Justin Sledge, who is Jewish and has excellent deep-dive videos on that channel. These are subjects deeply interesting to me as I started my own faith and have had to turn increasingly to Judaism and the suppressed books taken from the same Dead Sea scrolls as Gnosticism, found at Qum Ran, and included in the Ethiopian Bible, which you can find in English, also on YouTube and elsewhere online, with digging.
Basically, the Council of Nicea worked for Constantine, who had a political interest in regular people not getting ideas to violently uprise against his authority, much like slavers giving slaves a different version of the Bible than the slavers read.
It's been quite an enlightening, years-long journey, learning how much words or phrases were mistranslated from Aramaic to Greek and Latin, deliberately, or from misunderstanding, which were then mistranslated again, into English. Multiple scribes with their own biases and fallibities, as were, I would imagine, Jewish scribes before them, in addition to how tales change from one telling to the next, for multiple generations. The person to whom you are replying is probably closer to correct than incorrect, and quora, like Reddit and Lemmy, can get things right, wrong, or an amalgamation, according to their own writers' understandings and biases. Here, I've cited my sources so it's a rather fascinating and winding journey, if you're ever inclined to go digging. I'm saying this as someone who regularly disagrees with the person to whom you replied here as often as I've agreed with you, so it's not that I'm choosing their side based on personal feelings, for whatever that's worth or not.
Thanks for the context. It was also iffy because it gives credence to the implication that Iran is burning Ba'al because he represents Yaweh and therefore Zionists can say "Iran is antisemitic".
I did a little more research and found a Reddit thread where everyone really just seems to make random stuff up https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/hu3gvu/yahweh_and_baal_the_same_deity/
But even there the seeming most sensible comment says that Baal and Yaweh were two different deities.
The biggest connection people seem to find is that one is called "The Lord" and the other one "God" but it still all feels like a very large stretch to me. Thanks for your input though I don't really feel like spending more time on this subject but I might check out the Youtube channel in the future.
You're welcome, and thank you for that reddit post! It's quite fascinating and largely aligns with my current understanding. Part of the reason for yhwh allowing the conquering and exiles of the Jewish people was for "whoring after other gods" and Baal was one of several. In this context, the "covenant" between yhwh and his people meant "marriage" so the Hebrews worshipping other gods was adultery, punishable by death, so conquering, exile, and occupation was indicative of G-d's mercy on his people, because of his love and compassion.
If you do a deeper dive, some of the Hollywood movies begin to make more sense, and even deeper will change your understanding of the various names of G-d, akin to the Brahmans' saying, "Brahma is one, the faces of Brahma are many." Deeper still and you learn how modern Christianity also corrupted the common understanding of souls, the tree of life (and tree of death), the shattering of the vessels (mazel tov!) and so. much. more!
You are so stupid
👍
I don't really know about christians but for muslims, Allah was never a merge of other gods, so what you are saying is not correct when it comes to muslims.
Not true for christians either. There is the holy trinity, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit but they are seen as different expressions of the one god, not three gods merged into one.
The Trinity was originally considered polytheism by the Church.
I'm not that deeply versed into it, the "sun" analogy gets used a lot nowadays, but sabellius himself was excommunicated for supposedly opposing trinity or something idk I don't really understand it tbh
Yes. As Christians we're largely taught not to question or doubt. I'm hard-headed, and wanting to better understand my faith had changed it in irrevocable ways, over the years. Regardless of the faiths I've explored, I keep ending up at the same place, different vantage point, like climbing an eternal spiral staircase, and the ancient mystical symbol found on cave walls makes more sense, and clues us that these people were much more intelligent than we credit them. In short, lack of language/vocabulary != lack of intelligence, ability to think deeply. We just rely more heavily on different brain hemispheres. If we ever evolve to the place where the larger world populace uses both equally and simultaneously, I'll daresay we will become "as gods," able to eat from every tree in the metaphorical garden!
Oh I've been dialectical about my faith in many ways. I grew up in a majority muslim country so having to "defend" or rather explain my faith has been at the core of it from the very start. Synthesising two theses gives me great joy and so I definitely understand your point about having to irrevocably change it. Creationism, The bible as the word of god being the two largest, LGBTQ+ acceptance of course and some other ones likely. I'm currently on the Jesus was not a vegan bend. This one is pretty tough I've gotta say 😅
Literally chuckling, first sip of coffee barely swallowed in time to avoid spilling!
Hard to say, but he celebrated Passover after the trumphal entry on the ass, and was welcomed and financed by enough people "of means," that lamb was probably served. Additionally there are the five loaves and two fishes miracle, so I'm not sure. I lean toward agreement with you, although it's possible he restrained from fish and lamb, himself, as we're simply not told.
I will encourage you he literally told the disciples not to take everything so literally, after the Sermon on the Mount, when asked why he taught in parables. My latest hypothesis is that in certain instances, "dead/death" referenced spiritually dead (eating from the tree of life, dead bury the dead), and the reason his teachings not being for those who didn't understand the parables is because those people had hardened their hearts (empty cups), and hadn't done the spiritual work (being spiritually alive) to understand. Wait until you start digging into Judaism and Jewish mystacism! 🤯 The soul is truly taught differently!
Anyway, best along your journey, may it ever bring you closer to union within yourself and the Divine.
Oh yeah, that was one of the things that got resolved to "hell" is not a place, but more of a state of being, or rather not being anymore. How atheists view death.
Well the "Jesus is not a vegan" is of course a bit of a caricature. More broadly, genesis talks about giving "mankind dominion over animals" for example. God drowns all the animals except two for mankinds sins? Seven if they're "holy"? Being kinda speciesist there bestie... Not to mention the hell did those animals that got drowned do?? But the thing I'm most hung up on atm is after Jesus death him appearing at the shore and telling his disciples to cast their nets on the right side, them murdering a christillion of fish and coming to shore to Jesus already having the fire to roast them lit. Got me going "Not my savior 😤" in only a half-joking way to be real.
https://www.chabad.org/kabbalah/article_cdo/aid/380651/jewish/Neshamah-Levels-of-Soul-Consciousness.htm
That may help, but then is even questionable since there are seven heavens and Merkaba.
https://www.chabad.org/kabbalah/article_cdo/aid/379706/jewish/Of-Lunatics-and-the-7th-Heaven.htm
ooh thanks
You're welcome!
Not canonically, but they mean historically and like sociologically.
The etymology of some words have previous origins, but that's it. The concept of God in Islam (and all of Abrahamic monotheism) is very different from other religions (including the pagan religions of the time and Zoroastrianism), it's way less bestial and/or anthropomorphic and local.
What are you basing this on? It's pretty settled among historians that the Abrahamic God is Yahweh, who was previously a minor deity in the Canaanite pantheon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
Whoa. Super judgemental here, and also wrong.
i went on a really fascinating rabbit hole when i read baal's role in the epstein files and learn that all abrahamic monotheism started out as polythesitic paganism based on the ancient mesopotomic pantheon of gods.
over time, they morphed into monotheism with a particular god as the supreme ruler and all of the other others were demoted to demigod/hero/prophet/noteable-figure status. baal was such a god and became synonymous with satan in what would eventually become the cristo-judiastic religions we know today.
Just posting to say that I initially read that as "i went on a really fascinating rabbi hole"
i've gone down a couple of rabbi holes in my time and each one thoroughly enjoyed it. lol
That's pretty interesting, if questionable. The major prophets of Abrahamic monotheism are pretty clearly men, with flaws and no major powers (Moses parted the sea and Jesus healed the sick but the former had to exile himself and lead his people through the desert and much suffering and the latter got captured and murdered by the Romans... Zeus wouldn't have gone through that, you know). Solomon was proud and very hedonistic in his youth, Moses killed a man, Job got angry at God... But yeah, before God guided people full-on, paganism was the law of the land. Or they had something more interesting and closer to the magnanimity, complete supremacy and non-anthropomorphic nature of God, like the cultures that worshipped the Sun. 🤷
that's another fascinating aspect about how these religions morphed in christianity, judiasm & islam that i learned.
the gods slowly lose their god powers over the millennia and those powers are either re-attributed to the one god; that would later be the same god that the christians, jews & muslims worship today; or just disappear altogether. the end result is that you have one god with all of the powers and just regular people.
it's a bit like how tolkien described middle earth or how greek/roman pantheon describe the ages going from heroes to men, with the old ages defined by powerful creatures like the titans and balrogs at the begging of history and then a slow degradation of power to the point of ordinary men and hobbits in the current age.
Mmm. I appreciate the information and your politeness. The Christians are Trinitarians so idk if they count but fair enough. ✌️
the christian trinity is also fascinating; it's one of the most modern examples of this sort of god-powers-changing-hands phenomenon when i used tolkien and the greek/roman pantheon as examples.
you should consider changing primary instances if you're hit with rudeness so much that you felt the need to say this.
Ok, but it doesn't mean that one didn't have massive influence on the formation of the other.
Religion are just belief stolen from other religion that stole it from other religion since the start of religion anyway
So in that way yes it’s true for muslim too
Yeah, but don't you dare ask them why they have to walk counter-clockwise around a shrine with a meteor in it
Yeah but the guys who stole my religion were being guided by the real God!
I've never heard that Baal was, not that he wasn't, but Baal simply means "Lord," or "master," like Baal Shem Tov, for example. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Baal-Shem-Tov