A God Without a Mythology
One of my loves is studying ancient religions and mythologies. I have always found it fascinating. I have found it to also be helpful in my understanding of the Bible. As I study the Bible and as I study mythology, I become more and more convinced of the uniqueness of the biblical faith. I do not mean just that the biblical God is real and the mythological gods are false. What I mean is that how the God of the Bible is described is unique in its ancient religious context.
For one thing, the God of the Bible is a God without a mythology. The ancients were very interested in their gods and the stories about them. They examined where the gods came from, what they looked like, where they lived, what they did, who they were married to and so on. The Bible does not seem to be interested in this. There is no explanation of where God came from, the Bible starts with the assumption that he was just there and that everything came from him. We are actually not told much about what God is like, in the sense of his interaction with others as we see in the myths of other gods. Most of what we know about God’s personality comes from prophets. Much of the Bible does not deal directly with God and what he is doing but rather what his people are doing and how obedient or disobedient they are. When God does reveal himself, it is not with stories about what he has done, but rather with revelation of his expectations within a covenant context.
We can look at the ancient gods of the Ancient Near East or Egypt or Greece and write at least short biographies of where they came from, what they were like and what they did. To attempt that with Yahweh would result in something much different. I would encourage you to read the ancient myths and then go back and re-read the Bible and notice the incredible uniqueness of the God of the Bible, the God without a mythology.
To those interested in the truth and what the Bible really teaches,
The creation of Adam by Jehovah God took place in the year 4026 B.C.E. There were ten generations between Adam and Noah when the knowledge of the Creation and the knowledge of the true god Jehovaah was passed on orally in the line of descent that led to Noah. I Noah’s day the had become ruined in Jehovah’s site. The deluge came and swept all away but eight persons who were on the Ark.
After the Deluge, in 2370 B.C.E. the oral passage of the Creation and knowledge of the true God Jehovah, Noah lived 350 years after the deluge, Noah would have continued to be what he was before the Deluge which was a preacher of rightousness so others other than just his sons and their families were also to here of the accurate knowledge of the truth about the creation and the true God Jehovah. The line of descent to produce the seed, Genesis 3:15, would now go through Noah’s son Shem to Abraham which would be 1o generations from Noah to Abraham.
Abraham was the tenth generation from Noah through Shem and was born 352 years after the Deluge, in 2018 B.C.E. Then through Abrham’s son Issac then Jacob and on to Moses was another 10 generations and before Moses died he started to put down in writing the writings that we now have in the complete form the Bible. That writing was in 1513 B.C.E. The final writing of the inspired Holy Scriptures was in @98 A.D by the Apostle John and now we have that entire collection that says of itself at 2 Timothy 3:16,17:
“16 All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.”(New World Translation of The Holy Scriptures)
All through the time from Adam to Moses there were many false religions would sprout and to produce many false ideas about the Creation and who the Creator really was and still is.The true God’s name is Jehovah and means “He causes to become.” The word create is defined as “To cause to become.”
The Readers Didest Encyclopedic Dictionary 1971 has on page 1385 for the definition of the word”Tetragrammaton” the following:
“In Hebrew texts, the group of four letters (JHVH, JHWH, YHVH, or YHWH) representing the name of God, that is considered ineffable. The common transliteration Jhovah is the result of a combination of the Tetragrammaton with the vowel points of Adonai “my lord,” that is substituted inreading the name.
God’s name was never considered ineffable by any true worshipers of him, the true God Jehovah. The model prayer that Jesus taught his followers to pray as the first issue to be prayed for is the snantification of God’s name Jehovah and not a substitute that man has placed where the Tetragrammaton appeared and more properly the common transliteration Jehovah should be in a reading of the name orally.
That is not taking the name of God in vain but asking that it be sanctified.
Knowledge to help understand the truth and deviation from the trth can be useful but one must realize where, what, and how deviation from the truth about Creation and the true od relates to Jehovah and his purposes.
So yes it is true the that the only true God Jehovh is unique, he is the Grand Creator of all things.
Warm Christian Love,
Randy