Hi Geo. Feel free to chip in here any time. I must say though that I found Thom Starks views and interpretations quite bizarre and seriously wrong.geo wrote:An excerpt:
Quote:
At this point, many Christians would abandon their faith, because their faith is in the creeds, and in an idea of an inerrant Bible. For me, on the other hand, taking the Bible seriously meant taking all of the conflicting voices within the Bible seriously, and I was able to see the value in that. What informs my faith is not so much what the Bible “says” as it is what the Bible displays, the processes that unfold in its pages, the struggle to find meaning that it represents. It’s precisely in the humanity of the Bible that we can gain real insight into the divine. What’s revelatory is not always the words themselves, but the spaces between them.
Maybe it's appropriate to apply First Commandment—though shall have no other gods before me—to those who worship the creeds? That's what Stark seems to suggest. But more importantly, Stark argues that the early Israelites were polytheists and that Yahweh was one El Elyon’s children. Only later did Yahweh become the one God of monotheist Christianity. There's plenty of textual evidence to support this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/valerie-t ... 77340.html
I haven't read his book but in the interview you linked he refers to Deuteronomy ch 32 supposedly referring to Yahweh as being one of the sons of El Elyon.
I had a look and as close as I can find there he must be referring to verse 8, but it says nothing of the kind, rather it refers to the sons of Adam.
You can check the original Hebrew on biblehub if you like. Not only that but in the same song of Moses he's referring to, in verse 39 there is a clear and unambiguous statement of monotheism, to the exclusion of all other supposed gods.
http://biblehub.com/nasb/deuteronomy/32.htm
He also wrongly characterizes the test of Abraham's faith as being to appease God when it's obviously nothing of the kind. Abraham knew Isaac could not have died ultimately based on the promise. Paul in Romans 4 gives a better understanding of this.
Also he mentions Jepthah's sacrifice of his daughter. He fails to mention that God never asked Jepthah to make this rash vow. Also close study of the relevant text in Judges shows that what was entailed was not killing his daughter but that she his only heir, never married and this ended his lineage which was an important matter to them.
And Stark doesn't give due weight to the commands of God against child sacrifice and the judgement on the Canaanites for this very crime.
So I'm not impressed with his scholarly ability from what I have seen.
On the question of original monotheism I linked a podcast earlier of Dr Corduan discussing his book on the subject. He draws on extensive anthropological studies to make this case.
Finally the relevance of discussions on when books such as makeup the Pentatuech were written are important because they undoubtedly are monotheistic and indicate the earliest beliefs of the Israelites.
Liberal theological theories such as the documentary source hypothesis truly were conceived in a vacuum of archaeological ignorance and predicated on rationalistic philosophical presuppositions.
It's impossible to emphasize this enough so to underline it, here again is Prof Kitchen's summary of relevant archaeological discoveries.
http://www.theologynetwork.org/the-bibl ... tament.htm