beatrice_otter: Dali's Christ of St. John of the Cross (St. John of the Cross)
beatrice_otter ([personal profile] beatrice_otter) wrote in [personal profile] alexseanchai 2014-05-13 12:41 am (UTC)

I'm not so sure if Abraham was so much strongly monotheist as he was henotheist; certainly, until very late Israel and Judah were henotheistic, not monotheistic; that is, they believed multiple gods existed, but only worshipped the one. And from what I recall, the dualism of God/the Devil is mostly a Christian thing, when they slapped pagan theology onto Jewish holy texts. And isn't the Demiurge out of Greek philosophy? As to "the Holy Spirit" calming YHWH, that presupposes two things: first, that YHWH spends a lot of time angry and needing to be propitiated, which is much more of a Christian assumption than a Jewish one, I believe. It's part of what happens when you separate God into three pieces and one of them (Jesus) is explicitly all about forgiving; then one of the others needs to be seen as angrier to compensate, and once Christians had decided Jews were Evol it was a good "justification" for prejudice--not only were Jews Christ-killers, they worshipped the angry god of the Old Testament! The other thing about the Holy Spirit calming YHWH is that the Holy Spirit being separate from the Father/Creator is also a product of Christianity; in the Hebrew Bible, the spirit is "ruach elohim," "the breath of God." It's not separate from the Creator, it's a part of the Creator that gets sent out into the world.

Post a comment in response:

(will be screened)
(will be screened if not validated)
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

If you are unable to use this captcha for any reason, please contact us by email at support@dreamwidth.org