musso
Member
Ha do you even realize that El, Yahweh, Elohim, etc were all separate Canaanite deities? To assume theological unity within the Old Test is highly problematic, even more so between the Old and New Test.
Within every society in every era you have conflicts of interests and factions even among the priestly, elite class itself. We all know about the theological and political differences between the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes in the first century. I’ve already mentioned the differences between Jesus and the Pharisees, and between Paul and the Jerusalem Church led by Peter and James. Anyone familiar with early church history knows the theological conflict between all the different forms of Christianity arising across the empire. The result was politically led councils to create an authoritative, universal (ie Catholic) Christian faith with the main purpose of “preserving the [Roman] Union.” Remember the coup that our high school American history book told us was the Constitutional Convention. The stated goal was to “revise” the Articles of Confederation, right? But the meetings ended up closed, private, and secret, resulting in a whole new constitution with much stronger central government.
Canonization of the Old and New Test followed similar patterns of political expediency and accommodation of conflicting values, ideals, gods, etc. It’s always about compromise when trying to please large numbers of people. To look at the Bible and refuse to see all the contradictions and deviations is to use it merely as an instrument of faith and confirmation bias. And you’re free to do so. Personally I find it more useful and enlightening to approach the text without any need to make it conform to any dogma or doctrine. Accepting and evaluating history as it appears, rather than how you want it to be, isn’t easy, even for irreligious scholars, because all scholars need to keep their jobs, grants, budgets, etc. But religious scholars who already have a theological framework in need of satisfying have an even stiffer challenge in arriving at truth.
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