Horace Heffner wrote:
At 11:14 AM 3/24/5, thomas malloy wrote:This is in danger of turning into a serious argument. Time to derail it again.
The idea that Yehovah, and Allah are the same entity is pure
nonsense. Ditto for the idea that Shariah is a substitute for Torah.
I thought I'd made the case adequately, but apparently I didn't.
You completely failed to address the issue and you seem to not even understand the point.
Jews and Christians worship the god of Abraham. Islamists worship the god of Abraham. If it is the same Abraham it is the same god.
I have run across some references to cuneiform records on clay tablets found in a temple(?) which served as a way station for caravans traveling the road between Babylon and Canaan. The tablets included records of the names of those who stopped there on their journeys. Included in the roles were a group of people with Jewish names (of course, I mean names like Benjamin, _not_ names like Goldstein, duh). The tablets date to about 1800 BC.
This jibes pretty well with the time period of the events in Genesis in which Abraham led his clan from Babylon to Canaan. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it suggests strongly that there was indeed a clan of Jews traveling that road at that time, which supports the notion that Genesis is more or less correct on this point: They migrated from the east into Israel some time between 1500 and 2000 BC. Whoever the leader of the clan was, was "Abraham". He existed. (Whether he called himself Abraham or the name was altered in a scribal error is, of course, not determinable, and also somewhat irrelevant IMHO.) "Abraham"'s God was, by definition and scribal errors notwithstanding, Yhwh.
In addition, and far more subjectively, I would assert that the very strange incident of Melchizidek provides strong internal evidence for the historical authenticity of at least some of the stories of Abraham. Nobody who was inventing stories about a mythical Abraham would have invented such an out-of-character tale; it seems far more likely that it documents a real incident, and in fact may be the only record that remains of a far more extensive connection between the god of Abraham and the god of Melchizidek.
The name of Bethel, which has some significance in Jewish history, is also interesting: As I understand it, it means "the seat of El". Who was El? El, the Lord Most High, was the chief god in the pantheon which included Baal. Is it possible that Yhwh was connected in some way with the same pantheon? This seems likely to me, though I've read arguments that it could not be, since Yhwh was a god of the cities and Baal a god of the countryside (or perhaps I have it backwards) but I didn't find that all that convincing.
I expect somebody in Vortex knows more about this than I do, and can jump in and correct the errors in this :-)
