The origin of Christianity 10.18.2011

What's the origin of Christianity? I'm sure many people will cry out "Christ Jesus is the source of Christianity!". I guess you would be somewhat correct here. He is the main character the jewish splinter sect drew it's name from. But I want to take this back a step further. After all Jesus was Jewish, so the story goes, so that would make the real source or origin of Christianity not really Jesus, but Judaism (to some extent).

If just reading this intro already makes you feel offended or angry or uncomfortable, please do read on.

Before I continue, if I'm somehow making an error in the way I think or if anybody feels like they need to correct me anywhere, please let me know! Don't take my word for anything, please look into it yourself and see I'm not just making this up. If you come to another conclusion than I did, again, let me know! My e-mail and facebook inbox are always open.

I've noticed a lot of Christians want to chuck the Old Testament away. To just pretend that it doesn't matter much. I don't understand this behavior. Ok, that's not entirely true. I can understand it being a pain in the ass trying to defend all of the horrible things that happen in the OT when Jesus says god loves us.
However, if we take Jesus' own words, he came to represent exactly that same god of the Old Testament. He came to uphold the laws that were written in the Old Testament [Matt 5-18]. It's very clear that Jesus himself did not denounce or dismiss the OT at all, so why would a modern day Christian do that?

That being said, Jesus mentions the one and only god. Here's where it starts to get interesting. Early scriptures of the OT actually point more towards a Polytheistic origin of Judaism. Honestly, I can't say that surprises me. You have a region with nomadic people roaming around, each tribe has their own deities and most have a couple of them. It's not until a man gets the idea that his particular deity should be worshipped above all others which forms the seed of monotheism. Think about it, why else do you think the first of the "10" commandments is "You shall have no other gods before me"? This means it's alright to still have minor deities in your life, just worship Yahweh as your primary god. (Another oddity is why he indicates being "jealous", how can a perfect being be jealous? o_O It doesn't make sense for a perfect being, it does however make sense for an imperfect being who has brothers and sisters drawing worship away from him..)

Alright, this might sound way out there if you heard this for the first time, but let me give some examples:

- Before God was God, he was known as Yahweh, before Yahweh he was El of the Elohim (and who knows who he was before that). In the Canaanite religion, before there was any Israelite in sight, the term Elohim was used to address the pantheon of gods they believed in. And El was just the big daddy of the gang. The funny thing is that you can read in the OT how the sentiment changed regarding the other gods of the pantheon. In the original religion they were all part of one club of gods, however as the Israelites started tweaking their religious ideas, the other gods became "False" gods and had to be squashed since El was the only "true" god.

- Asherah used to be worshipped alongside of Yahweh in the templates (which proves they used to believe there was more than one god). Which led to the part in 2 Kings where her poles were cut down. In this passage you can also read about Nehushtan. Also, Asherah is the wife of El by the way. El->Yahweh->God had a wife. Shocking :O Would explain statues found with inscriptions like "I have blessed you by YHVH of Samaria and His Asherah"

- Nehushtan was the bronze serpent made by Moses to cure people who'd been bitten by snakes. The charming stories goes that the people complained to Moses that he and YHWH had led them to a useless desert to die and YHWH punished them. He created snakes to bite his beloved people and many died. Moses then prayed and YHWH said he should make a bronze snake and put it on a pole so people who'd look at the snake would be cured. This snake figure was still around when the temples were razed and obviously they were worshipped as well. (Obviously, if God really meant, "you shouldn't believe in any other gods", there could never, ever, be worship of other deities in the house of Yahweh! If Yahweh is the one true god, surely he would have striken down this practice)

- Then there is the instance when god actually transforms into a human and wrestles with Jacob Gen 32:22~32 which is an aspect found in many other religions, anthropomorphism. This chapter kind of makes sense when you dig further into the Septuagint Deut 32:8~9 v1 v2. Here it clearly states there being multiple "divine sons" or "angels of god" and that the peoples of the earth are divided up among them, and YHWH chose Jacob .. as his pet.

- Besides the small gods in the OT, you can notice while reading it that it's more of a "When we win this fight it means our god was favoring us, when we lose it means that the gods of the opposing side weren't favoring them". Then we have the animal sacrifices that god used to love which is also a remnant of something other gods were said to enjoy but which doesn't fit the current "character" of god.

- Oh talking about sacrifices, what about human sacrifice? When Abraham heard a voice telling him to kill his son, he should have said "No! My god is a loving god, he would never ask this of me, be gone demon!" instead, he felt it was totally fitting in the character of his god to ask for a human sacrifice. It just sucked that it was his own son this time.. Note that it wasn't the human sacrifice which was difficult here, but merely that it was his son. (Actually in the story Abraham doesn't complain about having to sacrifice his son, at all...)

Now, if you haven't gotten the point I'm trying to make yet, it's this: How can Jesus talk about representing the one and only god, when the origin on the faith he uses to justify the truth of his claims, finds it's origins in polytheism! In other words, Jesus' religious beliefs came from people who knew that there were multiple gods, while Jesus, based on the theories of an evolved religion, makes claims that he knew that there was just one god.

Quite odd. Isn't it?

Now you might say that this doesn't matter. But seriously, how can this not matter? This goes directly to the heart of claims of the monotheistic religions! This drags the Single True God belief under water which is the basis from which Judaism, Islam and Christianity grew. Look into the sources and information I've provided, it's clear that the origin of the "one and only god" idea, which seems so popular today, has it's roots in the same people which used to be sure about there being multiple gods.

God, p.k.a. Jehova/Yahweh, p.k.a. El started out as one of many gods accepted in the ancient religions. Over time he forcibly became "accepted" as the god which should be liked best. When you are forced to worship one god over other gods, eventually those other gods will fade away and it might feel like there's just one god. Like there's always been just one god.

Just don't forget how this god came into being, he didn't change, the people who worshipped him did.