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Quote by: Athena I think you get the prize for coming closest to answering the question. This biblical God wants sacrifices made to him. Previous deities appreciated gifts, and these did not request sacrifices. The story of Cain and Able, is about this transition from a deity appreciating gifts to one who wants bloody sacrifices. The biblical God was not pleased with gifts of fruits and vegetables that had been traditional gifts to a deity. This God wants bloody animal sacrifices. This God is also a jeolous, revengeful, fearsome sky God.
I think he is worse than Zeus, because Zeus didn't want sacrifices. Another this biblical God is unlike Zeus, is Zeus didn't want to be bothered with humans. The biblical God intentionally creates humans and intervenes in their lives.
The Mother Goddess who predates Zeus and the biblical God, was a caring mother, pleased with gifts. She was less to be upset by humans did, but could be upset by what other immortals did, and when she is upset, things on earth can get very bad. That is why it is important to do what we can to keep her happy. These more feminine qualities don't seem to appear in the biblical God until the New Testament and this is also the end of animal sacrificing. Curious don't you think?
The Mother Goddess seems to come up again in this idea that we find God in nature. This is the early US democracy, diest point of view. That to know how many teeth a horse has, you look in the animals mouth and count its teeth. To anything else we want to know, we look at nature and observe what is so. We can not know God, but only God's manifestion and that is the earth and all life on it. To study God, therefore, is to study His manifestion.
Historically, concepts of God being fearsome or caring, seem to come from different environments. In the fertile valley where life was easy, was the caring Mother Earth Goddess. From the north, that harsh environment that is Tibet today, there was a fearsome sky God who just assume killing pathetic humans. I think the bible is a history of the blending of these concepts of God. What about you? How do you explain how God's personality changes from the old to new testament? |
God according to Christianity. I will not deny the apparent shift between old testament and new testament God. As I mentioned before, I believe the number one quality of God is purity. Humans violated his purity in the garden of Eden, and were banished, and became objects of His wrath. Supposedly, Jesus Christ was sacrificed and finally satisfied the wrath of God, hence we are able to return to the pre-fall state and experience the love and mercy that God is also capable of.
This justifies a longer answer, but that will have to wait utnil later....