A Brief History of The Hebrews: Inconsistency & Polytheism

INCONSISTENCY 

Anyone who wishes to seriously understand the story of Jesus needs to first have some understanding of the Old Testament. This requires more than mere familiarity or rote memorization of verses, but to actually use one's ability to think about the Bible critically, as an historical document, rather than simply worshiping it  as an "infallible" or "inerrant" golden calf. 

To begin with, there are a number of false claims that Biblical exegesis has uncovered. The first being that the historical situation depicted in the stories about Israel's ancestors does not reflect the ancient reality. Instead, the Genesis account of Israel's ancestors reflects a deliberate attempt to place its stories within the context of "things as they used to be." 

For example, in the stories, Abraham comes into contact with people that historically only entered Syria Palestine around the 12th century, BCE, which was long after the days of Abraham, who is said to have entered Canaan around 2100 BCE. Also, Israel's ancestors are associated with cities that did not exist before the Kingdom of Israel was founded. Abraham is likewise said to come to "Ur of the Chaldean's," but the Chaldean's did not occupy Ur until about 1000 BCE, over a thousand years later. The stories in Genesis also have Israel's ancestors having domesticated camels, but camels were not domesticated much before 1000 BCE.

Such details suggest that the traditions about Israels ancestors were written down during the early monarchy in Israel and were added later to reflect older times. This likewise reflects a possible example of how these texts were rewritten by later generations to legitimize their own systems by rooting them in history. But this is like the scriptural equivalent of hair replacement, where the plugs poked into the scalp look like that of a doll, rather than the real thing. 

POLYTHEISM OF THE HEBREWS 

Also, the early Hebrews were not monotheists, which was an idea that would've seemed truly strange, if not perhaps heretical, to the early Hebrews. In fact, Christians in Rome were called atheists for claiming to be monotheists. 


Egypt and Mesopotamia, much like India and China, were mostly polytheistic. It wasn't until the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten that we saw someone in the area of Mesopotamia that was bold enough to suggest there was only one God (although the Japanese, with their idea that their emperors were their gods, seemed to therefore have a kind of monotheism early on, since they only had one emperor at a time). 
 
Ishamel, for example, was one of the sons of King Saul, who's name means Son of Ba'al. Hence, even the King of the early Israelites recognized the existence of other gods.  Even the command "I shall have no other gods before me," which by today's perspective only seems to be talking about things like money or drugs, is only seen that way by us because we view such a statement with the monotheistic bias we were born with.

The covenant made with Moses on Sinai confirms "the Lords" status as Israel's "national god" out of all the gods that existed at the time. The first commandment in Exodus 20:2 You shall have no other Gods beside me" reflects the Lords "jealously," which is the jealously of a henothiestic deity, who wishes to be worshiped alone among all the other gods. ( We are left to wonder from this, of course, how, then, can this be distinguished from the story of Satan who likewise wanted to be worshiped like God?) 

What's more, Israels religious history reflects the continual struggle between the Lords henotheistic claims and the peoples polytheistic practices. Most often, the Israelite's would combine worship for the their Lord with ritual recognition of other gods. 

We see this polytheistic worship of the Hebrews even in Saul, who worshiped both the Lord and Ba'al.
Saul has a son named Jonathan, for example, which meant "gift of the lord," and a son named after the god Ba'al, who was named Ishbael, which means "man of ba'al"

(As for God appearing in a "burning bush," however, we are left to wonder why is it that, if we read about some guy talking to a burning bush from thousands of years ago, who tells us God has a message, we think it must be true, but if anyone were to do that today we'd clearly think they were nothing but crazy.)