Just throwing this out there to chew on. Look up Marcion of Sinope some time on Wikipedia (always a good place to start). He was an early proponent of this idea.
Personally this makes a lot more sense to me. You don't have to deal with a bi-polar God that way. Instead you have:
An Old Testament demiurge (who is NOT I AM) who is a wrathful, cruel, vengeance driven ego-maniac. He's the guy who utterly destroys cities, and gets great joy out of killing children.

You have a separate being, a loving Savior who is the son of a loving forgiving God, the one who says "Whosoever should harm one of these little ones...":

Personally, this makes much more sense. And when I went looking for proof, there's quite a bit there.

Just another crazy thought I'll throw into the crock pot:

What if there is no savior or jehovah?

Or satan, elohim, easter bunny, santa claus, dragons, unicorns, fairies or pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

What if water ran uphill instead of down?

I'm betting we can come up with one or two more if we tried really hard.

+1000

A polytheistic method of denouncing the god of Jewish worship and embrace the god of Christian worship.


This reminds me of Akhenaten's attempt to impose monotheism on the Egyptians, without first destroying the other gods. It's nonsensical in that it doesn't appropriately allow for the organic evolution of god. It is to forced.

believe what makes you happy.

I don't subscribe to that, I think that it espouses to much self delusion.

I think it should be noted that the early Latter-day "saints" would entirely agree with the notion. Jesus=Jehovah really comes of age in the church about 1904.

The early temple endowment had four principle actors: Eloheim, Jehovah, Jesus and Michael.

<early temple endowment had four principle actors: Eloheim, Jehovah, Jesus and Michael...changed in 1904>

Okay, that's interesting. Not that it would get TBM's to question because they'll just say "further light and knowledge was revealed".

BUT it does bring about a question about the "unchanging" nature of the endowment. So could you please give a reference / link? Thanks in advance!

I guess you're working under the assumption here that these are not largely fictional characters.

Be that as it may, Richard Packham as written that the confusion over Jehovah results from, "a fundamental mistranslation of the Hebrew scriptures." http://packham.n4m.org/linguist.htm#JEHOVAH



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2013 03:58PM by minor2nd.

Possibly the case etymologically speaking but in the end Christianity's view of Jesus is a result of the evolution from ethical monotheism to redemptive monotheism. Since Christianity is evolved from Judaism it wouldn't make sense for Judaism to be wholly false.

"Proof".

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

--

I suppose you can find evidence to support whatever you want to believe, but it seems quite inconsistent with the theology of both the Old or New testament. That requires rival gods - more like Greek mythology. Not the ONE god that is eternal and unchanging.

However, what DOES make sense is the definition of God is a product of the existing culture and thoughts of the people living at the time. (This could be true even if God exists - that people transpose their personal worldview onto that definition and conception of god.) The much more likely answer is that the nature of god didn't change and who god was didn't change but that people changed and thus their definition of god changed.

Just look how different the Mormon god is today vs 180 years ago. He used to hate other Christians, he used to be prejudice against blacks. He still considers women and gays to be inferior - maybe in another 100-200 years he'll change to accept them as equals too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2013 04:11PM by The Oncoming Storm - bc.

Even with Trinitarians, God is in three persons, the Father (Jehovah or YHWH), the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Ghost (unnamed).

The savior, I am convinced, is Joseph Smith. I mean, who else, right?