MathetesKhole t1_j4v9jsw wrote on January 18, 2023 at 2:37 PM

Reply to comment by woodrobin in [WP] The Greek, Norse, and Egyptian pantheons of gods attend a conference on Mount Olympus, trying to discern whether or not Christianity's god is evil or truly good as it claims. The talks were going poorly until an Archangel came to visit them. by Tigerstorm6

Thank you for your critique. I was not satisfied with the ending, either. If I were to extend it, I would have the gods mention acts of kindness from El, God of Israel to their peoples

TentacleJihadHentai t1_j501gyc wrote on January 19, 2023 at 1:34 PM

>gods mention acts of kindness from El, God of Israel to their peoples.

Such as Joshua 8:24-29 where Israel put an entire city to the sword. Men, women, and children.

Leviticus 25:44-46 (literal slavery)

44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

Joshua 6:20-21, Israel putting Jericho to the sword. Every living being except one extended family.

Numbers 31: 15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

32 The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep, 33 72,000 cattle, 34 61,000 donkeys 35 and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.

Vengence on the midianites.

The other sumerian/middle eastern gods should be hosting a war crime summit, not mention acts of kindness. In fact, why do the other gods inexplicably start showing respect? This seems very out of character.

Why does Baal come to El's defense? Hell bible wise, Yahweh/Elohim/El do not like him and orders his followers to strike down the temples of other gods. Specifically his.

Speaking of El, according to what information I can find, it does not specifically refer to the God of Israel, but seems to be a title given to the supreme deity of a given pantheon. Or a major deity in general.

MathetesKhole t1_j516tf7 wrote on January 19, 2023 at 6:05 PM

To have pagan gods objecting to slavery seems to be the pot calling the kettle black, as according to the Enuma Elish, they created humanity to serve them and their worshippers are all slaveholding societies. I have done a fair bit of thinking about the cherem warfare in the Hebrew Bible, putting cities to the sword. In Canaan and Assyria, at least, it does not seem to have been a war crime.

Here’s Mesha, king of Moab from 830 BCE > I proceeded by night and I fought with it from the crack of dawn to midday and I took it and I slew all of them, 7,000 men and boys and women and girls and maidens because I had put it under ḥerem (in Moabite: החרמתה) to Ashtar-Chemosh.

and Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria > The people of Sais, Piṭiṭi (and) Ṣi’nu and the rest of the cities that had joined them (and) plotted evil, young and old, they struck down with the sword. No one among them was spared.

Naturally, the gods of these peoples would be incensed by that because they are their worshippers, but as an act of war it wasn’t uncommon. I still wanted to voice the objection, though.

I was initially a little puzzled by your remark that Baal came to the defense of the God of the Judeans, he doesn’t. You are quite correct that in the Hebrew Bible, El, God of Israel and Baal are rival gods, but the El Baal is talking about there is the Canaanite El, whose son he is and who was sometimes equated with Kronos in Hellenized sources. I wanted to make it clear that they were, at least in a sense, different gods, by saying that Israel’s god has a resemblance to Baal’s father.

You are correct that El or Assyrian Ilu could refer to a major deity in general, that’s why I specified El, God of Israel, a title used in the Hebrew Bible at Genesis 33:18-20