26 Aug 2023

7 day creation could be pagan

Did you know that, according to Genesis chapter 1 God did NOT create the heavens and the earth?  What's that?  You say.  What the heck am I talking about?

What I am talking about is what the original Hebrew  Bible says, not what the King James version or some other translation says.

You see, the original Hebrew Bible is very exact when it refers to God. It uses a specific name for him: "Yahveh" (or Jehovah in English).  I have a copy of the Hebrew Bible so does it anywhere in Genesis 1 mention the Tetragrammaton (Divine name in Hebrew)?  

It does not. The Tetragrammation is quite a short word, whereas Elohim is quite a long word.  You can't miss the difference.  What Genesis 1.1 to 1:3 says is that the Heavens and Earth were created by "Elohim", which in Hebrew means "gods", any gods.  Could be pagan gods.  Don't blame me.  That's what it says.

So what is going on?  Why is Genesis 1.1 to 1:3  so different from the rest of the Torah?  It's because that passage is what scholars politely call an  interpolation, in plain words a pious fraud.  It was not there when the original Torah was written.  It is a late addition, presumably put there by some priests.

The original creation story starts from Genesis 2:4.  And guess who gets a mention there straight away? Yahveh.  The divine name now appears.

So Genesis 1.1 to 1:3  is a document from somewhere much later than the rest of the Torah.  It dates from a time when Israelite priests had ceased using the divine name out of a fear of taking it in vain.  They used "Elohim" instead, as a respectful plural. It is quite a late document.

So Why?  Why did the priests do that? It's propaganda.  The Israelites have always had to exist among pagans and pagans all regard the Sun as a great god.  So they dedicate the first day of the week to him. So it has always been a battle for Israelites to defend their unique god.  

And one way they did that from early on was to defy custom and have their Holy day on the 7th day, not the 1st.  But that needed defending to the Israelite public.  They had to have a reason for celebrating the "wrong" day.  So in desperation the priests invented a story about God resting on the 7th day of  creation.  Keeping Saturday holy was simply following God's example.  Neat, eh?

I give a fuller account of the above matters here:

https://ntwords.blogspot.com/2017/03/#804425755551654534

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