It’s because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.
That might be a bit oversimplified, but that’s really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.
I was reading a scholar’s book and one of her central themes was that there are clearly two gods in the Bible. It was really dry reading, couldn’t finish.
Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.
Seems clear early Jews believed in multiple gods. There’s more than a couple passages in the Old Testament talking about gods, plural. I would think singular vs. plural would make the translations, and even if you changed the passage to singular god, it wouldn’t make sense or need to be stated.
“You shall have no other gods before me.”, comes to mind.
It’s because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.
That might be a bit oversimplified, but that’s really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.
I was reading a scholar’s book and one of her central themes was that there are clearly two gods in the Bible. It was really dry reading, couldn’t finish.
Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.
Seems clear early Jews believed in multiple gods. There’s more than a couple passages in the Old Testament talking about gods, plural. I would think singular vs. plural would make the translations, and even if you changed the passage to singular god, it wouldn’t make sense or need to be stated.
“You shall have no other gods before me.”, comes to mind.