I wouldn't believe it unless I saw it with my own eyes: someone has actually made the Jehovah Witnesses look rational and well thought out.
That would be quite the Irony of a statement on this board.. However, the information I provided is cited to which includes the Hieroglyphic Dictionary.. Whether people can deal with that is up to them... But the next time you yell out Hallelujah , or Halleluyah, be sure to remember what it actually means. However we aren't on board where anyone really cares about the facts concerning the history of the Christian religion, or realize that it is entirely of Pagan origin.. You aren't using the names El Elyon, El, or EL Shaddai for no reason, and you would have to be severely woeful in ignorance to think it's not Pagan.. But hey, you can believe whatever you want to believe.. But as one has said here, facts don't change regardless what you believe..
And I don't see anyone providing any real rebuttal, you can go look those up if you need to. Heck here's a link concerning Mount Sinai:http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13766-sinai-mount
It is evident that, long before the promulgation of the Law, Mount Sinai was one of the sacred places in which one of the local Semitic divinities had been worshiped. This is clearly indicated in Ex. iii. 5: the ground was holy, for it was Yhwh's special dwelling-place. The expression "and brought you unto myself" (Ex. xix. 4) means that Yhwh brought the Israelites to His mountain. The two names of Sinai and Horeb, meaning respectively "moon" and "sun,"
In this case giving Sin and Yah being moon gods, it's appropriate that Mount Sinai means moon Mountain..
Horeb is thought to mean glowing/heat, which seems to be a reference to the sun, while Sinai may have derived from the name of Sin, the Sumerian deity of the moon, and thus Sinai and Horeb would be the mountain of the moon and sun, respectively.
^ a b Jewish Encyclopedia, Mount Horeb
^ a b c "Mount Horeb". Jewish Encyclopedia.
Which fits pretty well with a volcano Mountain GOD even if the deities Yah and Sin were originally moon GOD's from the Egyptians and the Sumerians. You can reference this here:
(Akkadian: Su'en, Sîn) or Nanna (Sumerian: DŠEŠ.KI, DNANNA) was the god of the moon in the Mesopotamian mythology of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia. Nanna is a Sumerian deity, the son of Enlil and Ninlil, and became identified with Semitic Sin. The two chief seats of Nanna's/Sin's worship were Ur in the south of Mesopotamia and Harran in the north.
And there are plenty of other citations regarding Mt Sinai:
(mownt ssi' nay i) Mountain in the south central part of a peninsula in the northwestern end of Arabia. God made many significant revelations of Himself and His purposes to Israel there. The meaning of the name is unclear; but it probably means “shining” and was likely derived from the word sin, a Babylonian moon god. The suggestion that it means “clayey” does not in any way fit the nature of the terrain.
You add all this evidence up and it's pretty damn clear.. Even the Sinai dessert is likely named after the Sumerian moon god "Sin" as "Sin" is entirely Sumerian in origin.. The Assyrians, Babylonians, and the Akkadians took the word Suen and transformed it into the word Sin as their favorite name for the Moon-God. As Prof. Potts pointed out, "Sin is a name essentially Sumerian in origin which had been borrowed by the Semites. "
In ancient Syria and Canna, the Moon-god Sin was usually represented by the moon in its crescent phase. At times the full moon was placed inside the crescent moon to emphasize all the phases of the moon. The sun-goddess was the wife of Sin and the stars were their daughters. For example, Istar was a daughter of Sin. Sacrifices to the Moon-god are described in the Pas Shamra texts. In the Ugaritic texts, the Moon-god was sometimes called Kusuh. In Persia, as well as in Egypt, the Moon-god is depicted on wall murals and on the heads of statues. He was the Judge of men and gods. The Old Testament constantly rebuked the worship of the Moon-god (see: Deut. 4:19;17:3; II Kngs. 21:3,5; 23:5; Jer. 8:2; 19:13; Zeph. 1:5, etc.) When Israel fell into idolatry, it was usually the cult of the Moon-god. As a matter of fact, everywhere in the ancient world, the symbol of the crescent moon can be found on seal impressions, steles, pottery, amulets, clay tablets, cylinders, weights, earrings, necklaces, wall murals, etc. In Tell-el-Obeid, a copper calf was found with a crescent moon on its forehead.
And we even find the same connection in Islam:
The fact that they were given such names by their pagan parents proves that Allah was the title for the Moon-god even in Muhammad's day. Prof. Coon goes on to say, "Similarly, under Mohammed's tutelage, the relatively anonymous Ilah, became Al-Ilah, The God, or Allah, the Supreme Being."
It gets much more obvious when you also note that the Isrealites worshiped the image of the Golden Calf.. To which of course, and I quote someone else here:
The golden calf was a common Near Eastern symbol of the moon god. In the Bible, we see the Israelites worshipping the golden calf during the Exodus, then next during the reign of Jeroboam, the first king of the northern Hebrew kingdom. Although few references have survived in the Bible, the moon god was clearly an important part of ancient Israelite culture.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the golden calf (עֵגֶּל הַזָהָב ‘ēggel hazâhâḇ) was an idol (a cult image) made by Aaron to satisfy the Israelites during Moses' absence, when he went up to Mount Sinai. The calf was intended to be a physical representation of the God of Israel, and therefore was doubly wrong for involving Israel in idolatry and for ascribing physicality to God.
In Hebrew, the incident is known as ḥēṭ’ ha‘ēggel (חֵטְא הַעֵגֶּל) or "The Sin of the Calf". It is first mentioned in Exodus 32:4
So its without a doubt that Yahweh originates from the Sumerian and Egyptian Moon GOD's.. And equated to Ba'al in regards to the Babylonian, and as one of the Sons of EL.. In fact we can see this directly when Yahweh is being equated to El Elyon to which is attested to Ba'al and EL of the Canaanite Pantheon.. And we know now that the Israelites and the Canaanites were the same people and that Yahwism was simply a pagan monotheistic movement intended to usurp the entire Pantheon into one GOD.. Hence the whole conflict was essentially Pagan monotheism vs Pagan Polytheism. And we can see Yahweh being equated to El Elyon quite clearly here:
From the dead sea scrolls:
"When El Elyon gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of El. For Yahweh's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance."
This was of course edited to what you find in the duet:
"When the Most High (EL ELyon)(Either EL or Ba'al) divided their inheritance to the nations,
When He separated the sons of Adam,
He set the boundaries of the peoples
According to the number of the children of
For the LORD’s (Yahweh's) portion is His people;
Jacob is the place of His inheritance."
I fixed it so you can see where it was edited..And is further supported by:
"son of EL" as this Ugarit Canaanite text (KTU 1.1IV 14):Source:
The Israelites in history and tradition Niels Peter Lemche - 1998 - 246 "Maybe also the Ugaritic passage KTU 1.1:IV:14-15 should be included in the discussion: sm . bny . yw . ilt, translated by Mark S. Smith in Simon B. Parker, ed., Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 89 "of the son of god, Yahweh."
Hence translated as: "son of EL" as this Ugarit Canaanite text (KTU 1.1IV 14) shows: sm . bny . yw . ilt: "The name of the son of god, Yahweh."
This is further supported in the Psalms:
"Ascribe to Yahweh, O sons of EL, ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength."
"For who in the skies can be compared to Yahweh, who among the sons of EL is like Yahweh"
And supported here as well to where Yahweh stands in a council of GODs in Psalms:
A psalm of Asaph.
1God presides in the great assembly;
he gives judgment among the “gods”:
2“How long will you defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
3Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless;
maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.
4Rescue the weak and needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
5“They know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6“I said, ‘You are “gods”;
you are all sons of the Most High.’
7But you will die like mere men;
you will fall like every other ruler.”
8Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.
You can also see the Threat Yahweh makes to the assembly of GOD's in Psalms to over throw the throne and be claimed King, and the GOD MOST HIGH. And this assembly of the GOD's can still be found in Genesis 1:26 below, and during Yam's and Ba'als conflict
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them crule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
And just so you know.. Israel orginally had nothing to do with "Yahweh".. Israel has to do specifically with the Canaanite GOD "EL"..
The name Israel has historically been used, in common and religious usage, to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel or the entire Jewish nation. According to the Hebrew Bible the name "Israel" was given to the patriarch Jacob (Standard Yisraʾel, Isrāʾīl; Septuagint Greek: Ἰσραήλ Israēl; "struggle with "EL")
It's not struggle with Yahweh, it's struggle with "El".. And they didn't use EL's name in generic form, and nor would they name their city using a generic name.. Even Adon is attestested to "EL"...
*In Canaanite (Ugaritic) tradition, ʾadn ilm, literally "lord of gods" is an epithet of El
* Hebrew tradition makes Adon "lord" or Adonai "my lord" an epithet of the God of Israel, depicted as the chief antagonist of "the Ba`als" in the Tanakh.
refers to El, Mardikh, Yaqar or Yarikh. ʾAdn ʾilm (meaning "the Lord of Gods") also appears in the texts to refer to El, and when Yam is described in at being at the height of his power, he is proclaimed ʾadn or "lord (of the gods).
Ugarit family households were modeled after the structure of the divine world, each headed by an ʾadn (meaning in this context "master" or "patron"). Generally, this was the patriarch of the family and there may be some relation between ʾadn and the Ugarit word for "father", ʾad.
^ Van Dijk-Hemmes et al., 1996, p. 211.
^ a b van der Toorn, 1999, p. 532.
^ Cook et al., 2001, pp. 48-49.
And anyone that thinks that Christianity doesn't have a clear foundation of Pagan mythology is simply very ignorant of the history behind it.. All Christianity is, is a modern version of , and a mixed breed of Pagan mythology, and I didn't even have to go into the Egyptian aspects from which Christianity takes a lot from, especially the Coptics to which had a lot to do with the evolution of Christianity. And if you need a more obvious in the face examples, pictures are worth a thousand words:
And all Orthodox Christianity really is, is Pantheism riding on the backs of Christianity and Pagan mythology.