The first "god" was El. So, yes, I believe in god because I believe El was a real person. He was a deified ancestor, the first one of which there is any record. Sometime following the meltdown of the Ice Age, a great conqueror was born. He was a sort of Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan of the prehistoric age. There is no connected story of El anywhere. He lived and died before the dawn of writing, but bits and pieces of his legend crop up in the legends and folklore of languages and cultures throughout the Mediterranean region. He was the founding avatar of this religion although he personally had no more to do with it than Jesus did with founding Christianity.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.The best accounts of El were from the canaanites, from which the Israelites originated. There is no record of El being anything than a war god. It is true that many gods were deified ancestor, but there is no hard evidence that that is the case with El. If we speculate beyond the facts we have made our own folk lore.
DavidLaDeau
Level 8
Feb 2, 2018
0
Yahweh seems to have his origins in El's son Yah. Consider Deuteronomy 32:8-9:
"When the Most High apportioned the nations,
when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of the gods;
the Lord’s own portion was his people,
Jacob his allotted share."
Surely this is a most ancient text, for the polytheism inherent in it in no wise reflects the strict monotheism of later texts. In the Hebrew, the "Most High" in these verses is Elyon, a derivative of El, while the "Lord" (" LORD" in the KJV) is YHWH.
WTSharpe
Level 6
Feb 2, 2018
1
Ohferpetessake....."bits & pieces" do not a Gawd make.
AnneWimsey
Level 9
Feb 2, 2018
2
I thought the 1st person we know the name of was Ozymandias. Can anyone here tell me how long he has been dead?
273kelvin
Level 8
Feb 1, 2018
0
"Ozymandias" is regarded as one of Shelley's more famous works and is frequently anthologised. In antiquity, Ozymandias (?????????? in the Greek alphabet) was a Greek name for pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled Egypt from 1279 BCE to 1213 BCE, in the 19th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. (Wikepedia). You need to learn to open a tab and do a search! lol
The first god was El? WHAT? You mean the first SEMITIC god. A big wide world existed outside of the Levant.
LukeJWalker
Level 4
Feb 1, 2018
2
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