Evidence of Many Levels of Gods During the Time of Jesus


My hobby as amateur historian looking into life and beliefs during the time the Bible was being written has carried me to different threads of ideas and evidence. The total picture of the few thousand years BCE will never be revealed.

I have quoted Bart Ehrman, a celebrity New Testament scholar, here many times. Often there are readers who scoff at my references to Ehrman. He apparently is a thorn in the side of orthodox Christian history.

At the risk of misstating him, Ehrman's sees Jesus as a local itinerate preacher who was convinced the world would end in the very near future. It would end during his life. He might have had fans who were so devoted they thought he was a low-level god. Certainly, after he was dead, the low-level god status would not have been unusual. But quite a while after he was dead Jesus became a big-time god. He went big time when a story started that he had come back to life.

Ehrman's low-level god idea came from handed down writing done during the period. This writing has made it clear there were both low level gods and higher-level ones. Jesus started as an entry level god. 

I am reading Weavers, Scribes and Kings (2022) by Amanda H. Podany. This book is based on surviving original writing done in clay, not papyrus.  An amateur like myself would surmise original writing in clay would be more reliable historical source than writing on parchment which had been recopied many times as the parchment deteriorated. The writing in clay discusses the local entry level gods that Ehrman talks about. 

The book talks of worship that slid between living royalty, dead royalty, carved figures of royalty and various unseen gods. Gifts were even left at carved figures of royalty when the royal was still alive. The carvings were so revered a living god left gifts for the carved image of himself.

From discussion of carved or molded images with supernatural powers discussed on the mundane clay tablets we can jump to the revered Old Testament. In the Moses tale, he was angry his people snuck in some worship of golden figures. They were merely doing what was common at the time.  

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