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[Hopeful]

How do Christians respond to the fact that Christianity has (1) man-made and (2) polytheistic origins?

To summarize: "One objection to Christianity is that the most fundamental, foundational, and essential tenet of Christianity is that of monotheistic Yahwism. Yet the evidence for Yahweh, and Yahweh worship, originates in a heavily polytheistic pantheon that can be shown to have evolved through multiple stages, for human manipulated social-military-political reasons, into a monotheism."

This would seem to be a major problem for Christians, and I wonder how Christians respond.

[jimwalton]

It might be a major problem if it were true.

The assertion that Christianity is man-made is obviously someone's opinion, but it is no more than that. It can't be proved any more rationally than "somewhere in the universe there are maybe probably spaghetti strands in the inside of a planet." The link (the "scholarly literature") has enough books to keep me busy for five years, so, uh, no time for that tonight.

There are many "scholarly" minimalists who deride and ignore all the evidence out there to perpetrate their own secular theories about Christianity. Some of it has legitimacy, some of it is pure blah-blah. The Bible clearly claims a supernatural source, a claim that can't be scientifically verified nor scientifically or logically refuted. We'd have to have the conversation, though, to play it through. I can't read 20 tomes to see what they're saying.

> Polytheistic origins

Again, the Bible claims it was the original belief system and all subsequent polytheistic expressions are distortions of its truth. No scholarship can give evidence to the contrary. Gobekli Tepe, in southeastern Turkey, is thought to be the world's first temple, and is the earliest known sanctuary built for communal ritual activity. It is dated to between 10,000-8,000 BC. The further back we go, the more scant evidence becomes, and the more shaky any scholarly theories.

In the ancient world, people believed that the gods were manifested in the forces of what we call the natural world, as well as in the celestial phenomena. Abraham came out of this environment, but our belief system as Christians by far predates Abraham.

Polytheism reflects a way of thinking in which multiple gods function as a community and have multiple spheres of jurisdiction and authority. Throughout the OT, YHWH consistently reveals that he is in a class by himself and accepts no competition. No other being is worthy of the designation of "God" or has the authority associated with the name or nature.

> Yet the evidence for Yahweh, and Yahweh worship, originates in a heavily polytheistic pantheon that can be shown to have evolved through multiple stages, for human manipulated social-military-political reasons, into a monotheism.

This, in my opinion and research, is a bunch of malarky.

[Hopeful]

Thanks for responding. This is interesting.

When do you think that Yahweh first shows up on the scene? Because AFAIK human "religious" activities (you can debate what constitutes "religious) go back to 40,000 BC. Someone said that Judaism only goes back to 1000 BC.

[jimwalton]

According to Genesis 1, Yahwism goes back to "the beginning." The name YHWH first shows up in Genesis 2.4, as YHWH Elohim. (Elohim is used as the name for God in Genesis 1.) In the ancient Near East, compound names were often used to designate one god (Amun-Re in Egypt; Kothar(-wa-)Hasis at Ugarit, etc.). So in the Bible YHWH-Elohim is the same God as Elohim. YHWH goes back to the beginning of time. Many verses in the Bible speak of YHWH being eternal (Ps. 102.12; Isa. 40.28) and the YHWH was the creator. By that reasoning YHWH goes back at least 14 billion years to the beginning of the universe ... and then beyond.

> Someone said that Judaism only goes back to 1000 BC.

See, you just can't believe everything you read. Abraham dates to 2000 BC, Noah obviously before that (at least before 10,000 BC and possibly before 20,000 BC), and so on. The conquest of Joshua was somewhere from 1400-1200 BC. The story of the Tower of Babel is from about 2200 BC. If Judaism as a specific religious system is thought to have started with Abraham, then we're at 2000 BC. If the Judea-Christian faith system is really dated to its beginning, it goes back to the beginning of time, and Genesis 2 picks up the story where hominids have evolved to the point of being spiritually capable and morally culpable. Who knows when that was, but it easily could have been around 40,000 BC, as the figure you gave, give or take millennia.