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I don't understand why gods have to be symbolic of anything beyond what their believers claim them to be symbolic of, whether that is "wisdom" or "a choleric narcissist father figure that created the universe and everything in it". The blood covenant also does not need any special interpretation: it's just the claim that the all-powerful figure has specially favoured a particular lineage. Can you not believe yourself to be the favourite son of a father with many children without claiming that the father is uniquely similar to yourself? If I think my boss or advisor likes me, does that imply I think he is the same as me? Every medieval European royal house claimed that their lineage was chosen to rule by the Christian god. Does that mean that each house saw the Christian god as a symbolic representation of themselves, in your understanding? Why did different royal houses then ever get along at all, if they apparently had a fundamental disagreement that amounted to "Jesus is symbolic of us! - No, Jesus is symbolic of us!"?
The attempt of medieval European royal houses to appropriate Yahweh as a symbol of their lineage falls flat precisely because of the Hebrew bible. If Exodus entailed God choosing the lineage of Alfred the Great, then it would absolutely be cogent to identify the God portrayed in that mythos as representing the people chosen by him. You sure as hell wouldn't be saying "oh the worship of that god started because the Saxons claimed that god selected them as his favorite among all the nations, who knows what the god is supposed to represent! Nothing, probably."
You aren't recognizing the difference between the mythological impetus for the cult itself being the Moasic covenant, whereas it has not been in any single other case you have tried to cite as a point of comparison. You have just continued to point out that gods representing people is a thing that happens all throughout history, except for Exodus I guess! Yeah right.
The Yahweh cult is rooted in the Mosaic covenant. Yahweh is a symbol of that people. If some other cult emerged on the basis of a blood covenant between a god and a people you would certainly recognize that as plainly obvious.
I still can't discern a single argument that any of the gods discussed is supposed to symbolise the people that worshipped him or her. You just keep asserting that it is so and must obviously be so, against a wealth of literature that is replete with claims of those gods symbolising all sorts of things but people, and not a single example of anyone ever understanding worshipping the god to entail worshipping the associated people. There is of course a trivial sense in which they do, in that people who both believe in the god and in the story that a particular group of people are the god's chosen necessarily will treat that group in a special way, but there is no evidence whatsoever that the latter belief follows from the former, or that this amounts to worshipping the group as synonymous with the god.
Ask any adherent of religions in the Judaism-derived family and they will probably tell you that yes, they worship the exact same god as the Jews do, no, that god is not a symbol for the Jews, and no, they definitively are not expected in a symbolic way to worship the Jews. They will probably also tell you that the thing about the Israelites being god's chosen for some reason or another does not apply to modern-day Jews, and they are just confused. Even the Jews themselves make a point of not requiring non-Jews to believe the part about the covenant.
You know I was actually typing up a reply that argued against @SecureSignals's thesis, as it runs somewhat contrary to the conception of Judaism that I've traditionally held, but then when I referred back to Maurice Samuel's You Gentiles I found this (pg. 74):
which does seem to lend support to his position.
It is worth remembering that Samuel was essentially a troll who delighted in the criticism of his arguments by other Jewish intellectuals in the Jewish press, from Dissent to Commentary.
In any case, it is certainly true that Samuel and SS agree (somewhat) about this, but that’s exactly the interesting thing, since Samuel was otherwise very far politically removed from him.
I essentially agree with Samuel's critique of Christian anti-semitism. Christianity makes anti-Semitism totally incoherent, regardless of the feeling of any given Christian towards the Jews. And regardless of whether or not the Christians understand the actual symbolic meaning of Yahweh, which they like OP do not. They are actually unequipped to properly analyze these works because their own religion is so deeply rooted in the mythos itself.
Christians have no idea what they are reading when they read the Old Testament, if they ever do so.
...Provided you are correct, and "properly analyzing these works" means agreeing with you. Alternatively, they have their own analysis, and while you can dismiss it at your pleasure, we are equally free to dismiss you at ours. There is little point in discussion where agreement with your bespoke interpretations is set as a precondition for engagement.
Sure! But at the end of the day there is a correct answer, the people who put the pen to paper did so for specific reasons. I think Christians are forced into a wrong interpretation. Of course they believe their interpretation is correct, although frankly speaking they mostly just ignore the Old Testament except as setup for Jesus.
So you assert. And if we assert back that in fact our interpretation is correct, what then? From an inside view, we could argue over the verses themselves. From an outside view, we could observe that Christianity has been an absurdly successful religious and cultural force by pretty much any metric you could select, and despite reports of its demise for the last century continues to wield considerable (and in my view growing) influence even now.
I certainly can't speak for all Christians, having not met most of them. When I was a child, the Old Testament was my favorite part of the bible. When I was a youth, it was my least favorite as I found it strange and disconcerting. With maturity, it now seems of a piece with the New Testament, and many of the parts that seemed harsh and unforgiving now make good sense. The churches I've attended did not ignore the Old Testament, but they certainly treat them as "setup for Jesus" since that's, you know, the central thesis of our entire religion. This is the thing you do where you frame the discussion on the assumption you are right and everyone else is wrong. You haven't elaborated on how Christians supposedly do this, or why you believe they do, so what response is possible other than "no, that seems incorrect"?
If one believes that the correct way to read the OT is as setup to the NT, what's the proper way to argue that with you? Your argument that Christians "mostly just ignore" the OT is absurd on its face, given the amount of Christian teaching, commentary and theology centering on the OT. Your claim that Christians are "unequipped to properly analyze" the OT because their "religion is so deeply rooted in the mythos itself" seems to be an attempt to disqualify people with a deep knowledge of the subject at hand because they care too much, as opposed to dispassionate, detached observers of the Judaic mythos such as yourself. Is that about the size of it?
I contend that we do not, in fact, ignore the OT, that many among us study it in great detail, and that we are no more unequipped to properly analyze it than you are. Make an argument if you have one, but spare me the empty, pompous pretense of sophistication.
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