"Skydaddy"

I notice, that there's an irony to this term and terms alike, uhm ... "Sky Wizard" perhaps. Perhaps it isn't as much irony however, as it is an odd cultural inheritance or just the human flaw when it comes to dealing with God.
Though - this is where Religions such as Daoism or Islam stand apart; As they don't focus as much on a figure, a Character, but a more cosmic or universal concept. And yea, I suppose the Hindu fit somewhere in-between.


This is a very interesting view on the emergence of YHWH - and if I understand the person correctly, is it somewhat difficult to really state ... perhaps anything ... with certainty unless something just is. But trying to connect the dots may leave one ignorant of this or that minuscule detail that has the potential to overthrow a theory.

Yet - it couldn't be ... "that" difficult! One only needs to know how to look at it. But ... I mean, I had to think of Independence Day, that movie - where we have those shots of enormous spaceships hovering above major capitals. It's easy to say: "Hey, look at the sky!" and not miss the obvious - though entertaining this now as an abstract thought experiment, it still mattered into which direction one would look. Or, assume a mind doesn't register a huge spaceship as an oddity - they might be looking at it and glance past it to wonder about what it is that is to be seen.


So - as for 'my Mission', there's this reoccurring issue that matters of the Old Testament are somewhat grim and dark. People would so take offense in the Biblical God - as some sort of final stretch to "cast out" any weird believer's insistences on upholding their religion. It is possible a learned behavior, stemming from how these believers like to represent their faith; Or rather so: The value of the Bible. How to read it, how to think of it - what to see it for.

As Christians - and I wouldn't totally exclude myself from that - like to present the Bible as some kind of absolute or even spotless record of the past; People are incentivized to see the God depicted therein as similarly absolute and spotless. And here then, it would seem, everyone gets to pick and choose. Atheists, being somewhat cynical about religion, are fair to see this God as the Bible depicts - wholly and without excuse; But then perhaps not serious enough to account for the rationality behind Christ's appearance. Christians would then much rather start off with what Christ's presence implies - to then however get caught up in their own game of picking and chosing based on what they think Christ's ministry involves.

I'd try to remedy this by arguing, that God's work is not to be taken as absolutistic and timeless. Uhm, or to wrap it into a more potent term: Final. So, finality hereby refers to the state of the earth, where the desire for a Good and Righteous God entails the idea that we ought to see this Good and Righteous governance play out within a perfect world - with God among us, as perhaps sitting on a throne executing His supremacy.

As for picking and choosing - it is inevitable. Christ's work entails as much - for, while on the one side the Law is held up high, on the other that is being relativized or simplified. And as for what came after, we have tried. We have tried to institute justice by Law - and yet could not create a righteous system without the potential for Mercy and the awareness of flaws and justifications baked into it.

In simplicity: If the Old Covenant was all that great, why Jesus?


Anyhow. That's not ... what this is about!

If we want to understand the Old Testament properly - it might help to understand what happened after the Reign of David ended. For, the death of David marked a turning point in Israelite history. So, from the Exodus to David - as far as the Bible was concerned - things went well. To say: there was an era of prosperity during which things could grow and thrive and no major upheavals occurred that would disconnect the people of their time from their respective past. Then Salomon came in - and ... there's a lot to talk about - whether you want to portray him in a good or a bad light. But overall ... he didn't seem to care a lot about tradition - and eventually justified his antics by how David did a thing or two also. So, then Salomon died - and that's where things ultimately fell apart.

And though Israel had prospered until then - that is not to say that the records we have of those days are somehow magically protected. We'd have to just assume and believe that God made sure that the records would survive - or argue that "if there were a God, He sure would have" ... though that's only true in as far as His plan hinges on that.
For those that trust the scholarly understanding of scripture, one must then also ask: 'When and Why' have things compiled and from what. While - at any rate - post Salomon - we're entering a stage of religious wars that may very well have employed some form of Propaganda as well. And the Bible itself reveals to us, thereby, that the belief in idols had still very much been alive. So - if we take the Bible by its word and run through how things unfolded - we're left with the belief that under David, Israel was a somewhat unified people with a unified Religion as the memory of the Exodus had very much been alive and thriving. We could call that a narrative Bias - or novelist Bias, to say: reading the Bible as a story about God - we read the Israelite Religion as the Protagonist and are thus inclined to believe that things were well; And all the Israelites who were of a different mind ... they were just ... bad.
However, leading up to Saul ... we read that the people of Israelite were preoccupied by Philistian raids - thinking that the System of the Judges didn't really cut it anymore. Allthewhile ... God was probably playing hide and seek again - and ... found a great hiding spot ... apparently.

Because ... God is Real!


And so we can return to the contents of that video.

The guiding question ... or thing ... whatever ... is round about: How much interaction has there been between God and mankind ... throughout history? And by interaction I mean ... explicit "Burning Bush" type of stuff. So, contact. Intersections. Touchdowns. So, the amount and duration of instances through which the development of a people has been significantly, or maybe not, altered to then be justifiably reported as God making Himself known to mankind.

And yea. That is ... probably the core of the issue. For, judging by the Bible, it is minuscule. And I'd further argue, that Moses alone got more of that time than everyone else combined - well, prior to the New Testament and ignoring Adam and Eve.

The point being, that all those volumes written on the matter, go vastly without any actual divine interaction to warrant our certainty concerning God's will ... like ... at all. Presumably.

Well - give or take.
I mean, as far as the Old Testament is concerned I'd assume that there was a group of people dedicated to record keeping - and that there is a high chance for valid records to have made it into the final product. But it has to be taken with a grain of salt.


So - looking at the contents of the video; Rather than some cohesive cultural whole; We see a very fractured evolution. Old beliefs grinding against new ones - or the matter of Gods being merely political statements; Like flags or colors. Ba'al, El, YHWH - in some sense all just different flavors of the same "thing".

What the Bible also tells us, is that the Israelite Religion has - with the exception of the reign of David - usually just been a thing at the side. And Archaeologically - outside of the Bible - there isn't much left that testifies of David even existing. This would explain how there could be a record of the history of the Kings - but no real ... physical footprint to go along with it. Saying that anything of material value had probably been ransacked, raided or otherwise destroyed.

At any rate does YHWH - as just one of many - not 'happen' without the written record of His deeds.


So is the picture I want to paint here - although I so far focused a lot on the Biblical record - of the external circumstances. Other than just ... sharing the video and leaving it at that.

The issue here is - that this "Skywizard" ... El or YHWH ... - may at first or for the most part be indistinguishable from all the other "Gods" of their respective time. Pretty much how Jesus would be indistinguishable from Buddha or say ... Shiva or whatever. Or, hey, even Mary or Baphomet.

I have reason to assume that presence YHWH is older than the Burning Bush incident - like how there is this Melchizedek whom we have absolutely no clue about. If he had anything of importance to say, why do we not learn about where he came from and all that. No, if we go by the Tower of Babel incident to argue that all the major religions of the time have been placed there by God - some vague knowledge of a YHWH would be on par with some Gilgamesh Epos. Not in scope or material presence - but in nature of origin.

So, God revealing Himself to Moses, through the Burning Bush, as YHWH - or at that instance: "I am the I am" - did presumably ring a bell with Moses. I mean, we may assume that there also was some cultural tradition inherited from Abraham/Isaac/Jacob - we do not learn of some institution that would maintain that belief among the people of Israel. To say that at first the people of Israel were effectively a family of ... 12 - 13 if we count Jacob - and that is arguably already too vast for some vague belief of "Gramps" to really ... matter. I mean, I know a story that Gramps once told me - and ... you could color me shocked if I ever found out that it's actually true!

It concerns a Knight of sorts that escorted a Baby Child from one place to another and the Devil wanted to stop him and was given the power to do so by the time the rooster crowed his third crow in the morning - so he threw rocks at him but ultimately failed. So he stomped angrily in the ground - and to the very day you can see the imprint of his hoof there! And yea, I've seen it! It's the story of the "Devil's Wall" (Teufelsmauer) which is somewhere in the Czech republic/Bohemia.

And also, my Gramps could tell it in great detail - vividly. All I know is that there's some monastery involved - but I'd have to guess which one if you gave me a list. And ... places and stuff. With a good chance of me getting it wrong!
There's a place we visited once and I might recognize it - but - I also don't know how it fits into the story anymore!

And we could say that my Gramps tried. And the story is sure still in my Memory. Obviously. I mean, there's this ... well, I wouldn't call it a river ... flooded with boulders - really large ones - which were, allegedly, yea - from the Devil throwing rocks at the Dude:tte (not to be presumptuous).


And so - Israel raiding Canaan - that ... at any rate ... was really just ... what people did back in the days. And yea, it's understandable that some Canaanite King wouldn't really look at Moses' threats as ... something to take seriously. But whether that led to the Bronze Age collapse or some odd Sea People ... [shrugs].