Opinion of "From Gods to God"

[slow-learner]

I'm reading a book "From Gods to God" by Avigdor Shinan and Yair Zakovitch (translated by Valerie Zakovitch).

The book is an attempt to reconstruct the earlier form of stories in the Bible.

I was curious if anybody here has read the book, and what they think of it. I am not knowledgable enough to distinguish fringe ideas from mainstream ideas.

[ericbwonder]

No clue. From the title, I thought you were talking about Halpern's book, which I would never read. Probably way too technical for a simple layman like myself.

[arnoldo]

Rodney Stark discusses this in chapter 4 of his book, Discovering God.

[slow-learner]

Thanks, everybody. I need to add "Discovering God" to my wish list.

Also, to clarify, the title of "From Gods to God" is a little misleading. The authors look for discrepancies in versions of bible stories to try to reconstruct the earliest form. For example, they propose that Moses was originally a superhuman character who acted independently of God, but then the stories were changed to make Moses dependent on God when performing miracles.

I haven't finished the book, but I feel a little uncomfortable with the reasoning of the authors. I was curious if the ideas presented in this book are mainstream or not.

[nili]

The book looks interesting. Can you offer an example of reasoning (or conclusions) that caused discomfort?

[slow-learner]

The book looks interesting. Can you offer an example of reasoning (or conclusions) that caused discomfort?

I am only 25% through the book. The full title is "From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths & Legends". It is hard to point-out a single issue that makes me uncomfortable. Generally it sometimes feels like I'm reading an outline or a power point presentation instead of a book. That is an exaggeration of course. It is a very interesting book, but I am concerned that some of the theories presented in this book might not be mainstream. I prefer to stick to the mainstream views when my knowledge is so limited.

A couple of examples, that gave me pause:

(1) There is a story where Elijah crosses the Jordan by rolling up his cloak and touching the water. Then after Elijah is taken to heaven, Elisha rolls up his robe and crosses the Jordan to go home. However, Elisha explicitly prays to God before crossing and suggests that of course Elijah also prayed to God before crossing. The authors argued that in the original form neither prophet prayed to God, but somebody inserted that detail for Elisha to show that God performed the miracle. I found myself wondering why this editor didn't also insert this explicit prayer in the story about Elijah as they claim he did for Elisha?

(2) The authors mentioned that Moses is mosheh (the active form "he who draws out (the Israelites from Egypt)") instead of mashui (the passive form "he who was drawn out (of the Nile as a baby)"). They argued that this indicates that Moses originally was more of a demigod with miraculous powers independent of God. They give other examples such as variations in the narratives describing the parting of the Red Sea.

I'm not convinced by the reasoning presented in the book, but I also don't know that much. The authors seem to be credible scholars. That's why I was wondering what others might know about this book.

[nili]

Thanks. That was helpful. I think I'll hold off on purchasing the book.

[arnoldo]

Google Books has a preview of the book available at the link below.

From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends

. . . also you can send a sample to you kindle at the link below.

From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends [Kindle Edition]

[slow-learner]

Thanks, arnoldo. I hope my little book report of the first few chapters wasn't unfairly negative. The authors have some interesting ideas, but their reasoning is hard for me to follow. Maybe somebody who has studied the Hebrew in detail would appreciate it more.

[toejam]

I'm currently reading Mark S. Smith's "The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel", which sounds like a similar kind of thing. Fascinating.