The following article was written by guest writer K. Axel Brauch, author of The ADAR Chronicles. For a profile of K. Axel Brauch, click here. In this article he compares the Gods - Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Baal, Zeus, and Thor and discusses the age of the earth and when each God unveiled himself to mankind.
I was reflecting on the age of the earth recently and whether one believes it is 4.5 Billion years old or 8,500 years old, it struck me as odd that God waited such a long time to declare himself or herself to humanity. Taking the worst case and assuming that God created the world 8500 years ago, then why did God wait a minimum of 6300 [1] years to reveal himself to us? The God of Abraham is nowhere to be found in the writings of civilizations from before that time.
Christianity is more recent still. If Jesus really was the Son of God and lived and died when the New Testament says he did, then Christianity is only 2000 years old. If Christians want us to believe theirs is the only and true faith then who the heck are Baal, Zeus, and Thor? All of them preceded Jesus Christ and Abraham’s God.
Are we to believe that the more recent a prophecy is the more accurate it is? In this case, Mohammed would appear to be more authoritative than Jesus, and we should all be Muslims, something that the Christian community will surely decry. Worse still, there are thousands today who claim to speak with God everyday. Many of them, like the Mormons, asserting the same authority as Jesus and Mohammed did. Perhaps we should start worshipping at the altar of Son of Sam? He spoke to God regularly through his dog. Or perhaps, he spoke to his dog through God. Perhaps he was just dyslexic and couldn't tell them apart? Who knows. This reasoning isn't well accepted by Christians, so perhaps older must be better. This, however, would dethrone Christianity and replace it with Judaism.
Let us suppose then that prophets aren't God's way of letting us know that he or she exists. After all, how can we test the veracity of a prophet? It does strike me as curious that God chose not to manifest him or herself to the Chinese or the Assyrians, the Aztec or the Mohawks or even the Tutsi. Why just the Jews? Could it be that God was intended only for the Jews and we have usurped him, trying to become members of an exclusive club we weren't invited to belong to?
The relative lack of antiquity of the Bible itself is also a problem when compared with the writings of the Sumerians, the Assyrians, the Indians and the Chinese. Since the “jealous” God of the Jews proclaimed numerous times that he wanted the Jews to stop worshipping other gods, there must have been other gods before him to complain about. If one views God as strictly a patron of the Jewish people, that would explain why she or he didn't share this patronage with other civilizations that came before. They were left to find their own versions of a god.
Without the advantage of antiquity, Christians seek to bolster the Bible by pointing to the story of Adam and Eve and claiming that this proves that all men are descended from them. Unfortunately the Bible itself contradicts this an assumption. After slaying Abel and being expelled from the sight of God, several curious things happened. God set a mark upon Cain to prevent “others” who might find him wandering from killing him. Who these others might be in a world with three people is open to question. He also settled thereafter in the land of Nod and took a wife. She must have belonged to an older branch of humanity, which God didn't oversee. Since the Bible offers no good explanation for her existence or for the existence of Nod it is clear that non-Jewish branches of the human tree don't fit into the plans of the God of Abraham.
Time certainly is the issue in the Bible and it astounds me that no one has spoken of the strange dilemma of God's tardiness in declaring himself before. Christianity is still in its infancy compared to man's history and Islam is even more so. Christians, Jews and Muslims claim that each of their faiths is the “true” one and point to the “success” of their creed as evidence. There once were hundreds of other, older faiths throughout the world, none of which conformed to the beliefs of the book of Abraham. They were, however, stamped out by militant Christian and Islamic zealots, whose tyranny should not be used as evidence of their superiority.
Archaeological evidence has now linked Neanderthal man to burial practices, which include some form of ritual or faith, with grave goods and flowers being placed with the deceased. Whose God, if any did they worship and when did they know about him? That surely is the question.
K. Axel Brauch
Author of The ADAR Chronicles
http://www.learningteacher.com/adarchronicles/
Notes & References:
1The oldest known versions of the Old Testament are the Dead Sea Scrolls, attributed to the Essenes Sect during the period 200 BC to 63 AD.
[Created: 8/3/2002]
[Last Update: 08/12/2002]