LET'S DO SOME COMPARING

 
There are courses in college offered called “Comparative Religion.” Comparative religion "is the branch of the study of religions concerned with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices, themes, and impacts (including migration) of the world's religions." That's a mouthful directly out of a college catalogue.  

Odds are that a person taking such a course emerges liberalized or even hostile to Christianity. But let’s do a little comparing together of the the one true God of the Jews and the gods of their ancient neighbors.

The Baals of Syria and Mesopotamia were local deities who man made happy if he went about sacrificing his fellow men. In the words of one historian, the Baals were at one and the same time arbitrary and dreadful objects of worship.

Let’s compare the never-ending supply of  the gods of Egypt with the One true God and the Bible, and in the words of Russell Kirk, we find that the Egyptian gods were, in his words, lunatics.

Going over to Greece, their gods were personified forces of nature nobody would think of imitating. Besides that, ancient Israel’s contemporaries deified their rulers; the Jews never turned David or Solomon into gods.

When it came to living out their beliefs, the pagans had their temple prostitutes. It was part of their worship. The gods of Greece and Rome were indifferent to justice and righteousness. They laid down no ethical standards; they were too busy sinning themselves.  

Comparing the Romans at worship, with the Israelites, the Romans had their lares and penates--they were groups of deities who protected the family and the Roman state. Although different, the Lares and Penates were often worshiped together at household shrines. Each family had their own particular lares and penates as objects of worship not to be angered. (In the movie, "The Gladiator," the hero of the film had his little wooden statues with him and those were the lares and penates of his family.)

 Considered spirits of the dead, the lares guarded homes, crossroads, and the city. Every Roman family had its own guardian, to protect the household and ensure that the family line didn't die out.

But the God of Israel was no force of nature or relegated to a single clan. Yahweh had an ethical relationship with the nation of Israel who made eternal covenants with His people. He forbade them to make a molten image of Him. When the Roman army crashed through Jerusalem in 70 AD and rampaged into the Temple, they tore away the veil and entered the Holy of Holies. It was then they were surprised to find no golden images of Israel’s God. That was different.

Rather than ferocious and capricious, Jehovah was kind to His people when they lived according to His Law. He loved them. But no worshiper of Zeus, Astart, Baal, or Molech thought of those gods as the author of any law for man, nor believed that such a one could be loved. Their gods made no covenants.

To live in a pagan world was to live in a world of chance and accidents because their gods were whimsical. They gave no principles or rules for living. They did as they pleased with human beings with no thought of justice, right, or wrong.

Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet who was writing his verse between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer of "The Iliad" fame. Hesiod summed up the ancient religions when he wrote about the chief of the Greek gods:

"Zeus rules the world and with resistless sway
Takes back tomorrow what he grants today."

Comparison? There is no comparison.