Not every early Christian thought Jesus was divine. The Ebionites, a Jewish-Christian group, saw him as a prophet and the Messiah a human picked by God, not God in the flesh. That makes sense if you think about the Jewish roots here. “The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4) was the heartbeat of their faith, just like it was for Moses or Solomon. Jesus claiming to be God would’ve been a total curveball in that world.

In the New Testament, too, Mark the first gospel never has Jesus saying he’s God. When a guy calls him “good teacher,” Jesus brushes it off: “Why call me good? Only God’s good” (Mark 10:18). Sounds like a prophet keeping the focus on God, not himself. It’s only in John, written way later, that you get lines like “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

Say what you will about the Jews avoiding pronunciation of the Divine Name. They never REMOVED it. It takes a special type of sleaze to do that. But somewhere from early on, people with such qualities removed the Name for Lord (kyios) in the Septuagint, which has enabled a furtherance of the trinity doctrine. Prior to that, it had been either ‘YHWH’ transposed into Greek or the Greek equivalent letters (IAO) employed in that Hebrew-Greek translation.

The only question becomes, not whether there was fraud or not—there clearly was—but did the NT writers catch it? The record of extant NT manuscripts so far suggests they did not. Surely the Word of God will not be transmitted through such devious methods! That’s why translators of the NWT proposed a theory that, just as the Name was quickly defused in the OT, and removed in the Greek Septuagint, the same thing may well have happened with early Christian manuscripts.

Frankly, I suspect the New Testament writers DID search out the uncontaminated Septuagint copies. At least two such manuscripts date from the first century. A change so fundamental as that, removal of the divine name for ‘lord’ must surely have caught someone attention. It would be like attending the Kingdom Hall for years and years, then one day discovering it had been renamed the Empire Hall. Someone would have noticed that.

tell me about marcion

in many cases where we see Χριστὸς we tend not to see κυριος as a relational lexicon to describe the godhead. Rather, it virtually always turns out to be that the Greek primary sources have God in the "son of God" denoted by Θεοῦ. Consider Nestle 1904 of John 11:27:

λέγει αὐτῷ Ναί, Κύριε· ἐγὼ πεπίστευκα ὅτι σὺ εἶ ὁ Χριστὸς ὁ Υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ ὁ εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἐρχόμενος.

And yet a linguistic analysis of the Septuagint would suggest that Yahweh takes the Greek κυριος.

My understanding is not perfect, but it does seem that Greek scribal tradition veers away from affirming that Christ is the son of Yahweh. We cannot go back in time and read their minds, but it seems to me that this lexicography is consonant with either:

-Jesus is Yahweh
-Yahweh resides outside the godhead
However, I'm very skeptical about my own inferences here because both are quite bizarre.

The Canaanite El was sometimes referred to as Toru El (the bull god), identifying him with that ancient symbol of strength, power, and virility. The worship of a sacred bull was common in many cultures throughout the ancient world. In the book of Exodus, we are told that Aaron, the brother of Moses, fashioned a golden calf as a physical representation of Yahweh, which mirrored the sacred image of El. Although the attributes of El were gradually assimilated into the traditions of the Hebrew people, the Exodus story tells of the complete rejection of any symbolic image to represent Yahweh. The first two of the Ten Commandments recognize the ongoing problem of integrating other religious traditions into the developing Hebrew story.

You shall have no other gods [Elohim] before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them. (Exodus 20:3-5)

Among religious groups, Protestants and Buddhists stand out for their relatively high levels of happiness. I read a study where Protestants also reported high life satisfaction, although slightly lower than Roman Catholics. Buddhists had one of the highest average happiness scores (Mean = 3.17 out of 4), indicating strong emotional well-being, and moderately high life satisfaction (6.88 out of 10). Their elevated happiness remained statistically significant even after socioeconomic adjustment, potentially reflecting the influence of meditative and mindfulness practices common in Buddhism, which cultivate calm and contentment.

Roman Catholics, interestingly, ranked highest in life satisfaction (Mean = 7.12) but not in happiness. Their average happiness was 3.13- above average but slightly lower than Protestants and Buddhists. After adjusting for income, education, and other factors, the Catholic advantage in life satisfaction was no longer statistically significant, implying that their higher cognitive well-being may be more attributable to life circumstances than religious belief per se. The divergence between their strong life satisfaction and only moderate happiness may reflect a value-driven worldview or community orientation that shapes life evaluation more than daily emotional tone.

Just make things more like god

>>24571127 (OP)
OP could you kick up the 4d3d3d3?