Probably the best answer to that question is that there is no one God of the Old Testament. The Hebrew Bible is a compilation of patch-work oral traditions, priestly lore, and occasional bits of actual history. "God" changed through the course of the centuries during which that compilation came together -- sometimes resulting in a competition between two or more traditions on what God is or does.
But, combining the entire amalgamation into one consensus Being (God as created by committee) the biblical God seems to have evolved to the point that He no longer needs to act like just another member of the pantheon of Semitic deities.
Continue that development for a few more millenia, and the biblical God may well have as little in common with His antique persona as a butterfly has with a discarded cocoon.
I wonder how a similar discussion will go in another 1000 or 2000 years? Will there still be the equivalent of today's Amish, living the "old-fashioned way?" Or will our descendants be quoting Gilgamesh, Jean-Luc Picard style, as symbolic of human faith-experience, rather than human pseudo-history?
So basically they had loving and caring gods, then they had angry and vengeful gods, and at one point some priest said, "I know, let's try to combine all the stories about these guys into a single super god."
forbiddencokedrinker Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > So basically they had loving and caring gods, then > they had angry and vengeful gods, and at one point > some priest said, "I know, let's try to combine > all the stories about these guys into a single > super god."
More like some Mesopotamian elites with Israelite ancestry said to themselves -- "What combination of our ancestors' traditions" will best preserve us, when we go to Palestine and try to take back the countryside from our ignorant half-cousins?
And a few of the priests said, "There's this little story about a guy named Moses -- let's expand upon that -- and make the whole ball of wax appear as though Moses taught our ancestors this special religion. We can call it Judaism. Just don't let that Isaiah cult anywhere near our revamped scriptures -- they're sure to mess it all up."
According to what I learned in Seminary, Old Testament God was Jesus. When Jesus was born and got his body, God God took over, and Jesus stopped playing the God role. So, yep, OT God retired, and we have a different God now.