Deathbed Conversion of Jesus
If you ask fundamentalist Christians, they will tell you that many well known atheists in history have had deathbed conversions to Christianity. Among the names that I have heard from Christians include Voltaire, Sartre, Mark Twain, Thomas Paine, and of course Charles Darwin. Of course, these well known freethinkers never really had a deathbed conversion.
It isn’t hard to look into each of these individual cases and see that none of these atheists converted to Christianity at the time of their deaths. What I find interesting though is that according to the Bible, someone else had a deathbed change of heart.
“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” – Matthew 15:34
Christians generally translate this to mean, “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me.” But that is not entirely accurate. Eloi is translated as “My God” but it is not a generic form of god as most Christians seem to think. It is a particular god and not the God Yahweh.
Eloi refers to the God `Ely?n who like Yam (Yahweh) is a Canaanite deity. In the Canaanite pantheon of gods, `Ely?n was the “Most High” father deity. He was the Zeus of that mythology. Yahweh was one of `Ely?n’s sons. The Bible also mentions Yahweh’s brother god Ba’al Zebul (the fertility deity).
So when Jesus was being crucified, he was not calling out to himself because that would be just a little silly. Instead, he was calling out to a Canaanite deity.
Filed under: death, deathbed conversion, image of god, Religion
