I have in the past few months started reading the bible from front to back. The version I have is my brothers "Complete Jewish Bible" which leaves the names of the prophets intact (for instance jeremiah's real name was pronounced yirme-yahu, isaiah yesha-yahu, elijah, eliyahu), which for whatever reason were translated, when names shouldn't be translated. This comes obvious to me because my name for instance is Christopher... generally I go by Chris... if I go to france or africa or japan or australia or saudi arabia, where ever... I'm going to expect someone to call me Chris... or Christopher... perhaps your different language will cause it to be pronounced somewhat differently, but none the less if my name is Chris, don't call me Crat or Crud, my name is Chris, that's the name I will answer to. Alright, but anyway... So I was reading in Kings where Eliyahu comes out (sorry look it up if you want the text I tend to paraphrase but correct me if my paraphrase loses something) and summons all the prophets of Ba'al then he says "I am the only prophet of YHVH left, but Ba'al's prophets number 450" then he proceeds to challenge their faith in Ba'al by offering a competition of sacrifices, the prophets of ba'al were given first choice in the bull and allowed to offer their sacrifice first, but neither sacrifice was to have a fire put under it, that the gods being prayed to had to light to fire to acknowledge their existence. So all the prophets of Ba'al set up their sacrifice and stood outside all day praying to Ba'al to light the fire. Eliyahu even mocks their god during this time. But alas, no one answered when they called upon Ba'al. Then Eliyahu comes and makes his sacrifice, on his sacrifice he has water poured on it 3 times and fills a trench around the sacrifice with water, then at the time of the evening sacrifice he calls upon YHVH and sure enough YHVH answered and lit the fire so hot that it even evaporated all the water in the trench around the sacrifice. Then all the people fell on their faces saying YHVH is Elohim, YHVH is Elohim.... (a day or two before this I had downloaded E-Sword which is a free bible software which has the KJV but it has the original hebrew word if you hover over the character so you can see the original wording, which was helpful in differentiating what was actually being said, I don't encourage the KJV but this program for the hebrew characters is very useful) Ok, so I read through that and I started wondering... ok these are the people of Israel he's talking to... it's not like he went off to Egypt or Babylon and found all these believers in Ba'al, they were right in his home of Israel, yet he was the ONLY one left who was a prophet of YHVH. So I'm thinking like... these people just got rescued from Egypt got their promised land who is this god Ba'al that everyone is praying to. I looked in the appendex in my bible for Ba'al and it said "Ba'al- a phoenitian deity"... well that was real helpful... so I went online and started searching for Ba'al to figure out who it is that everyone was praying to if they weren't praying to YHVH.... what I found was more than I bargained for.... now I'm not saying that everyone must believe what I believe mind you, but in real life I have for about 3 or 4 weeks now been seeking people who might be interested or have something to say on this topic, and alas, I think what someone was saying on the "what's happening to christianity" thread is pretty much what I discovered.... no one really believes, or if they believe, they believe what they believe but don't care to learn any different. The only person who showed any interest in this wasn't a christian, but says his personal beliefs he got from studying black magic in general he says his belief is "knowledge is salvation".... which... to each his own beliefs.... but regardless him being the only person interested was very sad, so I'm hoping to find someone on here that is interested in this concept. What I found was many christian websites that says Ba'al means Lord. This is also the Ba'al from Baalzebub (Lord of the flies). As far as direct definitions go, I found lord as one of many definitions, however I think the case of Baalzebub makes clear that it can be safely translated to Lord. So what does this mean? From what I'm coming to discover... 7000+ times in the old testament the name YHVH was replaced with Lord (which translated to Hebrew means Ba'al), in general prayer and general thought of faithful believers in the Holy One of Israel He is referred to not as YHVH but as Lord or Ba'al.... in fact, back to the beginning of this post, remember how I said for some reason these names were translated, but other names, like David or Ba'al were not translated... it's the names which have Yah or Yahu in them.... those who were named in reverence to Yah that were translated, to take Yah out of them, just as they took YHVH out of the scriptures and replaced it with Ba'al. This is so that all the faithful believers will not call on the name of YHVH, but rather call on Ba'al, and not be answered (or at least it has been shown that he is at time willing to ignore the pleas of his own people Israel, when they called on Ba'al, but answered the one who comes in his name)..... in fact, I am (thankfully) not Catholic and never have been but when I was younger I went to a Catholic school where I was taught in religion class that it's a sin to say YHVH because of the third commandment.... but NO... this is not what the third commandment says... it says don't say his name in vain, it doesn't say don't say his name like.... EVER! In fact it is stated "Baruck Haba B'Shem YHVH" or "Blessed is he who comes in the name of YHVH" (yes this too is translated and most people will think "The Lord" to finish that phrase) I understand that other people have different beliefs so for that reason I have used the letters of the name in place of the name itself so as not to offend them and wind up getting my post deleted. I hope that the content of my message doesn't warrant my post's deletion simply because they disagree. I think everyone can come to their own conclusions on this topic, but to do so, I think the dialogue should be allowed at least..... this was a new concept to me and surely is a new concept to many others, maybe you will be prone to object to it instantly and if so that's your choice, but at least leave the thread here for debate so anyone else can see and decide for themselves.... I would be interested to see any thoughts or opinions about this, although ultimately as stated above my hope is to find at least one christian believer who reads this and understands, because in the world the only one who understood was not a christian and that makes me sad.......... I know that had I discovered this before, my brother would've have understood and discussed this with me... I don't check this forum all the time but I hope to come back here and have some interesting dialogue on the topic. Thank You for your time... Yah Bless... and Shabbat Shalom..