What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 6)

Note: This post is meant to be read after reading part 1 of this series, where I lay some groundwork and introduce some important concepts. I would also advise reading the other preceding parts, but this is not completely necessary.

YHWH - A Portrait

In the last post, we explored the connections between YHWH and the Canaanite deity named Baal. And part of this exploration revealed that YHWH was originally seen as a storm deity. In this post, I'd like to explore how YHWH was a brash, warlord deity, as well as exploring some of YHWH's other character flaws.

YHWH's limited Jurisdiction

But first I'd like to explore the limits of YHWH's power - before the exile, YHWH's sovereignty was thought of as limited to Israel. And we talked a bit about that in part 2 of this series when we explored how Deuteronomy 32:8-9 portrays El Elyon (the Most High God) giving Israel to YHWH as an inheritance. 

But there are other examples. In 2 Kings 3, there is a strange tale where the king of Israel, the king of Judah, and the king of Edom set out to conquer Moab. And as they are marching to Moab, they run out of water. So they go to Elisha to beg him to prophesy on their behalf. At first, he refuses, but after the king of Israel presses him a bit, he does, and part of the prophecy in verses 18 and 19 goes:

[YHWH] will also hand Moab over to you. You shall conquer every fortified city and every choice city... 

So they go into Moab, and the story says that they overturned cities as they went, but then they reached Kir-hareseth, and it says in verses 26 and 27:

When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through opposite the king of Edom, but they could not. Then he took his firstborn son who was to succeed him and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and returned to their own land. 

And apologists will try to tell us that the "great wrath" that came upon Israel's was YHWH's, but this doesn't make much sense. Rather, the most plausible explanation for this story is that it, embarrassingly, tells us about a time that YHWH lost a battle because he was out of his jurisdiction - the king of Moab sacrificed his son to their god Chemosh, and the wrath that came upon Israel was likely seen by the writers of this story as the wrath of Chemosh. And, interestingly, 1 Kings 11:7 indicates that at some point in Israel's history, some Israelites may have also worshiped Chemosh.

In addition to YHWH losing a battle in this story, we see another sign that there were limits to YHWH's jurisdiction - 2 Kings 5 tells a story where Naaman, the "commander of the army of the king of Aram", gets a skin disease (which some translations render as him having leprosy). And the story says that his wife had a slave who tells her that if Naaman "were with the prophet who is in Samaria... [h]e would cure him of his skin disease." So Naaman goes to see Elisha, and after Elisha has him wash in the river Jordan seven times, he is healed. And in verse 17, Naaman says:

[L]et two mule loads of earth be given to your servant, for your servant will no longer offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god except YHWH.  

And why would he want to cart-loads of soil? Because YHWH's jurisdiction is limited to the soil of Israel - so how is someone like Naaman to worship this god when he's back in Syria? He takes some of the soil of Israel back with him so that he might do this. 

A depiction of Naaman bathing in the Jordan River

Now, you might argue: but this is just the perspective of someone who is not a Hebrew, so he has heretical ideas. But we see something similar in a story about king David in 1 Samual 26 when David is in the wilderness, away from Israel. He says to Saul in verses 19 and 20:

[T]hey have driven me out today from my share in the heritage of YHWH, saying, ‘Go, serve other gods.’ Now therefore, do not let my blood fall to the ground away from the presence of YHWH...

Notice how David feels the importance of not dying in a land outside of Israel, because this would mean he would be dying away from the presence of YHWH. Here we have a consistent portrayal of YHWH's jurisdiction being limited to the soil of Israel, and his jurisdiction is not extended until the exilic period of the Hebrew history.

YHWH's Character Flaws

From the first part of this series I have argued that over time, the Hebrew ideas about what they call "God" changed. And the idea that YHWH lies is one example of this. Apologists will no doubt bring up verses like Numbers 23:19, which says that "God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind." But right away, we have one problem - this verse uses the name "El" for God, and El is not YHWH. Now you may point out that if you read the whole chapter, it switches back and forth between El and YHWH - and I'd say that we might have a bit of that source mixing going on here that I talked about in the first part of this series. 

But ok, let's say we accept that this verse is about YHWH. YHWH definitely changes his mind - we see that in Exodus 32, when YHWH wants to destroy the Israelites after they make the Golden Calf, and Moses talks him out of it, and verse 14 says that "YHWH changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people." And in I Samuel 15:11, YHWH says that he regrets having made Saul king - that sounds like changing his mind to me. Additionally, Genesis 6:6-7 has YHWH regretting making humanity due to their wickedness, Amos 7:1-6 has YHWH preparing to send locusts and fire upon Israel and the prophet Amos pleads with him and changes his mind, and 2 Kings 20:1-6 has YHWH granting king Hezekiah 15 more years of life after he weeps and prays.

But surely YHWH doesn't lie? I mean, not only do the apologists have Numbers 23:19, but they will also use Hebrews 6:18 and Titus 1:2 to make this case. But it certainly looks like YHWH lies, according to a few passages.

A depiction of the Garden of Eden

For starters, in the story of the Garden of Eden, YHWH says about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that "in/on the day that you eat of it you shall die." And when Adam and Eve eat of it, they don't die until much later. And the phrasing of this does not mean "you will be condemned to die", nor is it talking about a spiritual death. And some people will try to make a case that this is like a parent making a hyperbolic threat - like if I had told my children that if they touch the stove they will die. And there are reasons to doubt this, but what if this were not the only case where YHWH uses deception?

In Jeremiah 4:5-10, the prophet Jeremiah is instructed to prophesy to Judah and Jerusalem, telling them to prepare for an invasion. And the prophesy is encouraging them to be courageous, implying that they will be victorious. But in verses 9-10 it says:

On that day, says [YHWH], courage shall fail the king and the officials; the priests shall be appalled and the prophets astounded. ¹⁰ Then I said, “Ah, [Adonay YHWH], how utterly you have deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘It shall be well with you,’ even while the sword is at the throat!” 

And apologists usually try to make a case that it isn't YHWH directly deceiving, because YHWH simply allowed prophets to give bad prophecies. And yet the passage seems to indicate that YHWH instructed his prophet Jeremiah to give these deceiving prophecies.

We have a similar account in 1 Kings 22:19-23, where Micaiah says that he saw YHWH sitting on his throne with the host of heaven around him. And YHWH says "[w]ho will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?" And it says that a ruah (the Hebrew word for "spirit", which also means "breath" or "wind") came and said that he would do it. And when YHWH asks "how?", the spirit says: "I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets." And YHWH says to go do it. And Micaiah's take on this in verse 23 is that "YHWH has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets." In other words, Micaiah doesn't think that this rhetoric of "YHWH didn't do it - he just allowed it" works. (Note: the same story appears with the same wording in 2 Chronicles 18:18-22.)

And the prophet Ezekiel seems to feel the same way - Ezekiel 14:9 says:

If a prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, YHWH, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. 

So we see a consistent portrayal of YHWH lying and deceiving, much like a human ruler who uses deception against his enemies. 

Similar to the concept of deception, the book of Exodus portrays YHWH as a god who hardens Pharaoh's heart because he wants to show off his power. And if you read the book as if it was written by a single author, you might try to make a case that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, ignoring verses like Exodus 9:12 in favor of depictions from earlier in the story like Exodus 8:15. But a critical reader can see the signs that there are multiple portrayals of what is happening here. It might seem subtle, but examine Exodus 5, where Moses has his first encounter with the Pharaoh. You might say "see? Pharaoh hardened his own heart" - but what does Moses say to YHWH in verse 22? "O YHWH, why have you mistreated this people?" And if we turn back to the previous chapter, in Exodus 4:21 YHWH tells Moses from the very beginning that his plan is to harden Pharaoh's heart so that, even after seeing signs, he will not let the people go. This shows that, according to the storyteller, YHWH wants to show off his power to the other gods and to the people.

And if we're honest, we see repeated accounts where YHWH is shown to be a warlord deity. This god even goes so far as to command genocide - such as the command in Deuteronomy 7:1-2:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy and he clears away many nations before you—the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you—and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.

This motif is repeated in Deuteronomy 20:16-17:

But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. Indeed, you shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded...

Similarly, I Samuel 15 tells a story where Saul is commanded to "attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." When Saul defeats the Amalekites, but spares the king (and some livestock), Samuel scolds him and informs him that because he didn't kill everything, he's not going to be king any more. 

From the beginning of this series, I have been clear that everything I am presenting challenges the idea of inerrancy. And I think this is the most important challenge to that idea. Because if you believe the Bible is inerrant, your beliefs about God are like defending the idea that the Jor El in the new Superman movie is the same Jor El we see in the Christopher Reeves movies and the same Jor El we see in the Brandon Routh Superman movie and in the Henry Cavil movie. Because you have to defend the idea that these genocide passages I've brought up accurately reflect this God, but then you turn to the New Testament, which tells us that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15) and the exact imprint of God's very being (Heb. 1:3), and who commanded us to love enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Mt. 5:44), who said to do good to those who hate you and bless those who curse you (Lk. 6:27-28), who said "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" of the people who nailed him to a cross (Lk. 23:34), and who inspired Paul to say that we should overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21) and the writer of I Peter to say that we should repay evil with blessing (I Pet. 3:9). 

The Prophetic Critique of Sacrifice

Before I move on from a portrait of YHWH, I feel it is useful to consider the prophetic critique against sacrifice alongside the idea I am presenting that the understanding of YHWH changed over time. Because not only do you find commandments for animal sacrifice (which I don't even feel I need to argue at this time), but Biblical scholars widely accept that child sacrifice is an accepted practice that you can find the Bible condoning as well. At the very least, we need to understand that when Deuteronomy 7:1-2 and Deuteronomy 20:16-17 command complete annihilation of enemies, this is actually a form of human sacrifice called a "ban" or a herem. 

But we have other evidence of human sacrifice in the Bible. In Leviticus 27, a custom is described where a man can devote a field, a house, an animal, or even a person to God. And in verses 28-29 it says:

Nothing that a person owns that has been devoted to destruction for [YHWH], be it human or animal or inherited landholding, may be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord. No human beings who have been devoted to destruction can be ransomed; they shall be put to death.  

This is human sacrifice. In this context, we can understand why scholars hold that when Exodus 22:29 commands that "the firstborn of your sons you shall give to me", this is also a commandment for child sacrifice. Likewise, scholars understand that the story of Jepthah and his daughter in Judges 11 is a story of human sacrifice. Further evidence of human sacrifice is given in this free book (starting on page 52), but the point of all this is that: to argue that Israel's genocide was justified on the grounds that these other cultures were "so evil because they practiced human sacrifice" ignores the fact that Israel also practiced human sacrifice. Until they decided not to any more and wrote that God had never wanted that in the first place.

But we see this perspective challenged in prophetic texts, such as Jeremiah 19:5, which has the prophet accusing his audience near Jerusalem (in the valley of Hinnom - which is also referred to as "Gehenna", and is a word that has been mis-translated as "hell") of "building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal", and then has the prophet telling his audience that YHWH says that he "did not command or decree [this child sacrifice], nor did it enter my mind." 

But there are also prophetic critiques against sacrifice in general. Hosea 6:6 says that YHWH desires mercy (or love, in some translations) "and not sacrifice".  Isaiah 1:11 has YHWH saying "what to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?" And the verse goes on to say "I have had enough of burnt offerings" and "I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats." Micah 6:6-8 says:

With what shall I come before [YHWH]
    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
Will [YHWH] be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
    and what does [YHWH] require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
    and to walk humbly with your God? 

There are even Psalms that join in to this critique - Psalm 40:6 says "sacrifice and offering you do not desire" and "burnt offering and sin offering you have not required." And Psalm 51:16 says that God (this Psalm alternates between elohim and adonay, which is a later substitution for YHWH) has "no delight in sacrifice", and adds that "if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased."

And then if we turn to the New Testament, Hebrews 10:4 says that "it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins."

And while some of these references can be somewhat convincingly argued away by apologists who tell us things like "God doesn't like sacrifices, but requires them as a temporary solution" or something along these lines, isn't it more likely that along with all these other changing perspectives I have demonstrated, this critique against sacrifice is another developing line of thought that functions as a revision?  

We're going to stop here, and in the next post we will discuss how the authors in the Bible began to use more abstract terminology when discussing God. 

What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 5)

Note: This post is meant to be read after reading part 1 of this series, where I lay some groundwork and introduce some important concepts. I would also advise reading the other preceding parts, but this is not completely necessary.

Today I'd like to talk about another feminine deity that shows up in the Bible. But before I do, I need to introduce a connection to this deity.

Baal and YHWH

If you are familiar with the Bible, you are probably familiar with the fact that it contains pejoratives against Baal worship. For example, Judges 2:13 mentions the Israelites abandoning YHWH to worship Baal, 1 Kings 18:20-36 is about YHWH triumphing over the priests of Baal (through Elijah) and proving he is the true god of Israel, and Jeremiah 19:5 has Jeremiah prophesying in the valley of Hinnom (or Gehenna, which eventually becomes a word that is mis-translated as "hell") regarding child-sacrifice to Baal.

A stele with Baal holding a thunderbolt, from Ugarit

But what you may not have known is that scholars believe that Baal and YHWH are historically connected - or in other words, YHWH used to be Baal. The smoking gun, in all this, are the texts of the Ugaritic tablets, dated to the 13th and 12th centuries BCE. These texts give us a few interesting connections between Baal and YHWH.

In the beginning of the Baal cycle, Baal fights against Yam, the god of the sea (which often represents chaos in the Near East religions), and defeats him. Later in the epic, we learn that Baal defeated the Leviathan. This directly parallels Psalm 74:13-14.

Baal is also referred to in these texts as the "rider on the clouds" who brings rain and storms, and controls the thunder. YHWH is mentioned as the "rider on the clouds" in Psalm 68:4 and verse 33, as well as in Psalm 104:3. In these same Psalms, YHWH is said to bring rain and storms (see Psalm 68:8-9, Psalm 104:7, and Psalm 104:27). We also see Daniel 7:13 turning the enigmatic "one like a son of man" into the rider on the clouds. Consider also how YHWH is shown as a storm god in the story of Noah, and in the end of the story he hangs his bow (the bow he uses to release the storms) in the sky. And we see Psalm 18:13, Psalm 78:48, and Isaiah 28:2 depicting YHWH as a storm god as well.

In Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, author John Day also draws a connection between a passage in the Ugaritic texts with a sevenfold manifestation of Baal in the thunder, and the sevenfold manifestation of the voice of YHWH in Psalm 29, writing:

...the parallel to Psalm 29 [is] even closer when it is noted that in KTU2 1.101.1-3a, immediately before the reference to Baal's seven thunders and lightnings, we read of Baal's enthronement like the flood: 'Baal sits enthroned, like the sitting of a mountain, Hadad like the flood, in the midst of his mountain, the god of Zaphon in the [midst of] the mountain of victory', just as Ps. 29.10 states, 'The Lord sits enthroned over the flood, the Lord sits enthroned as king for ever'. The fact that the seven thunders of Psalm 29 go back to Baal mythology means that they are an integral part of the original psalm....

Note also that Psalm 29 mentions three locations, but that these three locations were Baal's territory. Lebanon is mentioned in verses 5 and 6, and while Lebanon is mentioned frequently in the Bible as land God gave Israel, it was never fully conquered by them but was occupied by Sidonians and Phoenicians. And Sirion, mentioned in verse 6, was also in Sidonian territory. And Kadesh, mentioned in verse 8, was part of the wilderness that the Hebrews wandered with Moses, and is also territory for Baal.

In an article on his blog site, Dr. Bart Ehrman writes:

Principally, modern scholars know that the Israelites actually were a subgroup of Canaanites who gradually developed their own identity and culture. In fact, it’s possible that early on, the Israelites sometimes referred to Yahweh as Baal (in its meaning as “Lord”). We can see this in some names in the Hebrew Bible: Gideon in the Bible is also called Jerubaʿal, meaning "The Lord Strives" (Judges 6:32), King Saul names one of his sons Eshbaʿal, meaning "The Lord is Great" (1 Chron. 8:33), and one of David’s followers in 1 Chronicles 12:5 is named Bealiah, meaning “Baal is God.”  

But there is another curious connection between Baal and YHWH. As I mentioned in part 3 of this series, scholars believe that the Canaanite deity El was originally the god of Israel (whose name contains the name El), and that eventually YHWH and El are conflated. I also demonstrated how the Bible contains references to El Elyon as the head of the pantheon who gives Israel to YHWH as an inheritance in part 2 of this series. Interestingly, the Ugaritic texts show El as the head of the Canaanite pantheon of gods, and Baal is his son. And El has a wife named Asherah.

YHWH's wife Asherah 

At the site of Kuntillet Ajrud, in the Sinai Peninsula, archaeologists discovered inscriptions on stone, plaster, and pottery. On a pithos - a large stone jar - was a drawing of two gods, with the inscription in Hebrew: "I bless you by YHWH of Samariah and his Asherah". This has become a source of debate amongst scholars, with some believing that this indicates that Asherah was believed to be YHWH's consort, and some arguing that this does not necessarily make that connection. One scholar who believes this inscription demonstrates that connection - Dan McClellan - sells t-shirts with the drawing of YHWH and his Asherah.

The pithos drawing with the inscription "YHWH of Samaria and his Asherah"

Similarly, at the archaological site of Khirbet el-Qom, an inscription on a tomb was discovered that partially reads:

Blessed is/be Uriyahu by Yahweh
And [because?] from his oppressors by his Asherah he has saved him 

English Bible readers will likely only know of Asherah as a god whose worship was condemned. But there are a couple interesting references that demonstrate that at one point, her worship was considered part of their service to YHWH.

In Jeremiah 44:15-17, it says that "all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah", and part of their answer in verse 17 says: 

[W]e will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. 

Who is this queen of heaven that, apparently, people in Judah and Jerusalem used to worship? Likely, it is Asherah. 

I remember another reference to Asherah that I learned about in Sunday School, and was very confused about. In Numbers 21:4-9, there is a story where the Israelites "spoke against God and against Moses", complaining that they were brought out of Egypt just to die in the wilderness. As a response, YHWH sends venomous serpents to attack them. When the people return to Moses, begging him to have YHWH remove the serpents, YHWH instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, and anyone who was bitten by a serpent could look at this and live. 

And this story never made any sense to me, until I realized - this is an idol to Asherah, YHWH's wife. Asherah is associated with serpentine imagery, as well as being a goddess of fertility, healing, and immortality. So YHWH is saying here: "if you want to be healed from the venomous snake bites, worship my wife - the goddess of serpents and healing - and she will heal you." And in 2 Kings 18:4, it says that King Hezekiah cut down the Asherah and "broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it." And often, apologists will try to argue that when Moses erected this bronze serpent, it was not an idol, but a symbol of Jesus on the cross - and I really have never been able to make any sense out of how a serpent becomes a symbol of Jesus. But what if, rather, it was always an idol to Asherah, and in the beginning this was accepted but later on became condemned?

I've demonstrated repeatedly thus far in this series that the Hebrew people worshiped other gods at different points in their history. And scholars believe that the path from polytheism to monolatrism (and eventually to henotheism) begins when King Josiah "discovers" the "book of the law" (thought by scholars to be Deuteronomy) in 2 Kings 22:8-20. And it is believed that Josiah realized that he could increase his tax revenue if he centralized all temple worship in Jerusalem, so he outlawed the worship of the other gods (who had temples scattered around the land), and began the work of commissioning writings that condemn these practices as well as destroying the temples and alters to these other gods, whose worship had previously been accepted. At the very least, one must admit that the many passages demonstrating idol-worship by the Israelites - including the reference to an Asherah pole that had been erected in the temple of Solomon in 2 Kings 21:7 - demonstrate that this was part of Israel's culture, as much as other parts of their culture fought against it.

And part of this eventual condemnation of Asherah involved writing negative things about her (which eventually became recorded in the Bible). And one writing that is thought by some scholars to be a pejorative against Asherah worship is the story of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis 3. Because the combination of serpent/tree/woman is a common motif in other myths surrounding Israel. For example, the Mesopotamian Inanna and the Huluppu tree has Inanna being prevented from building her throne from the sacred tree by a crafty serpent, and is thought by scholars to be a way that a goddess was demoted in a male-dominated society and demonstrates how this society co-opted her power and worship in that society. Also, while not containing a woman, the Epic of Gilgamesh has a serpent preventing Gilgamesh from obtaining eternal life by stealing the fruit of immortality. Considering these myths alongside the fact that Asherah was at one time worshiped by Israelites, and is symbolized by a serpent, it is logical to conclude that this story of the Garden of Eden was used as part of an effort to abolish Asherah worship. And it is interesting to note that there is a twofold interpretation within Judaism that says that: 1) idolatry was the original sin, and 2) the story of the exile from the Garden of Eden is symbolic of Israel's exile to foreign lands because of their own sin of idol-worship, when they lose access to their "Eden" (the temple). 

It should also be noted that a connection can be made between the story of the Garden of Eden and the bronze serpent of Moses. To make this connection, you need to first understand that in the original Hebrew in which this story was written, there were no vowels. And when you understand this, you should understahd that in the original Hebrew, the word for serpent - nachash (נָחָשׁ) - and the Hebrew word for bronze - nechash (נְחָשׁ) - look like the same word. Also, the story makes a connection between man and the serpent when the man is described as arumim (plural for naked), and the serpent as arum (for crafty). And it has been suggested by some scholars that the writer wants us to see the connection of man having been made from dust and serpent from bronze. This draws a parallel to Moses' bronze serpent in the desert.

Note: for an alternative take in the interpretation of the story of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you can read an older post of mine where I explore this story.

But I am going to stop here, and next time we will begin exploring the development of YHWH in the Biblical literature. 

Part 6 - A Portrait of YHWH 

What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 4)

Note: This post is meant to be read after reading part 1 of this series, where I lay some groundwork and introduce some important concepts. I would also advise reading the other preceding parts, but this is not completely necessary.

 

El Shaddai

A few days ago, Dr. Dan McClellan posted a video on his YouTube channel - the subject matter was the outrage amongst conservative Christians in America regarding a statement that James Talerico made saying that "God is nonbinary". And as always, Dan makes an excellent argument in his video demonstrating why Representative Talerico would say this. But in the comment section, I replied: "I would've said something about El Shaddai." 

In Genesis 17, something strange happens - I am going to demonstrate by pointing out the terms used for God and replacing the English translations of these terms with the original Hebrew terms for God (pay attention especially to the first 3 verses):

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, [YHWH] appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am [El Shaddai]; walk before me, and be blameless. ² And I will make my covenant between me and you and will make you exceedingly numerous.” ³ Then Abram fell on his face, and [Elohim] said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁵ No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁶ I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be [Elohim] to you and to your offspring after you. ⁸ And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding, and I will be their [Elohim].”

Now you may have noticed, with my help, that in the first 3 verses of this passage, the terminology for God changes 3 times. Recall my discussion in part 1 of this series about Source Criticism, and the various hypothesis involving different sources being compiled to make up the Pentateuch (as well as other books in the Hebrew Bible). That is likely a bit of what is going on here.

But let's talk about that name: El Shaddai. Many English Bibles will render that "God Almighty" - this is because some scholars have suggested that the name comes from the Hebrew word "shadad", which means "to violently destroy." But I think that a more likely translation is "the breasted God". Let me explain: shad is the Hebrew word for "breast", and you can find this word in a number of places, such as Job 3:12, Psalm 22:9, Song of Solomon 1:13, and there are many other references (some of which I will cover in this post). And adding ai to the end renders it in the plural possessive - making it literally "my breasts". So one way to translate el shaddai would be to literally translate it "the divine power of my breasts". But some scholars have suggested things like "the Breasted God" or simply "Mother" as ways to render this name in English.

While the translation of the name is contested, note that both the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) and the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDOTTE) recognize that the name Shaddai comes from the word shad (שַׁד) which means "breast" or "mountain". Although TDOT concludes that "God of the mountain" is the best translation, the fact that it recognizes "the God of Breasts" as a possibility is significant. TDOT notes that shaddai follows a common pattern for divine name formation using a “natural element plus an adjectival suffix. One thinks of Artsay, Tallay, and Pidray, wives of Ba`al whose names mean 'One of the Earth,' 'The Dewy One,' and 'the Misty One'" (TDOT, I:256). Following this convention, Shaddai would mean "The Breasted One".

And it should be noted that this name consistently appears in the Bible alongside fertility blessings, and that this convention is exclusive in Genesis. Note how the entire chapter of Genesis 17 is about an old man and woman who are supposed to be infertile being given a fertility blessing. Later on in Genesis 28:3, Isaac pronounces the following blessing on Jacob:

May [El Shaddai] bless you and make you fruitful and numerous, that you may become a company of peoples. 

And examine Genesis 35:11: 

[Elohim] said to him, “I am [El Shaddai]: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall spring from you. 

 Likewise, if we turn to Genesis 49:25, this is part of a blessing that Jacob pronounced on his sons:

[B]y the God [El] of your father, who will help you,
by [El Shaddai] who will bless you
with blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that lies beneath,
blessings of the breasts [shaddayim] and of the womb.

In the story of Joseph, Jacob says the following to Joseph in Genesis 48:3-4: 

"[El Shaddai] appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and he blessed me and said to me, ‘I am going to make you fruitful and increase your numbers; I will make of you a company of peoples and will give this land to your offspring after you for a perpetual holding.’"

Note how in all of these cases, the name El Shaddai accompanies the idea of being fruitful and having numerous descendents. 

Additionally, Isaiah 60:16 starts with the metaphor of suckling breasts before using this name, and Job 33:4 uses this name to speak of giving life. 

Charity, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1878

 

So while one can point to Exodus 6:3 to say that this is just another name for YHWH, I think that this was another god entirely - a fertility goddess, to be exact. And even if we agree that "this is just another name for YHWH", that would make YHWH non-binary. And this idea is further strengthened when Job tries to conflate YHWH and El Shaddai and has YHWH talking about his womb in Job 38:29.

And while this has nothing to do with El Shaddai directly, in Luke 13:34, Jesus uses feminine, motherly imagery when he says "how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings...."

In the most recent episode of the "Big Bang Theory" spinoff, "Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage", Mandy says something about God being a "She" on TV and this puts her job as a TV reporter in jeopardy, as people in her Texas community send her hate mail. But I wonder - if more people knew about the feminine side of God represented by El Shaddai and took seriously Jesus' imagery of God as a mother hen, would this challenge their misogyny? 

I'm going to stop here, and the next post will cover another goddess, whose worship the Biblical writers tried to erase. 

Part 5: Baal and Asherah

What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 3)

Note: This post is meant to be read after reading part 1 of this series, where I lay some groundwork and introduce some important concepts.

Yesterday's post explored the language in the Bible regarding the Most High God - the head of the pantheon of gods, El Elyon. Today I am going to explore some concepts that are all related - El, Elohim, and the bene elohim.

El

Scholars believe that the original Hebrew deity was El - a name which eventually became a generic word for "god". And in Genesis 33:20 we are told that when Jacob arrived in the city of Shechem, which is in Canaan, "he erected an altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel [which means "God, the god of Israel" or "El, the god of Israel"] ." And this shows corroborating evidence that what we call "Israelites" are originally descended from Canaanites - because here, Jacob is in a Canaanite city erecting an alter that references a Canaanite god, but claiming it as the god of Israel. 

A statue of El from Ugarit

Archaeology has discovered evidence that a people group known as "Israel" occupied the land of Canaan as early as 1208BCE, in the form of an inscription on the Merneptah Stele. And there is no archaeological evidence of the existence of YHWH as an Israelite deity until about 300 years later, when we find inscriptions on the Mesha Stele, the Tel Dan Stele, and the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which reference Kings that have forms of "YHWH" in their names, as well as some mention of YHWH as the god of Israel.

But it is important to note that the very name Israel - meaning "strives with El" or "El strives" or even "El rules" - is a name containing the name of this Canaanite deity. And so scholars believe that El-worship by the Hebrew people predates YHWH worship. 

El was originally a Canaanite god, but there are forms of the name "El" in Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Akkadian. He was viewed as the father of the gods, the creator of humanity, and the head of the pantheon - much like El Elyon in later Hebrew literature.

El eventually starts to become conflated with YHWH in Biblical literature - and this is part of the development I mentioned in part 1 of this series where the Hebrew polytheism starts to become monolatrism (belief in many gods but worshiping only one) and eventually henotheism (almost the same thing as monolatrism, but believing that the god you worship is the supreme deity). 

Elohim and the Bene Elohim

As I mentioned before, "El" becomes a generic word for "god". But later on, "elohim", which is a plural-form word, becomes a word that is not only used for "gods", but is also generically used to speak of "God" - even as a name. Elohim is the way the entire chapter of Genesis 1 refers to God, which you can see if you switch over to the "Names of God" translation of the Bible. And this is one of the reasons scholars believe that Genesis 1 through Genesis 2 verse 4a was written after Genesis 2:4b-25, as the tendency for the priestly class to discard anthropomorphism and use more abstract language about God is a development that is observed in later writings. Whereas Genesis 2:4b-25 has YHWH Elohim (literally: YHWH God) getting down in the dirt and forming man like a potter, and planting the garden of Eden like a farmer, Genesis 1 has Elohim creating through divine decree, like a king or emperor.

And as I mentioned in the last post, we sometimes see Elohim being used to talk about gods, plural. One example I gave was Psalm 82:1, which talks about the Most High (Elyon) ruling over the divine council of elohim (gods). But there are also references to the bene elohim - the sons of God. And this shows evidence of a theology that involves a divine hierarchy of greater and lesser gods. 

One interesting reference to the bene elohim is in the beginning of Genesis chapter 6 - Genesis 6:1-4:

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God [bene elohim] saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord [YHWH] said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God [bene elohim] went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

Here we see an interesting picture of lesser gods impregnating human women - which might feel similar to Greek mythology. And, also similar to Greek mythology, the resulting spawn of these acts were giants, and were great warriors.  

A depiction of the Nephilim

Another passage of note regarding the bene elohim is found in Job 1:6-12. In this passage, we find that an unnamed deity which is referred to by the title of ha satan (literally: the accuser, and this is the way to refer to a prosecuting attorney or a state prosecutor, like a district attorney) enters the courtroom of God among the bene elohim. Note how in verse 6, he simply waltzes into the courtroom - he doesn't sneak in or beat up any guards to do so:

One day the bene elohim came to present themselves before the Lord, and ha satan [literally: the accuser] also came among them.

The verse implies that this ha satan - which again, is not a name, indicating that this unnamed deity is no more than a plot device - was among the sons of god - the bene elohim - and was therefore another one of them. 

And I have argued at great length that, much like the way the ideas regarding God changed and developed over time, the ideas regarding ha satan also developed over time. In one part of a series of posts I wrote about Satan, I argue that Job was written during Persian captivity, and that this depiction of ha satan is answering and arguing with the dualism of Zoroastrianism, which believed in dualing gods: Ahura Mazda (the good deity) and Angra Mainyu (the bad deity). In Zoroastrianism, this was an effort to take blame for suffering off of the good deity and place it on the bad deity, but rather than affirm this, Job does not allow the reader this luxury, as ha satan has to request permission of YHWH to inflict suffering, and then seems to disappear from the story and become absent when YHWH is answering Job regarding his suffering.

And if you'd like to read some more summarized versions of that series of posts on Satan, I wrote some shorter posts about the development of the ideas of Satan and Demons in the following posts: 

Most modern, popular Christian ideas about Satan are not Biblical, part 1

Most modern, popular Christian ideas about Satan are not Biblical, part 2

A discussion on the language of demons

Symbolism and Metaphor in Revelation (wherein I demonstrate that Satan is shown by the author to be the personality of the Roman empire) 

I'm going to stop here, and in the next post, we're going to talk about a feminine deity in the Bible. 

Part 4 - El Shaddai 

What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 2)

 

Note: This post is meant to be read after reading part 1 of this series, where I lay some groundwork and introduce some important concepts.

When I was growing up, one of my parents' favorite Christian musicians was Amy Grant. And I remember, vividly, a song by her called El Shaddai.

 The lyrics of this song begin:

El Shaddai, El Shaddai
El Elyon na Adonai
Age to age You're still the same
By the power of the name 

And these lyrics represent an idea that was very prevalent in the theology I grew up with - that the various names for gods in the Bible are all just a bunch of different names for the same God. They would argue: of course these can't be names for different gods, because "I the Lord do not change" (Malachi 3:6) and "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8 - see also James 1:17). And while there are verses in the Bible that say that God doesn't change, that is a very different argument than saying that the perspectives of the Hebrew people regarding what God is like didn't change. 

Another common argument that is used to say that polytheism couldn't have been represented in the Bible is to point to Deuteronomy 6:4, which says that "the Lord [YHWH is used here] is one." This is used to argue that the Bible is saying that YHWH is the only god - but there's a few problems with this argument. First off, it assumes univocality - that every author in the Bible agreed on everything with every other author and no author ever wrote anything that contradicted another. But also, the interpretation of the phrase ignores another place in the Bible where the same language is used. When this verse says that God is one, it says "YHWH ehad", and that same word - ehad - is used in Song of Songs 6:9, when it says "my dove, my perfect one, is the only one." And this is not saying that she is the only woman in the whole world - it's saying she's the only one for me. It's about devotion, not existence.

So I would like to discuss various names of deities we find in the Bible. And for reasons which will soon become apparent, I am going to start with El Elyon.

El Elyon

People who believe that the Bible is Inerrant are trained not to see polytheism in the Bible. Their views about what the Bible is dictate that the Bible is not allowed to have any texts that represent polytheism. And yet, scholars see quite a bit of evidence for polytheism within the Biblical texts.

 

Perhaps the strongest case for polytheism within the Bible can be found in Deuteronomy 32:8-9: 

When the Most High apportioned the nations,
when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of the gods; (in Hebrew, this is the "bene elohim", and some later manuscripts tried to hide this by changing it to "bene Adam", or the "sons of man")
the Lord’s (YHWH) own portion was his people,
Jacob his allotted share.

When this passage says "the Most High", this is "Elyon", which sometimes shows up in the Bible as "El Elyon" (literally: "the Most High God"). And it is clear from this passage that Elyon and YHWH are not the same god, since Elyon is giving Israel to YHWH as an inheritance (and speaking of Israel as YHWH's inheritance is a theme that is repeated many times in the Hebrew Bible - we will return to this when we cover YHWH in this series). And not only that, but this passage implies that Elyon gave the other nations to other gods - or "bene elohim", as this passage states.

 

Now, note here that elohim can be a confusing term in the Bible, as it is sometimes used as a generic term for God (so it can be singular), but the word itself is grammatically plural and is sometimes used to speak of more than one god. And a discerning interpreter/translator has to be very careful about this and examine the surrounding verbiage to determine whether the singular or the plural is meant.

 

But to return to polytheism - there are other verses in the Bible that give a strong case for the idea of polytheism. Exodus 15:11 says "who is like you, O Lord (YHWH is used here), among the gods...". In Exodus 12:12, YHWH says that he's going to "execute judgements" on "the gods of Egypt" (and how can one execute judgements on something that doesn't exist?). 

 

And returning to Elyon, Psalm 82:1 shows us a picture of Elyon as the head of the pantheon (like Zeus in the Greek pantheon):

God [Elyon in the original Hebrew] has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods [elohim] he holds judgment...

Then in verse 6 of this same Psalm, it says:

I say, “You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you..."

And here it uses the term "elohim" again for "gods", and "children of the Most High" is the phrase "bene Elyon". And yes, at some point in Jewish history, it became custom to interpret this Psalm as talking about the Israelites (they become the bene Elyon), but when you take into context the mention of the "divine council" at the beginning of the Psalm, as well as some of the other passages I've brought up demonstrating polytheism, it makes more sense to understand the original intention of this Psalm as indicating that Elyon is judging the other gods.

 

 

 

The name "El Elyon" (the Most High God) shows up in a few places - one place of note being the story in Genesis 14:17-24, where Abraham (called Abram here) is blessed by King Melchizedek, whom the story says "was priest of God Most High [El Elyon]". And in this story, Melchizedek says in verses 19-20:

Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
maker of heaven and earth,
and blessed be God Most High,
who has delivered your enemies into your hand! 

Note something of interest here: according to this passage, the belief is that El Elyon is the creator - not YHWH (as Genesis 2:4 indicates). And this indicates that Abram was polytheistic, as other passages have him worshiping other gods. Just turn to the next chapter and Genesis 15:1 switches to talking about YHWH talking to Abram. So, as I argued in the first post of this series, there is a progression of ideas that starts with polytheism before we start seeing monolatrism (belief in many gods but worshiping only one) or henotheism (belief in many gods, but believing that the god you worship is the supreme god over all the others).

 

Part 3: El, Elohim, and the Bene Elohim  

What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 1)

 

Recently, I've had a few conversations with people about how there is a progression of ideas represented in the Bible - how the idea of what is called "God" is an idea that developed and changed over time. This is, of course, controversial with people who make certain assumptions about the Bible - people who usually describe this collection of assumptions by the title "Inerrancy". And quite often, part of what is meant by the term inerrant is the idea that it is also univocal - that every author of any piece of the Bible agreed completely and totally with every other author represented in the Bible. That every author described every idea in the Bible in exactly the same way - despite all evidence to the contrary. 

 

And this idea is very demonstrably false. There is a great wealth of evidence against it. But unfortunately, any time someone like me comes along and challenges this idea, what usually happens is that we come up against what I call "whack-a-mole". We come up against an attitude where inerrantists will fight hard against every single piece of evidence we bring up - and what I'd really like them to do is to take a step back, stop focusing on the trees, and see the forest. I want them to see that there is a large collection of data that contradicts their view.  

 

 

And one of the things you have to understand about "whack-a-mole" is that when you fight against one piece of evidence, you can usually make a good case that there is a certain percentage of a chance that your way of interpreting that piece of evidence is right. But if I bring up another piece of evidence that contradicts your view, and you fight hard to show that there is a certain percentage of a chance that you can accurately interpret that piece of evidence in a way that is not contradictory to your views, the problem is that the chance you are right about both pieces of evidence is much smaller than the chance that you are right about each individual piece of evidence. Let's say that for the first piece of evidence, we calculate that your probability of being right is 40%. That's not excellent, but it's not too bad either. And then, let's say your probability of being right about the second piece of evidence is 50%. That's even better! But the problem is that the probability that you are right about both pieces of evidence is now 20%. And you can check my math with this calculator. And the biggest problem with inerrancy is that someone like me can continue to bring up contradiction after contradiction, and the inerrantist will fight and fight (playing whack-a-mole), all the while ignoring that the probability that they are right about inerrancy is getting smaller and smaller.

 

I recently watched a podcast episode where Dr. Joshua Bowen describes his own process of slowly leaving Christianity. And in one part of this episode, he gives this analogy of dating someone who is having an affair (link should go to the 50:28 mark of the video where he gives this analogy). And he describes this idea of something "feeling off", and the girlfriend saying "I'm not sure if you're being faithful to me - you're coming home late." And in his analogy, the boyfriend says "oh no, I know it might seem that way, but I've had to work late because something is going on at the office." But then later on, he comes home and smells like perfume - and yet again, he has an explanation: "oh yeah, I know, I get it - it would make sense for you to think I was having an affair. But you have to understand, there's this woman who sits in the cubicle next to me and she wears so much perfume, and that's why I smell that way." And then next week, there's lipstick on his collar: "yeah, I know, but look, my mother came to visit and she got some lipstick on my collar when she was hugging me." I think this is another good example of what I call "whack-a-mole".

 

I'm not interested in playing whack-a-mole with anyone. Especially since my plan for this series of posts is to try to keep each one smaller than my usual post (since I get a lot of complaints of my posts being too long).

The Historical Progression

So for the purposes of keeping this post shorter, at this point I'm just going to give an outline of this progression of ideas about God that I'm describing. And I think what I will do is to periodically come back to this post and update it with links to the other posts to serve as a table of contents.
First of all, there is a progression in the Bible that goes like this:

• Polytheism (the Hebrews worship more than one god, and believe in other gods they don't worship) 
• Monolatrism (the Hebrews worship one god as their patron deity, but still believe there are other gods - but those gods are the gods of other nations) 
• Henotheism (the Hebrews acknowledge the existence of other gods, but worship one god that they believe is the supreme deity - the most powerful god) 
• Panentheism (the belief that what is called "God" is present in every part of the universe - that all is in God and God is in all, but that God also transcends the universe) 

At the same time this progression is going on, there is a progression from describing the gods of the Hebrews in ways that demonstrate character flaws to becoming uncomfortable with these character flaws and trying to get away from them so that they can describe what is called "God" as perfect and flawless. And not only that, but there is also a progression from describing God in anthropomorphic terms (a fancy term meaning to describe something in ways that look/sound human) to describing God in much more abstract terms, and trying to shuffle these anthropomorphisms onto "the angel of the Lord" instead. For example - Genesis 2 has a very agrarian view of God that describes God planting the garden of Eden like a farmer and forming man from dirt like a potter. This God gets dirty. But later writers are uncomfortable with this way of describing God, and one of the ways they try to get past that is to use the term "the angel of the Lord" to describe any direct interaction with the world.

Source Criticism 101

And at this point I need to reiterate an idea that I introduce in a post I wrote in another forum (about Genocide in the Bible): modern scholarship holds that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses. Rather, the Pentateuch (as well as most other books in the Hebrew Bible) came about by a process where there were original, distinct sources - smaller writings - that over time were collected together into an omnibus by scribes. The scholarly theories on this subject start with the Documentary Hypothesis, but today, there is the Neo-Documentary Hypothesis, the Supplementary Hypothesis, and there are other newer theories as well (such as the Fragmentary Hypothesis, which I cannot find an article about at this time). And while these theories disagree on the details, they all agree on the idea of multiple sources coming together over time.

 

Balaam and his ass

 

 

And one of my favorite examples to demonstrate this is the strange story of Balaam and his talking donkey. You may remember this one from Sunday School. The story is found in Numbers 22, but something very strange happens in a sequence of 3 verses that they probably never pointed out to you in Sunday School. In verses 20-22, the following progression occurs within the story:

 

1. (verse 20) God comes to Balaam in a dream and says "go with the Midianites, but only tell them what I tell you to tell them." 
2. (verse 21) Balaam wakes up and goes with the Midianites. 
3. (verse 22) God gets angry at Balaam for doing what God told him to do. 

And this makes absolutely no sense at all...unless you understand that what likely happened here is that there were two different stories about Balaam - one that was written at an earlier time and had a positive view of Balaam, and another that was written later and had a negative view of Balaam. And at some point in time, a scribe had the desire to preserve both stories within his version of the omnibus, and mashed them together into one story, but this resulted in some strange contradictions.

Now as a side note, I originally posted this article in another forum. And in that forum, one user tried to argue with me about what I just said about the story of Balaam. His argument was that God told Balaam to go with the Midianites if they summoned him. So, this user argued, God was mad because Balaam went without being summoned. But this is such a good example of the "whack-a-mole" attitude I described, and in no small part because if you read verses 15-19 of this same story, you see that the Midianites were already there to summon him, and Balaam had told them to stay overnight with him.

But back to the concept of these writings coming from different sources - you need to understand this concept because scholars can see perspectives from different points of the progression I have described above represented in different places within the same stories at times, and it can be confusing. Sometimes these views are separated into different stories - such as when "the angel of the Lord" visits Hagar in Genesis 16, and then God seems to talk to Abram directly in the next chapter, and then in Genesis 18, three men visit Abraham directly and eat with him. And at one point in the story (verse 13), it simply says that YHWH said something to Abraham - seemingly indicating that one of the three men was YHWH in the flesh. But then there are other stories that can be very messy, and it seems like multiple perspectives are represented within the same story, indicating a process similar to the one I outlined with the story of Balaam.

But at this point I am going to stop. And like I said earlier, I plan to come back to this post periodically and update it with links to the rest of the posts so that this post can serve as a table of contents.

 

Table of Contents

Part 2 - El Elyon 

Part 3 - El, Elohim, and the Bene Elohim 

Part 4 - El Shaddai 

Part 5: Baal and Asherah 

Part 6 - A Portrait of YHWH