What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 10)

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.

The Trinity

As we've been exploring the way the concept of God develops and changes throughout the Biblical texts, I wonder if there have been audience members sitting in their office chairs with sullen looks, wondering when, oh when will I talk about the Trinity?

And I wondered if I even should talk about it. Because I'm no longer convinced that it even appears anywhere in the Bible - at least not in the way tradition insists it does.

This is a subject that the popular Bible scholar Dan McClellan has repeatedly returned to in his videos - such as this one, or this one. In one of my favorite videos of his where he talks about this, he points out that there is a "fundamental incoherence" of the Trinity, and he explains what this incoherence is with the illustration of a math problem. And in this math problem, it is like saying:

a is the Father
b is the Son
c is the Holy Spirit
g is God
a + b + c = g
a = g
b = g
c = g
a ≠ b
b ≠ c
a ≠ c 

And this does not make mathematical sense, nor does it make sense in light of the way persons or substance have ever been understood. 

 

And I can recall wrestling with this concept as a child, and questioning elders about it, and these sorts of conversations would always seem to end with something along the lines of "well, this is just one of those mysteries that you have to accept through faith."

Or, hear me out here, what if it's one of those things that authoritarian men came up with after the Bible was written and then enforced when the Church got in bed with empire in the days of Constantine and started using governmental authority to punish heresy?

But some of you will insist: the Trinity is in the Bible. Except many of the "proofs" for this concept are based on fundamental misunderstandings of what the original author was trying to say in the language in which these passages were originally written.

One of the passages people often point to as "proof" of the Trinity is John 1:1-5, which I discussed in part 8 of this series as part of my discussion on "Logos" and the connections to the Jewish literature on Lady Wisdom. And hopefully, through that discussion, some of my readers have already caught on to the fact that modern Christians who are unfamiliar with the connections between this passage and some of the things Philo said about Logos will already be seeing how taking this passage as equating Jesus with God misunderstands the passage. Because for John, Logos is the Wisdom of God, the argument of God, the reason behind the order of the universe, and it was the first creation, which means that equating it with God is a misunderstanding of what John is saying. 

But oh, you say, verse 1 of the passage says that "the Logos was with God and the Logos was God." Except that people who make this argument don't understand the original Greek and what is going on here. Because you have to understand that in Greek, there are definite articles but there are not indefinite articles. Meaning: in English, we have definite articles like "the", and we have indefinite articles like "a book" or "a tree". Greek does not have indefinite articles. So when we read John 1 in the original Greek, it says that "the Logos was with the God [ton theon] and the Logos was divine [theos]." Now, note here - theon and theos are the same word, but different cases - theon is the form used when the word is the direct object in a sentence, and theos is the form used when the word is the subject of the sentence. And Bible scholars have noted that when they look at the ways this word is used in this time period by many different authors, it can mean "God" or it can simply mean "divine" - as in, "a god", or someone or something that is godly/god-like. So it is important that in this verse, the author switches from using the definite article ton when referring to God in the first part of the verse, and leaving out the definite article in the second part of the verse.

So then some people will retort: well Jesus definitely claims to be God in John 8:58 when he says "before Abraham was, I am." And here they are interpreting this as Jesus using the divine name that was revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14. But there's a big problem with this - when Jesus says "I am" here, it's just a commonly used Greek phrase for saying things like "that's me", or "that was me" - ego eimi. And furthermore, when you examine the first known Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible - the Septuagint - and look at Exodus 3:14, you see God telling Moses that his name is "I am who I am", and the Greek here is ego eimi ho on. And then later in the verse, when God says "tell them I am sent you", the words used here are not ego eimi but are ho on. So here, God seems to be telling Moses that the divine name Moses should use is not ego eimi, but is ho on. And Jesus does not use the words ho on, he just uses a very common Greek phrase that identifies oneself as the one who did a thing or was in a place. And to illustrate how important this is, when Jesus heals a blind man in the next chapter of John, and the people in his town are asking "isn't this that blind man who sits and begs?" The blind man replies in verse 9 "ego eimi", translated as "I am he", and no one ever seems to argue that this means that the blind man is God.

So then, some may come back to John 8:58 and say that because Jesus seems to be claiming eternality or preexistence, it implies he is God. But that is not necessarily the case. Again, returning to part 8 of this series, recall that Philo claims that the High Priest is the preexisting Logos, "by means of whom the universe arrived at creation." And this does not mean that Philo believes every High Priest who has ever lived was a person of the Trinity, with the same being/substance (homoousion) as God. But also, this verse doesn't necessarily imply preexistence, either - because if we go back to the context, we see that in verse 56, Jesus is arguing that the prophecy that the messiah would come from Abraham's line was about him (Jesus) - so this statement may simply be a statement that Jesus as messiah was preordained since the beginning of time, and is not a statement of eternal existence on Jesus' part.

So then some will continue the argument by turning to the story in John 10:22-40, where Jesus says that "the Father and I are one" in verse 30, and then verse 31 it says that the Jews responded by picking up stones to stone him. Surely [they argue] this proves that he was claiming to be God, since the Jews responded this way? 

But what about the way Jesus responds to this? Because after the Jews pick up the stones to kill him, and then explain that they feel that Jesus is committing blasphemy and making himself God, it says in verses 34-36:

Jesus answered, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’—and the scripture cannot be annulled—can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?

Note two things about this response - first, Jesus quotes Psalm 82 here, which we covered as a proof for polytheistic thought within Judaism in part 2 of this series. And secondly, note how Jesus clarifies here that he has never "made himself God" as the Jews are accusing him of in this passage, but rather - Jesus argues - he has only claimed to be God's Son. Note that this demonstrates that for the writer of John, while being "God's Son" implies a special relationship with God that includes "one-ness" with God, it is not the same thing as being equal to God.

Furthermore, if "the Father and I are one" is indeed a claim of being one of the members of the Trinity, then what does it mean when Jesus prays in John 17:21-22 "that they may all be one... [a]s you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us", and then repeats the request that "they may be one, as we are one"? Does this mean that Jesus is praying that the disciples would become members of the Trinity [thus making the Trinity the Quadrinity and then the Quintinity and so on and so forth]?

Or is it possible that the writer of John simply has a different conception of divinity - perhaps one closer to the panentheistic formulation that we discussed in the last section of this series?

Perhaps, when considering formulaic language such as the Trinity, one should hold these words and concepts loosely - recognizing that if one is trying to talk about the infinite, sacred, and holy ground of all Being that has existed before time itself, then one must recognize that all language one uses to attempt to explain such a thing fails? Because if the divine is limitless, then surely any limited language one tries to use will fail to capture such a thing?

I remember years ago, I had a co-worker that I thought I would witness to - I thought I would try to bring him to salvation. This happened just as I was only beginning to ask some questions about my own faith that were starting to reshape it. And I remember that I had a conversation with him about faith, and in response, he lent me a copy of Living Buddha, Living Christ, by the Tibetan monk Thich Nhat Hanh. And there is a chapter in the book where he writes about the Holy Spirit - and this had been a concept I had never really grasped as a child. But for the first time in my life, I felt like I understood the Holy Spirit - all because of a Buddhist monk. And in this chapter of the book, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about breathing exercises and meditative phrases used to help the practitioner develop a sense of living in the present moment, and compassion for others and for all of nature around us. And I think back on the concept we talked about in the last part of this series where I mentioned that the Hebrew word for "spirit" is ruach and the Greek is pneuma (from which we get English words like pneumatic), both words which mean "breath" or "wind". 

https://lisagawlas.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/your-breath-of-life/

In this chapter, Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When our mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love. When your beloved is suffering, you need to recognize her suffering, anxiety, and worries, and just by doing that, you already offer some relief. Mindfulness relieves suffering because it is filled with understanding and compassion. When you are really there, showing your loving-kindness and understanding, the energy of the Holy Spirit is in you.

And later on in the same chapter, he writes:

Discussing God is not the best use of our energy. If we touch the Holy Spirit, we touch God not as a concept but as a living reality. 

And then, near the end of the chapter, he writes:

Our true home is in the present moment. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment. Peace is all around us—in the world and in nature—and within us—in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice. We need only to bring our body and mind into the present moment, and we will touch what is refreshing, healing, and wondrous.

What if, instead of turning Trinity into a credal statement that Christians must bow before and recite whether it makes sense to them or not, the real point of it all was for Jesus to show his disciples a Way - the Way of compassion, through which the presence of the Divine becomes a living reality in the present moment?

What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 9)

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.

Panentheism 

We are coming close to the end of this series, and some of my readers might be thinking: when is he going to talk about the Trinity? And we're going to do that. But I think that before we do, we should talk about a concept that some Trinitarians may never have thought about. They may not have even heard this term before. And the term that this concept goes by is 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. Or to put it another way, panentheism is the belief that whatever it is that we call God is more than a thing which exists, but is rather the ground of existence itself. As the Christian theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich put it:

God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. To argue that God exists is to deny him.

And some might protest: but that's not a Biblical view of God! And at one point in my life, I would have agreed. But then I found that I had been trained to read right past many statements from Paul the apostle.

A depiction of Paul preaching on Mars Hill in Acts 17

One of the most fascinating examples of Paul's panentheism comes from a story about him in Acts - so he might not have even said this. But in Acts 17:16-34 there is an account in which Paul was in Athens, where he argued in the Synagogue and with "Epicurean and Stoic philosophers". And in verse 28 he quotes their own philosophers, drawing from the Cretan philosopher Epimenides in the first half of the verse, and the Cilician Stoic philosopher Aratus in the second half of the verse. And he uses their words to describe the God that Paul saw through Jesus:

In him we live and move and have our being...[f]or we, too, are his offspring."

And as I said, we don't know for sure if Paul actually said those things or if the writer of Acts put those words in his mouth. But they are not unlike statements from Paul's own epistles, such as this statement from Romans 11:36:

For from him and through him and to him are all things.

Here Paul describes the presence of God as not only the origin of all things, but the animator of all things.

And in Colossians 3, Paul writes about the concept of the death of the false self, resulting in being raised with Christ. And in verse 11 he describes the result of this as being raised to a state where the separation that we experience through the various societal labels and categories are erased - he says that "there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free", and goes on to state that "Christ is all and in all." 

Earlier in the book of Colossians, Paul writes (Colossians 1:16-17):

[I]n him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Here Paul states that not only does he believe that all things were created by Christ, but that all things are held together by Christ. 

And while I feel I must note that some scholars do not think Paul actually wrote this, we find another similar statement in Ephesians 4:4-6:

[T]here is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

Note here that the formulation of these various statements ought to challenge certain views of Christianity, because Paul doesn't say that Christ/God are through and in just the Christians or the things Christians do. Paul says, simply: all. God is simply over all things, in all things, and through all things. For Paul, God is in and through the nonbelievers as well, and they are also his offspring, and they are for Him, and held together by Him.

Once you begin to see the panentheistic thought patterns in Paul's writing, you may begin to even see this way of thinking through more subtle statements, such as when Paul writes in I Corinthians 3:16 that "you are God's temple and [...] God's Spirit dwells in you." In ancient thought, temples were necessary dwellings for the gods they worshiped - this is why the Hebrews worried and mourned over their exile from Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, and why it was necessary for the prophet Ezekiel to write about a vision of YHWH departing from the temple in Jerusalem in Ezekiel 10. This vision was a sign to Ezekiel's readers that YHWH's presence was no longer limited to the space within the temple, but was now accessible to them wherever they were. And Paul extends this thought by stating that we are the temple, and that God's spirit dwells in us.

And later on in I Corinthians, Paul writes about the concept of spiritual bodies in I Corinthians 15:35-49. And it should be noted that when Paul wrote this, there was no concept of a separation between earthly and spiritual planes of existence like many people have today. They didn't think of the idea of "spirit" being something that existed outside of normal space and time - rather, the word "spirit" comes from is also the word for "breath" or "wind". It is this way in both Hebrew and Greek - the Hebrew word being ruach and the Greek word being pneuma (from which we get English words like pneumatic). And when Paul talks about "spiritual bodies" in this passage, it should also be noted that in the original Greek, this did not carry the sense of "bodies made out of spirit", but rather, the original Greek word - pneumatikos - carried the sense of bodies which were animated by spirit, as the suffix ikos has to do with what animates or powers the thing it is speaking of. So for Paul, he wants the Christian to undergo a death of ego and be crucified with Christ (as he writes in Galatians 2:20) so that they will then be animated purely by the wind or the breath of God/Christ. Only through this metaphorical death of ego can we eliminate the societal religious and economical categorizations that we use to label and separate people like he talks about in Colossians 3:11.

And we see a similar thought pattern in the gospel of John as well as in the first epistle that is attributed to John. In John 17:21-22, Jesus prays for his disciples, "that they may all be one... [a]s you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us", and then repeats the request that "they may be one, as we are one." And as I pointed out in the last post when I talked about the Logos, this challenges traditional concepts of Trinity. Because traditional Trinitarians hold that Jesus is One with God in a way that no human could ever be, but here Jesus is praying that we would be One with God and "in us" in the very same way that the Father is in Jesus and Jesus in the Father he prays to. 

My favorite passage in the Bible is like this as well - the writer of I John (who may or may not be the same writer who wrote the gospel of John) writes in I John 4:7-21 writes that "everyone who loves is born of God and knows God" and that "[w]hoever does not love does not know God, for God is love." He speaks of living in Christ, and says that "[n]o one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us." And he repeats these thoughts, writing that "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them."

For the writer of the epistle of I John, Christianity is not a system of belief statements. It is an experience that is only accessible through selfless love - and this kind of love does not seek to condemn others who do not make the same belief statements, but also live lives full of compassion and kindness. Rather, it sees the presence of God in them. For the writer of this epistle, Christians do not need to condemn followers of other religions who love, because "everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." And this way of thinking about the mark of a disciple is affirmed in statements of Jesus, such as John 13:35, where Jesus says that love for one another is the mark of a disciple, not a system of belief statements. Or when Jesus told the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46, where the defining mark that distinguishes the sheep from the goats is not their belief statements, but how they treated other people. And this is how one learns to experience God in all things, as Paul writes about - because when we believe that people who do not belong to the artificial label of "Christian" are not also bearers of the presence of God, we limit the presence of God.

The subject of panentheism is one I have written in other posts, and if you would like to read more, I invite you to read these older posts:

Paul and the Greek Poets 
Love is Like the Wind
Oneness: A Collection of Quotes Illustrating a Common Theme  

In the next, and final post of the series, we will explore the development of the concept of Trinity, and how one might conceptualize this way of thinking in a healthy way in our time. 

Part 10 - The Trinity 

What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 8)

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.

Up until this point in the series, I've been talking about various depictions of "God" in the Bible that we could say were anthropomorphic. To put it in pejorative terms, you may hear people outside of Christianity making fun of Christians for worshiping "sky daddy", or something along those lines - and this portrayal of the god-concept is really not far off from the portrayals we've seen thus far in the series.

But later on, the Hebrew writers began to be uncomfortable with anthropomorphism - they began to seek ways of removing anthropomorphism from the picture, and ways to talk about God in more abstract terminology. We are going to explore that in this post.

The Angel of the Lord

In previous posts in this series, we've discussed some anthropomorphic portrays of God - such as when God got down in the dirt and formed man out of the clay like a potter, and then planted the garden of Eden like a farmer in Genesis 2. Or when YHWH eats with Abraham in Genesis 18. Another example we did not discuss would be Exodus 33:18-23, where Moses asks to see YHWH's glory, and YHWH informs him that to see his face would kill Moses, so Moses hides in the rocks and YHWH covers Moses with his hand, and Moses sees YHWH's backside. And we could give many other examples, such a when God is described walking, talking, laughing, or resting, or when human emotions like jealousy, anger, or regret are attributed to God. 

But at some point, the Hebrew writers began to try to offset anthropomorphism within the old stories. And the way they did this was to replace references to YHWH directly with references to the angel of the Lord (literally: malak YHWH). And what's interesting is that you can often see the signs of this by the fact that stories will switch back and forth between referencing YHWH and referencing malek YHWH. 

For example, we can look at the story of Balaam and his talking donkey, which I mentioned in part 1 of this series. After YHWH gets mad at Balaam for going with the Midianites (which, as I pointed out, is what YHWH told him to do), it says in Numbers 22:22 that the angel of the Lord (the malak YHWH - and note that malak literally means "messenger") stood in the road as Balaam's adversary (literally: satan). Then it says that the donkey saw the malak standing there with a sword in his hand in verse 23. And as the story progresses, it continues to mention the malak YHWH, but then it switched back to referencing YHWH directly when it says in verse 28 that YHWH opened the donkey's mouth, and then later on it says that YHWH opened Balaam's eyes in verse 31. But then it switched right back to referencing the malak YHWH, whom it says was standing there with sword drawn. And then there's some dialogue between Balaam and the malak YHWH.

 

A more striking example of this is found in the story of the burning bush, in Exodus 3. Note how, in this story, the malak YHWH is what appears to Moses in the "flame of fire out of a bush" (verse 2), but then in verse 4 it is YHWH who speaks to Moses directly, and for the rest of this story it seems to be YHWH speaking directly to Moses. For this reason, many scholars believe that what is happening here (and in other instances where we see the story switching between "malak YHWH" and "YHWH") is that either: 1) a scribe has come along and edited an older story, replacing direct references to YHWH with malak YHWH, or 2) we are seeing how two separate versions of the same story were combined.

The Wisdom of God

At the beginning of the book of Proverbs, we see a personification of Lady Wisdom:

Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. (Proverbs 1:20)

This is a theme that Proverbs returns to in chapter 8 and continues in chapter 9. In Hebrew, the word for wisdom, chochmah, is grammatically feminine. When these passages are translated into Greek, the word for wisdom is a word that becomes a name: Sophia. A personified wisdom - as a she - is also found in some apocryphal books. For example, the book of Baruch, which is used in Catholic and Orthodox churches, has a personified Lady Wisdom in Baruch 3:9-4:4. And Wisdom of Solomon 7:7-14 also contains a reference to Lady Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon is considered canonical by some traditions). 

Proverbs 8:22-31 refers to Lady Wisdom in ways that might remind one of the malak YHWH - saying that YHWH "created me at the beginning [or as the beginning] of his work, the first of his acts of long ago", that she was created "before the beginning of the earth", and that she was there "[w]hen he established the heavens, [...] when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, [...] when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit", and finally stating "when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker." Likewise, Wisdom of Solomon 9:9 states that Lady Wisdom "was present when you made the world". This all seems to imply that Lady Wisdom was a collaborator in the act of creation.

We then see a striking development when we compare a certain passage in the non-canonical Book of Enoch to a certain passage in the canonical scriptures. But before I make that comparison, I'd like to note - while Enoch is not canonical, it was popular in early Christianity and even included in some early canon attempts. It fell out of favor as early Christians would debate Greek philosophers, who would point out that Enoch couldn't have written the book, because how would it have survived the flood of Noah if he had? But despite it being excluded from most canons, the Ethiopian Orthodox church still considers it canon, Matthew 22:29-30 seems to be alluding to a section of the Book of Enoch, and Jude 1:14-15 calls Enoch a prophet and then quotes this book. 

Keeping that in mind, examine the following statements from Enoch 42:1-2:

Wisdom found no place where she might dwell [...] Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling among the children of men, and found no dwelling-place...

Now compare this to John 1:10-11:

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 

And at this point, I need to introduce a New Testament concept that is deeply connected to the concept of Lady Wisdom.

Logos

In the first verses of the gospel of John, the writer uses the word "logos". Most English Bible translators render this as "Word" - people familiar with this passage would usually recite it as "in the beginning was the Word...." But, unfortunately, this translation doesn't nearly capture the concept behind this word.

The concept of logos begins with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. We don't know much about this pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, and only have fragments of his writing. But for Heraclitus, logos is an underlying intelligence in the Universe that governs all. In the fragments we have, he writes:

Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time [...] though all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it... 

Later on, Aristotle wrote in Rhetoric about three appeals one must make in order to persuade another person. These three were ethos (or appeals to credibility and character), pathos (appeals to emotion), and logos. Logos was the appeal to reason, logic, and facts. 

This concept is then merged with the Biblical writings on Lady Wisdom by the Jewish philosopher Philo, who lived between 20BCE and 50CE. In "De Somniis", he writes: 

For there are, as is evident, two temples of God: one of them this universe, in which there is also as High Priest his firstborn, the divine Logos...

 He further develops this connection between High Priest and Logos in "Flight and Finding":

For we say that the high priest is not a man, but is the Logos of God... God being his father, who is also the father of all things, and wisdom being his mother, by means of whom the universe arrived at creation....

 In "Confusion of Tongues", he writes:

And even if there be not as yet any one who is worthy to be called a son of God, nevertheless let him labour earnestly to be adorned according to his first-born logos, the eldest of his angels, as the great archangel of many names; for he is called, the authority, and the name of God, and the Logos, and man according to God's image, and he who sees Israel... for the image of God is his most ancient Logos. 

When we compare this to the opening verses of John 1, we see similar concepts of the Logos being the firstborn, and the one through whom God created the Universe - John writes that the Logos was "in the beginning with God", and that "all things came into being through him." John ties the Logos to Jesus, and so if we're following, we could say that, according to John, Jesus was the argument of God. He was God's appeal to reason. He was the image of God. And, as when Heraclitus said that "men are unable to understanding - not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time", John writes in verses 10-11 that "the world did not know him", and that "his own people did not accept him."

And we can make further connections between the Wisdom of God, the Logos, and Jesus if we turn to Paul's writing in Colossians 1:15-20, where he writes that Jesus is the "firstborn of all creation", that "in him all things in heaven and on earth were created", that "in him all things hold together", and finally that "through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven."

Note here also: these connections between the Jewish Wisdom literature, Logos, and Jesus challenge traditional ways of thinking about the Trinity, rather than affirm them. One must ask: If Philo says that the High Priest is the Logos of God, the first born, the eldest of angels, and divine, does this mean Philo believes every High Priest is a part of the trinity? And if not, this ought to challenge how we read John, as his own Logos statements clearly draw from this same tradition and are also likely inspired by Philo's own writings. 

Part 9: Panentheism 

What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 7)

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.

Over the last few posts I have attempted to show how the history of the Hebrew people - shown both through the Biblical writings and in archaeology - demonstrate polytheism. Now I would like to examine the development from this into monolatrism and henotheism.

Monolatrism and Henotheism 

Christians reading this are no doubt familiar with "the 10 commandments". They may not have ever examined the question of "which version?" (This is a good video discussing that question.) And if you've grown up in certain cultures, you've probably been taught to ignore the language within the 10 commandments that contradict monotheism (the belief that there is only one god). Because we see in Exodus 20:3 that YHWH commands: "you shall have no other gods before me." But the phrasing of this does not deny the existence of other gods - it exhorts the Israelites to show devotion to only one god. It's "no other gods before me", not "no other gods exist, therefore worship only me."

And when giving the commandment against idols, YHWH says in verse 5 that this is because he is a jealous god. And how can one be jealous of something that does not exist?

A depiction of Moses with the 10 commandments

In the song of Moses, we find this statement (Exodus 15:11):

Who is like you, O [YHWH], among the gods?

Again, this does not deny the existence of other gods - in fact, it affirms their existence. It simply states that the singer believes his or her god to be superior to the other gods.

Turn to Psalm 95:3 and you find a similar statement:

For YHWH is a great God [el] and a great King above all gods [elohim].  

Again, this does not deny the existence of other gods, but in fact affirms them, while claiming YHWH's superiority over them. 

Some scholars have pointed out that the plagues in Exodus are a way for YHWH to prove his superiority to the gods of Egypt. Turning the Nile to blood would be an attack on Hapi, the god of the Nile, or possibly Isis. The plague of frogs would be YHWH's way of showing superiority to the frog-headed Heqet. The plague of gnats would prove YHWH's superiority to the Egyptian god of chaos, Set. The plague of flies would possibly be an attack on Khepri, the scarab-faced god.  The death of the livestock would be an attack on Apis (depicted as a bull) and Hathor (who was often depicted as a cow). Boils would be a way of showing power over Sekhmet (goddess with the power to ward off disease and sickness). Hail would likely be an attack on both the god of agriculture, Osiris, and the goddess of the sky, Nut (locusts may also be an attack on both of these deities). The plague of darkness would likely defy Ra and possibly Horus as well. 

And before the final plague, YHWH says in Exodus 12:12: "on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am YHWH." And how can one execute judgements on something that does not exist? This is not a god proving that they are the only god in existence - it is a god seeking to prove their superiority to the other gods.

Idols

As mentioned earlier, the commandments in Exodus 20 contain a commandment against making and bowing down to idols (see verses 4 and 5). But what if idol-worship could be shown to have been a part of the Hebrew culture before it became outlawed?

Starting in Genesis, we have a story in Genesis 31 where Jacob is fleeing from Laban's property, and it says in verse 19 that Rachel had stolen "her father’s household gods" - the word used here that is translated "gods" is "teraphim", and it describes a type of idol. The passage contains no condemnation of this act, and if you follow the story, it seems that even though Laban pursues them to get his teraphim back, he doesn't find them, and it seems that Rachel gets to keep them. One interesting thing about this story is that when Laban tells Jacob about this theft, it seems that he considers it so egregious that he promises to kill anyone who is found to have these teraphim in their possession. One might think that if Jacob shares this condemnation of all idolatry, he would perhaps promise to also destroy them if they were found?

Why would she steal these teraphim? This is a mystery that has plagued interpreters for centuries. Some argue it is merely a transfer of wealth. Others, including Rabbi Rashbam and Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, have argued that the teraphim - which were often used for divination - could have been used by Laban to discover her family's location. Still others think it's the other way - Rachel wants to use them for divination herself.

Another story with teraphim that, strangely, contains no condemnation is the story of an Ephraimite named Micah, found in Judges 17 and Judges 18. It speaks of silver that was taken from Micah's mother, which he was able to take back, and it says in Judges 17:3 that she consecrates or dedicates this silver to YHWH to make an idol out of. So she gets the idol made, Micah makes a shrine to put it in, and then it says that he makes an ephod and a teraphim to put in the shrine in verse 5. And it is interesting to note that the same connection between ephod and teraphim are found in Hosea 3:4, where it is prophesied that "the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim." And this verse seems to offer no condemnation of the practice of owning teraphim. 

Furthermore, in the story of Micah, it goes on to say that he finds a Levite to serve as a priest for his shrine with the teraphim. And the idea that teraphim are connected with divination has been connected to Judges 18:5-6, where some Danites ask the Levite priest to use divination to determine whether their mission will succeed. We see further references to teraphim being used for divination in Ezekiel 21:21 and Zechariah 10:2, though these references condemn those using them.

Finally, there is an story in 1 Samuel 19:11-16, where it says that David's wife Michal helps him to escape from Saul and his guards by putting a teraphim in his bed, dressing it up to look like him, and telling Saul's guards that David is sick. This seems to indicate that teraphim were life-sized, and that they were not unusual to have around one's household. 

In part 3 of this series, I argued that the Canaanite deity El was the main deity for Israel before YHWH (even the name Israel evokes this name, and means "strives with El" or "El strives" or even "El rules"). And this is interesting to consider in the context of the story of the golden calf in Exodus 32 for two reasons. First, a common symbol for El was a bull, and he is repeatedly referred to as Bull El. And secondly, the earliest known place of worship for Israel was the 12th-century BCE "Bull Site" in Samaria, found in 1977. The discovery of this site included a bronze calf statuette.

The bronze calf discovered at the "Bull Site" in Samaria

I remember a story 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 really doesn't make any sense unless you understand that at one point in the Hebrew history, it was acceptable to worship other gods, as well as using idols as a form of worship. And so, the bronze serpent in the temple that King Hezekiah breaks into pieces in 2 Kings 18:4 is probably a relic from the earlier snake cults of Canaan that had followed the early Hebrews into Israel, and this story in numbers is probably a retroactive way to explain this object.

When I was growing up, I was taught that not only did Moses write the first 5 books of the Bible, but that the Bible was basically lined up the way the timeline worked: books of the Bible were not only in the order in which the events occurred, but were also written in that order. My hope is that as you see how this is all jumbled up - we have polytheism occurring both before and after the events of Exodus in which this is condemned, as well as idolatry being normalized after it is supposedly condemned by God - you start to understand why it is that Biblical scholars largely accept the source critical theories I mentioned in part 1 of this series.

We're going to stop here, and in the next part of the series I will discuss the development of more abstract ways of conceptualizing God in Hebrew literature. 

Part 8 - Abstract Concepts of God 

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. 

Part 7 - The Development of Monolatrism and Henotheism