2024-03-26

Before “Biblical Israel” there was Yahweh

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by Neil Godfrey

Barkay, Gabriel, Marilyn J. Lundberg, Andrew G. Vaughn, Bruce Zuckerman, and Kenneth Zuckerman. “The Challenges of Ketef Hinnom.” Near Eastern Archaeology 66, no. 4 (December 2003): 162–71.
Image is deceiving. The scroll on the left measures 27 X 97 mm while that on the right is less than half that size, only 11 X 39.2 mm.


The headline looks decisive. But proceed with caution. I have not yet read in any scholarly publication that the silver scrolls, originally dated by their discoverer, Gabriel Barkay, circa 650 BCE, are evidence that any part of the Bible was known so early. What the inscriptions indicate is that a couple of passages in our Bibles drew on a source that went back so far. [See below for more information on the dates of the plaques.]

Nonetheless, a critic of the Hellenistic origin of the Hebrew Bible (a theme I have been dwelling on in recent posts) frequently threw up the challenge on another forum with this kind of rebuttal:

The late, great Ada Yardeni wrote … that the silver plaques do not prove the existence then of the Pentateuch. (Nor disprove of course.) Oddly, she wrote that “Only a discovery of biblical scrolls or even a fragment of a biblical scroll could serve as such a proof.” So writing on parchment or papyrus would count, but not writing on silver?

I did not think it worth investing much time to engage with that kind of protest. In short, I could have said:

  1. We have material evidence (the Dead Sea Scrolls) that books of the Bible existed in the third century.
  2. We have material evidence (the silver ‘plaques’) that a passage in the Bible was also known in the seventh century.
  3. The simplest explanation is that the third century source knew of a saying that existed as early as the seventh century.
  4. We might even think it perverse to claim that the earlier source was proof that some form of a later source must have existed before the earlier one!

No bigger than a cigarette filter tip

But let’s look at those “silver plaques”. They are interesting in their own right and for what they indicate about the background to the religion of the Bible. They were discovered in 1979 in Jerusalem. The image above shows them unrolled. That’s not how they were found, though:

At first viewing, they appeared to be tiny, some­what corroded metallic cylinders, no bigger than the filter tip of a cigarette. On closer examination, it was realized that they were, in fact, tightly wound up “mini­ scrolls,” that, as later testing revealed, were made from almost pure silver. (Barkay 2003, 163)

There has been widespread agreement among commentators that the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24-26 is a quotation from a much older source that has been inserted into the biblical narrative. ...[T]here neither has been nor can be much doubt felt that it was not composed by [the biblical author] and that it is, consequently, of earlier origin than the date of its incorporation [into Numbers].” (Gray, p. 71) — “It may well belong to the traditions handed down from the earlier period and its simplicity of expression would even argue for great antiquity.” (Noth, p. 58)

Magic in the words

What makes them of special interest to historians is that they contain the same words we read in Numbers 6:24-26

24 Yahweh bless thee and keep thee;
25 Yahweh make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee;
26 Yahweh lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

Before we look at how those words appear in the silver artefacts it is worth taking a closer look at the magic they contain even in the Hebrew Bible:

Among the verses from the Bible cited on some of those amulets and incantations the priestly blessing is represented many times. The priestly blessing is appropriate for use in magical contexts because of its inner structure. It is built up of three verses in a pyramid-like structure, the number of words increasing from 3 in the first verse to 5 in the second and to 7 in the third. The name YHWH is repeated three times. The number of the letters is 60 — all these numbers have a magical connotation. (Yardeni, 185)

Pre-biblical Yahwists

The first scroll (according to the 2004 Barkay reading, simplified) is inscribed with these words:

the Eternal … blessing more than any snare and more than Evil. For redemption is in him.
For YHWH is our restorer and rock. May YHWH bless you and may he keep you.
May YHWH make his face shine…. 

The second scroll consists of these words:

May [the name of the person wearing the scroll] be blessed by Yahweh, the warrior [or helper] and the rebuker of Evil:
May Yahweh bless you, keep you.
May Yahweh make his face shine upon you and grant you peace.

The principal difference between the biblical blessing and those in the silver scrolls is that the former is a collective blessing for the nation while the latter is a blessing for the individual.

Jar from Kuntillet ʻAjrud inscribed with a blessing later adapted in Deuteronomy

Those silver scrolls were found in Jerusalem. There is another site on the Sinai border that was established about 100 years earlier with artwork and inscriptions expressing devotion to YHWH and his wife:

I have blessed you by YHWH of Teman and His asherah. May He bless you and may He keep you . . . 

So calling on Yahweh to bless and keep his worshipers extends back long before there is any hint of the Biblical religion.

There’s more. The first scroll additionally has a passage echoed by Deuteronomy 7:9

Deuteronomy 7:9 First scroll
Know that Yahweh your God is God, the faithful God who keeps His gracious covenant loyalty for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commands. … who loves the covenant and mercy for those who love him and keep his commandments

Protection against evil

What were those silver inscriptions? They were rolled up and most likely worn around a person’s neck. Throughout Phoenicia and North Africa archaeologists have unearthed amulet cases — some of wood, others of silver and gold — that held small inscribed scrolls that served to protect the wearer from evil.

Barkay, Gabriel. “The Priestly Benediction on Silver Plaques from Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem.” Tel Aviv 19, no. 2 (September 1992): illustrations on pp 23-24.

The Ketef Hinnom inscriptions are therefore the earliest known artifacts from the ancient world that document passages from the Hebrew Bible. (Barkay 2003, 163)

Time to rethink

We think of Yahweh being merciful and keeping covenant with his people and blessing those who keep his commands as uniquely biblical. The covenant and commandments surely took on a different meaning with the later biblical narrative.

The finds described above give us quite a different perspective of the roots of the religion of YHWH.

–o0o–

Dating questions

The majority of scholars date the plaques to a time before the Babylonian exile but Nadav Na’aman disagrees. I quote his discussion because, despite being a minority voice, he offers a helpful overview of the question. (I have some difficulties with details of Na’aman’s perspective on this matter and tend to agree with the majority opinion, though that’s a separate discussion. There are no doubt more recent views that I have yet to read.)

On the basis of the palaeographic evidence, Barkay (1992: 169–174) originally dated the plaques to the second half of the seventh century BCE, whereas Yardeni (1991: 180) dated them to the early sixth century BCE. Most scholars who dealt with the plaques accepted either the mid-seventh-century or the late seventh–early sixth-century date (see literature in Berlejung 2008a: 211, nn. 41–42). Cross (2003: 23*, n. 23) dated the plaques to the late sixth century BCE, and Renz (1995a: 449–452) dated them to the Hellenistic period. The team dated the plaques to the seventh–sixth century BCE (Barkay et al. 2004: 52b). They examined Renz’s arguments in great detail and made it clear that only eight late Hellenistic vessels were unearthed in the repository, all located in its uppermost layer (Barkay et al. 2004: 43b). The team further demonstrated that no letter forms in these inscriptions point to a Hellenistic date (Barkay et al. 2004: 44–52), thus concluding that dating the plaques to this late period is highly unlikely. 

. . . 

7 For an earlier discussion, see Barkay 1992:174–176; Keel and Uehlinger 1998:366.

In two recent articles, Berlejung (2008a: 211–212; 2008b: 45–47) suggested an early Persian date for the plaques, emphasising that amulets and stamps made of silver and gold are rare in Iron Age Palestine and that small objects of this kind appear only in the Persian period.7 Moreover, text amulets written on rolled papyrus, silver, or gold lamellae appear in large numbers in the Phoenician–Punic world in the sixth–fifth centuries BCE (Lemaire 2003 [link is to PDF]: 2007; Berlejung 2008b: 53–56, with earlier literature; 2010: 5–11; Smoak 2010: 427–429). The Persian period date of the manufacture of silver plaques strongly supports the date established by the orthographic analysis.

In sum, the archaeological and palaeographic data do not supply a firm date for the plaques; thus, the decision should be made on the basis of other considerations, in particular the orthographic data. In my opinion, the pre-exilic date for the plaques, originally suggested by Barkay and Yardeni and supported by the majority of scholars, cannot be maintained. Dating the plaques to the late sixth or early fifth century BCE is preferable, and is in keeping with all the available data. This dating corresponds with the conclusions I present in the final part of this article, which are drawn on entirely different grounds . . . .


Barkay, Gabriel. “The Priestly Benediction on Silver Plaques from Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem.” Tel Aviv 19, no. 2 (September 1992): 139–92. https://doi.org/10.1179/tav.1992.1992.2.139.

Barkay, Gabriel, Marilyn J. Lundberg, Andrew G. Vaughn, and Bruce Zuckerman. “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Evaluation.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 334 (May 2004): 41–71.

Barkay, Gabriel, Marilyn J. Lundberg, Andrew G. Vaughn, Bruce Zuckerman, and Kenneth Zuckerman. “The Challenges of Ketef Hinnom.” Near Eastern Archaeology 66, no. 4 (December 2003): 162–71.

Chicago Tribune. “Newly Deciphered Silver Scrolls Take Bible Back 4 More Centuries” July 5, 1986. https://archive.md/fgrx4.

Gray, George Buchanan. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Numbers. New York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1903.

Meshel, Zeev, Shmuel Aḥituv, and Liora Freud. Kuntillet ʻAjrud (Ḥorvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012.

Noth, Martin. Numbers: A Commentary. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1968.

Waaler, Erik. “A Revised Date for Pentateuchal Texts? Evidence from Ketef Hinnom.” Tyndale Bulletin 53, no. 1 (May 1, 2002).

Yardeni, Ada. “Remarks On the Priestly Blessing On Two Ancient Amulets From Jerusalem.” Vetus Testamentum 41, no. 2 (1991): 176–85.



2023-02-11

When Yahweh was at Peace with Other Gods — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7e]

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

With thanks to Taylor & Francis (Routledge) for the review copy

When we read the Bible we assume that its references to God or Lord all mean the same idea: the deity of Judeo-Christian belief. So when we (non-scholars) read that the Bible’s references to the God of the Patriarchs were originally names of various local deities it can be a difficult pill to swallow. But a principal reason I began this blog was to share with the general reader what scholarly research has to inform us about the Bible, so let’s look more closely at the Genesis references to El Shaddai, El Elhon, and the various altars Genesis says the Patriarchs established in Canaan.

Here is Russell Gmirkin’s paragraph in Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts that pulls up the reader who is not familiar with the scholarly background references:

Genesis 11-50 mention a number of local gods, such as El Shaddai, with an altar at Bethel or Luz (Gen 17:1; 28:3, 19; 43:14; 48:3; 49:25); El Olam, with a grove at Beersheba (Gen 21:33); El Elyon, with a temple at Salem (Gen 14:18-20, 22); and Yahweh, with altars at Bethel (Gen 12:8; 35:1, 3, 7) and Hebron (Gen 13:18); the god Bethel (Gen 28:17; cf. Cross 1973: 47 n. 14); cf. Baal Berit (Judg 8:33; 9:4) or El Berit (Judg 9:46), the god of Shechem (cf. Smith 1990: 6; Cross 1973: 39, discussing the Hurrian El Berit). Most of these are thought to be local titles or manifestations of the Canaanite deity El (Cross 1962, 1973: 6-69; Day 2000: 13-43). Yahweh was another local god, worshipped in Iron II Hamath (Dalley 1990), Samaria and Judah, alongside Baal, El, Bethel and other Canaanite gods. Far from being inimical towards their polytheistic religious heritage, the pantheon of Canaanite gods was carried over into the present text of Genesis as local divinities associated with numerous ancient altars and holy sites. In Ex 6:3, El Shaddai was explicitly assimilated with Yahweh, but the identity of the two deities is not evident in the text of Genesis itself. (Gmirkin, 233f — bolding is mine in all quotations)

Let’s take a closer look at each of the above. I have for the most part (not entirely) followed up on Gmirkin’s bibliographical references.

El Shaddai

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am El Shaddai. Walk before me, and be blameless. (Gen 17:1)

May El Shaddai bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you . . . .  He called the name of that place Bethel, though previously the city was named Luz. (Gen 28:3, 19)

And may El Shaddai grant you mercy (Gen 43:14)

And Jacob said to Joseph, “El Shaddai appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me (Gen 48:3)

by the God of your father, who will help you, and El Shaddai, who will bless you with blessings of the sky above, blessings of the deep that lies below, and blessings of the breasts and of the womb. (Gen 49:25)

Here is what John Day in Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan has to say about El Shaddai. Italics are original.

El-Shaddai. The most likely interpretation of the divine name El-Shaddai is ‘El, the mountain one‘, with reference to El’s dwelling place on a mountain. . . . (Day, 32)

And Frank Moore Cross in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic:

A group of names from Ugarit gave additional confirmation of the etymology . . . 

The epithet šadday thus proves to mean “the mountain one.” (Cross, 54f)

Many Bibles translate the term as God Almighty, but that translation should be discarded:

Traditionally, El Shaddai has been rendered ‘God Almighty’, following the LXX’s παντοκράτωρ and the Vulgate’s omnipotens, but it is widely accepted that this is a later misunderstanding, possibly arising through association with Hebrew šdd ‘to destroy’ (cf. Isa. 13.6; Joel 1.15,  kešōd miššadday ‘as destruction from Shaddai’).

The two most widely accepted views today render the name El-Shaddai either as ‘El, the mountain one’, relating it to Akkadian šadû ‘mountain’ (and šaddā’u, šaddû’a, ‘mountain inhabitant’), or as ‘El of the field’, connecting it with Hebrew śādeh ‘field’. It is a disadvantage to the latter understanding that the Hebrew word for ‘field’ has ś, whereas Shaddai has š. (Day, 32f)

This same god appears among the Hurrians and Amorites:

Amorite states = Yamhad, Qatna, Mari, Andarig, Babylon and Eshnunna c. 1764 BC (Wikipedia)

Cross observes that in a Hurrian hymn El is described as ‘El, the one of the mountain‘ . . . . He also notes that an epithet resembling ‘ēl-šadday, namely, bêl šadêlord of the mountain‘ is employed of the Amorite deity called Amurru; judging from such facts as that this deity is also called Ilu-Amurru and has a liaison with Ašratum, the counterpart of Athirat (Asherah), El’s consort, Cross suggests that Amurru is to be regarded as the Amorite El. (Day, 33)

There is a “Balaam text”, the Deir Alla inscription, from Jordan:

This is a detail of the so-called “Bal’am Text” (also Balaam Inscription) which was discovered in 1967 CE at Tell Deir Alla, in modern-day Balqa Governorate, Jordan. It was written in around 800 BCE. It was written in black and red ink on wall plaster. (World History Encyclopedia)

Interestingly, in the Deir ‘Allā inscription, 1.5-6 we read,

I will tell you what the Shadda[yyin have done]. Now come, see the works of the gods! The gods gathered together;
the Shaddayyin took their places as the assembly.

In both sentences it is most natural to take the Shaddayyin (šdyn) and the gods (‘lhn) as parallel terms referring to the same deities, who constituted the divine assembly. Logically, El, the supreme deity, who also features in the text (1.2; II.6) would therefore be Shaddai par excellence. Since, moreover, this epithet is here applied to the gods in their role as members of the divine assembly, which characteristically met on a mountain, the meaning ‘mountain ones’ seems very appropriate, much more so than ‘those of the field’. (Day, 33 – my formatting)

El Olam

Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called on the name of the LORD, El Olam (Gen 21:33)

It seems inherently plausible that we have an Old Testament allusion related to El’s being an aged deity in Gen. 21.33, where the patriarchal deity at Beer-sheba is called El-Olam, ‘El, the Eternal One’, which may possibly have meant originally ‘El, the Ancient One’ . . . . Probably El-Olam was the local Canaanite god of Beer-sheba . . . . (Day, 19)

A Canaanite tablet proclaims ‘El is “eternal”, translating “olam”:

Indeed our creator is eternal [= ‘ôlam]
Indeed ageless he who formed us.

El (mythology.net)

Another series of epithets describe ‘El as the “ancient one” or the “eternal one” with grey beard and concomitant wisdom. One is cited above. In another Asherah speaks of a decree of ‘El as follows:

Thy decree O ‘El is wise,
Wise unto eternity [= ‘ôlami],
A life of fortune thy decree.

In the same context Lady Asherah addresses ‘El:

….
Thou art great O ‘El, verily Thou art wise
Thy hoary beard indeed instructs Thee.

(Cross, 16)

We are reminded of the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7 who sits on his throne in judgement when another god “like a man” comes riding on clouds  (Baal was the rider of storm clouds who defeated the beasts of the sea) to be given the rule over the earth.

Olam can be used alone to refer to El. Cross cites and comments on a Phoenician incantation:

The Eternal One has made a covenant oath with us,
Asherah has made (a pact) with us.

The formulaic juxtaposition of ‘Ēl’s consort Asherah with ‘Ôlām . . . argues strongly for the identification of ‘Ôlām as an appellation or cult name of ‘Ēl. The two supreme gods are named and then follows:

And all the sons of El,
And the great of the council of all the Holy Ones.
With oaths of Heaven and Ancient Earth,
With oaths of Ba’l, lord of earth,
With oaths of Ḥawrān whose word is true,
And his seven concubines,
And Ba’l Qudš’ eight wives. (Cross, 17f)

Olam appears in a later (early fifth century BCE) Phoenician account of the origins of the gods as the first god perceptible to human intellect — as we learn from the Christian-era Damascius:

Phoenician mythology according to Mochos. Aither was the first, and Aer; these are the two same principles from which was begotten Oulomos [= Olam] the (first) deity that intellect can perceive, and he, I think, is unmixed mind. . . . This Oulomos himself is the mind that may be intelligible. (from Azize, 219)

Azize also turns back to Cross where he writes:

The name ‘Ôlām also appears in the Phoenician theogony of Moschos reported by Damascius, in the late Phoenician form transliterated into Greek: oulōm(os). Its context strongly suggests, however, that it applies not to a god of the cult such as ‘Ēl, but to one of the old gods belonging to the abstract theogonic pairs. This would equate Moschos’ oulōmos with Philo Byblius’ Aiōn of the pair Aiōn and Protogonos, and, of course, the Aiōn(s) of later Gnosticism.

We also find the epithet ‘ôlām applied to the “old god” Earth in the theogonic pair: “Heaven and Eternal Earth.” (Cross, 18)

Going back to the fifteenth century BCE we have Proto-Canaanite inscriptions in Sinai that point to an El cult in south-west Palestine and identify El Olam with the Egyptian god Ptah, the Egyptian “lord of eternity” (Cross, 18f).

The consort of ‘Ēl, Canaanite and Egyptian Qudšu, whose other names included ‘Aṭirāt yammi, “she who treads on Sea,” and ‘Ēlat, also is well documented in the south. (Cross, 20)

Finally,

In the case of ‘Ēl ‘ôlām, “the god of eternity” or “the ancient god,” the evidence, in our view, is overwhelming to identify the epithet as an epithet of ‘Ēl. This is the source of Yahweh’s epithets “the ancient one” or “the ancient of days,” as well as the biblical and Ugaritic epithet malk ‘ôlām [eternal king] . . . At Ugarit and in the Punic world, ‘Ēl is the “old one” or “ancient one” par excellence: ‘ôlām, gerōn, senex, saeculum, he of the grey beard, he of eternal wisdom.

. . . . ‘Ēl ‘ôlām is an “executive deity,” a deity of the cult, namely the cultus of the (‘Ēl) shrine at Beersheba. (Cross, 50)

El Elyon

Elyon means “Most High”, hence El-Elyon is God Most High according to Day (1985, 129) though in the view of Cross,

The title theoretically could mean “the god ‘Ēlyōn, creator of (heaven and) earth,” or “‘Ēl, Most High, creator …,” or ‘Ēl ‘Ēlyōn, creator …” (that is, a double divine name). (Cross, 50)

Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, 19and he blessed Abram, saying,

“Blessed be Abram by El Elyon,
Creator of heaven and earth.
20And praise be to El Elyon,
who delivered your enemies into your hand.”

. . . 22 But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “With raised hand I have sworn an oath to the Lord, El Elyon, Creator of heaven and earth (Gen 14:18-20,22 — “to the Lord” translates “to Yahweh” but Cross notes that these words were not part of the original text according to comparisons of various manuscripts.)

[In] Gen. 14.19, 22, ‘El-Elyon, creator of heaven and earth’, . . . is depicted as the pre-Israelite, Jebusite god of Jerusalem. Elyon also occurs elsewhere as a divine name or epithet a number of other times in the Old Testament (e.g. Num. 24.16; Deut. 32.8; Ps. 18.14 [ET 13], 46.5 [ET4], 78.17, 35, 56, 82.6, 87.5; Isa. 14.14; Dan. 7.22, 25, 27). There is dispute as to whether Elyon was originally the same deity as El or not. Philo of Byblos (c. 100 CE) depicts Elioun, as he calls him, as a separate god from El. Interestingly, he refers to Elioun (Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 1.10.15) as the father of Heaven (Ouranos) and Earth (Ge), which is reminiscent of the creator god El, and also strongly supports the idea that the reference to El-Elyon as ‘Creator of heaven and earth’ in Gen. 14.19. 22 is an authentic reminiscence of the Canaanite deity, and not simply invention. Prima facie the eighth-century BCE Aramaic Sefire treaty also represents Elyon as a distinct deity from El, since ‘El and Elyon’ occur together . . . (Day, 20f)

Day concludes that El Elyon is a separate god from El, but El-like. Cross, however, leans towards Elyon being an epithet of El, the creator god of the Canaanites, and thus identical with El.

Sefire inscription – images from http://archive.org/details/aramaicinscripti0000fitz

Yahweh

Continue reading “When Yahweh was at Peace with Other Gods — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7e]”


2014-07-08

The Evolution of the Son of Man, the Human & Divine Messiah

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by Neil Godfrey

Throne3This post outlines the way Jewish ideas about God appear to have developed until they found a new form in the Christian Messiah, the heavenly Son of Man. I base it on a range of scholarly articles and books (including Black, Boyarin, Erho, Fossum, Knibb, Rowland, Wolfson) but will not reference each detail in this overview.

In the beginning God

Let’s start with the visions of God on his throne in 1 Kings 22:19-22 and Isaiah 6:1-8.

In the Kings passage the prophet Micaiah tells king Ahab of a vision he had of the Yahweh sitting on his throne in heaven. In this vision God commissioned an evil spirit to go and inspire false prophets to tell lies and lure the wicked king to his doom. The significant detail for our purposes here, though, is that Yahweh himself ordered the commissioning of the prophets through a lower angel. One angel from among the multitudes of angels volunteered to carry out God’s request.

So God clearly acts from above and without equal.

The second passage tells us of Isaiah’s vision of God on this throne, but this time the throne is in the Temple — on earth. This time God is accompanied by a presumably higher order of angel called seraphim. Again God is high above and has no equal. A seraphim approaches Isaiah to place a burning hot coal he has taken from the altar of the temple on his lips and prepare him for God’s call. God then commissions Isaiah to take his message of judgment to Israel.

So far we have seen God act exactly as we would expect him to act given our clear monotheistic understanding of how God is supposed to be.

Now we come to Ezekiel and suddenly something seems to go slightly askew.

Continue reading “The Evolution of the Son of Man, the Human & Divine Messiah”


2012-02-16

Where did the Bible’s Jews come from? Part 1

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by Neil Godfrey

Kurdistan .Yazidis .Judaism . Christianity ....
Kurdistan. Yazidis. Judaism. Christianity. Islam. (Photo credit: Kurdistan Photo كوردستان)

This post is based primarily on a few pages in The Mythic Past by Thomas L. Thompson. It is slightly supplemented by fewer notes from a different but complementary discussion on the biblical meanings of “the people of God” in The Israelites in History and Tradition by Niels Peter Lemche. (All bold fonts for emphasis or highlighting key points for ease of reading are mine.)

I conclude with my own thoughts on what all of this means for the first of our Gospels.

The biblical tradition informs us of the meaning and understanding that the biblical authors’ contemporaries attributed to the past. Archaeological evidence points to a different reality of the past.

The religious understanding of Israel’s origin myth

The primary biblical referent for Israel’s ethnic and family identification is found in the stories and metaphors of “exodus”, “wilderness”, “exile” and “return”. Even in the Books of Kings the narrative is couched in the suspense of threats and promises of exile from the land. These themes centre on the motif of the children of Israel as the “people of God”, as Jahweh’s “first-born” and God’s “inheritance”.

These stories all are solidly rooted in the self-defining, grand epochal line of a God without a home or a people [and who was] searching for a people without a home or a God. It is in this metaphor that we find the foundation and matrix for the ethnographic metaphor of all Israel. This metaphor gives voice to the ‘new Israel’ with its centre in Yahweh’s temple of the ‘new Jerusalem’. This is an identity that is formed from the perspective of the sectarian theology of the way. (pp. 255-56, The Mythic Past by Thomas L. Thompson)

Compare Niels Peter Lemche’s observation of the nature of Israel’s origin myth: Continue reading “Where did the Bible’s Jews come from? Part 1”