Is anyone from the UK watching this. A new program on Channel 4 where they take a number of famous people and they show their interpretation of the history of the bible. The first one was looking at the Creation story. One of the things that was brought up there was that according to some biblical scholars the torah was actually written at about 6-700 BC during the exile to Babylon rather than being handed down to Moses a few thousand years before. The evidence for this was fertility statueetes found in ancient houses unearth in an archelogical site in Jerusalem. This was meant to show that the Iraselites where into polytheistic religion and only came to monotheistic religion during their exile in Babylon and that is when the stories came out. Also it was implied that this was also a reinterpretation of Bablyonian myths anyway.
This is the usual thing I expect from Channel 4 but has anyone any comments on this or can point to any counter evidence to this arguement.
Silvertusk,
The History of the Bible.
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Silvertusk
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Silvertusk
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Re: The History of the Bible.
Although I have now just found this.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34880397/
Also thinking about it - there were many "Jewish" people that worshipped idols which lead to the introduction of the Judges and the wrath of God in the Exiles. It really just seems that Channel four have a continual vendetta against Christianity by not telling the story correctly - or looking at all the evidence.
Silvertusk.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34880397/
Also thinking about it - there were many "Jewish" people that worshipped idols which lead to the introduction of the Judges and the wrath of God in the Exiles. It really just seems that Channel four have a continual vendetta against Christianity by not telling the story correctly - or looking at all the evidence.
Silvertusk.
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DannyM
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Re: The History of the Bible.
Not seen this, Silvertusk, but have to say I never watch anything that sounds historically interesting if it is advertised on CH4; you can be sure it will be skewed to fit an agenda. But, do give me the times and I'll take a look so I can talk to you about it. In fact, I'll just look at the TV listings...now there's an ideaSilvertusk wrote:Is anyone from the UK watching this. A new program on Channel 4 where they take a number of famous people and they show their interpretation of the history of the bible. The first one was looking at the Creation story. One of the things that was brought up there was that according to some biblical scholars the torah was actually written at about 6-700 BC during the exile to Babylon rather than being handed down to Moses a few thousand years before. The evidence for this was fertility statueetes found in ancient houses unearth in an archelogical site in Jerusalem. This was meant to show that the Iraselites where into polytheistic religion and only came to monotheistic religion during their exile in Babylon and that is when the stories came out. Also it was implied that this was also a reinterpretation of Bablyonian myths anyway.
This is the usual thing I expect from Channel 4 but has anyone any comments on this or can point to any counter evidence to this arguement.
Silvertusk,
Hope to catch it and get back atcha.God bless
credo ut intelligam
dei gratia
dei gratia
Re: The History of the Bible.
This is something I found on William L Craig's website in his Q & A section. Someone asks a very similar question and tries to say that the Israelites were polytheistic and later became monotheistic. Here is this persons response.
When I receive an interesting question in an area outside my specialization, I sometimes like to invite a guest scholar who is an expert in the area to respond to the question. This week's answer comes from Dr. Richard Hess, who is the Earl S. Kalland Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Denver Seminary and is an expert in ancient Israelite religion. His reply follows:
You raise some very important issues in your question. Given its length, allow me to divide it into some of the major concerns and address them.
You begin with an evaluation that a significant number of current Old Testament scholars hold; that Israel began as a polytheistic nation and evolved into one which followed a monotheistic religion. Different scholars cite different pieces of evidence for this. You summarize some of the major arguments, which I will attempt to deal with here. Before I do that, allow me to note that I do believe that some Israelites believed in many gods, of which Yahweh was one. However, there is also evidence inside and outside the Bible that there were other Israelites who believed in a single deity.
Please distinguish between a personal name of a deity, a title of a deity, and an epithet.
In the Bible “Yahweh” is a personal name, revealed as such in Exodus 6:2-8. “Yahweh” appears in a number of early Israelite poems (Exodus15, Deuteronomy 33, Judges 5) where he is associated with the southern desert and with a warrior deity. A god named “Yahweh” may well have been known in this area, as suggested by one early inscription and by the connection of Moses' father-in-law Jethro and his clan with the God of Israel (Exodus 3:1; 18:1, 12). The manner in which Moses accepts Jethro and takes him into his confidence would seem to violate laws about intolerance toward other deities unless the god whom Jethro worshiped and served as a priest was the same deity that Moses served. However, Jethro's understanding of this deity was not the same as the revelation of Yahweh to Israel through his historic act of redemption from Egypt (Exodus 20:2) and through making an unprecedented covenant with that nation. The Bible makes clear that Yahweh is not known merely by his name but by the divinely enacted covenant (in both act and word) with which God binds Israel to himself. In a similar manner as the third century Roman emperor who placed a statue of Jesus among the images of the many deities he worshiped, so Jethro might have had only an inkling of the true nature of Israel's God. The identity of Yahweh is not found merely in a distinctive name, but much more in his acts of love and mercy for his people. (By the way, the comments about massacres and pillaging carried on by this God are a misreading of the actual text of Joshua and elsewhere which I would be happy to discuss in a different context than what I am presenting here.)
“El” appears as a title in the Bible. Like the much more frequent “Elohim,” it derives from ancient Semitic words for “god/God.” It is true that “El” appears as the name of the chief god in the myths of Ugarit, a West Semitic (Hebrew is also a West Semitic language) city from the 13th century B.C. However, the word also appears there to refer to any deity or even a spirit. Therefore, it need not refer to the God of Israel. You discuss Psalm 82 at some length. It is possible that this text refers to the allotment of responsibilities for the management of different nations of the earth to members of the heavenly council, whom we would call angels. As a result of their failing to act with justice, God terminates their rule. Nevertheless, Yahweh is frequently identified with El (Numbers 23:22-23; 2 Samuel 23:5; Psalm 118:27; Isaiah 40:18; 43:12; 45:22; etc.). However, the Bible also recognizes El as a separate god in texts such as Ezekiel 28:2 where the leader of Tyre claims that he is El (but this is probably also another use of “El” as a title, “god”). Note that the term “sons of El” need not refer to physical sons of a god. It may refer merely to those who share the characteristics of the divine (in terms of authority and rule, for example). Compare the “sons of Belial,” in Deuteronomy 13:14; Judges 19:22; 20:13; 1 Samuel 2:12; 10:27; 25:17; 1 Kings 21:10, 13; etc. This expression does not mean that all these people had the same physical parent by the name of Belial. No, it refers to a common characteristic of all these people. There are other such examples, both within the Bible and in contemporary extra-biblical literature.
By the way, the connection of Jacob with El is sometimes asserted on the basis of Jacob's other name, “Israel,” where “El” is the last part of the name. Again, “El” is a title for god that is often used in other personal names in Israel (such as “Samuel”) and in neighboring nations. So in the Ammonite collection of personal names more than 150 contain the name “El”, but most would affirm that the chief god of Ammon was Milkom, and that “El” was a title of Milkom. One must be very careful about drawing lots of conclusions from a word that can be a title for any god in the West Semitic world.
“Elyon” is an epithet used with reference to God. It means “Most High.” Note that it is unrelated to “El.” “El” begins with the Hebrew letter aleph, whereas “Elyon” begins with an ayin. This distinction is very important and needs to be kept in mind. In Genesis 14:18-22, Melchizedek is called the priest of El Elyon (God most high), a deity with whom Abram identifies in v. 22. There are those who would like to identify this epithet with a separate deity. They argue that El Elyon was originally a god separate from Yahweh and worshiped by the Canaanites in Jerusalem. Only later did the Israelite tradition of Yahweh merge with it so that it evolved into a title of Yahweh. In order to do this, however, it is necessary to hypothesize an otherwise unknown deity by this name--a deity nowhere attested inside or outside the Bible by this name. Further, the usage of “Elyon” in the Bible does not support such an interpretation. In Psalm 82:6, those who are called “children” (or “sons”) of Elyon are certainly the “children” of the God of Israel, who is here in charge of this divine council and who regulates all its doings. Yahweh is not their physical father. He is their ruler.
Now as to the matter of Deuteronomy 32:8-9, I translate the Hebrew as we have it: “When the Most High (Elyon) gave nations their inheritance among humanity, he established boundaries for the people according to the number of the sons of Israel. (He did this) because Yahweh's allotment is his people. Jacob is the portion of his inheritance.” To find “sons of God” in place of “sons of Israel,” you need to rely on the Greek Septuagint translation, which actually has “angels of God.” It is not in the Hebrew. That is not to say that this old Hebrew poetry is easy to translate. However, this is a far cry from citing this as proof of a distinction between Elyon and Yahweh. To the contrary, the Hebrew identifies the two as both personally involved with Israel, and thus most likely as identical. As for the supposed Aramaic deity Ilyaan, I cannot find the name attested in Early Aramaic texts or as an element in personal names. On the other hand, connecting the “number of the sons of Israel” in Deuteronomy 32:8 with the 70 children of Israel who entered Egypt is at least found in later Jewish tradition. However, the view that this must refer to the 70 sons of El and Asherah, a number defined in this manner only in the myths of Ugarit, is hardly necessary. Some medieval interpretations connected it with the 70 nations of the world as counted in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. This is possible. Clearly, 70 is a common number occurring about 57 times in the Bible and often used to describe a sense of completion or perfection. A leap to Ugarit myths and polytheism is not warranted without more compelling evidence.
As for the statement that the God of the Hebrews had many names, I would encourage you to distinguish once more between the personal name “Yahweh,” various titles of “god” such as “Elohim” and “El,” and epithets such as “Shaddai” (perhaps related to the divine council or hosts of heaven). “Elohim” does, indeed, appear by itself to be a plural form (with the -im ending). However, whenever it refers to the God of Israel, it always takes singular verbs and so is treated as a singular noun.
I conclude with the observation that ancient Israel appropriated the Hebrew language and many other cultural features, often transforming them in the Bible so as to conform to its distinctive theology. The same is true of various religious practices. So the name “El” may refer to the chief god in Ugarit of the 13th century B.C. However, this does not mean it must be the name of a god separate from Yahweh in the Bible. As a title for various gods inside and outside the Bible, it can be applied to Yahweh without proving anything about early Israelite beliefs.
For further reading on this, see my Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey (Baker: 2007).
When I receive an interesting question in an area outside my specialization, I sometimes like to invite a guest scholar who is an expert in the area to respond to the question. This week's answer comes from Dr. Richard Hess, who is the Earl S. Kalland Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Denver Seminary and is an expert in ancient Israelite religion. His reply follows:
You raise some very important issues in your question. Given its length, allow me to divide it into some of the major concerns and address them.
You begin with an evaluation that a significant number of current Old Testament scholars hold; that Israel began as a polytheistic nation and evolved into one which followed a monotheistic religion. Different scholars cite different pieces of evidence for this. You summarize some of the major arguments, which I will attempt to deal with here. Before I do that, allow me to note that I do believe that some Israelites believed in many gods, of which Yahweh was one. However, there is also evidence inside and outside the Bible that there were other Israelites who believed in a single deity.
Please distinguish between a personal name of a deity, a title of a deity, and an epithet.
In the Bible “Yahweh” is a personal name, revealed as such in Exodus 6:2-8. “Yahweh” appears in a number of early Israelite poems (Exodus15, Deuteronomy 33, Judges 5) where he is associated with the southern desert and with a warrior deity. A god named “Yahweh” may well have been known in this area, as suggested by one early inscription and by the connection of Moses' father-in-law Jethro and his clan with the God of Israel (Exodus 3:1; 18:1, 12). The manner in which Moses accepts Jethro and takes him into his confidence would seem to violate laws about intolerance toward other deities unless the god whom Jethro worshiped and served as a priest was the same deity that Moses served. However, Jethro's understanding of this deity was not the same as the revelation of Yahweh to Israel through his historic act of redemption from Egypt (Exodus 20:2) and through making an unprecedented covenant with that nation. The Bible makes clear that Yahweh is not known merely by his name but by the divinely enacted covenant (in both act and word) with which God binds Israel to himself. In a similar manner as the third century Roman emperor who placed a statue of Jesus among the images of the many deities he worshiped, so Jethro might have had only an inkling of the true nature of Israel's God. The identity of Yahweh is not found merely in a distinctive name, but much more in his acts of love and mercy for his people. (By the way, the comments about massacres and pillaging carried on by this God are a misreading of the actual text of Joshua and elsewhere which I would be happy to discuss in a different context than what I am presenting here.)
“El” appears as a title in the Bible. Like the much more frequent “Elohim,” it derives from ancient Semitic words for “god/God.” It is true that “El” appears as the name of the chief god in the myths of Ugarit, a West Semitic (Hebrew is also a West Semitic language) city from the 13th century B.C. However, the word also appears there to refer to any deity or even a spirit. Therefore, it need not refer to the God of Israel. You discuss Psalm 82 at some length. It is possible that this text refers to the allotment of responsibilities for the management of different nations of the earth to members of the heavenly council, whom we would call angels. As a result of their failing to act with justice, God terminates their rule. Nevertheless, Yahweh is frequently identified with El (Numbers 23:22-23; 2 Samuel 23:5; Psalm 118:27; Isaiah 40:18; 43:12; 45:22; etc.). However, the Bible also recognizes El as a separate god in texts such as Ezekiel 28:2 where the leader of Tyre claims that he is El (but this is probably also another use of “El” as a title, “god”). Note that the term “sons of El” need not refer to physical sons of a god. It may refer merely to those who share the characteristics of the divine (in terms of authority and rule, for example). Compare the “sons of Belial,” in Deuteronomy 13:14; Judges 19:22; 20:13; 1 Samuel 2:12; 10:27; 25:17; 1 Kings 21:10, 13; etc. This expression does not mean that all these people had the same physical parent by the name of Belial. No, it refers to a common characteristic of all these people. There are other such examples, both within the Bible and in contemporary extra-biblical literature.
By the way, the connection of Jacob with El is sometimes asserted on the basis of Jacob's other name, “Israel,” where “El” is the last part of the name. Again, “El” is a title for god that is often used in other personal names in Israel (such as “Samuel”) and in neighboring nations. So in the Ammonite collection of personal names more than 150 contain the name “El”, but most would affirm that the chief god of Ammon was Milkom, and that “El” was a title of Milkom. One must be very careful about drawing lots of conclusions from a word that can be a title for any god in the West Semitic world.
“Elyon” is an epithet used with reference to God. It means “Most High.” Note that it is unrelated to “El.” “El” begins with the Hebrew letter aleph, whereas “Elyon” begins with an ayin. This distinction is very important and needs to be kept in mind. In Genesis 14:18-22, Melchizedek is called the priest of El Elyon (God most high), a deity with whom Abram identifies in v. 22. There are those who would like to identify this epithet with a separate deity. They argue that El Elyon was originally a god separate from Yahweh and worshiped by the Canaanites in Jerusalem. Only later did the Israelite tradition of Yahweh merge with it so that it evolved into a title of Yahweh. In order to do this, however, it is necessary to hypothesize an otherwise unknown deity by this name--a deity nowhere attested inside or outside the Bible by this name. Further, the usage of “Elyon” in the Bible does not support such an interpretation. In Psalm 82:6, those who are called “children” (or “sons”) of Elyon are certainly the “children” of the God of Israel, who is here in charge of this divine council and who regulates all its doings. Yahweh is not their physical father. He is their ruler.
Now as to the matter of Deuteronomy 32:8-9, I translate the Hebrew as we have it: “When the Most High (Elyon) gave nations their inheritance among humanity, he established boundaries for the people according to the number of the sons of Israel. (He did this) because Yahweh's allotment is his people. Jacob is the portion of his inheritance.” To find “sons of God” in place of “sons of Israel,” you need to rely on the Greek Septuagint translation, which actually has “angels of God.” It is not in the Hebrew. That is not to say that this old Hebrew poetry is easy to translate. However, this is a far cry from citing this as proof of a distinction between Elyon and Yahweh. To the contrary, the Hebrew identifies the two as both personally involved with Israel, and thus most likely as identical. As for the supposed Aramaic deity Ilyaan, I cannot find the name attested in Early Aramaic texts or as an element in personal names. On the other hand, connecting the “number of the sons of Israel” in Deuteronomy 32:8 with the 70 children of Israel who entered Egypt is at least found in later Jewish tradition. However, the view that this must refer to the 70 sons of El and Asherah, a number defined in this manner only in the myths of Ugarit, is hardly necessary. Some medieval interpretations connected it with the 70 nations of the world as counted in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. This is possible. Clearly, 70 is a common number occurring about 57 times in the Bible and often used to describe a sense of completion or perfection. A leap to Ugarit myths and polytheism is not warranted without more compelling evidence.
As for the statement that the God of the Hebrews had many names, I would encourage you to distinguish once more between the personal name “Yahweh,” various titles of “god” such as “Elohim” and “El,” and epithets such as “Shaddai” (perhaps related to the divine council or hosts of heaven). “Elohim” does, indeed, appear by itself to be a plural form (with the -im ending). However, whenever it refers to the God of Israel, it always takes singular verbs and so is treated as a singular noun.
I conclude with the observation that ancient Israel appropriated the Hebrew language and many other cultural features, often transforming them in the Bible so as to conform to its distinctive theology. The same is true of various religious practices. So the name “El” may refer to the chief god in Ugarit of the 13th century B.C. However, this does not mean it must be the name of a god separate from Yahweh in the Bible. As a title for various gods inside and outside the Bible, it can be applied to Yahweh without proving anything about early Israelite beliefs.
For further reading on this, see my Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey (Baker: 2007).