Perhaps its better that I didn’t comment on the scriptural narratives of David and Solomon, as I don’t feel that the books of Samuel and Kings (histories composed by the Deuteronomists), nor the book of Chronicles (composed by the post-exilic priestly historians) are necessarily dependable accounts of the lives and actions of these men. I feel that both histories were written and/or edited by redactors who had a theological agenda and who generally disapproved of the monarchy. They seem to have had motives to want to discredit the Davidic monarchy and its religious beliefs and practices. I could go on and on about this, but I will refrain for now.  If you want to read a couple of the many posts I’ve written touching on this topic in the past, see here and here.

Okay, on to Elijah.  Elijah is one of the most revered characters in Scripture for Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others.  He appears in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), the New Testament, the Talmud, the Mishnah, the Qur’an, and elsewhere.  The Abrahamic faiths (except LDS) are all generally awaiting the return of Elijah “before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD” (Mal. 4:5).  While some groups believe that this scripture was fulfilled with the coming of John the Baptist or at the appearance of Elijah at the Transfiguration of Christ, neither seems to quite fulfill the expectation that he would come at the advent of the eschaton or (in Christian understanding) the Second Coming of Christ.  Latter-day Saints believe that his coming in 1836 to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland Temple fulfilled the promises in Malachi, including the idea that he was sent “to turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Mal 4:6).

The fact that his name means “Yah[weh] is my God” is very significant for the role he plays in the narratives in 1 Kings 17-19, 21, and the beginning of 2 Kings.  Elijah is the champion of the cult (“religion”) of Yahweh against the evils of the cult of Baal that have now virtually become the “state religion” of the northern tribes of Israel.  King Ahab has wholly adopted the religion of his idolatrous foreign wife Jezebel, who has made it her goal to rid Israel of its traditional worship of Yahweh. She ordered the prophets of Yahweh put to death (note the interesting detail that the governor of Ahab’s house, Obadiah, who was faithful to God, hid one hundred of the prophets in caves).  As indicated in 1 Kings 18:22, Elijah becomes practically the only prophet of Yahweh who continues to be active in Israel.  Elijah fights to return the people and its rulers to the correct worship of God.

The great irony in these Elijah narratives is apparent when we realize that Baal was believed to be the great “storm god”, the “rider of the clouds” that was responsible for bringing rain, which produced fertility and life for his worshipers.  In the Ugaritic (Canaanite) myths, when Baal is overcome and killed by his enemies and descends to the Underworld, there is no rain, the ground dries up, and all mankind is in peril until he is revived again, which miracle is signaled by the commencement of the rainy season.  Although we generally like to contrast the thought of the “pagan” religions that surrounded Israel from the true beliefs of Yahweh, it is likely that the reason the Israelites so easily fell into this pattern of Baal worship is because the two religions/gods were very similar.  For traditional Israel, Yahweh was the one who truly possessed the attributes claimed for Baal — He was the Son of God Most High, the true Lord/Master (Hebrew ba’al), the God who brought rain, fertility, and life (see, e.g., Pss. 36:5-9; 68:9; 77:16-19; 84; 104:3; 107; 135:7; 144:10-15; 147:8; etc.). To them, Yahweh was the Rider of the Clouds (see Ps. 68:4, where it should likely read “rider of the clouds”, instead of “heaven” or “desert”; also Ps. 104:3).  With this in mind, we see the clear polemics in these stories arguing for Yahweh as the bringer of rain and life rather than Baal.

At the beginning of chapter 17, Elijah, through his authority as a prophet of Yahweh, promises King Ahab that “there shall not be dew nor rain these years” until he says there will be. This is a direct challenge to the religion of Baal and its prophets, who believed that they could call on their god to bring rain.  Elijah shows the almighty power of Yahweh and the utter impotence of Baal as he, in the name of Yahweh, brings a lengthy drought that cannot be overcome despite the idolatrous prophets’ best efforts.

While we can perhaps see the drought as a punishment by the Lord for King Ahab and the followers of false gods, we are also shown that Yahweh remembers and provides for those who are faithful to Him.  In the second half of chapter 17, we have the story of the widow of Zarephath who had just enough cornmeal and oil to make one last meal for herself and her son, and then expected to starve to death.  At this point of crisis, Elijah the prophet arrives, having been promised by God that this poor widow would sustain him during the famine. When she explains her desperate situation, that she doesn’t have enough even for herself and her child, she is promised by Elijah that her meal barrel and oil cruse would not fail but miraculously last through the drought.  This is a great story of faith tested, and the poor widow did not fail but was blessed with abundance sufficient for herself, her son, and the prophet.  Yahweh can bring sustenance during famine, taking care of the lowest of his followers, while Baal can’t manage to reverse the dry conditions in any manner, not even to wet the thirst of the king of Israel.

Yahweh further proves himself to be the God who brings life by raising, through Elijah, the faithful widow’s son from the dead. The power to give victory over death is the ultimate display of Yahweh’s power to bring life. This miracle is later repeated by Elijah’s prophetic apprentice, Elisha, and, of course, by Jesus himself.  At seeing her son revived, the widow exclaimed to Elijah, “Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is true.” Her testimony that Yahweh was the true Governor over life and death was greatly fortified.

The next great challenge by Elijah against the Baal worshipers was at Mount Carmel, where he engaged the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal in a showdown to once-and-for-all show whose God had true power over the elements.  As a side note, the mention of the “prophets of the groves” (the prophets of the asherim, 18:19) seems to be a later insertion into the story, as we don’t hear much about them again. It is possible that in the original story there was a conflict between Yahweh and Baal, but not between Yahweh and Asherah (but we won’t go into that now).  The challenge from Elijah was to see whose god could bring fire down from Heaven to consume the sacrifice. The purpose of the sacrifice was apparently to request the sending of rain to end the drought, but the consumption of the sacrifice by fire from heaven would be a great visual manifestation of the true God’s power.

While the prophets of Baal called upon their god all day long and into the evening with no response manifest, Elijah began to mock them, saying:

1 Kings 18:27 Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.

His taunts reflect what the author sees as the foolish traditions regarding the god Baal, that during seasons of dry weather the fertility god was either on a journey (e.g. into the Underworld) or had died.  It is possible that other related myths described the god as being away hunting, or being asleep and needing awakening before the rains would come.  These beliefs were widespread throughout the region and Elijah’s derision is clearly a deliberate attack against them.  It is odd, in light of this, to see such language used to refer to Yahweh in the Psalms and elsewhere (see Pss. 35:24; 44:23; 59:4-5;  78:65).

After the false prophets’ antics (including jumping on the altar and cutting themselves) produce no results, Elijah prepares to demonstrate the omnipotence of the Lord. So confident is Elijah that the Lord can easily consume a sacrifice with fire that he makes the show of power even more dramatic by drenching the sacrifice, the altar, and the whole area in buckets of (precious) water.  He then called upon the One whom he knew to be the true God of Israel.

(1 Kings 18:36–37)  LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. 37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.

The prophet’s faith was not in vain. As soon as he had called upon his God, fire descended out of heaven and consumed everything associated with his sacrifice: the offering, the wood, and, amazingly, the water and even the stones and dust!  All present were compelled to recognized Yahweh as “the God” (1 Kgs. 18:39).

Elijah then capitalized on the people’s new-found faith in Yahweh and rid the country of the vast retinue of Baal’s prophets by putting them to death. He then advised the suddenly impotent King Ahab that rain was imminent. As the life-giving precipitation poured down, it was abundantly clear to all that Yahweh was the only true God in Israel.

Queen Jezebel, the matron of the Baal cult in Israel, was obviously very upset to hear of these happenings and orders that Elijah suffer the same fate that her prophets had (of course she had already been trying to kill all of Yahweh’s prophets, including Elijah). Elijah escapes and goes to spend some time on Mount Horeb (another name for Sinai, the mountain of revelation). Significantly, he fasts for forty days and nights before experiencing, similar to Moses, a theophany.

The theophany described in chapter 19 is different, however, from earlier recorded manifestations of God.  Here (vv. 11-12) we have the familiar story of the wind, the earthquake, and the fire that apparently accompany the Lord’s appearance, but he is not present in any of those phenomena. His presence is marked only by a still small voice (or, in some translations, “the voice of silence” or “the sound of sheer silence”).  While I certainly accept the concept of God communicating through a still small voice, it is apparent that this description is polemically motivated. The writer/editor clearly wants to disassociate the manifestation of Deity from the traditional images of the disruption of elements that accompanied the theophanies of earlier times. For example, consider these earlier accounts of the appearance of God.

(Psalm 18:6–15)   In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears. 7 Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. 8 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. 9 He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet. 10 And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. 11 He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. 12 At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed, hail stones and coals of fire. 13 The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire. 14 Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited them. 15 Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.

(Isaiah 6:1–4)  In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. 2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. 3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. 4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

These two examples are characteristic of the earliest descriptions of the appearance of the Lord. We even get such a description in the book of 1 Kings itself, in chapter 22 when the prophet Micaiah ben Imlah says:

(1 Kings 22:19) Hear thou therefore the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left.

Traditionally, the Lord is generally seen sitting on his throne and the vision is often accompanied by grand displays of smoke, fire, and earthquake. The account of Elijah’s experience on Sinai even goes contrary to Moses’ experience, where these elements are a main feature of the theophany.  In this 1 Kings account, those points are mentioned, but it is specifically stated that Yahweh is not associated with them.  The only true manifestation of Yahweh here is the still, small voice.

It is quite clear to me that the passages in Kings are an addition from the Deuteronomist redactors. Around the time of the Babylonian captivity (centuries after the fact), these books of the Hebrew Bible were compiled/edited by individuals who had a clear theological agenda.  They didn’t like the language used in the ancient theophanic accounts and attempted to edit those stories by making it look like God was never seen in human throne (e.g., sitting on a throne), and other visual aspects were downplayed. God’s only manifestation was through his Voice/Word.  We see these redactors at work in the contradictory statements surrounding the theophany at Sinai at the time of Moses. While the fantastic natural phenomena couldn’t be erased from collective memory, we are told by the Deuteronomist that Moses was informed that:

(Deut 4:12 RSV) Then the LORD spoke to you out of the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice.

This is odd when we are told elsewhere that Moses, Aaron, and the elders of Israel saw the Lord (Exod 24:10) and we are told later (in the context of the above scripture) that Moses sees God’s back — certainly part of his “form.” Yet the beliefs of the Deuteronomists would not let them admit that God could be seen — only heard.  For me, it is this theology that is behind the famous passage concerning Elijah.  While this kind of perspective may make God seem more mysterious and perhaps more omnipotent/omni-present, the older tradition is more awe-inspiring and definitely more cool!  Of course I don’t mean to say that God cannot manifest himself in any way in which He chooses — and He does make himself known in a variety of different ways — I do want to identify here the fact that the Bible is composed of differing theological views that come from disparate time periods and that sometimes these views are purposefully contradictory.  This is not due to contradictions in God’s Word or God’s own thinking, but due to the fact that the books that make up our Bible have passed through the hands of many human editors and translators.  Beyond these technicalities, however, the Word of God and the important lessons we need to learn from it continue to shine through.  God does speak to us through a still, small voice that we can only hear if we are humble and have a great desire to listen carefully to what he wants to reveal to us individually.

Noah and His Book(s)
Michael E. Stone, Aryeh Amihay, Vered Hillel

ISBN 1589834887
Status Available
Price: $45.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date June, 2010

In a collection of original essays, this book offers new insights on the question of the lost “book of Noah,” as well as studies of Noah’s figure in postbiblical literature. It focuses on ancient Jewish literature, including the Septuagint, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, and rabbinic literature, but Christian sources, especially Christian iconography, gnostic literature, and Syriac material, as well as later sources such as the Qur’an and Jewish medieval traditions, are also consulted. The contributors are Michael E. Stone, Vered Hillel, Aryeh Amihay, Michael Tuval, Daniel Machiela, Claire Pfann, Esther Eshel, Jeremy Penner, Rebecca Scharbach, Benjamin G. Wright III, Nadav Sharon and Moshe Tishel, Albert Geljon, Sergey Minov, Erica Martin, and Ruth Clements.

Michael E. Stone is Professor Emeritus, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and the author of numerous books on Second Temple literature and on Armenian studies. Aryeh Amihay is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. Vered Hillel is a professor at the Israel College of the Bible in Jerusalem.

Hardback edition available from Brill Academic Publishers (www.brill.nl)

Follow the link to order it.

(Via Jim Davila)

The first thing I wanted to point out is that Nephi’s vision in chapter 11 is given only after a few pre-requisite conditions are met. These are:

1. He had a desire to know the things that his father had seen in vision.
2. He believed the words of his father and that the Lord was able to make them known to him as well.
3. He was pondering those things in his heart.

It seems to me that these are some of the basic requirements, in both ancient and modern accounts, for receiving inspiration or revelation from God.  I have read quite a lot lately about revelatory experiences in the ancient world, and there is a lot of literature that describes how visionary episodes were supposed to be brought on by some “artificial” (I say artificial for “man-made” inducers of visionary experiences, as opposed to divinely-induced) means, including sensory deprivation, consumption of hallucinatory agents such as psychoactive plants, narcotics, breathing in hydrocarbon or other gases in caves, and so on. While I have little doubt that such methods have been used throughout human history to bring individuals into a psychedelic trance that they felt allowed communication with the Beyond, it is interesting to note that there is no mention of anything of this sort here with Nephi.  All we get is that he was pondering in his heart, and suddenly he was “caught away  in the Spirit of the Lord.”

Like so many ancient accounts of visionary experiences, Nephi is caught up into a high mountain, the ideal place for a meeting between God and man.  The Spirit here (and I’m assuming that this is the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Godhead), serves as Nephi’s angelus interpres, the “interpreting angel” that usually accompanies the visionary in similar accounts, explaining to him what he is seeing.  In verse 11, we are told that this Spirit, who is the Spirit of the Lord, “was in the form of a man.” If, as it would seem, this figure is the Holy Ghost, then, according to Nephi, although He is a spiritual being, He is “anthropomorphic.”  There are a good number of ancient texts that support this view, as a number of recent studies have pointed out (see my early posts on this topic here and here). Following on ancient Jewish traditions, many early Christians believed that the Holy Spirit was an angel that stood by the throne of God. Of course, being “angelomorphic” is essentially the same as being anthropomorphic.

The Spirit explains to Nephi (verse 7) that after he sees the object of his desire, the Tree of Life which his father saw, he would be given a “sign” — he would see a man descending out of heaven, who the Spirit identifies as the Son of God.  Apparently, the Spirit means for Nephi to see the Son of God as parallel to the Tree of Life.

However, when Nephi actually asks for an interpretation of the Tree (v. 11), he is shown a virgin who was “exceedingly fair and white” and “most beautiful and fair above all other virgins” (vv. 13, 15).  The virgin, then, is another parallel for the Tree. Note how Nephi’s description of the virgin compares to his description of the Tree: “the beauty thereof was fare beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty; and the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow” (v. 8). Nephi is told that this virgin that he saw “is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh.” In verse 20, Nephi sees this virgin mother carrying the holy child, the Lamb of God, in her arms.

Now the fact that parallels are made between the Tree of Life and both the Son of God and his Mother is very significant. As I’ve mentioned before, Margaret Barker picked up on the significance of this symbolism when she read these passages from the Book of Mormon. Barker, who is an expert in the religious culture of Jerusalem at the time Lehi and Nephi would have been there, explained in a speech at a conference held at the Library of Congress in 2005:

…[A] text discovered in Egypt in 1945 described the tree [of life] as beautiful, fiery, and with fruits like white grapes. I don’t know of any other source which describes the fruit as white grapes, so you can imagine my surprise when I read the account of Lehi’s vision of the tree whose white fruits made one happy; and the interpretation of the vision, that the virgin in Nazareth was the mother of the Son of God after the manner of the flesh.

This is the Heavenly Mother (represented by the Tree of Life), and then Mary and her son on the earth. This revelation to Joseph Smith was the exact ancient Wisdom symbolism, intact, and almost certainly as it was known in 600 BCE.

From my own studies, I have been intrigued to find that in ancient Israel, the Tree of Life was understood to represent both the King of Israel and also the Queen Mother (the king’s mother). (See also, on this topic, Daniel Peterson’s great article on this topic here) As I have pointed out before, there was a common ancient image of the Tree of Life, as a mother goddess, nourishing the “new born” king.

This image is paralleled by the many ancient images we find of the mother goddess holding and nursing the young god/king.

Besides the symbols of Mother and Son of God, it is interesting that the Spirit identifies the Tree with yet another idea. When He asks (v. 21) Nephi, after giving two symbols already, what he thought the Tree stood for, Nephi, without hesitating, answers that “it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things.” For Nephi, it seems that this was the obvious message being communicated by the vision of the Tree, the virgin and the Divine Son. It all represented the love of God for his children on Earth. I don’t know if that is the conclusion that I would have automatically come up with, but this is what the clear meaning was for Nephi. Perhaps the cultural and religious environment of 600 BC would have prepared Nephi to attach these symbols together to lead him to understand this great truth.

What helped me understand these connections a bit better as I read them this time around was pondering as well the comparable thoughts found in John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son (through the favored and chosen virgin, Mary), that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

This is the Tree of Life! This is the fruit that is “desirable above all things” and “the most joyous to the soul” (vv. 22, 23)! To know that God loves us all so much that he was willing to send his most beloved Son, by means of a precious and pure young woman, into the world to save us — to share with us Eternal Life! There is no greater or sweeter gift that we could possibly ask for!

Chapter 11 of 1 Nephi, along with the following chapters, contain many more amazing examples of ancient religious thought, some of which I have pointed out in previous posts. However, I felt very strongly about these points as I read over these verses, and wanted to share them here. May we all hold fast to that iron rod that leads to the precious Tree and endure on until we can eat of that most desirable fruit, and share the journey with those we love.

Searching for the Better Text

How errors crept into the Bible and what can be done to correct them

by Harvey Minkoff

But does this beloved image of the Peaceable Kingdom contain a mistranslation?

For years many scholars suspected that it did. Given the parallelism of the phrases, one would expect a verb instead of “the fatling.” With the discovery of the Isaiah Scroll among the Dead Sea Scrolls, those scholars were given persuasive new support. The Isaiah Scroll contains a slight change in the Hebrew letters at this point in the text, yielding “will feed”: “the calf and the young lion will feed together.”

This is just one of numerous variations from the traditional text of the Hebrew Bible contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In some cases the traditional text is clearly superior, but in others the version in the scrolls is better.

Thanks to the scrolls, more and more textual problems in the Hebrew Bible are being resolved. The notes in newer Bible translations list variant readings from the scrolls, and in some cases, the translations incorporate these readings in the text as the preferred reading. No one has ever seriously suggested that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain anything like an eleventh commandment; but the scrolls do help clarify numerous difficult phrases in the Hebrew Bible, and for textual scholars that is more than enough.

Before we list other examples of how the Dead Sea Scrolls influenced—or altered—Bible translations, we need to understand how ambiguities crept into the text of the Hebrew Bible in the first place. And we must also familiarize ourselves with the ancient versions of the Hebrew Bible on which modern translations rely (for good reason scholars call these ancient versions “witnesses” to the biblical text).

[...]

BOOK REVIEW (BMCR):

Einar Thomassen (ed.), Canon and Canonicity. The Formation and Use of Scripture. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010. Pp. 232. ISBN 9788763530279. $48.00. 

Reviewed by David J. DeVore, University of California, Berkeley

Table of Contents

As editor Thomassen’s preface states (p. 7), the volume under review is the fruit of “Highways and Byways,” a project based in Norway’s Bergen University; the stated aim of the project is to explore early Christian discourses distinguishing “orthodoxy” from “heresy.” The volume contains ten essays by seven scholars based in Scandinavia, two from Greece, and one in the United States. Seven essays focus at least partially on canons in the Roman world; the last three study biblical canons in northern Europe since the Renaissance and will not be considered here.

Interesting associations and questions surround the formation of the Christian (and Jewish) Biblical canons as they became fixed by the middle of the fifth century. During the twentieth century and into the current decade the field concentrated on gathering relevant evidence, and then reading that evidence closely to see which authors/communities accepted which texts as sacred and when, and how firm the boundaries were between sacred, acceptable, and condemned texts.1 While these works eradicated the previous teleological assumption that somehow the eventual New Testament texts were intrinsically more central to Christianity, their agenda also narrowed the scholarship to repeatedly addressing questions of dating and community. But scholars of canonization have begun to address two wider clusters of questions, approaches, and explanations for the canons.

First, discussion of the formation of the Christian canon had until very recently remained “internalist”: the diachronic formation and sanction of community’s collective norms were described and explained almost solely from evidence generated by that community, so that works on the biblical canons focused almost exclusively on testimonia from elite insiders. An “externalist” account, by contrast, will show how its subject relates to adjacent contemporary events, debates, and power structures, but is not likely to present the internal evidence for canonization exhaustively.2 Some scholars working on Jewish and Christian canonicity, notably Jan Assmann, Jed Wyrick, and collectively the 2004 collection edited by Enrico Norelli, have recently adduced evidence from outside the Jewish and Christian ambits for probing Jewish and Christian canonicity.3

The second domain into which canonization studies have recently ventured is theory: for exploring the establishment of a canon of authoritative texts, social and literary theory offer numerous concepts and questions, as well as comparable contexts from other times and places. For example, literary critics have been debating the significance of canonicity in reading and educational practices for decades, while students of historical memory have illuminated processes by which societies select particular memories and canonize mementos of them.4 The works of Assmann and Wyrick noted above, as well as the deconstructionist monograph of Giuseppe Veltri, have pushed canonization studies into this realm.5

To the credit of all contributors, the volume under review continues to theorize and externalize the methodologies for biblical canon studies. The results, though not of uniform quality, will nonetheless provoke plenty of new directions for research.

[...]

For Lesson 20 — Ruth; 1 Sam. 1

Gerald Smith at Joel’s Monastery gives a very in-depth and insightful analysis of the whole block of scripture: http://joelsmonastery.blogspot.com/2010/05/ot-lesson-20-all-city-doth-know-thou.html

Ben Spackman at One Eternal Round shares his great knowledge of the scriptures and background of the original languages and culture. His post consists of a podcast that you can listen to, plus written comments on the lesson: http://www.patheos.com/community/mormonportal/2010/05/28/gospel-doctrine-podcast-lesson-20-ruth/

If you haven’t see it before, “One Eternal Round” is a group blog featured on the Patheos Mormon Portal website.  This site is run by Ben Spackman and is very well put together. I have met Ben and have long admired his great religious scholarship. The site has some excellent contributors, including David Bokovoy, Blair Hodges, Seth Rogers, Robert Boylan, and others. It is directed both to Mormons and also to those curious about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It features both recent news stories regarding the Church and intriguing articles written on different topics regarding Mormon religion and life. I highly recommend taking a look at it.

For Lesson 21 — 1 Sam. 2-3, 8

Gerald Smith has a great analysis of this lesson as well: http://joelsmonastery.blogspot.com/2010/05/ot-lesson-21-god-will-honor-those-who.html

I also recommend very highly looking at Gerald’s material here. He has obviously put in a lot of time to put these ideas together and has one of the most complete and interesting analyses I have seen.

——————–

As far as my own comments on the GD lessons, I hope to get back to doing that soon. I’ll be finishing up this part of my dissertation in the next week or so. Then we’ll be moving to a new house here, after being “in-between” houses for a few weeks in June. I’m not sure what kind of internet access I’ll have during this period, so I apologize in advance if I’m not able to post much.

As I was studying recently about the “transfer of power” from the prophet Moses to his young aide, Joshua, it hit me that there was a similarity in this motif with the ideas presented in a paper by Julian Morgenstern  that I recently read called “The King-God among the Western Semites and the Meaning of Epiphanes.” This is quite an intriguing, even if somewhat old and outdated, work that looks at the ancient ideology of the Near East regarding kingship. I must preface my thoughts here by explaining that I don’t necessarily share all of Prof. Morgenstern’s reasoning or conclusions, but I found the pattern he describes strangely applicable to the Moses-Joshua narrative.

Morgenstern’s argument is that the religious traditions of the Ancient Near East, which he sees as background to, and an influence on, Israel’s religious thought, were associated with their understanding of the patterns of nature.  More specifically, the life-cycle of their gods, in their view, was reflected in, for example, the annual cycles of the sun that provide the different seasons, or the vegetation cycles of death in the winter and rebirth in the spring.  Examples of these traditions pervade the religions of the ancient world.

Morgenstern explains that, for example, in the ancient Tyrian (western-Semitic) religion, Baal-Haddad was the reigning god, the god of the storms, who brought rain and fertility to the earth. His consort was Astarte, the mother goddess who was represented as a type of Mother Earth. Their offspring was Tammuz, who was represented by the yearly crops. According to the myth, in the spring, Tammuz, the divine child, was born and grew to maturity to the point where he was identified with, or even supplanted, the Father god. In the autumn, the old god was seen as dying and being buried, only to be born again in the spring as the young god. The cycle repeated itself annually as the young god rose up from the soil (from the Underworld), grew up to become the old Father god, died, and then was born again with new and vigorous life.  (For me, personally, I think it is hard for us to know if this is how the ancients actually saw their gods, as dying and resurrecting each year, or if they saw the cycles of nature as merely reflecting a more archetypal divine example)

Later on, the Tyrian king Hiram, who had so much influence on Solomon and the building of his temple, supposedly reformed his people’s religion so that it no longer followed the pattern of the vegetation cycle, but followed the solar phases. The main phases of this new belief were following the steadily increasing light of the winter/spring sun and then the receding radiance of the summer/autumn sun. The summer/autumn sun, representing the god Baal-Shamem, grew older and dimmer as the year went on, until at the winter solstice, the point of least light in the year, the old god was believed to have died, fallen asleep, or departed on a journey.  The sun-god journeys to the darkness of the Netherworld through the portals of the West, only to be reborn far in the East. When he is reborn as the winter/spring sun, he is Melcarth, the Lord of Heaven, the young warrior god that brings new life as he grows in brightness and strength throughout these seasons of the year. Essentially, according to Morgenstern, the two gods, Baal-Shamem and Melcarth, were the same god, but in two basic phases — one mortal and one immortal. Often, the old god never truly dies but is replaced in the world of the living by the young god, who rules from his throne. The old god continues to rule, but more remotely, from the realm of the Afterlife. This general pattern can be seen in similar Egyptian beliefs regarding the dying Osiris who is avenged and “replaced” by his son Horus, the Greek traditions of the son god killing and replacing the father god, Zeus and Heracles, the Phoenix, Babylonian beliefs regarding Marduk, and so on.

While Morgenstern goes on extensively to then compare this pattern to ancient Israelite religion, including yearly temple rites in the autumn and spring at the Temple of Solomon, I will only briefly relate some of his ideas that concern the Israelite concept of kingship.  Morgenstern argues that the kings throughout the region of the Near East followed a similar pattern for their transfers of power, imitating the trajectory of the gods.  As the reigning king became old, he would appoint his son, his heir, to rule in his stead. The son symbolically “became” his father, the king, ruling on his throne. The old king would die and the new, young king would continue ruling in his stead, the embodiment of his father. Although the old king had died and journeyed to the Underworld, he would continue to rule, in a sense, through his seed who occupied his throne.

Similarly, the new reigning king would go through an annual cycle represented in the great religious festivals at the temple.  In these festivals, there were dramatic re-enactments in which, according to Morgenstern, the king would play the role of the god, as the embodiment of the god. At the Autumn New Year Festival, on the day of the autumn equinox, the king-god would, in a dramatic presentation, die and be buried in the earth (which Morgenstern seems to be saying would have been represented by the king entering the temple, the pillars of which represented the gates to the world of the dead). At the festival of the vernal equinox, there would have been a celebration of the god/king’s “awakening” or “resurrection” when, at the point of greatest light hitting the temple, he would emerge from its eastern entrance and appear to his people, glorious and radiant (the sun likely reflecting brightly off his throne and/or silver or gold colored crown/clothing) and full of new life, giving new hope to his people. (If such ideas were ever represented in Israelite religion, which I believe that they were, at least to an extent, they were greatly modified over time. According to some theories, all of these themes were represented in one great Autumn festival, and the Spring festival represented different ideas altogether).

I could go on and on about Morgenstern’s interesting analysis of these themes, but my point in bringing this up is that the idea of the old dying god/king and the rise of the young, vibrant god/king seems to have had some influence on the Israelite traditions regarding Moses and Joshua. We could say that history does have a tendency to repeat itself, or perhaps it is a case of ancient stories recontextualized to shape narrations of historical events, but the story of the transfer of power between Moses and Joshua does seem to follow this ancient pattern of cyclical transition as described by Morgenstern.  Moses, the old prophet (who was, for all intents and purposes, Israel’s earthly king), having lived a full life in service of the Lord, reaches the point when it is time for him to die and be replaced by a young, vibrant new leader.  There is a period where Moses is commanded to “share” the authority of his office with Joshua, in preparation for the transition. It is interesting that this takes place just as the people of Israel are reaching the promised land. It is as if God, when bringing his people into a new land for a new life, wants them to be led by a new, younger Moses into the promised land.  Just as Moses had, in earlier years, been both the spiritual and military leader of Israel, Joshua comes as a young warrior-prophet ready to lead the people to further conquests. This is how the resurrected, young god of the ancient traditions was depicted — as a warrior who comes to deliver his people.

However, as some traditions affirm, Moses does not really die, but was “translated” — he is essentially deified and continues ruling, in a sense, from beyond and afar, guiding still his young replacement through the prophetic mantle passed on, through the law that he had recorded, and perhaps, like the succession of Elisha following Elijah, through the endowment of a portion of his “spirit” to Joshua. Certainly, the same prophetic Spirit that had guided Moses was now operating in the Lord’s new servant.

I would like to share some musings on a source for studying the Sinai story that many might not think of — the Psalms. There will be some overlap here with my previous post on the Exodus story, so if you read that one, please bear with me as I repeat some of those ideas again here.  We usually think of the biblical psalms as a collection of hymns or poetry that is generally concerned primarily with praising God. As we are looking for sources to support our study of the Sinai story as presented in the book of Exodus, we should remember that the Exodus and Sinai pericopes became the foundational stories for explaining how Israel was chosen or elected to be God’s people. These events were among the mightiest works of salvation ever performed by Yahweh for his chosen Israel and became an essential part of their identity as a people. It would be logical, then, to imagine that a collection of hymns praising Yahweh would include references to these miraculous events.

Furthermore, besides simply referring to historical events and praising God for his help in times past, the Psalms perhaps furnish us with evidence that the Sinai story was “relived” each year in Israel through a ritualized performance of its major events.  If we utilize the theory that many of the psalms were used/performed in an annual festival at the celebration of the New Year (the harvest/ingathering festival or Feast of Tabernacles), then an analysis of these psalms can give us a picture of the liturgy, or ritual performance(s), that took place during this festival.  Scholars such as Sigmund Mowinckel, A.R. Johnson, and John Eaton, to name a few, have theorized that certain “ritual dramas” were acted out during the festival that represented the great historical deeds of Yahweh, including the primeval conflict with the forces of Chaos and Darkness, the Creation of the cosmos, the enthronement of Yahweh as King — and his salvific dealings with his people, including a representation of the Exodus from Egypt, the Sinai theophany, and the establishment of the covenant with Israel. All of this, theoretically, was re-enacted, or relived, in the present each year at the great festival — the Israelites experienced it all anew in a dramatic presentation at the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

While I don’t want to take away from your reading of the Exodus account itself, I believe that a review of the material in the Psalms can be of great help in understanding how the Israelites remembered these powerful events and applied them in their current situation. It is also most likely that the material in the Psalms pre-dates the Exodus/Sinai story as we have it in the book of Exodus in our Bible, therefore possibly providing a more ancient view of these events.

The principal psalms with relevant material are: Ps. 99; Ps. 95; Ps. 81; Ps. 114

The Song of Moses

Before getting into the Psalms themselves, I would like to look at a “psalm” that is actually recorded in the book of Exodus. It is known as the Song of Moses (or “of Moses and Miriam” or “of the Sea”) and is found in Exodus 15.  The song retells the experience of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and God’s victory over the Egyptians, and foretells their establishment in the land of Canaan by God and the building of his sanctuary there; the Lord reigns supreme in Israel. The tone of the song is very jubilant and dramatic.  There are many liturgical themes, including the fact that apparently Moses sings one part (perhaps leading the Israelite men), while Miriam and the Israelite women give a liturgical response, which includes dancing and playing instruments.  We can perhaps imagine that the described events were being theatrically re-enacted with the “song” as accompaniment. For more on Exod. 15, please see Gerald Smith’s great post here.

A very similar song/psalm¹ is presented in Deut. 32 and Deut. 33. These chapters describe in a similarly dramatic fashion the events of the Exodus that follow (basically) what was described in Exod. 15. Notice the ritual themes, such as the beginning of Deut. 32: “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.”

Deut. 33 is presented as a blessing by Moses on the people, but it is clearly a psalm meant to be sung. Its poetic description of the Sinai theophany is quite different from what we read in the Exodus story and is much more of the descriptions that show up in the book of Psalms (please see my last post on Exodus here).

Deuteronomy 33:2–29:

And he said, The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints: from his right hand went a fiery law for them.  3 Yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in thy hand: and they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words.  4 Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.  5 And he was (or became) king in Jeshurun (Israel), when the heads of the people and the tribes of Israel were gathered together.

(The next several verses give detailed blessings to each of the tribes of Israel)

26 There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky.  27 The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them.  28 Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down dew.  29 Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the LORD, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.

Again, this material in Ex. 15 and Deut. 32 and 33 likely represents an older version of the Exodus story than that which we receive in the rest of the book of Exodus. These hymns were likely in use for centuries and later inserted into the stories as they were edited/reconstructed in later times.²

The Presentation of the Exodus Story in the Psalms

As I mentioned in my previous post, Mowinckel and other scholars noted that  in the Psalms, the Exodus Story was presented as a repetition of the Creation (i.e. Egypt becomes the chaos monster Rahab and the Red Sea becomes the primeval ocean); through this historical act of “creation”, Yahweh becomes king over Israel and establishes his covenant with his “elect” people, Israel.

From the descriptions given, the relevant psalms appear to depict a grand procession(s) that took place during the New Year festival. These psalms seem to present both the Creation and the Exodus stories as part of a history of God’s salvific deeds in dealing with Israel. There are numerous parallels between God’s actions in the primeval victory/Creation and in the story of Israel’s escape from the Egyptians and election (creation) as God’s people (see my previous post for more on this). Mowinckel notes: “The procession reviews the Exodus story as well as the chaos myth.”³

According to this theory, the procession dramatically represented not only the victory over the Egyptians and the parting of the Red Sea, but also the journey through the wilderness to Sinai and the events at the holy mountain. The Israelite pilgrims participating in the procession started outside the city of Jerusalem, in “the wilderness.” After the miraculous events of the deliverance from Egypt were dramatically portrayed, the triumphant tribes are led through the wilderness by their victorious God and King.

We see hints of this motif in psalms such as Ps. 99, where during the liturgy of praise to Yahweh, the people are reminded of the Exodus:

Psalm 99:6–7   Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among them that call upon his name; they called upon the LORD, and he answered them.  7 He spake unto them in the cloudy pillar: they kept his testimonies, and the ordinance that he gave them.

Psalm 114 goes into further detail (again, as part of a ritual performance):

Psalm 114:1–8  1 When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language;  2 Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.  3 The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.  4 The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.  5 What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?  6 Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?  7 Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;  8 Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.

Psalm 95:

Psalm 95:7–11  7 For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,  8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:  9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.  10 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:  11 Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

Psalm 81:

Psalm 81:5–16   This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went out through the land of Egypt: where I heard a language that I understood not.  6 I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the pots.  7 Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I answered thee in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah.  8 Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me;  9 There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god.  10 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.  11 But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me.  12 So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels.  13 Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!  14 I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries.  15 The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever.  16 He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.

John Eaton also saw Psalm 68 as describing the festal procession as a re-enactment of the Exodus story. He explains:

From 68:8-9 it seems that the procession could be brought into relation with the Exodus journey. A pre-monarchy use of processional worship to relive the ancient journey into Canaan has been traced in Josh. 2-6 and Ps. 114 (Kraus, pp. 152-65). The equation of the Exodus Invasion journey with the festal procession of Yahweh as King in his chief sanctuary is indicated also by the hymn in Exod. 15, where the Exodus leads straight to Yahweh’s mountain sanctuary in the settled land and to declaration of his kingship. The fusion of the relived Exodus and the universalist Zion worship is also discernible in Ps. 66:1–12.⁴

Dialogue with the Gatekeepers

The journey of the participants to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was supposed to represent the journey to Mount Sinai. When the procession finally reached the holy mountain where Yahweh dwelled, they were stopped at the outer east gates of the temple complex by the gatekeepers (see 2 Kgs. 25:18).⁵  Their purpose in ascending the holy mountain was to “seek the face” of the God of Jacob (Ps. 24:6; Ps. 27:8). However, they could only approach the Lord’s presence if they were worthy.  They would have to prove this worthiness to the gatekeepers if they wanted to be allowed to pass by this barrier to continue ascending the temple mount.

Compare this situation to the strict rules that God places on ascending Mount Sinai in Exod. 19:

Exodus 19:12–13 And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death: 13 There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.

In the New Year festival, the leader of the procession (likely the king, representing Moses) engages in a dialogue with the keepers of the gate on behalf of the Israelite pilgrims.  This exchange, illustrated primarily by Pss. 24, 15, and 118, takes the form of a question-and-answer sequence. Johnson notes that in Psalm 24, after making reference to the Creation, there follows:

“a short section, couched in terms of question and answer, in which one is reminded of the moral integrity that Yahweh requires of His worshippers…Finally we have the appeal of the worshippers that the gates of the Temple should be opened to admit Yahweh into His sanctuary…”⁶

Apparently, this “question and answer” exchange lays out the temple entrance requirements which each individual pilgrim must meet before the guardians of the gate will allow them to pass into the temple’s holy precincts to continue participating in the sacred rituals of the festival. We read of the initial exchange in Psalm 24:3–4:

“Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully.”

Mowinckel notes that Psalm 15 is a parallel to Psalm 24; however, there are in Psalm 15 ten requirements for admittance. He believed that at some point these entry requirements became merged with the ten commandments of Mount Sinai, so that in the festival, entry to the temple involved compliance with these commandments as well. Thus, “the instruction as to the conditions of admittance became merged in the idea of the festival as being a renewal of the covenant and a commemoration of the great works of God and of his commandments”. He further notes:

Here we have a special form or application of Yahweh’s demands, which has been called ‘laws (toroth) of entry’, i.e. authoritative divine ‘instruction’ (tora) through the priest as to what is demanded from those who are admitted to the sanctuary and cult and the blessing thereof. They may have the form of answers to questions on the part of the congregation, or as in this case, the procession.⁷

In fact, according to Mowinckel, the idea that there were ten commandments (a decalogue) at Sinai is probably derived from this ancient tradition of the temple entry requirements; pilgrims were instructed in a way that they could remember–one rule for each finger. Mowinckel believed that these ten commandments of the covenant would have been heard at the entry to the gate and then later at the climax of the festal cult — the renewal of the covenant.⁸

According to Mowinckel’s theory, the dialogue at the gate played out in the following manner:

The third element in this logical structure of questions and answers would obviously be a declaration on the part of those who want to attend the cult (the congregation) as to whether they are equal to the demands: I have kept these commandments, I am guiltless of these crimes (taboos). The pattern for this part of the liturgy would then be:

1. Who shall be admitted to the hill of Yahweh?

2. The answer of the priest: he that hath kept such and such rules; he that is of such and such a character.

3. The answer of the procession: we have kept and fulfilled all this.

Such an answer may be detailed: I have not committed this and this and this. In Ps. 24 it is summed up shortly in v. 6: ‘Such are the men who are in quest of Yahweh, who seek the face of the God of Jacob’, i.e. we are confident of fulfilling the demands.⁹

Those found worthy to pass the gates were allowed to ascend further up the mount (this was likely represented by entering into the “Great Court” (2 Chr. 4:9) from outside the temple complex. Psalm 118:19–27 may represent another dialogue with the gatekeepers of the “Inner Court” where the great altar of the temple was located.

We can compare this to the narrative in Exodus 19-20. The Lord will not let all of the Israelite people “break through” to come up the mount and approach his presence. It would be dangerous, even fatal, for them to do so in their unworthy state. At this point in the narrative, when Israel is at the outer barriers of the holy mountain, Yahweh gives the Decalogue of “entry requirements.” Covenanting to keep these commandments (Ex. 24:3) and then actually keeping them is a requirement for progressing up the mountain. We can perhaps imagine here Yahweh playing the role of the gatekeeper revealing the laws and covenants for entry into his presence. Moses is the leader of the “procession” that mediates between the people who desire entry and the Lord (see Ex. 20:19–20).

We see from the narrative that only certain individuals are found worthy to continue the ascent. They are allowed to pass by the initial barriers. In Exodus 24, the Lord allows Aaron, his sons, and 70 of the elders of Israel to accompany Moses up into the next level of sanctity of the holy mountain. These are the “worthy” that are allowed to pass through the gates. This chapter informs us that they were there permitted to “see the God of Israel” (Ex. 24:10).

Mowinckel believed that one of the key features of the festival was the “epiphany”, or appearance, of Yahweh. He notes that this is a major theme in a number of the psalms (e.g., Ps. 96:13; Ps. 98:9; Ps. 98:2; Ps. 48:4; Ps. 76:2f.) He notes that: “This is not a mere idea, it is reality, visibly expressed through the symbols and rites of the feast and the emotional reactions of the congregation to its experiences. The festival, in short, is the festal epiphany of Yahweh.”¹⁰

As part of his appearance, as depicted in the festival, the psalms describe Yahweh as:

• coming with thunder and lightning (Pss. 97:2ff.; 29:3, 7ff.)
• with storm (29:5; 48:8)
• earthquake (29:6, 8; 46:7; 97:4)
• clothed with wonderful shining armor, including the girdle of strength (93:1)
• manifested in flaming majesty (48:6)

The arrival of Yahweh was both a glorious and wonderful occasion (for the righteous) and also a terribly frightening experience (for the unworthy). We see this latter perspective on the part of the Israelite people, as described in Exodus 20:18:

And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.

This was all that the general body of the Israelites saw — the lightning, the dark cloud, and the fire (see also Ex. 24:17). However, those who were worthy to ascend further saw the God of Israel himself.  The Psalms contain expressions similar to their experience:

Psalm 17:15 (RSV) I shall behold thy face in righteousness … I shall be satisfied with beholding thy form.

In the Sinai story, we are told that only Moses, accompanied by Joshua (his “minister”; Ex. 24:13), are allowed to progress further up into the dark cloud (think “veil”) where Yahweh is waiting to give them his revelation. Only Moses himself actually enters into the presence of the Lord.  Some later Jewish traditions indicate that Moses likely saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, similar to the vision of Isaiah in Isa. 6. Yahweh’s throne would have been imagined to be located at the very top of Mount Sinai, the holy mountain.

This imagery is very clear in the Psalms. Take, for example, Psalm 97:

Psalm 97:1–2 The LORD reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! 2 Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.

Psalm 11:4 The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’s throne is in heaven; his eyes behold, his eyelids test, the children of men.

Enthronement

The representation of God’s heavenly throne was located in the Holy of Holies of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.  While later tradition attributes this function to the Aaronic High Priest, during the New Year festival in the days of the Davidic monarchy, the king would have been the one to enter the presence of the Lord in the Holy of Holies. There he would have likely been enthroned on the throne of Yahweh himself, to serve as God’s vice-regent, his representative to the world.  As we read in 1 Chron. 29:23:

Then Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD as king instead of David his father; and he prospered, and all Israel obeyed him.

In the festival, the Davidic king was washed, anointed, clothed, and permitted to sit on the throne of the Lord. This is a common theme in early Jewish mystical texts. When the visionary ascends to heaven, he commonly sees God sitting on his throne. However, some texts have the visionary either see themselves sitting on the throne or see God inviting them to sit on a throne (even His throne) (for more on this, see my earlier post here). In the early Jewish drama written by Ezekiel the Tragedian, entitled Exagoge, Moses is depicted as being enthroned on the throne of God.  It reads:

68 I [Moses] had a vision on the top of Sinai of a high throne

69 that reached the fold of heaven.

70 On it was sitting a certain noble man,

71 with a crown and with a large scepter in his

72 left hand, while with the right

73 he beckoned me, and I stood before the throne.

74 He handed me the scepter and told me

75 to sit on the great throne, and gave me the royal

76 crown, and he departed from the throne.

77 I beheld the whole earth around

78 and the things underneath the earth and those above the heaven.

79 Then a multitude of stars fell on their knees before me,

80 and I counted them all,

81 and they paraded by me as in a march of mortals.

(for more on this text and topic, see my posts here and here)

The drama portrays the vision of Sinai as the enthronement of Moses as a godlike figure — the vice-regent of God. In the New Year festival, the king would have emerged from the Temple after his enthronement to declare the revelation given to him by Yahweh (see, e.g., Psalm 2:7). The people would have seen the king as if he were Yahweh himself because he was the representative of Yahweh.  Margaret Barker notes that in the Second Temple period, the high priest was still recognized as performing this function. She comments on the description of Simon the high priest emerging from the Temple:

When he emerged from the holy of holies he was like the morning star, like the sun shining on the temple; his very presence made the court of the temple glorious. When he had poured the libation, the trumpest sounded and “all the people together…fell to the ground upon their faces to worship (proskunein) their LORD…” (ben Sira 50:17). The most natural way to read this is that they were worshipping the high priest, or rather, Yahweh whom he represented.¹¹

Although it is not spelled out so clearly in the Book of Exodus, this is how the people see Moses after he descends from the mountain after speaking with the Lord. In Exodus 34, we read:

29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tables of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 30 And when Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.

33 And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; 34 but whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, 35 the people of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone; and Moses would put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

Moses appears to the Israelite people as if he were God himself.  He is the “angel” of Yahweh. His face radiates light, similar to Yahweh’s face (see Ps. 31:16; Ps. 67:1; Ps. 80:3, 7, 19).  This is how the king would have appeared (likely with a gold crown bearing the name of YHWH and golden vestments) — as an anthropomorphic vision of God to his worthy people who were gathered in the inner court of the Temple. The king would then proclaim the Law to the people and renew with them the Sinai covenant.

There is so much more that could be done with this topic — it could certainly cover many posts of considerable length to address all of the relevant issues here. This post doesn’t do justice to the complexity and richness of these issues. The ideas I have presented are just the bare structure of a very intricate theological system. The main idea that I want to express is that the events of the Exodus and the theophany at Sinai were foundational to Israel’s religion and self-identity, and that they maintained the power and effectiveness of this tradition by “reliving” it each year at their most important religious festival.  It was a ritualistic lesson regarding God’s salvific works in Israel’s past and how they could return to his presence.  They were able to experience, through the ritual drama, the past, present, and future all at once. This was the heart of Israel’s temple worship in the era of the First Temple.

1. That these sections were indeed presented as a song is expressed in Deut. 32:44.
2. See Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, vol. 1, 126
3. Mowinckel, 173-174
4. John Eaton, Festal Drama in Deutero-Isaiah, 14
5. Compare these as well to the cherubim placed at the eastward entrance to Eden in Gen. 3:24.
6. Johnson, Sacral Kingship, 72-74
7. Mowinckel, 179
8. Mowinckel, 180
9. Mowinckel, 178-179
10. Mowinckel, 142
11. Margaret Barker, Temple Themes in Christian Worship, 77

Joseph  is the beloved son of his father and (although not born first) is essentially made the firstborn.  Jewish tradition held that Joseph was the son that most looked like his father and whose life most resembled Jacob’s. Jacob taught Joseph the mysteries and the learning that he had obtained in the school of Shem and Eber. His (priesthood) garment was dipped in blood. Joseph was sent to be a slave/servant in Egypt (which is associated with Babylon, or the World). He was made second-in-command (vice-regent) in Potiphar’s house, and resisted all temptation. He was put into prison for crimes he did not commit. While in prison, he helped (in a way) liberate the good (butler/cup-bearer) and condemn the wicked (baker). He was raised up out of the prison to become vice-regent of Pharaoh. He is responsible for providing fertility/prosperity to Egypt (the World) during a time of draught, and brings salvation to his brethren. I’m sure there are many other parallels that can be noted.

After we are told of the death of Joseph, the book of Genesis ends and Exodus begins. The Israelites have multiplied and, because the Egyptians (who possibly overthrew the dynasty that favored Joseph and his Semitic family) feel threatened by their numbers, they are made slaves. We are told that they were in this condition of slavery for over 400 years. They looked forward to a new savior who would free them and return them to their promised land.  They desired, in effect, for the Lord to give them a new beginning.

That is exactly how the psalms represent the Exodus events — as a new Creation.  The psalms speak extensively about the Creation of the world, which they describe as Yahweh’s victory over the Chaos Waters — often including great sea monsters (Rahab, Leviathan, etc.). Gen. 1 picks up on this idea when it describes God as “dividing” the waters in the early stages of creation. The psalms are much more graphic and likely represent older versions of the story.  A good example is Psalm 74:12–17:

Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.

13 Thou didst divide the sea by thy might; thou didst break the heads of the dragons on the waters.

14 Thou didst crush the heads of Leviathan, thou didst give him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

15 Thou didst cleave open springs and brooks; thou didst dry up ever-flowing streams.

16 Thine is the day, thine also the night; thou hast established the luminaries and the sun.

17 Thou hast fixed all the bounds of the earth; thou hast made summer and winter.

Psalm 89 expresses a very similar image of Yahweh’s conflict at the Creation:

9 Thou dost rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, thou stillest them.

10 Thou didst crush Rahab like a carcass, thou didst scatter thy enemies with thy mighty arm.

11 The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine; the world and all that is in it, thou hast founded them.

12 The north and the south, thou hast created them; Tabor and Hermon joyously praise thy name.

Compare also Psalms104:5-9; 93:1-4. Yahweh’s victory over the Chaos waters and its forces of darkness merits his being enthroned as king over the world. Sigmund Mowinckel believed that this was the basis of the so-called enthronement (and other related) psalms we have in our Bible. He commented:

Even the special hymns of enthronement bring out very clearly that the fundamental myth of the festival is the myth of creation … Yahweh has become king of the world, because he has created it. And as we have seen, these psalms do not refer to any abstract notion of creation, but to the same mythical and poetical idea which may be glimpsed behind the account of the creation in Gen. 1, but which is much more prominent in other passages of the Old Testament, namely the idea of creation as the victorious struggle of Yahweh against the dragon of the primeval ocean, or against the primeval ocean itself (tehom).¹

Mowinckel then points out that in the Psalms (and elsewhere) the rise, or “election”, of Israel in the Exodus story is equated with the Creation. Egypt becomes the chaotic monster Rahab and the Red Sea becomes the primeval ocean, Tehom (Isa. 30:7; Ex. 15:48). Just as Yahweh divided the primeval waters, he also divides the Red Sea for his people. Through this historical act of “creation”, Yahweh becomes king over Israel (Deut. 33:2, 4f.; 114:1f.; cf. Deut. 32:8 LXX). Yahweh then builds his temple on his holy mountain (Ex. 15:17f.). Yahweh establishes his covenant with his people, which is then renewed at the annual festival (when all these psalms about Creation, the Exodus, and Yahweh’s enthronement in his temple are sung).²

Psalm 77 presents the dividing of the waters at the Exodus in the same type of “conflict” language as the Creation.

13 Thy way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? 14 Thou art the God who workest wonders, who hast manifested thy might among the peoples. 15 Thou didst with thy arm redeem thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah 16 When the waters saw thee, O God, when the waters saw thee, they were afraid, yea, the deep trembled. 17 The clouds poured out water; the skies gave forth thunder; thy arrows flashed on every side. 18 The crash of thy thunder was in the whirlwind; thy lightnings lighted up the world; the earth trembled and shook. 19 Thy way was through the sea, thy path through the great waters; yet thy footprints were unseen. 20 Thou didst lead thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

(Note the cool reference to God’s footprints in v. 19)

Psalm 114 contains very similar language, informing us that “When Israel went forth from Egypt…the sea looked and fled…at the presence of the Lord.”

One of the clearest passages that relates the primeval battle at Creation to the Exodus is Isa. 51:9–10:

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not thou that didst cut Rahab in pieces, that didst pierce the dragon? 10 Was it not thou that didst dry up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that didst make the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?

As Mowinckel noted, in the various manifestations of this motif, Pharaoh/Egypt seems to be cast as Rahab, the Dragon, the agent of Chaos in opposing Yahweh’s salvific works (liberating Israel). We also note that the plagues sent against Egypt line up quite well with the days of Creation — i.e., there are the plagues that have to do with water, with land, with the air, with darkness,  and with destruction of life (instead of creation). In the end, the waters are parted so that dry land appears, but then close down again to crush the Egyptians (Rahab). The Israelites (Adam and Eve) are placed in the Promised Land (eventually).

Last, but certainly not least, we should mention the role of Moses as Yahweh, dividing the waters. Exodus 7:1 alludes to this when God declares to Moses: “See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.” Moses was placed in the position of Yahweh in this story. Philo, at the turn of the era, understood this very literally and wrote that Moses “was named God and king of the entire nation.”³ At Qumran, 4Q374 2 ii relates Exo. 7:1 to the story of Moses’ transfiguration after seeing God on Sinai. It seems to be suggesting that Moses’ resultant shining face was evidence of his deification. Crispin Fletcher-Louis suggests that Moses, with his shining face, is fulfilling the priestly blessing of Aaron expressed in Num. 6:25 — “The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee.” Moses’ face, Fletcher-Louis argues, is to the Israelites as if it were the Lord’s face shining upon them.⁴  In the Exodus story, Moses speaks to Pharaoh through Aaron (his prophet). Moses performs great wonders, including the parting of the Red Sea, just as Yahweh parted the great waters at Creation.

This Creation story is fundamental to the oldest sections of the Hebrew Bible and can be seen repeated over and over — in the Flood story, the Exodus, the Psalms, Isaiah, Job, many of the minor prophets, and elsewhere. Keep that in mind and you will find many fun and insightful parallels that will help you understand your reading better. God’s work of Creation is the first work of Salvation and that theme is repeated over and over again in the history of Israel.

1. Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 1, 143
2. See Ibid., 154ff.
3. Philo, Life of Moses 1:158
4. Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “Some Reflections on Angelomorphic Humanity Texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Dead Sea Discoveries, vol. 7, no. 3 (2000), 298

While in the LDS Church we have at least four accounts of the Creation to work with, non-LDS biblical scholars have only two major canonical accounts (not counting allusions in the Psalms, etc.): Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 (which most believe to have been written by two different authors following different theologies). It is significant, therefore, to see the extent of the material that scholars can get out of those two chapters in Genesis.

As the work that Prof. Kaminsky presented to us is not yet published, I will not quote from it. But I do want to briefly outline some of the ideas that were discussed in our seminar and present them as a representative example of what some biblical scholars are saying today about the material we read in Genesis.

1. There is a significant difference between the creation story presented in Gen. 1 and the story in Gen. 2. There are also significant differences between these accounts and the creation material that is found in the book of Psalms, which is more representative of the creation myths found throughout the ancient Near East — the more common myth is that the cosmos was created after the cosmic battle of the gods. The Genesis accounts don’t preserve the more ancient ideas of the rebellion of the gods, the great pre-creation battle, or the struggle of God with chaos/the waters.

2. Although later Jewish and Christian interpreters would read the idea of creation ex-nihilo (out of nothing) into the text, that is not what it actually describes. In Gen. 1, the waters and the land are not created by God, but are put in their proper places by Him. There is a division and ordering of pre-existent materials.

3. Scholars see in the plural language of passages such as Gen. 1:26 a reference to an ancient Hebrew belief in a plurality of gods. Some would describe such passages as having reference to the Divine Council that planned the Creation. Many scholars are now of the belief that the religion of ancient Israel should more correctly be classified as monolatry (worship of one God, while acknowledging other gods) rather than monotheism.

4. Whereas some of the other ancient Near Eastern religious traditions (see Enuma Elish) see humans as having been created to be slaves to the gods, the Genesis account presents the first man and woman as having the potential to become god-like. It is largely recognized that the Serpent who beguiled Eve was, at least in part, telling the truth when he said that eating of the tree would make the human couple like God. When they ate the fruit, they didn’t die, but became like God, knowing good from evil.

These are just a few of the more significant (for my purposes) of the many ideas discussed at the seminar. I am grateful to Prof. Kaminsky for his insightful theological commentary on Genesis and for bringing his ideas all the way here to St Andrews to be discussed in our forum.