Clay Burell's Library tagged judaism → View Popular

Noah's flood (and the earlier Gilgamesh version) a myth centered on the formation of the Black Sea in 5600? It's a scientific controversy I've never heard about. Fascinating.

www.historyfiles.co.uk/...potamiaLostCivilisations01.htm - Preview

bible judaism myth gilgamesh

There were certainly several 
                largescale floods in Ancient Mesopotamia, with perhaps one of 
                the worst being that which took place between about 2900-2750 
                BC. This was probably the legendary flood of Sumerian 
                literature, which was handed down through the generations to 
                become Noah's great flood, but it may have carried a memory of a 
                far earlier and greater flood: that of the Mediterranean 
                breaking into the Black Sea in about 5600 BC [Ed].

There were certainly several
largescale floods in Ancient Mesopotamia, with perhaps one of
the worst being that which took place between about 2900-2750
BC. This was probably the legendary flood of Sumerian
literature, which was handed down through the generations to
become Noah's great flood, but it may have carried a memory of a
far earlier and greater flood: that of the Mediterranean
breaking into the Black Sea in about 5600 BC [Ed].

09 Jul 09

Salon.com Books | History is bunk after all

So much of this pertains to the histories in the Bible as well. Much more complex than the simple and dangerous ways they're represented in our cultures today. Prof. Hayes' Open Yale lectures on the Old Testament explicate this beautifully, if only implicitly.

www.salon.com/...print.html - Preview

history historiography bible loewen judaism

Some people embrace "bad history" because it reinforces their national, regional or ethnic identity, as in the case of the Serbs or those Japanese conservatives who want archaeologists kept out of the ancient tombs of the royal family for fear that the remains found there will indicate that the emperors have non-Japanese ancestors. People seeking to keep the Irish divided once perpetrated the myth that only Protestants fought alongside the British in World War I, when in fact 210,000 Irish Catholics and nationalists volunteered. Others use the past to deflect attention from their own mischief, like the governing elites in China, who dwell on its history of colonialism, persecution and victimization at the hands of the West in order to invalidate any criticism from outsiders as more of the same.
"Dangerous Games" calls for "professional historians" (by which I think MacMillan means "academics") to "contest the one-sided, even false, histories that are out there in the public domain. If we do not, we allow our leaders and opinion makers to use history to bolster false claims and justify bad and foolish policies."
4 more annotations...
- According to MacMillan, political and economic history, if properly studied, can offer much-needed guidance to today's leaders and can encourage skepticism in the public when demagogues try to justify themselves using distorted images of the past. Like quite a bit of "Dangerous Games," this statement seems so obvious that it hardly needs to be made in the first place. And surely there must be more to it than simply boning up. After all, George W. Bush reportedly spent most of his presidency reading one historical work after another without gaining much in the way of political wisdom. Instead, he scoured the books in search of validation for his own preset ideas. Reading an account of France's battle against Algerian insurgents, he concluded that it failed not because oppressive French tactics alienated Algeria's population but because "their bureaucracy was not up to the job." He launched his war on terror while reading about Churchill, but he finished his presidency by harping on Truman, an unpopular president whose reputation recovered after he left office.
- Noting that Churchillian hero worship is far more prevalent on this side of the pond than in Britain, where more people have had "direct experience" of the prime minister "in other roles than that of the great World War II leader," MacMillan speculates that the fascination lies in the conviction that WWII was "the last morally unambiguous good war." But lack of ambiguity is precisely what makes history "bad." Bad history dispenses with "nuances in favor of tales that belong to morality plays but do not help us consider the past in all its complexity." The British historian Michael Howard calls this species of fairy story "nursery history."
- Bad history may be more likely to lead to bad analogies, but it's clear from the dozens of examples she offers in "Dangerous Games" that you can also draw a bad analogy from good history. And MacMillan doesn't really explain how to avoid that particular pitfall. Perhaps that's too much to ask. The most important lesson to be gained from history, she writes, is simply "humility ... Knowing that classical Chinese civilization valued scholars above soldiers or that the Roman family was very different from the nuclear one of the modern West suggests other values and other ways of organizing society."
  
  To recognizes this is not, she maintains, merely "relativism," but rather the awareness that the threats, incentives and tactics that work on us won't necessarily persuade people in other cultures and situations. Americans, who often have so little understanding of what it's like not to live in an affluent democratic superpower, are especially prone to mistakes in this department, as our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have amply shown.
- Which is why seemingly lightweight examples like Highland kilts and wedding veils -- pace MacMillan's concerns about the diversions of culture studies -- remain enlightening. When a contemporary dispute with historical foundations is as explosive as, say, the Arab-Israeli conflict or the debate over whether Turkey perpetrated genocide on the Armenians, it becomes very difficult to acknowledge how history can be rewritten or overlooked in order to satisfy the desires of today. By contrast, we can laugh about the booming business in peddling Highlander trappings to people of Scottish descent or about the truly titanic dimensions of the wedding-industrial complex. When the stakes are lower, we can admit that some of our dearest traditions have very shallow roots indeed, however much we'd like to believe otherwise. The past can't be changed, it's true, but perhaps it can be overcome more easily than we realize.

28 Jun 09

Nampa charter school to use Bible as textbook - Salt Lake Tribune

www.sltrib.com/ci_12703678 - Preview

charters religion judaism

As for the Bible, if students are going to learn about Western civilization, they have to learn about the ancient Hebrews, Moffett said, and "the most authoritative text on ancient Hebrews is the Old Testament."

"If you want to be a fraud in front of those students, then omit the Bible," he said. "The kids don't have to believe it, but to understand a people's culture you have to understand the religious culture as well."
- I'm actually in agreement with the impulse, but the Bible is not the most accurate authority on the Hebrews. Modern scholarship is. - on 2009-06-28
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Bill Goesling, chairman of the Idaho Public Charter School Commission, said the Bible wasn't discussed when Nampa Classical Academy was approved last year. The school drafted a 280-page charter outlining its goals and overall philosophy, a document that does not mention the Bible or religion.

"I don't remember it coming up. Had it been known, I think we would have spent a little bit more time on it," Goesling said. "If it's being used as a whole class, and it becomes a Bible study, than we are going to have a problem.

"We've had two different petitions that approached it in that sense, that it was going to be more of a religious study than a historical study, and we turned them down."

Shawna Schneiderman, a 33-year-old former Notus teacher and one of two dozen instructors at Nampa Classical Academy, says the Bible is one of many texts students will read from.

For example, when studying the history and the culture of the Hebrews, Greeks and Mesopotamians, the students will read Greek myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh and from the book of Genesis, Schneiderman said.

"We knew people would come and say you can't do that," she said. "We knew people would not understand."
- Ooh, I bet the students googling Gilgamesh will find the Unsucky English Lectures on it. Good. - on 2009-06-28
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25 Jun 09

Auerbach's Odysseus' Scar

A lit crit classic now available online. How cool.

www.westmont.edu/...OdysseusScar.html - Preview

homer greeks judaism bible

Transcript 11 - On the Steps of Moab: Deuteronomy - Open Yale Courses

fascinating: the priestly hoax that led to unified temple worship in Jerusalem under King Josiah.

oyc.yale.edu/...transcript11.html - Preview

judaism judeo-christianity history religion

the Bible depicts Moses as receiving
law from God and conveying it to the Israelites. But clearly Moses
isn't the author or compiler of the legal traditions contained in the
Bible. Some of the individual laws we know are found in very, very,
very Ancient Near Eastern laws: they're part of an Ancient Near Eastern
legal tradition. The collections as a whole clearly date to a much
later period of time--and we're going to see that clearly when we talk
about Deuteronomy today--and they have been retrojected back to the
time of Moses.
Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with
the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands upon him
43 more annotations...
- So Israel's wanderings in the wilderness end on the Plains of Moab,
  which is on the east bank of the Jordan River, and it's there that the
  book of Deuteronomy opens. There Moses is going to deliver three long
  speeches prior to the Israelites' entry into the Promised Land, and
  these three speeches constitute the bulk of the book of Deuteronomy. So
  Deuteronomy differs very much from the other four books of the
  Pentateuch because in those books you have an anonymous narrator who
  describes Yahweh as directing his words to Moses to then be conveyed to
  Israel. Moses will speak to Israel on God's behalf. But in Deuteronomy
  Moses is going to be speaking directly to the Israelites so that the
  book is written almost entirely in the first person, whereas the first
  four books of the Pentateuch are not; they are third person anonymous
  narrative, narration. Here we have the bulk of the book in the first
  person: direct speech.
- Moshe
  Weinfeld is one of the leading scholars of Deuteronomy and he describes
  the book as expressing ideology by means of a programmatic speech put
  into the mouth of a great leader. That's a very common practice in
  later Israelite historiography, and he says it's happening here
  already.
- Deuteronomy differs from the other books of the
  Pentateuch in other significant ways. So for example, according to the
  Priestly writer, Israel received its laws, its Torah, from God at Mount
  Sinai. But in Deuteronomy the laws were given here on the Plains of
  Moab, 40 years after Sinai, before the Israelites crossed the Jordan.
  At Sinai the Israelites heard the Decalogue but the remainder of the
  laws, it would seem, are delivered on the Plains of Moab.
- Now the Greek title for this book, which is Deuteronomy, deutero
  nomos, a second law, a repetition of the law, and that name derives
  from the fact that the bulk of the book contains this legal core of
  material which reviews the law.
- from
  ancient Greece we know that in the ancient world settlers who would
  colonize a place, particularly if they colonized a place at divine
  instigation, they would perform certain ceremonies that would be
  accompanied by blessings and accompanied by curses. They would write
  the laws on stone pillars, they would erect an altar for sacrifices,
  they would proclaim blessings and curses for those who obey and
  disobey--very similar to what happens in chapter 27; all of these
  elements appear in chapter 27.
- But the importance of the
  Deuteronomist's view of history in which Israel's fate is totally
  conditioned on her obedience to the covenant--this is something that
  will occupy us repeatedly at a future date. I mention it here but it's
  something we will need to come back to.
- Listen to the cadences of this kind of language in Deuteronomy. We
  haven't heard language like this before but it's what people often
  think of when they think of biblical language. It starts here in
  Deuteronomy.
- Now centuries ago already scholars of the Bible noted that
  Deuteronomy opens with the verse, "These are the words that Moses
  addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan," that is to
  say the trans-Jordan, on the other side of the Jordan. So that line is
  obviously written from the prospective of someone who is inside the
  land, saying Moses said that when he was over there, outside the land,
  on the other side of the Jordan--so he's looking eastward. And so
  that's a line that one would think could not be written by Moses
  because Moses did not ever enter the land and would not be in a
  position to talk about something being on the other side of the Jordan.
- And so through careful analysis you have scholars like Moshe
  Weinfeld and many others--I think Bernard Levinson is the one has
  written about Deuteronomy in your Jewish Study Bible, and that's
  a wonderful introduction to read there, so I encourage you to please
  make sure you look at that--but analyses of scholars like these have
  led them to draw the conclusion that the original core of Deuteronomy
  emerged in the eighth century,
- the original core of Deuteronomy
  emerged in the eighth century,
- It was
  probably a scroll of laws known as the Book or the Scroll of the Torah.
  Deuteronomy refers to itself that way in Deuteronomy 17:19-20. And so
  we think it was probably something roughly equivalent to chapters 12 to
  26; maybe there was a little introduction, a little conclusion. And
  eventually these laws were put into the framework of a speech by Moses:
  maybe chapters 5 through 11 and maybe 28; maybe that would've been in
  the eighth, seventh century. And then at some later point several
  things happened, and I will say them in the following order, but that
  doesn't mean they happened in this order, we really aren't sure.
- You also have laws being updated, passages being expanded,
  to reflect the experience of exile. You'll remember that as of 586,
  Jerusalem is destroyed and the Israelites are in exile in Babylonia.
  Additionally at some point Deuteronomy is appended to the other four
  books of the Pentateuch. Genesis through Numbers is made to precede
  this. It's serving therefore as their conclusion, and by being joined
  to them it confers its title as a book of Torah, as a scroll of Torah,
  to that material as well. They don't use the word "Torah" in that way,
  in those books; only Deuteronomy uses the word Torah to speak of God's
  instruction or revelation overall. So by being appended now to Genesis
  through Numbers, all of this perhaps comes to be known as Torah, as
  well. And then finally during the exile or sorry, probably during the
  period after the exile--no, during the exile, down to the end of the
  sixth century, Deuteronomy was incorporated into a larger narrative
  history that runs from Joshua through Judges, First and Second Samuel,
  First and Second Kings: that's all a unit, as we'll come to see in the
  next lecture. And so Deuteronomy in a way served as an introduction to
  that material looking forward; so a conclusion to the previous four
  books but also an introduction to a long narrative history that's going
  to run through to the end of 2 Kings. Now there's a lot of debate over
  the precise timing of these events and this process by which this
  material grew and was expanded, but in the post-exilic period, at some
  point, the entire unit, the Genesis through Numbers material,
  Deuteronomy, and then the lengthy historical narrative, all the way
  through 2 Kings, was solidified.
- So if you are in exile, then perhaps a more satisfying ending
  is to have Israel not in fact entering the land.
- modern notions of authorship cannot be applied to biblical
  texts. We think of an author, we tend to think of an author, as a
  discrete individual who composes a text at a specific time, but this
  isn't the way that texts came into being in the ancient world,
  particularly important communal texts. As Weinfeld points out, the
  biblical authors were what we would call collectors, compilers,
  revisers, editors, and interpreters of ancient tradition. Ancient texts
  were generally the product of many hands over the stretch of many long
  centuries, and during that time modifications and recontextualizations
  occurred.
- the question is,
  what is the relationship between the different versions of the legal
  material? Some of these laws will parallel each other quite closely and
  others do not. So are Deuteronomy's legal traditions a direct response
  to or modification of the laws in Exodus and Numbers, or are they best
  understood as just different, independent formulations of a common
  legal tradition?
- Deuteronomy revises and reforms them
  according to new ideas: its new notion of a centralized cultic worship,
  and secondly its humanitarian spirit.
- dependent on the E source
- author of Deuteronomy limits the
  revelation at Sinai to the Decalogue and seems to assert that the full
  law was given to Moses for the Israelites on the plains of Moab. In
  Weinfeld's view this means that Deuteronomy, with its revisions, would
  have been seen, would have been presented as and would have been seen
  as an updated replacement of the old Book of the Covenant, rather than
  its complement. It exists side by side in our text now, but I think in
  his view those who promulgated it were understanding it as the updated
  replacement of the laws of the Book of the Covenant.
- the few civil
  laws that are there tend to be reworked in line with Deuteronomy's
  humanity. So, for example, the laws of the tithe, the laws of the
  seventh year release of debts, the rules for the release of slaves, the
  rules for the three festivals--these are all ancient laws; they occur
  in Exodus but they appear in Deuteronomy with modifications,
  modifications about things that concern the Deuteronomists, and some of
  you have discussed some of these in section. So in Deuteronomy the
  Israelite debt slave comes out of his or her servitude, with generous
  gifts from the owners. This is not something that appears in Exodus. Or
  as another example, Deuteronomy extends the Covenant Code's prohibition
  against afflicting a resident alien. In Deuteronomy there's the
  insistence that the Israelites must not just refrain from afflicting
  them, but must love the resident alien. It goes so far as to provide
  concrete legal benefits, food and so on, for the resident alien.
- the relationship
  between D and the laws in the Priestly source is more difficult to
  characterize. The Priestly source seems to represent an equally early
  set of laws, legal traditions, that just emanated from a very different
  circle and had different concerns. It tends to deal with sacral topics,
  or if it's dealing with other topics it will deal with the sacral
  implications of those topics. Like D, P often updates and revises laws
  of the Covenant Code. We can see that in the fact that the Priestly
  source abolishes Israelite debt slavery altogether and insists that
  slaves must be acquired only from the nations around Israel: no
  Israelite can enslave another Israelite. Nevertheless Weinfeld argues
  that on occasion Deuteronomy contains laws that are also found in P,
  but presents them in a more rational manner, is the word he uses, or
  desacralized manner. So D's treatment, Deuteronomy's treatment of
  sacrifice, we'll see in a moment, is going to be different, for
  example, from P's. They have different concerns and different foci in
  their presentation of that material.
- So
  Deuteronomy exemplifies a phenomenon that occurs at several critical
  junctures in Israel's history--and we're going to see this as we move
  forward through the biblical text--and that is the modification and
  re-writing of earlier laws and traditions in the light of new
  circumstances and ideas. So Deuteronomy is itself an implicit
  authorization of the process of interpretation. And the notion of
  canon, or sacred canon, that's exemplified then by biblical texts is
  one that allows for continued unfolding and development of the sacred
  tradition. And that's an idea that I think differs very much from
  modern intuitions about the nature of sacred canons. I think a lot of
  people have the intuition that a sacred canon means that the text is
  fixed, static and authoritative because it is fixed and static, or
  unchanging. That's not the biblical view or ancient view of sacred
  canon. Texts representing sacred revelation were modified, they were
  revised, they were rephrased, they were updated and they were
  interpreted in the process of transmission and preservation. It was
  precisely because a text or a tradition was sacred and authoritative
  that it was important that it adapt and speak to new circumstances;
  otherwise it would appear to be irrelevant. So it's a very different
  notion of what it means for something to be canonical and sacred, from
  what I think some moderns have come to understand those terms to
  mean.
- what are the special circumstances and concerns that guide
  Deuteronomy's revisions of tradition?
- emphasis on worship at
  a single, central shrine
- in a place that God himself will choose--it's
  not named
- striking similarities between Deuteronomy's religious
  program and the major religious reforms that were carried out in the
  eighth century by King Hezekiah, but even more so in the seventh
  century by King Josiah, around 622: King Josiah. This is a reform
  that's reported in the book of 2 Kings, in 2 Kings 22. This reform has
  long been noticed and provides scholars with a basis for dating the
  core materials of Deuteronomy, dating them to the late seventh century.
  According to the story in 2 Kings, during temple repairs that were
  being done in the time of King Josiah, the scroll of the Torah--that's
  how it's phrased--the scroll of the Torah was found and when it was
  read the king was distressed because its requirements were not being
  upheld. Now this term, the scroll of the Torah, as I said, does not
  occur in Genesis through Numbers; it is a phrase that occurs in
  Deuteronomy, in Deuteronomy 17.
  - So Josiah's reforms were based on a priestly Deuteronomistic hoax: the Torah was never called "scroll of the Torah" before D. Was it a priestly power grab, a consolidation of authority by divesting the country/hilltop shrine priests of authority? - on 2009-06-25
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- in 2 Kings,
  Josiah is said to take action. He assembles the people, he publicly
  reads the scroll, the people agree to its terms and then Josiah's
  reforms begin. We hear that he purges the temple of vessels that had
  been made for Baal and Asherah, that were in the Temple of Yahweh. He
  removes all foreign elements from the cult, he prohibits sacrifice to
  Yahweh anywhere but in the central sanctuary. He destroys all of the
  high places--this refers to sort of rural shrines that were scattered
  throughout the countryside where local priests and Levites might offer
  sacrifices for people--ritual shrines and pillars being used in the
  worship of Yahweh: these are deemed to be quite legitimate in the J and
  E sources. The patriarchs are doing this sort of thing all the time,
  building altars all around the country, but it's Deuteronomy that
  contains commandments to destroy the worship, first of all the worship
  of other gods but also the worship of Yahweh in high places or in rural
  shrines. So this is evidence again that what Josiah found to base his
  reforms on was something like the Book of Deuteronomy: it's Deuteronomy
  that contains the prohibitions of high places and so on.
- After these reforms it's reported that the Passover was celebrated.
  It was celebrated not as a family observance in individual homes; it
  was celebrated as a national pilgrimage festival, celebrated by
  everyone in Jerusalem. That's how its celebration is described in the
  Book of Deuteronomy. It's described as a family celebration in
  individual homes in the other books of the Bible. So again this is
  another basis for the conclusion that the scroll of the law, found by
  Josiah and guiding his reforms, was something like the legal core of
  Deuteronomy.
- Scholars now think that that legal core of Deuteronomy was
  produced in the Northern Kingdom, the Northern Kingdom of Israel which
  fell in 722, you'll recall. It was probably produced there in the
  eighth century, and that is supported by the fact that Deuteronomy has
  affinities with the writings of some prophets we'll be looking at later
  from the Northern Kingdom of the eighth century, such as the prophet
  Hosea, and we'll see this when we look at Hosea's writings. It also has
  affinities with the E source, which is also connected with the Northern
  Kingdom. In the ninth and eighth century, the Northern Kingdom was the
  site of a struggle, a struggle against Baal worship. It was also home
  to certain prophets such as Elijah and Elisha, who are known for their
  zealotry and their exclusive Yahwism.
- So some scholars think that was going on in the ninth/eighth century
  in the north, the sort of Yahweh-only party that was working hard and
  struggling against Baal worship. And they think that those Yahweh-only
  traditions were brought south; after the fall of the Northern Kingdom
  in 722, you have refugees coming south, they brought these traditions
  with them. Some of these written materials were put into the Temple and
  then about a century later, during Josiah's time, when the Temple was
  being refurbished, they were found.
  - The plot thickens: not a hoax after all? - on 2009-06-25
  Add Sticky Note
- So the centralization of the cult also needs to be understood
  against the larger political backdrop of the late seventh century. The
  Assyrian threat loomed large. You have to remember that the Northern
  Kingdom has already been completely destroyed: ten tribes exiled,
  deported, and essentially lost. The Southern Kingdom managed to escape
  destruction but only by paying tribute as a vassal to Assyria. So
  Judah, the Southern Kingdom, is a tribute-paying vassal state to the
  Assyrian overlord. And of course there's a great deal of Assyrian
  cultural influence and religious influence in Judah as a result. So 2
  Kings tells us that there were foreign forms of worship being
  introduced right into the Temple. Josiah's reforms have been
  interpreted by some as an attempt to assert the political and the
  cultural and religious autonomy of Judah. Unregulated worship
  throughout the land was no longer going to be acceptable; the people
  were going to be united around a central, standardized Yahweh cult,
  which would be purged of any Assyrian influence or foreign influence.
  And this was deemed as necessary to stand up against or to survive the
  Assyrian threat. So it's in that context that we can look at the very
  strong parallels that exist between the Book of Deuteronomy and certain
  Assyrian treaties, from the seventh century.
  - So was the Assyrian religion tied more to Mesopotamia or to the Canaanite/Ugaritic tradition? Was Gilgamesh part of this culture?
    
    This pushes back my "exilic reaction" theory by a century or so.... - on 2009-06-25
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- Deuteronomy reworks the second-millennium Hittite model in
  accordance with the covenantal patterns that are evident in the
  first-millennium vassal treaties of Esarhaddon. We see history being
  used as a motivational tool and we see laws being reinforced by curses;
  and it's fascinating, if you line up some of the curses in Esarhaddon's
  treaties with the curses in Deuteronomy, there's an amazing
  correspondence. Deuteronomy also includes blessings; the Assyrians
  didn't do that.
- Weinfeld notes that the Assyrian treaties are really
  loyalty oaths that are imposed upon vassals, rather than true
  covenants. And Deuteronomy is also something of a loyalty oath, except
  that the people are pledging their loyalty to a god rather than to a
  human king. So you have the exhortation to love the Lord your God--and
  think back to some of that language that we heard as I read Deuteronomy
  30 -- he exhortation to love the Lord your God, to go after God, to
  fear God, to listen to the voice of God: these are all typical of
  pledges of loyalty, and they are paralleled in the Assyrian treaties
  where the vassal has to love the crown prince, he has to listen to the
  voice of the crown prince. The same phraseologies are used. So it is a
  political literary form, but it's borrowed and it's referred to God.
- he Assyrian treaties also will warn against prophets or ecstatics or
  dream interpreters who will try to foment sedition. If you'll notice in
  Deuteronomy 13 we have something quite similar: a warning against false
  prophets who will try to foment sedition, and lead the people to the
  worship of other gods. Some scholars refer to Deuteronomy as a kind of
  counter treaty, if you will, right? A subversive document that's trying
  to shift the people's loyalty from the Assyrian overlord to God, the
  true sovereign, and it's part of a national movement.
- Deuteronomy differs in style, in terminology, in outlook and in
  theological assumptions from the other books of the Torah. As a series
  of public speeches it adopts a highly rhetorical tone, a very...
  sometimes an almost artificial style. It's a style of a very skilled
  preacher almost. It employs direct address: you, you; sometimes in the
  singular, sometimes in the plural, but Moses is constantly speaking in
  a very personal tone, direct address. And there are all sorts of
  hortatory phrases, phrases that exhort you: to do this with all your
  heart and soul, do this in order that it may go well with you. The land
  is described as a land where milk and honey flow, and if only you will
  obey the voice of Yahweh your God. This is the kind of language that's
  used here, and not so much in the other books.
  - So the D priests use Moses as their mouthpiece. - on 2009-06-25
  Add Sticky Note
- Now slaughter in the
  countryside was simply common, profane slaughter. As a result you have
  a lot of rural Levites who are out of business now, a lot of people who
  would have officiated at local shrines, and they're out of business:
  that probably explains the fact that Deuteronomy makes special
  provision for the Levites and includes them in its... in legislation,
  sort of social welfare legislation. There are provisions that are made
  for the Levites, who are not going to be able to earn their income
  anymore at these local shrines. So many of them would have gone up to
  Jerusalem and a real tension is going to develop between the Jerusalem
  priests and this class of Levites who are newcomers; and we'll see some
  of that tension played out in some other texts.
  - Yup. A priestly civil war. - on 2009-06-25
  Add Sticky Note
- We also have a greater abstraction of the deity; this is
  something many people point to in the Book of Deuteronomy because
  Deuteronomy and books that are related to it--those that are going to
  follow--consistently refer to the sanctuary as the place where Yahweh
  chose to cause his name to dwell. God himself isn't said to dwell in
  the temple, nor is the temple described as a house of God. The temple
  is always the dwelling of his name. The house is built for his name.
  Weinfeld asserts that this is in order to combat the ancient popular
  belief that God actually dwells in the sanctuary. Likewise to eradicate
  or guard against the idea, which is implicit in earlier sources, that
  God sits enthroned on the cherubim, on the cherubim, who guard his ark,
  Deuteronomy emphasizes that the function of the ark is exclusively to
  house the tablets, the tablets of the covenant; that's its purpose. The
  ark cover isn't mentioned, the cherubim aren't mentioned. We don't have
  the image of this as a throne with the ark as God's footstool. So it
  seems to be a greater abstraction of the deity.
- shift from visual to aural
  imagery in describing God's self-manifestations or theophanies. One
  hears God but one doesn't see God, in Deuteronomy. And that's very
  different from earlier texts where we're seeing a sort of a cloud
  encased fire and so on. So the sanctuary is understood to be a house of
  worship, as much as it is a cultic center, in which Israelites and
  foreigners alike may deliver prayers to God who dwells in heaven. So he
  is in heaven; this is a place of worship.
- when it focuses on sacrifices it focuses on a
  different aspect of those sacrifices. The sacrifices it talks about
  consist primarily of offerings that are consumed by the offerer in the
  sanctuary, or are shared with the disenfranchised in some way: the
  Levite, the resident alien [correction: resident alien], the orphan,
  the widow--portions are given to them. So by emphasizing the obligation
  to share the sacrificial meal with disadvantaged members of society,
  Deuteronomy almost gives the impression that the primary purpose of the
  sacrifice is humanitarian, or at least personal--the fulfillment of a
  religious obligation or the expression of gratitude to God and so on.
  These are aspects of the sacrifices that are emphasized in
  Deuteronomy.
  - Good, if followed by actual implementation. - on 2009-06-25
  Add Sticky Note
- Deuteronomy also emphasizes social justice and personal ethics and
  neighborly responsibility. God's own righteous behavior on behalf of
  the weak and the oppressed is a model for Israel's righteous behavior.
  God assists the orphan, the widow and the stranger, and that's the
  basis of Israel's injunction to assist them also. It's the basis for
  the humanitarianism that I mentioned earlier that seems to run through
  the laws of Deuteronomy 12 through 26.
  - Is this humanitarianism limited to Jews only, or to all people? I.e., is it racist? - on 2009-06-25
  Add Sticky Note
- Moreover Deuteronomy 31 proclaims that every seventh year the Torah
  is to be read publicly, the entire thing. And Weinfeld argues that
  where many Ancient Near Eastern cultures direct the king to write the
  laws for himself, to read them, it's only in Israel--he's yet to find a
  parallel--it's only in Israel that the law is a manual for both the
  king and the people. It's to be proclaimed and read aloud to the
  people, on a regular basis, every seven years.
  - In other words, it's a theocracy. The priests have hog-tied the King. - on 2009-06-25
  Add Sticky Note
- The Deuteronomist
  makes it clear that God's great love should awaken a reciprocal love on
  Israel's part, love of God. Love of God here really means loyalty. The
  word that is used is a word that stresses loyalty.
- Another key idea that occurs in Deuteronomy is the idea of Israel as
  the chosen people. We find it here for the first time. It's an
  expression of the particularity of Israel and its unique relationship
  with God, and that uniqueness is expressed by this term, bachar,
  which means "to elect" or "to choose." This is the first time we
  encounter this. Yahweh has chosen Israel in an act of freely bestowed
  grace and love to be his special property. Deuteronomy 10:14:
  
  Mark, the heavens to their uttermost reaches belong to the
  Lord your God, the earth and all that is on it! Yet it was to your
  fathers that the Lord was drawn in His love for them, so that He chose
  you, their lineal descendents, from among all peoples--as is now the
  case.
- perhaps to put it too
  crudely--for P, for the Priestly source, holiness is a goal to be
  attained through obedience to God's Torah. For Deuteronomy, holiness is
  a status to be lost through disobedience to God's Torah.

24 Jun 09

Transcript 10 - Biblical Law: The Three Legal Corpora of JE (Exodus), P (Leviticus and Numbers) and D (Deuteronomy) — Open Yale Courses

The Bible's 3 _different_ versions of the "Ten Commandments". Why do fundamentalists think they know which one is the "real" one?

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judaism fundamentalism christianity literacy

It's important to realize
that the Pentateuch contains three versions of the Decalogue. And there
are differences among them. The Decalogue is going to be repeated in
Deuteronomy, chapter five. And there are some minor variations.
Specifically you'll see that the rationale for observing the Sabbath is
different. God's name in Deuteronomy 5 is not to be used in a vain oath
as opposed to a false oath. There are differences in the meaning. And
there are some more differences too in language. So what are we to make
of this?

One scholar, Marc Brettler, whose name I've mentioned before, he
says that what we learn from this, these variations, is something about
the way ancient Israel preserved and transmitted sacred texts. They
didn't strive for verbatim preservation when they transmitted biblical
texts. And they didn't employ cut and paste methods that might be
important to us in the transmission of something. Texts were modified
in the course of their transmission. Verbatim repetition was not valued
in the way that it might be for us. So that even a text like the
Decalogue, which is represented as being the unmediated word of God,
can appear in more than one version.

There's a more surprising variation that occurs, however, in Exodus
34. After smashing the first set of tablets that were inscribed with
the Decalogue--the tablets in Exodus 20, those are smashed after the
golden calf incident--Moses is then given a second set of tablets. And
the biblical writer emphasizes in the story at that point that God
writes on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets that
were broken. The same words. So we expect now a verbatim repetition of
Exodus 20. And yet we don't have it. The Decalogue that follows in fact
has very little overlap with the earlier Decalogue. There's really only
two statements that even have the same content.
It's important to realize
that the Pentateuch contains three versions of the Decalogue. And there
are differences among them.
1 more annotations...
- There's a more surprising variation that occurs, however, in Exodus
  34. After smashing the first set of tablets that were inscribed with
  the Decalogue--the tablets in Exodus 20, those are smashed after the
  golden calf incident--Moses is then given a second set of tablets. And
  the biblical writer emphasizes in the story at that point that God
  writes on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets that
  were broken. The same words. So we expect now a verbatim repetition of
  Exodus 20. And yet we don't have it. The Decalogue that follows in fact
  has very little overlap with the earlier Decalogue. There's really only
  two statements that even have the same content. And even those, which
  do overlap in content, vary in wording. This Decalogue, which is often
  called the ritual Decalogue, so it's listed on there [the handout] in
  Exodus 34, bans intermarriage with Canaanites less they entice the
  Israelites into worship of their gods. It has other terms that give
  commandments about the observance of the festivals, various festivals,
  the dedication of first fruits to God, the dedication of first born
  animals to God and so on; things that were not in the Exodus 20
  Decalogue.

26 May 09

Downloads — Open Yale Courses Intro to Old Testament

good prof

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10 May 09

The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple

looks good

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Ludlul bēl nēmeqi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sumerian=Akkadian model for the Bible's Book of Job? Good bibliography, too.

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Gilgamesh bible judaism history

16 Mar 09

BibleGateway.com - Keyword Search: Babylon

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Psalm 137: By the Rivers of Babylon

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¹ By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
       when we remembered Zion.
² There on the poplars
       we hung our harps,
³ for there our captors asked us for songs,
       our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
       they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
⁴ How can we sing the songs of the LORD
       while in a foreign land?
⁵ If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
       may my right hand forget its skill .
⁶ May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
       if I do not remember you,
       if I do not consider Jerusalem
       my highest joy.
⁷ Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
       on the day Jerusalem fell.
       "Tear it down," they cried,
       "tear it down to its foundations!"
⁸ O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
       happy is he who repays you
       for what you have done to us-
⁹ he who seizes your infants
       and dashes them against the rocks.

Ugarit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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gilgamesh ishtar judaism

Ugarit's location was forgotten until 1928 when an Alawite peasant accidentally opened an old tomb while plowing a field. The discovered area was the Necropolis of Ugarit located in the nearby seaport of Minet el-Beida. Excavations have since revealed an important city that takes its place alongside Ur and Eridu as a cradle of urban culture, with a prehistory reaching back to ca. 6000 BC, perhaps because it was both a port and at the entrance of the inland trade route to the Euphrates and Tigris lands.
Though the site is thought to have been inhabited earlier, Neolithic Ugarit was already important enough to be fortified with a wall early on, perhaps by 6000 BC.
3 more annotations...
- Unfortunately for Ugarit, no help arrived and Ugarit was burned to the ground at the end of the Bronze Age. Its destruction levels contained Late Helladic IIIB ware, but no LH IIIC (see Mycenaean period). Therefore, the date of the destruction is important for the dating of the LH IIIC phase. Since an Egyptian sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah was found in the destruction levels, 1190 BC was taken as the date for the beginning of the LH IIIC. A cuneiform tablet found in 1986 shows that Ugarit was destroyed after the death of Merneptah. It is generally agreed that Ugarit had already been destroyed by the 8th year of Ramesses III—i. e. 1178 BC.
- Writing of 'religion' in the Ancient Near East is at best a dubious science. Academia prefers to speak of various 'cults' within the ancient context.^[2] The important textual finds from the Ras Shamra (Ugarit) site shed a great deal of light upon the cultic life of the city and Canaanite culture. There is growing scholarly agreement that the material culture of Ugarit should be properly designated Canaanite High Culture.^[3]
  
  In the north-east quarter of the walled inclosure the remains of three significant buildings were unearthed; the temples of Baal and Dagon and the library (sometimes referred to as the high priest's house). Within these structures atop the acropolis numerous invaluable mythological texts were found. Since the 1930s these texts have opened up for us something of the Canaanite mythological world. The Baal Cycle represents Baal's destruction of Yam (the chaos sea monster), demonstrating the relationship of Canaanite chaoskampf with those of Mesopotamia and the Aegean: warrior god rises up as the hero of the new pantheon to defeat chaos and bring order.
- It is almost certain that the cult(s) of Baal in the Levant influenced later Israelite cult and mythology. Yahweh often takes on the chaoskampf role of Baal in his struggle with the chaotic sea. It would, however, be incorrect to use later redacted biblical texts to reconstruct Canaanite religion or cult. As the soonest we can date a people known as Israel in southern Canaan is by the Merneptah Stele (c.a. 1200 BCE), and it would be some two hundred years more before this people have a monarchic state.
  
  While we know El to be the chief of the Canaanite pantheon, very little attention is paid to him in the cultic/mythological texts. This is rather common of Middle to Late Bronze Age mythology; the high god is drawn into the background whilst new warrior deities move to centre stage. In Ugarit and much of the Levant this is Baal, to the Shosu and the later Israelites this is Yahweh and his consort, and in Mesopotamia this is Marduk. These warrior-god mythologies show remarkable points of contact and are most likely reflections of the same arche-myth.

Asherah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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gilgamesh ishtar judaism

The goddess, the Queen of heaven whose worship Jeremiah so vehemently opposed, may have been Asherah or possibly Astarte. Asherah was worshipped in ancient Israel as the consort of El and in Judah as the consort of Yahweh and Queen of Heaven (the Hebrews baked small cakes for her festival):^[3]

Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.

—Jeremiah 7:17–18

... to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem ...

—Jeremiah 44:17

Figurines of Asherah are strikingly common in the archaeological record, indicating the popularity of her cult from the earliest times^[4] to the Babylonian exile. More rarely, inscriptions linking Yahweh and Asherah have been discovered: an 8th century BCE ostracon inscribed "Berakhti et’khem l’YHVH Shomron ul’Asherato" was discovered by Israeli archeologists at Quntilat 'Ajrud (Hebrew "Horvat Teman") in the couse of excavations in the Sinai desert in 1975, prior to the Israeli withdrawal from this area. This translates as: "I have blessed you by YHVH of Samaria and His Asherah", or "...by our guardian and his Asherah", if "Shomron" is to be read "shomrenu". Another inscription, from Khirbet el-Kom near Hebron, reads: "Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh and by his Asherah; from his enemies he saved him!".^[5]
The majority of the forty references to Asherah in the Hebrew Bible derive from the Deuteronomist, always in a hostile framework: e.g., Deuteronomy 16:21 reads: "Do not set up any [wooden] Asherah '[pole]'".^[8] beside the altar you build to the LORD your God." The Deuteronomist judges the kings of Israel and Judah according to how rigorously they uphold Yahwism and suppress the worship of Asherah and other deities: King Manasseh, for example is said to have placed an Asherah pole in the Holy Temple, and was therefore one who "did evil in the sight of the Lord" (2 Kings 21:7); but king Hezekiah "removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah", (2 Kings 18.4), and was numbered among the most righteous of Judah's kings before the coming of the monotheistic reformer Josiah, in whose reign the Deuteronomistic history of the kings was composed.

12 Mar 09

Mesopotamian mythology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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gilgamesh judaism

Gods and Goddesses from Sumer have distinctly similar representations in the religions of the Akkadians, Canaanites, and others. A number of stories and deities have Greek parallels as well; for example, it has been argued by some that Inanna's descent into the underworld strikingly recalls (and predates) the story of Persephone.

17 Nov 08

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Audio Slideshow: 'Babylon' - myth and reality

Nice.

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gilgamesh babylon iraq judaism history bible

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq's damaged Babylon hopes for revival

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babylon gilgamesh history judaism bible

The main ruins you can see now are of Nebuchadnezzar's northern palace, some 2,600 years old, and parts of the old city walls.
Mr Shahid hopes that one day, proper archaeological exploration will resume.
"We have many important historical sites here," he says, "but still only a quarter of the area has been excavated."
Its importance, and that of the many other ancient sites in Iraq, cannot be overestimated.
Long before there were any towns or cities in Europe, Babylon was thriving.
Modern civilisation as we know it now - built around organised, planned cities - first emerged in what is now Iraq.
Before that, humans had only lived as nomads.

17 Sep 08

nontheistnexus.com - Interview with Steve Wells from the Skeptic's Annotated Bible

Interesting interview with the creator of the wonderful Skeptic's Annotated Bible.

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christianity judaism islam atheism religion criticism

http://samharris.org/

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