Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Chris Weimer · 03-14-2005, 08:44 PM

I guess I misread the xeth and saw heth, mea culpa. But I knew the idea alone was preposterous enough to debunk any further commentary by Clive Durdle.

Sheshbazzar · 03-14-2005, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

I had to know what the cheezy grin was for.

+WH means "spin"

Not a "female", or "mother earth", Deity by any interpretation are ya?

Clivedurdle · 03-15-2005, 01:21 AM

Quote:

Hi, Clive. This is Gershon Winkler. In response to the misunderstanding about what I have ever said or written about yhwh, I have never said or written that yhwh is an amalgam for two gods but rather that it is an amalgam of two attributes of God, male and female, of that within God that manifests in the creation realm, not of God itself since God is not a shape or form or entity defineable by us mortals. Toward this teaching, which by the way is not mine but the Kabbalah, the Zohar, etc., elo'heem is a plural word for God, the manifesting of those among the infinite attributes of God that are involved in what we experience as Creation. Elo'heem literally translates as Many Powers. Judaism then is no more monotheistic by how people define montheism than Hinduism. Practically every ancient religion recognizes that there are numerous manifestations of the attributes of the Infinite Being of all Beings. Some refer to these manifestations as sefirot, some as angels, some as spirits, some as "gods". It is all semantics. The mortal experiences the one mystery of all beingness in a wide variety of qualities. The problem is giving any of them an absolute name. In the first of the The Ten Commandments God says to the Hebrews:
"There should not be any other elo'heem upon my face" ("before me" is a
mistranslation), meaning, don't appropriate onto me a face that is not
mine, don't purport to know anything about me, to peg me down, to define
me, to box me in to your assumptions.�*�*Every kabbalah writ introduces its
mysteries with that warning: don't get too caught up in the "names" in the
manifestations -- they are but meager attempts to grasp what cannot be
grasped, to get a handle on what cannot be reached.

Hope this helps.

gershon

.

Clivedurdle · 03-15-2005, 02:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Unfortunately, the evidence is umm, in the bible, in the few inscriptions available and from comparative cultural information from other sites.

This is how one establishes Asherah as a deity in her own right. We get to see El's real position. We see the parallels between Yahweh and Baal. Etc. There was plainly a pantheon. All you have to do is look at it.

What you are doing with shamanism, I'll leave to you. I can't see you mustering any contemporary evidence whatsoever. So, as I said, I'll leave it to you.

spin

From Biblical Archaeology

Quote:

Yahweh and Asherah

The most important artifacts relating to our exploration are some discoveries that relate to Yahweh and Asherah. At the ancient site of Kuntillet 'Ajrud, a large pottery jar dating to 8th century was discovered with the inscription brkt 'tkm lyhwh �mrn wl'�rth, which has been transliterated to mean "I bless you to Yahweh of Samaria [or Shomron] and his a/Asherah" (this is the ancient equivalent of "I'm praying for you"!). A pictorial scene beside the first depicts two standing figures, with another playing the lyre. Another inscription there states almost the same lines (brktk lyhwh [�mrn] wl'�rth) to someone else. Here, plenty of inscriptional artifacts have been found, linking Baal with El, Yahweh with Asherah/Asherat/Asheratah), or referring to Yahweh's location at Teiman or else Samaria/Shomron. At another site, Khirbet el-Qom, an 8th century eulogy on a tomb reads "May Uriyahu [Uriah] be blessed by Yahweh for from his enemies he has been saved by his a/Asherah." At Khirbet Beit Lei, a 7th century image of two figures making a petition to Yahweh with another figure identified as Asherah playing has also been found, though the interpretation is more circumstantial.[1]

Some debate exists about whether this referred to Asherah the goddess, or asherah poles, cultic objects said to even have been erected at the temple in Jerusalem. Though some believe the pronominal suffix (the ending of '�rth which denotes "his asherah") indicates that this did not refer to the proper name for Asherah, and thus denotes asherah the wooden object. However, while divine names with pronominal suffixes do not appear in Hebrew, many divine names are in fact bound in a form that can be read as a pronominal suffix. Another argument by Ziony Zevit is that the extra "h" at the end is simply an additional feminine ending. What "his Asherah" means is problematic though, since it doesn't make sense without an interjection like "his consort Asherah", whereas "his asherah" makes sense as an object. The crux may well be at Beit Lei, where the understanding that Yahweh had a consort named Asherah is likely, if the figures are correctly identified.

Yahweh and El

Many scholars have noted the complete absence of polemics in the Bible against El, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, reserving the most polemic against other Canaanite gods like Baal, Mot (Death), and Yamm (Sea), or the deities of other ethnic groups such as the Philistines. This should be surprising considering that we know of El being recognised as a Canaanite deity well into the 7th century by Israel's neighbours and possibly even into Roman times.[2] The transformation of El in Phoenicia and Aram was likely done through renaming him as Baal Shamayin, "Lord of the heavens" or Baal Hamon "Lord of the mountain". In fact, in the Bible, El in various manifestations is himself identified as Yahweh, and rarely ever distinguished.

Similarly, Asherah is missing from the polemics, with the only reference being to tearing down the "asherah poles" (the translators of the King James Version referred to these as "groves"), though the goddess herself receives no critique. We might say that she has been written out of the story through depersonification, but some clues remain. The Yahwist reformer Jehu, for instance, leaves the asherah poles alone, only to be condemned by later prophets for this negligence. Similarly, the "prophets of Asherah" who appear alongside the prophets of Baal in 2 Kings 23:4 may be a later interpolation of guilt-by-association, since Baal had no relation to Asherah (his consort was Baalat, which coincidentally was used in the names of some Israelite settlements). Other interpretations spurred by the 'Ajrud discoveries see them as neutral parties, since Elijah neglects to take any action against them, but the former hypothesis of interpolation is probably the more likely (though a good conspiracy theory would no doubt be lost).

From the Ugaritic texts however, the evidence of their relationship begins to unravel. We find that El and Atherat (a cognate with Asherah) were the chief god and goddess of the Canaanite pantheon respectively. If Yahweh had taken over El's role syncretistically (since his origin is likely from the south, whether in Sinai, Paran, Edom, or Teiman, associated with the Shasu nomads of Arabia that we saw earlier), then it explains how he would similarly have taken over the partnership with Asherah as supreme god.[3] Certainly, the majority view is that Asherah once existed as an Israelite goddess related to Yahweh or El.

Despite the lack of polemics against El in the Bible, it is not wholly silent on the matter. C.L. Seow has pointed out the strong association of the cult of Shiloh with El language (particularly in Psalms 78), as well as God's abode as a "tent" originating from Ugarit. Similarly, at Shechem the god associated with that location is El Berit "El of the Covenant", and several scholars have pointed out that the Ugaritic 'ilbrt was another title for El. Similarly, Exodus 6:2-3 directly states the transference of one name (El Shadday) to another (Yahweh), claiming them as different titles for the same god. More generically, Gensis 49:24-26 represents a confusion in the attribution of titles known to other Canaanite gods being given to El. "Bull (of Jacob)" was the animal associated with El and can be read as a direct metaphor for him (think of the Golden Calf story). The "blessings of the deep" tehom are associated with Yamm, while the strange inclusion of "blessings of breasts and womb" are more likely to be associated with a fertility goddess such as Asherah or Astarte (who are essentially the same goddess in different spaces). As Smith concludes,
This record illustrates the old transmission of West Semitic/Israelite traditions. Israelite knowledge of the religious traditions about other deities did not only reflect contact between Israel and her Phoenician neighbors in the Iron Age. In addition, as a function of the identification of Yahweh-El at cultic sites of El, such as Shiloh, Shechem, and Jerusalem, the old religious lore of El was inherited by the priesthood in Israel. At a variety of sites, Yahweh was incorporated into the older figure of El, who belonged to Israel's original West Semitic language heritage.

M.S. Smith, 2001, p. 140

The question that follows then, is whether El, not Yahweh was the original god of Israel. On the face of it, the biggest clue is the name Israel itself, since we don't call it yisra-yahweh or yisra-yah. However, the name "Israel" itself is extremely old, probably as old as the god El (since it means "fighter of/for/with El" as Genesis 32:28 points out) and attested at Ebla and Ugarit, and therefore this evidence is not conclusive. We have already seen that Yahweh, whenever associated with a physical place (Sinai, Edom, Paran, Teiman), was always to be found originating in the south where the Shasu nomads lived.

However, the biggest clue comes from Deuteronomy 32:8-9, part of Moses' farewell assembly:
When Elyon apportioned the nations,
when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of his peoples
according to the number of the sons of El;
Yahweh's own portion was his people,
Jacob his alloted share.

The Masoretic text revised the fourth line to read "sons of Israel", glossing over this rather uncomfortable line, but it disagrees with our earlier Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls texts. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan goes even further to insert "70" as the number of sons of El, which coincides with the number of sons of El in the Ugaritic pantheon, and was also believed to be the number of nations on the earth. The tradition of Elyon being the father of the gods reappears in Psalms 82:6, where the term bene elyon is used. What the text above represents is an older tradition, with the aetiological device of explaining Yahweh's foreign entry into the Canaanite pantheon, thus supporting the notion that El was the original god of Israel.

Celsus

This post started as a discussion of possible gods. For some reason I cannot work out there has been a huge reaction against a comment that there may be male and female entities here and parallels with other shamanistic traditions like Taoism. There has been a belief that looking at Shamanism is equivalent to mumbo jumbo. OK I have been triggered and should have taken more time to look up sources.

But look what happens -

Quote:

The crux may well be at Beit Lei, where the understanding that Yahweh had a consort named Asherah is likely, if the figures are correctly identified.

OK YHWH itself may not be an amalgam of male and female, but we do seem to have a very human god!

Chris Weimer · 03-15-2005, 02:32 AM

Yes, I think you're getting it now. If you reread all the posts, we actually even mentioned to you Asherah et al. But where you were coming from with the YHWH nonsense is unknown to me.

Celsus · 03-15-2005, 03:14 AM

The above material is copyright. Was there a point in quoting such a large chunk of it? Do you recognise the difference between describing certain characteristics and drawing parallels between those characteristics? I am somewhat anti-parallelist for several reasons, usually because people trying to draw parallels don't know enough about one or both of the religions they're trying to compare.

Joel Ng

Sheshbazzar · 03-15-2005, 07:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

This post started as a discussion of possible gods. For some reason I cannot work out there has been a huge reaction against a comment that there may be male and female entities here......
OK YHWH itself may not be an amalgam of male and female, but we do seem to have a very human god!

As one of the posters in this thread, I among others, resisted the attempted splitting of the Name Yahweh into two components, a male and a female,
and the attending yin/yang-heaven/earth shaminisim theology being forced upon the subject.
If you had only been attempting to present that Yahweh was often given a female consort by His devotees, I would have had no objection at all, in fact I expect that at one time or another Yahweh had been teamed up with every female goddess figure we know the names of, and probably hundreds more of lesser known ones whose names are now lost in the mists of time.
Nor do I hold much doubt, that as a 'figure' in these relationships 'Yahweh' could have been, and most likely was, taken as the representation of 'heaven' or the 'sky' to partner with whatever 'earth mother' was in vogue at that time and place.

However, all of that in no way, makes the continuance of the practice, (or its theology), to be acceptable after the acceptance of the Torah by the nation of Israel, Making no bones about it, they were commanded to immediately discontinue such practices.
Today when new laws are put in effect, they over-ride and over-turn former law and practice, this is evident in every day in common zoning regulations, my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, all burned their leaves and refuse, without restrictions, today, the law has changed, I have responsibilities that these before me did not, Because a Law has been published and been made known in the community, citizenship within the community requires acceptance of that law.
Israel agreed to keep and to obey the Laws they were given;
("and all the people shall say, "AMEN", ..........and all the people said "AMEN")

Dharma · 03-15-2005, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

.

Thank you, Clive! Again I don't disagree with the Kabbalistic interpretation or the mystic interpretation of the many names of the One God.

However, we must remember that monotheism is not taught this way. These many names in other religions have been degraded by fundamentalist priests as being "false Gods" and polytheistic. Yes, Yahweh would be 2 attributes, male and female of the one God -- however, if I were not as generous as the monotheists have been to other religions, this would indeed be called 2 separate Gods, since other religions identified all the Gods as merely attributes/names of the One...in other words, I am doing unto the monotheists what the monotheists have done unto others...the Golden Rule, indeed...

So if I continue with the strict traditional monotheistic interpretation that was afforded to other religions -- Yah, Weh and El would be 2 Gods (Yah and El) and one unknown Goddess (Weh)... :angel:

Also, although you will not find a statue of El from Judaic tradition, you will find a statue of El as a mountain God from other semitic tribes, Canaanites.

Chris Weimer · 03-15-2005, 09:56 AM

the problem, dharma, is that you won't find a statue or insription about this "weh" character in any Canaanite religion. :banghead:

Sheshbazzar · 03-15-2005, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dharma

---- Yah, Weh and El would be 2 Gods (Yah and El) and one unknown Goddess (Weh)... :angel:

Also, although you will not find a statue of El from Judaic tradition, you will find a statue of El as a mountain God from other semitic tribes, Canaanites.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To prove the proposition that "shamanism" was involved in the original creation or development of the Name "Yahweh", Clive, Dharma, and Winkler, (and anyone else), will first need to establish and to prove with several clear and irrefutable examples that;

(1) A word, 'weh' even exists in Hebrew.
(in other words list for us texts or inscriptions where "weh" is used separately as a word, so that we may all independently examine these texts or inscriptions)

(2) that this 'word' can be proved to have anciently had the meaning that you are attempting to assign to it, "..female, i.e. mother earth"
(in other words provide examples from ancient literature, inscriptions or icons, that clearly indicate the usage of "weh" (Heb. wah-heh or w-h) as a word for "female" or "mother earth".

(3) And that it (w-h) was ever separately employed as the name of a "female..mother earth" deity.

You still have not provided any evidence.

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03-14-2005, 08:44 PM	#101
Chris Weimer Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: none Posts: 9,879	I guess I misread the xeth and saw heth, mea culpa. But I knew the idea alone was preposterous enough to debunk any further commentary by Clive Durdle.

03-15-2005, 02:32 AM	#105
Chris Weimer Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: none Posts: 9,879	Yes, I think you're getting it now. If you reread all the posts, we actually even mentioned to you Asherah et al. But where you were coming from with the YHWH nonsense is unknown to me.

03-15-2005, 03:14 AM	#106
Celsus Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Singapore Posts: 2,875	The above material is copyright. Was there a point in quoting such a large chunk of it? Do you recognise the difference between describing certain characteristics and drawing parallels between those characteristics? I am somewhat anti-parallelist for several reasons, usually because people trying to draw parallels don't know enough about one or both of the religions they're trying to compare. Joel Ng

03-15-2005, 09:56 AM	#109
Chris Weimer Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: none Posts: 9,879	the problem, dharma, is that you won't find a statue or insription about this "weh" character in any Canaanite religion. :banghead:

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