Loomis

No. Get a clue. I mocked it and called it an “episode.� You are confusing me with everyone else.

Cut it out. You’re pissing me off.

Well … we’ll probably never know for sure. But when I read it I see two different types of churches/ structures/ buildings. I see there are “Houses of El� for the El worshippers, and “Altars to Yahweh� for the Yahwists.

The most high god of the Canaanites was El. The author wants us to be aware of the existence of two deities in Canaan -Yahweh and El.

Let’s reconstruct the scene:

Yahweh reveals himself to a Mesopotamian named Abram and tells him to leave his home and his homeland for an unknown destination. Abram does exactly what Yahweh tells him to do and ultimately finds himself in the land of Canaan. The unknown foreigner from Mesopotamia stands on Canaan’s soil and Yahweh reveals himself again. This time He informs Abram that he is going to give this land to Abram’s descendants, none of whom have been born yet. Now as he stands in El’s land he builds his first altar and calls out to Yahweh. Next he travels right past the House of El, builds a second altar, and calls out to Yahweh again. Canaan now has both the House of El and the two altars to Yahweh. The line has been drawn in the sand.

What will happen when the Canaanites find out what’s going on?

How will the priests of El react to the foreigner?

I think the answer is here:
It’s a little bit like a Christian welcome wagon for a bunch of Muslim immigrants.

To me the Melchizedek character does not appear to be a Yahwist, he appears to be an El worshipper. He brought bread and wine and surrendered to the Abram character in exchange for a tenth of everything. The possibility of two ‘Elyons is reinforced by two different types of houses of worship.

Loomis

Yes. I agree. “El elohe yisra'el!�

Lloyd Barre has some interesting comments on this. I am also open to the possiilty that Yahweh evolved out of the sea god Yam, or as a permutation of Baal.

Or all of the above.

And from what I’ve read, all of the fiery Cherub stuff, and the mulk sacrifice stuff, all come from the Yahweh camp.

Have you read this book or this book by Mark S. Smith?

Sheshbazzar

hyh In your little sampling above you admit to "forms of hyh" occuring in 9 out of these 20 verses.
Thank you spin, your example provides a total of 20 pluses and minuses, 9 of which are (+) and 11 which are (-) that makes the ratio 45% (-) and 55% (+) a whopping 5% difference, with the sample being limited to only the verb form "WAS", where "was" appears in English translations.
"Relatively infrequent" is certainly a "relative" way of describing the occurrence of any thing, say for example that in 20 years the IRS had only called you in for an audit 9 times, would that be "relatively infrequent"?
Or the engine in your new car refused to start only 45% of the time, would that be "relatively infrequent"?
Or the baseball player that only hit home runs 45% of the times he was at bat? would that be "relatively infrequent"?
I and most of humanity would not use the phrase "relatively infrequent" to describe any of these scenarios.
However as I perceive from your previous post....
....that you would like to include a consideration of verb forms other than those translated as "was".
I am most happy to oblige you, using the same range of texts that you used to come up with your list of pluses and minuses, I will add these;
Gen.
2:7 wyhy "and he became".....Interlinear="and-he-became" (see notes below)
2:10 whyh "and became..........." " ="and-he-became"
2:18 hywt "to be"...................." " ="to-be"
2:24 whyw "and they shall be"...." " ="and-they-will-be"
2:25 wyhyw "and they were"......." " ="and-they-were"
3:22 hyh "is become"............" " ="he-became"

I'll take time here to note that you allowed the verb clause wyhy in verse 4:2 of your list along with the hyh, verse 4:3 begins with the identical verb clause wyhy so I'll put it on this list.

4:3 wyhy "and it came to pass".....Interlinear=and-he-was
4:8 wyhy "and it came to pass"......" " " " "
4:12thyh "shalt thou be (KJV)........Interlinear="you-will-be"
4:14whyyty "and I shall be"............." " ="and-I-will-be"
4:14whyh "and it shall come to pass" " " ="and-he-will-be"
4:17 wyhy "and he (did) build".......... " " ="and-he-was"
5:4 wyhyw "And all the days(that were)"...." " ="and-they-were"
5:5 wyhyw "And all the days (that were)".." " ="and-they-were"
5:11 wyhyw "And all the days (that were)".." " ="and-they-were"
5:14 wyhyw "And all the days (that were)".." " =and-they-were"
5:17wyhyw "And all the days (that were)".." " =and-they-were"
5:20wyhyw "And all the days (that were)".." " =and-they-were"
5:27wyhyw "And all the days (that were)".." " =and-they-were"
5:31wyhy "And all the days (that were)"...." " =and-he-was"

NOTE; 5:32 was counted in your list, and it may be noted that the Hebrew phrase there is identical with all of the preceding "were's that you didn't include in your list.

6:1 wyhy "And it came to pass".............Interlinear = "And-he-was"
6:3 whyw "will be" a hundred and twenty.." " = "and-they-will-be"
6:4 hyw "There were Nephilim.."...." " ="they-were"

This fills in some of those missing verbs, and I think most men can also detect that the verb form is often used in the Hebrew text where it has been omitted in the English translation, (but must be recognized and translated when performing an interlinear translation) just as you have claimed that the English provides the verb forms that are missing in some Hebrew sentences.
The bottom line on this is, that the hyh in its various forms is not at all that "relatively infrequent", contrary to your claim.

ichabod crane

OK, but that's the way the story ends. The point is this. As we are agreed, we should not approach the Gospel of John as some sort of historical record as to what did or did not happen. Rather, we should approach it as a theological story designed to portray Jesus as having a particular nature and role. We should also not assume that how Jesus was understood by the Gospel of John author(s) is how he is understood in the rest of the New Testament, necessarily. I just think that a Philonic emanationist view of Jesus being the Word emanated from a distant monotheistic deity 'El/Yahweh to come down to humans and then ascend again seems far and away the most likely explanation. But maybe we should just agree to disagree on that.

I guess, if you are worried about such things, you could just transliterate as Yahweh or Yahveh. That would be easy enough. But why does it really matter? If you want to see how the names are used in detail, you have to go to the Hebrew anyway. The English is just a translation. The idea of substituting "Lord" for Yahweh is as old as the Septuagint, which translated it as "kurios". But all this is just an argument about principles of translation as far as I can see, it doesn't affect any issue of substance.


Maybe. I'd have to go away and think some more about the OT stuff. It just seems to me, from my reading of the OT, that the names 'El, `Elyon, Yahweh and 'Elohim are all just mixed up together in a hodge-podge manner without any particular distinction, except that there are a few passages which indicate that there were a bunch of gods rather than just one. Whereas you seem to be arguing for a consistent 'El/Yahweh distinction up to at least the time of the destruction of the Northern Kingdom. But you allow that latter redactors stuffed things around, which makes it hard to know if your hypothesis is true or not. But all this still wouldn't be relevant to the Gospel of John, unless you could show that this distinction was maintained even after the exile, which seems to me very unlikely. Remember "Judaism" in anything remotely resembling a 1st century sense is a post-exilic development.

I can't answer that question without doing further checking. It may just be a textual variant. Often in manuscripts a vav accidentally got altered to a yod, and vice-versa, because they are so similar to write. Indeed, some words that originally had a vav, ended up with a yod, as for example the feminine singular pronoun is hiy' in most of the Old Testament, but is generally hiv' in the Pentateuch. The theory is that hiv' was the early form, but it became hiy' over time.

As for how yahweh came from hayah, the answer is that for verbs with a middle yod or vav, the two letters often can be swapped. Hence the verb having the root consonants sin-yod-mem, meaning to put, to place, or to set, can also have consonants sin-vav-mem. The hypothesis that Yahweh is a Hif'il participle of hayah depends on the assumption that something like that went on. But it's only a guess.

ichabod crane

Loomis, Lloyd Barre's stuff looks interesting. I couldn't answer it without doing a lot more detailed study of how the names were used; as I said to cass256, there doesn't seem to me to be any particular pattern to it.

BUT where your theory seems to become implausible is that you seem to think that some of these distinctions persisted in the reconstituted community after the exile. In other words, in Judaism proper. That's what I haven't seen any evidence of yet. If your argument is just that, prior to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, 'El-worship and Yahweh-worship were at least somewhat distinct, then you might be right for all I know. The problem is with the post-exilic community.

There are numerous works from the intertestamental period written by Jews after the exile (e.g. 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, etc). Do you know if any of these show an 'El/Yahweh distinction? I've never heard of it.

Remember the original point of all this was the Gospel of John. That emerged from post-exilic, probably Hellenistic, Judaism. So I need to know your evidence that 'El and Yahweh were thought of as distinct even in the time of middle Judaism. It seems to me that you just aren't addressing many passages in John which would indicate quite the opposite.

cass256

I think I do agree with you, but I also have trouble grasping John completely. I can't read the NT and completely ignore the difference between john's view and the others.. I look at the differences in the way Jesus is presented by each author. The trouble is that we do know, as religious texts, there has been editing. I am no expert, but they say the style of writing in john changes at points where they believe a second author comes in to play. That tends to make me wary, and I acknowledge points that in my mind seem odd.

"But why does it really matter?" That is my point. it obviously mattered to whoever chose to translate a name as "the Lord" every place that name is mentioned. It is not translation alone. It has to do with beliefs of those who translated the works. That can't be completely ignored. I guess I am just interested in the psychology behind it. Even though they may just be stories, people believe them. I can't completeloy ignore that John may have believed his story, and it may have been affected by other "believers" that did, or did not agree. The OT was affected by a belief system, to the point where you cannot read it in English and get a fair read.
Again, it is just observation of something i'd like to understand.


Yes, and if it is historic at all, Judaism is only one fraction of the sons of Abraham. 2 1/2 out of 12 tribes of people. I have no clue how realistic anyone could get in terms of numbers of people that represents. There are scholrly studies that can identify, at least it has been said, where the El believer influenced the text and where the Yahwist, and also a 3rd. This is to the point where the well respected Brown-Driver-Briggs hebrew/English Lexicon has to have abreviations to show where it is believed a passage was "E=Eloist" narative or "P=Priests narrative" and "D= Deuteronomic" author or redactor outside of Deuteronomy. It is too confusing to keep track, but there are obvious differences at times.



I guess I find the interest in the possibility of a name that is more descriptive of that god's actions. He "hardened" Pharoah's heart to not let Israel go, so he could show his signs and wonders; which turned out to be death and destruction. He mentions the wonders to come a few sentences after he gives the Name. As a literary work alone, i would have suspected that a hint in the name that he gave was possible. That is, of course, pure speculation helped by noticing the similar word that exists. Also, the HVH in YHVH. Why say your name is HYH and then say call me YHVH? A curiosity I can't avoid. Not that I will ever have an answer. It keeps things a little more interesting for me. Thanks for your input. I think we are probably both comfortable with the way we read these things. We may disagree, but agree where we are speculating. Have a good day

spin

You cannot help to miss the forest.


spin

Loomis

Why?

What if you’re right?

What if none of the alleged “post-exilic community� ever believed that Yahweh had a dad?

So what?

If you and I can read Deut 32:8-9 and say, “Alas! The author tells us that Yahweh is El’s son,� then what was preventing the author of GJohn from making the same discovery and writing a story around it?

What does “Judaism proper� have to with anything?

Today there a millions of people who believe Yahweh had a dad. They are called Mormons. Some guy named Joseph Smith started it all. What was preventing GJohn from doing the same thing ~1800 years earlier?

GJohn said he made a remarkable discovery about the nature of God.

He said the “post-exilic community� had not comprehended it.

Gosh, what could that discovery be?

ichabod crane

OK, I'll grant that this is possible. But, when a person uses numerous allusions and phrases that derive from a particular cultural and historical context (i.e. Philonic Hellenistic Judaism), it becomes much more likely that that is the perspective from which he has emerged.

But I'd be open to your view, if you could prove it from the text of John. As I've pointed out several times now, and you still haven't addressed, John repeatedly uses the word theos to refer to OT Yahweh, which just disproves your theory completely. So the main problem is not that your theory ignores the cultural and historical context of Judaism, which was rigorously monotheistic. The main problem is that your theory does not withstand a careful reading of the text.

In context, that the Word had become flesh and lived amongst them.

Loomis

So?

Theos is synonymous with ‘elohim.’ Right?

In some circles Yahweh was The Elohim. But in other circles Yahweh was an elohim.

Right?

Here’s an example of Yahweh as an elohim.

In Judges 11:24 we’ve got Yahweh (the elohim of the Israelites) on a level playing field with Chemosh (the elohim of the Moabites). They are both elohim, and they are both theos. This favors the view that in some circles Yahweh and Chemosh were worshiped as siblings and sons of El according to the Ugartitic paradigm.

So what is it about calling Yahweh an ‘elohim’ or ‘theos’ that precludes him from having a dad?

What is it about calling Yahweh an ‘elohim’ or ‘theos’ that precludes Jesus from being Yahweh incarnate?

It looks to me like GJohn’s Jesus character called himself a theos.

Jesus is not the I in I said, he is the theos in you are theos.

I think GJohn had really weird slant on Psalm 82.

I think GJohn’s Psalm 82 has El waving his magic wand at Yahweh. El gives Yahweh authority to execute judgment on earth. Then he sends him there and turns him into Jesus while he’s at it.

Am I making sense to anyone? Or is Loomis just talking to Loomis again?