Loomis

Look at the context of Exodus 3. God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh to, “bring the Israelites out of Egypt.” Moses asks God, “who shall I say sent me? What name should I use?”

Now stop and think about it.

Why would Moses not know which name to use?

Why would Moses be concerned about this?

Why was this an issue?

What was the source of apprehension or confusion?

Why was Moses panicking?


Maybe if we could understand the source of the apprehension / confusion we could better understand what “I am” is all about.

Right?

Loomis

Genesis 33:20 says the god of Israel was named El.

"El is the god of Israel”

That makes perfect sense as the name Israel itself means, “El prevails.”

Look at Numbers 23:22

“El who brought them up out of Egypt has horns like a wild bull.”

It says that El (the god of Israel) led them out of Egypt, and that El has horns like a wild bull.

Now look at Exodus 32:4

“This is your god (referring to the bull), O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt.”

Do you see what I see?

Take a look at ‘The Early History of God’ by Mark S. Smith, page 84.
http://books.google.com/books?id=1yM...um=5&ct=result

It looks to me like El was the original god of the Exodus story, and that “Yahweh” was tacked on later. (We can argue if Yahweh and El were supposed to be the same god, but I don’t think it really matters here.)




Now concerning Exodus 3 - it looks to me like “Moses” had a legitimate cause for apprehension. Moses was confused. Who was the god who led Israel out of Egypt? Was it El? Or was it Yahweh?

So in Exodus 3:13 Moses asks God, “Who are you? What name am I supposed to use? Which god are you in this story?”

And so God gets impatient, throws his hands in the air and says, “Fuck it. I was El but now I’m becoming Yahweh; so tell the Pharoh ‘I am becoming what I am becoming.’ Deal with it!”

See?

It looks to me like the confusion over ‘who the god of the exodus was’ is written into the story.

Sheshbazzar

Fits well with what I recently posted over on E&C

Cesc

Ok, thx.
This verse in the Vulgate has been interpreted as God saying that he's Being in itself ("qui est"), metaphysically speaking (Aquinas among others).
But what did Jerome himself mean when he translated it from the Septuagint.
I am I who am. Go tell Israel that 'he who is' (or 'that which is' or 'the one who is'; qui est) has sent you.
Or I am who/what I am. Go tell Israel that 'he who is' has sent you.

But instead of having God saying I am he who is or I am that which is he says I am I who am. But if that isn't a valid translation anyway from ego sum qui sum then there's no discussion.
So I'm interested to know if it is infact a valid translation.
ego sum qui sum = I am I who am ? (or it is I who am in more day to day language)
Or would that necessarily have to be ego sum ego qui sum ?

show_no_mercy

So Exodus 3 might be an attempt to merge the two different "theisms" in early Judaism - the Yahwist account and the Elohist account according to the Documentary Hypothesis?

Sheshbazzar

Actually, as Loomis points out, there was also a merging of 'Baal' (Heb. "husband" "lord" "owner") going on, complete with the 'bull-idol' of 'Baal' being the elohim that 'led them out of Egypt', YHWH 'El' even wears 'Baal's' wild-BULL horns.

lpetrich

The NIV and the NASB both use the Masoretic version (ehyeh asher ehyeh):

God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'" (NIV)

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" (NASB)

The Septuagint uses "the being" (ho ôn) instead of "I am" in the second and third places in this verse. Making that substitution gives us

God said to Moses, "I am The Being. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'The Being has sent me to you.'"

Or a halfway version that keeps the relative pronoun:

God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'The Being has sent me to you.'"

This reads fairly coherently, and it would fit into how YHWH is likely derived from the Hebrew word for "be" (hayah).

To see if this substitution can be justified from the original Hebrew, I checked on Hebrew grammar and Hebrew verb conjugation, and I found that the Hebrew present participle is identical to its present tense. This means that "am/are/is" and "the being" look the same in Hebrew.

The Hebrew present tense likely originated from its present participle, something that is not as farfetched as it might seem. English has a compound present tense that uses its present participle.

spin

Jerome didn't have these options. He merely had ego sum qui sum. Nothing more, especially as it reflects what he would have received from the Hebrew. The possibilities of the English translation seem to be getting in the way. The language one has dictates the way one thinks or intends.

Ego sum qui sum is a literal translation of the Hebrew.

None of this has anything to do with Jerome and his work. I can still see that you have some unstated thought lurking behind the statement. The Latin doesn't allow you to stick bits in in your understanding of it. The English requires certain things such as a subject for every verb, hence "I am what I am". It's not a necessity in other languages because they can assume from other indications, such as here the form of the verb being 1st person singular, the subject must be "I". It's there in the statement. There is no room whatsoever for something like "I am I who am". And "it is I" is English idiom and nothing to do with the Latin.

Would it have made sense to a Latin user of the day?


spin

Loomis

Have you read the Baal Epic?

http://www.theologywebsite.com/etext...ite/baal.shtml

And say to The Bull, My father, El …

They say to The Bull, His father, El …

In that story El is the bull; not Baal. Baal is portrayed as a ‘rider of the clouds’ – like Yahweh.

I think we have been mislead (because of years of conditioning) into thinking that every time we see a bull or horns that it has something to do with Baal. That’s because it’s unfathomable to a believer that their god (El) is a bovine. Every time a believer reads something about a bull the believer says, “Oh look, they must be talking about Baal.”


It looks to me like the bull in Numbers 23:22 and Exodus 32:4 was El - the same El from the Baal Epic. The difference is that El was a good god in Numbers 23:22 (later equated with Yahweh) and a bad god in Exodus 32:4 (equated with the Canaanites). But that’s not a problem for me. It’s just fiction.

Loomis

There are more than two different "theisms" in early Judaism. The ‘Documentary Hypothesis’ and ‘Yahwist’ and ‘Elohist’ stuff is an oversimplification and a generalization. It is very traditional, it is very conservative, and it really doesn’t explain very much. Believers love it.

El was the god of the Ugarits. And El was the god of the Canaanites. And El was the god of the Israelites. He was a bull and had horns. It’s all the same El. That part is obvious. It’s all the same god; smeared out over time.

Baal and Yahweh are more difficult; there are conflicting opinions and conflicting stories. But what’s obvious is that over time these two or three gods all rolled into one.