gstafleu

You quote Barker as concluding:
This would be support for the myth theory, provided that the gospel writers used the Hebrew version as their source. If they used the LXX, maybe the situation was different. In that case the LXX would have had to consistently translate Yaweh as one thing and El as another in order for the gospel writers to see "Jesus as an angel figure." Any ideas if that was the case?

Gerard Stafleu

neilgodfrey

I haven't looked into that. But I don't think the assumption in your question is necessary to explain the Christian divine father-son concepts. What the literature points to is divided beliefs about the divine within the Jewish religious culture. One can imagine post 70 c.e. the rabbis embracing the Deuteronomist model and the Christians the El-Yahweh model that they inherited from tradition and practice -- not just from a reading of texts.

There is more evidence than just the LXX (which precedes out Hebrew MT) and Qumran texts. Barker also looks at the Second Temple literature and studies this, and the Jewish Bible, within the broader Mid East religious culture to arrive at her conclusions. I'll be detailing this in future blog posts as time permits.

Don't forget that the El-Yahweh relationship was only one part of this alternative religious view that the Deuteronomist sought to suppress, and that was picked up by the later Christians. Also were the role of Wisdom, vision of God, angels to name the ones I can think of off hand.

Neil

neilgodfrey

No. But Psalm 82 opens with a very El type image of the chief god sitting exalted before his lesser elohim. Barker reads this Psalm in the context of the ancient mythology of kingship, which is also reflected in Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 and Daniel 7.

Daniel 7 describes from a visionary's perspective a king ascending to the throne of the most high god for his coronation; extra biblical literature does the same type of ascent from other perspectives (e.g. 1 Enoch, The Exodus by Ezekiel the Tragedian....) which all seems part of the mythology of ancient mid east kingship coronation ceremony. But also the kings had their heavenly angelic counterparts. Their fate both symbolized and was directly bound with the fates of their earthly royal counterparts. We read of that in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 re the kings of Babylon and Tyre.

Psalm 82 is passing judgment on the Davidic dynasty via its heavenly counterparts.

Neil

funinspace

I thought the Akkadian/Sumerian god Ellil name had "El" as part of its root source, and that the Hebrew bore significant similarities to the Akkadian "Il". That is El is older than the Biblical sources, and is probably Semetic in nature. I didn't see a decent source on the web, but that is what I think I remember from a few books...

neilgodfrey

I think Earl Doherty's case for mythical heavenly Christ origins can find more traction when we put it in the context of the rich complexity and diversity of pre-70 c.e. Jewish religion:

On the one hand we have

• a strictly Yahweh-based monotheism that both identifies Yahweh with El and reduces El to a generic name for God (el);
• that was advanced by the "Deuteronomist" literature and re-editing of rival texts in the Primary History (including the Pentateuch);
• that opposed the father-son relationship view of El-Yahweh,
• opposed the role of Wisdom, replacing it with Law mediated by Moses,
• and the importance of visionary and ascent experiences, replacing it with the formless voice

and on another we have

• an El-Yahweh father-son divinity
• probably tossed in here was a wife for El, who in later Hellenistic times looked more like a personification of Wisdom
• and literature expressing a central role of visions of God and ascents to his heavenly throne
• and that seems often enough not to have had any place for Moses

and on our third hand we have

• a strand of Second Temple exegesis that grew out of the experience of martyrdoms in the Maccabean period and that came to develop a theology of a "beloved son" of God who was sacrificed for the salvation of his people (Levenson's Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son)

What do we get if we arrange a tryst between the El-Yahweh father-son-wisdom believers and the "beloved son" atoning sacrificial exegetes? Looks to me like we come up with a structure of belief that consists of a heavenly Christ son-of-God figure who is sacrificed and resurrected for the salvation and atoning of whoever can count as his offspring.

Toss in a destruction of the Jewish state and temple in 70 c.e. and a need for complete reorientation of earlier beliefs and practices, with one group going the way of the rabbis and another the way of Nazareans/Christians(?), with the latter building new roots in a midrash and allegorical reading of the Jewish scriptures to come up with a new temple and Israel in Jesus and the church. Interesting to think of the early strength of Marcionism in this context too -- with its fulcrum at the dual gods.

Neil

J-D

In Jewish tradition, the Tetragrammaton ('four-letter name')--transliterated YHWH or JHVH--is not to be pronounced. In prayers and ritual bible readings the word 'Adonai' is substituted, except on a few occasions where the Tetragrammaton appears in conjunction with the word 'Adonai' (usually translated 'Lord'), in which case the word 'Elohim' (usually translated 'God') is substituted for the Tetragrammaton. Therefore, most English-language Bible translations correspondingly use 'Lord' (in most cases) or 'God' where the Tetragrammaton appears in the Hebrew. Where other words, names, titles, or descriptions for God appear in the Hebrew, appropriate and different translations are used in the English--they aren't all lumped in as 'Lord' or 'God'. They don't appear so often in the English because they don't appear so often in the Hebrew. (However 'El', 'Eloha', and 'Elohim', which are forms from the same root, are all translated as 'God'.)

mg01

I think it would be fair to say the Priestly material actually attemptw to do this (with Elohim) but was stuck with terms that had a history of conotations to them. Without doubt, a Greek reading Greek without knowledge of the Hebrew origin and usage would have an entirely different sense of the text from sooeone who did. Much like readers today with no knowledge of the polytheistic background lost in translation.

When you undo the Elohim/God, YHWH/LORD, Lord/Adonai translations the text takes on a completely differently character. "And YHWH said to Moses... And Moses said to YHWH..." It reads natively no differently than any other of the world myths. If you haven't seen it, look at the Excel file and you can see what I mean.

mg01

The Elohim="god of the fathers" theme is found earlier in E. E tries to establish the idea that the various patriachial detities were all really the same, then with Moses identifies Elohim as YHWH.

J goes further claiming YHWH was known by name right after Noah. All of J in Genesis is reattributions of earlier stories and etiologies to YHWH including several where sacred places (places already sacred and attached to some local Canaanite numina) are given new "this place is sacred because" stories starring YHWH.

The real YHWH tradition starts with Moses. Everything before (Genesis) are ancestral Cannanite tales that were re-spun to try to equate YHWH as the same deity they already reveared, El. There is not a single verse of "anti-El" to be found unlike those against Baal, Chemosh/Shemesh, Milcom, etc... (Somewhere in either numbers 32 or 33 actualy states in two places it was El, not YHWH that lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Mark Smith has a chapter in "Early History of God" where he asks, did the Exodus itself originate with El.) How they were able to get away with it I tend to agree with F M Cross was because YHWH was itself originally an epithet for El that had found popular use in the south and centuries later made its way back north.

mg01

Like Neil pointed out, God is Elohim and El in different places, not YHWH. Due to singular verbs, Elohim is taken to refer to YHWH with him standing before the council of El and chastising the "other elohim" for not doing their jobs properly.

I think this is another instance of the original context being shifted and what the hymn originally had was El chastising the other elohim (his family/sons) who were themselves standing in the assembly. El by itself almost never shows up as a title for God directly. It is more commonly found in conjunction with something else in reference to a particular God, like El Shadday and Elyon. So when you find it off by itself it seems out of place and significant.

I don't advocate the idea that Hebrew Elohim should really always be read "gods", but I don't completely buy into the idea that the use od singular verbs, in the preserved texts, absolutely settles the entire matter either. Psalm 82 is a prime example where if we examine the alternative, we get something that makes perfect sense from the Cannanite realm and in line with the concept of YHWH "re-writing" his way into older traditions.

There is a JOSTR article entitled something like "The Mythological Background of Psalm 82" I have been trying to get my hands on written back in the 1920s.

neilgodfrey

Barker's hypothesis of texts in dialogue/rivalry is an alternative to that of the J and E hypothesis that has dominated OT studies till now.

Other hypotheses have come out challenging this traditional paradigm too. Philip Davies is another who sees the texts being produced by relatively contemporary schools or scribal traditions and in dialogue with one another. His setting is post-Exilic -- or rather a-exilic, since he rejects the traditional idea of an Exilic literature to begin with. The idea of pious scribes creating noble reflective literature in Babylonian exile he sees as a romantic nonsense, divorced from the realities of what mass deportations meant in the ancient world. The deportations of peoples into Palestine under the Persian mass migration scheme created the social, political, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions that became the matrix of the new ethnic identity and biblical literature.

One might even say there is as much evidence for J and E as there is for Q. Both are sexy classy theories but there are alternative hypotheses that have in recent years been persuading others that there is a better way to explain the evidence.

Neil