Jackalope

No, the Book of Enoch, Enoch!
Geez, you guys even goaded me into looking that up earlier this month...

And I have to ask which book about Wicca our poster is reading. There a lot of (to put in bluntly) bullshit out there. Try reading Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon for a fuller view of Wicca's history. An ancient religion it is not.

Doctor X

Kicks small stone near foot.

I thought part of it was in Jubilees as well . . . which means now I have to actually look at the text again.

Damn!

Not fair! Not fair I have to READ THE TEXT before pontificating!!!

Picks up ball and runs away. . . .

--J.D.

Jackalope

Hey, if we're going to take the christians to task for not reading their own holy book before they try debating about it, we can't let the infidels slack off either.

Unfortunately, with the search function broken, I can't look up a particular reference. I Seem To Recall (those can be fatal words in a debate) that the name "Lucifer" only pops up in later translations of Revelation. Like, maybe even as late as the Vulgate. Basically, the translator was trying to smear one of his politcal/theological enemies and picked the guy's name for the Big Bad Villian in his translation.

A little digging with Google turns up some interesting possibilities:
Lucifer, Bishop and Confessor of Calaris (Cagliari) in Sardinia. Exiled by Constantius after the Council of Milan. Written about/to in Athanasius' letters.

Dialogue Against the Luciferians

Entry from St.Jerome's Lives of Illustrious Men

And it appears that I actually did recall correctly. Jerome was the translator for the Vulgate bible, and he did indeed have an intense disagreement with Bishop Lucifer.

summary of the political situation within the church and the roman empire

There, does that make up for being a pedant?

spin

The Vulgate uses "lucifer" (never capitalized) three times: Job 11:17, Isa 14:12 and 2 Peter 1:19, each time following the LXX eosforos (2 Peter has fosforos), though its use in Job is not called for from the Hebrew. There is no negative content in the use of lucifer in these passages.


spin

Amlodhi

Hi spin,

I just now happened to see this, but I'm glad you posted it.

For the most part, the symbolic connections you have referenced above do exist.. The book of Judith was, of course, written during the Hasmonean period. It seems not unlikely then that Judith is a literary device, set in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, which uses the foil of Holofernes as an inspiration to the resistance of Antiochus IV. II Maccabees, chapter 9 also uses symbology reminiscent of Isaiah chapter 14.

However, I have never considered these connections to be an indication that Isaiah himself was referring to Antiochus. Rather, it seemed more likely to me that Judith and to a greater extent Maccabees, were simply borrowing the symbology with which Isaiah referred to Nebuchadnezzar (or perhaps simply a generic personification of Babylonian power) and then, themselves applying the same to Antiochus.

For instance, when Isaiah says in 14:11 that "the maggot is spread under you, yea, the worms cover you", this is simply a euphemism for death and the corruption of the grave. But both Judith and Maccabees convert the euphemism to their own purpose: Judith 16:21 "He will send fire and worms in their flesh and they shall weep with pain evermore."; and (as you mentioned) II Maccabees 9:9 ". . . the very eyes of this godless man teemed with worms and his flesh rotted away while he lingered on in agonizing pain. . ."

Also, as to your citation of Isaiah 14:13b as referring to Zaphon as the mountain (of Baal) in Ugarit, I don't think this is correct. Isaiah's statement here is, ". . . on the mount of meeting (Hebrew, "moad") in the sides (Hebrew, "yerkah") of the north (Hebrew, "tsaphon"). Although the term "tsaphon" is used once (in Joshua) to refer to a city in Gad, in every one of the 100+ other instances of its use, it very definitely means "north". A particularly good example is found in Ps. 48:2 where the exact same terminology is used as in Isaiah 14:13b. Thus, Ps. 48:2 ". . . in the city of our God, the mountain of his holiness, beautiful on high, the joy of all the earth, (is) mount Zion in the sides of the north . . .".

Why then does Isaiah symbolically refer to "lucifer" aspiring to ascend the mount of meeting ("moad") in the sides of the north, and Psalms refer to mount Zion as being the mountain of God in the sides of the north?

The answer is found in the meaning of the Hebrew term "moad". This is the same term that is used in Gen. 1:14 when God placed the "luminaries" in the expanse of heaven and said, "let them be for signs and for seasons (Hebrew, "moadim"). This term, "moad" basically translates to "appointed time". In addition, the term that is translated as "sides" in the phrase "sides of the north", is "yerkah" which translates as "recess", "border", "quarter".

Thus, when Isaiah says, "in the mount of meeting in the sides of the north", he is actually drawing on ancient mythology regarding the "mount of appointed time in the recesses of the north". The ancient sanskrit Vedas make reference to this mountain as "mount Meru" where the circumpolar stars continuously circle around and around the mount (hence, the north polar axis). This mythological mount is envisaged as being the "axle" on which the entire frame (skambha) of the cosmos revolves (thus controlling the "appointments" of the constellations). The literature is far too prolific to go into here, but there is ample attestation to various cultures considering their holy places as being the center of the earth and, thus, equated with the holy mount of the god's (or assembly) in the north. Also relevant to Isaiah's symbology is the fact that at the end of various cycles this "pin" of the north gets "unhinged" and the mount topples bringing the stars down with it.

My final consideration regarding whether Isaiah was making a reference to Antiochus, or whether Judith and Maccabees were, rather, borrowing Isaiah's symbolic references to Nebuchadnezzar for the purpose of applying them to Antiochus, regards the dates of composition. Since Antiochus IV ruled from c. 175 - 163 B.C. and we have extant Isaiah documents from Qumran which (even with the most conservative dating) places these copies at c. 150 - 100 B.C. (with some dating techniques suggesting even the middle to the end of the 3rd century B.C.), we come very close to excluding an available time margin for interpolation. Are you then suggesting that some or all of the passages in Isaiah chapter 14 are later interpolations not composed until the early to mid-2nd century B.C.?

Again, thanks for bringing up this point in your post as this is precisely the type of thing that interests me most. I do look forward to your further opinions on this.

Namaste'

Amlodhi

spin

Amlodhi!

Interestingly enough the only historical record of a Holophernes I have found comes from the time of Seleucid Demetrius I (ca. 160 BCE), when this king places one Olophernes in control of Kappadokia. And as I indicated the book indicates that it is well post-exilic in the speech of Achior (see 5:19 in its context).

As I'm sure you know, Isaiah was ostensibly written over a very long period. There are indications that part of it was supposed to have been written at the time of the Assyrians and Hezekiah, while the passage we are looking at claims to have been written about a period eighty or so years later. Others refer to the persian Cyrus. Later still we have references to Kittim which although it existed since around 1000 BCE only came to economic and political importance during the Persian period. Still later (19:18-9) we have five cities which speak the Canaanite language in Egypt which swear allegiance to YHWH CB'WT and an altar to YHWH in the centre of Egypt. This altar seems to refer to the temple of Onias IV at the holy city (Grk: polisasedek!), or according to the Vulgate, civitas Solis, the city of the sun, which is Heliopolis as the Greeks called On, which is also the city where Onias built his temple ca. 160 BCE. (The talk of both Egypt and Assyria later in the chapter are also pointers to the period when the Seleucids and the Ptolemies were the powers of the day.)

Talking about "Isaiah himself" is a very strange idea here.

If that were so, you'd expect an explicit tradition in the Hebrew literature. There are just a few hints from Job about his condition.

I'm sure that you'll find this "sides of the north" puzzling. However the passage does closely underlie the myth of Baal, the cloud walker, seen in Dan 7 with the one like a son of man ascending on the clouds to the divine assembly where a throne would be waiting. Daniel is modelled on Baal's return to Zaphon where El (the Ancient of Days) would receive him into the assembly of gods after Baal had defeated the sea. That's what is actually behind 14:13b-14. You don't need to get more esoteric.

The tradition was clearly known in Hebrew literature as both Isaiah and Daniel indicate. Daniel was explicitly referring to the Seleucid Antiochus IV: the fourth beast is the Seleucid elephant and Antiochus is the little horn which took the place of three others (Seleucus III, Heliodorus and his puppet Antiochus), the arrogant one (Dan 7:8, 2 Mac 9:11) who would "attempt to change the sacred times and the law".

The parallels between Baal and YHWH would naturally lead to a conflation of terminology in which Zaphon would become Zion.

Even under conservative scholarly analysis there are three separate divisions in the book of Isaiah. I find these hopeful in their simplicity, ie that there were simply three separate times of writing. The book has references over a very long period of time. Can you see any reason why the specific passage could not have been written not long before the Great Isaiah Scroll was produced? It might only take an afternoon to have written.


spin

external solipsism

Well this has all been interesting and helpful information.

The thing that spurred my interest in this subject is from some reading I've been doing on Wicca. One book I've been reading listed some gods and goddesses that some witches use and recognize in their practice of the craft. One of the gods was Lucifer, a deity from ancient Roman/Italian pantheons. Lucifer was the brother of Diana. Diana was a goddess of the moon. Lucifer was a god of the sun and of light.

I wondered if possibly Lucifer was an adoption by Christianity, and was labeled as being one in the same with Satan, in a similar way that many present day Christians believe any non-Christain religion is a religion of Satan worship in which Satan has fooled the followers of that religion to believe that he is in fact God, but some other God such as Allah, etc. I also wondered if some misunderstanding or mistranslation might have spurred the common beliefs of today's Christianity. Would the ancient Romans have called the planet Venus by the name of "Lucifer" suggesting that the light was the brother of the moon? Or could the morning star not be referencing a specific light, but the comming of light in general? Might the name Lucifer have been used to be synonymous with the object of light? Or might the morning star be the sun itself, which might also be called by the name Lucifer within the context of the ancient mythology?

Anyway, anyone who is knowledgeable on the relevant data, please feel free to offer theories on this matter.

spin

Venus, when you see it in the morning, comes before the sun rises, hence it is "lucifer", the lightbringer, ie it is called "lucifer" because of the sun whose arrival it heralds. At the other end of Venus's cycle it is known as "hesperus", of the evening, (aka Vesperugo, Vesper, Noctifer, or Nocturnus).

I incidentally wonder when the planet became Venus, moving from masculine to feminine.


spin

Adora

Random Comment of Randomness.

There are branches of Sufism who believe it was Lucifer's absolute love for Allah that made him fall. Allah ordered him to bow to Man, and Lucifer refused because the only creature he ever bowed to was Allah, and to bow to man would be a crime against his love. And so, after he fell, Lucifer now spends eternity tempting man and testing humanity, to show Allah how unworthy we are of the position he has placed us in.

I think it's one of the most wonderful versions of the Lucifer myth ever. But I'm a romantic like that.