Adamu

Hilarious indeed; quite the seductive sister Enki had, eh?

What I meant though was that Sumerian fragments of the Enuma Elish don't exalt a singular all powerful God, as is the case with Marduk, Ashur (the assyrian version) and the Hebrew YHWH.

Adamu

Ah, my mistake.
I'm not as familiar with the Quran.

Chris Johnston

Please remember that the pentateuch is most likely oral tradition, very old, committed to writing many generations down the road. The language used reflects ancient polytheistic origins, while the translation may have more to do with the translators struggling with the changing form from plural to singular etc. The doctrine of the trinity surely informs the translators, in a cruel sort of circular dance. The doctrine stems from this passage and a few others, and the doctrine affects the translation.
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cpollett

You are correct that the most you can say about zhen is that is honorific first-person pronoun. In English it is easy to see a distinction between a singular and plural pronoun because of the way verbs conjugate. Since you don't conjugate verbs in Chinese, I guess this facet of the 'royal we' might not be equivalent to zhen. I don't know enough about Chinese to know if using zhen men would make sense to pluralize zhen (I doubt it). So let me then restate what I meant to argue: The concept of having a special first person honorific is probably older than the 13th century.

DrZoidberg

We've got a Torah at home and access to Hebrew skillz. Either there is many gods referenced in the Torah, or ancient Jews sucked monkey balls when it comes to poetry. Just an opinion.

spin

Here's the thing, folks. If you want to retroject the royal plural into the bible, you have to show that the god person uses it regularly -- or even that anyone uses the royal plural. Problem is, you can't. Either it is a functional linguistic manifestation and it is used regularly, or you have no grounds to talk about a royal plural.

As it is, it should be clear why people talk about the royal plural here: they don't have a better explanation for the plurals in Gen 1:26. Well, people who don't know any linguistics will be happy with this ad hoc kludge.

And what does Quranic Arabic have to do with a text that was written at least 700 years before? Obviously nothing -- at least directly. That fact that one leaves the Hebrew and goes to Arabic is because there is nothing available in Hebrew to argue from.


spin

Adamu

Hi, spin.
You're right. The Quran is tangential, at best.
I misunderstood Salam's point anyway.

Back to topic:

Do you think the assembly of gods of which YHWH was a part in discussing the creation of Man is a reflection of the mesopotamian assembly of gods holding council to discuss the creation of Man?

IOW: Do you think the plural elohim is derived of the anunnaki "those from heaven to earth came" or din.gir "righteous ones?" of the earlier cultures?


Regards

spin

)LHYM is old and Canaanite, not Mesopotamian. Consider 1 Sam 5:7 in which people from Ashdod, referring to Dagon, call him "our god" [)LHY:NW -- loosing the mem from the plural, when a suffix is added]. See also Jdg 11:24 for Chemosh, "thy god" [)LHY:K].

I think, by the time the text was redacted in Hebrew, the divine council was a reduced structure of demoted deities in the form of angels of various types. That's clearly what Jubilees shows.


spin

Adamu

So... no, it doesn't reflect the assembly of gods in the earlier myths?

And the demoted deities, angels et al., this structure of divine council, from where were they reduced?

Thanks.

spin

So it does and it doesn't. It's almost certainly the tradition from which the text was developed -- and there are traces of that tradition littered through the Hebrew bible --, but as with all traditions it has been put to the use of the writers of the time, so it has been transmogrified.

The Canaanite tradition that Ugarit also belonged to. Even in Judah YHWH had a consort in the 800s BCE as shown by archaeology (at Kuntillet Ajrud). I've also pointed to both Ps 82 and Deut 32 which shows the Hebrew god in the council of El. Now that council has been transformed to his own and he has absorbed the role of El and the other gods are national gods (this is the common situation in the middle east where henotheism was the norm), who have been transformed into the equivalent of angels as can be seen in Daniel 8. YHWH's court is filled with ministering angels. At one stage even the accuser (the satan, H:$+N, noun not name) was part of the council, Job 1:6 ("One day the sons of god came to present themselves before YHWH and the accuser was also with them").


spin