Naphtali Jones

No offense, Sheshbazzar, but your ideas just don't sound logical to me. If the "Power" has total control over everything that is created or written or done in the universe, if all reality is exactly the way that "HE" has designed it to be, then how could it all be wrong and why should we be waiting for some sort of magical restitution? On a side note, I just looked at your profile...What is Biblical Mathematics? Is it basically the same as Numerology?

Naphtali Jones

Very interesting Loomis, but I'm confused. My translation says "Lucifer (Day Star), son of the morning. Was Sachar the god that personified dawn in the canaanite pantheon? Was Helel the day star? (I have always found it ironic that both Jesus and Satan were called the morning star). Is Mount Zaphon like the Olympus of canaanite mythology and where is it? Most importantly, are these names only in the original Hebrew and where does the word Lucifer come from? You didn't translate "Most High" at the end of the passage, is this El-Shaddai?

Diogenes the Cynic

"Lucifer" is Latin for "light bearer." It is the Vulgate translation of the LXX word, heosphoros ("dawn bringer") which is the Greek name for the Morning Star (Venus). In Hebrew, helel ben-shachar means "shining one, son of the morning," and is, again, a reference to the planet Venus.

Incidentally, the passage is talking about the King of Babylon, not Satan. The identification of "Lucifer" as Satan is an erroneous Christian interpretation.

Naphtali Jones

So, the question remains, is sachar just the Hebrew word for morning or was Sachar the Canaanite god of the morning and his name somehow absorbed into the Hebrew language.

I realize this, it just strikes me as ironic that Christians refer to Jesus as the "bright and morning star" and then talk about the evil of Lucifer.

Loomis

I’m familiar with that explanation and remember being satisfied with it myself.

However …. I love Yahweh. I search for him with all my heart!

Now I’ve learned a few new things. Check this out:

There is a Ugaritic text that is seen as the prototype of the Helel account called the “Ba’al and Anath” cycle.

It talks about the god Athtar who succeeded Baal as the king on Mount Zaphon. Athtar goes to take Baal ‘s throne and discovers that he is too damn small to fit in the chair! He’s a god-midget. So Athtar goes to the earth and rules from there.

End of story. It’s that cute and simple. Over time the story evolves into what you see at Isaiah 14:12.

There is an excellent paper on this subject here:

http://www.spiritandtruth.org/teachi...cles/18/18.pdf

Loomis

Shachar comes from one of the Ugartic texts called KTU 1.23 - the story of “Dawn and Dusk.”

KTU 1.23 is a seventy-six-line poem in which El becomes sexually aroused and impregnates two women who give birth to the two gods Shachar and Shalim (Dawn and Dusk). The texts open with repeated invitations, which suggests that it originally reflected or accompanied a ritual. A few scholars see the text as a theogony in which two gods are the firstborn of all the gods of Ugarit.

If you google Shachar Shalim Ugarit El you will find plenty of hits.

Also check this book out:
Canaanite Myths and Legends. Chapter 6: Shachar and Shalim and the Gracious Gods.

Anat

Loomis, there was the Greco-Roman deity Mercury, who became identified with the planet by that name, and we can also speak figuratively about people with mercurial character. One can talk of myths about Mercury the deity without believing in the Greco-Roman pantheon, or the planet Mercury, (or the metal mercury) and about mercurial people. Similarly there was a deity Shachar, the planet Shachar (Venus) and the word shachar in the sense of dawn. Obviously at some point people actually believed in the deity, but from the mention of his name in Isaiah can we conclude that the author, living in the time of the exile, believed literally in a deity named Shachar, or could the author have been borrowing figuratively from the ancient mythology of his people to describe the king of Babylon the way we might talk of mercurial people? (I don't think he considered the king of Babylon to be a god, so there already has to be metaphor in that verse.)

Loomis

Genesis 33:20 says El (a proper name) is the god of Israel.

Psalm 8 says Yahweh created the elohim.

Anat

Do you mean in verse 6? Though it does have Yahweh and elohim as separate beings, I thought the verse was about the creation of mankind and the special status mankind received in the created universe - a bit less than that of elohim.

Loomis

You should check out this paper because it discusses most of the things you mentioned. I just re-read it myself.

http://www.spiritandtruth.org/teachi...cles/18/18.pdf

I’m not sure the “King of Babylon” crap is real history. I think that the “King of Babylon” stuff might be fiction that encapsulates and earlier story.

Consider the possibility that the author who wrote the prologue and the epilog is NOT the same author who wrote the juicy stuff in the middle about Shachar and Helel.

The break between the prologue and the body is in the middle of verse 4:

you will taunt the king of Babylon with these words:

“Look how the oppressor has met his end …

Then the body ends at 14:21, and the epilog starts at 14:22.