Garnet

Thank you Amlodhi. Without knowing it, you backed up my argument with this individual. I should have posted this in the OP, but my response to her was that while some of the uses of the word "appear" may have been vision like others seemed clearly to me to be a physical manifestation. For example, I spoke of Abraham talking with God and Jacob (was it Jacob...gak...can't remember and don't have access to a Bible at the moment) wrestling with God. To me those most certainly were physical manisfestations. May I copy your post and send it? This girl continues to carry her assertion that there were no physical manifestations in the OT and thus the argument that there is a conflict with the NT saying that no one saw God is a fallacious argument.

Rick Sumner

Nothing in that suggests anything about your "general rule" being even remotely "general." In fact, your "general rule" isn't even mentioned, and the general view being suggested is one far more in keeping with my own.

It isn't recording history, it isn't recording anything remotely like history. It's discussing current events in the guise of history.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Amlodhi

Hello Garnet,

Feel free to do whatever you wish with it (except misquote it).

The fact that this verb is used in multiple applications won't, of course, convince her that YHWH was ever "seen" in any real sense. There are several avenues of interpretation available to the person intent on disclaiming this. But then, you needn't consider convincing her to be a requirement.


Amlodhi

Garnet

Thanks again Amlodhi. I'll be very carefull not to chop it up or mispost it. I'm not really concerned about convincing her, although to be honest she IS annoying the stuffings out of me. It's more that I wasn't completely out of my mind in thinking that appear could have more than one use and that to say it "always" means a spiritual type of appearance was disingenuous.

Lugubert

Amlodhi,

I am struggling to make a beginner's exegisis of Gen 19:1-29, and have of course to consider 18 as well.
The counting in itself is one problem, but who is/are counted? In 18:1, Abraham sees three men, and addresses them as "My Lord" (KJV) or "Sirs" (The Revised English Bible). Further on, The LORD (one of the men? newcomer?) speaks. In 18:22, the men (2? 3?) went towards Sodom, "but Abraham stood yet before the LORD". Abraham must have had his eyes shut, or he would have seen God, and thus been killed: the text uses lipne YHWH 'to the face of God'.

In 19:1, "two angels" (KJV) or "the two angels" (REB) came to Sodom in the evening. Several commentaries, including a BHS note, just say "for 'angels, read 'men'". But covering that distance in that time sure is supernatural.

In 19:18, "Lot said unto them" (KJV), but 19:21 "he [the two men? one of the men? God speaking in a stereo transmission through the two men as mere loudspeakers?] said to him [Lot]".

When choosing from
I first excluded 1., as it is pointed out that the apparitions really eat (18:8, 19:3).

Despite my "literal" translation above, "Peniel" in 4. doesn't have to be discarded as 'figurative', but can be interpreted as using the preposition 'in front of, before'. (Arabic has bayna yadaihi 'between his two hands' in the same sense; Chinese uses miÃ*n 'face' in similar compounds; in English, even a building can 'face' another one). If the God representation was real, it would of course, as I remarked, require that the human keep his eyes shut.

That leaves 2. as an early kind of virtual reality. In that case, are we allowed to interpret the destruction of Sodom as another VR event, seen by Abraham and Lot only, as we have no archaeological evidence for a destruction of five cities, leaving unharmed a neighbouring village?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Rick,

To recap the movement of the discussion fom my point of view, Gander asked if seeing God in a biblical story meant seeing him physically. He asked for our opinions on it. I suggested that, as a general rule, Biblical stories evolved from stories involving kings (with the role of the king being supplanted by a God), and therefore, yes, the old Hebrew Gods: Yawah, El, Elohim, etc. were meant to be physically seen in the stories.

By the phrase "general rule", I meant a quick easy helpful rule of thumb.
I brought up some references to Greek Gods having developed out of king stories and you correctly noted that this did not necessarily apply to the Biblical Stories. I gave you my website deconstructing and reconstructing the Sodom Destruction story (which indicates that the character of God replaced a King as the destroyer of Sodom). You asked for confirmation specifically in the Exodus story.

Again, being pressed for time, I cannot do any significant scholarly research, but off the top of my head, I can bring up the well known idea (from Mendenhall and Kline) that the form of the Ten Commandments derives from a Suzerainty Treaty, a Post 13th Century Hittite Treaty between a King and his vassal people.

This indicates to me that the Character of God was simply a Hittite King in the earlier stories. If you examine the story closely, you will see that God is no more than a magician King trying to save some of his people from Egyptian enslavement. With a close study of the relationships of the Hittites and Egyptians, I'm sure we could find the historical incidents that the Hittite stories were based upon.

The historical incidents are probably nothing like the current narratives. Probably it involved the Egyptian capture of a few Hittite families, the polite request for their release by the Hittite King, and a reply by the Egyptian King that they had drowned in the Red Sea, while being escorted out of Egypt by some soldiers.. The rest is the literary imagination of the Hittite people and the later Hebrew Nomads.

The theory that the Exodus story is total fiction and was created ex nihil does not reflect my understanding of the complex development of most fictional works.

I like your general observation that Bible stories are discussing current events in the guise of history. One may modify that to derive a formula for their production: we add 5% new fables based on current events to 95% old fables based on past current events.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Rick Sumner

And I agree. We even see contrary views reflected in the Pentateuch, where God both cannot be seen (though he did show Moses his "back parts" and God is seen by Moses on the Mount, for example.

I am not persuaded that it is a helpful rule of thumb, and emphatically think "general rule" is wholly incorrect. Such phrasing, and such sentiment, preclude the more natural assessment, particularly of the Exodus narrative: It's a fiction, none of the characters are real.

I haven't looked at it yet, but will do so today or tomorrow. I must emphasize my reticience at accepting that there was any historical destruction of Sodom. Or, for that matter, that there was a "Sodom," at all. "Jews" got there, found a destroyed city, and made a story up about how it got destroyed. This latter approach is far more a "general rule" than what you've suggested.

The Ten Commandments are decidedly different from the appearance of God. And why would I overlook Hammurabi, whose code has a picture of the same receiving his decree from his God on top of a mountain?

You've presumed that there are such stories before you begin looking for them. This is specious method at best.

I could put together a similar narrative for Canaanites, who are far more directly linked to ancient Israelites. Both of us would be putting forth wild unsupported speculation.

And yet, thus far, you've offered no reason to think it is anything else.

And yet the Deuteronistic history is generally (at least to my understanding, perhaps Celsus can clarify further) held to be largely the converse to that--the sizable majority reflecting a later reality paired with a revisionist idealism, not an historical core.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Celsus

Can I just ask here: What the fuck? Liverani is a minimalist who, in looking at the political context of writing is not arguing that the stories actually happened. Practically the opposite--apparently Raskin is caught on the "'true' historical nature" and forgets the mythic formation. As for Mendenhall's suzerainty treaties, the problem is that it can apply to the Hittite form, but it can also apply to other texts millenia on either side of its date. It says nothing of the necessity to equate the 10Cs with Hittite legal documents. Everything else collapses from there. The Biblical writers are completely unaware of the ancient Hittite kingdom, though aware of the neo-Hittites, called "Hittites" in the Bible. I feel I've entered an alternate universe.

Joel

Lugubert

Jay,

I had a look at your site. I hoped that I would get more material on Sodom & Co. I was disappointed.

I don't believe in your explanation of the ancient name of Hebron. I (and many others) prefer the 'four' interpretation, like Some scholars make it "the four-square city" and the like.

Your effort to make 'Mamre' develop into 'Abraham' is one of the worst I have seen. You discard letters, like the `ayin at the end of '´arba`'and transpose those that are left, and then add letters, like the 'h'. In that way, it is possible to explain any word in any language from any other word in any other language. In short, I'm not impressed.

Your final comment on the Sodom story, I find equally fanciful and unfounded.

<add>And in your "de/reconstruction", you should have purged 19:29, which is clearly a late addition from the P source</add>

PhilosopherJay

Hi Joel,

I did not mean to suggest that the Hittites wrote the original stories of Exodus. I have not done the research to put forward such an hypothesis. This scenario was meant as an illustration of the type of hypostheses we can make based on the evidence of the forms.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin