ShamashUruk
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- Jul 19, 2017
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So do you think that Moses was speaking to his personal idol (God figure)
face to face?
It may be that the Egyptians or Sumerians or Babylonians equated Ba'al and YHWH on the same level, but certainly not the Israelites.
YHWH in many scriptures castigated the Israelites for worshiping idols such as Ba'al.
As far as I know, YHWH hated Ba'al, and warned Israel not to worship him. Ba'al was an idol made of hands. YHWH was a living God, who spoke to Moses 'face to face', and Moses was preserved.
Whether I think that he was speaking to his personal God or not is irrelevant, a little about "idols" before we go on (see below). What is relevant is how those societies worked and how St. Moses would have engaged in pluralistic ritualism. So it would have been common that in each city-state a God was worshiped (even in Egypt) and each person had a personal God. Making the stories of St. Moses identical to much earlier Babylonian wisdom books as similar.
To clear up the confusion concerning "idol" worship, aside from it being a cliché term in monotheistic circles. In Biblical mythologies we see in Exodus 32:24 gold being cast into a fire to make a calf.
a little thing about the gold during the times of the ancient Egyptians about 2000 BCE and on; gold used by the Egyptians generally contains silver, often in substantial amounts, and it appears that for most of Egypt’s history gold was not refined to increase its purity. The color of a metal is affected by its composition gradations in hue that range between the bright yellow of a central boss that once embellished a vessel dating to the Third Intermediate Period for example. Hence Egyptian earrings would reflect this, also the gold used by the Egyptians and specifically Egyptian goldsmiths had added a significant amount of copper to a natural gold-silver alloy to attain a reddish hue. Gold is generally found in locations where there is a lot of quartz. So of course the Egyptians who mined gold would have had this kind of access.
Gold is an inanimate object; basically it is a thing that is not alive, such as a rock, a chair, a book, and so on. The golden calf in the biblical texts is not necessarily a calf; it is fashioned to be a lunar bull or a young bull. As the Egyptians would have worshiped the living animal, and not an image of it. also, the bull is the symbol of divinity only among settled agriculturists, and not among nomads such as the Israelites then were. Among the Hebrews, as among the other agricultural Semites, the bull was associated with a deity in a sacred character as the Ox, more associated with Yhwh or Yahweh. However, the word Yahweh related in those times to Yahwehistic cults and was banned, until a much later revelation.
Bringing this to the idea of "idol" worship, just like the golden earrings (inanimate object) story and making of a statue (inanimate object), even if it say were made purely of a type of material (any material)it is still an inanimate object. For example, the idea of having an object such as a cross on steeple is representation or symbolism of what that cross represents that is mounted on a church steeple. We see this in monotheistic as well polytheistic belief systems. Hence the association of "idol" worship is not well stated in monotheistic themes, and historically is vague. This is because statues are representational and are not actually ‘animate’, as in there is no such thing as a deity living inside of the statue.
Concerning Ba'al and YHWH as similar deities and later cosmic enemies in Israelite culture, also to note the Babylonian's, Sumerian's would be unfamiliar with Ba'al and YHWH in that context, as the Gods of Babylon and Sumer are only adopted in characterization in Israel and in Canaan. Much of the issue you are dealing with stems from divine council.
There is a familial language for divinity at Ugarit. The patrimonial household provides conceptual unity for describing divinity. Within the divine household are additional relationships centered
on one or two figures. There are relationships to illustrate further the root metaphor of the family for Ugaritic divinity.
The four tiers of the family include the household workers. Here we may note examples of another type of household “workers,” the groups of retainers attached to two gods of the second tier. There is some evidence for a group of divine retainers who serve Baal. The best evidence may be the god’s meteorological retinue in CAT 1.5 V 6–9. Possibly related, the phrase ’il t‘dr b‘l, “Baal’s divine helpers,” occurs in 1.47.26 1.118.25.1 We do not know how this collective may relate to mhr b‘l wmhr ‘nt in 1.22 I 8–9 (cf. 1.22 II 7). Common to all of them may be the military image underlying them: Baal is the leader of his military retinue. There is also possible evidence for a military retinue revolving around Resheph. Ugaritic attests to both rsˇpm and to several rsˇp combined with a place name. However, the plural rsˇpm in CAT 1.91.11, described as entering bt mlk, the royal palace or royal sanctuary/chapel, probably refers to the procession of cult statues of Resheph. “The Reshephs” are known in Egyptian and Phoenician sources, perhaps warranting the hypothesis that second millennium Levantine religion generally knew this plural collective. A New Kingdom Egyptian text compares Ramses III’s army to them: “the chariot-warriors are as mighty as Rashaps.” Sidonian inscriptions (KAI 15:2; RES 289:2, 290:3, 302 B:5) mention ’rsfi rsˇpm, “the land of Reshephs” (cf. ’rqrsˇp in KAI 214:11). Following W. F. Albright, H. Donner and W. Rollig interpret rsˇpm as a general collectivity of deities like the Rephaim. W. J. Fulco renders ’rsfi rsˇpm as “Land of the Warriors.” Phoenician rsˇpm may designate a martial vanguard. BH resˇep appears as part of theophanic vanguard (Deuteronomy 32:23–24; Habakkuk 3:5; Ben Sira 43:17–18) and as a generic noun for sparks and fiery arrows (Psalm 76:3; Job 5:7; Song of Songs 8:6; cf. Aramaic risˇpa¯’, “flame”).7 Hababkkuk 3:5 mentions Resheph as a member of Yahweh’s theophanic retinue. Given the warrior character of both Baal and Resheph, these pluralities would seem to be military retinues of the gods after whom they are named. As members of the second tier of the divine assembly and sons of the divine patriarch, these two gods were in a position to have retainers work for them. Accordingly, these retinues are well within the paradigm of the
patrimonial household. The same paradigm of military retainers may underlie Philo of Byblos’ comments (PE 1.10.20): “Now the allies of Elos, i.e. Kronos, were called ‘eloim’, as the ones named after Kronos would be ‘Kronians’ ” (hoi de summachoi Elou tou Kronou Elo¯eim epekle¯the¯san hos an Kronioi houtoi e¯san hoi legomenoi epi
Kronou).
Hence we see a Resheph in the Yahweh family tree, and the warrior character of both Baal and Resheph, these pluralities would seem to be military retinues of the gods after whom they are named. Also, Baal (Ba'al) isn't seen a demon, but a warrior in a military setting, to which we see the same concepts with Yahweh.
For about a half century scholars have contrasted the biblical attitude toward death with what was seen in the Ugaritic material as a “Canaanite embrace” of death. In the last two decades biblical scholars have proposed that the biblical critique of “Canaanite” customs pertaining to the dead reflects a more popular Israelite devotion to the dead and some priestly and deuteronomic restrictions on such activity. With the publication and integration of important archaeological studies, such as E. M. Bloch-Smith’s groundbreaking 1992 study Judahite Burials and Beliefs about the Dead, scholars have revised their understanding of the Rephaim in Ugaritic (rp’um) and biblical texts (reˇpa¯’ıˆm). Recent studies view the Rephaim in both corpora as the heroic ancestors. However, there is more to this comparison. Both the Ugaritic and biblical views of the Rephaim are the products of their societies. For Ugarit, KTU 1.161 makes it clear that the Rephaim represent the ancient cultural tradition with which the monarchy identified; in short, the Rephaim mark cultural identification for the monarchy (and for other sectors of Ugaritic society). Given the Israelite devotion to the dead, a similar view may have obtained throughout much of Iron Age Israel. But in Israel we see a reaction against popular practice. For example, for deuteronomic texts, the Rephaim represent the ancient cultural tradition of Israel’s putative predecessors in the land, the Canaanites; in short, in these texts Rephaim signal cultural distance or “disidentification.”
The Rephaim then are cultural markers of identity, insiders for the Ugaritic monarchy and society as well as Israelite popular religion, but outsiders for deuteronomic authors. Both the Ugaritic monarchy and authors of deuteronomic works use the putatively ancient cultural tradition of the Rephaim to claim political identity and authority.
Others associations relate various deities in different ways. Some associations reflect family relations, such as El and Athirat as divine couple, or Dagan and Baal as father and son. Other pairings are apparently “natural,” such as “Dawn and Dusk” (Shahar and Shalim), “Heaven and Earth,” “Mountains and Valleys,” or “Vine and Field.” The pairs of “olden gods” (e.g., “Earth and Heaven”) are a wellknown feature of ancient Near Eastern theogonies, but the Ugaritic material lacks such pairings in any theogonic context.28 Finally, the binomial pattern is so common that it is used also to denote single deities with two names, as in Kothar waHasis and Nikkal wa-Ib. In these two cases, the second term characterizes the deity named with the first term. Accordingly, Kothar is Hasis, or “wise”; and the Mesopotamian moon-goddess mentioned in CAT 1.24, Nikkal (nin.gal, “Great Lady,” the wife of the moon-god Sin in Mesopotamia), is called Ib, probably related to her Akkadian epithet ilat inbi, “goddess of fruit.
Conceptualization in Biblical literature without refercing ancient sources does little justice in equating broadly each deity. We don't see a Ba'al figure in one light. Ba'al is shown in Ugaritic and respectively Canaanite socieites in differing points of view, hence we see the Ba'al and the Ugaritic Ba'al cycle as a storm God similar to Hadad in Sumerian literature, and Jesus as master of the storms even in Luke 8:25 "And he said unto them, Where is your faith? And they being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him." Making "Jesus" clearly one who commands winds and water similar to Ba'al and earlier Hadad.
In turn you'd have to prove that Jesus is not master of the storms in order to dissociate Jesus from Ba'al (the storm God), but Luke 8:25 shows otherwise as Jesus clearly commands winds and water.
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