N.B. This post is too long so I have split it into two different posts. In case things get messed up as they are submitted, I will label them.
Post 1
BL said:
Except that GCC didn't say that. There's some propping up here methinks =)
You know what? You're actually correct here. After I posted this about there being three uses I re-read what GCC said. He is a good friend of mine, but he would acknowledge that my Hebrew is far superior to his. I saw his statement contradicting yours and due to my friendship with him I immediately rushed to say he was 100% correct. What I should have said was that he was on the right track. However, my haste to defend my friend does not in any way lessen the argument that I put forth.
El is the singular form of elohim
No it's not. While it is often taught in intro classes that אֱלֹהִים is the plural form of אֵל it is not. Indeed, back when I was a wee undergrad bible major I made that same mistake, much to my current embarassment I argued, rather vehemently on these very forums that אֵל is the singular of אֱלֹהִים. But alas, as I actually learned the language, including how to retrograde Hebrew into proto-semitic, I learned that no, no it's not. אֱלֹהִים is the plural of אלוהּ, which may be an expanded form of אֵל (they are certainly related). But linguistically it is improper to say that אֱלֹהִים is the plural of אֵל. (Incidentally, sorry for mixing pointed and unpointed Hebrew. I just re-installed Windows which means I don't have my preferred Hebrew word processor (a program called Nota Bene) so I have to live with Hebrew words copied and pasted from Wikipedia, yuck).
However:
In ancient Hebrew, the plural "elohim" became unacceptable as monotheism took hold, and thus when the plural "elohim" is used for the divine in the bible, it's meaning was changed to a "majestic plural." In this way, elohim transitioned to mean a singular divine being, given greater respect by a plural noun, in order to make sense of older polytheistic scriptures that recognized a pantheon of gods.
This is pretty much correct. With the one or two caveat 1.) (implied though not stated in your quote) that means that conceptually, when we see elohim in the Hebrew Bible to describe their object of devotion they are thinking of one and only one god (at least 9 times out of 10). 2.) It is not as if the ancients had a bunch of texts which included the plural form אֱלֹהִים and then all of a sudden realized that they were monotheists and had to rush to change the verb tenses to singular and inform everyone that now the word אֱלֹהִים should be thought of as singular. It happened much more organically than that. By the relatively late Semitic language of biblical Hebrew, אֱלֹהִים could semantically be plural or singular depending on whether the writer was referring to the concept of a plurality of gods or their own one God.
I imagine that this is what you meant, but I wanted to be sure.
What you're conveniently not responding to is the statement from Jacob, " el elohe yirael," in which there is no ambiguity. Jacob is specifically referring to the god El, not a god.
You have not offered one reason why this statement is so unambiguously referring to the West Semitic deity El. You simply asserted it in post 45. I don't respond to assertions, I respond to arguments. But in lieu of an actual argument to respond to, I will remind you that the Torah is not codified until the Exile so, no, when this is written it is not about the West Semitic deity El. It is possible that in the earliest strains of tradition it did, but not by the time it is redacted. I go into more detail in the next section.
Of course, this assumes that the Hebrew deity and the Canaanite deity are different.
Of course it does. And seeing as virtually every historian would make that claim I see no reason to defend it. Though importantly, I think I may have identified one of the potential misunderstandings, you and I. The text that we have is so systematically edited by the later redactor that I am assuming that when we talk about the "Hebrew deity" as you do in your quote that we are talking about the deity of the people who codified the Torah, i.e. the redactor, or, if we really want to push it then we are talking about the authors of the P and D sources and whoever combined J and E (scholars have recognized in recent years that J and E are so similar that it is nearly fruitless to try to separate them in most cases). Either way, that would mean that the texts that we are using represents a period in the history of Israel in which, even if they had point blank stolen El from the Canaanites they were clearly no longer seeing him as El and had already combined him with YHWH to make him their own. Are you trying to suggest that the texts that we have somehow preserve a much much older theological position? I.e. that of El worship? Because that would be deeply problematic as the Redactor has clearly removed much polytheism already. Why on earth would he allow the worship of El in opposition to YHWH to remain in the text he was redacting? Indeed, even if this is true, as I make clear in the next paragraph, traditionally this verse is attributed to the P source, which itself is relatively late. Why would the late P writer allow for this?
If you would like to make an argument for why the Canaanite deity and the Hebrew deity are one and the same as preserved in the Hebrew bible, or cite reputable scholars who make that argument, then I would be more than happy to respond to it. Likewise, if you do want to argue that El worship is somehow allowed by the Redactor and therefore is to be found within the redacted text, then by all means go ahead. But I don't need to defend something that is upheld by virtually everyone, i.e. that the god advocated by the Hebrew text is not to be identified with the Canaanite deity El. Indeed, El worship had fallen out of favor by that point. Similarly, note, what Hayes is saying in the youtube video that you give us is
not that they are worshiping the same deity by the time that the Hebrews have come into their own. She is saying that the deities may come from the same thing. But, most scholars attribute this particular text to the P source (like Speiser) which places it well after the Iron age making it impossible that the author of the the text thought of this as anything other than YHWH. Indeed, the P source is so staunchly monotheistic it is not even funny. Others (Like Friedman) make it the E source, a tradition which can be traced back to the Iron Age, but even so, the text is not redacted until very late in the history of Ancient Israel (some suggesting even as late as the Exile) when the entire shtick of the Redactor was to advocate for radical monotheism which was equated with YHWH worship.
1) When dealing with facts, and a desire to know facts absolutely, adherence to a faith statement and a claim to crowd ("we Christians") is not inspiring as to an unbiased approach.
It seems that you failed to actually read the paragraph that this is responding to. Had you done so you would have seen that the point was that contrary to the faith claim states, I am treating elohim as a name. Read that again:
Contrary to the faith claim.
2) The statement of faith is obviously based on modern Christian dogma, and not reflective of the beliefs of Iron Age scribes writing about El-Shaddai.
Obviously, which is why I say this:
me said:
However, linguistically speaking it is not uncommon particularly in the Torah to see the word elohim function more or less as a proper name for God.
That's the second sentence of the paragraph you are responding to which makes me wonder how far into it you read. What that means is that what my paragraph is actually saying is this:
~ the faith statement claims that YHWH is the 'name' of God
~but the text (i.e. the thing compiled well after the Iron Age as you say) seems to treat elohim as a name as well.
Clearly, when I am willing to say that the faith statement has it wrong, I am not blinded by my mad adherence to a dogmatic faith.
Again, it appears that your personal biases greatly impact the way you build a subjective historical construct. I know of no respected historian who would say that the ancient Hebrews and the ancient Canaanites began as two separate people groups. It is a given fact that the Hebrews were, in fact, a collection of Canaanite people that formed together into a distinct people group.
Ok, this represents another fundamental misunderstanding that you seem to have. Yes, the Hebrew people came out of the Canaanites, but the Canaanites are far far far far from uniform. They're not really one people group per se. They are a group of people groups. It is similar (though admittedly not as extreme due to the size of land involved) as the Native Americans. Yes, there are similarities between the Iriquois and the Cherokee, and yes, there may even be overlap in their religion (I must admit, I know very little about Native American... well, anything really). But they're not the same people group.
Yes, the Hebrews were a Canaanite group, but they should never be identified
as the Canaanites. That would be like saying the Cherokee
are the Native Americans as opposed to saying, the Cherokee
are Native Americans.
We can see that although the Hebrew people were supposedly from an origin outside of Canaan (according to the bible, Abraham came from Ur), the genealogies listed in the bible reveal that the language of the Hebrews was Canaanite all along. Look as far back as Abel and Mehujael... and yes, you see that these names are references to "El". So although the Canaanite people are supposed to be separate from the Hebrews (according to the bible), and the Hebrew people should have had a different linguistic record because of their supposed origins, what we see is that the Hebrew history of the world fits neatly with a Canaanite linguistic and cultural view. The earliest people, according to the Hebrews, had names recognizing a Canaanite deity.
See, again, you are so close to being correct, but then you miss the point. Of course no serious scholar suggests that the Hebrews come (solely) from outside of Canaan (a few say that there was some level of immigration, but even they say that the vast majority come from inside the land). But that does not mean that all people living in the land have identical religions. That would be silly today, but when travel 'to the other side of the hill' was difficult, it is absolutely ludicrous to imagine. Indeed, it is much more reasonable to understand the religions as being dis-unified. Indeed, even centuries later we find within the religious texts (including the Hebrew Bible) the priests of the religion still struggling to force the religion to be uniform (see for instance the question of where and it is proper to sacrifice to YHWH, even the Torah disagrees on this point). And that represents a much later form of the cult. Before that it was only more difficult. So to say that any history fits "neatly with a Canaanite linguistic and cultural view" is certainly an oversimplification. As an incredibly obvious example, look at Psalm 104 and notice the similarities to the Great Hymn of Aten (an Egyptian god). Clearly the Hebrew religion is affected by more than simply the 'Canaanite' culture.
See also, yes, we see names that include the word el both late and early. So? I'm getting exasperated at having to repeat this, but 'el' means god. Not all occurrences of the word אֵל are referring to the proper name El.
However, for some reason, it appears you either don't know this. It looks more like you accept a biblical narrative that doesn't hold up under linguistic and historical investigation.
You presume, without even questioning, that I accept the Exodus narrative at face value. Your logic seems to be this: I am a Christian, therefore I must take the narrative at face value which makes me unreliable as a scholar. As I have already made clear I do not make that historically rediculous assumption. I say that specifically about the exodus in this post, but it should come as no surprise seeing as what I have already said about Jesus research. I presume that you also assume that I think the world only came into existence 6,000 years ago as well? You do realize we're not all fundamentalists, right?
[continued in next post]
I don't want to put words into LAC's mouth, but I don't think that this actually addresses what he was saying. Yes, many scholars say that it is entirely possible that the Hebrew god and El are related (see my quote above). But as LAC says, the origin of the word El is that of the generic term for deity. Again, at the risk of putting words in his mouth, el means god. That's just simply what the word means. The Canaanites use the word el to mean their specific god El. Then, one of a few things could have happened. Either, a.) the Hebrews break off of the El cult and combine El with YHWH and eventually become monotheists; b.) the Hebrews simultaneously name their deity El (for the same reasons, i.e. that el means god) or c.) the Hebrews develop a religion based around YHWH worship and incorporate the word el to mean YHWH (either because they identify YHWH with El or because el means god). Anyway you slice it though, it is an oversimplification to say that it "is simply false" to say that el can (and does) mean god. LAC, feel free to correct me on my interpretation of what you have said. Below this is a visual representation of a few of these models.
Then you clearly have not been following the academic work in the last 50-60 years. To say that it hasn't budged, I mean, wow. That could not possibly be further from the truth. What I said is absolutely true, we have recognized that John is much more historically minded than we previously thought. However, as this is not a class on Johannine research I refuse to give you a complete summary of New Testament research in the last century, which is what it would take.
