And deity said, “Let the waters swarm with a swarm of living being, and let fowl fly on the earth, on the face of the barrier of the heavens.” 21And deity created the big serpents and all living creeping being with which the waters swarmed for their kinds, and all fowl of wing for his kinds. And deity saw that good it is. 22And them deity blessed by saying, “Bear fruit. And multiply. And fill the waters in the seas. And the fowl, let it multiply in the earth.”
From the book, Genesis 1-11: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text.
Bandstra opts to render Elohim as "deity" here; he translates nepes hayya in 1:20, "living being."
Darby Bible Translation: "And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living souls, and let fowl fly above the earth in the expanse of the heavens."
37 comments:
I'm not really a fan of using an abstract noun for God when a proper noun is almost certainly intended.
Do you like the rendering?
I understand what he's trying to do, but I prefer "God" in this verse and in Genesis 1:1, etc. Here is Bandstra's own explanation for why he chooses "deity" throughout his handbook:
"The noun is often rendered as if it were a name—God. The
Hebrew text taken at face value expresses the indefinite term deity,
which is how we render it here and throughout. Of course, biblical
Hebrew does not use initial capital letters to indicate the presence of
a personal or divine name (a proper noun) in distinction from a common noun, because it does not have distinctive capital letter forms."
See page 43.
Its almost like he is going "hyperliteral" while also not
hyperliteral = gods
"hyperliteral" - deity
translate: God
If you get what I'm trying to say
Yeah I see what you're getting at, and usually with translations, hyperliteral is not the best choice. He should also take the context into account.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0014524616672624
http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/ote/v32n1/06.pdf
Joshua 24:15 (ASV): "And if it seem evil unto you to serve Jehovah, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah."
Early humankind apparently got off-track and started to worship other gods besides Jehovah/YHWH, but I have trouble believing that all of this syncretism was supposed to occur whenever all the "evidence" I've seen is highly speculative and Israel had all of these warnings about worshiping other deities:
Exodus 23:13 (ASV): "And in all things that I have said unto you take ye heed: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth."
See https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1277&context=lts_fac_pubs
A Heiser paper.
I did not bither posting that one, but since you have, see - https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/7862/what-is-the-original-text-of-deuteronomy-328-9
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hosea%202&version=NIV
"I will make her like a desert,
turn her into a parched land,
and slay her with thirst."
"She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me my food and my water,
my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’"
"“In that day I will respond,”
declares the Lord—
“I will respond to the skies,
and they will respond to the earth;
22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine and the olive oil,
and they will respond to Jezreel.[h]
23 I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.[i]’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people,[j]’ ‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”"
No more lords (baals) of agriculture.
This is not deity. This is about agricultural methods.
It's been pointed out many times before with numerous works to document the fact, that MT is likely wrong in Deut. 32:8-9. That's what I also got from the link you posted.
Hosea is not about deity/God? The whole context screams otherwise. See Hosea 3:1-5 and many more verses in the book. Baal became a fixed term for a false god or set of false deities.
https://www.baslibrary.org/bible-review/20/1/6
Throughout God’s speech, the infidelity of God’s metaphorical wife Israel is associated with idolatry. God warns, “I will put an end to all her mirth, her festivals, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed festivals ... I will punish her for the festival days of the Baals [Canaanite deities] when she offered incense to them and decked herself with her ring and jewelry and went after her lovers and forgot me” (Hosea 2:11, 13).
Statement in the brackets appears in the article.
Another perspective is given here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0309089219862804?casa_token=alst7ZS0MpAAAAAA:mo3YrWtDVLcDTDUzQMQ6o3sGPpjPzDpILeFrB7RyxjvDddM213z5qFkeDnOK4j8hR3uvi8yAvYNz
https://sciendo.com/pdf/10.2478/perc-2013-0005
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Kings+9%3A37%2CPsalm+83%3A10%2CJeremiah+9%3A22&version=NASB
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2025%3A10&version=NIV
Isa. 34:7
https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Yoma.5.6?lang=bi
Duncan, I have no problem linking Baal with agriculture, but I don't reduce the deity to agricultural concerns. My read on the article you supplied is that he doesn't either.
That's how civilisations function, the control of food. Why grains? Because they store and are easily taxed. The control of food never made anyone good at managing the land. Baal was landlord not "god", just as eloha was judge not "god". Deity was not clearly defined - https://www.twu.ca/sites/default/files/256182_pdf_246075_57af479c-6921-11e3-bfd1-ea582e1ba5b1_mcclellan_d.pdf
I utterly disagree with these suggestions and I'm not alone. Baal in his many forms was a god albeit a false one. Eloah especially within Hebrew culture was "God" or "god," not simply judge. I will read Dan's piece but doubt if we'll see eye to eye.
Holman Bible Dictionary: "(bay' uhl) Lord of Canaanite religion and seen in the thunderstorms, Baal was worshiped as the god who provided fertility. He proved a great temptation for Israel. 'Baal' occurs in the Old Testament as a noun meaning, 'lord, owner, possessor, or husband,' and as a proper noun referring to the supreme god of the Canaanites, and often to the name of a man."
See https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hbd/b/baal.html
One of many references that affirm this point.
See D. Pardee, “Eloah אלה”, in: Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible Online, Edited by Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter W. van der Horst.
Here's a quote from that entry:
Eloah occurs as a divine name most frequently in the book of Job, where that term, -+EI, and -·Shadday are the standard words for 'God' in the poetic sections (Eloah forty-one times. El fifty-five times, Shadday thirty-one times). The divine name Yahweh appears almost exclusively in the prose sections and in some transition indicators in dialogues. The other three tenns are used much as Elohim or Yahweh are used in the
rest of the Hebrew Bible (the plural form Elohim occurs only four times in the poetic sections of Job). Outside the book of Job, only in Ps 50:22, 139: 19, and Prov 30:5 does the formulation clearly indicate that
'eloah is being used as a divine name.
In the time frames you are jumping all over the place. Are you going to use proverbs and psalms to try to interpret Job???
First of all, the dating of OT books is all over the place in scholarship, so it's hard to be dogmatic about when a text was written. One can make a case for a certain date but you're not going to find universal agreement on when these books were written.
Secondly, I was trying to demonstrate semantically how scholars generally define Eloah and Baal: I just picked two of many sources that I could have quoted, and I didn't want to cite the entire article about Eloah, just a snippet.
Finally, I posted a quote; those were not my words but D. Pardee's. However, the main point I was making is that Eloah cannot be reduced to "judge."
I've read about 80 pages of Dan's thesis, which you posted, but I'm wondering if you read it :-)
Nothing I've seen so far support the contentions above. Did you have a specific page in mind I should review?
This should have the latest data -
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/yahweh-and-the-origins-of-ancient-israel/91B716A1936398A60CD5EB30B062570A#
All right. Thanks.
I know his general position from earlier papers.
This whole framing of "deity" & "god" just will not do. You can imply ambiguity regarding the dating of text but how many serious scholars put the language of Job in the same frame as the proverbs? They are markedly different and everyone who reads them knows it.
Every appellation had a meaning. That is why he was known as El Shaddai etc. (which definitely doe NOT mean "god almighty"), the names of all the mighty were descriptors. Some say that eloah is dual and elohim is plural, but I dont really care as it just detracts from the point of what El actually means. It has a concrete meaning, just as they all do. Just because Yehovah is ultimate judge does not change the meaning of judge - who diputes the ox and the staff? I also have serious doubt about the supposed meanings of Yehovah. It must have a very solid meaning.
https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/dictionary-of-deities-and-demons-online/baalat-DDDO_Baalat
Not a "deity" - Really?????
These are arbitrary decisions.
"most high" across most if not all cultures at the time fell to one object - https://www.jstor.org/stable/26566810
Plants and crops do not thrive without it.
I wonder how many scholars who write on this have actually had there hands in the dirt and understand how hail can wipe out a food supply in seconds.
Did you understand why I posted - https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Yoma.5.6?lang=bi
Okay, I never said Job and Proverbs weren't materially different, but as I stated earlier, you're taking me to task for something I never said or intended. I posted a quote to make a point about the meaning of Eloah; they were not my words and were designed to make a narrow point. The dates of Job and Proverbs were not my concern, but rather, a semantic point.
On the other hand, Job does have a "doctrine of God." Your antipathy towards using "God" or "deity" is surprising to say the least :-)
We've had the El Shaddai discussion before. I can understand why scholars debate various nuances of El Shaddai, but I don't accept the rejection of "God Almighty" as a possible meaning for it. However, I will refrain from discussing that subject again for now.
Dual and plural are grammatical categories in the case of nouns: it doesn't mean the referents of the noun are plural or necessarily dual. How many times have we heard about the plural of majesty, etc.?
You speak about concrete meanings: God is concrete. The word doesn't have to be abstract.
I'm not denying that God is judge (the ultimate Judge in my view). The question is whether Eloah has that denotation.
The difficulties with defining "Jehovah" (YHWH) are well known. I accept that we must be content with possible meanings for the divine name.
What you posted from the Dictionary at the Brill site concerns Baʿalat, not Baal. Where does Baʿalat occur as a divine title/name in the Bible?
Duncan, I can't see how working in the fields is going to wipe out the denotations of linguistic signifiers. I work outside some, but I'm not a farmer, gardener or landscaper. Does that mean I can't do meaningful theology or analyze biblical words? As we've discussed privately, I think we need a mix of book and real-world learning. But none of that changes the linguistic data.
I initially did not understand why you posted the Mishnah link because my mind was on defining Elohim and the point of this thread. What you've said now may throw light on why you posted it.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43720025
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0014524616672624?casa_token=2DbgYi8u_jQAAAAA:rIl9atQek4mUtHOzdyUnpGLo0Fi77w9R3IkYFMGJNsLFd-vmepetNUeL4RFEfn52SDy7hb-tpV1R
the jstor paper admits and then denies - yes El does mean strong or might, but how? It is the ox and the staff. It is cattle culture. I dont know why anyone would even try to deny it.
The crown is the horn. The staff is the power over cattle.
It was ubiquitous, not just in Africa -
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/322446
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1898-0215-448
https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/articles/cdlb/2016-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzrish-Dagan - see occupational history.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23608857
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baalat_Gebal
Duncan, technically the entry that you quoted from the Brill site does not deny that Ba’alat is the name of a divinity: the comment made pertained to the Bible, but it then went on to talk about other contexts wherein the name is used for a deity.
Exact quote from the Brill article: "Baʿalat, ‘mistress’, ‘lady’, ‘sovereign’ (Heb. baʿălāt; Phoen./Ug. bʿlt; Akk. bēltu), is attested as both a divine name and an epithet in the ancient Near East from the middle third millennium bce. Though the term is attested in the MT as a place name (Josh. 19.44; 1 Kgs. 9.18; 2 Chr. 8.6), it does not occur in the biblical text as the designation of a divinity."
One can believe that El means strong or mighty without rejecting other denotations/connotations of the term like "God" or "deity."
The problem with the ox and the staff is that it is another contentious issue in the study of Hebrew. See http://bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org/viewtopic.php?t=860
There is an article on BAR about Proto-Semitic and the alphabet. Here's a quote from the article:
"For these illiterate Canaanites the pictorial meanings of the new letters were paramount. The iconic meaning of the hieroglyphs (what they actually pictured) served as an important mnemonic tool for
the Canaanite adopters. The iconic meaning of the hieroglyphs was so important that even today, when the Hebrew letters have lost all iconic connection to the old pictorial models (we can‘t recognize what the letters are supposed to picture), most letters are still named after the old pictures! The modern Hebrew letter aleph is the ‟alp, the word for ―ox‖; the letter bêt is the bayt or ―house‖; the letter „ayin, ―eye,‖ is the name of the old pictorial letter in Proto-Canaanite script (see drawings near the end of the article). But looking at a modern Hebrew aleph, bêt or „ayin, we can no longer see the ox, house or eye (nor are these original pictograms evident in the Latin letters A or B)."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamedh
Baalat Gebal came before baalat alone.
It is probably the source of the name Jezebel, the idea of the holy harlot in many cultures.
But Baalat Gebal was probably a name rather than an epithet.
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