Did Second Isaiah Misunderstand Idolatry?; Greek Sodom and Gomorrah Story

Yesterday, I finished Mark Smith’s The Origins of Biblical Monotheism and started Moshe Weinfeld’s Social Justice in Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East.

1. For Smith’s book, what stood out to me was his discussion of the conception of idols in the ancient Near East. Second Isaiah (a monotheistic document in the Hebrew Bible) equates the idol with the god. Isaiah 44 ridicules idolaters who cut down a tree, use half of it for a fire, and construct an idol for worship with the other half. The implication is that the idol is the god, and why would people worship a mere piece of wood that they themselves fashioned? For Second Isaiah, idolatry is ridiculous.

In Isaiah 46, Second Isaiah contrasts the Babylonian gods with the God of Israel. Whereas the gods of Babylon (the idols) are carried in procession, God carries the Jewish people, so the God of Israel is the one true God. Again, Second Isaiah equates foreign gods with the idols that are used in their worship.

Historical-critics have argued that the Israelites misunderstood idolatry, for the people of the ancient Near East never equated their gods with the idols that represented or housed them. After all, the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish presents Marduk creating the cosmos, so the Babylonians obviously believed that Marduk was more than a statue. Marduk existed before the statue was even made!

But Smith cites examples in ancient Near Eastern literature that actually do identify the god with the idol. At the same time, he also refers to a passage affirming that “Without mouth-opening this image does not smell incense, eat food or drink water” (STT 200). The mouth of the image needs to be opened for it to become the god, who will eat, drink, and smell incense in worship; otherwise, it’s a lifeless statue. So the ancients didn’t totally identify the god with the statue, but they did hold that the statue could become the god at certain points in time.

Was Second Isaiah aware of this? My impression is that Smith tries to rescue Second Isaiah from the charge that it misconstrues idolatry. Isaiah 44:9-10 denies that idols can look, think, or benefit people, so Second Isaiah may realize that foreigners believe their idols have consciousness. And Smith states that, if there’s only one God (the God of Israel), then no god inhabits the idols, and so Second Isaiah is correct to say that the idols are mere pieces of wood (192).

I’m not sure where I stand on this. Second Isaiah apparently expects his Israelite audience to see the idols as mere pieces of wood. My impression is that he doesn’t expect them to say, “But wait a minute, the idol is not the god, but is inhabited by the god, so your point that the Babylonian gods are weak because they are carried is null and void!” Did Second Isaiah really believe that foreigners were so foolish as to worship a mere piece of wood as if it were a god? We see in biblical literature that some Israelites realized that foreigners didn’t limit the god to the idol. If Genesis 1 responds to Enuma Elish, for example, then the priestly author knew the story of Marduk creating the cosmos. And, in I Kings 18, the prophets of Baal ask their god to bring rain, and Elijah responds that perhaps Baal is on a journey. So Baal is not an idol, but is a deity who can move about.

Perhaps the Israelite idolaters in some sense did equate the god with the idol, though: they had heard from the foreigners that the idol had consciousness, and they believed them.

2. In a footnote on page 30, Weinfeld refers to Greek parallels to the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah stories (Genesis 18-19; Ezekiel 16:49). Hesiod’s Works and Days, Homer’s Odyssey (XVII, 485-487), and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VIII 611-712) discuss cities and nations that were destroyed on account of their subversion of justice, as well as immortal gods walking among men to learn of such subversion. This is like the Sodom and Gomorrah story, in which Sodom was destroyed in part for its lack of justice, and angels (maybe even God himself) went to Sodom to see for themselves if the city was as wicked as it was reputed to be.

In my first semester at Jewish Theological Seminary, I first learned about parallels between the Bible and Greek legend. A speaker I heard compared Samson to the muscle-men of Greek lore. And Tikva Frymer-Kensky referred in passing to Greek parallels to the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah story.

I wasn’t sure what their point was. Were they saying that the Bible borrowed from Greek mythology, or that Greek mythology borrowed from the Bible? I have heard that there were connections between Israel and the Aegeans in pre-exilic times, so there may have been a sharing of stories that occurred through trade.

God’s Size, Differences, Three Stages, To the City, Dying and Rising Gods, King as God, Renegade Priest

I found some jewels in my reading yesterday of Mark Smith’s The Origins of Biblical Monotheism:

1. Smith talks about how certain gods in Ugaritic literature are said to have a large physical size. Smith sees a biblical parallel to this in Isaiah 6:1, in which the skirt of the LORD’s robe fills the temple. I was discussing the issue of “How big is God?” with a relative a few weeks ago. Keep in mind that Armstrongism actually believes in a corporeal God.

2. I’ve written a lot on this blog about the parallels between ancient Israelite religion and the religion of the ancient Near East. But there are some differences between the two, at least when one looks at particular strands of ancient Israelite religion, as it is manifest in the Hebrew Bible. Unlike the religion that we encounter in Ugaritic literature, Yahweh of Israelite monotheism didn’t have a large pantheon or family of gods, and he appears to have had no sex. There also isn’t much in the Hebrew Bible about him defeating death, in contrast to Ugaritic legends about Baal. Smith sees remnants of this kind of mythology (i.e., a pantheon, YHWH wrestles with death, etc.) in the Hebrew Bible, but he believes that priests edited a lot of that stuff out.

3. Smith posits three stages of development in ancient Israelite religion. In the first stage, El was the god of Israel. After all, Smith points out, “Israel” has the name of El! In the second stage, El was the head of the Israelite pantheon, and YHWH was his warrior god. Smith cites Genesis 49, Numbers 23-24, Deuteronomy 32:8-9, and Psalm 82 as evidence that there was a stage of Israelite religion that viewed El and YHWH was two separate figures. According to Smith, YHWH was a god in the south—in Edom, Midian, Teman, Paran, and Sinai (see Deuteronomy 33:2; Judges 5:4-5; Psalm 68:9; Habakkuk 3:3)—-whereas worship of El occurred more in the north. At the same time, Smith also argues that the Israelites who left Egypt brought El-worship with them—into the sanctuary at Shiloh. He notes that the stories about Shiloh in the Hebrew Bible appear to have a preference for the name of “El” (Judges 18:31; cf. 17:5; Psalm 78), and that the “tent tradition associated with Shiloh (Psalm 78:60; Joshua 18:1; I Samuel 2:22) conforms to the Ugaritic description of El’s abode as a tent” (140). And from where did the priesthood of Shiloh come? For Smith, the answer is “Egypt,” for the “various Egyptian names in Shilohite lineage (Moses, Phinehas, Hopni, and Merari) may point to the Egyptian background of the Levitical Shilohite priesthood” (147). So Smith believes in some sort of Exodus.

In the third stage, El and YHWH were merged into one deity. Smith sees this process as gradual, but he believes that it took place as early as Israel’s pre-monarchic period, for Judges 5 (which probably dates to that time) appears to combine the two. Moreover, Exodus 6:2-3 explicitly identifies El Shaddai with YHWH, perhaps indicating that it was responding to the view that the two were separate deities.

Do I agree with Smith? I’m not too convinced that there was a Stage 2, in which El and YHWH were deemed to be separate. Perhaps the passages that Smith cites for that stage are using “El” and “YHWH” interchangeably, to refer to the same God.

4. On page 164, Smith offers sociological explanations for the shift from polytheism to monotheism in ancient Israelite religion. In the eighth-sixth centuries B.C.E., Smith points out, the traditional family structure declined in ancient Israel. Royal power had a deleterious effect on traditional patriarchal authority, a growing upper class purchased family lands, warfare devastated the countryside, and exile resulted in a loss of land, and with it the “traditional strength of family and inheritance.” As the family declined in ancient Israel, its religion ceased to believe in a family of gods, Smith contends.

Some of this makes sense to me. Scholars have often cited a shift from rural to urban in ancient Israel to explain certain changes in Israelite religion. For example, Smith refers to the belief that children would no longer be punished for the sins of their fathers (Deuteronomy 24:16; Jeremiah 31:29-30; Ezekiel 18), which contrasts with the earlier view that divine punishment could be passed on to the sinner’s children and grandchildren (Exodus 20:5; 34:7; Numbers 14:18). With the decline of the land-based traditional family in ancient Israel, there was a tendency to see people as individuals, not as members of a group. And a professor I once met in Israel said that the shift from rural to urban also illuminates Proverbs 18:24, which concerns the importance of making friends: with the decline of traditional communities (the family, the clan, the tribe), people in the cities were lonely and needed friends to survive.

I still have a question, though. Whenever I read commentaries about Zelophehad’s daughters (Numbers 26-27, 31), I come across the argument that other ancient Near Eastern cultures were more egalitarian than ancient Israel in their inheritance laws because they were urban, whereas ancient Israel was rural and patriarchal. Ancient Israel wanted to keep land in the family, so it only allowed men to inherit property, since women who inherit could marry someone outside of the tribe and the tribe would lose its land; when Numbers 31 allowed daughters to inherit whenever the father had no sons, it tried to address this concern. Other ancient Near Eastern cultures didn’t have this problem, however, for they were more urban and didn’t focus on tribes. My question is this: if other ancient Near Eastern cultures were urban yet believed in a pantheon of gods, why couldn’t Israel when she was becoming urban? There doesn’t seem to be a necessary connection between being rural and believing in a pantheon, or being urban and embracing monotheism. At the same time, what people do can’t always be determined by sociological laws, for people are messy.

5. Smith discusses the “dying and rising gods.” He doesn’t particularly care for that term, but he does cite Ugaritic texts in which Baal is missing and people are looking for him (cp. I Kings 18:27), or Baal actually dies. Smith ties this to nature and to politics. Baal was needed for agriculture, since he was the storm god, so his return or resurrection were desired. And, whenever a king died, people wanted assurance that the dynasty would go on, for it was continually under threat from rebels and foreign aggressors. The death and resurrection (if you will) of a god addressed this sort of concern. I like this chapter because it interacts with data about the “dying and rising god.” I’ve long wanted to address that topic on this blog because some have sought to connect it with the death and resurrection of Jesus. But I knew that there are plenty of scholars who deem such a comparison to be misplaced, so I didn’t comment on it because I didn’t know that much.

6. Isaiah 9:5 calls the Davidic king “mighty God,” and Psalm 45:7 refers to the king as Elohim. This is significant in debates between Jewish and Christian apologists, for Christian apologists have argued from such texts that the Messiah would be God (cp. Hebrews 1:8), a view that Jewish apologists deny.

Smith points to Ugaritic passages in which a king is portrayed as a representative of the divine, with divine characteristics (159). And he refers to a comment by J.R. Porter, who states: “[A]t 2 Sam. xiv.17, David is called the Angel of God because he is able to [hear good and evil]: this recalls Gen. iii. 22 [to know good and evil], and it was precisely this knowledge which placed Adam among the [gods]” (161). Are Isaiah 9:5 and Psalm 45:7 saying that a future Messiah would be God, or is there a way to understand them within their ancient Near Eastern context: they mean that the Davidic king is a representative of God, who executes the divine mission to defeat evil and bring forth justice, and who also possesses certain divine attributes (e.g., the ability to distinguish good from evil)?

7. On pages 171-172, Smith interacts with Ezekiel 28, which likens Tyre to a beautiful figure within the garden of God who gets expelled. The figure wears precious stones, and v 14 refers to a cherub.

My church background assumes that this is talking about the fall of Satan, an angel who turns to the dark side. Historical-critics I’ve read, however, apply it to the fall of Adam in Genesis 3.

Smith discusses a third option: it refers to a bad priest. Smith refers to parallels between the Garden of Eden and the temple: cherubim, trees, the divine presence, and rivers. Plus, the high priest wore precious stones on his breast-piece. So could the bad guy of Ezekiel 28 be the high priest? Ezekiel often criticizes the establishment (e.g., Ezekiel 22:26 lambastes the priests).

Counterfeit Gods, by Tim Keller

For my Sabbath reading yesterday, I read Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters. Tim Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

His premise was what I heard several times in Redeemer: that those who base their happiness on anything other than God and God’s love in Jesus Christ (e.g., money, sex, power, relationships, approval from others, etc.) are practicing idolatry and are setting themselves up for disappointment, if not despair. The reason for this is not only that these things cannot satisfy us, but also that they’re unreliable: there are so many factors beyond our control, as the recent financial catastrophe indicates.

As I read the early pages of the book, I thought it was the “same old, same old” that I’d heard hundreds of times at Redeemer and other evangelical outlets. But I soon found myself enjoying the book. Part of it was because Tim Keller is so well-read, so I’m able to get a crash course on (say) Reinhold Niebuhr by reading Tim Keller. I also enjoyed his references to current events, movies, and books: he convincingly shows that many people set themselves up for a fall when they root their happiness in something other than God. Bernie Madoff, for instance, said that he did his ponzi scheme out of pride, in an attempt to save face and cover up his financial failure: he was rooting his identity in something other than God (his reputation), with disastrous results. And even Tim Keller’s biblical references show the danger of idolatry: Jacob rooted his sense of worth in having a hot wife (Rachel), with the result that he neglected his not-so-attractive wife (Leah) and her children. This led to them selling Joseph into Egypt, etc.

I also appreciated Tim Keller’s political critique, for it’s about where I am right now politically. I am so sick of conservative evangelicals who act like God is a Republican. I’ve seen some of them say to Christians with liberal politics, “Do you really know the LORD?”, as if being a true Christian entails embracing a narrow right-wing political ideology. But Tim Keller takes on the current polarization in America’s political discourse, attributing that to idolatry. He says that both the left and the right can learn from one another, for there are positives and negatives in their perspectives. Socialism, for instance, tends to penalize the successful through high taxes, but the lack of it can restrict education and quality health care to a privileged few. Tim Keller also criticizes the current hatred for Barack Obama, quoting his eighty-four-year-old mother: “It used to be that whoever was elected as your president, even if he wasn’t the one you voted for, he was still your president. That doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.” The same can apply to the left’s hatred of George W. Bush. If God has a standard, then I hope it’s above political partisanship, with its “us vs. them” mentality.

Tim Keller also says that idolatry can exist in religious communities, as they idolize having correct doctrine over accepting the love and grace of God through Jesus Christ. I like the fact that Tim Keller is an evangelical—one who emphasizes God’s love and grace through Jesus Christ, as well as the importance of Christians serving others—and yet he’s not bound to the aspects of conservative Christianity that turn me and many others off (e.g., spiritual pride, focusing on who’s in and who’s out, commitment to the G.O.P. as if it’s God’s political party on earth, a belief that the United States is God’s country and can do no wrong, etc.).

Keller says that the cure for idolatry is explained in Colossians 3:1-5, which actually calls greed “idolatry”: we set our minds on things above, not on earthly things. This includes rejoicing in God’s grace to us through Christ, worship, prayer, and meditation. I pray every day, but I still have problems: I am afraid of people’s disapproval, I’m shy, etc. I’ve often felt guilty about rejoicing in God and believing in his love for me because I have such problems—and there are plenty of Christians who act like I’m not truly one of them because I don’t reach out to people all that well. “Lordship salvation” advocates assume that those who don’t “follow Christ” (e.g., reach out to others in love) cannot claim to be recipients of God’s grace. Perhaps I should tell them to “shut up” in my mind and celebrate God’s love for me, regardless of what they think. That may be the path to producing spiritual fruit, as opposed to trying to pull myself up by my spiritual boot-straps through obedience to rules.

There were a few problems that I had with Keller’s book. First of all, he acts like idolatry is a sin that Christians cannot totally eradicate within themselves; rather, they keep on drilling for reliable bedrock, although they’ll never really reach it in this life (176). This makes some sense, for everyone—Christian and non-Christian—is an idolater on some level, for who does not rest his or her happiness on something other than God? It’s easier to root our sense of worth in things we can see, as opposed to a being whom we cannot see! But the Bible on a few occasions says that idolaters will not enter the kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:9; Galatians 5:20; Revelation 21:8). I think that Tim Keller does well to point out the biblical passages in which idolatry is more than bowing down to statues, but encompasses relying on one’s own strength for security and self-worth (Habakkuk 1:11, 16), or Israel seeking protection from nations rather than from God (Jeremiah 2-3; Ezekiel 16), or Saul’s arrogant disobedience to the LORD (I Samuel 15:23). But, if this is idolatry, then who among us is not an idolater, on the path to hell-fire? I’d like to believe in Tim Keller’s God of grace—a God who recognizes that we all have weaknesses, loves us anyway, and tries to pull us away from those weaknesses through his love and grace. But I wonder if that picture is consistent with certain passages of the Bible, which warn that people (Christians included) can end up in hell for their weaknesses.

Second, I was glad that Tim Keller didn’t harp on idolatry being what he and others have defined it as: as believing in a “God” who is not the God of the Bible, but is the product of one’s own imagination, or of picking and choosing from elements of the Bible. He does make that sort of comment in an endnote, though (200-201). Whenever one chooses not to believe in a God who burns people forever and ever in hell, or who commands mass genocide, there are Christians who are quick to tell that person, “Well, you’re picking and choosing from the Bible, so you’re fashioning your own God and are thus an idolater.” Tim Keller said in a few sermons that worshipping a God that you’ve made up cannot offer you comfort or security (though, to be fair, he doesn’t really define hell as a fire, but rather as spiritual separation from God, which people choose for themselves).

Personally, I agree that I should see God as a God of justice and of mercy, rather than believing in God’s love while ignoring the wrath aspect of God’s character. But I don’t think that means I have to view God as an ogre, or that I must think, “Well, my picture of God is too loving right now! I’d better focus on some wrath passages!” All of us have a picture of God that is not totally like the real thing, so, if having an incorrect picture of God is idolatry, then all of us are idolaters! It’s that simple. And we’re all making up our own picture of God, for how much wrath and mercy we attribute to him is our judgment call. To those who think that “making up” a loving picture of God is idolatry and cannot work for people, look, it works for people in AA all of the time, so who’s to say it doesn’t work?

And why does justice have to mean sinners experiencing a hopeless eternity in hell? God is just when he disciplines and chastises sinners to encourage them to repent, for God is not giving them a free ride in that case, but is upholding a righteous standard. One more thing: the Bible itself gives me permission to prioritize God’s love and mercy over his wrath in my conception of him (Psalm 30:5; James 2:13). So maybe those who have a problem with that are the ones who are disregarding the Bible.

Third, Tim Keller says that the successful should see their success as a gift from God rather than being proud, and that’s true, for our talents and our opportunities are things that we’ve received (I Corinthians 4:7). I like this because it shows how Christianity is so different from the Republican “you make your own luck” concept. As Tim Keller notes, a person in a poor foreign country cannot be whatever he wants to be, for his opportunities are limited. But I wonder why God allows things to be that way. And how can I trust in a God who doesn’t appear to bless or take care of everybody? I wish that Tim Keller had wrestled with these questions, at least in an end-note.

Emergence of Monotheism, Drunken El, Antichrist Defeats Hosts, Palin on O’Reilly

Here are some odds and ends:

1. I read more of Mark Smith The Origins of Biblical Monotheism yesterday, and page 49 is crucial because it offers insight as to when Smith thinks the shift from polytheism to monotheism occurred within ancient Israel. According to Smith, Israelite religion was initially tolerant of the idea that YHWH was for Israel whereas other gods had domain over the Gentile nations (Deuteronomy 32). The reason was that, at the time, foreign religions did not threaten the worship of YHWH in Israel. This began to change in the eighth century B.C.E., however, when the neo-Assyrian empire was promoting and creating a new world order under its dominion. In response, ancient Israelite religion became more monotheistic, affirming that YHWH should be worshipped by Israel and the other nations as well.

I hope Smith fleshes this out more in the course of his book. What I’ve heard in my classes is that Assyria and Babylon did not force the nations they conquered to abandon their national religion. In some cases, the imperial powers actually honored the gods of the nations they conquered. But could it have been the case that Assyria and Babylon were still promulgating Assyrian and Babylonian religion, thereby challenging Israelite religion with another way to see the world? “Yes, we’ll tolerate you, and your god does exist,” the imperial powers may have told Israel, “But our god is still the most powerful, for we are in control of so much of the world.”

2. On page 44, Smith refers to a Ugaritic document in which two pious sons hold the hand of the drunken god El. I’ve not read the Ugaritic source, but what Smith says reminds me of the story of Noah in Genesis 9: Noah gets drunk and lies down naked, and his sons Shem and Japheth cover him up. I wonder if this story-line was a common motif in the ancient Near East.

3. Smith talks about how many ancient Near Eastern deities in Ugaritic literature were seen as stars. Such a belief occurs in the Bible (e.g., Isaiah 14:13). Smith cites a passage that somewhat baffles me, indicating that perhaps I should see what some commentaries have to say: Daniel 8:9-11 states that the little horn (Antiochus Epiphanes) grew to the hosts of heaven and cast some of them down. I wonder how the author of Daniel believes that the little horn did that. What goes through my mind is II Thessalonians 2:4, which states that the man of sin will exalt himself above all that is called god, sitting in God’s temple as if he is God. Maybe the Antichrist (if you want to call him that) will cast down the hosts of heaven by undermining their authority and banning their worship, as he demands worship only for himself. Also, he may discredit the gods of other nations as he conquers their countries.

4. I watched some of the Bill O’Reilly interview with Sarah Palin on Greta. O’Reilly was grilling Palin over her lack of governmental experience, and she replied, “I never heard you criticize Joe Biden’s lack of experience.” O’Reilly replied, “But Joe Biden has lots of experience.”

Palin seemed to be talking to O’Reilly like he was part of the liberal media, even though many consider him to be a conservative voice. Also, her reference to Joe Biden was kind of a goof-up on her part. Good thing that O’Reilly gave her a hard interview. She’ll need practice on that.

A Thaw Among Physicists?

I started Mark Smith’s The Origins of Biblical Monotheism yesterday. The part that stuck out to me was on page 3:

Although discourse about God and the notion of belief has become increasingly problematic in departments of religion and divinity schools, theists elsewhere in the university are scarcely in full retreat. For example, a survey of American scientists on one campus, the University of Georgia, conducted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of science Edward Larson, hardly indicates a lack of belief; if anything, the opposite is the case. Moreover, the topic of God has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in contemporary Western culture by way of the field of physics…So, at the start of a new millennium, faith is increasingly questioned in religion and divinity faculties even as it is affirmed in other quarters of American universities.

I’ve seen numerous movies and TV shows in which a character says, “I don’t believe in God—I’m a scientist,” as if the two are mutually contradictory. In high school, I looked through a book in my school library, which was a publication of responses by celebrities to a child’s question, “Do you believe in God?” In the book, you got Oral Roberts’ dramatic narration of a vision he supposedly had, along with Andy Rooney’s blunt answer of “no—sincerely, Andy Rooney.” But the responses by the scientists were largely negative. As far as they were concerned, they couldn’t see God, so they didn’t believe in his existence.

A few years later, at DePauw, I read an article somewhere on the Internet, which said that physicists were more open to the existence of God than biologists. The reason was that biologists felt that they could account for biological phenomena naturalistically, through an appeal to evolution by natural selection. Physicists, however, realized that there were so many constants that had to be “just right” for life to exist on earth. Many of them, therefore, were open to the notion that a supernatural being created the cosmos and set in place the constants that were necessary for life. Is there a thawing in the physics community to the idea that God exists?

I also think of the pilot episode to Joan of Arcadia. On it was Joan’s geeky scientist brother, Luke, who said that the existence of God was theoretically possible, since light could have consciousness. The creator of the show, Barbara Hall, said that she had read many books on physics, for she was interested in the interrelation between physics and religion. Is Luke’s idea the sort of thing that Mark Smith is talking about when he says that physicists are writing about religion?

Was Solomon Wrong to Ask for Wisdom?

I finished David Carr’s From D to Q yesterday. I made an error in my last post: I said that Carr thought that the Deuteronomist inserted the part of I Kings 3 in which Solomon goes to Jerusalem to sacrifice. Actually, he says that an Adonai editor did that. The Adonai editor overlaps with the Deuteronomist in areas, but they’re not the same.

What stuck out to me yesterday was Carr’s treatment of the Book of Ecclesiastes. According to Carr, Ecclesiastes is a “counter-textual” reading of I Kings 3. In I Kings 3, Solomon asks for wisdom rather than riches, and God applauds his request. In Ecclesiastes, however, the author (who may purport to be Solomon) says that wisdom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I glanced over Ecclesiastes 1-2 to see what he means, and there’s a sense that wisdom leads to despair. Moreover, the author wonders why wisdom is so great, when everyone is going to die anyway, both the wise and the fools.

This reminds me of a sermon that I heard many years ago. The speaker was at David Antion’s church, and his argument was that perhaps Solomon erred when he asked God for wisdom. Many in my family loved the sermon because it thought outside of the box. I thought it was off-base, though, because God explicitly told Solomon in I Kings 3 that God approved of Solomon’s request. But the idea that there were different perspectives in the Bible wasn’t on my radar at the time.

I may ask my dad if he still has that sermon when I go home for Thanksgiving. Why did the preacher of that sermon think that wisdom was flawed? Critical scholars of the Bible maintain that the author of Ecclesiastes did not believe in an afterlife, and that’s why he thought life was so futile and adopted an “eat, drink, be merry, and enjoy God while you’re alive” sort of attitude. But I don’t think ministers in the Armstrongite tradition had that interpretation of Ecclesiastes. Maybe the preacher of the sermon said that Solomon’s wisdom led to despair because he saw how pointless so many things are: Solomon got bored.

Vorlage to I Kings 3, Palin on Oprah, Stupack Interview

Here are three items:

1. I’m continuing to make my way through David Carr’s From D to Q, which is about Solomon’s dream at Gibeon in I Kings 3, as well as early Jewish interpretations of it. Yesterday, I was reading about the pre-Deuteronomistic Vorlage to the story: the story as it existed before the Deuteronomist added his contribution. My impression (which could be wrong) is that Carr believes the original story was (at least in part) a justification for the sanctuary at Gibeon. Solomon had a dream there, and God appears to people in dreams or epiphanies at sanctuaries that he recognizes: Shechem (Genesis 12:6-9), Mamre (Genesis 18:1-16), Beer-lahai-roi (Genesis 16:7-13), Gerar (Genesis 26:2-5), Beersheba (Genesis 26:24-25), Bethel (Genesis 28:10-22), Shiloh (I Samuel 3:10-14), and Jerusalem (II Samuel 24:15-25; I Chronicles 22:1; II Chronicles 3:1).

The Deuteronomist has a slight problem with Solomon worshipping at Gibeon, for he believes that Jerusalem is the place God chose to place his name, and is thus the only legitimate sanctuary. Consequently, in I Kings 3, he sees a need to apologize for Solomon’s activity at Gibeon: people worshipped at high places at the time, for Solomon hadn’t yet built the temple for God’s name. It’s ironic that the Deuteronomist feels he has to apologize for Solomon’s behavior, for his general stance is that God let the Israelites do what was right in their own eyes before the time of the temple (Deuteronomy 12).

Carr believes that parts of I Kings 3:15 belong to the pre-Deuteronomistic Vorlage. There, Solomon goes to Jerusalem where the Ark of the Covenant is located and offers sacrifices. Carr maintains that the part about Solomon offering sacrifices is from the hand of the Vorlage, whereas the part about Solomon doing so in Jerusalem is the contribution of the Deuteronomist. If this is true, it sort of ruins an interesting thought I read in a commentary during my weekly quiet time on I Kings 3: God gave Solomon wisdom, and he immediately decided to worship at Jerusalem instead of the high places.

2. I watched Sarah Palin on Oprah a few days ago, and I thought Sarah did an awesome job. She was articulate and glib. She answered Oprah’s questions. Oprah conducted herself professionally, but she appeared uncomfortable. My favorite part of the interview was when Oprah asked Sarah if she felt snubbed because Oprah didn’t invite her onto the show during the campaign. Sarah replied that she didn’t have time to think about it at the time. I loved it! Not everyone thinks Oprah is the center of the universe? Say it ain’t so!

3. I’ve found myself cussing Chris Matthews out a couple of times this week. I like his show because Pat Buchanan is on it, and I also enjoyed Chris’ interview of Congressman Stupack, the Democrat whose amendment to the health care bill would ban federal funding for abortion. Stupack sounded level-headed and reasonable, and he answered Chris’ questions in a forthright manner. Chris often tries to corner people and read sinister things into what people (particularly conservatives) say. But he appeared a lot more serious and a lot less self-righteous in the Stupack interview.

Mesha in Jewish Interpretation; Helpful Guide or Authority?

Yesterday, I finished Shalom Spiegel’s The Last Trial and began a book by David Carr, From D to Q: A Study of Early Jewish Interpretations of Solomon’s Dream at Gibeon. I was about to return the Carr book, since (for some reason) I checked it out for my paper on the Deuteronomist’s contribution to II Samuel 7 and I Kings 8:1-30, a paper I’ve finished (finally). But the book looked interesting, for it wrestles with the whole issue of Solomon at Gibeon, in terms of the Deuteronomistic contribution to I Kings 3 and the interpretation of the scene in other biblical writings and in Jewish exegesis. And, as devoted readers of mine know, I wrestled with I Kings 3 for my weekly quiet time last Sabbath. (I’d post the link, but, for some reason, I can’t paste right now on this computer!)

1. For Spiegel, the topic that stood out to me concerned II Kings 3. In that chapter, Ahab king of Israel, Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and the king of Edom form an alliance to defeat Moab, which is rebelling against Israel. A prophet tells Ahab that God doesn’t care much for his behavior as king, but that God will still deliver Moab into his hands. When the battle is looking bleak for Moab, its king, Mesha, offers his eldest son as a burnt offering against the wall. Then, there is “wrath upon (or against) Israel” (v 27), and Ahab and his alliance withdraw.

Scholars have pointed to this story to argue that the ancient Israelites believed in the efficacy of human sacrifice. After all, it worked for Mesha, right? He offered his eldest son, his most prized possession; a god was appeased; and Israel withdrew from the battle.

I once asked how the rabbis dealt with this passage, since many of them went out of their way to argue against human sacrifice. For example, some contended that Jephthah did not actually sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering, but that he devoted her to the local sanctuary, the same way that Hannah gave up Samuel. So how would the rabbis deal with a passage in which human sacrifice actually works?

The answer I was given was that they don’t deal with the passage. But it turns out that they do, or at least medieval interpreters address the problem. On pages 78-81, Spiegel says that the rabbis went out of their way to say that Mesha’s sacrifice of his eldest son wasn’t God’s idea. As far as the efficacy of human sacrifice is concerned, medieval Jewish interpreters contended that the “wrath upon Israel” was not God’s wrath, but rather the wrath of Israel: When Israel saw that Mesha sacrificed his own son, she left the battle in disgust. Why have more bloodshed after that horrible sight?

2. Carr wrestles with the issue of historical-criticism and faith: How can the Bible speak to us, when it comes from a culture that is quite different from ours? He mentions the issue of women: Western societies today claim to champion egalitarianism, whereas the ancients did not do so that much. But there are other issues we can add to the mix, such as slavery, or the ancient belief that the earth had four corners.

On page 4, Carr states: Indeed, historical-critical method has enabled modern readers to engage in a bi-directional interaction with the Biblical tradition: they relativize some aspects of the Biblical text as mere artifacts of its ancient origin, while allowing other aspects of the Bible’s quite different perspective to call their modern pre-suppositions into question. Though the modern interpreter remains in ultimate control of the process, through it the Bible can (at least initially) speak a new word over against the reader as never before.

This is how I approach the text, in a sense: I may not adopt the ancient perspective in its entirety, but can it teach me certain values? A point I’ve often made to feminists who critique Scripture is that feminism isn’t that great itself! It has driven mothers from the home, prioritizing financial success over family. And it has also promoted abortion, which gets rid of those deemed inconvenient. At least the ancients valued family and community.

But where things get thorny is that, as Carr says, “the modern interpreter remains in ultimate control of the process.” I as the interpreter get to determine what lessons apply to me. Maybe the Bible can be a helpful guide with that approach: it can give me suggestions on how to live, or offer me new ways of looking at life. But can it function as an authority?

Closure

I’m reading Shalom Spiegel’s The Last Trial right now. It’s about Jewish legends concerning the akedah, Abraham’s binding and near-sacrifice of his son, Isaac, in Genesis 22.

The book has several interesting details, such as parallels to the akedah in Greek legends, in which someone is about to sacrifice his child and ends up offering an animal instead. Or Jewish explanations for why Genesis 22 states that, after the akedah, Abraham returned to his servants, without even mentioning Isaac. Or attempts to provide a rationale behind human sacrifice, which usually concerns a desire for a good harvest and protection of the community.

What stood out to me was a passage in Sekel Tob (p. 64), whose date I do not know. In rabbinic midrash (at least in one view), Isaac’s age at the akedah is calculated according to the time of Sarah’s death. The rationale is that Sarah died in sorrow and horror when she heard what Abraham had done. One story says that an evil demon, Samael, told Sarah about the akedah, causing her to drop dead. In Sekel Tob, Isaac’s soul leaves his body during the time of the akedah, and he sees his mother in Paradise. But the soul returns.

The point of the story may be that Isaac faithfully went through with the akedah, even after learning that his mother was dead after hearing of Abraham’s deed. His devotion to God was that great! I’d like to think, however, that the story is about closure. The story of Sarah dropping dead after learning about the akedah has often made me sad. Abraham lost his wife, and Isaac lost his mother, all because of a test that God gave to Abraham. Was the test worth all that, even if Abraham didn’t end up killing Isaac? I’d like to think that Isaac in Paradise let his mom know he was okay, and that Sarah perhaps understood that it was all a test: that God wouldn’t really make Abraham go through with the sacrifice. Maybe she understood things from God’s perspective, whatever that was.

An afterlife can create potential for closure. I think of the movie, the Sixth Sense, in which the boy who sees dead people comforts his mom that her dead mother is proud of her every day. He saw his late grandmother appearing to him as a ghost.

At the same time, it’s also important to make peace with people now, while they’re still around.

Mentors

My Latin mass write-up and my write-up on Martin S. Jaffee’s Torah in the Mouth will overlap today.

At my Latin mass, we had political priest, and he delivered a homily on Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed, which was really, really small yet grew up to be a really, really big tree, one that offered shade to birds. The priest applied that to Jesus and the church, who started off small and insignificant yet eventually became widespread and well-known, offering spiritual shade and rest to anyone who wanted it.

The priest also applied the parable to looking for the good in people, however small that good may be. He gave us the example of Thomas Aquinas, who was called a “dumb ox” by many of his fellow students, and yet a mentor dared to see the good in him. As a result, St. Thomas Aquinas became one of the most renowned theologians in history. Talk about a small seed of overlooked intelligence becoming a vast body of theological insight!

How’s this overlap with my reading of Jaffee? According to Jaffee, the rabbis wanted to keep the oral Torah oral because they sought to preserve it within a scholastic community. They desired for students to memorize the oral tradition so that it might change them. They also thought students should learn their oral traditions by following a teacher, who would instruct them through his knowledge and his example. Even if a teacher died, the students would be able to recite his teaching, so he’d still be present in the community in some way, shape, or form. But if the oral Torah got written down (as it eventually did), that could endanger the learning within community that keeping the oral tradition oral had fostered. Literate people outside of the scholastic community would have access to it, including (gasp!) Christians. Things didn’t exactly pan out that way, for many Jews even today study written texts in communal settings. But many rabbis sought to keep the oral tradition oral because that engendered mentorship, respect for a teacher, etc.

I learn a lot from books, and that’s all well and good. But it’s also good to have mentors, in both academia and my spiritual life. And, although I’m as much of a loner as you can get, I’m fortunate to have people in my life who offer me guidance, from their wisdom and their example.