Jacob on Resurrection and the Tree

Awful

I'm at various points in my scripture reading.  Luke with the kids, Numbers 25 in my Hebrew and Greek OT reading, and I'm also rereading the Book of Mormon, in a facsimile of the first printing.  Sometimes, differences between it and the current edition catch my eye.

Like this one.  Without the plain and precious things, the current edition says we are in a state of "blindness," but the 1830 printing says "woundedness."  I kind of like "woundedness."

All Manner of Sin and Blasphemy

I'm reading the New Testament with the kids, and tonight noticed something striking, which I will offer up without comment.

In Matthew 12, the warning that sins against the Holy Ghost (the "holy spirit" in Greek, and remember that, although "spirit," pneuma, is neuter in Greek, in Hebrew it would be the feminine ruach) will not be forgiven is followed immediately by a reference to the tree with good fruit that elsewhere Matthew identifies as lying behind the strait and narrow gate.

In Mark 3, the parallel passage transitions immediately into the question who is Jesus' mother?

See also 1 Nephi 11.

The Gifts of God

Since I'm not teaching Sunday School, I haven't updated this blog recently. I continue to read the MT and the LXX side by side. Today I read Leviticus 21, and was floored. 

Where the MT has "bread of God," the LXX consistently has "gifts of God."  This connects to Matthew 6 and 7 and shows that the bread of God brought out by the Melchizedek priest in Matt 6 was a gift, that is to say, an endowment. 

Bookshelf: the Divine Woman II

Two more books I came across in reorganizing my shelves that touch on Israel's Divine Woman in different ways:

• Jacob of Serug, On the Mother of God.  This is ancient Christian (Syriac) poetry about Mary, and Jacob weaves deep mythological and liturgical roots into what he writes.
• G.W. Ahlstrom, Royal Administration and National Religion in Ancient Palestine.

I Will Write

Exodus 34 shows us something spectacular and unappreciated about the religion of Moses.

First, Moses' ascension to the mountain (he spends 40 days fasting in the presence of the Lord) results in him having the appearance of God.  In his descent, he shines.

Second, in Moses' time on the mountain, he performs the tasks that God performs.  The first time around, God speaks the ten commandments and then He writes them with His own finger.  When He invites Moses up, God says that God will write the commandments again.  Then, in what seems like a craftsman's apprenticeship, Moses remains in the presence of the Lord and writes the commandments himself.

On the mountain, Moses becomes divine.  Does this shed light on Jesus' 40 days fasting in the wilderness?

Bookshelf: Deuteronomy

We've talked in class about the theory that Deuteronomy is a document created late in the Monarchy by assembling earlier sources and writing new material in the (fictitious) name of Moses, in order to define and propagandize a revolutionary movement that centralized religious authority and changed the nature of official Israelite religion, writing over the stories of the patriarchs and claiming that the things they did (building their own altars, performing their own sacrifices, worshipping at high places and sacred trees, entering into sacred places, and above all, seeing God) were pagan Canaanite acts.

This theory (in multiple variants) is at the bedrock bottom of modern biblical criticism.  That doesn't mean it's right, but it's also consistent with Nephi's horrible account of the rewriting of the Israelite record (the revisionists remove plain and precious things from the record; the tree that is the city Jerusalem and also the Virgin mother is the most precious thing), so we should take it seriously.

To date, this understanding has had approximately zero impact on Mormon Sunday Schools.  If you want to explore it, your on your own; so here are some books to start with:

• Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School.  This is a classic -- out of print, but still available secondhand.
• Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11 (The Anchor Yale Bible).  Weinfeld's commentary on Deuteronomy is being republished posthumously.  The 85-page introductory essay alone is worth the price of admission.
• Bernard Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation.  Should win some kind of prize for its title, but this is a terrific book about the way Deuteronomy rewrites earlier legal sources for its centralizing ends.

Again, there are many more books on this key topic.  These are just the ones I own.  A good introduction to the Old Testament (by "good" I really mean not tied to any church, but especially not Evangelical) will also give you some background.

Every One Which Sought the Lord

In class and on this blog we have seen repeatedly that the religion of the patriarchs is the religion of meeting God.  This same religion continues into the Mosaic period, at least as recounted in Exodus.  Anyone of the camp of Israel can seek the Lord; they do it in the tabernacle, which is named in Hebrew 'ohel mo'ed.  This is sometimes translated as the Tent of the Congregation, but can also be read the Tent of Meeting.  Meeting whom?  Meeting God.

Exodus 33 also provides us an image that is echoed in Benjamin's speech (and which I think is more relevant comparison than Lot and Sodom).

Bookshelf: the Divine Woman

Here are some excellent books on the subject of Israel's Divine Woman.  Shame that none of them are written by Mormons.

• Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord.
• Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess.
• William Dever, Did God Have a Wife?
• Susan Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree
• Walter Maier, Asherah: Extrabiblical Evidence
• Saul Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel

There are many others on the subject; these are just the books that happen to be in my library.

These are not fringe voices or fringe ideas.  Mainstream biblical scholarship (by which I mean scholarship not tied to seminaries, and specifically scholarship that is not Evangelical), in part because of the force of archaeological evidence, is increasingly accepting the idea that Israel knew a divine mother as well as a divine father.

This should not surprise us.  We have Nephi and Eliza R. Snow.

Come Up to Me in the Mount

I have noted before in class, and also in Plain and Precious Things, I think Exodus 24 shows a feast in the temple, the same feast with the Lord that is shown in Psalm 23, Genesis 14, Matthew 6, and 1 Nephi 8.

What I only noticed on this re-reading (this is why I have to read this stuff over and over again; I am dense) is that the feast of Exodus 24 happens in three-part sacred space, and the feast is in the middle of the three parts, exactly as in the Sermon on the Mount (where Matthew 5 is the first room, Matthew 6 is the second, and Matthew 7 is the third).

Bookshelf: Cornelis Van Dam

Cornelis Van Dam's recent monograph The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel is a great resource for understanding the UT in the OT.  It also opens up certain Book of Mormon passages: if you look closely, you'll see that, although the UT isn't mentioned, a couple of episodes in Alma track with the language of UT use exactly (high priest, gift of prophecy, national crisis, inquire of the Lord, possible indications of use in secluded / consecrated space, etc.), suggesting that the Nephites used the Urim and Thummim not only to translate, but also to make military decisions.  See, e.g., Alma 16:5-6 and Alma 43:23-24.

Three Times a Year

Exodus 23 has some interesting glimpses into what the religion of Israel was before the reformers got hold of it.

Exodus 23:14-17 sets out the requirement that three times a year the men of Israel went to the temple.  Even as the KJV translates it, the fact that they appear in the presence of the Lord three times a year is interesting.  But since "presence" is literally pen, "face," and "appear" could also be read "see," there's an even more provocative possibility: that three times a year, the men of Israel saw the face of the Lord.

Exodus 23:25 is also very suggestive.  To "serve" here is 'avadtem, meaning worship in liturgy, perform ordinances.  What ordinance is it?  It appears to be an ordinance in which the Lord will bless the people's bread and water (cf. Matthew 6).  The LXX here adds "wine," suggesting that the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria knew that this was a specific ordinance being referred to, and that ordinance, as they knew it, was a feast of bread and wine.

Bookshelf: Bible Dictionaries

Our Bible Dictionary is a work of scholarship.  It has the great advantage of including information from the other standard works, and the serious limitations of short length, committee authorship, and the necessity of maintaining a strictly orthodox point of view at all times (being published, as it is, by the church).  Here are some other English Bible Dictionaries you might consult, for longer, broader-ranging articles, with more diverse viewpoints:

The who's-yer-daddy of English BDs is the Anchor Bible Dictionary.  Six volumes, authoritative, expensive.  If you don't have the will to plunk down $300 for a used copy, you can always consult it in the library when you have a specific research project.

Smaller but more affordable is the HarperCollins BD.  I have and use this one.  Its advantages over the Anchor are portability, accessibility (it's written less for the scholar and more for the general user), and much more illustration.

I don't have the Eerdmans, but they're a reputable publisher doing mainstream scholarship, so this is probably a good one.

Regardless of which one you consult, remember that any article you look up is written by a scholar, and subject to that scholar's views and limitations.  Dictionaries aren't always right, but they can be a good first source to consult.  The larger the dictionary, the longer the articles, and the more the articles will point out disagreeing points of view and primary sources.

Shall Surely Make Restitution

Exodus 22 contains a number of laws governing situations in which one Israelite will be required to make restitution to another (for instance, if your animal gets into someone else's field (v. 4), if a fire on your land spreads to a neighbor's (v. 5), if an animal in your care is stolen (v. 11)).

In English, this stuff is dry and doesn't seem relevant, but a look at the Hebrew shows something interesting.  "Restitution" comes from the root SH-L-M, and the repeated phrases in Exodus 22 are yeshalem (he shall make restitution) and shalem yeshalem (he's really going to make restitution, emphatic).  Restitution is paying back, making whole, redeeming.

This is really interesting, because I think that Matthew 5:48 in Hebrew, as Nephi knew it, had people pronounced shalems as they transitioned to the second room of the temple.  With Exodus 22 as the background, one of the associations the initiates made must have been that they were becoming redeemers.  Similarly, Melchizedek, melekh shalem, must have been heard to be the redeeming king, as well as the initiated king and the peaceable king.

Bookshelf: Paul Hanson

"Apocalyptic" is a scholarly category that's very interesting.  It takes its name from the Revelation of John (apocalypsis is the Greek word for "revelation"), and Revelations has heavily influenced scholarly thinking and writing about this category of books / beliefs / social groups.  I don't talk about this stuff much in class because I think we have a better way to approach the same subject -- from the practitioners' side, rather than the after the fact scholarly guesses trying to figure out what the practitioners were thinking about.  In other words, I prefer Nephi's "visionary men" to scholars' "apocalyptic conventicles."

But once you're clear on the limitations of scholarship, literature on apocalyptic can be very enlightening.  Paul Hanson's The Dawn of Apocalyptic is classic and seminal.  Hanson looks for the origin of the people writing literature like Revelations, Daniel, Ezekiel, 1 Enoch, and so on, and he finds it in Lehi's day, among disciples of the prophet Isaiah, whom he even calls "visionaries."  Pretty good, for a Gentile.

The Staff of the Gods

(The church website is down as I write this, so I won't have the usual links.  I'm not going to come back and add them later, so you'll just have to look the verses up yourself.)

I mentioned in class and have written elsewhere that the Melchizedek priest bears a staff (see Psalms 110 and 23, as well as the "rod" of 1 Nephi 8, and elsewhere).  The staff imagery in the Book of Exodus is really interesting.

When the Lord commissions Moses from the burning bush, He asks Moses "What's that in your hand?" and Moses says "A staff" (Exodus 4:2).  Not my staff, just a staff.  That's interesting, because it leaves open the possibility that the Lord has just given the staff to Moses.  This possibility becomes an outright probability when we read Exodus 4:20 and 17:9, both of which call this same staff matteh haElohim.  The KJV translates this as "the staff of God," but for grammatical reasons (the ha is the article "the," which is unnecessary in front of a singular name), a better reading is "the staff of the gods."  The Lord gives Moses the staff of the Gods -- He confers on Moses the Melchizedek priesthood.

The appearance of this staff is especially interesting in Exodus 17.  In a battle against Amalek, Moses' role is to stand on top of a hill (= temple?) holding the staff in his hands.  There he sits on a Rock (enthroned like God on the Foundation Stone) with helpers (Cherubim) to his left and right.  The image here is of the Lord going to war with his people enthroned on the Ark of the Covenant, as He does for instance in 1 Samuel 4.  When he holds the staff of office, Moses is Melchizedek / the Lord.

Numerous passage connect this staff with serpents, suggesting maybe that it was a caduceus.  See Exodus 4:3-4, 7:8-10; Numbers 21:49 (in connection with which, John 3:14 and 1 Nephi 17:41), and Isaiah 14:29 (in which a murdered (righteous) priest is equated with a broken staff, which is also a defeated serpent).

The Reformers and the Rest

From today's lesson:

Who's the Man?

In Moses 7:35, God the Father seems to provide several names for himself.  Two of them are "Man" names, and they're both fascinating.

In Hebrew, "Holiness" may be two things: qodesh or qedusha. In addition to other meanings, qodesh is a name of the temple ("Holiness to the Lord" and "The House of the Lord" are identical statements), and qodesh qodashim, the Holy of Holies, really means Holiness of Holinesses.  So if God is naming himself Ish Qodesh, the Man of Holiness, it might mean The Man of the Temple.

Qedusha, another word translatable as "Holiness," can also mean "the sacred female one."  Now this starts to get really interesting, because in Hebrew the word for "man," ish, can also mean "husband."  So if the Father is introducing himself as Ish Qedusha, he might be saying he's the Husband of the Divine Woman.

That this latter interpretation is likely is suggested by the other "Man" name he gives himself: "Man of Counsel" in Hebrew is probably Ish Etza, the Husband of the Tree-Lady.  Ish Qedusha and Ish Etza would be parallel statements, connecting us into the imagery of 1 Nephi 11 (the white and beautiful Virgin is the white and beautiful tree), Isaiah 5:18-20 (the Tree of the Holy One of Israel is removed with ropes from the Holy of Holies, leaving it a dark cave), and others.

Bookshelf: Othmar Keel

Othmar Keel's book The Symbolism of the Biblical World is a classic (40+ years old now) that I have only discovered in recent weeks.  It's full of nuggets that make amazing sense in light of the Visionary Men Paradigm.

In The Goodness in the Mysteries and also in class, discussing the Sermon on the Mount, I suggested that the relationship between Nephi's Visionary Men and the Secret Combinations is not casual -- as shown by their contrasting teachings on oaths, they are polar opposites.  So I enjoyed this passage in Keel:

Besides the entirely private enemy (enmity based on rivalry) arising out of some specified personal affair (dispute over an inheritance, over a woman, over an honorary post, etc.), every community knows a type of enemy which represents, as it were, the antipole to what the community recognizes as good and desirable and continuously threatens the same... Enemies of this sort are by their nature carriers of all that is subversive and evil.  The view which a particular group or culture holds of its enemies is crucial to an understanding of that group or culture.

Bookshelf: Lester Grabbe

The writing of ancient Israel's history is in a state of high agitation right now, that might even be called a crisis.  Major scholars differ over the dating of historical events by centuries, as well as over whether crucial events and persons are historical or legendary.

Lester L. Grabbe summarizes the state of the debate in his recent book Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?  As you read this and other books on the challenges relating to Israel's history, it's important to think clearly about the data the Book of Mormon provides.  In some cases (e.g., 1 Nephi 1-5), Nephi is a witness to events in Jerusalem.  In others, he demonstrates that certain texts existed by his time (e.g., Isaiah 2-14).  In still others, he tells us that certain ideas were known by Nephi's day, whether or not those ideas are actually historically accurate (for instance, see Jacob's remarks on David and Solomon -- these don't prove that David and Solomon existed, only that Jacob thought they did, or at least he and his audience knew them as figures Jacob could use as examples in a sermon, proverbial for their numbers of wives and concubines).

Grabbe offers the following "summary of the principles" to be followed in writing the history of Israel (p. 219):

• All potential sources should be considered.
• Preference should be given to original sources.
• The longue duree needs always to be kept in mind.
• Each episode or event has to be judged on its own merits.
• All reconstructions are provisional.
• All reconstructions have to be argued for.