The Bible and the Canaanite "Book of Balaam bar-Beor" (8th century B.C.) (page 2)

gitasatsangha

Leolaia,

Would you consider collecting your discourses and putting them in a web site online?

Narkissos

Thanks Leolaia for another in-depth post.

As you can imagine, I wouldn't follow the J/E division here. Numbers 22--24 is a remarkable literary unit, very different from what precedes and follows. There certainly is a complex tradition history behind it, with some older poetical literary material (24:3-9,15-19?; perhaps not 23:7-10,18-24, which seem no older than the narrative). I think the variations of Yhwh within the story are not necessarily the result of divergent sources, rather one consistent feature of most "J" or Dtr-J texts...

On the Deir-'Allah inscriptions, I'm presently dependent on one partial translation: curiously André Lemaire reads Shamash (the sun-god) instead of Shagar...

Ginosko: the issue of Ugaritic "Yw" is discussed in several posts on:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/62692/3.ashx

Ginosko

Hi Narkissos,

Thanks for the link.

Yes I know that the most oldest ugaritc tablets are from 1400 -1500 BC, and also some are from 1800 BC. But I want to know if someone know which is the oldest written evidence in the ugaritic tablets using the tetragramaton.

I'm asking about the real tetragramaton not something similar.

Thanks in advance.

Narkissos

Ginosko: there is no Tetragrammaton (= Yhwh) in the Ugaritic texts, only one "Yw" the meaning of which is disputed (cf. the other thread).

Greenpalmtreestillmine

I have a question.

What is the meaning of the word "Shaddai" in Hebrew?

Thank you,

Sabrina

Leolaia

Narkissos....I am quite unconvinced of the unity of the narrative material in Numbers 22; the episode with the donkey forms a self-contained unit that conflicts with its preceding context in several ways, as I already mentioned in my first post. Regarding Lemaire's reading of Shamash, this is understandable because the name occurs only three times in the text, and the first two instances have lacunae after the initial consonant (i.e. s[...]). The third instance comes from a fragment which Lamaire may not have considered, and here it gives the full name as sgr-w-'str. This fragment parallels the first by reserving the curse the Shaddai-gods placed on the goddess.

Ginosko....Yahweh is clearly not the god mentioned in the Ugaritic texts; yw is an epithet of Yamm-and-Nahar, the very enemy of Yahweh in Hebrew mythology. The single text where the title occurs is as follows:

"He (i.e. El) took [a cup in his hand], a goblet in both his hands....El appointed his son regent, Bull El [installed him as king]. Then the Wise One, the receptive god, spoke: 'Yamm is the name of my son, divine lord (yw) of the gods [is Nahar!].' And he proclaimed the name 'Yamm', and [pronounced the name 'Nahar']. They responded to him, 'You shall indeed invest him,' ... you shall proclaim him 'Lord (adn)'. [And El replied:] 'I am the Wise One, the perceptive god. Over my hands I pronounce [my son king], your name is 'Beloved of El (mdd 'l),' I shall give you a house of silver, [a palace] of gold." (KTU 1.1 iv 9-22)

This is scene (analogous to Psalm 2:4-9 and Psalm 110) where the father god El appoints Yamm as king, adopts him as son, and bestows on him royal and divine epithets including adn "Lord," mdd 'l "Beloved of El," and yw il[m] which N. Wyatt translates as "Lord of the gods". Yaw-'ilym thus appears to be a title associated with divine kingship (just as Yahweh was the divine king of Israel). As an epithet or theophoric element, yw frequently appears in other inscriptions as an equivalent of 'l: in the Levant campaign list of Thutmose III we find the toponym Byt-ya which evidently is the same as Bethel, the name of the ruler of Hamath is variously given as Ilubidi or Yaubidi in another text, and in BM 93035 we have the equation ilu = yau. It is tempting to connect yw with Indo-European dyaw "god" as it is in Sanskrit dyauspitar "father god" (cf. Latin Jupiter), and regard the Canaanite epithet as derived through Hittite or Mitanni influence. There is some evidence that yhwh is of a later independent and southernly (i.e. Judahite or Kenite) origin, but it is possible that Yahweh originated as a hypostasis of Baal representing his political kingship; the problem with this is that yw is not attested as an epithet of Baal. However the preexistence of -yw as a theophoric element and title associated with El and gods of kingship may have nonetheless facilitated the adoption of "Yahweh" as a name for Baal in the early Israelite period and encouraged the later conflation of Yahweh with El.

Greenpalmtree, jst2laws....."Shaddai" is cognate of Akkadian shadda'u "mountain dweller" and shadu "breast, mountain," and ultimately recalls the Sumerian conception of the cosmic mountain from which the sun rises and sets, Mount Mashu, as twin breasts. Names such as Zuri-shaddai "Shaddai is my rock" in Numbers 1:6 might also reflect Shaddai as the divine mountain. The clearest OT texts referring to Shaddai as an epithet alluding to God's mountain is in Psalms:

"When Shaddai (sdy) scattered kings on it, snow fell on Dark Mountain. That peak of Bashan, a mountain of God? Rather, a mountain of pride, that peak of Bashan! Peaks of pride, have you the right to look down on a mountain where God has chosen to live, where Yahweh is going to live forever?" (Psalm 68:14-16)

"If you live in the shelter of Elyon and make your home in the shadow of Shaddai, you can say to Yahweh, 'My refuge, my fortress, my God in whom I trust' " (Psalm 91:1-2)

The Shaddai-gods (sdyn) that stir up cosmic trouble in the Book of Balaam intriguingly recall the biblical sdym or shedim "demons" (cf. Deuteronomy 32:17 and Psalm 106:37) of the OT. In Akkadian and Assyrian texts, the shidu are griffin-like deities in the form of winged bulls that guard the entrances to temples. The sdyn in the Book of Balaam are thwarted through sacrifice and supplication, and each of the references to the sdym in the OT refer to sacrifices to them (including possibly Hosea 12:12 where lswrym "to bulls" has been amended to lsdym "to demons"). The nefarious Shaddai-gods of the Book of Balaam might possibly represent a conflation between the Akkadian shidu and the Northwest Semitic concept of mountain gods (sdym/sdyn). But perhaps both concepts come from a common origin. Note also that Ezekiel 28 locates the garden of Eden, the abode of Yahweh, on "the holy mountain of God" where the defiant prideful "guardian cherub" ('t-krwb) was stationed (28:13-16). Like the shidu, the karibu (i.e. the cherubim) were also guardian griffin-like deities at the entrance of temples and the description in Ezekiel recalls the krwbym of Genesis 3:24 posted at the entrance of Eden. It is well-known that the krwbym are personifications of the wind, and thus they are mentioned as Yahweh's means of locomotion in his cloud-chariot (cf. 1 Samuel 4:4; Isaiah 37:16; Psalm 18, 65:12; 68:4; 80:1; 99:1; note also 2 Kings 2:11-12 where the "chariot of fire" brings a "whirlwind") and the means through which the Tree of Life is fertilized in Babylonian art, and the connection between the krwbym and mountains is obvious considering the wind-swept peaks of mountains. It is not difficult to imagine how ancient Canaanites perceived the winds as spirits (indeed, rwch in Hebrew means both "wind" and "spirit") inhabiting the mountains. The Shaddai-gods are thus analogous in a way to the cherubim mountain-spirits, and perhaps the motif of the krwb being thrown down from the mountain of God in Ezekiel has something to do with the sdym demons of Hebrew mythology. In this vein, consider the god Mot who resides in Sheol (cf. Ezekiel 28:8 of the krwb being thrown down to "the pit" of Sheol) and brings the east sicorro winds over the earth, drying up crops and representing the death of Baal. That does not necessarily mean that the chthonian god Mot was formerly a mountain-god (indeed he is nowhere described as such), but interestingly the Book of Balaam also describes El building a house (palace?) in Sheol, possibly for Mot.

JC anon.....Dualism is a late, Persian-influenced concept foreign to the polytheism of the Canaanites and pre-exilic Israelites. Just consider how Anat is the source of both war and life (cf. her epithet rchm "Womb"), and her coexistence with many other gods in the pantheon. As regards your appeal to a negative proof (i.e. Satan could have existed as a concept before the concept itself was attested), this is only possible theoretically, but we are not entitled to a priori assume that this was the case without positive evidence, and indeed there is evidence against this, as Narkissos pointed out in an earlier thread, that the earliest usage of stn "opposer" in a theological context is not at all consistent with the late Jewish and Christian concept of Satan as the primary adversary of God who is the source of all evil. Indeed, there is a huge body of Canaanite, Aramaic, and Akkadian religious literature where the figure of Satan nowhere appears. But we can see how the Christian figure of Satan draws on separate Canaanite traditions about different deities that were combined together, such as the chaos dragon Lotan defeated by Baal and the Venus god Athtar (and later, possibly, Shahar) who was also defeated by Baal. It is thus with good reason that I describe Satan as a late post-exilic synthesis of Persian and earlier Canaanite traditions.

gita.....Good idea, and I've thought about that too. I had a great dinner the other night with a person of note where I got to talk for over an hour about my interests in the Bible, of which he was quite intrigued, and I thought it would be great to show him some of my research w/o having it come from a JW website.

Narkissos

As to Shaddai being originally related to mountains and breasts (the later rabbinical "etymology" she-dai "sufficient" -- Middle Hebrew, not Biblical Hebrew syntax --, whence the traditional translation "Almighty", is a desperate attempt at obscuring the original meaning), o ne particularly interesting text is the blessing on Joseph in Genesis 49:25f, which has many Canaanite overtones:

by El your father, who will help you,
by Shaddai who will bless you
with blessings of heaven (shamayim) above,
blessings of the deep that lies beneath (tehom robeçeth),
blessings of the breasts (shadayim) and of the womb (raham).
The blessings of your father
are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains,
the bounties of the everlasting hills;
may they be on the head of Joseph,
on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers.

One interesting parallel is the depiction of Yhwh as a "mountain god" by the Arameans in 1 Kings 20:28:

Yhwh is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys.

As to the issue of narrative consistency in Numbers 22--24, I can't help thinking that Yhwh's whimsical fantasies are a quite consistent feature of "J" (even if "J" is post-deuteronomistic as many current scholars hold since Van Seters, Schmid or Rendtorff). For instance, Yhwh commissioning his "angel" or "messenger" as a satan against Balaam just after sending him with Balak's envoys reminds of his trying to kill Moses just after sending him back to Egypt (Exodus 4:24ff).

ikthuce4u

greetings all- I was referred here by a friend @ beliefnet.com. (my first post here) Seeing if it will "take" .... (if so, 'be back later = great thread!!!) I go by, rick >

LittleToe

Leo:

I was thinking of posting some time the books I consider indispensible for placing the Bible in its ANE and extrabiblical context....I should do that sometime. :)

I, for one, would be interested in seeing that

The Bible and the Canaanite "Book of Balaam bar-Beor" (8th century B.C.)

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