A Question for Leolaia

by Cicatrix 10 Replies latest watchtower bible

Cicatrix

Hi Leolaia,
I've really enjoyed reading your posts over the past couple of months.

I was wondering if you've ever come across information on the copper colored serpent that Moses instructed the Israelites to look at. This incident is such a curiosity to me.

Thank You,
Cicatrix
peacefulpete

While we both wait for Leolaia's response, I'll just give a brief comment. Snake icons occur frequently in Mesopotamian cult. Because of the way a snake sheds it's old skin the ancients believed it a good symbol of rejuvenation and healing. Also is was found that low doses of venom at times had positive healing properties. Additionally we have the primitive "sympathetic" medical concepts demostrated. ie. if bitten by firey snake then a firey snake god will heal you.
In other contexts the snake more broadly symbolized simply power over death. A number of god's and goddesses were represented as serpents or holding serpents. Ashera, Yahweh's consort was represented in this way because of fertility sexual symbolism which was at times also symbolized with serpent iconography. The JE story about Yahweh commanding the making of a bronze (red firey) snake totem to heal those who were bitten by the poisonous snakes (literally firey snakes)he sent against them is a classic example of Caanon iconography. Yahweh was being adored as the serpent god. The god of healing and the one with power over death. Possibly Ashera is involved but it seems simpler to see the snake as directly representing YHWH. The subsequent story about Hezekiah destroying the serpent idol was part of the priestly reforms that sought to reimage YHWH into a transendent deity unable to be represented by images. I feel the Numbers story reflects an ancient tradition but was preserved and modified slightly to provide an expanation for the serpent idol's existance while maintaining that the adoration of the idol was not the intent of YHWH. IOW, a bit of history revisionism.
The Greeks inherited this iconography and honored their god Asciepius (Roman Aesculapius) with the same serpent/serpents upon a pole. This is our present symbol for the healing power of our medical professsion.
Leolaia

Cicatrix....Thanks for the inquiry, and in fact that will form a key part of my upcoming post on the Garden of Eden. I won't be able to get it posted this week or perhaps the next, but I promise I will get the info up sometime this month. It is truly fascinating. There is a close connection between this copper serpent and the goddess Asherah, and Canaanite spells for curing snake bite evoke an Edenic scene which eeriely includes a "tree of death". What is important to understand that it isn't just the snake that is venerated but the snake AND pole. The pole wasn't just a means to hold up the copper snake....it was an asherah pole. And in the original Canaanite myth, the serpent was actually a positive figure, a friend of man, but our current Garden of Eden story serves as a polemic against Asherah worship (Asherah being represented by both the forbidden trees and Eve herself), and the serpent becomes an agent of death and quite possibly was reconceptualized as Mot -- the ophidic god of the underworld who tricked Eve into giving him a lasting food supply of souls. The evidence for this is quite intriguing and I'll try to lay it all out in my upcoming post. Stay tuned.
Cicatrix

"The Greeks inherited this iconography and honored their god Asciepius (Roman Aesculapius) with the same serpent/serpents upon a pole. This is our present symbol for the healing power of our medical professsion."

Thanks, Peacefulpete
I thought their might be a connection between the two.
Cicatrix

Hi Leolaia,
I'm so happy to hear that you're working on it for your next post! I'll check in from time to time to see if it's up. You answered one question already:)
Cicatrix

Peacefulpete,
I have another question. Why do you suppose that the serpent incident made it into the official cannon in the first place, since Yahweh seems to contradict his own law against using earthly things to represent him?
peacefulpete

I'm sure that there is a number of theories, but it seems a reasonable guess to say that the story in some original form was very early, that is before the much later prohibition against idols. It's good to remember that the OT was drawn up in stages. Many many stages, but 5 or 6 major periods of editing and writing have come into view. The ealiest compilers were already a thousand years or more after the legendary time of the patriarchs. The early editer and compilers selectively used legend and poetry that no doubt dates to at least that early but they used these stories in new and original contexts. Like Leolaia said some of the earliest material was recycled and used as polemic against the activity in the legend. They often did this by subtle means, perhaps using imagery in a negative way or having the characters suffer for having acted in a way that previously was deemed godfearing. The actual prohibitions against idol use, promoting monolatry and centralized worship are from the Persian period or possibly a little earlier. These "Laws" while actually new and novel were cast back into mythic past by attributing them to the legendary patriarch Moses. The question is then why would a later editor want to reuse an ancient legend that contradicted his present religious reforms. It may be that the bronze serpent (or similar iconography) was well known and accepted form of worship at the time this editor was working. His best approach to the problem would be to create or modify a story that placed the serpent totem in a new and less threatening context. Numbers does that, the legend offers an excuse for the serpent's existance while yet suggesting that it was not meant to be an object of worship (idol). As I suggested earlier the Hezekiah story carries this idea to it's end. There the serpent is expressly destroyed because the people 'wrongly' used it in worship. Therefore the inclusion of the story may have been theologically motivated, an attempt to downplay the importance of the icon in YHWH's worship. Ultimately we don't know just how much the Numbers story was modified or even if it was an entirely new literary creation by the JE editors. The logical inferrence is however that the iconography existed and an was once part of the worship of Israelites.
Narkissos

Waiting for Leolaia's post... one noteworthy detail in 2 Kings 18:4 is that "copper (brass, or bronze) serpent" is actually a pun in Hebrew (NaCHaSH NeCHoSHeT, whence the name Nechushtân given to it, and perhaps Nechushta as name of the queen-mother in 24,8). A number of ritual "copper serpents" have been found in Palestine, testifying to a very old (2nd millenium) ophic worship in this area. The double relation of the serpent to life and death, poison and cure, is ubiquitous in the Ancient Near East. The sloughing of the snake was very widely understood as a kind of immortality (still in Philo of Byblos).
An interesting passage of the Epic of Gilgamesh (tablet XI) seems to refer to this:
Utanapishtim spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Gilgamesh, you came here exhausted and worn out.
What can I give you so you can return to your land?
I will disclose to you a thing that is hidden, Gilgamesh,
a... I will tell you.
There is a plant... like a boxthorn,
whose thorns will prick your hand like a rose.
If your hands reach that plant you will become a young
man again."
Hearing this, Gilgamesh opened a conduit (to the Apsu)
and attached heavy stones to his feet.
They dragged him down, to the Apsu they pulled him.
He took the plant, though it pricked his hand,
and cut the heavy stones from his feet,
letting the waves throw him onto its shores.
Gilgamesh spoke to Urshanabi, the ferryman, saying:
"Urshanabi, this plant is a plant against decay
by which a man can attain his survival.
I will bring it to Uruk-Haven,
and have an old man eat the plant to test it.
The plant's name is 'The Old Man Becomes a Young Man.'"
Then I will eat it and return to the condition of my youth."
At twenty leagues they broke for some food,
at thirty leagues they stopped for the night.
Seeing a spring and how cool its waters were,
Gilgamesh went down and was bathing in the water.
A snake smelled the fragrance of the plant,
silently came up and carried off the plant.
While going back it sloughed off its casing.'
At that point Gilgamesh sat down, weeping,
his tears streaming over the side of his nose.
Cicatrix

"The actual prohibitions against idol use, promoting monolatry and centralized worship are from the Persian period or possibly a little earlier. These "Laws" while actually new and novel were cast back into mythic past by attributing them to the legendary patriarch Moses."
Okay, I get it now. Kind of like writing a prophecy after the fact sort of thing.Syncretism in action.
Do you know of any good sources for learning about this Persian period?
Thanks,
Cic

peacefulpete


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Print article Tell a friend Find subscription deals Trauma and Abstract Monotheism: Jewish Exile and Recovery in the Sixth Century B.C.E. Judaism, Spring, 2001, by David Aberbach

THE EXILE OF THE JUDEANS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C.E. is often linked to the emergence ofJudaism as a universal, e xclusively monotheist religion. [1] However, exile alone cannot account for the revolutionary nature of the Jewish acceptance of monotheism. It does not answer central questions relating to the biblical world: Why did non-monotheist religion in Jewish life, "the idols of wood and stone," suffer a mortal blow just then, ultimately vanishing from mainstream Judaism as completely as the dinosaurs? Why were the Jews the solitary heretics of the ancient world, accepting principles of faith which apparently no other entire people did for a thousand years? Why did they no longer tolerate idol-worship-which they had done until the sixth century B.C.E., at times to the exclusion of the worship of God? Why did most other defeated and exiled peoples, rather than become monotheists as the Jews did, evidently lose their faith in their local gods and fuse into the general pagan culture of their victors?2 And why did the sixth century mark a crucial stage in human development when for the first time a people, rather than go to war against its enemies, insults and threatens their religious culture instead-though there is no evidence that pagan societies were aware ofJudean monotheism, let alone its danger to them-and looks forward to an apocalyptic age of universal harmony and the end of war? The Judean acceptance of monotheism calls for a broad framework of explanation that takes into account not only historical, theological, and aesthetic factors but also psychological ones.

Circumstances in the late sixth century near east were favorable for Jewish monotheism. The need for unity of the surviving remnants of the two monotheist Jewish kingdoms, whose mutual hostility was now past, might have impelled them to escape further divine wrath by adopting the uncompromising faith of the prophets. General religious trends in the late sixth century, particularly Zoroastrianism, might have contributed to the Jewish acceptance of exclusive monotheism. [3] It may be thatJudean monotheism was supported by the Persians--the cost of rebuilding the Temple was paid by the royal treasury (Ezra 6:4; 7:20)--in part because of its likeness to Zoroastrianism. Furthermore, Judean monotheism was in many ways similar to the image of Ahura Mazda as taught by Zoroaster and accepted by Darius I (522-486 B.C.E.), in whose reign the Second Temple was completed. Ahura Mazda was believed to be creator of heaven and earth, source of light and darkness, sovereign lawgiver, center of nature, originator of the moral order, judge of the whole world. Boyce has pointed out that "Jews and Zoroastrians would have found a minor bond in their rejection of images of worship." [4] Still, the fact that Ahura Mazda was creator of Ahriman, his rival, was a major point of difference. Also, no people who came under Persian rule is known to have followed theJews in their exclusive turn to abstract ethical monotheism. These social and political factors were undoubtedly important in their time, but they hardly explain the power of monotheism among theJews in the long term.

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