The choice to name the headquarters "Bethel" is a reflection of the shallow scholarship that plagues the religion as a whole. While insisting the name choice is because of the story of Jacob resting his head on a sacred stone and having visions of a "ladder" (ziggurat) and thereafter piling stones for El (cannanite chief deity) to reside in, hence the name "bet-El", it seemed they were unaware that the same word "Bethel" is the name of a deity possibly equated with Chemosh. Of all the names to call the WT headquarters they chose a pagan deity's name. This god's sole extant reference in the Bible is in Jeremiah,however many translations have added a word or two in the script to suggest it is referring to a place rather than the god. I've found the information at various sites including Jewish scholarship forums. The following is from the Encyclopedia Mythica.
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Bethel
A Syrian local tutelary god, named after the sanctuary with the same name (located north of Jerusalem). He was possibly worshipped in the 7th century BCE by Jewish military colonists on the Egyptian island Elephantine (in the Nile). Bethel (the god) is mentioned in the Bible (Jeremiah: 48:14), as well as in the Ras Shamra texts (a treaty between the Hittites and the Ugarits from the 14th century BCE).
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Bethel is Cannanite god
by peacefulpete 16 Replies latest watchtower bible
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peacefulpete
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Euphemism
Jeremiah 48:14? NAS renders that verse as follows:
"How can you say, 'We are mighty warriors,
And men valiant for battle'?And all the other translations I checked said the same thing. Is there some kind of mistake here?
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DocBob
PeacefulPete,
See my article "Bethel, House of God or Symbol of Rank Apostacy" at http://docbob1.home.comcast.net/bethel.htm
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Narkissos
It's 48:13.
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peacefulpete
Very funny essay DocBob. No matter how you look at it, it was a strange choice of name. I didn't notice the typo(?) in the article, thanks Narkissos. Maybe they used the Douay or something??? I just posted this thread for fun. hehe
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Leolaia
Info from Mark Smith's Early History of God on the deity Bethel:
The treaty of Esarhaddon of Baal II of Tyre lists in order the deities of Tyre as Bethel, Anat-Bethel, Baal Shamem, Baal-Malaga, Baal-Saphon, Melqart, Eshmun, and Astarte. The initial position of Bethel would point to his status as the primary god of the Tyrian pantheon. That Bethel is a secondary hypostasis of El has been argued by M. Barre. The depiction of the Tyrian El in Ezekiel 28 would comport with this conclusion. [p. 63].....Bethel (Ba-a-a-ti-ili[mesh]) and Anat-Bethel (d A-na-ti-Ba-[a]-[a-ti-il]i[mesh]) found in the treaty of Baal of Tyre with Esarhaddon are marked as plural forms; BH 'elohim may be understood as a plural of majesty or the like. [pp. 77-78]....The name Bethel in Jer. 48:13 may point to a Phoenician source lying behind the evience for Bethel as a divine name in both biblical and Jewish Egyptian sources. Such an explanation might account for the element * 'nt in the names from Elephantine [p. 102]....In the case of other deities identified in biblical sources, devotion appears to be restricted to a particular area or period. Deities in this category would include Bethel (Jer. 48:13), perhaps Chemosh (1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:17), and mlk, the name of a sacrifice except in Isaiah 8:21 and 57:9. It may be argued that some, if not all, of these deities appeared in Israelite religion during the last century of the Judean monarchy. In some cases, they may have been borrowed from another culture. Chemosh belongs to this category. The late appearance of Astarte and Bethel may indicate Phoenician influence. In Tyrian religion Bethel perhaps developed as an aspect of El into a god. This deity is attested in the treaty of Esarhaddon with Baal of Tyre, in double names (AP 7:7; 22:124, 125) and proper names (AP 2:6-10; 12:9; 18:4, 5) in the Jewish Aramaic papyri from Elephantine, the Aramaic version of Psalm 20 written in Demotic, and Jeremiah 48:13. From these pieces of evidence, Bethel, like Astarte, may have been a specifically Phoenician import into Judean religion, an influence reflected in both Jeremiah 48:13 and the Jewish Egyptian evidence. [p. 183]....This late development may have laid the basis for further polemic against other deities, such as Baal, who belonged authentically to Israel's Canaanite heritage (in distinction to the Phoenician Baal of Jezebel). Chemosh, Bethel, and Astarte were known as religious imports, and Baal may have been understood along similar lines. [p. 190]
On the basis of this, it appears Phoenician Bethel was quite distinct from Chemosh, the Moabite patron deity of the Negeb. My question is why Bethel isn't called Beth-Jehovah? Doesn't the Society want to glorify the name Jehovah any chance they get?
Leolaia
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peacefulpete
Thanks Leolaia for posting more info. i have others as well. The Chemosh comment was made simply due to the apparent parallelism in the verse which may reflect the opinion (correct or not) of the author of the Jeremiah passage.
BTW does anyone else have trouble with the search function? I get irrelevant results usually dating a few months back at most. -
Leolaia
Yes, I notice that too. How can I get more than one page of search results? Leolaia
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shotgun
Interesting work DocBob
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stillajwexelder
even Israel -- means Children of the God El