This brief comment has been discused before but hey it's a slow week. Ps 78:23-25 says that the 'manna' that the Israelites ate in the story was the food of the gods/powerful spirits. Of course various mythologies describe humans seek or eating food of the gods for miraculous powers of wisdom or immortality.
My question is this, does not the manna story appear as an appendage to the rest of the roving in the desert story? The only mention of it in Ex is in chapt 16 the rest of the story describes the raising and consumption of grains (Ex 22:5 ansd 23:19 for example)and spices and herds. Does this not make the story line that the nomadic Israelites ate only manna for 40 years (16:3,35)awkward and an obvious literary slip? What if in the original form the manna had miraculous powers to keep them well and fertile? The other tradition (priestly) about the backsliding ways of the people was forced upon the manna tradition so that now the manna had not power and was given to an ungrateful and greedy people. I'm too lazy to check if this has been argued before but it just struck me.
Manna miraculous powers?
by peacefulpete 3 Replies latest watchtower bible
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peacefulpete
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Narkissos
An interesting parallel is "Elijah in Horeb", in 1 Kings 19:4ff. Not "manna", but "bread from heaven" with apparently miraculous sustaining power:
But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat." He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the LORD came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you." He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.
Of course, being fed in the wilderness is a recurrent motif, from Genesis (Hagar) to Revelation...
About manna proper, the tradition of Wisdom 16:20ff is quite interesting for its miraculous powers are developed as a commentary of Exodus 16, Numbers 11 and Deuteronomy 8 (it suits every taste); the melting of manna under the sun is also contrasted to the hail plague (involving fire, in the form of lightning, and ice):
Instead of these things you gave your people food of angels, and without their toil you supplied them from heaven with bread ready to eat, providing every pleasure and suited to every taste. For your sustenance manifested your sweetness toward your children; and the bread, ministering to the desire of the one who took it, was changed to suit everyone's liking. Snow and ice withstood fire without melting, so that they might know that the crops of their enemies were being destroyed by the fire that blazed in the hail and flashed in the showers of rain; whereas the fire, in order that the righteous might be fed, even forgot its native power. For creation, serving you who made it, exerts itself to punish the unrighteous, and in kindness relaxes on behalf of those who trust in you. Therefore at that time also, changed into all forms, it served your all-nourishing bounty, according to the desire of those who had need, so that your children, whom you loved, O Lord, might learn that it is not the production of crops that feeds humankind but that your word sustains those who trust in you. For what was not destroyed by fire was melted when simply warmed by a fleeting ray of the sun, to make it known that one must rise before the sun to give you thanks, and must pray to you at the dawning of the light; for the hope of an ungrateful person will melt like wintry frost, and flow away like waste water.
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peacefulpete
How about that, I may have called it right. Thanks Narkissos. What about the sory being a separate tradition stitched in? Read anything on that, or have opinions?
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Leolaia
Psalm 78:23-25 is rendered in the LXX "man ate the bread of angels" (arton angelon), and that got picked up in the Wisdom of Solomon quote, and other extrabiblical sources report the same:
Moses said to the Israelites: "Know that you have eaten the bread of angels for forty years" (Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 19:5)
"I pitied your groanings and gave you manna for food; you ate the bread of angels." (4 Ezra 1:19)
" 'The bread of the mighty' [in Psalm 78:25] means that they ate the bread that the ministering angels eat, according to R. Aqiba." (b. Yoma 75b)
Leolaia