Posts by Hmmm.2

129

YHWH a minor pagan god: Ugaritic Texts and the Sons of El

by DoomVoyager in

interesting.. here is the first thing i've found on the subject, though i haven't read much of it yet.. http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/05-deuteronomy/text/articles/heiser-deut32-bs.htm.

pseudo.

Hmmm.2

Hmmm2 not sure exactly what your getting at but notice this quote from many bibles,

When Elyon gave the nations an inheritance, 2 When he scattered the sons of man,
He established the borders of the nations,
According to the number of the sons of Israel.
But the portion of Yhwh is his people,
Jacob is the scope of his inheritance.

First this verse written this way doesnt make any sence "he established the borders of the nations according to the number of the sons of Israel" if what is talked about is the nation of Israel. The NLT translates is this way "when the most high (EL) assigned lands to the nations, when he divided up the human race, he established the boundaries of the peoples according to the number in his heavenly court. For the people of Israel belongs to the LORD, Jacob is his special people possession (or inheritance).

Hi, Crazyguy. Well, after going through the 'shields-up' article again, and after reading your post and looking over Leolaia's Post 11636 on page 1 again, I'm kind of not sure exactly what it is that I'm getting at. lol Sorry, but the 'shields-up' article is a bit confusing the way that it is written, but I think that the point that it is trying to make is that the DSS translation is only based upon a fragment, which only has the words:

According to the number of the sons of God.

Therefore, based on that, the author of that article expresses that the DSS manuscript does not support the claim that Deut 32:8 is referring to a Canaanite deity named El-Elyon who gave the nations their inheritence, since that part of the verse doesn't exist in the DSS manuscript.

However, the more that I keep reading over all of this, the more that I am starting to understand a lot of the subtleties and nuances of these verses.

For instances, I am now seeing that the article is being misleading by saying that there is no justification for thinking that the DSS manuscript for Deut 32:8 supports the idea of a Canaanite deity, when basically, no one really thinks that in the first place. Because from what I understand, the first part of Deut 32:8 is based upon the LXX manuscript, since that part of the DSS manuscript doesn't exist.

However, I'm now seeing that the whole interpretation of El-Elyon being the head of the Canaanite patheon in verse 8 is actually based on the part of the DSS manuscript that was intact for verse 8.

Also, Crazyguy, you made a very good and helpful point when you expressed how 'according to the number of the sons of Israel' doesn't make sense. Although actually, the LXX's 'according to the number of the angels of God' doesn't make sense either since there are currently 196 nations on earth(and obviously there were less than that when this scripture was written), even though the Bible mentions there being 100 million angels(myriad of myriads).

But as far as what you asked about the word "inheritence," well, I had did a little bit of research on it, and there seemed to be some kind of 'Biblical' meaning for God having an inheritence. However, I didn't finish my research on that.

P.S. How do you find this thread at this forum? Because if it wasn't for me either bookmarking this thread, or doing a search for it, I wouldn't know how to access this thread.

129

YHWH a minor pagan god: Ugaritic Texts and the Sons of El

by DoomVoyager in

interesting.. here is the first thing i've found on the subject, though i haven't read much of it yet.. http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/05-deuteronomy/text/articles/heiser-deut32-bs.htm.

pseudo.

Hmmm.2

Oops! Sorry about not finishing my above post, but I didn't know how to continue to write under the quotation.

But anyway, I don't know if Leolaia is around right now, but I wanted to share with her some information that I discovered about the Deuteronomy 32:8-9 Dead Sea Scroll quote:

Monday, 23rd January, 2012 by martin
deut 32:8–9 and the ancient israelite pantheon?

During a recent online debate the question of the meaning of Deut 32:8–9 was raised as evidence of the Bible’s affirmation of polytheism and the subordinate status of the God of Israel, Yhwh. The essence of the claim is that the version of this passage preserved in the DSS identifies El Elyon as head of a pantheon who assigns nations to various subordinate deities, and Israel is assigned to Yhwh in this process.

The argument rests upon the alternate reading found in a fragment from cave 4 at Qumran (4Q37 or 4QDeut j ). 1 This fragment only preserves a few words from these verses.

Here’s a diagram which illustrates the extent of the relevant fragment of 4QDeut j (i.e. 4Q37):

[...]

Ultimately, however, there are too many problems with both of these claims for them to be viable.

There are a number of references to sons of God in the OT. A singular “son” of God is a designation for God’s appointed human king (e.g. Ps 2:7). Plural sons appears to refer to the members of a divine court, presumably angelic beings but certainly not “gods” (e.g. Gen 6:2, 4; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7).
One particularly interesting text is Ps 82:6 which reads:

‏אני אמרתי אלהים אתם
ובני עליון כלכם

I said, “You are gods,
and sons of ʿelyôn are you all!”

The gods (אלהים, ʾelōhîm) who are sons of עליון, ʿelyôn, here are clearly human beings — albeit rulers.

The term עליון (ʿelyôn) is used as an epithet in the ancient Near East for quite a number of deities, and elsewhere in the Old Testament (and, indeed, in the new when ὕψιστος is used) it refers to Yhwh. In this way the term itself is relatively generic as a designation for a deity. To claim it must refer to some deity other than Yhwh in Deut 32 fails to recognise this observation.
There is certainly no warrant in any manuscript from the DSS to support the claim that this is a reference to a Canaanite deity named ʾEl-ʿElyôn since the fragment from the DSS does not even preserve this portion of the text. Futhermore, even this expression, when it does appear, is clearly identified as Yhwh (e.g. Gen 14:22).

http://blog.shields-online.net/?p=308

And I'll let you read the rest of the article. However, if this information is correct at the shields-up site, the Deuteronomy 32:8-9 DSS quote doesn't really conclusively say what you have quoted in your DSS quote.

Also, the reason why I am concerned about this is because I am a former JW and a regular poster at the "Discuss Jehovah's Witnesses" Beliefnet website, and I used your Deuteronomy DSS quote in a debate with a JW at that site, and basically, I try to be as accurate as I can within those discussions.

But please share any feedback that you may have about this. :-)

129

YHWH a minor pagan god: Ugaritic Texts and the Sons of El

by DoomVoyager in

interesting.. here is the first thing i've found on the subject, though i haven't read much of it yet.. http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/05-deuteronomy/text/articles/heiser-deut32-bs.htm.

pseudo.

Hmmm.2

Hi. I'm new to the forum. And have been a lurker for quite a number of years now.

Also, the reason why I finally decided to register at this forum is because of something that the poster named Leolaia wrote in her Post 11636 on page 1 on 9/22/2008. She wrote:

It is telling that the polythesitic overtones of the Song of Moses (the only text in the OT which clearly portrays Yahweh as distinct from the supreme god, although there is an echo of the old scheme in Daniel 7, in which the "Ancient of Days" is described with language evocative of El and the "one like a son of man" is described with language evocative of Yahweh) were systematically obliterated in later scribal activity. This was likely due to the embarassing theological implications of the passage, as the revisions obscure its polytheistic implications:

4QDeut j : "When Elyon gave the nations as an inheritance, when he separated the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God (bny 'l[hym]). For Yahweh's portion was his people; Jacob was the lot of his inheritance".