Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.
God’s Body
Doublethink
Admin, 8th Day Host
I am currently listening to this podcast on the body of God. (This is from the The Ancient’s podcast on History Hit). It is interesting in that it’s historians talking about a lot of material drawn from the bible.
One thing that struck me - that I’d never heard of before, is the blurb from the History Hit site, that states that Yahweh was once believed to be one of the seventy children of El.
I wondered if anyone else would be interested in listening to the podcast and discussing the argument being presented.
One thing that struck me - that I’d never heard of before, is the blurb from the History Hit site, that states that Yahweh was once believed to be one of the seventy children of El.
I wondered if anyone else would be interested in listening to the podcast and discussing the argument being presented.
Comments
The author talks about the changes in perceptions of Yahweh’s body over his “career”. Stating as part of a pantheon to a monotheistic and ultimately incorporeal understanding.
She notes that typical representations of a deity early on would have had him as a large, fit, young man with glowing reddish skin with black hair and a beard. Whilst later perception of white hair and beard would mean taking on the characteristics originally ascribed to El. She argues a lot of what we tend to think of as figurative language about God, where he might dwell or place his feet - how he might reach out his arm, would have been understood as literal some thousands of years ago and that that is consistent with cultural understandings of the nature godhood at the time.
She cites Ezekiel quite a lot and there is a strikingly uncomfortable discussion of the sexuality of Yahweh and she notes that a prophet has a vision that includes observing his genitalia and why that would have been significant in ancient cultures.
(ETA it is basically a historian being interviewed about a book she has just written on the subject - presumably the book itself would contain references / citations. Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou: 'God: an Anatomy')
The article uncontroversially continues with the evolution of Yahweh among Canaanites hiving themselves off as Israel, from polytheism through henotheism, monolatry to monotheism,
Judges 5:4-5 Yahweh, when you went out of Seir,
when you marched out of the field of Edom,
the earth trembled, the sky also dropped.
Yes, the clouds dropped water.
The mountains quaked at Yahweh’s presence,
even Sinai at the presence of Yahweh, the God of Israel.
So, which son of Canaanite El did Edomite Yahweh blur with and devour his adopting father?
I guess Peter Snow could be El and Dan Snow could be Yah. Kind of like Dick and Barry van Dyke in Diagnosis Murder.
The podcast episode is also titled "God's Body" which is produced by Ancient Faith Radio (link below).
The whole premise is that a body is not actually the physical stuff (hands, eyes, intestines, brain). Rather, our body is a nexus of potentialities. In the ancient world, when people talked about eyes, they weren't talking about gushy orbs in their skulls. They were talking about the power of sight. Ones feet were the capacity for movement. One's right arm is in regards to one's strength. Eyes are instruments for sight. Feet are instruments for movement. And so on.
But, this doesn't mean that those instruments are required for hearing, and such.
And this is related in part--along with the fact that we are made in the image of God--that man does not anthropomorphize God in the Bible, rather man "Theomorphizes" man (another point made in this podcast).
There's so much more to this. But it sounds like the take that the podcast in the OP takes a lot of liberties, and makes a lot of connections between ancient Mesopotamian religion and early Israelites spirituality.
https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/lordofspirits/gods_body
As an aside, I was super confused when I originally saw this thread, because I thought everyone was talking about this podcast, and I thought I was remembering something completely different from the podcast. Turns out, different podcast, same title.
It definitely makes sense that as well as (any) anthropomising of deities, there is also for want of a better word anthropomising of abstract words and concepts (e.g. good in the eyes of, facing, etc...) some of which we've probably still got today, some we can hide behind Greek/Latin.
--i haven't really sorted my views.
Obviously,you can't go too far without noting there's the incarnation.
The writers give Moses and the leaders a direct face to face encounter.
There are a few other 'messenger in human form' encounters (e.g with. Abraham and Gideon). Which to me seem different, but I'll have to try rereading them with a different perspective.
Daniel and Revelation have very anthropolised God's, but come from the opposite side of scripture.
There's also a fair bit of language that is to some extent semi-abstract. Something like the "lord stretching his hands to strike Egypt", must to some extent be recognising something 'non physical', even if reflecting a corresponding action on a deity body.
Argument
In the Levant there was a pantheon ruled over by El & his wife Asherah who had “seventy” (ie many) sons (sons & daughters). Different places and peoples had different ones as patrons. (The author often cites texts from Urgaritt in support of this, and inscriptions from various ancient ruined temples.)
Originally the Judhites worshipped El, who is in announced in the bible as El Shaddai - which is often translated as God Almighty. But in fact, would be better translated as High God. Later, Yahweh a storm God, became patron of Israel and Judah became more and more prominent - in a later verse in the bible when Yahweh says to the prophet I am Yahweh who announced myself to the patriarchs as El Shaddai, what we are seeing is an attempt to retrofit Yahweh into El’s persona to reflect political and social changes in worship.
The author notes that at one point Yahweh was worshipped with his wife, Asherah (taken on from El) and there are some 800BCE inscriptions to “Yaweh & his Asherah”.
I apologise if my anglicised spellings are all over the place. I have never read the bible in any language other than English, (and not all of it). Is this change from referring to God as El Shaddai to Yaweh across the Old Testament true, and do you think it bears the weight of this interpretation ?
For my money, what is seen in the prophets and elsewhere in the OT isn’t so much an attempt to “retrofit” Yahweh to the role of El; at least I wouldn’t describe it that way. It makes perfect sense to me that (1) Israel’s understanding of God and/or (2) God’s revelation of Godself to Israel (take your pick) was rooted in and developed within the language and concepts and constructs of the wider culture in which Israel moved. That dynamic of Israel’s beliefs growing out of the general mythology of the region is reflected in a number of places in the OT, most noticeably perhaps in the first 10 chapters of Genesis, and often evidences some twist or distinction, as though Israel’s version is in a sort of conversation with the versions of surrounding societies.
Rather than describing it as “retrofitting,” I’d probably say that in the OT, we can discern traces of Israel’s move from belief in their tribal god to a belief that that tribal god was in fact the only God.
Exodus 6:2 God also said to Moses, “I am the Lord (Yahweh). 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by my name the Lord (Yahweh) I did not make myself fully known to them.
As @Doublethink alluded.
And even which language was being spoken -if the hearer knew more than one language.
Anecdotes are no evidence, but for what it's worth. I've "heard" that voice maybe four, five times. In both cases nobody around me would have heard it (though Mr Lamb did hear it at the same time in one case, saying the same thing). It was utterly clear, utterly concise, unmistakeable as to its meaning, and to me at least, unmistakeable that it was NOT ME speaking--I mean, it was not an inner voice, of the sort that reminds me to take out the trash, and not to say X to Y. It was unmistakeably from elsewhere.
In my case it was in English on two occasions--I can quote the words. (I have multiple languages.) The other two cases it was a set of instructions (Go here, takes this, do such and such when you get there). I don't recall that being so much in a particular set of words, but that might be because I tend to think pictorially, and so it was the usual mishmash of images and words (I think).
On the male/female thing--it wasn't like I was noticing timbre and so forth. But then, I don't pay a lot of attention to gender anyway. It was utterly clear, calm, straightforward and authoritative. On one occasion it included a bit of exasperation. On another there was the impression of laughter.
For what it's worth.
I would say this is not only a massive generalisation but an incorrect one. I have never heard this assertion from an Evangelical pulpit - which is not to say it never happens, but suggests it might not be quite as rife as you imply.
Oh you'l never hear it from the pulpit, like the unspoken damnationism that cannot be challenged either. That it's a subset of. It's rife.
I have heard it. The claim is that by "My Brethren" Jesus means Christians, not people in general.
There's a strand within some popular evangelism that believes that words must mean the same thing in the Bible wherever they occur.
Action? What do you mean by that in this context?
Thank you. So have you been able to follow His instructions? Were they a blueprint for your life? A vocation?
The memory started with a pulsating dark up and to the right of me. I was trying to push forward but every time I seemed to be making progress the pulsating dark pushed me back. I was thinking of giving up when a voice behind my left shoulder said: you need to try.
I replied: I have tried, but it's hard!
He said: I know it's hard, but they're waiting for you.
This convinced me to try again but as I did so something came in and grabbed me and dragged me out of the dark into light and noise. I can still feel my revulsion to the assault on my senses; my first thought when I was out was " if I had known it would be like that I would have stayed in the dark!"
So advice specific to the moment but also there have been other times in my life when I have needed to try as it has been hard but they have been waiting for me. Also to me the most powerful name of Jesus is Emmanuel as He is with us and He knows that it is hard.
Book 1: Towing Jehova. "God is dead, and tanker captain Anthony Van Horne (contracted by Raphael) must tow the corpse to the Arctic (to preserve Him from sharks and decomposition). En route Van Horne must also contend with ecological guilt, a militant girlfriend, sabotage both natural and spiritual, and greedy hucksters of oil, condoms, and doubtful ideas.
Winner of a 1995 World Fantasy Award."
Book 2: Blameless in Abaddon. "God is a comatose, two-mile-long tourist attraction at a Florida theme park-until a conniving judge decides to put Him on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year."
Book 3: The Eternal Footman. "With God's skull in orbit, competing with the moon, a plague of "death awareness" spreads across the Western hemisphere. As the United States sinks into apocalypse, two people fight to preserve life and sanity. One is Nora Burkhart, a schoolteacher who will stop at nothing to save her only son, Kevin. The other is the genius sculptor Gerard Korty, who struggles to create a masterwork that will heal the metaphysical wounds of the age."
I only read the first one over a period of a few months back in the late 1990s, and I don't have a very good memory of it, other than I didn't quit partway through.
Indeed, @Martin54 !