Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

> Available is the following article- "Cherubim, The Pre-Biblical Origins of 
> (And The Mercy Seat Atop the Ark of the Covenant)". 
> 
> If interested click on the url below-
> 
> http://www.bibleorigins.net/CherubimOrigins.html
> 
Walter, I consistently find it amazing that you expect people to 
take your material seriously.  The fact that some Sphinx-like 
objects have been unearthed in Canaan may or may not have any 
connection with what cherubim looked like.  That connection is 
nothing but a flying leap with absolutely no evidence.  The Exodus 
description of the cherubim's positions is very clear that their wings 
reach toward each other and touch over the "mercy seat."  As for 
Ezekiel's vision, it should be obvious to anybody who reads it that 
he is describing things symbolically, attempting as best he can to 
describe things that are frankly indescribable.  To try and tear him 
down because "he should have known better" is just, pardon me, 
silly.  Josephus' statement is irrelevant; representations of 
cherubim on the ark and the curtain before it were destroyed by the 
Babylonians, so it stands to reason that in his time no one would 
know what these objects looked like.

I hope the others will forgive me for being so blatant, but this is not 
scholarship.  It is a little piece of this, a little piece of that, 
shoehorned into a set of baseless presuppositions and 
speculations.  It also frankly has nothing to do with biblical Hebrew.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with 
it.
                  -Emerson