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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] re: their altars

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] re: their altars
  • Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 01:59:30 +0000

On 05/03/2005 21:48, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

... Maybe
the Yahwist - traditionally a source written in the "South" after the
division of the
Monarchy and before the Assyrian conquest - wrote J at Kuntillet
Ajrud. ... All of this is rather indirect, but I think
it gives enough
basis to argue that perhaps Kuntillet Ajrud was the home of the Yahwist.
Would
we claim that the Yahwist's view of Yahweh was "odd and aberrant"?


There is something very strange about your method of arguing here. You start with a hypothesis that "perhaps Kuntillet Ajrud was the home of the Yahwist", and give some very circumstantial evidence why this might be possible. But then you look at the evidence which should immediately rule out this hypothesis, the clear fact that the concept of Yahweh having a consort Asherah is entirely repugnant to the authors of every strand of the Pentateuch, but you don't allow this to be evidence against your hypothesis. Rather, you argue from your unproved hypothesis to a need to revise the evidence of the actual text supposedly written by the Yahwist.

So if we strike out the part about the establishment, what we get is: "some
folk
in some parts of Israel thought that Yahweh had a consort". That's
not much, but
it's perhaps all we can say.


No, we can't say this much, because Kuntillet Ajrud was not in the land of Israel, or at best on its borders, and there is no evidence that the worshippers there were Israelites. They could well have been Edomites or similar who had grafted the Israelite divine name on to their own polytheistic beliefs.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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