Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin Graham" <kevlds AT hotmail.com>]

Good day Peter. You said,

== I refer to interpretations from Hellenistic and later times, including 
LXX, which, if I remember correctly, you yourself referred to as holding to 
a metaphorical interpretation. Indeed you allude to this below. There are 
also arguments close to this in "Deutero"-Isaiah.

Actually I never argued that all anthropomorphisms were removed from the 
LXX. But it seems virtually every comment on or allusion to Gen 1:26, even 
in hellenistic times, reinforces the literal reading. The LXX rendering is 
as follows,

"Let us make man according to our image and likeness, and let them have 
dominion over the fish of the sea ... So God made man, according to the 
image of God"

Some scholars like Clines postulate that the Ancient Hebrew could be 
rendered "man was created as an image for God." As such, God would not 
necessarily require a preexistent image from which to mold mankind. But the 
LXX translation doesn't support this at all. There is no Hebrew commentary 
that would reinforce such a thesis. Everything from this period, in fact, 
seems to point in the other direction. I'll present some examples. According 
to Tikva Frymer-Kensky ,

"The rabbinic notion of image is concrete: it relates to people's looks, to 
their face and form, which are like God's, and not to some concept of mind, 
soul, spirit, or intellect. The bodily resemblance leads Hillel to declare 
that we have an obligation to care for our body as the image of God…A 
tradition about Hillel makes the bodily nature of the image explicit. Hillel 
declared that he performed God's commandment in the act of going to the 
bathroom or bathhouse, for he was rendering his obligation to the body in 
the image" (Tikva Frymer-Kensky “The Image: Religious Anthropology in 
Judaism and Christianity” in Christianity in Jewish Terms (Radical 
Traditions) Westview Press; (September 10, 2000) p. 323 alluding to Hillel,  
Avot de Rabbi Natan B 30

In the DSS we find a manuscript from "'The Scroll of the War Rule" 12.10-11, 
which reads:

“Arise, O Valiant One!
Lead away Thy captives, O glorious Man !
Do Thy plundering, O Valorous One!”

Dupont-Sommer has a note on this: “These epithets are addressed to God. The 
expression 'glorious Man' (ish) may seem astonishing, but in Exod. xv. 3, we 
find ‘Yahweh is a man (ish) of war.’” (A.Dupont-Sommer, The Essene Writings 
from Qumran (Meridian Bookes 1961), p. 187.) There is also a second century 
B.C interpretation of Gen 1:26. From 4Q 504, frag.8: “You have fashioned 
Adam our father, in the likeness of your Glory.” Fossum notes that it was 
the, “genuinely Jewish tradition that the divine likeness of man was to be 
found in the body. The image after which the body of man was formed was a 
heavenly man, even the Glory.” (Jarl E. Fossum, “The Image of the Invisible 
God,” in Novum Testamentum Et Orbis Antiquus; 30 1995, p.20.)Again it is 
significant that allusions to the traditional interpretation are absent.

More evidence that some Ancient Jews understood God to be in human form 
comes from the Exagoge. According to James R. Davila, “The Exagoge was a 
Jewish work from between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC.” It was written by 
the Alexandrian playwright Ezekiel, who relates a vision to Moses on Sinai: 
“I dreamed that on the summit of Mt. Sinai stood a great throne reaching to 
the corners of heaven. On it was seated a noble Man with a diadem on his 
head and holding a great scepter in his left hand.” Joseph and Asenath, an 
early Jewish work highly regarded in Eastern and Western Christian 
traditions, most likely emanates from Alexandrian Egypt as early as 200 B.C. 
There we find the conversion of Asenath to Judaism: “The heaven was torn 
apart, and a great and ineffable light appeared. And Asenath saw it and fell 
on her face on the ashes. And a man of light from heaven came to her.”

==  No, this is not my argument. But I am arguing that words for body parts, 
whether of humans and animals, inanimate objects, or gods, are used very 
widely in metaphorical senses in Hebrew, in fact often far more often than 
they are literally.

Very well, we can agree here. The Bible is, after all, fraught with allegory 
and poetry.

== So your car does not have a back end, because it has a reverse gear? This 
is nonsense!

It would be if that were my argument. My car does have a back end, but it is 
not determined through movement. I can look at this three-dimensional object 
and tell you where the trunk is whether it is in motion or not. What you 
seem to be saying is that God's "backparts" are determined through movement. 
Meaning, if the light is moving away, then that must refer to his backparts. 
There is no logic to this at all.

== A perfectly spherical moving object still has a back, which is the part 
of it which happens to be at the back

But how do you presume to speak of a "back" if it is not discernable?

== well, I'm sure what you mean but I can't describe it without using words 
like "back" because that is the standard way that language describes such 
things.

Again, it makes no sense for Moses to refer to the backparts of an object 
unless he can visualyl discern which parts represent his backparts and which 
side represents the "face." You say God has backparts, but you cannot 
explain how they would be discerned except through a retreating movement. 
This does not logically follow at all because God, even if He is some glob 
of spherical light, could be facing us while moving backwards. Think of the 
sun for a second; maybe this will help illustrate my point. We might refer 
to the side we cannot see as the sun's back side. But if the sun were to 
revolve 180 degrees, how would we know were were now looking at its back 
side? By definition it would become its "face" simply because it is facing 
us. But the important point is, by simply looking, we never would know if it 
were turned around or not. So how was Moses able to distinguish the 
difference between God's backparts as opposed to his Face, all the while 
dealing with a giant appendage blocking his view? What would the difference 
be between a front and back of the sun?  If Yahweh had presented himself in 
human form, WHICH WAS HIS TRADITIONAL METHOD ACCORDING TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, 
then Moses' comments make perfect sense. With this assumption that God is an 
incorporeal entity of light, it makes no sense at all.

==  Why should a literal face kill anyone? This is clearly some kind of 
metaphor or extended meaning, because literally seeing a face cannot be 
fatal.

Surely you're not serious. By this logic, why would the ark of the covenant 
kill anyone? Arks don't kill people. So was it not REALLY an ark?

==  This is not hypothesis, this is established fact!

That backparts are metaphor? If this is true, then you should have no 
problem reconciling the logical dilemma presented above. Your car analogy 
only made my point, I think.

== If you disagree, please explain to me how you interpret the verses above. 
Try this plain reading of the text: "And he shall slaughter the young bull 
to the face of YHWH" (Leviticus 1:5) etc etc. Is the face of YHWH inside the 
tabernacle?

According to Ancient Jewish tradition, Yahweh's entire human form was 
present in the Holy of Holies. This included his face.

== If so, why isn't the offerer killed?

Because he didn't look at his face. I fail to see where you're going with 
this. Surely you're not saying a person cannot be present before God's face 
without actually looking at His face. This is precisely how Moses' 
experience is described.

== The example Van Leeuwen quoted is from the 10th dynasty "Instruction 
Addressed to King Merikare", quoted from Lichtheim, AEL 1:106. Here is an 
extract: "Well tended is mankind - god's cattle... They are his images, who 
came from his body..."

Thanks for that. Yes, this is the same reference cited by Westermann and 
Clines. Since Van Leeuwen was using Clines, I hope he at least mentioned the 
fact that Clines said this: "It would be tempting to regard it as an example 
of 'democratization' in the circles of wisdom-teaching, were it not for the 
fact that this text comes from a time several centuries earlier than the 
regular use of 'image of God' for the king. There is not likely to be any 
direct relationship between this isolated reference to humankind as the 
image of God and the biblical text."

== Well, when is their "eventually"? I would accept that this was popular 
belief - indeed it still is now, for people think of God as an old man 
sitting on a cloud. But I still see a sign of that old racism in the 
conclusion that it was not the original official religion, a suggestion that 
somehow such things could not be understood in earlier times.

Well, for the sake of avoiding racism, allow me to clarify my argument: such 
things were not understood in earlier times. Whether they "could be so 
understood" is a meaningless sidebar.

== Well, I haven't seen any which cannot be explained this way, although of 
course many are somewhat ambiguous. Walking eyes, fatal faces etc: this is 
the stuff of metaphor, or of extended non-literal senses of words.

But if this were the obvious explanation for the majority, they never would 
have bothered deleting them; especially given the sacred nature of written 
scripture. Changing it was to be a last resort.

== Well, I don't assume this. Of course to some extent he was, but his 
background was Israelite as well as Egyptian, and the Israelites had very 
likely developed a distinctive religious outlook over many centuries - or 
perhaps one in common with desert tribes like the Midianites, among whom 
Moses lived for perhaps forty years, distinct from the well known theology 
of the great empires.

But the problem here is this. Did the concept begin with Egypt or God? Moses 
was citing God's own words from "the beginning." This was a divine decree 
before Israel, before Egypt, and before haumanity. Was God speaking to the 
elohim, using "image" in a manner that would make sense only to Egyptians 
centuries down the road? There is a chronological dilemma for those who 
argue this way. JP Holding is an example.

== Who says it was a giant chair?

The Bible.

== Well, YHWH was certainly metaphorically enthroned, although in English 
"enthroned" does not mean that the monarch is literally sitting on the 
throne at that time, and a suitable symbol for that was a throne. Anyway, 
the "mercy seat" was not all that giant, so your hypothesis suffers from 
uncertainties of scale.

Scholars have noted that, “Isaiah 6:1 renders Yahweh after the fashion of an 
enthroned human king,” and according to 1 Kings 6:23-28, “the throne built 
for Yahweh in the Temple’s ‘Holy of Holies’ or ‘backroom’ was 10 cubits high 
and 10 cubits wide (5.3 square meters). Only a deity superhuman in scale 
could take a seat in such a throne.” (Smith, OBM, 85)

The “divine hand” which blocked Moses’ vision on Mt. Sinai, “suggests a 
superhuman appendage that can cover a human being, further pointing to a 
superhuman sized deity.” This motif adds clarity to Gen 6:4 which described 
the nephilim (offspring from human-angel relations) as “giants.” The overall 
evidence leads Smith to conclude that,

"From these biblical passages, this idea of divine scale may have been quite 
widespread. The description of the divine throne in the Temple especially 
implies a general view, for the throne was a public symbol of Yahweh. 
Isaiah's vision evidently reflects the widespread perception that Yahweh 
looked human but was superhuman in size. Even as the theological reflection 
of Ex 33 limits what humans can experience of the divine, the motif of the 
divine hand in this passage recalls the older Levantine tradition of 
describing divinities of superhuman scale."

You should probably take it up with Mark Smith. He's a leading expert in 
this area.

Meanwhile, you still haven't justified metaphor for the use of "form." As 
in, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with beholding thy form.”( Psalms 
17:15), and “He beholds the form of the Lord.” (Numbers 12:8)

== This is nonsense. The expression "face to face" is used in English with 
non-literal senses, such as "Face to face with chronic disease"

Am I supposed to be disagreeing with this? Last time I checked, we're 
talking about biblical Hebrew. Showing me what it sometimes means in English 
says virtually nothing about what it "could" mean in Hebrew, let alone what 
it "most likely" means.

==  And very likely its Hebrew equivalent could be.

And why is it "likely"?

== Would you argue from this expression that chronic disease has a face, or 
that if it does not it implies that the person who comes face to face with 
it doesn't have a face either?

See, you're doing it again (grin). You say you're not arguing that an 
example of metaphor proves all examples are metaphorical, but in your 
arguments you proceed in this fashion. One might as well insist two people 
having a "heart to heart" talk, don't have hearts.

==  "Eye", `ayin, can also refer to inanimate objects. Even if we leave 
aside the meaning "spring", the earth has one (Exodus 10:5), manna and 
bdellium have them (Numbers 7:7), a fire has one (Ezekiel 1:4), wine has one 
(Proverbs 23:31). More to the immediate point, `ayin commonly means 
"opinion" or "knowledge", and has many other non-literal uses. `ayin be`ayin 
is not a very common phrase, but in Isaiah 52:8 it is probably metaphorical 
rather than suggesting that the watchmen will themselves see YHWH.

The word "eye" isn't the issue. The phrase "eye to eye" however, is the 
issue. Just because "eye" means certain things in various contexts doesn't 
say anything about the phrase "eye to eye." Can you show me where this 
phrase is used with inanimate objects which do not have eyes? You seem to be 
playing a game of mix and match. This is like saying, "keep your eye on the 
ball" doesn't refer to human eyes because "eye" is also used in other 
expressions such as "eye of the storm," wich clearly refers different.

I'm out of time. I didn't see anything left in your post that I really 
disagree with so I'll stop here.

Cheers