Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Dear Karl,

Your message implies I'm a theologian.  Please do not label me or
address me as such.
Say anything you want about my arguments, but keep your considerations
of me to yourself.
This is not an issue that you should now explain why you view me as
such and what you
mean by such.

In any case, suppose to take your example, that a wife refers to her
neighbor's husband.
In this case, she evidently sees him as a husband -- not her husband,
but a husband.
She is "henogamic" -- having her husband, and being faithful to her
husband, without denying
the existence of other husbands.  In popular speech, we refer to her
as "monogamic"
because a more absolute sense of monogamic -- denying the existence
and validity of
other husbands -- is not yet culturally accepted.

In this case, there is widespread evidence from ancient witness texts
that the original reading
was "bny )l" or "bny )lhym".  The question is what to do with this.
According to Canaanite
myth, the god El had seventy children gods, and to each a different
inheritance was allocated.

We now ask: at the time the poem was composed, what was the world-view
of the author?
Was it henotheistic, or monotheistic?  We have to keep in mind, that
even in a henotheistic
world view, the author would have viewed himself as monotheistic,
having not yet reached a
cultural situation of more extreme monotheism than his.

We can throw upon the poem the world-view seen in other Biblical
books.  But this might
eclipse a situation where a poem with a particular world-view is
incorporated in a text with
a different world-view.  Since the poem is a unit, it is best to first
understand it in context,
to see what world-view arises from the poem itself.

You might similarly claim that the same author wrote the entire Torah
and the poem, and
therefore it is legitimate to throw the general world-view of the
Torah upon the poem.  But this
claim deserves proof.  This proof requires us to show that the same
world-view is exhibited by
both.  We are still back to trying to ascertain the world-view of the
poem itself.

In view of Deut 32:8-9, it is at least reasonable to suggest that the
poem's world-view as
henotheistic.  This is supported by the fact that elsewhere in the
poem, this is not really
denied, despite the poem's insistence on Y's worship.  We therefore
find other terms in the
poem such as )l nkr "god of a foreign land" and $dym l) )lh "deities
not God" which support this.
The mention of other deities such as Resheph, especially as the name
is used in parallel with
Qetev and Behemoth, also supernatural entities, is significant.
Resheph is a central god in
Canaanite myth.  About Qetev and Behemoth in the Iron Age or earlier,
much less is known
but Behemoth is a demon in later literature.

The parallelism of these three suggests that we do have supernatural
entities involved.  We
might say, well, these are demons/angels in Y's service.  But in the
Canaanite pantheon there
was also a sort of feudal  bureaucracy.  El was in the position of
king.  Underneath, the various
major gods, children of El, were comparable to ministers -- Baal, Mot,
Yam, etc.  They had varied
responsibilities.  Underneath, the lesser gods were comparable to
citizens.  The messengers
of Baal etc, were comparable to slaves.  In this poem, we can
therefore say that this
hierarchy is present in the poem: Elyon, underneath him El the king,
underneath him Y
the minister, and underneath him Resheph, Qetev, and Behemoth, the
lesser gods.  Resheph
is therefore demoted from major god to lesser god in this view, but
the divine bureaucracy is
still present.

The suggestion of henotheism remains: In the extreme monotheistic
view, looking back, these
are demons or angels.  In the henotheistic view of the authors, these
are lesser gods.  What is
different is that there is a strong connection between the people and
the major god (in this
case Y).  Other major gods are not to be worshipped in Y's land.
Their dominion is other lands.
We may say that except for Deut 32:21, the song is completely
henotheistic in outlook,
portraying a situation much closer to the Canaanite pantheon than to
monotheism as we know
it today.  Even Deut 32:21 is problematic because the words can be
taken poetically, in
reference to the previous statements of the poem.  In contrast Deut
32:8-9 are much less open
to reinterpretation, specifically because they build up - Elyon
divides the nations among the
children of El, Y gets his share in Jacob.  This is why the LXX and MT
saw the need to actually
change the text -- because the poem is in general rather open to a
polytheistic world view but
in these specific verses, it practically cries out.  In fact, any
attempt to suggest something else
seems to try to go around the text -- no, it's dividing the nations
but Y is Elyon who is keeping
his share from the division; no, it's not Resheph the god, but Resheph
a demon, or, no, Resheph,
Qetev, and Behemoth are all supernatural entities, but here it is just
a figure of speech; no, $dym
is in parallel with )lhym, but it is used metaphorically; no, )l nkr
literally means 'god of a foreign
land', but it is a figure of speech that does not betray where the
author viewed it as deserving
of the title )l 'god'.

Together, all these negatives make for a very strong positive: yes,
the song's natural simple
meaning is polytheistic, and it is simply its position in a text with
a very different world-view,
that prevents us from seeing it.

And this is where we get to Jason's question.  Even if we take all
these no's together and accept
them, we cannot deny the polytheistic metaphors and "figures of
speech" that are used in the
text.  So even if we consider Moses to be the author, and Moses to
have a world view of
monotheism similar to ours, we cannot deny that the text builds on
"pre-Torah myth about
Elyon dividing the nations."  The allusion is too clear to be denied.

Yitzhak Sapir