Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Yitzhak,

your observations about world view are correct and we should analyze the
poem in isolation to discover its true world view as you rightly asserted.
What do you make of the world view as presented in verse 39?

James Christian

2010/3/1 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
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