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  • From: George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>
  • To: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Genesis 14:18-22
  • Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:40:12 +0000

I find your response rather incredible, Karl. I've pointed to documentation
and yet you insist I haven't shown documentation and need to produce it.
There's so much more I could point to, but I only picked a handful of
examples for my previous post. There's no need for me to reproduce the texts
of the Ancient Near East across the millennia. I'll refer you to the standard
reference works, like Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Context of Scripture.
This will show you the ubiquity of henotheistic thinking across the Ancient
Near East prior to the Persian Era. Your proposal sees Salem during the
lifetime of Abraham as the one exception. This would make Melchizedek a kind
of Akhenaton figure, though using a well established deity, El Elyon (who
everywhere else was seen as president of the gods), and talking about him in
classic henotheistic terms, rather than making up a new deity from scratch
(which is what Akhenaton did). I don't think I need to find specific
documentation signed by Melchizedek to support my view. I think, rather, that
you need find that documentation to prove yours. Your request for
documentation in this case is extremely minimalistic in that it resembles the
same standard that some scholars demand to demonstrate that there actually
was a David or Solomon. I somehow doubt that you apply the same standard to
them, in which case you need to rethink your entire evidential methodology.

The other problem I have with your comments on this is that you seem to be
committing a reading fallacy, which conflates the world of a person mentioned
in a text with the world of the author and assumes that the two are one and
the same. This has to be proved. Yes, in the context of Gen 1, I can see how
one reads Genesis monotheistically. No argument there. But Genesis seems to
come from a Persian milieu, or a monarchic milieu at the earliest stretch.
This is much later than the supposed lifetime of Abraham. Even if, as I think
you are, going for an early Exodus and Mosaic authorship, this is still much
later than Abraham. So how does the Salemite understanding of El Elyon as a
universal deity, yet who is spoken of in terms that are consistent with the
classic henotheism of the Ancient Near East across many, many centuries,
continue from the Abrahamic era to the era of the author of Genesis (whenever
that is)? Or is there a cessation of this worldview after Salem, only to be
taken up again in the time of the author? How does this fit into the mindset
of people and the world of ideas in the Ancient Near East? I'm not sure that
you can actually hold these two things together. You're fighting an uphill
battle with the evidence on this one, Karl.

All in all, I would say the onus is on you to show that (1) Abrahamic Salem
was the exception to the rule of henotheism, which would also make it largely
out of step with things even in the monarchic era of Israel and Judah, and
(2) the worldview of the author of Genesis (esp. Gen 1) was the same as that
of Salem in the Abrahamic era (whenever that was). These two points that you
are going for are in contradistinction with what we know from the Ancient
Near East, and therefore the case for it has to be made.



GEORGE ATHAS
Director of Postgraduate Studies,
Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)
Sydney, Australia






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