At 11:27 AM 6/9/00 -0400, you wrote:
>"Hail and Fire"
>
>The issue is not whether a god can be embodied as fire but
>whether the combination of "hail and fire" may be found in the
>cognate literature as something that a god throws at his/her
>enemies. Lightening is more logical.
I think we might actually be splitting hairs here. I would presume that to
the ancients it was quite proper to call the flash of light in the sky seen
during a storm- and which sometimes hit trees and made them burn, would have
had no qualms about calling such a phenomenon "fire"- for such, in truth, it
was to them.
These theophanic scenes... they evoke everyday imagery to cause the
hearers/readers to visualize such events and remember that God is nothing to
be trifled with-- they are not scientific descriptions of meteorological
events.
best,
Jim
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
" The righteous man looks after his own soul, and the bodies of others,
whereas the hypocrite looks after his own body, and the souls of others"
Rabbi Lionel Blue