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The idea that Ps.82 somehow supports 'judges' and specifically in relation to John 10:34 is puzzling. How does the statement in John carry any weight if it just refers to judges? Jesus said he and his father are one and that he was the Son of God - that is he was God in the flesh. The Jews took that as blaspheme.
What power are Jesus’ words in John 10:34-36 if they are mere humans? ‘Hey guys I said I am the Son of God and that I and my father are one and you accuse me of blasphemy but God said humans could be gods so you to can call yourself gods as well ’ Really! If Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater the sting is taken out of his statement that he and the father are one - as pertaining to his divinity. It would just be saying that God ordained me as a unique human son of God not necessarily equal with God - God in the flesh. But John’s theme is that Christ is God in the Flesh (1:14) not just a unique human son of God.
If the argument is that humans were called gods in Ps.82 (the lesser) then certainly another son of God (the greater/in purpose and mission) should be able to be called a son of god. But how does this equate with being God? This is particualrly the case since the terminology in Ps.82 is in reference to sons of God not humans or judges.
The point Jesus is making is that if there were heavenly beings that were called gods in Ps.82 (the lesser) how much more so The Son of God (the greater). This is particularly so since the Son of God was manifest in the flesh to be the Messiah and take away the sins of the world according to John. Jesus is not using Ps.82 to downplay his remarks so as not to be construed as Divine statements he is highlighting the fact that God had sons and as such how much more of a son is The Son of God - hence I and my father are one unlike the other sons.
Dear whoppers, thanks for your fine post. It is nice we are posting nicer these days.
Yes, it's refreshing, isn't it? Excuse me for the long post - but perhaps it will be helpful in seeing where many of us are coming from, and why biblical scholarship makes the claims it does.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
However, concerning the agedness of the commentators I referenced and the finding of the Ugaritic texts etc., why would the Ugaritic texts discovered at Ras Shamra give Barnes, Clarke and the others I stated a better understanding concerning Psalm 82 since the knowledge those people of the Ugarit religion had of their "El" were idol worshippers and that not of the one true God? God condemned the idol worshipping practices of the Hebrews as to their Asherah and Baal worship which emanated from the Ugarit religion. Why would king David go to the religion of Ugarit to learn what God was really all about when they of the north knew not the Hebrew God? In 1 Kings 18:19 Elijah had a contest with the prophets of Baal and I imagine the Asherah worshipers from which our thread is woven concerning the Ugarit religion. Who won? Of course you can say the story is all made up. But I can just as easily say, No it wasn't. So don't go there, please. I'm being nice.
Well, the discovery of Ugarit in 1929 was one of those landmark events for Biblical studies (like the Dead Sea Scrolls later, for example) that completely revolutionized how we study the Bible and the ancient Near Eastern (ANE) world that produced it. It has importance for Biblical studies in several areas, one of which Daniel already commented upon (the literary motifs). In the following, I will try to give some lines of reasoning that lead to answering your question.
We live thousands of years removed from the Bible and it's surrounding context, and the text and it's message is shrouded in many places by this veil. But why should we even be interested in the ancient Near East environment? Cyrus Gordon and Gary Rendsburg provide some useful suggestions as to why:
...the world of ancient Israel stretched far and wide. In its thousand-year history in antiquity, Israel's contacts stretched from the Mediterranean coastal regions in the west to the Iranian (and perhaps Indic) lands in the east. Accordingly, no one interested in the nation produced the Bible can afford to be unfamiliar with the whole of "the ancient Near East".
(The Bible and the Ancient Near East, 4th edition, W.W. & Norton, 1997, p. 32)
(PS - this book examines the subject matter in a respectful and tactful manner, and is written by two devout believers who were intent on placing many of the events of the Bible in their historical context. Though outdated in many areas, it still is a great book for someone just diving into the subject. It's been through at least 4 editions since 1953, in order to revise previous theories, ideas and data that were shown to be no longer tenable as new discoveries were made. This is a textbook example of how certain forms of scholarship works - how conclusions can quickly change when more information is gathered. I personally think, from what I gather about you from this forum, that you would enjoy this book, and I highly reccomend it to you.)
What are some ways the ANE can inform Biblical studies?
The Biblical text can benefit from comparison and corroboration with other ANE sources, and our knowledge of the ANE has grown in leaps and bounds over the last several hundred years. Anyone who writes down something is writing from a certain viewpoint, and will introduce bias to the picture (no matter how small or large) because there will always be some degree of subjectivity in all accounts of history. In trying to form an accurate historical picture, historians and scholars tend to want what is called "independent witnesses" to work with. Think of them as witnesses in a court case, where one must try to get the truth. Gordon again:
We can study the thirteenth-century treaties made between the Hittites and Egyptians, comparing the Hittite version with the Egyptian version. Each will contain different elements depending on the respective viewpoints; and by correlating the two sets of treaties, we get a more exact historical picture than we could from examining only one or the other.
Another example: we know that in the ninth century Israel had dealings with Moab that at times involved invasion and war. The biblical account is one of our independent sources; the Moabite inscription of King Mesha is another. By using the documents of both the Hebrews and the Moabites, we arrive at a controlled history, in which one source can be checked against another. Sometimes the same episode is recorded in different indepent sources. Thus Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in 701 BCE is recounted in the Bible and in the Assyrian annals. The general agreement between both sources fixed the historicity of the event, and each version fills in lacunae [gaps in a record, missing text] in the other. Naturally the war communiques from two enemy camps are not going to have the same tone or point of view, but it is precisely the difference in origin that enables us to reconstruct what we call controlled history.
(ibid, pp.26-27)
So, the importance of the surrounding ANE materials can be seen from the above, I hope. I think they (Gordon, Rendsburg) provide a good summary of one aspect of it. Speaking of the Mesha Stele mentioned above, the written scripts used by the Moabites and the Israelites are almost indistinguisable from one another. Even the language they both spoke was very similar. Notice the scripts below, and compare Moabite to Palestinian (Hebrew - before the Aramaic "square script"). It is no wonder that they fought like siblings:
Why must we do this in the first place?
Why can't we take the Bible at face-value in all things? Why must we spend so much time trying to understand the context that was behind the Biblical authors? Well, besides the above-mentioned fact that we are thousands of years removed from them, there is the problem of the "indepdent witness". Gordon opines what we must know about a text before reaching conlusions from it, and offers some more questions that we should ask:
...they [the documents, texts] have to be evaluated before they can be used to reconstruct history. Obviously the date and origin of a text have to be established before it can be applied to a historical context. It may also be desirable to establish some facts about the author. If his name cannot be determined, it is often essential to find out at least his viewpoint, his purpose, what other compositions he may have written, or to what group of people he may have belonged.
Important, too, is the evaluation of the text's reliability. It is completely reliable? Is it completely unreliable? Or, as is usually the case, is it somewhere in between? If so, which elemets are reliable and which are not? The discipline of evaluating documents is known as philology and constitutes a basic aid to history. In fact the two overlap and it is often hard to tell where philology ends and history begins.
(ibid, p. 26)
In other words - it helps to know what motivated a writer (even if he was inspired, his own opinions, biases and background frequently found their way into the text). It is difficult to take the teachings of various Christian groups seriously without first examining the Biblical text before tradition claimed it (many times it is just a chance at birth that determines what our beliefs will be founded upon: Catholic, Protestant; Christian, Jewish - Unfortunately, in this situation, we are unable to accurately assess the evidence of the group's truth claims becauase of our birth into it, or our age). It is also difficult for many to just take things in "faith". Faith, in the manner of Hebrews 11:1 ("faith is the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen"), is useful and needed for certain things that "cannot be proved", but is not necessary when we have a wold of evidence from the Ancient Near East to examine and use for Biblical studies..
Tools to Assess the Evidence above
Before getting to the main points of how Ugarit can help ullumine our studies, let me mention why language study is so important, and the problems the Hebrew text imposes on our understanding at times. John Huehnergard, in Beyond Babel: A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages (Kaltner; McKenzie - eds., SBL, 2002), writes:
There are two fundamental reasons for the biblical scholar to study other languages of the Near East in addition to Hebrew. [1] The more obvious is that such study enables the scholar to read texts produced by ancient Israel's neighbors in the original tongues...
...all languages attested in the biblical region and period (and in earlier periods) are of interest because the texts recorded in them document the biblical world...
[2] The second, less obvious, reason to study other languages is that such study can shed considerable light on the grammar and vocabulary of biblical Hebrew itself and thus on the biblical text proper. Although classical Hebrew has never ceased to be an object of study, the fact remains that it has long been a dead language (i.e., a language that no one has learned as a first language), a language of texts only, and so it must be learned and explained with the tools of philology (the study of texts) [see Gordon above]....
Other related difficulties in the study of Biblical Hebrew, including
(1) the relatively small size of the corpus of biblical Hebrew (so that many words that may have been quite common in the spoken language appear only sporadically and are consequently difficult to interpret with confidence);
(2) the presence in the corpus of diverse genres, including poetry, narrative prose, aphorisms, and the like [see Daniel's comments on the literary aspects of the Ugaritic and Hebrew texts];
(3) the long chronological span covered by the corpus, nearly a millenium, during which time the spoken language undoubtedly underwent at least some change;
(4) the likely existence in the corpus of diverse dialects in addition to the standard Jerusalem literary dialect in which more of the text was written.
The study of other languages and of other forms of Hebrew (especially Mishanic...) provides an awareness of these problems, and, sometimes, solutions...
(pp. 1-2)
Sorry for the long quote, but it provides the briefest summation of why the study of languages besides Hebrew are important for understanding problems that are in the text. Even the Masoretes, when they decided to produce an "official" version of the Hebrew Bible, and began to include the vowel points for words, ran into these problems and consequently made various mistakes which the critical scholar must be aware of. That is why many compare the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls' fragments (in addition to Targums, the Vulgate, etc.) to the Masoretic Text - to try to find an older, perhaps more accurate version of the text.
Ugarit's Importance for the Bible
Bear in mind, that until this last century and Ugarit, we really didn't have any major examples of "Canaanite" literature, and it's always a risky business to be remembered only by what your enemies say about you.
Again, I'm going to quote someone's summary of why the discovery of Ugarit was so important for overcoming many of the issues discussed in thsi post so far. William Schniedewind and Joel Hunt, in A Primer on Ugaritic (Cambridge, 2007) wrote:
In the literature from Ugarit, we hear echoes of voices from ancient Canaan and the very time when Israel came into Canaan. Indeed, Ugarit reached its political and economic zenith in the thirteenth century BCE, that is, precisely the time when Israel first appears in the historical record of Canaan.
[1] It gives an independent witness [see Gordon above] to the epic and literary traditions of ancient Canaan that stand behind much of Old Testament literature [see Daniel's post]. By placing biblical literature, particularly early biblical poetry (e.g. Exodus 15, Judges 5, and Deuteronomy 33), into this context, we gain a much better understanding of the Hebrew Bible and early Israel.
Some of the Psalms (like Psalm 29) borrow quite directly from Canaanite literature, as we now perceive through our study of Ugaritic literature.
[2] The archives at Ugarit have expanded our knowledge of the cognate ["in linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin" - Wikipedia] Northwest Semitic languages and have helped us understand innumerable opaque Hebrew words and idioms [see Huehnergard above].
[3] Finally, Ugarit gives us a glimpse into the religious culture of ancient Canaan in which Israelite and biblical religion grew.
Ugaritic literature thereby goes a long way toward furthering our knowledge of ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and the Hebrew language.
(p. 28)
Ugaritic was a stunning discovery, especially once it was realized how similar it was to Hebrew in many ways. Here is a chart of the language family relationships in the ANE area in question. Notice that Hebrew is a "Canaanite" language - or Northwest Semitic, as preferred by many. Some might dispute details on this chart, but it will serve it's purpose here.
This is why, in other threads, I maintained that Hebrew was one of the youngest members of the Semitic languages, and developed quite late in comparison to the other languages. But anyways - the point was to show the family tree and how they connect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
Elijah and David and the other prophets spoke through the spirit of Christ. (cf 1 Pet. 1:10,11). Christ nor the prophets had to go to the Ugarit religion to learn of the Ugarit pantheon, God's mother, or their god, El being schizophrenic etc.
Likewise, whatever the Dead Sea Scrolls brought out I hardly see how it impacts our view of Psalm 82 being about the human judges of Israel who were going to die like the rest of their human counterparts rather than die a glorious death.
Some of the evil kings were buried in the tombs of the kings but later were dug up, had their bones burned and ashes cast out. Some of the evil kings died so ingloriously that they weren't even entombed with the righteous of Israel. Read about it in 2 Kings 23 please.
Just some things to thunk on.
The previous posters answered many of these questions, but I would add that the situation concerning Elijah, the Northern Kingdom, and Baal and Yahweh's rivalry are more complicated than at first glance. Most of the Hebrew Bible can be said to have been written for specific reasons, and the historical accounts seem to have been written to justify various forms of rulership (whether with God as ruler, a human King as ruler, or as Priests playing an increasinly more important role). Back then in the ANE, history was not a subject on it's own, and a country's religion was mixed in with it because they were seen to be linked together: a god was responsible for the wellbeing of a country and the events that transpired concerning it. That is why viewing the Biblical text as pure history, at times, is problematic - it's authors were saying much more than that, and those things must be recognized. Daniel illustrated how the account of Elijah verses the Prophets of Baal served a religious goal, and whether it really happened or not (I can't make that decision) it established the writer's opinion of Baal worship.
Baal worship, however, was a "Canaanite" practice. He was the storm-god of Ugarit, and judging from the many, many condemnations of the various biblical writers against the people "whoring themselves after the Baals", etc, he was also worshipped in Israel as well. This is an example of how Israel was okay with multiple gods for a long time, but eventually the idea that Yahweh should be the only god they worship began to manifest. Yahweh took on most of Baal's attributes as a storm-god, and some of the Psalms (as mentioned above) are almost directly borrowed from Northwest Semitic tradition (for example, "the rider on the clouds" is Baal imagery that one finds frequently given to Yahweh), with the exception that Yahweh is the one being praised - not Baal.
This is a complicated subject, and this post is already too long. One important thing to mention, to answer your point about how they didn't have to go to Ugarit to learn things: these "Canaanite" traditions were part of Israel for a long time - they were part of their culture, their language, their religious pratice. That has become increasingly clear over the years. Even the Patriarchs are said to have worshipped El (whether it was El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Roi, etc.) - who was the main, fatherly god of Ugaritic religion. The change from El to Yahweh is related in the beginning of Exouds where the theopany occurs and Yahweh tells Moses that his ancestors didn't know him as Yahweh, but as El Shaddai. El language occurs frequently in the Hebrew Bible. It is from Ugarit that we also get concrete examples of El, the "sons of El" (the "sons of the gods" - the subject of this thread), and how El was the head of the Divine Council: all elements that occur in the Hebrew Bible. This is why we have been trying to show you that Psalm 82 refers to the bene elohim, and not bene adam. Daniel provided some very good links to papers on the subject - perhaps you could read them now in a different light to see what he is saying? I hope this post has helped give you some context for these claims and why the majority of modern scholars hold this view.
That was just a quick comment above on the "Canaanite" heritage of Israel. Perhaps Daniel or someone else can add some more details of why many scholars today see Israel as being a Canaanite social group that eventually decided to ideologically separate themselves from other Canaanites.
They were fallen angels, and their hybrid offspring were all destroyed in the Great Flood. All humans alive today are descended from Adam.
Oh. I see. You must have skipped to the last page without reading anything inbetween before posting.
If what you say is true, it surely is curious that the text called them "gods", rather than the Hebrew term that was later associated with angels: "messengers of God/Yahweh".
I wonder what Alice has to say about that?
That reminds me: was Genesis 6 talking about Alice?
"There were giants in those days!"
Yes, it's refreshing, isn't it? Excuse me for the long post - but perhaps it will be helpful in seeing where many of us are coming from, and why biblical scholarship makes the claims it does.
Well, the discovery of Ugarit in 1929 was one of those landmark events for Biblical studies (like the Dead Sea Scrolls later, for example) that completely revolutionized how we study the Bible and the ancient Near Eastern (ANE) world that produced it. It has importance for Biblical studies in several areas, one of which Daniel already commented upon (the literary motifs). In the following, I will try to give some lines of reasoning that lead to answering your question.
We live thousands of years removed from the Bible and it's surrounding context, and the text and it's message is shrouded in many places by this veil. But why should we even be interested in the ancient Near East environment? Cyrus Gordon and Gary Rendsburg provide some useful suggestions as to why:
...the world of ancient Israel stretched far and wide. In its thousand-year history in antiquity, Israel's contacts stretched from the Mediterranean coastal regions in the west to the Iranian (and perhaps Indic) lands in the east. Accordingly, no one interested in the nation produced the Bible can afford to be unfamiliar with the whole of "the ancient Near East".
(The Bible and the Ancient Near East, 4th edition, W.W. & Norton, 1997, p. 32)
(PS - this book examines the subject matter in a respectful and tactful manner, and is written by two devout believers who were intent on placing many of the events of the Bible in their historical context. Though outdated in many areas, it still is a great book for someone just diving into the subject. It's been through at least 4 editions since 1953, in order to revise previous theories, ideas and data that were shown to be no longer tenable as new discoveries were made. This is a textbook example of how certain forms of scholarship works - how conclusions can quickly change when more information is gathered. I personally think, from what I gather about you from this forum, that you would enjoy this book, and I highly reccomend it to you.)
What are some ways the ANE can inform Biblical studies?
The Biblical text can benefit from comparison and corroboration with other ANE sources, and our knowledge of the ANE has grown in leaps and bounds over the last several hundred years. Anyone who writes down something is writing from a certain viewpoint, and will introduce bias to the picture (no matter how small or large) because there will always be some degree of subjectivity in all accounts of history. In trying to form an accurate historical picture, historians and scholars tend to want what is called "independent witnesses" to work with. Think of them as witnesses in a court case, where one must try to get the truth. Gordon again:
We can study the thirteenth-century treaties made between the Hittites and Egyptians, comparing the Hittite version with the Egyptian version. Each will contain different elements depending on the respective viewpoints; and by correlating the two sets of treaties, we get a more exact historical picture than we could from examining only one or the other.
Another example: we know that in the ninth century Israel had dealings with Moab that at times involved invasion and war. The biblical account is one of our independent sources; the Moabite inscription of King Mesha is another. By using the documents of both the Hebrews and the Moabites, we arrive at a controlled history, in which one source can be checked against another. Sometimes the same episode is recorded in different indepent sources. Thus Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in 701 BCE is recounted in the Bible and in the Assyrian annals. The general agreement between both sources fixed the historicity of the event, and each version fills in lacunae [gaps in a record, missing text] in the other. Naturally the war communiques from two enemy camps are not going to have the same tone or point of view, but it is precisely the difference in origin that enables us to reconstruct what we call controlled history.
(ibid, pp.26-27)
So, the importance of the surrounding ANE materials can be seen from the above, I hope. I think they (Gordon, Rendsburg) provide a good summary of one aspect of it. Speaking of the Mesha Stele mentioned above, the written scripts used by the Moabites and the Israelites are almost indistinguisable from one another. Even the language they both spoke was very similar. Notice the scripts below, and compare Moabite to Palestinian (Hebrew - before the Aramaic "square script"). It is no wonder that they fought like siblings:
Why must we do this in the first place?
Why can't we take the Bible at face-value in all things? Why must we spend so much time trying to understand the context that was behind the Biblical authors? Well, besides the above-mentioned fact that we are thousands of years removed from them, there is the problem of the "indepdent witness". Gordon opines what we must know about a text before reaching conlusions from it, and offers some more questions that we should ask:
...they [the documents, texts] have to be evaluated before they can be used to reconstruct history. Obviously the date and origin of a text have to be established before it can be applied to a historical context. It may also be desirable to establish some facts about the author. If his name cannot be determined, it is often essential to find out at least his viewpoint, his purpose, what other compositions he may have written, or to what group of people he may have belonged.
Important, too, is the evaluation of the text's reliability. It is completely reliable? Is it completely unreliable? Or, as is usually the case, is it somewhere in between? If so, which elemets are reliable and which are not? The discipline of evaluating documents is known as philology and constitutes a basic aid to history. In fact the two overlap and it is often hard to tell where philology ends and history begins.
(ibid, p. 26)
In other words - it helps to know what motivated a writer (even if he was inspired, his own opinions, biases and background frequently found their way into the text). It is difficult to take the teachings of various Christian groups seriously without first examining the Biblical text before tradition claimed it (many times it is just a chance at birth that determines what our beliefs will be founded upon: Catholic, Protestant; Christian, Jewish - Unfortunately, in this situation, we are unable to accurately assess the evidence of the group's truth claims becauase of our birth into it, or our age). It is also difficult for many to just take things in "faith". Faith, in the manner of Hebrews 11:1 ("faith is the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen"), is useful and needed for certain things that "cannot be proved", but is not necessary when we have a wold of evidence from the Ancient Near East to examine and use for Biblical studies..
Tools to Assess the Evidence above
Before getting to the main points of how Ugarit can help ullumine our studies, let me mention why language study is so important, and the problems the Hebrew text imposes on our understanding at times. John Huehnergard, in Beyond Babel: A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages (Kaltner; McKenzie - eds., SBL, 2002), writes:
There are two fundamental reasons for the biblical scholar to study other languages of the Near East in addition to Hebrew. [1] The more obvious is that such study enables the scholar to read texts produced by ancient Israel's neighbors in the original tongues...
...all languages attested in the biblical region and period (and in earlier periods) are of interest because the texts recorded in them document the biblical world...
[2] The second, less obvious, reason to study other languages is that such study can shed considerable light on the grammar and vocabulary of biblical Hebrew itself and thus on the biblical text proper. Although classical Hebrew has never ceased to be an object of study, the fact remains that it has long been a dead language (i.e., a language that no one has learned as a first language), a language of texts only, and so it must be learned and explained with the tools of philology (the study of texts) [see Gordon above]....
Other related difficulties in the study of Biblical Hebrew, including
(1) the relatively small size of the corpus of biblical Hebrew (so that many words that may have been quite common in the spoken language appear only sporadically and are consequently difficult to interpret with confidence);
(2) the presence in the corpus of diverse genres, including poetry, narrative prose, aphorisms, and the like [see Daniel's comments on the literary aspects of the Ugaritic and Hebrew texts];
(3) the long chronological span covered by the corpus, nearly a millenium, during which time the spoken language undoubtedly underwent at least some change;
(4) the likely existence in the corpus of diverse dialects in addition to the standard Jerusalem literary dialect in which more of the text was written.
The study of other languages and of other forms of Hebrew (especially Mishanic...) provides an awareness of these problems, and, sometimes, solutions...
(pp. 1-2)
Sorry for the long quote, but it provides the briefest summation of why the study of languages besides Hebrew are important for understanding problems that are in the text. Even the Masoretes, when they decided to produce an "official" version of the Hebrew Bible, and began to include the vowel points for words, ran into these problems and consequently made various mistakes which the critical scholar must be aware of. That is why many compare the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls' fragments (in addition to Targums, the Vulgate, etc.) to the Masoretic Text - to try to find an older, perhaps more accurate version of the text.
Ugarit's Importance for the Bible
Bear in mind, that until this last century and Ugarit, we really didn't have any major examples of "Canaanite" literature, and it's always a risky business to be remembered only by what your enemies say about you.
Again, I'm going to quote someone's summary of why the discovery of Ugarit was so important for overcoming many of the issues discussed in thsi post so far. William Schniedewind and Joel Hunt, in A Primer on Ugaritic (Cambridge, 2007) wrote:
In the literature from Ugarit, we hear echoes of voices from ancient Canaan and the very time when Israel came into Canaan. Indeed, Ugarit reached its political and economic zenith in the thirteenth century BCE, that is, precisely the time when Israel first appears in the historical record of Canaan.
[1] It gives an independent witness [see Gordon above] to the epic and literary traditions of ancient Canaan that stand behind much of Old Testament literature [see Daniel's post]. By placing biblical literature, particularly early biblical poetry (e.g. Exodus 15, Judges 5, and Deuteronomy 33), into this context, we gain a much better understanding of the Hebrew Bible and early Israel.
Some of the Psalms (like Psalm 29) borrow quite directly from Canaanite literature, as we now perceive through our study of Ugaritic literature.
[2] The archives at Ugarit have expanded our knowledge of the cognate ["in linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin" - Wikipedia] Northwest Semitic languages and have helped us understand innumerable opaque Hebrew words and idioms [see Huehnergard above].
[3] Finally, Ugarit gives us a glimpse into the religious culture of ancient Canaan in which Israelite and biblical religion grew.
Ugaritic literature thereby goes a long way toward furthering our knowledge of ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and the Hebrew language.
(p. 28)
Ugaritic was a stunning discovery, especially once it was realized how similar it was to Hebrew in many ways. Here is a chart of the language family relationships in the ANE area in question. Notice that Hebrew is a "Canaanite" language - or Northwest Semitic, as preferred by many. Some might dispute details on this chart, but it will serve it's purpose here.
This is why, in other threads, I maintained that Hebrew was one of the youngest members of the Semitic languages, and developed quite late in comparison to the other languages. But anyways - the point was to show the family tree and how they connect.
The previous posters answered many of these questions, but I would add that the situation concerning Elijah, the Northern Kingdom, and Baal and Yahweh's rivalry are more complicated than at first glance. Most of the Hebrew Bible can be said to have been written for specific reasons, and the historical accounts seem to have been written to justify various forms of rulership (whether with God as ruler, a human King as ruler, or as Priests playing an increasinly more important role). Back then in the ANE, history was not a subject on it's own, and a country's religion was mixed in with it because they were seen to be linked together: a god was responsible for the wellbeing of a country and the events that transpired concerning it. That is why viewing the Biblical text as pure history, at times, is problematic - it's authors were saying much more than that, and those things must be recognized. Daniel illustrated how the account of Elijah verses the Prophets of Baal served a religious goal, and whether it really happened or not (I can't make that decision) it established the writer's opinion of Baal worship.
Baal worship, however, was a "Canaanite" practice. He was the storm-god of Ugarit, and judging from the many, many condemnations of the various biblical writers against the people "whoring themselves after the Baals", etc, he was also worshipped in Israel as well. This is an example of how Israel was okay with multiple gods for a long time, but eventually the idea that Yahweh should be the only god they worship began to manifest. Yahweh took on most of Baal's attributes as a storm-god, and some of the Psalms (as mentioned above) are almost directly borrowed from Northwest Semitic tradition (for example, "the rider on the clouds" is Baal imagery that one finds frequently given to Yahweh), with the exception that Yahweh is the one being praised - not Baal.
This is a complicated subject, and this post is already too long. One important thing to mention, to answer your point about how they didn't have to go to Ugarit to learn things: these "Canaanite" traditions were part of Israel for a long time - they were part of their culture, their language, their religious pratice. That has become increasingly clear over the years. Even the Patriarchs are said to have worshipped El (whether it was El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Roi, etc.) - who was the main, fatherly god of Ugaritic religion. The change from El to Yahweh is related in the beginning of Exouds where the theopany occurs and Yahweh tells Moses that his ancestors didn't know him as Yahweh, but as El Shaddai. El language occurs frequently in the Hebrew Bible. It is from Ugarit that we also get concrete examples of El, the "sons of El" (the "sons of the gods" - the subject of this thread), and how El was the head of the Divine Council: all elements that occur in the Hebrew Bible. This is why we have been trying to show you that Psalm 82 refers to the bene elohim, and not bene adam. Daniel provided some very good links to papers on the subject - perhaps you could read them now in a different light to see what he is saying? I hope this post has helped give you some context for these claims and why the majority of modern scholars hold this view.
That was just a quick comment above on the "Canaanite" heritage of Israel. Perhaps Daniel or someone else can add some more details of why many scholars today see Israel as being a Canaanite social group that eventually decided to ideologically separate themselves from other Canaanites.
Yet another GREAT post, Whoppers. I came across the Ugarit material a few years back and was amazed. The discovery in the early 1900s just never got the press that the Dead Sea Scrolls received/receives but it is well known in academic circles. Yes, the civilization there (in modern day western Syria) pre-dated the Israelite culture was, at the same time, similar even in language. By the time we read about a band of tribes establishing themselves to become "Israel," Ugarit was on the waning days of its glory years.
Yes, it's refreshing, isn't it? Excuse me for the long post - but perhaps it will be helpful in seeing where many of us are coming from, and why biblical scholarship makes the claims it does.
Well, the discovery of Ugarit in 1929 was one of those landmark events for Biblical studies (like the Dead Sea Scrolls later, for example) that completely revolutionized how we study the Bible and the ancient Near Eastern (ANE) world that produced it. It has importance for Biblical studies in several areas, one of which Daniel already commented upon (the literary motifs). In the following, I will try to give some lines of reasoning that lead to answering your question.
We live thousands of years removed from the Bible and it's surrounding context, and the text and it's message is shrouded in many places by this veil. But why should we even be interested in the ancient Near East environment? Cyrus Gordon and Gary Rendsburg provide some useful suggestions as to why:
...the world of ancient Israel stretched far and wide. In its thousand-year history in antiquity, Israel's contacts stretched from the Mediterranean coastal regions in the west to the Iranian (and perhaps Indic) lands in the east. Accordingly, no one interested in the nation produced the Bible can afford to be unfamiliar with the whole of "the ancient Near East".
(The Bible and the Ancient Near East, 4th edition, W.W. & Norton, 1997, p. 32)
(PS - this book examines the subject matter in a respectful and tactful manner, and is written by two devout believers who were intent on placing many of the events of the Bible in their historical context. Though outdated in many areas, it still is a great book for someone just diving into the subject. It's been through at least 4 editions since 1953, in order to revise previous theories, ideas and data that were shown to be no longer tenable as new discoveries were made. This is a textbook example of how certain forms of scholarship works - how conclusions can quickly change when more information is gathered. I personally think, from what I gather about you from this forum, that you would enjoy this book, and I highly reccomend it to you.)
What are some ways the ANE can inform Biblical studies?
The Biblical text can benefit from comparison and corroboration with other ANE sources, and our knowledge of the ANE has grown in leaps and bounds over the last several hundred years. Anyone who writes down something is writing from a certain viewpoint, and will introduce bias to the picture (no matter how small or large) because there will always be some degree of subjectivity in all accounts of history. In trying to form an accurate historical picture, historians and scholars tend to want what is called "independent witnesses" to work with. Think of them as witnesses in a court case, where one must try to get the truth. Gordon again:
We can study the thirteenth-century treaties made between the Hittites and Egyptians, comparing the Hittite version with the Egyptian version. Each will contain different elements depending on the respective viewpoints; and by correlating the two sets of treaties, we get a more exact historical picture than we could from examining only one or the other.
Another example: we know that in the ninth century Israel had dealings with Moab that at times involved invasion and war. The biblical account is one of our independent sources; the Moabite inscription of King Mesha is another. By using the documents of both the Hebrews and the Moabites, we arrive at a controlled history, in which one source can be checked against another. Sometimes the same episode is recorded in different indepent sources. Thus Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in 701 BCE is recounted in the Bible and in the Assyrian annals. The general agreement between both sources fixed the historicity of the event, and each version fills in lacunae [gaps in a record, missing text] in the other. Naturally the war communiques from two enemy camps are not going to have the same tone or point of view, but it is precisely the difference in origin that enables us to reconstruct what we call controlled history.
(ibid, pp.26-27)
So, the importance of the surrounding ANE materials can be seen from the above, I hope. I think they (Gordon, Rendsburg) provide a good summary of one aspect of it. Speaking of the Mesha Stele mentioned above, the written scripts used by the Moabites and the Israelites are almost indistinguisable from one another. Even the language they both spoke was very similar. Notice the scripts below, and compare Moabite to Palestinian (Hebrew - before the Aramaic "square script"). It is no wonder that they fought like siblings:
Why must we do this in the first place?
Why can't we take the Bible at face-value in all things? Why must we spend so much time trying to understand the context that was behind the Biblical authors? Well, besides the above-mentioned fact that we are thousands of years removed from them, there is the problem of the "indepdent witness". Gordon opines what we must know about a text before reaching conlusions from it, and offers some more questions that we should ask:
...they [the documents, texts] have to be evaluated before they can be used to reconstruct history. Obviously the date and origin of a text have to be established before it can be applied to a historical context. It may also be desirable to establish some facts about the author. If his name cannot be determined, it is often essential to find out at least his viewpoint, his purpose, what other compositions he may have written, or to what group of people he may have belonged.
Important, too, is the evaluation of the text's reliability. It is completely reliable? Is it completely unreliable? Or, as is usually the case, is it somewhere in between? If so, which elemets are reliable and which are not? The discipline of evaluating documents is known as philology and constitutes a basic aid to history. In fact the two overlap and it is often hard to tell where philology ends and history begins.
(ibid, p. 26)
In other words - it helps to know what motivated a writer (even if he was inspired, his own opinions, biases and background frequently found their way into the text). It is difficult to take the teachings of various Christian groups seriously without first examining the Biblical text before tradition claimed it (many times it is just a chance at birth that determines what our beliefs will be founded upon: Catholic, Protestant; Christian, Jewish - Unfortunately, in this situation, we are unable to accurately assess the evidence of the group's truth claims becauase of our birth into it, or our age). It is also difficult for many to just take things in "faith". Faith, in the manner of Hebrews 11:1 ("faith is the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen"), is useful and needed for certain things that "cannot be proved", but is not necessary when we have a wold of evidence from the Ancient Near East to examine and use for Biblical studies..
Tools to Assess the Evidence above
Before getting to the main points of how Ugarit can help ullumine our studies, let me mention why language study is so important, and the problems the Hebrew text imposes on our understanding at times. John Huehnergard, in Beyond Babel: A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages (Kaltner; McKenzie - eds., SBL, 2002), writes:
There are two fundamental reasons for the biblical scholar to study other languages of the Near East in addition to Hebrew. [1] The more obvious is that such study enables the scholar to read texts produced by ancient Israel's neighbors in the original tongues...
...all languages attested in the biblical region and period (and in earlier periods) are of interest because the texts recorded in them document the biblical world...
[2] The second, less obvious, reason to study other languages is that such study can shed considerable light on the grammar and vocabulary of biblical Hebrew itself and thus on the biblical text proper. Although classical Hebrew has never ceased to be an object of study, the fact remains that it has long been a dead language (i.e., a language that no one has learned as a first language), a language of texts only, and so it must be learned and explained with the tools of philology (the study of texts) [see Gordon above]....
Other related difficulties in the study of Biblical Hebrew, including
(1) the relatively small size of the corpus of biblical Hebrew (so that many words that may have been quite common in the spoken language appear only sporadically and are consequently difficult to interpret with confidence);
(2) the presence in the corpus of diverse genres, including poetry, narrative prose, aphorisms, and the like [see Daniel's comments on the literary aspects of the Ugaritic and Hebrew texts];
(3) the long chronological span covered by the corpus, nearly a millenium, during which time the spoken language undoubtedly underwent at least some change;
(4) the likely existence in the corpus of diverse dialects in addition to the standard Jerusalem literary dialect in which more of the text was written.
The study of other languages and of other forms of Hebrew (especially Mishanic...) provides an awareness of these problems, and, sometimes, solutions...
(pp. 1-2)
Sorry for the long quote, but it provides the briefest summation of why the study of languages besides Hebrew are important for understanding problems that are in the text. Even the Masoretes, when they decided to produce an "official" version of the Hebrew Bible, and began to include the vowel points for words, ran into these problems and consequently made various mistakes which the critical scholar must be aware of. That is why many compare the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls' fragments (in addition to Targums, the Vulgate, etc.) to the Masoretic Text - to try to find an older, perhaps more accurate version of the text.
Ugarit's Importance for the Bible
Bear in mind, that until this last century and Ugarit, we really didn't have any major examples of "Canaanite" literature, and it's always a risky business to be remembered only by what your enemies say about you.
Again, I'm going to quote someone's summary of why the discovery of Ugarit was so important for overcoming many of the issues discussed in thsi post so far. William Schniedewind and Joel Hunt, in A Primer on Ugaritic (Cambridge, 2007) wrote:
In the literature from Ugarit, we hear echoes of voices from ancient Canaan and the very time when Israel came into Canaan. Indeed, Ugarit reached its political and economic zenith in the thirteenth century BCE, that is, precisely the time when Israel first appears in the historical record of Canaan.
[1] It gives an independent witness [see Gordon above] to the epic and literary traditions of ancient Canaan that stand behind much of Old Testament literature [see Daniel's post]. By placing biblical literature, particularly early biblical poetry (e.g. Exodus 15, Judges 5, and Deuteronomy 33), into this context, we gain a much better understanding of the Hebrew Bible and early Israel.
Some of the Psalms (like Psalm 29) borrow quite directly from Canaanite literature, as we now perceive through our study of Ugaritic literature.
[2] The archives at Ugarit have expanded our knowledge of the cognate ["in linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin" - Wikipedia] Northwest Semitic languages and have helped us understand innumerable opaque Hebrew words and idioms [see Huehnergard above].
[3] Finally, Ugarit gives us a glimpse into the religious culture of ancient Canaan in which Israelite and biblical religion grew.
Ugaritic literature thereby goes a long way toward furthering our knowledge of ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and the Hebrew language.
(p. 28)
Ugaritic was a stunning discovery, especially once it was realized how similar it was to Hebrew in many ways. Here is a chart of the language family relationships in the ANE area in question. Notice that Hebrew is a "Canaanite" language - or Northwest Semitic, as preferred by many. Some might dispute details on this chart, but it will serve it's purpose here.
This is why, in other threads, I maintained that Hebrew was one of the youngest members of the Semitic languages, and developed quite late in comparison to the other languages. But anyways - the point was to show the family tree and how they connect.
The previous posters answered many of these questions, but I would add that the situation concerning Elijah, the Northern Kingdom, and Baal and Yahweh's rivalry are more complicated than at first glance. Most of the Hebrew Bible can be said to have been written for specific reasons, and the historical accounts seem to have been written to justify various forms of rulership (whether with God as ruler, a human King as ruler, or as Priests playing an increasinly more important role). Back then in the ANE, history was not a subject on it's own, and a country's religion was mixed in with it because they were seen to be linked together: a god was responsible for the wellbeing of a country and the events that transpired concerning it. That is why viewing the Biblical text as pure history, at times, is problematic - it's authors were saying much more than that, and those things must be recognized. Daniel illustrated how the account of Elijah verses the Prophets of Baal served a religious goal, and whether it really happened or not (I can't make that decision) it established the writer's opinion of Baal worship.
Baal worship, however, was a "Canaanite" practice. He was the storm-god of Ugarit, and judging from the many, many condemnations of the various biblical writers against the people "whoring themselves after the Baals", etc, he was also worshipped in Israel as well. This is an example of how Israel was okay with multiple gods for a long time, but eventually the idea that Yahweh should be the only god they worship began to manifest. Yahweh took on most of Baal's attributes as a storm-god, and some of the Psalms (as mentioned above) are almost directly borrowed from Northwest Semitic tradition (for example, "the rider on the clouds" is Baal imagery that one finds frequently given to Yahweh), with the exception that Yahweh is the one being praised - not Baal.
This is a complicated subject, and this post is already too long. One important thing to mention, to answer your point about how they didn't have to go to Ugarit to learn things: these "Canaanite" traditions were part of Israel for a long time - they were part of their culture, their language, their religious pratice. That has become increasingly clear over the years. Even the Patriarchs are said to have worshipped El (whether it was El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Roi, etc.) - who was the main, fatherly god of Ugaritic religion. The change from El to Yahweh is related in the beginning of Exouds where the theopany occurs and Yahweh tells Moses that his ancestors didn't know him as Yahweh, but as El Shaddai. El language occurs frequently in the Hebrew Bible. It is from Ugarit that we also get concrete examples of El, the "sons of El" (the "sons of the gods" - the subject of this thread), and how El was the head of the Divine Council: all elements that occur in the Hebrew Bible. This is why we have been trying to show you that Psalm 82 refers to the bene elohim, and not bene adam. Daniel provided some very good links to papers on the subject - perhaps you could read them now in a different light to see what he is saying? I hope this post has helped give you some context for these claims and why the majority of modern scholars hold this view.
That was just a quick comment above on the "Canaanite" heritage of Israel. Perhaps Daniel or someone else can add some more details of why many scholars today see Israel as being a Canaanite social group that eventually decided to ideologically separate themselves from other Canaanites.
In light of us speaking about Deuteronomy 32:7-9 with its implication that Yahweh was nothing more than ONE son of the Most High, it was really interesting to come across this passage from the Ugaritic writings:
sm . bny . yw . ilt
“The name of the son of god, Yahweh.” (KTU 1.1 IV 14)
It seems rather clear here what is being said here and if accurate, it is consistent with Deuteronomy 32:7-9 and other speculations that many have made.
Eventually religious battles were fought between those aligned with Yahweh and those devoted to Baal. Yahweh (as per the Israelite record) won out and, as you pointed out Whoppers, assumed attributes of Baal and the even older El (their father).
Rejoice, O heavens, together with him, and bow down to him all you gods ('lym), for he will avenge the blood of his sons, and will render vengeance to his enemies, and will recompense those who hate him, and will atone for the land of his people".
LXX: "O heavens, rejoice with him, bow to him, all sons of God. O nations, rejoice with his people and let all the angels of God strengthen themselves in him. For he will avenge the blood of his sons. Be vengeful and render vengeance and recompense justice on his enemies, and recompense those who hate him, and the Lord will cleanse the land of his people".
MT: "Rejoice, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his enemies, and will atone for the land of his people".
Eventually religious battles were fought between those aligned with Yahweh and those devoted to Baal. Yahweh (as per the Israelite record) won out and, as you pointed out Whoppers, assumed attributes of Baal and the even older El (their father).
Very well said! The point, however, being that one does not need the Ugaritic texts in order to arrive to this conclusion.
All over the world the philosophers inherited the idea of the gods and decided that there should be some higher god producing common gods: The famous “Father of gods and men.”
Zeus is called by Hesiod “Father of gods and men” but he also recorded the traditional view according to which fathers of gods and men were the Titans.
In the universal mythology the gods did not come down from the skies. They were born on the earth inside caves and they had parents who were not gods. El, therefore, should be considered a Titan but with so many Bibloholic scholars around it is not nice telling such things.
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Excuse me for the long post - but perhaps it will be helpful in seeing where many of us are coming from, and why biblical scholarship makes the claims it does.
