Fred Anson has recently pretended to try to engage me in a debate on facebook(!) on a thread on the Mormons and Biblical Discussion group (a group I do not belong to). It is in response to an article I wrote a while ago:
Apart from the fact I am not a member of the group (and I don’t really “do” facebook debates—I prefer email and face-to-face encounters), Fred shows that he only can engage in google searches as he has proven he can’t read Hebrew and knows next to nothing about biblical scholarship and exegesis.
Here is his argument:
I'll go first. Mr. Boylan makes the following claim in his article:
"The Hebrew phrase אתה אל (“you are” and “[a] god”) appears elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible:
And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God [NRSV: You are El [god] Roi] seesth me . . .(Gen 16:13)
Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour. (Isa 45:15)
And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshiah: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. (Jonah 4:2)
The literal meaning of the Hebrew is "you are a god." Latter-day Saints can reconcile this biblical passage with our theology of God the Father having experiencing a mortality of his own under the premise that, once he was perfected/exalted (similar to how Jesus was--Phil 2:5-11; Luke 13:32; Heb 1:4; 5:9, etc) to being "[a] God," he remained "[a] God" "from everlasting to everlasting" (cf. D&C 132:20, quoted above and the discussion regarding the ancient understanding of "eternity")."
I immediately turned to a Hebrew/English inter-linear (this interlinear to be precise: http://scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm) and found NO support for Mr. Boylan's proposed translation.
A quick Hebrew lesson for the misinformed:
אתה means "you are"
אל means "El"/"God" or "[a] God" (no definite article [Hebrew, like Irish and other languages, lacks the indefinite article])
"You are [a] God" is a good direct translation.
If Fred wants to learn Hebrew, I can suggest a few books I used in university, though I am sure his buddy Rob Bowman will help, too.
While disagreeing with me (though he also misunderstands me [or deliberately misrepresents me--it is Bowman after all]), Robert Bowman, who Fred later quotes, undercuts Anson's comments (Bowman knows at least some Hebrew and has a good grasp of Greek, and I say that as one who takes strong exception with him on many things):
The adjectival descriptions lead us in idiomatic English usage to use an indefinite article ("a") before the noun.
His comments that "It is completely illegitimate to translate these words "...you are a god" in this context, as though the text meant that the Lord is one of many gods who have existed since before creation" relies upon (1) his understanding of the concept of "eternity" discussed in my article (e.g., the primary meaning of עוֹלָם per HALOT, the leading Hebrew lexicon on the market, is "long time, duration (usually eternal, eternity, but not in a philosophical sense))and (2) an a priori assumption of monotheism informing the Old Testament--see Blake T. Ostler, Of God and Gods (Greg Kofford Books, 2008) for a thorough refutation of this. Indeed, Psa 82 and 89 does not bode well with such theological presuppositions. To quote from a recent commentary on the book of Psalms from three Evangelical Protestants:
Psalm 82: King of the Gods Psalm 82 places the modern reader in a very unfamiliar world. Modern thinkers hold to a monotheistic theology, meaning there is only one god and the gods of others simply do not exist. Ancient Israel did not have the same definition of monotheism. Indeed, for them not only did other gods exist, but these gods were active in the world.[1] This psalm gives us a window on the assembly of the gods, a place where the gods are gathered to make decisions about the world.[2] This council is part of the greater ancient Near Eastern mythology and would be a familiar image to ancient Israelites.[3] [1] A multitude of texts demonstrate this belief, e.g. Exod. 20:3-6; Deut. 4:15-20; josh. 24:14-15. In addition, many prophetic texts extol the people to love God alone and not go after other gods, e.g., Jer. 8:19; Hos. 11:2. In later texts, the theology seems to move more toward an exclusive monotheism; see. Isa. 41:21-24 . . . Verses 6-7 place the gods on equal footing with the humans. They have lost their immortality, hence their god status[4]. This ability for the God of Israel to demote the others speaks of the power of the king of the council. The king alone can control all of the other gods. This divine trial also demonstrates the fairness of Israel’s god. This god is not capricious, but sentences the other gods for their refusal to act in ways that reflect the values of God’s kingdom . . . [Psalm 89:5-8] set the state in the heavenly council. In vv.5 and 8, God is praised by the heavens for God’s faithfulness, and this certainly continues the theme of vv.1-4 while also broadening God’s faithfulness to the whole world. The questions in v.6 are rhetorical, just as in Isa. 40:18 and Pss. 18:31 and 77:13, followed by the declaration of God’s clear supremacy among the gods (v.7). God is not only the God of Israel but is the chief god of the council, and all others bow before the Lord. [2] See 1 Kgs. 22:19-23; Job 1:6-12; Zech. 1:7-17. [3] See Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 177-90. [4] The Gilgamesh Epic is a story that concerns Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality that will make him a god, indicating the importance of immortality in ancient myth.
Source: Nancy Declaissé-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth Laneel Tanner, The Book of Psalms (New International Old Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2014), 641, 642, 680
