Saturday, May 27, 2023

Susan Gillingham, Benjamin Sommer, and Carmel McCarthy on the Plurality of Gods in the Old Testament

  

Psalms that use mythological language to describe how God is greater than all the other deities presumes an early view that other deities actually exist. They, too, are likely to be preexilic. Psalm 82:1, for example, speaks of God taking his place in a divine council, holding judgment in the midst of other deities; it then describes how God (Elohim) demotes these gods (elohim) for their lack of justice and compassion (verses 2-7). Psalm 29 also starts with God in a heavenly council: here he is to be both praised and feared as he brings about a storm. Several verses have correspondences with various references to Ba’al Hadad, the Canaanite storm deity. See, for example, verses 1 and 3: “Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. . . . The voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders, the Lord, overmighty waters.”

 

Thunder is also represented as the voice of Baal in the Ugaritic texts (KTU2 1.4:VII:29-31). The voice of God’s thunder is heard seven times in this psalm; Baal also appears “seven times” in the lightning and “eight times” in the thunder, and he, too, is seated enthroned over the waters. For example, in KTU2 1.101:1-4 Baal is the one who brings about

 

3b šb t. brqm. [[.t]] . . . seven lightnings . . .
4 tmnt. ‘iṣr r’t. ‘s. brq.y [] Eight storehouses of thunder.
The shaft of lightning.

 

In the same way, several hymns celebrate God’s world rule by comparing him with other deities and declaring him sovereign over them. This again suggests sometime before the more monotheistic faith of the Persian period. Psalms 95:4 (“The Lord . . . is a great king above all gods”), 96:4 (“The Lord . . .is to be feared above all gods”), and 97:9 (“You are exalted far above all gods”) are typical examples. (Susan Gillingham, “The Psalms and Poems of the Hebrew Bible,” in The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Companion, ed. John Barton [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016], 208-9)

 

On Exo 20:3//Deut 5:7 and 6:4:

 

The Decalogue’s wording does not deny the existence of “other gods”; it merely directs Israelites to have no relationship with them. The Shema’s language is obscure: What does it mean to say that “the LORD is one”? According to some modern scholars, this line merely asserts that the God of Israel does not subdivide into local manifestations in the way many ancient Near Eastern deities did. In Mesopotamia there was a goddess Ishtar of Nineveh, an Ishtar of Arbela, and an Ishtar of Carchemish; in Canaan, there were dozens of local Baal-Hadads; but, the Shema tells us, the LORD, the God of Israel, exists only in a single manifestation. Even if one rejects this interpretation of Deuteronomy 6:4, understanding it instead to mean “The LORD is our God, the LORD alone,” this verse may teach not that no other gods exist, but that they are not Israel’s deity. Further, in the Hebrew original the Shema, like the Decalogue, speaks not of “the LORD” but of “Yhwh,” which is the personal name of the God of Israel. The use of a name to refer to this deity suggests that there may be other deities out there; names are necessary when we talk about a particular member of a larger class. In allowing for the possibility that additional heavenly beings exist, these two verses are not alone. The Hebrew Bible often refers to heavenly creatures other than Yhwh, calling them “gods” (Genesis 6:2; Psalms 29:1, 82:6, 86:8, 89:7; Job 1:6), “angels” (Numbers 20:16; 2 Samuel 24:16; 1 Kings 13:18; Zechariah 1:11-12; Psalm 78:49; Job 33:23), and “the council of holy ones” (Psalm 89:6-8). (Benjamin D. Dommer, “Monotheism,” in The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Companion, ed. John Barton [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016], 239-40)

 

Poor Evidence for Biblical Monotheism

 

Some biblical texts seem at first glance to present Yhwh as genuinely unique and thus to exemplify monotheism. “Who is like you among the gods, Yhwh? Who is like you, exalted in holiness, acknowledged as awesome, performing wonders?” Moses and the Israelites sing at the shore of the Reed Sea (exodus 15:11; cf. 1 Kings 8:23; Isaiah 40:18; Jeremiah 10:6-7; Psalms 35:10, 71:19, 89:9). Such a verse sounds tailor-made to exemplify monotheism as I have defined it, since it posits an essential distinction between Yhwh and all other heavenly beings. Indeed, this line appears in the daily liturgy of rabbinic Judaism, where it functions in a genuinely monotheistic way. But a line such as this does not always function in that way. Other ancient peoples (for example, in Sumerian and Akkadian liturgical texts) also laud various gods as incomparable. This is the case not only in prayers to the heads of the pantheons such as Ashur in Assyria and Marduk in Babylon but in prayers to other gods and goddesses as well. Consequently, we cannot cite verses such as Exodus 15:11 as proof of early monotheism in Israel. Such a verse would have been recited by a monotheistic monolatrist, by a polytheistic monolatrist, or even by a nonmonolatrous polytheist.

 

The same may be said of biblical texts that stress Yhwh’s kingship over the gods (such as Psalms 47:2-3, 95:3-5, and 96:4-5) and perhaps even those that maintain that Yhwh assigned other gods their roles (Deuteronomy 4:19; Deuteronomy 32:8-9 as preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint). These passages stress Yhwh’s power in contrast to the relative weakness of other deities. Additional passages require other gods to praise the one true God (see Psalms 29:1-2, 103:20-22, 148:1-3). But similar lines occur regarding high gods of polytheistic pantheons. Thus in the Babylonian creation epic known as Enuma Elish the gods themselves praise Marduk as unrivaled and supreme (4:3-15). One might want to take the description of Marduk in these lines literally and therefore suggest that Marduk is being raised to the short of level we associated with a monotheistic God. However, earlier in Enuma Elish the goddess Tiamat had spoken of Qingu in nearly identical terms when she acclaimed hi king of the gods in 1:153-58. Qingu’s command, which Tiamat claimed was unchangeable, did not in fact endure: like Tiamat, he died at the hand of Marduk. That the gods’ guarantee of eternal power to Marduk is phrased in the same language as Tiamat’s short-lived guarantee to Qingu suggests that we should read this sort of language with a grain of salt. This language is an exaggerated form of praise for whatever deity happened to be on the throne. As a result, we cannot be sure that similar lines from the book of Psalms and Deuteronomy are intended to posit an essential distinction between Yhwh and other gods of the short that Hermann Cohen and Yehezkel Kaufmann require for their definition of monotheism. (Ibid., 253-54)

 

Deuteronomy 32:8

 

The Song of Moses in Deut. 32:8 contains a scribal intervention, the aim of which was to render this poetic description of Israel’s coming into being as the Lord’s special people in a more theologically acceptable way. The verse speaks of the Most High organizing the division of peoples within their various territories, fixing their boundaries “according to the number of the sons of Israel” (= M). A different form of v. 8b, “according to the number of the sons of God,” occurs in Qumran (4QDeutj). This is also the reading of a section of the Greek tradition: “sons of God.” M’s reading, “sons of Israel,” is generally accepted as a later theological correction, a textual intervention aimed at avoiding any possible hint of polytheism or suggestion that the Lord was simply one of the lesser gods in a pantheon presided over by “the Most High.” Only JPS follows M—“He fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel’s numbers”—without further comment. By contrast, the remaining three modern translations adopt the reading of 4QDeutj and G, in varying formulations. NRSV renders it as “the number of the gods,” REB has “the number of the sons of God,” and NABRE reads “the number of the divine beings.” All three include a footnote explaining the origin of their preferred reading. (Carmel McCarthy, “Textual Criticism and Biblical Translation,” in The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Companion, ed. John Barton [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016], 551-52)

 

 

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