Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Bruce Louden on Deuteronomy 32:8-9

  

Deuteronomy 32.8-9 briefly presents a very polytheistic account in which the supreme god, here named Elyon, apportions different peoples to different gods, with Yahweh, where in the role of a lesser god (!), receiving the Israelites as his share. Smith (2008: 140) offers a recent translation,

 

When the Most High (Elyon) gave the nations their inheritance,
and divided humanity (literally, “the sons of a human being”),
He [Elyon] established the boundaries of peoples,
[according] to the number of the sons of God/the children of Israel.
For the portion of Yahweh is his people,
Jacob his inherited measure.

 

Plainly descending from a fully polytheistic tradition, the surprising account differs from those at Iliad 15.187-93 and in the Atra-Hasis in that it does not depict drawing lots, nor does it specify a tripartite division. Here a Supreme god, called Elyon, dispenses the various peoples of the world to various gods, with only Yahweh specified as the one of the latter. In other respects, however, it suggests broad generic affiliations with the passages from Iliad 15 and the Atra-Hasis. Iliad 15, for instance depicts why it is that Zeus has dominion over the heavens. Deuteronomy 32 depicts why Yahweh has the people of Israel as his special responsibility. (Bruce Louden, Greek Myth and the Bible [Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies; Oxford: Routledge, 2019], 45)