Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Jordan Howard Sobel on the Shema and the Ontological Existence of Other Gods/Lords in the Bible

 

 

“Hearken O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH (is) One!” (Deuteronomy 6:4; Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses [New York: Schocken Books, 1995], p. 888). “Despite the centrality of this phrase as a rallying cry in later Jewish history and thought, its precise meaning is not clear. It most likely stipulates that the Israelites are to worship YHWH alone” (Ibid.) Proximate passages are, I think, not consistent with reading the line as an affirmation of monotheism, according to which YHWH would be the one and only god not just for the people of Israel, but period. “Now you are to love YHWH your God” (6:5). “You are not to walk after other gods . . . for a jealous God is YHWH “(6:14-15). “Know that YHWH your God, he is God, the trustworthy God, keeping the covenant of loyalty with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments” (7:9)—YHWH, among gods, is the trustworthy one who keeps the covenant made with His chosen who have entered into a convent with Him. “[F]or YHWH your God, he is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the God great, powerful, and awe-inspiring” (10:17), but, by implication, not, for all that, the only god. There comes in Leviticus this report: “YHWH spoke to Moshe, saying: Speak to the entire community . . . and say . . . Do not turn-your-faces  to no-gods, and molten gods you are not to make yourselves. I am YHWH, your God!” (Leviticus 19:4; Fox 1995, p. 601). “No-gods: Heb. ellim, a popular play on el/elohim (‘God, gods’) and al, ‘nothing.’ Greenstein (personal communication) suggests ‘little-gods’ as another possibility” (Ibid.). ‘Lesser gods’ would cohere with the message elsewhere that in any case YHWH is the greatest god, the god of gods. (Jordan Howard Sobel, Logic and Theism: Arguments For and Against Beliefs in God [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 540-41 n. 7)