RUSSELL USED SYMBOL LINKED WITTH BA'AL WORSHIP (page 2)

Why shouldn't they? Their not affiliated with the Witnesses. In fact they are more extreme than the Witnesses when it comes to pagan practices and symbols. RR

RR

PERHAPS I SHOULD HAVE CALLED MY THREAD;RUSSELL LINKED WITH MASONIC SYMBOLS

Why? What came first, Eqypt or the Masons?

RR

tula

Isis

Supposedly she was worshipped from 3000 BC to the 1st century AD

The winged sun disk is, of course, ubiquitous in Egyptian and Mesopotamian representation of royalty and divinity. But I wonder what the symbol meant in the unique context of Israel. If I remember correctly, Mark Smith cites an emendation of the word "shield" in Psalm 84 to read something like "sovereign". Both God and his anointed king are referred to in Ps. 84 as shields, and God is exhorted to "behold" the king, in effect, to shine upon him. In Is. 58:8, we find the healing sun imagery connected to the "glory" of God and the pillar of fire that play such prominent roles in the Exodus. YHWH as storm god and as sun god performs vital, life-giving functions. The storm imagery comes primarily from Ba'al, but there is a body of evidence suggesting that YHWH absorbed solar iconography as well from the surrounding cultures. Cloud and flame imagery mingle beautifully in Psalm 18, wherein YHWH rides on the cherubim and comes "on the wings of the wind." While the wings of the sun disk were, I suspect, originally intended to represent the diffusion of light surrounding the sun, especially at dawn (cf. "rosy-fingered Dawn" in Homer) and sunset, I further suspect that this is not what they meant to the Jews. After encountering the glory of God on his mountain, Moses, like the kings of Israel, is in some sense divine, and consequently radiates a fear-inspiring divine light which must be veiled, just as God's fire must be masked by cloud. Mark Smith's book mentions that some scholars interpret Moses' face emitting "rays" (lit. "horns") and his wearing the "veil" in Exodus 34 as a memory of animal masks (esp. of bulls) worn by priests when serving the god. (I think Jerome simply didn't understand the Hebrew idiom involved.) Throughout the Near East, bulls and horses are often linked with solar imagery, and Jehovah is the Bull of Jacob, the Calf of Samaria (called the "Calf of Samaria" because of the "golden calves" or cherubim placed in Dan and Bethel to represent God's presence over Israel). Whether Moses is being depicted as a type of Near Eastern sovereign, participating in the glory of the national God, or as a priest, the solar connection is clear. In any case, I'd like to suggest the hypothesis that the solar disk would be viewed by Hebrews as a representation of God's presence (the shekhinah) which was especially located above the cherubim (cf. the cover of the Ark of the covenant and various depictions in prophetic theophanies). The golden cherubim function sometimes as the guardians of the divine garden on the top of the cosmic mountain (cf. the depiction of Eden in Genesis and Ezekiel) and sometimes as the bearers of God, the bulls of Heaven. What do you think?

badboy

WASN'T NOAH AROUND 3000BC?

Leolaia

veradico....Thank you for another fascinating post. You raised a very interesting point on the relationship between wind/cloud imagery and solar iconography -- I can definitely see that the image of Yahweh in his cloud-chariot borne by the cherubim (winds), a traditional Baal motif, can be reinterpreted as a sun borne by the winged cherubim across the sky. As far as the Shekinah is concerned, I suspect that the feminine characterization harkens back to Canaanite representations of Asherah, who was later assimilated to Yahweh as Mark S. Smith shows (paralleled by the development of Tannit as a feminine hypostasis of El in Punic religion), but possibly related to the female Canaanite sun-god Shapsh -- who is thought to have had Asherah and Rahmay (= Anat?) as her hypostases. I find this LBA feminine characterization of the sun to be a interesting contrast to the contemporaneous Egyptian male-oriented solar ideology of the New Kingdom -- particularly the Aten cult of the 18th Dynasty and the Re worship of the 19th -- as this was the time Canaan was ruled by Egypt, whereas the trend towards solarized Yahwism dates to the Iron Age independence of Levant kingdoms which themselves appropriated solar imagery from neighboring empires, seen also in the presence in the west of Shamash. I have wondered whether the archangels Sariel and Uriel, associated with the sun in Essene/Enochic literature, represent vestiges of older (non-Yahwist) solar deities.

RUSSELL USED SYMBOL LINKED WITTH BA'AL WORSHIP

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