This famous passage and related material was explained in painful detail in the book, The Faces of God by Jacob Rabinowitz as a song sung during the annual Coronation Procession of the king. Some background is called for but I'll try to be brief.
In Cananite culture the god Baal as the agent of order and justice yearly was killed and returned to life to bring the necessary rains and blessings. The kings of the tribal kingdoms of the land served as an anthropomorphization of Baal's rulership. Therefore to dramatize the annual rebirth of their patron god the people yearly revalidated the kingship. The celebration (as reconstructed from Ugarit texts) consisted of a large procession to a water source (Baal conquered the water, (another story))considered holy and the king was reanointed and declared to have been reborn as a son of god. The king therefore was poetically said to be merely an expression of Baal, the true ruler of the land.
The Hebrew peoples who spoke a Cannaite dialect easily assimilated this tradition. This puts new meaning to the request for a king like their neighbors and why the Yahwist priesthood was disturbed by the request.
Texts like Ps 110 and Ps 2 have preserved some of the manner in which this celebration was done in Israel. Ps 110 as it was poorly translated in the NWT disguises the meaning. Verses 4 makes no sense at all as it is there translated. However a footnote does confirm the real wording. vs. 4 reads, 'Your people come forward willingly your warlike power is revealed. You are reborn, like a new day, your in the dew of your youth." This mirrors Ps 2 that declares he king is "that day recognized as a son of god" which also describes this annual coronation procession.
Verse 5 has perplexed Christians for centuries as they have attempted to attatch these words to Jesus. VS says 'you are a priest forever in the manner of Melchizedeq."
Melchizedeq was the legendary king priest of the Cannanite city of Salem. His name means "King of Tesdeq" . Tesdeq being the special word used by worshippers of Baal to describe the order and balance won by Baal in his fight against Chaos (see my earlier thread about Rahab the Dragon). Therefore it seems reasonable to suggest the verse was merely and continuation of the annual coronation theme inherited from the Ugarits or other Cannanite peoples. It was only later Yahwist editing that struggled to make Mel into an exclusive worshipper of Yahweh.
Interestingly vs. 7 of 110 says the king was to drink from the river, then raise his head. this may mean the ceremony included the drinking from the holy waters to symbolise victory over it.
! Kings 1:38-40 Describes Solomon's noiy coronation procession riding on an ass to the river Gihon. Gihon being a mythical source that fed the garden of Eden. The name was attatched to a river by Zion to symbolize the center of the earth as being in Jerusalem.
Ps 110:1-4
by peacefulpete 5 Replies latest watchtower bible
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peacefulpete
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Leolaia
Melchizedeq was the legendary king priest of the Cannanite city of Salem. His name means "King of Tesdeq" . Tesdeq being the special word used by worshippers of Baal to describe the order and balance won by Baal in his fight against Chaos (see my earlier thread about Rahab the Dragon).
Cite? I searched your Rahab message but didn't see any reference to "Tesdeq", nor have i heard this suggestion before. Are u offering this as an alternative to tsaddiq "righteousness" or are u saying that tsaddiq is itself related to "Tesdeq"?
Leolaia
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peacefulpete
I'm not suggesting anything. Jacob Rabinowitz does in his "Faces of God" thesis. (It's short, but a very scholarly call for a more mythologically informed interpretation of OT imagery) But yes the word is the same. His well argued position is that our translating, with Western bias has once again concealed the intent of the ancient authors. The Rahab thread was just a side comment that expounded upon the well known Baal vs. Chaos/Timiat/Rahab battle. The basic premise is brilliant, as the Baal cult declined as a rival to the Yawehist's, the language and motifs used by the Baalists became more attractive. Directly or more casually the Yahwehists adapted style and story to their needs. It's sort of like how the demon music of 25 years ago is now classic rock among the JWs. It's nice Leolaia to have someone read and respond to threads like these.
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Leolaia
Peacefulpete....I strongly recommend you read if u haven't already Mark Smith's THE EARLY HISTORY OF GOD, the most exhaustive, well-written, scholarly book on the subject I have read. Smith shows how true monotheism was a very late, post-exilic phenomenon and how the person of Yahweh in the OT gradually absorbed the personalities of other deities, specifically Baal, El, Anat, and Asherah. He distinguishes between an early period (equivalent to the Judges, United Kingdom, and early divided kingdom) where Baal worship and Yahweh worship were basically one and the same, and the later period when Baal was reintroduced to the northern kingdom from Phoenicia as a new deity (Baal-Shamem) which stood in direct competition with the national deity Yahweh.
Smith gives a very detailed discussion of the imagery of Baal and Yahweh in the OT which includes the things you mentioned on the Chaos/Sea conflict myth and the coronation/divine kingship theme, and also the "cloud-rider" epithet, storm chariot, "Most High" epithet, bull iconography of Jeroboam I (1 Kings 12), Samaria ostracon 41:1 (which says "Young bull is Yaw"), Amherst Papyrus 63 (which says "Horus-Yaho, our Bull is with us. May the lord of Bethel answer us tomorrow"), the title "Bull of Jacob" in Gen. 49 and Ps. 132, description of Yahweh as having horns like an ox in Num. 24:8, and the well-known complex of motifs re the Exodus from Egypt, which includes the toponym Baal-Zephon (likely a shrine to Baal), the divine intervention at the Sea by splitting the Sea in half, the worship of Baal at Sinai with a golden calf, and the storm-thunder theopany at Mt. Horeb.
The Blessing of Jacob in Gen 29:24-26 includes not only the epithet Bull of Jacob, but a long series of other epithets attested in Ugarit, including El, Shadday, Father, the Deep, and Breasts-and-Womb. The latter belongs to both Asherah and Anat, paired in the passage with the standard male imagery of El as everlasting father and Baal the "Bull of Jacob". In later texts, however, Asherah becomes assimilated with Yahweh (cf. Hosea 14:9, Jeremiah 2:27, Deut. 32:18 where Yahweh is given Asherah's attributes) and depersonalized as a representation of Yahweh (e.g. as an asherah pole). Anat's warlike attributes, motifs, and language are accrued to Yahweh in Is. 34, 49:26, Joel 3:13, 4:13, Deut. 32, Ezek. 39:19. And El's attributes are most clearly accrued to Yahweh in Deut. 32:6-7, Dan. 7:9-14, 22, and Tobit 13:6, 10.
Leolaia
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Leolaia
Here is something from Mark Baker's book in connection with your post on Ps. 110 you might find interesting:
"Some scholars have argued that the Feast of Tabernacles every fall (Ex. 23:16; 34:22) included the enthronement of Yahweh. According to S. Mowinckel, the theory's most vigorous proponent, the enthronment aspect of the festival is reflected in numerous psalms containing the motif of Yahweh's battle, often in storm, against the cosmic enemies. These texts include Psalms 65, 93, and 96-99. The burden of proof for this theory has fallen largely on two pieces of data. The superscription of Psalm 29 in the Septuagint associates this psalm with the Feast of Tabernacles. Zechariah 14:16-17 specifically refers to the celebration of Yahweh's kingship in connection with the Feast of Tabernacles:
" 'Then every one that survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, Yahweh of hosts, and to keep the feast of booths. And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Yahweh of hosts, there will be no rain upon them.'
"As J. Day notes, the reference to rain in verse 17 accords with the motif of Yahweh's control over the cosmic enemies of the water. Although this passage is postexilic, some of its motifs may have enjoyed a long history in Israelite tradition. A pre-exilic setting for the celebration of divine kingship is plausible. The setting in Ps. 65, which celebrates in the temple the bounty of autumn harvest, is possibly a Tabernacles psalm. Day observes that Psalm 65:7-9 recalls Yahweh's victory over the cosmic waters. It may be further noted that the motif in verse 9 is precisely a meterological one. The 'signs' witnessed at the ends of the earth are the thundering of the heavens and earth that announce the imminent arrival of life-supporting rains. Psalm 65 and Zechariah 14:16-17 indicate the meterological importance of rain in the early autumn. That divine power over the waters was celebrated in the autumnal feast in Jerusalem would seem evident from Pslam 65 and might be inferred from other psalms."
Baker then goes on to link the imagery in these psalms with Ugarit texts on Baal which parallel the building of Baal's palace and his kingship in connection with the autumn rains. "In short the storm imagery associated with Baal in Caananite texts and Yahweh exhibited a political connection."
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peacefulpete
I have the book. Yes the authors compliment each other. Thanks for posting that comment for all to read. I've grown too lazy to type long comments, so now I largely cheat and cut and paste.