Finger of God

by peacefulpete 6 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  peacefulpete

  A myriad (or close) of threads have discussed the depiction of deity in the OT and NT. Many exJWs simply can't seem to wrap their minds around the concept of hypostases of God. Hypostases as I'm using the term refer to personified conceptualizations of divinity often acting in a particular role. This personified aspect of divinity is often described as quasi-independent and yet subservient to the will of the divine. In the OT there are many expressions that were/are understood this way. I have touched on a number of these.

  Students of religious history understand how often, over time, the intent of an author becomes a casualty to later theological interpretation. This is the very essence of religious thought development. This is not saying a conscious effort was made to alter meaning, it rather is a natural result of changing circumstances and cultic leadership. Later theologians merely "clarified" what they understood a text to mean. Although in some instances a deliberate reutilization of an ancient story in a contemporary context was seen as away to reform a cultic tradition toward the ideal of the scribe. Either way, what we see is an evolving theology.

  It is also not surprising then that in a large setting multiple streams of tradition are likely to diverge. That certainly was the case in the traditions of Israel and Judah.

  Back on topic. I find the expression "finger of God' to be a simple example.

  Exodus 31:18 And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.

  This idea repeated in Deut 9:10:

  And the Lord delivered unto me two tables of stone written with the finger of God; and on them was written according to all the words, which the Lord spake with you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.

  It appears to me the author in context was anthropomorphizing his god as having fingers and it was simple as that. In time this was no longer deemed appropriate and the expression was redefined in a more abstract sense. Note that at Exodus 8:16-20 when the magicians are unable to reproduce the 3rd miracle 19 the magicians said to Pharaoh,

  “This is the finger of God.”

  This is clearly a fresh take on the expression, a more abstract, less anthropomorphic one, meaning simply divine action, even apart from the presence of God. Fast forward a few more centuries and we find the expression in Luke 11:20

  20 But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.

  Here the Lukan author is revising his source Matt 12:28 where is reads:

  28 But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.

  Now the expression is fully detached from any literal anthropomorphic sense and is equated to the Holy Spirit and doing the will of Jesus. It is approaching a hypostatic concept of God's action.

  The differences are subtle but reflect a growing sophistication.

  The ever-present risk when reading early layers of tradition is to color the meaning with the later. Reading the Moses story again we might think the earlier author intended the expression "finger of God" to simply mean "Spirit of God". Doing that begs the question of why the earliest author didn't simply say "Spirit". He didn't because he meant finger.

  I should add that the writers/redactors of the stories in Exodus and Deut. probably allowed the expression to stand precisely because the expression had taken on a more abstract metaphoric sense by their time. IOW they preserved an archaic concept by reinterpreting it.
  
  
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  Phizzy

  I agree, The Evolution from basic anthropomorphising of gods to a more "abstract metaphoric sense" is plain to see as you outline.

  Prof. Francesca Stavrakopoulou , in her excellent, entertaining, and frankly hilarious in places Book, "God an Anatomy" * traces this evolution, and she often quotes what the best Hebrew translation of many Scriptures is, where later Bible Writers obscure the original meaning, and even Translators have tried to obscure what was said.

  She comments on the "Finger of God " engraving upon the tablets that god gave to Moses, as verse Exodus 32 v 16 says, thus " As Yahweh's fingertip crafts the commandments by which his worshippers are to live, he inscribes his physical presence in to the covenant with his people".

  So the simple idea of a god with fingers quickly came to have a deeper meaning.

  * I recommend Prof. Stavrakopoulou's Book, if you haven't read it P.P. and to others on here, it really opens ones eyes to so much that is hidden in Scripture, much of it being the real Sexy bits, sanitised by a number of later hands !
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  peacefulpete

  Hey Phizzy. I'm also rather obsessed with the hypostatic process due to how it resulted in a dualistic image for many careful readers. (I like the word hypostatic and will use it a lot) The 'Spirit' that moves to and fro over the waters of chaos, the 'Light' that exists before the sun and moon, the 'Word' of god that rests and heals and runs, the Wisdom of God that creates and reproves, the 'Name' of God that dwells in the temple (tho likely the result of borrowed Akkadian idiom that meant having name inscribed but Rabbis later mistakenly understood as hypostatic for presence of a deity too great to enter a building made of stone). The Shekinah fire/light as similar stand-in for God's presence, and actually a number more, demonstrate an almost pathological love for hypostatic personification.

  As I've expressed before, this was a major contribution to the Christian conception of Logos(Word) and Christ/Wisdom/Light/Son as hypostatic names. John 17:11 goes on to say the Son was given the very Name of God. Which I'm assuming was not suggesting Yahweh but the Name in a hypostatic sense. The divine essence and presence.

  As SBF and others have argued, obviously there was no formal Trinity doctrine at the earliest stages of Christian development, however the writings reflect a far more sophisticated and esoteric conception of deity than the WT insists. As I see it, the rise of Christianity was an almost natural result of the evolving understanding of God within Judaism of the Greek world. God was so unapproachable by that time he needed a representative, someone to 'reveal' God to the world and who better than a Son of God that embodied all the earlier hypostatic concepts and whose name was Immanuel "with us is God".
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  Phizzy

  " however the writings reflect a far more sophisticated and esoteric conception of deity than the WT insists ".

  That is my perception too, it makes me wonder if that sophisticated way of thinking of Deity came from Babylon, it seems not to be there in earlier thought or writings, but unravelling when particular ideas were perhaps written back in to Scripture is a constant struggle.

  In the first century BCE, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. But that thinking may have come from further East, I would imagine these ideas were totally new to the Israelite Elite exiled in Babylon, but they embraced them with alacrity and zeal.

  It is a new thought to me that the so-called "Hellenization" of Jewish Religious thought occurred most likely in Babylon, and they therefore had adopted such ideas before the Greek philosophers like Plato.

  It all adds to the argument that the development and adoption of the Trinity Doctrine is firmly based upon religious thought we find in the whole of the Bible, and is not some upstart doctrine to be rejected out of hand as the W.T, and others do.

  The old canard that the O.T was written by "Bronze Age goat herders" looks even more silly now !
  
  
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  stan livedeath

  
  
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  Rattigan350

  People need to remember that it is

  The doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses are correct. It is the organizational policies that people have a problem with.
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  peacefulpete

  Phizzy, I suspect that exposure to a multicultural superpower alone offered the elite in exile new perspective. The world of ideas got a lot bigger. That combined with the disillusionment of no longer being the center of the world. Reinvention and reform were imperative. Yahweh had to mature along with his people.