We've touched on a lot of similarities between the YHWH and El/Baal cults in recent threads, the parallels and connections are very abundant.
I was just rereading a book that discussed another surprising one.
In Leolaia's recent thread about holy mountains we learned how the near eastern gods were frequently portrayed as housing on a mountain from which water issued. The house of gold made of cedars was both Baalist and YHWHist imagery and history.
I was under the impression however that the Yahweh dwelling in a Tent was unique to the cult , explained best that the "hebrews" were nomadic and that YHWH was a desert god in the oldest traditions. Tho these are true, there seems to be another piece of the puzzel. El lived in a tent also in some legends! El the chief diety of the Caananite pantheon was said to tent on mount Hamon while simultaneously be dwelling "in the midst of the sea". (again go to Leolaia's thread about the water element in the mountain imagery)
Why this is intersting is because of a detail in the Ex 26 description of the tent of YHWH. The outercovering of the tent was to be made of 'tahas' skins. For many years Jewish and Xtian translators have sought an alternative meaning of the word tahas. The reason is that the word means 'dolphin'. The hows and whys of the temple of YHWH having dolphin skin covering seemed to necessitate an alternative use of the word. Some modern Bibles use seal skin because it approximates the word yet allows for a land based people to have traded for them. But this does not explain the choice. Why would a shepard people use exotic sea animal hides to symbolize what they imagined the tent of their god to be like? The floor plan,cherubim, palm,palmegranate,gold, cedar and pillar entrance elemets all identify the YHWH temple/tabernacle as typically Phoenician/Canaanite with symbolic references to El/Baal/Ashera ,it then seems quite logical that ultimately the word tahas meaning 'dophin' or questionably 'seal' points to the imagery of El's tent being "in the midst of the sea".
dolphin skins?
by peacefulpete 5 Replies latest watchtower bible
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peacefulpete
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Narkissos
The exact translation of tachash is uncertain, as most zoological/botanical (or technical: it could also mean a kind of precious leather, not the animal) vocabulary -- just because the Hebrew corpus is very limited and we lack cross-references. However there is etymologically a good case for a sea context ("sea-cow", "porpoise", "dolphin"?). Actually we may never know better...
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peacefulpete
Cross comments that the unless there were controversy about the definition their would be no debate. The Arabic tuhas (dolphin)is the precise etymological reflex of hebrew tahas. I'm no linguist but there does seem to be a very good case, even the new Jewish Publication Society translation now uses dolphin.
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Sirius Dogma
Pure speculation, but would't it make sense for a desert people to use something strange and exotic. Something unseen to most people and therefore mysterious, perhaps even mystical and godly. A dolphin skin or seal skin, either is not native to the desert. Also as a desert people water would be precious and holy and perhaps so would an animal of the sea.
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peacefulpete
You are right, water was precious and therefore sacred in the desert and semiarid regions that spawned these myths. That is why water and the sea figure large in the El imagery. The symbolic significance of the iconography of the temple and tent included even some seemingly mundane details, perhaps the very choice of materials for the covering.
Perhaps the brazen 'sea' resting on the backs of 4 (astrologically significant) bulls in the Israel temple similarly has reference to the throne of El being "in the midst of the sea". Forgive me Leolaia if you mentioned this earlier in your other thread. -
Leolaia
I think we might be missing out on something here. If we are talking about an idealization, as the Solomonic temple described in 1 Kings surely was, might the tchs refer to a creature from the mythic world? According to Shabbat 28b, the tchs of the tabernacle was a unicorn that lived only during the time of Moses for his use in constructing the tabernacle "and then it was hidden away". The animal was described as multi-hued, a notion suggested by the references to colored skins and also by the LXX rendering of the word tchs as "hyacinth-colored". The big question is whether this is fanciful late interpretation of an obscure word, or whether it preserves genuine fragments of the original tradition. Note that the same tradition draws on the prevalent notion of the tabernacle as copied from heaven and a likeness of Paradise and/or the heavenly world (cf. Sirach 45:6-13, 50:5-11; Wisdom 9:8, 18:24; Letter of Aristeas 96, 99; Philo, Special Laws 1:84, Moses 2:117; Josephus, Antiquities 3:180; 2 Baruch 4:3-5; Hebrews 8:5; j. Berakot 4:5; Genesis Rabba 69:7), so it would follow that the tchs are beings of the divine world. Against this view, however, is the fact that tchs is simply used to refer to a kind of leather in Ezekiel 16:10 that was used in footwear, and the term itself occurs in Egyptian as t-3-H-s and refers to a special kind of leather. So it is possible that the word is just a loan from Egyptian and just refers to a kind of leather or hide, and not referring to a type of animal.