Who do Jehovah's Witnesses say they are? Do they say they are both Jehovah? Also, is the New World Translation Bible on-line to look at? Also, in the LXX and Dead Sea Scroll versions of Deuteronomy 32:8-9... Yahweh is portrayed as separate from El and as a member of the divine assembly subordinante to Him. The variation between the original and altered text is significant because by the changes made, someone was deliberately trying to eliminate the reference to the divine council and also erase the original distinction between El & Yahweh and to depict Yahweh as the one and only God. What is made of this all? Thanks.
El & Yahweh
by SharonUT 10 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Larsguy
Thanks for posting this information. I was not aware of the specific contextual comparison for this verse based upon the Dead Sea Scrolls. Could you be more specific, however, and perhaps give us references to the two texts involved or post them both so we can compare the actual text? I'd like to see more so I can make up my own mind. Lots of people claim things in one place and then somebody else quotes them and then somebody else quotes them and then they think everybody knows something but really nothing has been proven.
I'm not doubting you yet, but there is no way we can confirm what you say without more specific references. If you can post this information for all to see that would be best; everyone doesn't have the time or resources to look up specific rare text comparisons, etc.
Thanks.
LG
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SharonUT
Oh my gosh - I just typed a bunch of stuff and it got deleted because I didn't have a field filled in right. Here I go again...
Further proof that variant readings affect important passages comes from Deuteronomy 32:8-9. In the MT, as it is translated in the KJV, the passage reads as follows:
"When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the LORD's [Yahweh's] portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance."
However, it has long been known from the Septaugint, and more recently from the Dead Sea Scrolls, that the phrase "according to the number of the children of Israel" used to read "according to the number of the sons of God."
In the RSV, which takes into account the confirming evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the passage reads like this:
"When the Most High [El Elyon] gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. For the LORD's [Yahweh's] portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance."
The significance of this variation is that in ancient times the term "sons of God" frequetly referred to members of a divine assembly of gods. The ancient Hebrews believed in a divine council of deities headed by the supreme father-god El (also called Elohim or El Elyon), and they often referred to the members of this council as "the sons of God." There is considerable disagreement among scholars over the council's composition, but there is no serious question that a belief in a divine assembly of heavenly deities was an important doctrine in ancient Hebrew theology (Eissfeldt; Mullen; Hayman; Morgenstern; Hanson 39; Clifford; Ackerman; Ackroyd; Seaich 1983:9-23).
By changing "the sons of God" to "the children of Israel," someone was deliberately trying to eliminate the reference to the divine council.
The LXX and Dead Sea Scroll versions of Deut. 32:8-9 portray Yahweh as separate from El and as a member of the divine assembly subordinate to Him. As Niels Lemche says, "the Greek version apparently ranges Yahweh among the sons of the Most High, that is, treats him as a member of the pantheon of gods who are subordinate to the supreme God, El Elyon" (pg. 226).
According to Harvard University's Paul Hanson, "This verse no doubt preserves early Israel's view of her place within the family of nations. The high god "Elyon" originally apportioned the nations to the members of the divine assembly ... Israel was allotted to Yahweh."
As the RSV put in, Israel was Yahweh's "alotted inheritance," given (or "allotted") to Him by His Father, El.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and Septagint prove that in the original Hebrew of Deut. 32:8-9, Yahweh was portrayed as a member of the divine council under El. Therefore, those who subsequently tampered with the Hebrew text were probably Yahweh-only editors who wanted to erase the original distinction between El and Yahweh and to depict Yahweh as the one and only God.
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logical
I dont get it
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accuracy
I got it when she mentioned Niels Peter Lemche, a well-known "biblical minimalist." Biblical minimlaists are folks who take a purely human view of the Bible and accept the Documentary Hypothesis, that the Bible was composed late in time, after the Jewish return from Bablyonian exile, and that two of its editors can be identified by whether they use the names Yahweh or Elohim.
"The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible" (HarperCollins, 1999) shows that the scroll named 4QDeut renders Deuteronomy 32:8 as "When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated humankind, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of God." But the Septuagint (LXX) renders the last part "according to the number of the angels of God (Greek text: angelon theou).
Though this reading appears to reflect a text different from the traditonal Masoretic text, there is no significant theological point here. Many other verses in the traditional Masoretic text identify "sons of God" with "angels of God." Even Israel itself is called "God's son." None of this portends any distinction between El and Yahweh, or any "subordination" of Yahweh by El. These ideas are drawn, not from the Bible, but from Canaanite myths, and some scholars wish to superimpose Canaanite theology upon the Bible. Traditional Jewish Orthodox theology recognizes that Yahweh has a "council" of angels or divine "sons," in fact many Jewish commentators state that it was to such a council that God spoke when he said, "Let US make man in OUR image, according to OUR likeness..." Traditional Judaism also teaches that different nations had an angelic "son" or patron over them, but Israel was Yahweh's special possession, as the Bible states many times.
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SharonUT
Thank you. Would you explain to me who El/Eloheim (etc...) is in scripture? Also, do JW's consider Yahweh to be the correct spelling and pronounciation of Jehovah?
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accuracy
Many scholars have written that El/Elohim is a "generic" Semitic term for "God." This appears to have been the case when the Bible was written. The word is found in cognate languages to Hebrew; i.e., "ilu" in Akkadian, "elah/alah" in Aramaic, "ilah/allah" in Arabic. As for the proper vowels to put with the name YHWH in Hebrew, no one really knows. The form "Yahweh" is based primarily on Greek transliterations of how the name was pronounced by some people in the first or second centuries A.D. But even those Greeks had different ways of spelling and pronouncing it: IABE (which may indicate a two-syllable word), IAOUE (which may indicate a three-syllable word), etc. Eminent scholars have argued for both "Yahweh" and "Yahuweh," as well as other possibilities. The more ancient Hebrew texts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, give no indication of what vowels went with the Hebrew term YHWH originally. Every modern reconstruction is just that -- a reconstruction.
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Francois
Here is some interesting information I received recently from a friend who's into research of ancient concepts of God:
1. Yahweh was the god of the southern Palestinian tribes, who associated this concept of deity with Mount Horeb, the Sinai volcano. Yahweh was merely one of the hundreds and thousands of nature gods which held the attention and claimed the worship of the Semitic tribes and peoples.
2. El Elyon. For centuries after Melchizedek's sojourn at Salem his doctrine of Deity persisted in various versions but was generally connoted by the term El Elyon, the Most High God of heaven. Many Semites, including the immediate descendants of Abraham, at various times worshiped both Yahweh and El Elyon.
3. El Shaddai. It is difficult to explain what El Shaddai stood for. This idea of God was a composite derived from the teachings of Amenemope's Book of Wisdom modified by Ikhnaton's doctrine of Aton and further influenced by Melchizedek's teachings embodied in the concept of El Elyon. But as the concept of El Shaddai permeated the Hebrew mind, it became thoroughly colored with the Yahweh beliefs of the desert.
One of the dominant ideas of the religion of this era was the Egyptian concept of divine Providence, the teaching that material prosperity was a reward for serving El Shaddai.
4. El. Amid all this confusion of terminology and haziness of concept, many devout believers sincerely endeavored to worship all of these evolving ideas of divinity, and there grew up the practice of referring to this composite Deity as El. And this term included still other of the Bedouin nature gods.
5. Elohim. In Kish and Ur there long persisted Sumerian-Chaldean groups who taught a three-in-one God concept founded on the traditions of the days of Adam and Melchizedek. This doctrine was carried to Egypt, where this Trinity was worshiped under the name of Elohim, or in the singular as Eloah. The philosophic circles of Egypt and later Alexandrian teachers of Hebraic extraction taught this unity of pluralistic Gods, and many of Moses' advisers at the time of the exodus believed in this Trinity. But the concept of the trinitarian Elohim never became a real part of Hebrew theology until after they had come under the political influence of the Babylonians.
Jehovah is a term which in recent times has been employed to designate the completed concept of Yahweh which finally evolved in the long Hebrew experience. But the name Jehovah did not come into use until fifteen hundred years after the times of Jesus.
My $0.02
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pomegranate
Francoise,
two more cents for you:
John 20:10-12
11 but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. -
accuracy
Yes, Francoise, that is the sort of popular "evolutionary" concept of God provided by books such as Karen Armstrong's "A History of God." But in the Bible, El, Elohim, El Elyon, and El Shaddai are all just titles of the One God who is named YHWH. And it would be more accurate to say that "Jehovah" is the form of the name YHWH that was picked up by English Bible translators from the work of Latin scholars from the 13th century, where it first appeared as Iehouah and Jehouah, in Raymund Martin's "Pugeo Fidei."