by ColdRedRain 14 Replies latest watchtower bible
Forscher,
The name El is a god's name, just as yap and mot, is also a gods name in the canaanite panthieon, yet they also made their way into hebrew with a meaning of what the god governed, I forget what they both were gods of, but one was the god of the ocean/waters. and the name became a noun in hebrew, meaning ocean/water, not a proper noun. The same is true of the noun el, was originally a proper noun El.
Seedy
Forscher,
If you will check some of the earlier posts, such as Peacefulpete's, you will find that the argument that was being made was that the use of "'el" for "God" in some of the psalms was being cited to prove that the Canaanite 'El was the origin of the Hebrew god.
Perhaps it is not so simple. The Israelite Yhwh had actually more in common with Baal-Hadad (the Baalistic traits of Yhwh are more than obvious in Psalm 29 for instance) than with El (I personally understand that he is not to be construed as Baal's brother, i.e. another son of El, but as a local avatar of Baal -- which at some point became a rival to the original Baal when Phenician influence was strong in northern Israel, i.e. during the Omride dynasty). Only when Yahwist henotheism, or monolatry, emerged, did El and Baal features merge in Yhwh's worship.
That line of reasoning comes from certain scholars who believe that the Israelites never invaded the land of Israel as mentioned in the Bible, but rather grew from the existing Canaanites in the land. I don't buy that modern theory.
I do. Some nomadic settlement may partly account for the Judean kingdom, certainly not for Israel as a whole.
I do agree with the obvious that the hebrew word most used for "God" is the plural of majesty "'elohim." Unger & White note that while it is regarded as the plural of 'eloah by most scholars they also point out that the nature of the linguistic relationship between the two is difficult to determine (Vine's Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words 1985 Ed., pg 97).
The classic explanation "plural of majesty" for 'elohim is linguistically dubious. Otherwise I agree that we lack an attestation of the singular 'eloah as a generic noun for "a god" in Biblical Hebrew (most uses belong to sophisticated monotheistic poetry, e.g. Job, and are secondary to the use of 'elohim + singular in that sense).
In regards to the use of the word "'el" as a name in the middle east, the same authors mke the following observation "In the ancient world, knowledge of a person's name was believed to give one power over that person. A knowledge of the character and attributes of pagan 'gods' was thought to enable worshipers to manipulate or influence the deities in a more effective way than they could have if the deity's name remained unknown. To that extent, the vagueness of the term 'el frustrated persons who hoped to obtain some sort of power over the deity, since the name gave little or no indication of the god's character. This was particularly true for El, the chief Canaanite god." (pg 96.)
As I don't know the edition you quote, I don't know how much of Canaanite material it really takes into account. Vine's original work in the 1930's couldn't refer to much of the Ugaritic texts which had just been discovered. What I read here is the oft-repeated explanation about the use of divine names, which is quite debatable. Anyway, in Ugarit El is the remote old father of the gods, one who is prominent in primeval myths of cosmogony, but not so prominent in everyday worship and piety. And the much closer Hadad was mostly called upon by his title, Baal.
Seedy,
Yam(m) was the primeval god of sea (Hebrew yam), which is defeated by Baal in the creation myth; Mot is the god of the underworld and death (Hebrew mwt, probably mot originally and later maweth in the Masoretic vocalisation).
While a great many comments I have made could be disposed of, this is not one. The evidence comes from all directions, Bibical, linguistic, and paleographic. Narkissos, ya the son of El comment was a bit vague but that is his lable in Deut 32. The complicated syncretism in the traditions prevents any brief, encompassing, straightforward recontruction.
Forscher, dismissing evidence to believe something makes that belief hollow and superficial. It's just not possible to do this without the nagging suspicion that we're being a fool. This ultimately is not satifying. I speak from experience. Check out some of Leolaia's threads, here's a good start:Holy mountains in Canaanite myth and the Bible
Dig back a little farther, past the Canaanite traditions, and look at Sumerian mythologies regarding Enlil and Enki, half-brothers and the sons of Anu. Enlil was the more vengeful of the two, and sounds an awful lot like the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Enki was the one who created man and who tried to lead man to spiritual enlightenment, which really frosted Enlil's shorts because Enlil wanted man to remain as a simple laborer in his garden. Oh, and then there's the part about some of these deities being represented as serpents or dragons ... Sound familiar?
I'm currently reading a book by Laurence Gardner, who says "This muddled and unparalleled concept of Jehovah being right when he was wrong, honest when he was dishonest, was born out of an inherent fear of his vengeful power and unbounded wrath. Whether as Jehovah (in Genesis) or as Enlil (in Mesopotamian record) it was he who had instigated the Semitic invasions which led to the ?confusion of tongues? and the fall of Sumer. It was he who had brought about the devastating Flood, and it was he who had leveled the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah -- not because of their wickedness, as related in Genesis (18-19), but because of the wisdom and insight of their inhabitants. It was Jehovah who had removed the Israelites from their homeland and sending them into seventy years of captivity.?
No surprise. A lot of stories in the Hebrew scriptures (Noah, Adam, Eve, Sodom & Gomorrah etc. etc.) were also taken from Egyptian stories with the names almost matching.
