Paganism in the Bible, Transcript

Transcript: paganism in the Bible

(00:02) to mention that uh because we're streaming this uh lecture on facebook we'll ask you that if you have any quick question i might be able to repeat it but if it's a long question or maybe a comment that you want to make to please raise your hand so that urgent can bring the microphone to you and i apologize to everyone watching online because you're at john's mercy tonight uh you have to turn it on it's um no that you turn me off now no which one uh it's this one okay there you go i was just gonna say that because of all

(00:42) the material if it's going to be a really long comment you should save it for the discussion after but it you know but anyway if there's a question have urgent come and he'll give you the microphone thank you yeah i'm hoping we're going to be able to save to finish before nine tonight because i'm hoping to just bring some questions that i would like to discuss at the end of this lecture because i do find this topic fascinating in itself but every time i i started like this i continue this research i wonder to what extent

(01:19) this is relevant uh for us today in the 21st century in north america and of course i would like to start with something that is happening right now i guess hawaii is not north america but it's part of the united states uh and so i'm sure you've seen in the news uh that this volcanic eruption on may 3rd after an earthquake earlier in the day like uh steaming ground cracks open in kilauea volcano uh in the island of hawaii the big island featuring outbreaks of lava fountains up to 300 feet high lava flows and volcanic gas

(02:10) as of may 6 when i got this information the eruption had resulted in the destruction of 26 houses how what's it now 35 houses now the interesting thing about this uh is that the washington post reports that some residents insisted that it was pele the hawaiian volcano goddess coming to reclaim her land and that over the weekend residents placed uh i don't know how to pronounce this thai leaves it is the leaves of a local plant that is thought to have spiritual power to make an offering to pele and so who is this pele and by the way

(03:06) these were not uh there are many videos on youtube that you can watch and these people that are talking about pele are not necessarily aboriginal hawaiians they look like what we would call middle class white americans and yet they're talking about this goddess she is the goddess of fire lightning wind and volcanoes and she is also the creator of the hawaiian islands she either her or her spirit is thought to live inside this caldera of kilauea volcano and there's a myth that says that pele journeyed on her canoe

(03:50) from tahiti all the way up to hawaii and her sister was uh just chasing her and in the end they fought pele was killed her body was destroyed and thrown into the volcano where now her spirit lives and her her body is thought to be the lava stream that comes from the volcano but also she can change form and she can appear as as an as a dog as an all woman or a beautiful young woman now what if we look at okay what is the religion uh of hawaii and in 2014 this paul found that six to 63 percent of hawaiians identify themselves as

(04:48) christians different kinds of christians 26 percent say they are unaffiliated including agnostics and atheists and eight percent are buddhists and there's other minorities see although the traditional hawaiian religion was outlawed in the 19th century a number of traditions typically associated with it have survived by integration and for example there's some hawaiian practices that have been christianized and others other people practice these traditional uh religious rituals as as a co-religion that goes together with

(05:35) the either christian or buddhist religions that they may have today the testimonies are very interesting like um this uh person here saying you can't really predict what pele is going to do it's hard to keep up we're hoping our houses our house doesn't burn down oh it's in a different order what can you do you have no control over it pele is the boss you know if belly comes belly comes we have to do what we got to do but now we're kind of crossing our fingers to see what pele might do next and another interesting one the way i

(06:24) kind of look at this is the land doesn't really belongs to us it belongs to peli we get to live on it while we can and if she wants it back she'll take it i have good insurance i don't care i love that one so the lecture today is called paganism in the bible and uh i would like to take a moment to bring some definitions to uh the lecture the word pagan so because we we usually hear use all these words in in different lectures but i feel like sometimes we just take for granted that we all understand what these words mean and there's a little

(07:14) bit of nuance that comes when we use either one or another term so pagan comes from the latin word paganus and it was first used in the fourth century by early christianity for populations of the roman empire who practiced the traditional greco-roman religions because there was this perception that more and more it was only the rural people that practice these uh religions the the rural area is the pagus the term presumed a belief in any number of false gods therefore we talk about holy theism in contrast with the belief

(08:03) in and worship of only one god that we call monotheism and what is this thing god [Music] thank you john a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans but who interacts with humans positively or negative these are just very simple definitions i know you may be thinking of other definitions that are not here this is not the main goal of the lecture to define what god is but we have a range like you know of this concept of god from the infinite transcending being who created and lord over the universe the god that

(08:51) we usually refer to as the capital g god and the finite entity or experience with special significance or which evokes a special feeling and we call this one the lower uh god it's a concept in religious or philosophical context that relates to nature like thunder like fertility like death or it relates to virtues like wisdom knowledge and justice and so what is this thing monotheism once again there are more than one definition i'm gonna go with this one for the purposes of this lecture which is a belief in the existence of only one god

(09:44) that created the world is all-powerful and intervenes in the world and according to jewish christian and islamic tradition monotheism was the original religion of humanity like the religion of adam and eve however modern scholars and actually since the 19th century have favored this evolutionary view of religion and we often assume or we often take for granted that everyone started as an animist and we continue to move on as societies get more complex and into this thing that we call polytheism there's these other terms that we don't

(10:37) use very often that are very very technical and we'll talk about that are henotheism monolatry and finally we get to the pinnacle of what in the 19th century people thought a religion should be monotheism and we can continue on and just say that after monotheism you can include secularism here uh with you know even the idea that um but we'll see it again what is animism first of all belief that objects places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence i'm gonna skip polytheism because we'll talk about it later what is this thing

(11:29) that we call hinotheism that sometimes is used interchangeably with this term monolatry so here we have the worship of one god without denying that others may other people may worship different gods with equal validity there's nothing wrong about other people worshiping their gods this is often associated with national deities regarded as supreme and protectors of this land while worship of other deities has really no negative influence and we sometimes this is called in the context of first temple and second temple to an extent judaism

(12:16) this is called inclusive yahwism that is the religion of israel where it is okay to every now and then worship it's it's okay to every now and then bake cakes and make offerings to the queen of heaven that is inclusive yahwism inclusive yahooism includes things like having ashira polls at the jerusalem temple next to the the sacrificial altars but then we move to this other thing that it seems a little bit more exclusive that's monolatry which is very very similar to hinotheism here once again the existence of many gods is taken for

(13:06) granted but we're only allowed to worship one god and if we worship other gods our god will be jealous and this is what we in the context of israelite religion call exclusive yahooism this is what i was mentioning before in this we have moved in the 20th and 21st century towards what comes after monotheism and we have this secularism now or like secular humanism with its own quasi-religious understandings where the improvement of life happens by material means science is the available providence of man and it is good to do good

(13:58) so finally what is this polytheism thing and from now on i will tr tend to use the term polytheism as opposed to paganism which um in a paganism has a certain negative connotation i prefer to use polytheism this to my surprise we first hear or at least in the accounts that we have about this uh in the writings of philo of alexandria the jewish philosopher that is arguing with the greeks and he coins this term as far as we know to mean the worship or belief in multiple deities that different gods and goddesses are representations of forces

(14:43) of nature or even ancestral primordial principles and we have autonomous or aspects of emanations of a creator deity our transcendental absolute principle may be part of this polytheistic system so there's a lot of diversity that we may encounter within this big bag that we call polytheism what does it have to do with the religion of ancient israel and this is um most modern scholars now will tell us that the hellenistic judaism that is the judaism during the time of the greek occupation and even the roman occupation

(15:41) that we call the second temple judaism and also this thing that we call the cult of yahweh or sometimes that overlaps with what we call the first temple judaism of the eighth and seventh centuries pce are considered by modern scholars as hino theistic or monolatrist now using this definition of hinotheism we often tend to regard other religions of the neighbors of the israelites and other peoples of the ancient world as polytheism and we make the distinction that what israel maybe wasn't fully monotheistic but was henotheistic

(16:31) or monologuist when we presented the material of the ugaritic religion with the texts that were uncovered in this ancient city of ugarit on the coast of modern-day syria we have recovered very valuable text that speaks about the religion of these people that it's gotta take people and it's also in this case that the religion is arguably henotheistic as opposed to simply polytheistic why because they do have their national god ba all they acknowledge other gods and even their worship is allowed but they do have they are very clear of who is their

(17:28) national god and the same is true for you know other people in the region the same is true for the babylonians once we have the supremacy of marduk and we can continue mentioning examples but the focus of this lecture is not necessarily this hellenistic period the second temple period but this missing link that we have between the religion of ancient canaan in cities like ugarit baiblas and others and this religion is that is better documented in the bible and so to what extent we can reconstruct the religion of the people of israel in

(18:18) what we call it iron age one period like this is before uh the destruction of jerusalem from about the 10th century bce up to the seventh sixth century bce what happened what how was the worship what were the beliefs of the people that called themselves or they began to call themselves israel and just so that you get a clear um or not clear but i want i want to show you where we're where we're at in this period of the united uh so uh this line here this is where all these ogradic texts all these stories about ba al

(19:11) and ashe ra and anat and all these canaanite gods all the records that we have come from this period we have here this uh united monarchy period around the year 1000 bce whether or not there was ever a united monarchy as it is described in the bible it happened around this time but our biblical records start appearing earlier in this period and if you remember uh in the i think it was the the lecture that we had in december there's very very little archaeological evidence the archaeological record only has for this whole period from here from

(20:04) the bronze age collapse all the way up to say the destruction of jerusalem where's the destruction of jerusalem here here so for this whole period from here where this here up to here there's a few stilas here and there this rocks uh there's pillars uh with inscriptions but really not much that can tell us about the religion of israel most scholars will tell us that the oldest parts of the bible began to be written down in this period compiled around here during the exile in babylon and they continued to be edited even into the persian period

(21:04) so here's i guess it's not in the map but you know we'll get it is around in this region up here and northern canaan and as you can see in this period of the 8th century that we're considering we have the kingdom of israel in the kingdom of judah separate kingdoms not a united monarchy this is where we have started to have records historical records and they are surrounded by all these other kingdoms all these peoples that were very very related to the people of israel and judah they spoke a related language people that

(21:59) sometimes will be grouped as canaanites people with whom the judahites the israelites will often have conflict people who worship their own national gods so once again we could consider them to be hinotheistic uh even perhaps monologuist like the case of edom with the god cause cos um that appears in the bible like the god um kemosh of moab that once again the national god of all these related people when we look for these traces of polytheism or something that is not monotheism at least in the bible well let's open the bible and see what

(23:01) happens and you don't really have to go too far to find something that at least should raise suspicion so here's the opening phrase the opening uh paragraph of the bible that we all or most of us will know in the beginning when elohim created the heavens and the earth the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep while ruach elohim swept over the face of the waters and i am using here the new revised standard version however i have changed any reference to god or lord to the original hebrew word

(23:54) and as you can see there's uh we'll see uh eventually there's many many many names for god we can see some interesting parallels here with the religion the theology of ugarit because l in ugaritic uh religion is the creator god is a sky god and he's got this um creature primordial force god uh it's not an anthropomorphic god that is called yum that represents the sea it represents the abbess and primordial chaos and l also has a concert as a good polytheistic god called ashayrah that we hear about in the bible in the case of the bible ashira is

(24:57) associated with yahweh but here in the ugaritic text ashibra appears as the concert of l and she has a very interesting epi test these little titles or descriptive phrases that follow the name of the gods she who threats on the sea there's another parallel that many scholars consider is perhaps the source of the genesis story of creation that we find in mesopotamia with uh the very famous uh story of the pneuma elish that starts when on high or when the skies above were not named and the earth beneath did not get their name

(25:52) and a primible absu who begot them and chaos tiamat the mother of them both their waters were mingled together and no field was formed no merch was to be seen when of the gods none had been called into being as we saw in a previous presentation of this material l in the ugaritic text is the creator god and chief deity of the canaanite pantheon however this word el as time goes on as we move into the iron h period that is like the 10th century bce and after the word l becomes a generic word that simply means god so used to be the name of the deity now

(26:52) it's just a noun that means god so that's why it complicates the translation and it is very unclear when you read the uritic text whether you're talking about a god or you're talking about this guy uh all these languages in this region are either related languages or related dialects depending on what kind of linguistic classification you want to do and all have related words all words that relate to l like elo ah that appears repeatedly in the bible to refer to god ella in biblical aramaic al-aha in syriac and also allah in arabic

(27:40) one interesting aspect of this using this word elohim is that is identical to the plural of l so once again here the complexity comes because we never know when the word elohim is referring to the name of god or when it's referring to the gods in the ogaritic text usually we find it in this form lhm and of course here elohim as we saw in the opening chapter is one of the many names or titles of god other gods sometimes are referred to as elohim like in the case of the gods ephesians egypt the elohim of egypt in exodus

(28:40) sometimes a single foreign god like kemosh of moab is referred to as elohim this word another complicated thing that the hebrew has is that it can be followed it can be put together with a verb in singular or plural form and even we have to complicate this more other supernatural beings like demons and these seraphins these angels that are sometimes called elohims elohim one phrase that we will discuss in detail later towards the end of the lecture is this ben elohim that translates as sons of god appears many many times in the bible and

(29:34) we will talk about the different passages that talk about this ben elohim the sons of god or sons of gods and there's here a clear parallel with the ugaritic and phoenician literature in the case of ugarit this phrase sons of god always makes reference to the seven gods that are descendants of these couple this royal divine couple el and asherah that are also referred to as the council of gods which is another phrase that appears in the bible repeated times this is from psalm 82 elohim has taken his place in the divine council

(30:35) this is not the ugaritic text this is the bible and yet here we're talking about this divine council in the midst of the gods and here there's no doubt among scholars that in this case we're talking about god's plural he elohim holds judgment how long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked i say you are gods sons of elion elion mutually translated as most high god most high nevertheless you shall die like mortals and fall like any prince rise up o elohim judge the earth for all the nations belong to you

(31:28) now of course there's some scholars that will argue against the idea that we are seeing uh henotheism or polytheism in the biblical text and there's a very interesting passage that once again there's no doubt among among most scholars that we here we are using none other than the the patriarch abraham is talking about the gods and so before the polytheistic philistine king abimelech the one that as we learned with john and a couple weeks ago is confused about whether sarah is abraham's sister or abraham's wife or both um

(32:21) so that same abby milik and abraham says here to abimelech the gods caused me to wander and there's a very interesting scholar that is one of the voices against the documentary hypothesis he he rejects the documentary hypothesis that we usually um talk about here that the idea that different sources came together at different times to compose the bible as we know it today he is one of the scholars the minority opinion that whole said no there's only one voice and um and he will challenge he he has an explanation that

(33:14) justifies the use the of the word gods here that justifies why abraham is using the plural because he says well the israelites by the way he assigns total historicity to this event which is another problem when you have to defend your case without the documentary hypothesis but that's for another lecture but he assumes that abraham and all the israelites at the time they're supposed to be like the middle of the second millennium bce were monotheistic and now what's the situation well abraham is talking about the gods in plural

(33:59) why the most likely explanation is that abby malek is polytheistic so abraham is such a good pr person that he understands that he's going to talk to the king he has to explain to the talk to the king in a language that the king will understand and so that's the reason why he uses the word gods but now the problem here and you know he goes on to explain other problems in the bible this way cherry picking evidence and so we get to this problem when we do this kind of scholarship of confirmation bias so we only gather

(34:42) and process the information in a way that confirms the thing the premise that we started with the assumption and we simply ignore anything that says you know goes against it and i'll i'll do my best not to fall into this trap today one thing that um he's been criticized when he's coming up with this explanation this justification of this apparent polytheistic understanding of abraham is that there's a little bit of anachronistic concerns [Music] because at this time that doesn't seem to be any concern about a possible dichotomy

(35:35) between polytheism and monotheism people simply would not know would have known how to make sense of this this problem are you monotheistic or are you polytheistic would probably have not made any sense at all to anyone at the time so there wasn't a concern regarding how many gods there are the concern was about proper worship and about who rules who's the who's the god that has more power who's the god that has more status for example this in deuteronomy we hear that there is none like elohim or yeshurum or israel who rides through the heavens

(36:22) or who writes through the clouds to your help majestic through the clouds he subdues the ancient gods the ancient elohim shatters the forces of old he drove out the enemy before you and said destroy any questions up until this point am i going too fast jerusalem at that time if you believe what some of the prophets are saying if you believe the the deuteronomic reform that happened during king josiah a few decades before the destruction of jerusalem by babylon

(37:25) there apparently were all sorts of things at the jerusalem temple not just asherah poles but people were worshipping ba'al people were mourning the music at the temple so it was the picture that we get i don't have it here but we learn the last time we had like three four slides with all the different things that the people of israel were doing even at at the jerusalem temple and the azura poll was actually one of the easiest ones one one's of the easiest to digest because there were things like male prostitutes at the temple and all

(38:10) sorts of things that we wouldn't think would happen in this sacred space so yeah there were azure up holes what's any other questions at this point all right so what other divine beings do we encounter in the bible and if we refer we refer to the one of the definitions of polytheism is this idea that there's not just one divine being but many divine beings who may or may not be emanations of a supreme being but we still consider that a form of polytheism based on that definition that is often used so this is once again from genesis

(39:06) another beautiful passage then yahweh elohim said the man this is right after they eat the fruit and so yahuwah elohim said the audience is unclear the man has become like one of us since he knows good and evil he must not reach out and take the fruit from the tree of life and eat then he would live forever so yahuwah elohim sent the man out of the garden of eden to farm the ground from which the man had been formed after he sent the man out elohim placed kerubim and the flaming sword that turned in all directions east of the garden of eden he

(39:54) placed them there to guard the weight of the tree of life so sometimes we we talk about how in the religious context of greco-roman religion it seems like this separation between humanity and divinity has a little bit of overlap because we have these figures like hercules that started as a human and eventually become gods and we often say that that would never happen within the context of israelite religion and yet genesis is telling us that god is telling somebody else that he is concerned the man the human the adam

(40:40) will become like like them presumably like the gods if they become immortal because now they have the knowledge in the book of ezekiel this this being that yahuwah elohim places at the entrance to guard the garden of eden ezekiel goes to describe what this elohim is and apparently it had a number of wing uh pairs four faces a lion an ox a human and an eagle so representing all the powers of nature domestic animals humanity and birds these keto beam it's actually um if you if you've seen those um shadows uh that uh are very common in mesopotamia in

(41:46) persia that are like these winged uh bearded men with the body of a lion there's a connection there many scholars think that this these keto beam are actually the israel israelite version of these figures that were usually at the entrance at the gates if you had a gate you had one of these figures on each side guarding the gate so buddhist kerubim kerub is um the singular query beam the plural just like el elohim elohim are not the only lesser divinities or the only other celestial beings that are apparently running around the world

(42:35) um the septuagints will use the word angelos to kind of group together all these other beings beings and this word angelos is simply the translation of the hebrew term malak that means messenger messenger malachi elohim messenger of god malak yahweh messenger of the lord and once again sometimes what complicates a little bit what office skates a little bit our understanding is that we will find the term ben elohim sons of god to refer to these angels in the bible so not only to refer to the divine counsel is not only this divine counsel of the

(43:28) canaanites but here is specifically explicitly applied to these lesser divinities that we call angels there's this um [Music] philosopher that lived and lived in the cordoba in the 12th century a.d maimonides it's a separatic jewish philosopher and he compiled a rank of angels and so starting with the most important ones he i'm not going to go through each one of them i just want to point out where these sons of gods appear in his understanding of how important these angels were so these sons of god are just yet another kind of angel another kind of

(44:26) lesser divinity remember this is already fast forward in to uh the 12th century a.d um even the there are angels that are referred to as elohim which is the same name as god and here appear the keto beam are very lesser important importance kind of angel he quotes aristotle and he says to the wise man one sees i think that's [Music] how it goes yeah so he writes that to the wise man one sees that what the bible and talmud refer to as angels are actually allusions to the various laws of nature so he's taken

(45:30) here an allegorical interpretation they are the principles by which the physical universe operates so he's telling us it's not just these figures with wings etc these are the forces of nature these are the principles universal principles and he says this leads aristotle and turn to the demonstrated fact that god glory and majesty to him does not do things by direct contact god burns things by means of fire fire is moved by the motion of the spheres the sphere is moved by means of a disembodied intellect these intellects in being the angels

(46:15) which are near to him through whose mediation the spheres move and so hang on because i don't it's a kind of complicated thing that he's trying to say but i will continue thus totally disembodied minds and this is the part that i want to bring your attention to totally disembodied minds exist which emanate from god and are the intermediaries between god and all the bodies all the objects here in the world so for him these angels are just these emanations these minds that emanate from god and are simply here to interact with us to interact

(47:01) with nature another quote this one is a little bit more comprehensible for all forces are angels all forces of nature are angels how blind how perniciously blind are the naive for the naive person does not understand that the true majesty and power are in the bringing into being of forces which are active anything although they cannot be perceived by the senses thus the sages revealed to the aware that the imaginative faculty is also called an angel so it's the imaginative faculty that's what an angel is and the mind is

(47:50) called a carob how beautiful this will appear to the sophisticated mind how disturbing to the primitive okay who finds it disturbing who finds it sophisticated my point i don't expect to make full sense of this or that you will remember it or the comprehend exactly what he's trying to say but there's an understanding here and this is in the middle ages in the spain middle age spain cordoba that these angels that we read about in the bible are not some human things with wings that are flying around sending messages telling things to

(48:45) people but there are emanations of the one deity and once again if you remember the definition of polytheism that we presented it fits within the picture so are angels the same as god if you believe in angels does that mean that you're polytheistic or not because as maimonides is telling us they're not real beings searches agents of god their minds that have their simply emanate from god in abrahamic religions and zoroastrianism angels are beings envisioned with antimorphic forms generally regardless of what the hyper intellectuals may think

(49:45) more powerful than humans yet less powerful than god they are assumed to be immortal and they have specific roles one of them is to being messengers of god intermediaries between god and humanity they sometimes protect us they guide us and if basically they just carry out god's agenda and the bible as we started learning about these uh angels and so hearing about all these kids and setups they never the bible never mentions these by name except with the exception of gabriel and michael jewish literature during the hellenistic

(50:31) time in about the three uh 300s bce like the book of enoch will take on this and will add a lot more to this understanding of angels and the book of enoch will name michael gabriel raphael uriel and many other uh there's a quite a few more angels we just had this light ready so that's why we're using this one so what is what are these angels and are they different are they god or not and once again we start seeing that the bible uses this bene elohim sons of god to refer to angels sons of the elohim and related phrases

(51:26) occur many times in the bible in job deuteronomy and many psalms and daniel most notably in genesis six one two four this is one of my favorite uh this was probably my favorite passage of genesis when i was a kid because it just has it's pure mythology right um when people began to multiply on the face of the ground and others were born to them the sons of elohim saw that they were fair and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose then yahweh so this not elohim yahweh said my spirit shall not abide in mortals

(52:18) forever for they are flesh their days shall be 120 years the nephilim where on earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of elohim went into the daughters of humans who bore children to them these were the heroes that were of old warriors of renown so i'm sure you're familiar with that story of the nephilim this word is usually translated in english as the giant that's one of the reasons i always wonder i like this passage it's like what are these giants and why don't we read about them in the bible after this passage

(53:06) it's only in the book of enoch that we consider part of this pseudepigrapha because it's not canonized either in the jewish or as part of the jewish or christian scripture except for the church of ethiopia alone is there any other church that uses enoch the book of enoch will add a lot more to this story to the nephilim the sons of god mating with a female humans so the older part of the book of enoch the book of the watchers the watchers are these guys the sons of elohim that uh like women human women come from the around the 300 bce

(54:04) and the latest parts probably from the first century bc in the book of enoch all references to this uh sons of god sons of heaven become simply and explicitly an epithet for angel so by the time people are writing the book of enoch something had happened and sons of god no one had any doubt that meant just angel it no longer means some kind of divine counsel some kind of deities on their own right it simply means angels the fallen angels sometimes we call them uh these these ain't the angels in the story the sons of elohim in this story sometimes

(54:58) are called the fallen angels they are the former ancients of god cast out of heaven and they become enemies on humanity and that's remember that the book of enoch is another important source for apocalyptic literature so let's let's see where we're standing here this sounds of gods what do you think are these would you consider them gods of angels is there any difference between these two so we see how in this pre-exilic period the sounds of god in text like like the one that we read that the psalm that we read the deuteronomy

(55:46) passage here clearly sons of god is making reference to this divine council that echoes that ugaritic literature the divine council is very present it's the divine counsel is the canaanite pantheon and here that is what we see the authors apparently are referring to when they use this ben elohim sons of god what happens after and this is where our records become more abundant the deuteronomic reform and the babylonian exile change this picture so remember with king josiah what we were talking about a few minutes ago

(56:36) king josiah will say we have to just destroy all these azura poles we have to just ground level all these high places we have to concentrate all worship of yahweh at the temple of jerusalem that's a deuteronomic reform so that's when we see clearly in the bible this beginning or at least when we see that this development of monotheism really starts to speed up we have contact once in once in babylon there's not only the babylonians there but soon after the persians arrive in the scene and in the sorrow austrian view uh

(57:29) cosmology we see that we call it like a dualistic religion sometimes because we see the world as a battleground between forces of good and forces of evil and although these are not uh persian words this is in a sense where we get this idea that angels on one side fighting for the good and these demons on the other side these fallen angels or whatever that are the enemy so the develop so the the result of these all these developments is that when the israelites go back to the land go back to jerusalem to judah already this

(58:22) song of god this concept of the council of god sons of god no longer means a divine counsel no longer means the gods of canaan it means simply angel and that is not the same as the divine counsel that is a demoted understanding of what this divine being really is any question all right and so here's where i want to uh this whole this whole thing was an introduction to just talking about all the parallels that we have um of this concept of the sons of the supreme deity once again we have uh often hear this idea that there's very very like a sharp

(59:17) difference between what we read in the bible and what we read in other um sacred texts of other peoples of the the neighbors of of the ancient israelites and yet if we take certain assumptions aside at least for the purpose of our research we see certain parallels that can be very enlightening so remember that we have all these sounds of gods the ben ilm assembly of the sons of gods these are all little phrases that appear once and again in the literature that was discovered in the city of ugarit so all these texts of this cuneiform

(1:00:06) texts on written on clay tablets that were discovered in the 19th in the early 20th century and that are still being translated and so we get all these references to the assemblies of the sons of god the sons of gods we learn that el and asherah had 70 sons including this force of nature the sea that we talked about before but other forces of nature like death the stars uh other gods like ba'a'al the god of storm anat the huntress they all emanate from this el anashira divine royal couple um here this concept of the hirosgamus or

(1:01:02) holy marriage with the daughter of uh of men that we we saw in this story of genesis of the fallen angels exists here in the ugaritic text and it gives legitimacy to the kings of ugarit that can trace their descendants to the gods themselves through these holy marriages between a human ancestor and a deity each uh each of these people okay ogarit is one city in this region that we call it's a cultural region that we call canaan or sometimes in modern some modern scholars don't like the word canaan and they use like the west

(1:01:54) semites ugarit is just one of these people and each of them had a specific god that ruled over that region like notably kimosh in moab and kaus in edom and yahweh and judah and israel so we hear about these three gods in the bible these are assumed to be the sons of asherah and el not all of them appear in the ugaritic text however a very interesting uh passage in the bible that explains a little bit of this idea of the songs of ashira and l and how they become the gods of different peoples of the earth is it comes from deuteronomy

(1:02:53) when elion that is when god most high gave nations their land when he divided the descendants of adam he set up borders for the tribes corresponding to the number of sons of israel but yahweh's people were his property jacob his own possession and just a reminder here this is thought to be composed in jerusalem around the 7th century bce in the context of the reforms that took place during the reign of king josiah the deuteronomic reform that we we mentioned this text was edited later during the babylonian period and even the persian

(1:03:42) period but here we see this concept in the bible of this figure this deity elion dividing the lands dividing the people and assigning to each nation one god and yahweh happens to be the god that takes the sons of israel there's another this one is very interesting very interesting passage in samuel is david's uh king david offers a prayer and we see all sorts of things here i'll let you tell me what it is because there's it's a little contradictory therefore you are great o adonai yahweh for there is no one like you and there is no

(1:04:34) elohim besides you according to all that we have heard with our ears who is like your people like israel is there another nation on earth whose elohim went to redeem it as a people and to make a name for himself doing great and awesome things for them by driving out before his people nations and their gods and you established your people israel for yourself to your people to be your people forever and you yahuweh became their elohim do you notice anything interesting about this passage this prayer so there's a statement sorry

(1:05:29) elohim elohim is more like a deity here there's a clear monotheistic statement that is making that david is making in the middle of talking about other nations and their gods and how yahweh yahweh is so much better than all these other gods because he is capable of just pushing away all these other gods so that's this is from the book of samuel ii samuel whose earliest parts were believed to be composed in the time of king hezekiah that is the 8th century bc so this is before deuteronomy but the latest editions and the bulk of

(1:06:24) the edition of this text is believed to have happened as late as the hellenistic period so even after the persians so we see here there is no elohim besides you that's a clear monotheistic thing to say however we continue to talk about other nations and their gods driving their people and their gods so is it what is it david this concept of god uh the sons of god is not only present here in the immediate neighbors of israel all the canaanite people but it's a common motif it's a common element in the mythology of the broader

(1:07:26) region of mesopotamia that had a great deal of influence over canaan and this includes the mythologies of the sumerians the acadians the assyrians and the babylonians and these remember these are much much old all these texts are much older than the hebrew bible and some of them are like a thousand years older some of the texts that we have available these songs of god here in in sumer are called the anunnaki an anunnaki simply means the offspring of an or anu who's the sky god and his consort the earth goddess ki so it's

(1:08:24) the idea once again of the sky god everything else is an an offspring a son a children of this sky god and some of the most we don't know the name of all these anunnaki but the most famous ones are these gods whose mythologies whose stories are more familiar to us like enlil like enki inanna etc like remember n little um in the in the flat story of the mesopotamians and is the god that rules the universe rules on earth at the time enki ah sometimes called he will side with udnapishtim the mesopotamian noah to help udnapishtim

(1:09:23) uh build a boat to save his family to save the animals etc um inanna is the one that we know from the epic of gilgamesh the one that falls in love with gilgamesh and gilgamesh rejects her and she gets really mad she's the one that goes into the underworld in another famous myth so all these gods have a much more elaborate mythology in mesopotamia these sons of god however the mesopotamian texts often talk about these anunnaki and they refer to them as a cohesive group although we do have some that are gods and goddesses on their own

(1:10:16) right the literature of mesopotamia often continues to talk about this anunnaki as one group of deities and they have very inconsistent descriptions once again we don't know how many we don't know exactly what they do what their function was if there were messengers of anu anu is a very very uh removed god he lives in the highest heaven and is completely inaccessible to humans uh the hittites the the hittite scribes identified these uh anunnaki with the oldest generation of hittite gods that get banished by the younger gods of the hittites and

(1:11:03) are sent into the underworld and scholars believe that this may have been an influence on the development of the greek uh story of the titans the descendants of the primordial deities like the sky and the earth uranus and they are the predecessors the previous generation the uh uh the generation of gods before the olympians take supremacy so that's the material and now i started with um i'm not sure if i was telling somebody to so i don't know if i said it while the lecture was going or i said it before the lecture we

(1:11:54) were talking about it during meditation today i find this topic fascinating in itself i do like mythology i do like to read about all these people and make connections and i often wonder to what extent this is of any relevance in the modern world why would we ponder about all these possibilities what can we make of it how can we relate to it because so we'll start with some conclusions that hopefully will lead up to some questions that i would like to discuss tonight and it's perfect it's before nine so unfounded assumptions

(1:12:43) commonly held not only by the general public but also by many scholars tell us that pre-exilic israel was monotheistic so pre-exilic israel worship had an understanding of divinity that was one deity ancient the other assumption is often we talked about in the previous lecture that israelites and canaanites are different people and so whatever may have happened to these canaanites people had nothing to do with the israelites because in the bible in the book of joshua we hear that the israelites enter the land and they wipe out

(1:13:31) all the canaanites so if we believe that story the israelites and canaanites are different people so whatever gods the canaanites were worshiping has no consequence to israel finally the third assumption that sometimes clouds our research is polytheism in ancient israel was the product of syncretism because of this israel is monotheistic everyone else is polytheistic they're living together therefore if your neighbor tells you you know if you if you worship my god you might you know maybe you might get a better harvest

(1:14:18) this summer um syncretism now if we just use these assumptions in our research i will argue that a few things will happen so we end up having a very very superficial reading of the text so we lose depth in the content and of the text that we're reading it's going to lead to misinterpretation of the intention of the author so we are going to lose certain symbolism metaphor and then what happens is there's a devaluation of the text because all of a sudden it loses its meaning and this is why for many people the text is no longer useful we cannot

(1:15:17) relate to it and uh like my friend that i sometimes we start talking about these things he just tells me that but why do you read genesis it's he's he's from english so he's it's all rubbish just adam and eve and then uh they have two sons and then one gets killed and then all of a sudden more people appear what's that that's rubbish um so again we just lose the metaphor we don't understand the meaning of the text and all the complexity of the text all its depth gets completely lost and of course we cannot relate to something like that

(1:16:02) it's it really has it's not history we know it's it's not science so what is it how do we does he have any value in the 21st century however if we try to set these assumptions aside when we read this text and we read we read it as if it were sacred text of any ancient people without using these three assumptions we can see a clear continuity between bronze age canaanite religion and first temple judaism that what includes things like the names of the deities their epithets their descriptions and many other um phrases

(1:16:56) and and motifs the text shared these motifs and themes sometimes we call these the me themes so these mythological themes with the broader mesopotamian culture so we can just trace uh some of these motifs in the mythology all the way back to sumer the path to religious innovation is not as simple as this model that was proposed in the 19th century and that we continue to use and we continue to repeat and take for granted that we start as animists believing that their spirits everywhere and as we get more sophisticated all these spirits all these forces of

(1:17:52) nature becomes gods and all of a sudden we write mythologies about them eventually we pick one of them we make this god our god we worship this god but it's okay to worship other gods until someone tells you no you have to stop worshiping other gods only worship your god and of course the obvious evolution of that will be well only our god exists so that's that's the story but however when you read when you see the evidence it looks like this diagram this categories are have a lot of overlap and are easy to permeate because it seems like as we go

(1:18:41) in time as we move forward in time we just continue to go back and forth from one to another so these innovations cross these scholarly constructed categories and we must remember that that's what those are so we often try to squeeze a religion a sacred text that we read into these categories and it's just a category that we use for you know ease of understanding it helps our study but however we often we see that different things are happening and i will argue that similar trends continue to happen today so these concepts of divinity and

(1:19:34) humanity in western society we can see traces of these concepts that go all the way back to ancient sumer we can see concerns we can see motifs that we read in the ancient in the most ancient texts that we have available like the epic of gilgamesh like the descent of inanimate to the underworld there's a continuity that happens from there into the stories of the canaanites like the ba'al cycle in ugarit there's a continuity from this into the biblical texts and so what does it is there a continuity from that there's

(1:20:17) religious constant reinterpretation of all these human concerns that people wrote about in a very symbolic way so questions like the meaning of life the problem of evil that continues to hunt us especially when we face adversity uh so for example we do we even consider these questions like the answer to me is kind of no because it sounds ridiculous but but if if we were talking about ancient people we would consider it are hawaiian christians henotheistic because they talk about pele because technically they're christians or

(1:21:02) buddhists or atheists but but then now everyone is talking about pele and offering making little offerings to pele so does that mean that then the religion of hawaii is henotheistic at least at times the other question is like okay but these people that you see in the news talking about pele do they really believe that there's a spirit or there's a woman that lives in the volcano and she every now and then gets angry and starts spitting lava and destroy our houses or they just mean that symbolically well i think more often we would say that

(1:21:54) it's just symbolically and yet if we talk about ancient peoples we tend to think that no they really believe it so this this double standard so is this oh well this is my aunt hold on if she's watching she didn't know that i was going to talk about her but so she's jewish and yet once a month she goes and she makes her offerings to this catholic saint but she's every other day of the month she's jewish she follows you know kosher and she celebrates all the jewish festivals but once a month she goes and worships uh saint expeditis and a

(1:22:43) church near her house is that henotheism because that's pretty much the kind of things that the prophets were complaining about in the bible and yet it can happen now why what because maybe whatever she finds in her um and this catholic scene is something that she can't find in in in the other 29 30 days of the month so can we better understand these ancient religions if we look at what people are doing today and the other question would be if you know can we gain insight about ourselves today and our way of thinking our way of our reactions

(1:23:40) in the face of adversity when we see that bad things happen at random that bad things happen to the good and to the uh regardless you do good or evil bad things happen um so can we learn anything about ourselves and can we find any answers if we study all these ancient texts understanding this continuity that we often say it leads to us that it refines itself in a this kind of artificial line and yet it seems that we're continually crossing these categories that's it we made it to the end thank you [Applause] your talk is entirely about texts but

(1:24:39) there's also a wealth of images from this period some of which are showing yeah to what extent does that throw more light on the things you're talking about yeah well um some of the images uh for example we don't we don't have a lot of images of these sons of god in the biblical period we do have depictions of some of the canaanite gods we do have depictions of the mesopotamian anunnaki and they already appear as human figures with wings eventually that's the imagery that we will adopt later this is at the time of uh it's much later even later than all

(1:25:32) the texts that we're discussing the imagery that we will often have in mind when we think of angels although not all of them are human-like like the angel like the ketub of um ezekiel that has all these different faces because the schedule is representing all the forces of nature all nature and just one divine creature i don't know if you're thinking of any other image in particular yeah in general it's a whole additional source of yeah yeah i i focus primarily on text uh some imagery i mentioned but primarily texts like all

(1:26:25) these um in continuation with all the the body of literature of ugarit that i presented in the previous lecture and how it we see a lot of echoes of all this content of all these uh themes in the mythology of all these names of the gods of all these epithets or even the stories that happen in the things that they've all cycled etc how we we find parallels in in israel but yeah not not a lot of imagery so maybe next time so you mentioned second samuel chapter seven i was just wondering which version did you use to translate those

(1:27:21) words yeah this is the new revised standard version and with uh which is often considered by most scholars the the most accurate translation that we have today however the words god and lord i left in the original hebrew so that's why because i would i would like to show what the original text uh how the original text is addressing god how david uh there is addressing god as adonai yahweh as elohim yeah which is the reason why i'm asking and i just looked it up it was kind of different translation for gods um that that came

(1:28:08) up that's what i wanted to make sure which uh and what version um in the original hebrew okay yeah it was in the original hebrew at that point but um thank you for that i had another question yeah you have to show it to me after yes i will yeah because i'm using yeah like this resources that i don't speak i don't read hebrew so i'm using the both the new revised standard version that is we consider the most accurate translation and side by side with the name names of god version that preserves the original hebrew but it's the

(1:28:47) translation sometimes is less accurate i saw something different that's what i wanted to make sure so my second question would be do you know currently how many deities are being worshipped on earth right now i no i have no idea to you i just i just think it's probably a lot i i think it's probably probably is a lot you know as you know what what's interesting is that it never occurred to me how many deities we worship because if you if you account i mean they say that there's like 300 million it just within hinduism

(1:29:28) uh so i don't know if they all get worshipped at all times but yeah there's quite a lot and there's not only uh you know it once again it's like what is a deity so there's a catholic saying for each day so are all those deities or not because they for all practical purposes they are because people worship the saint people technically the saint is a human being that was sanctified and is simply a messenger it's an intermediary between the worshipper and god but then you tend to forget that there's this god behind because you make the promise

(1:30:12) to to your saint and then who delivers is not a god it's not that somehow you you see okay i talked to my saint and then it's god the one that comes back and gives me what i wanted or helped but people will tell you that yeah it's saying x who helped me get a job is this one who helped me heal from this affliction it's it's the saint himself or herself so are they deities yes i would say but maybe not everyone will agree i think um let me do things i think it's interesting to ask to you know what what things or forces are

(1:30:59) deified so we could think about deities with you know beings with histories behind them but you know in this modern society is is money deified is science deified have you seen american gods this yes i'm familiar with that yes i don't like the show but you know they have the internet they have tv they have a bunch of other kind of gods that are modern things perhaps modern takes on testimony these are some of those swelling forces that were originally worshipped as some of these forces you know some of these these these

(1:31:39) deity-like forces of nature going back to ancient times um another ques you know with that same samuel reading i thought it was very interesting the idea that the reading shows the idea that the people could perhaps by consuming from the fruit of knowledge you know become like god like like us as genesis okay so you said that comment but like this i one thing that i was thinking about this earlier today or yesterday was it says they may become like us and some people interpret that to mean oh it means there were other

(1:32:20) gods there was you know but i just wonder the timeline of that versus like how long have kings refer to themselves in the plural perhaps influencing the writers because a lot of people have written oh we are not amused we are not pleased you know and so i just wonder if that could have perhaps in that sort of thought thought in the on the on the part of the writers might have influenced the language used as well that works in english not in every language so i had no idea that yeah in english you can say things like oh you

(1:32:58) it's my microphone that you touch the thing it's the other one so in english you can say give us a hug meaning give me a hug and spanish makes no sense like to whom and who else so so sometimes we think that english is the language that we because we read english we think in english but i don't know if that might be true for for the hebrew it is true that uh they did use this word elohim for a whole lot of things do you speak hebrew do you speak hebrew because you know this this us thing is very different it's not just the words that i i do know

(1:33:43) that yet this elohim which is technically a plural is also used to mean singular to mean a singular uh either common a noun that means god or the name of the deity god with capital g but i never heard any any word saying that you can say us just to mean singular i mean it could go also opposite of the way initially suggested that you know based on wanting to use doctrines of divine right to rule well if in these spiritual texts we're using a plural well then if i'm going to base my kingship based on divinity and dissent from a god it makes

(1:34:28) sense to refer to myself as a plural king it may but like remember that there's many components that we should pay attention to in that passage because one is the fact that it seems like you as a human have the capacity to become a god or at least like a god if in addition to having a knowledge of good and evil you also live forever and so it seems like those are the characteristics of what being a deity is is to have knowledge of good and evil and to be immortal and if you have that then you're a god that's what the text

(1:35:13) is saying whether or not the us is singular or plural it opens the door to the possibility that there might be many so that's why the one god that is talking says no no more i guess no no i don't know why the text doesn't say why that would be a bad thing but the possibility apparently is there valerie just further to the interesting question of you know and of course we couldn't really determine it but how many gods possibly are being worshipped on the earth presently yeah yeah um about 20 years ago in my neighborhood and i

(1:36:09) live in the blue risk village area um there was a tibetan center located very close to where i live which is deep in the neighborhood it's not on a thoroughfare and so those who people who attend there tend to be locals and we're talking middle class caucasian mainly you know reasonably well educated and fairly modern and one of the most popular uh events uh on their monthly roster that is would see on their front window they were like a storefront operation at that point they subsequently moved to a bigger um bigger better funded uh location but

(1:36:50) at that time the most popular events were what were called the green tara and the white tara meditation slash venerations and these are quasi deities from tibetan lore female uh and i don't know how much they're overlaid with the buddhist notion of the bodhisattva which is like a saint figure and so it is mahayana buddhism after all but but they were also i do believe sourced in the more ancient bone religion of tibet and be that as in may these were hugely well and i would see the people walking in mainly middle-aged uh

(1:37:28) sort of women but from the neighborhood and so it would be hard to ascertain do they really believe in the existence of these deities um what purpose do they serve i mean this would be sociologist questions in some ways uh do they treat them as a metaphor or archetype let's say or you know some form of myth or is it something let's say um more like a subject you know like a object of devotion and how is it that something like that can you know arise in in a fairly modern society and um and and and you know and is it and it

(1:38:10) seemed to me that you know like what i was saying too was some uh cross-pollination with new age ideas and so it's very fruitful i mean it just keeps happening you know like in terms of you know how many gods are worshipped well this was like happening right in my neighborhood yeah you know and these people were showing up month in month out doing this obviously this is something they're devoted to and and so it's very curious you know it's not just you know in faraway places you know with you know lacking modernity

(1:38:37) but like here on our doorstep uh in my experience with different kinds of japanese buddhism for many years even though it's buddhism and technically when you go and you learn about the philosophy of it you they might tell you things like uh well you're just looking at this representation and yeah here's indra the the hindu god india and here's this other uh god and here's uh the shakyamuni buddha and here is the eternal buddha and here's a dragon and here's another celestial beings and and they tell you well but this is all

(1:39:22) like a metaphor of this and that and that however when people talk those metaphors become real they give meaning to the randomness that we see around us and so i don't know if they really believe that the dragon is a dragon but the dragon somehow helps make sense of this randomness especially when something really bad happens well and i think one of the tarots i can remember which is more used for like medical healing and so perhaps they had like issues but but but but uh it just seemed that this was like a real worship

(1:40:11) oh where are you going to say something oh hi hello i just wanted to make a couple points here you said about uh as one of the names of god i think maybe what you're talking about when they talk for example it'll say in the bible it means the god of abraham i think it was a possessive term i don't recall anything in there saying so you may have misinterpreted that as i said i i'm reading a translation of the bible into english that preserves names of god and not only in that phrase and in that passage but in many many other passages

(1:41:05) one of the ways in one of the hebrew words that gets translated into english as god is this thing sometimes it's elohim sometimes it's l uh there's a couple more but um sometimes even like the word shaddai gets translated as god just shaddai alone without you know there's el shaddai you know god sometimes i think it's translated as god most high even though almighty even though scholars say el shaddai means god of the mountain as in l of the mountain because l also lived in a mountain but then it all gets translated with just one word that brings us to the

(1:41:57) word el juan el yon means and so it's it's spelled differently it's better than ein not an aleph so there's there's no uh el elyon means the hot the the god above or of high or i believe that's what i said yeah no i thought you said el yuan was one of the names of god so anyway i thought you'd like to know you're talking about genesis yeah and um it's interesting genesis starts with the hebrew word sheet in the beginning okay and the kabbalistic meaning why does the torah start with the letter bet instead of the word olive

(1:42:39) okay so it's to let us know that there was something before that so the kabbalists believed that there was a world before this that was destroyed northam and nowhere in like that but another world okay and that's how they explain dinosaurs and things like that so another world that god destroyed or another creation before us so that's the kabbalistic interpretation of that i thought you just like to know that and um there are many things that that's a good one i didn't know that although you know there's this is just a fraction of all the

(1:43:14) material that is available there's many many many other passages where we can find traces of not strict monotheism in the bible and we can find any other interesting things we only have so much time here to talk about everything so but that one i didn't know yeah and the thing about elohim it also could mean just gods with a small g because talk about yes i said that too yeah okay elohim other gods right yeah so there's big g versus little jesus little jesus yes yeah i mentioned that jesus right um and i thought you might like to know

(1:43:52) you're talking about going you define christianity as a monotheistic religion but i'm afraid to tell you that i'm afraid to disappoint you that orthodox judaism defines christianity as a tri-theistic religion why are you afraid of telling me that well i don't want to just i didn't want to disappoint you to find out you're a hypno theist because see all the assad you're making an assumption upon assumption when you assume you make an asset of you and me i know that one yeah but because what happens is the because of the belief in the

(1:44:25) in god jesus and the holy spirit yeah it's it's considered three gods so orthodox jews in the bible you're not allowed to to go into a pagan temple no i i i'm very aware of that and there's also you know there's criticism also comes from you know the islam and to christianity about you know this lecture there's so many things a christian church and from protestants that talk about well how catholics are policies yesterday we always assume that monotheism is better yeah and then everything else is there yeah they're allowed to go into

(1:44:57) mosques not to pray or anything but if they have to go in for some some meeting or something like that but they're not allowed to go into christian churches because of this tri-theistic belief in the trinity basically okay and um i thought you might not know the what you call the chair i'm sorry am i stealing your thunder here the chair no no that's okay that's okay do you have many many other notes it's just a cheese just a little bit are you applying to make your own presentation yeah just another minute well all right well i'll just i'll just close

(1:45:36) close yeah sorry pardon me yeah yeah yeah it says it's the same word as in the hebrew it's a sword so you're talking about angels that hold swords is for the word in hebrew which means to burn okay burning angels and angels of swords i thought you might like to know the the very interesting yeah yeah and i'll just say my mind is i'll just say one more thing there's a saying from moses to moses there's none other risen like moses so from the original moses to moses nobody has been as great as those two yeah so that's the that's in his own

(1:46:14) lifetime he was quite uh he was quite despised by most most of the orthodox jerusalem but it turns out in history he really liked aristotle so i don't know yeah he was yeah he was quite divisive but uh history is proved to be right uh elizabeth in my neighborhood there's a shop that i pass sometimes and in the in the window there are busts of elvis presley and it has occurred to me that in if in an earlier time elvis presley would be canonized people would pray to him because obviously people buy these rather vulgar

(1:47:07) works of art and they must have them in their houses and they must respect if not venerate them it's very strange to me and i'm sure there are other people i've i've i i've been in houses where where there's a picture of jesus and there's a picture of john kennedy well uh i was thinking about that like you know very very i don't know loved political figures like in my country with evita yeah so a lot of people still ha i don't know if it continues today a lot but i remember like when i was a kid my uh going into members of my family their

(1:47:55) houses and uh and there was a shrine not just a photo but a whole shrine with flowers sometimes candles and there she is so it is is that how is that different from having a statue of mary because it's very similar and she is sometimes looking a lot like her in that kind of facial expression yeah well i suppose the difference is that she's an actual historical figure we know that she actually lived yep because i i was thinking let the bright seraphim and burning row their loud uplifted trumpets blow i'm quoting quoting milton uh

(1:48:44) handel yeah so yeah seraphim are um traditionally painted with bright red faces because they're burning there you go yeah ready i had heard that elvis had wondered about the the origin of his name because i never heard that name before and and he was comforted when someone pointed out to him that there he has an l in his name which is one of the names of god oh really that's someone told him that yeah well we all not my name but i'm sure that a lot of names here have you know this uh part of a deity like we call these

(1:49:34) theophoric names uh yours us my call phil gabriel yeah all those have the l subs yours has a bowel well there's a reason raphael uh there's two hands back there i only see one now but oh there you go you know one question that came up with the talk tonight you were talking about baal and talking about these different similarities between some of the different mesotamian faiths or how you know there'd be some ideas where there were the 70 sons and they were divided up so i'm just wondering it gave me the thought that you know for example what i

(1:50:36) might have thought when i was a kid or things when i heard about you know the worship of by al which is one of one of the only or all sorts one of the only other other gods i can remember being named in the bible and i think as a child or as a young person i had the impression that ba all must have been this sort of monstrous demonic type figure but i get i sort of more have the impression for what i've seen tonight that that might be a bit of a misconception so could you tell me in terms of how buy out ball would have been you

(1:51:13) know viewed by balls worshipers would there be a lot of similar traits as to how yahweh would have been seen by yahweh's worshippers in a previous lecture we saw a process happening to ba'a'al that is rather similar to what happens here with the sons of god as a whole and so here the sons of god beca start in bronze age canaan as the council the pantheon just like this image that we have when we think about the 12 olympians all these gods that are just hanging out together looking chill and beautiful that kind of thing

(1:51:58) that's the council of gods i wanted to use that slide from a previous lecture but i couldn't find it so we have that image of the greek gods and this is a it's a totally wrong that image but what i want to say it's more like those gods what we start with one of those gods was ba'al and then eventually ba'al becomes the supreme deity of many canaanite people not all of them but you know definitely in ugarit the entire uh ba'al like that the god of tyre is mel kharit which is the the ba'al of the city and so many other cities had this ba

(1:52:42) alex it becomes the what yahweh is for israelites ba'al is for many of these cities that we now in the iron age call phoenicia but as we move on in time and we get into the you know this uh more historical period it starts to get demoted and so it starts as a supreme deity and eventually by the time that we get to the writings of the new testament the al is a demon as bell cebu and so this this is a similar process as as we so the argument is as you start developing this more strictly monotheistic understanding of the universe being only one

(1:53:42) god then all these other gods that you remember the people are still worshiping then all of a sudden first you uh absorb the al gets absorbed into yahweh so many of the stories of many of the attributes of many of the epic tests like writer of the clouds that's an epithet of ba'al that gets absorbed into yahweh and we see that in several passages in the bible this idea that yahweh is also a storm god but it gets less and less important and becomes just one of the bad angels by the time the christian writers are writing the new testament

(1:54:30) there's a question just on our question of bahal um can you you you gave us the different names of god right and can you give us different names of bahal throughout the age i mean for to the uh the hellenistic time for example bahal go through all these ages and find itself with a different name for example in the roman empire in the roman empire yes can you trace bahal all the way to the roman empire so ba al i the only uh the only thing i can think of about al in roman times is when uh when the romans get to carthage

(1:55:15) and you know they had they got there is still ba'a'al said the because carthage is a tyrion colony and so interior tyrion's caught uh called their god as i said melcat but this is the ba of the city because syria tyre is the city is the most important phoenician city at the time and so it's the city the god uh there there's other uh there's associations that happen between ba al and the mesopotamian and so sometimes for example the god of in uh in several cities like resemble damascus we have baal haddad for example and then

(1:56:05) ba'a'al becomes just like el becomes a word to me in god but al becomes a word that just means lord and so sometimes you know you have lord and something else so baal something else like val haddad but i'm not aware that uh that the name of like just changes and it gets to the roman empire in any form because but i just said that one of the things that's going to happen is the syncretism and so it'll be ball would be associated with zeus yeah things like that right and so because polytheists often saw each other's gods

(1:56:46) so he's jupiter you know as far as as far as like yeah he is the the zeus of mount zapon that mounts upon is is the city that is near ugarit and that's val so getting to my uh questions here um in your own research that you did about the uh the who got it text yeah um did you come across the concept of idolatry by any chance no okay no the this concept of idolatry it would be a good lecture on its own right just to see the development of this idea that it's not okay to worship the image of a god but it doesn't exist and

(1:57:38) there's no evidence suggesting that um the the people of ugarit were against cultic images because we do have some imagery of ba ao coming from that period however we have to remember that ogari ends in the 12000 bce and so all these texts that can 1200 sorry 1200 bce is when ugarit gets destroyed and it never gets rebuilt and so all these this civilization ends right there the writings about idolatry come much later than that and my last question that might be more complex there might be take you longer than this concept of mind and versus

(1:58:32) object when it comes to angels yeah yeah i mean so if i understand it correctly um this uh jewish philosopher basically says that angels are basically just they're not bodies we understand that but it's just they are similar to to just minds or thoughts emanations of thoughts of god is that i wish michael were here because that's that's very aristotelian yeah i'll say that he's completely in keeping there with regular with christian and also muslims so anyway you can't see me but i'll talk in the over here so and so we're going

(1:59:11) to do a lecture in about a month on ptolemic cosmology and that and he's really very clearly describing that where essentially he's talking about the motion of the spheres and that essentially god is setting everything in motion the angels are causing everything to move this is the same sort of aristotelian view of the universe that you know continues all the way down to copernicus and so it's essentially describing all of cosmic motion why is anything moving why is there any cause and effect you have to get back to the

(1:59:37) first cause which is god but in between the angels are these causes that are the immediate emanations between the prime mover god and the fit the lower part of the physical world so that includes all the celestial spheres so the these crystal spheres that all the stars and planets are all set in they're all moving and that's causing everything below to move yeah well okay oh yeah go ahead just to get go go with that thought about angels i'll make a quick the fact that you think that maybe that there are emanations of god or

(2:00:09) thoughts that god's planted in your head uh the emanations of god what i'm sorry there are thoughts that god has planted in your head there seems to be some evidence that there's some kind of physical manifestation because when abraham meets an angel the angel tells him put off your shoes for your now stepping on holy ground because the angel is there so whether that's a physical manifestation that god has sent down or just as thoughts there's some kind of presence in there but i want to go into this ball of business for a

(2:00:36) second uh baal in hebrew there's three at least three interpretations it could be husband the modern hebrew user actually most hebrew uses a husband it could be master and it could be owner and they're still used today okay and matter of fact the first the first classific rabbi the one who founded khasidism was was known as the baal shem tov the master of the good name so it's for for our purposes we're talking about not modern times although that's really interesting that the word made its way to modern times as such

(2:01:11) but our primary concern i guess it's it's this ancient period where ba'al is a deity that eventually becomes just a bad angel but as far as i know baal is not even mentioned in the torah the mean protagonist is as malach two two weeks ago we read in the in the yes it is mentioned the weekly portion it is mentioned because and in the deuteronomic reform they mentioned ba'al by name look it up okay i said i'm not sure but the main protagonist always seems to be malach he said you shall not pass your children to

(2:01:44) the fire to malak because that was the the worst the worst uh kind of sacrificing you can do and lastly i just want about graven images for a second just talk about this prohibition of graven images and yet on the ark of the covenant god commands basal the man who fashioned all the all the temple instruments to carve uh images of the cherubim right on the archetype arc of the government so it seems a contradiction there you're not allowed to have statues but you have these statuesque things right on the arctic covenant so yeah

(2:02:20) that's another interesting one and it's always portrayed that way uh valerie the microphone behind you yeah just back to the uh briefly the the question about the emanations and you know starting with the mind and then going down it's very reminiscent to me too of neoplatonism which is kind of intermediary between aristotle and and later um sort of medieval thought and i do believe i i've come across uh the the idea that um medieval judaism or i i don't know whether uh kabbalistic or what was influenced by uh by um neoplatonism along also i think

(2:03:01) was developing muslim thought at the time but somebody else could address that i don't know enough about it but my but the question i wanted to ask was um you refer to asherah as the mother goddess and i'm wondering if um the gentleman over here asked about whether uh ball could be traced into roman times what about asherah did she later become like a starter or easter or whatever you know where you know sometimes she gets into egyptian mythology but the the goddess that becomes more associated with other greco-roman deities are um ishtar

(2:03:44) that in uh in canaan she is something ashtart okay actually the two names don't really and then which is anat so ishtar ashtart is associated with aphrodite because she is a she the same attributes of the goddess of you know sexual passion fertility um and then anat who is associated with um minerva this is a huntress uh not virgin but unmarried goddess uh shera i'm i don't think i mean the most obvious thing would be for ashira to become hera but i'm not aware so the just the name sounded similar i was wondering yeah i know all those you know

(2:04:30) she's uh ashira is the the hebrew name for her uh and it is i'm not sure i'm pronouncing yeah correctly but they're all very similar um there's a depending on the diet like they change ashtaroth um this is the last your yours is going to be the last question okay because it's it's almost 10. oh i was thinking of the rabbits in watership down and i'd rather think that the author may treat them as a model of a kind of um primitive worship uh frith by the way frith is an an old english word it means peace it's cognate with the german freed

(2:05:29) uh frith is god and frith is also the son and they don't distinguish between the two and i wonder if this is not something that happens in certain kinds of worship it could be i mean sometimes when you have one word for two different things how do you distinguish them yes i think one of the best com my favorite comment on this topic comes from wayne and schuster they were um the greatest canadian comedy team oh okay and they had a little skit showing uh two roman soldiers they were talking about those christians and one says you know that they believe

(2:06:18) in only one god and everyone says well that's the next thing to atheism thank you i have to look that up thanks everyone for joining us online if you're still there so see you next time you