Transcript & Glossaries

T&MP Before God Was God - Centre Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kaauBP9_Dg

Table of Contents

Transcript:

Introduction to the Concept of Change in God

(00:10) And I would like to start with something that I found on Instagram the other day. Uh a very prominent theologian on Instagram said, "God never changes." And that's this guy. I don't know if you know him. It happens to be a Canadian theologian. No, it says, yeah, it says Justin Bieber on his Instagram feed posted this this thing.

(00:37) And if you were wondering whether Instagram was the right thing for you, I may have ruined it forever. Um but but I thought it was very interesting because uh he actually or he or whoever uh gave him this meme is uh quoting here as it's it's telling us what the source of this is. And in fact, when you go to the book of uh Hebrews and you check this quote, it actually it pretty much conveys the opposite idea because what we hear what we read here first of all is that is not God but it's Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. But

(01:21) this is slightly taking out of context because here the message is do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace not by regulations about food so on and so forth. So in fact this passage of Hebrews is talking about change. is talking about a change that is happening and that is causing a division between the Jewish community that is starting to define identify themselves as Christians and the rest of the Jewish community.

(01:58) So I see here not a god that doesn't change but a beginning of a change. Now this is um we had a here uh recently a lecture on the topic of the ontological argument. So this lecture is not a theologic of theology or philosophy. Um so from a theological or philosophical viewpoint we may argue that this might be right.

The Baal Cycle Mythology

(02:32) uh instead we'll see what uh my point is when I talk about a god that changes. So without further ado because we have a lot of people here from our meditation group that u have decided to stay u because we actually uh work through uh some of the material that I'm going to present during our meditation today. I will like to follow to get just to dive in uh the Bahal cycle and I don't know how many of you are already familiar with the Bahal cycle.

(03:09) It's not one of the most famous mythological stories. We're far more aware of the mythology that we find in the Hebrew Bible, Greek mythology, Mesopotamian mythology, but not so much with the mythology of these people that we call the Canaanites. And this is one of the main stories that we have from them and written by them in their own words.

(03:38) So the story unfortunately is contained in a a number of clay tablets. Many of those are heavily damaged and many of those are simply lost. So there are a lot of parts that uh a lot of lines that we're missing. Uh unfortunately we are missing the beginning. But when we are able to start reading the story we see yum.

(04:05) Yam is the deification of the sea and it's not so much like the like posidum like a anthropomorphic kind of god but you have to think of yam as as a force of nature as a primordial force of nature that is claiming supremacy over the gods and c claims ba c says that he wants to uh humble ba Al L who happens to be we learn the king and the judge and the ruler of the assembly of the gods decides for reasons that are not made clear decides to surrender this other god Baal to the wishes of sea and after a little bit of an adventure

(05:00) there's this other god whose name translates as skill and wisdom who helps Baal to defeat a monster, a sea monster. Some uh sometimes uh referred to as a serpent, sometimes as a dragon is called in some sources Litten, sometimes it's translated as Loten. And after defeating this monster, the sea monster, uh C is defeated.

(05:29) What follows here is the gods proclaim that Baal, this god Baal that has just defeated the primordial force of nature of the sea. He is now the conqueror and he's also the rider on the clouds. And it helps when you are Bal and and when you are a god that is trying to rise to supremacy to have a very violent sister and Anat is presented as Bal's sister and she is a really uh dangerous uh goddess.

(06:10) She threatens the gods. She threatens to do horrible things to the other gods and the other gods have to say, "Okay, go ahead. Just do whatever you want." And so they get away with this uh with their plan of promoting Baal to be the new king, the new judge, the new ruler of the assembly of the gods.

(06:34) And they build a palace to Baal in a mountain that is on the Syrian coast. that becomes the that's Mount Safon or Mount Sephon. Uh Baal at this point apparently once you become the new king of the gods. This is something that you have to talk about with death. You have to communicate to this other p primordial force of nature, death, that you are now the new king.

(07:13) So Bal sends his messengers to this god that deifies the concept of death. And death responds to Baal. When you killed Litten, the fleeing serpent finished off the twisting serpent. The sevenheaded monster, the heavens withered and weakened like the falls of Europe. Now you must descend into the throat of El's song, death, into the watery depths of El's darling, the hero.

(07:49) And I want to bring your attention here uh to these little things that sound a little silly at first sight when we talk about El's darling, the hero. We're always talking about death, but this is very important in these mythological stories. How we describe these gods or these forces of nature with all these things that we call uh epithets.

Parallels in the Hebrew Bible

(08:20) There's a very very interesting parallel to this story that we find in the Hebrew Bible in the book of Isaiah. On that day, Yahweh will use his fierce and powerful sword to punish Leviathan, that slippery snake. Leviathan, that twisting snake. He will kill that monster which lives in the sea. So, I'm not suggesting here that Isaiah is copying the Baal cycle.

(08:52) I'm just pointing out certain commonalities between these two mythological stories that we also find in other mythological stories like many of you know the story of the Anumalish, the Mesopotamian story of the god Marduk defeating the sea monster, the primordial sea monster Tiiamat And um and even in at in a more abstract uh way we find this same concept at the beginning of the Bible in the book of Genesis when Yahweh here not no sorry not Yahweh Elohim I'm using uh when I'm uh using uh Bible passages I for the most part I'm using

(09:50) translation that is called names of God. For the purpose of this lecture, I think is important to see what the original Hebrew word is used when we talk about God because there are many many different uh words in the original language. It's not always we sometimes in English simply translate it as Lord or God.

(10:15) But there are in fact many and we'll we'll get to that. And here this is a different more abstract I said uh kind of take on the same concept. And here Elohim will not defeat darkness and the sea by going and killing a monster but simply by speaking let there be light. And that's um how he brings order into this primordial chaos. The Baal cycle continues with we learn that Baal uh descends into this underworld into the realm of death that is once again thought of like something deep.

(11:05) It's it's referred to as the pit as the swamp as even the filth. So here I read Baal must enter inside him meaning death. He must go down into his mouth like a dried olive. The earth produce, the fruit of the trees, but all the conqueror has died. The prince, the lord of the earth has perished. And then we get this very um clear imagery of farmers plowing a field.

(11:42) And here first L and later Anat. Remember this is an epic poem so it's very repetitive. L plowed his chest like a garden, raked his back like a valley. L raised his voice and declared Bal is dead. What will happen to the peoples? Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of Yahweh. This is the Bal cycle.

Vegetation Cycles and Fertility Gods

(12:15) But this is a parallel once again that we find in the Hebrew Bible. Women were sitting there weeping for Tamuz. Then he meaning Yahweh said to me, "Have you seen this? Oh mortal, you will see still greater abomination than these." Tamuz is the mess the Hebrew way of calling the Mesopotamian uh god Dumuzid and uh these gods here Dumuzi Bal and then in Greece Adonis and even to an extent Osiris in Egypt and in Aturia we have Atunis are all gods who have mythologies that describe them as bound to the cycle of vegetation. So

(13:11) these are sometimes called fertility gods, but I think it's more accurate to say that they are they represent the cycle of vegetation and food. And for us living in the 21st century Canada, it's very easy to take food for granted because we can just go to the store or to the restaurant and find food every day, no matter what day of the year is, as long as you have money to pay.

(13:41) Um, but especially in the ancient world, the vegetation cycle is very important. And I'm going to tell you, even today in Canada, if you're a farmer, you are much more aware of how much um how delicate the vegetation cycle is. I was at this last summer at a meditation retreat in Alberta and I met a farmer that was there because he was very stressed out about losing his uh all his his crops because they were having a drought there.

Comparative Mythology and Hero's Journey

(14:22) Um and that would never occur to me that people would be so stressed out about food. It did. But it's different when you actually have someone that tells you in your face. This story also has echoes of a story that we uh explored in a previous lecture here, the the Epic of Gilgamesh. And this is a we see two sides of the story.

(14:59) We see first the hero going and doing this hero kind of thing of defeating a monster, of fighting these forces of nature that are in a way hostile to civilization. And so that's the first part, but the second part is always now the hero has to go and conquer death. So we see this very clearly in the epic of Gilgamesh and also here in the Bal cycle.

(15:34) The epic of Gilgamesh is a much older story and was a very known very well-known story across the ancient near east and in fact we have found uh copies of the epic of Gilgamesh in the same part of the world where we found the Bal cycle. We hear echoes of this two part of this hero's journey. First conquering the forces of nature, then going to the underworld to conquer death.

(16:09) In another mythological story from uh Mesopotamia, the Inana's descent into the underworld. Um she first becomes the queen of heaven and earth, the most uh powerful goddess in the Mesopotamian pantheon. And after doing that, she needs to also add to her dominions the underworld. It doesn't go very well for her.

(16:41) Um that's a story for another lecture. I promise. It's it's a very good story. Now back to Baal and that kills death. Apparently you can kill death. Uh grinds him up. It's is this part is very graphic. Uh she grinds him. He she scatters death. And then we have a few missing lines. And then it reads, "Where is Baal the conqueror? Where is the prince, the lord of the earth?" And son, the god's torch replied, "I will look for Baal the conqueror.

(17:22) " Once again, I want to bring your attention. Baal, the conqueror, the prince, the lord of the earth. Here comes another uh this is a goddess. Once again, a primordial goddess, the sun. She is the god's torch. Another epithet. the sun will look for Baal because in the mythology of the Canaanites and also it's uh in in other peoples in this region uh in the ancient world the sun goes around the earth and as you see the sun going down the sun goes to the underworld and emerges once again in the east the next day. So the idea is the

(18:09) sun goes to the realm of the dead every night. So that's why son has to go and find Bal and son finds Baal and this is a happy ending. So at the end of the story we learn that Bal finally defeats death. Death acknowledges its uh position as subordinate to Baal. Baal becomes in this story the new king, the new supreme god, the new god most high.

(18:49) And it ends beautifully. Son rules the dead. Here the word isim or sometimes pronounc it's supposed to be pronounced arapa. son rules the divine ones. Your company are the gods. See the dead are your company. Kar is your magician and His diver. In C it is the sire and the dragon whom c whom skillful and wise expels skillful and wise banishes.

Character Analysis in the Baal Cycle

(19:31) There's this beautiful German word kausk that means this motif of the struggle against chaos that we find in mythologies across the world but now it's enough of this comparative mythology and I just want to summarize once again who are all these characters that we learn about all these gods and goddesses and primordial forces of nature that are the protagonists of this story.

(20:10) L is the creator of the entire universe and not only the gods but all the gods that are benevolent and beneficial to humanity but also all the forces of nature that are seen as uh hostile to humanity. We live in the 21st century and we see nature as something good. Nature for these people is not so good.

(20:40) It's not something that you get excited about. L is also wise, compassionate. Lives on a high mountain. Lives in a tent is an old man with an old with a long white beard. Then we have although we didn't mention her but she appears in this story uh Asher Rah mother of gods el's wife she is she's got other u epithets um I think we'll see those later here the two sons of l yam and m these forces of nature death and the sea.

(21:29) And again, the sea is not just the water, but it's representing the primordial chaos. Anat a very interesting goddess that we will talk about later because she appears here as the mistress of the people. She's a maiden, daughter of L, but she's also Baal's sister. However, Baal is not El's son in this story. So, we have some conflicting genealogies here.

(22:04) And uh I want you to I want to bring your attention to this these inconsistencies that we find in these stories. Sometimes for those of you who have been here when we talked about the documentary hypothesis in the Bible that says that in fact this is a collection of many different sources that different editors have put together.

(22:26) We can't tell to what extent there is a a similar process going on here, but there seem to be inconsistencies and these things are very common as we will see in all these mythological stories all um that come that extend over a very very long period of time and that are written at different places for different audiences.

(22:54) And that in this story in a way because this is a very patriarchal society, she represents the untamed female power because she is not married. Shapoo, that's the sun. In this case, it's the sun is a goddess. It's a great light. And once again, she has to go to the underworld every night. And this interesting god skill and wisdom that it it kind of parallels the uh heistasis and vulcan in Greek and and Roman mythology and as opposed to L that is wise at a more cosmological level of wisdom at a more deeper level of wisdom.

(23:46) This is a very practical wisdom that um wisdom and skill represents here. For example, he builds the palace of Baal at Monsapon and he says, "Well, you need a window, Bal." And Bal says, "No, I don't need a window." "Well, you'll see. You'll need a window." And eventually when the palace is finished, Bal says, "Oh, yes, I would like a window.

(24:13) " So this is a very practical craft craftsmanship kind of knowledge kind of wisdom. Bal finally our main protagonist the hero of the story is a storm god is the god that represents the cycle of vegetation and food. Baal and other gods that represent these same concepts have to die. Sometimes people will say that they die in the winter and they uh resurrect in the summer.

(24:52) But in this particular part of the world, these gods die in the summer. The summer is very hot, very dry, and then they come back to life when the rains come back to the region in around November. Bal here is establishing order over chaos, over nature, hostile nature. And at the end, he becomes the new king of the assembly, which means that he's going to replace L because at the beginning of the story, L is the supreme god.

(25:30) So here once again we have a story about change in the concept of God. Change in how we think of maybe not God but the divine domain. Doesn't matter how many gods we talk about. I will use the word the divine to refer to this concept whether or not we're talking about monotheism or or polytheism. So here we see a story of change.

Methodological Approach

(26:03) We are changing the order in the divine real before we move forward. uh this is my approach here is academic and historical and also I will use uh the approach of modern comparative mythology which understands for our purposes here in the 21st century understands myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural or societal truths rather than inaccurate historical accounts.

(26:45) So when we talk when we read all these stories I don't want you to get caught up in whether or not this of course the bal cycle didn't happen in in the real world in real history but there are other stories that involve humans. I don't want you to get distracted thinking of whether or not this is a historical account.

Challenging Assumptions about Israelite Monotheism

(27:06) I want you to focus instead on the psychological, cultural and um sociological aspects and my goal with this lecture and the reason why I I first suggested to John uh that I would I would like to be here today adding doing my first presentation on this topic is that often when I study uh when we study here uh the the Hebrew Bible and I I read uh books from uh scholars that I really respect like Glenn S. Holland.

(27:52) I really like uh his book. He also has uh several lectures on uh biblical history a biblical um Israel uh available on the great courses. So I often hear from scholars like him and many others a number of assumptions and for my background in systems analysis and software engineering usually we learn that assumptions lead to bad systems and when bad systems crash and they don't function as expected.

(28:36) So, what are the assumptions that I want to point out and that I would like to investigate to see whether they're sound or not? The Israelites were monotheistic. Everyone else was polytheistic. Now, a more I would say a softer version of that assumption is to acknowledge that yes, in fact, the people of Israel did worship other gods, but this is not their native religion.

(29:12) They worshiped other gods because of foreign influence. And one way you can have these gods introduced into the land of Israel is with these evil queens like Jezebel. And so we learn that Jezebel is the wife of King Ahab. She's a Sidonian princess from the city of Phoenicia. Her name actually means where is the prince? the we we write Belle but it's Jezebel so that's the same that it's a theophoric name so it contains the name of a god in her name and it means where is the prince and that is the prayer that worshippers of Baal

(30:08) were crying to ritually mourn the god as the god is understood to die and go into the underworld when summer comes and all vegetation dies in the land of Canaan. And what the Bible goes on to say that she was so evil that she introduced 450 prophets of Baal, but also 400s of the goddess Asher into uh the land of Israel.

Historical Context of the Bronze Age Collapse

(30:42) And then finally, the third assumption that I would like to investigate is this idea that Canaan or Canaanite and Israelite are two different peoples. So what is Canaan and who are the Canaanites? So this region here in red is what we often more or less talk about when we refer uh refer to the land of Canaan.

(31:17) And this is we learn from later Greek historians that is the endonym that that means the name that people in this region used to refer to themselves and to their land and that later the Greeks will call Phoenicia and Phoenicians. These are amitic people and we often when we use the term Canaan and Canaanite we have to think of the second millennium uh BCE because after that when the Greeks appear in the scene they give names to everyone and these people become the Phoenicians and I guess they deserve to be called

(32:02) Greeks by the Romans because they did the same thing to the Phoenicians to the Canaanites and we also learned that it's the most frequently used ethnic term in the Bible. So the writers of the Hebrew Bible of the when in this lecture I will when I say the Bible I mean the Hebrew Bible the Tanakh the Old Testament and in the Christian Bible very aware of Canaanites because they're constantly talking about the Canaanites and for example this is a the story of Canaan in the Bible.

(32:42) Kaden is the son of Ham and grandson of Noah. And Ham is the one that finds uh Noah drunk and kind of makes fun of Noah. And that's really not a good thing to do. Apparently, Noah curses Ham. And uh after this some scholars, some biblical commentators assume or uh conclude that this is a justification for the alleged subjection and to an extent in some parts of the Bible total annulation of the Canaanites and that happens uh primarily in two books Joshua and Judges which they are conflicting accounts accounts of the

(33:35) entrance of the Israelites in the land of Canaan. And the word Canaan in these two books referred to the land and they always use the word Canaan to refer to the land. Whereas Canaanite is just one of many ethnic groups that inhabit this land. So from the book of Joshua, this is what Yahweh Elohim of Israel says, "Long ago your ancestors Terra and his songs Abraham and Nahor lived on the other side of the Euphrates that is Mesopotamia and served other gods.

(34:17) But I took your ancestor Abraham from the other side of the Euphrates River. I led him through all of Canaan and gave him many descendants." Joshua continues, "Then you crossed the Jordan River and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho, the Amorites, Herzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Gerosites, Heivites, the Jebusites fought you, but I handed them over to you.

(34:46) So, here usually are all the different ethnicities or ethnic groups or nations that the Bible identifies. And there's a few more. there's like the Amorites. Um, now here apparently if we believe this, we believe that there was like a total conquest of the land that was handed by God because in fact God tells the people you people have no military capacity.

(35:15) So you should know acknowledge that it's me who is doing this for you. But apparently this with or without the help of God they are not completely capable of getting rid of everyone. And we read you are uh here Joshua said to the descendants of Joseph the tribe of Ephraim and Manasseh that are kind of in the middle like sandwiched at at the middle.

(35:46) They have really no way to expand. And he says you are an important very powerful people. One region is really not enough for you. So the mountain region will be yours as well. It is a forest. So will so you will have to clear it. All of it will be yours but you must force out the Canaanites even though they are strong and have chariots made of iron.

(36:09) So tough people the Canaanites. So that was Joshua. Now, judges tell us a rather different account. The tribe of Ephraim did not force out the Canaanites who lived in Gazer. So, the Canaanites continue to live with them in Gazer. So, the Canaanites stay with the tribe of Ephraim. The tribe of Zebulum did not force out those who lived at Kithan or uh Nahalal.

(36:45) So the Canaanites continued to live with them, but in this case they were made to do forced labor. And even more and this is I find this very interesting when we are in these two books trying to make this distinction between Canaanites and Israelites that we read so the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, parasites, Hivites and Jebusites.

(37:15) The Israelites allowed their sons and daughters to marry to these people. Israel also served their gods. So it doesn't look to me like after all they were so different or at least maybe they were different but they were in fact living together and marrying intermaring and worshiping the same gods. Just to give you an idea of the historical context, uh the land of Canaan is really at the crossroads of the ancient world and is the uh passage the necessary the only route that connects Egypt well you can go but it's the most direct

(38:08) route to go from Egypt to the Mesopotamia to uh Hittite Empire. Uh there's another empire that is powerful that is not in this map, the Amati empami empire. And we have Msanian Greece over here. Everyone has to go through these little neck narrow leg neck of land to go from one place to another.

(38:40) So this is a very disputed area by all the major powers of this time period that we call the bronze age that the late bronze age. So about the the second half of the second millennium BCE. Uh there are as I mentioned before the Amorites the nomadic inhabitants of what would be modernday central Syria are related people.

(39:13) Uh the Amorites enter Babylon and the famous king Hammurabi is a descendant of these Amorite invaders. And you, some of you might be familiar with the story of the Hixos that sometimes some people try to uh claim that the Hixos maybe represent these uh the people that migrated out of Egypt that we learn about in the book of Exodus led by Moses.

(39:47) But in fact, that's a most scholars don't take that story seriously because in fact we learned that the Canaanites had settled in the Nile Delta from centuries before they became the 14th dynasty of Egypt. So they were the rulers of northern Egypt before the Hixos arrived. So the hixos is another migration that might be Canaanites and other maybe Amorites, maybe Arabian tribes.

(40:25) They arrive later they displace a Canaanite dynasty in Egypt. But later the Egyptian native dynasty expels the Hixos around 1500 B.CE. Around this time we get this city Ugarit that rises to supremacy. This is a today an archaeological site where we have found all these tablets that contain the Bal cycle in other stories. And it was it's it's hard to emphasize how important this city was at the end of the Bronze Age.

(41:18) It was in contact with the Hittite Empire, Egypt, Cyprus and also other empires farther east is the entrance of the inland trade route to the Euphrates. So it's a very very uh strategic location. These are the ruins of Ugarit today. That's the gate of the palace of Ugarit. A very vast palace complex. More ruins. What happened to this city? Luckily, we uh the city was burned.

(41:57) Well, luckily for us, not for them. The city was burned to the ground in an invasion around the year 1200 BC. And we have a letter that has survived because it was written in clay tablet and the fire burned the tablet and preserved it very well. And it says Amurabi which is the same as it is the Canaanite version of Hamurabi to the king Amurabi.

(42:28) It's not the same to the king of Allesia, which is Cyprus. My father, behold, the enemy's ships came, my cities were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots are in the land of Hati, and all my ships are in the land of Luca? So, these are places in what would be modern day Turkey.

(42:56) Thus the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it. The seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us. He's not talking to his real father is a way of addressing another king. And unfortunately for Ugarit, they did not survive this invasion. But fortunately for archaeologists, the city was forgotten, never resettled, and was only rediscovered in 1928 by accident by a farmer.

(43:28) And we found there more than 5,000 tablets, clay tablets with an early version, like a transitional language between the Aadian cuna form of Mesopotamia and the later uh Phoenician alphabet. So this is a an alphabetic language written in Q&A form uh script. So this is the city. This is a modernday port of Latakia in Syria.

(44:07) And uh I want to show you this. That's that's the archaeological site today. And I want to compare this with similar scale uh satellite photos of Mysini and Troy that were destroyed around the same time. So these were also Mysini for sure an important uh bronze age center destroyed around the same time.

(44:38) But you can see the archaeological site of Ugarit is is quite larger. And this is what uh is sometimes referred to as the Bronze Age collapse because Myini, Troy, the Hittite Empire, all the cities of Canaan, Cyprus all collapsed around the same time abruptly. And uh so these are because of Egyptian sources. We call these uh we associate these to the sea peoples to the invasions or migrations of these sea peoples that Egyptian sources tell us about.

(45:25) And uh around the same time we have an interesting Egyptian incursion that is part of these wars against all these sea peoples that ends in the land of Canaan. And we have evidence of this records in uh Stila. That's a stone uh inscription. It's like a billboard of the ancient world where you just put the things that you want to let people know.

(45:54) the Mara Stila of Pharaoh Marpa. Now, um that was the Bronze Age. There's this abrupt uh division, this this abrupt end of of this era of these big empires of these world order. And now we move to what we call the Iron Age one. So this is period that in In Israel, in the Hebrew Bible, we call the period of the judges.

Iron Age and the Rise of Israelite Monotheism

(46:31) So, it's a period that, as we read in the Bible, is before the emergence or the development of the monarchy in both Israel and Judah. And uh we also read in the Bible that there's this united monarchy under David and Solomon, a great kingdom. And uh around this time we assume that Yahweh, the God Yahweh becomes uh important, rises to power among the people of Israel.

(47:10) However, this god interestingly not only in the Bal cycle but in no other sources we hear about we read about Yahweh. Just quickly the archaeological record just to give you an idea is very thin when you try to look for when you try to confirm the information that we see in the Bible. We have four maybe five references to Israel in the whole archaeological record for this period until the arrival of the Persians much later and it will not be covered in this lecture.

(47:59) So we rely on just a few of these stilas that look like this where kings boast about their campaigns. And uh so in some of them we see uh references that can be translated as Israel. Although of course some scholars always dispute these uh references this this hypothesis translations and um What is this? Oh, this one is a very interesting one.

(48:32) It's a very famous stila. The tell Stila and the king Hazel of Damascus is talking about his victory over King Omry. So here we have an extra biblical source for King Omry that we read in the Bible. And he says, "And Hadad, Hadad is one of the names of the god Baal in this period." We're talking, this is more than 400 years after the Baal cycle.

(49:05) And Hadad went in front of me, and I slew 70 kings who harnessed thousands of chariots and thousands of horsemen. I killed uh Jehoram son of Ahab king of Israel and I killed Ahazu son of Jaboram king of the house of David. So this is why this uh Stila is so famous because it's the first reference that we have in the archaeological record for the house of David.

(49:37) The so we assume archaeologists assume that this is a reference to the Davidic monarchy. However, that doesn't prove that there was ever a united monarchy. What the only thing that this Stila is telling us is that there was a dynasty that claimed their descent to a figure called David. So in some four rather widely uh accepted references to Israel in the archaeological record of this period between the Bronze Age collapse of the sea peoples etc and the arrival of the Persians many many centuries later and this is the period where

(50:34) Israel arises as a nation. And so that's why uh it's it's unfortunate that we only have just a few references. It's even more unfortunate that we actually only have one reference to Yahweh. We would like to know, okay, where does Yahweh come come from? Where is this God or at least the name of this God? it.

(51:04) There isn't a lot of Yahweh in the archaeological record. There is no Yahweh in the Canaanite sources. The first mention that we have of Yahweh is in this stila. The Messa Stila that is dated around 840 B.CE and was built by King Messa of Moab. Moab is a neighboring kingdom of Israel and is very very very interesting because the stila tell us that Kimosh the god of Moab is angry because his people have committed transgressions.

(51:47) Sounds familiar. Kimosh then allows them to be subjugated and oppressed by King Omry of Israel. Kimosh returned and assisted Messa to defeat Israel and restore the land of Moab. And then we read, "And from there I took Yahweh's vessels and I presenting them before Kimosh's face." So this is a motif that has echoes in the Hebrew Bible of a God that is angry because of the transgressions of his people.

(52:29) The God allows foreign invaders to come and teach a lesson to the Israelites. The Israelites cry for help. God remembers the people of Israel and then helps them once again defeat their enemies and go back to uh be being in a good standing with with Yahweh with God. But in this case is the goddess Kimosh and the people are the Moabites.

(52:55) So this is the kingdom of Moab. So very very near on the other side of the Dead Sea and uh the iron age we if you remember the map of Canaan we don't have a lot of information to about kingdoms it appears that we had for the most part Canaanite city states a lot of important ports In the Hebrew Bible, we read all these stories about the Jebusite and the Hittites and the Canaanites, etc., etc.

(53:36) And now we have a different kind of order. And these all these little kingdoms of which Judah and Israel are just another two kingdoms. The Philistine states and the Phoenician states are city states for the most part, but these are all similarsized little states. And interestingly, they all have their own national gods in the Canaanite period of the Bronze Age.

(54:10) And what we, as far as we can tell, we unfortunately only have one Ugarit. We don't have we wish we had more archaeological sites like that. Unfortunately, all these important cities have been occupied continuously. So, it's it's really hard to do archaeology and excavations there. But we have a list of gods that we discussed that we talked about.

(54:34) There are more gods, but El Baal, Asher, Anat, Astarte are the main gods and goddesses. But in the bronze age and sorry in the iron age now with the emergence of all these new little states we see the emergence of all these new gods that we never heard about before. And so the kingdom here of Ammon has this god that sometimes his name is translated as Moolok or Milcom.

(55:10) Edom we think is is not for sure but there's a god whose name is sounds something like cos also Yahweh appears to be the god of the [ __ ] we know that Yahweh is the god of Israel and Judah Kimosh in Moab Dagon in this case this god is a bronze age god that we read about dagon in the baal cycle is ba Al's father.

(55:40) That's where the genealogy gets complicated because his sister is El's daughter. Entire Malcart, Siden, Eshmoon. And one complicated thing about all these gods and to try to figure out where do these gods come from is that they all mean things in their native languages. For example, melt simply means king of the city in the local dialect of tire.

(56:14) So let's concentrate on Yahweh and see if we can what do we know what are the main leading hypothesis and opinions about the origin of the name Yahweh. So one that is many of you are familiar with is that the name means I am that I am and this is revealed to Moses at Mount Si. Some other scholars have this theory that in fact the name comes from an in there's an inscription another stila that has the phrase el if you speak uh Hebrew you may want to cover your ears.

(56:59) Yahweh Shab L the god L who creates the hosts the hosts that meaning the all the gods. So in this case the war the word Yahweh Yahweh is to create or to bring to existence. And there's another of these stilas that mentions the shassu of YHW and that sounds suspicially similar to the tetragram that we often pronounce as Yahweh.

(57:39) And it's been suggested that it means he blows and that it means that it's a deity associated with the wind and the storms. And that may have been introduced by nomadic tribes of Arabia that were neighboring of the land of Canaan. Just quickly and we will discuss this in another lecture because we can go a whole 90 minutes just on on on this topic.

(58:12) There's a an interesting hypothesis that is called the Kennite hypothesis uh that that says that Israel adopts the cult of Yahweh from these people that were nomadic uh herders in northwest Arabia. that are called the Medidianites, sometimes the Kennites. The land of Media was is thought to be just I think we have a map. No, just southeast of Canaan.

(58:47) And according to Judges, the Canaanites were Medidianites that first raided and eventually settled the land of Canaan. And we read in Judges, like swarms of locusts, they came with their livestock and their tents. They and their camels could not be counted. They came into the land only to ruin it. So the Israelites became very poor because of Median and cried out to Yahweh for help.

(59:22) We're not going to go into details, but I would like to point out this idea of Israel already settled in the land and new people coming in and bringing with them their own cults, their own gods. Finally, another element that adds that complicates the story a little bit is we discuss this idea of the epithets or these little titles, descriptive phrases or even metaphors that appear that follow or precede the name of the gods in all these sources.

The Nature of Divine Epithets and Titles

(1:00:06) And so for L we have the bull, the compassionate, the creator of creatures, father of time, father of humanity, the king, the holy one. So for just I don't know if those of you who watch Game of Thrones, but all these kings and queens when they try to be important, they have a sidekick there that is going to remind everyone else what all his or her titles are.

(1:00:35) So this is once again all these gods have all these titles that describe them that say something about them. Asher the mother of gods the holy and most blessed one. We said anat is the mistress of the people and Baal the conqueror writer of on the clouds the prime lord of the earth. God changes or God doesn't change.

(1:01:08) L the God L the word L in the Canaanite language becomes in the Iron Age a generic term that means simply means God. So it comes from it it starts as the name of a deity in the Bronze Age now is simply means God. And we have like we see this in the Bible and sometimes it's the words the the names of the god like El Shadai are translated as God almighty or God of the mountain you see Elleon god most high elith god of the covenant baal in the iron age his name increasingly simply means lord And so we see it as a assigned to

(1:02:09) other words like Adad. Adad is a Mesopotamian god of storms. So Bal Hadad, Baal of Mount Sephon, Ba Al Hammon, Ba Al Shamin, all names that appear in the archaeological record and the Phoenicians. So these people that the Greeks are call are calling Phoenicians. the the people that are the Canaanites that live on the coast on cities like Biblo, like Beirut, like Tyer, uh they increasingly identify Bal with L.

(1:02:49) And as we mentioned before like the god Melkart of Ty which is the most prominent most important Phoenician city Melkart simply means lord of tire lord of the city. And when the Tyrans found Carthage in North Africa they bring with them the cult of Melkart. when they go to Spain, they bring with them the cult of Melkart.

(1:03:22) And interestingly, the same thing is happening among the people of Israel. But in this case, this new God, in this case, we only have the gods that we always had. In this case, we have this new name, this new God, we call Yahweh. And Yahweh increasingly is associated with these two older gods. Now the association with L is assumed that happens very early.

(1:03:55) It happens before people sit down and start writing uh the books like Joshua and Judges because we never see a conflict between Yahweh and L. It simply happens. All these little epithets, all these little titles and powers that El has simply are passed on to Yahweh. However, it's only in this time period of the the monarchy in Israel and Judah that the association between Yahweh and Baal starts to develop.

(1:04:40) And this is why it's suggested that there's so much conflict and so much condemnation of the god Baal. But we never hear anything wrong any problem with with L. So Yahweh had already absorbed L or the attributes of L by the time people start writing the Bible. What some of the interesting epithets of Baal or titles of Baal that increasingly appear with the name of Yahweh are the writer of the cl upon the clouds.

(1:05:20) So lift a song to him who writes upon the clouds. It's from the Psalms from Deuteronomy. There's none like your Elohim Yeshu. He rides through the heavens to help you in majesty. He writes through the clouds. He subdues the ancient gods, shatters the forces of old. He drove out the enemy before you and said, "Destroy.

(1:05:50) " I think we're coming close to the end of the lecture and uh at this point I would like to go back to these assumptions uh that we often make of one of those that I didn't mention is this idea that there's something that is very unique about the religion of Israel and I'm not saying that there isn't but we don't really see it in this period.

(1:06:20) The uniqueness I will argue will is about to come and this is not material for this lecture but in this time period when Israel is still living in the land this period that we call the first temple period the preexilic period Israel is in at least more like its neighbors than it is different from it its neighbors.

(1:06:52) And so this process of granting titles, epithets, powers, and names on your na national god is not unique. And the most the closest example of this that happens a little earlier is with the god Marduk in Mesopotamia. When we read uh the Gilgamesh stories, Marduk doesn't appear.

(1:07:27) All these very old Mesopotamian stories, Marduk is simply not there. It only appears with the rise of power of Hamurabi and simply starts as a god of vegetation, god of storm and slowly starts to acquire all the attributes and titles of older gods that we do see in older stories like the stories of the flawed uh Mesopotamia like a like and little.

(1:07:57) And in the same way it seems like the associations with a are specific. It just happens naturally. Whereas the associations with Enlil happen by force. And ultimately, Marduk in the Anuma Elish, it's a mythological story that is much newer than the older creation stories and flat stories of Mesopotamia.

(1:08:28) Here, Marduk becomes the creator god, the god that brings order over chaos, over the primordial forces of nature that are ultimately in their eyes hostile to humanity and to civilization. Now to end the this presentation today, I often when we study all these ancient peoples and the way they think about the divine, they think about God or their gods.

Conclusion and Comparative Theology

(1:09:05) It sounds or it it feels very alien to us. And uh I would like to suggest just to make sure that we don't walk into the trap of the Protestant bias that we have here. I am originally from a Catholic country and uh so that is a Christian country. If you ask people are you monotheistic, are you polytheistic? Everyone is going to say oh monotheistic. We know that.

(1:09:33) And yet certain aspects and certain behaviors that we were discussing that we see in these very ancient myths and the idea of associating gods with other gods and granting titles are very still present. So this is my our lady of Lordes that is the national uh version of Mary that is the patron of the country Argentina.

(1:10:08) And so we we know this is Mary. This is also Mary but in a different garment in a different capacity. Here is she is in the capacity of the patron of my hometown. looks more humble. Now, if you look at these two statues, we see two different things. We understand theologically or intellectually that we're talking about the same Mary.

(1:10:41) And yet, in a very practical way, this is not the same Mary. You cannot ask the things that you ask to this Mary, you don't ask to this one. The way you ask to this Mary is not the way you ask to this one. This one has her own prayers. This one has different prayers. The pilgrimage to this one doesn't happen in the same.

(1:11:02) This one doesn't even have pilgrimage sites. And finally, that other one is not even a Mary. And yeah, that's St. Rita. And that's my local neighborhood uh church. And once again the imagery, the prayers, the concept how we worship this St. Rita is very similar and she becomes in a way her titles become also our lady the titles of these are the two that who are married.

(1:11:42) So back to our uh yeah Justin Bieber once again this is not a a discussion on ontology. This is a historical discussion. This is a discussion about mythology and about how we how people how cultures understand the concept of the divine. How in that light we behave, how we worship, what we expect of the divine, and what we think the divine expects from us.

(1:12:24) So I'll leave the question on whether God changes or not up to you. And we'll have another lecture two months from now that I I'll have time to uh do a little bit more research on on how we develop this separate identity between the Canaanites and the Israelites in the period that we discussed that would have been too long to include in this lecture.

(1:12:49) What are your questions? How close have you taken us in in this progression to uh the uh unification of all these gods into one god? Uh you seem to be getting pretty closer with Ellen Bal being synonymous almost right. Yeah. So the period that I'm discussing here, it's pretty much so we we're writing it that the writers the writers of Joshua and uh judges are assumed are believed to uh just write years later.

(1:13:29) They're not writing as these events are happening, but they're writing when already we have a monarchy. And we we think that it's the case because there is a monarchic bias in this writing. So they are saying all these horrible things happened when we didn't have kings or because we don't have king I think is is how the story goes.

(1:13:52) So we're talking about just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.CE that we are having here a process that is undergoing that has started we don't know exactly when that only becomes clear to us through these writings but interestingly uh if we uh I think it's 2 Chronicles where we learn about the reforms of Josiah and Josiah this only one generation before the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadessor.

(1:14:40) Josiah uh under goes this massive religious reform where he goes down all the cities of Judah and cuts down all the Baal statues or idols. He cuts down all the poles that people used to worship the goddess Asher. So the this is a process that is still happening when the people of Israel of or the people of Judah are exiled to Babylon.

(1:15:11) It only ends in Babylon. So only when when people come back after uh this experience in Babylon is when we can probably begin to see that this is already that the process is coming to its completion. But we continue to hear about Baal even in the New Testament and uh can think of the in the New Testament Bal is more becomes like a force of evil already.

(1:15:43) So that can tell you that Baal has been degraded to not a god that you worry about and that you condemn your people if they worship it. But it's it's some kind of demon. And uh uh for those of you who are familiar with the New Testament, there's a story of B And Bel Zebub was a demon that Jesus had to fight against. And it's a pun on a title of Baal that is Bal Bal Zabul which means simply Lord Prince and because the Jewish uh writers apparently love puns they translate they they write that as Balu and that becomes uh Lord of Lord Prince becomes Lord of flies

(1:16:39) and So if you ask me I would say this process of assimilation of all these different gods of absor absorption of all these qualities and titles and capacities of all these ancient gods into Yahweh is probably completed by the time we we get to the writings of the of the Christian writings in first century AD.

(1:17:08) years before that totally completed. This is only this is the only time the the first writings where we see Baal not as a god that people are that people condemn or whose worship people condemn but as some kind of demoted demon or lesser kind of divine or supernatural uh being. So that if I had to guess, I would say somewhere in between the last books of the Tanak and the first Christian writings and that Beloop story is one of my favorites because some it's only a pun, right? And then some people use that to

(1:18:05) just theorized that maybe Baal was a god of pestilence, but it's just a pun. So, it's just a side note. Um, do you find it interesting that in the Hebrew Bible all of the or some of the names like Elohim, there's a there's one that starts with an S. I can't remember the name now. Shai. Shai. Like, is it interesting that they kept those names in there? opposed to just having the one name Yahweh.

(1:18:39) Well, yes. I think it's interesting. I'm I'm glad they they made that decision because it's it's beautiful and it's very entertaining to just to follow in just one sentence. Sometimes we use three different words or three different names of God. Uh, I think that may have to do with all these different sources that we uh hypothesize come together to make the Bible as we know it.

(1:19:08) Uh, but some of these writings writings uh uh come from different periods and they reflect stories that were all people already knew especially all these psalms. The Psalms are the part of the Bible that from a literary perspective most resemble all these stories that that we read in in Ugarit.

(1:19:34) Not only the Bal cycle but other stories about um other heroes of of the Canaanites of of the people of Ugarit. Uh and so in these stories, perhaps because this is a literary style that people have been doing in in this culture for many centuries, they they continue to use all these different descriptions. uh when the different ways of describing the gods and its qualities and what are your other questions? Well, that was easy.

(1:20:22) Not a lot of questions to thanks for a very interesting lecture. Um, my question is I'm seeing um various names of cities in modern day Lebanon and the surrounding countries, but I'm specifically interested in asking about the city of Balbeck. Balbeck in Arabic. That's how it's written. So, it's literally Ba.

(1:20:56) Was that one of the cities that I mentioned? Okay. It was never mentioned in your culture and yeah I don't in recent times it known as center of power um at at certain time Roman rule and I mean up until now it's archaeological and historical site to be visited by tourists and so on. I've been there and I'm wondering if it has any links to these stories.

(1:21:28) I'm sure it does. It's by no means this was a super comprehensive uh preview of all the archaeological record that we have for the land of Canaan. I'm only uh talking about specifically the appearances of the word of the word Israel Yahweh in the archaeological record. There's a lot of cities that that had baal or a particular baal.

(1:21:57) The same way that my hometown has a particular Mary, a particular lady, each city had a particular baal. uh because remember that then this word ba in this time period after the the sea peoples uh becomes just lord and so and it's a it's a common theophoric uh uh suffix or prefix that people use not only for naming cities but also for naming people.

(1:22:32) So yeah, I'm I'm gonna have to look into that one. Thank you. A couple more questions. Did the maps we seen up there, did they come from those books there on the table or did John have to sit down and they come from Google? Oh, okay. So, no, they don't I don't think they had maps.

(1:23:00) I'm not sure they they had figured out map. Oh, you mean like these books? Yeah. Oh, okay. No, I thought you were asking whether we find in these stone tablet in these clay tablets if we have you find maps. But no, no, they're they don't come because these these are kind of kind of black and white boring maps. You can find a lot better things on Google as long as you don't have I guess we're streaming, but um no one has complained so far about copyright.

(1:23:28) So, so we're actually talking 2,000 years before the th00and to,500 people 15 to,200 years. Okay. So this is a history I've never known about. So it's pretty comprehensive to sit here and Was it too overwhelming? No, it's just a huge I know you don't like too much information sometimes. Thank you. Um, thank you. The scriptural versus the archaeological evidence.

(1:24:15) Yes. The scriptural evidence um is that God has multiple attributes, hence different names. Um that there is an assumption in scripture ism. Although God's is referred to early, um there is extensive text which makes it clear that the Israelite peoples welcomed others into their midst.

(1:24:44) We have terabans in Jacob's tent. We have the Exodus which had probably more non-Jews than Jews. We have extensive scriptural evidence um that Jewish practice while having one main god had ancestor worship and incorporated the religions around them. That's scripture. In terms of archaeological evidence, um there's fairly extensive material which talks about a significant number of synagogues um in which the records of the donors and the records of the attendees were both Jews, deviant Hebrew Christians and pagans.

(1:25:27) And so my reading and my understanding of both the actual text of the Hebrew uh and the archaeological evidence is that while there is an assumption of monotheism, the actual Jewish practice and Jesus was a good Orthodox rabbi. He died a good Jewish Orthodox rabbi. uh thanks to Saul uh your your Paul he became a very different leader and you had then a different religion but he wasn't any different than any other Jewish rabbi but my s my question to you is does not the scriptural record and the archaeological record suggest that your

(1:26:11) unification of practice of of Judaism being exclusively monotheistic doesn't in either realm. So, first of all, when you talk about synagogues and uh the people, the Jewish people accepting these, as you said, deviants, Jews, that would be the Christians and pagans into the their worship that we're talking about a very different period.

(1:26:44) So what I cover here pretty much ends before the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 and you're talking about many centuries later. Now uh in terms of archaeological record versus scriptural record as I said in at the almost the beginning of of this lecture I I'm using here a historical approach and so I cannot use I cannot take scripture for granted to uh justify uh a position.

(1:27:30) And so this is the difference that we have here is like pretty much the difference between uh the Bible archaeology and Middle Eastern archaeology. Uh since we're talking about archaeology, Bible archaeology was the the first attempt of archaeologies in this area, the Holy Land. uh trying to prove that all these stories that we read about in the Bible are true.

(1:27:56) So they would go and with the Bible in one hand and the shovel in the other hand and read something in the Bible and when they find something like for example when they found that there was in fact a wall that had collapsed at Jericho then there you prove this is proof that in fact this passage of the book of Joshua in fact is historical but with further archaeological analysis And with the modern discipline of Near Eastern archaeology, we realize that in fact there are serious problems with that hypothesis because it it just that

(1:28:38) the wall collapsed centuries before this period that we're talking about. So there there's different problems that uh make it so that um for this research I cannot assume that what's in the Bible has the same uh weight on from a scientific from a historical uh viewpoint than what we read in the Bible.

(1:29:10) And this is why another thing that I mentioned is that I'm using uh these stories that I call myth. Not because I I say me because I think that they're they're not true that they don't tell us the truth about what happened, but because I want to know how these people understood their journey towards figuring out their relationship with God, figuring out their identity among their neighbors.

(1:29:43) I'm not sure that answers your question. Uh but uh so these are the like the the reason I started this I thought about this lecture is that when we read the Bible the Bible take those things for granted and this presentation is not trying to destroy that position that assumes that Israel was monotheistic and simply Israel welcome their nicely their neighbors views sometimes not very nicely.

(1:30:20) I'm simply just trying to explore and trying to figure out if maybe in reality the the story is not quite as we read it in the Bible. And at the end of the day, you have to come to and this is once again the the systems analyst and me. You have to keep going until the the very very very first line of code and see okay if the Bible tells us that the the truth then how did this happen? How did these people become so different from everyone else? Why where does that come from? What? How do you think that a people would all of a sudden out of

(1:31:13) nowhere just come up with this innovation? And if that happened, when did that happen and how? So, sorry, I'm pretty much Yeah. finished. Yes. Oh, yeah. Um so to go to the point of you know the gods where you're talking about how all these other names and epithets were adopted it's something that we see in other groups religions too um and it occurs in the Egyptian pantheon so the priests of different gods in different cities would at times when they were associated with a powerful dynasty make their god the most

(1:31:58) powerful one and then adopt all the best epithets for that god. So for a time that was Osiris, for a time that was Ammoon and it just depended on which priests, you know, were attached to the ruling dynasty and they would then take the best epithets and their god would suddenly become the most ascendant and the most powerful one in the pantheon.

(1:32:22) I'm glad you brought Egypt into the picture because I didn't research that. Uh I was just wondering it might not be entirely related to the whole story of uh God and Yahweh especially but I'm just wondering uh since you brought up the story of L and Bal and his transition to a more powerful position is there anything um in terms of action that may have happened historically to trigger that particular change in theology? I so from the viewpoint of modern the modern study of philosophy that emphasizes uh psychology as if that were the only

(1:33:05) thing that people were writing about. Uh that is a motif that we see in pretty much not all but in in many mythologies that we know like the Greeks, like Mesopotamia. Uh so we see it in in Greece with this struggle between Uranus, with Kronos, with Zeus. So this idea that the younger generation is going to displace the older gener that the young male has to fight against the older male.

(1:33:43) the mother will side with the the the son to displace the old the older patriarch and this cycle continues and we it's it's a motif and uh it I wouldn't say that it reflects a particular historical event but is perhaps trying to tell us something that happens in general in all families Let's um even though there's probably a lot more questions, why don't we break Yeah, you guys saw it once.

(1:34:19) Yeah. And and uh go you can have snacks and things like that and we can continue our discussion. Landro has all plenty more to tell us and we'll say goodbye to our online folks. And thank you. And let's all give Andrew applause for his first point.

Glossaries

Table: Related Lectures

Glossary 2: Religious Studies Terms

Glossary 3: Individuals Named

Glossary 4: Bible Passages

Glossary 5: Non-English Words

Glossary 6: Books Mentioned

Glossary 7: Linguistics Terms

Glossary 8: Scientific Terms

Glossary 9: Graphics Referenced

Glossary 10: Biblical Cities

Glossary 11: Archaeological Sites

Glossary 12: Chronology