The Library

Richard

11:57

@Caleb Aah, I see. :P That's actually a nice phrase. I may end up using it soon.

@Ami Good morning! I'm all ears.

Ray

@Richard, thanks for the answer on meta

I think that will be very helpful going forward

The only point that I think I disagree with is to include multiple options

It strikes me that those should be multiple answers so they can be voted independently

OTOH, exegesis is not rightly done by democracy

Richard

I've found that posting multiple opinions on the matter allow people to get a better overview. If you post multiple answers per opinion, (1) it becomes a list answer and (2) it becomes a voting contest

@Ray I do agree that having one canonical answer that surveys the multiple opinions can be cumbersome at times, though.

Ray

12:31

I guess I don't mind showing what the options are

but there ought to be a conclusion

what I want to avoid is "well, some say this, and others say that"... to me it fails to answer the question

Richard

@Ray I totally understand where you're coming from and I agree to a certain extent. It just seems to be what the community wants.

My highest voted answer basically says "Well, I think this, but others disagree. Who knows!" (although much better worded).

Also, that post was mostly just my opinions on what I've learned over at C.SE. It seems that survey answers gain a lot more support than answering based on one viewpoint.

Ami

13:33

Good morning @Richard

Richard

13:44

@Ami Hey, good morning!

Ami

nice to see you again

do you have a few minutes?

Richard

@Ami Oh, yeah, definitely.

Somewhat distracted by some huge goings-on in C.SE, but I'll definitely try to keep up here. :)

Ami

Don't worry about it...Here are my thoughts on your "Elohim" answer:

I think the fact that we are exposed to very little paganism and pagan thought in day to day life is a major obstacle to a precise understanding of the Bible as it was meant to be understood.

Since most of the people around us today are monotheistic, we forget how different the theological climate was at the time the Bible was first given.

In your answer about the name “Elohim” you point out that the name could be understood as the singular monotheistic (in the case of the singular verb) or as a plurality of foreign gods. Elohim is essentially the plural of El, which is this guy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_(deity). In a pagan context, there is no question that people would be inclined to read the very first verse in the Bible “In the beginning Elohim created the world” to mean a plurality of pagan gods created the world.

This makes the first verse in the Bible really cool, because you have the ambiguous Elohim with the singular verb Barah.

That must have been really jarring

sort of like: "all the people is ___"

Richard

@Ami This is an excellent point.

Ami

thank you

thats it

I got it off my chest

Richard

13:52

@Ami I totally agree with you here. It's hard for people to really grasp the difference between paganism and Christianity.

Especially when we grow up in Christianity and are surrounded by monotheism.

Ami

Most people do know this, but the word "Sun" does not appear in the Genesis creation story.

the word for sun would be shemesh

Richard

@Ami Wow, I'd never thought about it before, but you're right.

Ami

instead you have meor hagadol

Richard

Do you think that's related to (or because of) the sun worship from that time?

Ami

which means great illuminator

definitely

Richard

13:54

That's fascinating. Really interesting stuff.

Ray

Very interesting

Ami

this could also be used to explain 1:21

the hebrew word there is Tanin

which is usually translated as sea monster

[hold on while I try to find the right wikipedia page...]

Yam (god)

Yam, from the Canaanite word Yam, (Hebrew ים) meaning "Sea", also written "Yaw", is one name of the Ugaritic god of Rivers and Sea. Also titled Judge Nahar ("Judge River"), he is also one of the 'ilhm (Elohim) or sons of El, the name given to the Levantine pantheon. Others dispute the existence of the alternative names, claiming it is a mistranslation of a damaged tablet. Despite linguistic overlap, theologically this god is not a part of the later subregional monotheistic theology, but rather is part of a broader and archaic Levantine polytheism. Yam is the deity of the primordial chao...

in ancient pagan mythology the world was created by a battle between "baal" and a sea monster

[Specifically the epic of Ba'al section]

Richard

@Ami I think your wikipedia link up here should have been this one:

El (deity)

' (written aleph-lamed, e.g. , , , , or etc.) is a Northwest Semitic word meaning "deity", cognate to Akkadian ' and then to Hebrew : Eli and Arabic : Allah). In the Canaanite religion, or Levantine religion as a whole, Eli or Il was the supreme god, the father of humankind and all creatures and the husband of the goddess Asherah as recorded in the clay tablets of Ugarit (modern Rās Shamrā - , Syria). The noun ʾēl was found at the top of a list of gods as the Ancient of gods or the Father of all gods, in the ruins of the royal archive of the Ebla civilization, in the archaeological si...

@Ami This is amazing and really explains a lot.

Ami

I'm glad you like it

I got a lot of this from Cassuto

Richard

Aah. Sounds like an amazing book.

Ray

13:58

SO @Ami, would you say El always refers to the pagan deity in the Bible?

Ami

definitely not

but it could

El actually means "strength" or "power"

there are plenty of examples of that in the Bible

Richard

@Ami I can see now why Moses would choose to use multiple names. It insures that God isn't identified as any other pagan god. (such as the "Sons of El"#Canaanite_religion))

Elohim

Elohim () is a grammatically singular or plural noun for "god" or "gods" in both modern and ancient Hebrew language. When used with singular verbs and adjectives elohim is usually singular, "god" or especially, the God. When used with plural verbs and adjectives elohim is usually plural, "gods" or "powers". It is generally thought that Elohim is a formation from eloah, the latter being an expanded form of the Northwest Semitic noun il (, ʾēl ). It is usually translated as "God" in the Hebrew Bible, referring with singular verbs both to the one God of Israel, and also in a few examples to...

Ray

Gotcha

Richard

That link didn't work... had to onebox it.

Ami

@Richard, that could be...but multiple names could create some confusion of its own

Richard

14:01

@Ami Maybe so. But I think that's why we get commandments (in Exodus) about being the one true god.

Ami

[Michah 2:1 - one example of many where El just means "strength/power"]

definitely could be

Ray

@Ami good example

Idolatry is huge throughout the old testament

it's what defined whether a king was a good king or a bad king

but it's not without application today

Ami

explain

Ray

Well there are still a multitude of false gods

that we all worship

we just don't typically talk about them as deities

For example, pride is the worship of self

Ami

interesting

Ray

14:05

we make sacrifices to honor ourselves, and are destroyed when our god disappoints

same could go for fear of man--worship of others

or anything God has created--money, sex, power

none are inherently bad, but any can easily become an idol that we worship

Calvin said that the heart is a factory of idols

Just makes all of this stuff about paganism as opposed to the God of Christianity all the more relevant

Ami

In Judaism it's a little different

Idolatry in Hebrew is called "Avodah Zarah" which means foreign worship

namely, any worship of God that God didn't legally prescribe

Ray

Yes, I would agree that the form of idolatry that I'm referring to is a bit of a metaphorical extension

that we make things to be gods in a functional sense

Ami

I understand

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