Posted by Bronwen Manning on October 22, 2008 under Biblical Hebrew | 
Animals and Humans
Statist
ically, animal forms in Israel predominate those of human shape, and the majority of human forms are those of females. These female figurines have been labeled as the “Mother-goddess” or “Astarte” and since they go against the principal of aniconism (aversion to the use of icons) that the book of Deuteronomy describes, scholars have often placed the use of these figurines into the ‘popular’ religion of the common folk of Israel.
Religious Difference amongst the Israelites?
Many assumptions underline this idea. The first is that human figurines are representative of deities. The other, is that the presence of figurines in ancient houses is evidence of popular Israelite worship. This is contrasted by scholars with the official religion of Israel that claims to hate the production and use of such items as religious icons. Did such a religious divide exist in Israel?
The Bull and the Cherubim
One often cited example of unofficial versus official religion in Israel, is the worship at Dan and Bethel of the Bull that was installed by Jeroboam been Nebat, the first king of Israel. These bulls are interpreted as an image of worship, opposed to the Cherubim inside the Jerusalem temple that served as the throne of the invisible God, for the bible says God is “seated upon the cherubim”. So, from the biblical perspective, worship was different in Jerusalem than in Dan and Bethel.
Religious Ways Begin to Change
When we learn of the religious reform of Hezekiah, King of Judah – how he tore down the standing pillars and removed the Asherim from his land, we also hear how he removed an image of worship from the Jerusalem Temple. It was a bronze serpent and was called the Nehushtan which “the people of Israel burned incense to” (2 kings 18:4).
The bible clearly acknowledges that the worship of images and icons (such as the snake) existed at one time in Israel, and that a King who believed it a breach of proper worship took on the task of removing their presence.
The Call to Worship the Invisible God
The Bible tells us that the prohibition of religious images in Israel dates back to the times of Moses. However, the long use of the Nehushtan (the snake) in the Temple shows that either the Jerusalem priests ignored this religious stance against icons, or that the prohibition had not yet taken root in Judahite worship. What does seem to be sure is the growing awareness and introduction of worship of the invisible God alone, soon after the actions of King Hezekiah. Perhaps words like these drove him in his actions, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Deut 5:8).
In conclusion, we see that the official religion in Judah did, at one time, acknowledge the use of images in their worship, and thus one does not see the necessity of classifying figurines and such like icons into the ‘popular’ religion category. It was only a process of time that brought the use of icons to an end.
Tags: Astarte, Bethel, cherubim, Dan, Deuteronomy, Hezekiah, Israel, Jerusalem, Judah, Mother-goddess, Nehushtan, pillar figurines, religion, Sacrifice
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Posted by Bronwen Manning on May 25, 2008 under History |
Ancient Man’s View of the Heavenly Realms
For the average ancient man it was common to envision the godly entities of the heavens in pairs. These pairs normally consisted of a husband-wife ratio which essentially reflected the importance of the family unit in ancient times. For it was the help and patronage of the family and clan that protected and eased people’s daily hardship. One example of this husband-wife pair comes from the Syrian city of Ugarit (modern day Ras Shamra) where from the 14th century BCE onwards we have a rich deposit of religious literature that has revealed ancient worshippers outlook on the gods. These people worshipped a variety of gods, of whom the high god was called El and his consort was called Athirat.
A Divine Marriage in Judah & Israel
A similar picture has been suggested in regards to the early religious life of the Israelites and Judahites. There exists some evidence from archaeology that many people also worshipped the god Yahweh with a female consort called Asherah. (See Kuntillet Ajrud and the Khirbet el-Qom Inscriptions). In fact it is not just extra-biblical evidence that can be cited in support of this older version of how the heavens were ordered, but the bible itself reveals a picture that seems to place Asherah in a legitimate position of worship early on in the religion of the nation. For example we are told that Asherah (generally believed to by a stylized tree or pole, possibly a date palm) was installed in the Temple of Jerusalem and in other sanctuaries around Judah at different times (2 Kings 18:4; 21:7).
Some have suggested that even the decorations used inside the Temple, the “cherubim, palmettes and calyxes” (1 Kings 6) helped to legitimize her position since she was worshipped in the form of a tree, and the decorations inside the Temple upheld the ancient motif of the Tree of Life flanked by two guards (like in the Garden of Eden story). This picture from Judah is likewise reflected in the northern kingdom of Israel. King Jehu who was a great religious conservative, destroyed the worship of Baal that had sprung up in Israel, but did not destroy the Asherah that was installed in his capital city of Samaria. This particular story seems to reveal that early religion in Israel was pro-Asherah and that such a position was in step with being a conservative follower of Yahweh.
Yahweh stands Alone
However this idea did not retain its legitimacy as time moved on. Another idea began replacing it, an idea that Yahweh was alone in his dealings with human kind, and that he was almighty and none other existed besides him. This ideology that is found so eloquently expressed in the book of Deuteronomy, naturally takes an aggressive stance to anything else that may attempt to steal or share Yahweh’s glory. It is thus not surprising to see the high anti-Asherah rhetoric in the bible that stems from this increasingly developed theology of Yahweh.
It is in this vein of thinking that we see religious reforms carried out in the land of Judah under Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Kings 18 & 23). They removed and destroyed the symbol of Asherah wherever she was found in the country- and in so doing proved to be more radical and innovative in their approach to how the world and the heavens were ordered.
They broke tradition with the ancient religious beliefs that had been so normative in their area of the world and in the worship of Yahweh in its early stages, and they struck a new path that led to the monotheistic religion of today.
Tags: Asherah, Athirat, Deuteronomy, El, Hezekiah, Jehu, Josiah, Khirbet el-Qom, Kuntillet Ajrud, Ras Shamra, Ugarit, Yahweh
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Posted by Bronwen Manning on March 25, 2008 under Archaeology, History |
A 3rd Century CE Roman grave has revealed a startling find- a small golden scroll with the Hebrew prayer, known as the Shema, "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). The scroll is a Greek transcription of the prayer, and was found resting in an infant’s grave. This finding may push back by 600 years the evidence of a Jewish Presence in modern day Austria.
To read more go to the University of Vienna.
Some caution needs to be exercised however since the finding is an isolated one, and may have been carried as an amulet by a non-Jew. Despite these concerns, it is an exciting find given the quality of the amulet and its dating.
This finding is analogous with the silver-scrolled amulets found outside of Jerusalem at Ketef Hinnom which are much older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. These amulets were also found in a family grave and parallel the Priestly Blessings found in Numbers 6: 24-26.
"The Lord (Yhwh) bless you, and Keep you,
The Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you,
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace."
Interested in learning Biblical Hebrew? Sign up for a trial lesson at www.classicalhebrew.com
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Posted by Naama Baumgarten on January 3, 2008 under Language and Genre |
Parallelism is a prominent feature in Ancient Near Eastern poetry and biblical poetry as such, and is also present in certain cases in biblical prose. The meaning of parallelism is that there is an inherent connection between the two members of a poetic verse: various elements are re-worded and repeated, or changed and re-stated, as part of the stylistic characteristics of the poem. A good example of the simplest kind of parallelism is Deuteronomy 32:1: “(a) Listen, heavens, and I shall speak, (b) and the earth shall hear the words of my mouth”: 1. listening (a) is parallel to hearing (b); 2. heaven (a) is parallel of earth(b); 3. speech (a) is parallel to words of mouth (b). While the first and the third parallelisms listed are obvious, the second teaches us of the types of parallels this style can create: due to the need to have a parallel for each element in the verse, opposites can also serve as parallels when they both come together to convey one and the same meaning: all of creation, heaven and earth, are called to listen to the song.
As part of its stylistic features, the genre of parallelism usually dictates the use of specific word-pairs as parallels: hear-listen, Israel-Jacob, peoples-nations, desert-wilderness, and many more. It is interesting to note that many of the same exact parallels are common in Ugaritic poetry as well.
In terms of the meaning of parallelisms, there are two major types: synonymous parallelisms like the example above, where both members of the verse convey the same meaning in different ways; and antithetic parallelisms, where the two members of the verse convey opposite ideas. Naturally, there are many parallelisms which are hard to classify as either.
From the technical aspect, there are different ways of creating a parallelism: not all the elements in the first member of a verse are necessarily repeated, and often it is the verb or the person addressed which is only stated once and implied in the second member of the verse. The parallel members can either be grammatically identical and organized in the same order (as in the example above), or can be presented in a different order. A common way of doing so is chiastic parallelism, as in Gen 9:6: “One who sheds a man’s blood, by a man shall his own blood be shed.”
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