Ugaritic Yom Kippur

Among religious texts from Ugarit is also a beautiful and deeply meaningful liturgy of communal penitence. It is a Canaanite, pagan, Late bronze version of Yom Kippur now known refered to as KTU 1.40. Thus this liturgy is more than three thousand years old and easily predates anything we have in the Bible by hundreds of years.

            In that liturgy, sons of Ugarit, citizens and resident aliens, government, including the vizier, and the king beg forgiveness from a long list of social, national, and ethnic groups. They beg forgiveness for whatever might compromise their integrity in relationships with the Qatians, the Dadmians, the Churians, the Hettites, the Cypriots, the Hebrews, all the subjects, all the poor, all the refugees, by their anger, impatience, any transgression, for any missteps in sacrifices or dues. (Some of it is conjecture, but the intention of this liturgy is clear.)   

            And these petitions by men are followed word-for-word in an almost absolute parity by petitions from daughters of Ugarit, including the Queen and her court.

            The clay tablet with this liturgy is unfortunately broken and badly damaged, but these petitions were clearly repeated a number of times with different sacrifices. From what we can guess, at least three times for sons of Ugarit and three times for daughters of Ugarit.

            I find this bronze age liturgy moving and deeply meaningful. Just imagine in our own times that instead of the self-congratulatory and boastful State of the Union Address we would have this tradition of an annual national holy day of repentance in which the president, all the secretaries, all the dignitaries and supreme court justices would come together and lead the nation in repentance doing nothing but humbly asking all the poor, the homeless, the immigrants, all the racial, national, cultural or gender minorities, all the international partners and enemies, expressing sadness and asking for forgiveness! Not once, not twice but six times and possibly the seventh time for good measure. And afterwards they would personally serve the people a lavish meal paid from their own pockets.

 

These are the ancient pagan roots of the biblical day of Atonement, and the Jewish Yom Kippur until today. And quite likely something you might not know about the Bible and the biblical roots and background.

 

Join us this Sunday - we will talk about atonement and what the medieval church and after them the fundamentalists until now did and still are doing to the concept of repentance by developing atrocious dogma of substitutionary atonement. We will reject this harmful and blasphemous dogma and will seek more hopeful and healthier alternatives.

 

Video clip version can be watched here: https://youtu.be/M488DnmNXQo

God against censorship

American white evangelicals have been recently up in arms, yelling at teachers and being rude at school board meetings, attempting to ban books from classrooms and school libraries, demanding gagging orders forbidding teachers to talk about race or LGBT issues. Dozens of innocent books have been banned.

     And it did not stop at school boards! There are now more than 150 legislative bills introduced in 38 states of our union that attempt to censor what teachers are allowed to say or teach in their classrooms.
      It is quite upsetting but also mildly amusing coming form specifically those groups. How come these racist fundamentalists don’t know their bibles? Or are they just hypocrites and their “Christianity” is just a cloak for bigotry and racism? In the Bible there is a story about censorship with a lesson they certainly should hear and learn.
      In Jeremiah 36 we hear how scribe Baruch wrote down Jeremiah’s prophecy King Jehoiakim, probably unable to read, asked it to be read to him, and as they were reading it, the king would use his knife and cut it and burn it piece by piece until he burned the entire scroll. King thought, that was the end of it.
      But God commanded Jeremiah: Get another scroll and write in it all the words that were in the original burned scroll. And so Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to his scribe, and he dictated and Baruch recorded all that has been burned. Only this time, it has been substantially expanded!
     So here you have it! The Bible itself is teaching that burning books and censorship are impotent and futile. And that is something you might not know about the bible. And that is also good news for all freedom loving people everywhere. Freedom loving, free consciousness loving, free spirit loving, freedom of speech loving. And for us in our current context there is reassurance to fight back censorship. Any racist attempts to censor black history will NOT succeed.

And if you read this far: there is another interesting biblical exegetical aspect and theological insight.
     The story about the burning of a prophetic scroll from Jeremiah 36 has a close antipodal parallel in the 2 Kings 22 in a story about the discovery of the Torah scroll in the temple supposedly at the time of king Josiah.
     Modern scholarship suspects that both these stories are in fact much later literary fictions. They required certain conceptual and mentality preconditions among the authors as their audience. It could have been written and made sense to the readers only after they encountered and became familiar with the Babylonian legal tradition and especially after they experienced the Persian administration relaying on written documents.
     The Persian setting - after the time of Ezra, Nehemiah - is to me the terminus post quem and possibly a much later moment for creation of these literary fictions. They are two complementary parts of the same biblical sermon teaching something similar to this - When encountering a challenging, uncomfortable writing – we all can chose – do we want to be like Josiah embracing the text and learning from it or do we want to be like Jehoiakim burning it?
     Recognizing this connection and dating this dual sermon to the Persian period or even later makes this argument only stronger and more plausible. This late Persian, and possibly even Hellenistic homily about two approaches to the challenging message is another aspect you might not know about the Bible. It might be a literary fiction but at the same time a powerful encouragement not to burn, ban or censor uncomfortable books but to study them and take them seriously.

Revolution in Heaven

Nine classes of angels in three spheres depicted in a medieval manuscript.

Have you heard about the revolution in heaven? Have you heard how Jesus overthrew the heavenly hierarchy?

     First I need to explain the angelic hierarchy. The ancient polytheistic peoples were familiar with the notion of the divine court. Greeks situated it on Mt. Olympus. North West Semitic people looked up to Mt. Zaphon (modern Jebel Aqra). Of course the Hebrew Bible knew about Zaphon but there are also signs that Mt. Sinai, Mt. Zion or occasionally other mountains might play a similar role.

            A deepening process of monotheisation under the prophets like Isaiah or Jeremiah led to less interest in the divine court. But then, it found its way in again during the late biblical period under the influence of apocalyptic writings such as Ezekiel or Daniel. In this stage, what used to be deities were replaced with throngs and retinues of angels. The angelic hierarchy was imagined and structured according to Hellenistic Royal Courts. Later the rabbis organised angels into no less than 10 classes or ranks. But the Jewish angelic hierarchy stayed rather fluent and even a little chaotic. For instance different cabalistic schools could have one class of angels, for instance Seraphim, in the highest rank as well as lowest rank and anything in between, depending on the author.

            Roman Catholic medieval Scholasticism put angels in better order, probably inspired by needs of the medieval feudal church. Angels were organised in three large spheres and nine different classes. The highest sphere was for angels who were constantly in the presence of the divine and never left. Beneath them was the intermediary sphere of angelic functionaries mediating divine commands to the lower angelic sphere. The lowest angelic sphere was charged with execution of divine orders. Here were patrons of nations and royal houses, here were archangels in the second lowest class. Lower were only regular angels and the lowest of lowest of angels were the personal guardian angels, the blue collar angels, angelic proletarians. 

            Angelic hierarchy thus reflected medieval feudal structures of power but also represented the general human desire for order in the hierarchy of power. Image of heaven in Roman Church reflected medieval feudalism, in the Biblical times it reflected Hellenistic courts, among early Jews and pagans Zaphon, Sion or Olympus were perceived like Bronze Age royal palaces. (In heaven it was as it was on earth. When you think about it, it was the very opposite of one of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer.) 

            And then, Jesus, as was his well-established practice, turned this all upside down in one sentence.  Matthew 18:10 in my loose rendition - Don’t even think to disregard and neglect the powerless, I tell you, their guardian angels have direct access to God. (My loose translation.)

            The lowest, worldly, working angels, that angelic proletariat has direct access to God! That is revolution in heaven. As if Jesus said, Stop projecting your human corrupt power structures to heaven! Rather, change your human structures according to the egalitarian heavenly model which I bring and preach to you. 

            That is what I call the revolution in heaven. The overthrow of imaginary heavenly hierarchy and by the way the utter abrogation of heavenly and earthly feudalism or any other abusive power structures which humankind is so eager to create and recreate.

            The first are last and last are first in heaven! And the first will be last and the last will be first in bright divine future. And you should start living it out now.

 

And that is something you might not know about the Bible and Jesus’ radical angelology.

 

Video version of this article can be found on Rutgers Church YouTube. 

And here it is being explained to children in virtual Children Message

God and her loom

The Bible is full of surprising images and metaphors when it speaks about God. Take for instance Jesus’ parable of the lost coin. In it God is compared to a housewife sweeping the floor.

     The Hebrew Bible contains similarly surprising metaphors. When, for instance, Job (7:6-8) and prophet Isaiah (38:12) lament the fleeting nature of human life they use a metaphor of weaving. Job is the most evocative comparing human life to a weft, the thread swiftly flying off the shuttle.

            That is a highly surprising image because within the context it implies that God is the weaver. And here you need to understand that throughout the Middle East the spinning and weaving were activities for women. We know it from myths, documents, as well as, artwork. And it is confirmed by the bible itself. Delila is to fasten and weave Samson’s hair in her loom (Jdg 16:13). And part of the Josiah reform, we are told (2Ki 23:7), was that he threw out female weavers from the temple.

            For all the ancient middle eastern people a weaver God takes up a clearly feminine role, female household work. As much as the Hebrew Bible is predominantly patriarchal and God is portrayed as male, there are these surprising depictions of God clearly taking over female gender roles. And that is something you might not know about the Bible.

 

Join us this first Sunday of the year 2022, we will lift up and expound this image of a divine weaver – far from talking about a loom of gloom, it in reality contains a beautiful, illuminating and hopeful message.

 

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And for those who read this far and might be interested in understanding the Bible within the context of the Ancient Near Eastern religion here are a few more words.

            In the mythology from Ugarit (Ball cycle, KTU 1.4.ii), it is the goddess Asherah who is depicted as spinning and dyeing a yarn. And those earlier mentioned female weavers who were thrown out of the temple by Josiah, were allegedly making fabric for the same goddess. 

            It is therefore possible that in the process of monotheisation of the biblical religion, this single Biblical God absorbed some attributes, functions and activities of the goddess Asherah, thus combining gender roles, and becoming biblical version of divine Herm-Aphrodite.

            Earlier we made several short videos and some blog entries linked here:

 

"Does YHWH Have a Womb?" https://youtu.be/5AYosnwrtz0 "God Our Mother" https://youtu.be/WssQ06JRw24

Fragrant Christ

It is a sign of biblical literacy, if not basic cultural competence, to know that “Christ” was not Jesus’ second name nor his surname. Children in the Sunday School learn that Christ is from the Greek word χριστὸς and itself is a translation of Hebrew word Messiah מָשִׁיחַ and in both cases the meaning is “The anointed one”. And they also learn that anointing was an Ancient Near Eastern act of promoting persons to some high offices, to priesthood, kingship, occasionally to a role of prophet. Thus sur-name “Christ” is in fact an honorific title. Our modern theology and liturgy tries to highlight this original meaning by using expression "Jesus the Christ".      
    Nevertheless, the New testament writings and the Early Christianity were fully immersed in the Hellenistic Greek Culture and in it the inaugural anointing was not widely used and known. And thus already from the later parts of the New Testament onward the title Christ lost the meaning of an honorific title and started to function as a second name, it became part of a holy name (nomen sacrum).
    And this early (biblical) onset of pious ignorance is something you might not know about the New Testament Bible.

 

I mentioned that the Hebrew word messiah מָשִׁיחַ was an honorific title indicating that the person was inaugurated into some higher-ranking position by the act of anointing - pouring fragrant oil over them. Kings, priests and prophets were called anointed. 

    But the act of religious anointing (root משׁח) was not reserved for people alone. Religiously anointed were also the temple furniture (ark, lampstand, incense table, utensils) even the sanctuary/tabernacle itself. Anointing was a religious ritual consecrating objects or people as holy, setting them apart for special religious functions.

    Anointing was in fact a liturgically enacted metaphor with several interconnected meanings. 

Oils have preservative faculties that slow down rusting or rotting - thus anointing visualized and represented this desire to forestall decay. Before the invention of soap, oils played an important role in personal hygiene (rubbing oils on skin and scraping off dirt) - thus anointing was associated with cleanliness. Oils and ointments especially infused with herbs are used until now in medicine - thus anointing represented this desire to protect the health of the anointed. Oils infused with herbs were also used as perfumes, covering or repelling unpleasant odors. Here you need to understand that in ancient times it was about more than just cosmetics. Demons were believed to reek - thus anointing actualized repelling demons.

    Anointing was associated with preservation, cleanliness, health and repelling of demons, it was in fact apotropaic magic - a high brow religious ritual to set objects or persons apart and to express desire in protecting them from evil influences. 

    And this deep apotropaic function of anointing is something you might not know about the Bible (biblical religion).

 

And here is a YouTube video of the sermon: Fragrance of Loving Care.

Biblical Hopscotch

In our series “Who wrote the Bible” we come to the book of Daniel. It will be our introduction to the apocalyptic genre. There were earlier signs of apocalypticism in several older prophecies, but for the most part the book of Daniel is considered the beginning of the biblical apocalyptic genre - those expressionistic, ear-catching prophetic revelations how history is progressing towards the end. Daniel is an excellent early example of it, and as a book it is highly unusual, a book itself that was written in several languages, but also extremely problematic.
      Already in the ancient times, around the year 300 CE a Greek Philosopher Porphyry of Tire pointed out historical and authorship problems. Porphyry “denied that it was composed by the person to whom it is ascribed in its title, but rather by some individual living in Judaea at the time of that Antiochus who was surnamed Epiphanes; he further alleged that ‘Daniel’ did not foretell the future so much as he related the past, and lastly that whatever he spoke of up till the time of Antiochus contained authentic history, whereas anything he may have conjectured beyond that point was false, inasmuch as he would not have foreknown the future.”
     This is a loose quotation from Jerome, translator of the Bible into Latin (Vulgate). And we must be thankful for these apologetic disapproving quotations, because they are our only sources of this Porphyry’s book about Daniel.  100 years later, after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Emperor Theodosius II ordered all the copies of Porphyry book burned, not once, but twice! In 435 and then for good measure again in 448.
     It took Christian theologians another 1400 years, until enlightenment, to acknowledge that Porphyry was right after all and his scholarship was sound. With the growing body of historical and archeological knowledge of the ancient Middle East it became ever more clear that Daniel is absolutely sketchy about the time when it was supposedly written. And here are some examples of blaring anachronisms and contradictions.
1) Daniel writes about Nebuchadnezzar “madness” but if anything such an episode is known only about Nabonidus.
2) Daniel treats Balshazzar as a king of Babylon, but he was never a king of Babylon, if anything he was possibly a crown prince .
3) Balshazzar also was emphatically not a son of Nabuchadnezzar, he was a son of Nabonidus.
4) Daniel claims that Dareius the Meade (this cognomen itself is anachronism) conquered Babylon while it is a well known fact that it was the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great who did it, after earlier battles Babylon opened its gates to him without a fight.
5) Dareius was not a son of Xerxes as Daniel claims, in reality Xerxes was a son of Dareius.
            Thus the Book of Daniel is not only wrong about predicting the future beyond Antiochus Epiphanes as Porphyry observed, the book of Daniel is also completely wrong about the past, when it was supposedly written and about the events which should been fresh in the memory of the author.
     This is, dear friends, the beginning and foundation of the apocalyptic genre. Source and inspiration of all those feverish, fiery and often bloody visions of the end of times. In reality it is a forgery and quite a sloppy forgery at that!
     And that is unfortunately something many Americans might not know about the Bible even now. I am singling out our religious/fundamentalist compatriots because in the last several centuries especially American fundamentalist have been a steady source of apocalyptic excesses.
     The Book of Daniel was the basis for Milerites (later known as Adventists) to calculate the end of the world. It played an important role for Jehovah witnesses and several other groups after them (Davidians or Peoples Temple).
     Imagine selling all your property, upending your lives and waiting on hills (and it can be even more sinister - drinking Kool-Aid) and imagine that somewhere at the foundation of all of that nonsense is a sloppy forgery in which Babylon is conquered by Darius, Darius! That is why education matters in all aspects of life and also in theology and in faith!
     On the other hand if we abandon this folly’s errand, this crazy idea that Daniel is predicting the future until now, and take a sober approach and perceive it as a literary product of a religious person (or a group of persons) who felt marginalized, alienated and attacked by a hegemonic foreign culture and religion, then the book of Daniel can offer us invaluable insights into human religious psyche and even possibly bring some sparks of hope to the extreme times and situations.
And that is what we will attempt to do this Sunday.

Gospel in Cuneiform

A recreation of KTU 1.24.7

Among the Ugaritic cuneiform tablets dated to 12^th century BCE is also a myth about the wedding of Yarich (moon god) to a princess called Nikal-and-Ib (KTU 1.24)
            The seventh line reads hlģlmt.tldbn - “Look, the sacred bride shall bear a son...”
            It is almost identical (with just minor dialectical variations and one omitted word) to what is in the prophet Isaiah 7:14 “Look, the young woman is pregnant and shall bear a son...”
            The Ugaritic word ģlmt and corresponding Hebrew ‘lmh were words for a princess, possibly with some religious function. But this word primarily designated a young noble woman who hasn’t given birth yet (in the medical Latin - Nullipara).
            Originally this phrase was quite likely a linguistically and culturally established way of announcing a birth to a new mother. (Similar phrasing is used to about the birth of Ishamel to Hagar and Isaac to Sarah). 
            But then, when Isaiah was translated from Hebrew to Greek ‘lmh - “the nullipara princess” became παρθενος - “a virgin”. The Septuagint was the Bible of the Church and so “virgin” found its way to the Gospel of Matthew and indirectly to the Gospel of Luke while simultaneously generating virginal phantasms of early church theology. 

And this Nativity Gospel in Cuneiform is something you might not know about the Bible.

David the Hellene

David and Goliath is a beautifully crafted story. The bucolic pastoral innocence of David is alluringly contrasted with his vulgar mercenary opponent.  And more is there than meets the ear of the modern reader or listener. This story has the Hellenistic heroic legend written all over it.

            Beside the idyllic pastoral setting the antiquity is further alluded by what is called the single combat. Such single combat especially when presented as a ritualized substitute for a battle has many classical echoes and was to indicate the antiquity of the story. David’s glorious spolia opima - a stripping and repossessing of the armor of the defeated enemy - was a well recognized trope and the highest rank of military achievement worthy of the dynastic founder. Similar legends circulated for instance about Romulus and other heroes of antiquity. 

            Talking about Goliath’s armor, it is a clear example of a biblical anachronism. Goliath’s armor simply does not fit what is known about the late bronze age Philistines (no matter how many times the word bronze is repeated) but it closely resembles the armor of a Hellenic hoplite.

            And from the textual perspective, there is a substantial difference between the Hebrew and Greek versions. In most of the cases it is Greek Septuagint which contains textual expansions. In this case it is the other way round. The Hebrew text is half a chapter longer thus further pointing to relatively late textual developments.

            These are all signs of the Hellenistic composition of this legend. And at its center is another strong argument which might elude many modern readers. It is the very choice of David’s weapon, his sling. Modern readers can be easily lured into perceiving it, just as it is skillfully and seductively presented, as a bucolic pastoral reference. But that was certainly not the case at the time of composition.

            A sling was a regular military weapon and units of slingers were well established parts of ancient armies. There are numerous references to the military use of slingers from the time of Homer onward (Ajax, the son of Oileus). Xenophone in his Anabasis writes extensively about the deployment of the Persian as well as Greek slingers. Furthermore, the archeological finds of sling projectiles, stone, clay, and especially lead, from all around the Mediterranean Basin, further confirm the well-established and long lasting use of this serious weapon.

            Without a doubt there was a difference between a hoplite warrior and a skirmisher (light infantry) slinger. Hoplites were wealthy aristocratic citizens while slingers were often recruited from among the specific groups of peasants, for instance Hellenistic slingers were from Rhodos, while later in the Punic period the Balearic slingers gained reputation (mortally wounding Consul Paulus at the battle of Cannae). This difference of rank between Goliath and David, a hoplite warrior and a slinger skirmisher made the tale immediately understood and appreciated all around the Hellenistic world.

            David and Goliath is a well known biblical legend, but its military Hellenistic background is something not many might know about the Bible.

 

A lead sling projectile from the collection of the British Museum.
The Greek text cast on it reads ΔΕΞΑΙ - "Here you go!" or "Catch this!"

 

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Occasionally there are questions about the academic sources of claims made in these blogs. I decided to list some of the sources.
Israel Finkelstein & Neil Asher Silberman: David and Solomon, New York 2006
John Van Seters: The Biblical Saga of King David, Winona Lake, 2009
Philippe Wajdenbaum: Argonauts of the Desert, Routledge 2011