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 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

Mythic Grains

Ugaritic tablet KTU 1.6 with text of part of Baal Cycle.

Among the Ugaritic Mythological texts, there is this interesting part of Baal myth (KTU 1.6.ii.31-37 in my translation and partly reconstructed from parallels).

     Goddess Anat grasped divine Mot,

     with a trashing blades she split him,

     with a fan she winnowed him,

     with fire she parched him,

     with millstones she ground him,

     on the steppe she scattered him,

     in the furrows she sowed him.

     His remains the birds did indeed eat,

     his remnants the sparrows did consume.

 

     Do you recognize how similar it is to the parable which Jesus said?! The one about the different seeds landing in different soils and about their different destinies.

     Well, I am not suggesting that Jesus copied ancient Canaanite myths, of course he did not. Those myths are twelve hundred years older and were buried in the ruins of the city for centuries.

     But Jesus was certainly drawing from the same treasure of religious metaphors. Those religious metaphors about grain date from great antiquity, from the beginning of farming, thousands of years before the time of Jesus or the time of Ugarit.

            And these mythical metaphors were not limited to Hebrew or Semitic people. It is likely that similar grain metaphors played an important role in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries. And among the hairs of Celtic religion and culture are present in the ballad John Barleycorn must die (A friend Neil Nash alerted me to this fact.)

            In the New Testament Jesus is not the only one who uses this grain metaphor. Apostle Paul reached out to the same mythic treasure when he tried to explain to the Corinthians (1Cor15) the resurrection. He used the similar metaphor of grain being buried and then rising to new life.

            And thus through Apostle Paul and the parables of Jesus we share this important, meaningful and beautiful connection with the dawn of civilization, the beginning of agriculture, and the oldest shared hopes of transcending our mortality.

            And that is something you might not know about the Bible, about the New Testament metaphors and their deep, meaningful, mythical roots. 

 

Video version of this blog can be found here.

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.

Biblical Monsters

The Hebrew Bible is surprisingly aflush with mythical primordial monsters which it shares with other Near and Middle East religions and cultures. It is especially surprising when you consider that is coming from one of the driest parts of the world full of savannas, deserts, and semi-deserts.

            Probably best known among those monsters is Leviathan. In Ugaritic known as Litanu. Sometimes it is paralleled with a serpent monster, possibly with seven heads.

            Next well known monster could be Behemoth. Possibly a bull like amphibian beast present in water as well as on land. One is almost led to imagine it like a monstrous hippopotamus. In ancient Near East sources it might be associated with similar amphibian monsters like Atik and Arshu.

           Besides these two well-known water monsters there was also Tannin, known in Ugaritic as Tunnanu. There are signs it was perceived like a monstrous crocodile but likely with two tails. This monster eventually made it to the Greek language as Tuna fish  and thus also into our tins. ;-)

            Then there was a monster called Rahab known possibly just from the Bible. But there might be two instances of it in broken and obscure Akkadian texts. It is also likely that this monster was known under its descriptive names like for instance “Seven-headed Serpent”, or “Encyrclerer”.  

            Finally there was Tehom known from Babylon as Tiamat, a monster of primordial chaos. In the Bible Tehom is often demythologized as "the ocean deep", but there are also well documented instances where it is clearly a divine or semi-divine demonic figure (for instance in Job 28:14 or Pslam 42:8).

          And the presence of all these mythical monsters in the Hebrew Bible is something you might not know about it.

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All these sea monsters are clear vestiges of a rather complex creation mythology. The world was created and made habitable by all these monsters being slain, vanquished or at least captured and kept under check.  

            The first battle happened at the beginning of time. The forces of chaos were defeated and an orderly and civilized world came into being.

          Unfortunately, some of these monsters, or the forces they represented, were only rebuffed or perhaps they escaped. They need to be constantly under check. That is the source of persistant anxiety as well as a reason for many prayers. And in this context we can observe these monsters being linked with historical enemies: Egypt, Babylon, Hellenistic kingdoms or later in the New Testament Rome.

            But the final and complete victory is coming. These monsters will be decisively defeated at the end of time. This part of the myth is for instance present in the biblical book of Revelation in its vision of the final victory over the dragon. 

           As you can see, this is a rather complex tripartite monster-mythology embracing the entirety of time. Its presence in the Bible is another thing you might not know about the Bible.

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All of this is, as you can recognize, quite a dense mythological material. It does not fit neatly with biblical monotheism and its program of toning down old mythological references. And so the biblical scribes and editors used several strategies to make it fit with their overarching program.

            Firstly they re-naturalized these monsters. They attempted to return them back to the beasts from which they most likely originated. There are clear attempts to portray Behemoth as hippopotamus, Tanin as a crocodile, and  Leviathan as a whale.

           Secondly and somehow overlapping with the previous strategy, these monsters were “domesticated”. They were made less horrifying and even portrayed as playful. For instance, Psalmist (Psalm 104:26) describes Leviathan as created by God to romp in the sea.

            The next step was when a sea monster was made to faithfully serve divine purpose. In the book of Jonah a sea monster follows divine command and swallows a rebellious prophet. Being thusly swallowed by a monster must had been the stuff of horrid nightmares! But then we realize that the monster had a hard time keeping the rebellious prophet inside. And as soon as God allowed, it vomited him on shore (Jonah 2:10).

          Such use of a mythical sea monster for parody and comic effect was the last stage of the biblical demythologization of monsters. And that is yet another, third thing, you might not know about the biblical monsters.

Biblical Chaoskampf

Can you walk on water? I would doubt it! Such skill is reserved only for deities!
Prophet Isaiah (43:16) speaks about YHWH

     who makes a way in the sea,

           a path in the mighty waters.

And similarly Psalmist (77:19) sings about YHWH:

Your way was through the sea,

    your path, through the mighty waters;

        yet your footprints were unseen.

And for those who might be a little slow in understanding the Psalmist spells it out and drops a direct hint:

            You led your people like a flock

            by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Of course, those walking-on-water reports are actually references of Exodus and the Israelites escaping from Egypt across the sea. The Hebrew Bible, especially the poetical parts, seems to have plenty of these direct and indirect hints of God subduing, defeating and controlling unruly waters while at the same time liberating and protecting God’s faithful people. And, of course, that image is picked up in the New Testament when Jesus calmed the stormy sea and even walked on it. All these biblical passages are hinting, alluding and reenacting the Exodus - this formative and quintessential event of the people of faith - both Jews and Christians.

            But then... then there is a problem. Actually an entire mound of problems, big problems

because such references and allusions are not limited to the Bible. There are many renditions of this image of calming, subduing or walking on an unruly sea which are predating not only the Hebrew Bible - they also predate the theoretical date of Exodus whenever you might think of placing it. These Ancient Near East examples predate anything in the bible by hundreds and even thousands of years.

            In the Babylonian myth  Enūma Eliš god Marduk defeats, crushes and tramples on the watery monster Tiamat and you can find similar stories throughout the Ancient Near East. Among the scholars of religion this mytheme is called Chaoskampf - struggle, fight against the powers of Chaos.  And there are also many iconographic examples - cylinder seals, engravings and other depictions from all over the ancient Near and Middle East. On an attached picture is a stela of god Baal from the late bronze age city of Ugarit. You can see  Baal standing, trampling and thus dominating waves of the sea. Just like we read in the Psalm or in prophet Isaiah.

            These could not be allusions of Exodus because that was still in the distant future for many of these examples. And hardly any orthodox Jewish and Christian theologian would claim these instances were pagan prophesies foretelling the birth of those religions.

            But strangely, in a special, unique way, these might very much be exactly something like that! Those Bronze Age Babylonian and Syrian myths can be seen as foreshadowing the future. They were preparing a building material for the future, for the birth of the biblical religion.

            And the authors of the Hebrew Bible and later of the Christian New Testament took over those myths and used them, adapted them to tell their own stories about their own heroes and their victories over chaos and creation of the new world, new people. But most importantly, their re-purposed stories had the same function and purpose - reassuring audiences, listeners and readers of ultimate divine victory and thus bringing hope to the midst of chaos and uncertainty.

          When Jesus walks on the billows of the sea and calms the raging waves or when we hear about Moses leading people from slavery through the sea to freedom - in these dearly beloved biblical stories – we hear that God will act the same way again. And while listening we are actually touching something very precious. We share our hopes and our stories with people at least 4,500 years ago and we are connected with the dawn of the civilization, almost as far back as the written records go. In these formative stories of our faith we encounter deep archetypal fears and also hopes. And that is something you might not know about the Bible.

There is also a YouTube video clone of this blog.

 

Join us this Sunday, we will rejoice in the New Testamental reworking and reshaping of this powerful ancient theme.

And here is a video from the worship.

 

Beelzebub or Beelzebul

In the New Testament Jesus was accused of conspiring with Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, which was how he was able to heal and expel demons. We all know that Jesus had a quite tense relationship with the religious authorities of his time. No surprise there! What is really interesting in this instance is the name of his alleged demonic ally.
      In the New Testament he is consistently called Beelzebul, while the Hebrew Bible presents him as Beelzebub.
      The Hebrew version of this name can be easily translated as Baal (Lord) of the flies (unpleasant insects). This interpretation is further confirmed in the Septuagint, an Ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, where it is translated that way into Greek.
      So why does the New Testament have only Beelzebul, what does it mean and what is the significance of it? It cannot be easily translated. Over the years theologians offered a number of different explanations and translations: 1) The Lord of the lofty house; 2) The Lord of the Flame; 3) The Lord of the illness/affliction.
      Then, in the middle of the 20^th century, as the cuneiform texts from Ugarit, a Late Bronze city in Syria, were translated and better understood there were many surprises and among them scholars noticed that the word zbl was used as a title also with a number of divine names. Soon a consensus formed that it was a royal title, something like “Prince” “The elevated one” “His highness”. And in those texts were also instances where name was b‘l zbl -- Ba‘al Zebul best translated as Baal the prince.
      Thus it was confirmed that Hebrew Bible’s - Beelzebub / Ba‘al Zebub was an intentional misspelling to denigrate, to slander a foreign god. We know that the biblical scribes did that especially to the god Ba‘al - replacing his name occasionally with BOSHET - “shame”. In this case they replaced the royal title with the unpleasant insects - from “Ba‘al the prince” was “Ba‘al/The Lord of the Flies” 
      But in the Ugaritic texts were also another rendition of this divine name zbl b‘l ars - which can be translated as Prince, Lord of the netherworld. And there were several (unfortunately badly broken) incantations which invoked this Prince, Lord of the underworld, to drive out illness/demons. That well fits the well-known role of the chthonic (underworld) deities who were often believed to possess these curative powers over illnesses and demons.
       So here you have it - the New Testament rendition of this divine name Beelzebul was closer to the original pagan context rather than the one from somehow older Hebrew Bible. And even the accusation of healing with the help of Beelzebul, the lord of the demons better fits the ancient context.
       And that is something you might not know about the Bible. 

And here is a video clone of this blog on YouTube.

And on this Sunday (2021-06-06) you can join us in worship, we will certainly mention the dark forces instigating the civil strife in our world, but we will go further and rejoice in the truly healing, life giving, realm of our Prince of Peace.

Not a Lunacy

The biblical message is quite unequivocal and resolute: 
       When you look up to the heavens and see
       the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven,
       do not be led astray and bow down to them and serve them. (Deuteronomy 4:19)
Worship of heavenly bodies and any astrology were forbidden.
But then the prophet Isaiah (40:26) takes us in an exactly opposite direction:
       Lift up your eyes on high and see.
       Who created all of that?
      The one who brings out the host (of stars) in full number,
      calling them all by name;
      because of his great strength and mighty power,
      not a single one is missing.
On the surface it all looks quite orthodox. It looks just like a lovely celebration of the Creator of the splendid and awesome night sky. No problem, no conflict there, until .... Until we realize that the prophet describes biblical god with well known attributes of the Moon god - Yarikh (also transliterated as Yarih, Jarich or Jarikh).
            Behind the prophet’s words was the mythical image of the Moon god leading out each evening the flock of stars like a shepherd - that would be the peaceful version of that mythical image - or like a king leading his heavenly army to war - that would be a more bellicose image.
            And so there is no doubt, Isaiah is not the only instance in the Bible quoting this old myth. The same mythical image appears also in Psalm 147:
            The LORD determines the number of the stars;
            God calls all of them out by their names.
In Isaiah or in the Psalm the Moon God Yarikh is never mentioned by name, but YHWH is eloquently described as the moon god. And that is not a lunacy. There clearly was a time when the Hebrew god was merged and fused with the Moon god Yarikh and took over many of his attributes and functions. And this Biblical fusion of biblical god YHWH with the Moon god Yarikh is something you might not know about the Bible!

This Sunday we will observe what it might mean for our faith. Not a lunacy! But rather we can draw inspiration from our predecessors and ancestors, take it as encouragement to seek justice in our own turbulent times, and draw encouragement and hope for the future generations.  

Compassion and healing

Crown prince Yaṣib came to his father,

he lifted up his voice and cried:

    Listen, I besiege you, O noble Keret,

    listen, and let your ear be alert!

You have not defended the widow,

you have not protected the powerless!

You have not stopped the plundering of the poor.

You have not fed the orphans under your rule,

you have not protected widows around your throne!

    And for all those reasons

    your bedfellow is illness,

    your concubine is disease.  (KTU 1.16.vi.46-51)

 

This is a short and slightly adjusted quotation from an epos recorded on a clay tablet about three thousand years ago. All that long ago people already knew that there was a connection  between arrogant, abusive and corrupt power and suffering and illness. (Aren’t we reminded of it by our recent national events?!)

            But please, understand me well, I do not believe for a moment in a vindictive God. This was composed centuries before the first sentence of the Hebrew Bible was ever written! Yet people already knew what constitutes a healthy society! It was and still is taking care of the widows and orphans, the poor and powerless. There is simply no denying that there always has been this connection between selfish, incompetent rulers neglecting the most vulnerable and the suffering of their subjects and their societies. In fact it is also a heartbreaking logic because the vulnerable always suffer twice - first they suffer being neglected and then they suffer the secondary consequences of that neglect - unhealthy and collapsing society. 

            Thankfully there is a way out of it if only we decide to take it. This logic of lack of compassion and illness can also be reversed and compassion does lead to broader healing.

            Have you noticed how many examples of just that healing we have in the Gospels? They give many accounts of Jesus’ miraculous healings. But this Sunday we will listen to a very special healing story from the gospel. To my best knowledge, among all the miraculous healings, this is the only healing which is part of a parable thus being a direct invitation for all of us to step in and follow the suit.