Who were the Magi?

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, Magi from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”

- Matthew 2:1-2

In two videos of a talk delivered at UC Irvine on 29 November 2012, Bruce Lincoln examines the evidence for the identification of the Magi, a term strangely bifurcated between somewhat positive and very negative meanings.
“From Ritual Practice to Esoteric Knowledge: The Problem of the Magi”

Why I like Biblical Studies

Apparently, back in 1947, Saul Lieberman introduced a lecture by Gershom Scholem on Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah with these words:

That sums up, rather nicely, why I like Biblical Studies.

 

Davey and Goliath Playlist

A Davey and Goliath playlist! Hurrah!!

 

Davey and Goliath

Eegah! The Worst Giant Movie Ever Made?

Judge for yourself. The whole movie is available on the youtubes:

Tim Bulkeley responds to Francesca Stavrakopoulou on Asherah, God’s Wife

Tim Bulkeley (5-Minute Bible) has been responding, in a series of podcasts, to an article written by Francesca Stavrakopoulou way back in March 2011. The article in question was published in the Daily Mail, and is entitled, “Why the BBC’s new face of religion believes God had a WIFE”. In it, Stavrakopoulou introduces the ancient Israelite belief in many gods (polytheism) and their belief that Yahweh had a divine consort, the goddess Asherah – subjects that she looks at in more detail in the BBC series, Bible’s Buried Secrets, in particular in episode 2.

Tim’s second podcast takes issue especially with Stavrakopoulou’s musing, at the conclusion of her Daily Mail article, “I can’t help but wonder what the world would be like had the goddess remained”.

Tim attempts to answer this question by pointing out some of the sometimes violent actions of goddesses in the ancient Near East, on the assumption that the literary remains of such cultures can be compared with what we have in the Bible. Now there is some degree of justification for such a comparison: just because a divine being is conceived as a female does not mean that she should be stereotyped as “motherly” or “loving” etc, just as a male divinity should not be stereotyped as “warlike” or “vengeful”. With a goddess such as Anat, the reverse can certainly be the case.

But Tim’s answer misses the mark somewhat. From the content of Stavrakopoulou’s article and episode 2, it is clear that the purpose of her question is to ask whether later Judaism and Christianity would have been quite so patriarchical and androcentric if the monotheistic God had instead been a divine couple. It is certainly a highly hypothetical question, but you can hardly answer it by adducing evidence of the actions of goddesses in Ugaritic legends written almost a millennium before the Bible was written!

Or, if you do make these older legends your comparison, you might want to take notice of similar unethical and violent actions earlier attributed to Yahweh, such as his ordering of Israelites to sacrifice firstborn children to him (on which, see Francesca Stavrakopoulou, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities, BZAW 338 [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004]).

Rather, the point of Stavrakopoulou’s question concerns how monotheism was received in later Judaism and Christianity, how the monotheistic God became identified with the male half of what was earlier a divine couple. To make her question more concrete, we might begin with Paul of Tarsus’s interpretation of “the image of God” of Genesis 1, in which he applies the divine image primarily to males. Females only have an indirect image of God, in reflecting males, and this distinction serves to justify Paul’s gender hierarchies. Now, there are plenty of recent apologetic attempts to explain away Paul’s patriarchical beliefs. But I can’t help but wonder what Paul would be like had the goddess remained.

See:
Tim Bulkeley, “Was God married? Part two: the death of the goddess“
Tim Bulkeley, “Why do you read? Or: Was God married?“

Update: Tim replies with some comments on episode 2 of Bible’s Buried Secrets, “Did God Have a Wife?”

Keith Whitelam on Obama’s Speeches in Israel

Following Remnant of Giants‘ examination of Obama’s opening speech in Israel as buying into Israeli and biblical founding myths, Keith Whitelam comments on what Obama has been saying about Israelis, and what he hasn’t been saying about Palestinians:

The references to ‘our ancient homeland’, ‘our ancient capital’, the story of the exodus, ‘the promised land’ or the use of the Dead Sea Scrolls as a title deed to the land in the speeches of Obama, Peres and Netanyahu show why it is so important to challenge this biblical view of history. It is constantly used to justify Israel’s claim to the land and resonates powerful with Israeli, American and western audiences. It is used to deny Palestine’s connection to the past and undermines any claims to the present.

There is no mention in Obama’s speeches to Palestine’s past. The cultural struggle for an alternative history of Palestine that shows how the past is connected to the present is crucial in countering the biblical view of history.

- Keith W. Whitelam, Keith W. Whitelam Facebook page, 22 March 2013

Whitelam is a former biblical studies professor at the University of Sheffield and, most recently, the author of  Rhythms of Time: Reconnecting Palestine’s Past (BenBlackBooks, 2013) – which was reviewed by Remnant of Giants here.

H/t: Jim West, “Keith Whitelam: Right on Obama’s Visit to Israel“

Obama’s Opening Speech in Israel Sounds Strangely Familiar – Oh yes, remember Bibi Netanyahu’s speech before Congress in the US?

No sooner had US President Barack Obama touched the ground at Ben Gurion Airport, than he commenced this speech:

Shalom.

President Peres, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and most of all, to the people of Israel, thank you for this incredibly warm welcome. This is my third visit to Israel so let me just say tov lihiyot shuv ba’aretz.

I’m so honored to be here as you prepare to celebrate the 65th anniversary of a free and independent State of Israel. Yet I know that in stepping foot on this land, I walk with you on the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

More than 3,000 years ago, the Jewish people lived here, tended the land here, prayed to God here. And after centuries of exile and persecution, unparalleled in the history of man, the founding of the Jewish State of Israel was a rebirth, a redemption unlike any in history.

Today, the sons of Abraham and the daughters of Sarah are fulfilling the dream of the ages — to be “masters of their own fate” in “their own sovereign state.” And just as we have for these past 65 years, the United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend.

- Barack Obama, in “Full text of Obama’s speech on arrival in Israel”, The Times of Israel, 20 March 2013

Now, there is much in here that a critical biblical scholar might take issue with.

Have “the Jewish people” really lived in the region for “more than 3,000 years”? No. A people known as Judeans did live in the land from perhaps the early part of the first millennium BC to the early Common Era. And they did so alongside many other peoples, many of whom have come and gone, including the Philistines (or residents of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath), the Edomites/Idumaeans, Romans, and Arabs (including Nabataeans). Moreover, the Judeans never occupied all the region now occupied by the modern state of Israel, including Tel Aviv, where Obama delivered his speech.

Did “the Jewish people” pray to God there for more than 3000 years? No. Not if you mean by God, with a capital letter, or the monotheistic concept of later Jews. In the early period of Judean settlement of the southern hill country and northern Negev, the inscriptions from various sites and the Elephantine correspondence (around 400 BC), written before much of the Bible was written, show that Judeans worshipped a number of gods and goddesses. Before this, even Yahweh (later identified as the monotheistic “God”) was worshipped alongside his divine consort or wife, named Asherah.

Are “the sons of Abraham and the daughters of Sarah” fulfilling the dream of the ages — to be ‘masters of their own fate’ in ‘their own sovereign state’”. No. Almost everything is wrong with this. First, no Abraham or Sarah ever existed, except in legendary tales. Second, if you’ve read the Bible, you might note that “the sons of Abraham and the daughters of Sarah” comprises a much more inclusive group than the Jews of the “Jewish State of Israel”. The sons of Abraham and daughters of Sarah include, for example, Ishmael (Abraham’s first son), the alleged ancestor of all Arabs. Given that the Bible makes Ishmael older than Judah (the eponymous ancestor of the Jews), why haven’t their “dreams of the ages” to have “their own sovereign state” been fulfilled? Third, the “dream” of a sovereign Jewish state is not “the dream of the ages”. It was only a dream of some Jews in the nineteenth century onwards, under the influence of European concepts of national sovereignty and Christian concepts of divine election and manifest destiny. And many Jews today still oppose the idea of a sovereign state in Palestine.

But this propaganda sounds all very familiar. Oh yes – remember the speech by Bibi Netanyahu to Congress in the US in 2011?

We’re not the British in India. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one god, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw his vision of eternal peace.
- Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, in Jonathan Lis, “The facts and fictions of Netanyahu’s address to Congress”, Ha’aretz, 26 May 2011

I guess when you’re planning a war against Iran ”to preserve our freedom” (as Obama alludes to the Bush Doctrine in his speech) the facts will only get in the way of shoring up political alliances.