User:Ioe bidome/Documentary hypothesis

Notable sections

Priestly

• The first Genesis creation narrative.
• The genealogies
• Parts of the Global flood narrative, specifically:
  • No distinction between clean and unclean animals is made
  • The flood lasts one year and 10 days
  • structured in periods of 150 days instead of 40
• The covenant of Abraham in Genesis 17:1
• Twelve sons of Jacob
• Jacob fleeing to Egypt
• Parts of the plagues of Egypt
• Parts of the red sea crossing
• Instructions for various things told by God to Moses on mount Sinai
• Most of Leviticus
• A small section at the end of Deuteronomy where Moses dies
• A small section of Joshua, specifically Joshua 21:43-45

Yahwist

• The garden of Eden story and the fall of man.
• The story of Cain and Abel
• Sections of the flood narrative
  • A distinction between clean and unclean animals is made
  • Structured in periods of 40 days instead of 150
• The curse of ham
• Most of the "peopling" of the earth found in Genesis 10:10-30
• The Tower of Babel

Polytheism in the old testament

There relationship between polytheism and the Old Testament is complex. The Israelites originally worshipped the same Canaanite pantheon as their neighbors, but as Yahweh became prominent it became less and less acceptable to worship the other gods. The oldest sections of the Old Testament accepted polytheism, but later sections do not.

The Canaanite pantheon

The chief god of the Canaanite pantheon was El. He is present in many theophoric (literally, "god-carrying") names like Michael, Samuel, Elijah, Joel, Immanuel, Daniel, etc. and in the very name Israel itself. If Yahweh had always been the chief god of Israel, the name would be something like *Israiah

Traces in the Bible

Deuteronomy 32:8-9

In Deuteronomy 32:8-9 we get this bizarre statement:

(8)When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

(9)For the LORD's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, the verse is slightly different, with "sons of Israel" replaced by "divine sons". The fact that Yahweh was given an inheritance implies he was not the top god, but below one. It also implies the existence of other gods.

One more interesting detail: If you count the number of people given in the genealogy sections of Genesis 10:1-32, it adds up to seventy. According to Ugaritic texts, El had seventy sons. This number of sons matches the number of countries, which supports the interpretation that Yahweh was only one god among many.

Mentions of "we" in Genesis

In Genesis 1:26 says "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness", in Genesis 11:7 he says "Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech" and in Genesis 3:22 god says "Behold, the man is become as one of us." Who is the "us" or "we" in these passages? Some Christians will claim that it's the trinity, a royal we, or to angels. But the trinity was not a doctrine in ancient Israel, and the royal we did not exist in Hebrew either. These are also the only passages like this.

The consensus of scholars is that Genesis 11:1-9 and Genesis 3:22 were from the Yahwist source, which was henotheistic, while the first genesis creation myth is from the priestly source, which was monotheistic.

"Lord" and "god"

There is a weird trend where there is both "lord" and "god". The two are equated in Genesis 2 Genesis 3, and elsewhere with "Lord god".

The phrase "god almighty", a translation of "El Shaddai", appears several times.In Exodus 6:3, God says he used the name God Almighty in front of the Patriarchs. Why would God use two names and not one?

Hymns

In several hymns found throughout the Bible, other gods can be seen being prayed to:

• in Habakkuk 3:5,

Stages of acceptance

Tolerance

The first commandment does not technically ban the worship of other gods, but only their worship "above" Yahweh. In other words, Yahweh was the most important god, but you could still worship other gods.

Sources

• MacDonald, Nathan (2012). Deuteronomy and the meaning of monotheism. Forschungen zum Alten Testament (2nd corrected ed ed.). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-151680-1. 
• Smith, Mark S. (2002). The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 9780802839725. Retrieved 9 October 2018. 
• Van der Toorn, Karel (1996). Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria, and Israel. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-10410-5. Retrieved 1 November 2023. 
• Feyer, Zev-Hayyim (2014-09-29). "Shaddai: Deity of the Breasts". 
• Lutzky, Harriet (1998). "Shadday as a Goddess Epithet". Vetus Testamentum (Brill) 48 (1): 15–36. doi:10.1163/1568533982721839. ISSN 0042-4935. JSTOR 1585459. Retrieved 2023-10-28. 
• Day, John (2000). Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. London: Burns & Oates. ISBN 1-85075-986-3. 
• Toorn, K. van der, ed (1999). Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible (2nd ed.). Leiden ; Boston : Grand Rapids, Mich: Brill ; Eerdmans. ISBN 978-90-04-11119-6. 
• Niditch, Susan, ed (2015-10-09). The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-65677-8. 
• Green, Alberto Ravinell Whitney (2003). The storm-god in the ancient Near East. Biblical and Judaic studies from the University of California, San Diego. Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-1-57506-069-9. 
• Oorschot, Jürgen van, ed (2017). The origins of Yahwism. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin Boston: De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-044822-1.