Bible

Dogs in the Bible

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Hello, I hope you and your family have had a great weekend. When I say ‘your family,’ I do of course include any pets that you might own. They are definitely part of the family. Especially dogs.

As you know, I am studying animals as part of my PhD research—looking at animals in the Old Testament. This week I read an interesting chapter about dogs in the book of Exodus.[1] It always surprises me, when I study the Bible, how much I have missed in the past. I certainly missed the dogs in Exodus, even though they appear a couple of times. We can understand something of how ancient people regarded dogs.

Archaeologists find evidence of dogs and humans living together since the earliest times. Whether humans domesticated dogs to help them hunt, or whether dogs trained humans to feed them in return for protection, is unknown. The ancient Israelites certainly interacted with dogs, and they were listed as ‘unclean’ in the law, meaning they could not be eaten. (Which I have always thought made the animal disliked, but actually, it protected the animal’s freedom to some extent.)

The first mention in Exodus is near the beginning of the book, in chapter 11 (I am giving the English Bible references, the Hebrew Bible has different verse numbers). We have a description of the last plague in Egypt, when God’s angel of death was going to pass over the land, killing all the first-born people (and all the first-born animals, interestingly).[2] As children died, the people would wail and cry. But not the dogs. The dogs would remain silent. (In the Hebrew, it has something complicated, about not deciding to ‘tongue’ and tongue tends to be used for ‘speech’ and dog-speech is barking or growling, so that is how it tends to be translated.) Think about that for a minute. What does it mean? Dogs—which were kept to help with hunting and guarding—would not bark. Why? Did the dogs somehow know? Did the dogs recognise that this terrible happening was from God? Did the dogs understand something that the people did not recognise? I think they did.

Another mention of dogs is in Exodus 22:31. This has been linked by Jewish scholars to the verse in Exodus 11. It talks about when the Israelites find dead animals in the wild (road-kill of the ancient world), and they are told not to eat them, but to give them to the dogs. Jewish scholars suggest this meat is given as a reward to the dogs for keeping silent. It is owed to the dogs. I have never understood it this way before, but it is logical. God looks after people, and he looks after animals. Therefore animals have certain rights to certain food.

The book mentioned another scholar, a Jewish man who talks about his own experience with a dog.[3] He was a Jewish prisoner during the war, and forced to work in a work camp, where he describes being treated as if he was an animal. He says that Jews were viewed as animals by the guards—which in turn made the guards behave like animals. All very sad and dehumanising and wrong. But a stray dog wandered into the camp, and he managed to live there. When the prisoners returned from a day of hard labour, the dog would bounce around, joyfully greeting them. The dog made them feel human again. I can imagine the scene—I know what it is to be greeted enthusiastically by a dog. I can imagine how affirming that would be for prisoners who were hated.

In his book, Levinas suggests the dog viewed the prisoners as human (whereas the guards did not). Personally, I think the dog regarded them as dogs—one of the pack. We often ascribe human traits to animals. However, even if the dog was simply behaving like a dog, treating the men as one of the pack, it is still good. I think animals have much to teach us. We need to learn how to notice.

There are lots of animals in the Bible. Too often we don’t notice them, or assume they are simply metaphors and not an intrinsic part of the teaching. Yet the ancient world did not view animals as a mere commodity, and we should notice how they are used in the sacred texts. We might learn something.

Thanks for reading.
Take care.
Love, Anne x

Thank you for reading.
anneethompson.com
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[1] Ken Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

[2] Stone suggests this shows the people/animal groups were divided by God according to whether they were Egyptian or Hebrew, not according to species.

[3] Emmanual Levinas, Difficult Freedom, trans. Sean Hand, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 151.

Who wrote Genesis?

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Genesis is the first book of the Bible and I was taught that Moses wrote it (as part of the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Christian Bible). However, being taught something, even believing something, does not necessarily make it true. So what is the evidence?

There is some evidence within the Bible itself. In the Old Testament, the law is often referred to as ‘the law of Moses.’ (Eg: Dan 9:13, Mic. 6:4) plus we read that Moses wrote down all that God told him. This does not necessarily mean he wrote the book of Genesis—he perhaps only wrote down the laws, and then passed them to the people. In the New Testament people also refer to the law of Moses, which falls into the same category. Jesus refers to ‘the book of Moses’ (Mk 12:26) and there are several places when Moses is described as having written the law. Therefore it is clear that the early church believed that the law came from Moses—but not explicitly that he wrote Genesis.

If I use a modern analogy, I can say that I tell my children Hans Christian Anderson’s story  of The Ugly Duckling. Now, I have never actually read his original story (I do not read Danish) nor have I ever read a translation. But I know the story from my own childhood, and I trust that it originated with him, therefore I consider it truthful to say it is his story. I might even write it down, centuries after he died, and it would still be ‘his’ story, even if I wrote it in modern English. Of course, someone looking at my book in the year 3000 might notice it is not written in Danish, or even in English of the 1800s, and they might question whether it was really a story by Hans Christian Anderson. But I think this is an accurate description of the book. (Today, we would write a colophon, saying that the story was retold by me, and the dates, but in the ancient world, this was not a thing.)

What then do we find if we look at the writing of Genesis? We do not have any original texts, so we need to use the manuscripts that we do have. The oldest manuscripts show it was written mostly in Hebrew (just two words in Aramaic, in Gen.31:47). Like all languages, Hebrew has evolved over time, and the language is not consistent throughout. There are texts written in Archaic Biblical Hebrew, Classical Biblical Hebrew, and Late Biblical Hebrew. However, most of the texts were written in Classical Biblical Hebrew. This was used from about 9th century BCE to the 6th century BCE. Within this time frame, Classical Hebrew continued to evolve and some words began to be written in different ways. It is likely therefore that Genesis 1 (the 7 days of creation) was written later than the Eden creation story, even though it is placed first in the book.

As well as the style of language, some of the terms used also help to date the texts. For example, ‘Ur of the Chaldeans (Gen.11:28) must have been written (or added) after 700 BCE, yet the city Calah in Gen.10:12 must have been written about 880 BCE, because after 704 BCE it was part of Ninevah, not a separate place.

So what do we make of all this? And does it matter? 

My view is that the best way to read Genesis is as openly as you are able, making sense of what the texts say, and asking God to reveal something to you while you read. That, I think, is how biblical texts should be read. Genesis is a place where you might encounter God.

However, from an academic point of view (which generally reveals very little of God, but is extremely interesting if you like that sort of thing!) Genesis seems to be a composite text, added to over centuries by various authors or schools of thought. Whether it began with a single author is impossible to prove. Personally, I do not like to examine the various sections in isolation, taking strands from various time periods and looking at them separately. I think they were combined for a reason, and to study them properly you need to view them within the context of the whole. But others disagree. What do you think?

Thanks for reading. I hope your day is a good one.

Take care.

Love, Anne x

My main source for facts was Ronald Hendel, ‘Historical Context’ in The Book of Genesis (Leiden: Brill, 2012) 51-82.

The Sheep’s Poem

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We had such an interesting seminar last week. It was a joint initiative, the biblical studies students (that’s me!) joined with the Islamic studies students, and we had a guest speaker who joined us via the internet from the West Bank in Palestine. That alone made it pretty exciting.

There is a man (Jakub) and he is trying to get translations of the Bible in local Arabic dialects. He isn’t trying to ‘convert’ anyone, there’s no agenda here, he simply reads the passages to local people and asks them to interpret the texts according to their own understanding. How do local people (likely to be Muslim) interpret texts, when they are removed from our Western understanding? What do the texts mean today, to local people?

There is no problem with studying the Bible in the West Bank; this surprised me. I assume there would be a problem with trying to ‘convert’ people, but the book itself is openly sold in shops and it’s not uncommon to see Arabic versions of the Christian Bible in Muslim homes. For his research, Jakub asks people to tell him what the words mean to them, and then he translates them using the most suitable words in the dialect. Language is personal to people, so although in time A.I. will replace translators, it won’t understand the nuances of meaning in the same way as real people, in real time. It’s an interesting project, but I was especially excited by the next bit.

One of the example texts that Jakub has been working with is Psalm 23. You remember it—the one about the Good Shepherd, looking after his sheep? We listened to how a local man, Ahmed, interpreted the words, and I realised that perhaps my understanding of this well-known Psalm has been wrong. Perhaps the words mean something slightly different.

 You should also know that scholars have debated the interpretation of this Psalm for decades, and do not agree (this is pretty normal for scholars—they like to debate, and rarely agree). The Psalm begins with a relaxing pastoral scene, the sheep being led to pastures, with streams of water, and told to rest. Then there is reference to a table—so does the action now move into a house? Then the Psalm describes anointing with oil—so has the subject now changed to a person, maybe a king being anointed? It finishes in ‘the house of the LORD’ which would be the temple, which is where a sheep would be slaughtered as a sacrifice—so what does that mean???

 Ahmed is from a shepherding family in Palestine. He has spent time with his family’s flocks, caring for them in the wilderness. He told us how shepherding traditions are passed down, and have probably changed very little over the centuries. A sheep is still a sheep, they need the same food and water, and the landscape in the Palestinian wilderness is not much different to when the Psalmist cared for flocks and wrote his poem. He described how he understood the Psalm, and it helped me to understand it in a whole new light. Ahmed’s words made me understand the Psalm from the viewpoint of the sheep. Imagine a shepherd, who was also a poet (so a creative sort of chap) and he thinks about God, and he looks at his flock, and he writes a poem with the sheep as the subject—not a metaphor—this is the sheep talking. I will rename this: The Sheep’s Poem.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not need anything. Ahmed said a shepherd wants to raise healthy sheep, so he will ensure they have everything they need.

He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. God the shepherd takes the sheep to where they will find food, where they can rest safely, he cares about the sheep’s soul—the internal wellbeing of the speaker.

He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. In Muslim thinking, the paths of God have special meaning, it is about living in the way that pleases God. In this Psalm, the sheep is being kept safe so he can please God the shepherd.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and staff—they comfort me. Ahmed described how predators lurk in the valleys of the wilderness, and the sheep get frightened. A frightened sheep becomes erratic, so the shepherd uses his rod and staff to control them, to keep them safe, keep them on the right path.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Ahmed said that sometimes, if he has a ewe about to give birth and he wants to supplement her feed, he would make a little table by setting a plank of wood on logs, and he would put some grain or milk in bowls, and take the ewe there to eat. He also frequently rubbed oil on the heads of his flock, to calm them down, and improve their health. He said a sheep that is regularly anointed with olive oil has a much healthier coat and is less likely to get ill. It is the pinnacle of caring for a sheep.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for the rest of my days. In Islam, an animal is only ever killed as part of a ritual, a sacrifice to God (otherwise it is viewed as murder). Only after this ritual can a sheep be eaten. This sheep, which has been so cared for, is content to know that its purpose is to serve God as a sacrifice, it will go to the temple ready to die—death is not seen as an end, but as a beginning of something new—the sheep will be with God forever.

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I love when something familiar can be understood in a new way, and it makes perfect sense to me that this Psalm is about a sheep (because we see animals as periphery in the biblical texts, but I don’t think God does). Now, obviously the text wasn’t written for a sheep, even if it’s about a sheep. I’m not pretending sheep can read! But if we read this Psalm, about a sheep, can we not learn something? Does it not show what it means to have absolute trust? To know that our purpose is simply to be what we were designed to be (not what the rest of the flock thinks we should be)? The sheep doesn’t fear the future, or what will happen after it is time to physically die—the main event happens in the LORD’s house. It is never scary going home.

I hope you find this interpretation helpful. May we never stop learning new things in the biblical texts, they are such a helpful guide in life. Thanks for reading.
Take care.
Love, Anne x

Who Has Got Your Back?

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As part of my research, I have gone back to Genesis, exploring the text for new insight. It never ceases to surprise me how often reading a passage that I ‘know’ extremely well, offers something new. A new teaching, or way of looking at life, something helpful for life ‘beyond theology.’ (Afterall, the biblical texts would be pretty useless if they were only good for academic debate.) I’ll share my recent discovery with you.

I am looking at the story about the garden of Eden, which begins near the start of Genesis (after the narrative about the 7 days of creation). There are different ways of understanding these stories. Some people view them as historically accurate—these describe actual events about actual people. Others understand them as myths or parables—stories to explain something important, but the things in them didn’t actually happen.[1] To be honest, I’m not sure it matters really, as long as you are reading openly, listening for God to speak to you (the main fault, in my opinion, is to read them as a weapon, to ‘prove’ your own belief or show someone else that they are wrong.) Anyway, for this nugget of wisdom, it doesn’t matter what your viewpoint is. Personally, I sit in the ‘parable’ camp, but to properly understand the texts I think we have to enter the world of the story, leave behind our scientific knowledge for a moment, and try to understand what is being taught.

It helps if you can read them in Hebrew, but I’ll write this in English (just be aware that the words are not exactly as written). The story begins (Gen.2:4) with the earth being bare and barren—because, we are told, there is no human to work the ground and God hasn’t sent any rain yet. God creates the man, forming him from the dust of the earth (so he’s literally an earthling!) God plants a garden in a place called Eden and places the man there. God causes trees to grow, so the man has food. (In the middle was the tree of knowledge of good and evil—but that’s not relevant for this bit of the story.) God made rivers, to water the garden, and then we are told (again) that God put the man into the garden (and this is important) לְעָבְדָהּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ to work it and to guard it. Remember that bit—especially the ‘guarding’ bit. These were the roles given to people: to work the ground, and to guard.[2]

There is lots of speculation (academics prefer the word ‘deduction’ but really it cannot be more than educated guesses) about what, exactly, the man was guarding the garden from. Some say it has an ecological meaning—showing that humans were meant to care for the world (we’ve certainly made a mess of that!) Others say it’s evidence that there were other people, outside the garden, and the man was to guard against them.[3] God then commands the man to eat from every tree, but warns that if he eats from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, then he will die that very day.

We’re going to skip through the next bit. The man needs a companion, and God makes a woman to help him. (The word עֵזֶר helper is the same word used when God helps people—just in case you were wondering if there was a hierarchy here.) Then a snake appears (described as עָרוּם prudent/shrewd which is a clever little pun, because it’s pronounced ‘aroom’ and the people are עֲרוּמִּים  naked which is pronounced ‘aroomim’.) The people eat from the forbidden tree, they and the snake are punished and the people are banished from the garden. They still have to ‘work’ the ground, but now it’s harder. There is no mention here of guarding anything.

Then we skip ahead, to when the couple have two sons, Cain and Abel. Both sons make an offering to God, and Cain’s is rejected. I wrote an earlier blog on how this wasn’t fair.

Right, we’re nearly at the bit I want to talk about.

Cain takes his brother into a field (presumably because there were other people around—and he didn’t want to be seen). Cain kills Abel. God asks Cain, where is your brother? Cain replies (this is important): לֹא יָדַעְתִּי הֲשֹׁמֵר אָחִי אָנֹֽכִי  ‘I don’t know, am I my brother’s keeper/guard?’ We have that word again, שָׁמַר to keep or guard. Remember, the word at the beginning, when the man was told to work and guard the ground.

So, this is my understanding. People were given two tasks: to work the ground (care for nature) and to guard. At first, they had to keep/guard the garden. Then, when there were other people, they were supposed to guard each other. When Cain asked, ‘Am I my brother’s guard?’ our reply is: Yes! Yes, you are supposed to look after your brother. You are supposed to watch out for each other. That is what people are supposed to do.

This seems to me to be true today, it is how things are meant to be. When someone is having a rough time, when they have a health issue or a problem or something difficult, does anything help like having someone watch their back? It’s what parents do—they guard their children. It’s what siblings do—they support each other. It’s what friends do—they make it known that they are there, supporting, keeping, guarding. Let’s try to do this in the next week, let’s look for people who need to be ‘guarded.’ People who we can help as they cope with the muddle that is life as we know it.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have someone to watch your back.
Take care.
Love, Anne x

[1] Joseph Fitzpatrick, The Fall and the Ascent of Man (2012).

[2] Kristin M. Swenson, ‘Earth Tells the Lesson of Cain,’ in Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics, ed. Norman C. Habel (2008).

[3] Ziony Zevit, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? (2013).

Is The Old Testament Still Helpful?

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I am currently exploring how we can use the Old Testament[1] to help form our ethics. This is more complicated than I first thought, and there are several books which all seem to give slightly different views. The problem is, there is a whole variety of writings in the Old Testament—from narratives about genocide, to commandments, to prophecies, to love poems—and to apply it all literally today would involve stoning rebellious teenagers and slaughtering the pets of our enemies. So what do you think? Does the Old Testament have any relevance today, and if so, how should it be used?

One useful book has been The Immoral Bible by Eryl W. Davies.[2] He basically puts the various views into categories, and then says what he likes/dislikes about each one. He starts by considering some of the ‘difficult’ texts in the OT—mainly Joshua 6-11, which describes the conquest of Canaan. This has parallels with what I’m seeing on the news at the moment, but I don’t want to link the two because there are lots of complicated issues that I want to avoid discussing—so this post will only focus on the ancient world.

I find Davies’ book interesting because he forces me to consider things from a new angle. As a child, I learnt the story of ‘Joshua and the city of Jericho’, how God told him to march round the city, and then the walls fell down, and the Israelites killed everyone, and we all cheered and thought it was brilliant because we were, after all, on the side of the Israelites. But wait. If you engage your moral brain for a minute, is it really okay? The people were all killed—old people who were nearing the end of life, young people, almost certainly some babies and toddlers, as well as all their animals—just because they happened to live in the wrong city. I think, actually, it was not okay. I am uncomfortable with toddlers being crushed under city walls. So what do we do with stories like this one? Is there anything we can learn? Do we give the Old Testament authority when some (many) texts seem just plain wrong?

This is never okay.
(See below for credit.)

One approach is what Davies calls ‘the evolutionary approach.’ This says that people have evolved, and God’s revelation has been appropriate through history—in the less sophisticated ancient world, where slaughter was commonplace, the rules were different to those of today. Basically, it says that people today know better. The trouble with this is it makes the Old Testament pretty obsolete other than as a background history lesson for the New Testament. It is also rather disproved by things like the holocaust, which indicates that actually, people today are just as cruel/violent as the ancient world. However, whilst I don’t think people are getting better, I do think that perhaps God revealed himself and his plan for the world gradually—so ideals like ‘love your enemy’ were introduced at a time when this was an achievable goal for people.

Another approach is labelled by Davies as ‘the cultural relativist approach.’ (I feel this one overlaps with the previous one a bit.) This says that you need to look at the culture of the ancient world, and judge according to those standards. So we can tell ourselves that ‘this happened in the olden days’ and that was okay, but it wouldn’t be appropriate now. Scholars call this a ‘historical-critical’ view, and they enjoy digging around, discovering how ancient cultures lived and thought, putting texts into context. (I enjoy doing this too!) The problem is deciding what, if anything, is relevant today. If you take the 10 commandments, they were applicable to Israelite married males, rich enough to own property and important enough to give evidence in a lawsuit.[3]

Therefore, when we read the Bible, we should be aware of the difference between the ancient culture and our own. Which means those translations which change things like the patriarchal wording of ‘brothers’ to ‘brothers and sisters’ are (I think) making a mistake. We ought to recognise the biblical times were different, and treat them accordingly, not pretend that everything then still applies today. People who take this approach (do you?) would say that whilst the culture was different, some principles are timeless, and these are what we should learn from—whilst leaving other bits as historical. But I don’t know how you decide what to keep and what to put into the ‘historical’ bucket. I also fear it takes authority from the Bible, and allows the reader to disregard uncomfortable texts as ‘irrelevant for today.’

The next approach is ‘the Canonical approach.’ This says that we need to look at all the Bible, all the time, and only read texts in the light of all the others. So yes, the poor children of Jericho were slaughtered, but later Jesus taught things like kindness and mercy, and one thing balances out the other. Again, I’m not sure who decides what is important, and what is not. No one treats every text as having equal authority (even if they say they do) but the whole issue can become very subjective, and easily abused. Slave traders definitely took different passages as authoritative, as did men who wanted to oppress women. I personally like comparing different texts in the Bible as a way to understand them better (and have just returned from a conference on intertextuality, which spent whole days doing this). But as Davies points out, it’s not very practical (because who knows the whole Bible, in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, so that all the texts can be properly compared?) Plus what happens with the texts that contradict each other? And who decides what is the ‘Canon’ when Non-Conformists and Anglicans and Catholics disagree?

Next is ‘the paradigmatic approach.’ I like this one (though it still isn’t perfect). You will know about ‘paradigms’ if you have studied a foreign language. You take a bit of grammar (‘want’ becomes ‘wanted’ in the past tense) and then you apply it to other situations (so ‘look’ becomes ‘looked’ in the past tense). The ‘rule’ is applied in different situations.[4] With the Old Testament, we look at the principles behind the text, and then apply those. So not harvesting a field to the edges was a commandment, the principle was to ‘give some help to poor people’—and that can be applied today (even if you don’t happen to have a field). Also, just as you must learn not to apply the ‘paradigm’ to every word (‘run’ does not become ‘runned’) nor do all Old Testament principles apply to the modern world. The problem is that it can be subjective, and if you look hard enough, you can probably find an ‘underlying principle’ that makes the Bible say whatever you want it to say.

The final approach is ‘the reader-response approach.’ (This is the one Davies seems to prefer.) This states that the Old Testament ‘says’ nothing unless someone is reading it, and it is the response of the reader that brings the message. The reader should read it with a conscience, noting that some behaviour is wrong, being prepared to be critical. (Scholars like to use the phrase ‘a hermeneutic of suspicion’ which basically means not switching off your brain when you read the Bible, and not accepting everything as ‘right’.) However, it should be a two-way process, so the Old Testament texts will also criticise the reader, and speak to contemporary culture.

My problem with this approach is that it seems to remove all authority from the Bible. I do think it’s good to pause, and to question whether an action in the Bible was correct, but I think we should be careful. I believe there is a time to simply admit we don’t understand—that a narrative seems cruel or an action commended by the Old Testament author seems evil—but I am uncomfortable making judgement. I believe the Bible, including the Old Testament, is used by God to change people. Therefore the texts within it, can teach us something, even if we don’t understand what they say.

The Old Testament does not claim to be infallible, it was not dictated by God, it was written by men. I think we need to rely on God, and allow him to change us as we read the ancient texts. There is perhaps something helpful in all the above approaches, and certainly the Old Testament can still shape our thinking today—but I think no approach is perfect. What do you think?

anneethompson.com
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[1] By ‘Old Testament’ I mean the texts in the Hebrew Canon which have been selected for inclusion in the Christian Bible.

[2] Eryl W. Davies, The Immoral Bible (London: T&T Clark, 2010). Another helpful book is Pieter J. Lalleman, Enduring Treaure (London: Apostolos Publishing, 2017) though I personally find the method of putting texts into categories too subjective.

[3] David Clines, Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).

[4] Christopher J. H. Wright, Walking in the Ways of the Lord (London: InterVarsity Press, 1995)

Photo credit: Mandatory Credit: Photo by Sipa USA / Rex Features (1894273a)
A severely wounded baby boy is medically treated
Conflict in Aleppo, Syria – 03 Oct 2012
As Bahar Al Assad’s army steps up its military campaign to regain control of Aleppo, children are treated by the small staff of doctors in one of the city’s last standing hospitals.

Why Did He Ask What They Wanted?

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As you know, I am currently writing the dissertation for my MA. One thing offered by my college is symposiums—nothing to do with music—where people present their work, and everyone makes helpful comments. They’re useful—partly because you hear some interesting presentations and everyone helps to improve the final dissertation—but also because writing a research paper is rather isolating. Lectures have finished, and we are all in our own bubble, and it’s really good to see each other again, and to hear how we are progressing.

Anyway, one happened last week, and one of the presenters (Rebecca—I can’t remember her last name) is writing a dissertation on people coping with health conditions, and she made a very interesting point: Before Jesus healed people in the New Testament, he often asked them what they wanted. Then the blind man said he wanted to see, and the lame man said he wanted to walk, and the lepers wanted to be clean—and so on. But why, if he was able to heal them, and already knew their complaint, did Jesus ask? Afterall, a blind man begging must have been obviously blind—did Jesus think perhaps he wanted to be blind? Or was something else going on?

It was suggested Jesus probably asked as a way to empower the person. They were choosing whether they wanted to be healed, able to voice their need. I found this very interesting, because it reminds me of a personal experience. Soon after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, I was at a church meeting, and when I spoke about my tumour and the constant pain, someone announced that they would pray for healing. I remained sitting, and the group stood around me, with their hands on my head, praying for healing.

Now, here’s the thing. I had not asked them to pray for healing. I was not at all sure that it was in God’s plan for me to be healed (because I recognised that I was a better person with the tumour, and daily asking him to help me was a good thing). But here I was, in the middle of a ring of very kind, well-meaning friends, praying for something that I didn’t know if I actually wanted. But I couldn’t really voice that—I couldn’t politely tell them ‘no thanks, I’m coping okay and I’m not sure it’s in the plan for me to be healed,’ could I? A bit awkward. So silently, in my head, I changed the prayer. You see, there were other, more important things that I was struggling with, and I felt as if I was sinking and really wanted/needed God’s help with those. And although I had prayed about them, I wondered if perhaps, in some way that I didn’t understand, God was more likely to act if these people all prayed on my behalf. So in my head, I asked God to use their prayers to please help me with this other thing, this non-health-issue thing, and could he please heal that instead?

I cannot justify the theology of this. Nor do I know whether those prayers were the trigger for God to answer my prayer. But he did. And my life would be worse today if he hadn’t.

Maybe sometimes, people praying for healing for others might not necessarily be what their greatest need is. Perhaps we should remember that often Jesus asked before he healed people. I find it rather thrilling that God doesn’t just know what we need, he listens to what we think we need too. Perhaps learning to walk with God—learning to be like God—is about listening to other people and understanding their needs rather than what we assume their needs are. Sometimes, we need to ask.

Thanks for reading. Have a great week.
Take care.
Love, Anne x

anneethompson.com

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How Should We Pronounce YHWH?

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In my last blog, I continued my discussion about God’s name, and whether we should call him by the name given in Exodus, or by a title, such as ‘LORD.’ However, if we DO decide to use the name given in Exodus (whether privately or in public) how should we pronounce it?

Usually, we see the tetragram YHWH used in place of God’s name. I understand this to be because some people consider the name too holy to say, and therefore they remove the vowels. The name given in Exodus is : אֶֽהְיֶה which is Hebrew for ‘I am/will be’ and usually the masculine singular form of the verb is used: ‘יהוה’ which we substitute for the English letters: YHWH. We then add vowels to make it pronounceable, and end up with ‘Yahweh.’

I was interested to learn how this should be said though, especially given the v/w confusion — I’m not sure why ‘W’ is used, as I have learnt that  ‘ו’ sounds like ‘v’. I will ask my tutor when term starts. Why do we not write it as ‘Yahveh’? I did some research, and discovered that likely BOTH are wrong—or at least, not what Moses would have said.

Languages, all languages, change over time. If Chaucer stepped into a time-machine and arrived in Tesco, I doubt they would understand what he was saying. If Shakespeare arrived in Waitrose, they would probably understand him, but assume he was foreign. Now, Hebrew has also changed over time. During the time of Moses (whenever you decide to date him) the Hebrew being spoken/written was different. The verb that is used for God’s name would have probably been written with a waw, a ‘v’ in the middle, as we write it today. Before 900 BC, there were no vowels, so the ending we have today would not make a ‘eh’ sound, but more of a ‘hah’ sound. Therefore, the problem we have (as explained by Mark Futato, The Divine Name ) is that the middle of ‘YahWeh’ is before Moses, but the ending of YahwEH is way later, long after Moses. Therefore, whatever name God gave to Moses, and whatever name the people then used in the Old Testament, it was almost definitely NOT ‘Yaweh’.

Does this matter? We don’t think so in the case of Jesus, (as Andrew Case, Pronouncing and translating the Divine Name points out). We say ‘Jesus’ but his parents would have named him ‘Yeshua’ and if you go to Italy, or China, or France, they pronounce it differently again. As I commented in my last blog, maybe the name is less important than we think. Maybe it is who God is that matters, and his name is for our benefit, so we know who we are talking to—and therefore the pronunciation, or whether we use a name or a title, does not matter at all. Thanks for reading.
Have a great day, and take care.
Love, Anne x

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God’s Name—More Thoughts

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I have further thoughts on whether we should refer to God as YHWH, or a pseudonym, such as LORD or ‘The Name’ or ‘Jehovah’. Here are some interesting considerations.

For example, what should Bible translators write when translating parts of the New Testament that include direct speech and are quotations of the Old Testament? In New Testament times, they would have quoted the Hebrew version—which uses YHWH as the name of God. However, whilst they would have thought the Hebrew word, they would not have spoken it. Since the time of Amos, speaking God’s name had almost superstitious repercussions, so when speaking, even when reading aloud, they would always substitute ‘Adonai’ or ‘Elohim’ in place of YHWH.[1] Of course, the New Testament was written in Greek, so they simply used the Greek word for ‘Lord.’ What therefore, should modern translators write? You understand my question? Should they write what the people would have actually said, or should they write the words of the Hebrew passage being quoted? If you look at Bibles from different ages, they have not all agreed on this, and there are differences. I guess it doesn’t affect the meaning of the passages, but I find it interesting.

This leads to a consideration of why New Testament writers didn’t find a Greek equivalent for YHWH, and instead used ‘Lord’ (κυρίου). Should we follow this example, and no longer use the name of God? Everyone is a product of their times, even if we choose to reject our culture, we are affected by it. Did the early church continue the embargo on saying God’s name? I don’t have any evidence either way, but certainly was what written implies they continued to substitute a pseudonym.

Whilst this is interesting for Christians, for modern Jews it is more inflammatory. Apparently, the 1985 version of The New Jerusalem Bible used the name YHWH, but in 2019, the chief Rabbi of Rome spoke to Pope Benedict XVI and asked for this to be changed, as saying God’s name is offensive to Jews.[2] This then, is another consideration. As Jews find the spoken form of YHWH ‘offensive’ should we, due to respect, also not say God’s name? We do not, as a rule, adapt our religion for other faiths—and certainly I wouldn’t suggest that we stopped talking about Jesus because some find our belief offensive—but is this a little different? Is it seen as overtly confrontational? I do not, myself, follow the teachings of Islam, but nor would I write or draw something about their faith which would be insulting. Not on purpose. But to what extent should we accommodate other beliefs? Where do we draw the line, what is ‘respectful’ and what is acquiescing to something which we do not believe?

I suppose it depends on whether we feel we should use God’s name. Did God give the name YHWH because it is personal and represents a personal relationship? Or is it merely a label, given for ease of reference, because God is so much bigger than anything we can comprehend and a ‘name’ is a human invention. In Exodus 3:14, it seems clear: ‘This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.’ (זֶה־שְּׁמִ֣י לְעֹלָ֔ם וְזֶ֥ה זִכְרִ֖י לְדֹ֥ר דֹּֽר ) I would interpret this as meaning that God’s name, YHWH, should be remembered forever. However, the form of the name, ‘I will be’ (אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה) might be significant—perhaps God was saying that his ‘name’ (as in, how he is to be known/understood) is in what he has done (that is, having been the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and therefore this, these past actions, are his ‘name’ and this is what should be remembered forever.

If we pay heed to how the people in the ancient Near East thought, then something only existed if it had a name and a function.[3] Therefore ‘naming’ gods was important, as was knowing what they did. Is this the problem that God is addressing? Does he understand that Moses, as part of his ancient thinking, needed God to have a name and a function. This is certainly what God gives him in the Exodus passage.

Perhaps this giving of names is less important to our modern minds. Many people admit to believing in ‘something’ but they are happy to keep it vague. I have friends who admit to believing in ‘something’ but nothing more specific than that. There can be ‘some kind of God,’ something beyond our human world, but they don’t need a name. Personally, I’m not sure whether I need a name or not, but I do need evidence of action, I do need to remember what God has done for me, I do need to know that he is a reality. Maybe this is what Exodus 3:14 is saying.

I will continue to grapple with this. If you read anything relevant, let me know. In my next post, I will consider how God’s name should be pronounced–because that’s not clear either!

Thanks for reading. Have a great day, and take care.
Love, Anne x

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[1] Andrew Case, Pronouncing and Translating the Divine Name (Amazon: Self-published, 2020).

[2] Dom Henry Wansbrough, The Revised New Jerusalem Bible (New York: Penguin Random House, 2019) see Forward.

[3] John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018)

Does God Have a Name? And Should We Say It?

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When I started to learn Hebrew, I was introduced to ‘ketiv qere’ in ancient scripts. As I have explained before, Hebrew words have a basic 3-letter root, and a group of people (the Masoretes) added dots and dashes to represent verbs, so people remembered how to say them. However, some words were written (ketiv) one way, but should be said (qere) differently—so they added the wrong verbs. Therefore, God’s name, written YAHWEH,[1] has the verbs for ADONAI, so when people saw the word, the would say ‘Adonai’ even though the letters are YWH. As my Hebrew lessons continue, whenever we read YHWH, we say ‘Adonai,’ as a sign of respect. But should we?

In most English Bibles, whenever Yahweh is translated, they write LORD, all in capitals. So we continue the tradition even in Christian churches; the name of God is rarely said.

Where did this idea originate, and should it continue? I have been reading a book on the subject by Andrew Case,[2] and I will give you a brief summary. He begins by quoting Clines, who states that, ‘The personal name of God is Yahweh. It is a foreign name, quite un-English […]’ and he suggests that perhaps for that reason alone ‘[…] the name Yahweh must be preserved—lest it should ever be imagined that God is an Englishman. He is a foreigner now to every race on earth. The very awkwardness of addressing a God whose name is not native to one’s language in itself alerts us to the alienness of Yahweh to every god created in our own image.’[3]

To begin with, Yahweh is introduced by God,[4] and is used by the Old Testament writers. All the early books use the name freely,[5] sometimes it was even used as part of a greeting,[6] and it was used in oaths.[7]

This changed in the book of Amos. There was a terrible punishment, many people died, and they declared that they ‘must not mention the name of the LORD!’[8] However, this was not a new ‘rule’ it was more that they were so traumatised, so worried the same thing might happen, that they dared not approach God or even say his name.[9] Case suggests that due to this fear (which sounds a bit superstitious I think) they started to use alternative names for God, avoiding saying Yahweh.

The use of Yahweh in oaths/contracts was also banned in the Talmud. (The Talmud is the written form of all the verbal laws the Jews had, with added explanations so they were clear.) The Rabbis disliked that a written contract would one day be rubbish, and therefore banned the use of Yahweh on written contracts.[10] Case notes that this, and a later ban by the Essenes (who probably wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls) does not give a reason—they don’t say it is out of reverence for God’s name. However, it seems likely to me that this is the reason, as unlike in the Amos example, no other reason seems logical.

The Essenes then began to eliminate the name from their copies of manuscripts, sometimes putting symbols or dots in place of the letters. As I have written before, we don’t have any original manuscripts for our Bible, we have used various manuscripts (copies of copies of copies…) which means anything ‘corrupted’ by the Essenes (an early sect of ‘manuscript copiers’) continues today.

This continued to when the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) was written. Case (who is himself a Bible translator, so speaks with authority) suggests that when the Septuagint was written, they were so indoctrinated with the idea that they must not say the name of God, that it influenced their translations. Therefore, for example, the passage in Leviticus that says: ‘The one who blasphemes the name of Yahweh will surely be put to death.’[11] was translated in the Greek as: ‘The one who names the name of the Lord will surely be put to death.’ There seems to be no other reason for the change, as all the copies we have of the Hebrew use ‘blaspheme’ so it appears to be a deliberate change by the translators. (My understanding is that this happens a lot with translations—there is rarely a word-for-word equivalent with different languages, there is always a choice as to which word best fits the meaning. If translators hold a particular belief, it would be natural for them to use a word that upholds that.)

Case suggests that the Masoretes (who wrote the Hebrew version that I use) copied the convention of the Septuagint, and so added the vowels of Adonai to YWH. He also discusses how, over time, people would have begun to read this substitution as a name. Therefore, although people read ‘kurios’ meaning ‘the Lord’ in their Greek versions, after a while they would think of ‘Lord’ as a name, not a title. (Which probably most English speakers do today, when they pray to ‘Lord’ they are possibly not thinking of it as a generic title, but as a term specifically for God.

This is interesting, because his next point refers to the church in New Testament times—did they return to using Yahweh to address God? Well, no. Case says this is probably because in mixed Jewish/Greek congregations, the disciples were challenging all sorts of traditional thoughts, and challenging the idea of not using God’s name was probably a step too far. (Which to me, suggests that perhaps it is not important.) However, he does make an interesting point when he refers to the bit that says Jesus has ‘the name that is above every name’.[12] This ‘name’ suggests Case, would have been understood to be Yahweh. He thinks Paul was quoting from Isaiah 45:23, which uses ‘Yahweh’ but Paul has changed it to ‘Lord’ because that is the Greek custom. Case also points out that ‘Jesus’ in Hebrew is from ‘Joshua’ meaning: Yahweh is salvation.

There is further evidence that ‘Lord’ was substituted for Yahweh when Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 in Mark 12:30. He changes ‘You shall love Yahweh your God’ to ‘You shall love the Lord your God’ and he also adds ‘with all your mind’. Case thinks this is because the ancient Hebrews thought that everything was decided by the heart, whereas in Greek thought, there was a disconnect between heart and mind (so loving Yahweh with all your heart was insufficient, they needed to engage the mind too). Jesus therefore ‘tweaks’ a quotation, so the people understand the meaning of the quote. Thus ‘Lord’ is a substitute for ‘Yahweh’. Every time the early church read ‘Jesus is Lord’, they were really reading ‘Jesus is Yahweh’ which was completely radical!

My main concern when reading Case’s argument, is that he refers to ‘the personal name’ of God. Yet the name that was given, Yahweh, was NOT really a ‘personal name’. It’s a verb. The verb ‘to be’ which in the tense given means that God told Moses: ‘I will be whatever I will be.’ This, I feel, is more of an evasion than a name, more a telling humans that they cannot sum up God in a name, they cannot label him. The Old Testament writers took this verb and used it as a name. Should we copy their example? I guess the difference is that they were Hebrew speakers, so although they used the verb as a name, they would ever be aware that it was really a verb. We, however, see the word only as a name. Which potentially has dangers, but I’m not sure. Maybe it only has power. Maybe it has both.

[1] In case you missed my earlier blog: When the German theologians wanted to write this (Yahweh written with Adonai vowels) they ended up writing ‘Jehovah’ because ‘Y’ sound is written ‘J’ in some languages. Therefore, when you see the name ‘Jehovah’ you are reading a German attempt to write a wrongly-written Hebrew word, not a name that ever appeared in any Bible!

[2] Andrew Case, Pronouncing and Translating the Divine Name יהוה (UK: Independently Published, 2020). Although self-published, Case references his sources appropriately, and therefore is considered reliable to cite.

[3] David Clines, Yahweh and the God of Christian Theology: Theology Volume 83 (Sage, 1980)

< https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0040571X8008300503&gt; p.324.

[4] Exodus 3:15.

[5] Psalm 135:13.

[6] Ruth 2:4.

[7] 1 Samuel 14:45.

[8] Amos 6:10.

[9] Suggested by Douglas Stuart, Hosea – Jonah: World Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word Incorporated, 1987) p.364.

[10] Michael L. Rodkinson, The Babylonian Talmud: Original Text, Edited, Corrected, Formulated and Translated into English (Boston: The Talmud Society, 1918).

[11] Leviticus 24:16.

[12] Philippians 2:9 -11.

The Baal Cycle — a story from an ancient world

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The Baal Cycle

Here is an ancient story, from Ugarite, a civilisation that has lots in common with ancient Israel. The characters of the story are referred to during the Old Testament, because this is a tale the people would be familiar with—you might have noticed references to Baal, this is his story:

The Canaanite’s God, El, created all things. He is an old man, with a long white beard (he sat on a throne, not a cloud—but the description sounds familiar…) There is a Heavenly Realm, and El makes Yamm the king of all the gods. Yamm is a seven-headed sea dragon, known for his pride and creating chaos, sometimes called ‘Lotan’ (There is bit of a fuzzy divide between gods and monsters in some of these ancient stories. I guess they were trying to represent the things they didn’t understand with images/stories.)

Two other gods, Athtar and Baal resent this, and Baal threatens Yamm.

Baal is a young god, the son of Dagon, and his wife is Asherah (a name you might also recognise from the Old Testament).[1] He is a warrior god, he often brings thunder and lightning, and is in control of both fertility and rain. (This is particularly interesting in the light of the OT story in 1 Kings 18.)

Baal goes to Kothar, who is the god of skill and wisdom, and asks him to make two magical clubs. Baal then uses them to crush Yamm. He’s helped by his sister, Anat.

So we have Baal—thunder and lightning, defeating Yamm—chaotic sea. Baal is less chaotic than Yamm, so this is seen as a good thing.

They have a feast to celebrate (as you do) and Anat goes to ask El if they can build a palace for Baal on Mount Zaphon. Kothar (the god of skill and wisdom—remember?) helps to build the palace.

When the palace is complete, they invite Mot, the god of death to visit. (I find this is interesting, as ‘mot’ is the Hebrew word for ‘death.’) Mot says he will come, but to devour Baal, not to celebrate. Baal is defeated and killed (but not permanently, so don’t make a cuppa just yet). Anat (the sister) then fights Mot (because this is what sisters do when their younger brother is beaten up) and she manages to get Baal’s body. She kills Mot, and scatters his body to the birds (though he pops up again later, so this bit is a little confusing). During this battle, Athtart, another sister (obviously one who doesn’t like Baal so much) tries to make one of her sons king, but they all fail.

Baal and Mot then fight again (don’t ask me how, it seems ancient gods didn’t really stay dead, even when fed to the birds). Baal is declared the winner.

*****

I don’t feel the story has much traction as a bedtime story, but I found it interesting to see where some of the beliefs about Baal and Asherah came from. They pop up a few times in the Old Testament, because people tried to worship both them and God. The story seems strange/weird to our modern minds, but I guess the stories from every religion seem strange when you’re new to them.

[1] 1 Kings 14:15.

Thanks for reading. Hope you have a great week.

Take care.
Love, Anne x

Thank you for reading.
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