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Contradictions in the Bible
Identified verse by verse and explained using the most up-to-date scholarly information about the Bible, its texts, and the men who wrote them — by Dr. Steven DiMattei
CONTRADICTIONS IN GENESIS
CONTRADICTIONS IN EXODUS
CONTRADICTIONS IN LEVITICUS
CONTRADICTIONS IN NUMBERS
CONTRADICTIONS IN DEUTERONOMY
#294. To which god was Balaam subservient: Yahweh OR El? (Num 23:8, 23:26 vs Num 23:8)
#295. By which god was Israel blessed: Yahweh OR El? (Num 24:1 vs Num 24:4)
#296. Who liberated the Israelites from Egypt: Yahweh OR El? (Ex 20:21; Lev 19:36, 23:43; Deut 5:6, 13:10, etc. vs Num 23:22, 24:8)
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In contradiction #27—Is Yahweh and El the same god or different gods? (which has become one of my most visited posts)—I not only laid out the biblical evidence suggesting that Yahweh and El were variously viewed as the same deity on several occasions, while in a few rare instances as two distinct deities, but I also summarized the scholarly evidence for the claim that (some of ?) the early Israelites actually worshiped El as Israel’s god and that Yahweh eventually usurped El’s characteristics and domain through a process of assimilation.
The Balaam pericope (Num 22-24) is another piece of textual evidence that bears witness to an early stage in Israelite religion when Yahweh and El co-harmoniously existed as two distinct deities in an original Canaanite pantheon. This is particularly the case in the poetic sections.
For example, Numbers 23:8 accords El and Yahweh equal footing:
How can I curse whom El has not cursed,
and how can I doom whom Yahweh has not doomed?
In short, what this verse explicates is that Balaam had not received any pronouncement against Israel from either El or Yahweh! Baruch Levine, whose textual acumen and knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Canaanite languages far exceeds that of my own, concludes from an in-depth analysis of the poem sections that the author(s) of the Balaam poem uses El as a proper noun, not the generic ‘el of later biblical Hebrew, usually translated as “god.” These 9th century poetic sections, Levine concludes, attest to a time prior to the synthesis of Yahweh and El.
“In the Balaam poems one senses that this synthesis has not yet occurred and that El, Shaddai and Elyon, along with Yahweh, coexist in a regional pantheon.” (Levine, Numbers 21-36, Anchor Bible Series, 173)
Thus, these poetic sections represent a period in Israelite religion—or taking Levine’s cue from “regional,” Transjordanian religious practices (?)—prior to the 6th century Priestly writer’s explicit attempt at synthesizing the ancient worship of El by early Israelites with the exclusive worship of Yahweh in later periods. Again, this is most visible in P’s comment in Exodus 6:2-3, where he has Yahweh proclaim to Moses:
“I am Yahweh, and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, and I was not known to them by my name Yahweh!”
I have already written at length about P’s theological claim here since it clashes pretty violently with the Yahweh of the Yahwist tradition who attests in numerable places that he, Yahweh, was in fact known by name by the patriarchs (see #11).
We should not fail to notice what the Priestly writer was attempting to specifically accomplish here. Exodus 6:2-3 is basically asserting that those patriarchs (and indigenous Canaanites ?) who previously worshiped the Canaanite El were in fact worshiping Yahweh! You can’t carve a better synthesis than that. I reproduce Levine’s comments on this as well, because I find his assessment well articulated and right on point.
“What is rationalized in Exodus 6 as prior fact is, in reality, the outcome of a diachronic process on the theological level, and of a progressive source-critical redaction on the textual level. In a word, it is synthesis. The patriarchs had actually worshipped the deity El, variously known as El Shaddai and (El) Elyon (cf. Deut 32:7-8). What their descendants were being told is that Yahweh was taking over from El, and was henceforth to be worshipped as if he had always been their god. They should no longer turn to El for help, but to Yahweh; and furthermore, they should now believe that all that they had attributed to El in the past was really the work of Yahweh. In summary, the text of Exodus 6:2-8 records the ascendancy of the national god Yahweh, whose cult was henceforth to be the only legitimate one in Israel” (221).
This synthesis, Levine continues, is not present in the Balaam poems! In the poem sections of the Balaam pericope, Yahweh and El are variously represented as the deities to whom Balaam is subservient.
The real shocker here in these poem sections is the mention of El, not Yahweh, as Israel’s liberator from Egypt!
El, who liberated him from Egypt, has horns like a wild ox. (Num 23:22, 24:8)
What we might have here is a regional formula endemic to the religious practices of Transjordan. I don’t think this would be an antagonistic statement against Yahweh; but rather since Yahweh and El were viewed as co-existing harmoniously in this regional pantheon, it is merely a statement that the regional gods, preeminently El, liberated Israel from Egypt. In our current context, this former liberation is invoked since here too El and Yahweh are seen as “liberating” Israel from any potential or real threat from the Moabites of the region.
This all changes of course in later biblical formulations where it becomes, according to this assessment, Yahweh who liberates Israel. “I am Yahweh your god who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” As Levine states: “The liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, earlier attributed to the regional god El, was now being accredited to the national god Yahweh.”
In sum, these biblical passages, including those mentioned in contradiction #27, attest to the fact that El was the original god of Israel and that Yahweh was later assimilated to El by loyal devotees of Yahwism. So in this centuries long diachronic process of subversive reinterpretation and reimagination, Yahweh usurps El, Jesus usurps Yahweh, Allah usurps Jesus. . . Is it that difficult for our species allegedly “created in the image of God (variously El, Yahweh, Jesus, Allah)” to use our god-created intellects and be brutally honest about this whole process of theologized syncretism and subversion
Hello, my face family and friends. I am sharing some knowledgeable information you may want to know. About the history of YHWH the regional God. Knowledge is power, but lack of knowledge make us powerless. According to the seer Prophet Isaiah chap 5, the children went into captivity due to their lack of knowledge. Therefore, Know yourselves children of the Most god of Abram, Isac and Jacob/Israel..Here are some historical knowledgeable you may want to know.
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by M-Theory
13 January 2004
from HiddenMysteries Website
In a September 22nd, 2002 speech to visiting Christian Zionists, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asserted,
"This land is ours... God gave us the title deeds..."
However, recent scholarly research, including discoveries by an archaeological team from the University of Tel Aviv, not only deconstruct the Biblical Old Testament and Torah stories upon which this claim rests, but grant previously unthinkable credence to an ancient historian’s claim that the Israelites of Exodus were actually the Hyksos, and therefore of Asiatic origin.
To trace the foundations of this ongoing Biblical bonfire, we must go back to 1999.
All hell broke loose in Israel in November of that year when Prof. Ze’ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University announced:
"the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander the desert, did not conquer the land, and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes".
Moreover, the Jewish God YHWH had a female consort - the goddess Asherah!
His conclusion that the kingdom of David and Solomon was at best a small tribal monarchy, at worst total myth, has made enemies for him in the camps of traditional Jewish and Christian belief systems. He asserts: all evidence demonstrates that the Jews did not adopt monotheism until the 7th Century BCE - a heresy according to the Biblical tradition dating it to Moses at Mount Sinai.
Tel Aviv University’s archaeological investigation at Megiddo and examination of the six-sided gate there dates it to the 9th Century BCE, not the 10th Century BCE claimed by the 1960’s investigator Yigael Yadin who attributed it to Solomon.
Herzog, moreover, states that Solomon and David are "entirely absent in the archaeological record".
In addition, Herzog’s colleague, Israel Finkelstein, claims the Jews were nothing more than nomadic Canaanites who bartered with the city dwellers.
The team’s studies concluded that Jerusalem did not have any central status until 722 BCE with the destruction of its northern rival Samaria.
However, the real bombshell is Herzog’s discovery of numerous references to Yahweh having a consort in the form of Asherah. Inscriptions, written in Hebrew by official Jewish scribes in the 8th century BCE, were found in numerous sites all over the land.
For Yahweh, supposedly the "One God", to have had a female consort and, of all people, the goddess Asherah, is dynamite of wide ranging significance.
The Secret Identity of Yahweh
The use of Yahweh as the name of God has always fuelled speculation and philosophical argument. YHWH, sometimes pronounced Jehovah, is taken to mean "I AM" or "I AM WHO I AM".
There is also the puzzle of the rule that his mysterious real name is not to be spoken.
The identification of the goddess Asherah (Asherat) as his consort somewhere within the original Jewish faith leads to some explosive conclusions about the identity of the Jewish/Christian God of the Cosmos, the one Monotheistic God with whom we are so familiar from western religion.
But before looking at Asherah, and what she means to the identity of Yahweh, it is worth taking a look at another goddess, Ashteroth. Her significance will become evident a little later.
Referred to as an "abomination" in 2 Kings, Ashteroth was an important deity in the Near East pantheons.
To the Sumerians she was IN.ANNA (Anu’s beloved) and is an important character in the Sumerian Epics
To the Assyrians and Babylonians she was Ishtar
Ashtoreth was her name for the Canaanites
To the Greeks - Aphrodite
The Romans - Venus
The most important equivalent however is the Egyptian goddess Hathor
Hathor was the wife of Horus, the God of War.
Hathor is identified with the symbol of the cow, and statues of her in the 26th Dynasty (572 - 525 BC) in Egypt actually depict her as a cow.
Asherah, (whose name means "she who walks in the sea") supposedly consort of the supreme god El, was also referred to as Elath (the goddess). According to the Ugarit tradition, whose clay tablets contain the earliest known alphabet, she was consort of El, and mother of seventy gods. She is also associated with Baal and is supposed to have interceded to her husband, the supreme god, on Baal’s behalf, for the building of a palace - in order to grant him equal status with other gods.
In the cuniform tablets of Ras Shamrah (Circa 1400 BCE) the head of the Pantheon was El; his wife was Asherat-of-the-sea (Asherah). After El, the greatest god was Baal, son of El and Asherah.
Curiously, Baal’s consort is his mother, Asherah. In the Lebanon traditions, Baal is equated with Jupiter.
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