TNDL: "THERE ARE THOSE RELIGEOUS THEOLOGIANS, WHO KNOW THE TRUTH, BUT CHOOSE NOT TO IMPART THE TRUTH TO THE GREAT MASS, WHICH IS THE 99% of the people. So, as Psalm 2 asked, Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing, and the kings set themselves against the Lord?"
Are Yahweh and El Distinct Deities In Deut. 32:8-9 and Psalm 82? Dr. Michael S. Heiser Academic Editor, Logos Bible Software, Bellingham, WA The polytheistic nature of pre-exilic Israelite religion and Israel’s gradual evolution toward monotheism are taken as axiomatic in current biblical scholarship. This evolution, according to the consensus view, was achieved through the zealous commitment of Israelite scribes who edited and reworked the Hebrew Bible to reflect emerging monotheism and to compel the laity to embrace the idea. One specific feature of Israelite religion offered as proof of this development is the divine council. Before the exile, Israelite religion affirmed a council of gods which may or may not have been headed by Yahweh. During and after the exile, the gods of the council became angels, mere messengers of Yahweh, who by the end of the exilic period was conceived of as the lone council head over the gods of all nations. Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and Psalm 82 are put forth as rhetorical evidence of this redactional strategy and assumed religious evolution. The argument is put forth that these texts suggest Yahweh was at one time a junior member of the pantheon under El the Most High, but that he has now taken control as king of the gods. Mark S. Smith’s comments are representative: The author of Psalm 82 deposes the older theology, as Israel's deity is called to assume a new role as judge of all the world. Yet at the same time, Psalm 82, like Deut 32:8-9, preserves the outlines of the older theology it is rejecting. From the perspective of this older theology, Yahweh did not belong to the top tier of the pantheon. Instead, in early 2 Israel the god of Israel apparently belonged to the second tier of the pantheon; he was not the presider god, but one of his sons.1 The focus of this paper concerns the position expressed by Parker and held by many others: whether Yahweh and El are cast as separate deities in Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32. This paper argues that this consensus view lacks coherence on several points. Parker’s position is in part based on the idea that these passages presume Yahweh and El are separate, in concert with an “older” polytheistic or henotheistic Israelite religion, and that this older theology collapsed in the wake of a monotheistic innovation. The reasoning is that, since it is presumed that such a religious evolution took place, these texts evince some sort of transition to monotheism. The alleged transition is then used in defense of the exegesis. As such, the security of the evolutionary presupposition is where this analysis begins.
Why does God in the Old Testament seem different in the New Testament? Is God the same God from the Old to the New Testament?The apostle John writes that Jesus the Christ is the Creator God of the Old Testament. “John 1:1-3, 10 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made…He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. NIV”Paul also claims that Jesus was our Creator God. “Colossians 1:15-17 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. NIV”Paul portrays Jesus as that God that led Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land. “1 Corinthians 10:1-4 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. NIV”Isaiah quotes God’s statement the He is that Rock. “Isaiah 44:8 Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one." NIV”Moses also refers to God as a Rock. “Deuteronomy 32:4 He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he. NIV”Jesus refers to Himself before the Jews using the same name that He gave Moses at the burning bush. “John 8:58 "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I AM!"
NIV”Deuteronomy 32:8 When the Most High gave the nations their ...From the very beginning, when God first allotted to the nations a place and a heritage, he had respect in his arrangements to the sons of Israel, who were his .Are Yahweh and El Distinct Deities in Deut. 32:8-9 and Psalm ...
BACKDROP TO THE PROBLEM In the spirit of going where angels—or perhaps gods in this case—fear to tread, in my dissertation I asked whether this argumentation and the consensus view of Israelite religion it produces were coherent.2 I came to the position that Israelite religion included a council of gods (אלהים (and servant angels (מלאכים (under Yahweh-El from its earliest conceptions well into the Common Era. This conception included the idea that 1 Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 49. 2 Michael S. Heiser, “The Divine Council in Late Canonical and Non-Canonical Second temple Jewish Literature” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004). 3 Yahweh was “species unique” in the Israelite mind, and so terms such as henotheism, polytheism, and even monolatry are not sufficiently adequate to label the nature of Israelite religion. Those who use such terms also assume that אלהים is an ontological term in Israelite religion, denoting some quality or qualities that points to polytheism if there are more than one אלהים .This fails to note the use of the term within and without the Hebrew Bible for the departed human dead and lower messenger beings (מלאכים.(3 Rather, אלהים in Israelite religion denotes the “plane of reality” or domain to which a being properly belongs (for example, the “spirit world” versus the “corporeal world”). For these reasons and others it is more fruitful to describe Israelite religion than seek to define it with a single term. Questioning the consensus on such matters requires some explanation, and so the path toward consensus skepticism is briefly traced below via several examples where the consensus view suffers in coherence. These examples demonstrate that the consensus view has been elevated to the status of a presupposition brought to the biblical text that produces circular reasoning in interpretation. First, Deutero-Isaiah is hailed as the champion of intolerant monotheism, giving us the first allegedly clear denials of the existence of other gods. And yet it is an easily demonstrated fact that every phrase in Deutero-Isaiah that is taken to deny the existence of other gods has an exact or near exact linguistic parallel in Deuteronomy 4 and 32— two passages which every scholar of Israelite religion, at least to my knowledge, rightly sees as affirming the existence of other gods. Deutero-Isaiah actually puts some of the 3 Examples in the Hebrew Bible would include Genesis 28:12 (compared with
Genesis 32:1-2, and in turn comparing Genesis 32:1-2 with the plural predication in Genesis 35:7) and 1 Samuel 28:13.
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