Class Notes

JAN 10

• Chronicles→ second era temple, apocalyptic prophecies are written, driven by need for justicr, that today god has not done anything

malachi 4

is “sun of righteousness” a personification?

• christian interpretation: old testament is alinged to lead into the old testament sooo…..elijah is john the baptist,sun of rughteousness is jesus

• new living translation is translated entirely by christians

• sun of righteousness as a personification in nlt was personified by christian

• hebrew has no uppercase or lowercase letters

• malachi 4 doesnt exist in the hebrew tanach, but the texts exists in malachi 3 in the tanach

• greek is either all capital or all lowercase (septuigant)

• in hebrew the word is clearly thr ball of fire, you dint have the same ambiguity as in English, sun vs son

• sun of righteousness over time in the christian perspective changed to son if righteousness as a title for Jesus

• is sun of righteousness a title that existed in that historical period?

• jew vs christian interpretation

other notes:

• the translation presupposes the ideals of the translator, they make interpretation decisions

• translation is interpretation

• Jesus tells the disciples to read the bible in a way that refers to himself

• historical jesus vs the way jesus was written in thr Gospels

• textual criticism

• error gets introduced because scribing went from oral to written down and there may be differences between the texts, this kind of error is common in historical texts

• there are parameters to what a text may mean when it comes to textual ambiguity, but there are options

• what the author intended → historical context

• hebrew mesoretic tradition, lennigran codex, authoritative forms

• texts written in middle east: egypt, babylon, mldern day iraq, israel, palestine

• when did the bible actually come into existence?

• Chronicles some parts are plagiarized from Samuel and kings

Earliest Witnesses

• earliest witness to the text in the bible, silver scrolls, found in a burial chamber, its an amulet with pastiche of phrases which can be found all over bible like exodus 20:6, numbers 6:24-26, Deuteronomy 5:10 & 7:9, daniel and nehemiah. has language that is biblical but is not biblical texts

• aaronic benedict

• 3rd century → full texts in jars in Qumran caves, Nahal Hever, and surrounding textsdead sea scrolls, 11 caves, includes all hebew texts except for esther, extra-biblical texts, and sectarian texts in hebrew, aramaic, and greek

• community was active in mid 2nd bce to 1st century ce

additional witnesses

• septuigant + greek manuscripts and codices, 2nd century → lots in 3rd and 4th centuries

• study hermeneutics

JAN 15

Genesis 1 & Job

• Job explores the limits of human knowledge

• combat metaphor → in order for god to create he had to fight monsters, leviathan, theobat, in job. this metaphor used

• greater and lesser lights vocabulary ensures that the reader does not view the sun and moon as deities that god fought but objects that god created

• in genesis the face of the deep is set up to fight

• polemic → combating other near Eastern myths of deities fighting monsters

• god does not fight beasts he creates them

• in order ancient religion deities give birth to other deities and elements of creation

• in the ancient near east it was common to speak of creationism stories as genealogies and genesis 1 plays with that and it is most likely the genre it belongs to, but using the form to show that what God created weren't deities and they didn’t copulate to create other things, its dissonance

• this genealogy genre comes from their understand of how things are created, reproduction, sex, but divine reproduction and sex….eg. the Egyptian creation story

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Genesis 1:26-27

synonimus parallelism is common in Hebrew poetry

• Us -

• in the image of god he created HIM (not them), male and female He created THEM

• this parallelism is making the point that the image of god exists in relationship, male AND female → this is stunning because it privileges both genders, the image of god is in their genderness and that their purpose is to live in relationship

• verse 26 is the first time we hear gods inner thoughts and he expresses himself in plurality

CLASS NOTES - FEBRUARY 3

• in ancient near eastern governing it was rare to say that you were divine, (it was hard to say that you are god when you are mortal) hats what made the pharoah unique → in egyptian mythology they believed the pharoah to be god → Osiris/Horus cycle

• Gods are just as much a part of the cycle of life as human beings are

• pharoahs death is necessary

• Osiris were always painted green - cause he’s dead! (teacher)

• tradition of pyramids → pharoahs needed to have all their things that go along with their rule in the afterlife

• osiris always had a son → horush,

• female dieties protected horus until horus could fight seth

• Horus was hidden in a basket and hidden in the papyrus thicket

• snake → nahash

• tanin → sea monster, dragon, or crocodile → pharoahs magician turns into snakes, aarosn turns into crocodile (serpent, dragon, monster)

• Parallels between horus and moses → horus is the wielder of snakes and crocodiles (horus holds them by the tail → narrrative in exodus four (thrown down the staff and pick it up by the tail → very exolicit)

egyptology - don redford → exposed infant motif article in u of a library

CLASS NOTES - FEBRUARY

The Plagues

Turning The Nile into blood

• The Nile is the life blood of egypt → the water provides agricultural life to egypt and without it, there are problems (so Moses attacking it (it directly or the divinity represented by it)

• One interpretation → so the magicians “fake” do it → but its NOT supported by the texts, the egyptian magicians had that same power too (kind of beats this modern religious narrative that there is only one God who has true powers) → this interpretation assumes that it is solely monetheistic and assumes that its history/literal (they have to interpret it this way in order for the text to be consistent with their beliefs, when in reality, the text does not support that)

• Historical narrative does not hold, the text does not say that, people assume it is

• The Lord instructs Moses and Aaron (Moses using the staff that’s in his hand and Aaron did it too) (two instructions, like the flood)

• There’s two different plagues going on → Moses miracle → Nile river, the fish die, in Aarons → all the water in Egypt turns to blood

• Two sources → Moses is primary and Aaron acts, Moses speaks eg. Gnats and boils don’t appear in one of the accounts

• In Psalm 78 and Psalm 105, you have different sequence of plagues, in Psalm 78 there are 8, Psalms 105 there’s 7 (to possibly 20).

• What we see in the exodus is evidence that it existed in various different variations and various different traditions because it was important and valuable, but they didn’t say it the same way every time (in exodus itself there’s 2 versions, and 2 other versions in Psalms) so there’s at least 4 versions within the biblical narrative that is proof this is not historical

Hardening of the heart

• His heart is literally getting hard, like its getting heavier and heavier, this is because in egyptian mythology in the underworld osiris measures the heart against a feather, if your heart is heavier than that feather you will have to pass the trials and tribulations that are written in the book of the dead

• Moses representing Horus → you’re getting battle of the gods, pharoah vs. moses, who is the true Horus? → Moses is the true Horus and has power, pharoah is not because he is evil (his heart is heavy)

other plagues

• will cover the face of the land (comes from eye)

The Battle with Ra

• The eye of Ra (one of the powers of the pharaoh) → is how the pharaoh sees his kingdom and domain, eye of ra is all seeing and knowing

• So when YHWH sends the locusts and tissues says it will cover the ‘eye’ of the land → refers to the eye of ra, its in a penultimate positioin and is meant literary, showing that not only do they not have control over the nile, over the insects/animals that they worship (personified dieties), but the pharaoh cannot even see his own kingdom and cannot rule them

• Raa is used as evil but also refered to Ra

• 10:10 → asserting his own divinity over and against Moses, he’s being stubborn so they have to darkness

• Taking the life of the firstborns → Taking revenge (when the egyptians took the life of hebrew firstborns), and so now God is saying i can do that too → coming full circle. But what targets pharaoh is that his first born is killed, not only is it his kids but its also undermining the rule of pharaonic lineage (He’s osiris passing on his lineage to Horus → his firstborn)

• Moses has a horn (has also led to antisimetic trope of jews having horns)

• face shined → face horned (actually) its about the egyptians pharoah also had horns, so even alexander the great issued coins depicting himself with coins when he conquered egypt → moses has horns, proves his deification, he proved himself to be god (hebrew god embodied in moses vs. the egyptian gods) → relates to the god

• ridley scott movie

FEB 12

• tension in the text: did they already know

• contradictions (genesis 4:26, ) → or acknowledge instead that there are different traditions and groups of texts in the pentateuchs

• plagues are divided into a way into 2 separate traditions, one focusing on the narrative of Moses and the other emphasizing the role of Aaron, which reflects the varying perspectives and theological emphases present within the source material.

• the pentateuch should be considered a library of texts

• JEPD sources → differences in the torah have been long since recognized (four different sources compiled into the pentateuch → walhousen (had antisemetic agenda, believed the P source corrupted everything and P is the basis judaism)

• jacop milgrom

• the torah is not a single document written by one hand (moses), you will only find this in conservative religious tradition → all biblical scholars acknowledge JEPD as straightforward and obvious in the text

• geographical differnece → the patriarchs travel in different places (d source is its own separate book) → exclusively interested in Moses, deuterist theology is not reflected in genesis

• priestly source is in charge for genesis 1 and for geneologies (geneologies organized the narrative → seen as final narrative)

• J source → Yahweh → souther kiingdom,

J SOURCE

• vivid concrete style

• anthrompomorphic view of god

• mount sinai is sacred

__________-

ORIGINS OF THE ISRALITES

Amorites Westerners

• late third and earlys econd millenium BCE, Amorites from the Syro-Arabbian steppes infiltrated/migrated into the Fertile Crescent, amid the collapse of the Ur III Sumerian dynasty, which had succeeded the collapse of the Sargonid and Gutian dynasties

• In the West, Amorties came to rule Ugarit, Byblos, and Aleppoo in modern Syria and Lebanon

• In Northern Mesopotamia, Shamsi-Adad I, an Amorite came to rule Ashur, conquered Mari, and established the first kingdom of Assyria, in southern mesopotamia, Amorties came to rule Larsa and founded the city of Babylon

• Decline of the middle kingdom in Egypt → Amorite migrations into the Delta reflected in extant sources and amterial culture, they came as laborers and professioinals, it coincided with the dicline and ultimately collapse of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt

• Amorite depictioins in egyptian have very colorful cothes (joseph)

• get new oxford annotated bibles

• Hyksos

Hyksos Dominaton

• means foreign rulers, assumed control of lower and middle egypt

• established avaris as capital

• kingdom extended into the engev and S palestine

• cultural contacts with minoan civilations in crete and levantine coastal cities

• worshiped the god Apophis and the Canaanite deity Ba’a'l which they associated with Seth (now considered a good guy)

• progressively egyptiezed

Hyksos and Biblical Tradition

• were eventually kicked out

• biblical story recounts the descent into edypt of the trybal leader, jacob, with his clan and their subsequent settlement on the eastern fringes of the Delta, the central area of Hyksos domination

• For a time, with one of their one in the office of vizier, they lived peacefully with the “Egyptians”

• After four generatins the “egyptians” turned hostile and “enslaved” them and, by divine intervention and the help of a propher mmoses, they were delivered

• donald redford saw very strongly related exodus tradition is late, hyksos are hebrews

Yawhweh from Shasu-land

• according to biblcal tradition after leaving egypt the hebrews travelled in sinai peninsula and to midian to meet their god yhwh and receiving instriction from a priest named jethro=reuel

• egyptian texts refer to much of this are as the land of the shasu and note among them, the shasu Srr (“seir”) and the Shasu of Yhw (“Yahu”) → there seems to be a group of seminoadic groups that come from an area called yahu, its not rare that divine names of place name and

• best guess that yahu comes from shasu-land (thats where the name yahweh comes from)

• if you were claiming that a land is yours, would it not be better to find your god there? Biblical scholars “find” their deity in another territory (he comes up form that territory to the new territory) → wilderness of sin vs. modern-day palestine, Israel met its god int eh wilderness far below its promised land , this highlights that it is literature is an auntentic historic cultural legacy → these are not the kind of things you invent to make yourself look good in order to defend religious view (its messy) → there’s something significatn historical cultural going on inthis literature and why this is and why ther'e’s different threads, different traditions, is somethign that is not easily answerable

• how and when does israel actually emerge into this la'nd that was promised to them…the pentateuch ends with this authentic push for promsied land is just moses dying and the people in thhe wilderness → ultimate cliff hanger

• Joshua, judges, ruth, samuel → only in samuel that they finally do ‘posses’ the land

• israel finally shows up in history (the first time) → israel is laid waste, his seed is not’ canaan is become a widow for Egypt (Egypt has commited genocide and wiped them out → terribly ironic, first appearnce in historical artifacts, they are victime of genocide )1205 BCE

Password: canaan (no caps, for quiz)

March 7 lecture notes - Ruth 3

• uncover his feet → feet is a euphimism, and potentially means genitals, so essentially uncover him, and lie with him (he’s going to be drunk) → (everyone who’s reading this understands perfectly clear her instructions) → but ruth literaly uncovers his feet and lay at it (there’s no suggestion that she laid with him), so the audience would laugh because ruth didn’t get the euphimism, makes ruth seem innocence and extreme positive characterization, and so devoted to her mother and law that she follows them verbatum, literaly goes and follows this silly instruction to uncover his feet, and then asks for protection with it (theory 2, where she didn’t have sex with boaz, which the professor believes) → but boaz tells her to stay there until morning??? boaz doesn’t want her to leave and be seen to protect her honour so he tells her to stay with him until the morning

• ruth instruction: dress your best, washed annoitnment, and wait until he finishes eating and drinking and goes back to hisi tent, observe where he is laying down and lie down (he’s going to take advantage and have sex with her)

• did they have sex or not? theory 1 (boaz insists that she stays the whole night, so far men in the bible don’t really reject sex, she sneaks out (leaves before anyone could recognize him), sex as a form of marriage) boaz still kind of asks to check in with another man, to respect who has priorities, in all the previous narratives he is someone whos is upright, and torah following, his termonology is very religious elevated language (law-related)

• narrative the ruth is this very faithful and very innocent person, which adds a comedic effect to the story

• moabite identity

• trickster, positive character trait, boaz concerns in taking ruth is that there’s property involved, boaz doesn’t want to perceive as enriching himself, so he offers it to someone else, other man already has another woman, boaz is unnattached and wealthy

• man gives up his claim in front of everyone

• sandal custom ??? → making it very official and legal and fair, uncertainty of previous night → certainty, everything was done right → huge emphasis

• interesting blessing that mentions women: “May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you produce children in Ephrathah and bestow a name in Bethlehem; and, through the children that the Lord will give you by this young woman, may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.’” → appeal to tradition and authority, matriarchs of israel, women who gave birth to all of israel (12 sons, between Rachel and Leah, Ruth the moabite, elevating Ruth up to these hierarchical matriarchal models, allusion to the story of Tamar,

• finished judges and ruth is elite propaganda (problem david is descende moabit, but do you know who the moabite was, she ties herself to her mother law (israelite) with such incredible loyalty and innocence that there is none like her to the point where the people around her compared her to rachel and leah, thats who ruth the moabite was and yes she was in the line of david, but she was righteous → who ought to be the next king of israel? david → his ancestors where righteous. → stories of the benjaminites, so suspicious they can’t even procreate properly, slander towards them in Judges (condemns them), especilly judges 19, Saul came from Gibead where the men raped men and men raped women in order to replenish their rank, horrible people → Saul shouldn’t be the king of israel

• Polemic against Saul → abimelech, the anti king, as a type of saul (evil spirit and parallel deaths), gibeah of benjamin worse than sodom (Genesis 19:1-21:25), Levite’s dismembering of the concubine is reminixcent of Saul cutting up the oxen into 12 pieces in 1 sam 11, Jabesh Gillead and Saul → allusion between those two narratives

• Ruth: an apology for david, story of this beautiful portrait of Ruth doing everything right and Boaz, doing the right thing in the worst of eras were the best of people because everyone else was being evil, counter-argument towards targeting David’s lineage

• should already be reading samuel

• very good argument that judges and ruth must be fairly early literature because whenw ould be the best time period for this particular issue to be raised in scribal writing → when the issue is actually happening, to persuade somenody of righteousness of your cause (assuming david and civil wars in samuel are historical)

• other scholars say that in the book of chronicles taken all the way down to the persian period, and the site of benjamin becomes geopolotical important because of the babolyninan destruction of jerusalem so possible that it happened later and lineage of saul trying to claim the throne, showing that david is the true royal lineage → tension betweein saulite and davidic house

• biblical history (patriarchs 220,1550, exodus 1300, conquest and settlement 1200-1000, united kkingdom golden age 1030-922, two kingdoms 922-721, judah alone 721-567, babylonian exile 567-509, babylonian exile 567-539, return and restoration 539-333BCE)

• judges 5 → old poetic hebrew story, folkloric elements

• in ancient world politics and religions are synonimous ideas and concepts, davids and sauls concepts tie into religion questions (which temple and where should you worshop) political and religious question → you can see the tension between different groups in the text in israel, implies that the text is contextual, meta-narrative that is realizing itself, whoeve'r’s version of these texts, they got the last say and crafted it in a certain direction, goes back to right the beignning of the course, samaritans also have a version of the bible → its different, they privilege different sites and evolves in a slightly different perspective → from a historical critical perspective is that these texts where a conversation / dispute between different groups of people who saw their relatopnship in god in different ways and then it eventually involved in a interisting interpretation to judaismm and christianity

CLASS NOTES MARCH 10

Kingship and Kings, The United Moarchy

The Question of Kinship

• Tension → 1 Samuel, anti and pro monarchical passages

• samuels warning against kingship

The problem of kingship

• conscript for sons for a standing military

• conscript your daughters for service in the palance (mundane to harem)

• introduce taxation (kings are costly, palaces)

• request for a king equated by yahweh to a rejection of his divine kingshop: 2 sam 8:7-8, interesting picture, leading towards the idea that israel needs a king and that would lead to them being faithful to god and successful, samuel says that its not true, and yahweh says that well if you’re asking for a king, you’re rejecting me (literature builds you up to accept it and believe it to be a right thing to do but yahweh disagrees, change in dynamic, tension)

The Rise and Demise of Saul

• almost as soon as he takes power, he loose his kingship but why?

• saul was not a chosen and annoitend king

• saul annointed as pring (nagid) by samuel

• saul selected by lot (ilk) and acclaimed as king (melek) before all the tribes of israel

• saul reaffirmed as king after routing the ammonites in 1 sam 11:1-12:25 (or 13:1)

• Saul is rejected as king because of his disobedience

• before enganging the philistines saul doesn’t wait for samuel to perform the sacrifice

• does not utterly destroy the amalekites

• nagid vs melek

• text is corrupted 1 samuel 13 (…)

• canadian system does not provide the prime minister with a national vote (he’s not a nationally elected leader, he’s the leader of the elected party) → still democratic → political language is different

• Samuel is a baddieeeee (waiting behind a rock until sauls screws up to condemn him)

• Samuel doesn’t come until after Saul did the sacrifice (he waited the appointed time and Samuel never came) so he did what he believed he needed to do in order to get the favour of yahweh, and samuel says no you screwed up, god doesn’t love ya anymore (in Professor Ken Ristau’s words)

• within 11 verses saul is condemend and told he’s not the kind of israel anymore
  who’s in the wrong, who’s not acting in the will of yahweh → samuel personal feelings, samuel 8 (samuel is a whiner - professor), who’s wrong samuel, yahweh, or saul? the narrative isn’t straight forward or gives you an easy solution to what is right and what is wrong

• The Lord says this isn’t about you, they’ve rejected me

• God tells Saul to commit a genocide, and yahweh does not utterly destroy them, but he leaves some captives and livestocks, and samuel condemns themm for not utterly destroying them or commiting the genocide he was told to to → what is right and what is wrong, is yahweh right or is saul right? the narrative doesn’t give you an easy out

Saul a tragic hero

• a tragic hero, according to aristotle, is the protaganist in a drama who’s misfortune is borught not by vice or depravity but by some sort of error or frailt in his or her character that they can’t avoid or circumstance. This tragic flaw in the hero expresses itself either through a definite action or through failure to perform a definite action

• Within a canonical context, judges and ruth condition readors to expect Saul’s demise and the rise of David

• The Question and problems of Kingship

• The rejection of Saul (ironically even the accession formula in 13:1 is corrupt)

• The Rise of David

• Chronicles reports only his death and rejection

• 1 and 2 samuels, 1 and 2 kings, 1 and 2 chronicles

David’s narrative

• accession narrative (1 sam 16 - 2 sam 8, sometimes inclusive of 1 sam 15 and/or exculsive of 2 sam 6-8)

• court or succession narrative (2 sam 9 - 1 kgs 2, sometimes exculsive of 2 sam 21-24)

• a majority of scholars say that the david accession narrative believe it was early writing because the literature seems to honerate david, with a level of detail, it seems to be very specific to its time and setting (if it wasn’t, than why all the details) → Joel Baden, Ruth Kalmpur

David as King

• Political Consolidation (cf. 1 Ch 11-12, 18-20):

  • Civil war

  • capture of jerusalem → insipient formative moment where jerusalem begins to be considered a holy city

  • marriage and progeny (strengthening of his house and lineage)

  • defeat of the philistines → great enemy of israel

• Religious consolidation (cf. 1 Chr 13, 15-17, 21-29):

  • transfer of the ark of the covenant to jerusalem (2 sam 6)

  • temple and covenant (2 sam 7)

Davidic Covenant

• Perpetual Support, David’s descendants rule on God’s throne → 2 Sam 7:16, 1 Chr 17:14

• Nature of the Covenant Relationship, Divine sonship, 2 Sam 7:14a, 1 Chr 17:13a, 1 Chr 29:23a

• Samuel → Davidic kings ruling during the time the text was written

• Even if David commits sin, I will continue to support him and his kingship (Yahweh), your son will build me a house (1 Chr 22:7 → David shed a lot of blood) → Davidic Covenant

• Chronicles → davidic kings no longer ruling and so covenants have loser definition during the time the text was written

• Victory Stele (ancient near-eastern monument that can range in height, inscribed tablets of stone, often put a boundary points of a kingdom or in a capital city to describe the victory of the kings) 2 Sam 8, 1 Sam 14:47-48, 1 Kgs 11:14-35 vs. The Annals of Thutmose

• Stele’s had to be written in an element of truth, but how you described the significance of that → a certain amount of exageration was allowed (border skirmishes described as “conquests”)

• Claims of davidic empire need to be taken with a grain of salt

• Merneptah stele (if that was true we wouldn’t have had the Bible)