Chewing on the Trinity 3
In a previous post, we saw that Yeshua’s use of I am
or egw eimi
was pointing to the phrase before Abraham was
for its significance. What Yeshua says would therefore be better understood as: I am before Abraham was. But what does that mean?
The Trinitarian, as we saw in the debate video, is quick to say this means Yeshua is claiming a divine attribute for his own personal existence: eternality. This whole time while Yeshua has been telling people about how he is bringing about a day in which the word of YHWH will overcome death through himself, he suddenly decides, out of nowhere, to stop talking about that and to declare I have existed forever!
And surely no one can exist forever except God.
It would not need to be said had Trinitarians not been so blind to the problem of their own argument: Yeshua does not say forever, he says before Abraham.
There are trees and monumental structures created by humanity that existed before Abraham or stretch back as far or further in time from now as Yeshua did to the time of Abraham and no one would think to say they are eternal because of it. The angels existed prior to Abraham. Are they YHWH himself? Some patriarchs lived to be almost 1,000 years old according to various manuscripts of Genesis. Are they somehow specially divine because their lives have reached back beyond the limits of what we think of as ordinary human longevity? There is nothing in Yeshua saying I am before Abraham was
that requires the divine attribute of eternal existence. However, since reason doesn’t exclude the possibility of that interpretation, let’s have a look at what the text says and see if the subject of what Yeshua is saying and what the Jews understand him to be saying is anything like that at all or if there is something else going on (there I go again, daring to actually look at what the text says).
Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself? Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God: Yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
John 8:52-58, KJV
What is going on? Yeshua is saying that his Father (YHWH) is making him greater/of more honor than their father (Abraham) or all the prophets who came after. What is the essence of that honor/greatness? That Yeshua is eternal? That he existed forever? Is that what the Jews think he means by before Abraham was?
It is clear in the text that the essence of Yeshua’s honor/greatness is that what he says overcomes death. Let’s see it again right there in the text in case you missed it: thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death.
That is what Yeshua said to them and that is their problem with him because, obviously, they do not believe it! Abraham and the prophets spoke the word of God and the Jews follow the words that Abraham and the prophets spoke, but Abraham and the prophets all died and all those who follow their words die. So how can Yeshua’s word overcome death unless Yeshua were greater than Abraham and the prophets or carried a message from YHWH greater than they? Yeshua’s audience thinks he must be possessed of the devil and trying to falsely gain some honor or greatness that is not and never can be his.
Yeshua responds by saying that it is not only his Father (YHWH) who honors him, but even their father (Abraham) saw his day and was glad.
What is his day? In the context of everything that has just been said by Yeshua and by the Jews in response to him, it is a day they have never known: a day when the word from YHWH will overcome death. All other days with the word of YHWH ended in death. Abraham died and did not come back. The prophets died and did not come back. But Yeshua is claiming a day in which that end is overthrown. Surely Yeshua will die and not come back and what he says will not be able to bring anyone back either.
They respond by saying You are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham?
But this is not asking Yeshua how far back he exists (and thus does not have to do with eternality
) because they obviously do not believe from the getgo that he could exist far back in time (you are not yet 50
) and there has been nothing Yeshua said in the passage that indicates he was previously talking about being eternally existent. By saying You are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham?
, they are mocking his claim to bring into the world a word from YHWH that can overcome death by pointing out that what he says IS NEW. What he is claiming is not yet 50 years in the earth. But Abraham…boy, he goes WAY back. So how then can Abraham have known what Yeshua is claiming?
The issue is not whether Yeshua existed eternally or not. Nor is the issue whether Yeshua has existed for a very long time. The issue is whether this thing Yeshua is claiming about himself whoever keeps my words will not taste death
is new or whether it precedes him as far back as even Abraham. Yeshua said that Abraham knew of what he was claiming and approved, so that is where the Jews are taking their aim. There is nothing else in the text for them to take aim at—no claim of personal eternal existence, no declaration of I AM via the divine name, no statement that he, himself, is YHWH. What there IS, however, is the bold revelation that if those who follow Yeshua’s words will not taste death, then Yeshua himself, who lives by the very thing he is delivering, will escape death.
By saying I am before Abraham was,
Yeshua not only settles the issue at hand (that his claim isn’t new–it does precede him as far back as Abraham, which validates what he had just previously said about Abraham), but at the same time positively answers what is implicit about the claim: through the word given to him from the Father, Yeshua himself will overcome death. Not even Moses, who gave Israel the Torah From Heaven, escaped death! Frenzied at that claim and that assertion, the Jews pick up stones to put his word to the test. They intend to deliver him to death and thereby show him to be a fraud in what he says.
Unlike the Trinitarian, I do not come away from this text with the message Yeshua must be eternal and God himself.
Rather, my response is The word of the Lord. The word that conquers death. The word that is LIFE. Yeshua has it?” And then I read along further in the text and see that Yeshua rose from the grave and my reaction is “It is true! Yeshua’s way is life! Life greater than death! So I will believe what Yeshua says and follow him. Praise be to the Lord!
To the Trinitarian, John 8 is telling us something about the philosophical makeup of Yeshua’s being. To me, the non-Trinitarian, John 8 is preaching the gospel message.
Chewing on the Trinity 2
In a previous post, I talked about a debate between a Unitarian and a Trinitarian posted on YouTube where I had a few stunning revelations:
- A Trinitarian can actually make a good argument
- Whatever I am as a non-Trinitarian, I don’t fit very well into the Unitarian camp
- The Trinitarian, for the most part, destroyed the Unitarian’s arguments and won the debate by a landslide
The main reason, I think, for the Unitarian’s defeat was that he was outmatched and out-gunned. The Trinitarian knew his stuff and made good arguments. The Unitarian didn’t know his stuff and was unable to make arguments that worked with and overthrew his opponent’s criticisms.
One thing the Unitarian was on to, which he completely failed to lay out, was the problem with the Trinitarian’s assertion that when Yeshua said I am
(before Abraham) he was using the divine name to declare himself YHWH.
The Unitarian correctly pointed out that the Greek of I am
that Yeshua uses is egw eimi
and that when we look at what the translators of the Septuagint thought represented the divine name, YHWH, in Greek, it is NOT egw eimi,
but o wn.
Since Yeshua does not use the Greek equivalent of the divine name, the Trinitarian argument that Yeshua calls himself YHWH by saying egw eimi
falls flat on its face. The Unitarian should have won the argument. Instead, he let the Trinitarian run right over him by making the ridiculously false claims that egw eimi
actually does represent the name YHWH in Exodus 3 and that we can see this to be so in a passage like Deuteronomy 32:39 where the Greek renders the divine name as egw eimi.
Well, since this isn’t a debate, I have the luxury of actually looking at the verses in question and showing what they do and do not say instead of simply giving a verse reference, reading it in English, and then moving on as if I validated my point. So let’s do that.
First, let’s look at what Greek words the New Testament author(s) felt best represented what Yeshua said when Yeshua said before Abraham was I am.
John 8:58 according to the SBL Greek Text says before Abraham was: εγω ειμι.
In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew, when we turn to Exodus 3:14, we see God say, Say to the Israelites I am ο ων. The I am
part of that is egw eimi,
but if we continue to read the passage, we see that the I am
or egw eimi
is NOT identified as the divine name YHWH. The verse continues, Thus you will say to the children of Israel ο ων has sent me to you. Not egw eimi,
but o wn.
Where the Septuaginat says ο ων has sent me to you, the Hebrew says YHWH has sent me to you,
clearly and unambiguously showing us that ο ων represents the divine name in Greek, not εγω ειμι. Yeshua does not say ο ων, but says another phrase that the Greek Old Testament doesn’t chose to identify with the name YHWH. The Trinitarian argument fails on the plain facts of the text.
So now let’s look at the claim that egw eimi
is being used in the manner of the divine name to identify YHWH in Deuteronomy 32:39.
The Septuagint says See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me.
The Greek for I am he
is εγω ειμι, a common and familiar expression used throughout the Old and New Testaments, but not for the divine name. So the question is whether egw eimi
is being used here to signify the divine name. We can answer that by looking at the Hebrew. Is the divine name used there where the Greek text says egw eimi
? And secondly, is the identification of who is YHWH by use of this expression the purpose and meaning of the text?
Deuteronomy 32:39 says in the Hebrew אני אני הוא, ani ani hu,
which means I, I [am] he.
So what the LXX renders as egw eimi
is not standing in for YHWH
in the Hebrew text. Those two Greek words are standing in for the two Hebrew pronouns I
and he.
Not only has the Trinitarian failed to show that what Yeshua says is to be identified with the divine name, but we see direct evidence in the very verse quoted by the Trinitarian in the video that where he believes this identification to be taking place in the Greek by the phrase egw eimi,
that very identification is absent. It’s nothing but air. And so is another Trinitarian argument that when Yeshua says I am
(egw eimi) he is calling himself YHWH.
But let’s not stop there. Let’s ask the second question. What IS the Deuteronomy text saying? Is the text using egw eimi
to tell us exactly who is YHWH? It that it’s purpose? Or does egw eimi
serve a different purpose? Because if we can understand how egw eimi
IS used as opposed to how it ISN’T, that will tell us something about what Yeshua might actually be saying instead of what Yeshua is not. Let’s look at the text (you will by now notice that I like to pay attention to what the text actually says, which I have continually found be the fatal stroke against most Trinitarian arguments).
And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
Deuteronomy 32:37-39, KJV
So what’s going on here? People are looking to other gods to rescue them and to protect them. But only YHWH can do that for them. The phrase egw eimi,
is being used in a very specific sense. Not to tell us he is
or I am,
but to tell us something about what he is: the one who kills and makes alive, the one who wounds and heals, the one who can be protection or deliver from the enemy’s hand. The Trinitarian has put the emphasis on exactly the wrong part of what egw eimi
is used by the text to tell us. It does not refer to itself, but to something else that was said.
By seeing how egw eimi
is used, we can expect something of its use by Yeshua. Yeshua should be using I am
(egw eimi) to say something else about himself, not to say I AM. If we look at the text, it is obvious what he is: before Abraham was. Before Abraham
is the significance of egw eimi,
not egw eimi
itself. This would be best represented by the English translation I am before Abraham was.
So what does that mean? See part 3: I Am Before Abraham Was.
So I’m not a Trinitarian. I don’t hide that fact. The main reason is because I have never really seen any reason from the scriptures to think in Trinitarian ways. Almost without exception (there are exceptions), virtually every argument I have ever heard in support of the Trinity, I have researched and looked into, and found to be false, baseless, or downright misleading.
But I’m open to this long-established and cherished doctrine. I took an on-line course through Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a well-respected, very conservative school, where the primary emphasis was a defense of the Trinity. I wanted to know from people who know what they’re talking about and who have really looked into this what they thought and why. Lay it all down in front of me so I can see the cards you’re playing with. Unfortunately, I left thinking their game was a fraud.
The best argument I had ever heard for the Trinity was something Francis Schaeffer said (or maybe it was C.S. Lewis? Or a combination of both?). His (their?) point was that there are attributes of YHWH that make no sense unless there is an relationship—particularly love. YHWH is love. And yet how can YHWH be love if there is no one/nothing to love since love is an interchange and if YHWH is only one God or one person, there cannot be an interchange? It would make that attribute of God dependent upon creation or upon something that is less than God. And how can something that is not God define an attribute of God? There must be something or someone in God that allows for the interchange of love. That makes sense. That is a good argument. Not a great argument (it certainly doesn’t require Trinitarianism), but a good one.
So to get to what I really wanted to discuss here… I just finished watching a really informative debate between a Trinitarian and a Unitarian on YouTube. Here is the beginning of that debate (it is in 12 parts).
This is the first time that I have EVER heard a good defense from a Trinitarian (and he even brings up the Schaeffer/Lewis argument…in his own way). I’m not saying it’s a great defense (it has a whole host of problems), but it is a good one. I, of course, align more with the Unitarian perspective (not to be confused with Unitarian Universalist
). Although after watching that video, I think I differ from Unitariansim in a great many respects. But I am very willing to concede that the Trinitarian wipes the floor with his opponent. I often come away from Trinitarian arguments thinking this person has no concept of what the biblical text is or is not saying and is trying to substitute this strange concept into it.
And yet throughout the debate at the link above, I felt like the Unitarian had no concept of Trinitarianism and spent most of his time either trying to understand what his opponent thought (or what Trinitarianism was) and kept going back over his own thoughts without answering the challenges his opponent brought to those thoughts. The Trinitarian makes some good arguments and counter-arguments and they deserve to be answered well in turn.
So as I ponder those arguments and counter-arguments, I was wondering what stood out to you, dear reader? Not only in support of Trinitarianism, but also against it. (Yes, I realize I am asking that you watch the whole thing. And, yes, I realize that I am asking those who probably support one or the other of those positions to try to allow their perspective or bias to be challenged, but I think it is possible.)
Let me get the ball rolling…
One thing that stood out to me as a Unitarian
(so to speak
since I differ from that Unitarian and from that Trinitarian’s experience with other Unitarians) is how so much of the Trinitarian argument rests upon and results from specific theological perspectives without which those arguments would fall apart. One theological perspective it requires (and that I am not so sure—in fact, very doubtful—I follow) is Original Sin. The Trinitarian’s belief in Original Sin (combined with other requisite beliefs), makes Yeshua have to be a certain way in order for his salvation (as that is understood—another specific theological belief) to be genuine or effective. So the Trinitarian perspective is a natural outflow of what the biblical texts say about Yeshua within the confines of the interpreter’s underlying set of theological beliefs. Since, however, I do not share many of those underlying theological beliefs, I am not restricted in my interpretation of scripture to a Trinitarian perspective. The Trinitarian’s argument would have been stronger had he shown why all his underlying theological beliefs are valid. But, of course, there is never enough time in a debate to do something like that (one reason why I generally hate debates).
Perhaps the most lucid argument the Trinitarian made, which is something I’m going to have to chew on for a while, is that if Yeshua was ever able to sin, then is he able to sin now that he stands at the right hand of YHWH? Does Yeshua have the ability to turn away from YHWH either back then, now, or ever? My perspective has been—contrary to the Trinitarian and slightly different from the Unitarian (the Unitarian believes Yeshua had the capacity to sin but was ALWAYS sinless)—that Yeshua could have sinned and that there was a point at which he became sinless. But even if that is so…does that mean Yeshua could ever cease to be sinless? Because if Yeshua can… Well, that opens up a whole can of worms that is pretty yucky to deal with. And it also creates other issues such as free will or choice and how that relates to YHWH (not my will, but your will
). My position is not an easy one. And I certainly don’t have all the answers for it. The Trinitarian argument that says Yeshua was always sinless and never could sin because Yeshua is God himself in his being is a much better or easier road to take since it means the Trinitarian doesn’t have to worry about his eternal fate whereas mine will never be completely and totally certain.
And yet the counter-point is also a strong one: if Yeshua never could have sinned, if he was never able to do so (the Trinitarian belief), then the word temptation
is pretty much meaningless (though technically, I know, the meaning is probably more like trial
or test
). How can God be tempted? Scripture indeed says it is impossible. And while saying that Yeshua was both 100% man and 100% God enables him to be tempted/tried/tested as a man but not as God solves the problem philosophically, it doesn’t deal with the language and story issue. What does temptation mean? If temptation for Yeshua means temptation in a way that is totally unlike all other temptation experienced by humanity, then what’s the point of the story at all?
Of course, the Trinitarian will answer the point is to show and tell us that Yeshua is God himself in his being and thus cannot be tempted/tested/tried.
But that, to me, avoids the question and cheapens scripture. That is not the way to go about telling us Yeshua is God in his being and cannot be tempted/tested/tried. Rather, that is the way to go about saying Yeshua could be tempted and yet in the end triumphed.
The Trinitarian’s response (at least from those videos) would be that I am trying to hold the word of God to my own judgment. That I am saying if the word of God is going to communicate to me, it has to do so on my terms.
This misses the point, however, because what I am saying is, look, I know something about how stories and literature are written. And I know that there are ways to communicate that make sense of a certain kind of text and ways that don’t.
This is called literary competence.
Like when I read a phone bill, I don’t expect it to tell me the weather because I know from my experience with weather reports and phone bills that they have certain ways of telling me things. So if I read a text and it’s telling me something in the way a phone bill should and would, it should be interpreted as the information of a phone bill and not as a weather report. And yet I ALSO know if someone told me my phone bill is trying to tell me the weather, that such a thing cannot be right because that is not what a phone bill does. I am not trying to tell scripture how it should speak instead of allowing it to say what it does. I am saying, look, this phone bill isn’t a weather report!
So in the temptation
of Yeshua, we have a very clear story being played out in which Yeshua goes through the water, is lead into the wilderness by YHWH for 40 days, is tested/tried/tempted, and then enters the Promised Land. This is very obviously a story that is trying to equate Yeshua with the formation of Israel in the Exodus story. In that story, Israel is lead through the waters and into the wilderness for 40 years where they are tempted/tried/tested by YHWH in a very real sense in which they could fail or they could triumph. And they fail. But Yeshua does not! And through this contrast we see that Yeshua is the foundation of a new and better Israel. The significance of the story and its relation is entirely lost if Yeshua could never have failed and the whole point was to tell us that Yeshua is God himself because he can’t be tempted. The Trinitarian perspective requires one to negate the relevance of the exodus and wilderness story that the gospels are trying to communicate about Yeshua’s mission and position and replaces it with a philosophical concept of Yeshua’s being. In terms of literary competence, that is like saying the phone bill is a weather report. It just ain’t so!
This sort of thing (replacing the relevance of the story with a philosophical concept of Yeshua’s being) seems to be a common thread in Trinitarian arguments. It is ironic that the Trinitarian in the video spends so much time trying to show how the Trinitarian belief is not Platonistic, but the Unitarian’s is, and yet by replacing this fundamental Jewish story and its significance to Yeshua with a philosophical concept about the makeup and character of Yeshua’s being, the Trinitarian does nothing but exchange the shoes of a Judaic perspective and worldview with the shoes of a Hellenistic philosopher. The Gospel of John seems to be ripe for this sort of activity. To be fair, though, I suppose if you believe in Trinitarianism, it would be a natural thing to do. Like Pentecostals who see demonic warfare in all sorts of scriptural passages when there is nothing there to give that impression. To err is to be human. And in that respect, I am no better off than the Trinitarian.
Yes, I’m Mennonite. And certainly that plays into it. But just because I’m Mennonite doesn’t mean I’m a Luddite (some of us Mennos–even the conservative ones!–sport the latest and greatest Apple or Google gadgets). I actually have a lot of good reasons for not having a cell phone. And here they are:
- Cost
Cell phones cost A LOT more than a landline. I’ve heard it many times a cell doesn’t cost that much more
or my plan was actually cheaper than a landline.
I’ve searched over half a decade for a cell phone plan that allowed me to call whenever I wanted for as long as I wanted (that’s what you get automatically with every landline) and the lowest price I have ever found was about $40 a month (not counting taxes and fees). For my landline WITH long distance, WITH high speed DSL, and WITH taxes and fees, I pay about $52 a month. The amount of money I save every month over the cheapest cell phone plan that can offer anything close to what a landline offers is almost enough to buy an Xbox 360 every year, or two Wiis every year. But why stop there? Have a landline instead of a cell for five years and you would have a down payment on a car or be able to feed a starving family in Africa for three decades.
- Signal
With a landline, I have an eternally perfect signal. I have never had a dropped call. I have never had static or had to say can you hear me now?
I am never out of range when I want to talk to someone. Does the high price you pay for cell service include this basic reality? I like having perpetually uninterrupted and clear conversations. How about you?
- False sense of security
Another reason I have heard people go to cell phones is because of security. If something happens to them, they have a cell phone. They can get help. But that’s the thing: just because you have a cell phone doesn’t mean it’s going to be of any use to you at all. It may not be charged when you need it. You may not be able to charge it. There may be no signal or service available. For instance, one of my co-workers lives and works in the middle one of the largest human sprawls in the United States of America—Los Angeles County. But his home is a bit up in the hills and his cell signal is worthless even here. Or you may simply be unable to use it for a thousand common reasons such as forgetting where you put it, accidentally leaving it at home, etc. I have been in plenty of emergency situations in my life—including having my car break down in the middle of the California Valley desert—and did just fine without a cell phone. Cell phones are useful for their convenience, not their safety.
- Perpetuating childish behavior
This usually takes the form of useless communication, time wasting, indolence/lack of planning, or interruptions/rudeness. Studies by Google say that more than a third of all calls made about a place are made within a mile of that place either to confirm they are there (useless communication) or get directions (indolence/lack of planning). What’s so hard about planning where and when to meet up? What’s so hard about going online and figuring out directions before you leave? Why not know where you’re going before you get there? Cell phones increase the opportunity and over time the dependence upon capricious decision-making. By planning in advance, you also have the opportunity to chart alternate courses and are not left flying by the seat of your pants at every vagary.
And then there’s the annoyance that cell phones bring to others. You’re sitting in the theatre watching an awesome movie and suddenly a bright light flashes up into your face from the person sitting one row down in front of you as they check some text message they just received. That pool of light is even brighter than the movie screen! If they had any sense of themselves, they wouldn’t have done that in the middle of a movie. But cell phones perpetuate that kind of behaviour. And now they have interrupted your viewing experience. I remember a time when one could be in a classroom or attend a meeting or be in any sort of contextual gathering and there was no such thing as someone’s cell phone accidentally going off and interrupting everyone. That day is gone thanks to cell phones. But you will NEVER have to worry about my cell phone being an interruption or annoyance to you or to those around you. Join me in helping to make this world a better place again.
And let’s not forget talking on the phone while driving (or worse, texting while driving). Look, I know some of you think you can drive perfectly fine while you’re on the phone, but I’ve been on the road a long time and I can’t count how many times I’ve seen someone doing something silly or stupid behind the wheel and noticed that they had a cell phone to their ear. Even if it is possible for someone to drive well while talking on the phone, it isn’t a wise and mature thing to do. You expect a teenager to do that because they think they’re invincible, they think they know better than others, and because they’re immature. If you’re an adult, there’s no excuse for it. But I’ve seen more adults
talking on the phone while driving than teenagers.
- Local calls
Studies by Google about how people use cell phones reveals one of the largest things people use cells for is local calls, which is exactly what landlines do very well and very cheaply. Why pay more to do the same thing, but not as well (see above)? Most likely because of its immediacy. Why wait till you get home to make that call when you can make it now? See above. Why figure out ahead of time what you’re doing or where you’re going when you can figure that out at the moment you suddenly need that information? See above. I’ve had plenty of situations where I’m at work and I need to make a call. Almost always, it is a local call and my company—and most likely yours as well—is fine with important local calls being made on their phones. The only real reason I see for someone to step out with their cell at work is because of the privacy it offers. And the number one reason for the privacy of that call is because it is not the kind of call you would make on a company’s phone anyway (i.e., it’s not an important business call—it’s some sort of personal interaction that could just as well have been made later on your home phone or done over email).
- Freedom versus slavery
Constant connectivity means you don’t have the freedom of your own personal space (which you need). But you also need real, personal, human-to-human interaction. Constant connectivity creates a spiral of dependence. Since you have chosen not to get away from your phone, and you still need personal space, you find a way to detach from the world THROUGH the phone—by fiddling with it in useless ways instead of engaging with others around you. So detachment from the world through the device becomes a means of seeking freedom from the attachment you have with it. Try this sometime: leave your cell phone at home while at work or school. Loosen the chains of your cell and just leave it behind for the day. If it isn’t difficult to do that, you’re okay. If it is, you have a problem as real as any addiction.
1
I know there are many who would be immediately bored by the following quotes, but read through them attentively and you will be rewarded by what comes after.
The descendants of Joseph by their families: Manasseh and Ephraim. The Manassehites: from Machir, the family of the Machirites (now Machir became the father of Gilead); from Gilead, the family of the Gileadites. These were the Gileadites: from Iezer, the family of the Iezerites; from Helek, the family of the Helekites; from Asriel, the family of the Asrielites; from Shechem, the family of the Shechemites; from Shemida, the family of the Shemidaites; from Hepher, the family of the Hepherites. Now Zelophehad son of Hepher had no sons, but only daughters; and the names of the daughters of Zelophehad were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. These were the families of Manasseh; those numbered of them were 52,700.
Numbers 26:28-34, NET
The tribe of Manasseh, Joseph’s firstborn son, was also allotted land. The descendants of Makir, Manasseh’s firstborn and the father of Gilead, received land, for they were warriors. They were assigned Gilead and Bashan. The rest of Manasseh’s descendants were also assigned land by their clans, including the descendants of Abiezer, Helek, Asriel, Shechem, Hepher, and Shemida. These are the male descendants of Manasseh son of Joseph by their clans.
Joshua 17:1-2, NET
These two snippets of biblical texts list the major clan divisions within one of the half-tribes of Joseph: Manasseh. What is particularly fascinating is that many of these clan names have been verified by archaeological evidence outside the bible. In the early 20th Century, numerous inscribed potsherds were excavated from the site of the ancient city of Samaria. They date between about 785 and 745 BC.2 These ostraca
as they’re called were temporary administrative records of the exchange of goods, though for exactly what purpose is not entirely known.3 These ancient records sometimes indicate the region (clan) from which an item came. Below, I list the names of the clans from the biblical texts with the ostraca numbers on which those names appear.
- Helek = ostraca 22-27
- Shemida = ostraca 3, 29, 31-40, 63 (maybe also 49, 57, and 62)
- Abiezer = ostraca 13, 28
- Shechem = ostracon 44 (maybe also 43)
- Hoglah = ostraca 45-47
- Noah = ostracon 50
Here we have names from all the sons of Manasseh that the biblical texts say were assigned land except one (Asriel): Abiezer, Helek, Shechem, Hepher (Hoglah and Noah), and Shemida. What makes this so pivotal is that it shows that even if the form of the biblical texts as we have them today in our bibles originated between 500 and 150 BC, when it comes to things in the biblical texts like Numbers’ or Joshua’s clan lists, even though they may be 300, 400, or 500 or more years removed from the time described, they are probably not imaginative re-creations of a non-existant past, but very likely do represent real memories and records of existing peoples, places, and events passed down through time.
As an example, the daughters of Zelophehad receive mention in Numbers because they receive land in absence of a male chieftain and it serves as an example for Israelites about what to do in certain inheritance circumstances (read the story in Numbers 27). And 50-75 years before the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel, certain regions of the land are still going by the names of those very matriarchs instead of a male name (as one would expect) in official records of the kingdom. There probably are elements of imaginative fiction built into the story of Zelophehad’s daughters, but the story must have arisen around real incidents and identities that, at least in this case, are revealed in the archaeological record.
ETANA has made PDFs of Volume One and Volume Two of the official archaeological publication on the Samaria excavation available for free download. Or visit this Harvard University Library web site where more can be found, such as Israelite Ostraca From Samaria by G.A. Reisner. Any document on the site can be emailed to you as a PDF file. Just following the instructions under print.
It is often said that Esther is the only biblical book in which the name of God, YHWH, does not appear. Indeed, there are a great many things lacking in the book from a religious Israelite perspective, which explains most of the additions in the Greek versions. However, the assertion is not entirely true. The divine name does, in fact, appear in the scroll of Esther. It occurs in Esther 5:5 (5:4 English). However, instead of appearing as a single word, it has been written into the text at the beginning of four consecutive words:
יבוא המלך והמן היום
Taking the first letters in each word of the phrase, we get the Tetragrammaton, YHWH: יהוה.
Most English translations say something like let the King and Haman come today.
This would not, however, be correct, since the verb is singular, not plural. The verb is speaking of only one person. It might better be translated may the King come today—and Haman.
Haman is clearly being inserted into a situation where he doesn’t belong. But there may be a reason for the insertion: the creation of a double entendres. By inserting the word and Haman,
the divine name enters into the narrative and, therefore, the events of the narrative, subtly indicating that when Esther is calling the king to her banquet, she is subversively calling the King, YHWH, to the banquet as well. And so begins the series of events that will culminate in the salvation of her people.
This subversive language appears in one other part of the biblical texts, Psalm 96:11:
ישׂמחו השׁמים ותגל הארץ
Taking the first letters in each word of the phrase, we get again, YHWH: יהוה. I translate this verse as may the heavens exult and the earth rejoice,
which is exactly what one would expect creation to do when it bears the name of YHWH upon it.
The presence of the divine name in Esther (and also Psalm 96) has been known for a very, very long time. It is no secret bible code.
Ancient Jewish scribes created notes in their manuscripts telling those who copied the text that it was okay to write the divine name in these two verses because it was part of the original text. It was a common scribal practice in the ancient world to use the first letters of a series of words, verses, or sentences to include some sort of information. Oftentimes, it was the name of the scribe who copied the text or the name of the client who had purchased the copy. The Masoretic manuscript most Old Testaments are based on today has a poem at the end called The Song of the Vine, where the scribe of the manuscript signs his name in the first letter of each consecutive line of the poem.
Chances are you don’t. And chances are if you do, you probably own only a few of their releases and are unlikely to purchase more due to the astronomical prices involved. But maybe you’re someone who likes them and wants to know more. Unfortunately, Wikepedia, Discogs, Brainwashed, and Amazon can only tell you so much. Well, I’m a Coil newbie myself. And while that doesn’t make me an authority on anything, it certainly means I’ve already had some questions and gained some answers that might be of benefit to you. So here we go…
ArsNova. The scant references to this guy/company don’t say much other than that it’s a production house that released Coil albums of inferior quality without the permission of Coil and without paying them any proceeds from their sales. Several albums were remastered and re-released by Coil in response with the phrase “StevØ, Pay Us What You Owe Us!” on the cover (Scatology and Horse Rotorvator).
Now, I completely understand why anyone would be displeased with ArsNova and refuse to support them out of love for the artist who’s getting screwed over. However, I am also pissed that Coil has chosen to let virtually all its work fall into obscurity. Whoever did the marketing for Coil was certainly one of the most clueless people on earth if they didn’t realize that their own fans wanted their stuff and were willing to pay them for it, but simply couldn’t get it (either because it couldn’t be found or because the price was so freaking high due to it being so limited and hard to find). Sometimes, therefore, the Coil fan is faced with a dilemma: not purchase a CD because it’s too expensive or purchase the ArsNova version because it’s affordable and/or available. So the main questions I had were how bad are these ArsNova releases, how much better are the remasters compared to the original releases, and if there are originals, remasters, or ArsNovas available, what might be the better purchase?
Well, I ended up purchasing the ArsNova release of Astral Disaster because I wasn’t willing to pay the price of the official release. I could tell right away that this was an inferior product. The artwork looked like it was rudely scanned onto a computer and then run off their home printer. I half expected to see a CDR inside. But it was an actual stamped CD. I archived the songs to my computer using EAC. Later, I found an official release and archived it as well. Then I did a sound and visual comparison from within Audacity. The artwork and packaging may have been junk, but the audio was exactly the same. There was no visual difference between WAV files. No matter how long I closed my eyes and listened, back and forth, between ArsNova and Eschaton, they sounded exactly the same. So while I can agree that this is an inferior product, the music itself is exactly the same as what you get on an official release. And, really, the music is the thing we REALLY want. Sure, we’d like the artwork also. But music will always come before artwork. So I am happy to say that if you have an opportunity to get an ArsNova release at a decent price and you don’t want to pay the price of the normal release, go for it because you’ll still be hearing the same Coil you would hear otherwise. However, don’t be fooled into paying the price of an Eschaton for an ArsNova. Always make sure to check with the seller to see if it is ArsNova or not. Trust me, it is easy to tell.
But what about those Remasters? How do they compare to the originals? Well, usually, you’ll find they cost even more money than the original releases or reissues. But they’re remasters. So they must be worth the extra, right? Fortunately, I got my hands on both originals and remasters. I only did a superficial comparison of the two because that was all I needed. It wasn’t pretty. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the loudness wars at all, but this is a prime example. When I opened up the songs in Audacity, I instantly saw that whereas the original release had a lot of dynamic range and didn’t fill the entire sound field, the remaster did. In order to make the remaster the same volume as the original, I had to shrink the sound of the remaster down considerably. And when I did and compared the two at the same volume, the original has a lot more depth of sound. And we’re talking Coil–depth of sound is a necessity. Coil basically raped their own music with the remasters and I encourage you NOT to buy them. Even the ArsNovas are superior because bastardized artwork is better than bastardized sound.
Disc bronzing. Be aware that some early Coil CDs made by PDO have suffered a kind of disc rot over time. I purchased an Unnatural History that was virtually unplayable. EAC gave me infinite disc read errors. I could tell as soon as I looked at the surface that something was not quite right. I would advise anyone who purchased the Unnatural History CDs to make a CD-R copy or archive it to your computer in lossless format with EAC. Here is a good resource to find out more (and see visual examples of affected CDs).
The last two DVDs in Coil’s Colour Sound Oblivion set are public domain and can be downloaded at archive.org. They are a compilation of the imagery and backing tracks used by Coil in their later day performances. In most cases, the music is very bare-bones and should not be taken as representative of what a Coil song sounds like, but is quite interesting and hypnotic nevertheless. If you ever wanted to remix a Coil song, now you can.
If you’re like me, you can appreciate the fact that Coil was constantly redefining their sound, but you’ll probably also care more for one type of sound than another. Here is my own breakdown of Coil’s music. Maybe it will help you think about what you’d most like to buy, download, or hear. The way I see it, these are the only real “albums” by Coil: Scatology, Horse Rotorvator, Love’s Secret Domain, ELpH vs Coil, Black Light District, Astral Disaster, Musick To Play In The Dark I, Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil, Queens of the Circulating Library, Musick To Play In The Dark II, Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases), Black Antlers, The Ape of Naples, and The Remote Viewer. Everything else doesn’t seem to deserve the title.
There is a raw, low-tech, indie feel to Zos Kia’s Transparent that is lacking in the other releases and a stark contrast to the glittering perfection of production and sound on the last Coil releases like Black Antlers, Ape of Naples, and Remote Viewer. The later work almost feels too refined for the type of music Coil is making…and yet Transparent is almost too raw, low-tech, and aggressive. And yet both are pleasing in their own ways. I don’t think Transparent is worth more than $25. If you end up paying more than $35 for it, you’re probably going to regret it. And you’re probably not going to listen to it as much as the next two…
Scatology and Horse Rotorvator have the same sort of sound. They are more industrial and less ambient or noise than other releases. There is hardly any drone. To me, this is the pinnacle of Coil. As good as it gets—so long as you don’t get the remasters.
Things change quickly with Love’s Secret Domain. It is an album unto itself among the Coil releases–a lot more techno-oriented and about as close to pop as Coil can get. I have a sort of love-hate relationship with it. Production quality has risen dramatically between Horse and LSD.
Between Horse and LSD stands Gold Is The Metal and Unnatural History I—both compilations of other/discarded/reworked-album material—along with the Unreleased Themes To Hellraiser, which is basically just that. You see a lot more going on in the in-between with these. And you also get your hands on some material that is just as good as anything on Scatology or Horse or belongs perfectly next to Transparent.
Next comes How To Destroy Angels, which is a very creative, six-song reworking of the single of the same name (on Unnatural History I), along with Stolen And Contaminated Songs, which is a compilation of other/discarded/reworked-album material along the lines of LSD. For those who thought LSD was the best of Coil, they would probably be very interested in Stolen.
Then there’s Coil vs ELpH, which is basically one LSD-type song and three similar ambient pieces that showcase the direction Coil is now heading, and The Angelic Conversation, another movie soundtrack that, IMO, stands head and shoulders above the Hellraiser one—particularly with its use of ambience, poetry, and musique concrete.
If we were previously about to step straight into the world of Coil as something between ambient, minimalism, drone, and noise, ELpH vs Coil (not the same as Coil vs ELpH) brings us solidly within it. Unnatural History II comes along to fill in some more missing pieces ranging across the spectrum.
Black Light District carries us further into the perfection of ambient, minimalism, drone, and noise. Unnatural History III fills in a few more scattered pieces. Time Machines offers us the pinnacle of Coil’s drone. And just as quickly, we hit what I think is their perfection of ambient, minimalism, drone, and noise with Astral Disaster and Musick To Play In The Dark I.
Constant Shallowness presents us with noise and Queens with ambient drone. Then we’re back into ambient, minimalism, drone, and noise with Musick To Play In The Dark II and the four parts of Moon’s Milk (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter).
There are a bunch of live shows at this point—Live One, Two, Three, and Four, …And The Ambulance Died In His Arms, etc. All good. The music from the four Live CDs appear on the Colour Sound Oblivion DVDs along with a few other live CD releases (although I was bummed to find that the lengthy version of Last Rite of Spring on Live Four was cut from CSO).
Now we enter the final phase of Coil. With Black Antlers, we see Coil moving again… and Ape of Naples is the arrival. It is a movement not so much beyond the former ambient, minimalism, drone, and noise phase, but they seem to have added some of the pop and flavor of the entire Scatology/Horse/LSD phase back into it. The amount of singing on Ape comes as a bit of a surprise. It is surprisingly good, but does not IMO surpass the greatness of Scatology and Horse. A fine bookend to those two.
Remote Viewer thrusts us out of nowhere into a pinnacle of Coil’s noise that was only hinted at in Constant Shallowness, and we emerge on the New Backwards with an odd assortment of old and new that doesn’t mix all that well together and is really a throwback to the other/discarded/reworked-album material CDs.
Maybe some day Threshold House will re-open and we will see something like the entire discography rereleased on CD or find all the albums in FLAC showering down upon us. Until then, most of this rare, out-of-print, hard-to-find, expensive material can be found at rutracker.org in lossless format. It’s a Russian site, but with a bit of Babelfish, you can find your way around. Otherwise, check Discogs, Amazon, and Ebay for the latest and cheapest offerings.
R.I.P. John Balance and Peter Christopherson.
I posted a good while back that an English translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch was on its way to the publishers. For a long time, the only thing available was Von Gall’s Der hebräische Pentateuch der Samaritaner, which was practically useless since it didn’t represent any actual Samaritan manuscript and was harmonized throughout to agree with the Masoretic text. Then there was the more excellent The Torah: Jewish and Samaritan Versions Compared; A Side-By-Side Comparison of the Two Versions with the Differences Highlighted by Mark Shoulson, based on a single manuscript with differences in the Hebrew bolded. And now, at long last, comes the first ever English translation in history! It is being published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company with an expected ship date of June 29, 2011 and is available for pre-order at Amazon.com. This is a rare, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime moment. Books like this often get published once in a limited amount and then when they’re gone, are gone for good.
As a male, I find it both a source of frustration and delight that women can think along completely different trajectories at the exact same time. Currently, I am in the delight mode. So I just wanted to take a moment to glory in the feminine mind.
We males think in certain ways about certain things. And in order to change the way we are thinking, we either have to abandon the one way of thinking for the other, or we have to smash another up against it until the winner takes precedence (hey, just because I’m non-violent doesn’t mean my mind works that way!). It is difficult for us to work at a discipline amorphously and it becomes bothersome when hard-fought boundaries are softened or, perhaps, bent into areas they don’t belong according to our classifying, organizing, and compartmentalizing way of thinking. And that is exactly the point at which the female mind shines so radiant.
At the moment, I am reading a short little book called The New Historicism by Gina Hens-Piazza. I knew I was in for a treat the moment I began reading. Here is a biblical criticism which defies normal boundaries between practices and threatens to unite seemingly disparate and differentiated concepts. At least, that is the male reaction. And it is humorous to read that she experienced that reaction as well when she first stumbled into the field. Although, perhaps first
and stumbled
don’t do her justice. She did, after all, spend a great deal of time previous to this book working in Rhetorical Criticism, ANOTHER discipline that moves freely between usually oppositional methods, concepts, and practices.
The past several centuries of modern biblical study were ruled and presided over by men and their male ways of thinking. And, suddenly, in the fourth quarter of the 20st Century (at least for biblical studies), women have stormed into the arena and upset the balance of the whole system. What wonderfully masculine terms and concepts balance
and system
are. And yet what a wonderful turn of events to have the feminine mind finally released from the male structures (another good masculine term) that governed her. In a way, it is alarming. The male can seem to think that the ship on which he has sailed so long on such a proud journey is suddenly under attack. And by unseen assailants! But that is exactly what we men need. If the male can only work within and withstand the forms that male minds present him, what good is he? The rocking and perhaps overturning of our boats is what enables us to build better ships with which to sail and conquer the seas of our discovery. For too long we have considered women unable to lend a hand either to critical scholastic or religious and theological peregrinations, and it has only been to the frustration of our own goals: the acquisition and employment of truer and better knowledge. It is a glory of the woman that she thinks different than the man, just as it is a glory of the man that he thinks differently than the woman. Together, we may serve as checks and balances to our own self-serving interests and perspectives. Together, the sum of two different dimensions of sight can become three-dimensional. I am pleased that such progress is being made in the house of academia, but disheartened that the house of God is lagging so far behind. Not until scripture is taught and interpreted in our churches by as many women as men will a truly holistic picture of what us religious folk call the word of God
be open and available to all. Hey, yo, sista! Bring it!
Behold, beloved reader, I admonish and advise you, if you seek God with all your heart, and do not wish to be deceived; depend not upon men and their doctrine, no matter however old, holy and excellent they may be esteemed; for the divines, both ancient and modern are opposed to each other; but put your trust, alone in Christ and his word, in the sure instruction and practice of his holy apostles, and you will through the grace of God, be perfectly safe from all false doctrines and the power of the devil; and may walk with a free and pious mind before God.
As a Mennonite, I think Menno Simons had some very important—nay, necessary things to say. And while I appreciate the way Menno focuses faith around the words and ways of Yeshua, including the praxis of the apostles and disciples of the early church, I am deeply concerned with his reliance upon Sola Scriptura evident in the phrase above. Whom among us will say, looking at history, that he spoke truly? That after people turned away from outside instruction and sought wisdom, understanding, doctrine, and faith simply and solely through reading the scriptures, that this caused false doctrines to fall away and that it led to better and clearer understanding? Dear reader, whether you are a follower of Yeshua or otherwise, can you honestly say that the mass of Protestants in the world today have found more common ground and drawn closer together in common truth on account of their free
reading of biblical texts than otherwise? Has not Menno’s sincere belief in the illumination provided by scriptural reading birthed a myriad of conflicting interpretations, gave rise to multitudes of contrasting beliefs, splintered those who would follow Yeshua into a plethora of factions, spawned hordes of mystery sects and end-time cults, and cast a great many into what seems to be impenetrable darkness?
One of Menno’s favorite words to describe scripture is plain.
The plain meaning. The plain reading. The plain understanding. What is stated plainly. We Anabaptists like to use the word plain,
but what we mean is a turning away/separation from worldly things like materialism, fashion, luxury, hedonism, or dependence on tyrannical and oppressive systems that take away our self-governance or endanger the outworking of our faith by making it subservient to other interests and powers. For Menno, however, plain
was how one approached or understood scripture. Truth was available to all if only we would turn away from the hardness of our hearts, listen, and accept what scripture says. One could take one of Anabaptism’s fundamental criticisms as an opposing example:
Remember also how the early writers contended about infant baptism. Had it been apostolic, and found in the gospel, why should they have thus wrangled?
If such were a true criteria, it would invalidate a great many things Menno himself took to be self-evident. As an example, for some time, the number of Christians who believed in Arianism may actually have been greater than those who believed in Trinitarianism. It took an ecclesiastical debate, whose conclusion was backed up by the excommunication and banishment of any Christian who believed differently through the power of the Emperor, in order to make Trinitarianism the orthodox and valid scriptural interpretation for the church. Trinitarianism is no more contained in scripture or defined by the apostles than infant baptism. Yet Menno would hardly abandon the first.
What Menno overlooked (and what many other Modernists continue to overlook) is the part that one’s own perception, culture, time, experience, language, world-views, etc, play in the formation of meaning. We are, in a very real sense, prisoners of culture and history. Plain
the scriptures may have been to a Palestinian Jew in the First Century. Plain
they are no longer—either to a Radical Dutch Reformer or to us. It is a fanciful delusion, I think, to say that YHWH will bypass our own cultural, historical, and mental structures of thinking and understanding in order to reveal divine truth to us. If that were the case—if YHWH did reveal truth to us which came from outside our own perceptive lens, how could we possibly know it unless we changed and warped it to make it subservient to that lens? The way to true understanding does not come by denying the existence and influence of one’s perceptive lens, but by allowing new ways of thinking and understanding (at least to us) to change our lens. If we want to understand what texts written by Jews in Palestine in the First Century meant, we need to think like a First Century Palestinian Jew. And that will, by no means, involve turning away from outside instruction to simply and naively read the text and see it as we see it.
This is, indeed, a disparagement of Sola Scriptura. Apart from the traditions and doctrines of humanity, no divine meaning or understanding can exist. It may sound pious to say you have rejected worthless human traditions in order to follow, unadulterated, only that which is revealed in the biblical texts, but all you have really done is replaced one human tradition or doctrine with another and pretended to eliminate it from consideration. While I respect Menno on account of many significant insights and the fruits of a faith that was real, I must at the same time gainsay the naively impressionistic method he advocated. It does not befit the one who calls themself a child of YHWH or follower of Yeshua to take scripture so lightly as to think it requires nothing from us other than an honest and open heart in order to yield up its treasures.
