Please read A Disclaimer first.
Briefly stated, Categoricalism posits that Yeshua was made by God to represent him–to be the final and complete image, form, appearance, proxy, or avatar of YHWH. Yeshua is thus the category of God, but not ontologically God. Categoricalism takes for granted that YHWH is one person (not three) and that Yeshua is not that person, yet allows for Yeshua to be considered divinity in that he was uniquely chosen by YHWH and made by YHWH to represent him. Thus, to speak of the man Yeshua is to speak of the god YHWH. To follow the man Yeshua is to follow the god YHWH. And to be saved by the man Yeshua is to be saved by the god YHWH.
All this is based around a Hebraic concept that one person can be identified as another without literally or ontologically being the other. A person is understood to stand in the other’s place and be the category of the other (thus, for instance, you have Peter referred to as Satan1, Satan referred to as God2, Moses referred to as God3, and numerous other examples). This is further explained by the concept of agency as we find it even in the earliest Rabbinic halacha, a man’s agent is as himself.
The saying does not speak ontologically, of course, but categorically. The one who is sent is viewed as if he is the other.
A man’s agent is like to himself.
Mishnah, Tractate Berakoth 5:5
In all circumstances do we find that a man’s representative is equivalent to himself.
Babylonian Gemara, Tractate Nazir 12b
We find in the whole Torah that a man’s agent is as himself.
Babylonian Gemara, Tractate Nedarim 72b
A man’s agent is as himself.
Babylonian Gemara, Baba Mezi’a 96a
It is logical that the hand of a slave is as the hand of his master.
Babylonian Gemara, Baba Mezi’a 96a
Although the agent remains subordinate to the sender, the agent and sender are considered equal to any third party. The agent has the same rank and authority as the sender. Whatever authority or rank a sender lacks cannot be held by the agent. They are one. So much so that, as the expression goes, when the agent speaks, it is as if the one who sent was speaking.
We need not wonder, therefore, how Yeshua, if only a man, could pronounce verily I say
instead of thus says YHWH,
for if Yeshua is uniquely YHWH’s agent and representative, his words should be considered YHWH’s.
The agent can do all that the sender can do. That which a sender cannot do, the agent cannot. The question, therefore, is not whether a mere man can bring salvation, can receive glory, can be worshiped, or the many other objections people have to Yeshua having divine status without being YHWH himself. The question is, rather, can YHWH bring salvation, receive glory, or be worshiped? If so, then he can appoint one in his name to bring salvation, receive glory, or be worshiped, for such is considered done by or to YHWH himself.
If an agent acts or speaks without having identified themselves as being sent or without having identified their sender, then such is considered done on the part of and by the individual themself. However, if an agent does provide this information, the representative nature is understood and such an idea as them claiming something of themselves and for themselves is untenable. If Yeshua were YHWH’s unique agent and representative, we would expect to find a proclamation of Yeshua’s agency and representation in the New Testament. And if we were lucky enough to find Yeshua describing this exact agent/sender relationship as we’ve already explored in terms of himself and God, we would know that Yeshua means for us to understand him in this way and not according to Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union. Surprisingly, the evidence is staggering (unequivocal claims of agency in CAPS):
Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me RECEIVES HIM WHO SENT ME.
Matthew 10:40
Finally, HE [YHWH] SENT HIS SON [Yeshua].
Matthew 21:37
HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, TO SET AT LIBERTY those who are oppressed.
Luke 4:18
The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me REJECTS HIM WHO SENT ME.
Luke 10:16
My food is TO DO THE WILL OF HIM WHO SENT ME and TO ACCOMPLISH HIS WORK.
John 4:34
I CAN DO NOTHING ON MY OWN. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will BUT THE WILL OF HIM WHO SENT ME.
John 5:30
For THE WORKS THAT THE FATHER HAS GIVEN ME TO ACCOMPLISH, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that THE FATHER HAS SENT ME.
John 5:36
So Jesus answered them, MY TEACHING IS NOT MINE, BUT HIS WHO SENT ME.
John 7:16
And Jesus cried out and said, Whoever believes in me, BELIEVES NOT IN ME BUT IN HIM WHO SENT ME.
John 12:44
For I HAVE NOT SPOKEN ON MY OWN AUTHORITY, BUT THE FATHER WHO SENT ME has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.
John 12:49
And we have seen and testify that THE FATHER HAS SENT HIS SON TO BE THE SAVIOR of the world.
1 John 4:14
Those are just a sampling. Clearly, Yeshua is portraying himself to be not the literal nature and person of God himself, but is instead specifically using terms which describe himself as the functional representative and agent of God. He does not speak his own words but the words of his sender. He does not do his own deeds but the deeds of his sender. He has no authority other than the authority of his sender. But if they accept him, they accept his sender. If they believe in him, they have belief in his sender. If they know him, they know his sender. Et cetera. And clearly this concept was of primary concern. He even claims that believing himself to be the agent of YHWH is the marker of eternal life!4 To say that Yeshua used specific words again and again that meant one thing to his audience (agency) but really meant something entirely different (Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union) is not only to beg the question, but to make a mockery of the text.
Even in modern times we understand and utilize this concept of agency. No one would be confused if I said I watched and heard President Bush give a speech last night despite the fact that I was not actually in contact with the literal person of President Bush and even though I didn’t actually hear his voice. I watched thousands of flickering points of light on a television monitor and heard sounds created by pulsating speakers. The monitor light and speaker vibration represented Bush and his speech-giving in such a way that I can truthfully say I heard and saw him. In like concept then, YHWH made Yeshua to become his image and glorified him by giving him a name above every other name (his own) without Yeshua ever being God of his own self or being5. Our modern systems of jurisprudence have also incorporated this concept. If I were to appoint a man to marry a woman for me by proxy and she accepted, his vows, his presence, his signature, and his completion of the ceremony would be considered my own. Even if I had never met the woman, we would be legally wed.
Categoricalism has many further advantages. For one, it makes sense of every theophany without turning YHWH into something he isn’t or turning something that isn’t God into him and does so simply without need of complicated and arbitrary theological formulations. It allows one to call the burning bush a form or image of YHWH, the pillar of fire a form or image of YHWH, the Shekinah a form or image of YHWH, and so on and so forth up to Yeshua himself as the final and complete representation without having to delimit divinity. We need not wonder, for example, that all three visitors to Abraham are called by the divine name reserved only for the Father and that all three are worshiped by the Patriarch while simultaneously being called men.6 Likewise, we are not confounded by the messenger who speaks one moment as someone and something other than YHWH and the next, without qualification, as YHWH himself.7 For another, it requires no distortion of scriptural data. So, for instance, the Categoricalist need not create terms like God the Son
in replacement of scriptural ones like Son of God.
And when referring to a scriptural term like Son of God,
the Categoricalist need not define it in a way foreign to the text or its ancient Near Eastern background. Instead of understanding it as speaking of the philosophical makeup of a person’s ontological being or descriptive of their own personal divinity, which is nowhere present in scripture’s use of the term, it defines Son of God as scripture does: generally as either a righteous person or Israel herself and then specifically as Israel’s representative head, Messiah, or King.8 In fact, the idea of divine sonship as applying to the election of a human figurehead was quite common in ancient Syria and Palestine. So, for instance, we find that the kings of Damascus in the ninth century BC were titled “Son of Hadad” (Hadad being another name for the Canaanite god Baal) and at least one Syrian king was called “Son of Rakib” after the god Rakib-El.9
If this were all (and it is not), it would be more than enough for Categoricalism to make better sense of Hebraic perspective, ancient culture, and scriptural text than Trinitarianism. But since this theology is especially hard for Orthodox
Christians, fundamentalists, and proof-texters to accept, I offer up in conclusion a small but powerful list of passages in the New Testament that are not only misleading, but outright contradictory if meant to convey to its readers that Yeshua is and should be known fundamentally as YHWH himself. Instead, these verses literally define and speak of Yeshua as something other.
He is the IMAGE [not the actual person or literal divine being] of the invisible God.
Colossians 1:15
He is the REFLECTION of God’s glory [instead of the source or origin] and the REPRESENTATION of God’s being. [instead of God’s being, essence, or nature itself]
Hebrews 1:3
who existing in the FORM of God . . . [instead of the person or literal being of God]
Philippians 2:6
who is the IMAGE of God. [instead of the person or literal being of God]
2 Corinthians 4:4
I have undertaken in the next post to describe the fundamental propositions of a new theology to stand in replacement of Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union (as well as their various so-called heretical offshoots). The formulation of this theology was necessitated by an unsought-for and unwanted realization of two supremely undesirable situations: firstly, the complete failure of Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union to make sense of scriptural text, to properly align with a non-Hellenistic, ancient Jewish world-view, and to maintain rational coherence or consistency, and secondly, the absolute and unassailable position to which this doctrine has been glorified above every essential aspect of Christian faith. In other words, I did not seek from some pedestal of pride and rebellion to cast Trinitarianism down from a worthy place. Rather, having found the pedestal on which Trinitarianism resided so weak and it’s fall so great that it crushed all dependence I had set upon it, I was forced, like a fish thrust out of water, to wriggle and writhe in search of something that could rescue me from devastation. Those who have not similarly been betrayed will, of course, find little reason for replacing their theology with this new one, but it is not my purpose to show the utter frailty of that foundation (I am quite confident that unless the theology remains critically unexamined, it will eventually fail them as well). In the following post, I hope to lay out a new theological position based on historical world-view and scriptural text which, I believe, give better answers and a better theological foundation for the identity and person of Yeshua in terms of YHWH than Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union can provide. At some later point in time, I hope to augment this description with the analysis of various textual narratives, which will better show how this new theological position makes better sense of the evidence. But before the evidence can be shown and the texts examined, the idea must be presented.
Proceed to An Introduction To Categoricalism.
It may be a surprise for some to learn that in ancient Hebraic texts, Yeshua was neither the first nor last to be called the Son of God (or even the first-born Son of God). It appears that the collected tribes of Jacob, Israel herself, was the first to gain this distinction.
Thus says YHWH, Israel is my Son, my first-born.
Exodus 4:22
Referring back to this event, a prophet says in the name of YHWH:
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my Son.
Hosea 11:1
In Joseph and Aseneth, a Jewish romance and missionary novel dated sometime, perhaps, in the first century of the common era, Joseph is referred to three times as the Son of God—twice by his bride-to-be (Aseneth) and once by Pharaoh.
And how will Joseph, the Son of God, regard me, for I have spoken evil of him? …I spoke evil of him and did not know that Joseph is the Son of God.
Joseph and Aseneth 6:2, 6
And Pharaoh was astonished at her beauty and said, “The Lord will bless you [Aseneth], the God of Joseph, who has chosen you to be his bride, for he [Joseph] is the first-born Son of God…
Joseph and Aseneth 21:3
This is by no means a complete listing of such occurrences, but it serves to show that this term has been abused in some theological circles by injecting it with all sorts of meanings incompatible with its ancient usage. Son of God
no more refers to divinity or third person of the Trinity when speaking of Yeshua than it does when descriptive of the nation of Israel or Joseph. As it has been noted by many others, Son of God
is a functional title, not the ontological description of a person’s being.
I find it interesting that the primary focus and thought in a great deal of Protestantism today is theology and that, for the most part, if the historical process is any concern at all, it only appears and disappears when called on by the processes and initiatives already worked out in the philosophical and theological realms of the mind. For instance, how often have you heard a Protestant ask what is historical study?
or what part does history play in my theology?
Chances are, you haven’t. Chances are, the only thing you’ll get when you bring up history and faith is a nice discussion of the history of other Christians’ theologies and philosophies. And woe be the one who thinks to veer away from this historical
faith. It’s as if history
has been removed from the sphere of the world and become only a sphere of the mind—and even, perhaps, only the sphere of the regenerate
mind. Why is that? I stumbled onto an eloquent description that seems to sum up the situation:
…the necessary truths of an aesthetically shaped reason were a more reliable path to true religion than the contingent truths of history.
Setting the Scene: A Brief Outline of Histories of Israel, Rogerson
Could it be Protestantism in general has so moved away from and lost the historical foundation of its faith that the only thing left to make sense of it is a philosophical/theological construction? Did people start thinking that history probably denied or refuted what they believed and that, therefore, they had to retreat into a faith that had nothing to do with it? What is this Christianity that takes the trinity, the hypostatic union, justification, atonement, original sin, predestination, free will, etc, and makes many or most of these mental concepts to be the highest and most essential thing of faith?
I believe history is the foundation of faith and that no amount of sophisticated theological theory will provide an answer about or a way to move forward in one’s faith as well as a good understanding of history. History is the realm in which YHWH works. And it is by history that he is known.
(I speak solely in terms of Protestantism since I belong to this grouping and not another.)
In a previous post, Water-boarding and U.S. Government, I encapsulated the fundamental premise of U.S. government in order to show its relation to the allowance and support of or lawful entitlement against and protection from torture. Here, I will show how this premise relates to governmental welfare.
In the conception of the government and law by which this nation was established, natural human right and liberty is antecedent. Government or law does not give us rights or liberties, but is instead created and bounded by our natural, pre-societal rights and liberties. Basic human needs cannot, therefore, be Constitutional entitlements, for the Constitution does not entitle us to anything. Rather, it acknowledges what we were already entitled by nature before government or law so that government and law do not trespass. Prior to law and government, we each had a right to our life. We were not entitled to someone else’s. Prior to law and government, we each had a right to property. Our property was not entitled to someone else. Prior to law and government, we each were entitled to the pursuit of our fortune of being or welfare. We were not entitled to pursue someone else’s. This is why the notion that legislation of welfare is either a right or even a lawful choice is directly antithetical to our government.
To suggest or even demand that someone either has a right to legislated welfare or that government can or should engage in welfare steals from the very people their natural and inalienable condition set in place by nature and the Creator, gives it to government, and enables government to arbitrarily decide thereafter both what is acceptable and what is not acceptable for humanity. Humans not longer allow government to exist, but government allows (or disallows when and where it decides) humans to exist. Humans no longer allow government to protect and help them maintain their well-being, but government decides for us what our well-being means and what it wants to do or not do about it. Should humans dislike what government decides, not only do they no longer have a right to do something to rebel against that decision, but they no longer have a right to well-being at all, for that has become the government’s. In the end, therefore, the pursuit of a right to legislative or governmental welfare is the loss of welfare itself.
Our system of government is not at all perfect. And if this system alone were the end of the matter, we might have good reason to think something essential was missing. But it is my belief that the faults in the best structure the Modern Age provided can be corrected by something the Pre-Modern Age gave us…
[to be continued]
Sometimes I get into one of those moods… And when I do, strange things happen. Like this quiz I created: What Rabbinic School Do You Belong To?. Check it out and see which side of the great Jewish debate you stand on.
The Septuagint has fascinated me for some time. Although it has widely been considered holy writ by the church historically, some groups—Protestants primary among them—reject it, choosing to do away with the deuterocanonical (pejoratively called apocryphal
) texts and to stick as closely as possible instead to the Masoretic text-type. Even those who might claim sympathy for the LXX are quick to make it subservient to the Masoretic, rendering null and void its own voice and authority. Saint Augustine’s attempt at compromise between the two sides led him to believe that the Spirit which inspired the writings of the prophets was the same which inspired the translators of the Septuagint. Thus, according to Augustine, there is dual-scriptural authority—that both the Hebrew and the Greek, even when they are different or at odds, are equally authoritative. In order to come to an understanding of some of the evidences which might argue for an acceptance of the Septuagint on its own grounds, I attempted to come to a grasp of the historical situation and what that might mean. What follows are my conclusions that favor the LXX.
1 – Aristeas
Perhaps the best place to begin is with the Letter of Aristeas. The purpose of the letter, as many scholars attest, was to help stimulate the acceptance of the Greek translation among Jews of the diaspora and/or pagan converts. For reasons and arguments that have escaped me thus far, the letter is not considered genuine or historically reliable. Another important thing to note is that the Septuagint of Aristeas is only the Pentateuch. Despite these things, however, the letter makes the Septuagint to be nothing less than guided by the Spirit of God and sacrosanct—so much so that a curse is placed near the end of the letter, like unto Revelation 22:18-19, which gives dire warnings against additions or changes to this Greek translation of the Torah (Letter of Aristeas 310-311). Although the curse was not regarded by later Jewish translators like Aquila, this letter makes it clear that the first Greek translation was held in esteem early on and that its translators were venerated by Jewish communities outside Palestine.
2 – Philo
And then there was the Hellenistic Jew Philo. In his Life of Moses I, Philo writes much more glamorously of the events surrounding the translation of the sacred books into Greek. He wrote that the translators were inspired by God as prophets in the office of Moses. Their translation was under divine motivation, prophetic in nature, and the holy word of God. Indeed, according to him, each translator wrote the same words as if one single, invisible voice had dictated the Septuagint to them. There is no doubt that Philo was glorifying the Septuagint and that he considered it as great if not greater than the Hebrew itself. It is quite likely he was not the only one.
3 – Palestinian and Rabbinic Judaism
But what of those within Palestine? What did they think about the texts of the Septuagint? Among the Dead Sea Scrolls and from caves nearby, not only have we discovered Hebrew and Aramaic fragments of some of the deuterocanonical/apocryphal
texts in the Septuagint (like Tobit and Sirach), proving that they were used alongside the other biblical texts, but we have also discovered both proto-Septuagintal texts—Greek texts that antedate any previously known Septuagint manuscript, but which closely follow it in word and form—and Hebrew texts which agree in meaning or form with the Septuagint against the Masoretic. In fact, the Babylonian Talmud itself quotes extensively from Sirach. Origen and Jerome both tell us of Hebrew and Aramaic versions of Judith and Maccabees used in their day. Origen defended Susanna (one of the additions
to Daniel) as being inspired scripture by pointing to its authenticity in a proto-Theodotian LXX manuscript, a version of the Greek scriptures used by many Jews and which was used exclusively by almost every church father after him. So we can see quite clearly that the various texts of the Septuagint, including the so-called apocrypha,
were quite commonly used and preserved as every other biblical text among the Jews.
4 – Justin Martyr
Indeed, the authority of the Greek translation among Jews can be seen in that when Justin Martyr accused the Jew Trypho of failing to obey his teachers who told him the translation of the seventy elders was true scripture(Dialogue 68:6-8), Trypho didn’t deny that his teachers had told him this or that Justin’s appeal to the LXX as true scripture was incorrect, something which would have greatly supported him in his debate had he believed the Hebrew was superior.
5 – 4 Ezra (?)
This Jewish psuedepigraphal work might be saying in 14:37-48 that while the regular texts of the Masoretic tradition were regarded as scripture, the seventy (the Septuagint) were of even greater authority and thus were to be given only to the wise, because in those texts was the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge.
6 – Josephus
Even Josephus, who seems to take the hard, Pharisaic line that only certain Hebrew texts (those of the Masoretic tradition) were scripture, actually makes use of the Septuagint’s so-called apocryphal additions
in the longer Greek version of Esther in Book 11, Chapter 6 of his Antiquities.
7 – Church Fathers
If I were to even begin listing the times and places that church fathers quoted authoritatively from texts of the Septuagint, both apocryphal
and not, or spoke of the texts of the LXX as being either inspired or canonical, such a list would quickly consume the bandwidth of my website. Indeed, many councils, such as the Council of Laodicea, the Third Council of Carthage, and the Council of Hippo, all presumed texts of the LXX to be inspired scripture.
8 – The New Testament
We mustn’t forget the fact that the LXX was used without issue by many of the earliest Christians including those who wrote parts of the New Testament and quoted from it or summarized the LXX’s words therein. Although I believe that the NT’s reliance upon the Septuagint is not so great as many claim, it must be acknowledged that some differences between quotes or summaries of OT verses in the NT and what those verses look like in the Masoretic is best explained by reliance upon a Greek text of the OT. And despite what is commonly assumed and even taught, many things in NT texts have a foundation in the deuterocanonical
texts of the LXX. John’s entire concept, for instance, of the Word becoming flesh and tabernacling in Israel is drawn directly from Sirach (the major difference being that whereas Sirach says the Word in flesh tabernacling in Israel is Torah, John says it is Yeshua). Therefore, any understanding and acceptance of John’s perspective is dependent upon an understanding of Sirach and an acceptance of at least some authority of viewpoint in that text.
You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they’d experienced the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time.
And we are here, we are here this evening because we are tired now. And I want to say that we are not here advocating violence. We have never done that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people! We believe in the Christian religion! We believe in the teachings of Jesus! The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest!
Love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith, but there is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.
The Almighty God himself is not the God just standing out saying through Hosea, I love you, Israel.
He’s also the God that stands up before the nations and says, Be still and know that I’m God, that if you don’t obey me I will break the backbone of your power and slap you out of the orbits of your international and national relationships.
Martin Luther King Jr., address to the first Montgomery Improvement Association, December 5, 1955
In my previous post New Thoughts On Abortion, I explored an authoritative, ancient Hebrew perspective about the beginning of human life by looking not only at the Hebrew Bible, but at the ordinances of the Pharisees/Rabbis preserved in the Oral Law and its commentary. In that post, we saw that breath was the foundation of human life according to an ancient and authoritative Israelite perspective. This was represented even in the very Hebrew word (nephesh) traditionally translated soul in the Hebrew Bible. We therefore were able to see that abortion was a legal and Torah-abiding activity because until a baby breathed, it was not considered human life.
Ancient Israel didn’t exist alone in history. Its concepts, ideas, values, and world-views were not sui generis. We know that Israel’s perception was in some ways very much like the Canaanites and that, in fact, trying to retain her own purity of tradition, ancestry, and religion instead of being absorbed into the Canaanite life and religion was a recurring problem. One of the ways, therefore, to come to an adequate understanding of ancient Israel is to make a comparison of it to its neighbors—particularly its closest neighbors whom Israel drank with, married amongst, cursed, and slaughtered.
In order to further solidify the proposition that human life began and ended with breath in the Israelite perspective, it would benefit us greatly to look to the Canaanites to see if they had any similar concept. If there is evidence that they thought in the same manner, then this lends a great deal of support to the proposition that Israel would have thought in such a manner. And in the matter of abortion, it would further the claim that abortion could not technically or even morally be considered the taking of human life if one respects the beliefs of the ancient Hebrew people.
To this end, I turn my attention to one of the great archaeological finds of the last century—the capital city of an ancient Canaanite kingdom called Ugarit, sitting under the long shadow of the Mountain of Baal himself. The archeology and artifacts of Ugarit have dramatically changed the way we think about the ancient world, ancient languages, and indeed about ancient Israel herself. Among all the texts found at Ugarit, there were several popular epics which were known as far away as Babylon. One of these is Aqhat. It is the story of how an ancient patriarchal hero asks Baal for a son. Baal turns to El, the supreme God, who grants the request and gives him a son: Aqhat. At a crucial point of his life, Aqhat is given a special bow which the goddess Anat desires. Anat asks for the bow, but Aqhat refuses to give it to her. Anat then gathers her forces and attacks Aqhat to kill him. In the description of Anat’s attack, we can see this same concept of life coming from breath (and conversely a lack of life meaning an absence of breath) in the ancient Canaanite perspective spelled out for us. The death of Aqhat is described thusly:
Let his life go like a breath…
From his nose like smoke…
I shall take his life.
[His] life went off like a breath…
from [his nose] like smoke.
Aqhat, Tablet 2, Column IV, lines 24, 26-27, 36-37, translation by Simon Parker
Aqhat’s life passes out of his mouth and nose as he ceases to breathe. Were breath to enter him again, he would return to life. However, unlike Baal in another Ugaritic epic, Aqhat isn’t so lucky as to have breath (i.e. life) returned to him.
As I was looking at the transliteration of the Ugaritic, I noticed something even more interesting. The word translated breath—the thing that leaves him and renders him non-living—is spelled NPSH. Add vowels to that and you have the Hebrew word “nephesh,” which occurs through the Hebrew Bible, and which as discussed previously is also the thing (meaning breath) which gives life in Hebrew literature. (Another example of breath being the thing that makes people living from the Hebrew Bible is Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones. YHWH resurrects the people, putting their bones back together, sewing flesh and sinews back together, and making their bodies whole and complete. But it is not until breath comes and enters them at last that they live.)
Those intimately familiar with the Hebrew Bible will at once be aware of numerous instances where the authors or editors of the texts could be charged with plagiarism (I put together a short list of some here). However, in the ancient world, this was not the moral or ethical dilemna it would be today. The opposite was the case. Originality was not necessarily a virtue. Writing and editing texts was a specialized art and being able to precisely copy something else or draw on a vast storage of shared literary heritage was considered participating in high craftsmanship.
Consider the following description of the Underworld as taken from three completely different texts composed and edited at different times in Babylonian history.
To the dark house, the abode of Irkalla,
To the house which none leave who have entered it,
To the road from which there is no way back,
To the house wherein the entrants are bereft of light,
Where dust is their fare and clay their food,
Where they see no light, residing in darkness,
Where they are clothed like birds, with wings for garments,
And where over door and bolt is spread dust.
from The Descent of Ishtar
To the dark house, dwelling of Erkalla’s god,
To the house which those who enter cannot leave,
On the road where travelling is one way only,
To the house where those who enter are deprived of light,
Where dust is their food, clay their bread.
They are clothed, like birds, with feathers.
They see no light, they dwell in darkness.
They moan like doves.
from Nergal and Ereshkigal
Seizing me, he led me down to the House of Darkness,
the dwelling of Irkalla,
to the house where those who enter do not come out,
along the road of no return,
to the house where those who dwell, do without light,
where dirt is their drink, their food is of clay,
where, like a bird, they wear garments of feathers,
and light cannot be seen, they dwell in the dark,
and upon the door and bolt, there lies dust.
from the Epic of Gilgamesh
When we approach the biblical texts, it is easy to forget that a prophet, figurehead, or legendry personage didn’t write much (if any) of those texts, but they are to a large extent (in their final forms) the work of one or more elite scribal artisans. In whatever locale the scribes of ancient Israel wrought their art, and whatever their motive for editing, composing, or rewriting their texts, they were part of a certain social system of scholars and craftsmen much like their Mesopamian and Egyptian counterparts. They had no qualms taking something from someone else and incorporating it into their own work or even putting another’s name to it.
