I suspect that I'd like the book more than I like the review of it. It seems
like the reviewer has a vested interest in proving the existence of a deity
in which modern people believe. I kind of like that idea of God and His
Consort, though.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of R. E. Driscoll Sr
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2016 12:53 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Book Review How YHWH Became God
Carl:
Please note that I am posting this because I found the review to be
interesting. I am not trying to 'start' a religious war. /s/ R. E. (Dick)
Driscoll, Sr.
I found this while reading this morning and thought it would be of interest
to you.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-yhwh-became-god-1457732366
How YHWH Became God
The idea that the Hebrew god once had a consort, Asherah, was a shock to
some biblical scholars.
By Shai Held
March 11, 2016 4:39 p.m. ET
7 COMMENTS
How did a desert war god originally worshiped by ancient Israels southern
neighbors become the God worshiped today in churches, mosques and synagogues
across the globe?
Thomas Römers The Invention of God has a deliberately provocative title.
And many of his argumentshis contention that the God of Israel originally
shared a temple with a sun god, for examplewill be scandalous to most
traditional believers. Some of his claims, like his suggestion that the
temple erected in Jerusalem originally contained a statue of YHWH, or
Yahweh, will be controversial even among the guild of academic Bible
scholars to which he belongs.
Clay figurine of the Canaanite goddess. ENLARGE
Clay figurine of the Canaanite goddess. Photo: Alamy
Mr. Römer begins in the Sinai Desert at the end of the 13th century B.C.,
among Israels Edomite neighbors, who worshiped Yahweh as a god of wars and
storms. Yahweh arrived in Canaan, where the Israelites lived, brought by a
group of his nomadic worshipers. In his early days, he was just another
tutelary deity, that is, a tribal protector and patron. Those that
worshiped him believed he would intervene in his peoples military battles
and bring rain to fertilize their crops.
Yahweh initially had a consort, the goddess Asherah, who was also known as
the Queen of Heaven. For biblical editors and modern scholars alike, the
idea that a god who reigned supreme had a consort was deeply disconcerting,
and yet Asherah continued to be worshiped for hundreds of years. Eventually,
Yahweh became associated almost exclusively with Jerusalem, a view
reinforced by the experience of an Assyrian siege of the city that was
suddenly and mysteriously aborted in 701 B.C.: Yahwehs worshipers were
convinced that he had wrought a great miracle.
The Invention of God
By Thomas Römer
Harvard, 303 pages, $35
As they often do, tragedy and devastation had a major impact on theology.
After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. and the
geographical dispersion of the Israelites, there was no king, no Temple and
no autonomous national entity. Yahweh could no longer be worshiped as a
national god or as the tutelary deity of a royal family.
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Israels humiliating defeat at the hands of a hated foe could have led it to
abandon its God. It would have been natural to conclude that Israel had been
defeated because the gods of Babylonia were more powerful than Yahweh. But
the Bibles authors chose the opposite explanation, insisting that the
Temple had been destroyed because Yahweh had used the Babylonians to punish
his unfaithful people. Mr. Römer explains that if YHWH can make use of the
Babylonians, that means he can control them; therefore, he is more powerful
than the gods of Babylon.
This is, Mr. Römer suggests, a prelude to the monotheist idea. Ironically,
then, the crushing defeat of Judea gives rise to the monotheistic insistence
that its God is all-powerful and universal. The history of theology
sometimes takes wild and unexpected turns.
Mr. Römers work is not for the faint of heart. Drawing heavily on recent
findings in archaeology and epigraphy, it is extremely technical:
Commentators have often wondered whether Elyon was really a god who was
distinct from El, given that the name is also attested without El. In fact
there is mention of a god Elioun, called Hypistos (the most high) in
Greek, who appears in the Phoenician history composed by Sanchuniaton,
extracts from which have reached us via the Church father Eusebius, who
cites them in his Praeparatio Evangelica 1.10.15-29. Follow that?
The bigger problem with the book is contained in Mr. Römers title, The
Invention of God. To speak of the invention of God is to suggest a
conscious, deliberate process by which people conjure up the God they want
or need. But human beings do not invent their deities; they encounter them.
This is so regardless of whether those deities exist outside of human
experience or not. As the Christian theologian Paul Tillich has astutely
observed, symbols cannot be invented. Like living beings, they grow and
they die. They grow when the situation is ripe for them, and they die when
the situation changes. (Mr. Römer explains that by invention he actually
means cultural process, but the provocative term remains misleading.)
Mr. Römers arguments sometimes require more careful scrutiny than he gives
them. To take one example, he repeatedly insists that the very fact that
the biblical god originally had a proper name . . . indicates that he was
not originally understood to be the one-and-only God, but merely one god
among others who were worshiped by various peoples in the Near East. For
anyone even moderately versed in the history of the ancient Near East, it is
difficult to argue with the conclusion of this sentence. But does the proper
name necessarily bolster that case? There is another explanation that ought
at least to be considered. The biblical God has a proper name because he is
personal rather than abstract: Yahweh enters into covenantal relationship
with the people whom he loves. In other words, a proper name can teach us
something qualitative, not just quantitative, about the biblical God.
Mr. Römer sets out to explain how one god among others became God, and on
one level he does just that. But when all his contextualizing is done, the
reader is left scratching his head. If Yahweh was really just another
ancient Near Eastern deity, then why did he endure while others faded into
oblivion? And why does he continue to elicit so much love and loyalty so
many centuries later?
This is, in a sense, the corollary to wondering why the Jews, in contrast to
the Sumerians and the Phoenicians, were able to persist through endless
persecution. One can answer this question historically or theologically. Or,
if one believes that God works through human channels, one can attempt to do
both.
Mr. Römers book demonstrates how much cultural-historical treatments of the
Bible can teach us, but it also points to a crucial limitation of such
approaches: It does not give the reader any sense of why the biblical God
matters so much to so many.
Mr. Held directs Mechon Hadars Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas. He
is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence.
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