An Intellectual History of
Judaism and Christianity
HILR Fall 2015
SGL: B Ruml
1. Modern Bible Scholarship:
The Hebrew Bible
The Two Creation Stories
Where's the break?
v. 4a: "Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created."
v. 4b: "When the LORD God made earth and heaven . . ."
First Story:
What's the big picture?
First Story:
What's the take-away?
First Story: Worth noting:
- v. 26: "Let us make man in our image"
- v. 29-30: a dietary restriction?
- v. 31: "very good"
Second Story:
What's the big picture?
Second Story:
What's the take-away?
Etiologies
Etiology: a story which explains the cause of something.
Second Story: Etiologies
- Why did God create woman?
- Why does a man leave his parents and live with his wife?
- Why is nakedness embarrassing?
- Why do snakes have no legs?
- Why do women have pain during childbirth (animals don't)?
Second Story: Etiologies
- 6. Why does a husband rule over his wife?
- 7. Why is cultivated land less productive than wild land?
- 8. Why must man work so hard to "make a living"?
- 9. Why are men mortal?
Second Story: Worth noting:
- the tree of knowledge of good and bad: a merism?
- for better, for worse
- for richer, for poorer
- in sickness and in health
- prohibition of eating given before Eve is created!
- Levenson: they ate because of an ambition to be like God
- v. 21: clothes made by God! (a nice guy in spite of himself)
Creation Story Differences
Was Adam created last or first?
Creation via speech or craftsmanship
Man/woman created together or separately
Motive for creating the beasts, fish, birds
Name of the deity: Elohim or YHWH
Proverbs 8: Wisdom as a hypostasis
hypostasis: the personification of some major attribute of God
Proverbs 8:22ff: Wisdom as a hypostasis
The LORD created me at the beginning of his course
As the first of his works of old
In the distant past I was fashioned,
At the beginning, at the origin of the earth
He had not yet made earth or fields . . .
I was there when He set the heavens into place;
I was with Him as a confidant, . . .
Evil in Genesis 1-3
What is Hayes's fundamental message? (link)
"evil is not built into the structure of the world; it stems from human behavior"
"human life should revolve around . . . the moral conflict and tension between a good god's design for creation and the free will of human beings that can corrupt that good design"
Evil in Genesis 1-3
What's her most easily challenged assertion?
"The biblical writer asserts of this God that he is absolutely good. . . . True godliness means imitation of God, the exercise of one's power in a manner that is godlike, good, life-affirming, and so on. So, it's the biblical writer's contention that the god of Israel is not only all-powerful but is essentially and necessarily good."
Evil in Genesis 1-3
"So the very action that brought them a godlike awareness of their moral autonomy was an action that was taken in opposition to God"
Rick Warren: "Does evil exist?"
What did Rick Warren, an evangelical Christian,
mean by evil?
Does it have anything in common with Hayes's meaning?
The Documentary Hypothesis
Four sources: J, E, D, P; probably written in that order.
Persuasive accounting for inconsistencies and doublets.
The Flood Story as an instructive example.
The Overview Timeline (link)
Could you fill out a blank timeline?
Trojan War: 1200 BCE
Homer(s): 850-700 BCE
First written Homer: 700 BCE
Golden Age (Pericles): 460 - 430 BCE
Plato: c.425 - 348 BCE
Aristole: 384 - 322 BCE
Geller, "The Religion of the Bible"
"biblical religion"
-- the beliefs and practices described in the Hebrew Bible
- a minority, dissident phenomenon
- not the religion practiced in Israel and Judah
- differing, competing opinions and traditions
Israelite - Judean Religion
YHWH = El + Ba'al (+ familial "god of x")
consort: Asherah - tree of life (hypostasis of fertility?)
Israelite Religion
centers in Dan and Bethel: YHWH worshipped as a calf
but aniconic tendencies; later confirmed
role of prophets: medium for inquiring of God (later suppressed)
child sacrifice ?
Judean Religion
a royal theology (Davidic covenant; messianic expectations)
the afterlife in Sheol: a shadowy, listless realm
but compare: stories of necromancy (e.g., Saul)
the divine assembly toned down in HB
Continuity or Revolution?
Differences between earlier and later religion:
- monotheism (we'll call it cosmic monism)
- centralization of worship and cult
- myth => history (but a typology: the cyclical recurrence of a few historical patterms (esp. apostacy followed by repentance)
- individualism - esp. individual suffering
- text and canon (preclude further prophecy)
- prayer and study in addition to ritual sacrifices
Torah (final redaction: 400s BCE)
a compromise between Deuteronomic-convenantal religion and Priestly-cultic religion
Deuteronomic-covenantal Religion (the dominant stream)
Summary:
monotheistic
the “name of God” rests in the Temple
divine transcendence: no God-earth interactions
love of God as total commitment (implicit free will)
militant against pseudo-foe “Canaanites”
textual -- no (competing) prophecies
Priestly-cultic Religion (final redactor?)
Summary:
sacrifical cult as "eternal (unconditional) covenant"
the "glory of God" rests in the Temple (divine immanence)
touching, smelling: a physical religion
central ritual substance = blood; central idea: atonement
cf. Rabbinic Judaism: prayer -> atonement
holiness = separation, exclusion
For Geller, underlying unity is "faith"
unconditional trust in God (and in the prophets who delivered his word)
and, derivatively, in the authenticity of the textual record of his revelation.
The Six Retrojections
religion as belief
the divine realm as transcendent
evil as an independent force
the afterlife as just deserts
soul/body dualism
salvation as redemption from sinful embodiment