My Near Eastern Biblical Footnotes thread

[Pavel Mosko]

This thread was originally conceived as an Apologetics thread for the folks into the various "Pagan Corruption of Christianity" threads of the day but I realize that such folks are usually not open to reason. But originally, I was going to point to not only why the reasons are not just spurious in studying history etc. but often so from the standpoint of the actual background of the Bible coming from the ancient near east. The ancient Hebrews were a "peculiar people" but they were not Martians. They lived in the same cultural milieu as their heathen neighbors, and yes God in inspiring the various prophets, patriarchs and Bible writers often uses motifs and elements from the past neighbors of Israel for his own ends to tells his story.

For folks who know the work of Michael Heiser this is definitely a Michael Heiser thread as well as other related stuff.



1) The iconography of Fire. Throughout the Bible fire is often associated with the divine. This is especially true for the Old Testament, especially the Torah, where the divine theophanies are shown as a flame or something on fire, like Moses before the Burning Bush, the pillar of Fire leading the Israelites in the Wilderness etc.

I've always really like this imagery because fire is a very interesting kind of metaphor for the God and the Spiritual nature of out Faith. That it is something that is both intangible (unless we are talking about the incarnate Christ that is) yet it can affect the material world very profoundly with heat and of course its light.

This is my first item on the list because it is not only a big theme in the Bible, but it actually was the topic I first ran across. I was a nondenominal Charismatic gotten into the movement from my best friend Stan. My best friend however got under the skin of another guy, a much older obnoxious and well educated unbelieving chap named Jim who was doing his best to return the favor to my friend during the commercial break of one of our favorite 90s TV shows like the X files. He tried to question Stan about all the strange appearances of fire in the Bible and why they were. Now Stan pretty much ignored him, but I paid attention, and I thought the issue very relevant. After his line of questioning fell on deaf ears he piped up with his answer. "Because Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees and they worshipped a Fire god is why!!" OK I was not really willing to believe his ultimate agenda, which was to try to convince us that Abraham was originally a pagan and monotheism somehow evolved but he did point to a really important point, namely how the ancient motifs in the Bible do reflect the older culture that the Hebrews came out of and also inherited from their parents. Anyway, this event got me into thinking about "The Ancient Near Eastern" culture behind the Bible probably 20 years before Michael Heiser began to get fame for posting videos like this.



2) Angelic Iconography lifted from near eastern cultures.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

3) Primordial Chaotic Waters at the beginning of Creation

enesis 1

New King James Version

​

The History of Creation​

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness [a]was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. [b]So the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 Then God said, “Let there be a [c]firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 7 Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.


\ The early near eastern peoples had chaotic waters existing at the beginning of creation. Quite often their god had to slay a great Leviathan sea monster at the start of time and fashion the land of it flesh and bones to create a place where human being could live. The Creation account here is different than what we would expect. Christians typically teach God creating "out of nothing" because of other scriptures that God is the only self existent thing and being. But it is funny, at the waters being at the start of creation story, because if you are extreme Biblical literalist, it would suggest that the existence of water precedes even God creating.

\ Also worth noting the existence of Leviathan in the Bible as a whole. Leviathan presents no threat to God whatsoever, unlike the epic knock down, drag out fights in the pagan myths. It is simply the biggest creature of creation, but nothing that would challenge God.