In the interests of fair disclosure, I am about to demonstrate that the authors of our Torah sometimes went to unusual lengths to cover up our polytheistic tendencies.
To some extent, you would not think the twisted maneuvers I am about to describe would be necessary. After all, if the Israelites hadn’t been wayward worshippers of Baal and the like, our prophets would have been out of a job.
It remains a fact that ancient scribes found various passages troubling, and they messed with them. We know this for a fact. We can identify insertions, deletions, and the like in the service of clarifying (for example) a confusing theological problem. It helps to have, in some cases, various examples of the same text to see what’s going down, but there are also other methods of discovery.
The following lesson will be based on textual comparison, though, just so you don’t think I am one of those people who will post anything that wanders into my dreams and nightmares. I know those people. My students keep quoting them.
The writers of Torah were mostly monolatrous. This is not some form of sexual deviance. Monolatry is a kind of polytheism in which one recognizes the existence of other deities for other people-groups. In the Ancient Near East, deities possess specific geographical territory. Chemosh holds sway in Moab. Marduk hangs out in Babylonia.
Here’s the important part: Your own deity is always the biggest and the bestest on the block.
The name of our national God-dude is YHVH. That’s the name. Not “Elohim” or “Adonai.” Our God has a name, and it is YHVH. To be certain, we are not exactly certain how to pronounce it, but that is the stuff of another blog (though really, you can find that information everywhere –rather like pictures of the humongous statue of Jesus in Brazil).
YHVH shows up in some rather unexpected places in the archeological record. Often, on pots. And not infrequently, given the sample sizes from the eighth century BCE, YHVH is paired with another deity whose name happens to be Asherah.
Long, long ago, in the Canaanite culture that helped give birth to Israelite culture (some historians say the Israelites were actually just Canaanites with a new look), the pantheon of deities was headed up by El Elyon, also known simply as “El.” He bossed around a number of lesser deities. Among them were Ba’al and Asherah and, it would seem, for some ancient Israelites, YHVH.
Check out Kuntillet Ajrud, an archeological site occupied between the ninth and eight centuries BCE. The site has yielded a number of inscriptions to El, Ba’al, Asherah, and YHVH. Here as elsewhere, YHVH is paired with “his” Asherah (in other texts, she is referred to as his “consort”). YHVH, for some ancient Israelites, had a wife.
Now, the text in question. Here it is, in three textual forms:
Deuteronomy 32:8-9
| Masoretic Text (MT) | Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) | Septuagint (LXX) |
| [8] When the Most High(El Elyon)apportioned the nations,when he divided the sons of men,he fixed the borders/boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.[9] For YHVH’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage. | [8] When the Most High(El Elyon)apportioned the nations,when he divided the sons of men,he fixed the borders/boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the divine beings (literally, “sons of god[s]”).[9] For the YHVH’s portion is his people, Jacob his inherited portion. | [8] When the Most High(El Elyon)divided the nations,when he separated the sons of men,he fixed the borders/boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.[9] And his people Jacob became the portion of the YHVH, Israel was the line of his Inheritance. |
“Sons of men” are people groups. Who is “Jacob”? Jacob is not used just to refer to the character of our Torah, but to the whole people of Israel. Same thing for the Septuagint’s use of the name Israel. The names Jacob and Israel are used interchangeably for the Israelite nation in ancient texts. See, for example, the point at which the seer Bilaam ends up blessing the Israelite nation though he is hired to curse them: How fair are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwellings, O Israel! (Num. 24:5).
Still, no matter how you shake it, the Masoretic Text is weird. El Elyon apparently fixes the boundaries of people according to the, um, sons of Israel. Wait, what?Torah names an awful lot of people groups – we don’t ALL descend from Jacob’s loins. Let’s see: Ishmaelites, Moabites, Kenites, and so on and so forth. Weirder: the text says YHVH is given Jacob as a people group, as a “portion” of all humankind. But all humankind is from Israel/Jacob.
Scholars have long since decided that the DSS is giving us the older version of this story, in which El Elyon (that Canaanite head honcho, remember?) divided up the peoples according to the subsidiary deities of his pantheon. El Elyon gave Israel/Jacob to YHVH.
The Septuagint is trying to get a more monotheistic read by insert angels for subsidiary deities. The MT is going one better and trying to get the reader to read as though El Elyon is actually the same deity as YHVH. But the rewrite is challenging – almost nonsensical.
The Israelites were not monotheistic. Actually, most Jews today aren’t monotheistic either – not strictly speaking. Neither are Muslims or Christians. All three of us insist that there are other supernatural beings inhabiting the divine world – whether angels or demons of some sort. God is not alone.
But then, no one is.
