Bokovoy on the warpath again

[_Fortigurn]

There's another problem, and that is that LDS apologists assume that recognition of the Divine council by textual commentators and text/source critics necessarily means recognition of a Divine council of gods. This is not so. The Divine council depicted in Scripture is of God and His angels, as understood in the earliest Targums and Talmudic commentary.

I am certain that a lot of the brief (and occasionally truncated), quotes from various scholars referring to the 'Divine council' understand the Divine council to be represented in the Old Testament as composed of God and His angels, not as a multitude of conferring gods, as the Mormon understanding is.

The concept of the Divine council had been recognised by many mainstream and popular Bible commentators before Smith. I'm sure you'll find it recognised in Poole, Henry, Gill, and Clarke, to name a few, all of whom preceded Smith by at least 80 years at the minimum, and almost all of whom were household names and standard commentaries in England and North America.

[_dartagnan]

It is also noteworthy that Bokovoy appeals to the RSV to prove how Smith had divine insights as to how the Bible should be translated. However, the first thing Smith says in his sermon is:

Rev 1:6 "And hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father: to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” It is altogether correct in the translation… Our text says "And hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father."

This served as his lead in to his plurality of Gods sermon, yet the RSV disagrees with his statement that this is the correct translation, and renders it accordingly: “and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

See the difference? The text isn’t saying God has a Father as Smith insisted. So why is it that modern biblical scholarship can only be used to support Smith’s claims of prophet hood, but it cannot be used to disconfirm it?

Here is more from Smith’s sermon as he justifies his understanding of the divine council in Gen 1:1-

It read first, "In the beginning the head of the Gods brought forth the Gods," or, as others have translated it, "The head of the Gods called the Gods together."

Did you get that? While David Bokovoy assures us that Smith’s idea “shocked” everyone, Smith has essentially admitted this concept preexisted as others had already interpreted it that way. Smith was simply borrowing from them by his own admission!!
Further undermining David’s polemic is the fact that the RSV doesn’t agree with Smith’s rendition of Gen 1:1. Again, the RSV can confirm he was a prophet but it doesn’t work both ways for David. He simply picks apart modern scholarship as it suits his apologetic agenda.

If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that He had a Father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? And where was there ever a father without first being a son?

Even more interesting is the fact that LDS apologists maintain that this sermon does not constitute divine revelation or official doctrine. Why? Because the idea of an eternal regression of gods is just too weird and incoherent to even think of defending. Yet when this sermon speaks of a divine council, suddenly it is evidence he was receiving divine revelation. Further, the only instance where Smith specifically mentions a “council” is in the Book of Abraham. A work which he never canonized as official scripture.

I once asked a learned Jew, "If the Hebrew language compels us to render all words ending in heim in the plural, why not render the first Eloheim plural?" He replied, "That is the rule with few exceptions; but in this case it would ruin the Bible." He acknowledged I was right.

So Eloheim should always be understood as plural? Is that what David thinks scholarship has concluded? How do we reconcile this with the fact that the Church maintains that the name of God the Father is Eloheim. Is the Father plural? The Father was named El in the Ancient Near East, not Eloheim. But again, the misses cannot count against Smith in the universe of the apologist. The game has been rigged from the start and it simply doesn’t work that way for them. Scholarship can only prove Smith was a prophet, but everything to the contrary only proves scholarship is wrong. Amazing logic.

[_Fortigurn]

This served as his lead in to his plurality of Gods sermon, yet the RSV disagrees with his statement that this is the correct translation, and renders it accordingly: “and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

See the difference? The text isn’t saying God has a Father as Smith insisted. So why is it that modern biblical scholarship can only be used to support Smith’s claims of prophet hood, but it cannot be used to disconfirm it?

Neat jab.

Here is more from Smith’s sermon as he justifies his understanding of the divine council in Gen 1:1-

It read first, "In the beginning the head of the Gods brought forth the Gods," or, as others have translated it, "The head of the Gods called the Gods together."

Did you get that? While David Bokovoy assures us that Smith’s idea “shocked” everyone, Smith has essentially admitted this concept preexisted as others had already interpreted it that way. Smith was simply borrowing from them by his own admission!!

Ouch, a full on body blow.

So Eloheim should always be understood as plural? Is that what David thinks scholarship has concluded?

If he does, he knows nothing about Hebrew or scholarship.

How do we reconcile this with the fact that the Church maintains that the name of God the Father is Eloheim. Is the Father plural? The Father was named El in the Ancient Near East, not Eloheim.

That's like saying 'fish' should always be rendered plural.

Even worse is the fact that Smith was incapable of distinguishing between elohim as a singular noun, and elohim as a plural noun. His ignorance of Hebrew grammar is at fault here, but it didn't stop him making dogmatic statements which were totally wrong.

[Guest]

I honestly don’t know how long I’ll have the patience to respond to such silliness, but I am going to try.

If you were at all interested in finding the truth through reason, then you would welcome this instead of responding to it scornfully in knee-jerk fashion.

Kevin, the minute that you contribute some sort of intelligent criticism, I will happily accept it. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but it hasn’t happened yet. I fully believe that you are capable, but in order to do so, you’re going to have to devote yourself to a bit more study. For example:

Instead he is focusing on irrelevancies and trying to keep the Zohar alive and well for further kicking, even after I have made it perfectly clear it was a minor point and I am no longer discussing it. After I was banned he wrote up yet another response, but he addresses nothing in my last post. Instead he keeps kicking the Zohar issue because he is anxious to appear as though he is refuting something of consequence.

The reason I have emphasized the Zohar issue is because you claimed that not only was Joseph Smith “particularly familiar” with the Zohar but that within the Zohar “the concept of the divine council preexisted.”

The second you made that claim, I knew that you had never even cracked the pages of the Zohar which does not contain references to a divine council of deities.

Here is the Zohar’s first commentary on a biblical divine council text:

“It is written, ‘The secret of the Lord is to them that fear him’ (Ps. XXXV, 14). That most reverend Elder opened an exposition of this verse by saying, ‘Simeon, Simeon, who is it that said: ‘Let us make man? Who is this Elohim?’ With these words the most reverenced Elder vanished before anyone say him.” The Zohar; vol. 1; Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon trans. (London: Sonciono Press, 1931), 90-91

I would suggest that before making these sorts of claims that you should go through the Zohar and see what it has to say on the divine council of deities. I keep returning to this claim because it illustrates how faulty your reasoning is on this issue.

David is playing us for fools here. He wants us to believe that Joseph Smith couldn’t have learned of this concept from the Bible because the Bible never used that precise word?

Yes Kevin. That precise word, i.e. “council” is incredibly meaningful to Joseph’s theology.

Concerning “the beginning,” Joseph declared that “the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it;” Teachings 349.

In his journal entry for June 11, 1843, Elder Franklin D. Richards provided an account of the Prophet’s teaching that “the order and ordinances of the Kingdom were instituted by the Priesthood in the council of heaven before the world was;” The Words of Joseph Smith; 215.

Revelations received by Joseph Smith proclaim this dispensation as the fullness of times “according to that which was ordained in the midst of the Council of the Eternal God of all other gods before this world was” (D&C 121: 31-32).

Anyone who has read the teachings and revelations of the Prophet knows that concept of a “council” of Gods was no mere piece of theological trivia for Joseph Smith. In a discussion concerning his views regarding the council, the Prophet once taught that when Latter-day Saint “begin to learn this way, we begin to learn the only true God, and what kind of a being we have got to worship;” Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith; 349-350.

In Samuel Noah’s 1828 edition of the English dictionary, the word “council” used so frequently by Joseph Smith in his teachings and revelations referred to “a body of men specially designated to advise a chief magistrate in the administration of the government.”

Hence, Joseph’s description of a “council of gods” is actually a very significant theological concept. You argued that “the Bible refers to the divine council on numerous occasions.” The fact is that you are wrong. As I illustrated, the King James Version of the Bible does not refer to the divine “council” of gods at all, let alone on numerous occasions.

Here we see David’s duplicity, because in his opening post he wanted to establish that the divine council is “a fundamental symbol for the Old Testament understanding of how the government of human society by the divine world is carried out.” He also cites another scholar who says, “a narrative of events in the heavenly council on an occasion when the council is gathered to make some fateful decision concerning the affairs of men. In fact, wherever in the Old Testament the activities of the council are described, or the deliberations of the council may by thought to be alluded to, some decision of great moment is always involved.”

I know that you’re intelligent enough to understand the argument. With the discovery of contemporary documents which provide a detailed depiction of ancient Near Eastern views concerning the divine council of deities, biblical scholars now recognize that the divine council is “a fundamental symbol for the Old Testament understanding of how the government of human society by the divine world is carried out;” Patrick D. Miller, “Cosmology and World Order in the Old Testament,” Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 432.

The discovery of these Near Eastern accounts have effected the way the Bible is now translated by contemporary scholars. As an example, I pointed to Psalm 82:1:

“God has taken his place in the divine council” (NRSV)

“God standeth in the congregation of the mighty” (KJV)

Yet, here is trying to mitigate the references to the divine council by saying the lack of the specific word requires divine revelation to discern. Apparently he is trying to say that the divine council is important in the Bible, but on the other hand it is not clear enough for anyone except a prophet to discern. This is the ole apologetic two-step, folks.

As I’ve illustrated, the specific word “council” does carry an extremely important theological connotation. Unlike “assembly” and/or “congregation” it specifically implies “a body of men specially designated to advise a chief magistrate in the administration of the government.” The idea that God has a “council” suggests something very meaningful about the way he governs the universe. Assyriologist Thorklid Jacobsen refers to this view in the divine realm as a type of “primitive democracy;” see Thorkild Jacobsen, “Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 2/3 (1943): 164.

But of course the connection between the divine council within Joseph’s theology and the biblical portrayal is much, much more than simply the important word “council.”

In the ancient Near East, stories of the divine council typically begin with a crisis in which the head God calls together the gods of the council to resolve the dilemma. During the council, a series of proposals are offered. Finally, a “savior” steps forward, offering his services to the council. This savior then receives a commission to perform his redemptive role (this summary is based upon the pattern identified by Simon Parker, “Council,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 206).

This common Near Eastern pattern is witnessed, for example, in the Mesopotamian story of divine kingship known as Enuma Elish. In the Babylonian myth, the head god of the pantheon calls together the gods in a council to resolve the dilemma created by the goddess Tiamat. Following a series of proposals, Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, receives a commission as savior. In the myth, Marduk agrees to perform the role of savior on the condition that his Father, Ea, the head god of the council, will grant Marduk all power and glory. The same pattern appears in the Assyrian myth Anzu, however, in this rendition, the god Ninurta agrees to serve as council savior while allowing his father to retain his position within the council.

Because this portrayal is so obscured in the Bible, it specifically took the discovery of texts such as Enuma Elish to help scholars such as Tidwell provide a useful definition of the biblical council genre as

“a narrative of events in the heavenly council on an occasion when the council is gathered to make some fateful decision concerning the affairs of men. In fact, wherever in the Old Testament the activities of the council are described, or the deliberations of the council may by thought to be alluded to, some decision of great moment is always involved.” “Washington’omar (Zech. 3:5) and the Genre of Zechariah’s Fourth Vision,” JBL, 94 (1975): 352.

No one would have applied this divine council pattern to a text like 1 Kings 22:19ff without the discovery of Enuma Elish, Anzu, the Baal Cycle, etc. and yet Joseph places the exact same pattern in his portrayal of the divine council of Gods in the Book of Abraham. He goes so far as to preserve the notion of God “standing” in the divine council:

“And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits… And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down…” (Abraham 3:23-24).

Biblical scholar Simon Parker has shown that the distinction between sitting and standing in judicial settings also operates in the biblical view of the divine council; Simon B. Parker, “The Beginning of the Reign of God—Psalm 82 as Myth and Liturgy,” Revue Biblique 102/4 (1995): 537.

These nuances were not unique to the West Semitic world. In Mesopotamia, “anybody who happened along and had a mind to could ‘stand’—that is, participate—in the pu?rum [i.e., assembly].” As Assyriologist Thorkild Jacobsen explained, the Akkadian words “uzuzzu, ‘to stand,’ and yaš?bu, ‘to sit,’ are technical terms for participating in the pu?rum;” Jacobsen, 164.

From a Near Eastern perspective, these observations shed considerable light on passages such as Isaiah 3:13 where Jehovah “stands up to plead a cause, He rises to champion peoples” (Jewish Study Bible, JSB).

So you see, as important as the word “council” really is, there’s a lot more to the issue than simply the term itself.

I never said it was a novelty, so why is David throwing out citations from scholars that do nothing to establish his point? He is doing precisely what I said he does. He is trying to eclipse his inability to deal with arguments, by throwing out all sorts of weird, irrelevant citations from scholars; again, apparently to woo his audience.

Apparently you didn’t catch the significance of the quote in context. Here it is again:

There it is, Kevin, the only reference to a “council” in the entire King James Version of the Old Testament. Ironically, as you can see, the only attestation of “council” does not even refer to the heavenly council of deities, and yet still, the most recent scholarly treatment of the issue states:

“The council of God in the Hebrew Bible is no novelty, the occurrences are well known;” Martti Nissinen, “Prophets and the Divine Council,” Kein Land fur sich allein: Studien zum Kulturkontakt in Kanaan, Israel/Palastina und Ebirnari fur Manfred Weippert zum 65. Geburtstag (Vandenhoeck: Universitatsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 2002): 4.

Well known to biblical scholars, but not to those who even today have studied only the King James Version of the Bible.

Does David really want to hang his argument on the assumption that it takes a Prophet to use the word “council” to appropriately describe the biblical passages that refer to a congregation in heaven? “Council” is the word modern scholars chose also, but they are not prophets. The word was chosen because it is appropriate, not because it is necessarily the only literal translation of the word. Who would object to this? The word is translated “congregation” 124 times in the KJV. It is also translated, company, assembly, multitude, people and swarm.

You should now understand why this argument is so faulty.

There is nothing “faulty” in their translation. Congregation works just the same as council. David would have us believe that council makes a huge difference and that all scholars insist on its rendering, but other modern translations like NIV and the Amplified Bible chose “assembly,” the NASB sticks with “congregation,” and Young’s Literal Translation chooses “company.”

See Ibid.

If the council is the literal translation and that is the only thing it could mean, then maybe that would serve as some kind of notch for Joseph Smith’s claims of divine revelation. But the simple fact of the matter is that the Bible speaks of many instances where a council is manifestly appropriate, and Joseph Smith mentions Gen 1:1 where the gods make a decision to do something. He bases his argument on his understanding of Eloheim in the plural. He does not base it on divine revelation…

This is absolutely astonishing. It is a stretch to think that a group of beings who are gathered and are deciding to do something is fittingly called a “council”? And of course Joseph Smith is on my side explaining his own case using precisely the argument David calls a “stretch.” This is the point David is desperately trying to run away from. Here we go again with this brain-dead logic. I have established definitive evidence from Joseph Smith’s own mouth, yet David absolutely refuses to address it.

I did address the issue. You seem to have missed the point. Granted, Joseph uses the plural meaning of Elohim to establish his theological point in the discourse, however, in the same sermon Joseph specifically declares:

“I will preach on the plurality of Gods. I have selected this text for that express purpose. I wish to declare I have always and in all congregations when I have preached on the subject of the Deity, it has been the plurality of Gods. It has been preached by the Elders for fifteen years. I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage and a spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods!” (Teachings, 370).

I honestly can’t believe that anyone would assert that Joseph Smith did not claim to know that God exists in the plural via revelation.

One does not need extra biblical texts to know that a group who gathers to make decisions is fittingly called a council. This is what Joseph Smith offers as his reasoning, yet David is hell bent on painting this picture differently as though he was revealing from God what the Akkadians, Canaanites and Phoenicians already knew. Joseph Smith’s own words mean nothing and I am making a “stretch” for accepting what Smith said. Absolutely astonishing.

Yes! Scholars do need the Akkadian, Ugaritc, and Phoenician texts in order to put the pieces together concerning the biblical view of the divine council.

The Ugaritic texts were discovered in 1928.

As a result, the groundbreaking study for divine council imagery in the Hebrew Bible was H. Wheeler Robinson, “The Council of Yahweh,” Journal of Theological Studies, 45 (1944): 151-157.

This was 1944. I suggest that you read the article and discover for yourself why the extra biblical texts are so important.

After Robinson see Frank Moore Cross, “The Council of Yahweh in Second Isaiah,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 12 (1953): 274-277; G. Cooke, “The Sons of (the) God(s),” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 76 (1974): 22-47; E.C. Kingsbury, “The Prophets and the Council of Yahweh,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 83 (1964): 179-286; M.E. Polley, “Hebrew Prophecy within the Council of Yahweh Examined in its Ancient Near Eastern Setting,” Scripture in Context, ed. C.E. Evans, et al., PTMS 31 (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1983), 141-156; W. Schmidt, Köntigtum Gottes in Ugarit und Israel (Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1961), 69-72; Patrick D. Miller, “The Divine Council and the Prophetic Call to War,” Vetus Testamentum 18 (1968): 100-107.

Although dated, the foundational study for the divine council in the Hebrew Bible remains E. Theodore Mullen, The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973);

More recently see Patrick D. Miller, “Cosmology and World Order in the Old Testament,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 9.2 (1987): 53-78; repr. in Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 422-444; Lowell K. Handy, Among the Host of Heaven: The Syro-Palestinian Pantheon as Bureaucracy (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994); Martti Nissinen, “Prophets and the Divine Council,” Kein Land für sich Allein: Studien zum Kulturkontakt in Kannan, Israel/Palästina und Ebirnâri für Manfred Wippert zum 65. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 2002), 4-19.

All of these studies base their observations on the insights gleaned through ancient Near Eastern texts.

[_Enuma Elish]

The Divine council depicted in Scripture is of God and His angels, as understood in the earliest Targums and Talmudic commentary.

Oh my heavens! You people don’t know anything at all about these texts you’re discussing.

How do the earliest Targums and Talmudic commentary understand the divine council?

This one is even worse than Kevin’s Zohar blooper! The Aramaic revisions of the Bible, i.e. Targums, specifically try to remove the divine council imagery from the Bible!

In contrast to the biblical version of Psalm 82, which refers to God standing in the midst of literal deities, the Targum for Psalm 82 reads: “ A psalm by Asaph. As for God, his Shekinah dwells in the assembly of the righteous who are mighty in the Law; he judges among the judges of truth”; Psalm 82 as translated in David M. Stec, The Targum of Psalms (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2004), 160.

This Aramaic revision of Psalm 82 intentionally stripped the Hebrew psalm of its original divine council ideology. Instead of presenting God as holding council with the other deities of the universe, the Targum substitutes the Aramaic word dayyanin (“judges”) for the Hebrew word elohim (“gods”).

Based upon the judicial setting for Psalm 82, the authors of the Targum presumably felt comfortable with this textual switch because of their misreading of the Covenant Collection in Exodus which uses the Hebrew word elohim in a judicial context (Exodus 21:6). However, David P. Wright has recently shown that, like the rest of the Covenant Collection, Exodus 21:6 ultimately derives from the Babylonian Laws of Hammurabi; See David P. Wright, “The Laws of Hammurabi as a Source for the Covenant Collection (Exodus 20:23–23:19),” Maarav 10 (2003): 11–87.

Therefore, the expression ‘el ha-elohim in Exodus 21:6 and 22:7 directly reflects the Akkadian phrase mahar ilim (§23, §120, §266). This connection strongly suggests that the laws in the Covenant Collection that feature the phrase ‘el ha-elohim use the term elohim as a reflection of the Akkadian word ilim, both of which literally mean “God.”

In their interpretation of these passages, however, the Aramaic revisers specifically switched the Hebrew word elohim for the Aramaic term dayyanim:

"Then his master will bring him to the judges, and he will bring him to the doorpost; and his master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he will be his slave forever. (Exodus 21:6 Neofiti)

The same switch however, appears in Pseudo-Jonathan, Onkelos, and Neofiti 27. For an English translation of Neofiti see Michael Maher, trans., Targum Neofiti 1: Exodus/Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus. The Aramaic Bible (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1994).

This later Jewish interpretation of the Covenant Collection reflected in the Targums allowed readers of Psalm 82 to interpret the biblical text, which presents God’s judgment over the deities of the council, as a passage in which God renders judgment against human beings.

The same theological move to purely “humanize” the divine council appears in Neofiti’s revision of Genesis 6:2, which changes the Hebrew title “sons of God” (one of the specific titles given the divine council in the Bible) into the Aramaic expression “sons of the judges”:

"And the sons of the judges saw that the daughters of the sons of man were beautiful in appearance and they took wives for themselves from among whomsoever they chose. (Genesis 6:2)

I am certain that a lot of the brief (and occasionally truncated), quotes from various scholars referring to the 'Divine council' understand the Divine council to be represented in the Old Testament as composed of God and His angels, not as a multitude of conferring gods, as the Mormon understanding is.

Well, I am certain that you are wrong! Dead wrong! I don't claim to know much. But I do know a little bit about the scholarly view of the divine council of gods in the Old Testament. It just so happens that I'm giving a presentation to some pretty important Bible scholars on this very issue next week:

http://www.sbl-site.org/PDF/NE2007Program.pdf

I really don't have the time and/or patience for this. You guys who seem to know so much about this issue can have the last word.

Happiness to all,

--DB

[_Fortigurn]

The discovery of these Near Eastern accounts have effected the way the Bible is now translated by contemporary scholars. As an example, I pointed to Psalm 82:1:

“God has taken his place in the divine council” (NRSV)

“God standeth in the congregation of the mighty” (KJV)

Keep reading, and you'll see the KJV using 'gods' in the second half of the parallelism. This precedes the NRSV significantly. Try the LXX, which reads 'God stands in the assembly of gods; and in the midst of them will judge gods'. Clarke (1712), says 'God standeth in the assembly of God'. Clarke's was a standard Protestant commentary, and a household name.

In the ancient Near East, stories of the divine council typically begin with a crisis in which the head God calls together the gods of the council to resolve the dilemma.

But we don't have that in the Bible. That's the point.

During the council, a series of proposals are offered. Finally, a “savior” steps forward, offering his services to the council. This savior then receives a commission to perform his redemptive role (this summary is based upon the pattern identified by Simon Parker, “Council,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 206).

Never happens in the Bible.

No one would have applied this divine council pattern to a text like 1 Kings 22:19ff without the discovery of Enuma Elish, Anzu, the Baal Cycle, etc...

Of course they would. It's a natural and even necessary conclusion of having mistranslated 'elohim' as 'gods' in Genesis 1-2 (which Smith did as a result of incompetence in Hebrew). Very simple. In fact it takes a particularly superficial reading of 1 Kings 22:19 to interpret it as a reference to a Divine council of gods, as opposed to a Divine council of God. The fact is that not a single god is referred to in 1 Kings 22:19 other than the one God of Israel.

I note (as indeed I had mentioned previously), that you appeal to a number of sources which speak of the Biblical Divine council, and yet which do not speak of that Divine council as a Divine council of gods, rather of the Divine council of the one true God, consisting either of His angels, His spirits, or privileged members of the faith community. Talk about bait and switch.

[_Runtu]

David,

Of course the idea of a divine council is important in LDS theology. But I'm at a loss as to why it's significant at all as evidence of the Book of Abraham's affinity to ancient scripture. Joseph tells us himself that his study of Hebrew led him to believe that Elohim, the head of the Gods, called the Gods together to plan the world. That Joseph describes this as a council isn't particularly earth-shattering. I guess I find it at least as likely that Joseph's source for the concept of a council comes out of his Hebrew efforts as it is that it came from some insight into the ancient.

I'm not dismissing your argument, David. I've always thought you were one of the most thoughtful and logical of the apologists I've met. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing the significance of your point here.

And for the record, I thought your post about Ritner's inappropriate tone was a major disappointment. I've seen Peterson wave off Ritner in this manner, but I didn't expect it of you.

[_Enuma Elish]

But we don't have that in the Bible. That's the point.

If the pattern for a divine council story was explict in the Bible then we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Never happens in the Bible.

Of course it does. That's what those studies I cited discuss.

For example, the pattern provides the conceptual background to biblical call narratives such as Isaiah 6. In his story of prophetic commission, Isaiah described the members of God’s council as seraphim who praised the “Lord of hosts” seated upon the heavenly throne (Isaiah 6:1–3). Through a purificatory ritual, Isaiah became a member of this heavenly council and therefore responded to God’s question, “whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” with the statement, “here am I; send me” (v. 8).

For a scholarly analysis of Isaiah 6 in accordance with the divine council pattern see Victor Hurowitz, “Isaiah’s Impure Lips and Their Purification in Light of Akkadian Sources,” Hebrew Union College Annual 60 (1989), 39-89.

In the ancient Near East, mouth-cleansing rituals like the one featured in Isaiah’s story held considerable significance. In Mesopotamian ritual prayers, for example, mouth purification symbolized total and complete purity. Biblical scholar Moshe Weinfeld drew attention to the analogy between Isaiah’s experience and the mis-pi ritual performed in “An Old Babylonian Prayer of the Divination Priest” first published in 1968 by A. Goetze:

“O Šamaš, I am placing in my mouth pure cedar (resin). . . . I wiped (akpur) my mouth with . . . cedar (resin). . . . Being (now) clean, to the assembly of the gods I shall draw near;” Moshe Weinfeld, “Ancient Near Eastern Patterns in Prophetic Literature,” Vetus Testamentum 27/2 (1977): 180–81.

Concerning this relationship between Isaiah 6 and this Babylonian text, Weinfeld explained: “Like Isaiah, whose mouth has to be purged in order that he may participate in the divine council, the Babylonian prophet also declares that having cleansed his mouth he is ready to draw near to the divine assembly;” Ibid. 180-181.

Through the mouth-cleansing ritual, Isaiah had become a divine member of the heavenly council of deities.

Studies have shown that in its presentation of the theomorphic prophet, the entire chapter draws upon ideas traditionally associated with Mesopotamian idolatry and deification; see See, for example, Gregory Y. Glazov, The Bridling of the Tongue and the Opening of the Mouth in Biblical Prophecy (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 111–63.

As Victor Hurowitz has noted:

A large portion of the [Mesopotamian] sources . . . raise[s] the possibility that the washing of the mouth . . . has independent significance as a characteristic granting or symbolizing special divine or quasi-divine status to the person or object so designated. The pure mouth enables the person or object to stand before the gods or to enter the divine realm, or symbolizes a divine status; Hurowitz, “Isaiah’s Impure Lips,” 54.

The pattern witnessed in Isaiah 6 reflects the general trend for council stories in the ancient Near East witnessed in texts like Enuma Elish and Abraham 3.

For Latter-day Saints, Isaiah’s story, therefore, provides an impressive type of Jesus Christ, who volunteered in the premortal council to serve as the Savior of the world with the declaration “here am I, send me” (Abraham 3:27). With his divine status, Isaiah could respond to the question God directed toward his council, “who will go for us,” with the response “here am I, send me.”

[_Fortigurn]

The Divine council depicted in Scripture is of God and His angels, as understood in the earliest Targums and Talmudic commentary.

Oh my heavens! You people don’t know anything at all about these texts you’re discussing.

Yes, I do in fact.

The Aramaic revisions of the Bible, I.e. Targums, specifically try to remove the divine council imagery from the Bible!

No they don't (see Targum Palestine on Genesis 1:26). Now you're going to take a single passage (Psalm 82:1), and argue from it that the Targums and Talmuds didn't recognise the Divine council (I note you skipped Genesis 1:26, which disproves your statement).

But they didn't remove the reference to the Divine council in Genesis 1:26 (and plainly interpreted it as such), nor did they tamper with Job 1-2, 1 Kings 22:20-22, nor yet Isaiah 6:8, all references to God consulting the Divine council, and all interpreted by the Targums as references to the angels.

In contrast to the biblical version of Psalm 82, which refers to God standing in the midst of literal deities, the Targum for Psalm 82 reads: “ A psalm by Asaph. As for God, his Shekinah dwells in the assembly of the righteous who are mighty in the Law; he judges among the judges of truth”; Psalm 82 as translated in David M. Stec, The Targum of Psalms (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2004), 160.

This Aramaic revision of Psalm 82 intentionally stripped the Hebrew psalm of its original divine council ideology. Instead of presenting God as holding council with the other deities of the universe, the Targum substitutes the Aramaic word dayyanin (“judges”) for the Hebrew word elohim (“gods”).

Erm, you're committing very obviously the fallacy of petito principii. You're assuming your conclusion (that this refers to 'God as holding council with the other deities of the universe'), and then claiming that this true teaching was abandoned by the early Jewish commentators. You need to prove your case first.

Based upon the judicial setting for Psalm 82, the authors of the Targum presumably felt comfortable with this textual switch because of their misreading of the Covenant Collection in Exodus which uses the Hebrew word elohim in a judicial context (Exodus 21:6).

Or, to put it another way, the authors of the Targum interpreted the passage with the relevant proximate textual data. Again, you're begging the question whereas they simply did Bible study.

However, David P. Wright has recently shown that, like the rest of the Covenant Collection, Exodus 21:6 ultimately derives from the Babylonian Laws of Hammurabi...

What nonsense.

[_Enuma Elish]

David,

Of course the idea of a divine council is important in LDS theology. But I'm at a loss as to why it's significant at all as evidence of the Book of Abraham's affinity to ancient scripture. Joseph tells us himself that his study of Hebrew led him to believe that Elohim, the head of the Gods, called the Gods together to plan the world. That Joseph describes this as a council isn't particularly earth-shattering. I guess I find it at least as likely that Joseph's source for the concept of a council comes out of his Hebrew efforts as it is that it came from some insight into the ancient.

I'm not dismissing your argument, David. I've always thought you were one of the most thoughtful and logical of the apologists I've met. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing the significance of your point here.

And for the record, I thought your post about Ritner's inappropriate tone was a major disappointment. I've seen Peterson wave off Ritner in this manner, but I didn't expect it of you.

Hello Runtu,

Joseph did not say that he gained a knowledge of the divine council through learning about the Hebrew word Elohim. That was Kevin's misreading of the sermon.

I'm sorry to disappoint. As you know from reading the thread, I do not disagree with Ritner's translation of the papyri. I disagree with the anti-LDS tone he used in JNES. It was inappropriate. I can assure you that I would raise the same complaint if Ritner had been discussing the Qur'an as "scripture," as sheer “nonsense,” and as an "absurdity."

Best,

--David