by Brian Godawa
[179] Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (London, Continuum, 2001), 259.
[180] William G. Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: Where Archaeology and the Bible Intersect (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 273-275.
[181] Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 260-261.
[182] Erin Walcek Averett, “Masks and Ritual Performance on the Island of Cyprus,” American Journal of Archaeology , Vol. 119, No. 1 (January 2015), 12.
[183] Averett, “Masks and Ritual,” 12.
[184] Averett, “Masks and Ritual,” 21.
[185] “The phenomenon of women—and, occasionally, men—prostituting themselves in order to obtain the money to fulfill their vows was known and to some extent accepted in broad layers of the Israelite society. Until the Deuteronomic reform, it seems to have been tolerated by the official religion.”
Karel Van Der Toorn, “Female Prostitution in Payment of Vows in Ancient Israel,” Journal of Biblical Literature 108 (1989): 201.
[186] See: Isaiah57:5; Jeremiah 2:20; 3:6-9; and 1 Kings 14:24; 15:12; 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7; Job 36:14; Hosea 4:14.
[187] Karel van der Toorn, “Prostitution: Cultic Prostitution,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 511.
[188] Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess Third Enlarged Edition (Detroit MI: Wayne State University Press, 1967,1978, 1990), 299, footnote 59. See also: John Day, “Canaan, Religion of,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 835.
[189] Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sacred Marriage Rite: Aspects of Faith Myth and Ritual in Ancient Sumer (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Unversity Press, 1969), 18.
[190] Pirjo Lapinkivi, “The Sumerian Sacred Marriage and Its Aftermath in Later Sources,” in Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro, eds., Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 8.
[191] Douglas R. Frayne, “Notes on the Sacred Marriage Rite” (review of Samuel Noah Kramer, Le Mariage sacré à Sumer et à Babylone [rev. ed. by Jean Bottéro; Paris: Berg, 1983], Bibliotheca Orientalis 42 (1985), 6.
[192] Mark S. Smith, “Sacred Marriage in the Ugaritic Texts? The Case of KTU/CAT 1.23 (Rituals and Myths of the Goodly Gods)” in Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro, eds., Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 96.
[193] Adapted from: “KTU 1.23: The Gracious Gods: A Sacred Marriage Liturgy” in N. Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit, 2nd ed., Biblical Seminar, 53 (London; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 325–326.
[194] Richard M. Davidson, Flame of Yahweh: Sexuality in the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007), 94.
[195] N. Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit, 2nd ed., Biblical Seminar, 53 (London; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 324.
[196] Douglas Frayne argues that the high priestess, at her installation, would have sex with the king as a ritual impersonating the divine pair. Douglas R. Frayne, “Notes on the Sacred Marriage Rite” (review of Samuel Noah Kramer, Le Mariage sacré à Sumer et à Babylone [rev. ed. by Jean Bottéro; Paris: Berg, 1983], Bibliotheca Orientalis 42 (1985), 5–22.
[197] William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), 117-118.
[198] Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People, 278.
[199] Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 176-180.
[200] One strange exception to this small portable size was the case where David’s wife Michal used what must have been a life-sized teraphim to lay in a bed to impersonate David sleeping. But one wonders how she could have possibly moved some so heavy as a life-sized sculpture, unless it was made of light material rather than clay or metal or stone See 1 Samuel 9:13-16.
[201] Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 187.
[202] Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People, 279-280.
[203] William G. Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: Where Archaeology and the Bible Intersect (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 271–273.
[204] H. te Velde, “Bes,” ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 173.
[205] “Found in Jerusalem’s City of David: The Egyptian God Bes”:
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-found-in-jerusalem-s-city-of-david-egyptian-god-bes-1.7042407
[206] Theodore Joseph Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit, dissertation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1986), 282.
[207] Lewis, Cults of the Dead, 196-197.
[208] Lewis, Cults of the Dead, 206.
[209] “So in the Akkadian “Descent of Ishtar” (obv. 10, ANET, p. 107) and the Gilgamesh Epic (VII, iv, 38, 39; ANET, p. 87), as well as the Aeneid vi.492.3; the Iliad xxiii.101; and Horace Satires l.i.viii.40.” John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1–39, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986).
[210] Amar Annus, “Are There Greek Rephaim?: On the Etymology of Greek Meropes and Titanes,” Ugarit Forschungen 31 (1999), 15; Quoting Klaas Spronk, Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Near East, 1986: 167.
[211] Lewis, Cults of the Dead, 229.
[212] Lewis, Cults of the Dead, 244-245.
[213] John H. Walton, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary (Old Testament): Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 382.
[214] Manfred Bietak, “Temple or ‘Bêt Marzeah’?,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, ed. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 165.
Also, Loren R. Fisher, The Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets, Analecta Orientalia, 48 (Roma: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1971), 46
[215] Loren R. Fisher, The Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets, Analecta Orientalia, 48 (Roma: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1971), 45.
[216] Mark S. Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle: Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU 1.1-1.2, vol. 1 (Leiden; New York; Köln: E.J. Brill, 1994), 142.
[217] El’s Divine Feast CAT 1.114, Translated by Theodore J. Lewis in Mark S. Smith and Simon B. Parker, Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, vol. 9, Writings from the Ancient World (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), 193.
[218] Loren R. Fisher, The Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets, Analecta Orientalia, 48 (Roma: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1971), 45.
[219] Lewis, Cults of the Dead, 146.
[220] Marvin Pope, “A Divine Banquet at Ugarit,” The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays: Studies in Honor of William Franklin Stinespring (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972), 190-191.
[221] Pope, “A Divine Banquet at Ugarit,” 193.
[222] Dennis Pardee and Theodore J. Lewis, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, vol. 10, Writings from the Ancient World (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 87.
[223] Brian Schmidt, Israel’s Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult and Necromancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition, Dissertation (Oxford, England, The University of Oxford, 1991), 131.
[224] KTU 1.15:3:10–19. Dennis Pardee and Theodore J. Lewis, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, vol. 10, Writings from the Ancient World (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 87.
[225] Brian Doak, The Last of the Rephaim: Conquest and Cataclysm in the Heroic Ages of Ancient Israel, dissertation (Cambridge: MA, Harvard University, 2011), 249.
[226] For example:
KTU 1.161:1–14
You are invoked, O saviours of the underworld,
you are summoned, O assembly of
Didanu.
Invoked is Ulkan the saviour;
invoked is Taruman the saviour.
invoked is Sidan-and-Radan;
invoked is the eternal one, Thar.
They have been invoked, the ancient saviours.
You are invoked, O saviours of the underworld,
N. Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit, 2nd ed., Biblical Seminar, 53 (London; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 432–434. See also,
[227] CAT 1.22.9-10. Mark S. Smith and Simon B. Parker, Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, vol. 9, Writings from the Ancient World (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), 203.
[228] Brian Doak, The Last of the Rephaim: Conquest and Cataclysm in the Heroic Ages of Ancient Israel, dissertation (Cambridge: MA, Harvard University, 2011), 250.
[229] Michael Heiser explains the meaning of Nephilim best here: https://www.godawa.com/chronicles_of_the_nephilim/Articles_By_Others/Heiser-Nephilim.pdf
And here: http://michaelsheiser.com/TheNakedBible/2013/03/thoughts-nephilim-answering-criticism/
[230] Michael Heiser, “Clash of the Manuscripts: Goliath & the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament” Bible Study Magazine Online. http://www.biblestudymagazine.com/extras-1/2014/10/31/clash-of-the-manuscripts-goliath-the-hebrew-text-of-the-old-testament
[231] Sometimes translated as “descendant of the giants.” Conrad E. L’Heureux “The yelîdê hārāpā’: A Cultic Association of Warriors,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 221,(Feb., 1976), pp. 83-85.
[232] See also: 1 Chronicles 20:4-8.
[233] Edward Frank Wente and Edmund S. Meltzer, vol. 1, Letters from Ancient Egypt, Writings from the Ancient World, 108 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990).
[234] Maria Lindquist, “King Og’s Iron Bed,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 73 (2011), 480-481.
[235] KTU 1.108:1–3. See “Bashan,” DDD, p 161-162 and Scott Noegel, “Aegean Ogygos of Boeotia and the Biblical Og of Bashan,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 110 no 3 1998, 416.
[236] Michael Heiser, “The Mythological Provenance of Isaiah 14:12-15: A Reconsideration of the Ugaritic Material” Digital Commons Online https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1279&context=lts_fac_pubs
[237] Simon J. DeVries, 1 Kings, 2nd ed, vol. 12, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Inc, 2003), 205.
[238] Alan F Segal, Sinning in the Hebrew Bible: How the Worst Stories Speak for Its Truth (Columbia University Press, 2012), 192.
[239] See also: Leviticus18:21; 20:2-5.
[240] See also 2Kings 17:17; Jeremiah7:31; 19:5; Ezek 16:20-21; 20:31.
[241] See also NASB95: 2Kings 16:3; 17:17; 21:6; 23:10; 2 Chron 33:6; Jeremiah32:35; Ezek 16:21; 20:26, 32; 23:37.
[242] See also: 2 Kings 24:4; Isaiah59:7; Jeremiah22:3; 26:15; Psalm 106:38.
[243] See Leviticus18:21; 20:2-4; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah32:35.
[244] See also Jeremiah19:5.
[245] About Molech and Baal as separate deities see John Day, Molech: A God Of Human Sacrifice In The Old Testament (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 34-36.
[246] See: 2 Esdras 7:36; 2 Baruch 59:10, 85:13; Mark 9:43, 45, 47. See Day, Molech, 52.
[247] Kleitarchos, Scholia to Plato’s Republic, 337A: Quoted in Paul G. Mosca, Child Sacrifice in Canaanite and Israelite Religion: A study in Mulk, PhD Thesis, (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, 1975), 22.
[248] Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, Book 20, 14:4-7, Loeb Classical Library, 1954, 153. Quoted in Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage: Religious Rite or Population Control?” Biblical Archaeology Review 10,1 (1984), 14. https://www.academia.edu/2298111/Child_Sacrifice_at_Carthage_Religious_Rite_or_Population_Control._Biblical_Archaeology_Review_10_1_1984_30-51_with_Lawrence_E._Stager_
[249] Plutarch, On Superstition, Loeb Classical Library, 1928, 2:495. Quoted in Smith, Jr., “Canaanite Child Sacrifice,” 98.
[250] Stager and Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage, 6.
[251] Henry B. Smith, Jr., “Canaanite Child Sacrifice, Abortion, and the Bible,” The Journal of Ministry and Theology, 93.
[252] Smith, Jr., “Canaanite Child Sacrifice, 93.
[253] Smith, Jr., “Canaanite Child Sacrifice, 99-100.
[254] Stager and Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage, 2.
[255] These reasons were all drawn from several sources: A debate over child sacrifice: https://phoenicia.org/childsacrifice.html; Brien K. Garnand – Lawrence E. Stager – Joseph A. Greene, “Infants as Offerings: Palaeodemographic Patterns and Tophet Burial,” Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici 29-30, 2012-13: 193-222; Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage: Religious Rite or Population Control?” Biblical Archaeology Review 10,1 (1984).
[256] Garnand, Stager and. Greene, “Infants as Offerings, 193-222.
[257] https://phoenicia.org/childsacrifice.html
[258] Stager and Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage, 11.
[259] Stager and Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage, 13.
