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31. Or is even this simply a product of the Jamesian (he coined the phrase) stream of consciousness? Cf. Flanagan (1992), 178: “There is an important sense in which consciousness is a unity. Furthermore, this unity is in need of an explanation. But the explanation that turns on the ‘I’ fosters an illusion. The illusion is that there are two things: on one side, a self, an ego, an ‘I’ that organizes experience, originates action, and accounts for our unchanging identity as persons and, on the other side, the stream of experience . . . The better view is that what there is, and all there is, is the stream of experience . . . ‘Ridiculous! What accounts for my ongoing sense that I am the same person over time?’ I hear you say. What accounts for your ongoing sense of self [is] the fact that you are constituted by a unique and distinctive stream, that thought can create complex models of the course of the stream in which it occurs, and that you are an insensitive detector of the great changes that accrue to you over time and thus miss how much you do in fact change over time. We are egoless [he means: we lack a self] . . . Egolessness is such a chilling thought, but we shall see that it needn’t be.”
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32. Churchland (2002), 61.
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33. The oft-cited case of Phineas Gage, a railroad worker whose personality radically changed after an injury to his prefrontal cortex in 1848, was an early piece of evidence in the association of specific areas of the brain with different functions; see Macmillan (2000). Particularly significant was the connection of specific brain injuries with various speech difficulties; see Pinker (2000), 318–24.
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34. The latter position is well stated by Colin McGinn: “We know that brains are the de facto causal basis of consciousness, but we have, it seems, no understanding whatever of how this can be. It strikes us as miraculous, eerie, even faintly comic. Somehow, we feel the water of the physical brain is turned into the wine of consciousness, but we draw a total blank on the nature of this conversion”: McGinn (2002b), 529.
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35. Gerald Edelman has attempted to reconstruct a process of natural selection that would result in the emergence of a primitive sense of self out of a fundamental distinction between self and “nonself,” that is, everything outside of the single creature; see Edelman (1987). Note in this connection Flanagan (1992), 50–51: “Consciousness emerged with the development of segregated neural equipment subserving, on the one hand, internal hedonic regulation and, on the other hand, information processing about the state of the external world . . . There is evidence that the dorsal parietal region of the cortex is essential to concern for the wellbeing of the self. Lesions in these areas result in a loss of self-concern. Conversely, lesions in ventral (temporal) regions of the cortex diminish attention to and awareness of the external world. The frontal lobes meanwhile, are thought to be especially important in the maintenance of the hedonic self/nonself memory system . . . [Edelman’s theory] about the emergence of consciousness about self and nonself is [thus] credible. Perhaps it is true. Some sort of sensitivity to the boundaries of the self is a necessary condition for survival.” Cf. Dennett (1989): “The origin of complex life forms on this planet was also the birth of the most primitive sort of self, whatever sort of self is implied by the self-regard that prevents the lobster, when hungry, from eating itself.”
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36. One exponent of this view is P. S. Churchland: “In assuming that neuroscience can reveal the physical mechanisms subserving psychological functions, I am assuming that it is indeed the brain that performs those functions—that capacities of the human mind are in fact capacities of the human brain”: Churchland (2002b), 127. At greater length Churchland (1986) and (2002a), esp. 43–50. Contrast Flanagan (1992), 2, and Dennett (2002a) as well as Dennett (1991) and Dennett and Kinsbourne (2002). “Let me pose an analogy: you go to the racetrack and watch three horses, Able, Baker, and Charlie, gallop around the track. At pole 97, Able leads by a neck, at pole 98, Baker, at pole 99, Charlie, but then Able takes the lead again, and then Baker and Charlie run neck and neck for a while, and then, eventually, all the horses slow down to a walk and are led to the stable. You recount all this to a friend, who asks ‘Who won the race?’ and you say, well, because there was no finish line, there’s no telling. It wasn’t a real race, you see, with a real finish line”: Dennett (1994), 56–57.
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37. This name (actually, “new mysterians” at first) was put forward somewhat whimsically in 1991 by Flanagan in imitation of the name of the rock group Question Mark and the Mysterians, though the name itself also suggests Noam Chomsky’s distinction between problems, which appear to be solvable even if unsolved at present, and mysteries, which appear to be unsolvable; consciousness would, for Chomsky, belong in the latter category. (This in turn sounds like the medieval distinction between mirabilia, things that inspired wonder because they were not yet understood, and miracula, things that were beyond nature and hence must have been performed only by God; see Bynum [2005], 91, and sources cited on pp. 231–32.) On Thomas Nagel as a mysterian, see below. Steven Pinker has likewise endorsed a mysterian position, while also arguing that consciousness is too broad a term, only part of which appears unsolvable: self-knowledge, access to information, and sentience are all part of what people mean by consciousness, but the first two have nothing mysterious about them and even “have obvious analogues in machines.” It is sentience that is unsolvable; Pinker (1997), 131–48.
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38. See previous note. Indeed, numerous scholars have expressed reservations about the utility of the term “consciousness.” On “Quining consciousness,” Flanagan (1992), 21–34.
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39. Another aspect of our inability to step outside of ourselves is the extent to which the very terms by which we perceive and seek to understand things are tied to our own embodiment, the physical conditions (and limitations) of our bodies that shape our apprehension of the world. These have been explored by (among others) Lakoff and Johnson (1999). A synthetic examination of the arguments: Shapiro (2011).
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40. Nagel (2002). See also Nagel (2012).
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41. Though, as Nagel observes, “if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually lose their faith that there is experience there at all”: Nagel (2002), 319.
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42. Nagel writes: “I am not adverting here to the alleged privacy of experience to its possessor. The point of view in question is not one accessible only to a single individual. Rather, it is a type. It is often possible to take up a point of view other than one’s own, so the comprehension of such facts is not limited to one’s own case . . . [However,] the more different from oneself the other experiencer is, the less success one can expect with this enterprise . . . This bears directly on the mind-body problem. For if the facts of experience—facts about what it is like for the experiencing organism—are accessible only from one point of view, then it is a mystery how the true character of experiences could be revealed in the physical operation of that organism. The latter is a domain of objective facts par excellence—the kind that can be observed and understood from many points of view and by individuals with differing perceptual systems . . . [But] what would be left of what it is like to be a bat if one removed the viewpoint of the bat?”—Nagel (2002), 522.
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43. A measured introduction to the use and misuse of positron emission tomography (PET) in imaging various brain states: Dumit (2004). Unfortunately for our subject, the book deals with imaging brains as they experience ecstasy the drug but not ecstasy the religious state of mind.
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44. To carry the color perception analogy further, one might note that “color perception originates in different levels of activity in the three kinds of [color-sensitive] cones” in our eyes, but those cones do not simply transmit their information on an on-or-off basis; rather, “color perception originates in differe
nt levels of activity in the three kinds of cones. Each experience of a particular color or shade is subserved by a unique ratio of activity in the three cone types and by the complex pattern of neural activity it gives rise to . . . The essential feature of the receptor cells is that they can vary across a fine-grained continuum in their degree of activation. It is the ratio across receptor cells . . . that determines what is experienced”: Flanagan (1992), 52.
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9. TO MONOTHEISM . . . AND BEYOND
1. In an influential article, Sigmund Mowinckel argued that the prohibition of graven images in the Decalogue was a later insertion, and that the text read far more smoothly without it; Mowinckel (1937), 218–35.
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2. There is a vast scholarly literature on aniconic and semianiconic worship. Particularly significant has been the work of Triggve Mettinger; see Mettinger (1994) and (1995). For some further bibliography, Kugel (2003), 217–34.
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3. Despite his later reputation as the “first monotheist” in Judaism and Islam; see Levenson (2012).
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4. As is well known, Kaufmann (1960) (originally four volumes in Hebrew, abridged to one volume by M. Greenberg) attributed a fundamentally monotheistic view to Israelite religion virtually ab initio. A survey of recent works reacting to his scholarship would certainly include many more than the following studies, which are, however, of interest to what follows herein: B. Halpern (2009), incorporating his “Brisker Pipes Than Poetry,” first published in Neusner et al. (1978), 77–115; clearly, I cannot accept his conclusion that what separated “monotheism of earliest Israel” from its later manifestation was its “unselfconsciousness” (p. 55). Note also B. Sommer (2009), which, with many new insights and access to new data, seems to uphold something akin to Kaufmann’s early monotheism. Understandably, earlier works of “continental” scholarship, such as Eichrodt (1961), 1:220–27, and Ringgren (1961), do not mention Kaufmann, no doubt because his work was then available only in modern Hebrew; cf. Albertz (1994) and the various essays in Kratz and Spiekermann (2010) and various other studies cited below.
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5. Many scholars have argued that YHWH was originally a warrior deity (Exod 15:1–3); see von Rad (1958); Cross (1966) and (1998), 91–111, 158–63; Longman (1995), 31–47, 86–87; Miller (2000), 8–9; Kang (1989). Moreover, Ba‘al himself had strong associations with warfare, as Cross and others have stressed; see the brief review in M. Smith (2002), 49–55.
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6. Mazar (1985); Finkelstein (1988), 237–59; Dever (2003), 76–78, 102–3.
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7. Various scholars have sharpened this point; see Albright (1968), and his students Cross (1973), Freedman (1987), and P. D. Miller (2000), esp. 24–28; also McCarter (1987), Olyan (1988), Dearman (1993), and numerous others. For a summary of the arguments, see Kugel (2007a), 420–32.
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8. This may seem belied by the fact (seen above) that it was Hosea who favored monolatry and the king, Ahab, who didn’t; but his religious junta of YHWH and Ba‘al was clearly what the existing religious establishment (“prophets of Ba‘al”) wanted, and most likely most of his subjects as well.
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9. See the pioneering collection in Porter (2000), parts of which are cited below.
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10. Cf. Sommer (2009), 145.
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11. The subject has been studied extensively in Hornung (1982); see esp. 49–60.; also Baines (2000), 9–78.
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12. For Assyrian evidence see the essays by S. Parpola and B. N. Porter in Porter (2000).
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13. See Burkert (1996), 17; Vernel (2000); for this theme in later times: Grant (1986).
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14. Cf. Burkert (1996), 80–97.
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15. This last is suggested by Burkert (1985), 125–27, but apparently based on his connection of this same root with dies etc., “day.” In general, etymology is, I admit, a notoriously treacherous basis for drawing conclusions; still, these “generic” god names do give one pause.
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16. This psalm has been studied by many scholars since Morgenstern (1939). For further bibliography and discussion, see Kugel (2003), 121–24, and (2007a), 545–46.
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17. See on this Olyan (2012).
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18. On the four archangels in 1 Enoch 9–10 and in the Qumran War Scroll (Michael, Sariel, Raphael, and Gabriel), and then seven, see Nickelsburg (2001), 207 and sources cited there. He notes that these four were later augmented to seven through the addition of Uriel, Reuel, and Remiel in 1 Enoch 20–36, 81. See also: Olyan (1993).
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19. Sommer (2009), 145–74. One later version of this approach is embodied in the first-century Jewish composition (written in Greek) called the Wisdom of Solomon, though included in some Bibles as, simply, [the Book of] Wisdom. In it, God is basically a heavenly deity, whereas Wisdom (Greek Sophia), a “benevolent spirit” (1:6), is everywhere on earth, where she plays a somewhat ambiguous role. At times she can be just ordinary wisdom in our sense, entering the soul of Moses (10:16) or other humans and guiding their actions. But elsewhere she is much more than this: “She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well” (8:1; cf. Prov 8:22). Since God remains in highest heaven, it is left to Wisdom to intervene in earthly affairs. Like many a female in such a marriage, she is charged with cleaning up all the little human messes, steering Noah in his ark during the flood, rescuing Lot from the fires of Sodom, guiding Jacob on his way to visit his uncle Laban, and many more (see Wisd chap. 10). In depicting these things, the anonymous author incorporates numerous earlier midrashic motifs: Enns (1997). In this sense, Wisdom of Solomon may serve as a model for the wider point to be made below: divine omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence may be Greek formulations, but they are simply part of a long process of development within Judaism itself. At the same time, the path from the grammatically female sophia (or the grammatically female ḥokhmah in Hebrew) as described in Prov 8:22 led the way to her transformation into grammatically male logos, identified as Christ in Jn 1:1–14 and its recasting of Gen 1. Further: G. Anderson (1990).
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20. Shaked (1994) has argued that this oft-stated view is in need of modification. On dualism at Qumran, see two recent collection of essays: Xeravits (2010) and Lange et al. (2011). On this combat in a rabbinic context: Rosen-Zvi (2011).
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21. See van der Toorn et al. (1998).
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22. On Jubilees’ “Ten Percent Solution,” see Kugel (2012a), 82–84.
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23. See for all of these, Kugel (1998a), 76–77; Kaduri (2015).
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24. For Moses’s veil, see Kugel (1998a), 737–38. William Propp treats at length this passage’s suggestion that Moses’s face qaran ‘or after meeting with God, suggesting that this phrase may originally have meant that the skin of his face became hardened and disfigured like a blacksmith’s. See Propp (2006), 622–23. For the tradition that Moses’s face grew horns, see Mellinkoff (1970).
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25. Most recently: De Vries (2016), 124, 130–31. This passage is also a good illustration of the vayyomer . . . vayyomer feature of direct dialogue in the Bible and rabbinic writings: see Septimus (2004).
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26. The textus receptus has the plural form mar’ot, though other text traditions assume the singular mar’it; the frequent confusion of the letters yodh and waw is well known. Cf. Greenberg (1983a), 37–59.
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27. Later, Ezekiel reports: “I was sitting in my house, and the elders of Judah were sitting in front of me, and there the hand of the Lord GOD fell upon me. As I looked, behold the likeness of the appearance of a man, from the appearance of His loins downward was fire and from His loins upwards, was the appearance of brightness
like the color of amber. He stretched out the form of a hand and He took me by the hair of my head” (8:1–3). Note that in the version cited above, the word “man” appears in the Septuagint text, while the MT has “fire.”
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28. Surveyed in light of Mesopotamian scribal practices by van der Toorn (2007).
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29. It may be difficult to part from the standard translation, “And God saw that it was good,” but this seems to be in error. The phrase ra’ah ki tob is an intensification of the more common ra’ah tob, which means “was pleased” in a number of different contexts; see further Kugel (1980).
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30. “The notion of such a cherub throne (the cherubim being apparently a kind of gryphon) is found in texts of different dates, but the priestly picture in Exodus 25 does not describe a throne (pace Haran, 1978:251, 254). There is no seat, no armrests, no footstool; the creatures do not stand side-by-side, but face each other . . . There is no way this can be envisioned as a throne.” Propp (2006), 390.
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31. This is not to say that divine hugeness was an Israelite creation invented ad hoc to account for His taking over the whole world; as we have seen, inter alia, the god of the temple at ‘Ain Dara was huge, judging by his footsteps. See M. Smith (2015), 478–81.
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32. See the discussion in Frankfort and Frankfort (1949), 3–30.
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33. True, Jephthah may have come close to pitting YHWH against Chemosh (Jud 11:23–24), but here too, there is no direct conflict between two deities. Note also the speech of the Rabshakeh in 2 Kgs 18, esp. vv. 32–33.
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34. Cross (1997), 58.
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35. Of course, as we have seen, God can penetrate the human mind and find out things, but this is different from omniscience in the sense of knowing all things all the time. See Carasik (2000).
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36. The huge God of 2nd Isaiah, for whom the skies themselves are simply His chair and earth His footstool, will obviously lack the fine motor control required to intervene directly into human affairs—so in this sense, He may be very close to the omnipresent deity of postbiblical times. But He still does have a body; typologically, He is closest to the unseen deity of Deuteronomy’s revelation at Mount Sinai, or the priestly Creator in Genesis 1, whose spirit hovers over the deep, who speaks and things just happen. But neither of these can truly be said to be omnipresent; they are just unspecified.
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