The Great Shift
Page 69
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** Hebrew kabod is used to designate God’s physical being; sometimes this word is translated as God’s “presence” or “glory.”
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* This act of hearing was “in order to discipline you” because it was painful, designed to “put the fear of Him upon you, so that you not sin” (Exod 20:20).
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* Rather like the angel narratives examined in chapter 1, wherein God appears as an ordinary human being, until the appearance evaporates and God begins to speak true words to the human being(s) involved.
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** In another way, such attempts might be compared to contemporary physicists’ pursuit of the “Theory of Everything,” namely, the attempt to unify the three nongravitational basic forces of particle physics—weak, strong, and electromagnetic forces—with the role of gravitational force as the basis of the theory of general relativity. The overall goal, thus far not achieved, is to arrive at a single explanation that will account for all four.
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* If God is all-powerful, then can He create a rock so huge that He Himself cannot pick it up? (If yes, then there is something that God cannot pick up, which means He is not all-powerful; if no, then there is something that God cannot create, so He is not all-powerful.)
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* He lived in the early second century BCE; his book, called “The Wisdom of Ben Sirach” (or “The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach”) is included in some Bibles in the Apocrypha or under “Deuterocanonical writings.”
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* Modern translators: “Behold [Heb hinneni] I will stand in front of you . . .”
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** The bracketed phrase is not in the traditional Hebrew text.
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* Cain, by contrast, does not understand that God is present even when unseen: according to Josephus, he buries Abel’s corpse “since he thought that the matter might thus remain a secret.”
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* The Assyrian name for Mittani, a Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and southeast Anatolia from around 1500 BCE–1300 BCE. Alshi, mentioned here, was a territory north of Assyria.
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* n this wording, see chapter 9.
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* Note that this passage was cited in chapter 9 in somewhat abbreviated form.
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* Note that God had previously said He would send an “angel” to lead the Israelites into Canaan (Exod 23:20, 23, cf. 27; 33:2).
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* The Hebrew text uses a word borrowed from Latin, curiosus, which means “spy” or “informant,” especially as a member of the emperor’s secret police. The Jews under Roman occupation were of course quite familiar with the term.
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* See chapter 3.
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* Sending a ruaḥ to do the job is altogether appropriate. After all, “wind,” “breath,” and “spirit” all have something in common: they refer to something immaterial and invisible, something you can’t point to or hold in your hands or put in a box, but at the same time something that is active and the result of whose doings can indeed be observed. Because this something is invisible and immaterial, the book of Ecclesiastes repeatedly describes a futile endeavor as a “chasing after the wind [ruaḥ]” (Eccles 1:14, 2:11, 17, 26, etc.). Elsewhere the same author observes, “No one controls the wind [ruaḥ], or can lock up the wind [again, ruaḥ]” (8:8).
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* Note also that “thirsting” and being “sated with a rich feast” both evoke that other meaning of nefesh, “throat” or “appetite.”
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* Of course, asking God not to “take it away” means, “Don’t kill me.” But that the ruaḥ itself is described as holy is certainly significant.
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* See chapter 8.
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* This is the common Greek word for soul; I have used the modern transcription of Greek ψυχή, otherwise spelled in English as “psyche.”
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* The same phrase might be translated as “the bundle of the living,” which might be taken as a more explicit way of wishing someone continued life.
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** Such apparently rhetorical questions are virtually negations in biblical Hebrew: Ecclesiastes means, “No one can know,” implying that those who claim men and animals have different fates are just making it up.
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* Presumably judging by the spectacle of a painful death.
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* A line of fortifications—here presumably including a siege-tower enabling the attacker to look into the besieged city and/or eventually enter it.
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* Cited previously, chapter 2.
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* The expression has nothing to do with the Pauline doctrine of divine grace, but derives from the Latin habere [or referre, etc.] gratiam, or in the plural agere gratias, “express thanks.”
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* Prov 22:17, cited here to mean that, without further prophets, our only recourse is the wisdom of rabbinical sages.
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* Unlike the prophets of earlier times, who were seen principally as intermediaries and spokesmen of God; see chapter 7.
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* The Second Temple period technically covers the whole time from the rededication of the Jerusalem temple (according to some sources in or around 516 BCE) through to its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. In this sense “Second Temple period” is nearly synonymous with the “post-exilic era,” though in practice scholars have a tendency to use “Second Temple period” to refer specifically to the closing two or three centuries BCE through the first century CE.
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* For example, Gen 32:24–30, Dan 8:15.
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* In chapter 9, the section headed “God’s Helpers.”
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* He probably means, “pretend to eat with him,” because by a common convention, angels don’t eat or drink.
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* On this phrase see chapter 1.
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* See in this connection Daniel’s prayer (2:20–22), discussed in chapter 2.
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* The phrase “of those who reject Me” (some translations: “of My enemies”) is much debated; it has sometimes been interpreted to refer to those who continue to reject Me in the third and fourth generations, but the more straightforward meaning is that the descendants of “those who rejected Me in the first generation” will be punished to the third or fourth generations, even if these are altogether innocent. In the next verse, God promises to “save up kindnesses to the thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments” (Exod 20:6). Taken on its own, this too is somewhat ambiguous. The word “thousands” is subsequently glossed in Deut 7:9 and elsewhere as “a thousand generations,” but here it may simply have meant saving up kindnesses (or “covenant loyalty”) for the thousands of people who are loyal to Me.
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* Not the Satan of later times, the embodiment of evil, but a heavenly accuser or adversary. See Zech 3:1–2, Ps 109:6, 1 Chron 21.1.
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* Cf. Gen 18:27.
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** Bowing and standing (with arms extended upward) are both biblical postures of prayer.
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* In other words, you don’t know what isn’t there.
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* Some examples have been seen already, in chapter 3.
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* The apparent attribution to David (or: the Davidic collection of psalms) is not taken by most scholars as an actual indication of its origin, but a late editor’s addition. Such attributions continued to be added in the Septuagint translations of the Psalms as well as in noncanonical works.
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* Note, however, that the psalm offers no clue as to what this enlightenment or secret knowledge might consist of or come in answer to.
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* “Taken within” seems to mean taken bodily inside heaven. Ben Sira says “likewise” because he had earlier mentioned Elijah’s ascent into heaven (Sir 48:9–10).
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* A term of affection, sometimes “my sister, my bride”; strictly speaking, neither phrase indicates that the couple is married.
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* Of course, people continued to frequent the Jerusalem temple (and others), not only because of its traditional role in collective worship, but because of the vibrancy of the sacrificial cult in general and the fact that sacrifices on the part of an individual were still a powerful mark of devotion. On top of all this was a political consideration: the priesthood, indissolubly connected to temple worship, also ran Judea’s affairs throughout the Second Temple period.
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** As with the “elusive individual,” I am excluding here any evidence from psalms and prayers themselves because of the circular-argument problem
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* Scholars like to point out that the Greek name eventually conferred on this collection was ta biblía, “the books”—in the neuter plural. Eventually, however, the same word came to be thought of as a Latin feminine singular, “the Book,” as if the whole collection were really a single, unitary composition, which is in fact how it came to be treated.
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* “Profession” seems to be the sense of Hebrew melakhah, as in Jonah 1:8.
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* Literally, “fathers,” whose “offspring” consist of various further elaborations and subtypes.
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* Remember that Hebrew devarim, “things,” can also mean “words.”
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* The Greek christos, “anointed one,” was the standard translation of the Hebrew mashiaḥ.
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