The Divine Council?

[Timo]

I was looking over the "Why So Angry" thread and amidst the truly uninteresting discussion of whether or not atheists are "angry"[1] I saw a post that was dismissed by one poster as a "delusional rant."  In the the aforementioned "delusional rant", L-Chaim wrote:

I'm a Christian Monothiest but i do not deny that there are other gods (Elohim), i have done a good deal of study into the Divine council and the ANE. So i take on board what you say here. At Bebel God put the nations under lesser elohim some are the ones you mention above, God started out again by calling Abraham and making Himself known through Him.

Psalm 82 is quite explicit in this but most Christians are afraid of these type of texts due to lack of contact with them, Divine council theology is not for the people who want comfortable theology.

So Good point.

Far from being "delusional," I think this brings up a good point.  Contemporary Christian Monotheism isn't quite the same as Near Eastern Israelite Monotheism--which I would call Monolatry before Monotheism.[2]

For those of you who haven't (like good little boys and girls) kept your nose in the Bible:

A psalm of Asaph.
 1 God presides in the great assembly;
   he renders judgment among the “gods”:

 2 “How long will you defend the unjust
   and show partiality to the wicked?
3 Defend the weak and the fatherless;
   uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
   deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

 5 “The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.
   They walk about in darkness;
   all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

 6 “I said, ‘You are “gods”;
   you are all sons of the Most High.’
7 But you will die like mere mortals;
   you will fall like every other ruler.”

 8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
   for all the nations are your inheritance.

Note that "great assembly" is what is translated as the "divine council."

Anyway...Discuss.


Peace

1.	I'm an angry person (in person) and so I tend to fit the stereotype.  But my anger has almost nothing to do with atheism.  Honest.
2.	Though I do take L-Chaim's point in that no other god is presented in the Hebrew Bible as being a potential rival to Yahweh and thus it's no surprise that His adherents might notice a qualitative difference between their respective deities.

[Nick]

Sounds like "L" might have a little Mormonism in him.

[Historicity]

When I had a course in writing research papers one rule in the book was that the King James Version is so traditional that it is the default.  All other translations must be identified by name or abbreviation.

Here is the KJV

Psalm 82
God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.
How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.
Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.
Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.
They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.
I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.

There are substantial numbers of people (some of them not even native speakers of English!!!!) who more or less say that the KJV is the authentic version of the Bible.  Since these are crazy people we should best not provoke them.

[Timo]

I guess in their defense, I've heard that the KJV is a more literal translation.  But speaking no Greek or Hebrew myself, I'll just have to take their word for it.

[L-Chaim]

Sounds like "L" might have a little Mormonism in him.

Not at all. But the mormons do hijack this and play it for all they can get. As i said before this subject gets dense pretty quick if i could upload PDF's here i could post the Scholarly papers on this subject of other gods in the Hebrew Bible. You can let me know if thats possible ?

anyone interested Deut 6:4 explicitly states the nations were given over to worship other gods.

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance Deut 4


In the ANE sun moon stars ect ere all deities. After Babel God had enough and gave humanity over to idols/gods and started again with Abraham.

But to address the OP The Divine council is made up of a 3 tier hierarchy.

God  (The Holy One Of Israel)  El
Sons of God (little g gods) Bene Elohim/Bene El
Angels Messengers = Malakim

The sons of God show up in Gen 6 and in Deuet 6:32 The nations who are given over to idolatry are given over to worship these sons of God aka gods. The reason one can Be a monotheist and still have other gods is because the elohim/god is just a place of residence term, i.e if you are a god you are from the other side, the problem is when people heard the noun g-o-d the attach a set of attributes to it that are only ever attributed to the Most High, but demons are called gods, angels are called gods, departed human beings (Spirit of Samuel) are called gods. There is a lot more to this but hope it helps get things going.

[Truth OT]

A couple things..............
First, because a couple posters have discussed the literalness of translations, I thought this literalness test may be of interest: http://web.archive.org/web/20050308193313/http://christianbiblesociety.org/ntest.shtml

Finally, the matter of the Divine Council as it relates to the Hebrew Bible is discussed in great detail flaws and all at the following site: http://www.thedivinecouncil.com/

[screwtape]

The guy in the second link makes the mistake of using biblical passages to explain other passages and ideas that were not contemporary with each other.  He makes some of the right points - sons of the gods are not angels - but gets some other stuff wrong. 

[Add Homonym]

Genesis 1: Elohim creates the universe and man
Yahweh and Elohim create it again in Genesis 2, like Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze making a pot together.
In Genesis 6:7, Yahwey says that he created the world, and does not like it, so he will kill everyone.
In Genesis 6:12 Elohim says the same thing, and tells Noah to put 2 of each animal into the ark. (Only 10 types of animal were known in the ANE, so this was easy.)
Genesis 7 is now Yahweh's turn. (Noah must be in a spin by now.) He tells Noah to put 7 pairs of clean animals into the ark. (7:3)
Genesis 22, Elohim tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and then Yahwey (22:12) tells him not to. 22:12 Yahweh refers to himself as Elohim, which explains the schizophrenia.

Is it true 22:19, that Abraham returns from the mountain in the singular?
 

[12 Monkeys]

 Simply put,from the verse,there is more than one "God"

[Mr. Blackwell]

I always liked the Nephilim...why does no one ever talk about them?

[Noman Peopled]

I always liked the Nephilim...why does no one ever talk about them?

Ancient astronaut "theorists" love to.

[screwtape]

Is it true 22:19, that Abraham returns from the mountain in the singular?

It's too bad Doctor X got the boot.  I think he was actually a biblical scholar.
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19915

I always liked the Nephilim...why does no one ever talk about them?

they bring up uncomfortable subjects.  I like that some yecs think they were dinosaurs.

[Mr. Blackwell]

It's too bad Doctor X got the boot.  I think he was actually a biblical scholar.
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19915

I didn't have time to read the whole article but I am curious about the commonplace practice of child sacrifice asserted by Cross and Mosca as sited. Seems to me that would immediately change the context and importance of the story of Abraham sacrificing his son. Presuming everyone sacrifices a child now and then, that part of the story is nothing special to the folks in that day and age. However...the revelation that God himself said that he did not want or need the sacrifice would be a culture shock for the Jews living at that time no? Sends a different message methinks.


Edit: Fix quotes

[L-Chaim]

I always liked the Nephilim...why does no one ever talk about them?

From a Christian point of view the nephilim are explained away in natural terms with the sons of seth theory. This is because they are obviously (by the biblical account and other books such as 1st Enoch) preternatural, and lo and behold Christians get twitchy when discussing the supernatural realm ? go figure

[screwtape]

the sons of seth theory.

I'm not familiar with it.  would you care to explain? 

[L-Chaim]

the sons of seth theory.

I'm not familiar with it.  would you care to explain?

The nephilim are explained away as unrightious men of the Seth's line, who marry the daughters of Cain. On this view the preternatural element of the sons of God as Divine beings is disabled and reapplied as ungodly human beings. I'm sure there a ton of stuff on the net about it if you want more.

[velkyn]

The nephilim are explained away as unrightious men of the Seth's line, who marry the daughters of Cain. On this view the preternatural element of the sons of God as Divine beings is disabled and reapplied as ungodly human beings. I'm sure there a ton of stuff on the net about it if you want more.

interesting as always to see Christians (and from the nephilim wiki article, jews, etc) mangle their holy books when they find something "uncomfortable". 

[L-Chaim]

The nephilim are explained away as unrightious men of the Seth's line, who marry the daughters of Cain. On this view the preternatural element of the sons of God as Divine beings is disabled and reapplied as ungodly human beings. I'm sure there a ton of stuff on the net about it if you want more.

interesting as always to see Christians (and from the nephilim wiki article, jews, etc) mangle their holy books when they find something "uncomfortable".

Theres no need to be uncomfortable if one posits they believe in a supernatural God then why get uncomfortable when some one brings up the preternatural events of Gen 6 ? It may be they genuinely see it that way, which is fine it's not a major concern but for consistent exegesis it should be read as is, without forcing meaning into the text.

influence of a naturalistic culture i guess. All Biblical and extra biblical text should be considered when trying to find out meaning and context of problem passages. This "mingling"  is good practice for getting a better understanding of culture and context i see no problem with this at all.

[Emily]

Sounds like "L" might have a little Mormonism in him.

Not at all. But the mormons do hijack this and play it for all they can get. As i said before this subject gets dense pretty quick if i could upload PDF's here i could post the Scholarly papers on this subject of other gods in the Hebrew Bible. You can let me know if thats possible ?

[/quote]

You can always post a link. Its not that hard to do. Just copy and paste the URL.

[velkyn]

Theres no need to be uncomfortable if one posits they believe in a supernatural God then why get uncomfortable when some one brings up the preternatural events of Gen 6 ? It may be they genuinely see it that way, which is fine it's not a major concern but for consistent exegesis it should be read as is, without forcing meaning into the text.

influence of a naturalistic culture i guess. All Biblical and extra biblical text should be considered when trying to find out meaning and context of problem passages. This "mingling"  is good practice for getting a better understanding of culture and context i see no problem with this at all.

read as it is?  We have christians by the sackful saying that they all read the bible "as it is".  All sure that they and only they know what their god "really" meant. 

[Timo]

You can always post a link. Its not that hard to do. Just copy and paste the URL.

Yes indeed.  L-Chaim, I would definitely be interested in reading any papers you have on the topic.  I find the subject of reconstructing ancient Israelite religion to be deeply fascinating.

And screwtape, thanks for posting that Doctor X essay.  I also miss that dude.  He always had great contributions (and he cited source material, which was nice).

[L-Chaim]

You can always post a link. Its not that hard to do. Just copy and paste the URL.

Yes indeed.  L-Chaim, I would definitely be interested in reading any papers you have on the topic.  I find the subject of reconstructing ancient Israelite religion to be deeply fascinating.

And screwtape, thanks for posting that Doctor X essay.  I also miss that dude.  He always had great contributions (and he cited source material, which was nice).

Sounds like "L" might have a little Mormonism in him.

Not at all. But the mormons do hijack this and play it for all they can get. As i said before this subject gets dense pretty quick if i could upload PDF's here i could post the Scholarly papers on this subject of other gods in the Hebrew Bible. You can let me know if thats possible ?

You can always post a link. Its not that hard to do. Just copy and paste the URL.

They are PDF's on my hard drive they dont have a url ?

but i'm a computer dunce so any advice on how to upload these ? i have good stuff that Timo would be interested in on comparative studies and the Divine council and the ANE.

[L-Chaim]

Theres no need to be uncomfortable if one posits they believe in a supernatural God then why get uncomfortable when some one brings up the preternatural events of Gen 6 ? It may be they genuinely see it that way, which is fine it's not a major concern but for consistent exegesis it should be read as is, without forcing meaning into the text.

influence of a naturalistic culture i guess. All Biblical and extra biblical text should be considered when trying to find out meaning and context of problem passages. This "mingling"  is good practice for getting a better understanding of culture and context i see no problem with this at all.

read as it is?  We have christians by the sackful saying that they all read the bible "as it is".  All sure that they and only they know what their god "really" meant.

Fair comment but when i say read as is, i mean "bene elohim" = Sons of God and a simple OT search will show that this term is only used of Divine beings, not the sons of Seth, Adam is called a son of God singular as He was made directly by God but the plural term son's of God is only divine beings i.e

Job 1.6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD and Satan came also among them.

Here they are again at the creation of the world in Job 38:7 When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

anyway you get the picture.

 

[Emily]

They are PDF's on my hard drive they dont have a url ?

but i'm a computer dunce so any advice on how to upload these ? i have good stuff that Timo would be interested in on comparative studies and the Divine council and the ANE.

You cannot upload anything to this server, but you can sign up for online storage at places like mediafire, upload them, and post the URL There are dozens of online storage sites out there that are free. Typically they offer 1 gig of space so that should be plenty for your PDFs.. Or if you search hard enough I bet you can find the PDFs online somewhere. Most people typically don't have PDFs sitting on their hard drive without having gotten them from someplace online first.

[velkyn]

you can also put them here if you join the group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/badreasoninggroup/ 

I created myself a yahoo group so I could have a place to store photos, documents, and then pull them out for use here on this forum. 

[L-Chaim]

They are PDF's on my hard drive they dont have a url ?

but i'm a computer dunce so any advice on how to upload these ? i have good stuff that Timo would be interested in on comparative studies and the Divine council and the ANE.

You cannot upload anything to this server, but you can sign up for online storage at places like mediafire, upload them, and post the URL There are dozens of online storage sites out there that are free. Typically they offer 1 gig of space so that should be plenty for your PDFs.. Or if you search hard enough I bet you can find the PDFs online somewhere. Most people typically don't have PDFs sitting on their hard drive without having gotten them from someplace online first.

Yeah i was thinking that but they came from a Theology course so and they don't appear to be available to the public. I PM Timo and gave him my email i can attach them to that if he willing.

[screwtape]

They are PDF's on my hard drive they dont have a url ?

when you post, just below the text box is a link "+ Attachments and other options".  If you click that it opens up some options, one of which is an attachment.  It cannot be larger than 128KB, though.  Or take Emily's suggestion.

[Nam]

Doesn't it say in the 10 Commandments that there are other gods?  And since Biblegod is the one who wrote it, supposedly, that Biblegod admits that there are other gods but they aren't the true god(s) as it is, or something?

-Nam

[velkyn]

AFAIK, the bible god never says that there are no other gods nor that they are not "real" ones.  Just that he's to be consider first and formost.   

It's only in the NT where the story appears to change to beleivers claiming that this god is the only god.