Papers

Professor Mary Douglas (London): ‘The Go-away Goat, or Is There Such a Thing as a Scapegoat Ritual?’

Professor Hans Barstad (Oslo): ‘The Old Testament: A Hellenistic Book?’

Dr Laura Yoffe (Edinburgh): ‘The Nursing God: Female Images of Yahweh’

Professor James VanderKam (Notre Dame): ‘Have the Qumran Scrolls Made a Difference?’

Professor Friedemann Golka (Oldenburg): ‘Joseph, Tammuz and Thomas Mann’

Dr Isaac Kalimi (Jerusalem): ‘Jerusalem in the Chronistic History’

Dr John Day (Oxford): ‘The Old Testament’s Transformation of Some Canaanite Underworld Gods’

Abstracts

Professor Mary Douglas (London): ‘The Go-away Goat, or Is There Such a Thing as a Scapegoat Ritual?’

According to the standard interpretation of the scapegoat rite described in Leviticus 16, its object is to purge the community of Israel of their sins on the lines of the Greek rituals which are generally assimilated to it. The hellenicist association has influenced the reading of the levitical text and covered weak philological arguments which support the idea that the goat is treated like the Greek pharmakos, and sent out to a desert demon called Azazel. On this traditional reading the scapegoat is a despised victim, a model for any victims of persecution. The difficulties are stark incongruity with levitical attitudes to demons and glaring dissimilarity between the Greek ceremonies and the levitical rite. Instead of foreign rites, close parallels in Leviticus itself need to be studied. The focus upon a pair of animals, one chosen for sacrifice and one set free in the wilderness, corresponds closely to the pairs of birds for purification from leprosy. The doctrine of lifting the sins of another person has to be clarified: Aaron’s laying both hands on the goat suggests a commissioning. The comparisons suggest that the goat that escapes being sacrificed corresponds to the brother that was not chosen in Genesis narratives (Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau). In this light the goat would be commissioned to go far away from the habitations of Israel as an honourable envoy to the peoples who were not chosen.

Professor Hans Barstad (Oslo): ‘The Old Testament: A Hellenistic Book?’

Biblical scholarship has experienced heated discussions recently concerning the dating and reliability of the historiographical traditions of the Hebrew Bible. One particular trait of the discussion has been the claim that everything, or most, of what we find in the Hebrew Bible originated in the Hellenistic period. Of some influence in the debate has been the article by the Danish Old Testament scholar Niels Peter Lemche, ‘The Old Testament: A Hellenistic Book?’, published in 1993. Lemche directs attention to four different circumstances that, according to him, favour a Hellenistic date for the Hebrew Bible. The present paper discussed these four points in some detail. After having studied Lemche’s arguments closely, it becomes apparent that they do not at all support a Hellenistic background for the Hebrew Bible.

Dr Laura Yoffe (Edinburgh): ‘The Nursing God: Female Images of Yahweh’

This paper drew attention to passages where Yahweh is pictured as nursing his (her?) people: Numbers 11:11-12 (implied only); Deuteronomy 32:13-14; Isaiah 66:10-13; and Hosea 11:3-4. This is the most consistent of a number of female images: labouring woman (Isaiah 42:14), midwife (Psalm 22:9), mistress (Psalm 123:4); together they put an interesting spin on one interpretation of Genesis 1:27. The image of a nursing God is important in the debate on whether the Israelites had a goddess (Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el Qom inscriptions; Genesis 49:25; Jeremiah 44) and raises the questions, ‘Where did the image come from?’ and ‘Why has it been overlooked by modern scholars?’

Professor James VanderKam (Notre Dame): ‘Have the Qumran Scrolls Made a Difference?’

The paper offered a survey of contributions that the Dead Sea Scrolls have made to scholarship on the Old Testament. After briefly touching on publication of the scrolls, reference works available for studying them, and the ostraca found at Qumran in 1996, the main part of the paper focused specifically on Qumran and the Old Testament. In the first section (‘Scrolls and editions’), the point was made that the so-called biblical scrolls allow us to see the ways in which texts were set forth, the changes and corrections made by scribes, and the growth of texts which are available in multiple copies (e.g. Serek ha-Yahad). The second section dealt with the ‘biblical’ scrolls, the categories into which scholars have placed the different witnesses, and the types of variants found in the scrolls. The third and final section was devoted to the larger issues of which works were considered authoritative by the Qumran community and whether they had a canon of scripture. It is clear that a number of works which would later become parts of the Hebrew Bible were considered authoritative at Qumran, but for the status of some of the later canonical books the testimony of the scrolls is not clear and in the case of books such as Jubilees it is evident that high authority was attributed to a book that was not canonized in Judaism at a later time. Revelation was believed to be ongoing, with the result that the categories of authoritative books seem not to have been regarded as closed and fixed.

Professor Friedemann Golka (Oldenburg): ‘Joseph, Tammuz and Thomas Mann’

For over a century it has been known to biblical exegetes (the Pan-Babylonist Alfred Jeremias and others) that the dying and rising god Tammuz is the prototype of Joseph in Genesis 37-­50. Tammuz is a vegetation and spring deity (later to be identified with Osiris and Adonis), the archetypal saviour. He is the beloved of the moon goddess Ishtar (compare Isis and Aphrodite). Tammuz is the beautiful youth who is nevertheless given over to death, be it through the attack of a wild boar or through Ishtar’s love. Ishtar follows him into the underworld while the fertility of all vegetation, animals and humans comes to an end. Through her negotiations with the goddess of the underworld Ishtar achieves the release of Tammuz at least for part of the year. Knowledge of this myth came to the Israelites via the Canaanites (Isaiah 17:10; Ezekiel 8:14). Joseph is the beautiful youth. He has to go down to the pit twice in order to rise again to even higher glory. Thomas Mann in his novel Joseph and His Brethren achieves a christological interpretation of the Joseph figure by extending the perspective from Tammuz via Joseph to Jesus. While in volumes 2 and 3 Mann re-mythologizes Joseph, he de-mythologizes him in volume 4 (‘Joseph the Provider’), where Joseph works salvation in the social and economic field.

Dr Isaac Kalimi (Jerusalem): ‘Jerusalem in the Chronistic History’

The Chronicler does not clarify his position concerning the contradictory stories about the capture of Jerusalem in Joshua-­Judges. He wished, probably, to say that only in David’s era could the conquest of the city be accomplished. The significance of Jerusalem in the Chronistic History is revealed above all by the description of the city’s conquest, the immediate and first royal action of David, even prior to the celebration of his own coronation. The capture is presented as the most remarkable and meaningful national goal in which all the Israelites participated and to which they contributed willingly, as a result of deep conviction. In order to stress this viewpoint, the Chronicler avoided describing the conquest of the city as a fulfillment of God’s command. The details concerning the capture in Chronicles are, however, an outcome of the Chronicler’s efforts to clarify his difficult Vorlage. He omitted the date as well as the unclear passages. He understood the rest of the text in 2 Samuel 5:8, ‘and David said at that time, “Whoever smites the Jebusites…”’, as a conditional sentence which did not clarify what would be done to a man who smote the Jebusites and caused the capture of Jerusalem. He concluded the incomplete sentence from similar biblical accounts and close syntactical constructions which could be found in the Former Prophets. The main purpose of 1 Chronicles 11:6 is to emphasize the difficulties which were faced in the capture of Jerusalem in order to create suspense and anticipation for a very significant forthcoming event in the Israelites’ national life. The historical trustworthiness of this source is extremely doubtful.

Dr John Day (Oxford): ‘The Old Testament’s Transformation of Some Canaanite Underworld Gods’

The paper discussed the transformation of the gods Mot, Resheph and the Rephaim (Ugaritic rp’um). (Molech was excluded, having been dealt with in an earlier book.) First, the god Mot was discussed. The Old Testament’s references to Sheol swallowing people up (e.g. Isaiah 5:14; Habakkuk 2:5) use metaphorically language earlier used of the god Mot in the Ugaritic texts. Death itself being swallowed up in Isaiah 25:8 is probably a metaphor for the end of exile, not literal death, comparable to Isaiah 26:19 (cf. 27:8). Death coming through the windows in Jeremiah 9:20 (ET 21) perhaps alludes to a demon derivative from Mot. Several other alleged allusions to Mot in the Old Testament are unconvincing. Resheph, a plague god, was noted for his pestilential arrows. In the Old Testament he is sometimes transformed into a plague demon(s), on occasion in Yahweh’s entourage (Habakkuk 3:5; Psalm 78:48 [‘Reshephs’]; Job 5:7 [‘sons of Resheph’]); in Song of Songs 8:6 ‘Reshephs’ is demythologized, referring to love’s arrows (cf. Cupid), though the original underworld background is still in evidence (‘love is strong as death’), whilst in Psalm 76:4 (ET 3) ‘Reshephs’ is totally demythologized, simply referring to ordinary human arrows. Psalm 91:5-6 refers to Resheph as a plague demon, even though not explicitly mentioned by name. In the Old Testament the term Rephaim is used not only for the dead but also for certain giants, part of the pre-Israelite Canaanite population of Canaan. The underworld meaning is primary, since rp’um is already used of divinized dead human beings (especially kings) at Ugarit and the concept of the giant Rephaim is derivative from them. That there is a connection between them is supported by the fact that the giant Rephaim are especially associated with Ashtaroth in Transjordan (Genesis 14:5; Joshua 12:4; 13:12), just as is the case with the underworld figure rp’u (singular of rp’um) in the Ugaritic text KTU 1.108.1-2. That giants may be related to gods is paralleled, for example, in the case of the Nephilim.

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