The notion that the family is eternal is central to modern Mormon identity. The definition of the family that has been adopted in this vision is the 20th c. nuclear family. This is in stark contrast to how some early Christians envisioned eternal earthly relationships. It was not the family that was eternal, but friendships. Interestingly, this view may have some resonance in early Mormonism as well. (more…) Read more
Edward Said’s monumental book Orientalism (1978) chronicled the discourse about the “Orient,” specifically Islam, that imagined it as fundamentally distinct from the “Occident.” He suggested that the various disciplines built around Orientalism as a mode of thinking, including literature, history, philology, and religious studies. He argued that the West’s ways of thinking about and depicting the East were interwined with the imperialist aims of the West to dominate, and to justify the domination of the East. This “description” of the... Read more
Although YHWH clearly was perceived by biblical authors in anthropomorphic terms, YHWH’s body was still different from regular human bodies. For YHWH, like many other deities of the ancient Near East,[1] possessed massive size. (more…) Read more
Yesterday, I presented on Rawlsian social justice themes found in the Book of Mormon at the seventh annual meeting of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. Mormon Times of the Deseret News did an article about me presentation. The article does a good job of picking up on some of my main points. As a former reporter, I know that these type of presentations are not easy to cover. I would like to thank Michael De Groote for coming... Read more
Of course, much of this [i.e., that Israel worshiped El and Asherah alongside YHWH] is really to be expected given that recent syntheses of the archaeological, cultural, and literary data pertaining to the emergence of the nation of Israel in the Levant show that most of the people who would eventually compose this group were originally Canaanite. (more…) Read more
One of the most important deities that many, if not most, ancient Israelites worshiped was YHWH’s heavenly spouse or consort, the goddess Asherah (the Hebrew linguistic equivalent of Ugaritic Athirat, the wife of El). (more…) Read more
This historical reconstruction [that El was originally Israel’s chief deity, and YHWH was originally his son and the patron deity of Israel], in turn, helps to make sense of certain biblical texts which seem to indicate most naturally that El was originally the chief god of Israel and that YHWH was the patron deity of Israel. For example, Deuteronomy 32:8-9 reads: When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the nations according... Read more
How do we measure our missionary work? Is it in number of invites given? Books of Mormon given? Baptisms? Changed hearts and minds? I recently had the opportunity to follow up on an experience I had sharing the Book of Mormon over a decade ago. It was embarrassing, and it reminded me of several other embarrassing efforts at sharing the Book of Mormon. Though I might have garnered praise by some measures for these “successes,” I can’t help but feel... Read more
As the very name Israel might indicate on account of its theophoric element el (אל), it appears that the chief god worshiped in earliest Israel was El, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon in the Late Bronze Age. The god El has been revealed most clearly to the modern inquirer through the discovery of the Ugaritic texts at Tel Ras Shamra in 1929, a flourishing kingdom-city-state on the Syrian coast during the second half of the second millennium B.C.E.[1]... Read more
Introduction: Was Ancient Israel Monotheistic? Western Society is perhaps more indebted to the Hebrew Bible than to any other book, and arguably the most famous teaching associated with the Hebrew Bible is that of absolute monotheism. This position famously affirms that there is only one god in existence and no other(s). For example, Deuteronomy 6:4, known as the Shema, has often been cited since antiquity as supporting this understanding of monotheism.[1] It declares, “Listen, O Israel, YHWH is our god,... Read more
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