Ten Tidbits about the Old Testament<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This post joins the previous ones of similar title on the New Testament and Book of Mormon. I make no claims that these are the biggest nor the most\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithpromotingrumor\/2007\/09\/ten-tidbits-about-the-old-testament\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ten Tidbits about the Old Testament\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This post joins the previous ones of similar title on the New Testament and Book of Mormon. 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{"id":458,"date":"2007-09-06T11:52:20","date_gmt":"2007-09-06T16:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faithpromotingrumor.wordpress.com\/2007\/09\/06\/ten-tidbits-about-the-old-testament\/"},"modified":"2007-09-06T11:52:20","modified_gmt":"2007-09-06T16:52:20","slug":"ten-tidbits-about-the-old-testament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithpromotingrumor\/2007\/09\/ten-tidbits-about-the-old-testament\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Tidbits about the Old Testament"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This post joins the previous ones of similar title on the New Testament<\/a> and Book of Mormon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I make no claims that these are the biggest nor the most tantalizing, but here are ten tidbits about the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) that receive little attention (in my experience) in Church settings. I\u2019m intentionally leaving out the better known biggies, such as JEDP, two or three Isaiahs, or the fact that \u201chistory\u201d in the modern sense wasn\u2019t an operative category for the authors of the Hebrew Bible. These topics are more widely discussed elsewhere and don\u2019t lend themselves easily to one-line smackdowns. Here\u2019s the list, with thanks to my fellow bloggers for corrections and additions, esp Moggett, Nitsav, and HP:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1. \u201cThou shalt not kill\u201d should be translated \u201cyou shall not murder\u201d.<\/p>\n

2. Prophecy: Prophecy was restricted, for the most part, to speaking about contemporary situations. This changed in the exile and post-exile. [Corollary: It\u2019s highly unlikely that the Immanuel prophecy references Christ, which is a centuries later connection resulting from interpretation of prophecy. The connection is forged when Matthew uses the Septuagint\u2019s mistranslation of \u2018young woman\u2019 (Heb. \u2018 \u2018almah \u2018) as \u2018virgin\u2019 (Gk. \u201cparthenos\u201d) in the infancy narrative.]<\/p>\n

In some texts, prophecy was a professional vocation, which some scholars have compared to a guild. Additionally, it also involved ecstatic (some translate \u201cfrenzied\u201d) behavior at times. Prophets competed with each other and women could be prophets. Finally, Prophecy is coterminous with kingship (more or less).<\/p>\n

3. Messiah: Some scholars says there\u2019s only one clear reference to a coming Messiah. It\u2019s in Daniel 9:25, I think. (And see #8, below). There\u2019s no indication of a resurrection until quite late, nor is there any link between the messiah and resurrection, nor does the messiah suffer. The messiah of deutero-Isaiah is Cyrus. The Ancient of Days in Daniel is God rather than Adam and the Son of Man is a collective figure.<\/p>\n

4. There\u2019s not a shred of evidence that the Endowment derives from rituals performed in Solomon\u2019s Temple, let alone any kind of marriages.<\/p>\n

5. There is a discrepancy about who killed Goliath. See 1 Sam 17 (David) vs. 2 Sam 21:19. (The KJV will lead you astray in 2 Sam 21:19.) It\u2019s more likely that David didn\u2019t kill Goliath, but perhaps rather another, anonymous, Philistine.<\/p>\n

6. Though it\u2019s clear Israelite religion wasn\u2019t always monotheistic, we also don\u2019t find the LDS conception of the Godhead (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) present. Further, as many know already, there is no Jehovah = Jesus; Elohim = God the Father correlation. (Apparently there wasn\u2019t in early Joseph Smith, either, but this is outside my expertise.) Finally, there was never any god called \u201cJehovah\u201d in the ancient world. \u201cJehovah\u201d arose by a misunderstanding of how the tetragrammaton (YHWH) is vowelled. (It was most likely vocalized as \u2018Yahweh\u2019.)<\/p>\n

7. As in the NT, the notion of Priesthood is severely restricted to persons able to officiate in the cult. (As for the \u201clowering\u201d of the priesthood, this is the result of our interpretation of the combination of two texts that did not originally show a \u201cnew\u201d covenant being made. See my posts<\/a> on this.)<\/p>\n

8. The last texts of the OT (= parts of Daniel) were probably written in the second century BC, not the fifth.<\/p>\n

9. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job all present radically divergent outlooks of the way the world works, specifically around the question of theodicy.<\/p>\n

10. The Israelites were not radically different from their neighbors, especially in terms of material culture. They worshiped the same gods, (sometimes by different names), spoke the same language, and by and large existed in continuity with the \u201cevil\u201d Canaanites that preceded them. That, and they intermingled even with \u201cforbidden\u201d population groups whenever possible.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"