In the Old Testament, “flesh” physically describes the musculature of the body; the skin is the boundary between the world and the flesh, and there is a distinction made between the flesh and the heart or internal organs. Both in animals and men, “flesh” denotes the “meaty” portions of a body. This is in the background of the use of the word “flesh” in the laws of impurity in Leviticus 12-15. When the flesh breaks through the boundary of the... Read more
At the beginning of Galatians 3, Paul reminds the Galatians of his first visit to them and says that Christ was “publicly portrayed” before them. This was before their eyes; now, someone has laid an “evil eye” on them. This verse is sometimes taken as a reference to the vivid character of Paul’s preaching. But the wording suggests something visual, and besides Paul consistently says that he doesn’t appeal to his listeners with deceptive and highly rhetorical language. We get... Read more
Theodore Lewis assesses Tryggve Mettinger’s comparative study of Israel’s aniconic tradition in a 1998 issue of JAOS . Lewis’s enumerated conclusions are (the next few paragraph are directly quoted): 1. Aniconic traditions (i.e., Mettinger’s “de facto ani-conism”) are not uniquely Israelite. 2. Cultures can have both aniconic and anthropo-morphic traditions at the same time. 3. The repudiation of divine images is very rare in the ancient Near East apart from Israel. A type of programmatic aniconism is attested in Egyptian... Read more
Greeks also seem to have practiced some form of ancestor cult and, perhaps related, a cult of heroes. In a detailed discussion of the archeology of the cult of the dead in early Greece in the American Journal of Archeology , Carla Antonaccio summarizes the evidence that she wishes to test by archeological evidence: “Although the Greeks did speak of ancestors using a variety of terms, there is less written evidence for a cult of ancestors than for hero cult.... Read more
A 1984 article by Baruch Levine and Jean-Michel de Tarragon in the JAOS examines a Ugaritic liturgy that commemorates the accession of Ammurapi and includes honors to his dead father Niqmaddu. The liturgy begins with a summons to the Patrons of Ugarit, including the “Rephaim of the netherworld and their council of Didanites.” Two recently departed kings are also summoned, addressed as “king” not “Rapha,” and the “text continues with a lamentation over the dead king, Niqmaddu. The narrators addresses... Read more
In a 1973 article in the journal Iraq , Miranda Bayliss reviews the evidence for a cult of the dead in ancient Assyrian and Babylon Little evidence survives a general “cult of deceased kin” except among royal families. For others, most of the evidence involves dealing with ghosts that torment their kin and others. “Just as the Mesopotamian cult of the gods entailed the provision of their ‘physical’ needs, particularly the provision of regular meals placed as offerings in front... Read more
Nearly every student of Israel and the ANE emphasizes the uniqueness of Israel’s aniconic worship. Explaining the significance of it is much more difficult. As Ronald Hendel summarizes ( CBQ 1988), scholars have offered several rationales for the exclusion of images from Israel’s worship: “(1) Yahweh is a god of history. (2) Yahweh cannot be magically manipulated. (3) Yahweh is transcendent. (4) Yahweh is Israel’s god in contrast to the gods of Canaan.” None of these works. In response to... Read more
Though the Greeks built temples for a variety of reasons, housing and serving the cult image of a god was one of the motivations for building a temple in the first place. John Pedley ( Sanctuaries and the Sacred in the Ancient Greek World ) writes that some temples “seem to have been purpose-built as houses for ancient venerable images with special powers, or for sheltering new cult images; both temples and images were costly offerings from the city to... Read more
Othmar Keel ( The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms ) has shown that much of the symbolism and theology of temple is common throughout the ancient world. Of Egypt, he writes, “Almost all the great Egyptian sanctuaries claimed to house without their courts the primeval hill, the ‘glorious hill of the primordial beginning,;’ which had first emerged from the floods of Chaos. The great wall which surrounds the huge temple enclosure... Read more
Exodus 12:42: “It is a night to be guarded for Yahweh for having brought them out of the land of Egypt; this night is for Yahweh, to be guarded by all the sons of Israel throughout their generations. Exodus 12 cannot remind us often enough that the Passover took place at night. Eat the flesh the same night; Yahweh goes through Egypt on that night; Pharaoh arises in the night, and calls Moses in the night, and when it’s all... Read more
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