From Gods to God

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters University of Nebraska Press 2012 From Gods to God Avigdor Shinan Yair Zakovitch Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Shinan, Avigdor and Zakovitch, Yair, "From Gods to God" (2012). University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters. 130. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/130 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Nebraska Press at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. From Gods to God Buy the Book University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln Buy the Book FROM GODS TO God How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths & Legends avigdor shinan & yair zakovitch Translated by Valerie Zakovitch The Jewish Publication Society Philadelphia Buy the Book English translation © 2012 by Avigdor Shinan and Yair Zakovitch. Lo kakh katuv ba-Tanakh © 2004 by Miskal-Yedioth Ahronoth Books and Chemed Books. All rights reserved. Published by the University of Nebraska Press as a Jewish Publication Society book. Manufactured in the United States of America. ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zakovitch, Yair. [Lo kakh katuv ba-Tanakh. English] From gods to God: how the Bible debunked, suppressed, or changed ancient myths and legends / Yair Zakovitch and Avigdor Shinan; translated by Valerie Zakovitch. p. cm. “Published by the University of Nebraska Press as a Jewish Publication Society book.” Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8276-0908-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, Redaction. I. Shinan, Avigdor. II. Zakovitch, Valerie. III. Title. bs1158.h4z3413 2012 221.6'6—dc23 2012020072 Set in Arno Pro by Shirley Th ornton. Designed by A. Shahan. Buy the Book Dedicated with aff ection and gratitude to our many students in Israel and abroad. Much have we learned fr om our teachers, more fr om our colleagues, and fr om our students most of all. Buy the Book Buy the Book Contents acknowledgments ix translator’s note xi Introduction: When God Fought the Sea Dragons 1 part 1. Th e World of Myth 1. Eden’s Winged Serpent 19 2. When Gods Seduced Women 27 3. Moses or God? Who Split the Sea of Reeds? 35 4. What Is Manna? 46 5. Th e Hero Who Stopped the Sun 56 part 2. Cult and Sacred Geography 6. Th e Wandering Gate of Heaven 65 7. Seeing and Weeping: Managing the Story of a Divine Defeat 73 8. Where Were Rachel and Jacob Buried? 84 9. Where in the Wilderness Did Israel Receive the Torah? 91 10. Some More Reasons for Eating Matzah 96 11. Was Worshiping the Golden Calf a Sin? 101 12. Where Was the Law Given? In the Wilderness or in the Land of Israel? 109 13. When and How Was the City of Dan Sanctifi ed? 120 Buy the Book part 3. Biblical Heroes and Th eir Biographies 14. What Did Ham Do to His Father? 131 15. Out of the Fire: Recovering the Story of Abraham’s Origins 138 16. Th e Reinterpretation of a Name: Jacob’s In Utero Activities 149 17. Were the Israelites Never in Egypt? A Peculiar Tradition about Ephraim 157 18. Moses’s Most Miraculous Birth 164 19. Moses’s African Romance 173 20. Moses’s Necessary Death 179 21. Son of God? Th e Suspicious Story of Samson’s Birth 189 22. A Cinderella Tale: Clues to David’s Lost Birth Story 197 23. Finding the Real Killer of Goliath 206 24. How a Savior Became a Villain: Jeroboam and the Exodus 213 part 4. Relations between Men and Women 25. Sister or Not: Sarah’s Adventures with Pharaoh 223 26. Th e Story of Rebekah and the Servant on the Road from Haran 230 27. Reuben, Bilhah, and a Silent Jacob 237 28. Seduction before Murder: Th e Case of Jael 242 29. No Innocent Death: David, Abigail, and Nabal 250 30. Not Just Riddles: Solomon and the Queen of Sheba 259 In Closing 267 glossary of extra-biblical sources 271 inde x 293 Buy the Book Acknowledgments We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to our academic home of many years, the Mandel Institute of Jewish Stud- ies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and to the Yitzhak Becker Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Father Takeji Otsuki Endowed Chair in Bible Studies for their support of our research throughout the years. Th anks are due also to Ms. Yael Shinan-Tzur for preparing the excellent glossary and to our dedicated research assistants, Ms. Esther Bar-On and Mr. Yochai Ofran, for their invaluable help. Our translator, Ms. Valerie Zakovitch, served as a very sensitive and knowledgeable mediator between the original Hebrew edition of this book and its counterpart for an English-reading audience. Words can- not express our feelings of thanks and gratitude. We would also like to thank the Deborah Harris Agency for fi nding a good home for the book and the highly dedicated people at the Jewish Publication Soci- ety and the University of Nebraska Press, including Carol Hupping, Elisabeth Chretien, Sabrina Stellrecht, and Mary Hill, for their careful and wise handling of our book, “upon them the blessing of good will come” (Proverbs 24:25). ix Buy the Book Buy the Book Translator’s Note All translators of literary works must choose which of the diff erent meanings and nuances of the original text they will convey and which they will, out of necessity, silence. Translators of the Bible must con- tinually choose not only between denotations and connotations of diff erent Hebrew words but between a translation that conveys a more limited and immediate sense and one that preserves crucial intertex- tual relationships. I have generally relied on Tanakh: Th e Holy Scrip- tures: Th e New jps Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (1985) for all biblical quotations. Th e nature of this book, however, which oft en focuses on analyses of specifi c Hebrew terms or expres- sions, required that I sometimes adjust that translation to refl ect other meanings present in the Hebrew. Th ese changes were meant not as “corrections” but only to enable English readers to understand the interpretative possibilities of the original Hebrew that are being ad- dressed by the authors. xi Buy the Book Buy the Book From Gods to God Buy the Book Buy the Book Introduction When God Fought the Sea Dragons Th e twenty-four books that constitute the Hebrew Bible were writt en over the course of roughly one thousand years, during which time they gradually reached their fi nal form. The purpose of these books was to teach readers about themselves: who they were, where they came from, what their relations were with other nations. Most importantly, the Hebrew Bible aimed to persuade readers of the existence of one god and of their relationship with that god. Th e Bible was the manifesto of the revolutionary thinkers who were its writers: it was the manifesto of the monotheistic revolution. Th ough the writers of the Bible may have lived hundreds of years apart, they spoke with one another through their writings, each add- ing his words to the growing canon. Indeed, the Bible is not merely a collection of books but a network of connections in which stories talk to poems and laws to prophecies. Two brief examples illustrate the phenomenon. Th e genealogy of David’s ancestry in the book of Ruth (writt en in about the fi hft century bce) supplies information that was miss- ing from the (earlier) book of Samuel, which, when it introduces the youthful David to us for the fi rst time, relates almost nothing about his ancestry except for the name of David’s father. Th e writer of Sam- uel had his reasons for not describing David’s background. For one thing, he wanted David to prove himself as a leader and so to be seen as a self-made king. But the writer of Ruth, who lived a few centuries 1 Buy the Book Introduction aft er the writer of Samuel, did not share that point of view. For Ruth’s writer it was unthinkable that we would not know the genealogy of such a fi gure and that David would not be the descendant of illustri- ous ancestors. As a second example, a short prophecy in the book of Isaiah about the Days to Come (Isaiah 2:2–5) tells us how, in that wondrous future, “the Law [Torah] will come forth from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Th is prophecy actually converses with the Bible’s paramount story about the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai in Exo- dus 19. Th at fi rst Law was given only to the Israelites at the base of Mount Sinai when they were alone in the wilderness, in “Splendid Isolation”; on the other hand, in the Days to Come, according to Isa- iah, the Law will be given to all the nations, and not on Mount Sinai but on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Isaiah’s goal was peace, and he deemed peace to be att ainable only if all the nations join together and communicate. Isaiah conveys the importance of communication by shaping his prophecy as a mirror image of the story of the Tower of Babel.

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