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RESURRECTION IMAGERY from BAAL to the BOOK of DANIEL by JOHN DAY Oxford a More Precise and Fuller Tide for This Essay Would Be

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RESURRECTION IMAGERY from BAAL to the BOOK of DANIEL by JOHN DAY Oxford a More Precise and Fuller Tide for This Essay Would Be RESURRECTION IMAGERY FROM BAAL TO THE BOOK OF DANIEL by JOHN DAY Oxford A more precise and fuller tide for this essay would be "Death and Resurrection Imagery from Baal to the book of Daniei via Hosea and the so-called 'Isaiah Apocalypse"'. I hope to demonstrate that the first c1ear reference to the literal resurrection of the dead in the Old Tes­ tament in Dan. xii 2 is areinterpretation of the verse in Isa. xxvi 19 about resurrection, which I shall argue refers to restoration after exile, rather than literal life after death. Isa. xxvi 19 in turn, I shall argue, is dependent on the death and resurrection imagery in the book of Hosea, especially on areinterpretation of Hos. xiii 14. Finally, the imagery of death and resurrection in Hosea (both in chapters v-vi and in xiii-xiv), which likewise refers to Israel's exile and restoration, is direcdy taken over by the prophet from the imagery of the dying and rising fertility god, Baal. That Baal was regarded as a dying and rising god cannot seriously be disputed. 1 In the Ugaritic Baal myth we read of his being swal­ lowed by Mot, the god of death, and it is dec1ared several times that "Mightiest Baal is dead, the prince, Lord of the earth has perished". He is buried by Anat and lamented in the customary way by her and EI. The land becomes hot, dry and parched, for Baal has taken the rain, wind and most of the dew with hirn into the underworld. Then EI has a vision in which the heavens rain oil and the ravines ron with honey. EI rejoices and dec1ares, "mightiest Baal is alive, for the prince, Lord of the earth exists". Baal then resurnes his throne. (See KTU 1.4. VIII-l.6. VI.) Hosea, of course, was highly polemical against the cult of Baal. But polemic can sometimes involve taking up one's enemies' imagery and reusing it for one's own purposes. It was W.W. Graf Baudissin I Contra H.M. Barstad, The Religious Polemics 0/ Amos, SVT 34 (1984), pp. 150-1, who fails to note all the evidence which leite here. 126 JOHN DAY in his book Adonis and Esmun 2 who first argued that Hosea took up the imagery of death and resurrection from a fertility deity. But strange to say, he does not mention Baal in this connection, but rather speaks of Adonis and Eshmun, since, prior to the discovery of the Ugaritic texts, he had to depend on late classical SOUfces, which curiously do not mention the death and resurrection of Baal. Subsequently, a number of scholars3 have argued that it was from Baal that Hosea drew his imagery. But some other scholars4 have questioned this. One point that has frequently been claimed is that Hosea is refer­ ring not to death and resurrection but rather to illness and healing.5 The following points, however, may be made in favoUf of seeing death and resurrection imagery in Hos. v-vi.6 First, in support of the resUf­ rection understanding of Hos. vi 2 it may be noted that the verbs employed are the hiphil of qum "raise up" and the piel of I:zäya "revive": "After two days he will revive us (ye~ayyenu); on the third day he will raise us up (yeqfmenu), that we may live before hirn." In all the other places in the Old Testament where these two verbs (~yh, qwm) appear as word pairs the meaning clearly relates to resurrectitm from death, not simply healing. This is the case in Isa. xxvi 14, 19 and Job xiv 12, 14. Secondly, three verses later, in Hos. vi 5, the prophet implies that the people are dead: "Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth ..." Thirdly, in Hos. v 14 Hosea uses the image of a lion carrying off its prey and says "and none shall rescue". EIsewhere in the Old Testament the image of the lion carrying off its prey implies certain death (cf. Amos iii 12; Jer. ii 30; Mic. v 7, E. tr., 8). This is clear elsewhere in the book of Hosea itself, as we see from Hos. xiii 7, 9, where Yahweh's 2 (Leipzig, 1911), pp. 404-16. Cf. H.G. May, "The fertility cult in Hosea", AJSL 48 (1932), pp. 74-8. 3 E.g. R. Martin-Achard, From Death to Life (Edinburgh and London, 1960), pp. 81-6 (E. tr. of De la mort a la resurrection, d'apres I'Ancien Testament [Neuchätel and Paris, 1956]). F.F. Hvidberg, Weeping and Laughter in the Old Testament (E. tr., Leiden and Copenhagen, 1962), pp. 126-31. 4 Cf. W. Rudolph, Hosea (Gütersloh, 1966), pp. 136-7; D.N. Freedman and F.I. Andersen, Hosea (Garden City, 1980), p. 420. See below n. 9 for the more nuanced position of G.I. Davies. 5 E.g., J.L. Mays, Hosea (London, 1969), p. 95; H.W. Wolff, Dodekapropheton I. Hosea (Neukirehen, 1961), p. 149 (E. tr., Hosea [Philadelphia, 1974], p. 117); Rudolph (n. 4), p. 135; C.I. Davies, Hosea (London and Grand Rapids, 1992), p. 161. 6 Those supporting the view that death and resurrection are envisaged here inc1ude Baudissin (n. 2), pp. 404-7; Martin-Achard (n. 3), pp. 80-6; Freedman and Andersen (n. 4), pp. 418-20; B.C. Pryce, The Resurrection Motif in Hosea 5:8--6:6: an exegetical Study. (Ph.D. dissertation, Andrews University, Ann Arbor, 1989), passim. .
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