‘I am a God and Not a Human Being’: The Divine Dilemma in Hosea Samuel E. Balentine ‘What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ The question posed by Tertullian (ca. 155–240 CE) marks a longstanding divide between reason and faith, theology and philosophy. To look toward Greece for philosophical insight into the nature and character of God, Tertullian argued, leads to heresy.1 A num- ber of recent works, including some by biblical scholars, have mounted a new (renewed) challenge to Tertullian’s supposition.2 Perhaps inadvertently, these emerging philosophical approaches to the Hebrew Bible have intersected with a growing number of studies that explore lexical and thematic connections between the Old Testament and Greek literature during what Walter Burkert describes as the ‘orientalizing period’ (ca. 750–650 BCE), the ‘formative epoch of Greek civilization.’3 1 The context for Tertullian’s question is instructive: ‘Unhappy Aristotle! Who invented for these men dialectics, the art of building up [arguments] and pulling [them] down; an art so evasive in its propositions, . so productive of contentions—embarrassing even itself, retracting everything, and really treating of nothing! . .[W]hen the apostle would restrain us, he expressly names philosophy as that which he would have us be on our guard against. Writing to the Colossians, he says: ‘See that no one beguile you through philosophy and deceit after the tradition of men’. He had been at Athens, and had in his interviews [with the philosophers] become acquainted with that wisdom which pretends to know the truth, while it only corrupts it. What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord can there be between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians?’ (Prescriptions Against Heretics, 7.15–22). 2 For the purposes of this paper, see especially, J. Gericke, The Hebrew Bible and Philosophy of Religion, Atlanta 2012; Y. Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, Cambridge 2012; J. Barton, Ethics in Israel, Oxford 2014; S. Sekine, Philosophical Interpretations of the Old Testament (BZAW, 458), Berlin 2014. 3 W. Burkert, Die orientalisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Literatur, Heidelberg 1984; ET: The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (transl. M. Pinder, W. Burkert), Cambridge/London 1992. The literature on this ‘orientalizing period’ is extensive. In addition to multiple works by Burkert, see especially B. Janowski et al. Religionsgeschichtliche Beziehungen zwischen Kleinasien, Nordsyrien und dem Alten Testament (OBO, 129), Freiburg 1993; M.L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth, Oxford 1997. Burkert notes that reading the Hebrew Bible alongside the Greek classics was commonplace well into the eighteenth century. For a variety © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004337695_005 Samuel E. Balentine - 9789004337695 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 06:09:36PM via free access ‘I am a god and Not a Human Being’ 55 This paper seeks to contribute to this larger conversation about Athens and Jerusalem. My focus on Hos 11:9 relocates Tertullian’s question: What does Hosea have to do with Homer (or Hesiod)? More specifically, I invert the logic of the question. If Hos 11:9 is the answer to some sort of divine dilemma— and not a human,’ that is, ‘I am this kind of god but not ( אֵ ל ”,I am God (or “a god‘ that kind of god’—then what were the presenting metatheistic and metaethi- cal questions about divinity that shaped the world of this text? My exploration comprises three parts: 1) a god’s ‘El-ness’; 2) transcultural distinctions between divine and human portfolios; and 3) the interface between divine moralizing and moralizing about the divine. 1 A God’s ‘El-ness’ The Book of Hosea comprises a metanarrative of Israel’s history from an eighth century Judean perspective.4 Beginning with a review of the exodus from Egypt and the covenant between God and Israel, it tracks major episodes of Israel’s violation of covenant demands, God’s punishment, focused in the fall of the state, and the promise of restoration at some future but undefined time. From a structural standpoint, chapter 11 occupies the space between punishment and restoration. It begins with a rehearsal of the past, when God called the people out of Egypt, led them with bonds of love through the wilderness and into the land of Canaan, but was spurned by their decision to love other gods (vv. 1–4). It then summarizes God’s consequent and immanent judgment, manifest in Israel’s subjugation by Assyria (vv. 5–7), which, however, will not be the end, for as the last verses of the chapter announce, God resolves to rescind the judg- ment and restore the relationship (vv. 10–11). Verses 8–9 are the pivot between judgment and restoration. Why does God decide to move from ‘burning anger’ of reasons—philological, ideological, and theological—it was thought important to sever the link between Indo-European languages and Semitic languages, and more fundamen- tally between East and West (The Orientalizing Revolution, 1–6). For a critique of essential- ist arguments about racial distinctions between Greek and Semitic languages and cultures, see S. Arvidson, Aryan Idols. Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, Chicago/ London, 2006; C. López-Ruiz, When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East, Cambridge 2010, 1–22. 4 E. Ben Zvi, Hosea (FOTL, 21A/1), Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2005, 228. Cf. J.M. Bos, who argues for a date in the late sixth or early fifth century BCE but does not address Hos 11:8–9 (J.M. Bos, Reconsidering the Date and Provenance of the Book of Hosea: The Case for a Persian- Period Yehud [LHBOTS, 580], New York/London, 2013). Samuel E. Balentine - 9789004337695 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 06:09:36PM via free access 56 Balentine -The answer has some ?(1:8)(נִכְמְ רּו נִ חּומָ י) ’to burning ‘compassion חֲ (רֹון אַּפִ י) ’.( י אִ ׁש) not a mortal ( אֵ ל) thing to do with God’s El-ness: ‘Because I am a god (אֱלֹוהַ and) אֵ ל The standard approach to understanding the Hebrew word uses cognate forms in other Semitic , אֱ ֹל הִ י ם and אֵ לִ י ם ,and its two plural forms languages (Akkadian ilu/ilanu; Ugaritic ʾil/ʾilm) to construct what Mark Smith calls the ‘historiography about divinity’ in the ancient Near East.5 The basic contours of the history that moves from notions of multiple gods in ancient Near Eastern literatures to one-god theism in ancient Israel, from conceptual- izing El and Yhwh as different deities to collapsing them into a single divine figure, are well known and need not be rehearsed here.6 It is sufficient for my purposes to note that Hosea scholars have long understood the message of this book to revolve around the prophet’s indictment of the northern kingdom for worshipping the Canaanite deities El and Baal.7 Scott Chalmers succinctly states this position: ‘Just as Hosea proclaims that it was Yahweh, not Baal, that lavished grain and wine and oil on Israel in 2.10, in Hosea 11–13 the prophet insists that it was Yahweh, not El, who appeared to Jacob and who brought Israel up from Egypt.’8 Hosea’s insistence that Yhwh alone is the true God,9 that is, the true El, has usually been understood to reflect Israel’s movement toward one-god theism during the eighth to the sixth centuries, when vassalage to Assyria required 5 M.S. Smith, God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2008, 149; cf. idem, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, Grand Rapids 2002 (second edition); The Memoirs of God: History, Memory, and the Experience of the Divine in Ancient Israel, Minneapolis 2004. 6 Recent studies describe a three-step process in Israel’s movement toward monotheism: convergence, differentiation, and accommodation. For a summary of the discussion, see R.P. Bonfiglio, ‘God and Gods,’ in: S.E. Balentine (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Bible and Theology, vol. I, Oxford 2015, 412–26. 7 In Hos 1–3, the focus is on Baal; in 4–11 on El. For a concise overview, see J.A. Dearman, The Book of Hosea (NICOT), Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2010, ‘Appendix 1: Baal in Hosea,’ 349–51. For a dissenting view, see B. Kelle, Hosea 2: Metaphor and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective, Atlanta 2005, 137–52. 8 R.S. Chalmers, The Struggle of Yahweh and El for Hosea’s Israel, Sheffield 2008, 241–242 (emphasis original). Chalmers argues (87–91) that Hosea’s ‘El polemic’ is directed not toward past sins of Baal worship at Baal-peor (Num 25) but instead at present apostasy in Bethel, where Hosea’s opponents misidentify Yhwh’s compassion as that of ‘the kindly one, El, the compassionate’ (ltpn ʾil dpʾid; e.g., KTU 1.4.IV.58; 1.6.III.4, 10,14; 1.16.V.23). ;11–12:10 ;9 ,11:3 ;אנכי) ’Chalmers notes the importance of the repeating personal pronoun ‘I 9 13:4–5), which is strategically located at places where there is potential confusion about the identity (or agency) of the deity, thus his translation of 11:8: ‘For I and I alone am ʾēl and not a mortal, the Holy One in your midst’ (ibid., 78). Samuel E. Balentine - 9789004337695 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 06:09:36PM via free access ‘I am a god and Not a Human Being’ 57 absolute loyalty to the Assyrian king, who embodied the will of the imperial Assyrian god.10 To subvert Assyrian hegemony,11 so the argument goes, Israel separated itself not only from the gods of its overlord but also from its own polytheistic heritage, what Patrick Miller has called the ‘the gods in Yahweh’.12 From this perspective, God’s El-ness emerges out of and responds to transcul- tural god-talk in Mesopotamia and Canaan.