Readers Reply

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It’s a Keeper

I normally pass on my copies of BR after I have read them, but the August issue is a “keeper” thanks to Bernhard Lang’s glossary of God’s many names. I plan to keep it on my reference shelf.

BR Second to Bible

As a new subscriber to your fascinating magazine, I was skeptical that the Old Testament would be portrayed in a non-anti-Semitic way. The articles I have read—my first exposure to true facts about the New Testament, too—have been so illuminating that I look forward to the coming issues. I have been a student of Torah for the past six years and have taken many interesting classes, but nowhere except for the Bible have I read anything that got me thinking so intently as Ogden Goelet’s article on Moses’ “real name” and its meanings (“Moses’ Egyptian Name,” BR 19:03). It was like a light went on—an aha! moment if you will: An Egyptian princess would never give a foundling baby a Hebrew name. I look forward to more thought-provoking articles.

Missionizing

No Need To

Thank you so much for Shaye Cohen’s wonderful, accurate article “Did Ancient Jews Missionize?” BR 19:03.

The idea of proselytizing others presupposes that another religion lacks something necessary that your religion adds. This Judaism does not and never did do.

Seeking Students

Shaye J.D. Cohen is absolutely correct in shedding doubt on the authenticity of Matthew 23:15: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you compass sea and land to make one proselyte.” I encourage readers to examine two ancient documents that translate the same verse.

The first is the Hebrew translation of Matthew attached to Even Bokhan, a 14th-century work by Ibn Shaprut. (See George Howard, “Was the Gospel of Matthew Originally Written in Hebrew?” BR 02:04.) This translation is the work of Christian missionaries to the Jews and follows very closely the Latin Vulgate. Evidently, the translators used ancient Hebrew documents to help them in their work. Their translation includes at least a hundred variants from the canonical version. The second is the anti-Christian treatise by Abd Al Jabbar, a Muslim scholar of the tenth century, who claimed that the Christianity of his time was not the religion of Jesus. To prove his case he quotes extensively from the Christian writings.

Both of these documents read “disciple” or “supporter” rather than “proselyte” or “convert” in Matthew 23:15.

These readings should be preferred because they are commensurate with one of the most fundamental tenets of rabbinic Judaism: that the word of God is spread by recruiting as many disciples (students) as possible. This tenet always meant recruits from within the Jewish communities.

David and Joab

The Real David

Robin Branch did a fantastic job. By bringing out the gritty humanness and shortcomings of David (“David and 004Joab,” BR 19:04), Ms. Branch has shattered the theories of the biblical minimalists who deny the very existence of Israel’s king. For who would make up a hero as flawed as David is portrayed in these writings?

I would like to see more exposition such as this, where the real person emerges from behind the fog of myth.

God’s Names

We’re All Yahoos

The widely current word yahoo, which refers to a brutal or repulsive person, derives from the fourth and last voyage of Gulliver’s Travels. In it, Gulliver lands in a country made up of two races—horses, which are eminently reasonable and kind, and horrible human beings named Yahoos, who enjoy doing wicked, ugly acts. Thus our current use of the word.

But author Jonathan Swift implied a more profound, ironic meaning. We learn in Genesis 1:16 that God “made humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” Thus, for Swift, we are Yahoos created in God’s image; and look at the brutal, repulsive deeds we do. Our name is the anglicized form of Yahu in the list of God’s names given by Bernhard Lang in “Why God Has So Many Names,” BR 19:04. It is an alternative spelling and pronunciation of Yahweh, the most frequently used name for the Old Testament God.

In Addition

In his excellent piece, Dr. Bernhard Lang might have added that pious Jews often call God Adoshem. The Hebrew word shem means “name.”

Yikes

Upon reading Bernhard Lang’s reference to the Most High [Elyon] dividing up the nations to the number of the gods—I had to check the quotation. I was astonished to turn in my Bible to your citation, Deuteronomy, chapter 38, and discover there was no chapter 38. Could a lost version of Deuteronomy have been found with four more chapters (at least)—and yet remain unknown to this parish pastor? Was I that much out of touch with modern biblical scholarship?

Imagine my relief when I tracked the verse down as Deuteronomy 32:8–9. For a minute, you gave me quite a scare.

Thank you for the correction.—Ed.

Sources, Please

I would like to ask Dr. Lang what Hebrew manuscript he used to translate Deuteronomy 32:8–9 (miscited as 38:8–9), especially the last part of verse 8, which he translates, “according to the number of the gods.” I checked the Masoretic text, which says, “according to the sons of Israel.” The Septuagint says, “according to the number of the angels or messengers of God.” I prefer Lang’s version but wonder what it is based on.

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Bernhard Lang responds:

The source of my translation “according to the number of the gods” is the reconstructed Hebrew text echoed in the Septuagint. A more technical version of the beautifully balanced couplet is “When the Most High gave their inheritance to the nations, when he divided the sons of man, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of El.”

The “sons of El” (=“the gods”) balances the “sons of man” in the parallelism. The reconstructed Hebrew text can be found in the apparatus of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, where it reads: bney el. The scribe who produced the Masoretic text took the letters BNY’L to be an abbreviation of bney Yisra’el.

Don’t Bisect God

Bernhard Lang seems to be lodged between the rock of wanting to convey a sense of the awesomely complex figure of God and the hard place of not wanting to concede that the Torah does so in a way that also establishes the oneness of God, complete and all-encompassing.

For example, Lang distinguishes between “Yahweh, the personal name of the Israelite God,” and Elohim, “the universal God, the Creator and the ruler of all Creation.” The use of these two names together as early as Genesis 2:4 shows that they are not meant to refer to two gods, but to two attributes of the One God. In Jewish tradition, Elohim represents the divine attribute of justice, Yahweh the attribute of mercy. The use of Elohim in Genesis 1 indicates that justice is the ideal state of the world that God has created; the combination of Elohim and Yahweh in Genesis 2 reflects God’s recognition that divine judgment of humankind would need to be tempered with mercy.

Seemingly indifferent to the context provided by the sacred text, Lang veers toward contrasting the “Israelite God”—

“a stern, austere figure, prone to getting angry and meting out punishment”—with the “universal God,” who “generally appears to be an intrinsically kindly God.” This unjustified bisection of the One God of the Torah is critical to the ancient claim that the Christian God of Love supersedes the angry, vengeful God of the Old Testament (itself superseded by the New Testament).

If I referred to my father as “provider” and “protector,” I am confident that Mr. Lang would not infer that I have two fathers, but that one father fills both roles. One is left to wonder what is at stake in resisting an unqualified presentation of the names of the “God of Israel” (Lang’s term) that appear in the Torah as united and fully descriptive of One God. I am not ascribing motives to Lang’s work, but I know of no good that can come from sustaining caricatures of Judaism in order to define Christianity in opposition to them.

Bernhard Lang responds:

The biblical books, like the names of God that they prefer, highlight different aspects of the one God. Elohim, El and El Shadday in Genesis generally refer to a kindly deity, a God who creates and blesses, a figure echoing the Ugaritic god El who is commonly called “the Compassionate, God of Mercy” in the ancient cuneiform sources. In the Book of Exodus, Yahweh is a more 055demanding figure. Particularly interesting are passages that juxtapose the two names or the two sides of the one God. In the Paradise story, we may read the divine name Yahweh Elohim in this way: Elohim points to the Creator, Yahweh to the one who punishes the transgression of the primeval couple, with the banishment from Eden foreshadowing the Babylonian captivity. Exodus 34:6 seems to combine El-ness and Yahweh-ness by simple juxtaposition: “Yahweh! Yahweh! a god (El) compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness … yet he does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.”

Moses’ Name

The Ten-Plus Names

Of course Moses is an Egyptian name (Ogden Goelet, “Moses’ Egyptian Name,” BR 19:03) that likely had an unacceptable prefix such as Ra or Tut, excised by the author of Exodus. This matter has worried many generations of Jews who have tried to come to terms with something so unacceptable. Excuses range from linking the name Moses with meshitihu (Exodus 2:10, “drawing out of the water”) to the opinion (expressed in Midrash Rabbah 32:5 on Leviticus) that the Israelites merited deliverance from Egyptian slavery because they didn’t Egyptianize their Hebrew names, clearly an attempt to “kosherize” Moses and possibly other Egyptian names like Hur (from Horus). Rabbinic commentators came up with the notion of aseret shmot moshe, the ten (authentic) Hebrew names of Moses, these being Hever, Yekutiel, Yered, Avi-Zanoah, Avi-Gedor, Avi-Socco, Shemaiah ben-Netanel, Avigdor, Tuvia and Levi (see Yalkut Shimoni on Exodus and Midrash Rabbah 32:5 on Leviticus).

According to an Egyptian source (Against Apion 1:31, 32, known from Josephus) Moses’ real names were Osariph and Tisithene.

Potpourri

Something Wrong

Letter writer Kevin Amaro (Readers Reply, BR 19:04) is not familiar with the Old Testament. He states that “God would never lead a believer to harm a child.” But Jephthah killed his daughter in a promise to God (Judges 11). God did not intervene. Further, to me, Abraham’s character is somewhat questionable. He argued with God over Sodom and Gomorrah but not over killing his son. There is something wrong there.

Beware the 13th of April

While Harry Rand’s comments (Readers Reply, BR 19:04) on tax payment dates in ancient Rome were interesting, he makes a mistake in referring to April 15 as the “Ides of April.” In one of the traditional Latin grammars I used in high school almost a half-century ago (Bennett, Allyn and Bacon, or Gildersleeve and Lodge), there was a rhyme that I memorized: “In March, July, October, May, the Ides are on the fifteenth day; the Nones the seventh, but all besides have two days less for Nones and Ides.” The Ides of April are on the 13th, not the 15th.

It’s a Keeper
I normally pass on my copies of BR after I have read them, but the August issue is a “keeper” thanks to Bernhard Lang’s glossary of God’s many names. I plan to keep it on my reference shelf.