Your being over there

Your being over there tonight.

I fetched you back with words, here you are,
all things are true and a waiting
for trueness.

The beanstalk climbs
at our window: think
who's growing up near us and
watches it.

God, so we've read, is
one part and a second, dispersed:
in the death
of all who've been reaped
he grows whole.

Our gaze
leads us there,
it's this
half
we deal with.

John Felstiner trans.

The Origin of God Part I Response

Thank you for your comments. You obviously did some digging. I’d like to honour your study with a reasonable response.

First I should point out that the books of the Torah (Pentateuch) are not written in chronological order, though their contents may seem to flow this way. One cannot assume, therefore, that the first mention of God’s name in the Torah is the earliest. For example, “Yahweh” is used as a name of God in Genesis 2, and yet we’re told in Exodus 6 that God was not known as Yahweh until the time of Moses. This is further evidence that the books of the Torah were written at a later date than the events narrated in them. It also provides evidence of alterations to the narrative: since God wasn’t known as Yahweh until the time of Moses, the identification of the two has been enacted retroactively. All this is further supported by the archaeological record. I’ve tried to keep my comments within the scope of the Biblical literature in order to provide a text that is easily accessible, but at some point a stubborn refusal to examine all the evidence reduces one’s position to a circular argument (at that point I would argue it’s no longer a reasonable approach, but superstitious, and has little to do with truth).

El is the singular form of Elohim. Elohim is a variant of the name usually used in the Ancient Near East (ANR) for one god among many. Among the Hittites and in the Ugaritic texts it was “El”. Among the Assyrians and Babylonians it was “Ilu”. The Southern Arabians referred to “Il or Ilum”. One of the texts found at Ugarit makes a similar connection between El and Yahweh as Deut. 32 (see my first post):

Fragment KTU 1.1 IV 14: "The name of the son of god, Yahweh."

At Ugarit Yahweh was viewed as one of El’s sons. El was the head of a pantheon of gods and was usually represented as a bull. In the Ugaritic poems for example, El is referred to as “Bull El”. As you recall, Israel set up a golden calf at Sinai (Ex. 32). This wasn’t some random representation or idolatrous whimsy. The Hebrew text is clear that this was a male (bull) calf:

He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf [‛êgel], fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods [elohim], Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

Note the text says: “these are your gods, Israel...” The translators (NIV) note that the translation can be either singular or plural. The point is clear: this wasn’t a random usage of the term “elohim” as some Biblical commentators have tried to suggest, as if in this instance “elohim” refers to a generic “gods”. The connection between the bull-calf and the Bull god El is quite clear, and would have been clear to Israel. This was the reason for constructing the calf in the first place.

Please see the comment section of my previous post for the response to the rest of your questions.

The Origin of God Part I addendum

Development of Israelite Religion

Polytheism I

El (the chief god of the Canaanite Pantheon) and Yahweh (the god of Midian) are two separate gods.

Polytheism II

El and Yahweh have been assimilated. Traces of the earlier distinctions between the two gods are still present in some texts (Deut. 32:8-9: see initial post on this topic). However, because the two have been assimilated, El is not seen as a threat to Yahweh.

Polytheism III

A movement to assimilate the other gods into the being of Yahweh. The battle with Ba’al at Carmel (1 Kings 18) is an example of how some gods are being discredited and Yahweh is taking on the characteristics usually associated with them (e.g. the storm god). However, other gods, such as Asherah, are still being worshipped.

Monolatry

While other gods exist, the only one worthy of worship is Yahweh. This is reflected in the final edition of the Book of Kings.

Monotheism

There are no gods other than Yahweh. The first explicit literary expression of this can be found in Second Isaiah (Isa. 43:1-11; 44:6-9; 45:5-6; 21-22).

My thanks to Prof. Ellen White at Assumption College for this brief summary.

Origin of God Part I

The Origin of God Part I

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided all mankind,
he set up boundaries for the peoples
according to the number of the sons of Israel.
For the LORD’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted inheritance. Deuteronomy 32: 8-9.

Originally the Old Testament gods “Yahweh” and “El” were two separate entities. The passage quoted above is a Biblical remnant of this distinction. In it the warrior god Yahweh (translated “LORD”) has been initiated into a larger pantheon of gods headed by the Canaanite god El. The Hebrew word translated “Most High” is `el-yôn, an ancient title for the high god El. The passage relates that El apportioned “Jacob” to the god Yahweh as the latter's nation. It was quite common for each nation to have its own god or gods and this story merely plays a part in the mythic tale of how this apportioning came about. Though El divided all mankind, and gave the “nations” their inheritance, it was only the particular nation "Jacob" which was given to the particular god Yahweh as his portion (chêleq). To further support this, there is textual evidence for the variant reading of “the sons of Israel” as: “sons of God” or “divine beings” (which the NIV translators have honestly noted). The passage reads thus: “he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of divine beings (or “divine sons).

There are a number of places in scripture that also point to the original separation of the two deities. Judges 9:46 speaks of a local Canaanite temple of the god “El-Berith” or “El of the covenant”:

“On hearing this, the citizens in the tower of Shechem went into the stronghold of the temple of El-Berith.”

Earlier we learn that the Israelites had worshipped this false god: (Judges 8:33-34)

“No sooner had Gideon died than the Israelites again prostituted themselves to the Baals. They set up Baal-Berith as their god and did not remember the LORD their God, who had rescued them from the hands of all their enemies on every side.”

Once again notice the distinction made between “Yahweh” (LORD) and the local god. That we are not speaking of two separate gods is evident from Judges 9:3-4 where Baal-Berith is indeed identified with the temple of El-Berith in Shechem.

As is often the case, over time gods tend to be conflated with one another, forming a kind of hybrid. One can see this taking place in the passage quoted above, between Baal and El. This was also the case with El and Yahweh. There are many examples in Scripture of this conflation. Psalm 18:13 contains one:

The LORD (Yahweh) thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High (`el-yôn) resounded.

An interesting passage may be found in Exodus 6:2-3:

"God also said to Moses, “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty (El Shadday), but by my name the LORD (Yahweh) I did not make myself fully known to them."

It also supports the evidence that the patriarchs were not aware of a god by the name Yahweh and worshipped rather the Canaanite god El. It further supports the evidence of a later attempt to smooth over the distinction between El and Yahweh (for the most part successfully).

Rilke

Leben und Tod: sie sind im Kerne Eins.

Wer sich begreift aus seinem eignen Stamme,

der preßt sich selber zu dem Tropfen Weins

und wirft sich selber in die reinste Flamme.

Life and death: they are one, at the core entwined.
Who understands himself from his own strain
presses himself into a drop of wine
and throws himself into the purest flame.

Christmas 1922, Mood trans.

Mallarmé

Une proposition qui émane de moi - si, diversement, citée à mon éloge ou par blâme - je la revendique avec celles qui se presseront ici - sommaire veut, que tout, au monde, existe pour aboutir à un livre... Le pliage est, vis-à-vis de la feuille imprimée grande, un indice, quasi religieux : qui ne frappe pas autant que son tassement, en épaisseur, offrant le minuscule tombeau, certes, de l’âme.

What about Haiti?

I am outraged and frustrated by the way the international community, including Canada and the US, has handled the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. Of all those hundreds of millions of dollars, indeed, billions of dollars concerned citizens of these countries have given for the relief effort, only a staggering 20% has reached the people of Haiti since the catastrophe in January. While the US State Department decides whether or not it should honour a promise it made of 1.15 billion dollars in aid, 442 people have died of a totally preventable cholera outbreak, and over 1.3 million are living in "tents." I put it in quotations because I can't justify calling these pieces of scrap materials "tents." A legal intern named Beatrice Lindstrom, who works and lives in Haiti describes it this way:

"But each time the rain falls, I still struggle to turn my mind away from Port-au-Prince’s internally displaced people, especially the hundreds of families living on the street out side my apartment in makeshift tents pulled together from tarp, scrap metal and sheets. For so many of Haiti’s IDPs, rain means no sleep. It means standing up through out the night. It means that the water will transform the floors of their homes into a muddy mess that seeps through their belongings and soaks their beds."

How many homes and shelters have our hundreds of millions of dollars help build for the displaced people of Haiti?: 19,000. And these shouldn't even be called homes. No they're referred to as "transitional wooden shelters." This doesn't even scratch the surface of the need in Haiti. I find it incredible that when the financial sector was threatened with collapse, literally billions of dollars were pumped into the very banks and financial corporations that helped bring about the collapse itself, and this happened in a mere fraction of the time it has taken to build 19,000 shelters, some 10 months after 250,000 people died and over a tenth of the population was displaced because of the earthquake in Haiti. It has become glaringly obvious what the interests of our governments are. While they will scramble like chickens clucking that the sky is falling during a financial crisis, making promises of big bucks to finance corporations (and delivering), once the initial shock of the catastrophe in Haiti was over, it's business as usual. As one of many people who donated to the effort in Haiti, I officially protest the use of only 20% of my donation. I wasn't giving to government or NGOs, I wasn't giving to marketing agencies to promote these same NGOs, or to their CEOs. I, along with literally millions of people, gave to the people of Haiti, every penny, to help ease their suffering and rebuild a life. Ok, realistically I expected a small part of my donation to be used for other purposes (salaries, logistical needs, etc), but only 20% actually reaching the people isn't good enough. It's criminal.

What about Haiti?

Fragment of a thought (on Faith)

How much of current religious belief is merely this: The investing of a proposition with all one's hopes and wishful thinking, a proposition which is only coherent within a certain language game, but which corresponds with nothing in the world, nothing but the proposition itself? Within the circularity of one's proposition there is no 'fact' but the fact of one's proposition. There is, therefore, no truth but the desperate repetition of a worn out phrase: 'God exists.'

Person-al Prayer

1) God is personal

This is perhaps one of the greatest myths the evangelical Church (and others) continues to perpetuate today. To speak of a personal God is to speak of a God that enters into relationship with an individual. God/Jesus is considered my "personal" saviour, hearing my every prayer, comforting me when I need comforted, and for some, even speaking to me when I need to hear a voice. The personal God is one I can speak to like a friend, a God that is nearer to me than I am even to myself. How does this happen? The language varies, but usually any member of the Trinity is spoken of in intimate terms as entering into relationship with us, whether through the agency of the Holy Spirit mediating between God and humans, or as a direct experience of the Father or the Son. The Spirit actualizes the presence of the Divine in the Church/individuals, or the Divine comes to us in what wouldn't usually be referred to as "Holy Spirit," but a direct experience of the Trinity or the Father/Son.

Isn't it funny that while many Christians criticize New Age spiritualists, RPG enthusiasts, or even Harry Potter fans as "living in a fairy tale" or for being out of touch with reality, Christians themselves will sincerely whisper, cry, and shout their hopes and fears to an entity they believe can hear each one of them, who is invisible, and who actually cares about how they perform on that upcoming exam, to rescue them from the consequences of that illegitimate child, for the latest diagnosis of cancer, for improved health and success, etc? This when statistics tell us prayer makes absolutely no difference to the outcome of the situation. In fact, in one study those who prayed actually had a slightly greater negative outcome (I can readily provide the data to anyone who's interested)! For many people this is common sense. Prayer, as most sociologists and psychologists understand, is of the most benefit to the one who prays, whether it be a desperate individual or a collective in need of comfort or hope. Whether the One addressed in prayer exists or not is of no consequence to the outcome. What matters is that the one who prays believes the One they are addressing exists. This is enough. Whether or not the prayers are even answered matter little in this regard. As the late comedian George Carlin sarcastically commented:

"Suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? "Well it's God's will. Thy will be done." Fine, but if it's God's will and he's going to do what he wants to anyway, why the f@#k bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me. Couldn't you just skip the praying part and skip right to his will? It's all very confusing... You know who I pray to: Joe Pesci. For two reasons: 1) First of all I think he's a good actor. 2) He looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't f#@k around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things God was having trouble with... So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now, and I noticed something. I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't, same as God: 50/50. Same as the four leaf clover, the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbits foot. Same as the mojo man, the voodoo lady... it's all the same, 50/50."

That God is "personal" should be understood in it's true light: that God is the person of the believer. In other words, one's relationship with God is little more than one's experience of self-relation. It is this experience of self-relation that is in turn projected outwardly (or yet again inwardly as an experience of Other within the self). The outcome? The believer commits idolatry by attributing divinity to some aspect of the believer's psyche/self. The God-relation is nothing more than another name for the experience of human self-relation, misinterpreted as divine presence etc: a blasphemous idolatry, an exaltation of the human creature to the place of divinity.

Neil Young

It seems that whatever the journey, whatever place I travel, there is always a voice that captures my heart and cuts diagonally across the particularity of my situation. What depth of universality this voice is capable of! What comfort and friendship. Sacred simplicity in the vibration of string and flesh. I salute you Neil Young.. you voice of the prairie wind and northern lights. Thank you for your music. Thank you thank you...

I'm listening...

Robespierre 8 Thermidor II (A translation)

Mais elle existe, je vous en atteste, âmes sensibles et pures; elle existe, cette passion tendre, impérieuse, irrésistible, tourment et délices des cœurs magnanimes, cette horreur profonde de la tyrannie, ce zèle compatissant pour les opprimés, cet amour sacré de la patrie, cet amour plus sublime et plus saint de l'humanité, sans lequel une grande révolution n'est qu'un crime éclatant qui détruit un autre crime. Elle existe, cette ambition généreuse de fonder sur la terre la première République du monde...

But there exists, I will attest, souls that are feeling and pure; it exists, that tender passion, imperious, irresistible, torment and delight of magnanimous hearts, that deep horror of tyranny, that compassionate zeal for the oppressed, that sacred love of country, that love sublime and holiest of mankind, without which a great revolution is just a loud crime that destroys another crime. It does exist, that generous ambition to establish on earth the first Republic in the world...

Capitalism and Poverty

Margaret Bourke-White

I will summarize at least 5 ways that capitalism creates/contributes to poverty:

1) The preconditions needed for capitalist modes of production create poverty

The process whereby wage labourers are appropriated for use in industrial environments necessarily means the destruction of non-wage modes of production, i.e. the guilds and craft associations, which in turn leads to a severing of the connection between land and labour. This has happened and is continuing to happen in Africa and Asia in large numbers where poverty is additionally created by the fundamental necessity for labour to move, i.e. rural to urban, leading to the breakdown of traditional social configurations and often causing living conditions to considerably deteriorate.

2) Commodification increases poverty

As commodification becomes ever more pervasive, cultural norms are modified to reflect “general standards of private consumption.” Wages are the basic precondition of realizing these modified norms. As others have pointed out, the inability to realize these basic norms means relative poverty.

3) Capitalistic production of waste produces poverty

This may be seen clearly in the case of the production of weapons, tobacco and other socially harmful substances for mass consumption. In addition the by-products of pesticides and nuclear power in the form of nuclear waste often contaminate the water table and thus crops and human health. Rather than allocate funds for health victims of capitalistic modes of production and commodities, researchers have argued that governments in the 20th century used surpluses for military purposes, further endangering and pauperizing global citizens.

4) Capitalistic environmental destruction has caused and will cause further poverty

This is related to the previous point but at a much greater level. While some believe capital will be able to appropriate clean technologies for production, the reality is this process is moving much too slowly to prevent global environmental catastrophe. This is partly because capitalistic modes of production are always pushing towards more and more productivity which require more energy and produce more waste. Researchers believe that due to increasing global warming and climate change, there have already been large migrations of victims, in excess of those migrations caused by global conflict. These mass migrations (sometimes numbering in the hundreds of millions) have the inevitable consequence of causing extreme poverty, even as aid organizations and governments strain to meet the need. Unfortunately these migrations are only likely to increase, especially from coastal regions.

5) Capitalism creates poverty through the mechanism of accelerated technological change

Capitalism seeks to increase profit and productivity through the use of technological innovation. As the pace of productivity increases, the ability of labour to adapt to these changes decreases, as is evidenced by developments in India and elsewhere. Technology which allows greater productivity leads particularly to the reduction of the requirement of unskilled labour, which also allows for the fragmentation of the production process itself, leading to greater outsourcing. This process is also evident here in the West.

A Brief Response

The preacher in me will sometimes utter that age old dictum: “Don’t take my word for it, look it up!” There are at least two reasons ministers do this: 1) It establishes their authority as one who is “in the know”, whose opinions are in fact the opinions of Scripture and scholars, etc; and 2) It encourages the flock to read more Bible, to open their books once and a while and engage in their religious beliefs. Even though I no longer speak from that blessed podium, I still have recourse to the dictum for just these two reasons: a) While I do engage in theoretical exercises I begin from a foundation built upon scientific research, study, and academic opinion; and b) I encourage anyone who engages my thinking to at least show the courtesy of doing the same, even at some minimal level before making unfortunate statements or ad hominem attacks.

It would be simple to dismiss such things out of hand, but I’ve customarily responded to comments on my blog out of respect and the principle of mutual engagement (unless of course the comment be a hearty “amen!” or something similar). Needless to say, I will respond to comments made by a friend regarding the role capital plays in global poverty. I will be brief, however, as there are many, many good books one might turn to for an explication of this well-documented phenomenon, and my time has become very precious lately. Please see the next blog post for a brief summary of my position.

Pastor Terry Jones

Photo Credit: Chip Litherland for The New York Times

What Dove Outreach Ministries’ (Pentecostal) Pastor Terry Jones fails to do is quite frankly what a lot of people fail to do: think deeper about the complexity of the social fields in which Muslims live. I say “Muslims” here because obviously we’re dealing specifically with the claims Jones is making about Islam, but it could just as easily apply to any religion or people. When asked for Jones' response to the deaths and injuries sparked in Afghanistan by his plans to burn the Qur’an he said: "We're pointing the finger at the wrong person. I haven't even done anything. I think it reveals ... the violence in Islam” (1). This kind of surface thinking utterly fails to understand the more fundamental social and economic complexities involved. This isn’t the first time Jones has gotten into trouble for his radical behaviour. In 2009 he was expelled from a church in Germany where he had demanded complete obedience from church members, preached a radical form of demonology (not that uncommon in the Pentecostal assemblies I would argue), and resulted in a number of members having to seek out therapy for the psychological damage he caused (2).

What would a Leftist critique of Jones’ statements be? Quite obviously this doesn’t come down to a matter of religion, but economics. I will not comment on the other important aspects of the social field, of which economics is a part, or on the ethnic and political aspects, which are also fundamentally important. I merely want to highlight the irony involved in Jones’ understanding of Islam. The Pentecostal church has always been known as the church of the poor. It is growing like wildfire in the global South, and churches in Africa, Asia, and South America are increasingly sending missionaries to Europe and North America to preach the gospel. What Jones has failed to analyze is the connection between poverty and violence in what he has called “Muslim” violence. In almost every instance of so-called “Muslim” violence, it has in fact been a violence of the oppressed. For example, just today “Islamic” insurgents carried out a suicide attack in Russia’s Caucasus region, killing at least 18 people. Was it politically motivated? Absolutely. What Denis Dyomkin at Reuter’s news agency astutely observes is that “The blast was a new blow to the Kremlin, which is struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, a strip of impoverished, ethnically mixed provinces along predominantly Orthodox Christian Russia's southern border” (3). Jones’ own politically Rightist orientation reflects the very angst so often found to characterize other right-oriented commentators and their counterparts abroad: the fundamental opposition between rich and poor. Religion is a smokescreen Jones. Properly speaking, Islam is not "of the devil": Poverty and its self-deluded big brother, Capitalism, deserve that distinction.

Plotinus (An attempt at translation)

Τίς οὖν ὁ στόλος καὶ ἡ φυγή; Οὐ ποσὶ δεῖ διανύσαι· πανταχοῦ γὰρ φέρουσι πόδες ἐπὶ γῆν ἄλλην ἀπ´ ἄλλης· οὐδέ σε δεῖ ἵππων ὄχημα ἤ τι θαλάττιον παρασκευάσαι, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα πάντα ἀφεῖναι δεῖ καὶ μὴ βλέπειν, ἀλλ´ οἷον μύσαντα ὄψιν ἄλλην ἀλλάξασθαι καὶ ἀνεγεῖραι, ἣν ἔχει μὲν πᾶς, χρῶνται δὲ ὀλίγοι.

Enneads, I.6

What then is the voyage, what is the way of our flight? It is not a journey for feet; for our feet only bear us to distant lands on earth. Nor prepare yourself a horse, or make preparations to travel by sea; all these similar things you must let go and not consider. Close your eyes and wake another way of seeing, which everyone indeed has but few use.