Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 121 posts

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#81

Post by thaumasiotes »

cogman10 wrote: post #18
octopoc wrote: post #5

The Fall of Civilizations podcast has an interesting episode about Assyria. The cities in Mesopotamia were polytheistic and each city has its own deity. Apparently the way they viewed their deities was similar to how we view sports teams. There was an expectation that if you traveled to another city, you should sacrifice to its god. They viewed inter city warfare as the gods competing in heaven.

Some of this is visible in the Bible. For example, Moses needing to keep his hands up to win a battle (Ex 17). Or his battles with the Egyptian gods. From what I've read, it's believed that the Hebrews emerged from multiple people's groups combining and unifying their beliefs. El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. That's why some of the biblical stories like the c…

> El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified.

Well, only one of those is the name of a god. El is just the ordinary word "god".

Ba'al is the ordinary word "lord". Unlike El, this could theoretically double as the name of a god in a couple of ways. In the typical case it didn't, and gods addressed as Ba'al had names beyond the title. Compare "Ba'al Hadad", where the god's name is "Hadad".

(But in the general case, Freyja is just the ordinary word "lady" and has no other name that survives to us, and Adonis is the ordinary word "lord". Adonis is a special case in that his name is not the word "lord" in Greek; he is a borrowing of the Semitic deity Tammuz, and the Greeks copied his title, "lord", rather than his name.)

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#82

Post by thaumasiotes »

schuyler2d wrote: post #44
smithkl42 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Baal" was less a name than a title. In modern Hebrew, it just means "lord" or "husband". It was also apparently a title that could, at some stages of Israel's history, even be applied to YHWH, much like "Adonay" ("My lord"). For instance, the individuals named "Mephibosheth" and "Ish-bosheth" (two of the sons of Saul, a clear if imperfect Yahwist) were originally named "Meribaal" and "Ish-baal". Whoever put together…

I don't want to completely refute this because I'm also an amateur and there are a lot of instabilities of consensus, but Baal was at least also the son of El in Canaanite religion which predated an Israeli kingdom. My understanding is more that Yahvists had more nomadic origins and populated (/conquered, possibly the Levites[1]) a Canaanite cultural context and then there was religious syncreticism and interest in m…

> Baal was at least also the son of El in Canaanite religion which predated an Israeli kingdom

Where are you getting this from?

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#83

Post by xeonmc »

colechristensen wrote: post #64
cogman10 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this is visible in the Bible. For example, Moses needing to keep his hands up to win a battle (Ex 17). Or his battles with the Egyptian gods. From what I've read, it's believed that the Hebrews emerged from multiple people's groups combining and unifying their beliefs. El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. That's why some of the biblical stories like the c…

>You can see a historic parallel to how that played out with the formation of the Roman pantheon. Mostly stolen stories and ideas from the Greek pantheon tweeked to fit the empire. You also have to think in the opposite direction, how did these gods all come about. Every person will have their own at list slightly different understanding and memory of the stories and rituals. Go to the next village over and everythin…

Iron Man (Earth-626), Iron Man (Earth-25519), Iron Man (Earth 42069 Prime)

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#84

Post by thaumasiotes »

nrclark wrote: post #76
empath75 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Bible" is not a single coherent text, but rather a collection of hundreds or thousands of years of oral tradition that was created and passed on by various people at various times for various purposes, and then collected and edited again by different people for different purposes. There are layers of edits that you can tease out with careful reading, and they can be supported by archeological evidence from sites…

It's also worth noting - the Bible isn't a single book, and it never was. It's 66 or 73 separate books (depending on the flavor of Christianity), bound together in a single binding. Much more of an anthology than a single book. The books were separated in time, authorship, culture, and even language. Never intended to be taken together as a single document.

> Never intended to be taken together as a single document.

Well, that's clearly untrue. People all over the world intend for you to do that right now.

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#85

Post by ThalesX »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #82
schuyler2d wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to completely refute this because I'm also an amateur and there are a lot of instabilities of consensus, but Baal was at least also the son of El in Canaanite religion which predated an Israeli kingdom. My understanding is more that Yahvists had more nomadic origins and populated (/conquered, possibly the Levites[1]) a Canaanite cultural context and then there was religious syncreticism and interest in m…

> Baal was at least also the son of El in Canaanite religion which predated an Israeli kingdom Where are you getting this from?

Have you tried googling "baal son of el"? I have no idea on who Baal is, or El, but the discussion sparked my curiosity and that's all I needed to do in order to answer for myself the question "where are you getting this from?".

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#86

Post by exceptione »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #84
nrclark wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting - the Bible isn't a single book, and it never was. It's 66 or 73 separate books (depending on the flavor of Christianity), bound together in a single binding. Much more of an anthology than a single book. The books were separated in time, authorship, culture, and even language. Never intended to be taken together as a single document.

> Never intended to be taken together as a single document. Well, that's clearly untrue. People all over the world intend for you to do that right now.

The original author/copier intends.

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#87

Post by exceptione »

schuyler2d wrote: post #46
cogman10 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this is visible in the Bible. For example, Moses needing to keep his hands up to win a battle (Ex 17). Or his battles with the Egyptian gods. From what I've read, it's believed that the Hebrews emerged from multiple people's groups combining and unifying their beliefs. El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. That's why some of the biblical stories like the c…

There's definitely some relatable and transmitted stories like the flood, etc. However, the Levant and Egyptian gods "grew up" in different contexts than Mesopotamia. Egypt was pretty centralized from the beginning and their gods were not based on cities. "El" means mountain and Baal was a storm god -- neither of which has (to my understanding) any trace to specific cities. That said, I agree there was some idea of a…

> YHWH living in the Arc so they could carry Him into battle.

What story do you refer to?

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#88

Post by thaumasiotes »

schuyler2d wrote: post #46
cogman10 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this is visible in the Bible. For example, Moses needing to keep his hands up to win a battle (Ex 17). Or his battles with the Egyptian gods. From what I've read, it's believed that the Hebrews emerged from multiple people's groups combining and unifying their beliefs. El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. That's why some of the biblical stories like the c…

There's definitely some relatable and transmitted stories like the flood, etc. However, the Levant and Egyptian gods "grew up" in different contexts than Mesopotamia. Egypt was pretty centralized from the beginning and their gods were not based on cities. "El" means mountain and Baal was a storm god -- neither of which has (to my understanding) any trace to specific cities. That said, I agree there was some idea of a…

> Egypt was pretty centralized from the beginning and their gods were not based on cities.

I don't think this is really accurate; you can often tell where an ancient Egyptian was from by the choice of god honored in his name. The gods very much are localized to particular places.

> "El" means mountain

"El" means "god"; this one couldn't be more clear-cut. If someone told you it means "mountain", you should dismiss anything else they might say.

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#89

Post by thaumasiotes »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #66
sapphicsnail wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pagan gods are personifications of natural forces, hence Thales's famous remark that "the world is full of gods". There were all kinds of gods. The Christian conception of God is taken from "pagan" philosophers. There's also a difference between theologian's/philosopher's conception of the Divine and religion and how lay people actually understood their faith. Even early Christians were divided on how they understo…

> There were all kinds of gods. And if you look at all those quintessentially pagan gods of the myths, you will find that they share this in common: that they are beings among many. > The Christian conception of God is taken from "pagan" philosophers. I'm not sure what you're implying, but traditional Christian theology draws from both biblical sources and philosophical analysis, and yes, that includes the philosophi…

> note also the use of "Logos" [λόγος] in John 1:1, which has echoes in such concepts as Tao [道]

Well, 道 is used to translate the Biblical Word because (a) it is the native Chinese word for what is right, and also (b) it is, unrelatedly, also a verb meaning "say", but that's just a pun. The 道 of morality is not a word or anything related to a word. It's a path, the correct path through life.

Re: Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

#90

Post by nkoren »

empath75 wrote: post #55
ARandomerDude wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. How does this theory account for the overt hostility to Baal et al. in the Bible?

"The Bible" is not a single coherent text, but rather a collection of hundreds or thousands of years of oral tradition that was created and passed on by various people at various times for various purposes, and then collected and edited again by different people for different purposes. There are layers of edits that you can tease out with careful reading, and they can be supported by archeological evidence from sites…

This is all absolutely correct. To amplify this point for people unfamiliar with it, the two creation stories are:

1. God separates the light from the darkness, the earth from the water, and creates all the plants and animals and peoples of the world.

2. The LORD God creates the garden of Eden, makes Adam from mud and Eve from his rib, plants a tree of knowledge and tree of life, etc.

Already there's a divergence: Adam is supposedly the first man in the second story, but in the first story, all the peoples of the world have already been created. But the more interesting divergence is in the name of the responsible God. This often flies over the head of readers in English, but notice that the first story isn't the "LORD God", just "God". This is because in Hebrew, the name of God in the first story is "Elohim", while in the second, it's "YHVH" -- a name too holy for Jews to pronounce, so they just say "Hashem" ("the name"), although if you're naughty you can say "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" or whatever. Why the difference?

A clue is that "Elohim" is a pluralised word in Hebrew. Once Judaism became fully monotheistic, this became interpreted as something like "The Wings of God" -- a sort of abstract all-encompassing Godly aura, rather than the pointed and personified manifestation of the divine, which is YHVH. But this is a bit of a tortured post-rationalisation, and isn't explicitly supported by the text. It's much more straightforward to read "Elohim" as simply "the gods", which is probably how it was read when the text was first assembled, with a henotheistic YHVH text being appended to an earlier polytheistic text.

Even the first commandment -- "I am YHVH, your God, and you shall have no other Gods before me" -- reads better as a henotheistic rather than a monotheistic text. It doesn't say there are no other gods. It pretty strongly implies the opposite. It just says that the other gods aren't for you.

Post reply on HN