Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Yahweh’s killer instinct

Copyright 2021, InterAmerica, Inc.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Biblical episode in which Yahweh seeks out Moses to kill the great prophet [Exodus 4:24-26]

“ .. The Lord came upon Moses and would have killed him. [But Moses’ wife cut off her son’s foreskin, touching his feet – who’s feet? The Lords? Or her son’s?] Then God let Moses go.” [Confraternity/Douay Verson, 1957]

There are other interpretations of this episode. Here’s one:

“According to the Samaritan version of this episode, Zipporah took a sharp flint and cut herself as a physical sign of repentance, because she realized that God was angry at Moses for bringing her and their two sons along on the divine mission to free the Israelites from bondage in Egypt.” [From an internet query]

(Much interpretation occurs about Biblical passages, slanted according to the interpreter's bias.)

My point here is that god [YHWH] had murderous urges and expressed them as a human being would, not as a mythical or theological god would. Thus, YHWH is seen or experienced as a fellow human, not as a super, omnipotent entity.

Let me stress that the consideration YHWH is god comes after the fact(s). All we have are passages from The Hebrew Bible constructed long after YHWH’s biographical existence. Which is about 1200 B.C.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Hebrew_Bible_canon

To restate: In the period of the heralded humans, called gods by later interpreters – about 1400 B.C, or during the Bronze Age – YHWH appears out of nowhere, and asserts himself among the Israelite nation, but attaches his presence mostly to Moses, who was the Israelite hero that extracted the Hebrew peoples from Egypt.

Why YHWH attached himself to Moses is contained in the homoerotic instances noted by Eilberg-Schwartz in his book God’s Phallus mentioned early on here.

Let me get into this…..

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