In order to understand my proposal-that divine council co-regency provides the conceptual backdrop to the two powers idea-we have to begin with a brief introduction to the divine council and its structure. This material is quite familiar to scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the Semitic world, but isn’t on the radar at all for scholars whose focus is Second Temple Judaism and New Testament. We have to bridge this gap.
As many scholars of the Hebrew Bible have noted for many years, early Israelite culture cannot be divorced from the culture of “Canaan.” As Smith notes, “Canaanite” is better described as “West Semitic,” since “Canaanite” is used more often than not as a term of contrast with “Israelite,” a choice that is influenced by the biblical record, not archaeology.1 The close relationship of Israelite and West Semitic culture is securely established through the well-known commonalities in material culture, script, language, burial customs, and religion. In terms of language, biblical Hebrew and Ugaritic, for example, have an abundance of common terms in religious contexts: priesthood; sacrifice; offering; tabernacle/temple; the realm of the dead and its inhabits; and names, epithets, and stock descriptions of divine beings.2 Hebrew itself is described in the Bible as one of the languages of Canaan (Isaiah 19:18).
The Council of the Gods / God3
The religious similarity between the Israelites and other West Semitic cultures is quite evident with respect to the hierarchical bureaucracy of divine beings. The textbook example outside the Bible is the literature from Ras Shamra (Ugarit). Translated shortly after their discovery in the 1930s, these tablets contain several phrases describing a council of gods that are conceptually and linguistically parallel to the Hebrew Bible. The Ugaritic council was led by El, the same proper name used in the Hebrew Bible for the God of Israel (e.g., Isaiah 40:18; 43:12). References to the “council of El” include:
- phÌ®r ʾilm (”the assembly of El/ the gods”; KTU 1.47:29, 1.118:28, 1.148:9)4
- phÌ®r bn ʾilm (”the assembly of the sons of El/ the gods”; KTU 1.4.III:14)
- mphÌ®rt bn ʾil (”the assembly of the sons of El”; KTU 1.65:3; cf. 1.40:25, 42)
- dr bn ʾil (”assembly [circle, group] of the sons of El”; KTU 1.40:25, 33-34)
- Ê¿dt ʾilm (”assembly of El / the gods”; KTU 1.15.II: 7, 11). Phoenician texts, such as the Karatepe inscription, also describe a Semitic pantheon: wkl dr bn ʾilm (”and all the circle/group of the sons of the gods”; KAI 26.III.19; 27.12).
The Ê¿dt ʾilm (”assembly of El / the gods”) of Ugaritic texts represents the most precise parallel to the data of the Hebrew Bible. Psalm 82:1 uses the same expression for the council (Ê¿dt ʾilm), along with an indisputably plural use of the word ʾĕloÌ„hiÌ‚m (”God, gods”): “God (ʾĕloÌ„hiÌ‚m) stands in the council of El/the divine council (baÊ¿adat ʾeÌ„l); among the gods (ʾĕloÌ„hiÌ‚m) he passes judgment.” The second occurrence of ʾĕloÌ„hiÌ‚m must be plural due to the preposition “in the midst of.” The Trinity cannot be the explanation for this divine plurality, since the psalm goes on to detail how Israel’s God charges the other ʾĕloÌ„hiÌ‚m with corruption and sentences them to die “like humankind.” Psalm 89:5-7 [6-8] places the God of Israel “in the assembly of the holy ones” (biqhal qĕdoshiÌ‚m) and then asks “For who in the clouds can be compared to Yahweh? Who is like Yahweh among the sons of God (beneÌ‚ ʾeÌ„liÌ‚m), a god greatly feared in the council of the holy ones (bĕsoÌ‚d qĕdoshiÌ‚m)?” Psalm 29:1 commands the same sons of God (beneÌ‚ ʾeÌ„liÌ‚m) to praise Yahweh and give him due obeisance. These heavenly “sons of God” (beneÌ‚ ʾeÌ„loÌ„hiÌ‚m, or the beneÌ‚ ha-ʾeÌ„loÌ„hiÌ‚m) appear in other biblical texts (Gen 6:2.4; Job 1:6; Job 2:1; Job 38:7; and Deut 32:8-9, 43 [LXX, Qumran]).5
Another biblical Hebrew term matching Ugaritic terminology is doÌ‚r, which often means “generation” but, as with Ugaritic and Phoenician dr, may also refer to the “circle” (group) of gods; that is, the divine council (Amos 8:14 [emendation]; Psa 49:20; 84:11).
The next post will detail: (1) the comparative evidence for the meeting place / abode of the gods / temple / tabernacle language, and (2) the structure of the divine council.
- Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (2nd ed.; Eerdmans, 2002), 19. ↩
- Smith, 19-24. ↩
- The classic book-length study on the divine council is E. Theodore Mullen, The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature (HSM 24; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1980. See also Gerald Cooke, “The Sons of (the) God(s),” ZAW 76 (1964): 22-47; Mullen, The Divine Council; idem, “Assembly, Divine,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary 2:214-217; S. B. Parker, “Sons of (the) God(s),” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 204-208 (hereafter, DDD); Matitiahu Tsevat, “God and the Gods in Assembly,” HUCA 40-41 (1969-1970): 123-137; J. Morgenstern, “The Mythological Background of Psalm 82,” HUCA 14 (1939): 29-126. ↩
- KTU = Die Keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit; now known as The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995). ↩
- Textual critics of the Hebrew Bible are unanimous in agreement that the Qumran reading (in brackets) is superior to the Masoretic text in Deut 32:8, which reads ×‘× ×™ ישׂר×ל (”sons of Israel”). See for example, P. W. Skehan, “A Fragment of the ‘Song of Moses’ (Deut 32) from Qumran,” BASOR 136 (1954) 12-15; idem, “Qumran and the Present State of Old Testament Text Studies: The Masoretic Text,” JBL 78 (1959) 21; Julie Duncan, “A Critical Edition of Deuteronomy Manuscripts from Qumran, Cave IV. 4QDt b, 4QDt e, 4QDt h, 4QDt j, 4QDt b, 4QDt k, 4QDtl,” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1989); Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 269; Eugene Ulrich et al., eds., Qumran Cave 4.IX: Deuteronomy to Kings (DJD XIV; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 75-79; Sanders, The Provenance of Deuteronomy 32, 156; J. Tigay, Deuteronomy, The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 514-518 ↩
