One vein of research I didn't get to use in yesterday's piece is something I think about often: the OT is *filled* with rich references to pantheon gods. The word for "dawn" in Hebrew is literally one of the twin gods, Dawn and Dusk, children of El, and both words are used to bestow a sense of divinity upon David's line.
Sometimes I wonder what it must have felt like to live in a world with so many god stories from intersecting tribes.
Then I chuckle at my silliness: that's us, today, as well.
What an excellent instructor!
I'm always fascinated by the contexts that shape worldly perception. I know I share this digital sphere, for instance, with people who genuinely believe in angels and demons, & who see signs and symbols in places I do not.
One could roll one's eyes at it, but it's much more fruitful to think about what it actually means to share a world where we're all speaking slightly different tongues.
Sometimes it's a wonder that we connect well at all.
@MLClark oh, he hit heavy on the "environmental devastation imagery is used to show consequences for not behaving in a just and righteous manner"--granted, this was during the '70s but he drew direct lines between injustice and mistreatment of the poor and downtrodden and the environmental consequences described in some of the prophetic books.
@MLClark one of the valuable parts of my year of Biblical Hebrew was the degree to which the original is so rooted in the environment. Metaphors that don't always cross over into English--but my teacher had spent time in the Middle East and talked about those desert-based metaphors.