Hear, O Israel!  ## Metadata - Author: [[Data Over Dogma]] - Full Title: Hear, O Israel! - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/030eed49-cb28-44c4-81f3-6b95937d9672 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Grammatical Ambiguity Of The Shema** - Deuteronomy 6:4 (Shema) is short in Hebrew but densely ambiguous in translation. - The phrase structure supports reading 'Adonai, our God, Adonai is one' rather than 'the Lord alone.' Transcript: Dan McClellan Very short. And we're going to cruise on past the first two. In Hebrew, it's Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Boom, that's it. And then what is the translation from our beloved NRSVUE? Dan Beecher NRSVUE has it, Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Ooh. But they do have a... I'm going to... You've thrown a flag already. Yes. A flag on the play. Yes. There is a footnote that says, or the Lord is our God, the Lord, the Lord is the Lord, our God is one or the Lord, our God, the Lord is one or the Lord is our God. The Lord is one. Wow. That's a, it sounds like it's not definitive in the Hebrew. Dan McClellan Yeah, I'm going to quibble with this translation, but this is a hotly debated, or it has a history of being hotly debated. I think scholars, for the most part, have more or less settled on a way to understand this. But yeah, if we move past Shema Yisrael, which is just the imperative here, listen. Just listen to me. Yeah, and Israel, O Israel is supposed to indicate the vocative. The O means you. And so, hey, you Israel, listen. ([Time 0:12:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/32c6404e-9071-4e4f-b22d-bd750d50e9b9)) - **Phrase Usage Points To Apposition** - 'Adonai Eloheinu' in Deuteronomy consistently functions as apposition: 'the Lord, our God.' - That pattern argues against translating the first clause as 'the Lord is our God.' Transcript: Dan McClellan And the question is, are we to understand these as verbless clauses, the null copula, where it is— You just said a whole bunch of words. I'm going to explain. Is it an X is Y sentence? Because in Hebrew, you don't need the to be verb all the time. In fact, you very rarely ever need it. So you can just put two things together, and can be understood as X is Y. Or is one thing just qualifying the Adonai? And this phrase, Adonai Eloheinu, those exact words occur multiple times in the book of Deuteronomy. I think like 20-ish times, something like that. And every single time it is used the exact same way where Eloheinu is in apposition to Adonai. So it is not a verbalist clause. It is just saying Adonai, that is to say our God. Okay. Dan Beecher Eloheinu means our God. It is the possessive plural first person of Elohim. Elohim, exactly. Dan McClellan And this occurs a bunch of times, and it always means the Lord our God. So it never is used in Deuteronomy, as near as we can tell, to mean Adonai is our God. ([Time 0:13:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/95e57df9-aca6-4589-a4d8-f960eb79ba1e)) - **Shema Emphasizes Exclusive Relationship** - The Shema likely addresses how many 'Adonais' there are, not how many gods exist. - The text presupposes other gods by using Eloheinu ('our God') and by parallels with the first commandment. Transcript: Dan McClellan Lot of people understand this as the quintessential declaration of monotheism. But it's not a question of how many gods there are. It appears to be a question of how many Adonais there are. Right. Dan Beecher Because when we're saying Adonai or the Lord, we're not just saying a God. It is the Tetragrammaton. It is his name. Dan McClellan So we're naming a very specific being, a very specific entity. Right. And then using Eloheinu is interesting. A lot of people don't look hard at this, but Eloheinu, as you pointed out, is the noun Elohim with a first common plural pronominal suffix or possessive suffix. So that presupposes the existence of other gods because it's saying God. Well, which one? Our God. The one that pertains to us. Not that one over there, not those over there. Our God. So it's already presupposing the existence of other gods. And this is much like the first commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. The first commandment is not everything's cool because there are no other gods. ([Time 0:17:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2d1efdb3-24df-46c1-9532-8a8a747cdf0f)) - **'One' Means Exclusive For You, Not Only Existent** - The Hebrew use of 'one' (echad/achat) can mean 'the only one for me' rather than 'the only one that exists.' - Song of Songs uses the same construction to mean 'my beloved is the one for me' despite many other lovers existing. Transcript: Dan McClellan And it's such a fascinating example. It's in the Song of Songs. And it's an easy one to remember. What's the Song of Songs all about? Songs. No, sex. No, there you go. The hibbity-dibbity. So we're going to go to Song of Songs 6, 9. Thank you for that. That was a gift to me. This is not my joke. This is real. So, song 6, 9. And it says, my dove, my perfect one, is one. Achat. And that's the feminine form of what we see in Deuteronomy 6, 4, which is the masculine form, echad. And then it says, the NRSV UE says, the darling of her mother, flawless to her who bore her. And I'm not a big fan of that, but it says she is one to her mother, the favorite she is to the one who bore her and so we have two occurrences of this identification of the lover's uh dove and Perfect one as one and it does not mean this is the only woman out there right no other women exist and we know this because the previous verse says there are 60 queens and eight concubines And maidens without number. And then they go, but my dove, my perfect one is one. And so the idea here is not this is the only one that exists. The idea here is that this is the only one for me. This is the only one that matters. And then we go to the next part. She is one to her mother. And so people think, oh, well, that means she's an only child. But then it calls her the favorite to the one who bore her, which a lot of scholars have pointed out doesn't support the idea of an only child. Rather, this is the mother's favorite child. In other words, again, the only one for me. Of all the ones that are available, this is the one that matters to me. And so this would suggest, in accordance with the context of Deuteronomy, that is all about a covenant where God is saying, me and you, me and you, just me and you. ([Time 0:26:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/24b53847-3a57-42c3-92d3-68d137f0451b)) - **Shema Fits Vassal-Treaty Rhetoric** - Deuteronomy's rhetoric suits vassal-treaty language: 'you belong to me, be faithful.' - Shema fits this covenant model as a demand for exclusive loyalty to Adonai. Transcript: Dan McClellan And you shall have no other gods, the first commandment. So I think Nate makes a wonderful case that the idea here is not that Adonai is the only God that exists. The verse actually presupposes the opposite, that Adonai is one of many other gods, but Adonai is our God and Adonai is one to us. Right. Which is exactly what we have in 1 Corinthians when Paul says there are many gods and many lords, but for us, there is one God. And so I think this is all interrelated. It is about an exclusive relationship, not some kind of exclusive existence. And this would fit with a lot of the rhetoric elsewhere in Deuteronomy and elsewhere in Deutero-Isaiah ([Time 0:28:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a9c62818-de70-4ddc-8e4e-b972953a4485)) - **Single Adonai As A Centralized Address** - A related reading is 'monoyahwism': there's one Adonai (the Jerusalem Adonai), not multiple local manifestations. - This supports centralizing worship at Jerusalem as Deuteronomy demands. Transcript: Dan McClellan This is my backup reading. Okay. And because this is the first layer of Deuteronomy, this is going on when there were other cult sites besides the Temple of Jerusalem. Now, Sennacherim had destroyed them a century before. The kings before Josiah were probably rebuilding them, trying to reestablish this worship of Adonai and Asherah and things like that at these other cult sites. Another interpretation is monoyahwism, which would be there is no Adonai of Taiman and Adonai of Shomron and Adonai of Jerusalem. There is only one Adonai. That is the Adonai of Jerusalem. In other words, it would be an attack against the manifestations of Adonai at other locations. Oh, okay. Because you're only allowed to worship in the one location where Adonai will choose to place his name, which would be Jerusalem. So there's another interpretation that understands this to be saying you can't go to other temples to worship Adonai. ([Time 0:31:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/33c64d06-d44e-4d97-b769-b28b98eedb9d)) - **Pseudoepigraphal Letter To Exiles** - The Letter of Jeremiah frames itself as Jeremiah's counsel to exiles taken by Nebuchadnezzar. - Scholars note it was likely composed later (possibly in Greek) and not by Jeremiah himself. Transcript: Dan McClellan It's in the form of a letter or an epistle, if you're nasty. And this purports to be a letter from Jeremiah sent to those who were to be taken to Babylon as exiles by the king of the Babylonians. That would be Nebuchadnezzar. To give them the message that God had commanded him. So thematically, this is connected with Jeremiah. Obviously, it was not written by Jeremiah. Scholars these days are coming around to the idea that this is probably originally composed in Greek and that it was probably composed perhaps in the late second, early first century BCE. So it's still before the New Testament. Dan Beecher And just to remind me, the exile happened when? Dan McClellan So the Babylonians, there are two main waves, 597 BCE and then 586 BCE, and it's the 586 invasion that results in the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. I think some folks think this is probably the 597 wave that this letter is supposed to be associated with. Okay. But yeah, this is purportedly Jeremiah writing to the exilees. ([Time 0:35:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7f332b4b-7269-44d1-9f6e-5b645ae2402e)) - **Exile Framed As Divine Punishment** - The Letter rationalizes exile as punishment for sins to protect divine reputation. - This fits a broader ancient pattern explaining military defeat as deity displeasure. Transcript: Dan McClellan But it starts off, as you would expect a letter to start off, because of the sins that you have committed before God, you will be taken to Babylon as exiles by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians. Therefore, when you have come to Babylon, you will remain there for many years, for a long time, up to seven generations. After that, I will bring you away from there in peace. Dan Beecher Wow, what an amazing prediction that ended up being. Dan McClellan Seven generations from now, won't matter to you, but seven generations from now. Dan Beecher And is that about the length of the exile, seven generations? Dan McClellan That's a traditional way to measure it. Dan Beecher So yeah, this is definitely written by someone much later on down the road. Just after the fact, just working that in. I do want to say uh i when i first read that that opening line because of the sins that you have committed before god like explaining that the reason for the exile is is the sins of these people I was like why is that the setup here? Was that really necessary? Why is it you guys suck and so you have to put up with this? But it becomes clearer as we move into the rest of the book. ([Time 0:37:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6214a28b-3590-476d-820e-cf0e15da4a9a)) - **Idol Polemic Repeats The Same Point** - The Letter of Jeremiah is an extended polemic: don't fear Babylonian gods, they're crafted by human hands. - It repeatedly mocks their materiality (wood, silver, gold) to show they lack divine agency. Transcript: Dan Beecher You ain't kidding, man. It retreads the same ground a lot. Yeah. Dan McClellan So three through five is just, now in Babylon, you will see gods made of silver and gold and wood that people carry on their shoulders and that caused the nations to fear. So beware of becoming at all like the foreigners or of letting fear of these gods possess you when you see the multitude before and behind them, worshiping them. But say in your heart, it is you, O Lord, whom we must worship, for my angel is with you and he is watching over your lives. Dan Beecher Fiend, that could have been the end of the letter. That's the whole thing. Because literally, it gets infuriating, I'll be honest with you. It's painting a picture and it is getting a little muddy. Well, it's painting a picture and then repainting the same picture over that picture and then doing it again and again. And the thrust of it really is just, hey, you guys are going to see a bunch of other gods. Don't worry. They're not real. And that is the entirety of the thing over and over and over again. Dan McClellan You're going to hear about wood, silver, and gold like 30 times. ([Time 0:42:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fdbcb14f-e3aa-4c1f-9197-5ff456df19e3)) - **Read Polemics By Finding The Thesis** - Expect repetition when reading ancient polemics; the core thesis often appears early and is restated. - Focus on the thesis sentence to grasp the author's main argument quickly. Transcript: Dan Beecher Fiend, that could have been the end of the letter. That's the whole thing. Because literally, it gets infuriating, I'll be honest with you. It's painting a picture and it is getting a little muddy. Well, it's painting a picture and then repainting the same picture over that picture and then doing it again and again. And the thrust of it really is just, hey, you guys are going to see a bunch of other gods. Don't worry. They're not real. And that is the entirety of the thing over and over and over again. ([Time 0:42:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ae8af355-0c9f-4587-8e73-446f51e3ff78)) - **From Images To Text As Divine Presence** - The destruction of images in 586 BCE led Judahites to renegotiate divine presence toward texts and laws. - Standing stones and written law became new loci of divine agency replacing vulnerable idols. Transcript: Dan McClellan Okay. And in my book, Adonai's Divine Images, I talk about this, how there seems to be a renegotiation of divine presencing. What kind of material media are we going to use in order to manifest God's presence? Because the temple in Jerusalem would have had divine images. We have a Judahite temple preserved at Arad that had a divine image in it. It's still there. You can go look at it. It's a standing stone. It looks like a headstone from a cemetery. And that would have been the thing that housed the divine presence, the divine agency. Dan Beecher Was all of this just jealousy because they had better looking gods? Dan McClellan Well, the larger empires around them definitely had more goods, more money, more experts, a bigger market. So they had a lot more anthropomorphic statuary and things like that, and there was a lot more silver and gold, where we think that the ancient Israelites and Judahites were mainly working In like clay and stone. Dan Beecher So these Babylonian gods were definitely anthropomorphic because it describes they have a tongue, but that was blah, blah, blah. They have eyes, but they can't see like it. Like this is definitely a human figure. Dan McClellan Frequently, not exclusively. There were divine images that were not anthropomorphic. And there's a wonderful book that was edited by Barbara Porter called What is a God? That was all about Mesopotamian divine imagery and deity and what it meant to be a god. It seems like in ancient Israel it was primarily standing stones or miniature statuary that was like in the shape of a bull or maybe like a horse or maybe a human or something like that. They found incorporated into the one of the walls a broken probably standing stone that has two little legs in a uh in a smiting pose that were probably so so probably there was a standing Stone that was an image that depicted either ball or adonai the storm deity in a smiting pose and at some point it was broken and the stones were just reused architecturally. Why not? Yeah. But what I argue in the book is that the realization that the divine images are vulnerable, that they can be destroyed, and the fact of that happening in 586 BCE led to a renegotiation Where they're like, we need to find a better way to do this. And my thesis is that it moves to text. And this is why you have texts in Deuteronomy and in Joshua where they're supposed to set up standing stones and write the text of the law on the standing stone, which is the divine image. And then they worship because the standing stone with the law on it has facilitated the presence of the deity. And so the law then becomes kind of the locus of divine agency. ([Time 0:47:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0fffc1ca-e12d-4b43-a267-1aee688ad21b)) - **Polemic Ignores Judahite Image Logic** - The Letter's polemic is crafty because Judahites used images too and understood them as channels of divine presence. - The text reframes those images as mere material while redefining divine presence toward text-based forms. Transcript: Dan McClellan This is a very crafty little piece of polemic because they know that the wood and the gold is not the god itself. They know that's just the channel that transmits the agency because they've been doing the same thing. They did the same thing with the Ark. They do the same thing with standing stones. They did the same freaking thing with the Nehushtan. When Moses puts the bronze serpent on the staff, exact same logic. So they know that saying that piece of stone or that wood covered in gold isn't a real God. They know that's not what they believe. ([Time 0:55:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b589f265-e39a-443e-ab68-884d28ee3922))