Theocalm XL

In the books of the Old Testament, the agreement that the god Yahweh makes with the Israelites is in the form of the type of suzerain-vassal covenant typical in the ancient Near East. These covenants would normally specify the terms of an agreement between a king and a people who would have to pay tribute to him. A section of these covenants would be devoted to the curses that would happen if the vassal breaks the agreement. Leviticus and Deuteronomy each have their own version of this part of the covenant with Yahweh, from which I've quoted in the picture.

One example of a similar covenant outside of the Bible is a treaty from 1280 BC between the Hittite king Muwatalli II and Alaksandu, king of Wilusa. See Dennis J. McCarthy's book, Treaty and Covenant: A Study in Form in the Ancient Oriental Documents and in the Old Testament for a comparison of each section of this covenant with Deuteronomy. The main difference is that, normally, covenants would have a section where gods would be listed as witness to the covenant, but since Yahweh himself was a god, there was apparently no need for this part of the Yahweh-Israelite covenant. Another example are the treaties of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon. Some of the curses in these are the same as those in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.

So, the covenant that Yahweh makes with Moses and the Israelites essentially states that Yahweh would be the Israelites' god, would protect them, make them prosperous, and help them defeat their enemies. The Israelites' part of the agreement was that they would have to worship no other god but Yahweh and obey all his commands. The punishments for the Israelites breaking the covenant included Yahweh making them eat their own children.

However, the view that only Yahweh should be worshiped was apparently either a minority view or a later literary invention. This can be clearly seen by reading Judges, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, and 1st and 2nd Chronicles. In these histories, most Israelites are constantly worshiping many gods in addition to Yahweh, such as Baal and Asherah. Whenever a disaster happens to the people, such as being conquered by the Philistines, the compilers of these books blame it on the Israelites' worship of those other gods. Even as late as the fifth century BC, Jews were still polytheistic, as can be seen in the Elephantine papyri, writings written by a Jewish colony in Egypt. For example, one papyrus contains an oath sworn by a Jew to Anath (apparently the wife of Yahweh) and to another god.

The other passage I put in the above picture is from a chapter of Isaiah describing the “Day of Yahweh”, when Yahweh would gather an army and kill all the sinners in Babylon. This is part of the first section of Isaiah, which was written around the same time as the core sections of Deuteronomy— while Judah was a vassal state to Assyria, before they were conquered by Babylon.

For the quotes in this picture, I used the World English Bible translation, instead of translating it myself this time.

Choose an English translation to read these passages in their contexts:

Leviticus 26:

World English Bible | English Standard Version| New International Version

Deuteronomy 28:

World English Bible | English Standard Version| New International Version

Isaiah 13:

World English Bible | English Standard Version| New International Version

Zombie Invasion!

This, of course, is from the story of the resurrection of the dead towards the end of the Gospel of Matthew.

Among the early Christians, the gospels were not static, unchanging documents, but rather were freely changed and added to. For example, the earliest available copies of the Gospel of Mark have four different endings. Another example would be the fact that the "cast the first stone" story in the Gospel of John does not appear in the ancient manuscripts until the fifth century Codex Bezae (F. 133b through F. 134b)

The gospel of Matthew is a copy of the Gospel of Mark with some rewording and stories added to it. Almost every verse of Mark is included in Matthew, and almost always in the same order. Much of it is reworded, and much of it is taken word-for-word from Mark. By comparing the two books, and seeing what changes the author of Matthew made, one can see what his intentions were in compiling this gospel. One of his main intentions seems to be to convey to his audience that Jesus was the Jewish messiah prophesied about in the Jewish scriptures.

This story in the quoted passage about holy people raising from the dead at the time of Jesus’s death is one such example of the author inserting a story with that intent. Jewish writings that predicted a resurrection of righteous people include Isaiah 26:19, Daniel 12, 2 Maccabees 7:9, 7:14, 7:23, 12:43-45, and 1 Enoch 51.

If one compares Matthew and Mark in their original Greek, it becomes easy to see exactly what parts in Matthew came from Mark, and what parts were added. Click here to see the context of this story compared to the corresponding section in Mark. I’ve highlighted in red where the words are the same in the corresponding verses.

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Compare with its parallel passage in Mark:

Bears!

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This is from the book of 2nd Kings, after the prophet Elijah had been taken up into the sky by the whirlwind caused by a chariot made of fire. His apprentice, Elisha, succeeded him and gained a double portion of Elijah's power. Elisha then proceeded to perform a series of miracles, this being one of them.

This was one of the passages listed by Marcion in his book Antithesis (Contradictions), in which he compared the harsh god of the Old Testament books to the loving god of Jesus, to show that they could not possibly be the same god, but must be two separate gods. He started a large sect of Christianity during the reign of Antoninus Pius (138 to 161 AD). His book Antithesis is no longer extant, but is known through Tertullian's five-volume work entitled "Against Marcion", written in 208 AD. See chapter 23 of book 4 to see Tertullian's response to Marcion's use of this passage from 2 Kings. See also book 4, chapter 11 of Eusebius's Church History, written in the fourth century AD, for more on Marcion.

Henotheism gets pushy

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This is from the book of Deuteronomy, which is traditionally thought to be the book which 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34 say was found in the temple of Jerusalem during King Josiah's religious reforms in the 7th century BC. It is a law code which purports to have been given to Moses by the god Yahweh. It is comparable to older law codes from the Near East, such as the Code of Ur-Nammu (2100-2050 BC), the Laws of Eshnunna (1930 BC), the Code of Lipit-Ishtar (1870 BC), and the Code of Hammurabi (1790 BC). It should be noted that in the quote in the picture, wherever you see the word "Lord", it would be the name Yahweh in the original Hebrew. I translated this from the Septuagint, which replaces Yahweh with "kurios", meaning "lord". This tradition, started by the Septuagint, is still followed today by most modern translations.

An interesting thing I've found when reading Deuteronomy in the Septuagint is that, although it is presented in the form of speeches given by Moses to a crowd, it keeps switching back and forth grammatically from addressing multiple people to addressing a singular person, without explanation as to why. This can't be seen in English translations, since English doesn't distinguish between 2nd person singular and plural. I assumed that this was a peculiarity of the Septuagint Greek translation, but I've found out recently that this anomaly is present in the Hebrew also. This should make it a relatively simple matter to separate out some of the earlier sources that would have been compiled together to make Deuteronomy.

Choose a translation to read this passage in its context:
World English Bible | King James Version | New International Version