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

Testicles

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World English Bible | King James Version | New International Version

Another pearl of wisdom from the mouth of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy. One especially interesting passage in Deuteronomy is chapter 32, which it says is a song sung by Moses to the assembled Israelites, and may be one of the oldest parts of the Bible. If you compare the available manuscripts, the influence of monotheism on the text over time can be seen. For example look at verse 43, where Moses is predicting that Yahweh, the god of Israel, will take revenge on Israel's enemies:

"Rejoice, O heavens, together with him; and bow down to him all you gods, for he will avenge the blood of his sons, and will render vengeance to his enemies, and will recompense those who hate him, and will atone for the land of his people."

-Dead Sea Scrolls, date: between 100 BC and 100 AD, translation by Martin Abegg Jr., et al.

"Be delighted, Skies, with him, and may all sons of a god bow to him. Be delighted, nations, with his people, and may all angels of a god strengthen him, that the blood of his sons will be avenged, and he will avenge and pay back the enemies, and to the haters he will pay back, and Lord will clean out the land of his people."

-The Septuagint, 4th century AD (Codex Vaticanus), translated by me

"Rejoice, you nations, [with] his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will render vengeance to his adversaries, And will make expiation for his land, for his people.

-Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex), 1008 AD, translation from the World English Bible

This is an example of the polytheistic beliefs of the early Israelites being later edited out by the time of the writing of the Masoretic Texts, which have been used for most modern translations of the Old Testament. Another example occurs earlier in the same chapter— verses 8 and 9 say that the highest god divided the nations up according to the number of "sons of god", and that the nation of Israel got assigned to Yahweh (see scroll 4QDeutj of the Dead Sea Scrolls). The Masoretic Texts change "sons of god" to "sons of Israel", which doesn't make sense in the context.

To see other references to the sons of god in the Bible, see Genesis 6, where the sons of god mated with human women, who then gave birth to giants ("Nephilim" means "giants"— see Numbers 13:32-33). Also see the book of Job, where the sons of god are Yahweh's heavenly counsel (Job 1:6, and 2:1). See also the Baal Cycle, written between 1300 and 1200 BC, found in Ugarit, Syria. In it, El is the highest god, and all the other gods are referred to as "sons of the holy one". Yahweh appears to be one of these sons — see KTU 1.1 IV verses 12 through 14. Ugaritic was written with only consonants, like Hebrew, so the god's name is spelled "yw", similar to "yhwh" in Hebrew. In the Baal Cycle, El renames this god as "Yam", and Yam is later defeated in battle by Baal.