The problem of metaphors

That is not, however, the end of the matter, because the notion that the God of the Bible is masculine rather than feminine is false. Despite the overwhelmingly masculine language used for God in the Bible, to extract the notion that God is male is an example of the error of the via eminentiae: the idea that God is like something else, only more so. In this case: God is like a king, only much more powerful; God is like a father, but a better father than any human. It is necessary, albeit difficult, simultaneously to affirm the metaphors as metaphors and to admit that they fall so far short of divine reality that they threaten to lead us astray in crucial ways.—Christopher B. Hays in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 217–18 (emphasis original)

Well, did it or did it now happen?

We do not believe the flood story of the Bible is myth, but neither do we believe the author of Genesis 6-9 intends to give us a straightforward depiction of the event that lies behind it. We believe there is an event that inspired the story; after all, Genesis 6-9 is theological history. However, we believe the best understanding of Genesis 1-11, which of course includes the flood account, is that it talks about real events of the past through the use of figurative language. In the case of the flood story, we have identified the use of hyperbole to describe the flood. But there is a real event behind the story just as there was an actual conquest behind the hyperbolic presentation of Joshua’s conquest as presented in Joshua 1-12 (see proposition four).—Lost World of the Flood, 145 (emphasis original)

Keep making those cakes!

As long as a church is patriarchal, or indeed outright misogynistic, as long as it is a means for men to worship and reinforce their own power, which is often what it has been throughout history, then people will always feel a need for a goddess. If Christians are going to worship our own likenesses, then femininity is, after all, not less worthy of adoration than masculinity. As long as God the Father reinforces patriarchy, it is entirely natural that many will want to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven.—Christopher B. Hays in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 217

About those statues…

"Social memory theory maintains a group’s memory of the past is always socially constructed—never how it actually was. The past has run through a social filter so that it serves the needs of the community and its coherence. Further, this past impinges on the present moment, as a community understands and acts in the present moment in a way that for them seems consistent with that memory. Communities keep the constructed past alive and in front of the community through myth, stories, festivals, sites, media, and various social institutions. Likewise, the community structures its future vision based on this constructed history."—Rodney Werline, in Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL Press, forthcoming).

<idle musing>
And don't forget to add statues! They are part of the ordering of our memory. We need to always be examining that ordering; perhaps—no! definitely—it needs to be reordered and modified to bring it more into line with what actually happened and whom we want to be as a nation and as a people. This should especially be true of Christians, who follow the only truth.
</idle musing>

Inclusio

When the theme of order by means of divine presence is recognized in Genesis 1-2, and when the restoration of divine presence is recognized as the motivation of the ziggurat builders, Genesis 1-11 can be seen as a unit with these important bookends serving as a rhetorical inclusio for the record of the primordial period.—Lost World of the Flood, 138

Augustine and the dea nutrix

At the roots of monotheism, then, there began a kind of theological dance in the tension between the desire to preserve female imagery for God, including the dea nutrix, and the denial that this is possible for a single deity who was more commonly imagined as male. This would go on through the ages. Even individual theologians were often of two minds. For example, the same Augustine who spoke of “the Lord’s breast” elsewhere declared that, in “the image of God,. . . there is no sex,” and that the woman is not the image of God except when she is joined together with her husband.—Christopher B. Hays in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 212

<idle musing>
Augustine was wrong! I suspect that the reason he went the route of women not being fully the image of God, aside from his patriarchal frame of reference, was that the church is the bride of Christ, and apart from Christ can't reflect the glory of God. But those two don't have to be, in fact, shouldn't be, tied together.

The problem with Augustine is that he wrote so much that you can find pretty much anything you want in there. Unfortunately, it seems his worst stuff is what the church adopted! But that is just an
</idle musing>

Who are they?

In contrast, focus on the use of terminology in the Bible suggests that “sons of God” (as rare as it is) refers consistently to the members of the divine council (e.g., Job 1-2), and this is the interpretation adopted in the earliest sources (Second Temple period works like the Book of Enoch) as well as reflected in the New Testament (2 Peter and Jude).—Lost World of the Flood, 123

Filling the void

The polemic against dea nutrix imagery for God is deeply connected with the process by which Israelite religion came to focus on a single deity for whom masculine pronouns were most commonly used. The attempted exclusion of goddess worship, particularly that of Asherah (e.g., 2 Kgs 23:4–7),34 left a psychological void for Yahwistic worshipers that continued to be filled in various ways. Monotheism was a revolutionary idea—or to put it a different way, an irregular one. It is not surprising that it was resisted; consider the backlash against the religious innovations of Akhenaten or Nabonidus. Rather, it is surprising that it endured.—Christopher B. Hays in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 210

Here's where inspiration lies

[I]f we wish to get to the core of the authority of the author, we have to focus on what the author (who has been vested with God’s authority) is doing with the event.—Lost World of the Flood, 121

<idle musing>
Because Walton/Longman restrict where they believe the inspiration lies (and I agree with them), there is no issue with many of the issues that are hang-ups for so many. This view frees you from having to defend undefendable positions; you're not continually on the defensive, looking for offense. That kind of defensive attitude seems pretty anti-Christian, by the way. At the least it is the opposite of the attitude you see in the scriptures.
</idle musing>

The nourishing God

Blending the imagery of flowing milk into that of flowing water, the passage goes on to promise that the wealth of nations will be “like an overflowing stream,” inverting the negative imagery of floods as a violent threat in, for example, [Isaiah] 30:28; 28:2, 15–18; and 10:22. God then says: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (66:13). So this passage distances YHWH from breastfeeding imagery both through the use of simile and by projecting the divine nursing onto Jerusalem/Zion as a proxy. Nevertheless, it is difficult to ignore the effort to connect God with dea nutrix imagery. —Christopher B. Hays in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 207

Quick! Hit the reset button!

The naming of Noah could indicate that he will be the one through whom order is preserved and restored in the aftermath of the insurgence of nonorder represented in the flood. Be that as it may, however, the text indicates that Noah would comfort us (presumably humankind) “from our labor and from the toil of our hands from the ground” (authors’ translation). The combination of the verb nhm with the preposition min (from) occurs three times in this verse and nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. The combination does not suggest consolation or comfort concerning those things—that uses a different preposition. It can mean only that nonorder related to the labor, toil, and ground are going to be resolved and a greater semblance of order would be restored. It is difficult to deduce how that is taking place; what is important is that it is taking place. The vocabulary shows us how the flood is being interpreted—it is an order—bringing event. The connection of Noah’s name to the flood suggests that besides being presented as an act of judgment, grace, and deliverance, the narrator is recounting this event as a sort of order “reset button.” God uses nonorder (the waters) to eliminate disorder (pervasive violence) and then to reestablish optimal order (even as he recognizes that disorder remains [Gen 8:21]).—Lost World of the Flood, 118 (emphasis original)

El Shaddai as mother?

Significantly, one of the major theological perspectives that makes up the HB did understand Shadday as related to childbearing. David Biale points out that “all of the passages using El Shaddai in Genesis, with one exception, are fertility blessings.” Thus he argues that an early Israelite tradition “understood El Shaddai as a fertility god.” He demonstrated the point through a survey of passages from Genesis in which Shadday occurs (17:1–2; 28:3; 35:11; 48:3–4), all of which are blessings to be fruitful and multiply.—Christopher B. Hays in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 204

Vengeance is mine! I will repay, says who?

[W]e also receive a glimpse of the persistent disorder personified in the boast of Lamech (Gen 4:23-24). Here we find a warped perspective on the vengeance God offered in protection of Cain. With Lamech it is reflected as a right to his own vengeance as he builds order around himself. So even as order progresses, disorder also becomes entrenched and is rationalized with self-justification.—Lost World of the Flood, 116

He's there, hiding in plain sight

Yet a fuller recognition of chance as a divine look-alike for YHWH in ancient Israel serves to highlight the strong account of providence evident throughout the biblical witnesses. The HB is drenched in a providential understanding of God’s activity within the world. At the same time, it offers what might be termed a realistic understanding of how divine providence works. Sometimes there are indeed miracles: God is not restricted by the world’s standard operating system. However, God often chooses to act more locally, more incrementally, and more indirectly, working through human agents, social institutions, inherited customs, and ordinary circumstances. This hidden quality of YHWH’s work had the effect of compelling an interpretation of current events on the part of YHWH’s Israelite worshipers, a pressure that is now actually preserved even in the literary style of biblical poetics. The Bible is written so as to pose the character of God’s action as a question to its readers. Even a random arrow may kill a disguised king and thereby fulfill God’s sure prophetic word (1 Kgs 22:34, 38; cf. 21:19). So too, God’s express will may occur in the form of an accident.—Stephen B. Chapman in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 197

Chaos ensues

In Genesis 4 it is evident that Cain and Abel are seeking to remain in contact with God as they offer their sacrificial gifts (by the label given to their gifts, minhah [offering], they are clearly not thinking of dealing with sin but of retaining God’s favor). Sacrifice here is a relationship—building activity but a poor substitute for divine presence. It becomes evident, however, that Cain does not have God’s order in mind when he rejects God’s offer of a way to gain favor and chooses instead to seek order for himself by killing his brother. Thus he pursues disorder as he seeks his own benefit.

The result is that God banishes him (the thrust of the Hebrew word ’arur, translated “under a curse” in Gen 4:11). Being driven away from society and the provision of the ground places him in further nonorder. Cain notes this by the three things he has lost: provision of the land, access to the presence of God (further reduced), and protection of society (Gen 4:14). Nevertheless, he retains the order that was established in the blessing of Genesis 1:28—he is able to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 4:17).—Lost World of the Flood, 115

Hiding in plain sight

In style as well as content, the biblical literature invokes a God who is relentlessly present but whose actions are characteristically disguised, with the result that the arena of human experience is full of beckoning coincidences: “Truly you are a God who hides yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (Isa 45:15).—Stephen B. Chapman in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 196

Not a dichotomy, a trichotomy!

It is common for people to think that we live in a world of dichotomy between good and evil. The previous interpretation suggests a further nuance: that we live in a trichotomous world: nonorder (still to be resolved), order, and disorder (evil, the results of sin).

These concepts frame our understanding of the coherence of Genesis 1-11. When we try to understand the coherence of a biblical book (or section of it), we do so by trying to identify the rhetorical strategy that drives the compilation. Episodes were carefully chosen from among many possibilities. The narration of those episodes was presented with purposes in mind. The most acceptable interpretation of that rhetorical strategy is determined by how well it accounts for all of the pieces (both included and omitted) and for the way each episode is presented.—Lost World of the Flood, 114

Is it chance? Or is it God? Or can it be both?

What the chapter [1 Sam 9, Saul and the lost donkeys] evidently means to thematize is not simply a high view of providence but also the contrast between how providence works and how it appears when it does. The chapter’s theological purpose is no doubt to provide reassurance to the implied reader that God is in control despite how things seem, but this reassurance is not given in such a way as to sweep aside as misinformed or ignorant the admittedly real difficulty of spotting God in action. Religious faith, the chapter is saying, can embrace the epistemological deficits of human experience. Indeed, those deficits are themselves marks of true faith and genuine faith experience. This insight will be pressed even further in the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible (whether to the breaking point or past the breaking point is debated), and so more references to miqreh cluster in Ecclesiastes than in any other biblical book. Ecclesiastes is thus not the first biblical book to recognize the tension between the objective and subjective aspects of divine providence, but it might be the first one to pull them apart by questioning the objective reality of providence from the subjective perspective of its human participants.—Stephen B. Chapman in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 195

Chaos!

Divine presence in the ancient world has significance not just in regard to enabling relationship of some sort between humans and deity but as that which brings and maintains order in the world and in the cosmos. God is the center and source of order; in and through his presence the whole cosmos coheres. Though Genesis 1–11 is framed by the element of divine presence, the driving theme through this section is order, which derives from the divine presence.

In the beginning there was nonorder (Heb. tohu wabohu [Gen 1:2]). This condition is not evil or flawed; it is just a work in process. Order in the ancient world defined existence and is characterized by having a purpose (whether in human terms or in the larger sphere of God’s plans as much as they could be perceived). Material objects (such as the sea or the desert) in the ancient world could be considered nonexistent if their role and purpose could not be identified by people or if they had no function in human experience.—Lost World of the Flood, 112–13

Deterministic?

miqreh can be employed for both “fortune” and “misfortune,” which offers a vantage point for understanding one of the HB’s most profound and challenging theological claims: God may also work through misfortune. This theme is particularly prominent in the Joseph narrative and elsewhere in the book of Genesis. Thus Joseph can tell his brothers: “At last you see that you did not send me, God did, and he has placed me as a father to Pharaoh, as lord of all his house, and ruler over all the land of Egypt” (Gen 45:8). And again: “While you intended harm for me, God intended it for good, in order to bring about this day, to bring life to many people” (Gen 50:20). To style this perspective “deterministic” would be to the miss the point. The thrust of this aspect of the biblical tradition is not that God determines every outcome in advance or that everything that happens is for the best. The point is rather that God is continuously, redemptively working to bring goodness out of misfortune and calamity (cf. Rom 8:28).—Stephen B. Chapman in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 194