Joel Baden Profile picture
Dec 20 13 tweets 3 min read
#Deuteronomy 6:1-4

The Shema, part 1

“Hear O Israel, the Lord is our god, the Lord is one” - that’s how I was taught this verse (6:4) growing up. And I was also taught that this was a, if not the, major expression of monotheism in the Bible. Alas…
This is one of the (many) verses that really suffers when the name of Israel’s god, YHWH, is rendered as a title, “the Lord.” What’s lost is the very specific, very non-monotheistic sentiment here: of all the gods - and every nation has one - YHWH is ours.
It’s almost the very opposite of what I, and I think many people, are taught. People concentrate on the second half, but the first half is where the real money is. We know all the other national gods of Israel’s neighbors. What would Moab say? “Chemosh is our god.”
So what about the second half? Doesn’t “YHWH is one” mean “the only one?” No - if “is one” is even a decent translation. Here are two reasonable options for understanding this phrase.
1. It could mean not “YHWH is one,” but, as also often rendered, “YHWH alone,” which sort of just reinforces the first half. It’s a basic expression of D’s desire for devoted worship of YHWH and obedience to YHWH’s laws. Don’t follow other gods. Like in the Ten Commandments.
This option is appealing in part because it conforms to the general ancient near eastern vassal treaty pattern that D follows basically throughout. Imagine D as a treaty between a conquering king and a defeated state, and substitute “the king” for YHWH everywhere.
This little trick works a ridiculously high percentage of the time. Suddenly it seems so obvious: you’re obligated to this sovereign, king or YHWH, and so obviously you can’t go around being loyal to other kings, or deities. And that’s the simple, non-monotheistic, message here.
2. Alternatively, it could be “YHWH is one,” in which case the best option is to understand it as part of D’s other big concern, which is the centralization of the Israelite cult. We aren’t there quite yet, but this will be a big, big deal for D.
Here, the oneness of YHWH doesn’t have to do with singularity among other deities, but rather with singularity within Israel itself. When sanctuaries are imagined as divine homes, places where the deity manifests, then many sanctuaries means multiple manifestations, at once.
That’s how you get a YHWH who resides in the north - “YHWH of Samaria” - and a YHWH who resides in the south - “YHWH of Teman,” as we have attested in inscriptions from ancient Israel. D is having none of it. One sanctuary, one manifestation of YHWH.
I’ll admit that I lean more toward the first option, but I’m fine with the second too - and the language is ambiguous enough to support either. The key is that both possibilities work within the larger purposes of D: these are contextual readings.
What makes the monotheistic rendering of the verse so annoying (to me!) is that it’s entirely removed from its context, and then often used to dictate what that context should mean, rather than the other way around.
The Shema is part of D - it’s one sentence out of hundreds. It has no claim to primacy, either chronologically or ideologically. It’s given a higher status by tradition, and within that tradition has taken on a different meaning. That’s all fine - but shouldn’t be read back in.

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More from @JoelBaden

Dec 21
#Deuteronomy 6:5

The Shema, cont.

Another super famous line - “you shall love the lord your god with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might” - that has come to mean something pretty far from what it once did. Lots to unpack here. Sorry in advance.
One of the great scholarly realizations of the mid twentieth century was that Deuteronomy followed the basic form of an ancient Near Eastern vassal treaty (see yesterday’s thread). YHWH is in place of the conquering king, and Israel is the vassal that must obey.
Part of that discovery was that some of the language used in D is actually formal treaty language. Like, imagine that someone wrote something today, and used the “whereas…whereas…therefore” structure. You’d know it was modeled on legal documents. Same thing here.
Read 13 tweets
Dec 19
#Deuteronomy 5

The Ten Commandments

Here they are, in all their (original) glory. But as I’ve commented on the content of them already, here I’m going to talk about how they function in D, because they do two neat things at once.
We gotta remember that D never just recounts past events for their own sake. This isn’t a history - it’s a speech by Moses that has a clear purpose, to convince his audience to follow the laws that he’s about to give them. Everything has to be understood through that lens.
So here’s Moses, at the beginning of this second oration, telling them about the Ten Commandments. Why? First, because those laws were the beta version of the expanded laws he’s about to proclaim. They were the wilderness laws, the basic starter package.
Read 8 tweets
Sep 18
When you find yourself saying “I don’t believe that so the Bible can’t really say/mean that,” that’s on you, not the Bible.

It’s an admission that there is no “originalist” reading of the Bible - it’s always being read in line with the reader’s values.
This is true for everyone, liberal and conservative alike. “It couldn’t possibly support slavery!”…so how can I read it to make it not say that?

“It can’t be socialist!” “It can’t be anti-gay!” “It can’t promote genocide!” “It can’t have multiple voices!”
And it’s as true of readers past as it is of readers today. “I’m monotheistic, so everything in the Bible must also be monotheistic!”

The very words of the Bible are redefined and reimagined as conforming to contemporary beliefs, norms, values. The Bible is subordinated.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 16
#Numbers 32:33-42

The distribution of the Transjordan

After all the requesting and haggling, finally Reuben and Gad get to it. As always, if we followed what happened in the stories before, we can see how to understand the division of the text here.
Remember that in P, Moses tells R&G that they will get the land formally only after the conquest, when Eleazar and Joshua will be in charge. So in 32:33, when Moses himself gives them territory, that can’t be P - that has to be E. As confirmed by the mention of Sihon.
Likewise in 32:34-38, where R&G build fortified cities and sheepfolds, that has to be P, because this is exactly what they said they’d do earlier in the P story. No need to build cities in E - the Amorite cities are already unoccupied and waiting for them.
Read 11 tweets
Aug 3
#Numbers 23:11-26

Balaam’s second speech

Second verse, same as the first. Interwoven with lines that keep us situated in the narrative are some nice traditional poetic and prophetic images - somewhat further down the poetic road than the last poem, not as far as we’ll get soon.
References to Balaam’s divinely ordained mission, and restrictions; to the Exodus, and less explicitly to the ancestral promises - these all keep one foot planted in the broader story, in a way that actually very few independent poems, especially older ones, do.
But the imagery - particularly the horns of the wild ox (or unicorn for all you KJV fans out there), the lion that rises to feed on its prey - these are standard poetic animal images that we find in older biblical poetry, like Gen 49 (which…is also brought to us by J).
Read 5 tweets
Aug 2
This is a pretty good question (that I missed when it was first posted) and I’ll take a minute to explain. The Pentateuch, like the rest of the Bible, is the product of many many different redactional and editorial moments, many of which probably we’ll never accurately identify.
Some occurred within the sources - like the H expansion of P. Some occurred after the sources were combined - like the insertion of the laws in Exodus 34. Some were very small, some were very large. Some were local, some were global. And one was global and huge: compilation.
When I talk about the compiler or compilation, I’m talking exclusively about the process of combining the four independent sources into one new whole. I’m not talking about any other redactional or editorial activity. Just what needed to be done to interweave the sources.
Read 7 tweets

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