God Against the Gods: Storytelling, Imagination & Apologetics in the Bible
By Brian Godawa
God Against the gods: Storytelling, Imagination And Apologetics In The Bible
1st Edition
Copyright © 2016, 2021 Brian Godawa
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
Warrior Poet Publishing
www.warriorpoetpublishing.com
ISBN: 978-1-942858-18-8 (Paperback)
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001.
Table of Contents
Preface: Of Myth and the Bible 1
Chapter 1: Demonizing the Pagan Gods 9
Chapter 2: Old Testament Storytelling Apologetics 30
Chapter 3: Biblical Creation and Storytelling 46
Chapter 4: The Universe in Ancient Imagination 65
Chapter 5: New Testament Storytelling Apologetics 101
Chapter 6: Imagination in Prophecy and Apocalypse 119
Chapter 7: An Apologetic of Biblical Horror 144
Chapter 8: Companion Book 154
About the Author 164
Great Offers by Brian Godawa 158
Preface
Of Myth and the Bible
Whenever I consider that I have something important to say about faith, imagination, and/or apologetics, I usually discover that C.S. Lewis has already said it long before I could, and he has said it better than I will. True to form, his famous essay, Myth Became Fact, describes the heart of Christianity as a myth that is also a fact. He comforts the fearful modernist Christian whose faith in the Bible as a book of doctrine and abstract propositions is suddenly upset by the frightful reality of the interaction of holy writ with legend, pagan parallels, and mythology.
Rather than deny the ancient mythopoeic nature of God’s Word as modern Evangelicals tend to do, Lewis embraced it as a reflection of God’s preferred choice of concrete communication over abstraction (the worshipped discourse of the modernist). He understood myth to be the truth embedded into the creation by the Creator in such a way that even pagans would reflect some elements of that truth. Thus, when God Himself incarnates truth into history in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is no surprise that it takes on mythopoeic dimensions reflected in previous pagan notions of dying and rising gods.
He concludes his essay with these memorable words:
We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about “parallels” and “pagan Christs” — they ought to be there — it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic — and is not the sky itself a myth — shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: perfect myth and perfect fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher.
A common reaction of many Christians to the word myth is often one of mistrust. In their minds, “myth” means “false,” and since the Word of God can never be false, the category of myth is anathema in relation to the Bible.
But this is not an accurate assessment of the varied understandings of myth. Because of a modernist bias of anti-supernaturalism, some scholars define myth as “a necessary and universal form of expression within the early stage of man’s intellectual development, in which unexplainable events were attributed to the direct intervention of the gods.” In some critical and liberal quarters of theology, this connotation has stuck to the meaning of myth and certainly warrants critique in light of its prejudicial definition that assumes a materialist universe without supernatural agents.
But a more specific and recent definition of myth is appropriate to our discussion. In this sense, myths are, as Northrop Frye has explained, “stories that tell a society what is important for it to know, whether about its gods, its history, its laws, or its structures.” In this sense, mythical stories, whether historically factual or fictional, do the same thing; they reveal true transcendent meaning. By this definition, calling the Bible mythical in some of its characteristics or imagery is not to jeopardize its historical claims. In fact, the Bible often claims to reveal the unseen transcendent meaning and purposes behind immanent historical events. Thus, Lewis’ phrase, “myth became fact.”
The problem comes when Christians seek to protect the Bible’s reliability by demanding it be “historical” or “factually accurate” according to modern definitions of history writing and factual reporting or observation. They conclude that if the Bible is not accurate according to the “plain reading” of the text, then it cannot be relied upon to be truthful about the more important issues of God and salvation.
Let the reader be careful to note that I did not deny the historicity of the Bible, but I did make a distinction between our modern notion of what constitutes historical writing (historiography) and the ancient’s notion of what constituted historical writing. For us to demand that the Biblical text be scientifically or historically “accurate” as we define those terms is not a high view of Scripture, it is a low view of Scripture. It is in fact imposing our own prejudices upon the text by refusing to understand it within its context. This is called cultural imperialism and it is the height of hubris, or human pride.
One example of this kind of modern hubris in defining history can be found in the notion of genealogies. In the Bible, genealogies are often used as apologetic tools to prove chosen lineage. The modern notion of historical precision and chronological accuracy is not always a part of the Biblical understanding of genealogy that prioritizes theological truth over historical veracity. The genealogical formula of Genesis, “X is the son of Y” that once was interpreted as the “plain reading” of literal sons is now universally acknowledged to involve historical gaps which renders the term “son of” as often figurative and not literal. “X is the son of Y” often means, “X is a descendent of Y.” This is not liberal denigration of the Bible, it is the Bible’s own context of meaning when it comes to genealogies.
The most important genealogy to Christians is of course that of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and “Son of David.” In Matthew chapter 1, Matthew details Christ’s genealogy and concludes, “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations” (1:17). So Matthew uses Christ’s genealogy as an apologetic by exegeting the symbolic number of 14 as being historically symmetrical in the lineage. There’s only one problem: It’s not historically accurate — at least by our definition of history. And it is the Bible itself that proves this, not liberal theology.
As Bible commentator Craig Blomberg explains,
The actual number of generations in the three parts to the genealogy are thirteen, fourteen, and thirteen, respectively… When one compares the genealogy with Luke’s account (Luke 3:23–37) and with various Old Testament narratives, it is clear that Matthew has omitted several names to achieve this literary symmetry.
The Bible itself shows us that Biblical genealogies are not always historically accurate by our modern definitions of history. They are first and foremost theological in their interpretation and only secondarily are they historical. So to suggest that the way the Bible treats history sometimes includes figurative or mythopoeic dimensions that are not scientifically precise by our reckoning is not liberal subterfuge but Biblical fidelity. It is an unbiblical and humanistic belief to assume that the understanding of the Bible’s approach to historical writing matches our understanding of historical writing. I hope to show in this book that there are quite a few more elements of mythopoeia and imagination that God uses that may make the modern Christian uncomfortable, but are clearly Biblical.
My approach in this book is to understand the Bible in its own ancient Near Eastern context, and thereby subordinate my own perspective to the perspective of the original writers and readers to whom the text was given. I seek to let the Bible define how it does history, fact, and imagination, and then I submit to that Biblical authority in how I seek to understand its meaning. The Bible is my authority, I am not the authority over the Bible.
To liberal theologians and critical scholars, this is antiquated fundamentalism, and to actual fundamentalists, it is syncretism, the attempt to blend pagan myths with the Bible. But the argument I make in this book is that the truth is neither of these bigoted hermeneutics, or prejudiced interpretations. I believe that God is doing something much more creative than fundamentalist believers and fundamentalist critics realize.
I believe that the Bible is God’s Word and as such, it is breathed out of God through the writings of men inspired by the Holy Spirit. So, while the Biblical writers are very human and therefore very much creatures of their time and culture, there is also another author who is operating providentially behind the writing of the text to communicate transcendent truth, and that is the author and finisher of our faith, God Himself.
How He actually does this, I do not know, but the divine authorship does not reduce the human authorship to dictation or automatic writing. God uses the genre conventions and mindset of the ancient time period within which to communicate His transcendent truth.
This is what is called “accommodation” by theologians. In the same way that Jesus Christ is God incarnate within human flesh, so the Scriptures are God’s message incarnate within human writings of the ancient Jewish world. A major part of that Jewish worldview was the special calling of a nation out of the nations of the earth to be His own people. God does separate Himself from the gods of the pagans, but at the same time, he utilizes much of the mythopoeic imagination that Israel shared with its pagan neighbors to communicate that separation.
One of the complaints of Christian apologists about the use of imagination and poetics in articulating or defending the faith is that it tends to lack the clarity of logical argumentation and rational discourse. The fuzziness and ambiguity of images, stories, metaphors and symbols tend to obscure or dilute the message of the Gospel. My book Word Pictures: Knowing God Through Story and Imagination deconstructs this rationalistic modernist fallacy as unbiblical. God uses so much imagery, symbolism, metaphor and poetic figurative language throughout the Scriptures (about 80% of the Bible) that one could even say he prefers it to abstract logical propositions (about 20% of the Bible).
Jesus is famous — or should I say infamous — for using parables to teach about the Kingdom of God instead of rational sermons of doctrinal exposition. Ironically, He quotes the Old Testament as explanation for why He used such fuzzy ambiguity in His parables:
Matthew 13:10–17
Then the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And He answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:‘“You will indeed hear but never understand,
and you will indeed see but never perceive.”
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and with their ears they can barely hear,
and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart
and turn, and I would heal them.’But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”
The use of parables by Jesus had the two-fold purpose of revealing the truth only to those who “have ears to hear,” and concealing from those who were unrepentant in rejecting the Gospel. One could say that Jesus engaged in an anti-apologetic apologetic. That is, He embedded the truth into imagination in order to avoid the inevitable confrontation of debaters who were more interested in arguing than in discerning truth. Only those who wanted truth would recognize it in the imaginative form the parables incarnated. A Master storyteller may have a deeper influence on culture than a Masters in Apologetics.
Now, I don’t want to appear to be an anti-intellectual who scorns the use of traditional apologetics. I have aggressively argued for a proper place of rational argumentation in Word Pictures. My real goal is to uncover the unreasonable exaltation of modernist rational abstraction and empirical observation when it comes to articulation and defense of the Gospel.
But I also want to provide a positive case for the Biblical use of the equally important imagination and storytelling. And yes, that means I am writing a book that engages in rational argumentation for the Biblical use of imagination in theology and apologetics. I do this because I maintain an ultimate equivalency between reason and imagination when it comes to truth. If you want to read examples of actual application of imagination, watch the movies I’ve written and read my novel series Chronicles of the Nephilim, Chronicles of the Watchers and Chronicles of the Apocalypse (www.godawa.com). I am a both/and writer on this issue, not an either/or curmudgeon.
In the spirit of this both/and approach, I offer this volume to explore the following essays that address storytelling, imagination, and apologetics in the Bible:
In Chapter One, “Demonizing the Pagan Gods,” I lay out the basic premise of this entire book, that God does in fact demonize his opponents and their beliefs, both human and divine, by showing the demonic reality behind their earthly façade. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, so our polemics should take that into account.
In Chapter Two, “Old Testament Storytelling Apologetics,” I address two mythopoeic elements that Israel shared with other ancient Near Eastern peoples, the sea dragon of chaos, and the storm god. These are polemical concepts that are used by Biblical writers to show Yahweh as incomparably superior to the gods of Canaan.
In Chapter Three, “Biblical Creation and Storytelling,” I tease out the genre of creation stories in the ancient Near East and the Bible, which express a primeval battle called Chaoskampf, as well as a symbol of covenant establishment that is defined in both comparison and contrast with surrounding pagan nations.
In Chapter Four, “The Universe in Ancient Imagination,” I do a detailed study of the Biblical picture of the universe as being very similar to the ancient Mesopotamian one, and alien to our own. I explain how this shows God’s real intent behind His description of the universe as one of theological meaning and not physical description. This is a case of God using common understanding in order to communicate His transcendent superiority through finite writers of His message.
In Chapter Five, “New Testament Storytelling Apologetics,” I exegete Paul’s sermon to the pagans on Mars Hill as an example of communicating the Gospel in terms of the Stoic narrative with a view toward subverting their worldview.
In Chapter Six, “Imagination in Prophecy and Apocalypse,” I examine some of the mythopoeic imagery used by God to deliberately obscure His message to unbelievers while simultaneously “proving” to believers his claim about the true meaning and purpose behind history.
Chapter Seven, “An Apologetic of Biblical Horror,” explores the otherwise offensive genre of horror writing to show how God Himself uses it as a powerful moral tool to communicate serious spiritual, moral, and social defilement in the context of repentance from sin and redemptive victory over evil.
While this is a collection of essays from assorted books and articles I have written, the unifying thread that connects them all is an underlying theme of Gods’ use of storytelling and imagination as an apologetic tool in the Bible. My hope is that the Christian reader may gain inspiration from these insights to begin using more imagination in their own approach to communicating and defending the faith and glorifying God, since it is a severely underappreciated element of God’s word.
Chapter 1
Demonizing the Pagan Gods
This chapter expands upon some material from my scholarly book, “When Giants Were Upon the Earth.”
In American political and religious discourse, the act of “demonizing” one’s opponents is considered insulting, something that discredits one’s arguments. It charges that the “demonizer” is the one at fault for casting “the other” or their ideas with dishonest exaggeration. It’s based on the assumption that such extremes of evil do not exist in human beings or their ideas. It assumes that demons do not exist.
But what if demons do exist? What if someone or their ideas really are demonic or truly evil? Then demonization is not a moral fallacy, but a morally appropriate act of designation. In that case, we ought to demonize the truly demonic.
It might surprise those self-assured indoctrinated Americans to discover that God himself demonizes his opponents, the pagan gods of the ancient world and their ideas with them.
Demonic Ideas
To start with, the apostles in the New Testament vigorously affirm that some ideas are so evil, they qualify as “demonic.” The apostle Paul calls the forbidding of marriage and the forced abstinence from certain foods for religious reasons “teaching of demons” and “deceitful spirits,” or, as I prefer with this older English translation, “doctrines of devils” (1 Tim. 4:1).
The apostle James describes bitterness, jealousy, selfish ambition and boasting as being “demonic wisdom that does not come down from above, but is earthly and unspiritual.” (James 3:13).
What these apostles are demonizing are not the explicitly spiritual teachings of necromancers, sorcerers and other spiritualists. They are not referring to the ontological reality of evil spirits, but rather to the moral behavior and religious teachings of people in their own fold! This is not a debate about whether one can lose their salvation. Paul was speaking of the Judaizers, those who claimed that in order to be a Christian, you must also follow the law of Torah. James was talking about those in the Christian congregation who were jockeying for power and causing division.
So much for the stigma of demonization. There are some ideas and behaviors that are so evil in their spiritual implications, they deserve to be called out as demonic.
The Gods as Demons
But that was only a warm-up. Because God also demonizes individuals and the pagan gods they worship – in both Old and New Testaments.
The Old Testament. A common understanding of absolute monotheism is that when the Bible refers to other gods it does not mean that the gods are real beings but merely beliefs in real beings that do not exist. For instance, when Deuteronomy 32:43 proclaims “rejoice with him, O heavens, bow down to him, all gods,” this is a poetic way of saying “what you believe are gods are not gods at all because Yahweh is the only God that exists.” What seems to support this interpretation is the fact that a few verses before this (v. 39), God says, “See now, that I, even I am he, and there is no god [elohim] beside me.” Does this not clearly indicate that God is the only God [elohim] that really exists out of all the “gods” [elohim] that others believe in?
Not in its Biblical context it doesn’t.
When the text is examined in its full context of the chapter and the rest of the Bible we discover a very different notion about God and gods. The phrase “I am, and there is none beside me” was an ancient Biblical slogan of incomparability of sovereignty, not exclusivity of existence. It was a way of saying that a certain authority was the most powerful compared to all other authorities. It did not mean that there were no other authorities that existed.
We see this sloganeering in two distinct passages, one of the ruling power of Babylon claiming proudly in her heart, “I am, and there is no one beside me” (Isa. 47:8), and the other of the city of Nineveh boasting in her heart, “I am, and there is no one else” (Zeph. 2:15). The powers of Babylon and Nineveh are obviously not saying that there are no other powers or cities that exist beside them, because they had to conquer other cities and rule over them. In the same way, Yahweh uses that colloquial phrase, not to deny the existence of other gods, but to express his incomparable sovereignty over them.
In concert with this phrase is the key reference to gods early in Deuteronomy 32. Israel is chastised for falling away from Yahweh after he gave Israel the Promised Land:
Deut. 32:17
They sacrificed to demons not God, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded.
In this key text we learn that the idols or gods of the other nations that Israel worshipped were real beings that existed called “demons” (Hebrew: shedim). At the same time, they are called, “gods” and “not God,” which indicates that they exist as real gods, but are not THE God of Israel.
Psalm 106 repeats this same exact theme of Israel worshipping the gods of other nations and making sacrifices to those gods that were in fact demonic.
Psa. 106:34-37
They did not destroy the peoples, as the LORD commanded them, but they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons.
One rendering of the Septuagint (LXX) version of Psalm 95:5-6 reaffirms this reality of national gods being demons whose deity was less than the Creator, “For great is the Lord, and praiseworthy exceedingly. More awesome he is than all the gods. For all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens.” Another LXX verse, Isa. 65:11, speaks of Israel’s idolatry: “But ye are they that have left me, and forget my holy mountain, and prepare a table for [a demon], and fill up the drink-offering to Fortune [a foreign goddess].
In the Old Testament, Yahweh calls pagan gods what they really are: demons. He demonizes his opponents righteously. But this doesn’t end with the Old Testament. The New Testament takes up the task as well.
The New Testament. In Revelation, the Apostle John defines the worship of gold and silver idols as being the worship of demons. The physical objects were certainly without deity as they could not “see or hear or walk,” but the gods behind those objects were real beings with evil intent.
Revelation 9:20
The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk.
This is precisely the nuanced distinction that the Apostle Paul refers to when he addresses the issue of food sacrificed to idols—that is, physical images of deities on earth. He considers idols as having “no real existence,” but then refers to other “gods” in the heavens or on earth who do exist, but are not the same as the One Creator God:
1 Cor. 8:4-6
Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
1 Cor. 10:18-20
Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.
In 1 Corinthians, as in Revelation 9 quoted earlier, gods are not merely figments of imagination without existence in a world where the Trinity is the sole deity residing in the spiritual realm. Rather, physical idols (images) are “nothing,” and “have no real existence” in that they are the representatives of the deities, not the deities themselves. But the deities behind those idols are real demonic beings; the gods of the nations who are not THE God, for they themselves were created by God and are therefore essentially incomparable to the God through whom we exist.
The terminology used by Paul in the first passage contrasting the many gods and lords with the one God and Lord of Christianity reflects the client-patron relationship that ANE cultures shared. As K.L. Noll explains in his text on ancient Canaan and Israel, “Lord” was the proper designation for a patron in a patron-client relationship. There may have been many gods, but for ancient Israel, there was only one Lord, and that was Yahweh.”
Gods of the Nations
Returning to Deuteronomy 32 and going back a few more verses in context, we read of a reality-changing incident that occurred at Babel:
Deut. 32:8-9
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.
The reference to the creation of nations through the division of mankind and fixing of the borders of nations is clearly a reference to the event of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 and the dispersion of the peoples into the 70 nations listed in Genesis 10.
But then there is a strange reference to those nations being “fixed” according to the number of the sons of God. We’ll explain in a moment that those sons of God are from the assembly of the divine council of God. But after that, the text says that God saved Jacob (God’s own people) for his “allotment.” Even though Jacob was not born until long after the Babel incident, this is an anachronistic way of referring to what would become God’s people, because right after Babel, we read about God’s calling of Abraham who was the grandfather of Jacob (Isa. 41:8; Rom. 11:26). So God allots nations and their geographic territory to these sons of God to rule over as their inheritance, but he allots the people of Jacob to himself, along with their geographical territory of Canaan (Gen. 17:8).
The idea of Yahweh “allotting” geographical territories to these sons of God who really existed and were worshipped as gods (idols) shows up again in several places in Deuteronomy:
Deut. 4:19-20
And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.
Deut. 29:26
They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they have not known and whom He had not allotted to them.
“Host of heaven” was a term that referred to astronomical bodies that were also considered to be gods or members of the divine council. The Encyclopedia Judaica notes that, “in many cultures the sky, the sun, the moon, and the known planets were conceived as personal gods. These gods were responsible for all or some aspects of existence. Prayers were addressed to them, offerings were made to them, and their opinions on important matters were sought through divination.”
But it was not merely the pagans who made this connection of heavenly physical bodies with heavenly spiritual powers. The Old Testament itself equates the sun, moon, and stars with the angelic “sons of God” who surround God’s throne, calling them both the “host of heaven” (Deut. 4:19; 32:8-9). Jewish commentator Jeffrey Tigay writes, “[These passages] seem to reflect a Biblical view that… as punishment for man’s repeated spurning of His authority in primordial times (Gen. 3-11), God deprived mankind at large of true knowledge of Himself and ordained that it should worship idols and subordinate celestial beings.”
There is more than just a symbolic connection between the physical heavens and the spiritual heavens in the Bible. In some passages, the stars of heaven are linked interchangeably with angelic heavenly beings, also referred to as “holy ones” or “sons of God” (Psa. 89:5-7; Job 1:6).
Daniel 10:10-21 speaks of these divine “host of heaven” allotted with authority over pagan nations as spiritual “princes” or rulers battling with the archangels Gabriel and Michael.
Daniel 10:13, 20
13 The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me… 20 “But now I will return to fight against the prince of Persia; and when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come.
In conclusion, the entire narrative of Deuteronomy 32 tells the story of God dispersing the nations at Babel and allotting the pagan nations to be ruled by “gods” who were demonic fallen divine beings. God then allots the people of Israel for himself, through Abraham, and their territory of Canaan. But God’s people fall away from him and worship these other pagan gods and are judged for their apostasy.
We will now see that Yahweh will judge these gods as well.
Psalm 82
Bearing in mind this notion of Yahweh allotting gods over the Gentile nations while maintaining Canaan and Israel for himself, read this following important Psalm 82 where Yahweh now judges those gods for injustice and proclaims the Gospel that he will eventually take back the nations from those gods.
Psa. 82:1-8
God [elohim] has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods [elohim] he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I said, “You are gods [elohim]
sons of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
Arise, O God, judge the earth;
for you shall inherit all the nations!
So from this text we see that God has a divine council that stands around him, and it consists of “gods” who are judging rulers over the nations and are also called sons of the Most High (synonymous with “sons of God”). Because they have not ruled justly, God will bring them low in judgment and take the nations away from them. Sound familiar? It’s the same exact story as Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and Isaiah 24:21-22.
Isaiah 24:21–22
On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth. They will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit; they will be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished.
The idea that the Bible should talk about existent gods other than Yahweh is certainly uncomfortable for absolute monotheists. But our received definitions of monotheism are more often than not determined by our cultural traditions, many of which originate in theological controversies of other eras that create the baggage of non-Biblical agendas.
According to the Evangelical Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, that the Bible alone is the final authority of doctrine, not tradition, believers are obligated to first find out what the Bible text says and then adjust their theology to be in line with Scripture, not the other way around. All too often we find individuals ignoring or redefining a Biblical text because it does not fit their preconceived notion of what the Bible should say, rather than what it actually says. The existence of other gods in Scripture is one of those issues.
In light of this theological fear, some try to reinterpret this reference of gods or sons of God as a poetic expression of human judges or rulers on earth metaphorically taking the place of God, the ultimate judge, by determining justice in his likeness and image. But there are three big reasons why this cannot be so: First, the terminology in the passage contradicts the notion of human judges and fails to connect that term (“sons of God”) to human beings anywhere else in the Bible; Second, the Bible elsewhere explicitly reveals a divine council or assembly of supernatural sons of God that are judges over geographical allotments of nations that is more consistent with this passage; Third, a heavenly divine council of supernatural sons of God is more consistent with the ancient Near Eastern (ANE) worldview of the Biblical times that Israel shared with her neighbors.
What’s in a Name
Another way in which God demonizes his opponents, the pagan gods, and their ideas is through name-calling. You read that right. I realize we think of name-calling as something immature children do on a playground. But there is a reason why that is so prevalent, not merely amongst children, but through all of human history. Because the act of naming something is an act of authority over the object named. It’s how God created us.
If you want to understand the nature of something, look at its origin. The origin of naming rooted in authority comes from Genesis 2. God created the Garden and placed Adam in it to tend it and keep it (Gen. 2:8, 15). Then he created the animals over which he would give man dominion and rule to subdue (Gen. 1:26-28). One expression of that dominion, or authority, was in the act of naming.
God brought the animals he created to the man “to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (Gen. 2:19).
Ancient Near Eastern Biblical scholar, John Walton explains,
Names are not given randomly in the ancient world. A name may identify the essential nature of the creature, so that giving a name may be an act of assigning the function that creature will have.
In Mesopotamia the assigning of function is referred to as the decreeing of destiny. Decreeing destiny by giving a name is an act of authority. In the ancient world, when a king conquered another country, the king he put on the throne was given a new name. In other cases, the giving of a name is an act of discernment in which the name is determined by the circumstances. In either case, Adam’s naming of the animals is his first step in subduing and ruling.
The ancient world was patriarchal, that is, men were considered the authority over women in both society and marriage. While this may be offensive to the prejudices of our modern world, it was an organizing principle in the Bible. This is why the very next section of Genesis 2 shows Adam naming Eve, because he was the expressed authority over her. “She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Gen 2:23).
Since names were considered an incarnation of that person’s essence or identity, or a change in their identity, God himself renames individuals for his purposes. We know that Abram’s name which meant “exalted father” was changed to Abraham to mean “father of many nations” (Gen 17:5) based on the historical events of God’s covenant with him. Later in the Bible, Jacob (“usurper”) was changed to Israel (“struggles with God”) as the ancestor of the people of God.
But God also renamed his enemies in the Bible. And often times, it was with mockery. Let’s take a look at some of these demons.
Nimrod. Genesis 10:8-12 speaks of the mighty Nimrod, the first “warrior of name” after the Flood, who is credited with starting the kingdoms of Mesopotamia, including Babel, of the Tower of Babel infamy. The name of Nimrod is apparently a Hebrew play on words that demonized the leader, because Nimrod in Hebrew means “to revolt.” One hardly thinks a person would make his name with such negative connotations, since such kings often considered themselves to be like the gods.
Scholars van der Toorn and van der Horst suggest that Nimrod was a deliberately distorted Hebrew version of Ninurta as the hunter god of Mesopotamia. They argue that the reign of Nimrod was most likely a symbolic synopsis of the history of Mesopotamia embodied in one character, a deity deliberately dethroned by the Jewish writer to a hunter king.
The cities [of Nimrod] mentioned in Gen 10:9-12 are given in a more or less chronological sequence. The list reads as a condensed resume of Mesopotamian history. Akkad, though still in use as a cult-center in the first millennium, had its floruit under the Sargonic dynasty. Kalhu had its heyday in the first half of the first millennium BCE, some fifteen hundred years later. If Nimrod is not a god, he must at least have enjoyed a divine longevity, his reign embracing both cities.
To top off God’s “verbal bullying” of the villainous Nimrod, the infamous city he began, was also renamed. Babylon, meaning “gateway of the gods,” was renamed by the writer of Genesis to Babel, meaning “confusion of tongues.” How’s that for a sarcastic swipe at man’s positive self-image?
Nimrod’s name is an example where God mocks a foreign deified “god-king” and his arrogant kingdom by renaming him as a mere rebel and hunter.
Cushan-rishathaim. In Judges 3:8-9, this king of Mesopotamia is mentioned with hostility toward Israel. Though he is not a deity, and he is most likely Naram-Sin (2367-2359 B.C.), he is renamed in the text with insulting degradation. This snarky rename means “doubly wicked son of Cush.” Sometimes name-calling is appropriate when it comes to truly evil people.
Jezebel. In 2 Kings, we read the story of this most ruthless and wicked queen of Israel. She was a royal pagan from Tyre whom King Ahab of Israel married as a treaty of appeasement. It didn’t work out well for Israel, as her idolatry infected Israel and brought judgment, in both physical and verbal condemnation. Archaeological discoveries have revealed that her name in Tyre was actually Izebul, which meant, “Where is the Prince?” Prince meaning, Ba’al, the prince of gods in Canaan. In the Bible, Izebul is named Jezebel, which is a slurring wordplay on the Hebrew word for “dung” (zebel). 2 Kings 9:37 reduces that worldly powerful queen to pathos with a double entendre of caustic scorn: “And the corpse of Jezebel shall be as dung on the face of the field in the territory of Jezreel, so that no one can say, ‘This is Jezebel.’”
But God does not merely jab kings and rulers with his verbal flame throwing, he also mocks the gods by renaming them.
Ba’alzebub. Jezebel, that wicked queen of dung, had introduced Ba’al worship into Israel in an unprecedented way that would haunt the people of God for generations. Ba’al was a high god in Canaan and he took on many manifestations. In Ekron, his name was Ba’alzebul, which meant, “lord of the heavenly dwelling.” The author of 2 Kings 1:2-6 renames Ba’alzebul as Ba’alzebub, which means the derogatory, “lord of the flies.” Ya gotta appreciate God’s wicked sense of humor. Jesus carries on this tradition of mockery in the Gospels when he reduces that prince of gods to a prince of demons (Matt. 12:24 : Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15).
Ashtoreth. Ashtoreth is a goddess who shows up often in the Old Testament (1King 11:15, 33; 2King 23:13; 1Sam 31:10). The name refers to the infamous Ashtart (or Astarte) of Canaan. It is said that ignoring someone is the most vicious way to hurt them. False gods were bad enough to the ancient Hebrew, but female goddesses were so offensive that the Bible writers didn’t use a word for goddess. They simply used their names. This may be because they believed that the demons behind the deities were of male gender, since angelic divine beings were all male. But it has long been noted that the name Ashtoreth was a deliberate diabolical distortion of Ashtart by using the vowels of the Hebrew word for “shame” (bosheth) between the consonants of Ashtart.
Satyrs as Goat Demons
Another way of demonizing and mocking God’s opponents was to use the pagan mythology against itself. That is, Biblical writers would quote or paraphrase pagan mythologies back to them, but in an undermining or ironic way. One of those examples is the references to satyrs in Biblical condemnation of false religion. Anyone familiar with ancient Greco-Roman religion has heard of Pan, the satyr deity of nature and shepherding. A satyr was a hybrid creature who had the upper body of a man, and the lower body and legs of a goat, accompanied by horns on his head as well. But these little nasties worshipped the chaos of unrestrained passion, in both sexual and consumptive behaviors. The notion of satyrs or goat deities finds a place in Canaanite lore, and therefore, in the Bible as well…