Ritratto di Yahweh | Mauro Biglino

[Music] Good morning friends. Sometimes we wonder if there are more modern theologians who tend to read the Bible in a way that is freer from tradition, which has essentially built all the theology we know on the Bible. And these more modern theologians actually exist.

Today I want to talk about a theologian who is Francesca Stavrakopoulos, who wrote a book "Anatomy of God". I don't intend to review this book because we will talk about it further with Professor Corrias, because it has a whole series of very interesting aspects. Today I prefer to read to you some passages from this book, because in this way at least we realize the effectiveness of a certain type of reading of the Bible.

Francesca Stavrakopoulos is a theologian graduated from Oxford, professor of biblical studies and ancient religion at the University of Exeter and therefore she is a person, so to speak, equipped with all the academic qualifications necessary to obviously talk about this topic. So let's start straight away and start right from the prologue, where she talks about when she was still a student and certain things didn't convince her. "Yet when I read the various books that make up the Bible I couldn't find this hypothetical God without a body, that is, the God constructed by theology.

On the contrary, those ancient texts evoked a surprisingly carnal image of God, like a divinity with human features who walked and he spoke, cried and laughed. A God who ate and slept, who felt emotions and who breathed, a God who was above all a male, and this is very clear. " And obviously she also intervened during the lessons and asked questions, but she received answers that didn't convince her.

For example, he says that one of his teachers replied: "But the problem is not God. The professor, a well-respected Christian theologian in the field and a member of the clergy, responded. The problem only arises when we take the Bible's descriptions literally.

- Here we go again, we must not take the letter - The professor continued by explaining that the biblical descriptions of a God with a male body, which I found so problematic, were nothing more than metaphors or even poetic license to his body, he told me. According to him, the risk would have been to undertake a simplistic reading of the biblical texts. We had to stop at the descriptions present in the biblical texts, it was necessary to go beyond the text by reading the various filigree passages .

profound theological truths and - she says - I found this response profoundly frustrating". This answer essentially says that what is written is almost not important, what is important is what can be found beyond, that is, going underneath, going behind what is written. And obviously when we proceed like this everyone invents what they want.

And she continues: "He possessed all the typical attributes of the other divinities of the ancient world. He had a head, hair and a face, eyes, ears, a nose and a mouth. He had arms, hands, legs and feet, a chest and a back.

He was equipped with a heart, a tongue, teeth and genitals, he was a God who not only had human features, albeit on an Impressive scale, but who also often behaved like a man. In fact, this God liked to walk and eating large meals. She listened to music, wrote books and compiled lists - she is a theologian who writes, I remind you - She was a God capable of not only speaking but also whistling, laughing, crying and engaging in soliloquies who fell in love and who willingly fought .

A God who quarreled with his worshipers and who fought with his enemies, a God who had friends, who raised children, who married and made love. " Warning: this is a very important statement. "This portrait of God was not obtained by reconstructing the mythologies inscribed on time-worn clay tablets.

Instead, it was taken directly from the Bible. " Now here this theologian writes things that I have never written, that is, I have never reached such a point of concreteness in the description of this God. And then he goes on to say that Yahweh, like the other deities of the Levant between the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, was originally "only one among many gods of the polytheistic world and remained so for much of his career.

The local pantheon, that is, the set of deities, was imagined as a vast and complex family group that reflected the social structures and family ties of the faithful in many Levantine societies. This pantheon had at its head the elderly creator of the cosmos El. Al Of under El there was a generation of younger gods, each with particular tasks regarding the management of the universe.

We know of El's family ties thanks to a large number of documents dating back to the 14th and 13th centuries BC and discovered. at the archaeological site of the ancient city state of Ugarit on the Syrian coast. El was considered the gentle father of the gods now at rest from the duties of the daily management of the cosmos and was accompanied by his consort, the mother goddess Athirat.

This couple had seventy children, a collective term for the second generation of deities. Among the latter were the divinity of Ugarit, practically the patron of the city, that is, the powerful storm god Baal, his sister Anat, a fearsome warrior, the turbulent sea god Yam and the underworld god Mot, each of whom resided in the own domain on the fringes of the divine kingdom. Below these gods were some minor deities whose duties included practical skills and the arts, including architecture, healing, music and magic.

Even further down, in the divine hierarchy, there were housed a group of messengers, the famous Malakim, and divine assistants who served the gods and shuttled between the heavens and the earth. Despite the differences in rank, all the gods used to meet in a divine assembly presided over by El, as a celestial god, with the power to decide on matters of a divine and mortal nature". In short, we are within that world that I I have been describing for many years now and this theologian does nothing but take up, In fact, as she says, what appears from the Bible and what appears from the texts of the time, that is, from the texts of the Semitic culture of the time.

She says: "Only later are they the pretentious theologies that want to make Yahweh a solitary god were born. Even more so since the Bible itself reveals to us that this God was far from alone. Yahweh is not presented as supreme ruler and creator of the cosmos; rather, he is an aggressive minor storm deity who resides on the edge of the world inhabited by humans in a place alternately called Seir, Paran, and Teman, depicted in the Bible as a dangerous, mountainous wilderness, probably located to the south in the desert of Negev, beyond the Dead Sea, in that territory known as Edom and today known as southern Jordan".

We have recalled several times that Yahweh was called lord of Teman, that is, lord of the south, in the Ugaritic culture found in Lebanon. That is, it was therefore north of this territory. All this to say that in reality the god presented by the Bible, that is Yahweh, - as I have been saying since 2010 and fourteen years have passed - was one of the many concrete deities.

the theologian highlights the fact that he was a male in fact in exodus he is called " ish milhama" that is "male individual of war, man of war". Bible in a more free way, that is, free from the tradition that has elaborated on that text a whole series of characteristics attributing them to Yahweh. But they are characteristics that Yahweh does not have.

Spiritual, transcendent characteristics such as omniscience, omnipotence, eternity, etc. etc. So the theologian says : "An extremely concrete God emerges from the Bible.

" And we absolutely agree. Then there is another important fact: we often tend to deny the historical validity of the Bible and here too you intervene by saying: "From the 9th century BC onwards, the archaeological evidence support the existence during the Iron Age of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah - we know that after the united kingdom of Solomon the two kingdoms were divided: that of Israel to the north and that of Judah to the south - sometimes even corroborating the names of some local rulers. Mesopotamian evidence confirms the Assyrian destruction of the kingdom of Judah in the late 8th century BC .

The Mesopotamian annals attest to the forced migration of some groups of high social status in both kingdoms (a usual Imperial strategy aimed at preventing local uprisings). Finally, there is sufficient evidence to support that some exiles actually returned from Babylon to Judah during the late 6th or 5th century BC. However, it is good to remember that the extra-biblical material highlights the strong limitations of the biblical representation of the past".

I have always said that the Bible is a sort of Bignami. For us it is a large volume, in reality it is a sort of extremely synthesized history of much broader, much broader stories that other peoples have written. And the theologian confirms this, she says: "So much so that the Bible cannot be considered a complete historiographical register" .

relationship between those people of Israel and its governor Yahweh, who we have seen, even for this theologian, to be a very concrete, absolutely concrete and non-spiritual male individual "In the two Books of Kings, for example, a ruler of the northern kingdom of Israel in the IX century BC named Omri is presented as a figure of marginal importance, whose only political achievement worth remembering was the foundation of the new capital Samaria. Yet the inscription found on a stele erected by Mesha, king of nearby Moab, celebrates the reconquest of a considerable portion of Moabite territory previously under the rule of Omri king of Israel and his successor, both of whom would have oppressed a along Moab". We have already talked about the stele of Mesha and we said how it is an extra-biblical document that confirms what the Bible says.

And Mesha is a king who is mentioned in the Bible, he is known in the Bible. So in this situation the Bible and the Mesha stele comfort and corroborate each other. "The dynastic and territorial longevity of Omri is also reflected in the Assyrian texts of the 9th and 8th centuries BC, in which the reign of Israel is called "land of Omri" and its various rulers as "sons of Omri".

So there are some Assyrian texts, which are not cited here with bibliographical references, and we are going to see them. There are therefore Assyrian texts that confirm the existence of this king Omri, king of Israel. And they are texts that belong to important rulers of the time, Assyrians, Assyrian-Babylonians.

For example, Hadad-Nirari III, Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II gave the name of the ruler to the territory of the Northern kingdom. For example, they called it mãr hu-um-ri-i, "son of Omri", bit hu-um-ri-i, "house of Omri", and mãt hu-um-ri-i, "country of Omri". And Yehu, who caused the destruction of the Omrite dynasty, receives the name, in the black obelisk of Shalmaneser III, of "son of Omri".

And then the prophet Micah also recalls the statutes of Omri. So we have little-known external texts, almost never cited, which confirm the historicity of the Bible. Sometimes we look for historical documentation in great monuments and instead it is precisely within unthinkable texts that we find confirmations of the Bible, texts like these which speak of a king who is apparently insignificant in the Bible.

Why seemingly insignificant? Because the Bible tries to limit its importance for the simple fact that, we know, from a certain point onwards between the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel there was bad blood and therefore everything that belonged to the kingdom of Israel was, so to speak, marginalized. Because then the Bible remained and developed in the kingdom of Judah.

So what does the Bible say, in particular the First Book of Kings in chapter 16: "In the thirty-first year of Ana king of Judah, Omri became king over Israel. He reigned twelve years, of which six Tirsa. Then he purchased Mount Samaria from Semer, for two talents of silver.

He built on the mountain and called the city he built there Samaria, after Semer, owner of the mountain. Omri did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh, he did worse than all those before him". So the Bible essentially gives him little importance because, how to say, Omri's behavior was not in accordance with the laws, norms, rules dictated by Yahweh was also addressed to other deities.

What is important, therefore, is to understand that "Archaeological evidence confirms - says the theologian - the existence of several temples dedicated to Yahweh throughout the world. of the entire first millennium BC and the dynastic and territorial longevity of Omri is reflected in these Assyrian texts". So we have, on the one hand, the finally official revaluation made by a university professor - but there are others but I liked cite this for the courageous clarity with which this theologian speaks and writes - we have confirmation of the existence of Yahweh as a male individual, a carnal individual.

The existence of Yahweh as one of the many deities, probably one of the many young deities existing at that time - and therefore Yahweh probably also had to be very harsh with his people because he had to demonstrate what he was capable of - and on the other hand we have some testimonies, in this case not archaeological in the sense of palaces or anything else, but philological testimonies attributed to the writings - them we have read - of important rulers of the time who quote one of the many Kings of Israel mentioned in the Bible. So as we move forward, the historicity of the Bible, of the Bible placed in Israel obviously, becomes more and more evident and it is interesting to note how, precisely, this historicity is found, here we can almost say "in filigree", that is, it is found at inside unthinkable texts, texts that we could never imagine speaking about Israel. And instead they do it and nominate one of the kings who for the Bible was a king of little importance and instead for these texts, starting from the stele of Mesha and then the texts that we have now read of these Assyrian rulers, he was an important king, who also fought important battles, conquered territories and then in turn was defeated.

And so the whole discussion we are having is important for this reason. That is, the Bible is a history book, a book as we have seen that is incomplete because it only tells the story that it was convenient for the biblical authors to tell, or rather that the biblical authors wanted to tell to magnify themselves, to magnify the history of their people. But it is a history book, and it is a history book that also helps us understand what is happening now precisely in that territory.

But we will have the opportunity to talk about it again. Bye, thanks and see you next time.