Torah and Nondualism: Diversity, Conflict, and Synthesis

INTRODUCTION

An Egyptian man saved us

Who was Moses?

If we take the biblical account at face value, Moses was the scion of a distinguished Israelite family residing in Egypt in about the 13th century B.C.E. Due to Egyptian persecution, Moses' mother hid him after his birth and later placed him, still an infant, in a tarred basket floating among the reeds on the bank of the Nile. Moses was then found and adopted by the pharaoh's daughter, and he was reared in the royal household. This endearing story serves to confirm Moses' great favor with God, his powerful influence in the Egyptian royal court, and his impeccable Israelite pedigree. Suspiciously, however, this much-loved tale of Moses' birth runs in close parallel to the birth story of Sargon of Akkad, a powerful king who conquered Mesopotamia a thousand years before the time of Moses. Sargon, like Moses, was left on the riverbank in a basket woven from reeds and sealed with tar, and Sargon, like Moses, was rescued and reared in the royal household.

Obviously, the Sargon birth story raises questions about the historicity of the Moses story. And then, too, there is the story from the Mahabharata of Karna's birth. Karna is the son of the sun god, conceived in the womb of noble Kunti, the future mother of the Pandava kings. Kunti, who remains a virgin, feels shame about the birth of Karna and places the child in the river in a basket. Eventually, Karna becomes a king and also a leading warrior in the army of the Pandavas' enemy, Duryodhana. With this third rendition of the Moses-in-the-bulrushes tale, again describing an infant king set adrift on a river in a basket, we begin to wonder if we are dealing less with history than with archetype.

Whatever we might conclude about the historicity of Moses' birth story, the biblical account makes clear that at least from his third birthday, when he was weaned (see Exod 2:7–10; 2 Macc 7:27), he was reared in the pharaoh's palace, essentially as a son of the pharaoh. Therefore, Moses would have spoken Egyptian, not Hebrew, as his primary language. Moreover, as a son of the pharaoh, Moses would have been trained in the esoteric wisdom of the Egyptian religion, for each successive pharaoh was considered to be an incarnation of the Egyptian god Horus, and the pharaoh's sons and grandsons were all trained for that role.¹ Thus, we can conclude from the biblical account that Moses' first religion—the religion of his childhood associations—was the Egyptian religion, not the Israelite religion.

Moses, the Egyptian prince, reached adulthood, and according to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (1st century C.E.), he led a successful military campaign to Ethiopia and married an Ethiopian princess.² What Josephus calls Ethiopia is a reference to ancient Nubia, the Nile kingdom just south of Egypt. Archaeological, linguistic, and genetic evidence demonstrates that the Nubian people were ethnic Dravidians (South Asians) who migrated to the Nile region during prehistoric times from what is now south and west India.³ It was relatively common for Egyptian pharaohs to wage military campaigns against the Nubians, and it would not be surprising for a son or grandson of the pharaoh to lead such a campaign, but an interesting detail appears in the story of Moses' Nubian campaign as it is related by Josephus.

Josephus says that Moses led the army by way of Egypt's interior, instead of leading it south along the Nile. This interior route offered a tactical advantage, but it also required the army to cross an area infested with poisonous winged serpents. According to Josephus, Moses instructed his soldiers to carry ibises in baskets and to release the ibises when the army reached the infested area. The ibises killed the serpents, and the army was able to proceed without harm. Thus, Moses' name became associated, in legend at least, with the ibis, a sacred emblem of the Egyptian god Thoth. That connection between Moses and Thoth is important, as this book will show.

According to the biblical account, the pharaoh's daughter who adopted Moses gave him the name Moses (Hebrew: MoSHeH) because, as she put it, I drew him (Hebrew: MeSHITiHU) from the water. (Exod 2:10.) But the pharaoh's daughter would have spoken Egyptian, not Hebrew. Not surprisingly, then, the name Moses is an Egyptian name. In fact, many Egyptian names end with forms of the Egyptian word mose, which means born from or drawn from. Ramesses II, who may have been the pharaoh during Moses' time (see hint in Exod 1:11), provides a good example. His name (Re-mose) translates as Born from Re—Re being the Egyptian sun god. Considering Moses' legendary association with ibises, and thus with the Egyptian god Thoth, we might suppose that Moses' full Egyptian name was Thutmose, meaning Drawn from Thoth. In fact, at the approximate time of Moses' life, several Egyptian pharaohs bore the name Thutmose.

Another Jewish historian, Artapanus of Alexandria (2nd century B.C.E.), relates a slightly different history of Moses.⁴ Artapanus describes Moses as a sage who taught practical sciences to the Egyptians—particularly the priestly sciences associated with the god Thoth. According to Artapanus, Moses was highly respected by the Egyptian priests, who called him by Thoth's name. Artapanus thus confirms that Moses' full name was Thutmose. The Torah records Moses' role as a leading priest and sage of ancient Egypt, saying that Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the eyes of Pharaoh's servants and in the eyes of the people. (Exod 11:3; see also Acts 7:22.) Artapanus's account fills in some of the details of Moses' revered status.

Artapanus records that during Moses' military campaign against the Nubians, he consecrated his military camp to the ibis, Thoth's emblem. Also, Moses' military camp was located in Hermopolis, Thoth's primary city. Artapanus further relates that the husband of the Egyptian princess who adopted Moses was bitterly envious of Moses' talents and successes, and he tried several times to have Moses killed, perhaps viewing Moses as a rival for the throne of Egypt. Moses escaped these plots, and—according to Artapanus—Moses' rival died from elephantiasis.

The Torah only hints at the latter events. It states that Moses killed a man, and Jewish legend adds that this was achieved by the utterance of divine names. Specifically, the Torah states: And [Moses] saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man—from his brothers. . . . And he struck down the Egyptian man. . . . (Exod 2:11–12.) The phrase from his brothers might be describing either the Egyptian man or the Hebrew man, and the Torah is delightfully ambiguous in this regard. The phrase is usually read as a description of the Hebrew man (the Hebrews being Moses' ethnic brothers), but that reading makes the phrase redundant. If we read the phrase more literally, it might be a description of the Egyptian man, and the word brothers might then refer to one of the sons of the pharaoh, with whom Moses grew up as an adopted brother.⁵

In other words, Moses saw a violent injustice being done to a Hebrew slave by a son of the reigning pharaoh, and he responded by striking down the violent prince. This reading finds support a few verses later when the Torah states that the pharaoh heard about the incident and sought to kill Moses. (Exod 2:15.) Would the pharaoh have sought to kill Moses—a prince of Egypt—if Moses had merely struck down a petty officer who was abusing a Hebrew slave? Not likely. Under Torah law (and, more generally, under ancient Near Eastern law), the reigning pharaoh would only be the avenger of the blood, with the legal right to kill Moses, if Moses had killed a member of the pharaoh's own household. (See Num 35:9–28; Deut 19:1–13; Josh 20.) It appears, then, that Moses' victim must have been some prominent member of the Egyptian royal family.

The Torah next describes Moses fleeing to Midian. There, he encounters seven sisters (daughters of the chief priest of Midian), and he defends them against a group of shepherds. When the sisters return to their father, they do not say, A Hebrew man saved us, nor do they say, An Israelite man saved us; rather, they say, An Egyptian man saved us. (Exod 2:19.) In other words, Moses dresses, looks, and speaks like an Egyptian.

Many other biblical hints suggest that Moses was essentially a foreigner to the Israelites. For example, when Moses' god—referred to in the Bible by the name YHVH—instructs Moses to lead the Israelites to freedom, Moses objects that he does not speak well (Exod 4:10), although we later find that he speaks quite beautifully (see Deut 1–11). Perhaps, the meaning of Moses' objection is that he does not speak Hebrew well, explaining why YHVH then instructs Moses to use Aaron as a translator. (Exod 4:16.) In addition, in describing the relationship between the Israelite people and the god YHVH, the Torah uses covenantal language that closely parallels contemporaneous Near Eastern peace treaties, suggesting that the relationship was one of submission to a foreign god and king.⁶

Was then Moses more Egyptian than Israelite? Was the charming Moses-in-the-bulrushes story added to the Torah as a contrivance to transform Moses into a native son of Israel? Was the greatest prophet of the Israelite people really an Egyptian prince and priest named Thutmose?⁷

For some Jews, ancient Egypt evokes memories of slavery and genocide, and the Hebrew term for ancient Egypt (Mitzrayim) functions as a metaphor for irreligion. Can it be, then, that many of the greatest secrets of the Torah are revealed in the study of the ancient Egyptian religion? Of course, it can be.

Aegyptus . . . , diuinitatis amantissima,

deorum in terras suae religionis merito sola deductio,

sanctitatis et pietatis magistra. . . .

Egypt . . . , most loving of divinity,

by reason of her reverence the only land on earth where the gods settled,

she who taught holiness and fidelity. . . .

— The Latin Asclepius [25]⁸

The Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) is sacred scripture for more than half the world's population. But even as religious fundamentalists cite chapter and verse in support of their competing doctrinal claims, modern critical scholarship has uncovered a radically new biblical narrative, revolutionizing our understanding of the Torah. These modern scholars, however, too often focus on the plain meaning of the biblical text, ignoring the ancient hermeneutical tradition that explains the methods by which that text is encoded. The Zohar (13th century C.E.), the leading work of the Jewish mystical tradition, describes this encoding of the Torah in this way:

Woe to the person who says that Torah intended to present a mere story and ordinary words! For if so, we could compose a Torah right now with ordinary words, and more laudable than all of them [in the existing Torah]! . . . Therefore, concerning Torah, one should look only at what is beneath the garment. So all these words and all these stories are garments.⁹

So, how then does one remove the garments of the Torah, gaining access to the story behind the story? The present book explains in plain language some of the complex hermeneutical techniques recorded in ancient biblical commentaries, persuasively demonstrating that the Torah is encoded and revealing how to pierce that code. The book then combines those ancient hermeneutical techniques with the methods of modern critical scholarship to unlock the Torah as never before, revealing a hidden subtext previously known only to a few experts and hinted about in obscure Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts. The basic theme of that subtext is the synthesis of both diversity and conflict in a world in which God is understood to be the one power at the source of all things, whether familiar or foreign, good or evil.

The analysis is divided into five parts. Part One is a commentary on the book of Genesis. As we explore the rich motifs of Genesis, we will see that the Torah has its roots in two religious cultures (Egyptian and Canaanite) and that this subtle ideological division within the Torah reflects the complex history of two rival kingdoms (Judah and Israel). Part One begins by exploring the many areas of correspondence between Genesis and ancient Egyptian mythology. It then turns to the Canaanite religion and demonstrates the many ways in which the Torah integrates Egyptian and Canaanite religious ideas.

Part Two is a commentary on the book of Exodus. The primary focus of Part Two is the divine name YHVH, the most sacred name of God in Judaism. YHVH is the divine name used by Moses, the Egyptian prince, and Part Two demonstrates, by scribal hermeneutics and by a close reading of the Torah's own text, that the name YHVH is an encoded reference to the Egyptian god Thoth. Thus, Part Two offers scholars of Hebrew scripture access to the single most significant secret of the Torah, known among Jewish mystics as the great secret of the name (ha-sod ha-godol ha-shem). This secret demonstrates that the Torah is fundamentally a syncretistic text aimed at harmonizing Egypt's venerable Thoth cult with Canaan's rival El cult.

Part Three, which concerns the book of Leviticus, takes the reader on an intellectual excursion to South Asia, presenting a brief introduction to Vedic thought. Leviticus focuses, among other things, on ritual fire sacrifice, a once ubiquitous form of worship that continues today primarily in South Asia. South Asia thus functions as a time capsule of sorts, preserving ancient ideas about sacrificial worship, and therefore Part Three seeks to deepen our understanding of ancient Jewish sacrificial ritual by comparing it to its Vedic counterpart, analyzing the common modes of thought that make both ritual systems comprehensible. In particular, Part Three shows that the Jewish fire sacrifice operated as an enacted metaphor that unified diverse human experiences, thus enabling a person to repair, through ritual actions, the way he or she viewed and engaged the external world.

Part Four, an essay on the book of Numbers, introduces a thesis that is even more provocative than the assertion that YHVH is the Egyptian god Thoth. Part Four argues that after a deadly confrontation with a band of Israelite rebels, Moses and Aaron were arrested, charged with capital offenses, tried, convicted, and Aaron was executed, dying as a martyr. That, of course, is a huge interpretive claim, but it is one that finds undeniable support in the Torah's encoded text and also in the esoteric Jewish tradition, as Part Four shows.

Part Five, an explication of Deuteronomy, carries the provocative thesis of Part Four a step further. The book of Deuteronomy introduces a new set of chauvinistic values to the Torah, supplanting the Egypt-Canaan syncretism of Genesis and Exodus with a denunciation of Canaan's religious culture in favor of a centralized, pro-Jerusalem, pro-YHVH religious model. Deuteronomy achieves this ideological shift through the guise of relating Moses' last words to the Israelites. But the revisionist content of Deuteronomy suggests that the book was composed at a relatively late date, when Judah and Israel were established kingdoms with an agrarian, not a pastoral, economy. Deuteronomy was probably put into semifinal form shortly after the fall of the Kingdom of Israel (the Northern Kingdom), when the Kingdom of Judah (the Southern Kingdom) was struggling to absorb Ba‘al-worshiping refugees from its northern neighbor, and when Judean kings were seeking to consolidate political and cultic authority in Jerusalem, where YHVH, not Ba‘al, was worshiped. Deuteronomy not coincidentally reflects those concerns—concerns that prevailed in the 7th century B.C.E., which just happens to be the time when the book of Deuteronomy was rather conveniently found in the Jerusalem temple. The effort to assimilate refugees from the Kingdom of Israel into the YHVH-worshiping Southern Kingdom explains the famous declaration of faith set forth in Deuteronomy: Hear, O Israel; YHVH is our god; YHVH is one and only. (Deut 6:4.) In short, Deuteronomy modifies the Torah in ways that serve the interests of a particular political regime, and it corresponds to the historical reality of a particular time.

Nonetheless, Deuteronomy's recapitulation and revision of the Torah also includes a beautiful and compelling justification by Moses of his own actions while leading the Israelites. When the latter point is considered in light of the hidden subtext of the book of Numbers, we see that Deuteronomy—even if composed long after Moses' death—takes the literary form of Moses' defense at his own trial, ending in a description of his martyrdom. Deuteronomy is, thus, a powerful Hebrew analog to Plato's Apologia Socratis.

¹ On Moses' mastery of Egyptian esoteric wisdom, see Acts 7:22.

² See Josephus, Jewish Antiquities II, chapter 10. Moses' Ethiopian wife is mentioned in chapter 12 of the book of Numbers, where Miriam and Aaron criticize Moses on her account.

³ See Lal, The Only Asian Expedition in threatened Nubia, pp. 579–581 [archaeological findings connecting the Nubians to the prehistoric people of southwest India]; Tuttle, Dravidian and Nubian, pp. 133–144 [linguistic similarities between these two groups]; Gonzalez et al., Mitochondrial Lineage M1 Traces an Early Human Backflow to Africa, 8:223 [DNA analysis showing that these two groups are genetically related].

⁴ See Eusebius, Preparatio Evangelicum 9:27:3–20.

⁵ In translating the Bible's Hebrew text, the author of the present book has erred on the side of literalism, and therefore the translations may sometimes seem unfamiliar or awkwardly phrased. The literal translations, however, often reveal subtleties of meaning that are lost in more idiomatic renderings. In addition, the author has occasionally italicized portions of the biblical text to add emphasis. The original text, of course, has no emphasized portions. Finally, careful readers who might choose to look up biblical citations should note that the author has worked from publications of the Bible's Hebrew text, and therefore verse numbering may vary slightly from verse numbering in Christian translations of the Bible.

⁶ See Kugel, How to Read the Bible, pp. 243–247; Coogan, The Old Testament, pp. 116–125; Hayes, Introduction to the Bible, pp. 119–121; see also Wright, Inventing God's Law, p. 350.

⁷ See Exod 32:9–13 [suggesting that the descendants of the Israelite patriarchs would not be abundant if God annihilated the Israelites and built up a new nation from Moses]; Deut 33:9 [suggesting that Moses did not know his parents, brothers, or sons]; 1 Chron 23:14 [stating that Moses' sons were called upon the tribe of Levi (implying adoption into that tribe)]. On the thesis that Moses was an Egyptian and that the repressed memory—the intentional forgetting (see Deut 25:19)—of ancient Egypt has a strong influence on present-day Western culture, see Assmann, Moses the Egyptian.

⁸ Translated in Copenhaver, Hermetica, pp. 81–82. A Coptic version of Asclepius 25 appears in the eighth tractate of Codex VI of the Nag Hammadi library, dating to roughly the 3rd century C.E.

⁹ Zohar 3:152a, translated in Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, vol. VIII, pp. 518–521.

PART ONE

Myths, Gods, and Syncretism A Commentary on Genesis

The road is long

With many a winding turn

That leads us to who knows where,

Who knows where.

But I'm strong,

Strong enough to carry him.

He ain't heavy, he's my brother.

—Bob Russell (1914–1970 C.E.)

1. And Jacob said to Joseph, ‘El Shaddai appeared to me in Luz, in the land of Canaan, and He blessed me’

In the second millennium B.C.E., people from the Levant—which includes the region the Bible calls Canaan—began migrating to the Nile Delta in northern Egypt.¹⁰ Some came as traders or refugees from famine; others came as prisoners of war, or as slaves offered as tribute. The Egyptians called these people "hyksos, which means (roughly) foreign rulers, reflecting the fact that some of these migrants eventually rose to political power in northern Egypt, ruling there as pharaohs for more than a century. The Torah relates the story of one clan among these Asiatic immigrants—Jacob's clan—and the Torah asserts that Jacob's clan was the specific clan that assumed political power. Jacob's son Joseph, for example, asserted that God had made him father to Pharaoh" (Gen 45:8), indicating that Joseph's descendants were Egyptian pharaohs.

According to the historical evidence, the Hyksos were worshipers of the Egyptian storm god Set. More accurately, the Egyptian storm god Set was the translation into Egyptian culture of their Canaanite storm god Ba‘al, although the respective mythologies of these gods differed in their details.

In ancient times, gods were sacred images located in specific temples, but gods also represented archetypes that were not place specific, and just as the name for water could be translated from one language to another, so too the name for the mother goddess or the storm god could be translated from one pantheon to another. According to this logic of ancient religion, the Egyptian storm god Set was the translation of the Canaanite storm god Ba‘al, and historical records tell us that the Hyksos who migrated to northern Egypt from the Levant (Canaan) worshiped Ba‘al/Set. But is that true specifically of Jacob's clan, the progenitors of the Israelite people? Did Jacob's clan worship Ba‘al/Set?

The Torah relates that the god of the Israelite patriarchs was El Shaddai, a god that the Torah expressly connects to the land of Canaan. For example, when the patriarch Jacob was near the end of his life, and his son Joseph came to see him, Jacob said: El Shaddai appeared to me in Luz, in the land of Canaan, and He blessed me. Likewise, God told Moses: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob [(that is, to the patriarchs)] as El Shaddai, and with my name YHVH, I was not known to them. (Exod 6:2–3.) What, then, does history tell us about the god named El Shaddai, and what if any connection is there between El Shaddai and Ba‘al/Set?

The biblical word El is often translated as if it meant God in the modern generic sense, but archaeological records confirm that El was the proper name of a specific god, the divine father of Canaan's seventy gods and thus the chief God of the Canaanite pantheon. As the progenitor of the gods, however, El's name was sometimes used to indicate divinity in the more generic sense. Hence, the name El Shaddai might refer to El in the aspect of Shaddai. But who or what was Shaddai?

The Hebrew word shad means breast, but in ancient Hebrew, the word shaddai may have meant mountain (from the Akkadian word shaddu). Therefore, El Shaddai might have been God of the Mountain. The name Shaddai, however, might also have been related to the Hebrew word shadad, which means to plunder, to ravage, or to despoil. In a few places, Hebrew scripture refers to a divine being called Shodeid (the Despoiler) (see Isa 16:4, 21:2; Jer 6:26, 15:8, 48:8, 48:18, 48:32, 51:56; Job 15:21), and the name Shodeid might be a variation of the name Shaddai. The latter conclusion is supported by an examination of Shaddai's character. Shaddai almost always appears in Hebrew scripture as the fierce aspect of God—the aspect that sets limits or metes out punishment. (See, e.g., Isa 13:6; Joel 1:15; Job (passim); Ruth 1:20–21.) For this reason, English-language Bibles sometimes translate the name Shaddai as the Almighty.

In Hebrew scripture, Shaddai is also a divine name that is widely invoked by non-Israelites. Excepting the patriarchal narratives, the primary places in the Hebrew Bible where the name Shaddai appears as a reference to God are the Bala‘am passages of the book of Numbers (Num 22–24), the book of Job, and the book of Ruth, all of which quote the words of non-Israelite prophets. In Job, moreover, Shaddai appears to be the same as the divine being called Satan (the adversary or the accuser), a being who is presented in later texts as a demonic enemy of God but who in earlier, less dualistic texts lacks the characteristics of an anti-god.

The book of Job includes a main section, written in a distinctive poetic style, and a prose prologue that may have been written at a different time. The prologue tells us that the sons of God (i.e., the seventy gods) were assembled before YHVH, and Satan was also present. (Job 1:6.) Thus, Satan is presented in Job as one of the gods included in the divine assembly. This same divine assembly is described in the book of Psalms: God stands in the assembly of El; in the midst of the gods he judges. (Ps 82:1.) In the prologue to the book of Job, however, YHVH (not El) is the name used for the presiding deity of the divine assembly, and Satan is presented as a member of the divine court.

Nonetheless, Satan acts as YHVH's arm of justice; he is the divine force that YHVH uses to inflict punishment. Hebrew theology is thus radically nondual. Satan is presented as a divine being that is subordinate to YHVH (God), which makes YHVH the ultimate author of both good and evil, both mercy and punishment. According to this theology, there is no independent second power in competition with God, responsible for the things a person might dislike. Many examples from Hebrew scripture illustrating this nondual theology are cited in the footnote below,¹¹ but one of the most explicit is from the book of Isaiah, where YHVH declares: I make peace, and I create evil; I, YHVH, do all these things. (Isa 45:7.)

In the prologue to the book of Job, Satan acts as YHVH's agent of affliction sent by YHVH to test Job. (Job 1:12, 2:6.) Significantly, however, the main section of the book refers to this same divine afflicter as Shaddai. By implication, then, Shaddai is Satan, the fierce and punitive aspect of the nondual Godhead, which of course is consistent with Shaddai's role elsewhere in scripture as the aspect of God that metes out punishment.

The foregoing conclusions are confirmed by an important extrabiblical source, the Deir ‘Alla inscription, which dates to about 800 B.C.E., earlier than any known manuscript of the Bible. This plaster inscription was discovered in 1967 during archaeological excavations at Deir ‘Alla, in western Jordan, near the Jordan River. The plaster fragments had fallen from the wall of a building (perhaps a sanctuary) that had been destroyed by an earthquake. Pieced together, the text describes a time when the social order, including even the natural hierarchy of the animal world, had somehow become subverted, and in response, "the gods gathered together; the shaddai-in [(plural of ‘Shaddai’)] took their places as the assembly."¹² The gathering of the divine assembly and the arrival, too, of the shaddai-in is strikingly similar to the scene depicted in the prologue to the book of Job: And the sons of the gods came, . . . and also the Satan came in their midst. (Job 1:6.) The Deir ‘Alla inscription thus supports the apparent identity between Satan and Shaddai. The use of the plural form of Shaddai (i.e., the "shaddai-in") in the Deir ‘Alla text is of no moment; it merely suggests that Shaddai acted through a host of divine minions. We find similar plural forms of Shaddai's name in some biblical passages, particularly in older passages written in poetic form. (See Deut 32:17; Ps 106:37.)

The Deir ‘Alla inscription also gives an account of Bala‘am son of B'eor, a non-Israelite prophet who appears in Hebrew scripture as an enemy of the Israelites (see Num 22–24). The biblical Bala'am and the Bala'am of the Deir ‘Alla inscription are both called Bala'am son of B'eor, and both refer to God by the name Shaddai. In addition, their manner of prophecy is strikingly similar.¹³ Thus, the two sources clearly refer to the same person, making Bala'am the only major figure in the Torah whose historical existence and role is confirmed by a contemporaneous extrabiblical source.

After describing the convening of the divine assembly, the Deir ‘Alla inscription relates the gods’ response to the subversion of the social order that has overtaken the earth: "And they [(i.e., the shaddai-in)] said to sh[agar]: ‘Sew up, bolt up the heavens in your cloud, ordaining darkness instead of eternal light!’" Here, assuming the reconstruction of the text is correct, the shaddai-in (plural of Shaddai) are clearly presented as gods who have directory power over storms and who act as a divine disciplinary force, not unlike the disciplinary role Satan/Shaddai plays in the book of Job (see, e.g., Job 37).

One more detail from the Deir ‘Alla text merits attention. Although the text is fragmented, and its translation is the subject of continuing debate, it appears to describe a grim ritual by which El (and, indirectly, the shaddai-in) is placated through child sacrifice, thus restoring order to the world. Archaeological and epigraphic evidence confirms that child sacrifice was practiced by Near Eastern peoples in ancient times,¹⁴ and there are several references to it in the Bible (all condemning the practice).¹⁵In the book of Jeremiah, for example, YHVH decries the worship offered by the inhabitants of Jerusalem to the Canaanite god Ba‘al, saying: They built the high places of Ba‘al to burn their sons in fire as whole offerings to Ba‘al, which I never commanded, nor spoke, nor even thought in My heart. (Jer 19:5.)

The Deir ‘Alla inscription seems to refer in broken fragments to a similar ritual. These fragments include the following: (1) his boy, full of love [ ]; (2) Why are the scion and the firepit containing foliage [ ]?; (3) El will be satisfied. Let him cross over to the House of Eternity [ ]; (4) I will put [ ] under your head. You will lie down on your eternal bed to perish.; (5) The scion sighs in his heart.; (6) Death will take the newborn child, the suckling [ ]; and (7) The heart of the scion is weak for he goes to [ ]. In short, the Deir ‘Alla inscription suggests a connection between the biblical prophet Bala'am son of B'eor, the fierce aspect of God called Shaddai, and the practice of child sacrifice.

The possibility that Bala'am was associated with child sacrifice explains the episode immediately following the Bible's Bala'am passages. The book of Numbers relates in chapter 25 that, at Bala'am's instigation, the Israelites sinned by way of attachment to Ba‘al P'eor,¹⁶ and Psalm 106 makes clear that the episode involved worship of Shaddai with child sacrifices, stating that the Israelites "joined themselves to Ba‘al P'eor and ate the sacrifices of the dead; . . . they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to shaddai-im [(plural of