Adelphiasophism
Baal, Yehouah, A Goddess: Hosea’s Marriage
Abstract
© 1998 The Adelphiasophists and AskWhy! Publications. Freely distribute as long as it is unaltered and properly attributed
Contents Updated: Wednesday, March 24, 1999
The Art of Distillation
The beginning of Hosea’s book is about such violence to women that it is hard to see any modern person accepting it. Yet Christian commentators not only accept it but approve of it and justify it. It has been said that commentary is the art of distillation. Christian commentators are past masters in this art. They distil and distil until they get what they desire. What remains is God’s, but it is not truth.
Honest commentators say at the outset what they are hoping to do—they set out their objectives. This gives the reader a chance of judging whether the commentator is being honest. If they try to distil facts from opinion, we are able to judge for ourselves, to some extent, whether they have fairly achieved their aim. Facts can be judged as what measures up to Nature, or at a lesser level what is accepted. This lesser criterion is the problem because what is accepted will depend upon the values or opinions of those who accept. Christians were ever happy to accept consensus as God’s truth so that Christian history, carefully looked at, is found not to be true but a pious fiction. Nevertheless Christians declare it to be true, and so, by a Christian miracle, it is true!
Indeed, ever ready to wrong-foot their more rational opponents, professional biblical commentators, in a book about to be published, seem about to persuade the faithful that the New Testament is “True Fiction” (”The New Testament as True Fiction” by Douglas Templeton). That should be sufficient to win back the doubters who were beginning to think God’s book was fiction full stop.
Whenever one ploy or another has failed to obscure sufficiently some objection to sacred history in the bible, the believers have happily re-written the offending part. Critical analysis of the accepted texts of both Old and New Testaments show that they have been multiply, and often clumsily, edited. That is another way of saying that they have been badly re-written to support some ancient position. Indeed, the ancient Jewish editors of the scriptures were often able to find that God meant the exact opposite of what he had said through his prophet.
While the accepted texts are today treated with some reverence, the chance to re-write has not ceased. The reason is that the accepted texts are written in ancient and foreign languages. Today, every “scholar” that wants to assert their own point of view, translates these ancient texts as they like. The same applies to whole churches. Each church adopts its own translation—Bowdlerisation is more the correct word.
There is no better book to judge God’s pious wordsmiths than in this book, a violent piece as it stands but pornographic too, when translated properly. Minor examples of this are plain in the various versions of the scriptures available to us but only scholars of Hebrew know the true extent of it, and they are professional Jews or professional Christians, so they are not letting on!
The Puritans who translated the Authorized Version, might have been puritanical but they were less so, or more honest, at least, than many modern pious biblical translators. The Puritans were happy to say that Hosea’s promiscuous wife, Gomer, was a “woman of whoredoms” but that is far too rude for modern Christians and in the New English Bible we find that she is merely an “unworthy woman”. Now which of these do you think that God meant? Elsewhere (Hosea 2:14) the trranslators coyly translate a word which in its Ugaritic cognate can mean “copulate with” as “allure.” “Seduce” is perhaps the best meaning but even that is too explicit for those whose piety exceeds their honesty.
There is nothing new in such textual tinkering, it goes back millennia and to other cultures beside the Jews, but these are people who claim, when it suits them, that this is the very word of god, himself. What then are they doing watering it down? As ever, Christians want to keep their sweetie and want to eat it too.
Hosea Problematical
The obsessively pious as far back as Jerome have described Hosea as problematical and have prayed to God for guidance in interpreting it. Their problem in Hosea is that God “commands” Hosea to take an unfaithful wife. Jews and Christians alike have to find a reason why God meant something quite different.
The most popular Christian extension of the fairy tale is that the saintly Hosea turns Gomer into Mother Theresa. Jerome, for example, thought she became a “chaste harlot(!?)” by marrying the saint. Saint Augustine regarded Gomer as a “reformed” prostitute, a precursor of Mary Magdalene, another supposed prostitute linked with a man called Saviour.
Luther thought the marriage was part of a religious drama meant to personify God’s distress at the behaviour of His people. A reasonable proposal like this is always rejected by “scholars” because it means these happenings were not true, and that would not do for believers in the Holy Book! They prefer to hang on to the problems and find absurd ways to justify them from the infinity of God’s mercy and good sense.
Since Gomer is really Israel, she had to finish up saintly, for Jews at any rate, because they were God’s chosen people. In reality, the metaphor is strikingly accurate because Israel is like a battered housewife who, though constantly beaten, paradoxically keeps returning to her tormenter.
The setting of Hosea’s marriage is that of an apostate or rotten nation (Hos 5:12). Israel was rotten and was personified as a woman. Harlotry was the standard metaphor for idolatry, doubtless deliberately chosen because it was offensive, but, for these prophets, not as offensive as idolatry was to God.
God is married or betrothed to Israel and Hosea to Gomer. The meaning of the name “Gomer” is not clear but these names are usually symbolic of the owner’s nature or deeds. Gomer was a gentile country in Genesis often thought to be the home of the Cimmerians who emerged from beyond the Black Sea about the time the tradition of Hosea was supposed to take place. It seems related to Javan in Genesis, considered by most people to be the Ionian Greeks, so conceivably, Gomer was meant to signify “Greek” during the time of Hellenisation.
This would imply that Hosea was written much later than the eighth century and more likely the third. It is therefore a pseudepigraph like Daniel, pretending that the protest was against Baalism when it was really protest about the spreading popularity of the gods of the Greeks. If so the apparent name of her father “Diblayim,” a plural said to mean the “cakes of figs” offered to Baal, might be a Semitic attempt to render the Greek for “slanderous”, “diabolos,” which of course also pertains to devils. Gomer therefore stands for Jews who were turning to the slanderous act of apostasy from Yehouah in favour of of Greek culture and Greek gods, who were categorized as devils.
Christian commentators invariably believe that Old Testament prophecies really were accurate predictions of future happenings. If they identify the event prophesied, they will place the prophet’s life before that date! Christians are so besotted with their fantasy that they reverse normal causality to make prophecies come true.
Hosea knew the Northern Kingdom had ended, so he obviously lived afterwards, perhaps centuries afterwards, but Christians will date him before the events he prophesied. So, a man who might have been writing after the exile is dated at least 300 years earlier in the time of Jeroboam. That this man and a few contemporary kings are mentioned in the introduction confirms it, for Christians. They will never consider that the book is a deliberate forgery, called by scholars, a pseudepigraph and the snippets of historical information could have been had from the chronicles that were obviously accessible to the compilers of the scriptures.
In times past, the priesthood doubtless did not mind strange men, called prophets, coming along and scaring the wits out of Jewish children, if not having them eaten by bears, because it made them more willing to rush along to the temple with offerings to God that had the effect of making the priests wealthier, thus proving that God loved his servants. But, despite all the dire warnings and threats of annihilation, a remnant had to be forgiven and guided through the prophesied tribulations. It goes without saying that every pious Jewish family thought they would be among the saved—and so did most impious ones.
In the end, as far as Christians are concerned, they all lost out because God got so fed up with all this harlotry that He decided to abandon Jews for far more sensible and more saintly non-Semitic types who called themselves... Christians!
An Allegorical Tale
Hosea’s wife is a metaphor for Israel and Hosea, which means Saviour, is God. The tale is allegorical. So, Yehouah addresses himself, I hear some Christian critics saying. Does God address His son, Jesus? He does! But God is Jesus, isn’t he? Together in the Trinity? Yes? Then God addresses himself all the way through the gospels. Yes? When people today start to speak to themselves, we think they are going Doolalli. But we all get old, surely gods have less excuse.
Anyway, for Christians the identity of Hosea and God allows him to give a command that they consider unnacceptable from God to a faithful servant—to marry an unfaithful woman. Within the bounds of Judaeo-Christian mythology, however, the command in the allegory is acceptable because God is only commanding himself to marry Israel. He did, and Israel was unfaithful. For those who are puzzled that God commands a good man to do something he would find distressing, the allegorical explanation makes sense of it.
Often it is impossible to know whose voice is speaking, Hosea’s or Yehouah’s. It is both or either, because they are the same. Proof is that in Hosea 13:4, God declares: “There is no “saviour” beside me.” The passage explains that Hosea (Saviour) is simply God personified.
The passage cannot be real history because according to the Law (Numbers 5) adultery was forbidden and an adulterous woman was punished by stoning. In Hosea 3:1 the prophet was told to love Gomer, the adultress, so God is commanding Hosea to break the Law of Moses, if Hosea is mortal. Only God could break his own rules. He had underatken to love the adulterous nation Israel. The marriage contract is the analogy of God’s covenant with Israel. A covenant is a contract.
Hosea’s children are just as allegorical as the rest of the characters. Jezreel was a famous city associated with Jezebel and the worship of the goddess, Astarte, but it also puns on Israel and represents the nation, as a home of its kings. God calls the first child Jezreel and the author identifies it as a son, but later it changes sex and becomes a “her.” If Jezreel stands for Israel as God’s offspring then it too should be female and we have an example of the patriarchal editor’s blue pen.
The other children have strange negative names “Lo-Ruhamah” and “Lo-Ammi,” meaning “Not-Pitied” or “Not-Loved” and “Not My People.” Indeed, properly translated, Yehouah also is given a negative name as part of the same system of threats. In Hosea 1:9 the translation is not “I am not your God” but “To you, I am Not-Yehouah”. Plainly, these negatives are simply warnings to the nation. The offspring of their promiscuity with foreign gods will be rejection by Yehouah.
Later, however, he promises that they could become “Loved” and “My people,” effectively, if Israel gives up her passions. It was the nation’s choice, the author tells us. And what is she chosing? Like any mother worth a grain of salt, she nurtures her offspring. The message seems to be that she is again inviting trouble by nurturing Yehouah’s threats.
Baal Worship
The second chapter of Hosea seems to have many allusions to the religion of Baal. Baal was a fertility god and the metaphorical Israel thinks he is providing bread, water, wool, flax, oil and drink. Yehouah says he was providing it all the time, so Yehouah is also a fertility god. He claims responsibility for what the idolaters thought was Baal’s beneficence. Obviously, the pagans enjoyed mirth, feasts, sabbaths and also moons, all of which Yehouah would end.
That Baal was an annual dying and rising god has been denied although he does seem to disappear for a long period in his mythology. Nevertheless, gods that disappear are sought and the seeking seems to be mentioned in Hosea 2:7.
The author of this work always speaks of “lovers,” a curiosity explained by the supposed existence of different shrines to different local Baals, but perhaps the religion had a seven year cycle of Baals, explaining the disappearance of each one for seven years. The number seven is associated with gods because of the seven visible planets (including the sun and moon).
If Baalism was so well established, it looks as if Yehouah is the intruder, despite the rhetoric in the book about him being the first husband. When Yehouah talks of “alluring,” he is talking like the toy-boy not like the established husband. T N D Mettinger says Yehouah was an importation into Canaan from the south and, in 1 Kings 20:28, we read:
The Syrians have said, Yehouah is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys.
There plainly was a stage when Yehouah was only a god of the hill country. It is interesting that Hosea 2:17 says that the name Baal wil be removed from Israel’s mouth. Yet Baal means “Lord” and the traditional translation of Yehouah is “The Lord.” Indeed in the citation just given, Yehouah is rendered “The Lord” in our bibles.
Yehouah promises (Hos 2:3) to act like Mot, the god of death in the Ugaritic legends, who parched Baal’s lands. The goddess in those myths was Anath and Israel (Gomer) acts like her in many ways. Anath pursues Baal in the Ugaritic tablets just as Gomer persues her Baals in the Hosea story. Baal is pursued because he is a great lover and donor of fertile land and providence to his acolytes.
In the Ugaritic myths Baal and Anath do indeed apparently copulate to make Anath conceive. Baal then commands Anath, who has been until then quite destructive, to “remove war from the earth” and “pour love on the fields and rain peace on the earth”. In Hosea, since goddesses had been outlawed by the patriarchal priests, these promises are made by Yehouah himself but are identifiably the same (Hos 2:18):
And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely.
Israel means “sowing and scattering” and “renewal and destruction”, typical goddess-like attributes, equal to those of Anath. Anath scatters seed, sows the earth to renew it and at the same time she destroyes Mot, the god of the death that is the dry season, that life can begin afresh. Since Gomer/Israel is depicted in the story in Hosea as his mortal wife, she cannot behave as the goddess, Anath, in the original, so her benefits are simply taken over by Yehouah who has also taken the attributes of Baal.
The providence of “the grain, the wine and the oil” of Hosea 2:8 and 2:22 appears explicitly in the Ugaritic literature as the providence of Baal, not Yehouah. Furthermore, Baal is identified with Dagon’s son, a grain god. “Grain, wine and oil” evidently are symbolic in the Middle East of the providence of the land, but the Ugaritic use linked to Baal precedes Hosea by centuries.
Even if we take the chronology of Hosea at face value, we are looking at an expression of Baalism that is about half a millennium removed from the Canaanite inscriptions of Ugarit in North Canaan. The standard response is that the two religions of Baal separated by such a time would have had nothing in common. This is the typical arrogance of modern Christian scholars, who have the idea that only Christianity lasts longer than a burning candle.
Ancient religions, to these “scholars,” were only the fads, fetiches and fancies of primitive people, not at all sophisticated, “like we Christians”. It is total smug, dangerous, selfish nonsense, of course—human nature being no different then from now. A few thousand years is not enough time to make the tiniest dent on evolution unless you are a fruit fly!
All religions are conservative, once established, and there is no reason to think that they changed any more easily 3000 years ago in Canaan than they do today. A bilingual inscription in Aramaic and Assyrian found in the Temple of Hadad at Tell Fahariyeh and dating from 830 BC describes Baal-Hadad worship in almost identical terms to fourteenth century BC Baal worship at Ugarit.
So, on standard chronology, we have two quite different sources, Hosea and the Tell Fahariyeh inscription, telling us that Baalism lasted for half a millennium unaltered significantly. Who knows that it did not continue for another 500 years into Greek times?
Christian critics delight in emphasising the orgiastic nature of Baal worship, which the Hosea readings are assumed also to be highlighting. The whole book is sexually explicit even though it purports to be a criticism of sexually oriented worship. Yehouah proposes to humiliate Israel by exposing her breasts (Hos 2:2) and even her genital areas (Hos 2:9-10). If the Baal worshippers were used to this sort of thing in worshipping Baal, it would seem that it could not be terribly humiliating to the woman. Is Yehouah proposing to adopt these practices himself? Some say it is an ancient punishment for an adulterous wife, but in all honesty it sounds like sexual titivation for failing patriarchs.
In Hosea 3:4, the author says that Israel will go without six essentials of social life, kings, princes, sacrifices, pillars, ephods and terephim. Terephim had been banned supposedly long before at the time of Samuel, yet here they were, hundreds of years later still in use. Pillars are phalluses associated with the goddess, Asherah, so it is perhaps surprising that these are considered part of the normal equipment of life too, of traditional Jews.
Ephod normally means a priest’s vestment but for Gideon, in the “Book of Judges,” it was a graven image, and that seems the more likely interpretation in this contest. Finally, later in this same book, the author depicts Yehouah as decrying sacrifices. Presumably kings and princes means simply kings and princes, but, otherwise, the list of objects to be denied, apparently temporarily, were all idols or related to cult practices, which Yehouah supposedly wanted nothing of, but evidently allowed. Curious?
This shows that the paraphernalia of worship was common in ancient times to Jews and to their pagan neighbours. If any attempts had been made before the exile to stamp out these foreign practices, as the various scripturasl books seem to say, they were plainly unsuccessful because the same message had to be continually repeated for centuries. The truth will be that no attempt or no serious attempt to clear out other cults was made until after the exile. It is then, when the priests re-wrote the mythology of the Jews that the pretence was created that the Hebrews had only ever worshipped one god. The disapproval of cult practices were interpolations into the texts by the priesthood trying to foster the belief that the cult of Yehouah that they promoted was always the proper cult of the Israelites.
The suggestion here in Hosea is that even having kings and princes was something which should be stopped. That too is what the priests wanted. They wanted to rule. They aimed to set up a theocracy—God was the only king and he could only rule via his anointed priesthood. Eventually this is what happened under the Macabbees, but unfortunately it was the princes who appointed themselves as priests.
Patriarchal Bias
Commentators on the scriptures are almost uniformly male and, despite the obvious parabolic nature of the story, they love to dwell upon the prophet’s wife as if she were a real woman. It is a form of holy masturbation. They love to imagine what the “adultery” was was between her breasts (Hos 2:2), for example, though it is probably no more than her exaggerated cleavage because it is paired with the harlotry of her face, plainly meaning cosmetics. So they are two elements of the woman’s conventional armoury to attract a man.
Plainly, such details are not important to the general idea that Israel, the nation personified as an unfaithful wife, was an unfaithful nation. More important is the intention of the analysts of Gomer to detract attention from the main point. Some of them, prefer to emphasise the unfaithful wife rather than the unfaithful nation. The reason is that it was a good way of keeping women in check. For them, God was making a point about how awful it was to have an unfaithful wife. He knew, he’d had one, look! So, you wives had better be faithful, or else you might get a bit of the same. (She was stripped naked and exposed to everyone, especially her lovers!)
Even besides that, it gives a lasting impression that it was not the whole nation of Israel that was turning to Baal worship but just, or mainly, women. It therefore has the effect of exonerating men, although we are sure that men are included in the criticism, because Hosea later picks on them also for kissing calves (Hos 13:2). The whole emphasis, though, is on Jewesses romping around on heat (one interpretation of the word Gomer is “heat”) rather than male Jews who are depicted as sad cockolds who cannot keep their women.
The metaphor of an unfaithful Israel is powerful because it is explicit, but it is plainly a construct of patriarchs who are the ones to worry when their wives prefer other men. Women would prefer Gomer’s position. In those days religious prostitution was a noble profession and the sons of temple prostitutes were considered as sons of God, since no one could know who their father was—a possible origin of the idea of sons of God being born of virgins (temple prostitutes were paradoxically considered perpetual virgins).
This piece attributed to Hosea was eventually to play its part in putting women into an inferior position, both socially and sexually. Sexually, eventually only the “missionary” position was allowed by the Catholic church... and it would find out if you had tried anything novel—through the confession. Yer Wha! Ooarghh!
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