Bethel (god)

Last updated March 31, 2024

Bethel, meaning 'House of El' or 'House of God' in Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic, was the name of a god or an aspect of a god in some ancient Middle Eastern texts dating to the Assyrian, Achaemenid, and Hellenistic periods.^[1]^[2] The term appears in the Torah and the Christian Bible, but opinions differ as to whether those references are to a god or to a place.

Historical records

A 1977 book by Javier Teixidor cited some early references that support viewing Bethel as a god of Aramaean or Syrian origin. The author maintains that the origin of the god's cult is unknown, but provides what he believes to be some of the earliest references to the god:^[3]

Theophoric names in the seventh century BC,
the 677 BC Esarhaddon's Treaty with Ba'al of Tyre, which associates Bethel with what is apparently another god, Anat-Bethel, in a curse upon the Tyrians if they break the treaty: "May Bethel and Anat-Bethel deliver you to a man-eating lion"; and
an Aramaic tablet from Aleppo dating to 570 BC, which contains three theophoric names of the god Bethel.

Teixodir states that the god Bethel became popular during the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which began in the seventh century BC. He found numerous references to the cult of Bethel in fifth-century Egypt literature, and notes that Bethel is mentioned, but with no details, in the Elephantine papyri and ostraca and the Hermopolis Aramaic papyri. Those papyri also mention gods with names that are variants of Bethel: Eshembethel 'Name of Bethel' and Ḥerembethel 'Sanctuary of Bethel' (cf. Arabic ḥaram 'sanctuary').^[3] Tawny Holm also notes that Papyrus Amherst 63 syncretizes Bethel with Yaho.^[4]

The ancient Phoenician Sanchuniathon mentions the god Baitylos as a brother of the gods El and Dagon. He later says that the god Sky devised the baitylia , having contrived to put life into stones. There doesn't seem to be any clear relationship between these two terms, however.^[5]

Biblical references

The term Bethel or Beth-El appears in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, but opinions differ as to whether these references are to a god or to a place.

Porten suspects that the Bethel mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah at chapter 48, verse 13 is a reference to the god Bethel, rather than the city named Bethel.^[6] Jeremiah 48:13 states: "Then Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the House of Israel was ashamed of Bethel, their confidence."^[7]

On the other hand, Biblical scholar Rodney Hutton says that the Bethel referred to in Jeremiah 48:13 is a location or city, and a metaphor for religious apostasy because it was the place where Jeroboam installed the golden calf.^[7]

There is further support among Biblical scholars for the view of Bethel as a location rather than a god:

Hutton regards Bethel as a place, not a god, in his commentary on The Book of Samuel 7:16: "Jacob gave the site, where God had spoken to him, the name of Bethel."^[7]
Biblical scholar David M. Carr's commentary on the Book of Genesis generally regards Bethel as a place, in the context it appears in 35:9-35:15 and 31.13. Also, with respect to the phrase "I am the God of Bethel" at 31:13, Carr states that the Hebrew is unclear, raising further doubt.^[8]
The Rabbinical Assembly of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, in its commentary on "The Revelation at Bethel" (Genesis 35:9-15) in parashah Vayishlach, follows the medieval Rabbinic commentaries^[9]^[10] and also treats Bethel as a place.^[11]

Another interpretation is that the stone which Jacob placed at Bethel, which was named House-of-God, was also a god in itself, a manifestation of the god Bethel.^{[ citation needed ]}

Names

The divine name is found in composite forms Ashim-Bethel and Herem-Bethel in the archives of Elephantine, while Anat-Bethel appears as an epithet of Anat, the consort of Bethel.^[12]

Zechariah 7:2 gives the personal name Bethelsharezer (Hebrew : בֵּֽית־אֵ֔ל שַׂר־אֶ֕צֶר "Bethel, šarra-uṣur", an Akkadian term meaning "Protect the king!").^[13]

Related Research Articles

Judaism considers some names of God so holy that, once written, they should not be erased: יהוה, אֲדֹנָי, אֵל, אֱלֹהִים, שַׁדַּי, and צְבָאֽוֹת ; some also include I Am that I Am. Early authorities considered other Hebrew names mere epithets or descriptions of God, and wrote that they and names in other languages may be written and erased freely. Some moderns advise special care even in these cases, and many Orthodox Jews have adopted the chumras of writing "G-d" instead of "God" in English or saying Ṭēt-Vav instead of Yōd-Hē for the number fifteen or Ṭēt-Zayin instead of Yōd-Vav for the Hebrew number sixteen.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elohim</span> Word for deity or deities in the Hebrew Bible

Elohim, the plural of אֱלוֹהַּ‎, is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is plural, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly the God of Israel in the majestic plural. In other verses it refers to the singular gods of other nations or to deities in the plural.

Elephantine is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological digs on the island became a World Heritage Site in 1979, along with other examples of Upper Egyptian architecture, as part of the "Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae".

The Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca consist of thousands of documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Aswan, which yielded hundreds of papyri and ostraca in hieratic and demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Koine Greek, Latin and Coptic, spanning a period of 100 years in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives, and are thus an invaluable source of knowledge for scholars of varied disciplines such as epistolography, law, society, religion, language and onomastics. The Elephantine documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives: divorce documents, the manumission of slaves, and other business. The dry soil of Upper Egypt preserved the documents.

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Mibtahiah , was a Jewish businesswoman and banker. She belonged to the first Jewish women of which there is any information outside of the Bible, as well as the first of Jewish businesswomen. She is well-documented from the Ancient Aramaic papyrus collections from Elephantine in Egypt, known as the Mond-Cecil papyri in the Cairo Museum and the Bodleian papyri, which is also named the Mibtahiah archive after her.

The Padua Aramaic papyri are a group of three Aramaic papyri thought to be from the 400s BCE, found in a collection of antiquities in the Italian city of Padua. The papyri are unprovenanced, but are thought to have been from Elephantine, which would make them the first Elephantine papyri and ostraca to have been discovered. They were acquired by Giovanni Belzoni in c.1815, together with a demotic letter; Belzoni presented them to the Musei Civici di Padova in 1819.

Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, often referred to as TAD or TADAE, is a four volume corpus of Aramaic inscriptions written during the period of ancient Egypt, written by Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni.

Papyrus Amherst 63 is an ancient Egyptian papyrus from the third century BC containing Aramaic texts in demotic script. The 35 texts date to the eighth and seventh centuries BC. One of these, a version of Psalm 20, provides an "unprecedented" extrabiblical parallel to a text from the Hebrew Bible. It syncretizes abundantly, including the names Yaho and Bethel, and mentions a khnh, a word meaning priestess of Yaho.

References

↑ Röllig, W. (1999). "Bethel". In Karel van der Toorn; Bob Becking; Pieter W. van der Horst (eds.). Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible . Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 173–175. ISBN 978-0-8028-2491-2.
↑ Zadok, Ran (2020). "Bethel—An Originally North Syrian Deity". NABU. 28: 62–69. .
1 2 Teixidor, Javier. The Pagan God: Popular Religion in the Greco-Roman Near East. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 30–31.
↑ Holm, Tawny (2023-08-24). "Bethel and Yahō: A Tale of Two Gods in Egypt". Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions. 23 (1). Brill: 25–55. doi:10.1163/15692124-12341335. ISSN 1569-2116.
↑ Ribichini, S. (1999). "Baetyl". In Karel van der Toorn; Bob Becking; Pieter W. van der Horst (eds.). Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible . Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 157–159. ISBN 978-0-8028-2491-2.
↑ Porten, Bezalel (April 1969). "The Religion of the Jews of Elephantine". The Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 28 (2): 116–121.
1 2 3 Hutton, Rodney R. (2010). The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Edition (College ed.). Oxford UK: Oxford University Press. p. 1133.
↑ Carr, David M. (2010). The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Edition (College ed.). Oxford UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 50, 60.
↑ "Rashi on Jeremiah 48:13:2". www.sefaria.org. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
↑ "Abarbanel on Jeremiah 48:10". www.sefaria.org. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
↑ The Rabbinical Assembly, The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (1999). Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary. New York, NY: The Jewish Publication Society. p. 213. ISBN 0-8276-0712-1.
↑ van der Toorn, Karel (2016). "Eshem-Bethel and Herem-Bethel: New Evidence from Amherst Papyrus 63" (PDF). Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. 128 (4): 668–680. doi:10.1515/zaw-2016-0037. ISSN 1613-0103.
↑ Porten, Bezalel (2014). "A Comprehensive Table of Bethel Names in Ancient Inscriptions". Maarav. 21 (1–2): 223–234. doi:10.1086/mar201421115. ISSN 0149-5712.

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[1] Röllig, W. (1999). "Bethel". In Karel van der Toorn; Bob Becking; Pieter W. van der Horst (eds.). Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible . Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 173–175. ISBN 978-0-8028-2491-2.

[2] Zadok, Ran (2020). "Bethel—An Originally North Syrian Deity". NABU. 28: 62–69. .

[Teix-3] 1 2 Teixidor, Javier. The Pagan God: Popular Religion in the Greco-Roman Near East. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 30–31.

[4] Holm, Tawny (2023-08-24). "Bethel and Yahō: A Tale of Two Gods in Egypt". Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions. 23 (1). Brill: 25–55. doi:10.1163/15692124-12341335. ISSN 1569-2116.

[5] Ribichini, S. (1999). "Baetyl". In Karel van der Toorn; Bob Becking; Pieter W. van der Horst (eds.). Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible . Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 157–159. ISBN 978-0-8028-2491-2.

[6] Porten, Bezalel (April 1969). "The Religion of the Jews of Elephantine". The Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 28 (2): 116–121.

[Hutton-7] 1 2 3 Hutton, Rodney R. (2010). The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Edition (College ed.). Oxford UK: Oxford University Press. p. 1133.

[8] Carr, David M. (2010). The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Edition (College ed.). Oxford UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 50, 60.

[9] "Rashi on Jeremiah 48:13:2". www.sefaria.org. Retrieved 2022-05-17.

[10] "Abarbanel on Jeremiah 48:10". www.sefaria.org. Retrieved 2022-05-17.

[11] The Rabbinical Assembly, The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (1999). Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary. New York, NY: The Jewish Publication Society. p. 213. ISBN 0-8276-0712-1.

[12] van der Toorn, Karel (2016). "Eshem-Bethel and Herem-Bethel: New Evidence from Amherst Papyrus 63" (PDF). Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. 128 (4): 668–680. doi:10.1515/zaw-2016-0037. ISSN 1613-0103.

[13] Porten, Bezalel (2014). "A Comprehensive Table of Bethel Names in Ancient Inscriptions". Maarav. 21 (1–2): 223–234. doi:10.1086/mar201421115. ISSN 0149-5712.

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