Does Deuteronomy 32:17 Assume or Deny the Reality of Other Gods?

Deuteronomy 32, the Song of Moses, is well known among biblical scholars for its textual, linguistic, and translation difficulties. l Attention to Deut 32 has tended to focus on vv. 8-9, and 43 in light of fragments of those verses recovered at Qumran and their disagreement with the Masoretic Text (MT).\u27 Though conceptually related to these verses and briefly discussed in commentaries, Deut 32.17 has received no concentrated attention in scholarly journals. Given the divergent ways the verse has been handled by Bible translators, Deut 32.17 deserves consideration

Monotheism, Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism? Toward an Assessment of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible

Israel’s view of God and his relationship to other divine beings in the Hebrew Bible has long been the subject of scholarly debate. The dominant critical consensus since the late nineteenth century holds that Israel’s faith evolved from polytheism or henotheism to monotheism. Passages in the Hebrew Bible that assume the existence of other gods are compared to other passages that put forth the declaration that “there are no other gods besides” the God of Israel as proof of this view. Other scholars who reject this evolutionary paradigm tend to assume passages evincing divine plurality actually speak of human beings, or that the other gods are merely idols. This view insists that “monotheism” must mean that the existence of other gods is denied. Both views are problematic and fall short of doing justice to the full description of Israel’s view of God and the heavenly host in the Hebrew Bible. This article overviews the difficulties of each view and offers a coherent alternative

The Mythological Provenance of Isaiah 14:12-15: A Reconsideration of the Ugaritic Material

Many scholars of the Hebrew Bible have postulated that the source of the taunt-song of Isa xiv 12-15 is to be found in Ugaritic religious literature Many of these scholars believe that the passage contains elements of both El and Bacal myths, an assumption that leads them to discount the proposition that all the mythological strands of Isa xiv 12-15 can be correlated with a single Ugaritic myth Still others contend that only a single myth concerning the usurpation of El can account for all of the mythological features This article disputes both of these positions, arguing that no usurpation of El is in view, and that the mythological provenance of Isa xiv 12-15 can be entirely correlated with the Bacal-cAthtar myt

The Divine Council in Late Canonical and Non-Canonical Second Temple Jewish Literature

Biblical scholarship has reached a consensus with respect to the presence of a divine assembly of gods in Israel\u27s faith. Prior to the sixth century B.C.E., Israelite religion underwent an evolution from an initial polytheism to a firm monolatry, where the other gods of the divine council were tolerated but not worshipped. The religious crisis of Israel\u27s early sixth century B.C.E. exile prompted the scribes to obscure the council in the canonical texts and compose new material declaring that Yahweh had punished Israel for her sins, brought her out of bondage, and put the other gods to death. This historical turnabout and its literary response marked the birth of true monotheism in Israel, where no other gods existed except Yahweh. This consensus is plagued by numerous difficulties. There are hundreds of references to other gods in a divine council in exilic and post-exilic canonical texts and the non-canonical writings of Judaism\u27s Second Temple period. The context for these references disallows the conclusion that the writers are speaking of idols or of the beliefs of pagans. Rather, they reflect the worldview of late Israelite religion and Second Temple Judaism. This worldview included the belief in a deified vice-regent who ruled the gods at the behest of the high God. So transparent was this divine vice regency that Second Temple Jewish authors wrote of a deified second power in heaven. The rhetoric of Deuteronomy and Deutero-Isaiah that there are no other gods besides Yahweh fails to prove the consensus view, since the same language is used in monolatrous pre-exilic texts and fails to account for the plethora of references to other gods in late Jewish writings. This dissertation calls the consensus view of the development of monotheism in Israel into question by demonstrating that belief in a divine council survived the exile. As a result, this dissertation posits that the survival of Israel\u27s pre-exilic divine council has greater explanatory power than the consensus view of the development of monotheism with respect to divine plurality in late canonical and non-canonical Second Temple period texts

Robotic Platform for Parallelized Cultivation and Monitoring of Microbial Growth Parameters in Microwell Plates

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The enormous variation possibilities of bioprocesses challenge process development to fix a commercial process with respect to costs and time. Although some cultivation systems and some devices for unit operations combine the latest technology on miniaturization, parallelization, and sensing, the degree of automation in upstream and downstream bioprocess development is still limited to single steps. We aim to face this challenge by an interdisciplinary approach to significantly shorten development times and costs. As a first step, we scaled down analytical assays to the microliter scale and created automated procedures for starting the cultivation and monitoring the optical density (OD), pH, concentrations of glucose and acetate in the culture medium, and product formation in fed-batch cultures in the 96-well format. Then, the separate measurements of pH, OD, and concentrations of acetate and glucose were combined to one method. This method enables automated process monitoring at dedicated intervals (e.g., also during the night). By this approach, we managed to increase the information content of cultivations in 96-microwell plates, thus turning them into a suitable tool for high-throughput bioprocess development. Here, we present the flowcharts as well as cultivation data of our automation approach

Final Report for Organic Partitioning Resulting from Operation of an INTEC Double-needle Sampler

The double needle sampler testing is a continuation of previous test series that investigated the fate of organic species in the Process Equipment Waste Evaporator (PEWE) system at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC). This test series was designed to investigate the effects of operation of the double needle sampling systems on volatile organic constituents in an acidic feed matrix