Expert: Fr. Chris Larimer - 3/24/2011

Question
QUESTION: Does the recent scholarly research revealing that Canaanites were not monotheists and that Abraham would have worshipped a female deity as well as Yahweh, alter the Christian message? Is there a place for the Old Testament in Christianity? Or is it more a collection of folk myths and barbaric laws that we are well rid of?

ANSWER: To what research are you referring? The recent fluff about Asherah worship?

The Canaanites were not monotheists, and so the true God ordered the Israelites to push them out of the land. That argues for the continuity of Abrahamic religion with Christianity...not against it.

As for Abraham worshiping other deities, I'm not sure to what you're referring. We know that various members of his household held on to some of the customs that they brought out of their native land. It also appears from recent research that Abraham was of a caste of Horite ruler-priests. The Horites only worshipped Horus as "the son of God" who was also equal with his father and born of a virgin mother. Does that sound proleptic to you?

The Christian message is that Jesus' blood cleanses us from sin and restores us to right relationship with God the Father. The Old Testament prefigures that salvation, both in words and deeds. I would highly suggest that you look to the scholarship of a less-confused time when biblical interpreters lived in a less artificial world. That helped them understand the natural symbolism and typology that runs through the Scriptures.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Yes. I am referring to the Asherah worship. Why do you see this as fluff, it seems like scholarly research to me? Atheists used the Horus example as a way of stating that the Jesus was yet another recycled myth- I am puzzled as to your inclusion of this. Do you see the Bible as symbolic and not literal?

Answer
The idea just isn't particularly novel. We know that the people of the land were continually tempted to foreign gods. The very first commandment prohibits such idolatry, and yet it was given while the people were committing idolatry at the foot of Sinai! Finding a few trinkets that indicate some people believed Asherah to be the consort of God is pretty flimsy evidence that there was an approved cult.

We know that God desired for his worship to be highly regulated so that idolatry would be avoided. That's why worship had to take place at the tabernacle (and later, the temple). We also know that even the temple was desecrated under wicked and syncretizing kings. Even Solomon sinned in setting up places of worship for his foreign wives. Again, nothing new here. And compared to the backdrop of continual condemnation in the Biblical texts, not compelling enough to make us rewrite history.

As for Horus, it all goes back to Eden. God spoke with our parents and, after they had sinned, showed them that a blood sacrifice would cover their sins. There, a promise came to us that a savior would be born. That promise was physically fulfilled in Abraham's lineage. Nevertheless, the memories from our first-parents persisted. That's why anthropologists discover universal flood narratives all around the world. That's why blood sacrifice has a memory among every people (even if they abandoned the practice millenia ago). God showed himself to all people, but some tried to substitute their own ideas - thus our religion became as confused as our language at Babel.

Whether you take the first 11 chapters of Genesis as history or as myth, they are *true* in ways that transcend either category. As for the Scriptures, they are pieces of literature of all sorts. Some history, some apocalyptic, some poetry, some letters, etc. We read the Bible *literarily* - taking our interpretive lens from the manner in which the material is presented. While it takes scholarship to plumb the depths of this type of analysis, all of us know how to practice it.

After all, you take information differently when it begins "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" from when it begins "In tonights top stories, making international headlines..." Recognize the genre and you'll recognize the rules that should be applied to make sense of the text.

The Abraham saga is clearly historical, carrying genealogies, place names, etc.