Sheol in Gen 1:1?
As argued previously, Scott Noegel has introduced the idea that one can include the ancient Hebrew conception of Sheol in Gen 1:1’s “earth.”[1] I have discussed this similarly in my dissertation. However, one must pause in going too far to either side of any possible debate on the issue to give up the middle ground the novelty grants. One risks going into a ditch on either side of such controversies.
Far too often, discussions cannot proceed. One only crashes into pits of extremes on either side of such disputes to get nowhere. Participants begin talking past each other. No headway can ever progress. In other words, the meaning of the text is lost. Those involved get sidetracked from the message God intended as the focus remains on supposed controverseries which amount to unnecessary distractions.
Neither side listens to the other’s perspective. Neither view gets corrected. Both are right in their own eyes. Thus, no point is truly ever made. The message gets lost in all the muddle. Each has its share of supporters and detractors to prod them on. Yet, there is no “on.” It merely lies stuck in a bog to which there is no escape.
Such practices are the opposite of what the environs of academia intend, whereby healthy debate pushes topics forward for refinement to bring about greater understanding and clarity for all. In the scenarios mentioned above, no one wins. These annoyances merely exemplify an overall trend in the Body of Christ whereby she attacks herself (eats her own) and is antithetical to Paul’s commands to edify one another in each own’s giftings. Most of all, Christ suffers as human pride steals the show from the actual point of being Christian. Why would one wish to go toward this dangerous pathway? Higher ground should be the goal.
Each position attacks its opponents in trying to come up with the nuclear point to win the day and send the other side into oblivion. The spectators align to the various sides. Those outside only shake their heads in dismay or remain unengaged entirely. Christian debates become apathetic. Their voices are no longer heard as credible witnesses of YHWH. What is the point? With what exactly are we indeed to be wrestling (e.g., Eph 6:10ff)?
Perspectives that focus only on one angle are blinded to seeing the fuller majesty the Scripture employs to speak beyond any single reading. When the Body appreciates one another, we can grow in the knowledge together rather than lining up in any civil war. To what end? “War? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!…“
However, some have made their reading of the text the sword to die upon! Anyone who disagrees is on the highyway to hell with no chance of redemption unless one recants. Amazingly, this is what the Protestants fought against in the Reformation while many Protestants now embrace themselves. Turn or burn!
I agree with Noegel’s nuanced position, but only to an extent, especially if that means expanding it to suggesting a change of English translations. I think what I see is far more profound than simply changing the English translations. I am only guarded because my sensibilities merely see a “more excellent way” forward in any controversy that may or may not have emerged over Noegel’s innovation. I cannot go so far as to spoil the authorial intention inspired by the Spirit to use the Hebrew word for earth in Gen 1:1.
If the author only intended Sheol, I think the author was fully capable of using solely that specific term. Game over, right? I believe much more is behind the word used (as it is and not as one would wish it to be) than just the lone concept of Sheol. Both sides may lose sight of what lies before them while trying to line up their sites the views they wish to target for critique.
Is this succeeding in wrestling the text by wrestling one another to obscurity? One has two ears and one mouth for a good reason. Often this fact is forgotten. Honestly, I feel the struggle lies more in semantics. The talking heads cannot come to grips with what these terms imply. What one side conveys is not sensible to the other simply because what one means to say does not register with the listener on the other side. This contention alone justifies that perhaps if in a simple debate as this, there is so much misconstrued, how can one ever expect to rightly divide the truth of God’s Word alone apart from help in those who expend their lifetimes to sort out what by far is the more problematic? Again, this simple, small debate to me is symptomatic of a larger yet quite acute ailment within Christ’s Body.
I agree with the bulk of English translations that the intent in Gen 1:1 is earth. To go so far as to expect one could translate the Hebrew term אֶ֫רֶץ/ʾereṣ into Sheol would not be correct and involves several fallacies. One is that Sheol is an English transliteration of another Hebrew term שְׁאוֹל/šĕʾôl which does not at all appear until Gen 37:35 in the Jacob narrative. For the uninitiated, the term Sheol in Hebrew is translated in the LXX into ᾅδης/hades.
Upfront, I wish to avoid mistakes that any baggage attached to any of these terms must be tamed much like the chaoskampf in 1:2. For example, this is not Dante’s Hades nor is it the NT or Greek’s Hades necessarily! The way one determines what the biblical sense of a term is in any given passage is determined by its usage and context. It is not wise to drop in here such English concepts never used in the HB like the English concept Hell here. Just because one believes that such a place exists, one cannot eisegetically implant it wherever one feels personally obliged to, hoping to justify one’s personal beliefs to become one’s own biblical author. I believe the United States of America, helicopters, and Soviet Era submarines exist. Does that mean I can scour the Scriptures looking where I can find any of them in prophecies because that is my perspicuity while ignoring that of the author? Does mine override theirs? God used them to write it in their context not me in mine.
Such practice goes against any sensible rules in biblical interpretation. Nor can one go to one’s favorite dictionary or lexicon and pick out the most suitable “gloss” that fits one’s chosen reading of the text as if I can merely select whatever suits me and my system of theology to rule over the text and any authorial intention. Because a phrase like “hot dog” can have a rather sizeable semantical range, context and usage determine what I intend whenever I employ this phrase. Those simple tools may help give the reader an inkling of how a word is used but offer no real help in nailing down what it would mean in any specific passage at hand. It is just a start in a long process to be certain one comprehends any specific selection of Scripture.
The author had the wherewithal to use Sheol and did not. The alone should suffice in this small debate. To compel its sole usage in 1:1 is an extreme form of confirmation bias. Thus, this little example proves large in the wider use of such within many on the internet to ride roughtshot over the Scriputres as some sort of Lone Ranger who’s lost his Tonto. Such an assertion goes against the most basic principles of biblical studies. I am not sure if anyone could convincingly argue otherwise. I find “earth” in 1:1 garners a much more semantical range which better befits the confines than “Sheol” would convey. It offers much wider nuancing for double meanings to hold more water so to speak to sate the thirsty.
Saying what Sheol represents has no place in Gen 1, though, brings the argumentation too far to the opposite extreme. Noegel rightly asserts that Sheol and earth are often used throughout the HB in tandem with similar meanings, almost as synonyms at times. Such usage adds weight to his view. It would be pitiful to ignore these connections. I would urge one to dig into his research before discounting it entirely. However, I think the better place is Gen 1:1’s nearest context. Still, much caution must be frontloaded to those uninitiated before getting into it more fully.
In the very next verse again, “earth” is used, not Sheol (Gen 1:2). Such usage should help settle what the author intended. Two chances passed, and neither time was Sheol used. I think using earth offers more amazing ways in which to conceive all the author wants to convey rather than confining it singly to Sheol. However, what does 1:2 imply about the earth? The answer is key in understanding both Noegel and Gen 1:1 and why there, really in my humble opinion, should be no disagreement here.
Plainly said, the earth in 1:2 lies submerged in the oceans of chaos. Hence, it is already there or created perhaps in 1:1. Verse one makes it plain the earth is already in view. It exists.
Later, when it rises out of the chaos to become what we now understand as Middle Earth, a portion remains in the same state in which the entire earth in Gen 1:2 exists until in the Eschaton at the end in Rev 21-22, the sea is no more. This portion of the whole earth or world or cosmos that remains submerged in the waters of chaos becomes known as Sheol and first gets depicted in Gen 37:35. It is the place of the dead—the underworld. It is where Jacob supposed he would meet his dead son Joseph. In his cosmology, the dead return to the dust from which they had come (3:19).
Adam in Gen 2:7 is earthling from this very earth. Albeit from its dust, the waters are very much present in vv. 5-6. Just as the earth or world as we know it rises out of the waters of chaos, so Adam as earthling comes from the very same space. When he dies, he returns from whence he had come. It will be from this conception later Christian baptism itself will arise. This place becomes associated with Sheol. That is the Hebrew term for it. So, why can it not be in play when reading 1:1-2?
To say Sheol is understood conceptually at some level in Gen 1:1-2, is quite understandable in this sense. The author shows how both the earth and the earthling originate from this space. The earthling at his uncreation returns to this state. It is death or the realm of the netherworld. It is off the grid of what God does when he creates all life. And death is the final enemy!
He creates out of the waters and the earth. When things die, they return to such places. To add concordist ideas of evolution here go well beyond what God chose to speak to those people in their day. While science may assert theories that readily explain the data they wrestle with that seem to comport with the text, the idea of the flat earth that the ancients believed does not comport with current science unless one then tries to make the text fit it by moving out of our three-dimensional world and see it as a higher dimensionality in some sense. This reasoning exasperates the problem until one makes the text entirely something alien to what it is.
The Scriptures become unrecognizable. One can repeat such nonsense ad nauseam. I am content to follow Walton and Heiser[2] and let the text be what it is. That is marvelous enough. Too wonderful for me to comprehend as it is without trying then to complicate matters with 21st-century science! Humanity’s reading of the texts as it is falls far short of its glory till date, why pile on more unneeded baggage?
I can spend my time trying to glimpse only glimmers of that majesty. I will let science also be what it is. I do not see them in discordance. At the same time, why try to conflate two separate streams into one so that one can feel emotionally at ease in some sense to afford me some greater level of accordance with the text which already holds me captive. I do not believe this does justice to either and only invites further discord!
The Bible as an authority of truth is not based solely upon today’s science proving it. This logic again defeats the design of either. Too many problems arise when confirmation bias is left unchecked. Science may or may not agree. This point presents no issue when the Bible is accepted as it is—a non-Scientific text.
God did not design the Bible so that 21st-century science would approve! I actually believe ancient cosmology at so many levels does not agree. Where’s the firmament? I cannot seem to find any hard science there, but I am sure if one were to spend a lifetime twisting laws of physics at some quantum level, I suppose one could repeat Louie Giglio’s Laminin experiment and woo lots of audiences ad infinitum. We as humans come to the text with our own biases with Christians seeing crosses wherever two lines meet. Many others see demons around every corner.
The Bible and Science remain two entirely separate things. To mix them when convenient will only invite criticism when they do not accord. When randomly the text speaks of things that happen to align with current scientific theories, such thinking invites us to the place the Church found itself with Galileo! Does one wish to repeat such errors? Such poor rationale is like the Bible codes where random bits of truth pop up in a computer analysis when the text is manipulated until something from 21st-century science pops out by chance!
I feel this exceeds God’s intendment of the text as given and the purpose it was intended to communicate to a people in the ANE. Such practices are merely confirmation bias and, to me, no different from those who try to say the Book of Revelation speaks of Apache helicopters instead of locusts. I believe what John has in mind is far more intense! Misreadings of Psalm 91 have God with feathers! God does not and neither do angels. Other beings have wings which surround the throne. They hardly are chickens!
It reads the text emotionally to fit with one’s perspicuity when the text allows only to conveniently ignore where the divine word of YHWH fails to comport as in a flat earth or the firmament. For me, Christian baptism is a far more significant conception from which to see here than Theistic Evolution, but I do not come from an atheistic nor scientific background. I do not have a view on evolution because I am not a scientist. My point remains, neither did the biblical authors! Why impose your perspicuity to override theirs?
From Sheol, David cannot be as YHWH intends, so he cries out in the Psalms to be delivered from such depths. He does not wish to go there before his time is up and prays for escape in the “already sense” as his enemies befall him. He also could want to find escape in the beyond when he joins his fathers there in some sense in the “not yet.” He knows once he is there, he can no longer be what YHWH desires in both cases. He asks for deliverance, possibly in both scenarios.
Without understanding Gen 1:2 appropriately, one could misconstrue the HB from its outset and cause errors henceforth in one’s interpretive hermeneutic leading to faulty exegesis onward. The HB is a product within the ANE context. In other words, the HB is an ANE text. It comes out of the very same context. They all drink from the same water yet produce things quite differently as discussed below. Using comparative studies, one ascertains both the similarities and the differences to comprehend best what God’s message was to them at that time. Once that can be established as best as tools allow, one can better discern what that message would speak to us today anew in our context. Certain truths may be ageless and discernable, but much else will also need factoring in for precision.
Just as God chose especially an Abram from Ur or a Moses from Midian (actually from birth), YHWH, the Bible’s God, decides to use these writings to set his seal upon them as an exceptional vehicle for special revelation as opposed to many other texts of the time extant or otherwise[3] with which he chose not to utilize. As these faithful witnesses have a unique calling, God places these traditions as recorded, safeguarded, and passed down faithfully by his chosen people as his Word until Christ becomes the Logos incarnate. Yet, the text is a product out of the ANE world and context because God speaks to a people within the ANE. If he spoke otherwise, they could not understand it.
He must speak in ways and forms they will comprehend. The Bible uses ANE conceptions. It is not that it steals them from other neighboring literature or cultures. It is the cultural worldview in which the Bible is written and presented.
The Bible uses this culture because it is their culture. This is not stealing or borrowing. It is logical. Studying them elsewhere along the Levant helps modern readers better understand the text because that is the medium by which God used to speak to a people living there in that time period. We must allow some of those ways to end up being entirely foreign to us without this much-needed background.
Assuming only the text needs translating is also an error. The culture behind the text is required for us to know more fully what is meant to give the appropriate context in which to understand the translation. To think because these texts are pagan means they taint the Scriptures only inhibits one from imbibing all that messaging this context affords as the medium God chose to use to speak to his people and provide special relevation of more precisely who he is. Why would one not wish for more precision in trying to comprehend what seems so incomprehensible? Anyone would wish to have all the data one could access to get as much out of the text that can be warranted!
Some on both sides of an apparent issue misunderstand ANE biblical scholar John H. Walton in this regard. As an ANE scholar, he provides much to offer to get the correct animus to understand the texts best as we have received them. However, some discredit his approach altogether. Some even label him as a Theistic Evolutionist on some agenda to misconstrue the text. If one bothered to read him and were familiar with his materials beyond skimming his research, one would certainly know this to be entirely a false premise as he seeks to do the exact opposite.
Such poor thinking is a flagrant attempt to paint him wrongly. As far as I can tell, Walton clearly states he is not a concordist in any sense, to the dismay of either side of this debate. He is neutral on evolution when it comes to interpretation, and rightly so because he feels, and I wholeheartedly agree, the text was never meant to discuss either evolution or dinosaurs as neither concepts were known to the ANE people whatsoever. He leaves the issues of science as I do to the scientists.
Both of us desire the Bible to be received as it is and not as one wishes it to be. Heiser also makes this same assertion. How can anyone paint broadly that we think the Bible teaches Theistic Evolution? It is not a scientific book. It does not speak at all to the theory of evolution. Why would anyone wish to drag those into any interpretation? Both sides are concording the Bible to fit their personal and private narratives to suit their worldviews rather than letting the text speak for itself and for God’s message to cause us today to concord with him from its worldview which did not include evolution! How prideful and so wrong on so many levels! I personally find it quite foolish.
For God to speak to a people in the context of an ANE worldview, he would have to use communication that speaks to those people in particular in forms they would comprehend. For example, when various prophets from various parts of the Bible across biblical history see God enthroned, each time it is different. Does this mean that God has an interior decorator in place to change things up from time to time? I think not!
Are the accounts in error? Which prophet got God’s throne room correctly? How would one choose? Is the Bible in error?
I presume the visions given at the various junctures show God to them in differing ways to communicate to the prophet and the people intended on receiving the vision what must be understood in ways and forms the audience could infer the message intended. These are not visions of different gods. Nor are they visions of other throne rooms. It is only imagery to depict it so the present intended audience would understand it utilizing the ideas from their cultural river.[4]
What changes is the audience and author because it is written from a different perspective but neither require God or his throne room to change to afford more literal renderings of the text. He uses ANE iconography because that is the imagery the people in the ANE would have understood to relay the messaging he intended. To say, Ugaritic is of no use is foolish! How else does one propose to understand such apocalyptic passages literally or more to point literarily except from its cultural origins?
Here’s an excerpt from my dissertation:
The Hebrew religion and its language are quite late in the ANE, where a whole host of content is now extant due to modern archeological discoveries in the past couple of centuries, and much has been unearthed, deciphered, and translated. Granted, as Brettler cautions, “the origin of a religious institution or belief should not be confused with how it was understood and depicted once it was incorporated into a religious system.”[5] Context remains essential. Israel remain quite distinct in the ANE. Furthermore, I cite Haran who rightly surmises, “this religion, like all religions throughout history, did not create all its practices out of nothing, but adapted to its purposes many existing forms and conventions which it imbued with a new spiritual meaning.”[6]
At some points, the visions will be similar to each other. At other junctures, they will be different. Along the same lines, at some points, for them to even understand it to be a vision of God’s throne room, God utilizes imagery similar to ANE depictions of throne rooms in general and divine beings in particular. However, there will also be ways in which the visions will be markedly different from the ANE depictions. These must be allowed for us to know God was speaking to them in a way they could comprehend while remaining distinct.
The problem is then it muddles it for us. We no longer think in such antiquated ways. We often, without a guide, will miss the similarities and differences. As John (or Daniel and even Paul) needs a guide often in Revelation, modern readers need specialists to avoid making gross errors in interpretation. That is a common Second Temple Period Apocalyptic motif in utilizing visionary guides.
The text is not speaking to modern audiences directly. It is written to them specifically. Often some mistake this for borrowing from the biblical authors of ANE concepts. I do not think this is the best way to construe the data points. I believe it is a misconstrual entirely.
As the ancient world is devoid of any concept of modern sensibilities to plagiarism, it would seem Walton’s idea of a cultural river from which all draw and then produce their thinking with many similarities is the better way to describe it. Rivers of information flow across the ANE cultures just as do the waters of the Tigris or Euphrates originate in its mountains and flow across many nations along ancient trade routes and the migration of people groups like the pastorals. People followed the water from which life exuded (cf. Ps 104). Any specific group from antiquity may utilize the same waters or data points from their tributaries, forming the main rivers that flow to all surrounding nations eventually. They all would share from this to cook, bathe, and even irrigate. However, each people group would also produce vastly different recipes using the same ingredients.
To foreigners, Asian food is all based upon rice and spice. Is not even Mexican to some extent? However, to each group, even within the exact geographical location, there may be similarities that at first blush, a foreigner might not distinguish any noticeable difference. One might go to various Indian restaurants and think one will get the exact item off the menu at each establishment only to find subtle differences. To those within the diverse cultures, these differences might be construed more heavily. In Nepal alone, there are over a hundred different languages. The vast amounts of people groups within this tiny nation all can cook differently. Each tribe or caste has its peculiarities while using Nepal’s same context to draw upon for being who they are as an individual people group. None always cook the same, even in separate households within a specific caste or certain location (e.g., village).
A foreigner might only better discern when comparing only an Indian restaurant with a Chinese buffet. One might be surprised how different even those are from actually eating in a private home in the specific culture the establishment wishes to exemplify. To sell to Westerners paying to eat out, a lot must be changed to make it more palatable on so many levels. This illustration shows the practicality behind translating a dining experience from one people group to another. Indian and Chinese (along with Mexican) involve similar items on a different scale, yet to present them to Americans requires lots of adjustments.
The idea that one can discern ancient texts using only the perspicuity of an untrained modern 21st century Western reading formed by thousands of years of evolution of religious (and philosophical) thought over time compounded by an enlightened mind which bears little resemblance to the cultures and worldviews of over three millennia ago is hardly being fair to the text as if God’s Word written then can now be fully understood by those without any initiation into those cultures. Of course, the core ideas are not lost. They can be translated in a general sense, but much nuance is missed. Many mistakes can be and have been made.
Anyone familiar with the KJV translation knows its majestic history and the many fallacies over its misuse.[7] It is an English translation only hundreds of years removed from today’s readers. Many controversies emerge when it has been misunderstood. So has the Bible in its long history been misused at various points. Some of history’s worst events have occurred because individuals in power misread the Bible or made it concord with their worldview rather than allowing its truth to transform them. Their perspicuity led to terrible events.
Likewise, if one were sick, one initially usually goes to a family member, a friend, or Google. Eventually, one may need a doctor. In some cases, that still might not be enough. One may need a specialist. I always warn my students; one does not take a pregnant woman to see an ophthalmologist for a baby’s immediate delivery. One must go to the correct place to get the necessary treatment.
There are times when specialists are required. There are ways in which specialists contribute their knowledge over time in their respective fields that an experienced family member, a friend, or even Google have learned, which can be of service at certain junctures. Those sources work because specialists paved the way for that to become general knowledge, but there are still many general knowledge errors. One must be cautious. It is fallacious to think specialists are no longer needed.
In the case of Covid-19, vaccines came out in record time because other areas of research already in progress cut the time down in significant factors to allow them to be produced so quickly. However, the Prime Minister of Nepal tells its citizens to eat guava leaves. Previously, the leaders regionally had suggested turmeric powder as “the cure.” Even the Chinese government, who have had the virus to study longer than anyone, initially debated the validity of the research behind the Pfizer vaccine to finally come forward with the truth that their vaccines are not very effective against the virus and admit defeat.
The reason Google or a friend works sometimes is the same. When specialists’ knowledge becomes common knowledge, one can wade into certain areas more comfortably. However, to disdain entirely new research is to set one up for failure. One cannot rely alone on one’s private interpretations as supremely reliable as if the Holy Spirit speaks so well to all.
Many have recently spoken by the Holy Spirit, yet as far as I can tell, no one predicted the coming of Covid-19 in 2019. To claim the Holy Spirit is all one needs to the novices works at times, but not every time. Some common knowledge granted in the world today has not come from specialists in academia. They have come from the most common of sources, yet they get verified by specialists. So it does work both ways.
We are all human. We are all prone to failure. Even the specialists are. No one gets it right every time, but it is logical to assume those specialists often have a better chance of getting things right. They spend most of their time and resources looking into the text to make sure they are rightly dividing it. Otherwise, one may drink the Kool-Aid and eat guava leaves and think they will be fine because one claimed it to be confirmed by the Holy Spirit.
New data is constantly coming forth. New discoveries near Thebes in Egypt will help scholars with the kingdoms of the Amarna period. Such findings help validate the Bible’s historicity and give us an interpretive edge in refining previous textual understandings. A Greek version of Zechariah has been discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Anyone who has studied Zechariah knows of the difficulties. We hope these new fragments can help better comprehend its apocalypticism. These are only two in the past week or so.
To claim, we can sit idly by and think there is nothing new under the sun because the Bible states it and we as Christians can coast is horrendous. I believe personally that is the one factor in many problems of the world today. Christians sat back and let others take over and lead. Wrong thinking has led to terrible results.
No, Christians must emerge and rise in times like these and be active in making sure we do our best to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven more so than any time in history. This apathy leads to the world’s decline among Christians who close their minds to new thinking that they become irrelevant as the world moves on without them. We should be at the cutting edge and the innovators rather than resting on our laurels and becoming old news instead of God’s good news to this present darkness!
In conclusion then, I suppose to say the Bible speaks for or against evolution is a moot point to me because both sides can claim passages where they see their point of view from their perspicuity with detractors denying such proof texting when countering with texts that do not correspond so easily to those modern systems like evolution. I believe the whole point of reading the Bible has thus been missed entirely as we are trying to understand its point of view. Hopefully, it would as it has in the past speak to us and transform us to become more like him and markedly different from them (as in those who choose to follow such worthless practices illustrated above to fight others with the Bible to begin with by asserting and superimposing our views of the text instead its own view). I think this is a far more excellent way.
[1] Scott B. Noegel, “God of Heaven and Sheol: The ‘Unearthing’ of Creation,” HS 58 (2017): 119–144.
[2] I would like to assert here as well, Heiser has said on numerous occasions that his views are not his own nor are they new. He is a “dot connector” so to speak in that he brings the views out there in academia together in ways for those not engaged to be able to see them. The bibliography behind his work the Unseen Realm has recently crossed 7,000 volumes. When written in 2015 after over a decade of research it had surpassed 5,000. So to argue against him, is essentially to argue also against them. That is a lot of specialists with which to disagree and only hold out one’s private interpretation of the Bible as the sole authority claiming the Holy Spirit speaks solely to one’s self, and over 7,000 volumes of peer-reviewed scholarship is wrong!
[3] Many texts are mentioned in the HB which are not extant. One of the most popular perhaps is the Book of Jasher (Josh 10:12–13; 2 Sam 1:19–27; see also 1 Kgs 8:12–13) which is not extant. A fake version from the past few centuries has been repeatedly circulated trying to convince those without knowledge to be an original. The notion is false. It has no value other than to teach one should be careful to rightly divide.
[4] John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible, Second Edition. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2018), 5–6; passim.
[5] Marc Zvi Brettler, God Is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor, (Sheffield: Sheffield, 1989), 116.
[6] Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 224.
[7] For a balanced approach see Mark Ward, Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible, ed. Elliot Ritzema, Lynnea Fraser, and Danielle Thevenaz (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).
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