Finishing Biblical Ambiguities

In my reading today of Biblical Ambiguities, David Aaron contends that the prohibition against images for worship was political: it was designed to prevent the existence of competing cults, for, if people could set up their own private sanctuaries (i.e., Micah in Judges 17), that would undermine the main sanctuary. That certain authors whose writings made the Bible had little problem with the main sanctuary (or, more accurately, the sanctuary that they believed should be central) having graven images is evident within the Hebrew Bible itself. The ark of the covenant had graven cherubim, and it housed the divine, for it was considered the very presence of God in battle. Regarding the Golden Calf narrative, Dr. Aaron says that it's about the elevation of Aaron and the Levites. Aaron is not punished, and the problem occurs when the Golden Calf gets outside of his control. But the Levites save the day, at least at a certain stage of the story's development. In Etched in Stone, however, Dr. Aaron argues that the Golden Calf story was written by marginal priests, and I think that he dates them to Judah's diaspora. But the whole part about aniconism being about politics is in Biblical Ambiguities and Etched in Stone.

There are similarities and differences between Biblical Ambiguities and Etched in Stone. In Biblical Ambiguities, as in Etched in Stone, Dr. Aaron questioned the tendency of biblical scholars to just assume that the biblical narrative is historical; he also believed that the anti-monarchical voice in the Hebrew Bible is post-exilic, telling an Israel without a king that it did not need a king. He states that "there is no objective evidence to allow us to date any biblical passage to a pre-monarchical period," although he says that the Hebrew Bible may have material that dates to the tenth century---only it wasn't yet incorporated into what we "recognize as the biblical narrative" (46). But there are some differences. On page 177 of Biblical Ambiguities, he appears to argue that covenant documents were deposited "by the divine effigy," as occurred in the ancient Near East. I take the divine effigy to be the ark. He says that this occurred "As there formed the tribal confederacies that eventually came to be Israel". I'm not sure when he dates this, but the ark is not presented as present any longer in the biblical stories about Israel's post-exilic periods, so are the ark traditions pre-exilic, according to Dr. Aaron? If so, then he's more open to dating stuff to Judah's pre-exilic period in Biblical Ambiguities.

I really enjoyed the conclusion, in which Dr. Aaron said that ambiguity challenges authority, and that Job and Qoheleth, though their appeals to experience, confronted the attempts to create religious monopolies (through an appeal to revelation, for example). Well, Qoheleth did this more, since the Book of Job has the divine voice. But we see in those books a notion that the usual religious platitudes did not wash. That's how I often feel when I hear Christian platitudes. They may work for some, but they've never worked for me.