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Idol notions : exploring the impact of the second commandment on the Exodus community
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MLA citation style (9th ed.)
Idol Notions : Exploring the Impact of the Second Commandment On the Exodus Community. rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/b8b06a9a-fd53-4062-93bd-7d331a911594?locale=en.APA citation style (7th ed.)
Idol notions : exploring the impact of the second commandment on the Exodus community. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/b8b06a9a-fd53-4062-93bd-7d331a911594?locale=enChicago citation style (CMOS 17, author-date)
Idol Notions : Exploring the Impact of the Second Commandment On the Exodus Community. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/b8b06a9a-fd53-4062-93bd-7d331a911594?locale=en.Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
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- This thesis aims to address a question arising out of the Old Testament’s constant condemnation of, and Israel’s constant stumbling over, the practice of idolatry. Why was idol worship such a draw in the ancient Near Eastern world, being in fact the final straw that sent Israel into the ultimate covenant curse of exile (cf. Ezek 6)? Archaeological records have revealed an enthralling polytheistic practice that remained entrenched for millennia, which involved the ritual animation of an idol with the god’s living presence, to be thereafter served relentlessly by ritual performance within a human-divine interplay directly opposed to Yahweh’s revealed truth. The second commandment forbade such image making and worship on its face to God’s people. Much modern scholarship, however, has questioned the dating of the composition of the OT, and the idol ban of the second commandment in particular. Such historical criticism tends to hold an evolutionary view of Israelite religious development, proposing a national origin in polytheistic belief and a later shift into a new understanding of the aniconic worship of their primary deity. This follows a larger trend in biblical scholarship which proposes a cadre of later redactors with varied agendas and theological emphases who assembled the Hebrew Bible; and it was one of these who purportedly instated the strict image ban for his own, much later, political moment. These critical views ultimately hold the biblical text as a biased and unreliable historiography. This thesis will instead employ a methodology that treats the text in its final form and adheres to a traditional view of divine instigation and guidance of Israel’s national worship. It will argue that the idol ban of the second commandment was necessarily delivered at Israel’s founding, being rooted in God’s immutable character and making explicit reference to the Creator-creation distinction in Genesis, a cosmology distinctly rebutting that of ancient polytheism. Further, a comparative method will be used to study the idol consecration rituals of the ancient Near East, revealing that idolatry was much more insidious than merely “bow[ing] to a block of wood” (Isa 44:19). As a gateway device to a deadly philosophy, idols were fundamentally and terminally opposed to the truth of God. With a view to the literary and theological unity of the text, therefore, it is imperative that the image ban be delivered to the exodus community at their national founding, and that it should stand in stone for Israel, and for the church, for all time.
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- 12/02/2024
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