You Are My Son: God as Father in Psalms and Ancient Near Eastern Iconography
Abstract
Tu és meu Filho: Deus como Pai nos Salmos e na Iconografia do Antigo Oriente Próximo
Abstract
Since the dawn of the Enlightenment, western society has sought to emancipate itself from any connections to a notion of the divine. The Judeo-Christian God has been relegated as a figure of the past and characterized as a later development from the polytheistic religions of the Ancient Near East into a monotheism that would eventually evolve into the secular atheistic society we have today. This caricatured view of God has been predominate in our western society and has been deeply caricaturized by scholars in the humanities and the sciences. Due to these assumptions, this paper seeks to reassess these claims in light of their historical factuality. The methodology we have employed in our work is a comparative study between the portrayals of the monotheistic father God in the Psalms by the Hebrew authors and that of the polytheistic father gods seen throughout the Ancient Near East. We have restricted our study to the Psalms since it is here were we have a large variety of father imagery in the metaphors employed by the Psalmists. By investigating carefully these passages in the Psalms and comparing them with their Ancient Near Eastern counterparts we will see that the depictions of God are very different from the anthropomorphic notions ascribed to Him by the Ancient Near Eastern cultures.
Keyowords: Old testament; Fatherhood language; western society; biblical interpretation
Resumo
Desde o alvorecer do Iluminismo, a sociedade ocidental tem procurado se emancipar de qualquer conexão com uma noção do divino. O Deus judaico-cristão tem sido relegado a uma figura do passado, e caracterizado como um desenvolvimento posterior das religiões politeístas do Antigo Oriente Próximo em um monoteísmo que pudesse eventualmente evoluir para a sociedade ateísta secular que temos hoje. Essa visão caricatural de Deus tem sido predominante em nossa sociedade ocidental e profundamente parodiada por estudiosos das humanidades e das ciências. Este artigo visa, portanto, reavaliar essas afirmações à luz de sua factualidade histórica. A metodologia que empregamos em nosso trabalho é um estudo comparativo entre a imagem do Deus-pai nos Salmos, construída pelos autores hebreus, e os deuses-pai no Antigo Oriente Próximo. Restringimos nosso estudo aos Salmos, pois é aqui onde temos uma grande variedade de imagens de pai nas metáforas empregadas pelos salmistas. Ao investigar cuidadosamente essas passagens nos Salmos e compará-las com suas contrapartes do Antigo Oriente Próximo, veremos que as representações de Deus são muito diferentes das noções antropomórficas atribuídas a ele pelas culturas do Antigo Oriente Próximo.
Palavra-Chave: Antigo Testamento; Linguagem Paternalista; Sociedade Ocidental; Interpretação Bíblica
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