28 February 2024
Pageau sometimes uses terminology that makes me uncomfortable. He talks about the stability of the pillar and trees and mountains as "reason", but includes divine revelation in that. Meanwhile, he then raises up the image of divination as games of risk and chaos. On the one hand, he views Covenant Law as "rational" and doesn't at all refer to the mysticism inherent in Hebrew culture, and then glosses over how God commanded His priests to use divination.
I believe the issue is more a matter of how he uses the English terminology and what he includes in the pool of meaning for the words he uses. It's possible he suffers the common prejudice against biblical mysticism, but we'll just have to work past that. As you might expect, I'm less likely to quote his terminology on the subject of the Temptation in the Garden, which is the subject for this post.
Adam was doing his job, mediating between above and below. The foundation of his job was divine revelation, but it's nearly impossible to assess how an eternal version of humanity before the Fall "knows" things. The Scripture does not characterize God's interaction with His steward in the Garden, except to suggest that God made things clear enough that Adam couldn't pretend not to know, and he would have told Eve everything.
The Serpent (Satan) introduced the chaos and instability of risk-taking. There is only the smallest separation between gaming/gambling and primitive divination. The "urim and thummim" were lots very much like the common gaming of the Ancient Near East. The Serpent was introducing complications to the guidance Adam had received, bringing in angles that had no place in his service. This equates to the spinning axle of the wheel of chance, of time and absurdity and chaos, raising questions that had no place in serving the Lord.
In the business of information warfare, we refer to FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) as a form of attack. This is precisely what Satan used. It's connected with sleeping, dreaming, dying, wandering in strange lands, trying to alienate Adam from what he knows best.
Side note: In case you don't know much about "casting lots before the Lord", the best evidence seems to point to a bag of stones. They were all the same shape and size, but there were two distinctly different colors. Depending on the nature of the question, there would be a set number of stones to account for each of the options. All would be the same color except one. They were placed in a bag together and shaken. As each option was called out in the hearing of witnesses, a stone was drawn blindly from the bag. The one matching the odd color was taken.
Based on the probable meaning of the words "urim" (lights, brights) and "thummim" (perfections?) my best guess is that the former were light colored or even crystals (the odd ones), while the latter were darker, and probably more typical. Tumbled and rounded stones of hard material were quite rare in that part of the world where limestone dominated; this is especially true of small stones of uniform size and shape.
The difference is that, under the Covenant of Moses, the use of gaming was regulated. God promised to speak through this casting of lots, or simply to support whatever option was chosen this way. However, the promise rested on a certain minimum obedience under the whole of Covenant Law. This is the stability of mediation between above and below, where the dry land (earth, people, civilization, etc.) was prompted to respond to the Word from Heaven, and bore fruit in an orderly fashion according to its seed.
When things get complicated, rather like the sea washing too high upon the land, the people could call on the Lord to clarify things and restore the division of land and sea, keeping things in their proper order, balancing between time and space.
Comments
Jay DiNitto
I never knew that's what was meant by casting lots, though I never really looked into it. I assumed it was some form of dice, because that's what I grew up with, and "casting" to me sounded a lot like throwing something... like dice. Interesting.
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