YHWH's Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach

by Daniel McClellan

In YHWH's Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach, Daniel O. McClellan addresses the longstanding question of how it is that divine images could be referred to as if they both were and were not the deities they represented. Drawing insights from the fields of cognitive linguistics and the cognitive science of religion, McClellan develops a theoretical framework for divine agency and divine images in ancient Southwest Asia that explains this apparent paradox. He then applies that framework to the Hebrew Bible to show that the presence of the God of Israel was similarly manifested through material media devoted to precisely that purpose.

Genres: Religion, History, Theology, Judaism, Christianity, Nonfiction, Psychology

300 pages, Paperback

Published September 2, 2022

Reviews

[Jordan Higham · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a slog to get through as a layperson but incredibly interesting.

[Brennan Flentge · Rating 5 out of 5]

TL;DR
— Ancient religion was messier than modern theology allows.
— This book explains why—thoroughly, densely, and without apologizing.

I am very much not a scholar 🌝 I read this as the kind of person who’s interested in biblical history but does not own tweed, know Hebrew, or enjoy pretending this is light reading.

That said, YHWH’s Divine Images is doing something genuinely interesting. The basic idea (as I understand it) is that ancient people didn’t think about God, images, messengers, or objects in clean either/or ways. Things could be “God” and “not God” at the same time, depending on context, function, and how humans actually think. Which immediately explains why so many modern debates about idols, angels, and divine presence go absolutely nowhere.

The book then methodically walks through how divine presence was “handled” in the ancient world—stones, objects, the Ark, messengers, the Name, glory, etc.—until you eventually realize that what later readers call symbolism was often functioning as something much closer to presence. And then it lands on the idea that the scripture itself eventually becomes the primary vehicle of divine presence, which suddenly makes a lot of later religious behavior make sense in a way that’s mildly uncomfortable 🌚

If you are a normie like me, this is not an easy read. It’s dense, technical, and not interested in holding your hand. You will reread sentences. You will be unsure whether you understood something correctly. That seems to be part of the experience.

But if you’re tired of being told ancient people secretly believed modern theology before modern theology existed, this book is worth the effort. I didn’t understand everything, but I understood enough to know my old assumptions were doing a lot of unexamined work.

Lastly, also worth noting: Dan made this book freely available years ago, and his broader work has been genuinely eye-opening for separating confidence from evidence. More of that, less noise.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is an enormous credit to Dr. McClellan's online content that I was willing to read his doctoral dissertation in its entirety.

This book is an academic treatment of the concept of deity in the Hebrew Bible, especially the way in which deities - mainly the god of Israel - were perceived to act and to be present in the lives of worshippers. It is absolutely humiliating to admit, but reading such dense academic prose about a subject I know very little about was refreshing, it made me feel like an undergrad again.
Part of that sensation, of course, is due to McClellan's writing. While clearly academic in nature and aimed primarily at an audience of fellow scholars and PhDs, his thought lines are clear throughout and his prose is easy to follow. The moment you start to get tired of the more theoretical parts at the beginning, they are immediately applied in a way that McClellan makes perfectly intuitive and enjoyable to think through.

I cannot give the book five stars simply because I am not a biblical scholar, and so I am sure that I did not understand enough of the text, and did not have enough familiarity with the 40-page bibliography, to engage it on the level it deserves. 4.25 is the maximum I believe I am qualified to award.

The book, especially the appendix and the sections referencing prototype theory and other cognitive linguistic phenomena (a bit closer to my area of scant academic familiarity), fully convinced me of McClellan's main ideas. Namely, I can clearly see the ways in which "presencing media" such as gravestones and the miscellanea of ex-lovers operate on the same framework as do so-called idols and divine images, and how that framework can be abstracted. I understand the difficulty in applying ancient Israelite and Judahite conceptions of deity to modern-day religions, and I can trace the evolution and negotiation of presencing media through history.

I recommend it with the enormous caveat that you will be mad at me for the recommendation, because it is indeed a dense, difficult, and academic work.

[Lark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dan McClellan what can I say except “HUGGGGE fan”
I’m so surprised you could write something like this that an armchair biblical scholar can keep up with at a jog.
I truly think this will stick with me forever if only because it has given me new language for MYSELF (I have been RUNNING with the idea of the Partible and Permeable Self), for the church upbringing I was raised in (intuitive and reflective belief and the friction of their distance), for the roots of human cognition!

It comes with the excitement of a Theory of Everything, informing your understanding of p much everything and firing those neurons that LOOOVE when there is so much to learn and review
BUT this is where the ethos of Dan really makes this work special. As mind-blowing as this framework is (to me, again, an armchair Anything) McClellan doesn’t ever near an attitude of finality to his conclusions. The whole book is framed as an experiment to apply to a millennia old field of study, and a clear invitation is given to poke holes and repudiate.

His breadth of knowledge is truly astounding, and you can trust fully in all he’s bringing to the table from several different fields of study.

I’m excited for his upcoming book to be a chance for more of his personality to shine through, because that was also part of what makes this work effective

Okay now I’m just throwing out every thought I have while reading

Tl;dr an amazing read, especially if you like me have a neverending hyperfixated special interest for these sort of things but none of the formal study or diachronic knowledge of the Hebrew language

👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

[فؤاد · Rating 4 out of 5]

دستگاه شناختی ما دو سطح داره:
سطح شهودی، که غیر ارادی و به سرعت کار می‌کنه.
سطح ژرف‌اندیشانه، که با اراده و به کندی استدلال می‌کنه.

در حالت طبیعی دین با سطح اول کار می‌کنه. ذهن ما مقولات دینی رو بر امور مختلف پیاده می‌کنه بدون این که خودمون متوجه باشیم. دستگاه شناختی ما در جریان تکامل یاد گرفته که در هر رویداد طبیعی، عامل آگاه ببینه. حیوانی که در جنبش هر بوته، شکارچی‌ای می‌بینه و فرار می‌کنه، شانس بقای بیشتری داره. ذهن ما هم بی‌درنگ و بدون استدلال، در هر رویداد طبیعی ارواح و خدایانی می‌بینه. فقط وقتی این دیدگاه طبیعی دینی به چالش کشیده بشه و نیاز به دفاع داشته باشه، الهیات استدلالی به وجود میاد. الهیات استدلالی مربوط به سطح دوم شناخته و مقولاتی منطقی رو وارد دین می‌کنه که در سطح طبیعی وجود ندارن.

حرف کتاب اینه که ما نباید تصور کنیم دینداری مردم دوران باستان، دینداری ژرف‌اندیشانه بوده. دینداری طبیعی، شهودیه و در نتیجه ممکنه برای سطح ژرف‌اندیشانۀ ما، غیر منطقی به نظر بیاد. مهمترین مثال که مسئلۀ کتاب هم هست، اینه که ذهن دیندار باستانی، بین خدا و نمادش تمایزی قائل نمی‌شه. کتاب مقدس فرشتۀ یهوه رو یهوه می‌نامه، صندوق عهد رو یهوه می‌نامه، با این که این امور از دید استدلالی ما نماینده یا نماد یهوه هستن. این تمایز در دینداری شهودی وجود نداره.

[Joshua Fairbanks · Rating 5 out of 5]

McClellan has very interesting ideas about how the God of the Hebrew developed. He traces back the concept of deity which encompasses the character of God throughout the Hebrew Bible to a model of unseen agency. This unseen agency model explains how the people of Israel and Judah and the surrounding Canaanite cultures came to recognize deities as distinct beings who caused unexplained events in the world. These people eventually came to equate the personhoods of certain deities with material objects in the world, like steles, shrines, or other divining media.

McClellan demonstrates how the cultures of Israel and Judah developed out of this background, and how presencing media influenced the development of the ideas of the Ark of the Covenant and the temple at Jerusalem as recorded in the Hebrew Bible. He further shows how the perception of the deity of YHWH changed over the course of the Babylonian exile, where scribes grabbed hold of ideas of the kabod—the mobile glory and presence of God—and the messenger, bearing the divine name of God, to rationalize YHWH’s continual existence beyond the destruction of the 1st Jerusalem Temple.

In a short appendix, McClellan hypothesizes the relationship between Jesus and the Christian God in terms of a divine messenger bearing the name of YHWH. This would explain how early Christians quickly came to equate Jesus with God, but also being distinct from God, which perhaps influenced the development of the doctrine of the trinity.

[Charles Meadows · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid book. McClellan reviews key works (esp Hurtado, Bauckham, and Sommer) and offers critique based on a cognitive linguistic framework. These scholars work with binary definitions of God in a sense, which McClellan says doesn't work well since definitions are always "fuzzy around the edges". Thus Bauckham's claim that Jesus was identified by early Christians as within the identity of YHWH the Jewish God is seen as taking too much for granted. "Jesus is divine" is thus too general. Divine how? Like YHWH, or rather just like a strong angel? The author's challenges are not sufficient to overturn the theses of the authors, but they do demand the older theories interact with newer insights from neuroscience.

[Felix · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. McClellan lays out his framework clearly and logically. He discusses other perspectives and explains why he disagrees when he does. Some really interesting and compelling ideas in here! Also the drawings included are beautifully done.