Subject:
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Re: The Brick Testament: Gideon!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.build.ancient
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Date:
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Thu, 21 Apr 2005 19:38:49 GMT
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Viewed:
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6056 times
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Marc Nelson Jr. wrote:
Thanks. That’s always a nice compliment to hear. :)
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I have a quibble with “Gideon and His Sons”. The
ephod was a priestly garment - “a
‘skirt’ with two shoulder straps, to which the golden breastplate was
attached, and a belt to tie it in front”. Your depiction looks more like a
statue or idol.
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When I first read this story about Gideon setting up an “ephod” at Ophrah which
all the Israelites “prostituted themselves” to, I was pretty confused about just
what was going on. I remembered the word ephod being used in Exodus where it
clearly does refer to something that the Israelite priests wore, something of a
holy garment. But on the face of it, it seemed very odd to me that Gideon would
create a preistly garment and “place it” in Ophrah (as opposed to “wear it”),
and that the Israelites would then come to Ophrah to “prostitute themselves” to
said garment. So I did some checking around on the web to see how others have
interpreted this confusing story and word usage.
There seems to be a difference of opinion on the matter. Some hold that the
word ephod is being used in its “normal” sense here in the Gideon story, and
that indeed, strage as it might seem to me, Gideon put on display a priestly
garment. Here are some sites that hold to that interpretation:
Bethel Church of God page about Gideon
SDA Sabbath School Lessons
NetBible’s textual notes
New Foundations Ministries
A rival theory is that, although the word ephod usually refers to the preistly
garment, in a certain set of passages in the Bible it is used with a different
meaning, to refer to something along the lines of “an image”, this passage in
Judges being one of those instances. Sites that hold to this interpretation
include this first link under “external links” on the Wikipedia page you noted
(Jewish
Encyclopdia: ephod) and others:
Roger Christopherson’s Bible
Study
And Adam Knew Eve
RightNow.org
David A. Denyer’s
commentary on Judges 8:22-35
Evolution of Theology by Thomas Henry Huxley
A commentary on Hosea
NIV
Study Bible Notes (as quoted on this page)
And still other sources note that the meaning of ephod in uncertain:
Bibletools.org
1911encyclopdeia.org
The Prohibition of
Images in the Old Testament The Prohibition of Images in the Old Testament
Since there is not concencus on the issue, for my illustration of the ephod in
this story, I decided to leave in a bit of ambiguity. Yes, it does kind of look
like an idol, but I also wanted it to be conceivable that it was some form of
higly decorative garment. It does not look like the breastplat described in
Exodus, to be sure, but in other parts of the Bible, the ephod likewise does not
always seem to be the breastplate and/or skirt, such as when King David wears a
linen ephod as he dances in front of the ark of the covenant (here the the ephod
is generally thought to be something like a loincloth).
Cool, hope you enjoy the book. With The Ten Commandments just having seen its
official release last month, there is not yet a fourth book in the works. I’m
sure my publisher is watching the sales of this new book closely in order to see
if it’s in their interest to continue the series. Needless to say, I would love
to have more of the website’s stories available in book form. Hopefully it will
just be a matter of time.
Thanks for the comments and support!
-Brendan
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: The Brick Testament: Gideon!
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| (...) Wow! Thank you for the detailed reply - I never thought I'd be getting an education in Hebrew etymology on LUGNET. The most interesting theory was from the (URL) Jewish Encyclopedia> link - that the ephod started out as a garment for an an (...) (20 years ago, 21-Apr-05, to lugnet.build.ancient, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: The Brick Testament: Gideon!
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| In lugnet.announce.moc, Brendan Powell Smith wrote: snip (...) Excellent beheadings! I have a quibble with "Gideon and His Sons". The (URL) ephod> was a priestly garment - "a 'skirt' with two shoulder straps, to which the golden breastplate was (...) (20 years ago, 21-Apr-05, to lugnet.build.ancient, FTX)
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