Divine Doppelg Ngers

The Bible says that YHWH alone is God and that there is none like him—but texts and artwork from antiquity show that many gods looked very similar. In this volume, scholars of the Hebrew Bible and its historical contexts address the problem of YHWH’s ancient look-alikes, providing recommendations for how Jews and Christians can think theologically about this challenge. Sooner or later, whether in a religion class or a seminary course, students bump up against the fact that God—the biblical God—was one among other, comparable gods. The ancient world was full of gods, including great gods of conquering empires, dynastic gods of petty kingdoms, goddesses of fertility, and personal spirit guardians. And in various ways, these gods look like the biblical God. Like the God of the Bible, they, too, controlled the fates of nations, chose kings, bestowed fecundity and blessing, and cared for their individual human charges. They spoke and acted. They experienced wrath and delight. They inspired praise. All of this leaves Jews and Christians in a bind: how can they confess that the God named YHWH was (and is) the true and living God, in view of this God’s profound similarities to all these others? The essays in this volume address the theological challenge these parallels create, providing reflections on how Jews and Christians can keep faith in YHWH as God while acknowledging the reality of YHWH’s divine doppelgängers. It will be welcomed by undergraduates studying religion; seminarians and graduate students of Bible, theology, and the ancient world; and adult education classes.

A collection of essays by scholars of the Hebrew Bible providing recommendations for how Jews and Christians can think theologically about the challenge of similarities between YHWH and other ancient gods.

The notion of a person--or even an object--having a "double" has been explored in the visual arts for ages, and in myriad ways: portraying the body and its soul, a woman gazing at her reflection in a pool, or a man overwhelmed by his own shadow. In this edited collection focusing on nineteenth- and twentieth-century western art, scholars analyze doppelgangers, alter egos, mirror images, double portraits and other pairings, human and otherwise, appearing in a large variety of artistic media. Artists whose works are discussed at length include Richard Dadd, Salvador Dali, Egon Schiele, Frida Kahlo, the creators of Superman, and Nicola Costantino, among many others.

Locking the foot of Tianshan Mountain, in a spacious house in the south of Tiejia Village, with a series of ringing noises, hundreds of sharp knives with long or short ropes hanging on the roof were swung out by an iron bar, and then under the action of gravity, Qin Yi, who waved the iron bar, fought back. In a blink of an eye, the tall boy was surrounded by layers of knife light

The Myriad Domain's great world was vast and endless, with many secret realms, planes, and worlds attached to it. Here, there were many lower realm kingdoms with powers that were like the stars, middle dukedoms with powers that weren't ordinary, upper realm kingdoms with legacies that hadn't declined in several thousand years, and the Royal Court that was recognized by the heavens and earth, the strongest and strongest in the Foreign Lands. Qin Hengtian brought the Creation Immortal Court system to summon many ancient Chinese civil and martial officials and martial arts novels ...

Eight outre tales of the doubly weird by J. Sheridan LeFanu, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Algernon Blackwood, Guy de Maupassant, Honore de Balzac, Hans Christian Andersen, Henry James, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. . . . The face in the mirror is yours, but ever so slightly different. A shadow haunts your house, but it walks in places you've never gone. You grew up with a boy who had your face and your name, except he always did everything right, while you never could. Evil twins, double images: these are the tales of the Doppelganger.

Gee, the air here is not from the celestial world, nor from the mortal world, or even from any world I know. There is no aura of heaven and earth in the mortal world, and there is no fairy spirit in the celestial world. There is only rich unknown energy here, which does not belong to any world of our own cognition. Where the hell is this? He struggled to get up and looked at the strange environment and thought