Heresy of Peor
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Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
at Numbers
Book of Numbers
The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
25:1-15. Back references to the event occur in Numbers 25:18 and 31:16, Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy
The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch...
4:3, Joshua
Joshua
Joshua , is a minor figure in the Torah, being one of the spies for Israel and in few passages as Moses's assistant. He turns to be the central character in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua...
22:17, Hosea
Hosea
Hosea was the son of Beeri and a prophet in Israel in the 8th century BC. He is one of the Twelve Prophets of the Jewish Hebrew Bible, also known as the Minor Prophets of the Christian Old Testament. Hosea is often seen as a "prophet of doom", but underneath his message of destruction is a promise...
9:10; Psalm
Psalms
The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...
106:28. Another reference is found in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 10:8.
Biblical account
The story proceeds from that of the prophetProphet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
Balaam
Balaam
Balaam is a diviner in the Torah, his story occurring towards the end of the Book of Numbers. The etymology of his name is uncertain, and discussed below. Every ancient reference to Balaam considers him a non-Israelite, a prophet, and the son of Beor, though Beor is not so clearly identified...
, in which he ascends the mountain of Pe‘or, and makes sacrifices to God from atop it. Having finished his sacrifices, Balaam views the Israelites on the plain below, and although hired to curse them, pronounces a blessing over them, prophesying their blessed nature and destruction of Moab
Moab
Moab is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over...
. When the narrative focus returns to the point of view of the Israelites, the contrast between Balaam's voiced opinion of them, and their actual behaviour, is distinctly noticeable.
According to the Torah, the Israelites, after spending a short time in the plain of Moab, begin to involve themselves with the Moabite women. Consequently, under the influence of Moabite culture, the Israelites begin whoring after the Moabite gods, and join themselves to Baal Peor (Hebrew בעל פעור Ba‘al Pə‘ôr), in the Septuagint Beelphegôr, a baal
Baal
Baʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
associated with Mount Pe‘or.
YHWH orders Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
to gather the chiefs of the people and hang up the idolaters before Yahweh to turn away Yahweh's anger. The scene then abruptly shifts from concerns about Moabites to those about Midian
Midian
Midian , Madyan , or Madiam is a geographical place and a people mentioned in the Bible and in the Qur'an. It is believed to be in northwest Saudi Arabia on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba and the northern Red Sea...
ites. A man — Israelite Zimri, the son of Salu — brings a Midianite woman into the camp in the sight of Moses, where the people are weeping. Phinehas
Phinehas
-Biblical figures:*Phinehas, son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the High Priest*Phinehas, son of the High Priest Eli. He was a priest at Shiloh, and died when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant-Other :*Pinchas, the 41st weekly Torah portion....
, grandson of Aaron
Aaron
In the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, Aaron : Ααρών ), who is often called "'Aaron the Priest"' and once Aaron the Levite , was the older brother of Moses, and a prophet of God. He represented the priestly functions of his tribe, becoming the first High Priest of the Israelites...
, thereupon rises up with a spear, follows the man into the chamber and thrusts the spear through both the man and woman, who were evidently in the act of copulation. The plague, from which 24,000 had died, then ceased to take life. A war with Midian follows later.
Ba'al Pe'or
These, and the biblical back-references, are the only ancient records referring to Ba‘al Pe‘or. There is no way of knowing whether Ba‘al Pe‘or was identical with any other BaalBaal
Baʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
, of which there were several, or was only a local god of Mount Pe‘or. Later commentators tend to suppose that this god might be identical with Chemosh who is called the god of Moab in other biblical texts, and sometimes speculate that the cult of Ba‘al Pe‘or was very licentious.
Talmudic traditions
If Pe‘or is connected to the HebrewHebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
stem p‘r 'open', used both of mouth and bowels, it might mean 'opening' and so Ba‘al Pe‘or could mean 'Lord of the Opening'. This apparent meaning is probably the source of Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
ic traditions associating Ba‘al Pe‘or with exposure and excrement. The tractate Sanhedrin 64a attributes to Rab through Rabbi Judah the story of a sick Gentile woman who vowed to worship every idol in the world if she recovered. Upon recovery she set out to fulfill her vow, but drew back at Pe‘or as the rites were too disgusting: eating beets, drinking strong drink, and then uncovering oneself.
A story follows about a Jew who showed his contempt for the god by wiping his behind on its nose after defecating in the temple and who was praised for his piety by the acolytes of the god who said: no man has ever before served this idol thus. Tractate ‘Avodah Zarah 3 states in the Gemara
Gemara
The Gemara is the component of the Talmud comprising rabbinical analysis of and commentary on the Mishnah. After the Mishnah was published by Rabbi Judah the Prince The Gemara (also transliterated Gemora or, less commonly, Gemorra; from Aramaic גמרא gamar; literally, "[to] study" or "learning by...
that the area before the idol Pe‘or was used as a latrine and that the worship of the idol consisted of excrementing before it. Rashi
Rashi
Shlomo Yitzhaki , or in Latin Salomon Isaacides, and today generally known by the acronym Rashi , was a medieval French rabbi famed as the author of a comprehensive commentary on the Talmud, as well as a comprehensive commentary on the Tanakh...
comments on Numbers 25.3 that Pe‘or was so called because they would uncover before it the end of the rectum and bring forth excrement; this is its worship.
Balaam
The story of Balaam may provide a clue concerning the identity of Baal Peor. Balaam is described as a ProphetProphet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
of El, usually translated as God. This is one of the first times that El is used, rather than Yahweh, because El can be used to describe angels and even the gods of other nations, and is not necessarily ever relegated to being a personal name like Yahweh, but a title; compare the frequently recurring "Yahweh Elohim" of the Torah. While Balaam is described as a son of Beor, Beor is never himself identified, and the close phonetic similarity to Peor is noticeable. If Beor and Peor are one and the same, then son of Beor merely identifies Balaam as being a prophet of Baal Peor.
(alternatively Balaam means and is a corruption of Baalim, the plural of Baal meaning 'The Baals' or 'all the baals' (cognate with 'all the gods'.)
Balaam is described as building altars at several of the high places of Moab, including at Peor, without ever criticising any Moabite religion occurring at those locations, entirely plausible if Balaam was a prophet of a Moabite god. Indeed, Balaam's own name is generally considered in critical scholarship to be a compound of Baal and Am, a semitic god. Later in the Bible, within the account of the war against the Midianites, Balaam is described as being amongst those killed for committing the heresy of Peor, implying that Balaam was one of those who had joined themselves to Baal Peor.
An archaeological find from 1967, from Deir Alla
Deir Alla
Deir Alla , is the site of an ancient Near Eastern town thought to be Pitru/Pethor.-History:...
in Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, produced an ancient Aramaic inscription written in red and black ink on plaster walls, telling about a hitherto unknown prophecy from a Book of Balaam, foretelling destruction for disobedience to the gods. Balaam, though still a son of Beor, in this narrative is a prophet of Shamash
Shamash
Shamash was a native Mesopotamian deity and the sun god in the Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian pantheons. Shamash was the god of justice in Babylonia and Assyria, corresponding to Sumerian Utu...
, the Semitic
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
sun god (The word "shemesh" is still the Hebrew word for "sun," which in Arabic is "shams"). If this reflects the god that El refers to in the biblical text concerning Balaam, and the connection between Balaam and Baal Peor is accurate, then Baal Peor can be identified as Shamash.
From Moab to Midian
The abrupt change from concerns about the Moabites to the Midianites, and mention of the end of a plague which is never described as starting, is explained by the documentary hypothesisDocumentary hypothesis
The documentary hypothesis , holds that the Pentateuch was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors...
as being down to a change from the JE
JE
JE is a hypothetical intermediate source text of the Torah postulated by the DH. It is a combination and redaction of the Jahwist and Elohist source texts. According to this hypothesis, J was composed c. 950 BC, E was composed c. 850 BC, and the two were combined into JE c. 750 BC. JE was...
source to the Priestly source
Priestly source
The Priestly Source is one of the sources of the Torah/Pentateuch in the bible. Primarily a product of the post-Exilic period when Judah was a province of the Persian empire , P was written to show that even when all seemed lost, God remained present with Israel...
. Despite the Torah redactor usually, according to the hypothesis, interlacing together the sources, the stories here were evidently difficult to combine, as the redactor appears to have cut the end of the JE version, and beginning of the Priestly source version, joining the remaining ends of each source together.
As the Priestly source is considered to be based on the JE source, albeit spun to the Aaronid priesthood's political viewpoint, the original JE ending, and priestly source beginning, can be expected to be fairly similar to the text that is currently present. Nevertheless, the use of plagues, by God, to punish the people in very large numbers, is unique to the Priestly source, once the Israelites have left Egypt, and consequently this detail is unlikely to have been present in the original.
While it is considered uncertain as to why the Priestly source would change Moab to Midian, it is generally agreed amongst critical scholars that the account of the war against Midian, and its spoils, originates from a writer who added these elements to the original version of the Priestly source. The command to vex the Midianites is also considered a part of these additions, and thus the revenge on Midian serves as a vehicle for this writer to include the list of spoils, and its distribution, which has a larger amount of text than the narrative of the war. Thus, this later writer could easily have changed Moab to Midian to facilitate this addition.
Other
Baal Peor, of Jordanian-Moabite origin, appeared as both the sun god and moon goddess, as did his priests. Healing was discerned from feces, often salt bathing in the dead sea, and his cult was present in the south dead sea (i.e. Sodom and Gomorrah legends).
See also
- BaalBaalBaʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
- BalaamBalaamBalaam is a diviner in the Torah, his story occurring towards the end of the Book of Numbers. The etymology of his name is uncertain, and discussed below. Every ancient reference to Balaam considers him a non-Israelite, a prophet, and the son of Beor, though Beor is not so clearly identified...
- Balak (parsha)Balak (parsha)Balak is the 40th weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the seventh in the book of Numbers...
- BelphegorBelphegorIn demonology, Belphegor is a demon, and one of the seven princes of Hell, who helps people to make discoveries. He seduces people by suggesting to them ingenious inventions that will make them rich. According to some 16th century demonologists, his power is stronger in April...
- Documentary hypothesisDocumentary hypothesisThe documentary hypothesis , holds that the Pentateuch was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors...
- Tzoah RotachatTzoah RotachatTzoah rotakhat in the Talmud and Zohar is a location in Gehinnom where the soul of a Jew who committed certain sins is sent for punishment...