#tanakh

[xochunja]

Sorry for the holdup in uploading

I couldn’t draw anything for a while cuz I had no idea what to creat.😭

(The original)

[sir-davey]

I’m soaking wet sobbing

Been drenching my phone screen with my tears…

Right before my 10 hr trip to Louisiana.

Dude… I can’t.

David and Jonathan…

I don’t know if I can handle reading another David and Jonathan book 😭

Expect a review

[magnetothemagnificent]

Thinking about Al Naharot Bavel and how we as Jews have been made to entertain our oppressors since....forever

עַ֥ל נַהֲר֨וֹת ׀ בָּבֶ֗ל שָׁ֣ם יָ֭שַׁבְנוּ גַּם־בָּכִ֑ינוּ בְּ֝זׇכְרֵ֗נוּ אֶת־צִיּֽוֹן׃ On the rivers of Bavel, there we sat, and also wept, as we remembered Tziyon. עַֽל־עֲרָבִ֥ים בְּתוֹכָ֑הּ תָּ֝לִ֗ינוּ כִּנֹּרוֹתֵֽינוּ׃ On the willows, in the midst, we hung our lyres כִּ֤י שָׁ֨ם שְֽׁאֵל֪וּנוּ שׁוֹבֵ֡ינוּ דִּבְרֵי־שִׁ֭יר וְתוֹלָלֵ֣ינוּ שִׂמְחָ֑ה שִׁ֥ירוּ לָ֝֗נוּ מִשִּׁ֥יר צִיּֽוֹן׃ For there our captors asked words of song; our tormentors, amusement, "sing for us from the song of Tziyon" אֵ֗יךְ נָשִׁ֥יר אֶת־שִׁיר־יְהֹוָ֑ה עַ֝֗ל אַד��מַ֥ת נֵכָֽר׃ How can we sing the song of YHVH on foreign soil? [Tehillim 137 1-4]

Thinking about how throughout history we've been made into the jesters, the comedians, the performers, how we're only good as long as we can entertain and amuse our oppressors. Over and over and over again throughout history we weep by the rivers of every generation's Babylon while our captors jeer and order us to sing our sacred songs.

And honestly? I think it's time we hung up our lyres on the proverbial willows. Enough. We don't have to keep on this performance. We don't live for the entertainment of Babylon. We won't perform for our captors anymore.

Antisemites don't deserve to be entertained by us.

[hailruth]

tehillim 137:5-6

[anniflamma]

Planned to make an animatic about these two for Pride Month but realized I won't be able to do one in time… So here is something cute!

+ the original

[nonsensical-raw-material]

I started painting on my TaNaKh. I tried to make them as even as possible obviously but ya know. They're based off the ring neck dove which is native to Israel. I figured I'd share. Also open to ideas on what else I should paint :]

[shiurkoma]

David, accessories inspired by the art works of @eleheba

[arri-vixx]

I know this is gonna sound crazy, but I think he might be just a little jealous of his brother

[chamberofthespirit]

Asherah aesthetic 🌱🌾🌤

[traumaticemphaticfantastic]

Here’s some of my first Masoretic paintings that I’ve done recently, Leviathan and Behemoth! An inseparable duo of primordial chaos monsters most popularly known for their appearance in the Book of Job, both are used as an example of the power of G-d and as a means to enlighten Job as to how insignificant he is. That last part might sound bad to you but I love that Job is told quite directly by G-d that G-d has more important things to attend to than but a single man. It makes me feel less scared that “G-d is constantly judging me” and let’s me take a bit of that edge off with the confirmation that G-d probably just has better things to do.

Now into the monsters: Leviathan is a mighty fire-breathing sea serpent with a double-layered armoured hide of scales that was said to have lived in the sea, it appears fleetingly in the Tanakh, like many creatures of Jewish Legend, yet it makes quite an impression with what little time is dedicated to it especially within the book of Job. In Job, G-d uses Leviathan as an example of G-d’s power, “Can you draw out Leviathan by a fishhook? Or can you press down his tongue by a rope?” and “Will he plead with you at length?” are just two lines that are used to show that only G-d has such immense power as to be able to not only create but also control such a beast. Leviathan is so powerful and so immensely large that no human weapon can kill it, the Book of Job describes in great detail how no weapon can even pierce the hide of the thing.

Truly the definition of the classical Sea Serpent, Leviathan was truly a great and terrible force to be reckoned with. However, in Psalms 14 the fate of Leviathan is described “You crushed the heads of Leviathan; You give it as food to the denizens of the desert” and so it would seem that Leviathan may have become too chaotic and that G-d decided that it must be destroyed, and in-turn, fed to the creatures of the land. It’s also worth noting that Leviathan is described as having multiple heads here, I must admit that I chose to only give it one in my painting, I couldn’t think of a way to incorporate the multiple heads into my vision for this piece. But another more obscure fact is that Leviathan isn’t the only sea serpent in the Tanakh! There is another serpent called “Rahab” who seems to be very similar to Leviathan and similarly is now long dead, this time being “Cut into pieces” by the L-rd.

As for why I included a popular illustration for the Kabbalistic concept of Ein Sof in the painting, I wanted to include a reference to G-d in the piece but I wanted it to compliment the circular pose of Leviathan (Referring to the Hebrew for Leviathan commonly being translated as “To twist” or “To coil” and I thought of the popular circular depiction often associated with Ein Sof was an interesting idea for a visual.

Now onto Behemoth! Behemoth is a very similar idea to Leviathan except it’s a mammal and dwelled on land, it is said to have very powerful muscles and similarly cannot be defeated by mere humans, it is an herbivore described as eating grass like cattle, and it “Makes its tail stand up like a ceder” and has “Limbs like iron rods” which I assume are more indicators of the beasts immense strength, it is also said of behemoth “He is the first of G-d’s works; Only his Maker can can draw the sword against him. The mountains yield him produce, where all the beasts of the field play. He lies down beneath the lotuses, in the cover of the swamp reeds. The lotuses embower him with shade; The willows of the brook surround him. He can restrain the river from its rushing; He is confident the stream will gush on his command.” Just such an amazing description I had to let it speak for itself!

For Behemoth’s design I took great inspiration from extinct mammals specifically of the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs as I think they do a good job of making the beast seem quite ancient yet still mammalian and incredibly powerful.

Anyways, that will be all for today, I hope everyone’s having a good lead-up to Hanukkah this year! I do love the holiday season, great time to get off work and be with the family and/or the friends. Be well all, and good morning, evening, afternoon, or night.

[xochunja]

evil Jonathan

The evil Jonathan is my favorite idea!!

THX @sir-davey for providing me with an idea😍

(But if you think I stole your idea, I'll apologize and delete it.)

TW: a bit of a bloody description

maybe Jonathan thought something like this before he died

: He probably wants his memory to mess with David's head even after he's gone.

It's like he's got this sick desire to stick around in David's mind forever...

But, this is just me overthinking stuff :)))

[sir-davey]

Made this a while ago, figured I should post this, I find it really cute <3

This is a little animation gift for @anniflamma >:3

No one underestimates Jonathan’s shots. I also have a headcanon of a little turtledove that likes to follow David and Jonathan around, so here I included one, except it almost gets pinned by Jonathan’s arrow lolll

[magnetothemagnificent]

Various Purim memes for ya'll:

[id in alt text]

[hailruth]

Maimonides makes the fundamental point that Reshit does not mean "beginning" in the sense of "first chronological sequence." For that, biblical Hebrew has other words. Reshit implies the most significant element, the part that stands for the whole, the foundation, the principle.

It is not myth. It is not history in the conventional sense, a mere recording of events. Nor is it theology: Genesis is less about G-d than about human beings and their relationship with G-d. The theology is almost always implicit rather than explicit. What Genesis is, in fact, is philosophy written in a deliberately non-philosophical way. It deals with all the central questions of philosophy: what exists (ontology), what can we know (epistemology), are we free (philosophical psychology), and how we should behave (ethics). But it does so in a way quite unlike the philosophical classics from Plato to Wittgenstein. To put it at its simplest: philosophy is truth as system. Genesis is truth as story. It is a unique work, philosophy in the narrative mode.

— Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Z"L)

[entanglingbriars]

My friend @apenitentialprayer (who you should be following if you're interested in Catholicism) asked me to expand on my belief that Genesis 3 is an etiological myth for puberty. The following understanding is emphatically not my own, but it comes from my rabbi and I'm not sure whether he published it so I don't have a citation.

Anyway, the basic argument is that we should read the phrase "knowledge of good and bad" (הדעת טוב ורע) ha-da'at tov v'ra (Genesis 2:17) in parallel with "[he] learns to reject the bad and choose good" (לדעתו מאוס ברע ובחור בטוב) l'dato ma'os bara u'vahol batov (Isaiah 7:15). In Isaiah, learning the difference between good and bad (more literally knowing the difference; da'at in Gen 2:17 has the same root as dato in Is 7:15 (dato is a conjugation of yada)) is a metaphor for maturing. If we read the phrase "knowledge of good and bad" in Genesis 2 in the same way, then we can reasonably infer that the consequence of eating the fruit of the Tree is maturation as such rather than the acquisition of forbidden knowledge.

So, what happens when we do that? Human beings in the Garden of Eden have two things in common with God: immortality and the image in which they are made. When they eat from the Tree they gain "knowledge of good and bad" which we've inferred means aging and (specifically) going through puberty. After puberty humans acquire a third divine characteristic: the ability to create life.

The curses that follow for the man and woman then describe the inevitable consequences that they will face by going from childhood and adulthood. The woman will carry babies and have pain in giving birth. She will desire (תשוקה) t'shukah (the verb is used for non-sexual desire in Gen 4:7 and for sexual desire in Song 7:11) her husband. The man will have to labor to bring for the food previously provided by his Parent (i.e. God). And of course both will die (which does happen to children, but is not an inevitable part of childhood the way it is for adulthood).

(Note that the interpretation that the Serpent is Satan comes from later Christian eisegesis is not actually a part of the myth as presented in Genesis 3.)