You know… That’s actually not a crazy thought. I’m not a professional Bible scholar but I’m super interested in the topic and read my share of books and research articles on critical biblical studies.
Some of the craziest prophetic writings in the bible are actually super anti-elite, criticizing kings and priestly leaders for extorting the poor and not caring for their people, decrying foreign and domestic opressors, etc, etc.
If you read Amos, Baruch, Ezekiel, Isaiah and so on it’s not rare to find stuff like “what is the value the sacrifices in the temple have if you’re starving your people?” directed at kings and other elites.
Not all of it, but some of the later stuff (exilic and post-exilic) is surrounded by crazy visions like “… the angel of lord showed me the throne of YHWH and it was awesome and terrifying and full of eyes and wheels within wheels and 200 heads”, etc.
So… part of it might be a way of saying “BTW, here’s the mothefucking terrifying being that’s going to fuck you up if you don’t stop oppressing the people…”.
Of course, all that was later coopted by an institutional priestly class who couldn’t give a fuck about the actual social message. But there was a lot of social preoccupation by some of the original authors.
You know… That’s actually not a crazy thought. I’m not a professional Bible scholar but I’m super interested in the topic and read my share of books and research articles on critical biblical studies.
Some of the craziest prophetic writings in the bible are actually super anti-elite, criticizing kings and priestly leaders for extorting the poor and not caring for their people, decrying foreign and domestic opressors, etc, etc.
If you read Amos, Baruch, Ezekiel, Isaiah and so on it’s not rare to find stuff like “what is the value the sacrifices in the temple have if you’re starving your people?” directed at kings and other elites.
Not all of it, but some of the later stuff (exilic and post-exilic) is surrounded by crazy visions like “… the angel of lord showed me the throne of YHWH and it was awesome and terrifying and full of eyes and wheels within wheels and 200 heads”, etc.
So… part of it might be a way of saying “BTW, here’s the mothefucking terrifying being that’s going to fuck you up if you don’t stop oppressing the people…”.
Of course, all that was later coopted by an institutional priestly class who couldn’t give a fuck about the actual social message. But there was a lot of social preoccupation by some of the original authors.