Structural bioinformatics: current status and future directions

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• leçon - matière potentielle : from eight years of distributed computing

Structural bioinformatics: current status and future directions Swanand Gore∗, Sameer Velankar and Gerard J. Kleywegt Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) EMBL-EBI Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge 1 Introduction Structural biology is a key discipline in basic and applied biological research. It reveals atomic and mechanistic details of biological macromolecules in normal and diseased states and en- ables researchers to modulate the molecular machinery in a rational manner, through the design of important molecules of practical relevance such as drugs, inhibitors, enzymes, antibodies, pesticides etc. Structural bioinformatics - an umbrella term encompassing many techniques in biocomputing and informatics of macromolecular structures - is an essential

• s. velankar
• a. golovin
• t. c. terwilliger
• p. mcneil
• structural nmr of protein oligomers
• g. j.
• g.j.
• r.
• structure
• 3 c.
• c.

Sujets

• Structure
• Thornton
• Worldwide Protein Data Bank
• Dougherty
• Jumper
• Folding

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• Publié par: sheyn
• Nombre de lectures: 8
• Langue: English

Extrait

1

Michael S. Heiser
[e-mail]
Providence, RI; ETS, 2008
The Concept of a Godhead in Israelite Religion

Introduction

The search for the doctrine of the godhead in the Old Testament is hardly new. Those of us whose
field focuses on the Old Testament are well aware that as far back as the apostolic fathers thinkers
and scholars have ferreted through the text on a quest to find traces of this fundamental point of
Christian theology. Typically such efforts, ancient or modern, have been focused on what one could
charitably call “theological exegesis,” where the interpreter begins with the refined articulation of a
Trinitarian godhead and then overlays that articulation on the Hebrew Bible to prove that New
Testament Trinitarian theology and its Nicene articulation is not contradicted by the Old Testament.
Almost invariably this approach involves contrivances such as imposing triunity on plural language
in passages like Gen. 1:26 and Gen. 11:7. However unintended, such efforts raise the question of
whether or not we would come up with a godhead if we only had the Old Testament. It is usually at
this point that we retreat to the camp of progressive revelation, which amounts to a negative answer
anyway.

Today I’d like to propose a different approach, one that politely ignores the New Testament. My task
is to persuade you that the orthodox Yahwism of ancient Israel is all we need for the concept of a
plural godhead. More specifically, I believe a Binitarian godhead is evident from a close reading of
the Hebrew Bible without recourse to the New Testament at all. A Trinitarian godhead is more
evasive, but I hope to demonstrate that such a conceptual framework is present in the Hebrew Bible.
My argument follows two trajectories: (1) understanding how orthodox Israelite Yahwism viewed the
structure of divine authority in the divine council; and (2) observing how orthodox Israelite Yahwism
actually had two Yahwehs—one invisible and the other visible—who were at times indistinguishable
and at other times clearly distinguished. The merging of these two components of the orthodox
Israelite conception of God and his rule results in a Binitarian godhead in orthodox Israelite
Yahwism. Before diving into the first of these components, a bit of background is necessary.

Background

Two Powers in Heaven in Ancient Judaism 2

Just over thirty years ago, rabbinical scholar Alan Segal produced what is still the major work on the
idea of two powers in heaven in Jewish thought: Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About
Christianity and Gnosticism (Brill, 1977). Segal argued that the two powers idea was not deemed
heretical in Jewish theology until the second century A.D. He carefully traced the roots of the
teaching back into the Second Temple era (ca. 200 B.C.), noting instances where Jewish writers like
Philo referred to a “second God” or “lesser Yahweh” as part of their theology.
The Jewish category of a "second power in heaven" caught the attention of scholarly specialists in
New Testament origins and Second Temple Jewish monotheism since the exaltation of a second
power in heaven became the hallmark of Christianity. New Testament scholars were stimulated by
the work of Segal and others who followed in the search for an explanation for the exaltation of
Jesus by a Jewish sect whose adherents were willing to suffer death rather than deny monotheism. A
fundamental question still remained, though. If Christianity derived from Judaism, was the exaltation
of a second power a departure from Israelite religion? Segal raised this question in his book as well.
He was able to trace the idea through the discussions of the rabbis to passages like Dan 7:9-13, Exo
23:20-22, and Exo 15:3, but could only speculate that such an idea came from the divine warrior
imagery in the Hebrew Bible. This answer did not satisfy him, nor has it satisfied his readers in the
three decades since his book appeared. There needed to be a larger coherent religious framework
into which a Binitarian interpretation of these passages would fit or derive from. Persian dualism was
unacceptable as an explanation since neither of Judaism's two powers in heaven were evil.
I believe Segal’s assumption was on the right track, but quite incomplete. Tracing the two powers in
heaven idea back into Israel's most ancient religion constituted part of my dissertation. I argued that
the "original model" for the two powers idea was the role of the co-regent of the divine council, an
idea that I’ll be sketching for you today after one more background item.
Yahweh as El; Yahweh as Baal
Scholars and students of the Old Testament and Israelite religion are already familiar with the fact
that Yahweh was believed to be the undisputed head of the pantheon of all beings that inhabited the
spiritual realm. I’ve been reading papers on the divine council at ETS for the last six years, so I won’t
bother to reinvent that wheel. Any who are unfamiliar with the topic or how it can be articulated in
the context of orthodox Israelite monotheism (or, better, mono-Yahwism) can read my articles in the
bibliography in the handout.
Equally familiar to those acquainted with the Israelite divine council is that the council described in
the Hebrew Bible bears a close resemblance to that described in the material from Ugarit. In many
cases there are word-for-word correspondences between Ugaritic texts like the Baal Cycle and the ̂
3

Hebrew Bible. At Ugarit, El was the high sovereign of the divine assembly. He is called “king” (mlk)
1 2 3in a number of tablets. He was also considered a holy, benevolent deity who was the father of
4 5humankind. It was El who appointed Baal to a throne of kingship to “rule over the gods.” In the
early days of Ugaritic scholarship, it was thought that El’s authority was usurped and that El was
relegated to a lesser position in the pantheon. The work of L’Heureux in 1979 and others since have
established that this is not the case. El and Baal both ruled the pantheon together in divine co-
regency.
Comprehending this co-regency is important for parsing the Israelite council structure since Yahweh,
the God of Israel, is identified with both El and Baal. The biblical writers did so in several ways
that would have been unmistakable to their ancient Israelite audience. The handout lists
representative examples:
Yahweh as El
1. The name "Israel" has "El" in it (IsraEL). That is, Israel is a proper name that honors El, not Yahweh.
2. The “Ancient of Days” is described in Daniel 7 with terminology very similar to that used to depict El (e.g., an
6ancient deity with grey hair and beard). Other passages have the God of Israel as an aged deity (Psa 90:2; Psa 102:27;
Job 36:26).
3. In the ancient tale behind the taunt of the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14:13-14, the Shining One, son of the Dawn
himself above "the stars of El" to make himself "like the Most High ( ʿelyon)." The stars of El are members of the divine
council, the sons of El/God (Job 38:7-8), and so this passage echoes the Ugaritic scenes of El as the enthroned lord of
the council.
4. Gen 49:24-25 describes the God of Israel with conceptually parallel El descriptions known from non-biblical texts
( ʾăbır)
5. Phrases like "God Most High" (e.g., Gen 14:18-22) are literally in Hebrew "El, Most High" ( ʾēl ʿelyôn).
6. Verses like Gen 35:1, 3 have God commanding Jacob to build and altar to El (Hebrew, ʾēl).
7. Exodus 6:3 explicitly states that God was known to the patriarchs as El Shaddai and only later (in the days of Moses)
as Yahweh.
8. Yahweh is explicitly called El:
a. Genesis 33:20 reads literally in Hebrew, "El, the God of Israel" ( ʾēl ʾĕl ōhê yi śrāʾēl).
b. Exod 15:2 - "Yahweh is my strength . . . this is my God (El)...”
c. Isaiah 5:16 - "The LORD of hosts is exalted . . . the holy God (El) shows himself holy...”
d. Psalm 31:6 - "O LORD, faithful God (El)..."

1 KTU 1.1 iii:23 [restored]; 1.2 iii:5, 1.3; v:8. 36; 1.4 i:5; iv:24. 38. 48; 1.5 vi:2 [restored]; 1.6 i:36; 1.17 vi:49; 1.117:2–3;
cf. 1.14 i:41).
2 KTU 1.16 i:11. 22.
3 KTU 1.4 iv:58; 1.6 iii:4. 10. 14; 1.16 v:23.
4 KTU 1.14–1.16 (ab ʾadm).
5 KTU 1.3 v:36; 1.4 iv:48; 1.10 iii:6; 1.4 vii: 49-50.
6 KTU 1.3 v:2. 25; 1.4 v:4; 1.18 i:12. 4

Yahweh as Baal
1. In Ugaritic literature, Baal, the “cloud rider” defeats Yam, the twisted serpent representative of the sea and forces of
7chaos:
What manner of enemy has arisen against Baal,
of foe against the Charioteer of the Clouds?
Surely I smote the Beloved of El, Yam;
Surely I exterminated Nahar, the mighty god?
Surely I lifted up the dragon,
I overpowered him;
I smote the twisting serpent,
The coiled one-with-seven-heads!
Yahweh is also said to have defeated the dragon and the sea (as though the sea was an enemy) in passages like Ps
74:12-15 and Isaiah 27:1, a conflict that (as with Baal elsewhere in the Baal Cycle) is associated with divine
kingship. Following Baal's victory over the sea in Ugaritic literature, Baal's palace / temple was built for him.
Following Yahweh's victo