User:Tuq44473/Nehushtan

Origins
Old Testament scholar H.H. Rowley proposed that Nehushtan as it was known during Hezekiah’s reign had no origins in Yahweh tradition despite being regarded as a Yahweh symbol at the time of its destruction. Instead, Rowley theorized that the bronze serpent destroyed by King Hezekiah was a sacred pre-Israelite symbol of serpent worship associated with a Canaanite god and was adapted by the Israelites following the occupation of Jerusalem. W.W.G. Baudissin was also of the belief that the Canaanite bronze serpent was adapted by the Israelites between 850-750 B.C.E following their settlement in Jerusalem.

Egyptologist H.R. Hall supports the theory that the Nehushtan destroyed by Hezekiah was not associated with Yahweh, but Hall alternately suggests that it was an ancient serpent image carried from Egypt by the ancestors of the Israelites. This theory is supported by acknowledging the common Egyptian practice of using the image of a serpent as to defend themselves against snake bites, in a form of sympathetic magic.

In his notion that the brazen serpent existed within Jerusalem prior to the arrival of the Israelites, Rowley argues that there is no record of Nehushtan prior to the reign of Hezekiah, aside from the Numbers 21 story of the bronze serpent. Rowley states that had Nehushtan been brought into Jerusalem at any time as a genuine relic, there would be documented record of its arrival or transfer. In his argument, Rowley also inserts that the arrival of Moses’ sacred rod would be a public spectacle with honorary procession which would be well documented. Instead, he proposes that the bronze serpent became associated with Nehushtan through process of religious syncretism, citing that the gradual fusion of Canaanite and Israelite beliefs and customs. He hypothesized that symbols representing both religions may have been erected side by side within a sanctuary or public space as a political maneuver following the Israelite settlement.

Hebraist and Old Testament scholar R. H. Kennett hypothesized that the Brazen Serpent was made by Moses, and that the Ark was created specifically to contain the bronze serpent, despite no known written reference made to the contents of the Ark. Kennett also theorized that should Nehushtan truly date back to the time of Moses, that it was either maintained by priests after fleeing to Nob from Shiloh, or accompanied the Ark as it was carried off by the Philistines. This is not widely accepted, due to no known tradition or association between the Serpent and the Ark.