Version 4.8
Israelite Religion to
Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of
By
Home page http://www.houseofdavid.ca/
1. Canaan Before the Israelites
1.1
The Nature of the Country and its Pre-Israelite Ethnic Makeup
a) Creation
b) Order out of Chaos - Baal and Yahm (the Sea a son
of El)
c) Fertility
for the Land – Baal and Mot
2. Alternative Views on the Emergence of Israel and
Israelite Religion
2.1 The Fundamental Problem – the Nature of the Evidence
2.1.1 Sources for the Cultural
History of Syria-Palestine (1200 BCE-600CE)
2.2
The Origin of Ancient Israel
2.3 Origin and Nature of Ancient Israelite Religion
2.3.2 That Israelite monotheism developed progressively
out of Canaanite religion.
2.3.2.2 The Process - Convergence and
Differentiation
2.3.3 YHWH and the High Places (bamot/bamoth)
4. The Transmutation of
Israelite Religion Into Judaism
Table 1 - Hypotheses Regarding the Origin of Ancient Israel
Table 2 - Hypotheses
Regarding the Origin of Israelite Religion
Table
3 - Hypotheses Regarding the Original
Nature of YHWH
Table
4 – Divine Characteristics
Table
6 - Sh’mac Yisrael (Deut.
6:1) - Transvaluation of a Credal Formula
Boxes
Box 1 - Near Eastern Religion and Morality
Box 3 - Near Eastern
Primordial Myths in the Hebrew Bible
Box 4 - Yahweh – God of Israel
Box 5 - Edelman on the
Ugaritic and Judean Pantheon
Box 5a - Ackerman on the
Judean Pantheon
Box 5b - Zevit on the Israelite
Pantheon
Box 6 - Israelite Religion: Triad to Monolatry -
Convergence and Differentiation
Box 7 - Canaanite El to Israelite El
Box 10 - Zevit
on the Reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah
Annexes
Annex
1 - Asherah, Anath, Ashtart - Three Canaanite Goddess
Annex
2 - Asherah Goddess of Israel?
A. Some Functions and Characteristics of Canaanite and Israelite Religions and Gods
B. Methodology
I will not write a note on methodology as this issue
is covered well in Zevit’s first chapter Surveying Paths: An Essay about
Humanities, Religion, History and Israelite Religions. Of particular interest is Zevit’s
discussion of the evolution of the concept of history. I would also light to highlight the following
quotes from his essay –
a)
What Are Israelite Religions? (Quoted from Zevit pp. 14-15)
1. Within
the worldviews of ancient Israel and her surrounding cultural milieus… deities
– the major ones usually being transcendental – conceived as having names,
personalities, functions, egos and histories…. In addition, different ancient
Near Eastern worldviews recognized the existence of various ill-defined,
lesser, often localized, attendant or indwelling powers both malignant and
benign.
2. The term "Israelite religion"
does not correspond to any well-defined historical reality and is, like
"religion," "Christianity," and "Judaism," also a product of the scholar's study. It is a technical term enveloping
the religions of groups with different but overlapping worldviews, patterns of
ritual acts, and other activities and expressions that we identify as
"religious." The common denominator of "Israelite religion"
is found in the adjective and not the noun: the majority of its practitioners
considered themselves a people descendant from an ancestor named
Jacob/Israel. But the noun is
troublesome also.
(In Ancient Israel) … there was no commonly
accepted cultic norm and praxis, cf. the Jerusalem temple cultic calandar and
clergy versus those in the temples at Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12:28-33).
Therefore, rather than consider the idealized, Jerusalem perspective of what
ought to have been a cultic and behavioral norm for all Israelites "proper
Israelite religion," and deviations from this norm
"corruptions," - an approach prejudging
conflicting truth claims - I prefer the more concrete and historically
defensible term, "Israelite religions."
… Accordingly, this work employs the following definition:
Israelite
religions are the varied, symbolic expressions of, and appropriate responses to
the deities and powers that groups or communities deliberately affirmed as
being of unrestricted value to them within their world view.
b)
Objectivity and Phenomenology
(Quoted from Zevit pp. 24-27)
The requirement for objectivity that
traditionally characterizes (or is supposed to characterize) academic research necessitates
that observers or researchers be apart from the religious matters that interest
them…. As outsiders, students of ancient religions (or of
religions not their own) come from cultures with their own worldviews and
mappings of reality, so the conclusions of their research will be delimited by a priori methodological considerations and translated into a language whose
conceptional and semantic fields differ from that of their subject….
The phenomenological approach recommends
tactics for bridging the gap between the paradigm-laden outside observer
striving for objectivity and basic signifying meanings of religious
constructions maintained within a participant insider's worldview.
Phenomenology is an approach to observing, describing and arranging phenomena
so that they may be studied either synchronically or diachronically by other
methodologies. It understands a phenomenon to be something perceived in
consciousness but not originating in consciousness. Thus, a phenomenon may be
something physical or not physical … such as a sacred ark, the temple
purification rituals of the first month, even the contents of the heavenly
vision of Isaiah. Phenomenology's specific objective is to penetrate through
the observed and reported phenomena in order to discern the meanings of
symbols, myths, and rituals within a religious culture. Its a priori assumption is that these meanings are available intuitively to those
within the culture but not regularly to outsiders. If, however, outsiders are
able to gain access first to the concrete surface world of phenomena, their Lebenswelt, through a form of disciplined observation called "reduction"
intended to eliminate anachronistic conceptualizing, they may also succeed in
accessing the world of meaning underlying the Lebenswelt.
Reduction consists initially of observing
carefully, without prejudging, because initially the observer may not know what
he or she is observing and therefore what is or is not significant
Reduction, in the phenomenological context,
involves bracketing out the observer's preconceived, culturally bound,
explanatory paradigms and all prejudices incompatible with and foreign to the observed culture. This is hardly an easy task. It involves concentrated thinking,
conscientious self-criticism and self-analysis, as well as the active criticism
of others. For example, in observing the culture of ancient Israel it is first of all necessary to
bracket out all (theological) notions of deity that are post-Kantian, or that are derived even indirectly from
Neo-Platonism and Neo-Aristotelianism. Ancient Israelite thinking was
pre-scholastic and pre-Aquinas and pre-Christian and pre-Jewish. As a
consequence, certain distinctions between categories of being and of thought
shared by most contemporary scholars, heirs of Western philosophic developments since the
thirteenth century CE, distinctions that fill this chapter, cannot be ascribed to Israelite
thought. They were foreign to that culture and not part of Israelite
consciousness; consequently,
evaluative distinctions made nowadays between knowledge of observable nature, knowledge of
things passed down in
oral tradition, and knowledge of intuited or of revealed matters, were not made then.
Contemporary scholars
have no reason to suppose, then, that Israelites considered faith and reason
separate categories of thinking and experience or that they conferred different kinds of
validity on
their subject matter.
Phenomenological
reduction must bracket out contemporary
understandings of monotheism; post-Enlightenment
notions of evolution, progress and
development; all post-geocentric concepts of astronomy;
almost all geographical knowledge about the shape of the planet and the global
distribution of populations and natural resources; information about microbes and contemporary understandings
of pathogenesis and
mental illness, weather patterns, economics, gender roles, women, children, slavery, war, kingship, animal
sacrifice, early death, astrology, and magic. The bracketing process, if not thought through, may
cause one to miss the mark entirely….
Researchers or
observers have to bracket in, keep in mind,
what is known about sacrifice in
Israel,
in Jerusalem c. 950-600 BCE. They cannot exclude some form of Israelite awareness, reflected in various biblical sources, of
what Israelites may have thought
such acts were intended to
accomplish and of what individuals experienced when participating in them. If not included, the exercise might lead observers to view Israelite
sacrifice as if it took place under isolated conditions in an unreflective,
preliterate culture,
like those of pre-missionary Polynesia or New Guinea or those of the
Chalcolithic period.
Reduction, therefore, includes disciplined and controlled bracketing in, and in the case of Israel
requires anthropological sensitivities linked to historical controls. This bracketing process enables observers to
reduce phenomena to a
level of meaning foreign to their own
sensibilities, but appropriate to Israel c. 950-600 BCE.
If the
observers/researchers have mastered the relevant primary sources, and if the observing and describing have been done properly, the phenomenological approach should enable them to consider phenomena from the subject's
perspective. Then, the observers/researchers should be able to intuit the
meanings of the phenomena of interest to them, experiencing them almost as insiders…. Unlike insiders, however, observers/researchers
have only bracketed their beliefs and disbeliefs, held them in suspension. Having obtained data, observers are prepared to re-engage their own critical faculties
and to analyze them
according to chosen critical methodologies in order to answer questions of their posing.
Phenomenology provides a
propaedeutic approach
for describing and analyzing the religious component of world views in ancient Israel. Its exercise,
when separated from the considerations that make it appropriate for the study of religion, is
employed with greater or lesser self-consciousness in many of the humanities, in most
social sciences, and to a much lesser degree even in some physical sciences as well. The process
described above is recognizable,
therefore, to historians using
other terminology. Rather than
"phenomenon," historians employ "datum, text, event" and "example;"
rather than "bracketing," they prefer expressions such as "thinking
historically" or
"critically" or "objectively," and rather than "intuiting," words such
as "imagining, inducting,
inferring, reconstructing," and "concluding. "
1. Canaan before the Israelites
1.1 The Nature of the Country and its
Pre-Israelite Ethnic Makeup
It
is useful to bear in mind two constants about the Palestinian area that held
true throughout the Middle and Late Bronze Ages and beyond:
The great professor Albright has
put it, perhaps overstating it, as follows[3] –
There has been much misunderstanding of the nature of
Canaanite-Phoenician culture. It must be emphasized that this was a relatively
homogeneous civilization from the Middle Bronze Age down to the beginning of
the Achaemenian period, after which it was swallowed up in large part by much
more extensive cultures. Chronologically speaking, it is certain that
"Phoenician" is simply the Iron-Age equivalent of Bronze-Age "Canaanite"….
Phoenician culture did not finally expire until the triumph of Christianity in
the fourth century. From the geographical standpoint, there was a homogeneous
civilization which extended in the Bronze Age from Mount Casius, north of
Ugarit, to the Negeb of Palestine, and in the Iron Age from north of Arvad (at
least) to the extreme south of Palestine. This civilization shared a common
material culture (including architecture, pottery, etc.) through the entire
period, and we now know that language, literature, art, and religion were
substantially the same in the Bronze Age. From the twelfth century on we find
increasing divergence in higher culture, but material culture remained
practically the same in all parts of the area. The differences (except in the
case of Israelite religion) were no greater than they were in different parts
of the Mesopotamian area of culture, which was geographically much more
extensive. The situation in Canaan is in a number of ways comparable to that in
Egypt, where the distance down the Nile is just about twice the distance along
the coast from Gaza to Ugarit and yet the civilization of Egypt was much more
homogeneous than even I would maintain with respect to Canaanite culture.
Since Israel emerged from the same Northwest-Semitic
background as the Phoenicians and other Canaanite groups which continued to
exist down into the Iron Age, one would expect to find extremely close
relationships in both material and higher culture. It is true that Israelite ties with Egypt were very strong,
both historically and geographically, but it is doubtful whether Canaanite and
Phoenician bonds with Egypt were any less close. Quite aside from the close
ties of reciprocal trade, it must never be forgotten that Palestine, Phoenicia,
and Egypt were as a rule part of the same political organization, in which
Egypt generally played the controlling part. So far as we know, the only
exceptions, during the period which interests us particularly, were during the
18th century B.C., again at the end of the 13th, and from the middle of the
12th to the late tenth. After the early ninth century B.C. Egyptian political
influence in Asia decreased greatly, but was compensated by the steady
development of reciprocal trade relations.
1.2 Canaanite Religion
Near Eastern
Religion and Morality If we
study the literature of the ancient Babylonians and Sumerians, we can no
longer believe the description of "pagan" religion that has long
been part of Western tradition and is still often found in modern religious
writing. Instead of capricious gods
acting only in pursuit of their own desires, we meet deities concerned with
the proper ordering of the universe and the regulation of history. Instead of
divine cruelty and arrogance, we find deliberation and understanding. Instead
of lawlessness and violence, we see a developed legal system and a long
tradition of reflective jurisprudence. Instead of immoral attitudes and
behavior, we find moral deliberation, philosophical speculation, and penitential
prayer. Instead of wild orgiastic rites, we read of hymns, processions,
sacrifices, and prayers. Instead of the benighted paganism of the Western
imagination, cuneiform literature reveals to us an ethical polytheism that
commands serious attention and respect. But
this new valuation of paganism creates its own dilemmas and awakens new
questions. If the Bible is not the first dawn of enlightenment in a world of
total darkness, then what is it? If polytheism was not the dark disaster that
our cultural tradition has imagined it to be, why was it abandoned in Israel
and replaced by biblical monotheism? If the old religions swept away by our
own monotheist tradition were not grossly deficient, how can we find the
precise significance of one God as opposed to the many? How does a
monotheistic religion develop? Did the god of Israel simply absorb all the
functions and attributes of the pagan gods, essentially changing nothing? Or
did monotheism represent a radical break with the past after all, a break not
as simply defined and immediately apparent as has been believed, but no less
revolutionary? The discovery of advanced polytheism poses a
central theological issue: if polytheism can have such positive attributes,
what is the purpose of monotheism? Did the Bible simply substitute another
system, one that represented no advance towards a better understanding of the
universe and a more equitable way of living?
Indeed, were there some aspects of paganism lost in the transition that
present, in fact, a more positive way of living in the world? The immediacy
of these issues makes imperative an analysis of the nature of paganism and
the precise nuances and essential messages of the monotheist revolution of
the Bible. We cannot build our spiritual quest on prejudiced assumptions and
polemical attributions. We must attain a profound knowledge of ancient
polytheism and a sophisticated reading of the biblical texts informed by this
knowledge. Thanks to the discovery of ancient Near Eastern literature, we
have the ability to study these questions, understand our own past religious
development, and make informed contributions to our future. From In
the
Wake of the Goddesses: Women,
Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth, by Tikva
Frymer-Kensky |
Our only real view into the world
of Middle to Late Bronze Age Canaanite culture is via Ugaritic literature (see
my Ugarit and the Bible:
Ugaritic Literature as an Aid to Understanding the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).
Ugaritic literature reflects a
society of independent city-states sharing a common culture; a stratified
aristocratic society based on agriculture.
Some of the characteristics of
Canaanite Religion were (see
Table
8 for more details):
§
It was polytheistic and iconic (i.e.
worshiped idols which served as focuses of the presence of cosmic /nature
gods).
§
It was tied to nature and the seasons; a religion of
renewal of life and fertility. Not surprisingly, its predominant sense of
time was cyclical not linear i.e. it did not provide a good cultural background
for the writing of history which presumes real linear change[4].
See
Best general source is van der
Toorn
Canaanite and
Phoenician religions http://i-cias.com/e.o/can_phoe_rel.htm
Canaanite/Ugaritic Mythology FAQ, ver. 1.1
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mythology/canaanite-faq/
Official Religion and Popular
Religion in Pre-Exilic Ancient Israel
The Canaanite religion, from which
the Religion of Israel emerged had priests, priestesses[5] and prophets. At Ugarit, like
later Israelite religion, it viewed the universe as having three levels. The
highest celestial realm was the realm of El, the earth was the realm of Baal and
other gods; and the depth was the realm of Mot[6] (death), Resheph[7] (pestilence) and Horon[8] (perhaps meaning “depth).
Canaanite religion concentrated on
the middle realm. In Bronze Age Ugarit many gods were worshiped.
However, the pattern in Iron Age Phoenicia, and probably in the
territories of Israel and Judah, usually was composed of a triad
consisting of a protective god of the place, a goddess, often his wife or
companion who symbolizes the fertile earth; and a young god somehow connected
with the goddess whose resurrection expresses the annual cycle of vegetation”
(see Dever on Popular
Religion and Canaanite Religion
Compared to Israelite Official Religion As Reflected in the Torah on the confusion of
divine names see). In Carthage the
triad was Baal Hammon (may be Ugaritic El or Baal-Haddad with some El features
attached), Tanit (his spouse who may be Ugaritic Asherah or an African goddess
with similar characteristics) and Melkart (may be derived from Baal-Haddad)
This triad[9], similar to that of
Israelite religion about 1000 BCE, can be seen as a reflection of the nuclear
family. At Ugarit, the primary triad was
-
'EI a strong but not absolute ruler…. 'El
also appears as the divine warrior: 'El Gibbor.... … 'El reflects the patriarchal structures of society in
many of the myths and the organized institutions of kingship in other titles
and functions. He may be a state god or a "god of the father."
We see 'El as the figure of the divine
father. 'El cannot be described as a sky god like Anu, a storm god like Enlil
or Zeus, a chthonic god like Nergal, or a grain god like Dagon. The one image
of 'El that seems to tie all of his myths together is that of the patriarch.
Unlike the great gods who represent the powers behind the phenomena of nature, 'El is in the first instance a social god. He is the primordial
father of gods and men, sometimes stern, often compassionate, always wise in
judgment…. He is a tent-dweller in many
of his myths. (In other texts) he appears to live in a palace, hekal, and
live like a king. 'El is creator …. In Akkadian and Amorite religion as also in
Canaanite, 'El frequently plays the role of "god of the father," the
social deity who governs the tribe or league, often bound to league or king
with kinship or covenant ties.
His characteristic mode of manifestation
appears to be the vision or audition, often in dreams. This mode stands in
strong contrast to the theophany of the storm god (Baal) whose voice is the
thunder and who goes out to battle riding the cloud chariot, shaking the
mountains with stormy blasts of his nostrils, striking the enemy with fiery
bolts. Baal comes near in his shining storm cloud. 'El is the transcendent one.
Is the
greatest of all the gods with full ultimate authority though he tends to sit
back and let other gods, especially Baal, take the spotlight;
is the
creator of all things[12];
Sexually
fathered the other gods who participate, under El’s headship in the Divine
Assembly;
El’s
epithets or descriptions include: Bull, Father of Men, Holy, Ancient, Merciful,
Supreme Judge, guardian of the cosmic order, Kindly One and Compassionate.
Ugaritic El can be drunken and, though he copulates freely with numerous
females, his consort is Asherah.
He is represented as an aged man. El wore bull's
horns, the symbol of strength, and was usually depicted as seated.
“The common identity shared by El and Yahweh is
impressive…. In the various texts El and Yahweh were both portrayed as 1)
father figures, 2) judges, 3) compassionate and merciful, 4) revealing
themselves through dreams, 5) capable of healing those who are sick, 6)
dwelling in a cosmic tent. 7) dwelling over the great cosmic waters or at the
source of the primordial rivers, which is also on top of a mountain, 8) favourable
to the widow 9) kings in the heavenly realm exercising authority over the other
gods, who may be called ‘sons of gods’, 10) warrior deities who led the other
gods in battle, 11) creator deities, 12) aged and venerable in appearance, and
most significantly, 13) capable of guiding the destinies of people in the
social arena.”[15]
“Certain
conclusions may thus be drawn from the Ugaritic myths … concerning the
relationship between El and Baal…. In
Ugarit Baal and Anat were the strong, young gods…. That does not mean that they swept away the
old gods completely, but what it actually meant can be observed in the texts.
The old gods remained, even in their previous positions, but their power was
only nominal. The young gods were placed in the foreground, a fact which the texts
announce clearly.
“El is
still present, in no changed position nominally, as father and apparent leader
of the gods. But actually he is only a shadow, receding slowly into the
background. In front of the picture Baal and Anat are fighting, struggling with
enemies of many kinds, building up a position in close contact with life in
nature, in men, women, beasts and vegetation….
when Baal and Anat are in the foreground in the mythical texts, it means
that they were also the dominating figures in the religious cult....
“Our
conclusion, then, is that there was a silent struggle going on between Baal and
El, a struggle that Baal was on the verge of winning, but had not yet won. The
Ras Shamra texts emphasize the importance of the role of Baal and indicate that
he was a leading figure in the religious cult.
El is
slowly receding into the background…. In
his house on the mountain from which the rivers flowed, he tries to reign, but
the events show that he no longer has any power. Baal is the powerful god….
Quoted
from THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN EL AND BAAL IN THE RAS SHAMRA TEXTS by
ARVID S. KAPELRUD
B. Ela/Elat-Asherah – Divine Mother
Goddess as Role
Model (In the figure of goddesses) women
could see divine modeling for their own roles in life. The goddesses provided
a way for society to discuss the roles and nature of women. Furthermore, the
fact that goddesses play the roles of women in the divine realm reinforces
cultural stereotypes about women and makes these stereotypes sacred. When the goddesses portray and
represent women in society, they are women writ large, with the same
positions in the god-world that women have in the human world. They appear in
well-known familial relationships to men and are the archetypes of
woman-in-the family…. By the end of the second
millennium, the religious thinkers of Mesopotamia saw the cosmos as controlled and regulated by male gods, with only
Ishtar maintaining a position of power. When we see such a pattern of
theological change, we must ask whether the religious imagery is leading
society, or whether it is following socioeconomic development? Was the
supplanting of goddesses in Sumerian religious texts an inner theological
development that resulted purely from the tendency to view the world of the
gods on the model of an imperial state in which women paid no real political
role? Or does it follow in the wake of
sociological change, of the development of what might be called
"patriarchy"? And if the latter is true, is the change in the world
of the gods contemporary to the changes in human society, or does it lag
behind it by hundreds of years? To these questions we really have no answer. The eclipse of the
goddesses was undoubtedly part of the same process that witnessed a decline
in the public role of women, with both reflective of
fundamental changes in society that we cannot yet specify. The existence and
power of a goddess, particularly of Ishtar, is no indication or guarantee of
a high status for human women. In Assyria, where Ishtar was so prominent,
women were not…. Ishtar,
the female with the fundamental attributes of manhood, does not enable women
to transcend their femaleness. In her being and her cult (where she changes
men into women and women into men), she provides an outlet for strong
feelings about gender, but in the final analysis, she is the supporter and
maintainer of the gender order. The world by the end of the second millennium
was a male's world, above and below; and the ancient goddesses have all but
disappeared. From In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical
Transformation of Pagan Myth, by
Tikva Frymer-Kensky |
§
She is the universal mother. As such, she is wise, nurturing, symbolizing and
supporting the fertility of man, beasts and crops.
§
Asherah is symbolized by the Tree of Life which, in turn, may be symbolized
by a pole. On a thriteent century BCE ewer found near a temple, a
female, probably goddess, figure has its pubic triangle replaced by a tree[16].
§
Her title Ela (Hebrew) or Elat (Phoenician) is the feminine form of
El and hence means "goddess". “Another name of
´Asherah in the first milleneum BCE is Chawat, which is Hawah in Hebrew and Eve
in English. “Her full title is Rabat Chawat ´Elat, Great Lady Eve the Goddess,
and is associated with the serpent.[17]”
§
El’s consort and as such clearly subordinate to
El. She provides an avenue of approach to the august El[18].
“Asherah succeeds in convincing El to give his permission
for the building of a palace for Baal. Apparently she has a decisive influence
on major decisions of her husband, the king of the gods. Later on in the myth
of Baal Asherah determines El's choice of a successor for Baal, in the same way
as the biblical Bathsheba does for her son Solomon (1 Kgs 1). It is likely that
this too reflects the situation on earth where queens, especially
queen-mothers, often influenced the political choices of their royal husbands
and in many cases decided who would be the next on the throne…. (However, in
addition) in the myth, Asherah is depicted as a power-greedy woman who manipulates
the heavenly court.” (Korpel p. 131, 137)
“As in ancient Egypt, the processes of creation and
procreation were not sharply distinguished in ancient Ugarit. El could create
by word alone, or by modelling a creature from clay, like a potter, or by
sexual , as he deemed fit. What is especially significant is the fact that when
creating a new human being ‘adm) El and
Asherah were thought to act not by physical interaction, but by
way of a mental process in which the god and the goddess both
participated.” (Korpel p. 130)
“Asherah is depicted as a respectable old lady, with typical
features of a mother…. The goddess is wearing a long robe, covering almost her
entire body …. The equally old god EI usually also wears such a long robe, and
it seems that this special type of clothing was worn by aged people of high
standing…. The Ugaritic goddess Asherah has to be seen as a kind of
matriarch….
Despite her high position in the divine hierarchy of
Ugarit, the Baal Myth tells us how the goddess was busy with maternal, domestic
affairs,
She took her spindle in
her hand,
(and) the spindle fell
from her right hand."
She carried her clothing
into the sea,"
her skirts, the covering
of her body,
her two skirts into the
river.
She placed a cauldron on
the fire,
a washing-copper on the coals.
(In this way) she wanted
to charm the Bull EI, the good-natured,
she wanted to please the
Creator of creatures. (KTU 1.4:II.3-11)
It is remarkable that Asherah by washing her clothes wants
to charm her husband. Obviously fine and clean clothes were essential for a
harmonious marriage.” (Korpel p. 131)
In contrast Anat,
associated with Baal is shown in the Ugaritic literature to be a ferocious,
bloodthirsty, lustful, “virgin”.
She shares many characteristics with the Mesopotamian Inanna-Ishtar of
whom Tikva Frymer-Kensky states
As an unencumbered woman, she could not easily be relegated to the
domestic sphere. Her role as representative of sexual attraction could not be taken
over by a male god …. As goddess of warfare, she maintained and even
increased…. On the one hand, she was glorified and exalted
as preeminent among gods and men. But she was, to put it mildly, intimidating
and frightening. Even her very sexual attractiveness inspired fear, and men
expressed their dread that such lust might lead to their doom. Alongside hymns
to Ishtar's glory and preeminence, we also find negative portrayals and
ultimately a demonization of her image…. which portrays Ishtar as so indiscriminately
wild and ferocious that the gods cannot control her….
§
Women would have been prominent among the devotees
of Asherah and,
to the extent that the cult of Asherah had a priesthood, probably Asherah would
have had priests of both sexes. Asherah could be counted on to understand the
women’s problems such as pregnancy, child rearing and managing family disputes.
C. Baal-Hadad – Divine Son
§ Baal means ”lord”. Elsewhere he is called Adon (=”lord”) and Recammin (=”thunderer).
§
Baal is also identified as Hadad (Ugaritic haddu), an Akkadian and Babylonian god of the sky, clouds, and
rain, both creative, gentle showers and destructive, devastating storms and
floods. In Ugaritic literature he is frequently referred to as "Cloud Rider" (rkb
rpt) a title that was later used to describe El-YHWH in Psalms 68:5.
Yea, also Baal will make fertile with His
rain, |
§
Baal is the vigorous, young god of the triad, not a creator, but
basically the executive member of the triad. He is the executive of the divine assembly. Baal is the
champion of divine order against chaos. Lightening is his weapon, and he can be
found in storms and thunder. However,
though he embodies royal power, Baal is vulnerable. He is repeatedly threatened
yet triumphant, as in the struggle to maintain order against the chaos
represented by the god Yam and to sustain life and agricultural fertility
against Mot (Mawet/Mavet in Hebrew), the god of drought, blight, sterility, and
decay. When Baal falls into the hands of Mot, the god of death,
there is drought and sterility, growth ceases. With his rescue, by his
consort, rains return and vegetation is returned to the earth. In the beginning of all things, Baal-Haddad warred
with and conquered Yamm (Sea), and so brought the unruly waters of Chaos under
divine authority and control.
§
Baal is always paired with a female consort whose
name varied with place and time – Anat (at Ugarit), Ashtart (paired with the vowels of boshet=shame to make the
artificial name Ashtoreth in the Bible).
§
Baal’s consort, whatever her name, had 3
characteristics:
o
Sexual lust;
o
Fecundity; and,
o
Being a bloody goddess of war e.g. Anat, at Ugarit,
wading up to her thighs in the blood of her enemies.
“Rituals were performed
either outdoors on hills or in groves, or inside temples. Outdoor cult places
are called bamah, which can be translated with "high place". On these
places, pillars were erected, one in stone for the male god, and one in wood
for the female goddess. Bamahs could be built on hill
tops…. When temples were built, bamahs were sometimes built in front of the
entrance — still under open sky. The reason of erecting temples, were that the
gods… needed a house, in order to exercise his power over humans and the earth.
The house was also believed to be a place where gods could dwell….
“Central to the rituals
were offerings that were consummated by the gods. Offerings were both vegetable
and animals. We also see that human sacrifice was fairly common in some areas,
even though some scientists believe that the frequency of this has been
exaggerated by outside sources, like what we read in the Old Testament. But at
least in the North-African colony of Carthage we know that children were thrown
into a fire in front of a statue of a god. But from Ugarit there are no
indications on child sacrifice.
“The myth of Baal's
death and resurrection is believed to have been the source of some of the main
religious festivals. Other festivals appear to have involved eating and
drinking (alcohol) by the partakers. A third group of rituals involve that
statues of gods were carried down to the sea, rituals that could involve either
a sacred marriage or the blessing of the sea and the ships. A fourth group of
rituals were the very central festival where sacrifice were hung from trees,
and then put on fire.
“Priests in Ugarit were
called khnm (there must have been vowels in the pronunciation, but these
were not written, and cannot be reconstructed). Under the priest … (there may
have been) qdshm, sacred prostitutes, performing their sexual rituals in
the temples to promote fertility. There was also room for oracle priests or
prophets that received messages from the gods during states of ecstasy.[20]”
1.2.4 Myths
"The
authors of ancient cosmologies were essentially compilers. Their originality
was expressed in new combinations of old themes, and in new twists to old ideas.[22]"
”From
the sources we have, texts from Ugarit and indirect recounts by contemporary writers,
creation myths dominate. There are several of these, but they resemble one
another. The main theme of the creation myths is that basic elements of nature
mix, and from them gods are created, and then heaven and earth.
“A
central element of the creation myths is the egg — a symbol that is found in
many other religions as well. Within the egg, the potentials of the complex
world is found, and then this is carried out.
“The primary gods of creation are not important to the religious rituals, and neither El nor Baal are among these. Most of the primary gods, or rather qualities and powers of nature, seem to disappear from the mythology after that the creation of the world is accomplished….”[23]
b) Order
out of Chaos - Baal and Yahm (the Sea a son of El)
“Foremost of the non-creation myths
is the death and resurrection of Baal. Then, from the Ugarit myths we hear
about an important battle, where Baal defeats Yam, the god of the sea,
resulting in Baal's total domination of the world. Yahm “… may
embody wild, chaotic earth-encircling ocean waters and winter floods and sea
storms. When in conflict with Ba`al, he is identified as a seven-headed sea
serpent or dragon. His other names - or perhaps the names of his henchmen -
include Tannin, the Primeval Serpent, Lotan,
the Crooked Serpent, the Sea Monster, the Close-coiling One,
the Tyrant of Seven Heads. He is eventually defeated and
subjugated by Ba`al. Their battle is told in altered form in the Bible as the
story of the sea monster Leviathan and Behemoth, the gigantic bull-monster.
Although he is Ba`al's adversary in part of the myth, he regularly received
offerings in the temples of Ugarit, featured in peoples' theophoric names, and
was otherwise honored, so he is a god to be revered. He was not an evil or
villainous deity, merely powerful and potentially dangerous… The Sea in the
West Semitic tale Astarte and the Tribute of the Sea is called Tiamat. Yam's name is linguistically
cognate with Tiamat, the Akkadian primordial ocean goddess, who is ta- (serpent)
+ yam- (ocean) + -at (fem. ending). She was the personification of salt water,
counterpart of Abzu, who was fresh water. Originally creatrix of the
world … (Tiamat) was demoted and considered the primary force of chaos and
evil, eventually slain by Marduk, who created heaven and earth from Her body.”[24]
c) Fertility for the Land – Baal and Mot
Mot[25], a son of El, is the god of senility
and death. Mot brings Baal into the netherworld (i.e. kill him), which causes
the vegetation to die which is a metaphor for the rainless summer of
Syria-Palestine. With the help of his sister Anat, Baal returns to life, and with
this nature returns to fertility (fall, winter, spring) [26].
This
myth that must have been central to the rituals of building temples[27] cf. Solomon’s building of a temple
in Jerusalem.
Near Eastern
Primordial Myths in the Hebrew Bible “A number of apparent
myths and mythical subjects which found their way into the Bible, have been
collected and compared with extra-biblical parallels. In the prophetic and
poetic books, references are made to the Lord's struggle with the primeval dragon, variously named Tannin ("Dragon," Isa.
27:1, 51:9; Ps. 74:13; Job 7:12), Yam ("Sea," Isa. 51:10; Hab. 3:8;
Ps. 74:13; Job 7:12), Nahar ("River," Hab. 3:8; Ps. 93?), Leviathan
(Isa. 27:1; Ps. 74:14), and Rahab (Isa. 30:7; 51:9; Ps. 89:11; Job 9:13;
26:12–13). A special parallel to this theme is found in the
Ugaritic myth of Baal and his struggle against Yam, in which mention is made
of Leviathan (ltn; C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook (1965), 67, 1:1)
and Tannin (tnn; nt, ibid., 3:37) as well as of
Nahar (nhr). In this myth the dragon is called, as in Isaiah 27:1,
bari'ah ("fleeing serpent") and aqallaton ("twisting
serpent"; cf. Gordon, ibid., 67, 1:2–3). The same theme is found in the Babylonian
creation epic Enuma elish (Marduk's fight with Tiamat, "Sea") and in the Hittite myth of the
storm-god and the dragon Illuyankas (Pritchard, Texts, 125–6), and with
variations in Sumerian, Egyptian, Phoenician, and other literatures.” Encyclopedia
Judaica Leviathan[28]
(Hebrew liwyatan), in the Bible, one of the names of the primeval
dragon subdued by Yahweh at the outset of creation: "You crushed Leviathan's
heads, gave him as food to the wild animals" (Psalm 74:14; see also
Isaiah 27:1; Job 3:8). In ; Amos 9:3 it is probably the that is called the
“serpant (Hebrew naHash the same word as is used for the serpant in
the Eden story). Biblical writers also refer to the dragon as Rahab[29]
(Job The biblical references to the battle between Yahweh
and Leviathan reflect the Syro-Palestinian version of a myth found throughout
the ancient Near East. In this myth, creation is represented as the victory
of the creator-god over a monster of chaos. The closest parallel to the
biblical versions of the story appears in the Canaanite texts from Ra's
Shamrah (14th century BC), in which Baal defeats a dragonlike monster: "You will crush Leviathan the fleeing
serpent, you will consume the twisting serpent, the mighty one with seven
heads." (The wording of Isaiah 27:1 draws directly on this text.) A more ancient version of the myth occurs in the Babylonian Creation Epic, in which the storm god Marduk defeats the sea monster Tiamat and creates the earth and sky by cleaving her corpse in two (Assyro-Babylonian Literature). The latter motif is reflected in a few biblical passages that extol Yahweh's military valor: "Was it not you who split Rahab in half, who pierced the dragon through?" (Isaiah 51:9; see also Job 26:12; Psalm 74:13, 89:10)[30]. Amos 9:3
Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, from there I will search
out and take them; and though they hide from my sight at the bottom of the
sea, there I will command the sea-serpent (Hebrew nāHāš the same word as is
used for the serpant in the Eden story), and it shall bite them. Psalm
74:13-15 You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the
wilderness. You cut openings for springs and torrents; you dried up
ever-flowing streams. Isaiah 27:1
On that day the LORD with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting
serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea. Job 3:7-8
Yes, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry be heard in it. Let those
curse it who curse the Sea[31], those who
are skilled to rouse up Leviathan Job Psalm 89:10
You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with
your mighty arm. Habakkuk
3:5-10 (very end of 7th century BCE) Before Him went Pestilence/pestilence
(Hebrew reshef), and plague followed close behind. He stopped and
shook the earth; he looked and made the nations tremble. The eternal
mountains were shattered; along his ancient pathways the everlasting hills
sank low. I saw the tents of Cushan under affliction; the tent-curtains of
the land of Midian trembled. Was your wrath against the River Yam/rivers (Hebrew neharim), O LORD? Or your anger against the River Yam/rivers, or your rage against the Sea/sea
(Hebrew yam), when you drove your horses, your chariots to
victory? You brandished your naked bow, sated were the arrows[32] (Reshef bore the title of Lord of the Arrow) at your command. Selah You split the earth
with rivers. The mountains saw you, and writhed; a torrent of water swept by;
the Abyss/depths (Hebrew tehom[33]), gave forth
its voice. |
See also Annex 5 - Phoenician Religion
2. Alternative Views
on the Emergence of
2.1 The Fundamental Problem – the Nature of the Evidence
The reason for
serious scholars coming up with very different ideas about Israelite history
and religion is rooted in the paucity, illusive nature, ambiguity and of the
ambivalence of the relevant data. Short of major
discoveries of contemporaneous religious and historical texts of the kind we
have for Pre-Hellenistic Mesopotamia, Egypt and Ugarit, this situation is not
likely to change. This results in the field of Ancient Israelite History
and Religion being extremely open to academic faddism.
In fact, we have almost
no certain knowledge of anything in Israelite history before the time of King
David[35] (c.1010-970 BCE)
at the earliest and almost no reliable biblical evidence regarding what
religious beliefs and behaviour were before that reflected in
the Torah. Since the Torah was only finalized in the early Persian period (late 6th-
5th centuries BCE) the evidence of the Torah is most relevant to
early Second Temple Judaism. The Judaism
reflected in the Torah would seem to be generally similar to that later
practiced by the Sadducees and Samaritans.
2.1.1 Sources for the Cultural History of
Syria-Palestine (1200 BCE-600CE)
Since, at least, 1200
BCE, the peoples of Syria-Palestine – Canaanites, Phoenicians, Israelites,
Aramaeans and Hellenistic Greeks wrote using alphabetic scripts on papyrus or
wood etc[36]. For non-permanent records they used broken
pieces of pottery (called ostraca) writing on them using water-soluble
ink. These materials usually do not long survive in the climate of the
region.
As N H. Niehr wrote[37] -
“With regard to the
sources, the distinction between primary and secondary evidence is paramount
for working out a religious history or aspects of this history of Judah and
Israel. Due to the Judean censorship of the texts of the Hebrew Bible
during the Second Temple period, the evidence contained in the texts for
reconstructing the religious history of Judah and Israel is of secondary
or tertiary value. This evidence has to be corroborated, corrected or
refuted by primary evidence provided by inscriptions and archaeological
findings.”
2.1.1.1
Primary Sources
§
Rare
fragments of writing that have survived against all the odds – e.g. Dead
Sea Scrolls, Arad and Lachish ostraca;
§
Equally
rare inscriptions and graffiti; and,
§
Other
archaeological evidence.
2.1.1.2
Secondary Sources
These are documents
prized by groups having direct cultural descendants (Jews, Christian cultural
tradition etc.) Since it was very laborious to copy books, normally only
a small selection could be copied and these would be the items that the
community, at the time of copying, considered important[38]. The community valuation of what is worth
preserving varies with period. E.g. In Hellenistic times Sappho’s poetry was considered a classic and was produced in a standard
collection in
1.
Copies
of copies, often many times removed, of documents, originally contemporaneous
with the events or situations described but may have been subject to editing
during the history of transmission;
2.
Histories
in the Greek or biblical traditions[39] (see)
Of course, the
most important of the documents are those contained in the Hebrew Bible. Though,
it can be argued that we have a reasonable idea of the political history of
Israel from, say the late 10th century to 586 BCE[40], and we have, from Ugaritic literature, a fair idea
of Canaanite religion of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, it is unclear how
much we know of Israelite religion before the Babylonian exile. Odd remarks preserved in the stories, not the
framework, of the books of Judges[41] and Samuel probably provide some information.
However, the overt information provided in the Torah-Deuteronomic History is
anachronistic and tendentious.
“In the Deuteronomistic History,
from Joshua to Kings, there was clear evidence of Israel’s polytheistic roots,
but readers often viewed the material as evidence of backsliding from original
monotheism, because they followed the intimations provided by the final editors
of these books. The editors were trying to promulgate monotheism in their
own exilic age by projecting their religious values in idealized fashion back
into the past. Some scholars went beyond the
idealized portrait of the Deuteronomistic and Priestly editors and envisioned a
religion more ideal and ethical than even those biblical editors suggested;
Yehezkiel Kaufmann’s work would be a good example.
“The Deuteronomistic Historians …. Viewed their past
through a Yahwistic lens and saw their history not only as it was but very much
as it should have been. The guidelines by which they
measured their past included strict allegiance to Yahweh, rejection of other
deities, rejection of native cultic activities (such as golden calves, asherim
and the bronze serpent), centralized worship in the Temple, and a great deal of
egalitarianism and social justice in society. Their criteria for
evaluating the past are laid out in their great manifesto the book of
Deuteronomy. They evaluated the past as though their spiritual ancestors,
the prophetic minority, were the true leaders meant to define the religious
life of Israelites from the time of Moses onward when in reality they were but
a progressive minority within society. Therefore, beguiled by the
rhetoric of the redactors of the biblical text, readers sometimes missed the
truly dramatic story in the Deuteronomistic History; the great struggle of the
progressive thinkers in the ‘Yahweh-alone’ movement who gave birth to a new
value system over the years and helped an entire people evolve toward
monotheism.
“The Deuteronomistic Historians were not
liars; they did not deceive more than historians of any age. All
historians seek to craft a narrative of the past by selecting those aspects
which they consciously or unconsciously consider most valuable in order to
communicate a meaningful message to the present so as to shape the direction of
the future…. The Deuteronomistic Historians were theologians and preachers who
wished to achieve significant religious goals with their interpretation of
history; they were above all preachers, and the Deuteronomistic History is
primarily a sermon.”[42]
“The task of
reconstructing the cult of Yahweh includes biblical claims and sets them within
a wider framework that accounts for the available information. The data
in the attested sources indicate a pluralism of religious practice in ancient
Israel that led sometimes to conflict about the nature of correct Yahwistic
practice. It is precisely this conflict that produced the differentiation
of Israelite religion from its Canaanite heritage during the second half of the
monarchy.”[43]
The approach of
the Deuteronomistic Historians is not at all dissimilar to the retrospective definition of
Normative Judaism in the rabbinic tradition.
2.1.1.3 The
Voiceless People
The only Middle-Late Bronze Age (1950-1250 BCE) group in Syria-Palestine to leave us
an extensive literature was the ruling class of Ugarit. No group did so in the Iron Age (1250-587 BCE). The only Iron Age groups in
the region to have survived to the present are the Jews and Samaritans.
The Jews, and the Christian church, have preserved important documents relating
to Israelite-Jewish history 1200 BCE-600 CE.
The many other
groups of the region, together with the illiterate, women, slaves, children,
minority groups etc. remain voiceless. Who knows what they might have
told us had there been records and had they survived.
This contrasts sharply with the situation in
Sumerian (third to early second millennium BCE), has
left us copious records and a cultural heritage –
“The Sumerians were prolific
writers, scratching their cuneiform script with a stylus on moist clay
tablets…. They recorded stories and poems, songs and technical data, laws,
receipts, medical prescriptions. They recorded, it seems, everything of
interest in their world and to their imaginations, and much of what they
recorded has survived, an enormous body of documentation that surpasses that of
the Romans and Chinese. ‘We have more from the Sumerians than from any
culture in history before the invention of the printing press,’ …. We know the
names of their gods and the list of their kings; we know their epics –
including the world’s first tales of creation and of the flood, and the oldest
written tale of paradise – and … we know their legacy; the legal and religious
tradition the Sumerians bequeathed to Israel, and of the magical, astronomical
and mathematical lore bequeathed to Greece. We know it because it became
part of our legacy too.”[45]
This plentitude
of documentation continued in the post-Sumerian period when the Semitic
Akkadian became the main written language of Mesopotamia.
“Akkadian
is first attested to in proper names in Sumerian texts (ca. 2800 BCE). From ca.
2500 BCE one finds texts fully written in Akkadian. Hundreds of thousands of texts
and text fragments have been excavated, covering many subjects, e.g.
-economy
(business, administrative records, purchase and rentals),
-politics
(treaties),
-law
(witnessed and sealed contracts of marriage, divorce; codes of law),
-history
(chronological text, census reports),
-letters
(personal, business and state letters),
-religion
(prayers, hymns, omens, divination reports),
-scholarly
texts (language, word lists, history, technology, mathematics, astronomy) and
-literature
(narrative poetry, recounting myths, epics).
The
last texts date from the first century A.D. By then Akkadian was already an
extinct language, replaced as a spoken language by Aramaic.”[46]
Many Mesopotamian tablets were private records recording
contemporary issues and concerns meant only for the eyes of the
recipient. Thus we have a better idea of what life was like and what
people thought in Mesopotamia, under Ur III in 2100 BCE that we have for almost
any period of pre-modern Jewish history!
2.2 The Origin of Ancient
The best review of current and past theories of
There are basically three alternative hypotheses (see Table 1 ) about the origin of Ancient Israel. Only one of these, in
my view, seems a reasonable enough hypothesis to merit serious consideration,
i.e. that ancient
Israel, and its constituent tribes, emerged after the settlement in the
almost unoccupied hill country of central Palestine by diverse groups
originating from outside and within Canaan[47]. Most
reconstructions assume that the worship of Yahweh and the traditions of Aramean-Mesopotamian
origin, Sinai Experience and Egyptian were brought in, not necessarily by the
same groups, from outside Canaan at, or before, the end of the Late Bronze Age
(approximately 1200 BCE).
Hypotheses Regarding the Origin of Ancient
Alternatives for Emergence of Israel (Probable meaning of Israel (Heb. yisra’el) is God or El Rules) |
How Well Does it fit Known Archaeological, Environmental and Historic Facts |
1. Pan-Israelite
Exodus and Invasion[49] as per Book of Joshua. Israel exists as a people before entering
Canaan. |
Not supported by archaeology. Fits with descriptions in
Torah and Book of Joshua. Extremely unlikely to be historically
accurate. |
2. Independent migrations & Settlement by separate extended
family (Hebrew bet ‘av), Clan (Hebrew mishpaḥa) etc[50]., in unoccupied hill country as per Alt[51], Noth, Aharoni. Israel, and its constituent tribes, form
after settlement in the hill country on the basis of geography. |
Fits
reasonably with archaeology record and with descriptions in Book of Judges. |
3.
“Conquest” as Internal Revolt[52] -Canaanite peasants moving into hills to escape
oppressive conditions under city-state aristocracies where they join up with
small groups from outside |
Fits
reasonably with archaeology record but contradicts what the Israelites
themselves said about their past in Hebrew Bible. |
4. Independent Migrations & Settlement by separate extended
family (Hebrew bet ‘av), Clan (Hebrew mishpaḥa) etc., in unoccupied hill country where they
merged with Canaanites leaving the
city-state ruled low lands as per Finkelstein[54] and many others. Israel, and its constituent tribes, form
after settlement in the hill country on the basis of geography. |
Fits
well with archaeology record and with descriptions in Book of Judges. In my view most likely to be correct. |
On the Origin of
the Israelites Archaeological data enable us to discern the
significant, basic discontinuity between the Late Bronze and the Iron Age populations
in the type and pattern of settlements, the zones of settlements, their use
of terracing for agricultural purposes, their employment of plastered
cisterns for water storage, their architecture, their demography, and by
implication their social and political organization. Study of pottery allows
the discernment of an important - not a basic - discontinuity in their
ceramic traditions. These discontinuities reflect innovations in the contents
and distribution of the material culture of the Iron Age population. The
confluence and overlapping of elements from the concrete, material culture
along with first-order inferences derived about the people who created it
within well-defined geographical areas suggest that they constituted an
ethnic group. Literary evidence, that is, traditions reflected
in biblical narratives and historiographic observations, in combination with
the above-mentioned congeries of archaeological data considered in their
spatial and chronological distribution, indicates that Iron Age Israelites of
the central mountains did not originate or derive from the preceding Late
Bronze population of the local Canaanite city-states and, therefore, were not
traditionists bearing and passing on some form of the antecedent, local
Canaanite culture. Although it is assumed reasonably that they had prolonged
contact with some ideational and technical aspects of this culture during its
latest stages through some Iron Age Canaanite descendants, … and although
they were aware of some evolved developments of Late Bronze Canaanite culture
among some of their Iron Age neighbors to their north and north-east, no
direct continuity may be posited between the technical and ideational culture
of the tribes and that of the prior inhabitants of the territories occupied
by the Israelites. The data do not support an inference that local
Canaanites became Israelites in the way that Gauls became the French and
Romans the Italians. A. Kempinski notes that at the end of the twelfth
century BCE, Merneptah referred to an exurban ethnic group living in the
central mountains as "Israel," whereas in an eleventh century
Hebrew poem about events in the twelfth century, Judges 5, an Israelite poet
referred to those living in the same area by the same term. Both outsiders
and insiders employed the same ethnicon. These independent but
mutually-corroborating data indicate that such a self-identified people did
live there and that connectedness and continuity between them is posited
reasonably…. People can work together, trade together, live
adjacent to each other for generations, and have no inkling of what makes the
"other" tick. Jews lived in Christian Europe for over 1,600 years.
Nowhere did Christians as a community have anything other than a superficial
notion of what Judaism was about; despite patterns of acculturation and
social accommodation necessary for their existence in Europe, nowhere did
Jews as a community have any deep understanding of Christianity…. A line can be drawn distinguishing between the
local Canaanite culture, whatever it was, and that of the later Israelites.
This line should be a broken one since I do assume some admixture of
population as well as regular, ongoing cultural contact. Furthermore, I
assume that some of these contacts may have stimulated responses in
ideational components of Israelite culture that may be construed from
available textual and archaeological data. But a broken, permeable line is a
line, nevertheless…. As stated above, this position does not deny that
non-Israelite peoples and cultures influenced the thought-content and ritual
practices of Israelite religion. At different points in the history of the
Israelite kingdoms there were contacts between Jerusalem and Ammon, Moab,
Egypt, Tyre, Assyria, Babylon and Egypt, and contacts between Samaria and
Tyre, Damascus, Assyria and Babylon, all of which may have had cultic
consequences and some of which definitely did, e.g., the reforms of Ahaz.
Many are mentioned in historiographical or prophetic texts. In addition,
historiographical sources mention that a few Canaanite cities persisted among
the weaker tribes of the north, along the periphery of the central hill
country…. The only indigenous groups recognized explicitly as non-Israelite
in the heartland area were four Hivvite cities whose residents were
subjugated into a caste of wood cutters and drawers of water for some
Israelite group and for the cult Josh. 9:17, 27; 11:19)…. … I posit and attempt to demonstrate that various cultic practices were
performed by Israelites functioning within overlapping but not completely
congruent kin, guild, residential, mantic, and cultic groups with the first
being considered the most concrete and meaningful. These not only defined a
person but also, to some extent, influenced his destiny. Moving from the
smallest to the largest organization considered consanguineous, family,
father's house, clan, tribe, fraternity of tribes, fraternity of tribes
supporting a king, data presented above indicates that all the Passover, and
others ad hoc, e.g., any zebaḥ šelamiym offered by an Israelite; some "traditional," e.g., the zebaḥ mišpaḥa, and others "innovative," e.g., the dedicatory sacrifices in
the Jerusalem temple. I have suggested that by the end of the united monarchy c. 930-920
BCE, if not earlier, at least three common threads united many of these
celebrations throughout the tribes of the central mountains: (1) a shared
sense of a common past; (2) a common recognition that YHWH was the chief
patron but not the only deity; (3) acceptance of the guild-clans of Levites
as cultic experts and, through them, of a shared repertoire of sacrificial rituals and
lore. As a consequence they shared
cultic familiarity…. They would have
been attuned to the mood of the ritual and understood what was and what was
not appropriate for the occasion…. |
2.3 Origin and Nature of Ancient Israelite Religion
A good and extensive
review of current and past theories of Israel’s religious development origin is
presented in Gnuse chapter 2 Recent
Scholarship on the Development of Monotheism in Ancient Israel (pp.
62-128).
There are basically
three alternative hypotheses (see
Table
2) about the origin of
ancient Israelite religion.
Hypotheses Regarding the Origin of Israelite
Religion[56]
Alternatives for Emergence of Israelite Religion |
How Well Does it fit Known Historic Facts |
1. Israelite
religion was originally a local variety of the pattern in Iron Age Phoenicia
in which there was a triad of deities: a protective god of the city (often
El), a goddess, often his wife or companion (in Ugarit and Israel Asherah) who symbolizes the fertile earth; and a
young god (in Ugarit and Israel Baal) usually her or their
son), whose resurrection expresses the annual cycle of vegetation[57]. Through the processes of convergence and differentiation this developed into
Biblical Monotheism. At an early stage a new god Yahweh was brought in from
outside urban Canaan, identified with the Canaanite High God El[58], and accepted as the main object of worship by the emerging
Israelite confederacy i.e. association of clans and tribes. |
Appears to fit very well |
2. It developed from early Semitic religion
which was a “practical monotheism” in which only El was worshiped[59]. |
Unlikely since the biblical
evidence is that Israelite religion was preceded by polytheism. |
3. It came into being as a sui generis
innovation unrelated to the
Semitic polytheism which preceded it. This hypothesis is further
divided into 3 subcategories: |
|
3.1 Verbal Revelation i.e. the Pentateuch
was Virtually Dictated by God[60] 3.1.1 Traditional Jewish Divine Revelation[61] – God gave Moses on 3.1.2 Traditional Karaite and Samaritan Divine
Revelation – God gave Moses on |
The results of Higher Criticism of the Bible make
this extremely unlikely. In fact, the only way to intellectually maintain
these positions would be to reason[62]: Higher Criticism of the Bible deduces that the Torah was
written and edited by people, over a long period, by comparing the Torah to
other documents, showing similar characteristics, that can be shown to have
been written and edited by people, over a long period; For this to be valid one must compare like to like; The Torah is the only divinely written document that has
ever existed so comparisons with other documents are fundamentally invalid. |
3.2 Various Modern Jewish Thinkers e.g. non-Orthodox
Jewish theologians[63] and, perhaps Kaufmann* – God intervened, perhaps progressively, to
reveal his totally new religious teaching** |
Given the evidence available, it is almost impossible to
prove or disprove these sorts of hypothesis though, by what is known, they
seem to me improbable. |
3.3
A teacher, say Moses or one of the Isaiahs, got a brilliant intellectual
insight or revelation from God, depending on your
beliefs, instantly grasping the concept of ethical
monotheism which was totally
alien to his, and the people’s, early polytheistic beliefs and
practices.*** Of course, the founder/prophet would need to express the
ethical monotheism through the linguistic semantics, images and at
least some of the accustomed religious practices, of the time (eg. Sacrifices)
provided that these did not fundamentally contradict the ethical monotheism.[64] |
* Yehezkel Kaufmann[65] was a distinguished Israeli scholar of the first half of the 20th
century. Many of Kaufmann’s ideas are interesting but his overall thesis[66] does not seem to me, or to most modern scholars[67], to be supported by what is known.
** we could use the image of Beethoven’s sketch books where a
rough idea, which may or may not have been crystal clear in Beethoven’s head
from the beginning, is extensively changed until the composer recognized that
it was perfect.
*** we could use the image of Mozart’s manuscript which were perfect as
initially written down.
2.3.1 That Israelite monotheism came into being as a sui generis
innovation unrelated to the Semitic polytheism which preceded it.
2.3.2 That
Israelite monotheism developed progressively out of
Canaanite religion.
Cross On the Emergence
of Israelite Religion[68] “Israel does not leap full-formed into history like
Athena from the head of Zeus. The study of origins is always difficult but
has a unique fascination. The possibility of such a study in concrete detail
is recent…. “Two dynamic societies, Israel and Greece, rose
from the ruins of the ancient Near Eastern world. The first societies of the
ancient Near East blossomed and grew old and moribund in the course of the
third and second millennia B.C.E.. The cataclysms that began about 1200
B.C.E. were symptoms of the end of essentially static and hierarchical
societies. Israel as a nation was born in an era of
extraordinary chaos and social turmoil. Egypt's empire had collapsed and the
Hittite kingdom had fallen, the Middle Assyrian Empire was in decline and
invasions brought the destruction of the great Canaanite city states of Syria
and Palestine, most notably at the hand of Greek Sea Peoples (which included
the Philistines). …. We are interested in the emergence of certain
characteristic features of Israelite religion: (l) the shift from pure myth,
stories of the gods, the central focus of Canaanite religion and cult, to the
centrality of epic memory in Israelite religion; (2) the shift from
hierarchical notions of equity to Israelite conceptions of justice as
redemptive; and (3) the change from sacral or divine conceptions of state and
church, king and priest, to the desacralizing of state and the critical,
provisional view of temple and priesthood. In sum we are
interested in tracing the progressive secularization of religion in ancient
Israel. |
Most scholars would
argue that the earliest unambiguously monotheistic texts in the Bible date to
the Exile[69].
However,
“The study of Israelite religion often
involves studying practices more than creedal beliefs because the Bible more
frequently stresses correct practices than correct beliefs or internal
attitudes. Christian scholars, however, tend to focus more on beliefs or
internal attitudes because Christian theology has often emphasized this aspect
of religion. The study of Israelite monotheism is complicated by this
factor, as monotheism has usually been
defined as a matter of belief in one deity whereas monolatry has been
understood as a matter of practice, specifically, the worship of only one
deity, sometimes coupled with a tolerance for other peoples’ worship of their
deities. However, if ancient Israelite religion is to be viewed primarily
as a matter of practice, then the modern distinction between monotheism and
monolatry is problematic.”[70]
2.3.2.2 The
Process - Convergence and Differentiation
“The great gods of
the Canaanite pantheon were cosmic deities. There is, indeed, a double movement
clearly discernible in Syro-Palestinian religion. A great god such as 'El or
'Asherah appears in local manifestations in the cult places and gains special
titles, attributes, hypostases[71]. In the process,
one cult or title may split apart and a new god emerge to take his place beside
'El or 'Asherah in the pantheon. On the other hand, there
is a basic syncretistic impulse in Near Eastern polytheism which tends to merge
gods with similar traits and functions. A minor deity, worshipped by a small
group of adherents, may become popular and merge with a great deity; major deities in a
single culture's pantheon may fuse; or deities holding similar positions in
separate pantheons may be identified.” Cross
p.49
Hypotheses
Regarding the Original Nature of YHWH
Alternatives for the Original Nature of YHWH |
Specifics |
Path to Monotheism |
1.
YHWH as manifestation of the El known
from Ugaritic |
Under this hypothesis, YHWH starts out
as a local manifestation of Canaanite El who is accepted as the national god
of the early Israelites. The only Baal
type characteristic he might have at this stage would be that as warrior
hero. “Our evidence also
points strongly to the conclusion that yahwe is a shortened
form of a sentence name taken from a cultic formula…. Yahwe şba’ot …. On the basis of the
mythological parallels, şba’ot in this context
probably means "the hosts of heaven[72]," the banii 'ilima, "sons of 'EI"
or "holy ones." In this case Yahweh is described as du yahwi şba’ot "He who creates
the (heavenly) armies," a title of the divine warrior and creator. It is
thus not greatly different from 'El's epithets, "Father of the
gods," "creator of creatures." Moreover, such an epithet lent
itself to use not merely as a creation formula, but as an appropriate name of
the god who called together the tribes to form the militia of the League, who
led Israel in her historical wars. In the holy war ideology Yahweh led the
cosmic forces of heaven alongside the armies of Israel. At the beginning of
the conquest proper, Joshua was confronted by the śar haş-şaba’ yahwe, "the general of the
(heavenly) army of Yahweh," Joshua's cosmic counterpart. In the victory
song in Judges 5 we are told that "the stars fought from heaven,
"and at Gibeon even the sun and moon support Yahweh's host ". . .
the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation had taken
vengeance on
their enemies."
“In order top meet the
needs of farmers Yahwism also owes a debt to the myths of Ba'al. In the
earliest poetic sources the language depicting Yahweh as divine warrior
manifest is borrowed almost directly from Canaanite descriptions of the
theophany of Ba'al as storm god.” From Cross |
1. The Israel group of El worshipers, of
assorted origins, is formed in the hill country (later tribal territories of
Ephraim and Cis-Jordan Manasseh) at the end of the Late Bronze age. El’s consort Asherah probably features in
the family religion and Baal-Hadad is worshiped as the giver of the
all-important rain. This is the 2. The YHWH worshipers enter 3. YHWH is reidentified with El gaining a
consort, Asherah 4. In the crisis of the imposition by Ahab
of Tyrean Baal (probably Melkart likely with his consort Tyrean Ashtart) - in the mid-9th century BCE –
the prophetic movement demanded the rejection of the native weather deity
Baal-Hadad (likely with his consort the native Ashtart/Ashtoreth) as un-Israelite and disloyal to YHWH.
Baal’s characteristics are appropriated by YHWH. (see Elijah on Carmel). 5. Perhaps spurred on by the establishment
of Astarte-Ishtar-Queen of Heaven worship in the 8th- 7th
centuries; the Deuteronomic movement of the late 7th century BCE
demanded the rejection of the native Asherah as un-Israelite and disloyal to
YHWH. By this time Asherah may just have been seen as a manifestation of the
nurturing side of YHWH. As far as feasible, given YHWH’s male language,
Ashera’s characteristics are appropriated by YHWH. |
2. A YHWH as Baal-Haddad type storm-warrior god. |
1. The Israel group of El worshipers, of
assorted origins, formed in the hill country at the end of the Late Bronze
age. El’s consort Asherah probably
features in the family religion and Baal-Hadad is worshiped as the giver of
the all-important rain. This is the 2. Baal replaces El as main god of worship
– El becomes a figurehead-folk memory. 3.
YHWH worshipers enter Canaan and develop relationship with this
Israel. 4. YHWH absorbs El characteristics and possibly gains consort, Asherah. YHWH
and Baal-Hadad each lay claim to control of the vital ability to control
rain. 5. In the crisis of the imposition by Ahab of Tyrian Baal (probably Melkart likely with his consort Ashtart)- in the mid-9th century BCE – the prophetic movement demanded the rejection of the native weather deity |