Version 2.1
Israelite
Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of
By David Steinberg
Home page http://members.rogers.com/davidsteinberg/
1.
Canaan Before the Israelites
1.1
The Nature of the Country and its Pre-Israelite Ethnic Makeup
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
2.3.2.2.2 Henotheism to Monotheism and the Importance of
External Factors
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
Annex
1 - A Few Gods from the Ugaritic Pantheon with Special Relevance to the Hebrew
Bible
1.
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:
Ø
The country was always open to immigration[2] the more so because, in
the Bronze Age, it had no unified government or army and had, in the Late
Bronze Age, large areas of hill country almost unoccupied. This was the case in spite of the fact that
the technology, in the form of plastered cisterns and metal tools, necessary to
clear and settle the land were available.
In the event,
From
the north, the country was open to
Ø
While, according to biblical tradition, there were
many ethnic groups in Canaan (Amorites, Hittites, Hivites, Horites,
Kenites, Perizites etc.), and even
though some of these would appear to be non-Semitic in origin (e.g. Horites (=
Hurrians?) and Hittites) they seem to have become assimilated into the
Canaanite culture speaking Canaanite and having West Semitic names.
Ø
There was, from the earliest times, strong Egyptian
cultural influence along the coast and strong Mesopotamian influence in north
Syria. Egyptian cultural influence was
boosted by Egyptian rule in the centuries preceding the emergence of Ancient
Israel.
1.2 Canaanite
Religion
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 1
for more details):
Ø
It was polytheistic and iconic
(i.e. worshiped idols which served as focuses of the presence of cosmic /nature
gods). Although there were, in principle, many gods, the pattern in Iron Age
Phoenicia, and probably in the territories of Israel and Judah, “… was composed
of a triad of deities: a protective god of the city, a goddess, often his wife
or companion who symbolizes the fertile earth; and a young god somehow
connected with the goddess (usually her son), whose resurrection expresses the
annual cycle of vegetation”[3]
Ø
It was tied to nature and the seasons; a religion of
renewal of life and fertility. This
sometimes led to what we would consider strongly sensual, orgiastic or cruel
behaviour. A prominent example of cruel
behaviour is child sacrifice (Molech in the Bible; massive child sacrifice,
apparently to El, in Carthage). 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].
2. Alternative Views on the Emergence of Israel and Israelite Religion[5]
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[6] (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[7]. 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[8] -
“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.
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 Alexandria. However, only one complete poem has come down
to us.
·
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;
·
Histories
in the Greek or biblical traditions[9] (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[10], and we have, from
Ugaritic literature, a fair idea of Canaanite religion, 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[11] 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 s,
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.”[12]
“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.”[13]
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.
First Temple and Second Temple Jewish society was fairly literate[14]. However, due
to the scarcity of stone inscriptions, and the use of perishable writing
materials, all the written remains could be printed on a few pages.
This contrasts sharply with the situation in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Egypt papyrus lasts for thousands of years
and there were many inscriptions on stone.
The papyri include personal letters, legal documents, tax receipts,
literature of all kinds. In Mesopotamia
the clay tablets, inscribed in cuneiform, last for ever.
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.”[15]
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.”[16]
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
A
good and extensive review of current and past theories of Israel’s origin is
presented in Gnuse chapter 1 New Understandings of the
Israelite Settlement Process (pp. 23-61).
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[17]. 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).
Yahweh may or may not have been a deity worshipped somewhere in the
region.[18]
The
best summary of the archaeological evidence is in Finkelstein. He outlines (pp. 12-14) a seven point hypothesis which he
considers to best fit the evidence.
Among other things, he points out the mixed background of the people who
became historic Israel.
Hypotheses Regarding the Origin of
Ancient Israel[19]
|
Alternatives for Emergence of Israel |
How Well Does it fit Known Archaeological, Environmental and Historic Facts |
|
1.
Pan-Israelite Exodus and Invasion[20] 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 mishpaHa) etc.,[21] in unoccupied hill country as per Alt[22], 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[23] -Canaanite peasants moving into hills to
escape oppressive conditions under city-state aristocracies where they join
up with small groups from outside Canaan as per Mendenhall, Gottwald.”[24] Israel, and its constituent tribes, form
after settlement in the hill country on the basis of geography. |
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 mishpaHa) etc.,
in unoccupied hill country where they merged with Canaanites leaving the city-state
ruled low lands as per Finkelstein[25] 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. |
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 of which two are worth serious
consideration i.e.:
2.3.1 That Israelite monotheism came into being as a sui generis innovation
unrelated to the Semitic polytheism which preceded it. In Table 2, I
provide further details plus the reasons that I find this option unconvincing, for
some variations, or, state that for others, given the evidence available, that
it is almost impossible to prove or disprove though, to me, they seem to me
improbable.
2.3.2
That Israelite monotheism
developed progressively
out of Canaanite religion.
Most scholars would argue that the earliest
unambiguously monotheistic texts in the Bible date to the Exile[26].
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[27].”
2.3.2.2
The Process - Convergence
and Differentiation
I find Smith’s reconstruction
to be convincing so I will quote him on this (the emphasis through bolding is
my own) -
“Baal and Asherah were part of Israel’s Canaanite heritage,
and the process of the emergence of Israelite monolatry was an issue of
Israel’s breaking with its own Canaanite past and not simply one of avoiding
Canaanite neighbours. Although the
Bible witness accurately represented the existence of Israelite worship of Baal
and perhaps of Asherah as well, this worship was not so much a case of
Israelite syncretism with the religious practices of its Canaanite neighbours,
as some biblical passages depict it, as it was an instance of old Israelite
religion. If syncretism
may be said to have been involved at all, it was a syncretism of various
traditions and practices of Israelites. In short, any syncretism was largely a
phenomenon within Israelite culture…. Israelite religion apparently included
the worship of Yahweh, El, Asherah, and Baal. The shape of this
religious spectrum in early Israel changed, due in large measure to two major
developments; the first was convergence, and the second was
differentiation. Convergence involved
the coalescence of various deities and/or some of their features into the
figure of Yahweh.
This development began in the period of the Judges and continued during
the first half of the monarchy. At this
point, El and Yahweh were identified, and Asherah no longer continued as an
identifiable separate deity. Features belonging to deities such as El, Asherah
and Baal were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion of Israel…. In … poetic
compositions, titles and characteristics originally belonging to various
deities secondarily accrue to Yahweh…. Israelite monolatry developed through
conflict and compromise between the cults of Yahweh and other deities. Israelite literature incorporated some of the
characteristics of other deities into the divine personage of Yahweh. Polemic against deities other than Yahweh
even contributed to this process. For
although polemic rejected other deities, Yahwistic polemic assumed that Yahweh
embodies the positive characteristics of the very deities it was condemning.
“The
second major process involved differentiation of Israelite cult from its
Canaanite heritage. Numerous features of
early Israelite cult were later rejected as Canaanite and non-Yahwistic. This development began first with the
rejection of Baal worship in the ninth century
continued in the eighth to sixth centuries with legal and prophetic
condemnations of Baal worship, the Asherah, solar worship, the high places,
practices pertaining to the dead, and other religious features. The two major developments of convergence and
differentiation shaped the contours of the distinct monotheism that Israel
practiced and defined in the Exile (ca. 587-538) following the final days of
the Judean monarchy.” …
“Though the reasons for Israelite ‘convergence’ are not
clear, the
complex paths from convergence to monolatry and monotheism can be followed…. (and) involved both an ‘evolution’ and a ‘revolution’[28]
in religious conceptionalization…. While evolutionary in character, Israelite
monolatry was also ‘revolutionary’ in a number of respects. The process of differentiation and the
eventual displacement of Baal from Israel’s national cult distinguished
Israel’s religion from the religions of its neighbours…. Israelite insistence
on a single deity eventually distinguished Israel from the surrounding
cultures….’”
Hypotheses Regarding the Origin of
Israelite Religion[29]
|
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.[30] 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[31],
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.[32] |
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[33] 3.1.1 Traditional
Jewish Divine Revelation[34] – God gave Moses on Mt.
Sinai the written Pentateuch that we have today together with the Oral Law
i.e. the tools for developing the laws of the Pentateuch to meet all future
needs. This Oral Law was later
embodied in the Talmuds and other Rabbinic literature; 3.1.2 Traditional
Karaite and Samaritan Divine Revelation – God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai
the written Pentateuch that we have today as an immutable, all-encompassing,
law. |
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[35]: 1)
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; 2)
For this to be valid one must
compare like to like; 3)
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 [36] 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.[37] |
* 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.
2.3.2.2.1
The Fundamental and
Pervasive Paradigm of Family and its Manifestation as the Covenant (Brit/Brith)
In Ancient Israel the
paradigm of the family was pervasive[38]. Judging by the stories of the
Ugaritic gods, the same was true of Canaanite society[39]. Both God (e.g. Exodus 4:22; Deut. 14:1) and
the king were considered fathers of the people of Israel.
“In the past, the question of Israelite
polytheism has been approached by looking for evidence of specific deities
worshipped by Israelites in addition to Yahweh. These would include biblical
criticisms of the worship of other deities, such as the goddess Asherah in 2
Kings 21 and 23, as well as apparent references to this goddess or at least her
symbol in the inscriptions from Kuntillet 'Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom in the
eighth century. In the Kuntillet 'Ajrud inscriptions, the symbol is treated
respectfully as part of the worship of Yahweh. The gods Resheph and Deber
appear in Habakkuk 3:5 as part of the military retinue of Yahweh. Other deities
who gain some mention in the Bible include the "hosts of heaven"
criticized in 2 Kings 21:5, but mentioned without such criticism in 1 Kings
22:19 and Zephaniah 1:5. Scholars have also noted that the god El is identified
with Yahweh in the Bible, again with no criticism. The criticisms of Yahweh's
archenemy, the storm god, Baal, also seem to reflect Israelite worship of this
god. While many of these deities are not well known from the Bible, they are
described sometimes at considerable length in the Ugaritic texts, discovered
first in 1928 at the site of Ras Shamra (located on the coast of Syria about
100 miles north of Beirut). As a result of comparing biblical and inscriptional
evidence with the Ugaritic texts, we can see how the worship of other deities
lasted for quite a long time in Israel down to the Exile in ca. 586.
“This approach to the study of
specific deities in ancient Israel was summarized in Smith's earlier book, The
Early History of God … On the whole, Smith's book -- following a number of
other scholars-- shows how Israelite polytheism was a feature of Israelite
religion down through the end of the Iron Age and how monotheism emerged in the
seventh and sixth centuries. It is in this period when the clearest
monotheistic statements can be seen in the Bible, for example, in the
apparently seventh-century works of Deuteronomy 4:35, 39, 1 Samuel 2:2
(earlier?), 2 Samuel 7:22, 2 Kings 19:15, 19 (= Isaiah 37:16, 20), and Jeremiah
16:19, 20 and the sixth-century portion of Isaiah 43:10-11, 44:6, 8, 45:5-7,
14, 18, 21, and 46:9. Because many of the passages involved appear in biblical
works associated with either Deuteronomy, the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua
through Kings) or in Jeremiah (with its similar language and ideas as these
other works), most scholarly treatments until recently have suggested that a
deuteronomistic movement of this period developed the idea of monotheism as a
response to the religious issues of the time. The question has remained: why in
the seventh and sixth centuries?
“In his newest book, The
Origins of Biblical Monotheism, Smith tries to address this question, but
from a different angle in regards to monotheism and polytheism. Beginning with the
Ugaritic texts, Smith asks what is monistic about polytheism and how the answer
to this question might help make the emergence of Israelite monotheism more
intelligible. Ugaritic polytheism is expressed as a monism through the concepts
of the divine council or assembly and in the divine family. The two structures
are essentially understood as a single entity with four levels: the chief god
and his wife (El and Asherah); the seventy divine children (including Baal,
Astarte, Anat, probably Resheph as well as the sun-goddess Shapshu and the
moon-god Yerak) evidently characterized as the stars of El; the head helper of
the divine household, Kothar wa-Hasis; and the servants of the divine
household, who include what the Bible understands to be "angels" (in
other words, messenger-gods).
“This four-tiered model of the
divine family and council apparently went through a number of changes in early
Israel. In the earliest stage, it would appear that Yahweh was one of these
seventy children, each of whom was the patron deity of the seventy nations.
This idea appears behind the Dead Sea Scrolls reading and the Septuagint
translation of Deuteronomy 32:8-9. In this passage, El is the head of the
divine family, and each member of the divine family receives a nation of his
own: Israel is the portion of Yahweh. The Masoretic Text, evidently
uncomfortable with the polytheism expressed in the phrase "according to
the number of the divine sons," altered the reading to "according to
the number of the children of Israel" (also thought to be seventy). Psalm
82 also presents the god El presiding in a divine assembly at which Yahweh
stands up and makes his accusation against the other gods. Here the text shows
the older religious worldview which the passage is denouncing.
“By some point in the late
monarchy, it is evident that the god El was identified with Yahweh, and as a
result, Yahweh-El is the husband of the goddess, Asherah. This is the situation
represented by biblical condemnations of her cult symbol in the Jerusalem temple
(evidently) and in the inscriptions mentioned above. In this form, the
religious devotion to Yahweh casts him in the role of the Divine King ruling
over all the other deities. This religious outlook appears, for example, in
Psalm 29:2, where the "sons of God" or really divine sons or children
are called upon to worship Yahweh, the Divine King. The Temple, with its
various expressions of polytheism, also assumed that this place was Yahweh's
palace which was populated by those under his power. The tour given by Ezekiel
8-10 suggests such a picture.” [40]
The concept of
covenant (brit in Hebrew) as a joining together of parties with mutual,
not necessarily identical, responsibilities in a hierarchical relationship would
seem to grow naturally out of the paradigm of the family[41].
Some time between the ninth and seventh centuries
BCE some minority groups within
2.3.2.2.2 Henotheism to Monotheism and the Importance of External
Factors
“This picture of royal power was
further developed with the monotheism of the eighth to the sixth centuries. The
other gods became mere expressions of Yahweh's power, and the divine messengers
became understood as little more than minor divine beings expressive of
Yahweh's power. In other words, the head god became the godhead. Why at this
time?
“Two major sets of conditions can
be suggested. The first involves the changes in Israel's social structure of
the family. At Ugarit, social identity was strongest at the level of the
family. Legal documents were often made between the sons of one family and the
sons of another. The divine situation followed suit. The divine family was
expressive of Ugarit's social structure. The same was true in ancient Israel
through most of the monarchy. Hence, the story of Achan in Joshua 8 suggests a
picture of the extended family as the major social unit. However, the family
lineages went through traumatic changes beginning already in the eighth century
with major social stratification, followed by Assyrian incursions. In the
seventh and sixth centuries, we begin to see expressions of individual identity
(Deuteronomy 26:16; Jeremiah 31:29-30; Ezekiel 18). A culture with a diminished
lineage system (deteriorating over a long period from the ninth or eighth
century onward), one less embedded in traditional family patrimonies, might be
more predisposed both to hold to individual human accountability for behavior
(as suggested by the passages just cited) and to see an individual deity
accountable for the cosmos (as suggested by monotheistic statements in this
period). In short, the rise of the individual as a social unit next to the
traditional family unit provided intelligibility to the rise of a single god
rather than a divine family.
“The second major set of
conditions apparent in forming this change involved the rise of the
neo-Assyrian and neo-Babylonian empires. As long as Israel was, from its own
perspective, on par with the other nations, it made sense to have a religious
outlook that saw Israel on par with the other nations, each one with its own
patron god. (This is the basic picture described above with Deuteronomy
32:8-9.) The assumption behind this worldview was that each nation was as
powerful as its patron god. However, the neo-Assyrian conquest of the northern
kingdom in ca. 722 altered this religious way of looking at the world, for, if
the neo-Assyrian empire were so powerful, so must be its god; and conversely,
if Israel could be conquered (and later Judah ca. 586), it would imply that its
god in turn is hardly as powerful as Israel had traditionally taught. As a
result, new thinking separated the correlation of heavenly power and earthly
kingdoms. Even though Assyria and later Babylon were so powerful, the new
monotheistic thinking in Israel reasoned that despite its own weakness, its god
was not weak. Moreover, just as Israel's fortunes fell, those of Assyria and
then Babylon rose; inversely, Israel's monotheists now reasoned that Yahweh
stood at the top of divine power, and correspondingly, the gods of Mesopotamia
were reckoned to be nothing. As a result, Assyria had not succeeded because of
the power of its god; instead, it was Yahweh now directing all the nations. In
short, the conditions of human empires provided the model for divine empire;
the Assyrian and Babylonian empires pointed now not to their own power and the
power of their divine patrons but to Yahweh’s guiding all the events of
Israel's life. Their exile was not their shame from the power of other nations
and their deities, but rather was seen now as Yahweh's plan to punish and
purify the one nation which Yahweh had chosen. Accordingly, the notion arose
that the new king who might help redeem Israel might not be a Judean as
traditionally thought in older biblical literature (see Psalm 2). Now, even a
foreigner such as Cyrus the Persian could serve as the Lord's anointed (Isaiah
44:28, 45:1). One god stood behind all these world-shaking events.[42]”
We should note that Yehezkel Kaufmann[43], a distinguished Israeli scholar of the first half
of the 20th century, is an exception to this consensus. Many of
Kaufmann’s ideas are interesting but his overall thesis[44] does not seem to me, or to most modern scholars[45], to be supported by what is known.
2.3.3 The High Places (bamot/bamoth) [46]
· When the
original Yahweh-worshiping group(s) entered Canaan either Yahweh, unlike the
gods of the agricultural Canaanites, did not appear at fixed places but to
particular men or Yahweh’s cult places were in their earlier home
territory. The early Israelites identified Yahweh with the ancient
Semitic high god El (see below).
By taking over cult legends of the local bamot, the early Israelites could
give a basis for their claims to a particular area in which the bamah
was located.
·
Every village, or group of
villages, had its bamah where sacrifice could be offered and sacred meals take
place (e.g. 1 Samuel 9:12 ff.) It seems
likely that pre-Deuteronomic Israelite tradition seems to have required that
all slaughter for food be in the form of a sacrifice.[47]
·
Many bamot had priests (Hebrew kohen plural
kohanim) who claimed Aaronic, Mosaic (at Dan see Judges 18:30), Levitical
or other lineage. It is likely that traditions of
Israel's relationship to God, Israelite origins, and the etiology of the bamah
itself would have been maintained by the kohanim or singers of the bamah.
During the Deuteronomic Reform (see below) the kohanim of the bamot
of Judah were put on the staff of the Jerusalem temple. It is probably through
this means that some of the traditions preserved at the bamot entered
the Torah (mainly Genesis e.g.. the stories in Genesis associating Abraham with
locations in the south of Judah such as Beer Sheba) and the Deuteronomic
History (Joshua-2 Kings). Traditions from the former Kingdom of Israel (e.g.
associating Jacob with Beth-El and Shechem in the territory of the Joseph
tribes or with Mahanaim in Gilead) may well have entered the Torah via the E
and D traditions which are considered to have originated there;
·
Some bamot were of particular renown or of
more than local significance. The Bible,
in various contexts, mentions a number including the following:
Ø
Ø
Beersheba (associated with Abraham)
Ø
Bethel (associated with Jacob)
Ø
Dan (associated with Mica)
Ø
Ø
Gilgal – probably a different place from above
(associated with Elisha and Elijah)
Ø
Gilgal (associated with Joshua and Samuel)
Ø
Hebron (associated with Abraham)
Ø
Mahanaim (associated with Jacob)
Ø
Ø
Ophra (associated with Gideon)
Ø
Penuel (associated with Jacob)
Ø
Shechem – later the Samaritan holy city (associated
with Abraham and Jacob)
Ø
Shiloh (associated with Joshua)
Ø
Zorah
·
There were tribal shrines as well as the royal
shrines at Jerusalem, Bethel and Dan.
These did not, and were not meant to, substitute for local shrines. This created difficulties for the
Deuteronomic historian(s) who wrote or edited the Deuteronomic History
(Deuteronomy-2 Kings) since a key part of his platform was, as we shall see,
the destruction of the bamot. Thus the Deuteronomic historian was forced to
give anachronistic “split decisions” to a number of kings who he wrote acted
against idolatry but did not remove the bamot.
(Of course, these kings had no way of knowing that there would be a demand to
close down the bamot in the 8th-7th centuries BCE.) These
included Asa, Jehoshefat, Jehoash, Amazia and Azariah. I’ll quote, as an
example of this treatment, the report on Asa –
“In the twentieth
year of Jeroboam king of Israel Asa began to reign over Judah, and he reigned
forty-one years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Maacah the daughter of
Abishalom. And Asa did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as David his
father had done. He put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land, and
removed all the idols that his fathers had made. He also removed Maacah his
mother from being queen mother because she had an abominable image made for
Asherah; and Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron. But the
high places were not taken away. Nevertheless the heart of Asa was wholly true
to the LORD all his days. And he brought into the house of the LORD the votive
gifts of his father and his own votive gifts, silver, and gold, and vessels.”
1 Kings, chapter 15:9-15
In contrast, the
Deuteronomic historian says of Rehoboam’s reign -
“Now
Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. … And Judah did what was evil in the
sight of the LORD, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they
committed, more than all that their fathers had done. For they also built for
themselves high places, and pillars, and Asherim on every high hill and under
every green tree; and there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They
did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD drove out
before the people of Israel.”
1 Kings, chapter 14:21-24
4. The Transmutation of Israelite Religion into Judaism
4.1 The Deuteronomic Reform (c. 620-609 BCE)[48] see 2 Kings Chapters 22-23; 2 Chronicles chapters 34-35
The Deuteronomic reform was an
official program of the Judean king Josiah (reigned 639-609 BCE) to reform the
cult and effectively to profoundly reform the theological, and probably also
fiscal, underpinnings of the Kingdom of Judah. It was based on a scroll
said to have been found in the Jerusalem Temple which probably contained the
core of the canonical Book of Deuteronomy. It is likely that this scroll
was authored in Jerusalem, sometime in the 7th century BCE, drawing partly on
materials originating in the former Kingdom of Israel. The newly found,
and perhaps newly authored, scroll, like the canonical Book of Deuteronomy, had 3 notable characteristics which made it the bedrock of both Judaism
and Samaritanism:
·
It was theocentric, leaving no room for a concept of secularity;
·
It was absolutely unbending in demanding justice and monotheism and
promised that God, who is just, would reward or punish his people based on how
they kept God's Torah; and,
· It demanded a single cultic
site for sacrifices.
This last demand is found nowhere else in the Torah. The demand for a single cultic site, with concomitant need to
destroy all other cultic sites in the land, was a feature of Hezekiah's
(727-698 BCE) reform (2 Kings chap.18) a century before[49].
However: (a) Hezekiah's reforms were reversed probably after his death;
and (b) no written Torah/Book of the Law was involved. In fact, there is no
mention of any such Book of the Law anywhere in the Bible before Josiah's
reforms at the end of the 7th century BCE.
As
P. K. McCarter comments on these two Davidic kings (Hezekiah and Josiah),
‘their policies, by unifying the worship of Yahweh, had the effect of unifying
the way in which he was conceived by his worshipers, thus eliminating the
earlier theology of local manifestations.’”[50]
4.2 The Destruction of the Local Bamot Throughout Judah and the
Neighboring Areas of the Former Kingdom of Israel.
During the years 734-732 BCE, the Assyrian
king Tiglath-pileser captured Galilee and Gilead, exiled the leading elements
of their Israelite populations and organized the areas as Assyrian
provinces. It was probably at that time
that most Galilean and Gileadite Israelite cultic and historical traditions,
oral and written were lost for ever. A
much reduced Kingdom of Israel, consisting of the former tribal territories of
northern Benjamin, Ephriam and Cisjordan Manasseh, continued to exist for a few
years as an Assyrian client state.
However the king of Israel rebelled and in 722 BCE the rump of the
Kingdom of Israel was destroyed and many of its inhabitants were carried off
into Mesopotamia. However, many Israelites fled south to escape the
Assyrians. Excavations have revealed
that at precisely this time Jerusalem expanded from about 32 acres
(corresponding to a population of about 5,000) to about 125 acres
(corresponding to a population of about 25,000) and that there was massive and
intensive development of terraced agriculture around Jerusalem to feed the
expanded population. It is likely at
this time that many Northern traditions were carried south and that a northern
levitical text, calling for the centralization of sacrifice, which was later
expanded into the book of Deuteronomy, was carried to Jerusalem.
As noted above, the Judean king Hezekiah
(727-698 BCE) had tried, but ultimately failed, to destroy the bamot
where sacrifices were carried out by the local priesthood. A century
later, it was tried again by his descendant king Josiah, as part of the
Deuteronomic Reform. Given general developments in Judah, it seems
possible that the bamot were reestablished after Josiah's death.
in any case, the goal was accomplished finally, or rendered irreversible, by
the Babylonian destruction of Judah and exile of the great majority of its
inhabitants[51].
Of course, during the 20 to 30 years between Josiah's destruction of the bamot and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the exile of the Judeans, the population outside Jerusalem people must have continued to experience the need to worship and to feel in contact with, and in favor with, the divine. However, poverty and distances would ensure that the vast majority would be unable to visit the temple in Jerusalem on more than a few occasions in a lifetime. Sacrifice, probably until that time a central element in the cultic life of the people[52], became marginal, a concern of the kohanim as it was to be in the Second Temple period. The removal of the local bamot included the removal of the local kohanim who may have been both the major source of religious teaching outside Jerusalem and a powerful force resisting religious innovation. The upshot would have been a situation highly conducive to prayer becoming the central act in the cultic life of the people. This form of worship was no longer tied to the local shrine; in fact, it could be as easily done in Babylonia as in Judah.
The depopulation of Judah both ensured that that bamot would not be rebuilt and destroyed local loyalties while strengthening national ones. The survivors from all over Judah, settled in Babylonia, felt themselves primarily to be Jews, and only secondarily, to be Ephratites, Benjaminites, Gezerites etc[53]. The way was fully open to the development of new national traditions divorced from the multifold ancient local ways. This would have encouraged the substitution of prayer for sacrifice.
4.3 The Finalization, Promulgation and
Acceptance of the Torah[54] as THE word of God and Basis of Israel's Relationship with God
This occurred around 400 BCE[55], plus or minus a couple of decades; perhaps at the
ceremony described in Nehemiah, chapter 8.
It was
the seminal event of Jewish history. The religion was transformed, over time, from an Israelite religion
based on sacrifice and prophecy
to a Jewish religion based on a written Torah with sacrifice playing an important, though isolated,
role throughout the Second Temple period[56]. Before the change
there was no written Torah[57],
literacy was religiously irrelevant, and, to learn the will of God the
community might cast lots (e.g.. 2 Samuel 10:20) or used the Urim and Thumim
or the community or individual consulted a prophet who was effectively the
intermediary between God and man. After the change knowledge of the Torah
was all important[58]. This led to a number of developments:
·
The
Torah, and the prophetic literature, totally banned any sort of polytheism and
established Judaism as clearly monotheistic.
·
The key function was now performed by the
scholar of the law. As the Jewish saying goes (Avot 5 mishnah 24) “study it
(the Torah) again and again for everything is contained in it. Scrutinize it,
grow old and grey in it, do not depart from it. There is no better
portion of life than this.”
·
The interpreters of the law could be kohanim (as in the Samaritans to this day) or
non-priests like the majority of Jewish rabbis
·
Prophecy becomes
irrelevant and slowly withers and dies;
·
Literacy is a
fundamental requirement to understanding the law.
A Few Gods from the Ugaritic Pantheon with Special Relevance to the Hebrew Bible
El (‘ēl)
The New Catholic Encyclopedia[60] states, likely correctly,:
“…El, (was) the ancestral deity of the
Semites. (“El” appears also (in Arabia) under
the augmentative form “Ilah,” who’s plural of majesty is the Hebrew “Elohim”)….
The names ending in ‘ēl and in ‘ilah are more numerous in
the various proto-Arabic dialects than those in honor of any other deity. Taken as a whole, they are to be considered
as survivals, for it has been proved that they were preponderant in ancient
Akkadian and in proto-Aramaic. Since the
word ‘ēl corresponds to the word god, it has been
rightly concluded that the proto-Semites invoked only El. In fact, if the word god had applied to
various deities, the personal names in ‘ēl would
have had an equivocal meaning. It is
legitimate to translate El as god but this practical monotheism does not imply
a clear awareness that the gods adored by neighbouring peoples did not exist.”
Cross wrote, in Canaanite myth
and Hebrew epic p. 43 “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 the league with kinship
or covenant ties.”
El seems to have been pushed into
the background, in most areas, by other deities: thorough most of Canaan by
Baal-Haddad the god of the weather, fertility and war; in northern Arabia by
astral deities (e.g. Şalam (moon god) Ilat (feminine
form of ‘ilah i.e. El the goddess Venus), Athar (Morning Star); and in
Mesopotamia the Sumerian religion largely displaced earlier Semitic forms
leading to a pantheon peopled by nature and astral deities with an increasing
role being played by national gods such as Ashur and Marduk.
Twice, at least, El was lifted out
of the dust of obscurity to be used as the name of the eternal, exclusive,
unique, all-powerful God of monotheistic religions[61]. This required that El be shorn
of his consorts, children, peers, sexuality and many unedifying
characteristics. The first occasion, was when the Israelites identified him
with their God YHWH, appropriating a number of Canaanite El’s titles or
epithets, as part of the process of developing the monotheism of the
Torah. Then, much later, under Jewish
and Christian influence, Muhammad declared El, under his Arabic designation,
Allah, to be the one true God thus founding Islam.
In the Bible El both means god and
the Israelite God[62].
In the Ugaritic literature El:
In Carthage, a Phoenician-Canaanite
colony near present-day Tunis, he and his consort were the main or only gods to
which child sacrifices, which took place on a massive scale[63], were dedicated.
“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.”[64]
Baal
(ba`al)
Anat (`anat)
Goddess of love and war. Sister/wife
of Baal. Anat often aids Baal in his battles and takes his part in defeat.
Mot (Death)(mwt)
Baal is killed by Mot (in the
autumn) and he remains dead until the spring. His victory over death was
celebrated as his enthronement over the other gods. It depicts the prevailing
order of things as the result of struggles among the gods--successive bids for
power in which Yamm and Mot are confined to their present bounds and Baal and
Anat (associated with fertility and military prowess, respectively) prevail.
Having descended into the underworld and survived Death, Baal embodies the
assertiveness and continuity of life.
Yam(m) (Sea)
Yam was the god of primordial chaos
and Baal’s enemy. Before the great combat with Baal Yam sent emissaries to the
Assembly of the Gods demanding tribute to include his receiving Baal as a
slave. Baal drove the emissaries from
the assembly hall thus opening the war.
What Syncretism Might Mean in the Context of the Theory of Early Israelite Sui Generis Monotheism
2 Synthesis and
Syncretism – Israel’s Response to Canaanite Culture
Since
the Israelites had little experience in governing and lacked a higher culture,
in a literary and artistic sense, they borrowed.
The
united Israelite kingdom under Solomon borrowed its administrative system[67] and the Wisdom
tradition of education administrators from the Egyptians. A “smoking gun” is found in the biblical Book
of Proverbs which probably started out as a Wisdom textbook for trainee scribes
and young Judean gentlemen. Proverbs
22:17-24:22 “…is modeled on an Egyptian work, The Instructions of
Amen-em-ope. This may have been composed
as early as the thirteenth century B.C., but was still being copied centuries
later and may well have been studied during his training by an Israelite scribe
of the prophetic period.”[68]
The
Israelites appropriated their literary and artistic higher culture from the
Canaanites (see below). The channel was either the scribes, architects
and artists of local cities such as Jerusalem, whose Jebusite-Canaanite
population remained in the city after it became the Israelite capital, or from
the Phoenician cities of present-day Lebanon whose Canaanite culture flourished
unbroken from the Middle Bronze age until Hellenistic times.
The
adoption of the Egyptian administrative system, and its cultural values, may
have led to greater stratification in Israelite society, a deliberate
distancing of the rulers from the ruled, the splitting of the kingdom after the
death of Solomon and exacerbated the social problems denounced by some of the
prophets. However, some of these
processes were simply intrinsic to the institutionalization of a state.
The
cultural interaction with the Canaanites was even more problematic. For one thing, the Israelites lived
cheek-by-jowl with the Canaanites for centuries. They spoke the same language and, indeed,
much of the Israelite population may have been Canaanite by origin. Overall, there were two broad approaches to
the absorption of elements of Canaanite religion-related culture:
2.1 Harmless
Borrowing - Synthesis
I
am defining synthesis as being an attempted union or reconciliation of
diverse, but ultimately reconcilable tenets, institutions or practices producing
a religion or culture that is viable.
Ø
Canaanite language i.e. Hebrew would have replaced their
earlier West Semitic language;
Ø
Accepting Canaanite cultic nomenclature – e.g. words
for priest, the sacrifices;
Ø
Acceptance of agricultural festivals e.g. hag
hamatsot, shavuot, sukkot. These
were later historicized i.e. became edot i.e. memorials to important
historic experiences of Israel.
2.2 More Substantial
Borrowing Eventually Absorbed into Israelite Normative Tradition – Synthesis
Ø Literary Tradition – The psalms and other biblical poetry are clearly in
the fully developed literary tradition of Bronze Age Canaan as we know it from Ugaritic literature. These ancient techniques include chiasmus, alternating tense forms,
fixed word pairs in parallel constructions, imagery etc.
The
Israelites borrowed literary images from the Canaanite tradition. Two examples are:
v
The Canaanites, at times, referred to Baal, the
weather god, as Rider of Clouds.
This term was used in Psalm 68:5 as a poetic image for God. However,
this did not imply attributing to God the nature of Baal. To the Canaanite Baal was a timeless weather
god annually fighting with the
forces of chaos and death (the god Mot) which threaten him and the world. However, for the Israelites, YHWH, totally
and effortlessly, controlled the weather and everything else without rival or opposition. God transcends natural phenomena;
is above and outside of nature.
The Israelite God acts in linear time rather than being in an endless succession
of seasons.
v
The use in Hebrew poetry of the assembly of God is
clearly descended from the assembly
of the gods in Ugaritic literature.
A clear example is:
“God
has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds
judgment” Psalm 82:1
The accepting of the
Canaanite literary tradition and poetic images paved the way for Israelites to
accept El rituals, places of worship and hymns.
I
am defining syncretism as being an attempted union or reconciliation of
diverse, ultimately irreconcilable tenets, institutions or practices producing
a religion or culture that is "artificial", "synthetic" or
derivative rather than one which is sui generis. Such religions are usually doomed by the
ultimate irreconcilability of their constituents.
Ø Identifying YHWH with El the Canaanite High God El. El was formally, though not actively, head of the
Canaanite pantheon. In the story of Abram and Melchizedek (Gen.
14:18-20), the approval of the biblical author or editor, makes it quite clear
that Melchizedek’s El Elyon is to be equated with Abram’s God. Some of the El titles in the Torah are known
to have been used by the Canaanites, while many of the rest probably were
though we do not have the records to prove it. El titles include – 'El Bet' el
(Gen. 31:13; 35:7); 'El 'Olam (Gen. 21:33); and 'El Ro'i (Gen. 16:13); 'El
'Elyon (Gen. 14:18); and 'El Saddai (Gen. 17:1) -- as titles for YHWH.
The identification of El with YHWH enabled the early Israelites to take over
High Places (Hebrew bamah; plural bamot) dedicated to El=YHWH probably together with their
traditional etiological legends and myths, cultic personnel and aspects of
their ritual. Obviously, in the end, these elements were
successfully accepted into the Torah.
However, this could, and probably often did, lead to syncretism (see
below)
Ø
Adopting Canaanite Bamot.
This could, and
probably often did, lead to syncretism (see below). However, in the transition from seeing YHWH
as a tribal god for a wandering people, to a god for a settled peasant
population, occupying the land that God had given them as part of the brit,
it would have been necessary to establish fixed shrines. Undoubtedly, Jerusalem started out as a
Jebusite bama.
2.4 True Syncretism
Ø Worship in every type of shrine,
including the royal shrines at Jerusalem, Beth-El and Dan (see for Jerusalem
- 2 Kings 23:4-7; Bethel and Dan - 1 Kings 12:26-33; Beth-El - Hosea 10:15,
Amos 7:12-13), of Canaanite fertility gods, especially Baal (e.g. Judges,
chapter 6:25 ff.), with or without worship of his consort Asherah (1 Kings
15:13; 2 Kings 21:7, 23:4) supplementary to the worship of YHWH. This could be a division of labor with YHWH
continuing to be worshiped as the national god and god of war, Baal as the
giver of fertility to the crops and Asherah-Ashtart as the giver of fertility
to women. This is similar to the Canaanite pantheon where El was the
creator god, Baal the bringer of fertility to the land and Baal's consort
(variously Anat, Asherah or Ashtart) was Virgin, yet Progenitor of People[69].
Ø Worship of the national god YHWH but attributing to him
sexuality and pairing him with a consort (Asherah who was El’s consort at
Ugarit). This may have been widespread, including in the Jerusalem temple
(2 Kings 23:4-7). We have interesting knowledge of this type of syncretism from
the inscriptions of Kuntilet Ajrud [70];and
the letters found in Elephantine (525-400 BCE)[71];
Ø
Worship,
probably child sacrifice to Molech –
“And he (king Josiah) defiled To'pheth, which is in
the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his
daughter as an offering to Molech.” 2
Kings 23:10
“This city has aroused my anger and wrath, from the
day it was built to this day, so that I will remove it from my sight … They
built the high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up
their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it
enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to
sin.” Jeremiah 32:31, 35
Ø
Of
popular beliefs and private worship we have very little knowledge.
However, the numerous figurines of pregnant women found in every pre-Exilic
Israelite site probably represent Ashtart (Ashtoreth in the Hebrew Bible) or
Asherah[72] In addition, the Bible makes repeated
reference to terephim which were statues or figurines representing household
gods (Genesis 31:19; Judges 17:5, 18:4-20; 1 Samuel 15:23, 19:13-16; 2 Kings
23:23; Ezekiel 21:21; Zechariah 10:2). A recent, brief, but good treatment of
this subject is found in What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When
Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient
Israel by William G.
Dever 2001 pp. 173-174, 180, 194-198, 270.
Canaanite Religion Compared to Israelite Religion (as reflected in the
Torah)
Syncretism would be the Bridging of the Distinctions Between the two Columns
|
Canaanite Religion |
Israelite Religion as Reflected in the Torah |
|
Many gods but the pattern in Iron Age Phoenicia, and
probably in the territories of Israel and Judah, “… was composed of a triad
of deities: a protective god of the city, a goddess, often his wife or
companion who symbolizes the fertile earth; and a young god somehow connected
with the goddess (usually her son), whose resurrection expresses the annual
cycle of vegetation”[73] |
Only YHWH
may be worshiped by Israel and he is unique and without rival. Other gods may exist but they cannot be
compared with YHWH. |
|
Images |
No images, massavahs
(pillars) or asheras (sacred poles) |
|
Many local
shrines, ritual, organized priesthood, nature festivals |
Before
settlement earthen alters at encampments.
|
|
Priesthood
probably hereditary[74] |
Priesthood hereditary
by time of the Torah but earlier sacrificial functions carried out by family
or clan heads. |
|
Ugarit - El
creates and procreates sexually. For Iron Age Phoenicia see |
YHWH is creator
of everything and has complete control.
He is the god of war. |
|
Ugarit -
Baal controls the weather and hence fertility of land. Baal and consort are deities of fertility,
sex and war. For
Iron Age Phoenicia see |
|
|
Pattern is
cycle of nature[75]. |
God acts and
the people live in meaningful history with direction. Covenant is part of this |
|
Destruction
on earth is due to conflict between the gods i.e. Baal and consort vs. gods
of death, chaos and the sea. |
Destruction
due to human sin. |
|
Child
sacrifices and cult prostitution. |
Forbidden |
1. Ugaritic Canaanite Religion
Aharoni,
Y and Avi-Yonah, M, The Macmillan Bible Atlas, third edition revised by A F Rainey
and Z Safrai, MacMillan 1993
Athanassiadi,
Polymnia and Frede, Michael editors, Pagan monotheism in late
antiquity, Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press,
1999.
Cassuto,
U.,The goddess Anath; Canaanite epics of the patriarchal age. Texts,
Hebrew translation, commentary and
introd. by . Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. Jerusalem : Magnes
Press, Hebrew University, [1971]
Herrick,
Greg, Baalism in Canaanite Religion and Its Relation to Selected Old
Testament Texts
Oldenburg, Ulf, The conflict between El and Ba'al in Canaanite religion,
Leiden : E. J. Brill, 1969.
Pfeiffer,
Charles F, Ras Shamra and the Bible, Baker Studies in Biblical
Archaeology, Baker Book House, 1962
Smith,
Mark S. ed. The Ugaritic Baal cycle, Leiden ; New York : E.J. Brill,
1994-
http://www.bible.org/docs/ot/topics/baal.htm
Canaanite/Ugaritic
Mythology FAQ, ver. 1.2
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze33gpz/canaanite-faq.html
Canaanite/Ugaritic
Mythology FAQ, ver. 1.1
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mythology/canaanite-faq/
Phoenician
Religion -- Pagan
http://phoenicia.org/pagan.html#anchor87202
2. Ugaritic Literature in Relation to the Hebrew Bible
Albright,
William Foxwell, Yahweh and the gods of Canaan; a historical analysis of two
contrasting faiths. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1968.
Avishur,
Yitzhak, Studies in Hebrew and Ugaritic psalms; [translated from the
Hebrew] Magnes Press, Hebrew University, c1994.
Bronner,
Leah, The stories of Elijah and Elisha as polemics against baal worship,
Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1968.
Craigie,
Peter C., Ugarit and the Old Testament, Grand Rapids : Eerdmans, c1983.
Cross, Frank Moore, Canaanite myth and Hebrew epic; essays in
the history of the religion of Israel, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University
Press, 1973.
Cross,
Frank Moore, From epic to canon : history and literature in ancient Israel,
Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University press, c1998.
Day,
John, Yahweh and the gods and goddesses of Canaan, Sheffield Academic
Press, 2000.
Fisher,
Loren R. Fisher, editor, Ras Shamra parallels : The texts from Ugarit and
the Hebrew Bible. Pontificium institutum biblicum, 1972-
Lewis,
Theodore J, Cults of the dead in ancient Israel and Ugarit, Scholars
Press, c1989.
Smith,
Mark S, Untold stories: the Bible and Ugaritic studies in the
twentieth century ,Hendrickson Publishers, 2001.
3. Early Israelite Religion
HEBREW
HENOTHEISM
http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/henotheism.htm
Albertz, Rainer, A history of Israelite religion in the Old
Testament period [translated by John Bowden], Louisville, Ky. :
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994-
Assmann,
Jan, Moses the Egyptian : the memory of Egypt in western monotheism,
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1997.
Bright,
J, A History of Israel, 2nd edition, Westminster, 1972
Cohen
and Troeltsch : ethical monotheistic religion and theory of culture / by
Wendell S. Dietrich, Scholars Press,
c1986.
Cornfeld,
Gaaiyah. Archaeology of the Bible: Book by Book, Adam & Charles
Black, 1977
Dever, William
G., What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did
They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel,
Eerdmans, 2001
Edelman, Diana Vikander (ed.), The
triumph of Elohim : from Yahwisms to Judaisms, Kampen : Pharos, 1995
Finkelstein, I. and Na’aman, N., From
nomadism to monarchy : archaeological and historical aspects of early Israel, Jerusalem
: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi : Israel Exploration Society ; Washington : Biblical
Archaeology Society, c1994.
Friedman,
Richard Elliott, Who Wrote the Bible, Harper & Row, 1987
Fohrer,
Georg, History of Israelite religion, translated by David E. Green,
Nashville, Abingdon Press [1972]
Gnuse, Robert Karl, No other gods : emergent monotheism in Israel,
Sheffield, Eng. : Sheffield Academic Press, c1997.
Hadley, J. M., The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah,
Cambridge University Press 2000
Hayes,
J H and Miller, J M, Israelite and Judaean History, Westminster 1977
Hess,
Richard S., Early Israel in Canaan:
A Survey of Recent Evidence and Interpretations, originally published
in Palestinian Exploration Quarterly 125 (1993) 125-42.
Kaufmann, Yehezkel, Uniform
title Toldot ha-emunah ha-Yisre'elit. English Title The religion of Israel,
from its beginnings to the Babylonian exile. Translated and abridged by
Moshe Greenberg, [Chicago] University of Chicago Press [1960]
King, P. J. and Stager, L. E., Life in Biblical Israel,
Westminster 2001
Nakhai B. A., Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan
and Israel, ASOR 2001
Noth,
M, The History of Israel, 2nd edition, A&C Black, 1960
Schmidt,
Werner H, The faith of the Old Testament : a history, translated by John Sturdy, Philadelphia :
Westminster Press, c1983
Shanks,
H, The Biblical Minimalists: Expurging
Ancient Israel’s Past in Bible Review vol. XIII no. 3 June 1997.
Smith, Mark S, and Miller, Patrick D, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel , San Francisco : Harper & Row, 1990.
Smith,
Mark S., The origins of biblical monotheism : Israel's polytheistic
background and the Ugaritic texts, New York : Oxford University Press, 2001
Stern,
E., Archaeology of the Land of the Bible Volume II: The Assyrian, Babylonian
and Persian Periods 732-332 BCE, Doubleday
2001
Soggin,
J A, A History of Ancient Israel, Westminster, 1984
Vaux, R de, The History of Early Israel, Westminster,
1978
Weber,
Max, Ancient Judaism; translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and Don
Martindale, Free Press ; London : Collier-Macmillan, [1967]
Vriezen,
Theodorus Christiaan, The religion of ancient Israel, Lutterworth Press
[1969, c1967]
Zevit,
Ziony, The religions of ancient Israel : a synthesis of parallactic approaches,
London ; New York : Continuum, 2001.
[1] Torah
refers to Genesis-Deuteronomy also called the Five Books of Moses and, in
Hebrew Humash/Chumash. For the history
of the development of the Torah and the Deuteronomic Reform see Friedman,
Richard Elliott, Who Wrote the Bible, Harper & Row, 1987
[3] Stern, E., Archaeology
of the Land of the Bible Volume II: The Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian
Periods 732-332 BCE, Doubleday 2001 p.
75
[4] This sort of
generalization must be used with caution see Gnuse, Robert Karl, No other gods
: emergent monotheism in Israel, Sheffield, Eng. : Sheffield Academic Press,
c1997. p. 229
[5]
See The Biblical Minimalists: Expurging Ancient Israel’s Past by H.
Shanks in Bible Review vol. XIII no. 3 June 1997; Mattanyah Zohar’s letter to
the editor of the Biblical Archaeological Review, entitled The Real Basis for
the Exodus that appeared in vol. XIV no.
2 March/April 1988 pp. 13 and 58.
[6] See: What Did the
Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us
about the Reality of Ancient Israel by William G. Dever 2001; The Biblical
Minimalists: Expurging Ancient Israel’s Past by H. Shanks in Bible Review vol.
XIII no. 3 June 1997; Mattanyah Zohar’s letter to the editor of the Biblical
Archaeological Review, entitled The Real Basis for the Exodus that appeared in vol. XIV no. 2 March/april
1988 pp. 13 and 58.
[8] In Edelman, Diana
Vikander (ed.), The triumph of Elohim : from Yahwisms to Judaisms, Kampen :
Pharos, 1995
[9] The best example of the biblical
historical tradition is the Deuteronomic History (Deuteronomy- 2 Kings). This is not history, as we would understand
it, and was not meant to be. Rather it
was salvation-history designed to illustrate a paradigm (when Israel obeyed the
Torah it prospered and visa versa). What
did not fit was dropped or changed to fit the paradigm. It is very instructive to examine, in 1 and 2
Chronicles how Samuel and Kings are adapted to a modified paradigm in the late
fifth or early fourth centuries BCE.
[10] See What Did the
Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us
about the Reality of Ancient Israel by William G. Dever 2001; The Biblical
Minimalists: Expurging Ancient Israel’s Past by H. Shanks in Bible Review vol.
XIII no. 3 June 1997.
[11] “The structure of the Book of Judges is primitive by
modern literary standards; blocks of successive editorial remodeling are piled
around the edges of the nuclear stories. The result is that old Israel’s
narrative art survives in its purest form in the Book of Judges, where
theological updating across the centuries was confined almost exclusively to
the connectives between the units; rarely did it invade their essential
contents.” P. 29 Anchor Bible Judges by R. Boling, Doubleday 1975
[13] Smith 1990 p. xxxi
[15] From the article The
New Sumerian Dictionary by
William McPherson in the Biblical Archaeology Review Sept./Oct. 1984 (vol. X no. 5) which was
reprinted from the Washington Post.
[16] http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/
[18] Fohrer suggests Midian
p. 71; “The only conclusion to which we can come, then, is that it is possible,
and even probable that the divine name YHWH existed outside Israel before
Moses… but we have no certain evidence of this. Vaux, R de, The History of
Early Israel, Westminster, 1978 p. 343; “…, from the beginning of her history
in that land Israel worshiped Yahweh. On
the other hand, before that time there is no trace of Yahwism either in
Palestine or anywhere else, nor has the divine name “Yahweh” demonstrably been
discovered in texts of an earlier period.” Bright, J, A History of Israel, 2nd
edition, Westminster, 1972 p 123
[19] A good and extensive
review of current and past theories of Israel’s origin is presented in Gnuse,
Robert Karl, No other gods : emergent monotheism in Israel, Sheffield, Eng. : Sheffield
Academic Press, c1997 chapter 1 New Understandings of the Israelite Settlement
Process (pp. 23-61).
[20] See Hayes and Miller p. 264 ff.
[21] See Hayes and Miller p. 266 ff
[22] “Earlier in this century Alt (1989)
proposed a new interpretation of the evidence. He suggested that Israel’s
origin is to be found in wandering semi-nomadic clans who peacefully entered
the [[127]] land and settled in the hilly country which was unoccupied. Brought
together into a loosely knit association by a group of Yahweh worshippers from
the desert, and perhaps ultimately from Egypt, this group populated the hill
country and eventually grew strong enough to band together and to gain
dominance in the rest of the land, during the period of the Monarchy” from
Early Israel in Canaan:A Survey of Recent Evidence and Interpretations by
RICHARD S. HESS
[23] See Hayes and
Miller p. 277 ff. and Early Israel in Canaan A Survey of Recent Evidence and
interpretations by Richard S. Hess “Various theories of the social sciences
have attempted to come to terms with the archaeological, biblical, and
historical data. A significant representative of these theories is that which
posits a peasant revolt which took place against the oppressive Canaanite
aristocracy which maintained its cities at the cost of sizeable expenditures
for defense in the forms of city walls, large buildings, and weapons, and for
paying tribute to Pharaoh, who was maintaining an empire in this land. Such
expenditures would come from the labor of the lower classes who may have been
gradually dispossessed and turned into serfs and then into virtual slaves.
Whether the revolt was a more dramatic
assault on the upper classes (Gottwald 1979), or whether it simply involved the
gradual movement of individuals and groups of dissatisfied people into the
hills (Mendenhall 1983, who emphatically denies the peasant revolt hypothesis),
there was a change and it brought about a change in living. In the hill
country, where the chariots and other weapons of the city-state armies could
not reach (Josh 17:14-18), it was possible to have simpler defenses and to live
in smaller communities without costly walls, palaces, and other large
buildings. The impression created in the excavation of these villages is one of
an egalitarian society, certainly more so than one finds in the socially
stratified larger towns located in the lowlands…. However, the reasons for the
evidence of the society as egalitarian may be due as much to the scarcity of
food and natural resources as to any ideology.
[24] “For Gottwald…this will
be a conversion in the more or less modern sense of the term: the rebel rural
masses will have accepted belief in YHWH, the liberator God brought to them by
groups coming out of the eastern desert” Soggin, J A, A History of Ancient
Israel, Westminster, 1984 p. 105
[25] see Searching for Israelite Origins by
I. Finkelstein, Biblical Archaeology Review vol. XIV no. 5 Sept./Oct. 1988 p.
34 ff. and the review article of
Finkelstein’s book The Archaeology of Israelite Settlement on p. 6. ff.
of the same issue.
[27] Smith 1990 P. xxx
[28] “Albert Lang… and
others propose a model of successive revolutions in an evolutionary process,
and this is an excellent paradigm in which to discuss the biblical tradition.”
Gnuse, Robert Karl, No other gods : emergent monotheism in Israel, Sheffield,
Eng. : Sheffield Academic Press, c1997. p. 142
[29] A good and extensive review of current
and past theories of Israel’s religious development origin is presented in
Gnuse, Robert Karl, No other gods : emergent monotheism in Israel, Sheffield,
Eng. : Sheffield Academic Press, c1997chapter 2 Recent Scholarship on the
Development of Monotheism in Ancient Israel (pp. 62-128).
[30] Stern, E., Archaeology
of the Land of the Bible Volume II: The Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian
Periods 732-332 BCE, Doubleday 2001 p.
75
[31] See Cross, Canaanite myth and Hebrew
epic p. 43 “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 the league with kinship or covenant ties.”
[32] “…El, (was) the ancestral deity of the
Semites. (“El” appears also (in Arabia)
under the augmentative form “Ilah,” who’s plural of majesty is the Hebrew “Elohim”)….
The names ending in ‘ēl and in ‘ilah are more numerous in the various proto-Arabic dialects
than those in honor of any other deity.
Taken as a whole, they are to be considered as survivals, for it has
been proved that they were preponderant in ancient Akkadian and in
proto-Aramaic. Since the word ‘ēl corresponds to the word god, it has
been rightly concluded that the proto-Semites invoked only El. In fact, if the word god had applied to
various deities, the personal names in ‘ēl would have had an equivocal
meaning. It is legitimate to translate
El as god but this practical monotheism does not imply a clear awareness that
the gods adored by neighbouring peoples did not exist.” New Catholic
Encyclopedia 2nd edition, Detroit: Thomson/Gale in association with
the Catholic University of America, c2003. volume 1 pp. 613-620
[33] see Maimonides’ 13 Principles of Faith
“… we believe that the entire Torah which is found in our hands today is the
Torah which was given through Moses, and that it is all of divine origin. This means that it all reached him from God
in a manner that we metaphorically call “speech”. The exact quality of that communication is
only known to Moses … to whom it came, and that he acted as a scribe to whom
one dictates….” Maimonides’ Commentary
on the Mishnah Tractate Sanhedrin trans. Fred Rosner 1981, p. 155. The Muslim view of the Koran is very similar.
[34] From Rabbi Norman Lamm in The Condition of Jewish Belief
“I believe the Torah is divine revelation in two ways: in
that it is God-given and in that it is godly. By "God-given," I mean
that He willed that man abide by his commandments and that will was
communicated in discrete words and letters. Man apprehends in many ways: by
intuition, inspiration, experience, deduction and by direct instruction. The
divine will, if it is to be made known, is sufficiently important for it to be
revealed in as direct, unequivocal, and unambiguous a manner as possible, so
that it will be understood by the largest number of the people to whom this will
is addressed. Language, though so faulty an instrument, is still the best means
of communication to most human beings.
“Hence, I accept unapologetically the idea of the verbal
revelation of the Torah. I do not take seriously the caricature of this idea
which reduces Moses to a secretary taking dictation. Any competing notion of
revelation, such as the various "inspiration" theories, can similarly
be made to sound absurd by anthropomorphic parallels. Exactly how this
communication took place no one can say; it is no less mysterious than the
nature of the One who spoke. The divine-human encounter is not a meeting of
equals, and the herygma that ensures from this event must therefore be
articulated in human terms without reflecting on the mode and form of the
divine logos. How God spoke is a mystery; how Moses received this message is an
irrelevancy. That God spoke is of the utmost significance, and what he said
must therefore be intelligible to humans in a human context, even if one
insists upon an endlessly profound mystical overplus of meaning in the text. To
deny that God can make his will clearly known is to impose upon Him a
limitation of dumbness that would insult the least of His human creatures.
“Literary criticism of the Bible is a problem, but not a
crucial one. Judaism has successfully met greater challenges in the past.
Higher Criticism is far indeed from an exact science. The startling lack of
agreement among scholars on any one critical view; the radical changes in
general orientation in more recent years; the many revisions that archaeology
has forced upon literary critics; and the unfortunate neglect even by Bible
scholars of much first-rate scholarship in modern Hebrew supporting the
traditional claim of Mosaic authorship — all these reduce the question of
Higher Criticism from the massive proportions it has often assumed to a
relatively minor and manageable problem that is chiefly a nuisance but not a
threat to the enlightened believer.
“Torah is not only God-given; it is also godly. The divine
word is not only uttered by God, it is also an aspect of God Himself. All of
the Torah — its ideas, its laws, its narratives, its inspirations for the human
community — lives and breathes godliness. Hillel Zeitlin described the Hasidic
interpretation of revelation (actually it was even more true of their
opponents, the Misnagdim, and ultimately derived from a common Kabbalistic
source) as not only Torah min ha- shameyim (Torah from Heaven) but Torah she-hi
shemayim (Torah that is Heaven). It is in Torah that God is most immediately
immanent and accessible, and the study of Torah is therefore not only a
religious commandment per se, but the most exquisite and the most
characteristically Jewish form of religious experience and communion. For the
same reason, Torah is not only legislation, halakha, but in its broadest
meaning, Torah — teaching, a term that includes the full spectrum of spiritual
edification: theological and ethical, mystical and rhapsodic.
“Given the above, it is clear that I regard all of the Torah
as binding on the Jew. To submit the mitzvot to any extraneous test — whether
rational or ethical or nationalistic — is to reject the supremacy of God, and
hence in effect to deny Him as God.
The classification of the mitzvot into rational and revelational,
or ethical and ritual, has descriptive-methodological but not substantive
religious significance. Saadia Gaon, who a thousand years ago proposed the
dichotomy between rational and
nonrational commandments as the cornerstone of his
philosophy of law, maintained that even the apparently pure revelational laws
were fundamentally rational, although man might not, now or ever, be able to
grasp their inner rationality. At the same time, far greater and more genuine
spirituality inheres in the acceptance of those laws that apparently lack
ethical, rational, or doctrinal content. It is only these performances,
according to R. Hai Gaon, that are prefaced by the blessing, "Blessed art
Thou... who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to
..." Holiness, the supreme religious category, contains an essential
nonrational core; and this state of the "numinous" can be attained
only when man bows his head and submits the totality of his existence to the
will of God by performing His mitzvah for no reason other than that this is the
will of the Creator. R. Nachman of Bratzlav recommended to his followers that
they observe the "ethical" laws as thought they were
"ritual" commandments. In this manner, the ethical performance is
transformed from a pale humanistic act into a profound spiritual gesture. I do
not, therefore, by any means accord to ceremonial laws any lesser status than
the others. On the contrary, while confident that these mitzvot shimiyot are
more than divine whim in that they are ultimately of benefit to man and
society, I prefer to accept even the sikhliyot, the rational and ethical, as
"ritual" in an effort to attain holiness, the ultimate desideratum of
religious life.”
[35] In his autobiography Helping With Inquiries, Louis Jacobs
recounts “He (Dayan Grunfeld) tried to convince us that the problems raided by
Biblical Criticism could be solved on the basis of the Kantian distinction
between the phenomena and the noumena, i.e. that Biblical
Criticism operated on the level of that which is perceived and could not
therefore, be applied to the torah which was not a human production but a
divine communication. I pointed out that
if this distinction makes any sense when applied to the Torah, it would follow
that no one has ever understood or can understand the torah, hardly a position
a devout Jew can hold.
[36] see Sacred Fragments: Recovering
Theology for the Modern Jew by Neil Gillman
[37] Maimonides recognized this “For a sudden
transition from one opposite to another is impossible…. And as at that time the
way of life generally accepted and customary in the whole world… consisted in
offering various species of living things in the temples in which images were
set up, in worshiping the latter, and in burning incense before them …His wisdom
… did not require that He give us a Law prescribing the rejection, abandonment,
and abolition of all these kinds of worship. Therefore He … suffered the
above-mentioned kinds of worship to remain, but transferred them from created
or imaginary and unreal things to His own name… He (thus) commanded us to build
a temple for Him …. Through this divine ruse it came about that the memory of
idolatry was effaced and that the grandest and true foundation of our belief –
namely, the existence and oneness of the deity - was firmly established, while
at the same time the souls had no feeling of repugnance … because of the
abolition of modes of worship to which they were accustomed….” Moses Maimonides The Guide of the Perplexed
trans. S. Pines 1963 vol. 2 Pp. 526-527
[38]
See King
pp. 4-5 and 36-38. Although many stories in the Bible (e.g. Samson, Levite's
Concubine) show that the nuclear family was important, there curiously is no
word for the concept in Biblical Hebrew. The family hierarchy was -
1.
individual
2.
nuclear family - father has main authority
3.
extended family bet
av in Hebrew
4.
clan mishpaHa
in Hebrew
5.
tribe
6.
in pre-monarchal times `am Yahweh translated as the 'kindred of Yahwe' (see below) i.e.
Israel as a whole. Later this role was taken by the king.
7.
God
From the Bible it is
difficult to determine:
· how the bet av functioned. However, we
can assume that it did so and was probably the most important unit in Israelite
society; and,
· whether the tribe and/or clan were really effective decision
making and action taking units and, if so, how decisions were made.
Perhaps it varied by situation, time and place. In particular, the tribe
might have disappeared, or lost its effectiveness, under the monarchies.
[39]
see Cross, Canaanite myth and Hebrew epic pp. 39-43.
[41] In God as Divine Kinsman: What Covenant Meant in Ancient Israel, (In Biblical Archaeology Review vol. 25 no. 4
July/August 1999). Frank Moore Cross is quoted as writing -
"The social
organization of West Semitic tribal groups was grounded in kinship..(which)
defined the rights and obligations, the duties, status, and privileges of tribal
members.... In the religious sphere, the intimate relationship with the family
god, the 'God of the Fathers,' was expressed in the only language available to
members of a tribal society. Their god was the Divine Kinsman...
"The Divine Kinsman
fulfills the mutual obligations and receives the privileges of kinship.
He leads in battle, redeems from slavery, loves his family, shares the land of
his heritage (naHalah) provides
and protects. He blesses those who bless his kindred and curses those who
curse his kindred [see Genesis 12:3]. The family of the deity rallies to
his call to holy war, 'the wars of Yahweh,' keeps his cultus, obeys his
patriarchal commands, maintains family loyalty (Hesed), loves him with all their soul, calls on his name…
"Early
Israel was a somewhat fragile tribal league, or confederation. This
league, says Cross was 'a kinship organizations, a covenant of families and
tribes organized by the creation or identification of a common ancestor and
related by segmented genealogies.' it was also a religious
organization. The league was called the `am Yahweh (see Judges 5:11; 1
Samuel 2:24; 2 Samuel 1:12 et al.). This phrase is usually translated
'people of Yahwe,' but it would be more accurately translated 'kindred of Yahwe.'
According to Cross, 'Yahwe is the god of Israel, the divine Kinsman, the
god of the covenant.' Each has obligations to the other"
[43] quote from A CULTURAL
HISTORY OF THE JEWS Tzvi Howard Adelman,
at
http://www.jajz-ed.org.il/juice/history1/week1.html
“Kaufmann is important because almost every study of the Bible which originated
in Israel refers back in some way to his views. For similar reasons Wellhausen
continues to live not only in Kaufmann's critique,
but
in reactions to Kaufmann. Kaufmann's views of the Bible are constructed around two
basic assumptions: 1) Rather than being late, the P source was early, perhaps
from the eighth century BCE. This means that the nationalistic and cultic
elements that Wellhausen saw as signs of degeneracy Kaufmann saw as original
aspects of the religion of Israel. Thus the religion of the Torah rather than
being a product of late post-exilic events after
the
first Temple was destroyed in the year 586 BCE reflects the original quality of
Hebrew monotheism. 2) Monotheism, therefore, was not a gradual development for
the Hebrews but an entirely new innovation. He took this view to the extreme by
asserting that nowhere in the Bible is there a trace of mythological elements,
of battles between primordial forces, or the birth and death of competing Gods.
Among the Hebrews this battle was waged and won before the compilation of the
Bible. Israelite monotheism began with
Moses and the conquest of the Land of Israel was done for religious-to
eliminate backsliding to the ways of the other nations-- and not national
purposes. While at times Kaufmann criticized biblical criticism for atomizing
the grandeur of the texts, he, nevertheless, accepts it with his own
modifications.”
[44] In his magisterial work The religion of Israel, from its beginnings to the Babylonian
exile he wrote –
“Biblical
scholars, and the historians of antiquity in general, tend to interpret
Israelite religion as an organic outgrowth of the ancient Orient. Some scholars
discover the origin of biblical faith in monotheistic tendencies of the
religion of the ancient Near East, others point our pagan elements in the
religion of Israel. All assume that an
organic connection exists, that even the unique elements of Israelite faith
must be understood in the light of the surrounding religions…. Israel’s
monotheism was, in this view, not a popular creation, but the doctrine of a
priestly or prophetic elite…. On the popular level, then, there was no
essential difference between the pre-exilic Israelite and the pagan; both were
children of the same culture
“This
view is here rejected in toto. We shall see that Israelite religion was an
original creation of the people of Israel…. Its monotheistic world view had no
antecedents in paganism. Nor was its theological doctrine conceived and nurtured
in limited circles…. It was the fundamental idea of a national culture, and
informed every aspect of that culture from the very beginning. It received, of course, a legacy from the
pagan age which preceded it, but the birth of Israelite religion was the death
of paganism in Israel. Despite
appearances, Israel was not a polytheistic people…. Israel’s world was its own
creation, notwithstanding its utilization of ancient pagan materials.”
In Kaufmann’s opinion the way of
thinking of Israelites, at all levels of the society, was so different from
paganism that they could not understand the meaning, and interior life, of
paganism. “… (the Bible’s) sole
polemical argument that idolatry is the senseless deification of wood and stone
images. We may, perhaps, say that the
bible sees in paganism only its lowest level, the level of mana-beliefs…. The
prophets ignore what we know to be authentic paganism. Their whole condemnation revolves around the
taunt of ism.”
[45] See e.g. Cross p. 241.
[47] See Bamberger’s comments
on Leviticus 17 in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, W G Plaut Union of American Hebrew
Congregations 1981 pp 872-74
[48] See Hayes, J H and Miller, J
M, Israelite and Judaean History, Westminster 1977 pp. 458-469; Albertz,
Rainer, A history of Israelite religion in the Old Testament period [translated
by John Bowden], Louisville, Ky. : Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994 p. 195 ff.
[49] See Hayes,
J H and Miller, J M, Israelite and Judaean History, Westminster 1977 pp.
442-444
[51] See The Babylonian Gap by
E. Stern in the November/December 2000 issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review
and the following two articles in the May/June 2002 issue: There Was No Gap by
J. Blenkinsopp; Yes There Was by E.
Stern.
[52] Fohrer p. 115 “At cultic sites sacrifices were
offered, which from this time (after the “conquest” but before the monarchy)
steadily increased in importance, the more so because, until the centralization
of the cult at Jerusalem introduced by the Deuteronomic reform, all animal
slaughter was sacrificial.”
[53] Local loyalties did continue for a few
generation. This is evident from the
insistence of returnees from Babylon on settling in their ancestral home.
[54] Torah
refers to Genesis-Deuteronomy also called the Five Books of Moses and, in
Hebrew Humash/Chumash. For the history
of the development of the Torah and the Deuteronomic Reform see Friedman,
Richard Elliott, Who Wrote the Bible, Harper & Row, 1987
[55] This is considered far too early by the
“Sheffield school” see Davies in Edelman p. 51-52
whereas Albertz places it about 500 BCE p. 466 ff.
[57] This is clear from the fact
that no one is ever recorded, in the historical books of the Hebrew Bible, as
looking in a book for divine guidance before the Deuteronomic Reform (c.
620-609 BCE).
[58] See Encyclopaedia Judaica vol.
3 col. 908 under heading Authority in deciding the halakhah for this in a
Jewish context.
[59] Compare this to Greece and
Rome where the priests conducted sacrificial auguries to determine practical
military and political questions
[60]
See volume 1 pp. 613-620 New Catholic Encyclopedia 2nd
edition, Detroit: Thomson/Gale in association with the Catholic University of
America, c2003.
[61] The following is taken from the New Encyclopedia
Britannica (1995), vol. 26 pp. 560-562
“God
in monotheism is conceived of as the creator of the world and man; he has not
abandoned his creation but continues to lead it through his power and wisdom;
hence, viewed in this aspect, history is a manifestation of the divine
will. God has not only created the
natural world and the order existing therein but also the ethical order to
which man ought to conform and, implicit in the ethical order, the social
order. Everything is in the hands of
God. God is holy ---- supreme and unique
in being and worth, essentially other than man…. The god of monotheism, as
exemplified by the great monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam --- is a personal god. In this
respect the one god of monotheism is contrasted with the conception of the divine
in pantheism (e.g. philosophical Hinduism) which may also affirm one god or a
divine unity. The god of pantheism,
however, is impersonal, rather like a divine fluid that permeates the whole
world including man himself….In monotheistic religions the belief system, the
value system, and the action system are all three determined…by the conception
of God as one unique and personal being.
Negatively considered, the monotheistic conviction results in the
rejection of all other belief systems as false religions, and this rejection
partly explains the exceptionally aggressive or intolerant stance of the
monotheistic religions in the history of the world. The conception of all other religions as
“idolatry” (i.e. as rendering absolute devotion or trust to what is less than
divine) has often served to justify the destructive and fanatical action of the
religion that is considered the only true one…. For exclusive monotheism only
one god exists; other gods either simply do not exist at all, or, at most, they
are false gods or demons; i.e., beings that are acknowledged to exist but that
cannot be compared in power or in any other way with the one and only true god.
This position is in the main that of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. While in the Old Testament the other gods, in
most cases, were still characterized as false gods, in later Judaism and in
Christianity…the conception emerged of God as the one and only, and other gods
were considered not to exist at all…. Inclusive monotheism accepts the
existence of a great number of gods but holds that all gods are essentially one
and the same, so that it makes little or no difference under which name or
according to which right a god or goddess is invoked. Such conceptions characterized the ancient
Hellenistic religions…. Henotheism …(is) a
belief in worship of one god though the existence of other gods is taken for
granted…. (In) pluriform monotheism… the various gods of the pantheon, without
losing their independence, are at the same time considered to be manifestations
of one and the same substance…. There may be some reason to speak of the Old
Testament conception of God as monolatry rather than monotheism, because the
existence of other gods is seldom explicitly denied and many times even
acknowledged…. In Israel the ethical aspects was as important as the
exclusiveness of their one God; the prophets stressed the ethical elements of
an essentially exclusive God. The God of
Israel was a jealous god who forbade his believers to worship other gods. In this respect he differed from other gods
in the ancient Near Eastern religions who, as a rule, did not put such
exclusive obligation on their adherents.”
[62] for El in Ancient Israel see pp. 252-253 of Harper’s
Bible Dictionary, P. J Achtemeir (ed.) Harper & Row 1985
[63] See Child Sacrifice at Carthage – Religious Rite or
Population Control? By L. E. Stager, S. R. Wolff Biblical Archaeological Review X:1, Jan./Feb.
1984
[64] Gnuse, Robert Karl, No
other gods : emergent monotheism in Israel, Sheffield, Eng. : Sheffield
Academic Press, c1997. p. 193
[65] Of course, the Sheffield school”, seeing
Israelite religion as a slowly differentiating variety of Canaanite religion
would see the issue differently.
[66] Some in Israel accepted that agriculture was not the
way of God but then rejected agriculture not God (see Jer. 35 re. the
Rechabites)
[67] See Solomonic State Officials by Tryggve N. D. Mettinger,
Gleerup 1971; Solomon’s New Men by E. W. Heaton, Pica Press
1974; and, p xxxiii Anchor Bible Proverbs and Ecclesiastes by R. B. Y. Scott,
Doubleday 1965.
[68] p xxxv Anchor Bible Proverbs and Ecclesiastes by R.
B. Y. Scott, Doubleday 1965.
[69] “The Phoenicians worshipped a triad of
deities, each having different names and attributes depending upon the city in
which they were worshipped, although their basic nature remained the same. The
primary god was El, protector of the universe, but often called Baal. The son,
Baal or Melqart, symbolized the annual cycle of vegetation and was associated
with the female deity Astarte in her role as the maternal goddess. She was
called Asherar-yam, our lady of the sea, and in Byblos she was Baalat, our dear
lady. Astarte was linked with mother goddesses of neighboring cultures, in her
role as combined heavenly mother and earth mother. Cult statues of Astarte in
many different forms were left as votive offerings in shrines and sanctuaries
as prayers for good harvest, for children, and for protection and tranquillity
in the home. The Phoenician triad was incorporated in varying degrees by their
neighbors and Baal and Astarte eventually took on the look of Greek deities.” http://phoenicia.org/pagan.html
[70] From (from Ha'aretz Magazine, Friday, October 29, 1999)
YHWH and his Consort
How many
gods,
exactly, did Israel have? Together with the historical and political aspects,
there are also doubts as to the credibility of the information about belief and
worship. The question about the date at which monotheism was adopted by the
kingdoms of Israel and Judea arose with the discovery of inscriptions in
ancient Hebrew that mention a pair of gods: YHWH and his Asherath. At two
sites, Kuntilet Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and
Khirbet el-Kom in the Judea piedmont, Hebrew inscriptions have been found that
mention 'YHWH and his Asherah', 'YHWH Shomron and his Asherah', 'YHWH Teman and
his Asherah'. The authors were familiar with a pair of gods, YHWH and his
consort Asherah, and send blessings in the couple's name. These inscriptions,
from the 8th century BCE, raise the possibility that monotheism, as a state
religion, is actually an innovation of the period of the Kingdom of Judea,
following the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel. Ze'ev Herzog.
[71] See Encyclopedia Judaica
vol. 6 col. 608. In their worship the main god was Yahu (=YHWH) with
Ashambethel and Anathbethel as accompanying goddesses. There were no remins of scriptures found at
the site which almost proves that these were “pre-Deuteronomic” Israelites
without a Torah.
[72] See pp.
188-205 in Hadley,
J. M., The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah, Cambridge University
Press 2000; p. 52 in Cornfeld, Gaaiyah. Archaeology of the Bible: Book
by Book, Adam & Charles Black, 1977; Understanding Asherah - Exploring
Semitic Iconography by Ruth Hestrin in Biblical Archaeology Review vol. XVII
no. 5 September-October 1991; King 348-352.
[73] Stern, E., Archaeology
of the Land of the Bible Volume II: The Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian
Periods 732-332 BCE, Doubleday 2001 p.
75
[74] “Phoenician priesthoods were hereditary,
like the Jerusalem priesthood, and they also habitually wore white, as the
Jerusalem priesthood did except for special occasions when a celestially
decorated garment was worn.” http://essenes.crosswinds.net/m91.htm
[75] This sort of
generalization must be used with caution see Gnuse, Robert Karl, No other gods
: emergent monotheism in Israel, Sheffield, Eng. : Sheffield Academic Press,
c1997. p. 229