Foreword<\/p>\n
The historical and literary questions preoccupying biblical scholars since the Enlightenment have focused primarily on events and leaders in ancient Israel, the practices and beliefs of Yahwistic religion, and the oral and written stages in the development of the people\u2019s literature. Considering how little was known about Israel, and indeed the whole ancient Near East, just three centuries ago, the gains achieved to date have been extraordinary, due in no small part to the unanticipated discovery by archaeologists of innumerable texts and artifacts.
\nRecent years have witnessed a new turn in biblical studies, occasioned largely by a growing lack of confidence in the \u201cassured results\u201d of past generations of scholars. At the same time, an increased openness to the methods and issues of other disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and literary criticism has allowed new questions to be posed regarding the old materials. Social history, a well-established area within the field of historical studies, has proved especially fruitful as a means of analyzing specific segments of the society. Instead of concentrating predominantly on national events, leading individuals, political institutions, and \u201chigh culture,\u201d social historians attend to broader and more basic issues such as social organization, conditions in cities and villages, life stages, environmental contexts, power distribution according to class and status, and social stability and instability. To inquire into such matters regarding ancient Israel shifts the focus away from those with power and the events they instigated and onto the everyday realities and social subtleties experienced by the vast majority of the population. Such exploration has now gained new force with the application of various forms of ideological criticism and other methods designed to ferret out the political, economic, and social interests concealed in the sources.
\nThis series represents a collaborative effort to investigate several specific topics\u2014societal structure, politics, economics, religion, literature, material culture, law, intellectual leadership, ethnic identity, social marginalization, the international context, and canon formation\u2014each in terms of its social dimensions and processes within ancient Israel. Some of these subjects have not been explored in depth until now; others are familiar areas currently in need of reexamination. While the sociohistorical approach provides the general perspective for most volumes of the series, each author has the latitude to determine the most appropriate means for dealing with the topic at hand. Individually and collectively, the volumes aim to expand our vision of the culture and society of ancient Israel and thereby generate new appreciation for its impact on subsequent history.
\nThe present volume by Patrick D. Miller covers the wide expanse of religious practices and expressions that have been rediscovered or reconstructed for ancient Israel from the early Iron Age to the latter part of the Second Temple period. Organized topically rather than historically, the discussion presents a discerning portrait of an extremely complex subject, one that has been sketched in part and in full by many previous scholars. Miller draws judiciously on available sources\u2014biblical texts, other literature from the region, inscriptions, artifacts, iconographic representations, comparative resources, as well as theoretical models. He remains sensitive to the limits of our knowledge with respect to dating and interpreting the evidence, but he does not refrain from making judgments as appropriate, acknowledging at the outset that he is presenting here not the ancient Israelite religion itself but a construct of that religion. He sets the social context for many of the details he describes, without attempting to press these details into an overall social history for which our evidence is often too sparse. Depicting the cultic practices and beliefs not as monolithic, orthodox entities but as variable and diverse forms allows for consideration of three basic religious types\u2014family religion, customs in villages and towns, and official state religion. Against this background, Miller proceeds to three specific topics for further analysis\u2014sacrifices and offerings, holiness and purity, and religious leadership and participation. The whole study conveys a deep appreciation for the complexities of Israel\u2019s religion, for the biblical renderings of religious thought and practices, and for their significance in subsequent traditions.
\nDouglas A. Knight
\nGeneral Editor<\/p>\n
Acknowledgments<\/p>\n
This book has taken longer from its inception to its completion than it should have. Along the way, I have benefited from the help and support of many persons and some institutions. First and foremost my thanks goes to Princeton Theological Seminary, its Board of Trustees and particularly its President, Thomas Gillespie, and its Dean, James Armstrong. Both of these persons value the scholarly work of their faculty and undergird it in every way. In my case, that has meant support of varying sorts\u2014personal interest, financial assistance, and released time for sabbaticals and leaves.
\nDuring two sabbaticals when parts of this book were being prepared or revised, the Association of Theological Schools provided grants to help fund the sabbatical time, in part through money provided by the Lilly Endowment. All of us in theological education are indebted to both of these institutions for their vigorous support of theological scholarship.
\nThe early drafts of the book were written during a sabbatical spent at Clare Hall in Cambridge, England. I want to express my gratitude to the then President of the College and his wife, Anthony and Belle Low, as well as to the fellows of the College for their invitation to be a Visiting Fellow and for the warm reception they extended to me and my wife, Mary Ann. A special word of thanks is owed to Elizabeth Ramsden of the staff of the College for her continuing friendship. Through the years she has been a key person in making Visiting Fellows and their families at ease and at home at Clare Hall.
\nThe final drafts of part of this book were written during a year\u2019s stay at the Center of Theological Inquiry. While this was not my main project during my time at the Center, it would not have been possible to complete the book by this time had the Center not provided both support and a congenial atmosphere for research and writing. I am indebted to the Director of the Center, Wallace M. Alston, and to Robert Jenson, Senior Scholar for Research. Under their leadership the Center has become a genuinely exciting \u201ccenter\u201d of theological discussion and inquiry.<\/p>\n
Numerous individuals have helped me along the way by providing materials for study. I hope I have identified them at the appropriate places. Walter Brueggemann and Gerald Janzen read parts of the manuscript and made many helpful suggestions. I am particularly indebted to three other persons. Douglas Knight, the editor of the series to which this book belongs, not only extended the invitation to write this volume but patiently waited for its completion, always providing encouraging words. Bryan Bibb has quietly, diligently, and with great efficiency served as my research assistant during the past year as I have completed the book. I am especially grateful for his care in preparing the final manuscript for the publisher. Finally, on quite short notice and with a limited amount of time, my student Christine Thomas took time away from other responsibilities to prepare the drawings for the book. I am grateful to all of these persons for their different contributions.<\/p>\n
Introduction<\/p>\n
PERSPECTIVE<\/p>\n
On its own terms, the religion of Iron Age Israel cannot help but interest, indeed fascinate, the student of the ancient world. In the midst of the much larger and equally fascinating empires of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt, the small nation of Israel found itself at a crossroads of political, economic, and cultural life in the Fertile Crescent. Unlike most of the other political entities of the same age, the extant literary remains are almost entirely focused on the religious dimension of Israel\u2019s life and history. While information about other aspects of life in ancient Israel can be extracted from those remains, they stand as a testimony first of all about the religion of that people.
\nWhen one then takes account of the continuing impact of these literary remains, particularly and primarily the Bible, and the dependence of major contemporary religious communities upon the literature of that ancient religion, comprehending the religious life and faith of the people of Israel becomes a matter of heightened significance. The enterprise of uncovering the religion of Israel has a paradoxical effect upon contemporary readers who belong to the religious communities that still read the texts as religious documents and not simply as an antiquarian library. On the one hand, there is a distancing from the biblical texts as one discovers that much of the practice that is either central or undergirds the faith and the beliefs represented there is quite foreign and strange, and often unrelated to the practice of the communities that hold to the Bible as a religiously significant document, for example, the practice of sacrifice. On the other hand, however, the interplay between practice and literature that is everywhere evident means that the literature is illumined by the knowledge of religious practice even as one discerns much of the practice from the literature. So the student of the Bible, whether for academic or religious purposes, is led more deeply into the text and its meaning as one learns of the religious practices and institutions that the text reflects.
\nThe pages that follow are an effort to comprehend and present the religion of this ancient people in behalf of a greater understanding of the \u201cthen\u201d\u2014an appropriate task in itself\u2014and toward an understanding of the \u201cthen\u201d in behalf of the \u201cnow.\u201d The word \u201ceffort\u201d is used intentionally as an important qualifier. There is much that we do not know, much that we cannot know, and much that we probably misunderstand. The possible and highly variable interpretations of many key texts informing us about the religious life of Israel mean that misunderstanding is built into the process. The only thing one can do is make judgments as carefully and judiciously as possible, often finding oneself forced to choose among legitimate but differing interpretations of the data and often having to acknowledge the impossibility of making any kind of final decision.
\nWhat is true for the literary remains is equally the case for artifactual and iconographic evidence that is available to the contemporary scholar and interpreter as a result of the extensive archaeological work of the last century and more. The stones are not utterly mute and certainly the pictorial remains convey a great deal. But in both instances, the interpretive task is as large or larger than it is for the written remains. They can illumine one another, and in this work I have sought to draw upon the artifactual and the iconographic as well as the literary. But in the final analysis, much of our judgment about the artifactual comes from what we know of the literature, both biblical and extrabiblical. The responsibility of the student of Israel\u2019s religion is not one of choosing or emphasizing one body of evidence over another but the intermixing of data from literary (and epigraphic), iconographic, and artifactual remains that are neither literary nor pictorial. All of the evidence is subject to varying interpretations. One has only to look at the discussion of the inscriptions that refer to \u201cYahweh and his asherah,\u201d inscriptions that are quite legible and readable but evince a variety of interpretations of their significance for understanding the ancient religion of Israel, identified often in these pages\u2014as elsewhere\u2014by the term Yahwism (see chapter 1).
\nIn addition to the openness arising out of the difficulties of interpretation and the many possibilities of interpretation often present with regard to any piece of evidence, there is the matter of how one weighs the data, what things are given primacy or emphasis, what matters are ignored. What follows here clearly represents some choices about what is to be examined, what topics are central, and what data are pertinent. The exponent of Israel\u2019s religion cannot avoid such choices and the risk of distortion that the choices inevitably create. When one then adds the difficulty of dating texts\u2014less a problem though not altogether missing in dealing with the archaeological remains\u2014and the question of the significance of the dating of the text for the dating of the information it contains, then the room for misunderstanding simply mushrooms.
\nIn light of all these inhibiting factors blocking an accurate assessment of the religion of ancient Israel\u2014to which one must add the perpetual difficulty of ever adequately understanding the culture of another people far distant in time\u2014it is important to recognize that what follows is a construct of that religion, pieced together from a mass of data and an even larger mass of interpretive assessments of the data. The whole matter is like a picture puzzle, in a sense. The outcome, however, is not simply a puzzle with a lot of pieces missing; there are bound to be many pieces that have been put together wrongly, so that one ends up not only with holes in the picture but with all sorts of distortions. It is my hope that the construct presented here does not distort that picture too much.
\nIt certainly does not look like everybody else\u2019s picture. But then that would be an impossible goal because it assumes a kind of consensus that does not exist. There are ways in which the presentation of the religion of Israel in these pages parts company with some rather dominant views, a few of which offer themselves as a premature consensus or as the assured results of archaeological and literary study. There are other places where I hope that the depiction will be widely acknowledged, for it often grows out of the capable work of other scholars in the field.
\nThe influences on this work of certain leading figures will be evident. I first began the study of Israel\u2019s religion under the tutelage of Frank Moore Cross. Those who have studied with him and paid close attention to his careful mix of detailed study of biblical and extrabiblical texts with brilliant intuition and insight will not be surprised to find these pages often reflective of his deep study of Israel\u2019s religion in the light of its milieu. But I am heavily indebted to such scholars as Jacob Milgrom and Baruch Levine, Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Phyllis Bird, Judith Hadley, and Rainer Albertz, and many other persons, some of whom I do not know but whose labors have made mine much lighter and have helped me see what I could not have seen without their assistance. No single scholarly enterprise that I have undertaken has involved as much research and reading as this one, and there is a large amount of still untouched richness of interpretation of Israel\u2019s religion of which I have not been able to avail myself, simply by the limits of time and endurance.
\nOne of the aims of this series is to pay attention to social processes and settings as the context for understanding the material and the subject before us. That is certainly appropriate for the study of Israel\u2019s religion. I have sought to do that at a number of places and to read the religion of Israel in relation to the culture and the society of which it was a part. Two caveats, however, must be entered at the beginning. One is the recognition that I am not a sociologist or an anthropologist and my knowledge of the methods and conclusions of those and related disciplines is secondhand and thus limited. I have sought to pay attention to the literature and learn from it, but I have not tried to go beyond my competence, seeking simply to make careful judgments about the social dimensions and process where appropriate and accessible. The second caveat is my conviction that there is much in the sociohistorical study of Israel\u2019s religion that remains highly speculative. That is a danger for any kind of reconstruction, but comprehensive theories about various topics, such as sacrifice, holiness, aniconism, and the like often seem difficult to root in the text and therefore difficult to appropriate with any confidence. Reticence at this point may be a result of ignorance, but it is appropriate under the circumstances.<\/p>\n
APPROACH<\/p>\n
While what follows is a construct, that is, an effort to draw together in somewhat systematic fashion a picture of a whole\u2014one that was never as systematic as this picture portrays it and that surely varied in certain ways from this and any construction of the religion\u2014this does not mean that either the entity Israel or its religion are to be regarded as figments or largely fictive projections from a later time. The existence of \u201cIsrael\u201d from the Late Bronze Age until the time of the latest documents of the Old Testament is a fact, attested as well from extrabiblical documents as from biblical ones. The texts cover a wide range of that history and so bear witness to a complex phenomenon of practice and institutional setting, of liturgy and belief, about the god Yahweh and the proper and improper worship of him. The centrality of this deity at the heart of all the practices of Israelite religion, even when having to do with the worship of other gods, is also a fact, well attested from extrabiblical documents (see chapter 1).
\nThe nature and character of this deity, in many respects a profile markedly like that of other Late Bronze Age\/Iron Age gods, is so clearly at the heart of Israelite religion that it provides the starting point for a presentation of that religion. Sketching the profile of that deity and the divine world within which Yahweh was the center is the focus of chapter 1 of this book. As such, it is foundational for all that follows. The same is true of chapter 2, which is an extended attempt to describe forms or types of religious expression and practice that may be discerned from the various kinds of evidence about Israel\u2019s religion. At the heart of this analysis is a recognition especially of three fundamental types of Israelite religion: family religion, local cults, and official state religion. The reader familiar with Rainer Albertz\u2019s comprehensive two-volume study of the history of Israel\u2019s religion will not be surprised to encounter such a reconstruction of the religion of Israel. I am much indebted to Albertz, but in this regard more to his earlier monograph on official and popular religion than to his history, which had not appeared when the basic draft of chapter 2 was first written. By that time, however, a number of other works had appeared along with Albertz\u2019s monograph that helped us see in the biblical and artifactual evidence indications that the religious expression of the people of Israel had in fact taken different forms in different settings. That form-critical analogy has suggested the possibility of describing \u201ctypes\u201d of Israelite religion, and I have attempted that in chapter 2 from two different angles.
\nThere is some sense in which these two chapters cover the whole of Israelite religion (and their length is the equivalent of a small monograph), but I have chosen to explicate three other topics in more detail, believing that while each of them is anticipated in the first two chapters, they are each more complex and so important for the religion of Israel that they warrant more extended treatments. These are sacrifice, holiness and purity, and the leadership and participation of persons in the practices of Israelite religion, particularly the more formal cult of the national expressions of that religion. Other topics could also justify a more developed approach, for example, the temple or the festivals, but they are treated at other points, and the limits of space prohibit a detailed examination of many different aspects of the religion of Israel. I hope that the first two chapters provide sufficient orientation and that the next three chapters will help the reader get at some of the more difficult and debated aspects of Israel\u2019s religion. I am not unaware that there has been a predisposition of Protestant interpreters to slough over sacrifice and for Christians in general to ignore the concerns for order, purity, and holiness that are represented especially in the priestly legislation. The choice of topics at that point reflects such awareness. At several points in the book, I lift up a more recent and much-debated topic of some contemporary interest and possible relevance: the role of women in Israelite religion. So the agenda of this view of Israelite religion is shaped in part by the materials and in part by the circumstances of its writing. In my judgment, such objective and subjective elements are nearly always present in our scholarly endeavors and often bring forth fruitful results.
\nMost readers will note immediately that I have not taken the tack of Albertz and many interpreters of Israelite religion, that is, a primarily historical approach. In that respect, this volume does not pose as a history of Israelite religion. Happily, the reader has access to Albertz\u2019s thoroughly historical approach if and when that is needed. I have sought to focus rather on significant dimensions or topics of Israelite religion, believing that getting a grasp on them in some depth will be of benefit to those who want a profile of the religious character of the people of Israel. At the same time, however, I have tried to be attentive to historical dimensions, to changes in the form and character of Israelite religion all along the way. Taking a more topical approach with attention to historical movement and change has the disadvantage of blurring many of the finer points of the history and of the developments in that history. It has the advantage of keeping certain key features front and center in a way that lets one get at them less spasmodically and atomistically. The more topical framework also manages better to avoid some of the inevitably speculative character of most historical approaches, which are forced to make decisions about dating of practices in relation to texts in a way that the material often resists.
\nA feature missing from the book is any summary presentation of the history of the discipline or of the discussion of methodological issues involved in dealing with Israel\u2019s religion. I have dealt with those in part elsewhere, and there are accessible surveys of at least some of the more recent scholarly work on the religion of Israel.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 1<\/p>\n
God and the Gods<\/p>\n
Deity and the Divine World in Ancient Israel<\/p>\n
ISRAEL\u2019S GOD<\/p>\n
The center of ancient Israel\u2019s religion was the worship of a deity named Yahweh. Biblical, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence all confirm that fact. For this reason, the religion of Israel is often referred to, not incorrectly, as Yahwism. That other deities were worshiped at different times or by different groups or that syncretistic movements took place from time to time cannot undermine the centrality of the worship of Yahweh throughout the course of ancient Israel\u2019s history.
\nThe origins of the worship of Yahweh are shrouded in mystery, but they reach back at least to the early Iron Age and apparently as far as the Late Bronze Age. The earliest known possible reference to the name of the deity occurs in an Egyptian toponym list from the time of Amenhotep III (c. 1400 B.C.E.), where a place called Yhw is associated with a nomadic group, the Shasu, whose location south of Palestine is indicated by other toponyms in the list. That is consistent with indications in the early poetry of Israel that Yahweh was a deity associated at the beginning with the South. Various places\u2014Sinai, Seir, Edom, Paran, and Teman\u2014are given as the places from which Yahweh marches or comes. They identify the locus or abode of this deity with the region of Edom and Midian, which also seems to be the area where Moses first encountered this deity at the \u201cmountain of God\u201d (Ex. 3:1\u20135). That encounter, as well as the indication that Moses\u2019 father-in-law, Jethro, priest of Midian, may have been a worshiper of Yahweh (Ex. 18:9\u201312), provides a plausible point of contact between the cult of Yahweh in the South and the Moses group or Proto-Israel.
\nThe name of the deity was a matter of some importance to the Israelite religious community, both for the way in which it identified the deity and also because of its character as a kind of theologumenon for him. The initial encounter between Moses and Yahweh in the biblical tradition focuses upon the name (Exodus 3\u20134). That is probably an accurate reflection of the significance the name came to have at an early stage in the tradition. While the vowels were lost and its pronunciation forgotten as a result of the later decision of the Jewish community not to pronounce the sacred name of God, linguistic and transcriptional evidence indicates that the spelling of the divine name was in all likelihood yahweh. That evidence also suggests that yahweh is \u201ca shortened form of a sentence name taken from a cultic formula.\u201d It is probably a causative form of the verb \u201cto be,\u201d meaning \u201che causes to be,\u201d or \u201che creates.\u201d The name may have had an object after it at one point, the most likely being \u1e62\u0115b\u0101\u2019\u00f4t, \u201chosts,\u201d in light of the liturgical name of the ark, \u201cYahweh of hosts, enthroned on the cherubim,\u201d which refers to the cherub throne of the invisible God that was part of the iconography of the Yahweh shrine at Shiloh and later at Jerusalem. The name Yahweh \u1e62\u0115b\u0101\u2019\u00f4t would mean \u201cHe creates the hosts.\u201d The reference would be to the hosts of heaven who made up the coterie and military entourage of Yahweh marching forth alongside the armies of Israel in the holy war ideology of early Israel as reflected in its early poetry and other texts. Creative activity, therefore, is not a late accretion to the mythology of Yahweh. Creation and procreation of gods and human beings as well as of the natural order was an aspect of the deity\u2019s activity, as was true of other high gods, and especially of El, the Canaanite god with whom Yahweh was most closely associated (see below) and who was characterized as father of human beings and of the gods.
\nAn object is not required for the verbal form yahweh, but it may have been a part of a longer sentence name, as reflected in Ex. 3:14, where the sentence \u2019ehyeh \u2019\u0103\u0161er \u2019ehyeh is given as the first answer to Moses\u2019 question about the name of the deity he encounters at Horeb\/Sinai. Frank Cross has suggested quite plausibly that lying behind this sentence may have been the sentence name, el d\u016b yahw\u012b (\u1e63aba\u2019\u00f4t), \u201cEl who creates the hosts.\u201d The god El is well known from the mythological and religious texts at Ugarit as the high god who was the head of the Canaanite pantheon (figs. 1 and 2). Genesis and Exodus 6 show indications of pre-Yahwistic worship by pre-Israelite clans as the worship of El and\/or the clan deities, known as the gods of the fathers (see below). The Priestly stratum of the Pentateuch identifies an earlier stage (Ex. 6:3) of Israel\u2019s religion that centered on the worship of El Shaddai but maintains that this was a prior revelation of the god Yahweh. That judgment seems to be correct. Yahweh was probably originally a cultic name of El as worshiped in the South. In some fashion, unknown to us, it would have split off into the particular worship of Yahweh, but the association with El continued throughout the history of Israel\u2019s religion. El\u2019s names, iconography, and characteristics were always freely associated with Yahweh and without condemnation, a fact that seems not to have been true with regard to any other northwest Semitic god.<\/p>\n
Fig. 1. The so-called El stele from Ugarit, featuring a relief of what is probably the high god El on his throne. (After ANEP, no. 493)<\/p>\n
The absence of any god but Yahweh from a central place in the course of Israel\u2019s religion is matched by the absence of Yahweh from any place in the pantheons or in the cultus of any other people of the ancient Near East. While it is possible that signs of such worship may yet turn up, that fact is rather remarkable, for there are many indications of the sharing of deities among the various groups of the Near East. Besides the evidence for the essentially exclusive worship of Yahweh by Israel (there are, of course, exceptions to this) this association of Yahweh exclusively with Israel or pre-Israelite elements suggests an intimate relation between deity and people, which the biblical traditions tend to confirm in a variety of ways as they characterize Israel\u2019s god and that relationship.
\nThe early association of Yahweh with the desert or its fringes in southern Palestine and with what were probably seminomadic pastoralists probably has something to do with the character of the deity and the relationship between the deity and his worshipers. Yahweh was not a god whose locus was the Canaanite city-states and their pantheons or triads of deities. He was more the clan or patron god of a group that developed into a nation. It is not surprising that the closest analogies, sociopolitical and religious, may be found in the southern areas of Edom, Moab, and Ammon where, as in Israel, kingdoms developed late and league or patriarchal institutions centered around a patron deity, later the national god, rather than around a complex of deities. The close relationship between deity and tribe or tribes was rooted in kinship relations and historical experience. It expressed itself in covenantal forms, at the heart of which was a binding together of the people in a sociopolitical relation with the deity that recognized the involvement of Yahweh in the guiding and protecting of the people and that obligated them to maintain allegiance to him, adhering to various stipulations that served to order their life and their relationship to other social groups or peoples.<\/p>\n
Fig. 2. Statuette of seated god El, bronze covered with gold, from Ugarit. (After ANEP, no. 826)<\/p>\n
The covenant forms of the league constitute an extended kinship group, provide means for group action in war by the creation of a militia in times of crisis, [and] provide a limited judicial system for mediation of intertribal disputes.<\/p>\n
There does not seem to have been any period in Israel\u2019s religious history where the specific recognition of the relation of deity and tribe or people was not expressed in such a pact, though it took different forms prior to the monarchy and during it and may have been understood or formulated differently in the North and in the South. In its simplest form, which is not necessarily the earliest, that covenantal bond rested in the reciprocal claim and promise of Yahweh, \u201cYou are my people,\u201d and of Israel, \u201cYou are my God\u201d (Hos. 2:25[23]). In its more complex form, the covenantal bond has been compared with international political treaties of the first and second millennium that spelled out the way in which a great king (in this case, Yahweh) had dealt beneficially with a vassal (in this case, Israel), set forth stipulations that such benevolence placed upon the vassal, and built in provisions for sanctions, witnesses, safekeeping of the treaty document, and its regular reading by the vassal.
\nThe covenantal structure assumes a theocratic model of rule mediated through various officials and leaders, such as judges and elders, priests and prophets. Its modes of power were ideological, coercive, and consensual. The ideological dimension is seen in the degree to which the effectiveness of the structure of covenant for Israel\u2019s religious and communal life depended upon deference and allegiance to the deity, mutual recognition between the two parties, deity and people, and the exclusiveness of the relationship between them. That the exercise of power was by persuasion and rhetoric is seen in the covenant document par excellence, Deuteronomy. It set up a structure for existence\u2014social, political, economic, and religious\u2014that depended upon the willingness of the people to accede to the demands of the covenant, a willingness that was elicited in large part by preaching, testimony, self-understanding, and self-indictment through song and instruction taught and learned by the people. At the same time, this social structure was rooted in a consensual-coercive power reflected in the people\u2019s acceptance of the requirements of obedience to the divine command as well as the sanctions invoked for obedience and disobedience, sanctions that were spelled out in curses and blessings incorporated into the covenant document, certainly at least in its first-millennium form. To some extent, the economic mode of power in the social structure came into play in that obedience to the covenant was presented as a necessary prerequisite to the enjoyment of the good fruits of a good land. When the covenantal structure of Israel\u2019s life shifted to incorporate the kingship (at least in Judah), the ideological became rooted in a royal theology that claimed the king was the chosen of Yahweh, adopted as \u201cmy son\u201d by the deity and beneficiary of a covenantal relationship requiring obedience and offering eternal dynastic rule. The ability of the kings of Judah to maintain control and power depended heavily upon this ideological component even as the coercive dimension increased with the power of the king and his military might to gain access to the means of economic production. In the North, a less developed royal covenant and ideology contributed to a less stable royal control and dynasty.
\nThe development of family religion alongside larger communal expressions of Yahwism and the melding of these, particularly in the Deuteronomic movement (see chapter 2) was surely aided by the fact that from the beginning the covenant between Yahweh and Israel was not only a political structure; it was also an expression of kinship relations. The kinship modes of Israel\u2019s life in the early period were precisely the context in which covenantal notions developed, both in interpersonal and intertribal relations and also in the relation between Yahweh and Israel. If relationships in ancient Israel were first of all governed by kinship (and that seems to have been the case), so that family and tribe were the central social units, then covenant was the legal way of effecting what Cross has called \u201ckinship-in-law.\u201d That is, covenant was the mode whereby someone or some group not a part of the kinship unit was brought into it, a legal means of creating a new kinship bond between persons\u2014for example, David and Jonathan, who were not kin, but covenanted together as brothers (1 Sam. 18:1, 3; 20:17). This kinship relation through covenant placed law at its center; that is, it understood the law as the way of defining relationships within the family unit, relationships that included mutuality of treatment but also acts of love and loyalty (Lev. 19:17\u201318). So, while the obligation to love the Lord arose out of the suzerain relationship as governed in the treaty-covenant, the love of the neighbor\/brother\/sister was an obligation of the kinship relation and extended into other relationships by an act of covenant, a complex covenantal structure signaled in the simple but early designation of Israel as \u201cthe people of Yahweh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Images of Yahweh<\/p>\n
It is not surprising, in light of the above, that the chief images and metaphors by which ancient Israel characterized its God were heavily sociopolitical. While the association of Yahweh with the natural world is clear, with the deity who claimed power over the forces of the storm (e.g., Psalm 29) and fertility (e.g., Hosea 2) becoming apparently more associated with solar and lunar imagery in the late preexilic period, the dominant and controlling images that Israel carried of its God were warrior, judge, and king. Two of the earliest texts preserved in the Bible, Exodus 15 and Judges 5, are victory songs celebrating Yahweh\u2019s defeat of the enemies of Israel. In the former, the battle at the sea and the victory were understood to be entirely the deity\u2019s. The people were not involved except as the recipients of the divine act. The song concludes the complex account of the conflict between Hebrew slaves and an unnamed Egyptian king (Exodus 1\u201314) and claims to see in that conflict and its outcome the nature and character of the deity whose name was revealed in that context: Yahweh is a warrior; Yahweh is his name (v. 3). The establishment of Yahweh\u2019s sanctuary (v. 17) and kingship (v. 18) were confirmed in this victory, as Israel\u2019s historical experience was couched in part in the categories of myth where the deity defeats the powers of chaos, sea, and death, thereby winning the right to build an abode or palace and claim kingship over the gods. In the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), the enemies (v. 31) and the victory (v. 11) are still Yahweh\u2019s. There is a more symbiotic involvement of the people, however, who were expected to come to the aid of Yahweh in the battle (v. 23).
\nThe two songs are indicative of the sociopolitical character of the relation between Yahweh and Israel. The deity\u2019s name and character were revealed in a war of liberation, interpreted via the mythopoeic categories of Late Bronze Age Canaan (Exodus 15). The Israelites identified their deity as one who had brought them out of slavery in the defeat of the Egyptians, and that act shaped the perception of Yahweh\u2019s character and became indicative of how Israel was to treat slaves and other groups outside the fixed structures of power. In other words, the ethos of Israel, which manifested a perduring concern for the marginal and powerless\u2014a concern reflected in legal collections, prophetic oracles, narratives, psalms, and wisdom sayings\u2014was rooted in its earliest understanding of the revelation of Yahweh as the liberating warrior. The sociopolitical context of the revelation of the deity to the people in their suffering and liberation from slavery placed that same context as a controlling factor in their moral life and their understanding of community.
\nJudges 5 attests to the locus of this imagery of the divine warrior also within the early league traditions and covenantal obligations, in which the tribes were understood to have mutual responsibilities for protection and support as a part of their obligation to Yahweh. The poem is a celebration (v. 3) of Yahweh\u2019s \u201ctriumphs\u201d (\u1e63idq\u00f4t, v. 11), but they are also the \u201ctriumphs\u201d of \u201chis peasantry in Israel.\u201d The poem is as much a recounting of the participation of the tribes who are led by Yahweh as it is a recounting of Yahweh\u2019s might. But throughout, the poem also deals with the issue of willing participation and acceptance of obligation on the part of the tribes who were bound together in responsibility for mutual defense and common allegiance to Yahweh. The expression \u201cpeople of Yahweh\u201d (v. 13), one of the oldest characterizations of the Israelite community, probably was a designation of that group as a militia in service of the warrior God who protected them and led them in battle against their enemies and his (vv. 4\u20135, 31). At its conclusion, this ancient text pronounces doom on all Yahweh\u2019s enemies and blessing on \u201chis friends,\u201d literally, \u201cthose who love him,\u201d or keep the covenant obligations of allegiance and social solidarity within the \u201cpeople of Yahweh.\u201d
\nThe image of Yahweh as divine warrior, reflected in early poems such as these as well as in the epithet \u201cYahweh of Hosts\u201d continued to play a major role throughout the history of Israel\u2019s religion. The story of the battle of Ebenezer and the loss of the ark on that occasion in 1 Samuel 4\u20135 attests to the assumptions on the part of Israelites and Philistines alike that the ark was the palladium of the God or gods of Israel and its presence assured the power or \u201chand\u201d of the Israelite deity against the enemy. That the battle seems to deny such power should not mislead one. The Philistines are defeated ultimately by the \u201chand\u201d of Yahweh, and the turning point is a quite specific, if narratively veiled, account of Yahweh\u2019s battle with and defeat of the Philistine god Dagon (1 Sam. 5:1\u20135). One encounters the imagery of Yahweh the warrior in a major way in the oracles of the prophets from the ninth century onward, and the prophetic function to be the herald or announcer of Yahweh\u2019s interventions in war is rooted in this conception of the deity. Two things particularly are noticeable. One is a popular belief, shared by prophetic figures, that the Day of Yahweh was a time when their God would destroy their enemies (Amos 5:18\u201320). This \u201cDay of Yahweh,\u201d which was rooted in the early notions of Yahweh as warrior and in the recollection of the early wars of Yahweh, became one of the prime categories for Israelite eschatology and apocalyptic, as official and popular theology anticipated the march of Yahweh and his armies against the armies of the nations and the forces of darkness. Both the earlier wars of Yahweh and the anticipated Day of Yahweh were celebrated in the festivals of the Israelite cultus, where Yahweh\u2019s victories were recalled cultically in recollection of Israel\u2019s liberation and occupation of their land and also in commemoration of Yahweh\u2019s kingship established in these victories. The other dimension in the prophetic presentation of the divine warrior is the claim that the activity of the warrior deity could and would be against Israel itself when it failed to live by the religious and social obligations to which it was bound by covenantal agreement (e.g., Amos 5:18\u201320; Isaiah 10). The religious ideology that centered in a mythohistorical perception of Yahweh as the warrior in behalf of Israel\u2019s need for liberation and preservation as well as for land and space to settle and live thus carried within itself the seeds of its own undoing in prophetic critique as well as the elements by which a rationalization of the fate of the people when defeated and sent into exile could be achieved.
\nClosely allied to the imagery of God as warrior and sharing some of the social functions of that imagery was the conception of Yahweh as the righteous judge. Again, this imagery is present in archaic poetry, such as Deut. 32:4\u20135 and Ps. 68:6(5), where Yahweh is called \u201cfather of orphans\u201d and \u201cjudge of widows,\u201d but it is pervasive in texts from different periods and settings within ancient Israel: ancient confessional statements (Ex. 34:6\u20137), sagas (Gen. 18:22\u201333), hymns (Psalms 96\u201399), legal codes (Ex. 21:6; 22:8\u20139, 11, 21\u201325), and prophetic lawsuits (Isa. 3:13\u201315; Micah 6:1\u20138) and judgment speeches (Amos 5:7, 10\u201311; Micah 2:1\u20135). In part, such imagery undergirded and provided religious or theological sanction for the administration of justice in the community of Israel. That is, the righteous Judge of Israel called for a righteousness and justice in the human community and pronounced judgment upon those who did not carry out explicit and implicit norms for justice. Indeed, the righteousness of Yahweh was whatever activity the deity carried out or required of others to establish and maintain. The divine judge, therefore, like the divine warrior, was a powerful religious impetus\u2014within the established procedures for the administration of justice (e.g., the legal statutes and processes) and through critical voices from outside (e.g., Amos)\u2014for the maintenance of justice in the courts and the protection of the weaker elements in the society from exploitation and oppression. A particular ethos was effected and the order of society was enhanced. As with the imagery of warrior, however, the activity of the divine judge could be a polemical tool perceived by elements in the society as threatening social chaos (e.g., Amos 7:10\u201317) and also a means of rationalizing the chaos when it took place (e.g., Isa. 40:1\u20132).
\nThere were further and significant political and religious effects of this divine imagery. The judgment of Yahweh extended over the nations, as one sees in texts such as Deuteronomy 32, where the judgment of the divine judge is carried out in his warrior role, and more generally in the prophetic oracles against the nations. But that judgment also extended over the divine realm. Psalm 82 is a surprising and somewhat unprecedented ancient Near Eastern text recounting a judicial assembly of the gods in which Yahweh stands up to indict and pronounce judgment upon all the other gods of the cosmos for their failure to maintain justice for the weak. The justice of Yahweh and his role as judge (i.e., the one responsible for maintaining justice and the right of the innocent) was thus also a significant polemical weapon in the conflict with the gods of the nations. It is doubtful that one can necessarily read a stage in the history of Israel\u2019s religion in this text, but its testimony to the moral dimension at the center of the notion of the divine is clear.
\nThe kingship of Yahweh is a feature of Israelite religion from early stages. It is thematic in the earliest poetry. The Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 reaches its climax with the declaration that \u201cYahweh will reign forever and ever,\u201d and other archaic poetry speaks of Yahweh as king. As a divine title or epithet, \u201cking\u201d originally meant one god as ruler over other gods. That was true in Ugarit, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. It had its roots significantly in the mythological pattern discerned in such texts as the Babylonian Creation Epic and the Baal-Anat cycle at Ugarit in which the god fought against hostile and chaotic forces (associated with sea or death), achieved victory, and was rewarded with the building of a house (temple\/palace) as an eternal abode. The victory also brought about the declaration of the god\u2019s eternal rule or kingship.
\nThis pattern had its impact on Israelite conceptions of Yahweh\u2019s nature and role but with significant modifications. The rule of God was seen and explicated primarily in terms of human communities, as, for example, in Exodus 15, while the cosmic rule of Yahweh was always affirmed. The victory of Yahweh to bring about this divine rule took place primarily over the human forces of chaos, although mythopoeic categories were sometimes explicitly the vehicle for describing the battle and the victory (e.g., Isa. 51:9\u201311), and the defeat of the deity who led the opposing forces might be assumed (e.g., 1 Sam. 5:1\u20135). In the course of Israel\u2019s religion, the divine rule also came to be extended temporally and spatially without any limits and was understood to have its full manifestation in the future when victory over the hostile nations would be complete and all would acknowledge the universal reign of Yahweh.
\nThe images of Yahweh as warrior and king were joined not only conceptually in the interpretation of historical experience with the language and clothing of myth but also in the cultus, where the procession of the Divine Warrior into the sanctuary was a celebration of Yahweh\u2019s kingship, a rule demonstrated in the victory over Israel\u2019s enemies. While there is much that we do not know about the cultic enactments of the major festivals, there are indirect indications in such texts as Psalm 24 and 132 as well as Joshua 3\u20135 that in the premonarchical and monarchical periods the central act was the procession of the ark, on which was enthroned \u201cthe King of glory,\u201d into the temple. Such celebration of Yahweh\u2019s victory and rule, which would have been characteristic of the earliest spring festival ritual at Gilgal,\u2019 also served to confirm and validate the establishment of Zion as the dwelling of Yahweh and the Davidic king as the anointed agent of Yahweh\u2019s rule (see chapters 2 and 5).
\nThe close connections between the rule of Yahweh and the warrior imagery carry over into the juridical imagery. That is, the provision for justice was a function of the ruler, and the enthronement psalms, which are among the primary declarations of Yahweh\u2019s kingship, specifically couch that reign or dominion frequently in judging language and assert the rule of Yahweh as a righteous and just rule (Pss. 96:10\u201313; 98:7\u20139; 99:4).
\nThe kingship of Yahweh seems at all times to have served both to undergird the existing sociopolitical structure and to challenge its manifestations. While that is especially true of the monarchical period, it seems also to have been the case in the less-ordered earlier period of the league of tribes, although the data there are less clear. Yahweh\u2019s rule as king over Israel in a theocratic structure was conducive to a system of tribal life and community that lacked a central government and permanent controls over clan and personal behavior and that left kinship and regional groups with a fair amount of freedom and flexibility of action. The book of Judges in its earliest levels is an account of the somewhat chaotic sociopolitical situation of premonarchic Israel with Yahweh as its only permanent king. Efforts to fix permanent rule or control in an individual were resisted in different ways, as the stories of the judges also indicate. The kingship of Yahweh was thus a part of the implicit resistance to the monarchical political structure of Late Bronze Age city-states. At the same time, the rule of Yahweh without permanent human leadership and structures meant that the Israelite components were vulnerable both to dissatisfaction on the part of the divine ruler and to the claims and attacks of forces and powers of more structured political organizations among their neighbors. The claim of Yahweh to be king over Israel as well as over the gods thus meant there was a religious element within the sociopolitical structure that exercised both stabilizing and destabilizing functions within it.
\nThe same is true of the even more elaborated conception of Yahweh as king in the monarchical era. As noted above, the cultic procession into the temple of the victorious deity enthroned on the ark served to undergird and support the claims of the Davidic dynasty and Jerusalem to having been chosen by Yahweh. The real king was still the deity. The human ruler was the regent or representative of Yahweh. The divine ruler, therefore, stood behind the human king and served as a guarantor of the human throne. Enthroned now permanently in the temple at Zion, Yahweh also was a guarantor and validator of the national capital and national shrine, Jerusalem. The radical move to kingship in the sociopolitical sphere thus acquired legitimation by the same conceptuality that also lay behind and was at work in earlier social structures.
\nAgain, however, the functionality of divine rule could be destabilizing and critical. This is found particularly in the figure of the prophet as the agent of the divine rule who had responsibility for designating the one chosen by Yahweh as ruler as well as for pronouncing \u201cjudgment on the king, the forfeit of kingship for breach of law or covenant, as well as the death of the king for like reasons.\u201d In like manner, the national shrine was not only guaranteed but also threatened by Yahweh\u2019s rule, as demonstrated by the oracles of Amos in the North and those of Micah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel in the South. Furthermore, the rule of Yahweh on Zion and through Yahweh\u2019s anointed became one of the primary carriers in Israel\u2019s religion of a vision of social and political harmony, peace, and justice.<\/p>\n
Characteristics of Yahweh<\/p>\n
In all this imagery of Yahweh there were significant lines of continuity between Yahweh and the gods of Canaan. In many respects Yahweh was a typical Late Bronze\/Early Iron Age deity. The sociopolitical metaphors for expressing the relation of deity and people were present in the worship of other gods in Syria-Palestine. The close association with El, the high god of the Canaanite pantheon, which was manifest in the acceptance of the El name as a Yahweh epithet, is reflected also in the assimilation of El characteristics by Yahweh. We have already noted the reflection of such characteristics in the understanding of Yahweh as creator and father. Like El, the Israelite deity was also patriarchal in other ways, such as being old or eternal, wise, and compassionate. The last attribute is lifted up by its being a part of an ancient Israelite liturgical or cultic formula that appears frequently in biblical texts and is also found in extrabiblical inscriptions. It represents one of the most persistent and apparently widespread characterizations of Yahweh in Israelite religion. In Ex. 34:6\u20137, we find the following self-disclosure or proclamation by Yahweh to Moses on Sinai:<\/p>\n
The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed,<\/p>\n
\u201cThe LORD, the LORD,
\na God merciful and gracious,
\nslow to anger
\nand abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
\nkeeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
\nforgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
\nyet by no means clearing the guilty,
\nbut visiting the iniquity of the parents
\nupon the children
\nand the children\u2019s children,
\nto the third and the fourth generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The text sets this self-disclosure in the context of the name (v. 5). It is already anticipated in the preceding chapter, again in the context of the revelation of the name (Ex. 33:18\u201319):<\/p>\n
Moses said, \u201cShow me your glory, I pray.\u201d And he said, \u201cI will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, \u2018The LORD\u2019; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both of these texts characterize the deity in a fundamental way as gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. While the text in Exodus 34 makes it very clear that such a picture of the deity is not to be set over against Yahweh\u2019s function as judge who acts in behalf of justice and exercises judgment against sin, these repeated characterizations of Yahweh as merciful and gracious (\u2019\u0113l ra\u1e25\u00fbm w\u0115\u1e25ann\u00fbn) and acting in steadfast love define this deity in a way that lifts up mercy alongside justice as indicating the particular \u201cbent\u201d of the God of Israel. While there may be some tension between the divine judgment and the divine mercy, that tension is indicative of Yahweh\u2019s character. The cultic formula is cited explicitly in other contexts and is alluded to elsewhere. The language of the formula even appears in an inscribed prayer from the seventh or sixth century found on the wall of a cave at Khirbet Beit Lei in which Yahweh is called \u2019 l \u1e25nn, \u201cgracious God,\u201d and the petitioner asks the deity as yh \u2019l \u1e25nn, \u201cYah(weh), gracious God,\u201d to \u201cabsolve\u201d or \u201cclear\u201d (nqh) him or her. The ancient blessing of Num. 6:24\u201326, also a text that is both echoed throughout the biblical literature and known from an early sixth-century inscription on two silver amulets found outside Jerusalem (plate 9, page 166), calls for Yahweh to \u201cbe gracious\u201d (\u1e25nn). Further, the attributing to Yahweh of \u201csteadfast love\u201d (\u1e25esed) is ubiquitous throughout the biblical texts and frequently the ground of prayer to the deity.
\nTwo other characteristics of the Israelite deity that affected the religious expressions and convictions of the people need to be mentioned in particular. The conviction that Yahweh was holy permeated the religion of Israel. It is most noticeable and emphasized in the prophets and the cultic legislation. The older poetic texts do not lift up this feature as an aspect of the character of Yahweh in a sharp way, but it is explicitly stated in the Song of Hannah (1 Sam. 2:2): \u201cThere is no Holy One like the LORD.\u201d The epithet \u201cHoly One of Israel\u201d or even just \u201cHoly One\u201d came to be one of the most common of all appellations of the deity especially in the Isaianic traditions, where the theophanic context of Isaiah\u2019s call is a vision of the enthroned Yahweh Sebaot, the King, with the angelic attendants crying out, \u201cHoly, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts\u201d (Isa. 6:3). From the references to Yahweh\u2019s holiness or Yahweh as holy, it is clear that the notion denoted separateness and transcendence and also moral purity and right. The holiness of Yahweh was not separated from the deity\u2019s righteousness, but it was not exhausted in moral categories. It identified Yahweh as belonging to a sphere apart from everything else in the universe, except as other places, acts, words, and people were drawn into that sphere by association with the deity. The overlap with the notion of Yahweh as righteous is seen in the fact that Yahweh\u2019s holiness served to define the order of the universe, which included both the moral sphere and the cultic sphere. These could not be separated, and the claim that Yahweh was holy and required holiness\u2014a requirement spelled out extensively in the cultic legislation of Leviticus, Numbers, and Ezekiel 40\u201348 but also claimed by the prophets as a way of speaking about Yahweh\u2019s dealings with Israel and their response\u2014incorporated moral and cultic claims in the broadest sense. Increasingly in Israel\u2019s religion, the definition of the holiness that reflected Yahweh\u2019s holiness (order and righteousness) was articulated and elaborated in cultic regulations. This seems to have been exacerbated by the experience of judgment for sin in the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon and in the demands of survival in the postexilic era as an identifiable Yahwistic community without political sovereignty and in the midst of other groups. The focus upon order and purity in the Priestly legislation was not only a symbolic expression but a real effort to actualize the holiness of the people under a holy God.
\nRelated to the holiness of Yahweh but standing in close textual and conceptual relation to the grace and mercy of God (Exodus 34) and the demand for Israel\u2019s exclusive worship of Yahweh was the claim of Yahweh to be jealous, an epithet that is probably quite ancient in Israel\u2019s religion and closely associated with the covenantal relationship. The jealousy of Yahweh was a theological form of the prohibition of the worship of other gods and was a way of expressing the mutual commitment of people to deity and deity to people.
\nWhile in origin the jealousy of Yahweh may have been primarily associated with the exclusive worship of Yahweh, it came to be associated also with the prohibition of making and worshiping images. Here we come upon one of the distinctive features of the worship of Yahweh in ancient Israel\u2014its aniconic character. The absence of images of the deity and the concomitant prohibition against representation of deity in any form of image is anomalous in the ancient Near East. The creation and use of images in the cultus was ubiquitous in the religions of that time and place (fig. 3). For the most part in Israel, they were not present and were officially inveighed against. Three questions about this unusual phenomenon are the subject of considerable debate: (1) Was the prohibition of images directed primarily toward images of Yahweh or images of other gods? (2) When did the prohibition against images actually begin? Was there a time when images were permissible in the worship of Yahweh? (3) What was the function or meaning of this aniconic feature? Why were images not used and not permitted? An attempt to answer these questions will uncover at least some of the dimensions of this rather unique feature of Yahwism.
\nThe close tie between the commandment against images and the prior commandment against the worship of other gods in the Decalogue (Ex. 20:3\u20136) suggests that the veto of images was directed toward any image that might be construed as an idol or cult artifact of another deity. While the prohibition in its earliest form may have been simply, \u201cYou shall not make for yourself images,\u201d the addition of the words \u201cor any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth,\u201d and the reference to bowing down and serving them, which originally had in mind the other gods of the previous commandment, serves to make a sweeping exclusion of any image of any deity. The elaboration of this prohibition in Deut. 4:16\u201319 confirms that as at least the eventual understanding of the prohibition. Indeed, the comprehensiveness of these formulations tended to make any kind of image, whether for purposes of worship or not, questionable.<\/p>\n
Fig. 3. Image of a god, head covered with gold and body with silver. From Syria. (After ANEP, no. 481)<\/p>\n
In light of the strong resistance to the worship of other gods in the official cult of Yahweh, such an understanding is to be expected. But it is likely that at an earlier time, the prohibition was specifically directed toward the exclusion of Yahweh images. Deuteronomy 4, itself a late text, suggests as much when it prohibits images on the grounds that at Sinai the people saw no form when the Lord spoke to them (v. 15). The likelihood that the prohibition against images was separate from that against other gods tends to confirm this understanding. If other gods are ruled out, obviously their images are also. The imageless character of the cult of Yahweh also supports this understanding. The deity was represented by a cherubim throne upon the moveable ark (fig. 4). When the ark was carried into battle, the people and their enemies believed that Yahweh was present. But there was no statue or image of the deity. Rather, Yahweh was enthroned invisibly upon the cherubim. Later, in the Deuteronomic theology, the ark came to be understood as the container of the torah, or law. As such, it still represented the deity\u2019s presence, only now in the torah rather than upon an invisible throne.
\nThe question of the antiquity of the aniconic tendency in Yahwism is more uncertain and much debated in contemporary scholarship, with views ranging from the earliest period of Israel\u2019s history to the Hasmonean period at the end of the first millennium. The weight of textual and archaeological evidence suggests that it belongs to the earliest stages of Israelite religion, at least within the more official cultus of Yahweh found at the central sanctuary or sanctuaries. While the dating of the decalogical prohibition of images (Ex. 20:4; Deut. 5:8) is difficult, and the formulation may have been articulated fairly late in the history of Israel, the ubiquity of the prohibition in the legal collections is matched by the absence of Yahweh images or those of other male deities from Israelite sites to weight the evidence toward the assumption that the aniconic tendency was an early phenomenon in ancient Israel. There is a marked contrast in the movement from Late Bronze Age sites (plate 1), where male and female images are common, to Iron Age strata in Israelite sites, where hardly any male images have been found and only one or two that might be serious candidates as an Israelite divine image (figs. 5 and 6).<\/p>\n
Fig. 4. Phoenician king Ahiram seated on a sphinx or cherubim type of throne. From Ahiram\u2019s sarcophagus. (After ANEP, no. 458)<\/p>\n
In his important study of Israelite aniconism, Tryggve Mettinger has suggested that one may distinguish between a de facto aniconism and a programmatic aniconism, the former being fairly tolerant, the latter moving toward a rigorous iconoclasm but developing out of the aniconic tendency of an earlier time. By the former, he means either the use of aniconic symbols, such as a stone or a stela, or empty space, such as an empty throne. The programmatic aniconism represents the development from a generally assumed use of empty space or certain symbols to a very explicit stand against any possible iconography to represent the deity. Thus, Mettinger concludes that \u201cthe Yahwistic cult was aniconic from the very beginning,\u201d but such aniconism included cults with aniconic symbols, specifically, standing stones. \u201cStanding stone aniconism\u201d was widespread in the West Semitic region and not distinctive to Israelite religion. But within Israelite religion, de facto aniconism in the state cults (see chapter 2) was represented by the empty cherubim throne and possibly Jeroboam\u2019s bulls.
\nMettinger does not try to say when a more programmatic aniconism developed in Israelite religion, one that rejected even the standing stones within the cult, but he rightly calls attention to the signs of such a move in the account of the conflict between the Israelite ark and the Philistine Dagon statue in 1 Sam. 5:1\u20135, though he acknowledges that the issue is more the conflict among the gods than a stance on divine images.<\/p>\n
Plate 1. Late Bronze Age Shrine of the Stelae at Hazor. (Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority)<\/p>\n
Fig. 5. Seated bronze figure from eleventh-century Hazor that may be an image of a male deity. (After Hendel, in The Image and the Book, p. 213, fig. 1)<\/p>\n
Fig 6. Possible divine stick figure carved into a miniature limestone altar from tenth-century Gezer. (After Dever et al., Gezer II, pls. 41 and 75)<\/p>\n
In this plausible construction, de facto aniconism was not one of the differentiating features of Israelite religion, but programmatic aniconism was. Consistent with this reading are the data from archaeological and iconographic investigations, particularly the indications that by the seventh century the Judean name seals show a clear tendency toward aniconicity, a tendency that is not exclusive but begins even further back and then becomes quite pronounced.
\nThe primary challenge to this picture is not from archaeology but from the biblical texts themselves. There are three cases of image-making by Israelites in the premonarchical period that either receive no condemnation or the condemnation comes from a later period. One is the bronze serpent Moses made in the wilderness, upon which those bitten by poisonous snakes could look that they might live. It is not depicted as an image of Yahweh; in fact, Yahweh commands Moses to make it. Later, however, it became an object of worship and persisted as such for some time until it was finally broken up by Hezekiah in his reform (2 Kings 18:4). Gideon made an ephod, whose character is unclear. But a later Deuteronomic voice regarded it as some kind of divine image and condemned the people for prostituting themselves to it (Judg. 8:27). The clearest case of making an image of Yahweh is in Judg. 17:2\u20133, where the mother of Micah (a good Yahwistic name) gives him silver that she has dedicated to Yahweh to make an image (pesel, the same term used in the aniconic prohibition of the Decalogue), which he sets up in a domestic shrine. There is no condemnation of this in the text except for a Deuteronomistic note in verse 6.
\nPerhaps the best explanation of the textual and archaeological data is that the aniconic tendency was dominant and gained weight in the course of Israel\u2019s history, but was not totally uniform. From earliest times, the main or official cult of Yahweh, as represented in its leaders and in its main sanctuaries, was largely aniconic, particularly with regard to representation of Israel\u2019s God. Other cultic paraphernalia that were eventually regarded as images were tolerated in the earlier stages, but by the time of the Deuteronomic movement in the eighth and seventh centuries they were condemned, at least by major elements of Yahwistic leadership. At the same time, there may have been domestic and extramural shrines that were more generally open to iconography and, in some instances, images of the deity. There is textual (Judges 17) and archaeological evidence indicating this.
\nThe cult of Jeroboam, attested to in 1 Kings 12:25\u201333 and reflected in the story of the making of the golden calf in Exodus 32, was, in origin, probably an imageless Yahwistic cultic movement set up as a counter to the cult of Yahweh in Jerusalem. There, however, are indications that, early on, the bulls of Jeroboam came to be understood not just as pedestals for the invisible God (fig. 7) as they were probably intended (and as the ark was in Judah), but images to be worshiped. The absence of any condemnation of the bulls from prophets such as Elijah, Elisha, and Amos, as well as Jehu\u2019s not removing them in his drastic purge of Baalistic elements in the North (2 Kings 10:29) suggest that they were not regarded as Yahweh images initially. Hosea, however, condemned them on exactly those grounds in the eighth century (see plate 2).
\nThe meaning and function of the absence of images is less certain. The tradition itself gives some indications that should be taken seriously. The attachment of the prohibition against images to the prohibition of the worship of other gods (Ex. 20:3\u20136 \/\/ Deut. 5:7\u201310; cf. Ex. 20:23; 34:11\u201317; Deut. 4:15\u201331) suggests that at least one function of the aniconic requirement was to safeguard the exclusive worship of the Lord of Israel. The association of the gods of the neighboring peoples with images meant that a representation of deity could always be potentially another deity. The aniconic tendency was, therefore, a feature of the conflict\u2014divergence and differentiation of Yahweh vis-\u00e0-vis other deities.
\nThe Deuteronomic tradition, however, also claimed that the resistance to images was a safeguard of the transcendence of Yahweh as well as of the proper form of God\u2019s immanence in the world. Deuteronomy 4:9\u201331, which is an extended sermon on this prohibition, presents it as a resistance to the worship of other gods. But it also sets imaging God over against the voice from the fire that has no form, is fluid, intangible, and potent (v. 15), and prohibits the making of an image in the form of anything in the whole creation (vv. 16\u201318). God\u2019s abode is in heaven; on earth there is only the voice from the fire, the word (v. 36). The interpretation of the prohibition in this text is consistent with the Deuteronomic understanding of the ark as the receptacle of the torah, that is, the words of Yahweh, through which the deity is present among the people (Deut. 10:1\u20135).<\/p>\n
Fig. 7. Reliefs of storm god standing on a bull pedestal. (After ANEP, nos. 500 and 501)<\/p>\n
It is possible, however, that the prohibition had other functions than safeguarding the exclusive worship of Yahweh and his transcendence. There are some indications that the aniconic insistence was also closely related to sociopolitical and economic realities. The close association of conceptions of kingship and of deity in the ancient world, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, for example, may have been a factor in the early appearance of the aniconic tendency. The clearest analogies to the cherub throne upon the ark are iconic representations of kings on cherub thrones. As R. S. Hendel has noted,<\/p>\n
The close relationship between the image of the god and the image of the king is an important part of the ideology of kingship in the ancient Near East. The king was regarded as the earthly representative of the gods, and as such the image of the god was a symbol of the legitimacy of the earthly king. The divine image was pictured and was treated as a king, therefore serving as a reminder of the divine authority of the king.<\/p>\n
Plate 2. Small bronze statuette of a bull that may have been an object of worship. Found in northern Samaria at what some believe was a cultic site. From the twelfth century. (Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority)<\/p>\n
The resistance to divine images may, therefore, have been linked to a distinctive feature of early Israelite social structure, the resistance to kingship. As such, it would have been a reflection on the iconographic level of \u201cthe early Israelite bias against the institution and ideology of kingship.\u201d The images on thrones were gods and kings. The physical image of Yahweh on a throne could have served to suggest and legitimate a mode of leadership foreign to Israel\u2019s early social structure. If this hypothesis about the social function of the aniconic requirement is at all correct, it does not mean that the other functions identified in the tradition were not also a part of its rationale at one time or another. It does mean, however, that the prohibition, or at least the creation of an imageless divine throne at the center of the cultus, would have belonged to the early stages of Israelite religion, prior to the beginnings of kingship.
\nW. Brueggemann has called attention to several instances in the biblical texts where the iconic tendency is closely associated with gold and wealth. These include the use of the gold rings of the Israelites to build the golden calf in the wilderness, gold that Brueggemann associates with the plundering of silver and jewelry from the Egyptians, noting that \u201cconfiscated gold is evidence of an economic surplus,\u201d and that Gideon made an \u201cephod\u201d (image? cf. Judg. 17:5) out of golden earrings taken from the Midianites (Judg. 8:22\u201328), as earlier Hebrews had plundered the Egyptians. The prophets inveigh often against idols made of silver and gold (figs. 2 and 3), and Deuteronomy warns against coveting the silver and gold on the idols (7:25). The temple in Jerusalem is another indication of the move toward the iconic in a situation of settled and secure affluence. There is a puzzling incongruity between the heavily iconographic and affluent character of the temple, built with much precious or fine metal and rich imagery (not images) and the aniconic character of the excavated \u201cestablishment\u201d sanctuaries of Iron Age Judah. Rest and riches, booty and plunder, seem to some degree to go hand in hand with the iconic tendency.<\/p>\n
THE DIVINE WORLD<\/p>\n
The place of Yahweh vis-\u00e0-vis other gods, or vice versa, remained an issue of Israelite religion throughout its course. That is no surprise in light of the continuing impetus toward the exclusive worship of Yahweh by Israel. The existence of a divine world, \u201cpeopled\u201d with divine and semidivine beings, some named and others not, was a common feature of Near Eastern mythology and was reflected in their religious conceptions and practices. In each society, the relationships among such divine figures was varied and complex. There were pantheons in which gods figured in familial relationships and\/or in conflictual ones. They interacted in some instances as groups in making decisions. They might have individual shrines or shrines in which more than one deity could be worshiped. Some deities acted as mediaries between human beings and other deities. Some were recognized as demonic figures who could and did afflict human beings. Many were associated with particular aspects of nature, while others were primarily national deities. In the case of deities such as Marduk and Ashur, the national gods of Babylon and Assyria, there was a tendency to absorb various features often associated with other individual deities.
\nIn such a varied, complex, and polytheistic world, Israel worshiped the god Yahweh. Yahwism was a part of that world but had its own particularities and mutations. While there are varying ways and varying opinions about how Israelite religion understood the relation of Yahweh to other deities, there are certain aspects of that relationship that are clearly indicated. Yahweh came into existence as a worshiped deity out of the world of the gods with discernable antecedents, so we may speak of Yahweh as coming out of the gods and the divine world of Canaan. It is also the case, however, that the divine world, that is, characteristic central features of other deities, seem to be a part of Yahweh\u2019s profile as a deity; so we may also recognize that the gods are present in Yahweh. But one of the most obvious features of the presentation of that divine world in biblical literature is the conflictual relation between Yahweh and the gods, so that it is necessary also to speak of Yahweh against the gods as a dimension of the relationship. Each of these aspects of Yahweh\u2019s involvement with the divine world, then, may be illustrated as follows.<\/p>\n
Yahweh out of the Gods<\/p>\n
Various kinds of evidence from biblical and extrabiblical sources attest to the fact that the god Yahweh had roots and origins among the high gods of Canaanite religion and the tutelary or clan deities of patriarchal family religion. The most plausible reconstruction of those origins of Yahweh, in my judgment, is that of Cross. Building on the work of Albrecht Alt, he notes that in the patriarchal traditions in the Pentateuch, the god worshiped by a patriarch and his family is identified by the patriarch\u2019s name, for example, \u201cthe god of Abraham\u201d or \u201cthe bull of Jacob.\u201d Such a deity, \u201cthe god of the father\/ancestor,\u201d was not a local god but the patron of the clan or social group, existing in a kinship or covenantal relation with it, responsible for assisting and guiding the clan in its movements and its conflicts in matters of family and generational need. The special relationship to the social group and the \u201chistorical\u201d character of the deity\u2019s activities anticipated traits and \u201ccharacteristics of the religion of Yahweh, the lord of covenant and community.\u201d Such clan deities, however, were not nameless and without identity apart from the clan. They were high gods, easily identified by common traits or cognate names with the gods of the Canaanite or Amorite pantheon.
\nThe other element identified by Alt, Cross, and others as present in pre-Yahwistic patriarchal religion was the worship of the high god El as indicated in the divine names in Genesis, such as El Olam and El Shaddai (figs. 1 and 2). These were titles of the high god of the Canaanite pantheon, a patriarchal figure, head of the assembly of the gods, primordial father of gods and human beings. He was a social god both in reference to the family of gods as well as to human beings. He frequently played the role of \u201cgod of the father\/ancestor,\u201d the social deity bound to tribe or king with kinship or covenant ties, guiding or leading them. The epic materials from Ugarit regularly show El answering, helping, directing the royal figures. In addition, El was the transcendent creator God. As the Genesis narratives reveal, the gods of the ancestors were identified with Canaanite El who bore in his character traits that made the identification natural, particularly in light of the fact that the god of the ancestor\u2014of Abraham, Jacob, and the like\u2014may have been Amorite Ilu or El.
\nAs we have already noted, Yahweh appeared on the scene probably as a cultic name of El and would have split off as a separate deity in the differentiation of Yahweh\u2019s cultus in south Canaan, an area where the worship of El was popular. Yahweh was thus, in origin, an El figure, as Ex. 6:2\u20133 suggests rather directly in identifying the pre-Mosaic manifestation of Yahweh as El Shaddai, and the various El names continued throughout the history of Israel\u2019s religion to be acceptable titles for Yahweh. The roots of Yahweh, therefore, are to be traced back far (historically) and broadly (geographically) into the religious world of the ancient Near East, and particularly Syria-Palestine. Clan religion, Amorite religion, Canaanite religion\u2014these formed the matrix out of which the worship of Yahweh came. It is not simply a matter of a few similarities between Yahweh and these other divine figures. Virtually all of the characteristics of the God of Israel are present in the early stages of Yahwism, and most of them reach back beyond Israel\u2019s earliest stage, wherever that is placed, to pre-Israelite religious developments.<\/p>\n
The Gods in Yahweh<\/p>\n
It is equally the case that the gods of the ancient world, particularly Syria-Palestine, were to be found in Yahweh. That is, their character and mythology were reflected in various ways in the character and mythology of Yahweh. If Yahweh was in origin a split-off from El, El features were part of the character of Yahweh\u2014El\u2019s compassion and wisdom, being divine judge and head of the divine council as well as creator and father, El\u2019s kingship, his tent and cherubim throne, to name some of the major shared elements. So also were fundamental dimensions of the god Baal basic to Yahweh. The patterns and motifs of Baal as storm god who rides the clouds and whose theophany has such powerful effects on the natural world were present in the numerous hymnic and prose traditions of the theophany of Yahweh. The imagery of Yahweh as the divine warrior reflected the character of El and other gods and goddesses but most particularly Baal, who was frequently depicted both in his march accompanied by his entourage to battle the enemy and in his return from battle to take his place in his new temple on his holy mountain.
\nPaul Riemann has drawn upon the work of Thorkild Jacobsen to make the cogent proposal that there was a centralization or integration of divine power and authority, perceived as the supremacy of one single deity to whom all other divine beings are subordinate, a tendency discernable in first-millennium Mesopotamian religion in the rise to supreme power in the divine realm of the two national gods, Marduk of Babylon and Ashur of Assyria. Other gods acted as agents or intercessors. There was a strong feeling of unified central power in the divine world. Various gods were seen as in essence one, with aspects of a supreme god. Enlil, for example, was Marduk (as god) of lordship and council. The gods were either identified with the supreme god (as in the ascription of fifty divine names to Marduk in the Creation epic) or reinterpreted as manifestations of the supreme god. The polytheistic framework was never abandoned in Mesopotamia. But \u201cthe emphasis had subtly shifted; power and decision were now centered in Marduk or in Ashur,\u201d national and political deities closely tied to their people, divine powers active in human affairs as well as nature. Looking at this effective integration of divine power, Jacobsen concludes, \u201cThere is a recognizable drive to see the forces that govern the cosmos as basically one and unified.\u201d
\nOne cannot transfer the process that led to this point in Babylonia and Assyria directly to Israel. Yet it may be that this integrative dimension, this drive to see the cosmic forces as unified, was reflected in Yahweh and is one way of comprehending the monotheistic tendency that was always present in Yahwism. A number of Yahwistic factors make sense on analogy with the Mesopotamian development. One is the difficulty of articulating a peculiar character to Yahweh as a deity. In origin, Yahweh has been seen as a mountain god, a sky god, a storm god, a national god, and so forth. But none of these was the case and all of them were. The forces and aspects of the cosmos were all caught up in Yahweh, and the characterization of deity in its manifold possibilities\u2014as portrayed in Near Eastern religion and mythology\u2014were present in Yahweh.
\nWhile there are some fragmentary mythological pieces in the Old Testament, the general absence of myth is probably also a reflection of this centralization of divine authority and rule. Riemann notes, \u201cThe radical subordination of all other divine powers has radically reduced the role of the heavenly realm as the locus of drama and conflict.\u201d
\nThe integration of the divine world is probably reflected best in the numerous biblical references and allusions to the divine council or heavenly assembly, a mythological phenomenon ubiquitous in the polytheistic world of ancient Near Eastern religions. Yahweh was envisioned seated on a throne in his temple or palace surrounded by a nameless host of divine beings who rendered service to the enthroned deity (1 Kings 22:19; Isa. 6:1\u20134). Yahweh took counsel with them and commissioned them with tasks. They sat as a court to judge a case and pronounce a verdict. The gods went from the assembly to accompany Yahweh into battle. In all of this activity, the members of the divine assembly had no autonomy or independence apart from the word and action of Yahweh. They remained essentially nameless, without personality or profile. Unlike Ugaritic or Babylonian mythology, for example, there was no conflict over power in the world of the gods that was brought before this assembly except for one quasi-mythological text, Psalm 82, whose point is precisely Yahweh\u2019s claim to rule as judge over the divine world. In that psalm, Yahweh condemns all the gods to death for their failure to maintain justice on earth and takes over the total rule of the divine world. It is, in effect, a story of the radical integration of deity in one god\u2014Yahweh.
\nThe divine assembly, therefore, was a manifestation of the integration of divine power while it also maintained its social character.<\/p>\n
[The] complexity and plurality of the universe was not lost but ruled. The plurality and diversity of experiences and phenomena that make up the creation point to a complex cosmos that is allowed both its complexity and its ordered direction by a fully integrated divine world whose rule by one is as clear as its social character.<\/p>\n
This means, therefore, that the mythopoeic symbol of the divine assembly not only served the radical integration of the divine world in the figure of Yahweh, but also gave to the reality of the divine a highly political shape. The assembly was understood as the machinery by which the just rule of Yahweh was effective in the universe. It is no accident that central to the conception of Israelite prophecy was the notion that the prophet was the herald from the council of Yahweh. Yahweh\u2019s rule took place in the activity of the divine assembly where the decrees of Yahweh directing the human community and the divine world were set forth and through which they were communicated or enacted.
\nThe absence of demons as a significant force in Israelite religion and in its conception of divine powers may be accounted for in a similar way. Such a proposal was put forth long ago by Paul Volz, who saw in the many manifestations of the terrifying, the uncanny, the pernicious, and the hostile in the activity of Yahweh signs of the demonic, a dimension of deity that represented an absorption of the demonic forces of the divine world that were well-known from other religions of the ancient Near East.Jehova These are reflected in the biblical literature not only in such strange episodes as the \u201cbloody bridegroom\u201d of Ex. 4:24\u201326, the death of Uzzah upon touching the ark (2 Samuel 6), and the anger of Yahweh inciting David to take the census of Israel and Judah (2 Sam. 14:1\u20139), but also in the many images of Yahweh as wild animal or natural force that breaks out into terrifying acts.
\nAt the same time, it is this dimension that points to an eventual partial breakdown of the integration of the divine powers in Yahweh. The Chronicler attributes the incitement of David\u2019s census to \u015b\u0101\u1e6d\u0101n, whose appearance as ha\u015b\u015b\u0101\u1e6d\u0101n, \u201cthe adversary\u201d or \u201cthe accuser,\u201d in Job 1\u20132 and Zech. 5:1\u20135 reflects an incipient opposing force to the power of the deity. While not in the biblical literature reflective of a forthright dualism, such a move sowed the seeds of dualistic thinking within Israelite religion in the postexilic period. It is likely, as the story of the census and the book of Job suggest, that such a move toward a subdued dualism was rooted in the community\u2019s attempt to deal with the problem of evil and the fact that the reality of human sin and divine judgment could not alone carry the moral burden of accounting for all the evil that happened. The conflict between the \u201cchildren of light\u201d and the \u201cchildren of darkness\u201d in apocalyptic thinking was a further indication of an incipient dualistic way of thinking that served to undermine the integration of divine power in Yahweh of Israel without, however, fully undoing it.<\/p>\n
Yahweh against the Gods<\/p>\n
The conception of Yahweh over against or in conflict with the gods of the Near Eastern religions permeates much of biblical literature. The God of Israel, who came out of the gods and in whom the world of the gods can be discerned, stood over against all other gods, claiming a unity and exclusiveness that ruled them out. Such a claim carried with it a theological perspective on the nature of the divine reality that was of far-reaching significance in the history of Israelite religion.
\nPsalm 82 is an explicit and possibly early manifestation of this opposition. While the gods who are gathered in the \u201ccouncil of El\u201d or \u201cdivine council\u201d (v. 1) are unnamed and do not speak, Yahweh stands up in their midst and condemns them all to death, in effect taking over all power, indeed all claim to deity, in the divine realm. The encounter with the Philistines described in 1 Samuel 4\u20136 contains a veiled allusion to the conflict, even battle, with the Philistine deity Dagon. The places at which this conflict was made definitional are the commandments of the Decalogue forbidding the worship of other gods and the making of divine images (Ex. 20:3\u20136; Deut. 5:7\u201310) and the Shema of Deut. 6:4\u20135, requiring Israel\u2019s full allegiance to Yahweh alone, as well as the insistence on Yahweh\u2019s jealousy (Ex. 20:5; Deut. 5:9).
\nThe temporal point at which the conflictual relationship between Yahweh and other deities began is much debated. It may reach back to premonarchical times, though some interpreters of Israel\u2019s religion would place it later. There may well have been elements within the community open to the worship of other deities, while a more orthodox Yahwism prohibited such worship. The clearest indicators of that conflict appear first in the ninth century, especially in Elijah\u2019s opposition to the worship of the Canaanite deity Baal. The issue was not that Yahweh could be forgotten or ignored, but that the deity would become simply another god alongside the great gods and goddesses of Canaanite religion. The high point of the ninth-century conflict was the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and its sequel in Yahweh\u2019s revelation to Elijah at Horeb (1 Kings 18\u201319). Not only was Baal defeated in the contest, but the appearance of Yahweh to Elijah at Horeb, not in the wind or earthquake or fire but in the sound of a low whisper, was clearly a polemic against the storm god Baal. Imagery and mode of revelation from the world of Canaanite religion that were once acceptable as a vehicle for Yahweh are here rejected.
\nIn an almost reverse manner, the prophecy of Hosea in the eighth century set forth the polemic against Baal in terms, not of Yahweh\u2019s rejection of Baal\u2019s imagery, but the deity\u2019s appropriation, in transformed fashion, of Canaanite language and thought. Yahweh preempted the role of Baal by promising to bestow fertility upon a faithful people and their land. The socioeconomic dimensions of the conflict appear especially here.<\/p>\n
THE FEMININE DIMENSION AND THE QUESTION OF THE GODDESS<\/p>\n
Other ways of describing the relation of Yahweh to other gods can be set forth with plausibility. But some such dynamic as is laid out in this framework would seem to be necessary to account for the data. In the next chapter, we will seek to show that matters are even more complex than presented here. One further matter requires some attention, however, in sketching a picture of Israel\u2019s God. That is the question of the feminine dimension and the presence or absence of the goddess or goddesses, who played a significant part generally in the surrounding religious systems. With the appearance of inscriptions referring to \u201cYahweh and his asherah,\u201d the latter word a term that customarily referred to or was the same as the name of one of the most prominent Canaanite goddesses, this question has come more to the fore. In the scholarly literature there are increasing claims Yahweh had a consort.
\nHere it is proposed that the extreme integration of divine characteristics, roles, and powers in Yahweh carried with it an absorption of the feminine dimension in deity represented in ancient Near Eastern religions by the worship of a goddess. That would mean, in effect, its disappearance as a separately identifiable dimension because the characteristics of goddesses in the ancient Near East were shared by male deities also, except for childbearing, and even there procreative activities were carried on by both gods and goddesses.
\nAgain, the Mesopotamian situation may give us some analogies. The god list AN = Anu \u0161a am\u0113li gives the various names of the sky god or god of heaven, Anu. The last name of Anu given there is Ura\u0161, \u201cearth,\u201d who elsewhere is Anu\u2019s spouse. The female counterpart in the divine world is here specifically identified with or merged into the male deity. The name is preserved in the list, but integration and absorption take place.
\nThat process may go a step further in a text referred to by both Jacobsen and Lambert in their discussion of integration, merger, or absorption in the Mesopotamian pantheon. In CT 24 No. 50, in which the major gods of the pantheon are identified with Marduk, Lambert observes that the only exclusions from the list of deities are demons and goddesses and suggests that \u201cpresumably the compiler of this list would not have denied the existence of Zarpanitum, spouse of Marduk in his temple in Babylon,\u201d and so the monotheism of the text would have to be qualified by allowing for the existence of one god and his spouse. The presumption may be correct. It is what one would expect. At the same time, one has to admit that the text as a whole is not exactly what one would normally expect in a polytheistic context, and it may be that Zarpanitum is either absorbed implicitly as Ura\u0161 with Anu or is simply outside the picture. No goddesses are named. The elevation of the male deity to position as \u201cthe sole possessor of power in the universe\u201d involves the integration of all the divine roles and powers associated with male deities and the absence or disappearance of the female deities. Whatever the structural process involved in such a move, the end result is clear: The goddesses are not present.
\nMuch the same seems to be the case with Yahweh in Israelite religion. Either the feminine deity was implicitly absorbed in Yahweh from the beginning along with all other divine powers and so had no independent existence or character, or the radical integration of divine powers in the male deity Yahweh effectively excluded the goddess(es), as seems to be the case with CT 24 No. 50 in Mesopotamia. There is some evidence that suggests that absorption and integration of the goddess into the character and indeed the cult of Yahweh was what took place and at an early stage, though the nature and character of that process and the extent to which there is evidence of a separate goddess alongside Yahweh at any stage in Israelite religion is a matter of much debate. At a minimum, the data\u2014biblical and extrabiblical, literary and artifactual\u2014suggest the possibility that the feminine dimension did not disappear altogether.
\nInscriptions from the ruins of a ninth to eighth century caravanserai or way station at Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud, which was visited by Israelites and Judeans, record blessings \u201cby Yahweh of Samaria\/Teman and by his asherah\u201d invoked by an individual on others, all of whom have good Yahwistic names. The expression \u201cYahweh and his asherah\u201d occurs also in an inscription from a tomb in Judah, probably to be translated as follows (fig. 8):<\/p>\n
(For) Uriyahu the rich: his inscription.
\n(Or: has written it.)
\nBlessed is Uriyahu by Yahweh;
\nYea from his adversaries by his asherah he has saved him.
\n(Written) by Oniyahu
\n(\u2026?) and by his asherah.\u201d<\/p>\n
The occurrence of the word \u201casherah,\u201d well known from the Bible as either a goddess or a cult object and usually condemned as contrary to appropriate worship of Yahweh, in the formulation \u201cYahweh and his asherah\u201d is obviously of some moment for an understanding of Israel\u2019s God and the cultus associated with his worship. But what exactly the phrase means or refers to is a matter of much debate.Jehova<\/p>\n
Fig. 8. Tomb inscription referring to \u201cyahweh\u201d on the left side of the second line and \u201chis asherah\u201d in the middle of the third line and at the bottom left. (After Hadley, Vetus Testamentum 37 [1987], p. 52)<\/p>\n
There is no question that the term \u201casherah\u201d can refer to a cult object of some sort, apparently wooden, though whether it is a tree or a crafted wooden object is not altogether clear (fig. 9 and the second register from the top of Taanach cult stand, plates 3 and 4). Both possibilities are indicated in different texts. In the biblical texts, the word \u201casherah\u201d occurs most often with the definite article, \u201cthe asherah,\u201d but also in an indefinite singular as well as a number of times in the plural. Several times it occurs alongside other cult objects, such as high place (b\u0101m\u00e2), pillar (ma\u1e63\u1e63\u0113b\u00e2), altar (mizb\u0113a\u1e25) incense altar (hamm\u0101n), and image (pesel). The asherah stood alongside an altar. Together with the pillar, these made up a shrine, whether a high place or a temple (plate 1).
\nWhile some interpreters would see at least some of the references to \u201casherah\u201d as referring to a goddess of that name, in continuity with the well-known A\u1e6firat associated with El in Ugaritic mythology, that is less clear. The reference to worshiping \u201cthe Baals and the Asherahs\u201d in Judg. 3:17 probably is an error for \u201cthe Baals and the Ashtaroth,\u201d referring to the well-known second-millennium goddess Astarte alongside the male deity Baal. The allusion to \u201cthe four hundred prophets of Asherah\u201d in 1 Kings 18:19 is also a suspect text and probably a secondary gloss. In several instances, a clear distinction is made between \u201cmaking\u201d an asherah or asherahs and \u201cbowing down to\u201d or \u201cworshiping\u201d and \u201cserving\u201d Baal and the host of heaven. That is, Baal and the host of heaven are frequently treated in the text as objects of worship, using exactly the vocabulary for worship that appears in the commandments prohibiting worship of other gods and images, while the asherah is not. The strongest suggestion of a goddess Asherah is to be found in 2 Kings 23:4, where it is reported that Josiah had brought out of the temple \u201call the vessels made for the baal, for the asherah, and for all the host of heaven.\u201d Inasmuch as Baal and the host of heaven are elsewhere worshiped as deities, the same might be suggested here. But it cannot be excluded that this is again a cult symbol. Immediately after this, in verses 6\u20137, the asherah is treated differently and the \u201cvessels made for the asherah\u201d may refer to the \u201chouses\u201d the women wove for the asherah.<\/p>\n
Fig. 9. Ibexes feeding on a tree that may have symbolized the goddess Asherah. (After Beck, Tel Aviv 9 [1982], fig. 4)<\/p>\n
Plate 3. Tenth-century cult stand from Taanach (front view). (Courtesy of Nancy Lapp)<\/p>\n
Plate 4. Tenth-century cult stand from Taanach (side view). (Courtesy of Nancy Lapp)<\/p>\n
In short, the many references to the asherah associate it frequently with nondivinized cult objects and dissociate it from verbs of worship and service applied customarily to deities while also associating it with deities in a way that was not true of any other cult object. The silence concerning Asherah (goddess) on the part of prophets such as Elijah and Elisha who condemned so vigorously the worship of Baal and other gods, as well as the fact that the asherah erected in Samaria survived the radical and bloody purge of Baalism, its adherents, and its cultic objects by Jehu under the auspices of Elijah and Elisha (2 Kings 9\u201310), suggest both that there was no worship of a separate goddess Asherah in Israel and that the asherah in some fashion could be acceptable to a radical Yahwist like Jehu.
\nThe inscriptions speaking of \u201cYahweh and his asherah\u201d may be a clue to what is going on here (fig. 8). They occur in a context that is otherwise Yahwistic. At a minimum one must recognize here a cult object of Yahweh marking his presence, in other words, a form of hypostatization of Yahweh. How far that hypostatization has taken place in these inscriptions is not altogether clear. A number of scholars argue that the presence of asherah as a consort of Yahweh may be inferred from them. The presence, however, of the possessive \u201chis asherah\u201d and the use of singular verbs with the expression \u201cyhwh \u2026 wl\u2019\u0161rth\u201d at both Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom inhibit a simple reading of this as referring to a goddess with some separate identity. The term \u201casherah\u201d does not have to be understood as referring to the cult symbol of the goddess Asherah. Other names for deities are also common nouns, the most obvious being baal (\u201clord\u201d) itself, which does not always refer to a deity and can be used in reference to Yahweh. In their extended treatment of the inscriptional and iconographic evidence, particularly the stylized tree that is associated with asherah\/Asherah, Keel and Uehlinger have made a cogent proposal: \u201cThe iconographically important evidence, referring transparently to the goddess by means of a stylized tree, but which even more frequently represents a gender-neutral symbol of numinous power, can best be understood if we interpret the Iron Age IIB asherah as a mediating entity associated with Yahweh, rather than as a personal, independently active, female deity.\u201d
\nHaving said that, one must also recognize that the blessing formulas in which the expression \u201cYahweh and his asherah\u201d occurs at Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud usually list only deities as the source of blessings and that the separation at Khirbet el-Qom of l\u2019\u0161rth from yhwh in a kind of poetic parallelism (the word also is written separately on the stone) suggests some kind of separate identity, related to Yahweh, of the asherah referred to in these texts. That separate identity does not have to be the goddess Asherah or even the goddess\u2019s cult symbol. But to the extent that a goddess named Asherah was worshiped in Iron Age Syria-Palestine, there was always the possibility that the asherah of Yahweh could be identified with that goddess. Its feminine character is clear linguistically. The fears of the Deuteronomists were well founded (see Deut. 7:5\u20136; 16:21\u201322). The setting up of an asherah in the temple of Yahweh, whether in the Northern Kingdom or in Judah, was not necessarily indicative of the worship of a separate goddess. It may have been a cult object of Yahweh, but, if so, it was one that could be understood separately from Yahweh\u2014and thus, potentially at least, as the consort of Israel\u2019s God\u2014which along with him could be the source of blessing (Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud) or salvation (Khirbet el-Qom). The history of Israel\u2019s religion, therefore, would represent in the asherah a move toward hypostatization of the feminine dimension of deity\u2014a move that was suppressed in the activities of the reforming kings and the Deuteronomistic supporters\u2014what one scholar has described as \u201can aspect of the divine \u2026 becoming concretized or reified.\u201d Other forms of such hypostatization, or at least personification, occurred in late biblical and postbiblical times. Divine characteristics that were feminine in linguistic form, such as \u1e25okm\u00e2, \u201cWisdom,\u201d and \u0161\u0115k\u012bn\u00e2, \u201cPresence,\u201d were seen to have a kind of reality subordinate to and representative of Yahweh. In Proverbs 8 and elsewhere, Lady Wisdom is described as the first of God\u2019s creative acts and a participant with Yahweh in the creation of the universe.
\nIf one could establish clearly that Asherah was worshiped in Israel at an early time as a separate deity and consort of Yahweh, then it would be necessary to think of the process leading to the inscriptional formula \u201cYahweh and his asherah\u201d and to the Deuteronomists\u2019 condemnation of the asherah in a reverse manner to that suggested above, that is, as a gradual absorption of the goddess and her characteristic features into the character of Yahweh within the course of Israel\u2019s history. What we find in the Old Testament and in the epigraphic sources would represent a subordination of the goddess into a cult object belonging to the worship of Yahweh, in effect again a kind of hypostatization. This possibility has been set forth by J. Hadley as follows:<\/p>\n
By Manasseh\u2019s time, it is possible that the asherah statue had lost enough of its \u201cgoddess background,\u201d and was considered more as an aspect of fertility, so that the image was allowed to stand until Josiah\u2019s reform.\u2026
\nIf it is indeed true that Israel was gradually losing the identity of the goddess Asherah as a fertility goddess, one must look for ways in which this need continued to be met. As a male deity, Yahweh needed to be able, in some capacity, to take over some of these fertility aspects.\u2026 It may be that he has absorbed the earlier Canaanite fertility goddesses into his cult, and the statues which were formerly dedicated solely to the goddess Asherah have now become part of Yahweh\u2019s cultic paraphernalia. The asherah pole may have even become a hypostatization of Yahweh\u2019s fertility aspects.\u2026 By the time of the deuteronomistic compilers, the distinction between Asherah the goddess and asherah the wooden cultic symbol had perhaps become totally obscured, hence the tendency to pluralize asherah.<\/p>\n
Another example of the presence of the feminine dimension in Israelite religion is the number of female figurines that have been found in domestic locations in Israel and Judah from different periods during the monarchical era (plate 5). The function of these figurines is unclear. It is possible that they represent a goddess, Asherah or Astarte. One interpretation suggests that they \u201cmay be smaller copies of the asherah statue which stood in the local temple, or they may be a part of a separate form of domestic worship of the goddess.\u201d Unfortunately, it is not possible to make a clear identification with any known goddess, which does not mean that they were not in fact so identified by those who possessed them. It is certainly possible, as many have suggested, that they were identified with the mother goddess and served some function in relation to fertility or were aids to childbirth and nurturing. The figures regularly are depicted holding their breasts. They may have been talismanic in character, \u201cused in sympathetic magic to stimulate the reproductive processes.\u201d That there tended to be only one figurine to a house or domestic site would suggest a more specific identification and cultic function within family or domestic religious life.
\nIn the process of Yahweh\u2019s absorption or integration of the feminine dimension, specifically feminine characteristics and images were applied to Yahweh on occasion, for example, the imagery of Yahweh giving birth to the earth (Ps. 90:2) and to Israel (Deut. 32:18), or the comparison of the deity to a nursing mother (Isa. 49:15; cf. Num. 11:12) and a comforting mother (Isa. 66:13).
\nBefore leaving the question of the feminine and the goddess in relation to Yahweh, it should be noted that the cultus around the asherah, whether cult object of Yahweh or his consort Asherah, seems to have involved women particularly. This is seen first of all in the roles of the queens or queen mothers who seem to have nurtured or been attentive to the asherah of Yahweh and were condemned for that in Deuteronomistic circles. In 1 Kings 15:13, reference is made to the miple\u1e63et. \u201cabomination,\u201d that the queen mother Maacah made for the asherah, which Asa then cut down and burned. It is impossible to tell what the miple\u1e63et is. The term may be simply a substitute word for what was actually made. Whatever its meaning, the queen mother was actively involved in supporting the cult of the asherah\/Asherah. A more general indication of the involvement of women in the cult of asherah\/Asherah is found in 2 Kings 23:7. There we are told that the women \u201cwove houses for the asherah.\u201d Like the miple\u1e63et of 1 Kings 15:13, the \u201chouses\u201d or \u201ccoverings\u201d here are enigmatic, and the text may be corrupt. But the point that women were active in making things for the asherah\/Asherah is clear in the text.<\/p>\n
Plate 5. Female figurines from Judah, eighth to sixth century. (Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority)<\/p>\n
Other indications may be set alongside these two explicit associations of women with the cult of Yahweh\u2019s asherah or the goddess Asherah, as the case may be. We have called attention to the suspect character of the textual reference to the \u201cfour hundred prophets of Asherah\u201d in 1 Kings 18:19. If that is not a gloss, however, it specifically identifies the Asherah prophets with Jezebel, at whose table they sat. That should come as no surprise, since A\u1e6firat in the second-millennium Ugaritic texts is identified with Tyre and Sidon, and Jezebel was the daughter of the king of Tyre and Sidon (1 Kings 16:31). Judith Hadley has suggested that the devotion to the Sumerian and Babylonian god Tammuz reflected in the scene of the women weeping for Tammuz in Ezek. 8:14 may be viewed in this connection: \u201cif the Israelites had \u2018lost\u2019 their fertility deity [i.e., Asherah], they may have then \u2018adopted\u2019 the popular Sumerian and Babylonian god Tammuz for this purpose.\u201d More explicitly, women are seen as the primary or initiating participants in the cult of the Queen of Heaven as described in Jer. 7:17\u201318 and 44:15\u201325.
\nThe significance of the involvement of women in the activities around the asherah or around goddess worship, as the case may be, is not altogether clear. Two or three possibilities, not necessarily mutually exclusive, may be suggested in light of the place and role of women in ancient Israel. It may have been that they were generally marginalized in most of the formal cultic activities of orthodox and public Yahwism (see chapter 2) and so forced into marginally acceptable to unacceptable roles from that perspective (see chapter 5). One notes that the women weeping for Tammuz were at the gate of the temple forecourt and not inside it, in contrast to the men who are condemned in the following verses for abominable practices they perform within the inner court. But one notices also in several of these cases that the women\u2019s cultic activities were of the sort that women customarily carried out in society and domestic life generally, for example, weaving and cooking. In both cases, the weaving for the asherah (or for Asherah) and the cooking of cakes for the Queen of Heaven, the usually domestic activities are explicitly cultic. The weaving took place in the temple; the making of special cakes was done along with the pouring out of the libations by the women, though the husbands joined in.Jehovas The domestic role of women is attested in these practices, but this role was brought into the cultic sphere. That suggests further that the cult of the goddess or the cult of the asherah, whether as a hypostatized or mediating dimension of Yahweh or as a goddess, was particularly open to the participation of women, and in a way that incorporated their customary activities as women into its ritual and cultic life. One notes further that while the women weeping for Tammuz were not involved in goddess worship, the deity in whose ritual support they participated was a vegetation and fertility deity, who\u2014if Hadley\u2019s tentative suggestion is at all on the right track\u2014may have taken the place of the worship of their \u201cfertility\u201d deity represented in Asherah or in the asherah of Yahweh. The weeping, again, is an activity with which women were often particularly associated, in the cult of Tammuz and more generally.
\nOne must not assume, however, that participation in the cult of the goddess was automatically or always a positive and self-enhancing activity for women. If Georg Braulik\u2019s interpretation of Hos. 4:18 is correct, then we have there a reference in the eighth century to the cult of the goddess (mentioned obliquely in v. 18 as \u201c[the goddess] whose shields are shame\u201d) that seems to put women in humiliating and exploited positions as sexual objects for men in alcoholic and orgiastic rites.
\nThe worship of Yahweh, therefore, stood at the center of Israel\u2019s religion. But, as we have seen, other currents and various ways of expressing that worship\u2014or, indeed, modifying it\u2014were present at nearly all times. In an effort to get a clearer grasp on those variations, we need to turn to an examination of the types of religion in ancient Israel.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 1: YAHWEH IN ANCIENT ISRAEL<\/p>\n
The biblical evidence for the centrality of Yahweh is so clear and obvious from even the most cursory reading that it need not be recounted. Where other gods are acknowledged as being worshiped, that activity is always condemned. The indications of syncretism, heterodoxy, and different types of religious expression in ancient Israel (see chapter 2) do not obviate the claims for the centrality of Yahweh.
\nEpigraphic data from Israelite and Judean sites during the eighth to sixth centuries confirm this fact. We now have over forty extrabiblical references to yhwh (including yh and yhw) in blessings, oaths, religious salutations, votive offerings, seals, prayers, and even an oracle of salvation. For a complete listing as of 1991, see the concordance in Graham I. Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Davies lists 42 occurrences of the divine name. Two more have appeared on inscriptions published since 1991. For these, see Pierre Bordreuil, Felice Israel, and Dennis Pardee, \u201cDeux ostraca pal\u00e9o-h\u00e9breux de la Collection Sh. Moussaieff,\u201d Sem 46 (1996): 49\u201376; and Hershel Shanks, \u201cThree Shekels for the Lord: Ancient Inscription Records Gift to Solomon\u2019s Temple,\u201d BARev 23 (1997): 28\u201332. The Mesha Stele, a ninth-century Moabite inscription recounting a Moabite victory over Israel, identifies Yahweh as the god of Israel. No clear reference to any other deity has been found except for possible references to \u201cAsherah,\u201d a goddess. These are all associated with Yahweh (for example, \u201cYahweh and his asherah\u201d), and are more probably to be understood as a reference to a cultic symbol of the deity Yahweh than to a goddess consort, though a number of scholars have so interpreted them and that possibility cannot be excluded. See below on this issue. On the attestations of Yahweh in the Hebrew inscriptions, see Andr\u00e9 Lemaire, \u201cD\u00e9sses et dieux de Syrie-Palestine d\u2019apr\u00e9s les inscriptions (c. 1000\u2013500 av. n. \u00e9.),\u201d in Ein Gott allein? JHWH-Verehrung und biblischer Monotheismus im Kontext der israelitischen und altorientalischen Religionsgeschichte, ed. Walter Dietrich and Martin A. Klopfenstein, OBO 139 (Freiburg: Universit\u00e4tsverlag, 1994), 147\u201349.
\nIn addition, a hymnic fragment from Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud contains references to El and Baal. Written in Phoenician script, it may or may not be Israelite\/Judean in origin. At the moment, this fragment contains the only divine names besides Yahweh\u2014or El\/Elohim in reference to Yahweh\u2014from any site clearly occupied by Israelites or Judeans. Kyle McCarter has argued cogently that \u201cbaal\u201d in this text is a title, an epithet meaning \u201clord,\u201d and that that epithet in early Israel, especially the early monarchy, was an acceptable title for Yahweh. Thus, he would see in the Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud plaster inscription an early extrabiblical account of Yahweh coming from the south as a warrior, comparable to some of the theophanic early biblical poetry. See P. Kyle McCarter, \u201cThe Origins of Israelite Religion,\u201d in The Rise of Ancient Israel, ed. Hershel Shanks (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992), 123\u201329. The claim that \u201cbaal\u201d in the early part of Israel\u2019s history was an acceptable epithet of Yahweh and is reflected in the Baal proper names and place names of the Bible has been made by other scholars, most recently, for example, by Stig Norin, \u201cOnomastik zwischen Linguistik und Geschichte\u201d (paper delivered at the Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Oslo, August 1998), forthcoming in the proceedings of the Congress in a volume of VTSup; and J. Andrew Dearman, \u201cBaal in Israel: The Contribution of Some Place Names and Personal Names to an Understanding of Early Israelite Religion,\u201d in History and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John H. Hayes, ed. Matt P. Graham, William P. Brown, and Jeffrey K. Kuan; JSOTSup 173 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 173\u201391.
\nThe name \u201cAsherah,\u201d apparently the goddess by that name, appears on inscriptions from Ekron, but this is clearly a Philistine site, as is indicated by the royal dedicatory inscription found there with references to two known Philistine kings. See note 142 for further discussion and references.
\nSimilarly, anepigraphic remains from Israelite excavations have included a number of female figurines, whose meaning and function are somewhat enigmatic. But male images that could represent another deity than Yahweh are absent, with one or two possible exceptions, Tel Dan and possibly a sanctuary at Megiddo. On the latter, see David Ussishkin, \u201cFresh Examination of Old Excavations: Sanctuaries in the First Temple Period,\u201d in Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990: Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, June\/July 1990, ed. Avraham Biran (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993), 67\u201385. There is no archaeological evidence for a cult of a deity other than Yahweh, except possibly at eleventh century Hazor, and that is much debated. The image found there may represent the carryover of worship of one of the Canaanite deities from the Late Bronze period. See Ora Negbi, Canaanite Gods in Metal (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1976), 138. William Dever does not think the context or the image is Israelite. See \u201cMaterial Remains and the Cult in Ancient Israel: An Essay in Archaeological Systematics,\u201d in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Carol L. Meyers and Michael O\u2019Connor (Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1983), 582\u201383 n. 12. Cf. Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods. Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 118, 147\u201349. A tenth-century cultic stand from Taanach has Asherah imagery on it and may have Yahweh imagery as well, though some would see Baal there instead (see the discussion in excursus 2). There are cultic areas in domestic loci and elsewhere, unrelated to the main sanctuaries, that could represent a less \u201corthodox\u201d form of religion (see chapter 2) that may have included goddess worship within an understood Yahwistic context. The very important study of the iconography of Canaan-Israel from the Middle Bronze Age on by Keel and Uehlinger tends to confirm the centrality and dominance of Yahweh, though it richly nuances it in relation to the symbolism and the way in which developments contributed to it, for example, the transformation of goddess images into icons of blessing associated purely with Yahweh (see Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God. 233ff.) This is evident both from the iconography of Iron Age II, where there is a decrease in anthropomorphic representations of gods and goddesses and a substitution of symbols, and also from the tendency of Deuteronomy and other biblical writings to \u201cde-deify\u201d or \u201cde-mystify\u201d other gods and turn them into icons and things. See also Georg Braulik, \u201cThe Rejection of the Goddess Asherah in Israel: Was the Rejection as Late as Deuteronomistic and Did It Further the Oppression of Women in Israel?\u201d in The Theology of Deuteronomy: Collected Essays by Georg Braulik, O.S.B. (North Richland Hills, Tex.: BIBAL Press, 1994), 176\u201378; Judith M. Hadley, \u201cThe Fertility of the Flock? The De-Personalization of Astarte in the Old Testament,\u201d in On Reading Prophetic Texts: Gender-Specific and Related Studies in Memory of Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes, ed. Bob Becking and Meindert Dijkstra; BibInt 18 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 115\u201333; idem, \u201cChasing Shadows? The Quest for the Historical Goddess,\u201d in Congress Volume, Cambridge 1995, ed. John A. Emerton; VTSup 66 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 169\u201384; and idem, \u201cThe De-deification of Deities in Deuteronomy\u201d (paper presented at the Congress meeting of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Oslo, August 1998). I am indebted to Dr. Hadley for sharing her paper with me.
\nThe evidence from personal names is consistent with all the above. In the monarchical period and later, there are so few non-Yahwistic personal names that those who had them were a very small minority and possibly foreigners. Out of nearly 600 theophoric names found on inscriptions from the ninth century on, six per cent or less are not Yahwistic (see Jeffrey Tigay, \u201cIsraelite Religion: The Onomastic and Epigraphic Evidence,\u201d in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. Patrick D. Miller Jr., Paul D. Hanson, and S. Dean McBride [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987], 194). Roughly the same percentages are to be found in the onomastica of the Bible itself for the same period. In the period from the time of settlement up to David, there may have been a preference for El names to Yahweh names (so de Moor), but the evidence is unclear at this point because different studies have come up with different results. The identification of El and Yahweh, however, is a feature of Israelite religion from the earliest period onward. The onomastic evidence is presented and discussed by Tigay in the essay referred to above and more extensively in his book You Shall Have No Other Gods: Israelite Religion in the Light of Hebrew Inscriptions (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986). Cf. Jeaneane D. Fowler, Theophoric Personal Names in Ancient Hebrew: A Comparative Study, JSOTSup 49 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988); Johannes C. de Moor, The Rise of Yahwism: The Roots of Israelite Monotheism (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1990), 10\u201341; and the Stig Norin article referred to above. On the basis of a study of hypocoristic names in the biblical and epigraphic texts, Norin concludes that the veneration of Baal was a limited phenomenon associated with persons closely connected to the Northern Kingdom\u2019s central administration and so reflecting the after effects of the Phoenician cultus on the Omrides rather than a widespread popular religion. He also notes a close correlation in the results from studying biblical names and those from studying epigraphic names and that in both contexts yhwh names increased during the monarchy in the biblical material and in the datable inscriptional material. (I am indebted to the author for sharing his paper with me.)
\nThis fairly exclusive worship of a national deity in Israel should not seem surprising. As Andr\u00e9 Lemaire has shown in the essay referred to above, in Moab fairly clearly and probably in Ammon and Edom as well, first-millennium inscriptions suggest that in the religions of these Transjordanian states, there was the cult of the national deity (Chemosh in Moab, Milcom\/El in Ammon, and Qos in Edom) that was monolatrous or quasi-monolatrous in a way not greatly dissimilar to what was the case in Israel during the Iron Age.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 2: TANAACH CULT STAND
\n(Plates 3 and 4)<\/p>\n
One of the pieces of evidence for the possible worship of Asherah in ancient Israel is a tenth-century cult stand found at Taanach with four levels or registers containing a number of divine symbols. On the bottom register, or level four, there is a female figure with hands resting upon the heads of lions standing to either side. This presumably represents a goddess, either Asherah, Astarte, or Anat. The third register has two winged sphinx-type figures (female heads and lion bodies) with vacant space between them. The second level contains a sacred tree with two ibexes on hind legs standing against either side of the tree. Here one probably has an asherah or the symbol of the goddess Asherah. The first register shows a horse (?) with a sun disk above it.
\nIt is likely that at least one of the levels represents Asherah or the asherah and possibly both levels two and four. J. Glen Taylor has suggested that that is the case and that levels one and three are representations of Yahweh, first with the symbol of horse and sun disk, reminiscent of \u201cthe horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the Lord\u201d (2 Kings 23:11), and then with the empty space between the sphinx\/cherubim figures representing \u201cYahweh of Hosts who dwells (between) the cherubim.\u201d (See J. Glen Taylor, \u201cThe Two Earliest Known Representations of Yahweh,\u201d in Ascribe to the Lord: Biblical and Other Studies in Memory of Peter C. Craigie, ed. Lyle M. Eslinger and J. Glen Taylor; JSOTSup 67 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988), 557\u201366). Taylor\u2019s proposal was anticipated by Silva Schroer, In Israel gab es Bilder: Nachrichten von darstellender Kunst im Alten Testament, OBO 74 (Fribourg: Universit\u00e4tsverlag, 1987), 39, and accepted by Judith M. Hadley, \u201cYahweh\u2019s Asherah in the Light of Recent Discovery\u201d (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1989), 216\u201323. A modification of that interpretation has been offered recently by David N. Freedman, who sees in the top two registers a bovine symbol for Yahweh representing the North Israelite bull iconography together with an Asherah-symbol sacred tree identifying Yahweh\u2019s northern consort and in the bottom two registers the cherubim iconography associated with Judah and a southern-oriented Astarte goddess representation. The proposal is ingenious but rather a lot to ask of a single tenth-century cult stand, that it offer a collection of some of the main orthodox and heterodox iconography of Israelite religion (Review of M. Smith, The Early History of God in JBL 110 (1991): 698). For a critique of Taylor\u2019s interpretation, especially of the empty space as a manifestation of the invisible Yahweh, see Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 157\u201360. They note that the biblical expression refers to Yahweh\u2019s enthronement on the cherubim, not dwelling between them. They suggest that the cherubs are guarding an entrance.
\nIf, however, the views of Taylor and others are on target and the stand belongs to an Israelite context, then we would have evidence for the first representation of Yahweh and probably of the existence of his consort Asherah in early Israel. The interpretation of the stand is sufficiently uncertain, as is the assigning of it to a clearly Israelite religious context, that one must be cautious in building much upon it. Ruth Hestrin has made the strongest case for seeing in the stand asherah as both an image of the sacred tree, that is, cult object, and as image of a naked woman, that is, goddess (\u201cUnderstanding Asherah: Exploring Semitic Iconography,\u201d BARev 17 (Sept.\/Oct. 1991): 50\u201359).
\nIt should be noted that the associations of Yahweh with El make it not implausible that a feminine divine figure associated with him would be the first-millennium form of the goddess A\u1e6firat, known in the second millennium as companion of El.
\nIn this connection, one should recognize that while the figures on Pithos A from Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud may not give us a visual depiction of Yahweh and\/or the goddess Asherah, there is a depiction of the ibexes standing against a sacred tree that is identical to the one on the second register of the Taanach stand. Judith M. Hadley has suggested plausibly that here one sees \u201cthe goddess Asherah (or at least her image).\u201d The fact that the tree is drawn above an image of a striding lion, another symbol for the goddess Asherah, reinforces her conclusion (\u201cYahweh\u2019s Asherah,\u201d 200). Hadley\u2019s work and the study of the iconography in Keel and Uehlinger offer the most extensive collection of all the iconographic, artifactual, and epigraphic data pertaining to the interpretation of the expression \u201cYahweh and his asherah.\u201d Several seals from Israelite occupation levels and bearing a representation of a sacred tree with worshipers on either side perhaps should be included in the picture. See Karl Jaro\u0161, \u201cDie Motive der heiligen B\u00e4ume und der Schlange in Gen 2\u20133,\u201d ZAW 92 (1970): 204\u201315; and Schroer, In Israel gab es Bilder, 34. For an interpretation of the iconography associated with the inscriptions at Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud in the light of the broader iconographic evidence, see Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God.
\nThe interpretation of the Taanach cult stand by Taylor and others, if correct\u2014and that remains rather dubious\u2014would have a further implication for the history of Israelite religion. It would provide iconographic evidence for the antiquity of the aniconic dimension in Yahwism via a tenth-century representation of the invisible deity.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 2<\/p>\n
Types of Religion in Ancient Israel<\/p>\n
Any effort to describe the religion of ancient Israel comes up against clear indications that, as in most religious communities, there was not a single understanding or expression of what that religion was. Both biblical and extrabiblical evidence suggest a certain degree of pluralism, of multiformity rather than uniformity. At a minimum, that is suggested in the prophetic and Deuteronomistic attacks on the worship of Baal and the making of an asherah. But the diversity and complexity was more than simply a matter of the worship of Baal alongside or in preference to Yahweh, such worship being contrary to true Yahwism. The very effort to define Yahwism opens up a certain complexity within Israelite religion. Further, the distinction between what goes on in public worship and what happens of a religious nature outside the public and formal sphere, what is commonly called \u201cpopular religion,\u201d has been widely recognized as apropos of Israelite religion.
\nIf, therefore, it is necessary to speak first of Israel\u2019s God in dealing with Israelite religion, one must then take some account of this multiformity that always makes the reality behind any presentation of that religion more complex than the presentation ever indicates, a state of affairs already indicated in the previous chapter. To that end, we will try to identify some of the types of religion found in ancient Israel. The term types may not be the best label. Some would say stages or levels, but such terms incorporate presuppositions about the relationship of these types to one another that are not necessarily appropriate. Type is a fairly neutral term, not unrelated to the use of form, type, or genre in form criticism to identify the different forms of speech in ancient Israel. Here the term is being used to identify different forms of religious practice and conceptuality, recognizing they may have had varying relationships to one another (e.g., outgrowth, independent simultaneity, conflict).
\nTwo assumptions should be laid out at the beginning. One is that a particular type, as it is proposed here, could and often did overlap with another type. The other presupposition is that over a period of time, the description of a particular type might change so that what had been characteristic at one point was no longer the case, or a practice that seemed to fit in one type at one time became characteristic of another type at another time.
\nIf there is an obvious danger in oversimplification, one also runs the risk of distorting the evidence in overcomplicating a religious phenomenon, breaking up into many pieces what was not perceived as such in practice. For this reason, it must be said that the types set forth here, while in no sense ideal, represent a reconstruction and a typology rather than a precise account of how the religion was actually practiced and experienced. Further, we are suggesting that different types may be identified around certain questions or perspectives. They will overlap with others or take different forms if the question is changed. In this instance, two different perspectives provide the categories or types to be discussed: (1) the question of orthodoxy, and (2) the form and character of the cult. Diachronic change and development make matters even more complex. That will be taken into account as much as possible even though the approach here as in the rest of this presentation of Israel\u2019s religion is not primarily historical or diachronic. No effort will be made to describe each type completely. The data do not even allow that. Rather, we will seek to be illustrative so that the reader may have a feel for the greater complexity of Israel\u2019s religion, especially when, in later chapters, it is necessary to state matters more simply for reasons of space and presentation.<\/p>\n
THE QUESTION OF ORTHODOXY<\/p>\n
In any religious system, orthodoxy is a relatively slippery term, one practitioner\u2019s orthodoxy being another\u2019s heterodoxy and vice versa. Yet there is some justification for suggesting that the tradition that became the end point of Israelite religion, or more accurately, the character it had as it moved into its two primary and immediately continuing streams, Judaism and Christianity, serves to define\u2014in retrospect\u2014what was orthodox and normative. That character is probably best represented in the words of the prophets, the history as told by the Deuteronomists and the religious system by which they measured it, and the cultic establishment of the priestly elements and writers of exilic and postexilic Judah. There is, of course, much inconsistency in details among these perspectives. Significant dimensions of the Torah not immediately represented by these groups also belong to this definition of orthodoxy, and its fundamental character is presupposed and may be discerned in the Psalms and the wisdom materials. It happens that some of the epigraphic and anepigraphic data are consistent with these biblical materials, but that is not uniformly the case. In any event, orthodoxy was not a fixed or unchanging reality in Israelite religion.<\/p>\n
Orthodox Yahwism<\/p>\n
In the broadest of strokes, the following primary features of orthodox Yahwism stand out.
\nFirst, exclusive worship of the deity Yahweh was expected. Yahweh was understood as the sole divine power ultimately effective in the world even if there was resistance or encroachment by other deities. The cult of Yahweh was without representation of the deity and the deity was without sexuality as a primary feature. The powers of blessing (fertility, continuity, health, and wealth) and of salvation (forgiveness, victory, deliverance from threat and oppression) resided fully in Yahweh.
\nSecond, the will of the deity was conveyed by means of oracle inquiry and prophetic audition or vision. Dreams, casting of lots within the sacral assembly, and prophetic revelation were legitimate means of discerning the divine will or direction. Divination, soothsaying, and necromancy, however, were prohibited. That is, there were both prescribed and proscribed techniques for consultation of the deity. The difference between the two is not always easy to tell, although the tradition makes it a matter of what is Yahwistic and what belongs to foreign cults. The individual or the community could cry out to Yahweh, either in the sanctuary or outside it, and would receive a divine response, mediated by priestly or prophetic figures. Whether such appeals for help on the part of the individual centered in cultic activities in a sanctuary or were more a part of ritual processes in the family or clan circles is a matter of debate. They could have been both (see below). Priestly instruction and direction of various sorts might be sought or offered. Sorcery was prohibited, though it was legitimate to invoke God\u2019s curse upon someone as much as to invoke blessing.
\nThird, sanctuaries were erected in various places (see example from Arad, plate 6) for the expression of devotion to the deity by means of sacrifice, festival meals and celebrations, prayer and praise. Some served as major sanctuaries where the formal or public cult of Yahweh took place. Toward the end of the seventh century in Judah, worship of Yahweh was restricted to the temple in Jerusalem. After the split of the kingdom into two parts, the major sanctuaries of the Northern Kingdom were Dan in the north and especially Bethel in the south, near the border of the Southern Kingdom. The deity\u2019s presence was associated with the ark of the covenant, a moveable palladium, and the cherubim. In pre-Solomonic times, the ark moved about in different sanctuaries. With the building of the Jerusalem temple, it became lodged there. While altars of different sorts, along with basins, chalices, and the like, were used for various kinds of libations and sacrifices, such as grain, meat, and incense, other cult objects such as pillars (ma\u1e63\u1e63\u0113b\u00f4t), sacred poles or trees (\u2019\u0103\u0161\u0113r\u00eem), and images (p\u0115s\u00eel\u00eem) were prohibited, as was anything that might be associated with the worship of another deity. The sacrifice of children, for example, was expressly forbidden.<\/p>\n
Plate 6. Altar, floor, and steps of \u201cHoly of Holies\u201d at shrine found at Arad (tenth to seventh centuries). (Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority)<\/p>\n
Fourth, certain times were set for the gathering of the people to celebrate the gifts of Yahweh and the deity\u2019s acts of deliverance and redemption. Pilgrimage festivals involved the whole community of Israel celebrating at a major shrine. Partly agricultural in background, they came to represent thanksgiving on the part of the people for both the blessings of nature and the occasions of God\u2019s deliverance and provided the context for renewal of the covenant that bound together the tribes as well as Yahweh and the people (see below). The primary activities at such festivals were the presentation of sacrifices and offerings and the sharing of meals. But central features of the community\u2019s historical experience of Yahweh\u2019s deliverance and rule were also celebrated, including, at different times and different festivals, the deliverance from Egypt and the coming into the land, the proclamation of the covenant law, and Yahweh\u2019s choice of David and Zion. Other special occasions were set during certain periods of Israel\u2019s history, some of which centered in the family, such as the Passover, and the Sabbath, a day of rest and remembrance. In the course of Israel\u2019s religion, other community-wide celebrations arose, for example, the Day of Atonement, and, in the late-and post-Old Testament period, Purim and Hanukkah.
\nFifth, the moral and ethical sphere was a matter of stress, with requirements and expectations about guarding the welfare of neighbors and providing for weaker members of society. Family relationships were protected by divine law. Purity of conduct, dress, food, bodily functions and characteristics, and other matters were regulated in different ways and different times. Everything in the moral and cultic realms was understood to be a part of the individual\u2019s and the community\u2019s relation to Yahweh, a manifestation of their holiness (see chapter 4).
\nSixth, religious leadership resided especially in the various priests who were associated with the sanctuaries and were dependent upon sacrifice and offering for support, but also in prophets, who were bearers of divine oracles and operated both at the center of the religious life, sometimes in relation to the court and sometimes in relation to sanctuaries, and also on the periphery, without a religious or political base and exercising an ideological and rhetorical power apart from economic and coercive means. The king and his predecessor, the judge, were understood to be appointees and agents of Yahweh in the political sphere. On occasion they assumed responsibilities in the leadership or oversight of worship and the official religion, for example, Solomon at the dedication of the temple and Hezekiah and Josiah in their reform movements. Various other officials came to be associated with the temple or other sanctuaries. While women occasionally exercised positions of leadership, that customarily fell to males, the women being given positions of a more supportive and maintenance sort.
\nIt should be noted that some elements of Israelite religion seem to have moved in and out of favor with orthodox Yahwism as described here. The calves or bulls set up by Jeroboam in Bethel and Dan (1 Kings 12:25\u201333) may have been originally a quite acceptable form of iconography for the northern sanctuaries, only to become regarded as idolatrous, at least in the south, by the eighth century. The asherah also may have been acceptable in premonarchical and monarchical stages, particularly in the north, but it came to be regarded as a part of an unacceptable syncretism.<\/p>\n
Heterodox Yahwism<\/p>\n
Heterodox Yahwism by definition was an amalgam of the above, together with particular practices that came into conflict with some of the facets of more orthodox Yahwism or were not customarily a part of it. Among those features that seem most indicative of a heterodox Yahwism are (1) the presence of cult objects rejected in more orthodox expressions, (2) the use of unacceptable procedures for discerning the divine will, and (3) veneration and consultation of the dead.
\nAmong the cult objects that had a place in these less orthodox forms of Yahwism, the asherah stands out particularly. It seems to have been present in different forms throughout much of the divided monarchy and probably reaches back to an earlier time. The references to \u201cYahweh and his asherah\u201d in inscriptions from two Judean sites in the eighth century is a good indication of the inclusion of the asherah of Yahweh in Yahwistic worship and piety. At Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud, the inscriptions seem to be quite Yahwistic in character but occur in a site of varying inhabitants and where an inscription about El and Baal appears that may or may not be Yahwistic. The inscription of Uriyahu over his tomb, however, seems to be thoroughly Yahwistic in its character except for the reference to the asherah. When we hear of a blessing by \u201cYahweh of Samaria and by his asherah,\u201d as we do at Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud, and then read of the asherah at Samaria, which still stood past the anti-Baal purge of Jehu, there is reason to believe that a fairly widespread element in the north and the south\u2014and not just the general populace or common people\u2014regarded the asherah cult object as a legitimate part of Yahweh piety.
\nWe may assume that the pillar (ma\u1e63\u1e63\u0113b\u00e2), rejected in orthodox Yahwism, was also used in cultic centers on occasion. At least, objects that may represent such standing stones or pillars have been found in some excavated cultic sites (for earlier examples, see plate 1). Further, while one may not be sure of the exact character of the asherah, figurines of various sorts\u2014females (plate 5), horses and riders (fig. 10), animals\/birds and the like\u2014have been found in Israelite and Judean sites, with a greater number of them by far in those extramural sites Holladay has described as \u201cnonconformist.\u201d The more heterodox forms of Yahwism seem to have incorporated both iconography and diverse cult objects into their cultic sites and activities to a greater degree than orthodox Yahwism thought appropriate, though we are not clear how they used these objects. The presence of such cult objects, it should be noted, is subject to considerable variation, both temporally and geographically. For example, the plaque-type figurines seem to have begun to disappear or go into eclipse in the ninth century and the \u201cmore fully formed figurines came into vogue at some time in the eighth century in the north and either the later eighth century or the middle years of the seventh century in the south\u201d (see plate 5). Further, the evidence of cultic activity in the more \u201cnonconformist\u201d cult centers belongs to \u201csurprisingly short periods.\u201d The presence of figurines in domestic sites (see below on family religion) also varied in intensity in different periods and different places.
\nIn this connection, one should probably include also the calves or bulls of Jeroboam in the Northern Kingdom, which may have been acceptable to such orthodox Yahwistic prophets as Elijah and Elisha but clearly were regarded as anti-Yahwistic by Hosea and later figures. That is, what was probably originally a pedestal for the deity (fig. 7) came to be understood as a divine image itself, either of Yahweh or of Baal. The same was apparently true of Nehushtan, the bronze serpent of Moses that was a cult object to which offerings were made in the Jerusalem temple until Hezekiah in his reforming activities broke it up.
\nThe \u201chigh place\u201d (b\u0101m\u00e2) as a shrine also seems to have moved from an acceptable place within Yahwism to an increasingly condemned status in official and orthodox circles. Samuel and Saul, both strong Yahwists, met at a b\u0101m\u00e2 (1 Samuel 9). Solomon received a revelation from Yahweh in a dream at the great or principal high place at Gibeon. Even the Deuteronomistic Historian seems to have acknowledged the acceptability of the high places as sites for worship before the temple was built. The Historian notes their continuation as sites of sacrifice by the people and their continued construction by kings. Deuteronomy, which prohibits all sorts of cult objects because of their connection with Canaanite worship, says nothing about the b\u0101m\u00e2. Nor do the prophets have much to say about this, if one excludes the frequent inveighing against false worship \u201con every high hill and under every green tree.\u201d Hosea does explicitly condemn the high places of the Northern Kingdom as a sin (Hos. 10:8). One expects that the ambivalence about the high places was because they were acceptable places of sacrifice and worship in outlying areas, and therefore more connected to local cults (see below), but were less under control of the official Jerusalem cultus and therefore became places where heterodox and idolatrous practices were possible and in fact happened. It is tempting to associate the \u201cnonconformist\u201d cultic areas described by Holladay with such high places, with their greater collection of heterogeneous and figurative cult objects. One notes that they were largely extramural, as seems to have been the case with at least some of the high places. But many of the high places at various towns may have been fairly orthodox in their activities of sacrifice and eating.<\/p>\n
Fig. 10. Horse and rider figurines. (After Taylor, Yahweh and the Sun, pl. 7 and fig. 9).<\/p>\n
Inquiry of the deity, or the effort to divine the future and the divine will, was another sphere in which there were religious practices that were frowned upon or condemned in the main traditions that articulated what we are calling orthodox Yahwism. Even dreams, which were regularly a vehicle for Yahweh\u2019s authentic communication, at times became suspect, usually because they were perceived as vehicles of lies. Indeed, much of the prophetic condemnation of dreams, prophetic visions, and divination is less because of an inappropriate medium being used than because of its false product. Saul\u2019s visit to the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28) is indicative of the existence within early Israel of practices of divine consultation that were not acceptable but were nevertheless practiced. Saul\u2019s reform of such practices, their persistence despite the reforms, and his own resort to them despite being a strong Yahwist, all suggest that consultation of mediums, wizards, and diviners\u2014clearly prohibited by Deuteronomy\u2014took place within Yahwistic circles. Saul\u2019s act to cut off such practices on pain of death is indicative of either a changing assessment of their acceptability in the early monarchy or a more aggressive effort to maintain an orthodox stance on these matters. His use of what he condemned indicates its persistence. The tradition, at least, claims that the necromancy produced a word from Yahweh. Furthermore, Samuel\u2019s spirit condemned Saul, not on religious or Yahwistic grounds, but because he disturbed Samuel\u2019s rest.
\nResorting to proscribed means of divining the divine will or the future may have been prevalent as a way of gaining the necessary knowledge on the part of persons who did not have access to the acceptable means of oracle inquiry. There was also probably an economic factor involved in that divination has been practiced consistently as a profitable or remunerative activity, in ancient times as well as in the present. Yahwism\u2019s denunciation of traditional means of divination may have been as much an effort to control the avenues of access to the divine will as it was a reaction to foreign religious influences. Such divinatory practices competed with Yahwistic prophecy for claims to divine revelation.
\nParticularly in this case, one notes the practice of necromancy, the consultation of the dead Samuel. The realm of the dead was always a \u201cshadowy\u201d matter for Yahwism, but consultation of the dead here takes place by a strong Yahwist calling up the spirit of one of the most aggressive of Yahwistic prophets, Samuel. Isaiah 8:19 suggests that such consultation was expected among the people but to be rejected as against the true word from Yahweh that was to be found in words and deeds of the Yahwistic prophet Other practices involving veneration of the dead or special mourning rites were apparently practiced but passed out of acceptability to orthodox Yahwism by the seventh century. The Deuteronomic code prohibits some of these, suggesting, by inference, that they were popular at the time of its formulation. See, for example, \u201cYou must not lacerate yourselves or shave your forelocks for the dead\u201d (Deut. 14:1).
\nThe prophets of the eighth to the sixth centuries, however, did not generally criticize such actions and in some instances seemed to presuppose their acceptability (e.g., Jer. 16:1\u20139), and Schmidt\u2019s analyses of the Deuteronomic, Deuteronomistic, and prophetic texts urges caution about an interpretation of texts that may reflect patterns of mourning so that they are seen to be explicit religious rites having to do with venerated and\/or deified ancestors. At least one needs to take seriously his claim that such practices as consultation and veneration of the dead may have come in only in the Assyrian period and do not reflect long-standing Israelite practices. Further, the conflicts between Deuteronomic and prophetic texts from approximately the same period in their attitude toward practices having to do with death and the dead indicate something of the fluidity between orthodoxy and heterodoxy or the different views on where that line was to be drawn.
\nIn Mesopotamia and Syria, the cult of the ancestors or dead kin was a part of family religion, and to the extent that it may have existed in Israel it also belongs to that context (see below). Again, Deuteronomy seems to be an implicit testimony to the veneration of the ancestors within Yahwism, but not as an acceptable practice for the form of Israelite religion that won out in the Deuteronomic and prophetic reforms. In the liturgy for the presentation of the tithe in Deut. 26:12\u201315, the one bringing the offering is required to testify that \u201cI have not offered any of it to the dead\u201d (v. 14). The erection of a commemorative stele by Absalom because he had no son to do so (2 Sam. 18:18) may also be a reflection of the practice of a son honoring his father by setting up a funerary stele to the ancestral spirit of his father. So also the reference to a b\u00eat marz\u0113(a)\u1e25 or \u201chouse of mourning\u201d in Jer. 16:5 points to the existence of an institution and practice common to Syria-Palestine, a social association of revelry that may have involved commemoration of the dead. The judgment pronounced on such \u201crevelry\u201d (mirza\u1e25) in Amos 6:7 suggests that the b\u00eat marz\u0113(a)\u1e25 and its activities were seen as heterodox in some fashion. Practices concerning the dead did not cease with the Deuteronomic movement but continued on in the postexilic age.
\nA particularly sharp example of heterodox Yahwism in the early period, at least as judged by the main line of orthodox Yahwism articulated by prophets and Deuteronomists, is the account of a Yahwist named Micah, who set up a household shrine in Ephraim sometime in the premonarchical period (Judges 17\u201318). The shrine (b\u00eat-\u2019\u0115l\u014dh\u00eem, \u201chouse of God\u201d) contained an expensive image of cast silver, an ephod, and (a) teraphim. The ephod functioned in Yahwism quite normally for the most part, but was at least ambiguous or condemned in some texts (e.g., Hos. 3:4; Judg. 8:27). Its character is somewhat unclear here, although it is plausible that, in conjunction with the teraphim, it was an instrument of divination or a divine representation of some sort. The teraphim, often regarded as household gods or idols but more plausibly interpreted as ancestor figurines used in necromancy, were even more ambiguous and were a part of the \u201cabominations\u201d (ha\u0161\u0161iqqu\u1e63\u00eem) removed by Josiah in his reform (2 Kings 23:24). There are numerous indications that the shrine and the family that set it up were Yahwistic. The name of the owner, Micaiah\/Micah (Judg. 17:4) is Yahwistic (\u201cWho is like Yahweh?\u201d). His mother blesses by Yahweh and consecrates the silver to Yahweh to make a cast metal image, surely of Yahweh (17:2\u20133). Micah understands his act as one that will gain the blessing of Yahweh (17:13). He pays a Levite to preside at the shrine, and the Levite later provides a word from Yahweh when an inquiry is made of him by some Danites. Here is no true syncretism, joining together specific elements from the cultus of different deities. The shrine of Micah was thoroughly Yahwistic and also clearly heterodox, initiated by a woman, as in the case of other heterodox activities, and supported by a person of considerable wealth, as was the case with the tomb of Uriyahu at Khirbet el-Qom. The iconic tendency is associated once again with affluence and made possible by it.
\nIf we ask what groups or communities were primarily responsible for the more heterodox elements of Yahwism, we may not be able to answer with much certainty. Indeed, there is no reason to assume that such heterodoxy as described above was peculiar to a particular element in Israelite society. The practices described above probably cut across economic strata. Some of them were associated with the family, some were apparently carried on particularly by women (cf. chapter 1). Both biblical and archaeological data indicate that heterodox elements of Yahwism could be found at cultic centers, such as Samaria and Jerusalem, as well as at more peripheral locations. The complexity of Yahwism in both orthodox and heterodox forms was not confined to a particular group or place.<\/p>\n
Syncretistic Yahwism<\/p>\n
The term \u201csyncretistic Yahwism\u201d may be a complete misnomer in that there is some sense in which many of the most orthodox practices of Yahwism were known and shared by other religious communities and entered Israelite religion in the prolonged experience of intercommunal contact or were the result of the very heterogeneous character of the Israelite community and its being fully a part of the religio-cultural world in which it lived. One often encounters references to what Israel \u201cborrowed\u201d from Canaanite religion or other sources. In the minds of some interpreters, \u201csyncretistic Yahwism\u201d may be simply an alternative term for what is discussed above under the rubric \u201cheterodox Yahwism.\u201d Some, therefore, would lump together in one whole what we have separated under two rubrics. In this instance, however, we have in mind a distinction around the recognition that some practices did not seem to be a part of Yahwism until they were explicitly drawn into it out of the cults of other and specific deities. Such practices and related concepts were explicitly dependent upon the recognition of other deities and their worship and not generally a part of the religious activity and conceptuality of Yahwists except the particular individuals and groups who self-consciously appropriated and assimilated aspects of the worship of other deities. It may be that, in the end, some of these developments are to be regarded as simply another form or aspect of heterodox Yahwism as described above.
\nThe most obvious indication of such explicit syncretism is in the several references to the worship of Baal, attested in the Deuteronomistic History and Hosea as a prominent religious feature of Israel from the ninth century onwards, but also present in Judah, as both the Deuteronomistic History and the prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zephaniah) indicate, as well as the worship of the heavenly bodies\u2014sun, moon, and stars\u2014possibly under Assyrian influence. The rise of Baalism among the Yahwists, especially in the Northern Kingdom but also in Judah, may have been under the influence of Jezebel and the Phoenician worship of Baal (see fig. 11). Biblical texts speak of a \u201ctemple of Baal\u201d in Samaria (2 Kings 10:18\u201327) and Jerusalem (2 Kings 11:18), but no such clearly Baal cultic center has been excavated to this date. Israelite personal names on the Samaria Ostraca seem to confirm the presence of Baal worship in Samaria. These are the primary non-Yahwistic divine elements in Israelite proper names from epigraphic sources, and it is not altogether certain that they do not have Yahweh in mind. The low number of Baal names\u2014or names of other deities for that matter\u2014in the Israelite and Judean onomastica or in the inscriptions from the time of the Divided Monarchy require us not to exaggerate the degree of syncretism around the figure of Baal or the cosmic deities of Assyria. Its presence may have been largely a matter of royal politico-religious policy whether by virtue of marriages with foreign wives, or for the purpose of coalition building, or under the influence and dominance of Assyrian power. The polemic of Deuteronomists and prophets suggests a greater prominence to such syncretistic influences in the general populace than the inscriptional and onomastic evidence indicates.<\/p>\n
Fig. 11. Stele of deity, presumed to be Baal holding stylized lightning in his left hand, from second-millennium Ugarit in Syria. (After ANEP, no. 490).<\/p>\n
The worship of the \u201cQueen of Heaven\u201d may have been a cult around either Canaanite-Phoenician Astarte or the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. We only know of it as an Israelite religious phenomenon in the time of Jeremiah (7:18; 44:15\u201330) when there is a return to it among the general populace. But the Jewish refugees in Egypt who insist on making offerings to the Queen of Heaven speak of it as something that they and their ancestors used to do in Judah and Jerusalem, as if it were an old custom interrupted by the late monarchical religious reforms. Furthermore, in the context of divine speech, Jeremiah reports it as a widespread activity in Judah. In all likelihood, however, the cult of the Queen of Heaven, which was particularly associated with women or wives who made cakes stamped with the image of the goddess and offered them, together with libations, to her, was brought into Judean religious life during the time of the Divided Monarchy. While particularly nurtured by women, the cult of the Queen of Heaven was supported by the husbands and, according to Jer. 44:17 and 21, incorporated kings and other officials as well. Its restoration was associated with the claim that poverty, famine, and death had been the consequence of its abandonment. Here one may find a clue generally to the syncretistic impetus, a clue consistent with what we see in the worship of Baal, child sacrifice, and the women weeping for Tammuz (see below). Other gods were invoked and serviced in order to bring about help in time of need or blessing and provision for life when the worship of Yahweh seemed inadequate to such purposes.Jehovas
\nThe practice of child sacrifice may have had some continuing place in heterodox Yahwism, but it seems to have been a genuinely syncretistic practice brought in from outside in the assimilation of cults of other deities to the worship of Yahweh. If it could be demonstrated conclusively that the molek to whom children were sometimes dedicated in sacrifice was a deity and not a technical term for a type of sacrifice, the syncretistic character of child sacrifice in ancient Israel would be quite clear. But that is surely the case in any event. Child sacrifice is specifically identified with non-Israelites in 2 Kings 3:27, where the king of Moab offers his firstborn son as a sacrifice to secure the favor of the deity in a battle against the Israelites, as well as in 2 Kings 17:31, which speaks of the Avvites burning their children (or sons) in the fire \u201cto Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.\u201d Within Israel, the practice appears first in the time of the Divided Monarchy when \u201cforeign influences were encroaching upon the cult\u201d (2 Kings 16:3; cf. 21:6; 23:10). The Deuteronomist explicitly identifies the practice of child sacrifice with the worship of the gods of the nations (Deut. 12:31). Jeremiah records child sacrifice to Baal (19:5; 32:35) in the late seventh to early sixth century. Psalm 106:37\u201338 alludes to the practice of child sacrifice specifically as a sacrifice to \u201cthe idols of Canaan.\u201d and Ezekiel\u2019s polemic against Jerusalem also points to child sacrifice in his time as a borrowing from the Canaanites. It was probably somewhere in the eighth to seventh centuries\u2014but possibly earlier\u2014that child sacrifice was incorporated into Yahwistic ritual, presumably by court and upper-class figures, from areas of Phoenician influence where the practice was widespread. It seems to have continued or been revived in the postexilic period (Isa. 57:5). Those who engaged in this practice probably did so as a part of their worship of Yahweh. As far as one can tell, the purpose of such sacrifices was either dedicatory, as a foundation sacrifice for a city (1 Kings 16:34), or, more likely and more often, a sacrifice in time of calamity to gain the favor of the god(s) (e.g., 2 Kings 3:27). As yet, the practice of child sacrifice is without archaeological evidence in Israel, though it has been argued that tophets, cult places for the sacrifice of children and\/or the incineration of corpses, have been found in Syria-Palestine.
\nEzekiel 8 has been seen as testifying to syncretistic developments during the late preexilic period within the royal, priestly, and upper-class circles of Jerusalem as well as specifically again among the women. Four different \u201cabominations\u201d are recounted in the chapter, not all of which are clearly understandable. The first is an \u201cimage of jealousy\u201d (s\u0113mel haqqin\u2019\u00e2, v. 3) at the gateway of the inner court of the temple, probably a statue of some deity. The second is a picture of seventy elders or leaders engaged in an obscure ritual in a room covered with paintings of reptiles and other beasts, those that were hybrid and unclean (Ezek. 8:7\u201313). They may have been Egyptian in origin, having to do with the worship of Osiris, but the iconography is reminiscent of scenes from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor as well. The women weeping for Tammuz (Ezek. 8:14\u201315) were participating in the cult of the Sumero-Akkadian vegetation deity, Tammuz, whose descent into the underworld was an occasion for weeping, usually by women, as it meant the end of the time of fertility with the end of spring. The final \u201cgreat abomination\u201d described by Ezekiel is a scene of twenty-five men (priests?) with their backs to the Lord in the temple and \u201cprostrating themselves to the sun towards the east\u201d (v. 16). In this case, what appears to be a clear syncretistic appropriation of the cult of the sun god may, however, be a case of heightened focus upon solar elements in Yahwism. Recent studies have made us more aware of the presence of solar symbolism in the biblical depiction of Yahweh. Seals and ivories from the ninth to eighth centuries show a dominance of solar symbols that had not been the case earlier. Ezekiel, however, clearly regards this solar dimension as evidence of an idolatrous sun cult. Certainly, Josiah\u2019s removal of \u201cthe horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the LORD\u201d (2 Kings 23:11) was consistent with Ezekiel\u2019s condemnation of a specific ritual focus on the sun. What may have been a long-evolving association of solar elements with Yahweh came to be regarded as heterodox or syncretistic by the prophetic and reformist elements in seventh to sixth century Yahwism.
\nThe divinization of the heavenly bodies in both Egyptian and Mesopotamian religions and the widespread appropriation of solar elements generally in ancient Near Eastern religions would have facilitated an exaggerated focus on the sun by Yahwists in a temple that contained cosmic symbolism from the beginning as well as a heightened resistance by the prophets to practices that could be disconnected from Yahweh (turning the back, v. 16) and associated with worship of the solar disc. Indeed, it is possible that the chapter is a kind of \u201cBabylonian\u201d interpretation of practices that originated elsewhere or were a part of the heterodox Yahwism that continued into the late preexilic period.Jehovas Some have argued that the \u201cimage of jealousy\u201d was an Asherah statue, and the weeping for Tammuz, which authentically represents a Babylonian ritual, may be an interpretation of other forms of weeping and lamentation that were regarded by Ezekiel as heterodox and therefore a form of rejection of Yahweh\u2014whether or not that was the view of the weeping women. How widespread any of the practices depicted in Ezekiel 8 were among the general populace is not known. They may have been prevalent primarily among the court and the upper classes.
\nIn the sixth century, a colony of Jewish soldiers lived on the island of Elephantine at the southern border of Egypt near Syene (Aswan). Papyri documents in Aramaic from family and community archives along with many ostraca have been preserved to tell us something of the affairs of that community, including its religious life. The presence of a temple to YHW (=Yahweh) oriented toward Jerusalem (1 Kings 8:44\u201345), frequent references to that deity as \u201cGod Yahweh\u201d (literally \u201cYahu\u201d), \u201cGod of heaven,\u201d \u201cLord of Hosts,\u201d and the like, as well as an onomasticon of Jewish names that is overwhelmingly Yahwistic while non-Jewish names bore divine elements such as Bethel, Eshem, Herem, and Anath\u2014all attest to the Yahwistic character of the community.
\nAt the same time, other data suggest that in fact other deities were also worshiped in this community. Money was collected not only for Yahu\/Yahweh but also for the Aramaic deities Eshembethel and Anathbethel. Oaths were sworn \u201cby Yahu\u201d but also by Anathyahu, the Egyptian goddess Sati, and possibly by \u201cMesgida,\u201d the divinized cult place. A person with a Yahwistic name (Malchiah) calls for help to the Aramaic god Herembethel. Worship of the Queen of Heaven seems to have been introduced into Egypt by Jews from Judah (Jeremiah 44) and was cultivated at a temple dedicated to her at Syene near Elephantine where the Arameans of that area were located. This may have been the goddess Anath, and the worship of the Queen of Heaven may have led to the assimilation of Anath to Yahu in the divine name Anathyahu.\u201d
\nThe fundamental issue under debate and not yet fully settled is whether in this very Yahwistic community\u2014with its Yahweh temple, Yahweh names, and the references at Elephantine to Sabbath and Passover\u2014the deities Eshembethel, Herembethel, Anathbethel, and Anathyahu were \u201chypostatic forms of Yahweh\u201d or actual deities worshiped or invoked on their own and not simply as aspects of Yahweh. With Anathyahu, as with the asherah in preexilic Israelite religion, the question remains as to whether we are encountering a hypostatic form of the deity or a separate goddess perceived as a consort of Yahweh. The issue is whether Elephantine represented a heterodox Yahwism, which surely would have been unacceptable to the prophets and Deuteronomists but was nevertheless perceived by the garrison as completely and exclusively Yahwistic, or a true syncretism in which the worship of specific Aramean deities was incorporated into Yahwism. The dominance of Yahu at Elephantine makes it clear that the Jews there understood themselves to be Yahwists, but the evidence for the independent existence of such deities as Bethel and Anathbethel suggests that they were worshiped as deities and not simply as manifestations of the presence of Yahweh. The close proximity of the Jewish garrison at Elephantine to the Aramean one at Syene, its distance and separation from the main postexilic centers of Israelite religion, and the general intermixing of Jewish, Aramean, Egyptian, Babylonian, Median, Persian, and other soldiers and their families within a relatively small area were circumstances conducive to forms of syncretism within an isolated outpost of Israelite religion.<\/p>\n
THE FORM AND CHARACTER OF THE CULT<\/p>\n
If one takes the form and character of the cult as the criterion, then the types of Israelite religion may be described somewhat differently, although much of what has been identified via the criterion of orthodoxy still makes up the ritual and ideology of the various types. The overlap means that it is not necessary to repeat each feature that has already been discussed but rather to show its place in another typology. The typology taken up here is a fairly familiar one, particularly in the distinction between \u201cofficial\u201d and \u201cpopular\u201d religion. A somewhat more complex categorization, however, is proposed to account for the literary, epigraphic, and artifactual data, one that is coming more prominently into the study of Israelite religion.Jehovas<\/p>\n
Family Religion<\/p>\n
Family religion and cult has to do with what went on in domestic households and in the larger circle of the clan. We are dealing with the \u201cfather\u2019s house\u201d or extended family (b\u00eat \u2019\u0101b) and the \u201cclan\u201d (mi\u0161p\u0101\u1e25\u00e2), recognizing that in any family locality there may have been single households made up of a single nuclear family\u2014as, archaeologically, would seem to have been the case for many houses\u2014but also larger clusters of family units. In addition to archaeological evidence, the primary biblical material comes from the family stories of Genesis and those of Judges\u2013Samuel with pieces of data from elsewhere. The picture painted here is necessarily more schematic than the actuality, where one must recognize there would have been changes over hundreds of years and that practices would have varied to some degree over a long time span and in different localities. Some changes would have been due to reform movements, such as that of the Deuteronomists, or the stresses of historical upheavals, but not all the variation can be explained.
\nThe Genesis narratives about the patriarchs reveal the cult of the family god as an important feature of family religion. The personal god of the paterfamilias, the family god, was therefore also the god of the collective entity of the family or clan of whom the head of the family was leader. That means that women who married into the family or servants within the family also worshiped the personal god of the father, who was sometimes called \u201cthe god of my father\u201d or identified by reference to the name of the head of the family or an earlier head of the family, for example, \u201cthe God of Abraham\u201d or \u201cthe bull of Jacob, \u201cthe God of Isaac\u201d or \u201cthe Fear of Isaac.\u201d So Eliezer, Abraham\u2019s servant prays, \u201cBlessed be Yahweh, the God of my master Abraham\u201d (Gen. 24:27). The family god, however, was not a nameless deity; nor was it willy-nilly any of the gods of Syria-Palestine. In the pre-Yahwistic period, the family god seems to have been the high god El. In the Yahwistic period of Israel\u2019s religion, from the time of the exodus onward (according to biblical tradition, which is probably correct) the family god appears to have been Yahweh, though some see indications in the early period that Baal may have been the clan deity in some instances. The family god was a personal and social god who provided protection and guidance for the family as well as the blessings of fertility and the continuity of life.
\nWithin the family setting there may have been at least two kinds of sacred areas or shrines. One would have been within the domestic center or household. Holladay has noted that \u201cabout 45 percent of all houses in Level A at Tell Beit Mirsim exhibited signs of cultic activity\u201d and that similar statistics are exhibited at Beer-sheba in the south and Hazor in the north during the time of the Divided Monarchy. The archaeological remains indicate that in any community a number of households had religious objects and a number did not and that the percentages varied from time to time, with a sharp increase toward the end of the Israelite and Judean states. While the religious objects suggest some sort of house cult, we can tell little about the actual character of sacred areas in the houses except to note some indications that offerings and other activities of worship took place on the roofs of houses. We can identify the kinds of apparently religious artifacts found in domestic contexts. For example, at the Judean sites of Tell Beit Mirsim and Beer-sheba, of those houses with religious objects about half had only one object, most often a pillar-based female figurine (and rarely more than one) but also horse and rider figurines (fig. 10), animal figurines or vessels, bird-shaped vessels, rattles, limestone altars, and fenestrated stands. Where more than one object was found, there was nearly always a female figurine. The limestone altars, which began to appear in domestic contexts toward the end of the eleventh century, and the fenestrated cultic stands were presumably used for incense offerings (fig. 12 and plate 7). Libation vessels appeared in domestic contexts from the ninth century on. It is worth noting, therefore, that the sacrifices and offerings of family religion, insofar as they took place in more domestic settings, were primarily incense and libation offerings rather than burnt offerings of grain or meat.
\nThe other type of sacred area of family religion was the cultic center of the clan or extended family. Three kinds of evidence suggest that there were such centers established in the early period of Israel\u2019s history and possibly continuing down to the exile, though affected by efforts at cult centralization: archaeological, toponymic, and biblical. As an example of the former, one may cite the \u201cBull Site,\u201d an open cult area situated on a hill between Dothan and Tirzah in the tribal territory of Manasseh during the period of the judges. A bronze bull figurine, 17.5 cm long and 12.4 cm high, was found there together with a possible standing stone and another partial cult object (plate 2). There is no major tell near by, but the cult place is in the middle of a cluster of small sites dated to Iron Age I, small agricultural villages, probably Israelite. It has been suggested that this is a \u201chigh place\u201d (b\u0101m\u00e2) erected by a farmer and used as the family shrine by the clan or mi\u0161p\u0101\u1e25\u00e2 that lived in the surrounding villages. It cannot be determined if it is a purely family shrine, but presumably it was used and maintained by the people in the immediate area, who are likely to have been members of a single clan. The bull figurine is capable of being related to Yahweh, El, or Baal. It is not impossible that here (and in the possibly domestic religious context of the cult stand at Taanach) one finds antecedents within local and family religion of the bull iconography that is later associated with Yahweh in the north, particularly in the bulls Jeroboam set up at Dan and Bethel.<\/p>\n
Fig. 12. Limestone incense altar from Miqne-Ekron. (After Gitin, Eretz-Israel, 20, p. 53*).<\/p>\n
Plate 7. Limestone incense altar from Megiddo, tenth to ninth century. (Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority)<\/p>\n
The second type of evidence for family shrines or cult centers is toponymic and indirect. In the period of Israelite settlement in the hill country and among the number of new settlements that arose, there are several place names in the formation \u201cBaal + clan name,\u201d for example, Baal-Shalishah (2 Kings 4:42; cf. 1 Chron. 7:37), Baal-Perazim (2 Sam. 5:20; cf. Ruth 4:18\u201322), Baal-Tamar (Judg. 20:33). These compound Baal names do not appear among the Canaanite sites on Egyptian and other topographical lists from the Canaanite era of the Late Bronze Age and before. It has been suggested that these were \u201cfamily cult places\u201d for Israelite clans settling in these areas. It is unclear whether the deity served at these presumed centers of family religion was Baal or Yahweh or a local deity of some sort. While it is quite possible that the deity was Canaanite Baal, this is the period in which the term \u201cbaal\u201d was used quite freely in personal names, apparently as an epithet or alternative name for Yahweh, where other members of the same family bore Yahwistic names. The same may have operated with the place names.
\nThere are several narratives in Judges and Samuel that tell about activities at family religious centers. The story of Gideon tells of his setting up a Yahwistic shrine, consisting of an altar for animal sacrifice, at the family settlement of Ophrah, but probably outside the town proper. While the later Deuteronomistic narrative portrays \u201call Israel\u201d as prostituting itself before the ephod Gideon set up at Ophrah (Judg. 8:27), it is likely that this was a cult center for the Abiezrite clan, to which Gideon belonged (Judg. 6:11, 24; cf. Josh. 17:2). By juxtaposing the account of Gideon\u2019s building the altar at Ophrah against the command to tear down his father\u2019s altar to Baal, the narrative suggests the family character of the Ophrah shrine. The concluding etiological notation about Gideon\u2019s building an altar there\u2014\u201cTo this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites\u201d (Judg. 6:24)\u2014confirms its family character, as does the report that Gideon was buried \u201cin the tomb of his father Joash at Ophrah of the Abiezrites\u201d (Judg. 8:32). The family character of the previously existing altar and asherah or sacred pole is also indicated by the report that they belonged to Gideon\u2019s father Joash (Judg. 6:25) and that Gideon was reluctant to tear them down for fear of his \u201cfamily\u201d (b\u00eat \u2019\u0101b) and the townspeople. The deity worshiped at the shrine built by Gideon was clearly Yahweh. The ephod he constructed of silver and gold, and for which the Deuteronomistic redactor condemns him, was probably a Yahwistic image or cult object. While the deity for whom his father Joash built an altar is depicted in the story as Baal\u2014thus the command to Gideon to tear it down\u2014one cannot be certain that the deity worshiped there was in fact the Canaanite deity rather than Yahweh. That may have been the case, and the story may preserve a memory of an early clash between the worship of Yahweh brought by clans and tribes from the south and the preexisting worship of Baal in Canaan. There are complications in the details of the story, however, that raise the alternative possibility that this was a Yahwistic family cult center but as heterodox (or more so) by later standards as Gideon\u2019s act of making the ephod at the explicitly Yahwistic shrine he built. Gideon\u2019s father bore the Yahwistic name Joash but is depicted as having set up a Baal altar. Gideon, who set up an altar to Yahweh and tore down the Baal altar of his father, had a Baal name, Jerubbaal (Judg. 6:32; 7:1; 8:35)! Joash\u2019s defense of his son against the townspeople who want to kill him becomes an anti-Baal statement that provides a Yahwistic etiology for Gideon\u2019s baalistic name, Jerubbaal\u2014that is, \u201cLet Baal contend against him\u201d (Judg. 6:31\u201332). In this instance, we are probably dealing with a Deuteronomistic projection of Baal worship onto an early family shrine serving Yahweh but using the Baal name\/epithet, a feature of early Israelite religion we have noted above. Hosea\u2019s later anti-Baal oracle\u2014\u201cno longer will you call me \u2018My Baal\u2019 \u201d\u2014is an indication, and rejection, of this earlier tendency to use the word \u201cbaal\u201d in reference to Yahweh. What was done with ease by good Yahwists in the time of the league and the early monarchy was unacceptable in the ninth to eighth century conflict with the Phoenician god Baal, whose worship violated the exclusive Yahweh allegiance required of Israel.
\nThe account of Micah and his shrine (Judges 17\u201318) in the hill country of Ephraim has already been discussed as an example of early heterodox Yahwism. In this context, it needs only to be noted that the shrine was clearly a family cult center initiated by Micah\u2019s mother and set up in Micah\u2019s house with his son as the priest until he later hired a Levite. The Levite was paid by Micah, called \u201cmy\/his priest,\u201d and resided \u201cin the house of Micah\u201d (Judg. 17:10\u201313). The family shrine in this instance was quite complex. While it seems to have been confined to a b\u00eat \u2019\u0101b or extended family, it was a separate structure (b\u00eat \u2019\u0115l\u014dh\u00eem, \u201chouse of God\u201d) with cultic objects of various sorts and its own cultic official. The size of the b\u00eat \u2019\u0101b here is unknown but later in the story reference is made to the \u201cmen who were in the houses comprising the household of Micah\u201d (Judg. 18:22), suggesting a sizeable multiple compound. The family compound may have been coterminous with the village itself. If that was the case, then this episode, like the story of the family shrines at Ophrah in Judges 6\u20138, would provide an illustration of the family cultic center serving also as the settlement sanctuary, and the family god interchangeable with the god of the settlement.
\nWhile the accounts of Gideon\u2019s and Micah\u2019s family shrines do not tell us much about the activities that took place there, from other texts, particularly in Samuel, we learn of sacrifices, meals, and festival celebrations at such shrines. Brief reference is made to a visit by Saul to the b\u0101m\u00e2 or shrine at his hometown of Gibeah in Benjamin, called both Gib\u2018at Ha\u2019\u0115l\u014dh\u00eem, \u201cHill of God\u201d (1 Sam. 10:5), and Gib\u2018at \u0160\u0101\u2019\u00fbl, \u201cHill of Saul.\u201d While no activity is indicated, Saul is queried there by his d\u00f4d, about which van der Toorn writes, \u201cThe leadership of the family cult normally lay with the d\u00f4d. The d\u00f4d is no mere uncle, but the oldest living male of the extended family and as such its paterfamilias with both social and religious duties (cf. Lev 10:4; 25:49; Am 6:10).\u201d Before returning home on this occasion, however, Saul had visited at the family cult center of Samuel and his clan, a b\u0101m\u00e2 in the territory of Zuph, apparently outside Ramah, Samuel\u2019s home (1 Samuel 9). This b\u0101m\u00e2, which seems to have been outside of and higher than the town, was distinct from the major shrines of Bethel, Gilgal, Mizpah, and Shiloh, with all of which Samuel was associated as Yahweh\u2019s spokesman to the people. At the family cult center at Ramah, which was clearly a structure with one or more rooms in it (1 Sam. 9:22), Samuel presided over a sacrifice, which he blessed, and a meal following the sacrifice, attended by about thirty people. While it has been suggested that this was a family sacrificial feast, like the one of which David speaks in 1 Samuel 20 (see below), the character of the feast makes it difficult to say that with any certainty. With its invited guests, it is more like the sacrificial feasts carried out by Samuel (1 Sam. 16:1\u201313), Absalom (2 Sam. 15:11\u201312), and Adonijah (1 Kings 1:9, 18\u201319, 41, 49) as \u201canticipatory coronation banquets,\u201d in this case in anticipation of Saul\u2019s becoming king of Israel. This may, therefore, have been more than a family shrine.
\nClans did hold a yearly sacrificial feast (zeba\u1e25) that was attended by all of its members, even those not residing at home, for David used this occasion as an excuse for avoiding attendance at Saul\u2019s court on the occasion of the new moon festival (1 Sam. 20:6, 28\u201329). The family sacrificial feast was significant enough that David could claim the urgency of his being there. His pretense that his elder brother had summoned him may point to a leading role on the part of that member of the family, or this may simply be an indication of the elder brother taking over the role of the father upon his death or because he is too old (1 Sam. 17:12). While no indication of the character of the sacrificial feast is given, it was probably not one of the main pilgrimage festivals celebrated by all Israel. It is unclear what was the relation of this occasion to the annual journey of Elkanah and his family to Shiloh to make a sacrifice (1 Samuel 1). They are both called zeba\u1e25 hayy\u0101m\u00eem. Whether or not these accounts reflect the same kind of cultic event, both reports, together possibly with the information in 1 Samuel 9, suggest that family religion in early Israel involved sacrificial feasts where the family made a sacrifice at a sanctuary, often the family cultic center, and then shared a meal from the sacrificial portions (1 Sam. 1:4\u20135; 9:23\u201324).
\nThe sacrifice was carried out by the male head, but the other members of the family, wives and children, participated in the meal (Gen. 31:54). Even at a later time when Deuteronomic reform centralized worship and sacrifice in Jerusalem, the combination of sacrifice or offering by the males followed by celebratory meals in which the whole family took part, before the Lord and in a chamber or room adjacent to the sanctuary (li\u0161k\u00e2, 1 Sam. 1:18 [LXX]; 9:22), was an important aspect of Israelite religion. Such reports receive probable confirmation in the extensive evidence for food offerings and preparation of meals that has been uncovered archaeologically at various cultic sites.
\nIn this connection, it should be mentioned that the biblical texts identify the celebration of the feast of Passover as a family feast held within the b\u00eat \u2019\u0101b (Ex. 12:3, 21\u201324), as well as an all-Israel celebration (Deut. 16:1\u20138). When it functioned as a family feast and when it involved the gathering of all the people is a matter of debate. Josiah\u2019s reinstitution of the Passover suggests that it was an all-Israel occasion prior to the monarchy and fell into disuse as such during the rule of the kings and the focus on the fall festival (see below). At some point, however, possibly both early and late, Passover centered in the family. It may have had to do with celebration of God\u2019s bounty in the flock or with sacrifice to secure the welfare and fertility of the flock, but it came to be linked with the going out of Egypt. In any event, Passover joins with the texts discussed above to identify once more the place in family religion of sacrifice and the family meal. At a much later time, the feast of Purim was instituted and celebrated within the family, again as a time of feasting and celebration (Esth. 9:20\u201328, esp. 28).
\nFood preparation as a family religious activity in devotion to a deity is also evident in the report of offerings made and libations poured out to the Queen of Heaven by Judean refugees in Egypt in the sixth century (Jer. 44:15\u201330). The family character of this particular form of cultic service is shown by the description in Jer. 7:18: \u201cThe children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven.\u201d These offerings and libations are explicitly described as a former widespread practice, given up (presumably in Josiah\u2019s reform) but now\u2014in new stress and crisis\u2014to be taken up again. The role of the women or wives is particularly stressed in Jeremiah\u2019s account.
\nThe \u0161abb\u0101t should be mentioned in this connection. While we know little of its origin, it seems to have been a preexilic institution that gained importance in the exile and the postexilic period (see below on \u201cCommunity Religion\u201d). It was a day set aside as sacred to Yahweh and on which no work was to be carried out. The commandment calling for Sabbath observance was addressed to the individual Israelite and was obligatory for the whole family. Because it centered primarily around a period of rest and cessation from work, its locus in the family setting is obvious. At the same time, it was understood as an element of religious life that belonged to all Israel and commemorated, in the Deuteronomic version of the Sabbath commandment, the deliverance from Egypt. In the postexilic period, the Sabbath became more significant as a mark of identity for the Yahwistic community. The Sabbath, therefore, is one of the places where a religious practice was located in family life but belonged to the wider understanding and practice of Israelite religion.
\nThe same is to be said for circumcision, the removal of the male foreskin. While there are accounts of its practice as an all-Israelite event (Josh. 5:2\u201312), in most instances it seems to have been carried out within the family context by mother (Ex. 4:24\u201326) or father (Gen. 17:23\u201327; 21:4) or by another person, at least in the late postexilic period (1 Macc. 1:61). There is no indication of its being carried out in a sanctuary or by a priest. Its original function seems to have been as a rite of passage, either from puberty to young manhood or in preparation for marriage, and it was practiced by other ethnic groups in the ancient Near East. Adult circumcision, therefore, would have been the original practice (cf. Genesis 34 and Josh. 5:1\u201312), with a later move toward circumcision of the infant (Lev. 12:3) as the ritual became increasingly regarded as a mark of identity, a sign of belonging to the community of Israel. Once again, therefore, in the course of its history, a family practice came to be understood within the larger context of the faith of the Yahwistic community and one\u2019s identification with it, a move especially indicated by the connecting of circumcision with the Passover in the Priestly ideology of the exilic period and later (Ex. 12:48). Like the Sabbath, circumcision did not leave the family context but gained a socioreligious symbolic function that may have been foreign to its original character. While its original function indicates why it was associated with males, its development as a symbol of incorporation and belonging functioned along with other features of Israelite religion to center religious identity and practice upon the male members of the family. Furthermore, the rite of circumcision took on a symbolic function, as a covenant rite to be a reminder of ethical obligation. The circumcised heart would love and obey (Deut. 10:16; 30:6; Jer. 4:4; 9:25\u201326), the uncircumcised ear would not listen (Jer. 6:10).
\nAmong those elements of family religion that were not directly associated with cultic activities in the sanctuary, practices associated with birth and death stand out. As we have indicated, circumcision came to be one of the religious rites around the birth of a child. Naming was less a religious activity in the strict sense, but in Israelite literature it is often depicted as an act of thanksgiving or confession of faith, a fact reflected also in the propensity for theophoric names. The association of fertility and the ability to bear children with Yahweh\u2019s will and blessing is seen particularly well in the story of the birth of Samuel. There the womb of the barren Hannah is understood to be closed by Yahweh, and she prays to the deity for a child, which is granted to her. His weaning is celebrated with a sacrifice at the sanctuary at Shiloh (1 Sam. 1:24\u201325; cf. Gen. 21:8). The conviction that childbearing was a blessing from the deity permeates the stories of family life in the Old Testament. That is why many regard the female figurines found in Israelite excavations as possible talismans \u201cused in sympathetic magic to stimulate the reproductive processes\u201d or images of the mother goddess, whose service or devotion might bring the devotee the reward of fertility. Any claim, however, about how these figurines were used remains quite speculative.
\nLike its beginning, the end of life also involved the family directly. Not all of the practices associated with death had direct religious associations or connotations, nor can we be sure that where we see religious death practices they were carried out generally and normally within the family. Two kinds of activities are attested either indirectly or in critical reaction. They are sacrifices for the dead and the veneration or worship of ancestors, both of which were quite common in the ancient Near East. Because sacrifices for the dead were unacceptable in the Deuteronomic ideology (Deut. 26:14) and criticized in the psalms as pagan practices carried out by earlier generations (Ps. 106:28), one may assume that in some times and places they were offered, presumably by members of the family and at the family tomb. In later postexilic literature, we find further implicit criticism of food offerings placed on graves (Sir. 30:18). The recent work of van der Toorn has given stronger support for the possibility that the teraphim mentioned several times in the Bible are ancestor figurines or deified ancestors rather than household gods. There are three narratives in which such teraphim are found in household or family contexts (Gen. 31:19\u201354; Judges 17\u201318; 1 Sam. 19:11\u201317). Van der Toorn associates these with the reference to the \u201cgod(s)\u201d apparently located near the door of an Israelite home (Ex. 21:6) and suggests that family religion included a recognition and service of the spirits of the ancestors, presumably with offerings of various sorts. Located near the entrance of the house, such \u201cgods\u201d would also have served an apotropaic function, warding off evil of various sorts.Jehovas If this interpretation of Ex. 21:6 and of the teraphim is correct, then the veneration of the ancestors would have been more commonly and acceptably a part of family religion in the early period before the Deuteronomic effort at centralization and containment of religious ritual and deity worship.
\nThe association of the teraphim with divination in a number of texts (1 Sam. 15:23; Ezek. 21:21; Zec. 10:2; cf. 2 Kings 23:24) further suggests that such ancestor figurines may have been used in necromancy, that is, the consultation of the dead. The only clear example of necromancy, however, is 1 Samuel 28, which does not seem particularly tied to the family. It may have been, however, that such consultation of the dead in order to divine the future or determine what the deity had in store and how the deity was directing the fate of the family or the individual member of the family was in fact an aspect of family religion and a part of regular and irregular inquiry of the deity. Inquiry of the deity via dreams, persons, oracular procedures, or the dead would have been a part of family experience, and the involvement of women in significant ways in such activities suggests an association with the family structure, the primary sphere in which women functioned generally. With regard to those matters that particularly concerned the family, as over against the nation as a whole\u2014for example, birth and sickness\u2014consultation of this sort at least would have taken place within the family or by family members in behalf of or on the part of other family members.
\nThree narratives explicitly inform us of such inquiry of the deity. When Rebekah\u2019s twin sons struggled within her womb, and she despaired of her life, \u201cshe went to inquire of the LORD,\u201d who gave her an oracle explaining the meaning of the struggle and what it presaged for her posterity (Gen. 25:22\u201323). Nothing is told about the medium of inquiry, but its family orientation and appropriateness is evident. So also, in the stories around the figure of Elisha, there is the account of the illness of the son of the Shunnamite woman, with whom Elisha was staying (2 Kings 4:18\u201337). The remark of the woman\u2019s husband when she says that she is hurrying to \u201cthe man of God\u201d (v. 22) is revealing: \u201cWhy go to him today? It is neither new moon nor sabbath\u201d (v. 23). Apparently it was customary for individuals in the family to visit and inquire of a seer, but it usually took place on a special day, the Sabbath, when the family rested, or at the time of the new moon, also a special feast day often associated with the Sabbath. The story intimates that the woman went to ask the help of the seer in healing the child and such may have been the case. Another narrative, however, tells of a mother, this time at the behest of her husband, Jeroboam, going to a prophet to inquire \u201cwhat shall happen to the child\u201d (1 Kings 14:3, 5). Each of these stories is an instance of a typical family circumstance or crisis\u2014the birth of a child and critical illness. In each case some sort of consultation is made to discern what will happen, and in one instance also to seek help. Such inquiry and consultation was not confined to the family and its circumstances. Nor was it necessarily restricted to the particular technique suggested in two of the stories. But they make it clear that family religion included such practices as consultation of the deity, and it is likely that all of the procedures that came to be rejected in orthodox and official Yahwism were available and used, though the family stories do not inform us in detail about that.
\nClosely related to the inquiry of the deity in time of family crisis was the resort to prayer under similar circumstances. Several works have identified the family sphere as the primary locus in which the prayers for help that are found in the Old Testament had their setting in life. These prayers, commonly called laments of the individual, were prayed in the context of the family in times of sickness, crisis, and distress, and may have involved a ritual of some sort carried out by a member of the family or neighbor or possibly a person who was regarded as an expert in prayer and the practice of healing. Such prayers were rooted in the life of the individual and that person\u2019s relation to God and not in the official cultus of the main sanctuaries. They included an address to the deity and a dialogue in which the relationship was expressed in highly personal terms. The need was often sickness, a human distress experienced and dealt with primarily in the context of the family.
\nYet one cannot simply assign the individual laments to a purely family locus never connected to the broader worship of the community at the sanctuaries and under priests who ministered to and in behalf of the larger community. Moreover, there are many instances of prayers embedded in narratives that are quite spontaneous and uttered in all sorts of circumstances, not necessarily related to the ongoing life of the family and its members. But those same narratives often are family stories, making clear that these prayers for help were very much at home, if not exclusively so, in the sphere of the family. The prayer for help was pervasive in Israelite religion. As it was prayed by the individual, it often centered in the family and so, as we have said, may have been accompanied by procedures that were carried out within the family structure. That such prayer was sometimes joined with particular modes of deity inquiry often associated with magic is suggested by some of the narratives discussed above.
\nWhen one considers that the protection, continuity, and well-being of the family were at the center of its concerns in all eras of Israel\u2019s life, it is not surprising that blessing should play a large part in family religion. While all blessing may not have had explicitly religious or theological formulation, the family stories are clear that the ultimate source of blessing was the deity, specifically the family god. Often, but not always, the blessing was explicitly a prayer-wish for God\u2019s blessing. The concerns of family life were the focus of the blessings. They took place at times of parting, both the taking leave of a journey and the parting at the end of life. In such a context, the blessing could have to do with the ongoing welfare of the one on whom the blessing was pronounced or for whom blessing was invoked, or with the continuity and growth of the family represented in the ones who went off on a journey or were the bearers of the family name and heritage in the next generation(s), or with God\u2019s protection during separation and times of absence. The blessing of the father in old age or on the deathbed had much to do with insuring the continuity and growth of the family as well as its well-being and prosperity. It also was concerned with directing the future in terms of family relations, seeking to create a particular order or relationship, especially among brothers. Not surprisingly, blessings were pronounced on those about to be married to secure for the couple a good future generally but especially children or posterity. Blessing was most often spoken by family heads, but it was not an act reserved to them or simply to males. There were instances of brothers and mothers invoking blessing upon sons or daughters. Generally it was pronounced upon males or sons as prospective family heads responsible for the family\u2019s welfare. When pronounced or invoked upon a woman, it had to do primarily with her fertility and the generational continuity that the family or clan mother provided for the family (Gen. 24:60; Ruth 4:11\u201312; 1 Sam. 2:20).
\nBlessing is one of the areas where the common distinctions between magic and religion are blurred. In most cases, the blessing had the character of a prayer and thus would be understood as a religious act. In some instances, the saying of the blessing, whether or not the deity was invoked as its author, seemed to carry an effective power that apparently could not be revoked, so that it seems to reflect a magical view of reality. This seems particularly to have been the case with the blessing of the patriarch upon the next generation. In those contexts, the biblical tradition clearly gives the impression that the expression of the blessing was either a shaping of the future or an announcement of what its shape was going to be like. Such potency and efficacy may not have been universally assumed for any blessing. But the distinction obvious to a modern reader of these texts may not have been of significance to the ancient Israelite.
\nOne notices within some of the blessings that a curse was also pronounced, indicating that such cursing was possible within the family context. But it would be a mistake to set blessing and curse alongside each other as comparable features of family religion. Cursing was much less common in the family and usually occurred only in the context of the larger blessing (Gen. 27:29; 49:4, 6\u20137). In fact, within the legal traditions there were explicit prohibitions against curses pronounced against one\u2019s father or mother. That may well indicate that such curses happened, but they did not have religious validation. Their potency, however, may have had something to do with the prohibition against curses within the filial relationship, although the force of the commandment to honor parents was sufficient basis for the prohibition against cursing of parents.
\nIt is appropriate to conclude an examination of family religion by summarizing its theology. The deity, whose particular identity was most often El or Yahweh but who could be identified as the god of the father\/ancestor, especially in the earlier period of Israel\u2019s religion, was the Divine Kinsman. Related to the individual members of the family as their creator, the one who formed them, the Divine Kinsman was their guide and protector. The relation between deity and family members was an enduring one, a relationship of trust that was not related to a particular act or event of history but may have had its primary roots in an encounter with the deity by the family ancestor. It was less vulnerable to the disobedience of the individual or the anger of God than was the relationship between Israel and Yahweh. When trouble came, it more often was seen to reflect the deity\u2019s abandonment than the deity\u2019s anger and rejection. Sin and forgiveness were not major themes of family religion. God was seen as one who turned to and helped the individual in trouble, protecting and being with the family and its members in times of distress. The nearness of God was not a dangerous experience, as was the case with cultic nearness. Instead, it was the deity\u2019s continuing presence with each person from birth to death, letting the individual grow and prosper and helping when called upon. Children, success, prosperity, and health were the signal gifts or acts of the deity. There does not seem to have been sharp conflict with other deities in the family relationship with the family god, unless the story of Gideon\u2019s altar reflects such conflict, which is very uncertain.<\/p>\n
Local and Regional Cults<\/p>\n
The family\u2019s devotion to the family deity did not exclude worship and participation with others in the cult of the larger community, that is, within the context of a local or regional cult that encompassed a larger entity than a b\u00eat \u2019\u0101b or mi\u0161p\u0101\u1e25\u00e2, presumably several clan or tribal units. Such local or regional cults are only recognizable indirectly for the most part. And it may be that what seems to belong to such religious expressions was perceived as either a part of family religion or a part of the cultic life of all Israel. Certainly within smaller communities, the line between family religious devotion and that of the larger community may have been fuzzy or vague because of the overlap between the larger family and the members of the village or town. We cannot be certain what social structure(s) supported such local or regional cults, although one must assume that either geographical proximity or clan relationships were at the heart of the matter. To the extent that such cults were devoted to different deities, one could assume that they provided locations for the gathering of persons from different areas who were devoted to particular deities.
\nIn some cases, local cults may have been devoted to the worship of Baal or some other deity such as the Queen of Heaven. In fact, the reported temple of Baal at Samaria may be an example of a local cult devoted to that deity and imported from Phoenicia. Some of the cultic centers identified in the stories of the ancestors may have continued as local cults of El under different epithets, but the identification of that deity with Yahweh would have occurred at an early time. There is no reason not to suppose that most of them were centers for the worship of Yahweh.
\nThe b\u0101m\u00f4t or \u201chigh places,\u201d which may have been family shrines in some locations, also served as geographical or regional cult centers comprised of altars for sacrifice and incense offerings and probably a room for eating the sacrificial meal. The extent to which they were open-air shrines or buildings of some sort is a matter of debate. They also would have included, in at least some instances if not regularly, stone pillars (ma\u1e63\u1e63\u0113b\u00f4t) and sacred poles (\u2019\u0103\u0161\u0113r\u00eem). During the time of the monarchy, some of the high places were structurally expanded and priests were appointed by the king. As the narrative of 1 Samuel suggests, such priestly figures may have been present at these high places at an earlier time.
\nWe do not know where all the high places were, nor can we directly connect any particular excavated sacred place\u2014or presumed sacred place\u2014with a high place. There were other sanctuaries that did not bear that title, and there are excavated shrines in locations that may or may not have been associated with high places. Some of these may have been open-air shrines. Others had small temple structures, such as the one excavated at Arad (plate 6), or, as apparently was the case at Shiloh, a tent shrine. A number of sacred structures have been excavated from the premonarchical and monarchical eras. Others are attested in the biblical reports, including Bethel, Mizpah, Gilgal, Beer-sheba, Shechem, Mamre (or Hebron), and Dan. Some of these, such as Dan and Bethel, were national shrines or chapels set up by kings, and as such were a part of the state religion of the kingdom of which they were a part, although both of these had an earlier history as family and possibly regional shrines. In the case of both Bethel and Dan, there is textual evidence that suggests their character as local cults of El (Bethel) and \u201cthe god who is at Dan\u201d (fig. 13).
\nAmong the clearest indicators from written sources of the presence of local cults of Yahweh in ancient Israel are the several references in the eighth-century Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud inscriptions to Yahweh of either Samaria or Teman. While it is not possible to identify any of the above cultic sites with certainty as local cults, the divine names \u201cYahweh of Samaria\u201d and \u201cYahweh of Teman\u201d are probably to be understood as \u201clocal forms or manifestations of the national god.\u201d In both cases it is possible that we are dealing with a region. Teman always refers to the region of Mount Paran, west of Edom; Samaria could be either the region or the city of Samaria. Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud may have been under the control of the Northern Kingdom at the time of these inscriptions, which would account for a reference to \u201cYahweh of Samaria\u201d in this southern locale. \u201cYahweh of Teman\u201d was the deity of other visitors to the site, from the south, or was the local Yahweh of the region of which Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud was a part. There are numerous analogies in Mesopotamia and Syria-Palestine to this form of divine name where the name of a national god is placed in genetival relation to a locale\u2014X of Y.
\nSuch names identify a local manifestation of a deity whose domain was much broader. At these local or regional centers the national god was perceived to have a particular identity and character, not necessarily significantly different from other manifestations of the same deity. Yahweh of Samaria was Yahweh as worshiped in Samaria. But, as McCarter notes, the particular cultic expression of the deity at any place may have been influenced by various factors appropriate to the place. Thus, he suggests that the \u201ccult of the Temanite Yahweh \u2026 may have preserved archaic liturgical forms and religious concepts, while that of the Samarian Yahweh \u2026 reflected the contemporary liturgy and theology of the national god [i.e., the state religion of the Northern Kingdom].\u201d Where Israelites took over Canaanite shrines, \u201cpre-Yahwistic practices and ideas are likely to have survived in adapted form.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fig. 13. Greek inscription (second century) \u201cto the god who is Dan.\u201d (After Biran, Temples and High Places in Biblical Times, p. 146, fig. 4 and pl. 20, no. 4)<\/p>\n
We cannot be sure which sanctuaries identified in the Bible or uncovered in excavations represented local cults of Yahweh. Nor can we say very much about what went on in these local cults other than what has been suggested above. Some probably contributed to the spread of practices deemed heterodox by the orthodox Yahwism of the prophets and Deuteronomy. Others would have had their own impact upon the larger religious expressions of the people, and in the premonarchical period would have served as sacred places for all Israel. That would have been the case with the sanctuary at Shiloh, which was a shrine visited by families in the region (1 Samuel 1) but also a central sanctuary for the people as a whole.
\nWherever local cults of Yahweh existed, there was always the possibility that they would become somewhat autonomous and independent. We have no direct evidence of that happening, but there is some evidence to suggest that the Deuteronomic reform of Josiah in the late seventh century may have been aimed at curbing that tendency. The confessional claim of Deut. 6:4, \u201cHear, O Israel! Yahweh our God is one Yahweh,\u201d seems to have been an implicit polemic against the notion, whether specifically articulated or not, that there was more than one Yahweh, a view that the local cults could have served to nurture, even as they may have encouraged the idea that Yahweh\u2019s asherah was capable of being understood separately from the deity. In any event, the Josianic reform\u2014and that of Hezekiah before him\u2014by closing down the local shrines and centralizing worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem, served to eliminate such local cults where they may have existed.
\nFamily religion and the religious activities of local and regional shrines are not easy to characterize because they were not institutionalized or codified in ways that give any systematic picture of their conceptualization. But that was not true of all types of religious practice and ideology in Israel. In turning to official national religion, we take up the religious expressions and ideas that belonged to the community as a whole, what we shall call \u201call Israel,\u201d and that were in various ways authorized, institutionalized, and inscribed in and by the institutions and traditions of Israel. Here, therefore, the community of \u201call Israel,\u201d which took changing shapes and political forms in the course of its history, provided the matrix for the religion, and the activities of political and religious leaders as well as the written legal, religious, and historical documents preserved in the Bible authorized and codified its forms and expressions. The four primary forms of official Israelite religion and the religion of the national entity correspond closely to the changing political forms of the nation and thus reveal the intimate connection between religious and political history. At the same time, these forms also contain significant dimensions of continuity that reflect the tenacity of religious practice over against the evolution of political structures. The forms of official Israelite religion now to be discussed are (1) the cultus of the Israelite confederation, (2) the state religion of Judah (the South), (3) the state religion of Israel (the North), and (4) the religion of the Jewish community after exile.<\/p>\n
The Cultus of the Israelite Confederation<\/p>\n
It is not impossible that the local or regional cult centers were also the places where persons in the area gathered for the great festivals. But there is evidence that at an early time those festivals involved the larger people of Israel, that is, \u201call Israel,\u201d at a major shrine that served on those occasions as a sanctuary drawing together all the tribes who worshiped Yahweh. Several of the shrines are identified in biblical tradition with cultic activities involving the tribal confederation as a whole, particularly Shiloh, Gilgal, Mizpah, and the Shechem area. The worship of Yahweh was not confined to domestic and local expressions. The tribes of Israel were joined together not only around the need for security and protection but more importantly around their common allegiance to the covenant god of the league, Yahweh. The union of the tribes had its primary expression in the all-Israel cult of the tribal confederation, \u201cthe centralized, organized, communal exercises of celebration and instruction directed explicitly toward Yahweh, the God of united Israel, and subjectively or indirectly toward affirming and cementing the union of the people.\u201d Such centralized expressions of Israelite religion, whose locus was not the family or geographically related communities but the larger transtribal community defined as the \u201cpeople of Yahweh,\u201d continued beyond the time of the tribal league and into the monarchical period so that many features of the all-Israel cultus did not cease with the rise of kingship. From that time on, however, they became a part of the state religion, which needs to be recognized as a type of Israelite religion developing out of the cultus of the league but significantly affected by the institution of the monarchy (see below). In both contexts, there was a clear relationship between the cultus with its central focus on the all-Israel festivals and the solidarity of the confederation or the nation. That is, the cohesiveness and unity of the community rested on and was regularly rearticulated, reactualized, and thus solidified by theological and liturgical means rather than coercive ones.
\nThe chief occasions for worship or religious practices were the three annual pilgrimage festivals of Unleavened Bread (spring), Weeks (summer), and Booths or Ingathering (autumn). The last two of these, and possibly also the spring festival, were agricultural festivals in which the people celebrated the harvest and gave thanks to God for the produce of the land. The spring and autumn festivals, however, were not simply agricultural festivals. What drew all Israel together on those occasions was their character as celebrations of Yahweh\u2019s election and deliverance of Israel and as opportunities for renewing the covenant that bound them together as a people and more particularly as Yahweh\u2019s people.
\nThe spring festival, held probably first at Gilgal but then later at the league sanctuary at Shiloh, was probably the major festival of the premonarchical confederation. The older traditions, such as Joshua 3\u20135 and Ex. 34:25 (and some of the later ones, such as the Priestly text in Exodus 12), connect this spring festival with the Passover. That is, the Passover is associated with the historical memory of the deliverance from Egypt and the entrance into the land and so was probably a part of the major spring pilgrimage festival to which the tribes of the league came at one of the major sanctuaries. The memory of this is suggested in those references to Hezekiah and Josiah instituting the Passover after it had fallen into disuse as an all-Israel tradition. Second Chronicles 30:5 tells of Hezekiah calling for all Israel and Judah to come keep the Passover, \u201cfor they had not kept it in great numbers as prescribed.\u201d Second Kings is more specific about this: \u201cThe king commanded all the people, \u2018Keep the passover to the LORD your God as prescribed in this book of the covenant.\u2019 No such passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah; but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this passover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem\u201d (23:21\u201323).
\nIn Cross\u2019s language, \u201cthis covenant-renewal festival becomes the cultic carrier of Israel\u2019s historical traditions.\u201d That is, it is in the great spring festival that Israel in its earliest form as a confederation of tribes nurtured and kept alive the story of its foundation in the exodus from Egypt, the covenant at Sinai, and the conquest or settlement of the land:<\/p>\n
While it is true, obviously, that all elements of later twelve-tribe Israel did not engage in these epic events but came to share them as historical memories through the \u201cactualizing\u201d of them in the covenantal cultus, it also must be insisted that the pattern\u2014Exodus from Egypt, Covenant at Sinai, Conquest of Canaan\u2014is prior, cultically and historically, to the several elements of the pattern.<\/p>\n
Joshua 3\u20135 probably preserves the memory of the early cultus of the tribal confederation gathering at Gilgal to celebrate the Passover and possibly also the feast of Unleavened Bread, though the extent to which these were combined at this early period is unclear. Building upon the work of Hans-Joachim Kraus on these texts and the important role of the sanctuary of Gilgal in the early period of Israel\u2019s history, Cross proposes to reconstruct the spring festival from the Joshua materials as follows (and this can only be a rough approximation, for the materials are complex literarily and historically):<\/p>\n
(1) The people are required to sanctify themselves, as for holy war, or as in the approach to a sanctuary (Josh 3:5).
\n(2) The Ark of the Covenant, palladium of battle, is borne in solemn procession, which is at the same time battle array, to the sanctuary of Gilgal.
\n(3) The Jordan, playing the role of the Red Sea, parts for the passage of the Ark and the people of Israel. The repetition of the Exodus is the transparent symbolism in the processional (Josh 4:21\u201324).\u2026
\n(4) At the desert sanctuary of Gilgal, twelve stones were set up, memorial to the twelve tribes united in the covenant festival celebrated there: we must understand this festival to be the festival of the old spring New Year. It is explicitly called Passover, and the tradition of eating parched grain and unleavened bread, as well as the etiological notice of the suspension of manna, lends confirmation (Josh 5:10\u201312). The setting up of the twelve ma\u1e63\u1e63\u0113b\u00f4t of the gilgal is paralleled by Moses\u2019 setting up of the \u201ctwelve ma\u1e63\u1e63\u0113b\u00f4t for the twelve tribes of Israel\u201d at Sinai (Exod 24:4).
\n(5) We must note also the circumcision etiology (Josh 5:2\u20138), and finally
\n(6) the appearance of the (angelic) general of the host of Yahweh (Josh 5:13\u201315: compare Ex. 3:2ff.; 14:19).<\/p>\n
The relation of the festival of Unleavened Bread to Passover is a difficult matter to figure out and there are various opinions. Joshua 3\u20135 draws the two together inferentially, and that may not be far wrong for the early period. That is, the spring festival of Passover celebrating the deliverance from Egypt may have included in its earlier all-Israel form the eating of unleavened bread. As the Passover disappeared as an all-Israel celebration and moved into the context of family religion, unleavened bread became the center of a major pilgrimage festival in the spring, thus detaching itself from Passover \u201cas an independent custom preserved to commemorate the exodus from Egypt.\u201d Thus, when Deuteronomy combines Passover and Unleavened Bread, now a full-fledged seven-day festival, it may have been \u201creverting to old custom.\u201d
\nAlternatively, the festival of Unleavened Bread may have been, from the start, an agricultural festival that became a substitute for Passover as it fell into disuse. It marked the beginning of the barley harvest (late April or early May), and the eating of bread without leaven may have been to eat that which did not have anything from the harvest of the previous year in it. Relatively early, at least in the oldest of the cultic calendars (Ex. 23:15; 34:18), this festival is connected with the history of salvation. The reason that Israel is to do this in the month of Abib is because \u201cin the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.\u201d The association of both Passover and Unleavened Bread with the exodus and their setting in the spring would have led to the combination of Passover and Unleavened Bread in a single festival as is called for in Deuteronomy.
\nIt is not easy to determine between these two options, whether (a) to assume an early joining of the two, which then fell apart into separate family (Passover) and all-Israel (Unleavened Bread) celebrations, only to be joined again in Deuteronomy; or (b) to assume separate and different kinds of all-Israel celebrations, both having to do with commemoration of God\u2019s provision (flock and crops), the exodus deliverance, and a spring setting that led to their subsequent joining in the Deuteronomic prescription even though one had been located within the family while the other was all-Israel.
\nThe fall festival, apparently held at Shechem, at least for a period of time (as traditions in Joshua 8; 24, and Deuteronomy suggest), and which during the monarchy was the principal pilgrimage festival (at Jerusalem and at Bethel) was probably also a covenant renewal festival in which the historical events of Israel\u2019s deliverance were recalled and the stipulations embodied in the law read before the people, after which they swore allegiance and obedience. In other words, the spring festival, associated with Passover and Unleavened Bread and held probably at Gilgal and then at Shiloh, and the fall festival of Ingathering, which came to be identified as the festival of Booths, were \u201cvariant covenant festivals of old sanctuaries which at different periods or at different seasons played their role as sites of a pilgrim festival.\u201d
\nThis did not continue to be the case in the state religion of the monarchy, as we shall see. As Kraus remarks,<\/p>\n
In the early \u201cperiod of the Judges\u201d Israel had not yet broken with its semi-nomadic tradition [sic], and the encampment at the feast times in spring and autumn was still a reality. In the period of the kings this archaic pattern disintegrated, and with the rise of the Temple worship the Passover rite came to be observed in the villages and families. Only the feast of Unleavened Bread was celebrated at the central sanctuary.<\/p>\n
The fall festival, however, continued in its prominence and became the major festival of the state religion in the Southern Kingdom and in the Northern Kingdom.
\nThe fall festival came to be accentuated in the tradition, being called \u201cthe feast of Yahweh\u201d in Lev. 23:39 and simply \u201cthe feast\u201d in Ezek. 45:25. The later designation of the fall festival as the feast of Booths or Tabernacles (sukk\u00f4t) probably derives either from the practice of farmers to live in huts or temporary dwellings during the harvest or the fact that the celebration itself took place in huts. Leviticus 23:41\u201343 associates the living in huts or booths with the wilderness period, but this is presumably a historical connection provided by later tradition.
\nWe see, therefore, that major festival celebrations in the spring and in the fall joined the natural and the historical, the annual agricultural celebrations and the regular remembrance and celebration of the one-time acts of Yahweh in delivering the people and constituting them as Yahweh\u2019s people bonded in covenant.
\nThe third major festival fell between these two, that is, in the summertime. The festival of Weeks\u2014called also in the older cultic calendars \u201cthe feast of harvest\u201d (Ex. 23:16) and \u201cfirst fruits\u201d (Ex. 23:16; 34:22)\u2014was celebrated, according to Deut. 16:9, seven weeks from the time the sickle was first put to the grain of the barley harvest, which would bring one to the time of the wheat harvest. This was a purely agricultural festival, celebrating the wheat harvest, the gathering in of \u201cyour produce from your threshing floors and your wine press\u201d (Deut. 16:13), an occasion of much rejoicing. The festival of Weeks had no historical connection, although \u201clater Jewish tradition regarded it as commemorating the giving of the law in the third month (cf. Ex. 19:1; 2 Chron. 15:10ff.).\u201d One notes that at the end of the law for the festival of Weeks in Deuteronomy there is a separate prescription: \u201cRemember that you were a slave in Egypt, and diligently observe these statutes\u201d (16:12). By its placing, the general injunction serves to make a historical connection that was not a part of the festival in its celebration by the all-Israel community.
\nWe are not altogether sure what transpired at the festival of Weeks, but its center was an offering of the first fruits of the harvest. Leviticus 23 prescribes two loaves made with new flour and leaven, thus tying it back to the festival of Unleavened Bread from which the date of the festival of Weeks or First Fruits was set. The antecedents of all three of the festivals is uncertain. In the case of Weeks, however, there is little doubt that the Israelites inherited the custom of celebrating the harvest from their neighbors as they settled in the land and became increasingly agricultural in their economy. It may well be that the festival in form was taken over as is, with two major adjustments: the celebration of the harvest by first fruits brought \u201cto Yahweh\u201d and the fixing of it at what would have been one of the all-Israel shrines. As the Priestly legislation indicates (Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28), the festival became increasingly a sacrificial one after the temple was built. But it was probably not a sacrificial rite in the time of the Israelite confederation. Even Deuteronomy does not associate sacrifice with either the summer or fall festival in any special way. It was the produce \u201cfrom your threshing floors and your wine press\u201d that the people were to bring.
\nSuch regular festival occasions were not the only expression of the religion of the tribal league. The people also gathered together on ad hoc occasions for lamentation and fasting as they cried to Yahweh for help, as, for example, in Judges 20\u201321 when all Israel went up against Benjamin because of the rape of the Levite\u2019s concubine by the men of Gibeah. The punishment was decided in an all-Israel assembly \u201cbefore the LORD\u201d at Mizpah, and a course of events included two occasions when \u201call the Israelites, the whole army (kol h\u0101\u2018\u0101m)\u201d went back to Bethel (20:26) or \u201cthe people (h\u0101\u2018\u0101m) came to Bethel\u201d (21:2). Another example is the occasion recorded in 1 Samuel 7 when Samuel gathered all the people to Mizpah so that he might pray to the Lord for them because they had been lamenting over the oppression of the Philistines. Occasions of this sort continued throughout the history of the people and are reflected not only in the narratives but in the community laments of the Psalter, Jeremiah, and Lamentations. Thus, particular crises or significant moments in the affairs of the league might draw them together. Such significant moments are reflected in the accounts of Samuel\u2019s gathering of the people at Mizpah to select a king by lots and his gathering them at the ancient cultic center of Gilgal to \u201crenew the kingship.\u201d Though these were not primarily religious or cultic affairs, at least in terms of their primary intention, they usually had religious dimensions to them. So on both of the occasions in Judges 20\u201321 when the people gathered at Bethel, they were there \u201cbefore the LORD\u201d (20:26) or \u201cbefore God\u201d (21:2), they wept and fasted, and they offered \u2018\u014dl\u00f4t and \u0161\u0115l\u0101m\u00eem, burnt offerings and communion offerings or offerings of well-being. In one case, it is even reported that they built an altar. When Samuel gathered the people at Mizpah to pray for them, there was not only prayer, but fasting, confession of sin, and the pouring of libations. When the Philistines moved to attack, Samuel prayed and offered a burnt offering. The renewal of Saul\u2019s kingship at Gilgal, likewise, was accompanied by \u0161\u0115l\u0101m\u00eem, \u201cofferings of well-being before the LORD\u201d (1 Sam. 11:15) and the report that Saul and all the Israelites \u201crejoiced greatly.\u201d
\nAll Israel also went into battle as a league sacral affair under the aegis of the deity. The battles may not always have involved all the tribes, but the obligation of those summoned to \u201ccome to the help of the LORD\u201d is clear from Judg. 5:23:<\/p>\n
Curse Meroz, says the angel of the LORD,
\ncurse bitterly its inhabitants,
\nbecause they did not come to the help of the LORD,
\nto the help of the LORD against the mighty.<\/p>\n
Whether on particular occasions, as, for example, the choice of Saul as king, or on occasions of battle, inquiry of the deity via oracular procedures often accompanied such occasions. First Samuel 28:6 indicates that the primary means for this inquiry were dreams, sacral lots known as Urim and Thummim, and prophets. Priestly involvement in divination or inquiry of Yahweh is attested early and late. In the context of an all-Israel sacral assembly, such inquiry is reported, for example, on an occasion of military defeat caused by transgression of the requirements of holy war in Joshua 7 and in the gathering of the people at Mizpah \u201cbefore Yahweh\u201d so that a king might be chosen from among them (1 Sam. 10:17\u201324).
\nIn all of this, one may identify some features or characteristics of this aspect of religious life in early Israel in distinction from the family religion discussed above or the possible local cults that seem to have been sporadically present in ancient Israel. The cultus of the league, itself a kinship structure, provided a form of religion in Israel that transcended the family and its religion while incorporating both into the larger whole. The egalitarian and family character of the larger community was enacted in the shared sacrificial meal. To the extent that Passover was both a family meal and a remembrance of the deliverance from Egypt, it served to conjoin the sense of belonging to the micro-and the macrostructures of ancient Israel, the family and the league. The cultic celebrations of the confederation took place at sites that may have served as family or local shrines. Symbols and titles associated with them functioned also as all-Israel symbols and divine designations. That was especially the case with the shrine at Shiloh, the ark that resided there primarily if not exclusively, and the title \u201cYahweh of Hosts.\u201d
\nMost significantly, the league cultus reinforced the unity of the tribes by the celebration of a common story, the creation of a common memory, and the traditioning of the next generation. In the absence of coercive or economic means of binding the tribes or controlling individual and clan conduct, the festivals provided an ideological source of power that was seen as residing outside the tribal structure, that is, in the will of the deity, but actualized in its daily life and its political affairs. Internal affairs\u2014between individuals and between clans and tribes\u2014and external relations were controlled by the structure and divine will set forth in the covenantal framework, the foundation and ground of which was recalled and its claims renewed in the cult. That such control was not always effective is indicated by the intertribal conflicts recorded in Judges and in the move toward a monarchical political structure. In the gatherings of the assembly of Israel for fasting and lament, the larger community sought to effect the final outcome of their political predicaments by affecting the deity through the penitence and prayer of the people.
\nTheologically, the all-Israel cult saw its relationship to deity as historically created in an act of redemption from oppressive slavery. While families and clans that made up Israel had an ongoing relation to the family deity, Yahweh, their existence as a larger community was understood to have been effected in this historical moment. The character of the covenantal structure required a setting of limits on Israelite worship so that the possibility of turning to other gods was made a first order of business and strictly forbidden in the religion of the league. The polemic against other deities that was absent from family religion for the most part was a feature of the all-Israel cultus and probably from the beginning of the covenantal formulations. They set a moral structure for the larger community and incorporated sanctions that were not a major part of family religion in its relation to the family deity. The wrath of the deity and the sin of the people were assumed to be ingredients of political disasters. Even in the nonthreatening cult, the presence of the holy god, Yahweh, in the midst of the people was potentially dangerous to those who were present, looked on, or touched the divine throne, a concomitant of divine appearance that was not a feature of family religion.<\/p>\n
The State Religion of Judah<\/p>\n
With the rise of the monarchy, another facet of Israelite religion, the religion of the state, came into being. It developed out of the all-Israel cultus of the tribal league and did not eliminate family religion and local cults except during reform movements under the power and authority of the king that sought to eliminate the influence of these other types. Such reforms were created by the very fact of state religion, an official religion under the aegis and influence of the monarch. It is in this context that one must differentiate to some degree between the state religion of the United Monarchy and its Judean successor and that of the Northern Kingdom, Israel.
\nFrom the moment of David\u2019s transfer of the ark of the covenant into his tent sanctuary at Jerusalem (1 Samuel 6), the cult of all Israel began to undergo significant changes. The most notable features of the official cultus and religion of the monarchical era were the role of the king and the place of the temple. The shift toward a temple-based cultus under royal authority did not happen overnight, nor was the shape of official religion in this regard the same in the north and the south.
\nDuring most of the monarchical era, however, the kings\u2019 initiative and power with regard to the cults of both kingdoms is evident in several respects. For one thing, they established sanctuaries. It is likely that from the tenth century onward a number of sanctuaries were built or rebuilt by royal order or placed under royal control and administration for several reasons. We can only speculate what those reasons were. Some of them seem to have been strategically located near the borders of the kingdom to establish the boundaries of the kingdom under divine and royal authority. Some may have been designed to keep religious practice under the direction and oversight of the royal administration. The most famous of these sanctuaries was the temple at Jerusalem, planned by David and built by Solomon, which became the central sanctuary and the center of state religion in Judah after the breakup of the United Kingdom in the reign of Rehoboam. The significance of these cultic building activities as an instrument of ideological social power is readily apparent. David\u2019s movement of the ark to Jerusalem\u2014consistently called \u201cthe city of David\u201d in the tradition\u2014was a first step in establishing that power, for the presence of the central symbol of Israel\u2019s God and of that God\u2019s presence would have been a powerful instrument in securing the support of those who were rooted in the old order of the tribal confederation and its covenantal allegiance to Yahweh. The election of Zion and the Zion theology began, in effect, when David moved the ark and made Jerusalem the religious center of the nation. A question remains at that point. As one scholar has posed it, \u201cWas the archaic Ark tradition sufficient to meet the needs of a dynastic order in a world in which the building of a temple was a requisite component of the establishment of monarchic rule, in which the construction of a shrine simultaneously actualized and symbolized the divine sanction of human rule?\u201d The legitimacy of David\u2019s reign over the people, whether or not it depended upon it, would have been reinforced by the building of a temple as an abode for the deity who chose the king alongside the abode of the king himself. The national sanctuary, now called a h\u0113k\u0101l or \u201ctemple,\u201d and more specifically dubbed \u201cthe temple of the kingdom\u201d (b\u00eat maml\u0115k\u00e2), became associated with the seat of government and the royal palace to the degree that in the eighth century in the Northern Kingdom, the sanctuary erected by Jeroboam at Bethel can be called \u201cthe king\u2019s sanctuary\u201d (miqd\u0101\u0161 melek) by the chief priest of the national shrine.
\nThe examples of David and Solomon and Jeroboam include other aspects of royal involvement and control of state religion. These figures initiated or reshaped the primary cultic events. Usually this was done in marked dependence upon or continuity with existing all-Israel cultic practice. But David\u2019s transfer of the ark to Jerusalem also represented both innovation and continuity, the former to establish his rule and his chosen locale as the center of Israel\u2019s religious life and the latter to insure their acceptability by the tribes. The building of the temple, designed to accomplish those same ends, was also both innovative and familiar\u2014innovative in Israel\u2019s religious history but familiar to the people from the religio-political structures of their neighbors, structures from which they had drawn the model of and desire for kingship.
\nSuch cultic initiative continued in the history of the kings. As far as the biblical tradition identifies this, it was primarily in the establishment of heterodox or syncretistic cults in the national shrines of both kingdoms and in consequent reform movements. All of these moves seem to have been related to social and political factors, from the marriage of kings to foreign wives who established foreign cults to the impact of Assyrian imperialism and its accompanying religious practices. To a significant degree, the \u201cpaganizing\u201d of Yahwism in the state religion was less a pervasive Israelite phenomenon than it was a feature of the politics of the royal court. Its presence in the national shrine would have meant, of course, that its influence went beyond that into the general populace. Epigraphic evidence, however, would lead one not to exaggerate the extent to which the worship of Yahweh was significantly displaced or compromised among the people as a whole.
\nThe king was also involved in appointing cultic officials. That is especially noticeable in David\u2019s appointment of Abiathar and Zadok as his priests, representing the two primary priestly families of the premonarchical period, the houses of Moses and Aaron. Here again, state religion was created in continuity with the cultus of the tribal league, probably reflecting conflict with the priestly families presiding at Shiloh and Hebron. But the activity of the kings in cultic appointments was not confined to this one act or this one king. The Chronicler may be at least partly right in ascribing to David the setting up of other cultic officials early in the time of the monarchy. It has been argued, primarily on the basis of late material from Chronicles, that David and Solomon set Levites in various parts of the kingdom with both cultic and political or administrative responsibilities. The latter could have involved collecting taxes and managing royal estates. Jehoshaphat appointed priests to new roles in his reform (1 Chronicles 19), and Josiah made the priesthood a focal point of his reform movement. Indeed, Josiah\u2019s reform of the cult is a major testimony to its control by the king.
\nOne scholar, who has shown how \u201cintimately interwoven religion and state were\u201d in ancient Israel, has concluded, \u201cThe king, as head of state, was also the head of the national religion as his god\u2019s viceroy.\u201d In light of that fact and the appointment of priests by kings to whom they were accountable, it is not surprising that the chief priest of Bethel, Amaziah, reported Amos\u2019s criticism as a conspiracy against the king and sought to ban the prophet from the kingdom. The state religion in both kingdoms was fully under the control of the king. As such it was an instrument of royal power and control in a way that was not true of other forms of Israel\u2019s religion.
\nThe other primary feature of the religion of the state was the temple, together with the cultic activities that took place within it (fig. 14). These now were as inseparable from the ideology of kingship as they were from its initiative and control. Changes that took place were features of historical change in the context of the developing power and politics of kingship. But change did happen. Rather than the mobile tent shrine, kingship brought with it a fixed sanctuary alongside or attached to the palace of the king. Whatever David\u2019s final decision with regard to the building of a temple or his degree of involvement in planning it, he knew the connections between king and temple symbolized in the use of the term h\u00eak\u00e2l for both temple and palace and represented in the traditional role of kings in the ancient Near East in temple building.
\nAt this point, and on the way to further interpretation of the significance of the temple, it is necessary to look at the tradition of the tent shrine and the shift from tent shrine to permanent building sanctuary. What is the significance of the tent shrine and the problem with the shift away from it to h\u00eak\u0101l, temple?
\nWe begin with recognizing the tradition, reflected in the tabernacle, of God\u2019s dwelling in a moveable shrine. Whatever was the earliest history of the traditions of the ark and of the tabernacle\u2014and many would claim that these were separate shrines joined much later in the tradition\u2014by David\u2019s time, there was a clear tradition that Yahweh had always dwelled in a tent. Other kinds of sanctuaries were around, presumably where the deity Yahweh was worshiped. But the abode of the ark as the central symbol of Yahweh\u2019s presence seems to have been a tent, at least according to the tradition of 2 Samuel 7, the oracle of Yahweh to David. To what extent was that the case? There is some evidence to confirm that, apart from the tabernacle tradition. Although the Deuteronomistic material refers to a h\u00eak\u0101l at Shiloh, other sources refer to the shrine there as a tent or tabernacle, especially the poetic sources (e.g., Ps. 78:60). Psalm 132:7 refers to the shrine of the ark at Kiryat-Yearim as Yahweh\u2019s mi\u0161k\u0115n\u00f4t, \u201cencampment.\u201d The likelihood is that the primary dwelling of the ark was indeed a moveable tent.<\/p>\n
Fig. 14. Drawing of a reconstruction of the Solomonic temple. (After Wright, Biblical Archaeology, p. 138, fig. 92)<\/p>\n
David continued that tradition when he set up a tent shrine for the ark (1 Samuel 6). But wherein lay the resistance to the temple that is so firmly a part of the Nathan oracle, even though it is short-lived? If the tradition is correct, that resistance was strong enough for David to hold off building the temple and to leave the ark in a tent shrine. Cross suggests that an explanation of the conflict can be found in part in the mythic background of the two types of shrine. Baal\u2019s temple on Mount \u1e62apon was founded to confirm his establishment of order, especially kingship among the gods. It served also to establish the rule of the earthly king. In other words, it was a manifestation of the typical Near Eastern royal ordering of cosmos and state. The temple thus served to tie the divine order and the human order, the eternal kingship of the deity and the eternal human kingship reflected in the dynasty. It was both the dwelling place of the deity and the dynastic shrine.
\nThe tent of El, which is reflected in some of the tabernacle terminology, reflects a different political structure. El was the divine patriarch, god of the father, of the league, of covenant. From Ugarit, we have now a reference to \u201cEl Berit,\u201d El of the covenant. El sat as judge in the assembly of the gods (p\u1e2br m\u2018d). In Israel the political counterpart was the tent of assembly (\u2019\u014dhel m\u014d\u2018\u0113d), the shrine of the federated tribes bound together in a conditional covenant.
\nThe \u201ctemple of Baal\u201d and the \u201ctent of El\u201d thus symbolized alternate political ideologies. These alternate ideologies are reflected in the traditions associated with the temple and the tent in ancient Israel. Psalm 132:5 speaks of the shrine David set up with \u201ctent\u201d language, that is, mi\u0161k\u0101n\u00f4t, which Cross plausibly translates as \u201ctent-complex.\u201d This psalm also underscores the conditional character of the Davidic dynasty (v. 12). Over against this, Psalm 89 exalts the king as the adopted son of the deity and declares that, come what may, he and his line shall rule forever (vv. 20\u201338 [19\u201337]).
\nIn fact, as Cross has pointed out, the temple in Jerusalem represented a compromise and incorporated features of both the tent shrine of the confederation and the dynastic temple of Canaanite kingship.<\/p>\n
The portable Ark with its cherubim became the \u201ccenter piece\u201d usurping the place of the divine image of the Canaanite temple.\u2026 The conditionality of temple and dynasty\u2014b\u00eat Yahweh and b\u00eat David\u2014persisted albeit intermittently until the end, thanks to the prophetic and traditional insistence that kingship was forfeit when the ancient covenant was violated and that the temple in which Israel trusted could be destroyed like Shiloh.<\/p>\n
David\u2019s tent shrine would have been the culmination of the development of Israel\u2019s tradition of tent shrines, serving as a successor to the league tent shrine at Shiloh. It may be reflected in some of the tabernacle description in the Priestly tradition.
\nWhat David initiated in the move from league cultus to state religion, Solomon carried out, building a temple on the pattern of the Canaanite dynastic temple with Phoenician architects and builders. Continuities with the league cultus were indicated with the procession of the ark into the temple (1 Kings 8). But with Solomon there were major changes in the cultus that shifted the focus away from the covenant renewal forms of the league cultus and toward a celebration of the election of David and of Zion by Yahweh as recipients of the deity\u2019s grace. While the three pilgrimage festivals apparently were still held at the central sanctuary, now in Jerusalem, Passover ceased to function as a pilgrim festival for the whole community until Josiah restored it in the seventh century, and the principal festival became the autumn one. While we are not told of the details of this festival under the monarchy, there are indications that its celebration of the rule of Yahweh joined the demonstration of that rule in the historical events that founded Israel as a people with its manifestation in the rule of the human king in Jerusalem, that is, in the foundation of the house of David and of the house of Yahweh on Zion. The festival would have provided the primary religious support for the primary political and religious developments of the monarchy.<\/p>\n
The State Religion of Israel<\/p>\n
The state religion of the Northern Kingdom after its breakaway from the South under Jeroboam I in 922 is a matter about which we have much less information. The Judean royal ideology with its focus on the election of David and Zion, the covenant with David, and the character of the Judean king as the adopted son of the deity (e.g., Psalm 2) would not have been applicable to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Indeed, it would have been necessary to counter that ideology. While we have little indication of how that was done, we are told that significant steps were taken in the direction of a countercultus to the state cultus in Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:25\u201333). The political character of Jeroboam\u2019s cultus is identified explicitly in the text:<\/p>\n
Now the kingdom may well revert to the house of David. If this people continues to go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, the heart of this people will turn again to their master, King Rehoboam of Judah; they will kill me and return to King Rehoboam of Judah. (vv. 26b\u201327)<\/p>\n
While the Northern Kingdom may in fact have been a more resolute repository of the traditions of the Israelite league as some would argue, that does not seem to have been the intention of the founder of the northern cult. It was a political move to hold the loyalty of the people by providing a Yahwistic cultus in the North to replace the one in the South. The fact that Jerusalem had been the religious center of the state for only about seventy years and the temple had been built only about forty years before would have joined with the tenacity of the religious traditions in the North to enhance the possibility of Jeroboam succeeding. Whereas David and Solomon had set up a royal temple in the capital city Jerusalem, which was without previous Israelite tradition, Jeroboam created national shrines at two already existing sanctuaries at the northern and southern ends of his kingdom, in Dan and Bethel, both of which had long standing as Israelite sanctuaries. Bethel had patriarchal associations as an El sanctuary. Like Jerusalem, however, it came to serve a dual function as royal chapel and national temple (Amos 7:13).
\nIn each one, Jeroboam placed a calf or bull (\u2018\u0113gel) as a counter icon to the ark of the covenant in Jerusalem. Within the polemic of Exodus 32, there is probably \u201ca cult legend of the old sanctuary of Bethel claiming Aaronic authority for its bull iconography\u201d and reflecting older traditions of the worship of El. The character or function of the bulls is a matter of much debate. The analogy with the ark and the well-known function of bulls and other animals as pedestals for divine images suggests that they were so conceived here (fig. 7). But the use of bull language in divine epithets and the close association of deities with their animal identifications would have opened up at a fairly early stage the possibility of the bulls becoming objects of worship in a way to which the ark was not susceptible (plate 2). There is no reason, however, for suspecting that these were other than Yahwistic icons in origin.
\nJeroboam\u2019s cultic activities necessarily included the setting up of a primary festival in opposition to the one in Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:32\u201333). Indeed, the report of Jeroboam\u2019s alternative, \u201clike the one that was in Judah,\u201d is one of the clearest indicators of the primacy of the fall festival in the Southern Kingdom. The reason for placing the festival one month later than the one in Jerusalem is unclear, though some have speculated that it was so those who wished still to go to Jerusalem could do so.
\nJeroboam also appointed non-Levitical priests chosen from among the people (1 Kings 12:31b). There is reason to believe that Jeroboam maintained significant continuities with older cultic tradition by confirming an existing Mushite (or Mosaic) priesthood at Dan and an existing Aaronide priesthood at Bethel. The accountability of the priests at the national sanctuaries to the king, indicated by Jeroboam\u2019s placing the priests of the high places in Bethel, is confirmed by the words and deeds of Amaziah, priest of Bethel in the eighth century. Although there were two principal sanctuaries in the state religion of Israel, Bethel seems to have been the primary one, as evidenced by the locating of the fall festival at that site (1 Kings 12:33). Jeroboam may have created other sanctuaries or more complex structures at the various shrines of the North called \u201chigh places\u201d (1 Kings 12:31).<\/p>\n
Community Religion<\/p>\n
The use of the term \u201ccommunity religion\u201d to describe the type of religious life and practice in the postexilic period is a convenience that is somewhat appropriate but hardly definitive or specific enough to describe the type of religion that developed and flourished in the sixth to fourth centuries. Like other types of religion, this expression had clear continuities with other types and was as much a historical stage as it was a particular type. But the religious life of the province of Yehud after the return of Babylonian exiles was different enough and significant enough to merit some effort at defining it on its own and in distinction from other types mentioned earlier.
\nThe use by other scholars of the word \u201ccommunity\u201d to characterize the postexilic Judeans has in mind the term q\u0101h\u0101l, \u201cassembly,\u201d \u201ccongregation,\u201d or \u201ccommunity,\u201d a word that is used specifically to describe the totality of the returnees from Babylon (Ezra 2:64 = Neh. 7:66). This term, or some expanded form of it\u2014\u201cassembly of the exiles\u201d (Ezra 10:8), \u201cassembly of those returning from the captivity\u201d (Neh. 8:17), \u201cassembly of God\u201d (Neh. 13:1)\u2014served to designate the gathering of the people for political and cultic activities. Thus, Nehemiah called an assembly (q\u0101h\u0101l; Neh. 5:7, 13) to deal with the problem of the poorer members of the community having to pledge their fields and vineyards and their children as slaves as well as to borrow money to pay off loans to the upper class as well as to pay the king\u2019s tax. The community\/assembly gathered for Ezra\u2019s reading of the Torah (Neh. 8:2) and for the marriage reform of Ezra rejecting the foreign women and children (Ezra 10:1, 12, 14). The congregation\/community of the exiles (q\u0115hal hagg\u00f4l\u00e2) was the body from which others could be separated or excommunicated (Ezra 10:8), and there is specific reference to the Deuteronomic law calling for exclusion of foreigners from the \u201cassembly (q\u0101h\u0101l) of God\u201d (Neh. 13:1, citing Deut. 23:2\u20134[1\u20133], where there are four references to the \u201cassembly of the LORD.\u201d
\nThe examples cited indicate that the \u201ccommunity\u201d was a politico-religious entity that was convened to deal with special crises or issues that came up, a custom that was not common in the preexilic period. As Blenkinsopp notes, \u201cIn all cases, we are dealing with a collectivity which defines itself over against others in the region, membership in which is regulated by incorporation in lists and genealogies, and which has its own procedures governing inclusion and exclusion.\u201d The shape of the community was in ways closer to that of the premonarchical character of Israel rather than the monarchical state. The community was made up of the \u201chouses of the fathers,\u201d a structure with roots in the premonarchical clan structures of the tribal confederation, and consisted of lay and priestly bodies of leaders, both organized according to the \u201chouses of the fathers\u201d and operating under a governor. Using Weinberg\u2019s model of a citizen\/civic-temple community, Harold Washington has aptly summarized the character of the Judean community:<\/p>\n
The postexilic community was not, as often assumed, a purely religious association. Under the Persian-sponsored civic-temple community, land tenure, participation in the temple cult, and full citizenship were combined and brought under the umbrella of a genealogical system that defined membership in terms of family descent, within the \u201chouse of the fathers,\u201d and accorded positions of political and economic leadership to the largest landholders.<\/p>\n
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah show the development of conflicts within the community or between elements of the community. Virtually every reconstruction of the history and religion of the postexilic community identifies groups and parties at odds with one another, though there is much disagreement about who those groups were and what the issues were that divided them. What is particularly suggested by the literature is the conflict between the returnees from Babylon and those who remained behind, between \u201cthe people of Judah and Benjamin\u201d and \u201cthe people of the land\u201d (which included Israelites from the north), a conflict that seems to reach back to the early stages of the return and the time of Zerubbabel (Neh. 4:1\u20134).
\nOne of the more insightful efforts to explicate this conflict in terms of its earlier roots is that of Shemaryahu Talmon. With others (e.g., Weinberg), he calls attention to the continuing agrarian character of the community and the fact that the returnees from Babylon did not simply all become urbanized in Jerusalem but settled largely in the villages. It was necessary, however, to place a number of the returnees in Jerusalem, and much of the leadership lived there (Neh. 11:1\u20132). The conflicts that developed, therefore, were not simply between urban and agrarian or between Jerusalem leaders and the people of the land. The critical impulse for defining the community and thus determining who was in and who was out came from the returnees from Babylon. As Talmon has noted, what happened in Judah, or the Persian province of Yehud, was largely shaped by the experience in Babylon.<\/p>\n
The enforced status of a confessional community had been regarded by the Babylonian exiles as a mere temporary adjustment to prevailing adverse circumstances. However, \u2026 once this new form of communal life had come into existence, it would not be discarded even when the conditions that brought it about were seemingly reversed or attenuated by the return to the land, which did not, however, put an end to the existence of an exilic community.<\/p>\n
A symbiosis of confessional community and nation evolved in the Persian period out of the experience of exile, so that \u201cJewish peoplehood would embrace communities that accentuate their national-religious heritage differently.\u201d Thus was paved the way for the development of various parties and groups within the nation.
\nThe \u201cin-group\/out group\u201d ethos that had long characterized Israel\u2019s relations with its neighbors now took on different forms. Maintaining the character and identity of the community against external pressures, which had been so much a necessity during the exile, was carried over into the community so that issues of identity and practice, such as Sabbath, circumcision, sacrifice, and festivals, became internalized. \u201cThe need for a close circumspection of Jewish identity that had been especially pressing in the setting of a surrounding pagan-foreign majority in Babylonia-Persia was turned inward, so to speak.\u2026 Compliance with the specific-particular execution of these rites now became a criterion that set apart constituents of one Jewish \u2018inner group\u2019 from others.\u201d
\nThus, the confessional community increasingly marked itself off and set boundaries between itself and either the \u201cpeople of the land\u201d or foreign peoples. Specific acts of separation from acts of pollution and from foreign wives and their children marked the practice of community religion in this period, practices rooted in earlier laws but coming to prominence in this period. While persons could be added to the community that centered in the returnees and their practices and power (Ezra 6:21; Neh. 10:29), proselytism was not as prominent an activity as was the differentiation and separation from others and others\u2019 practices. The purity of \u201cthe holy seed,\u201d which centered in the returnees, was protected by formal separation from foreigners, which may have included not only separation from the traditional surrounding nations (Neh. 9:1) but also separation from \u201cnon-Judean Israelites whose version of the biblical faith was at variance with the returnees\u2019 understanding of biblical monotheism.\u201d
\nSeparation, however, was not only separation from foreign elements and pollutions; it was also separation to Yahweh through the Torah. The classic understanding of holiness was thus manifest in both positive and negative forms of separation, and the prophetic charisma as a mode of personal revelation fell by the wayside after a brief spurt in the early postexilic period in favor of \u201cmore rational and controllable forms of instruction\u201d at the hands of a new class of leaders, the scribes or sages (see chapter 5), whose \u201cauthority rested on expert exposition of the hallowed traditions\u201d rather than on more subjective and personal inspiration, which was not subject to checks and controls.
\nThe classic instance of this focus now on the Torah is the account of Ezra\u2019s reading of the law before the community (Nehemiah 8). What comprised that law is much debated, with the usual conjecture that it was the Pentateuch or some form of it. But the occasion is important for its indication of the movement toward a Torah community that was focused upon obedience to the divine law as contained in the written Torah and led by leaders who were capable of interpreting and aiding in the understanding of the Torah. Henceforth the community religion of Israel\/Judah would be scripture-oriented, and the study and interpretation of Torah would become a major function of the religious leadership. The synagogue became the center of such study, but it came in at a later time and seems to have served other communal functions as well.
\nSamuel Balentine, along with others, has shown how this focus on the law was an important religious development that was at the same time consonant with the purposes of the Persian Empire in its provincial administration. That is, the codification of local law was an instrument of social control and political maintenance in the Persian provincial policy. Assuming that the \u201cking\u2019s law,\u201d which Artaxerxes commissioned Ezra to administer in the province of Judah, was the Pentateuch or some form of it, Balentine suggests that it was the product of both internal and external factors:<\/p>\n
On the one hand, it represents an internal synthesis of traditional laws and customs that provided Yehud a sense of cultural and religious identity. On the other, it represents an essential aspect of imperial control, a standardized law that was approved and implemented with the support of the Persian authorities.<\/p>\n
A major religious, economic, and political center of the religious community of Judah was the temple, rebuilt by the returnees from exile, who, according to the book of Ezra, spurned the help of the Israelites and Judeans in the land when it was offered (Ezra 4:1\u20134). The temple and its sacrificial cultus became the center of religious life as had been the case in the state religion of the preexilic era. Built on the ruins of the Solomonic temple, the second temple symbolized significant continuity with its predecessor while manifesting some differences in its character and symbolism and in its modes of administration and support, the administration being at the hands of the priests under the leadership of the high priest (see chapter 5). The lay members of the community, however, had a greater involvement in the temple, both in their voluntary economic support of the temple as well as in cultic participation, than in the preexilic period. The function of the temple as an economic center of the community is evident by the various avenues of income and distribution, including income from the Persian government, taxes of various sorts, deliveries of wood, and voluntary contributions. As cultic offerings swelled to around a third of the total income, with the state taxes in addition, \u201cthe temple developed into the most important economic factor in the community of Judah.\u201d
\nAs with the placing of torah at the center of the community\u2019s religion, the temple cult also served the purposes of the Persians while providing a cultic center for that religion, for the construction and maintenance of regional temples was a feature of Persian imperial policy. Because the temples were built and supported by funds from the Persian treasury, the Persian government effected a center of local stability but one in which it had a vested interest and thus some measure of influence or control. Balentine notes that this provided the Persian Empire a presence at the administrative center of the community\u2019s life. By the degree of financial support of the temples, the Persian king could exercise some control over the province. The connection to and support of the temple also kept the Persian presence as a part of the religious life, as the king decreed that prayers and sacrifices would be offered for the royal family (Ezra 6:10). Further, the temple supported and enhanced the empire\u2019s aims for political and social hierarchy in the region in a way that would help maintain Persian control and social and political stability. Balentine describes this relationship thus:<\/p>\n
Through the High Priest appointed by the Persians, temple personnel with conscious loyalty to the Empire, and a strata [sic] of educated, urban elite with vested interests in a local, nonmonarchic system of governance, the Persians developed a coalition of power within the temple that was loyal to the Persian agenda.<\/p>\n
As the sacrificial cult developed in the temple, a particular element came more to the fore: the concern for atonement of sin, represented especially by the celebration of the Day of Atonement (see chapter 3), which may have anteceded the postexilic period but is probably to be associated particularly with the community religion of that period. The experience of divine judgment associated with the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile led to a heightened emphasis on the sin of the people and the need for reconciliation, an emphasis reflected in the system of sacrifice and also in the personal piety of the individual.
\nIf the community religion of the sixth to fourth centuries grew out of the exile and was formed in the light of and around the realities of the Persian Empire, while not being wholly shaped by either context, that religion also included different ways of dealing with the end of kingship. There were elements that hoped to reinstate it in the figure of Zerubbabel (see Haggai, for example), but this failed in the face of the realities of the dominance of Persia over the province of Judah. Isaiah 55:3\u20135 seems to suggest a democratization of the messianic idea or the Davidic promise so that the covenantal promises to David were to be for the whole nation. There were other elements that reduced the role of the king to that of a prince (n\u0101\u015b\u00ee\u2019) ruling alongside a Zadokite priest, a civic ruler on the model of the earlier clan chieftain rather than the royal ruler of the monarchical period (e.g., Ezek. 43:18\u201344:3; 45:1\u20138; Zechariah 4). It has even been argued that in the law of the temple in Ezekiel 40\u201348 this term refers to the Judean governor under Persian rule.
\nThe developments reflected in Ezekiel, especially chapters 40\u201348, and in Zechariah represent the main trend within the community religion of the postexilic period. As Paul Joyce describes this trend with specific regard to Ezekiel, \u201cThe \u2018messianic\u2019 figure is at best on the fringes of what for Ezekiel is the real focus of future expectation, namely the restored sanctuary.\u201d As the temple and its cult under the administration of the priestly group but with lay involvement became the center of the religion of the community, the royal figure and the prophetic hopes associated with it were muted or transformed in favor of an emphasis on temple and cult. With regard to the Chronicler, Peter Ackroyd states, \u201cIt is not a Davidic monarchy which the Chronicler hopes to see restored; it is the expression in the life of the community, particularly in its being gathered around the temple and its worship, of what David had established.\u201d
\nOne of the conflicts that developed in the postexilic community would seem at first glance to be less a religious matter than some of the others. But its implications for the religion and theology of the community were far reaching, since it insured the continuation and development of prophetic and legal dimensions of Yahwism having to do with wealth and property, and justice for the weaker and poorer members of the community. The conflict was between the poorer members of the community and the upper class over the economic bondage that developed out of the debts of the poorer members and the system of credit that called for loss of property or bondedness to pay off debt and even the selling into slavery of children to cover debts. The primary and telling witness of this conflict is Nehemiah 5, where a report is given of a large outcry on the part of the poorer members of the community over their having to pledge the labor of their children to get credit to pay for food and the (Persian) king\u2019s tax, as well as having to pledge or mortgage their fields, vineyards, and houses to get grain during a period of famine. Their fundamental situation is well described in the final words of the protesters: \u201cWe are powerless, and our fields and vineyards now belong to others\u201d (Neh. 5:5). Nehemiah\u2019s laying the responsibility for these acts upon the \u201cnobles and the officials\u201d identifies the social and structural conflict here. The fact that this upper class or aristocracy seems to have responded to Nehemiah\u2019s indictment and call for redress indicates that there were at least some elements in the community who were sensitive to the long-standing legislation and guidelines in the community that called for amelioration of debts and who resisted high-handed encroachment on the property of those who were in economic deprivation (Neh. 5:12\u201313; cf. 10:32 [31]). That the occasion described in Nehemiah 5 was not an isolated instance is suggested by the number of references in postexilic literature to oppressive economic measures against the poor, widows, orphans, and aliens (e.g., Isa. 58:6\u20137f.; Mal. 3:5; Job 7:2\u20133; and probably a number of Psalms that cry out against economic injustice). Albertz has suggested that there were opposing elements in the upper class or aristocracy, some of whom went along with the Persian system of financial support without concern for the situation of their poorer compatriots, and others of whom were sensitive to their needs and worked to ameliorate them. By a close reading of the text (indeed, a reading between the lines in some cases), Albertz suggests that one can see in the accounts of the redresses in Nehemiah (including the actions of Nehemiah in 5:14\u201319 but also in the creation of didactic psalms and proverbs about the wicked and the righteous) efforts on the part of this latter element of the upper class to demonstrate solidarity with the poor and effect a change of attitude on the part of others. Within the poor or lower class, Albertz argues, an eschatologizing of prophecy developed that saw no possibility in the present reality but anticipated God\u2019s intervention in history in behalf of the poor and to do away with the unjust structures that even Torah piety could not overcome (e.g., Isaiah 56; 29:17\u201324).
\nIt is within such a development toward a more eschatological prophecy on the part of deprived elements within the community, though possibly on its fringes, that some would place the development of apocalyptic. Such an understanding has been called into question in more recent studies as it has been observed that apocalyptic and millenarian movements do not necessarily occur only among deprived groups but may have their locus among power-holding elements, such as priests and scribes. In other words, apocalyptic movements that expect an imminent and radical divine intervention to undo the structures of present reality in vindication of those who are righteous (pious or innocent) and who view that reality, both present and future, in sharply dualistic terms of good and evil can occur in a variety of social locations, and can involve both groups of the deprived and groups of the powerful. In light of the debate about the social location of apocalyptic and the sharply different views about the difficulty of dating apocalyptic literature, it cannot be determined at this point to what extent apocalyptic thinking belonged in any central way to the religion of the postexilic community. That it grew out of that community and may have been related to social and religious developments, including various conflicts, is likely, but caution in being too specific about its role in postexilic community religion is in order.<\/p>\n
INTERACTION OF FAMILY RELIGION AND OFFICIAL NATIONAL RELIGION<\/p>\n
The presentation of Israelite religion in terms of types vis-\u00e0-vis different social and political contexts shows some of the diversity and complexity of that religion. It runs the risk, however, of giving an overly segmented picture of what was connected and interactive in many ways. While some indications of that have been noted along the way, a more nearly complete picture requires identification of some other ways in which family religion\u2014and to some extent the religious features of local or regional sanctuaries\u2014interacted with official national religion and its continuation in postexilic community religion. Three areas of such interaction illustrate the connectedness in the midst of the diversity, or the overlapping of features across different social groupings and the religious practices and ideas that were characteristic of them.
\nThe first of these is the penetration of kinship categories into all parts of Israel\u2019s life, including its religion. At an early stage, the \u201cnation\u201d was itself a family or a congeries of kinship units. Its larger character as a league or confederation of tribes was couched in kinship terms, so that kinship-in-law became the means by which individual units were conjoined in a politico-religious whole. Cross has summarized the kinship character of the league as follows:<\/p>\n
The league was also a kinship organization, a covenant of families and tribes organized by the creation or identification of a common ancestor and related by segmented genealogies. Such genealogies are in substantial part constructs, based as much on \u201ckinship-in-law\u201d as real kinship, and the genealogies tend to be fluid, shifting to reflect social and historical changes and developments. The league in ideal form was conceived as twelve tribes, related at once by covenant and kinship.<\/p>\n
He notes further that the \u201cname\u201d of the league, \u2018\u0101m Yahweh, \u201cpeople of Yahweh,\u201d is a kinship term \u201cperhaps better translated the \u2018kindred\u2019 of Yahweh,\u201d but also \u201cin some contexts must be translated the \u2018militia of Yahweh,\u2019 and in other contexts the \u2018\u0101m Yahweh is a community of worshippers, a cultic association.\u201d These tribal and kinship relations never fully dissipated, therefore, even under the state.
\nFurthermore, the family deity was the national deity. Yahweh\u2019s relation to the nation was the same as to the family: personal, or better, that of kinsman. The god of the family was the high god El\/Yahweh, at one and the same time the \u201ccreator of the heavens and the earth\u201d and also the one who delivered the enemies of the family ancestor into his hand (Gen. 14:18\u201319). The head of the family addresses the family god as \u201cJudge of all the earth\u201d (Gen. 18:25). The deity who blessed and guided the destiny of the family did so for \u201call the families of the earth\u201d (Gen. 12:3).
\nOne of the primary codifications of official and orthodox Yahwism was the book of Deuteronomy. It was set as a Mosaic address to the assembly of Israel and was intended to define the life of the people politically, religiously, and socially. Within its bounds, however, familial categories and family-oriented perspectives were appropriated even as the family was set within the context of the experience and religion of all Israel. The category of \u201cbrother\u201d became in Deuteronomy the primary way of speaking of other members of the larger community and not just those in the immediate family. The family relationship became a moral category. Family laws are a prominent part of the Deuteronomic code. An intergenerational perspective is present throughout the book, and requirements for instruction of the young, within the family circle, about the fundamental claims of the official national religion are given. The home was seen as the locus of teaching and of shaping the next generation for participation in the official all-Israel cultus and for living by the covenant between Yahweh and the people. Some laws that are at the heart of the Deuteronomic social ethic but may be regarded as idealistic or unrealistic in their present all-Israel framework probably arose out of the kinship situation, for example, the remission of debts in Deut. 15:1\u201311.
\nOne other feature of Israelite religion that is associated with both family religion and official public cult is prayer. It has been discussed here primarily in relation to family religion, particularly in regard to the prayers for help of the individual, which often have their need and may have their setting in life in the family or clan group. But there were clearly ways or moments in which individual prayer was associated with the public cult of official religion and with its theology. Psalm 22, in some ways a classic individual lament that incorporates family imagery directly into its language by addressing the deity as one who has watched over the petitioner from birth, also specifically alludes to the cries of the \u201cancestors\u201d (\u2019 \u0101b\u00f4t) who trusted in God and were delivered (Ps. 22:5\u20136[4\u20135]). It is possible that such a reference could be to the family ancestors alone, but the immediately preceding allusion to the \u201cpraises of Israel\u201d (v. 4[3]) suggests that here the petitioner draws upon the experience of the ancestors of Israel and not just those of the immediate family as grounds for encouragement. So also in Psalms 42\u201343, the petitioner remembers going with crowds in procession (fig. 15) to \u201cthe house of God\u201d with shouts and songs of thanksgiving, \u201ckeeping festival\u201d (h\u00f4g\u0113g; Ps. 42:5[4]), and desires again to be brought to \u201cyour holy hill and to your dwelling,\u201d in order to sacrifice at \u201cthe altar of God\u201d (43:3\u20134). The one who cries out here does so in marked connection with the theology and ritual of official all-Israel religion. There are other references to the temple or to aspects of the ideology of official national religion in the individual prayers for help marking their assimilation to the official cult and theology. Some individual prayers may have been adapted for use by the congregation in the all-Israel cult. Psalm 22 and a number of others point to a ritual of thanksgiving after prayer has been heard and answered that takes place in the sanctuary with offerings, sacrifice, and praise. While such thanksgiving offerings and meals may have occurred in local sanctuaries or even domestic shrines in some instances, there are also indications that the paying of these vows by the petitioner was in the midst of \u201cthe congregation\u201d (q\u0101h\u0101l, Ps. 22:22; \u2018\u0113d\u0101, 111:1), \u201cthe great congregation\u201d (Ps. 22:26[25]; 35:18; 40:10\u201311[9\u201310]; \u201cthe assemblies\u201d (maqh\u0113l\u00eem, Ps. 26:12); \u201cin the presence of all his people\u201d (Ps. 116:14, 18). The story of Hannah\u2019s thanksgiving offering and sacrifice together with her song of thanksgiving is the clearest report of such occasions. As we have noted, this may not have been on the occasion of an all-Israel festival and no reference to a gathering of others is indicated, though the sanctuary involved was one of the all-Israel centers. The references above from the Psalms, however, place such occasions very much in a public context. We must assume, therefore, that the ritual of thanksgiving belonged very much to a cultic event that often or at different times was on the occasion of an all-Israel gathering, while at other moments it could have taken place in a more localized setting with the focus on the family, as was the case with Hannah\u2019s thanksgiving vow. To the extent that the king may have been the one speaking in the voice of some of these individual prayers, they would have belonged quite directly to the state religion during the time of the monarchy.<\/p>\n
Fig. 15. Drawing of worshipers with arms outstretched in either imploring prayer or adoring praise. From Kuntillet \u2018Ajrud. (After Beck, Tel Aviv 9 [1982], fig. 3)<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 3<\/p>\n
Sacrifice and Offering in Ancient Israel<\/p>\n
There seems to have been no period in ancient Israel\u2019s history when sacrifice was not an important part of religious practice\u2014from the oldest accounts of family and tribal sacrifice to the systematic organization of the sacrificial ritual reflected in the Priestly material of the Pentateuch that belongs to the later stages of that history, the time of exile and afterwards. The legislative parts of Leviticus and Numbers focus major attention on the sacrificial cultus. Deuteronomy 12 opens the Deuteronomic code with a program for the centralization of worship, but this means primarily slaughter and sacrifice. First Kings 9 not only sets prayer and sacrifice at the center of the dedication of the temple by Solomon but tells of regular sacrifices and offerings by Solomon in the temple. Not only was sacrifice carried out by Samuel, Saul, and David (the latter on the occasion of setting up the ark in Jerusalem to establish it as the religious and political center of his kingdom [2 Sam. 6:17], but Jeroboam\u2019s chief reason for creating a counterreligious center to Jerusalem when the Northern Kingdom split off was so that the people would not continue to go to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices (1 Kings 12:27). There is no level of the literature that is our primary source for Israel\u2019s religion that does not identify sacrifice as a major aspect of that religion. Even when sacrifice increasingly came to be spiritualized (e.g., Ps. 50:12\u201314, 23; 51:18\u201319[16\u201317]) and \u201cscripturalized,\u201d that is, the subject of literary and exegetical activity vis-\u00e0-vis texts on sacrifice, rather than the focus of liturgical and ritual activity, it maintained a significant place in Israel\u2019s religious conceptuality if not its actual practice. Its centrality is self-evident even from the most cursory reading of the texts that inform us about Israelite religion and is confirmed by comparative data as well as archaeology\u2019s identification of altars of various sorts and sacrificial remains.
\nWhile the previous chapter noted the place of sacrifice at various points in the different types of Israelite religion, here we shall examine the practice and ideology or conceptuality of sacrifice in more detail. Some distinction between \u201csacrifice\u201d and \u201coffering\u201d needs to be recognized. \u201cOffering\u201d is a broad term that can refer to any sacred gift or donation brought to the altar or cult place to be given over to deity and the deity\u2019s cultic personnel. \u201cSacrifice\u201d generally refers to those gifts that are totally or partially burned in the ritual of offering. The use of the expression \u201csacrifice and offering\u201d (zeba\u1e25 and min\u1e25\u00e2) as a way of talking about the whole conglomeration is found in several places (e.g., 1 Sam. 2:29; 3:14). While, therefore, sacrifice is the focus of attention in this discussion, other types of gifts or offerings, such as first fruits and tithes, which are not technically sacrifice, come into view also.<\/p>\n
TYPES OF SACRIFICE<\/p>\n
The categorization of the different sacrifices by way of the different names is possible but more complex than may appear at first glance. That has already been suggested by the discussion of the way that the term min\u1e25\u00e2 functioned. One should recognize further that the different terms for sacrifice reflect different concerns. In general, three principal orientations are reflected in the terminology, and a particular term may operate within more than one category depending upon how the sacrifice is applied:<\/p>\n
1. Terms indicating either the manner of performing the rite, for example, zeba\u1e25, \u201cslain offering,\u201d or \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2, \u201cascending offering,\u201d or the material to be used in the sacrifice, for example, q\u0115\u1e6d\u014dret, \u201cincense offering.\u201d
\n2. Terms indicating the place of a sacrifice within the order or process of cultic operation or the calendar of cultic activity, for example, pesa\u1e25, \u201csacrifice of the Passover (pesa\u1e25) festival,\u201d or t\u0101m\u00eed, \u201cdaily offering.\u201d
\n3. Terms indicating the purpose or motivation of a sacrifice, for example, neder, \u201cvotive offering,\u201d or t\u00f4d\u00e2, \u201cthank offering.<\/p>\n
Because there are so many different sacrifices and terms for sacrifices, it would not be profitable to list and characterize each one. Rather, we shall identify some of the main kinds of offerings that are prominent in both the Priestly codes of sacrifice and in the practice of sacrifice as that is attested in other literature.<\/p>\n
Burnt Offering (\u2018\u00f4l\u00e2)<\/p>\n
The word \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2, customarily translated \u201cburnt offering,\u201d comes from the root \u2018\u0101l\u00e2, meaning \u201cto go up\u201d or \u201cto ascend.\u201d The derivation may well be associated with the smoke that comes from the offering and \u201cgoes up\u201d to the deity, for this particular type of sacrifice was burned entirely on the altar, over against others that were burned partially or not at all, with some portions being consumed by priests or other participants. The prescription for the \u201cburnt offering,\u201d which was not a part of Mesopotamian sacrificial practice but does seem to have been a type of sacrifice practiced generally in Syria-Palestine and Anatolia, is found in Leviticus 1\u20137, especially chapter 1. This represents a rather late conception of a sacrificial practice that was much older and may have been handled in different ways at different times. The procedure could involve different animals, from bull to bird, apparently depending upon the economic status of the person sacrificing. While there are differences in the process depending upon the animal, the essential requirement was for an unblemished male animal if it was from the herd or flock (fig. 16). The presenter placed his hand over the animal to identify it as his offering for his need or benefit. Having been slaughtered by presenter or priest, the animal\u2019s blood was splashed or poured out against the altar and the animal burnt so that its smoke or odor might rise up pleasantly to the deity.
\nThe tradition depicts the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 being offered throughout the history of Israel\u2019s religion, and there is no reason to doubt its antiquity. It does not always seem to have required the presence of a priest (e.g., Genesis 22), but there may have been occasions when the reported burnt offerings of a king or other leader, in fact, involved the participation of a priest. The Levitical procedure is a conceptual presentation that does not necessarily inform us about actual procedure in every instance.
\nIt has been proposed that the primary function of the burnt offering was to attract the deity\u2019s attention \u201cwith the objective of evoking an initial response from the deity prior to bringing the primary concerns of his worshippers to his attention.\u201d This is suggested by several accounts of the presentation of burnt offerings, for example, Balaam setting up several burnt offerings whose sole purpose is so that \u201cperhaps the LORD will come to me\u201d (Num. 23:1\u20136) and the burnt offerings offered by Elijah and the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel to get a response from the deity (1 Kings 18). Levine summarizes the function of the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 as follows:<\/p>\n
[O]ne normally invited the deity to a common, shared sacrificial meal (like the one described in I Samuel, chapter 9) after he had been invoked by means of an \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2. There are instances, albeit infrequent in biblical literature, where the \u0161el\u0101m\u00eem, or the zeba\u1e25 generally, constituted the sufficient rite. The fact that in so many cases a sequence of composite rites is projected, and not a single sacrifice, indicates just what we are saying, i.e. that the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 was normally utilized for the purpose of invoking the deity preparatory to joining with him in a fellowship of sacrifice, which was the context for petition and thanksgiving, and for the expression of other religious attitudes of this character.
\nOn this basis, it is eminently clear why the \u0161el\u0101m\u00eem sacrifice, understood as a gift of greeting, a present to the deity, would follow the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 and not precede it. Until the deity indicated his readiness to \u201ccome\u201d to his worshipper, it would have been less appropriate to offer such a gift to him.<\/p>\n
Fig. 16. Worshiper carrying a sacrificial kid, from Mari in Mesopotamia, mid-third millennium. (After ANEP, no. 850)<\/p>\n
Such an interpretation of the essential function of the burnt offering makes very good sense of both narrative accounts and the order of sacrifices to which Levine has drawn attention.
\nAt the same time, it must be recognized that there are indications in Priestly legislation (e.g., Lev. 1:4; 9:7; 14:20) and narrative texts (e.g., Job 1:5; 42:8; and possibly 2 Sam. 24:25; cf. Ezek. 45:15, 17) that the burnt offering was seen as having an expiatory or atoning function also, especially at earlier stages before the institution of the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t offering (see below on the purification offering). One does not have to assume that the same intent was present in every instance of a particular sacrifice. Indeed, the burnt offering is also associated with joyous occasions, such as the fulfillment of a vow or a freewill offering (Lev. 22:17\u201319; Num. 15:3). The pervasiveness and frequency of this sacrifice cautions us against being confident we can always comprehend its function or motivation.<\/p>\n
Grain or Cereal Offering (min\u1e25\u00e2)<\/p>\n
We have already noted that the term min\u1e25\u00e2 functioned to speak about offerings or gifts generally but that it also had a specialized use with reference to the grain or cereal offering. That specialized use is particularly noticeable in the Priestly sacrificial legislation where the ordering of the sacrifices sets the procedure for the grain offering immediately after that of the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2, (Leviticus 2). The grain offering could come in several forms in the Priestly taxonomy, probably reflecting actual and varied practice over a long period of time. It might be presented as coarse grain in the ear, as fine flour, or formed into cakes. In the process, it was mixed with oil, frankincense, and salt (Lev. 2:1\u20132, 13, 15). It could be cooked in an oven, on a griddle, or in a pan. While at earlier stages the grain offering was burned on the altar in its entirety, in the priestly administration part of it was burned and part consumed by the priests (Lev. 2:8\u20139). There are indications that at some period, possibly during the time of the monarchy as well as after the exile, the grain offering was sacrificed daily in the evening and by itself.
\nThe close association of the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2, and the min\u1e25\u00e2 is evident, especially in the later Priestly tradition of sacrifice, for example, in the cultic calendar of Numbers 28\u201329 and the summary of the cultic calendar in Lev. 23:37. One notes further that the sequence of burnt offering (\u2018\u00f4l\u00e2), grain offering (min\u1e25\u00e2), and sacrifice of well-being (zeba\u1e25 \u0161el\u0101m\u00eem) that is found in the Priestly legislation of Leviticus 1\u20137 is attested elsewhere (Josh. 22:23, 29; 1 Kings 8:64 [2\u00d7] = 2 Chron. 7:7; Jer. 33:18; and Amos 5:22), suggesting that this order of sacrifice, whether conceptually or procedurally (see below), had some fixity in the understanding of the relation of the sacrifices to each other. That might be seen as simply a part of the later Priestly concern for systematizing the whole understanding of sacrifice. But the appearance of this sequence in Amos suggests its antiquity. Indeed, one might well see in the Amos castigation of \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2, min\u1e25\u00e2, and \u0161elem a kind of ABC of the sacrificial cultus, that is, a citing of the traditional first three sacrifices as a way of condemning the whole order. That would suggest that the ordering of these three and the ordering generally of the sacrifices was clearly present in preexilic practice and was not a late development. Milgrom has suggested that the<\/p>\n
procedure for the min\u1e25\u00e2 (Lev 2) was probably inserted between the procedures for the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 (ch. 1) and the \u0161el\u0101m\u00eem (ch. 3; 3:1 is a subsection of 1:2; cf. 1:3), because the min\u1e25\u00e2 became the regular accompaniment to the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 (e.g., Lev 14:20; Num 28\u201329), and especially because it was the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 of the indigent, serving the same wide-ranging functions, including expiation.<\/p>\n
If so, the insertion belongs to a fairly long tradition.
\nThe fact that the grain offering can be joined with both the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 and the \u0161elem offering (see below), and the fact that there are a number of indications of the offering of grain as a discrete sacrifice tends to confirm the view, which goes back at least as far as the Rabbis and Philo and is present in Mesopotamian sacrifical tradition also, that the cereal offering, as Milgrom suggests in the quotation above, was a concession to the poorer members of the community who could bring a cereal offering in place of an \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 or \u0161elem offering. In an Assyrian conjuration we read: \u201c(Then) the baru-priest brings you (an offering of) cedar (perfume), the widow (only) magda-(and kukkusu)-flour, the poor woman (some) oil, the rich from his wealth brings you a lamb.\u201d In another context, the point is made even more succinctly: \u201cThe widow makes her offering to you (pl.) with cheap flour, the rich man with a lamb.\u201d Within the Priestly tradition itself, there is explicit provision for the poor that includes the move to grain offering instead of animal or bird (Lev. 5:11).
\nThe fact that grain was so accessible to all classes, particularly in a heavily agricultural society, makes it quite understandable that a gift of grain could serve a variety of purposes. That is why the min\u1e25\u00e2 functions to refer to gifts in general as well as to a specific type of sacrifice or offering. Gary Anderson has given a plausible accounting for the varied use of this term in the Bible and Northwest Semitic texts generally. Rather than assuming, as has been traditionally the case, that there was a historical shift from the broader use to a narrow specialized usage reflecting a growing specialization and fixity of sacrificial practice and away from the freer and more spontaneous earlier practice, Anderson indicates how different social contexts led to varied meanings and understandings:<\/p>\n
We would suggest that both the usage of min\u1e25\u00e2 as tax or tribute payment and as cereal offering could co-exist at one time in Israelite culture. For the common Israelite, the term min\u1e25\u00e2 would have referred to a gift, most often a gift given to the Temple cult. Because Israelite society was primarily grain oriented, the min\u1e25\u00e2 payment given to the Temple was usually grain. This basic datum was further \u201crationalized\u201d by the priestly specialists in the Temple. For them there was a need to organize and categorize the variety of offering types which were received. A typical Judean farmer need not be specific regarding these matters; he simply contributed a tenth of whatever it was he produced. But the priests\u2014who had to deal with a variety of agricultural and pastoral gifts and revenues\u2014needed a more elaborate taxonomy to order their experience. No doubt a large impetus for this ordering came from Temple lists and tariffs. In order to deal meaningfully with the income of the Temple, a precise lexicon of cultic contributions had to be in place. This would explain the need to specialize further a term like min\u1e25\u00e2 from \u201ca gift\u201d (which was most often grain) to \u201ca cereal offering.\u201d \u2026 Once the new lexical meaning was established it could be used elsewhere in Israelite society.\u2026 [The Priestly classification] does not reflect a crudely materialistic view of the cult; rather it reflects the attempt of each and every cultic center to provide order and meaning to the wide variety of gifts and offerings which it receives.<\/p>\n
The fundamental meaning of the word min\u1e25\u00e2 is, of course, our best clue to its function. That is, it was understood as a gift to the deity, presumably to seek the benevolence and help of the deity, whether in a particular situation or as a regular part of one\u2019s life. So David says to Saul: \u201cIf it is the LORD who has stirred you up against me, may he accept an offering (min\u1e25\u00e2)\u201d (1 Sam. 26:19). If the cakes that were baked for the Queen of Heaven in Jeremiah are examples of the min\u1e25\u00e2, as is likely, then there too one sees explicitly the offering as a gift to secure the beneficent activity of the deity: \u201cBut from the time we stopped making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and by famine\u201d (Jer. 44:18).<\/p>\n
Offering of Well-Being (zeba\u1e25 and \u0161\u0115l\u0101m\u00eem)<\/p>\n
One of the primary and most ubiquitous forms of sacrifice in ancient Israel, this particular sacrificial type is often joined with or replaced by the word zeba\u1e25, signifying a slain sacrifice. Thus, we have zeba\u1e25, zeba\u1e25 \u0161\u0115l\u0101m\u00eem, or simply \u0161\u0115l\u0101m\u00eem, all apparently referring to the same kind of sacrifice, though zeba\u1e25, while often associated with the \u0161elem sacrifice\u2014particularly in the Priestly ordering of the sacrificial cult\u2014means a slaughtered offering whose meat was eaten by the worshiper. When zeba\u1e25 is joined with \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2, the combination may refer to offerings and sacrifices in general or identify two of the primary forms of sacrifice. Zeba\u1e25 is thus the larger category, of which \u0161\u0115l\u0101m\u00eem is a specific and important example. When the word zeba\u1e25 is used, the \u0161elem offering is often what is in mind.
\nThe translation of the term \u0161elem is much debated. The different proposals are tied either to etymological possibilities around the root \u0161lm, \u201cbe whole, sound\u201d and its noun cognate \u0161\u0101l\u00f4m, \u201cpeace, well-being,\u201d or analyses of its function, for example, \u201ccommunion offering,\u201d because of the presumption that the \u0161elem was to effect communion between deity and presenter. The translation \u201coffering of well-being\u201d is a guess but consistent with etymology and the context in which the sacrifice functioned.
\nThe two most conspicuous features of the \u0161elem offering are its consumption by human beings and its use on celebratory occasions. While the burnt offering was consumed entirely on the altar and thus given over to the deity for consumption and the grain offering largely given over to the priests, the (zeba\u1e25) \u0161elem, or offering of well-being, was offered to the deity but provided meat for the offerer and others participating (Deut. 27:7; Jer. 7:21), including the priest(s) (Lev. 7:28\u201336). The fat or suet of the slain offering was burned on the altar (Leviticus 3; 1 Kings 8:64) and the rest consumed. What is most important, however, is the association of this offering with celebratory occasions, both those reflected in the festivals and in the more personal occasions of celebration (Num. 10:10). In the Levitical ordering of the \u0161\u0115l\u0101m\u00eem sacrifices, the \u0161elem or zeba\u1e25 \u0161elem is specifically associated with three kinds of celebrative and often personal sacrifices: the thanksgiving offering given in gratitude for God\u2019s deliverance (Lev. 7:12\u201315), the votive offering made in payment of a vow to the deity to secure the deity\u2019s aid (Lev. 7:13; Prov. 7:14), and the freewill offering, \u201cthe spontaneous by-product of one\u2019s happiness whatever its cause\u201d (Lev. 7:13). The \u0161elem offering could, therefore, be either public or private, a part of the great festival or royal occasions or a part of a particular individual\u2019s worship of the deity in thanksgiving or fulfilling a vow. It belonged, therefore, both to official religion and to family religion. The latter, with its special moments, which would have included marriage, restoration to health, birth, and the like, would have provided many moments appropriate for freewill and thanksgiving offerings as well as votive offerings (1 Sam. 1:21).<\/p>\n
Purification Offering (\u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t)<\/p>\n
In the Levitical ordering of the sacrifices, two expiatory offerings follow the burnt offering, the grain offering, and the offering of well-being, a grouping we have noted has relatively ancient standing as indicated in Amos and other texts. The two expiatory offerings are the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t (Lev. 4:1\u20135:13; Num. 15:22\u201331) and the \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m (Lev. 5:14\u20136:7). They came to prominence apparently later in the history of the sacrificial cult in ancient Israel, taking over expiatory functions that may have belonged primarily to the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 sacrifice earlier.
\nThe particular intention and force of the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t has been a matter of much debate, reflected in the two primary ways of translating this word: sin offering and purification offering. Was the primary focus of the offering a matter of purification, whether with regard to sin or other forms of impurity, or was the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t primarily aimed at expiation for sin, which thus brought about purification? These are closely connected in the texts, but it is difficult to gain a completely harmonious view from all the data.
\nRecent studies by Milgrom of the various regulations and practices involving the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t have suggested that this sacrifice was not essentially a sacrifice for sin committed but a sacrifice to purify, an understanding that is indicated by its grammatical form and that of the verb from which it comes, that is, hi\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0113\u2019, \u201cto purify.\u201d Individuals who sought to effect purification by the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t included the person who sinned unintentionally (Leviticus 4), the mother after childbirth (Leviticus 12), the person with a genital discharge (Leviticus 15), and the Nazirite who had completed a vow of consecration (Numbers 6). The last three of these examples make it clear that the purification effected by the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t was not necessarily the purification of sin. It was rather the purification of altar and sanctuary, accomplished by putting blood on the altar or other parts of the sanctuary (e.g., Lev. 4:5\u20137; 16:14\u201319), that was effected by this offering. The purification, therefore, was in order to overcome cultic impurity, whether from the effects of sin or from other kinds of impurity manifest in individuals and things. The great concern was for the maintenance of the purity of the sanctuary as the place of the deity\u2019s abode or manifestation.
\nThis understanding of the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t is surely correct fundamentally. There remains, however, the question of what is meant by the forgiveness that is effected by the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t. That is, the ritual, which served to purify the sanctuary and its elements of contamination brought about by the impurity or sin of the individual or the community, also accomplished something for that individual or community. For the inadvertent sinner, whether priest, ruler, one of the people, or the entire community (Leviticus 4), the text indicates that the priest should make expiation (kipp\u0113r) for him or them (vv. 20, 31), or should make expiation \u201con his behalf for the sin that he has committed\u201d (vv. 26, 35), and \u201che shall be forgiven.\u201d For the person impure for other than reasons of sin, the same formula of expiation or purgation was used with the result that she or he would be clean (Lev. 12:6\u20138; 14:19\u201320). In both cases, the final outcome was a purifying of the individual also. The fact that the text indicates that the purification of the inadvertent sinner was forgiveness does suggest that there was some way in which the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t made expiation for the sin itself, that is, brought about the necessary purification, which in this instance was forgiveness. Thus, the ritual of the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t offering, which surely centered around purification, accomplished that for the sanctuary and the impure or sinful individual. Baruch Levine has described this latter outcome as follows:<\/p>\n
Once certain acts are performed, purity resulted, just as in other instances forgiveness resulted. That is to say: As a result of the performance of certain rites, God grants expiation or atonement. In such instances, expiation, forgiveness, etc. are not the direct physical effects of the rites performed. Such acts are prerequisite, but not causational. It is God who grants the desired result!<\/p>\n
The Day of Atonement. The Priestly texts of the Old Testament record in some detail a separate expiatory ritual called the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16; 23:26\u201332; Num. 29:7\u201311). While the ritual of the Day of Atonement involved more than sacrifice, it placed the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t offering at its center and served a purifying and expiating function that makes it appropriate to consider it in relation to that dimension of the sacrificial system. The Day of Atonement was, in effect, an occasion of purification and expiation.
\nThe fact that this ritual is not mentioned in any clearly preexilic texts or referred to in major postexilic texts that tell of other cultic matters, such as Ezekiel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, has led most scholars to assume that the Day of Atonement ritual was instituted in the postexilic period. This assumption has been contested in recent years, particularly by Milgrom, who argues that the ritual was instituted as an annual event on the tenth and final day of the fall festival already in preexilic times. While one would expect more explicit indication of this than is present, the argument from silence that is the primary basis for the judgment about a postexilic origin is not a strong one.
\nThere are internal and external indications that the procedures that came to be known as the Day of Atonement may not have been regularized at the beginning, serving instead as a kind of emergency purification ritual. Somewhere along the line the ritual became fixed as a particular day, that is, the tenth day of the seventh month, Tishri, in the fall. The set ritual indicates the character of the occasion as both purifying the sanctuary and its accoutrements of defilement from the sins of the people and purifying or expiating the sins of the people. Such purification or purgation could happen at any time through the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t offering. The institution of a day of purification and atonement created a special ritual to cleanse the sanctuary \u201cof impurity from deliberate [italics mine] sins and from any other lingering impurity not yet rectified.\u201d There were two dimensions to the ritual centering around two goats, one \u201cfor the LORD\u201d and the other \u201cfor Azazel\u201d (Lev. 16:8\u201310; cf. v. 26). The goat on which the lot fell \u201cfor the LORD\u201d was slaughtered as a \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t offering and its blood sprinkled in the sanctuary to purge it of impurities. As for the other goat, the priest would lay hands on it and confess the \u201ciniquities,\u201d that is, the deliberate sins and transgressions of the people. Having been confessed, they were now transferred to the goat who was sent away into the wilderness \u201cfor Azazel\u201d (Lev. 16:10, 20\u201322). Verse 16 (cf. vv. 21\u201322) identifies the dual purpose of the ritual, the removal of impurities and the removal of sins: \u201cThus he shall make atonement for the sanctuary, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel, and because of their transgressions, all their sins.\u201d
\nThe Azazel of this text and its ritual have been the subject of much discussion. Azazel may be \u201cthe name of a demon who has been eviscerated of his erstwhile demonic powers by the Priestly legislation.\u201d But the Azazel of this text has no personality, carries on no demonic actions, and the goat is not a sacrifice to a demon. The term should probably be interpreted with reference to analogous rites, which suggest that it be understood as a term for elimination.
\nIt is customary to see in this chapter and in the final form of this ritual the joining of two quite different rituals\u2014one a ceremony of ritual and expiation involving sacrifice and the sprinkling of blood, the other an act of transferring the sins of the people to a goat who was sent into the wilderness for \u201cAzazel,\u201d thus taking away the sins. There are indeed two dimensions to the ritual, but they are not necessarily to be seen as separately evolving procedures only lately and artificially joined. Purification and elimination rites were common in the ancient Near East, though not necessarily joined as they are in this instance. But there is an analogy elsewhere in the Priestly ritual for the sacrifice of an animal and the sending away of another one. In the purification of a person with \u201cleprous\u201d or scale disease of some sort, two birds were used (Lev. 14:2b\u20138, 49\u201353; cf. Zech. 5:5\u201311), one of which was sacrificed while the other was set free. The living bird was dipped in the blood of the slaughtered bird, and the diseased person was sprinkled with the blood, much as the sanctuary was sprinkled with the blood of the slain goat in the Day of Atonement ritual. The live bird was then sent away, carrying the impurity of the diseased person with him. The analogy suggests that the two-goat ritual of purification and scapegoating may have been an early form of the atonement ritual, not necessarily originally attached to sanctuary cleansing or fixed days but a means of purification and removal of both sins and impurities.
\nWhenever this atonement ritual was instituted, it joined with the purification and expiatory sacrifices to further effect both the removal of pollution from the holy things and the holy people. In so doing, the iniquities of the people along with the inadvertent sins were removed, from one perspective, or cleansed and purified, from another. The significance of such purification and expiation needs further discussion. Its achievement through the sacrificial system and related rituals, as one means of accomplishment, is evident in the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t offering and the larger context of the Day of Atonement.<\/p>\n
Reparation Offering (\u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m)<\/p>\n
As with the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t offering, there is a difference of opinion over how this sacrifice should be designated. While the Hebrew is commonly translated \u201cguilt offering\u201d because of the association of the root \u2019\u0101\u0161am with becoming guilty and incurring guilt, more recently it has been recognized that the \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m offering is primarily to make reparation for an offense of which one is guilty. Thus, this offering, like the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t, is expiatory in some sense or is intended to deal with particular kinds of sins and their effects or with violation of the sacred and the dangers that evokes. Leviticus 5:14\u201326 (6:7) together with Lev. 19:20\u201322 and Num. 6:10\u201312 give us the major instances in which the \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m offering is indicated. There one sees that it regularly involves bringing something to the Lord and making restitution and payment of a fine. That is, the whole procedure is a kind of compensation or reparation, a point further indicated by the fact that the \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m or reparation offering is seen as having an equivalent in silver or money (Lev. 5:15, 18; 5:25[6:6]; cf. 2 Kings 12:17).
\nThe earliest instance of an \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m offering is one that was sent by the Philistines with the ark when they sought to allay the anger of the Lord after the battle of Ebenezer and the capture of the ark. The golden mice and tumors that were sent with the ark were an \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m or compensation to the Lord of Israel for what they had done to Israel. This was not an altar sacrifice but a monetary or valuable gift offered to Yahweh of Israel because of the taking of the ark. The violation of sacral space and things is one of the reasons indicated in Leviticus for bringing a reparation offering (Lev. 5:14\u201316). Milgrom has seen such violation or \u201cmisappropriation\u201d of sacral things as the primary sphere of concern in the \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m offering, while Levine suggests that it is inadvertent misappropriation generally, whether of sacral things (Lev. 5:14\u201316; Num. 6:8\u201312) or property of others (Lev. 5:20\u201326[6:1\u20137]; 19:20\u201322), that is dealt with by the reparation offering. Both perspectives account for a significant amount of the information provided in the biblical texts and analogues from the ancient Near East. It is difficult to provide a single conception of the \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m that neatly accounts for all the material. The matters that are fairly clear are (a) the connection of the sacrifice to reparation for wrongdoing, including fines and restitution of what was misappropriated as well as the reparation offering itself; and (b) the convertibility of the sacrifice and its manifestation in both objects of value or money and sacrificial animals.
\nThe distinctions between the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t or purification offering and the \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m or reparation offering are sometimes rather blurry, but both offerings directly address and deal with the fact and consequences of sin, seeking to overcome its effects by purification and reparation. In the process the forgiveness of God is received by the sinner. The question of the antiquity of these two sacrifices in Israelite religion remains much debated. They appear primarily in what are generally regarded as postexilic texts, though Milgrom and others would date the sacrificial texts much earlier. While it is safe to conclude that these sacrifices were significantly a part of the ritual of the second temple, we cannot preclude the possibility that they were operative at an earlier time.<\/p>\n
Other Offerings<\/p>\n
There were various other offerings in the sacrificial ritual of ancient Israel. For example, in the regulations for the worship at the central sanctuary, Deuteronomy twice sets forth a series of offerings that members of the community are to bring to the sanctuary: \u201cYou shall go there, bringing there your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and your donations, your votive gifts, your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herds and flocks\u201d (12:6; cf. v. 17). So also Lev. 7:12\u201318 and 22:18\u201330 bring together the thanksgiving offering, the freewill offering, and the votive offering. These different references in Leviticus and Deuteronomy suggest two main categories of offerings that may overlap with the ones already discussed but are sufficiently characterized and distinguished that one should take account of them in order to see how thoroughly the practice of offering and sacrifice were a part of the individual and communal life of the people.
\nThe common denominator in the different offerings described in the references above is that they were brought to the sanctuary as demonstrations of thanksgiving. Some of these, such as the tithe and the presentation of first fruits, were regularized and expected of the community as a whole. Others, such as the votive, freewill, and thanksgiving offerings, were individual offerings that, while regularized in the Priestly sacrificial legislation, were related to, evoked by, or responsive to particular experiences of individuals in the community.
\nThe tithe seems to have functioned as a kind of regular tax, primarily of agricultural products\u2014grain, wine, and oil (Num. 18:27; Deut. 14:22\u201323)\u2014but also, according to some texts or at some point, flocks and herds. When it originated is unclear, but by the time of the eighth-century prophets, it was a regular practice, at least in the Northern Kingdom (Amos 4:4). It was a common feature of the cultures of Syria-Palestine, present at Ugarit in the second millennium and within the Phoenician-influenced Punic culture of Carthage many years later. At Ugarit, the tithe, collected from the villages where the agricultural products were harvested, was a secular tax due to the king or one of his servants. While described in the biblical texts as an act of religious devotion to the deity, its character as a royal tax in Syro-Palestinian culture generally is well indicated by 1 Sam. 8:10\u201317: \u201cThese will be the ways of the king who will reign over you.\u2026 He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers\u201d (vv. 11, 15).
\nAs a sacral phenomenon in ancient Israel, the tithe seems to have served three functions, though to what extent these overlapped with each other or were operative at different times is difficult to tell. The Deuteronomic law interprets the tithe as a celebratory gift to God, implicitly serving as an expression of thanksgiving that was to be enjoyed and shared by the members of the family as an act of devotion, at the central sanctuary if possible (Deut. 14:22\u201326). The tithe also functioned as a support for the priests and the priestly service, but more specifically for the Levites, since the priests who were not Levites received portions of sacrifices, first fruits, and the like. This provision of the tithe to support the Levites is first identified in Deuteronomy (14:27\u201328; 26:12), but the tradition is fairly consistent in identifying the tithe as a tax or gift for the Levites (e.g., Num. 18:21\u201332; Neh. 10:37\u201338; 13:10\u201312). Deuteronomy gives a clear rationale for this as it places the Levites with other categories of persons who did not have regular means of support off the land and so had to be provided for. Every third year the tithe was to be stored up and made available to the Levites, resident aliens, orphans, and widows throughout the land (Deut.14:28). The tithe thus served as a celebratory thanksgiving gift and as a kind of welfare system.
\nThe first fruits of the harvest and the firstborn of flocks and herds were offered to the Lord of Israel as both thanksgiving for the blessing of the Lord as reflected in the harvest (Deut. 26:1\u201311) and for the support of the priesthood (Num. 18:12\u201313; Deut. 18:4). The offering of first fruits seems to have been associated especially with the celebration of the harvest at the pilgrimage festival of Weeks (Ex. 23:16; 34:22; Num. 28:26). While Deuteronomy does not explicitly associate the first fruits offering with one of the pilgrimage festivals, it does describe the ritual by which individuals came to the sanctuary and offered their first produce of the harvest to the priest while declaring in a kind of credal statement what the Lord had done to deliver and provide for the community. The act was an individual or family presentation, but it was set firmly in the context of the experience of the community as a whole. The presentation of the firstborn may have served originally the same purposes as the first fruits of the harvest, that is, a dedication to the deity of the first of the flocks and herds as an acknowledgment of the rule and provision of the deity (Deut. 15:19). In the tradition, it came to be associated particularly with the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 13). This may have had to do with indications that firstborn sons were also dedicated to the Lord (Ex. 13:1\u20132; 22:29; 34:19\u201322; Num. 18:15) and redeemed (Ex. 13:15; 34:19; Num. 3:12\u201313; 18:15). The dedication of firstborn males is so clearly a part of the cultic tradition of Israelite religion that it raises the question of whether or not sacrifice of firstborn sons was a practice at one time. There is, however, no indication that such was the case except possibly in exceptional or aberrant situations (see chapter 2). The redemption of the firstborn was a way of recognizing the right of the deity over the family and the community, but the actual dedication involved either a life of service (Num. 3:11\u201313; 1 Sam. 1:11, 28) or a monetary or animal substitution (Ex. 34:20; Num. 18:16ff.).
\nIt is not clear at what point the first fruits offering became specifically a means of support of the priests, but by the postexilic period that was the case and probably earlier. The provisions for sacrifice also make it clear that either all or portions of other sacrifices were to be given over to the priests as provision (Num. 18:8\u201324; 1 Sam. 2:12\u201317).
\nIndividual offerings of various sorts could be brought to the sanctuary apart from the prescribed sacrifices and offerings discussed above. Thus, we are told of freewill offerings and votive gifts that were voluntary offerings presented to the deity, the latter either accompanying a vow or offered after the accomplishment of something sought by means of a vow (e.g., 1 Sam. 1:11, 21\u201328).
\nThe Psalms attest to the practice of the t\u00f4d\u00e2, the vow of thanksgiving made by a petitioner to the Lord and fulfilled when the prayer had been heard and answered. That is, the lament psalms, which are prayers for help, often included vows to give thanks to God and offer sacrifices in response to God\u2019s answering the prayer (Pss. 66:13\u201315; 116:12\u201319). So the individual brought a t\u00f4d\u00e2 or thanksgiving offering to the sanctuary when deliverance, that is, a response to prayer, had been experienced in some fashion. While this offering or sacrifice was an individual expression, it seems to have taken place in the context of a larger congregation, indeed, of the worshiping community as a whole (Pss. 22:23\u201326[22\u201325]; 40:10\u201311[9\u201310]; 66:16; 116:14). And even as the individual Israelite made a kind of declaration of faith as a verbal expression of thanksgiving when bringing the offering of first fruits (Deut. 26:3\u201310), so also the thankful petitioner made a public declaration of what the deity had done and how he or she had been helped and delivered. Such a declaration was intended to elicit praise and acknowledgment from those who heard it, whether that was a small group like the family or a larger gathering of worshipers (Pss. 22:24[23]; 30:5[4]; 40:4b[3b]).<\/p>\n
THE PURPOSES OF SACRIFICE AND OFFERING<\/p>\n
The study of Israelite sacrifice has been dominated by the effort to develop a theory of sacrifice that would explain the rituals of sacrifice in some coherent way and identify a fundamental rationale or intention behind the complex ritual. More recently, there has been widespread and appropriate recognition that many things went on and were accounted for or taken up, consciously or unconsciously, in the presentations of sacrifice and offering. Furthermore, because sacrifices and offerings were usually part of a larger ritual, one cannot fully comprehend or account for them without taking account of the larger context where matters of purification and holiness, the transcendent and the human, the sacred and the profane, were operative in many and complicated ways (see chapter 4).<\/p>\n
Support and Welfare<\/p>\n
From the preceding discussion, it is evident that the system of sacrifices and offerings served social purposes. These included a formal means of providing for two groups of people in the community: first, the clergy who were occupied with religious matters (e.g., Lev. 7:28\u201336; Num. 18:8\u201324; Deut. 14:27\u201329; 18:1\u20138; 1 Sam. 2:12\u201317; 2 Chron. 31:2\u201319; Neh. 10:37\u201339; 12:44; 13:5, 10), and second, within the Deuteronomic system of tithes, persons within the community who did not have clear access to the allotment of the land and its economic productivity\u2014resident aliens, orphans, and widows (Deut. 14:28\u201329; 26:12\u201315).
\nAt this point, Israelite religion provided for important social functions that have been a part of many traditional communities who have used a system of offerings to release clergy from other occupations and to provide charity for the economically deprived. Israelite religion happens to have systematized this in specific ways that did not leave matters purely voluntary. The community was required to provide this economic support for these two groups and given a system to insure that it happened. The uncertainty of the provision was only in the uncertainty of the harvest, an insecurity that was shared by all members of the community.<\/p>\n
Order and Movement<\/p>\n
The sacrificial legislation of the Pentateuch has been the object of considerable anthropological analysis. That analysis has tended to see the system of sacrifice as largely a reflection of the concern for order, its breakdown and its restoration. This involves the maintenance of boundaries between orderly categories, usually binary in form\u2014for example, clean and unclean, holy and profane, natural and social, sick and whole, inside and outside, life and death\u2014though sometimes more complex, as reflected, for example, in the Priestly school\u2019s assignment of the fauna of the earth to three (\u201cfish of the sea,\u201d \u201cbirds of the air,\u201d and \u201ccattle,\u201d \u201call the wild animals of the earth,\u201d \u201cevery creeping thing that creeps upon the earth\u201d\u2014Gen. 1:26). Sacrifice and the rituals of which it was a part had to do with maintaining these orders, restoring them when they became disordered, and moving or transferring things and people from one category or status to another category or status. When the holy was profaned\u2014as, for example, when the sanctuary was polluted or risked pollution by the impurity of the people\u2014sacrifice was part of the ritual for either the restoration of holiness and purity (so the Day of Atonement ritual as either emergency or regular ritual) or for maintaining it regularly, as in the practice of daily sacrifices, whenever that was instituted. When the sick person was restored to health and moved from sick to whole, from unclean to clean, then sacrifice might be a part of the ritual of cleansing and expiation of impurity and sin, as in the case of scale-diseased persons (Leviticus 14). While normal bodily discharges created uncleanness that could be reversed to cleanness, more serious and irregular discharges required not only a ritual of washing but also the \u2018\u00f4l\u00e2 (burnt offering) and the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t (purification offering) sacrifice to overcome the pollution (Lev. 15:13\u201315, 29\u201330). When a person moved from the sphere of the profane to the holy, as, for example, in the consecration of a priest, sacrifice was a part of the ritual (Leviticus 8\u20139). Indeed, the very act of sacrifice was a transfer of something from the profane to the holy, from human possession to the divine.
\nSuch an analysis makes considerable sense of the system of sacrifice as one encounters it in the Priestly legislation reflected in such works as Leviticus, Numbers, and Ezekiel, legislation that points to a developed system in the postexilic period that probably has antecedents in an earlier time. Whether such implicit notions of order and disorder were operative in the practice of sacrifice at all times is difficult to say. At all times, there were symbolic understandings at work. At all times, sacrifice may have involved a movement from the profane sphere to the holy, from the human to the divine. Further, there are indications that the sacrificial system, even as it is reflected in the didactic ordering of Leviticus 1\u20136, was known in some fashion as early as the eighth century, as the prophet Amos seems to attest to it (Amos 5:21\u201322). It is less certain that the ordered society with the coherent set of symbols presumed in these analyses was always operative or functional in all spheres of Israelite religious life. The sacrificial offering of the family that is attested more than once in the books of Samuel (e.g., 1 Sam. 1:4\u20135, 21, 24; 2:19; 20:6) may be accounted for only tangentially by the customary symbols of holiness and purity that are so dominant in the priestly system of sacrifice. Here family solidarity and identification with and acknowledgment of the god of the family may be much more dominant impulses (see chapter 2).
\nOne should note further that within the system of sacrifice as we can discern it, there are various forms of order that do not necessarily have to do with the system of symbols generally set forth in the anthropological analyses, but do reflect what anthropological interpretation has helped us see about the concern for movement across boundaries and the different spheres. Recent study of the Priestly legislation has uncovered different orderings that seem to have served different purposes, though there is debate about what those different purposes are. In Lev. 1:1\u20135:26 (6:7), the sacrifices are divided into two categories, those of \u201cpleasing odor to the LORD\u201d (burnt offering, cereal offering, and offering of well-being) and those having to do with purification and expiation (purification offering and reparation offering). It has been suggested that this ordering of sacrifice is primarily didactic. That is further indicated by the fact that the ordering of the first part of this system is the oldest ordering preserved in the biblical texts (Amos 5:21\u201322) and so seems to have been a quite traditional way of listing and referring to the whole system. A second order of the sacrifices is found in Lev. 6:1(8)\u20137:38. There the focus is on \u201cadministrative details, especially the allocation of various parts of the sacrificial victim to those entitled to eat them.\u201d Yet a third order, however, is discerned in the texts that seems to have been the procedural order actually followed when more than one sacrifice was to be made on any occasion. According to the procedural order, the purification (or sin) offering was made first and then the burnt offering and other offerings.
\nOne finds in the procedural order a fundamental clue to the religious significance of the sacrificial system. The initial act was the sacrifice that removed the impurity that might have polluted the sanctuary and the altar (the place where the deity dwelled and met the people), pollution arising from the effects of sin or other forms of impurity. The burnt offering followed this, having also an expiatory function in part but serving to evoke the deity and prepare for the full communal participation of the worshipers. Once these initial and crucial sacrifices were made, further burnt offerings and offerings of well-being could be presented. With regard to this stage, A. F. Rainey summarizes as follows:<\/p>\n
The former include both the voluntary gifts of individuals and the calendral offerings (symbolizing the constant devotion of the people as a whole). The peace offerings represented the communal experience in which the Lord, the priest and the worshipper (along with his family and the indigent in his community, Dt 12:17\u201319) all had a share. The ritual approach was therefore: expiation [or purification], consecration, fellowship.<\/p>\n
The ordering of the sacrifices when the ritual was complex thus involved various movements and transfers. The meaning and purpose of sacrifice, however, is not fully comprehended simply by binary categories and notions of order and movement across categories. Though these were clearly present, other social and religious purposes and effects were at work in the various dimensions of sacrificial activity.<\/p>\n
Flesh and Blood<\/p>\n
In the didactic or conceptual rendition of the offering of well-being in Leviticus 3, the following concluding comment is made:<\/p>\n
All fat is the LORD\u2019S. It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, in all your settlements: you must not eat any fat or any blood.
\n(Lev. 3:16b\u201317; cf. 7:22\u201326)<\/p>\n
This brief statement is a clue to the fact that the sacrificial ritual of ancient Israel had much to do with flesh and blood. Or to put it succinctly, sacrifice was a means of permitting the consumption of flesh or meat, and the handling of the blood was a crucial part of the procedure that enabled its consumption. The material that demonstrates this dimension of sacrifice belongs to the Holiness Code and so represents a Priestly perspective that is echoed by other and somewhat different Priestly voices in the Noah story, where permission to eat flesh is given but not the eating of \u201cflesh with its life, that is, its blood\u201d (Gen. 9:4). The particular association of this concern for not eating any blood with the offering of well-being is due to the fact that this offering was explicitly eaten by the people. The prohibition against eating the blood is reflected a number of times in the biblical documents (Lev. 17:10; 19:26; Deut. 12:16, 23\u201324; 15:23; 1 Sam. 14:31\u201335). The offering of well-being, which involved the presentation of the choice fat parts to be burned on the altar, turned the slaughter of animals for food consumption into a sacral act. One cannot be altogether sure of the underlying rationale for this, but analogies from the ancient world as far apart as early Sumerian mythology and Greek mythology suggest that the killing of animals was seen as incurring a kind of guilt that had to be dealt with in some fashion. Sacrifice turned the act of slaughter into a sacral ritual, involving dedication to the deity that would serve to assuage the feelings of guilt from killing the animal.
\nThe special treatment of the blood, beginning with the prohibition of eating bloody meat but incorporating the specific requirements of dashing or sprinkling blood against the altar (as one finds it in priestly sacrificial ritual), or pouring it out on the ground (as one finds it in Deuteronomic regulation of profane slaughter away from the central sanctuary), was also a part of the way by which the consumption of flesh was rationalized. Its life was in the blood, and that part was not to be consumed. Priestly development of that notion suggests that the blood was assigned by the deity for the purpose of expiating the sin of killing or murder that took place in the slaughter of the animal:<\/p>\n
The Levitical enactment postulates that \u201cthe life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have assigned it to you for making expiation for your lives upon the altar; it is the blood, as life, that effects expiation\u201d (Lev 17:11).\u2026 [T]he expiation involved here is nothing less than ransom for a capital offense. Under the Levitical dispensation, animal slaughter except at the authorized altar is murder. The animal too has life (older versions: \u201ca soul\u201d), its vengeance is to be feared, its blood must be \u201ccovered\u201d or expiated by bringing it to the altar.<\/p>\n
This analysis of one of the functions of sacrifice thus uncovers an important social and economic dimension of the practice. That is, it serves to sanctify an important part of the economy and the food production system. Hallo speaks of meat consumption as \u201ca privilege routinely accorded to priesthood, aristocracy, and royalty and sporadically, notably on holidays and holy days, to the masses of the population.\u201d One may assume that in Israel\u2019s economy, meat was an important food source, not only for the priests, whose access to it was explicitly insured by the sacrificial system, but for the populace also. Because the use of sacrifice for the feeding of the deity was not the dominant notion that it was in Mesopotamia and because sacrificial meat was shared by priest and sacrificer(s), one does not have to assume that this consumption was largely a privilege of rank, though it clearly was one of economic status, as those sacrificial regulations that provide for grain offerings by the poor make clear (see above). That sacrifice was, in a significant way, related to the need to justify meat consumption and make sure that the act did not in some fashion bring guilt upon those who slaughtered and killed is indicated further by the concern in the Deuteronomic reform of the seventh century\u2014as reflected in the book of Deuteronomy\u2014for making sure that people could slaughter and eat meat even though the altar was now centralized and it was not easy to bring a sacrifice from the slaughtered animal to the sanctuary. Deuteronomy 12:15\u201327 provides for a nonsacrificial slaughter away from the altar and ties it explicitly to the desire to eat meat. While there is an implicit indication that sacrificial slaughter at the altar is preferable, permission is given for slaughter of domestic animals for consumption in the towns:<\/p>\n
If the place where the LORD your God will choose to put his name is too far from you, and you slaughter as I have commanded you any of your herd or flock that the LORD has given you, then you may eat within your towns whenever you desire. (Deut. 12:21)<\/p>\n
But the permission makes sure that the blood is to be poured out, either on the altar in the case of the burnt offering, or on the ground in the case of other sacrifices and slaughter; it is not to be eaten (Deut. 12:23\u201324, 27). As the vital power of life, the blood was able to cleanse from sins or impurities and so was sprinkled and dashed on the altar or other parts of the sanctuary, or it was used to purify the impurities of sick persons, new priests, and the like. If not used in some form of purification or expiation, it was poured out.<\/p>\n
Food and Gift<\/p>\n
The sacrificial notions just described have primarily to do with social and religious purposes and effects for the participant(s), the offerer(s) of the sacrifice, or the consumers of the meat that is slaughtered but not sacrificed. But sacrifice also had important functions vis-\u00e0-vis the deity. As often noted, the primary explicit purpose of sacrifice in ancient Mesopotamia was the care and feeding of the gods. Hallo, for example, has claimed that the one clearly common thread running through both Sumerian and Akkadian myths about the relationship between human beings and gods is that the former were created to relieve the gods of the need to provide their own food: \u201cThe sacrificial cult was literally taken as a means of feeding the gods and specifically, beginning with the end of the third millennium, their cult statues.\u201d He notes, as others have, that Israelite sacrificial practice, which involved consumption of sacrifice by both priests and laity, moved in another direction. But remnants of this notion of sacrifice as food for the deity persisted in ancient Israelite religion, even if in fairly muted form. The whole notion of the burnt sacrifice producing an odor pleasing to the deity involved a highly anthropomorphic conception of Yahweh smelling and responding positively to the sacrifice as human beings respond to the pleasing odor of cooked food. For example, in Gen. 8:21, when Noah sacrifices burnt offerings to Yahweh, the text says that Yahweh \u201csmelled the pleasing odor\u201d (cf. Lev. 26:31). One of the main ways of identifying a larger category of sacrifices is those with \u201can odor pleasing to the LORD\u201d (e.g., Lev. 1:9, 13; 2:2, 9; 3:5, 16; Num. 28:13, 24). Further, several times, the sacrificial regulations of the Priestly code and the Holiness Code speak of sacrifice as \u201cfood\u201d (Lev. 3:11) or \u201cthe food of their God\u201d (Lev. 21:6; cf. 21:17, 21, 22; Num. 28:2). The notion of sacrifice as food is muted and perhaps even vestigial at this point, but the language betrays a notion that in some way, the act of sacrifice provided sustenance for the good of the deity. Such an understanding carried with it an implicit concern to appease the deity. That is certainly suggested in the deity\u2019s response to the pleasing (or soothing) odor of the sacrifice in Gen. 8:21, for there it has a placating effect leading to Yahweh\u2019s decision never again to curse the earth. The same sense of propitiation may be inferred from Lev. 26:31, as well as 1 Sam. 26:19, where David says to Saul: \u201cIf it is the LORD who has stirred you up against me, may he accept [lit. \u201csmell\u201d] an offering.\u201d
\nExplicit resistance to the notion of sacrifice as food for the deity was also a part of the conceptuality of sacrifice in ancient Israel. Even though the Priestly code and the Holiness Code use the language of \u201codor pleasing to the LORD\u201d and speak of Yahweh \u201csmelling\u201d the odor of sacrifice, Ezekiel and later literature tend to avoid using these terms except, in Ezekiel\u2019s case, with regard to idolatrous worship (Ezek. 6:13; 16:19; 20:28). Psalm 50 contains an explicit polemic, in the form of divine speech, against the notion of sacrifice as food for the deity:<\/p>\n
If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
\nfor the world and all that is in it is mine.
\nDo I eat the flesh of bulls,
\nor drink the blood of goats?
\nOffer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
\nand pay your vows to the Most High.
\n(Ps. 50:12\u201314)<\/p>\n
If, however, the notion of sacrifice as food for the deity was not prominent in ancient Israel, the function of sacrifice as food for human beings in order to effect or generate solidarity and community is evident in the centrality of table fellowship as part of the ritual of sacrifice. That is, of course, connected to the way in which sacrifice enabled meat consumption, but it went beyond that. The gathering of family, clan, or community around a meal was frequently an aspect of the sacrificial process\u2014often its final outcome\u2014as is well indicated in the Deuteronomic legislation for slaughter\/sacrifice and for the festivals:<\/p>\n
Most Israelite sacrifices resulted in a meal shared by the worshippers. The company of diners would consist of family (Deut 12:18; 1 Sam 1:3\u20135) and a circle of invited guests (Exod 34:15; 1 Sam 9:12\u201313; 16:3\u20135). As such, sacrifice may be understood as table fellowship with Yahweh for whom a portion of the meal was set aside by burning.\u2026 Those sharing the sacrificial meal would have seen it as a way of strengthening family and group associations, but also as a way of making personal contact with Yahweh. Commensality builds a relational bridge over which benefits can cross from the realm of divine power into the communicants\u2019 lives. Exodus 24:9\u201311 and Judg 6:19\u201324; 13:15\u201323 are narrative reflections of the ritual concept of table fellowship with Yahweh. Nevertheless, the Hebrew Bible is always careful to note that human worshippers dine before Yahweh, not actually with Yahweh (Exod 18:12).<\/p>\n
The Exodus narratives referred to above demonstrate the joining of sacrifice with the building and cementing of relationships. The literary and transmissional history of Ex. 24:1\u201311 is complex and the object of much disagreement. But the present form of the text attests to the place of sacrifice and meal in the uniting of the community in relation to the deity it was committed to serve. That is, the literary record of the beginning of the Yahweh-Israel covenantal relationship places at its foundation the ritual of sacrifice and a meal of tribal representatives in the presence of the deity. \u201cA meal is a social contract that is binding for both parts. This contract is reciprocal, both parts contribute something.\u201d In this context, it is sacrifice and meal that bring the contractual, or better, covenantal relationship about. So also, the binding of the relationship of Jethro the priest of Midian with Moses, Aaron, and the elders of Israel, an account that is probably a reflection of the origins of Israelite worship of Yahweh (see chapter 1), is set in the context of a sacrificial meal (Ex. 18:12; cf. Ex. 2:20).
\nAs we have noted previously, the sacrificial meal was a major feature of the thanksgiving offering and ritual as the community (whether large or small is difficult to say) joined with the one whose prayers had been answered or whose vow was being fulfilled in an act of thanksgiving that may have included dimensions of communal reconciliation and restoration.
\nIt is the t\u00f4d\u00e2, or thanksgiving sacrifice, along with the n\u0115d\u0101r\u00eem, or votive offering, that particularly point to the character of sacrifice in ancient Israel as gift to the deity. Increasingly, students of Israelite sacrifice in its larger context have seen here the primary purpose or fundamental principle underlying the complex and varied ritual of sacrifice. A number of features or aspects of the practice of sacrifice and offering indicate Israel\u2019s understanding of the presentation of sacrifice as a gift to the deity. The payment of a vow suggests a gift to the deity in return for the deity\u2019s help. The very character of the vow assumes that the deity desires the gift and responds in the light of the vow, as well as suggesting that without the offer of the sacrificial gift the deity might not respond. The vow indicates that as gift, the vow and sacrifice had an instrumental character, in some manner effecting, from the perspective of the offerer, divine assistance and returning a gift to the Lord in both thanksgiving and obligation.
\nSo also, first fruit and tithe offerings have the character of gift brought in return for what the Lord has given. Not infrequently, there is specific reference to what the Lord has \u201cgiven\u201d when a sacrifice or offering has been brought (e.g., Lev. 23:38; Deut. 16:17; 26:10\u201311). Here again, thanksgiving and obligation join as motivating forces for the offering, and the gift further symbolizes the recognition of the one who is Lord of the land and provider of life. The gift is thus symbolic as well as instrumental, indicating an acknowledgment of the divine gift and the source of the blessing received (Deut. 26:1\u201310).
\nSome of the technical terminology of sacrifice also indicates its gift nature. Thus, the word \u201cgift\u201d (matt\u0101n\u00e2), while not a frequently used noun, occurs with reference to offerings as a whole as well as to a particular category of offerings (Lev. 23:38). Two terms that most frequently have to do with sacrifice\u2014\u201cbring near\u201d (hiqr\u00eeb) and \u201c(grain) offering\u201d (min\u1e25\u0101)\u2014have secular uses in the sense of bringing tribute in Judg. 3:17\u201318 and Ps. 72:10. The latter term, min\u1e25\u0101, occurs elsewhere with the meaning \u201ctribute.\u201d The noun qorb\u0101n, \u201coffering,\u201d derived from the same root as the verb \u201cdraw near,\u201d is a priestly term used to refer to typical sacrificial offerings but also to anything that is presented as a gift at the sanctuary, including draft animals and wagons (Num. 7:3), silver (Num. 7:13), and gold and jewelry (Num. 31:50\u2014in this case war booty), all of which are to be understood as gifts for Yahweh. Thus, it has been suggested that these terms originated in the realm of diplomacy and the practice of acknowledging human sovereignty and were brought into the sacrificial language by the priests precisely to identify that activity as a tribute or presentation to the divine ruler that served the same purpose\u2014acknowledgment of Yahweh\u2019s rule and authority over the people.
\nAs we have said, no single theory of sacrifice or definition of its purpose adequately explains all its intended effects in ancient Israelite religion. But the function of sacrifice as gift, that is, as \u201coffering\u201d is clear. There was indeed, in many if not most instances, a sense of quid pro quo as the worshiper gave because of having been given, either help or forgiveness and expiation. The gift was understood as appropriate to the divine act of help or blessing. At the same time, the gift, like tribute to a king, expressed a sense of loyalty and devotion to the deity who ruled over Israel.
\nThe prophetic critique of sacrifice, which is regularly put in the mouth of the deity, did not mean that the various views of sacrifice described above were under question or the very practice itself suspect. The prophets\u2019 objection to sacrifice as it was practiced was its tendency to substitute for all other aspects of the covenantal obligation of the Israelite. They reacted to the substitution of sacrifice for obedience to the covenantal stipulations, to the divine directives for Israel\u2019s life in community. In their sharp criticism, they asserted a divine rejection of sacrifice, but this was because it came to be assumed by some that sacrifice by itself sufficiently covered the obligations of the individual to the deity. The rejection of sacrifice by the prophets in behalf of the deity was not a rejection of the notions of sacrifice described above but of an assumption that the gift to the deity, appropriate as both gratitude and acknowledgment, was a substitute for obedience to the requirements of torah for the moral life and the practice of justice and compassion in the larger community.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 4<\/p>\n
Holiness and Purity<\/p>\n
Both secular and religious life in ancient Israel were permeated with a concern for holiness and a proper guarding of what was sacred. While the various expressions of this reflect notions of taboo and dimensions of power and so belong to a common category of experience in other religions, the many ways in which holiness was achieved and protected came to be understood as directly related to Israel\u2019s God. The holiness of Yahweh was to be reflected in various ways in the society. A large body of legal material developed over the centuries to encourage and provide for achieving and guarding holiness, and extensive prophetic oracles attest to the seriousness of the concern for holiness and the frequent violation of the sacrality of the community.
\nThe most extensive collection of rules and regulations to determine, achieve, or protect holiness and purity is found particularly in the Priestly legislation of Exodus through Numbers and in the related body of rules known as the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17\u201326). But these are not the only places where the concern for and identification of the holy is to be found. Not only does Deuteronomy have a strong notion of the people of Israel as holy, but narrative reports and prophetic oracles all testify to a perduring concern for the sacral in ancient Israel\u2019s religion. While an elaborate cultic apparatus and procedure developed in the course of Israel\u2019s history to clarify and guard the realm of the sacred, the sense of the sacred and the experience of taboo were features of the religion of Israel at all stages.
\nHoliness or sacredness, expressed primarily in the various forms of the root qd\u0161, was joined with the related category of purity (t\u0101m\u0113\u2019). In each case there was an opposite category. For holiness, the opposite was profane or common, and for purity, it was impurity. These categories, however, existed in somewhat complex relation to each other. The holy and the clean were related categories, and so the holy needed also to be pure or clean. Thus, when the Israelites were instructed to \u201cconsecrate themselves\u201d at the holy mountain Sinai in order to meet there the holy God, they were told also to wash their garments (Ex. 19:10). Holiness and purity, however, were not the same. Purity, for example, was not an attribute or category applied to the deity, unlike holiness, which was a primary attribute from which Israel, or facets of its life, derived its holiness. Purity could be a feature of something that was holy as well as of something that was common, but nothing that was impure could ever be holy. In some sense, impurity was the true converse of holiness. An act of purifying oneself, as, for example, a woman purifying herself after her menstrual period, could be described as a consecration or sanctification, that is, with a verbal form of the common root for holiness, qd\u0161 (2 Sam. 11:4). While one must not too easily equate purity and holiness, these dimensions of Israel\u2019s social and religious life have enough contiguity that it is appropriate, if not indeed necessary, to give some attention to them together.<\/p>\n
HOLINESS AND POWER<\/p>\n
The experience of the holy manifested itself in features that partook of taboo. The dedication of spoils, for example, meant that they were not to be touched or taken, and doing so brought danger. The story of Achan\u2019s taking of the dedicated things in Joshua 7 is a good illustration of this. But the story also makes it very clear that the sacrality of the dedicated things was not because of anything inherent within them, any mana or potency with which they were laden. The sacrality and the danger lay in that they were set apart to the deity, Yahweh. Indeed, the word \u201choly\u201d and its derivatives from the root qd\u0161 mean \u201cseparated, withdrawn, set apart.\u201d But this seems regularly to have meant separated to Yahweh (Ex. 19:6; 20:8\u20139; 31:15; Lev. 20:26; Deut. 7:6; 14:2, 21). Not every reference to something as being holy can be seen in immediate relation to Yahweh, but the expression \u201choly to Yahweh\u201d is sufficiently common and the elaborated notions of holiness in the law codes so thoroughly tied to the command of the deity and the relation to the deity that one can read an animistic notion of holiness into Israel\u2019s religion only with great difficulty. Even when Uzzah was killed for having touched the ark of the covenant to steady it, the destruction is described as being due to the wrath of God, who struck him down (2 Sam. 6:7).
\nThat the ark was also the dwelling place of Yahweh contributes to an understanding of this event as a divine act (albeit a puzzling one) that happened because of Uzzah\u2019s apparent violation of the line between the holy and the common rather than because of an inherent danger in the ark itself, as if one were to touch an electric current. It is precisely the absence of a mechanistic or animistic kind of sacrality in this event that makes it so problematic. The danger came explicitly from the divine decision. So also Achan\u2019s punishment for taking the dedicated things from the destruction of Jericho was the outcome of a complex procedure and a divine decision rather than being from actual contact with the taboo items (Joshua 7).
\nThere was clearly potency in the holiness of anything, and the community may have responded to the awareness of something being holy or consecrated by treating it as innately potent. In 1 Samuel 4\u20136, a relatively early account of the involvement of the ark of the covenant in a military engagement, the presence of the ark is understood to be potent. As the palladium for the deity, it brought the power of the God into the camp (1 Sam. 4:7\u20138). While in its first entrance the ark seems to lack any power, before the story is over, its potency, or more precisely the power of the God who dwells there, is thoroughly demonstrated.
\nThe association of the ark, power, and the holiness of the deity is transparent in 1 Sam. 6:19\u201320. While the Hebrew text ascribes the death of some of the men of Beth-shemesh to their looking into the ark, the Greek text, which is generally preferred by commentators and several of the contemporary translations (e.g., NRSV and NAB), tells of the death of seventy of the descendants of Jeconiah because they did not rejoice at the return of the ark. In both texts, the people then say, \u201cWho is able to stand before the LORD, this holy God?\u201d The slaughter of the seventy men by Yahweh did not occur because of the inherent taboo character of the ark that destroys the one who looks inside it. Rather, it happened because the descendants of Jeconiah did not rejoice with the Beth-shemesh folk at the return of the victorious warrior enthroned on the ark. At the same time, what happened\u2014and one may assume that includes the presence of the ark as well as the destruction of the Jeconiah group\u2014is summed up by the exclamation about who can stand before this holy God. The combination of moveable object, power, and holiness did, therefore, place Israel\u2019s experience with the ark in the category of fetish and taboo. The ark was \u201creplete with power\u201d and an object through which the holiness of the deity was manifest. This is what taboo is all about. But the source of that power and holiness was not the object itself or some totem inscribed on it, but the God who was enthroned on it. That is true of the Hebrew text of 1 Sam. 6:19 as well as of the Greek, even though the former ascribes the divine response to something the people do to the ark, that is, look in it.
\nThe story of the ark thus marks a significant way in which the holiness of objects in ancient Israel may have shared the customary taboo character of many religions things. At the same time, it underscores the fundamental fact about holiness as a feature of Israelite religion\u2014that is, its derivation from the holiness of the deity, a point made programmatic for the life of the people in the Holiness Code, as they are commanded to be holy as the Lord is holy (see below).
\nThe power associated with what was holy is suggested also by the notion that ritual impurity was associated with things that represented the forces of life and death, such as carcasses and corpses (Lev. 11:24\u201340; Numbers 19), skin or scale diseases (Leviticus 13\u201314), and genital discharges (Leviticus 12; 15).<\/p>\n
The common denominator of these impurities is that they symbolize the forces of death: carcasses\/corpses obviously so; the emission of blood or semen means the loss of life; and the wasting of flesh characteristic of scale disease is explicitly compared to a corpse (Num 12:12).\u2026 [T]he conclusion is manifestly clear: if \u1e6d\u0101m\u0113\u2019 \u201cimpure\u201d stands for the forces of death, then q\u0101d\u00f4\u0161 \u201choly\u201d stands for the forces of life.<\/p>\n
Whether or not all dimensions of the impurity-holiness opposition reflected this particular power, it would seem to be the case that the power for life and the power of death were dimensions of the various ways in which holiness was guarded and impurity was avoided. Milgrom has made a cogent case that the prohibitions against the shedding of blood (Gen. 9:3\u20136; Lev. 17:1\u20139) and the ingesting of blood (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:10\u201316; 19:26; cf. 3:17; 7:26\u201327; Deut. 12:16, 23\u201325; 15:23), reflected a deep sense of the inviolability of life. While animals might be killed to provide food, their life was sacred and the blood of sacrificial animals was to be poured out on the altar (Ex. 24:6; Lev. 17:6; cf. 1:5, 15; 3:2, 8, 13) and\/or the ground (Deut. 12:16, 23; 15:23) and so returned to the Creator. Its pouring out on the altar could also atone for or ransom the life of the sacrificial donor(s) (Lev. 17:11). With its vital power, blood could also serve purifying, sanctifying, and protective functions in such cases as a person recovering from skin disease (Leviticus 14) and the consecration of the altar (Lev. 4:5\u20137) or of priests (Lev. 8:23\u201324). That such an understanding of the significance of the blood and regulations for handling it and not consuming it when slaughtering animals may have had a long history in ancient Israel is suggested by the story of the famished Israelites taking the captured Philistine herds and flocks and slaughtering them in a manner that did not drain the blood and so resulted in their ingesting the blood. This act was condemned by Saul, who made provision for the proper slaughter of the animals so that the blood was drained out of the animal onto the ground and not ingested (1 Sam. 14:31\u201334).<\/p>\n
THE PERVASIVENESS OF THE HOLY<\/p>\n
There is no clearer indication of the degree to which holiness permeated Israel\u2019s religion and indeed its life than looking at the many dimensions of societal existence where the sacred came into play in explicit and often critical fashion. Thus, holiness could be ascribed to many different kinds of things, but it also was a way of life. It had to do with morality and it had to do with ritual. Holiness was an aspect, a characteristic of a thing or person that could come and go. But it also could be perduring. Thus, a shrine, a \u201choly\u201d place where the deity was worshiped remained in a permanent state of holiness, but the people might sanctify or hallow themselves for a particular occasion, as they did at Sinai. From other perspectives, the people were enduringly holy or were summoned to manifest a permanent holiness, a separation from other groups, as evidenced in their devotion to the holy god, Yahweh, and as demonstrated in the totality of their ongoing existence. Holiness as a feature of something could be either positive or negative, that is, encounter with holiness could enhance life or destroy it. Space and time, daily life and extraordinary events, divine and human, animate and inanimate\u2014no sphere of life or realm of being was shut off from the sacred.
\nThe range of things or categories that could be regarded or designated holy was thus very wide, comprising objects, places, people, and acts or deeds. Some of the particular things that were called or became holy are fairly obvious, such as priests or vessels used in ritual procedures. But the land was holy, and war could be holy. A journey could be sacred or common (1 Samuel 21). Comprehending the depth of the experience of the holy as a fundamental dimension of Israelite religion involves a broad look at that range of categories of the holy.<\/p>\n
The Holiness of Yahweh as the Ground of the Sacred<\/p>\n
The starting point or the foundation of all dimensions of the sacred in ancient Israel was the holiness of the deity (see chapter 1). This is obviously indicated in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17\u201326), which prescribes a way of holiness for the people that is rooted in the holiness of the deity:<\/p>\n
Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
\n(Lev. 19:2)<\/p>\n
The prophets carried on such an understanding also as they identified Yahweh as the \u201cHoly One\u201d or \u201choly God\u201d or referred to the \u201choly name\u201d of Yahweh.
\nIn the Priestly tradition\u2014the origins of which are much debated and located from Solomonic times down to the late postexilic era but probably reflect developments from the late preexilic era into the postexilic period\u2014holiness as derivative from the deity is further indicated in various textual allusions to Yahweh\u2019s \u201csanctifying\u201d something, for example, the Sabbath (Ex. 20:10\u201311) or the seventh day (Gen. 2:3), the priesthood (Lev. 21:8, 15, 23; 22:9), the firstborn (Num. 3:13; 8:17), and the people (Lev. 22:16, 32). The deity is depicted as showing himself to be holy or manifesting holiness in various ways, for example, in righteous acts (Isa. 5:16) or before the eyes of the nations.
\nBut the holiness of Yahweh is something that also seems to be vulnerable to human acts. There are instances in which persons are said to have failed to maintain the holiness of the deity by their actions, as well as injunctions to act in a manner that does not profane the name of the deity but upholds Yahweh\u2019s holiness (Lev. 22:32). Human actions can be nonreflective of the holiness of the deity and so profane or make profane the deity and the deity\u2019s name. In Ezekiel, such profanation of the deity seems to be specifically at the point of not attending to the holy things, that is, to the distinction between the holy and the profane or common, between what is q\u014dde\u0161 and what is h\u014dl, or to the distinction between the clean and the unclean, between what is pure (\u1e6d\u0101\u1e25\u00f4r) and what is impure (\u1e6d\u0101m\u0113\u2019), as well as to maintaining the sanctity of the Sabbath (Ezek. 22:26). In other words, priestly profanation of the deity, priestly failure to manifest the deity\u2019s holiness, took place as the religious leaders did not uphold the system that identified holiness in the community. In what seems to be one of the postexilic definitions of priestly duties, those duties are identified as responsibility for teaching the people the distinctions between holy and profane or common, and between unclean and clean as well as for keeping the Sabbath holy (Ezek. 44:23\u201324). The distinctions so identified by Ezekiel are understood in the Holiness Code to be precisely reflections of the deity\u2019s holiness in the midst of the community. The laws regarding maintaining the distinction between clean and unclean animals conclude with the repeated Holiness Code formulation to \u201cbe holy, for I am holy\u201d (Lev. 11:47; 20:25\u201326).
\nSuch profanation of the deity or the name of the deity did not seem to indicate any diminishment of the holiness that was intrinsically a part of Yahweh\u2019s character (and that of many other gods as well). Activity so labeled was rather a failure to be holy or act in a manner that uncovered and signaled the holiness of the deity. The notion of profanation of the deity assumes therefore the binding relationship between deity and the people and a connection between divine holiness and human holiness, a connection such as is suggested in the Holiness Code\u2019s identification of Israel\u2019s holiness as grounded in and reflecting Yahweh\u2019s holiness.<\/p>\n
Holiness in the Spheres of Space, Personality, and Time<\/p>\n
Rooted conceptually in the holiness of Yahweh and Israel\u2019s experience with the holy God and the numinous power of that holiness (see Ex. 19:9b\u201325; 20:18\u201321; Isa. 6:1\u20135), the realm of the sacred was broad and comprehensive, in this respect, not unlike the experience of the holy in various other religions. Thus, holiness could accrue to places, things, and persons.
\nHoly places. The first of these is well exemplified in the sanctuaries and shrines that were understood to be sacred precisely because the deity was present there in some form or at some time (cf. Gen. 28:10\u201322; Ex. 3:5). Thus, the tabernacle was called \u201cthe holy place\u201d (Ex. 26:33\u201334) and the innermost sanctuary where the ark rested was the \u201choly of holies\u201d or \u201cmost holy place\u201d (Ex. 26:33\u201334; 1 Chron. 6:34(49). But specifically religious sites were not the only holy places. According to both the Deuteronomic Code and the Priestly circle (Deut. 23:9\u201314; Num. 5:1\u20134), the war camp was holy. In both instances, the holiness was explicitly understood to derive from the presence of the deity with the people in the camp. Ritual purity in the midst of military engagements is also suggested by the encounter of David with Ahimelech in 1 Samuel 21, when David indicates that his soldiers regularly stay pure\u2014away from women\u2014and thus holy, while on active duty.
\nHoly things. The ark itself was a good example of a holy thing or instrument (see above on holiness and power). But many other sorts of things could be holy, from the rest of the sanctuary furniture, such as the altar (Ex. 29:37) and the menorah (Ex. 30:26\u201329), to the offerings brought to the sanctuary (e.g., Lev. 27:9\u201310; see the discussion of gradations of holiness below), to clothing (Ex. 39:1), property or real estate (Lev. 27:14\u201325), seed (Lev. 27:30), fruit (Lev. 27:30), money (Lev. 27:23), and such products as incense and oil (Ex. 30:25).
\nThere is a particular and somewhat unusual accrual of holiness to the mixture of certain things, such as planting two different kinds of seeds together or wearing a garment out of mixed threads (Deut. 22:9\u201311; Lev. 19:19). Mary Douglas has suggested that such laws belong to a system of orderliness in life that is guarded by dietary laws and other such regulations. In this instance, the violation of the orders and distinctions in thread and seed require the forfeiture or sanctification of the material rather than allowing it to be a part of everyday life and thus creating in that life a kind of undercutting of the categories that insure the smooth and unchaotic movement of life. Such mixtures, however, could function in the holy sphere because they carried that symbolic value. Thus, the priest\u2019s garments, being holy, could be made of a mixture of wool and linen, because that mix was understood to be holy, thus not available in the common spheres of life but available to the realm of the sacred. Other mixtures were so dangerous to the normative order of creation that they were prohibited altogether, for example, the sexual union of different kinds of animals or of animal and human, because such mixings were \u201cbound up with the power and danger of sexuality.\u201d
\nHoly persons. The most obvious and perhaps important instance of personal holiness is that of the priests. In the Priestly tradition, their holiness was seen as secured by an elaborate ritual of sanctification (Exodus 29; Leviticus 8\u20139). The priests (Aaron and his sons) were brought forward from the congregation, that is, separated out, clothed in priestly garments (another mark of distinction and separation), washed with water to purify them, and anointed with oil, a process that is described as sanctifying or consecrating (qidd\u0113\u0161; cf. Num. 21:12). Various offerings were then made by the presiding figure\u2014in the Priestly tradition seen as Moses\u2014and further sprinkling of oil and also blood was carried out. The first part of this ritual of consecration thus began the process of sanctification by a complex of acts that separated the priests from the rest of the congregation or community, before whom the ritual was carried out.
\nAt that point, the priests were to remain seven days within the tent of meeting, \u201ckeeping the LORD\u2019S charge so that you do not die\u201d (Lev. 8:35). Milgrom has pointed out the liminal state of this period, a time when the priest or priests were moving steadily in a temporal way away from the congregation and increasingly into a condition or sphere of holiness but also a time of danger:<\/p>\n
They are consecrated as priests only at the end of the week, and during this liminal period they are highly vulnerable, not to demonic assault\u2014the world of demons has been expunged from Priestly notions\u2014but to human sin and impurity.\u2026 Each day\u2019s rites will remove them farther from their former profane state and advance them to the ranks of the sacred, until they emerge as full-fledged priests.<\/p>\n
As Milgrom has noted, various features of this seven-day period are comparable to other rites of passage involving a liminal state, including the seclusion of the priest candidates, their silence, their sexual continence (cf. 1 Sam. 21:4\u20135), and their prohibition from acts that, if carried out, involved breaking a taboo and so endangerment (see below on holiness and taboo).
\nThis transitional stage came to an end when the priests, now having passed through the liminal stage, were deemed fully consecrated and reintegrated into the full community, symbolized by their carrying out the ritual of sacrifice and the blessing of the people (Leviticus 9). The climax and confirmation of the full consecration of the priests, as well as of the tabernacle (Lev. 8:10\u201311), was the appearance of the deity to the congregation, a sign that the sacrality of the community and the sanctification of the sanctuary and priests was secure.
\nThe Levites, who had responsibilities for guarding and taking care of tabernacle materials and for carrying them (Num. 3:14\u201339; 4:1\u201333), went through a ritual process somewhat comparable to that of the priests (Num. 8:5\u201322). But it was more of a purification ritual than a consecration. The Levites were not characterized as holy, but they were separated from the rest of the Israelites and cleansed or purified in order to make them ready for the work of the sanctuary. This period of service was limited to the period of time between age twenty-five and age fifty (Num. 8:23\u201326). The clearest suggestion that there may have been some implicit sense of the holiness of the Levites rests in their being separated out and ritually purified for the performance of their duties and in the fact that they were regarded as substitutes for the firstborn of all the Israelites, whom the Lord had consecrated \u201cfor my own\u201d (Num. 3:11\u201313; 8:17\u201318). So while there is no explicit indication of the Levites being characterized as holy in the Priestly circle, they were a part of the process of separating out individuals and purifying them for the service of the holy God in the sanctuary. And in the Chronicler\u2019s witness to the rituals of sacrality, the Levites were indeed designated as holy (2 Chron. 23:6; 35:3).
\nThe Nazirite was another category of holy person (Num. 6:1, 8), one attested through the range of Israel\u2019s history. The term itself meant \u201cconsecrated\u201d or \u201cseparated out\u201d and probably meant \u201cseparated to God.\u201d One became a Nazirite by means of a vow, temporary (Num. 6:13) or lifelong (so Samson and Samuel). The vow was to a discipline that effected a kind of sanctification. The laws and stories having to do with Nazirites focus upon the particular abstentions that were standard to the vow\u2014no drink, no cutting of hair, no contact with the dead. It is important to recognize that, unlike the priests and Levites, Nazirite was a category of holy persons that could include women (Num. 6:1), although that inclusion of women was carried out within the patriarchal structures that dominated Israelite family and religious life. Numbers 30 reveals the detailed ways in which a woman\u2019s vow was under the control\u2014the approval or disapproval\u2014of father or husband. That is, a man\u2019s vow had to be fulfilled, but a woman\u2019s vow could be annulled by either her father or her husband. The vow of consecration and its reflection of holiness, while seeming a binding matter of relationship to the holy God\u2014and actually so in the case of males\u2014was subject to human control by way of the familial structure that ordered the subordination of women to their fathers and husbands.
\nWith regard to members of the community generally, the concern was for their purity and the preservation of the holiness of the sanctuary and everything and everyone connected to it. Thus, the rules and regulations for lay people had more to do with pollution and the effecting of holiness than with consecration and sanctification to a status of holy.
\nThe requirements for the maintenance of holiness on the part of those who were consecrated were various. Aside from the general distancing from pollution that would defile the person and anything that he touched, there were specific regulations to guard the purity and holiness of the consecrated individual. These included staying clear of corpses (Lev. 21:1, 10\u201311; Num. 6:6\u20138), not drinking wine or beer (Lev. 10:9; Num. 6:3; Ezek. 44:21), not marrying prostitutes or defiled women (Lev. 21:7\u20139, 14), exercising care in cutting the hair (Lev. 19:27; 21:5; Num. 6:5; Deut. 14:1), and avoiding unclean food (Ex. 22:30[31]; Ezek. 44:31).
\nAs has been indicated above, there was within the traditions of Israelite religion a definite notion of the people as a whole being holy. The consecration of the firstborn to the Lord was a specific and representative example of that larger claim that is attested in the Sinai tradition of Exodus (Ex. 19:6), the Book of the Covenant (Ex. 22:30[31]), the Holiness Code (Lev. 19:2), and Deuteronomy (Deut. 7:6; 14:2, 21; 26:18\u201319). The requirements for such holiness would have included the kinds of specific prohibitions and disciplines indicated in the preceding paragraph, but went far beyond that. The modern designation \u201cHoliness Code\u201d for Leviticus 17\u201326 attests to the degree to which it placed all of the rules and regulations of Israel\u2019s life, social and familial as well as ritual, as means by which the holiness of the people was demonstrated and maintained. In like manner, the Book of the Covenant and the Deuteronomic Code identified the means of effecting and preserving sacrality for the people\u2014their separation out from other communities and their identification with Yahweh\u2014with the whole of the various statutes and ordinances that they set forth (cf. Num. 15:37\u201341). It is at this point that the conceptions and manifestations of holiness in the legal literature of ancient Israel joined hands with prophetic notions of holiness. Thus, the prophet Isaiah viewed the antithesis between the holy God and the unholy people as manifest in all the different ways that their personal and social sins polluted their life (see below).
\nHoly times. Time as well as space partook of sacrality in Israelite religion. One of the responsibilities of the priests identified above was to keep the Sabbath holy to Yahweh. While the regular and significant observation of the Sabbath may have come later in Israel\u2019s history, its character as a day set apart, consecrated, \u201choly to the LORD,\u201d is indicated in the prescription for the day in the Decalogue (Ex. 20:8; Deut. 5:12) and other legal formulations (Ex. 31:12\u201317; 34:21; 35:2), as well as in the lists of priestly responsibilities (Ezek. 22:26b; 44:24) and prophetic injunctions (Neh. 9:14; 13:17\u201318; Isa. 58:13; Jer. 17:22, 24, 27; Ezek. 20:20\u201321, 24). As the Sabbath became increasingly a mark of identity for the Jewish people, the holiness of the Sabbath coincided with the holiness of the people as a way of marking them off distinctively from other nations. Thus, time was set apart\u2014even as space was set apart\u2014to be God\u2019s time, time when the common things did not go on. The hallowing of the Sabbath was in treating it as utterly different from other days. That did not happen in cultic or ritual processes, as was true of the sacrality of other things but particularly in the absence of work. The sacrality of the Sabbath came to be so sharply protected that in the Priestly tradition, the violation of the Sabbath, like the violation of other commandments, was punishable by death (Ex. 31:14\u201315; 35:2; Num. 15:32\u201336). Two social functions thus joined in its hallowing: the effecting of a significant identifying mark that would help keep the community together and avoid syncretistic meldings, and the provision of rest for persons caught in the bondage of unceasing labor and toil (Deut. 5:14b; cf. Ex. 23:12). The former function is underscored by the Priestly claim that keeping the Sabbath was a mark of Yahweh\u2019s sanctification of the people. The second function had its larger extension in the provision for a sabbatical year of release (Deuteronomy 15) and for a jubilee year of restoration (Leviticus 25).
\nWhile the Sabbath seems uniformly to have been regarded as sacred time, that is not as clear with the festivals. Certainly acts of sacrifice at the sanctuary brought the participants into the realm of the holy, but it is particularly in the Priestly tradition, though not alone there, that the pilgrimage festivals were viewed as \u201choly convocations.\u201d Such terminology applied to certain days of the festivals, thus indicating that here also there was some gradation of holiness. In the Holiness Code, the sacredness of the holy convocations was linked to that of the Sabbath by the prohibition of work on both types of occasions (Lev. 23:3, 8, 21, 25, 28, 31).
\nJenson has suggested that the deeming of a particular moment or day in the festival as a \u201choly convocation\u201d (miqr\u0101\u2019 q\u014dde\u0161) was linked to \u201can increased activity around the sanctuary on such an occasion\u201d:<\/p>\n
Most of the additional sacrifices were burnt offerings, the sacrifice particularly associated with God and thus an appropriate offering for a holy day. Even when the occasion was not a pilgrimage feast, there were a significant number of public sacrifices. Since no work was allowed, many could come from the immediate surroundings to take part in the celebrations. The \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t sacrifice probably guaranteed that a degree of purity appropriate for the holiness of the day was attained at the sanctuary. It is likely that special care was taken to attain a high degree of purity on these occasions, both by priests and non-priests.<\/p>\n
The Complex Interaction of the Spheres of Holiness<\/p>\n
It would be a mistake to read the above discussion as a catalog of unrelated items that were regarded as sacred. Holiness was so much a feature of the nature of the deity Israel worshiped and of Israel\u2019s worship in general that it can be misleading to treat each item or sphere of holiness separately. Not only is that a distortion because the holiness of the deity formed the ground of the sacred in other spheres, but rarely did something belong to or enter the sphere of the holy apart from its relation to other things that were holy. The relation of holy things to the deity is well illustrated by the sanctuaries. Both temple and tabernacle were holy spaces because of the presence of the deity. Thus, all else associated with them came into the sphere of holiness, whether it was the ark, which rested in the shrine and was also the dwelling place of the deity\u2014in at least some conceptions of the ark\u2014or the monies that came into the treasuries of the temple. While these had a distinct social and economic function having to do with the upkeep of the sanctuary and the sanctuary personnel, a function presumably reinforced by their sacred status, their very presence in the sanctuary would have vested in them a degree of holiness, even though that is rarely stipulated. Occasionally the extant texts are explicit about the consecration of the economic resources of the temple. So Solomon is recorded by both Kings and Chronicles as having put in the temple all the \u201choly things\u201d of David, or the things that David had consecrated: \u201csilver, gold, and all the vessels in the treasuries of the house of God\u201d (2 Chron. 5:1; cf. 1 Kings 7:51). And other kings are reported as having brought the holy things of their ancestors or their own into the house of the Lord\u2014silver, gold, and utensils (1 Kings 15:14 \/\/ 2 Chron. 15:18; 2 Kings 12:18). Such separation of the royal wealth and sometimes the booty of royal conquests was an act of piety that reinforced the religious standing of the king and provided revenues \u201cset apart,\u201d and thus available when tribute was demanded by foreign powers (1 Kings 15:18\u201319; 2 Kings 12:19[18]).
\nSo also everything having to do with the priesthood was understood as sacred, because the priest entered the sacred space at sacred times to handle things that had been consecrated and set apart to the Holy One. Jenson has suggested that the holiness of the high priestly garments is expressed by the way their materials and weave were aligned with the materials of the tabernacle and that what he calls the \u201cHoliness Spectrum\u201d \u201ccorrelates the personal with the spatial dimension.\u201d
\nThus, holiness in one area required holiness for whatever impinged upon that area, and the holiness of one thing worked to protect and safeguard the holiness of another. It is precisely this complex interrelationship and the ripple effect of encounter with the holy that effected such a complicated system of sacred spheres. The priestly community had primary responsibility for effecting and safeguarding that system and so enjoyed status, power, and financial support to do so. That such effecting and safeguarding had a self-serving dimension does not diminish the degree to which the Israelite community really found in this interaction of spheres the effecting of a realm that seemed to enhance the openness of the community to the divine and, certainly in the Priestly tradition, the preservation of the community in the face of the danger of the encounter with the holy God.
\nYet not everything belonged to a network of holiness. The holiness of the Nazirite was the result of an act of dedication to the holy God that did not depend upon proximity to the sanctuary or to holy things, though entry into the period of consecration or departure from it, if the Nazirite vow was temporary, brought the Nazirite before the Lord, that is, into the holiness of the sanctuary (e.g., Num. 6:13\u201320), and fundamental rules of ritual cleanliness and purity were central to the period of the vow.
\nSo also the Sabbath was not correlated to cultic or ritual activities. Its rootage in family life seems to have separated it out from the usual connections to the spheres of holiness even though it was by definition a piece of sacred time, \u201choly to the LORD.\u201d
\nFinally, one needs to note that one of the major documents preserved from Israel\u2019s religious history, the Holiness Code of Leviticus 17\u201326 with its view of the people in all their daily interactions with one another as exemplifying or embodying holiness, did not therefore see holiness as confined to certain spheres, specifically the cultic. In some ways, the network of holy acts, persons, places, and times became more complete and complex as holiness was the ground and rationale for all that was done or happened. To the extent that the community was to be holy because the Lord was holy (Lev. 19:2), no area of life and no time or space was relegated to the common or the profane, at least implicitly. Such an understanding seems to lie behind the prophetic emphasis on holiness as a requirement of the people that should be reflected as much in social life as in cultic ritual.<\/p>\n
GRADATIONS OF HOLINESS<\/p>\n
One might expect from what is said above that the clear indication of distinctions between what was holy and what was not, what was clean and what was impure, meant that these were simply two different realities, two spheres that could be distinguished from each other. What would have been required was understanding what characterized one sphere and what characterized the other, acknowledging that there could be movement from one to the other. That is, some thing, person, or place was holy or it was not.
\nBut the matter is not that simple. There were also gradations of holiness, so that one thing or person or place could be more holy than another. There was, from some perspectives, a clear hierarchy of holiness that began with Yahweh of Israel and moved down. Such gradations seem to have become more common in the development of a more systematic approach to sanctity and purity as we know it in the Priestly legislation.
\nOne of the clearest and broadest manifestations of some gradation in holiness is found in the tripartite division of humanity in the Priestly system into levels of holiness that corresponded to three covenants with God: humanity (Gen. 9:1\u201311), Israel (Gen. 17:2; Lev. 26:42), and the priesthood (Num. 25:10\u201312; Jer. 33:17\u201322). This division also represented increasing (or decreasing, depending upon where one starts) degrees or requirements of holiness. So Israel was held under a stricter requirement than all other peoples if they were to be a holy nation. Thus, the food laws that distinguished between acceptable and unacceptable animals for consumption reflected a perceived distinction between Israel and the nations (Lev. 20:23\u201326) or served to effect and guard such a distinction. And Deuteronomy grounded the holiness of the people in their rejection of the religious practices of the \u201cnations that are before you\u201d (Deut. 7:1\u20136) as well as in the rejection of certain practices associated with the surrounding nations, such as laceration and veneration of the dead (Deut. 14:1\u20132), even though it is clear that such practices went on and had some acceptability within orthodox Yahwism or were at least borderline between orthodox and heterodox Yahwism (see chapter 2). The shaping of Deuteronomy 14, with its reference to the holiness of the people at the beginning and end of the chapter and its focus upon the dietary laws, suggests that, as is indicated in the Holiness Code, those laws became a mark of distinction between Israel and the nations, probably by the late preexilic period. The point is made explicit in the instruction to abstain from eating animals that died on their own\u2014as over against being slaughtered\u2014while permission is granted to sell such meat to resident aliens and foreigners (Deut. 14:21).
\nThe priests, however, had even more stringent and specific requirements than the people, at least in certain respects, because they moved in and out of the spatial sphere of holiness and dealt with holy things. They were responsible for maintaining and protecting the holiness of that sphere and the things that came into it. The differentiation between the holiness of the priests and that of the people, as well as distinctions within the ranks of the priesthood, are the focus of the story of the rebellion of Korah in Numbers 16\u201317 and in Priestly legislation that follows it. These chapters are complex in their composition and redaction. They seem to reflect an internecine conflict between priestly groups in ancient Israel. But as such, they testify to significant differentiations. The rebellion against Moses and Aaron is said to be because they set themselves above others when in fact \u201call the congregation are holy.\u201d Graded and hierarchical holiness is specifically acknowledged but only to be attacked. The formulation indicates an explicit awareness of the difference between the priests and the rest of the congregation in terms of sacrality. The story may reflect some actual conflict in the community about the accessibility of ordinary Israelites to the sacral sphere. But the primary issue was probably one of priestly grades or of the claims of rival priestly houses (see chapter 5). That is, what develops at the primary level of the narrative as a distinction or grade between the priestly elements is identified and then fixed in law in the chapters that follow. The fact that such gradation of the Levitical priests did not always exist in ancient Israel is a reflection of the tendency to move toward an increasingly hierarchical and graded spectrum of holiness, one that served to support and reinforce the power of the Jerusalem priesthood, more specifically the Zadokite priests. At the same time, one is given a glimpse of the way that spheres of holiness were affected by internal societal conflicts and the struggle for power among varying and even warring groups in the religious establishment. Indeed, this particular gradation of holiness served to identify and sustain one group ahead of and over the other, although the narrative and legislative accounts give an etiology that roots it in definitions of sacrality and relative degrees of participation in the sancta (Num. 16:1\u201311).
\nIt has been suggested that lying behind all levels of the story in Numbers 16\u201317 is a further hierarchical dimension to the sacrality of persons, and that is the distinction between the high priest or chief priest and all the other priests. There were various ways in which that distinction was made in ancient Israel, some of which have to do specifically with the sanctification of the high priest and his participation in the sphere of holy space, the sanctuary. For one thing, there was at some point a more detailed and elaborate ritual of consecration. Whenever there was a new high priest, the ordination into the sphere of holiness took place (e.g., Ex. 29:29; Lev. 16:32; Num. 35:25), while for other priests the initial ordination of the Aaronide priests was sufficient in perpetuity (Ex. 40:15). The higher status and holiness of the high priest was further indicated by the more elaborate set of garments of the high priest, which included mixed cloth (see above) and were called holy (Lev. 16:4), the access of the high priest to the most holy place of the sanctuary (Lev. 16:3\u20134, 11\u201319), and the greater restrictions on the high priest with regard to marriage, mourning, and purity (Lev. 21:1\u201315; Ezek. 44:22).
\nDistinctions between the priests and the Levites is another place where gradations in holiness may be inferred. While the history of the relationship between Levites and other priests is a complicated subject, the Levites would have played a significant role at an early time, if information in Judges\u2013Samuel is any indication. Some of the administrative functions to which they were assigned, while generally understood as reflecting a late cultic development, may have been a part of their assignment as early as the United Monarchy. But in the course of Israel\u2019s religious history, and at least to some extent out of the rivalry of priestly groups and the effort to maintain power on the part of the Jerusalem priests and their descendants, the Levites came to occupy a subordinate, albeit important, cultic role, at least in the Priestly schema. Some indication of this form of priestly gradation is indicated in the following summary:<\/p>\n
[T]he Levites were to guard the sanctuary, while the priests protected the holy items inside. The Levites were not allowed access to the holy things on pain of death (Num 4:15). They were directed to serve Aaron, and were under the authority of him and his sons. They did not serve Yahweh directly in the sanctuary as did the priests; rather they guarded the sanctuary from defilement on the outside and performed the hard labour (\u05e2\u05d1\u05d5\u05d3\u05d4) of its dismantling and erection. Only the priests could safely pack and cover the holy items (Num 4:5\u201320), and subsequently the coverings provided the necessary barrier between the holiness of the Tabernacle and the Levites.<\/p>\n
Within the later traditions, there is some difference in the matter of whether or not the Levites were actually regarded as \u201choly.\u201d They are never characterized as holy in the Priestly tradition, and their initiation is understood as an act of purification (Num. 8:6\u20137, 21) rather than sanctification, as in the case of the priests (Lev. 8:10, 30). But their taking the place of the firstborn (Num. 8:16\u201318) suggests a kind of consecration, in that the firstborn were so regarded (see above). The Chronicler explicitly characterizes the Levites as \u201choly\u201d (2 Chron. 23:6; 35:3), but the gradation seems to be recognized in the assignment of Aaron and his sons \u201cto consecrate the most holy things\u201d (1 Chron. 23:13).
\nWithin the spatial sphere, distinctions and grades of holiness could be maintained, according to the Priestly tradition. This is reflected, for example, with regard to the sanctuary, more specifically, the tabernacle, where zones and grades of holiness were maintained as indicated in table 4.1.<\/p>\n
GRADED HOLINESS<\/p>\n
The significance of the zones may be indicated by the fact that the inner sanctuary was distinguished from the holy space where the sacrifices were brought by designating it as \u201cthe holy place\u201d or \u201cthe holy of holies.\u201d There was also a gradation of material in that the costliness of the material seems to have grown in proportion to the closeness of the material to the deity or the place of the deity\u2019s presence. So also greater proximity increased the lethal potential in the holiness of objects associated with the deity (see below).
\nThat such gradations may sometimes reflect an agenda other than guarding the sacred has already been suggested. Pressing that point further, David Wright has noted that \u201cthe social hierarchies of a particular society determine its gradation of ritual space and the access that groups may have to its different parts.\u201d He compares Ezekiel\u2019s program for the postexilic temple and its cultus with those of the Priestly tradition. In the former, the priests (Zadokites), who are judged as having been faithful when the people went astray, are given access to the inner court (Ezek. 44:15\u201327). But the Levites are kept from such access and assigned custodial roles because they joined the people in going astray (vv. 10\u201314). Foreigners and the uncircumcised are prohibited from the sanctuary altogether (vv. 6\u20139). The people remain in the outer court (v. 19). The prince or political ruler does not enter the inner court but is allowed to enter the vestibule of the east gate from the outside (44:3; 46:2). Wright, following Smith, observes appropriately:<\/p>\n
The book\u2019s gradation is not descriptive but prescriptive; yet not just prescriptive, but revisionist. It is a polemical reformulation of social and religious relationships. The Zadokite priests are exalted while the Levites are demoted and castigated. Civic leaders\u2014kings\u2014are criticized for their breach of purity rules and are restricted in the future from access much beyond laypersons and Levites.\u2026 By changing access to the temple, the prophet is changing the constitution and organization of society.<\/p>\n
While the Priestly tradition is not as polemical, there are similar distinctions, and the more implicit social distinctions and categories are still enhanced:<\/p>\n
The access laws in P and elsewhere do not just protect the sanctuary from encroachment and sacrilege, they sustain the borders between categories of persons in society. To carry it further, encroachment prohibitions do not just protect potential encroachers and the community from God\u2019s wrath, they protect the group from the confusion of social boundaries and thereby from social dissolution.<\/p>\n
SANCTIFICATION AND DESANCTIFICATION<\/p>\n
There were various ways in which something or someone or some place could be consecrated and thus made holy. The fairly elaborate process by which priests were sanctified or consecrated to the service of Yahweh has been described above. But there were other ways in which something could be brought into the sphere of holiness. This might happen formally and appropriately by such means as anointing with oil (Ex. 30:22\u201338; Lev. 8:10\u201312; 21:10), the slaughter and sacrifice of an animal (Lev. 8:14\u201317), or by simply offering it and setting it aside, as in the case of certain sacrifices (Ex. 28:38; Lev. 22:2\u20133) or of the individual himself or herself, as in the case of the Nazirite. In this last case, however, certain ritual processes seem to have been connected with entering the holy state, for example, shaving the head (Numbers 6). Or sanctification might happen more informally, less ritually, and sometimes inadvertently, for example, by coming into contact with something or some area that was holy (Ex. 29:37; 30:29; Lev. 6:11, 20[18, 27]). In Ezekiel\u2019s program, the priests were not to take their vestments or the offerings into the outer court and \u201cso communicate holiness to the people\u201d (Ezek. 42:12; 44:19; 46:20).
\nA particular kind of consecration took place in the dedicating of something as \u1e25\u0113rem, that is, placing something under a ban or devoting it to the ban. In this process of consecration, valuables, animals, and people could be separated off and dedicated to the Lord so that others no longer had access to them. Such consecration was particularly associated with war and its booty. It is not clear how often the spoils of war were so consecrated, but there were clearly instances of its happening, and even the Deuteronomic ideological leveling through of the practice of \u1e25\u0113rem in the recounting of the early wars of conquest is a testimony to an understanding of sanctification as an act of dedication that probably originated in a vow to set apart the spoils of war\u2014or something else valuable\u2014exclusively to Yahweh\u2019s use or domain in return for Yahweh\u2019s beneficence and assistance (Num. 21:1\u20134). Whatever was so dedicated was either to be destroyed (e.g., Lev. 27:28\u201329; Num. 21:4; Josh. 6:17\u201318, 21) or given over to the holy sector, that is, to the priests and the sanctuary (Num. 18:14; Josh. 6:19, 24).
\nSomething that had been consecrated could be removed from the holy sphere and thus desanctified by redeeming it (e.g., Leviticus 27). This could be by payment, as is indicated for several types of redemption in Leviticus 27, or by substitution of another item. The redemption of the firstborn Israelite is of particular interest, for in the Priestly system redemption was accomplished by the dedication of the Levites but also by the payment of a sum for those firstborn above the number of Levites (Num. 3:44\u201351; 18:15\u201316). The Nazirite moved back into the profane sphere by presentation of sacrifices and shaving \u201cthe consecrated head\u201d (Num. 6:13\u201320). The transition back into the common sphere was marked by the drinking of wine (Num. 6:20).<\/p>\n
CLEAN AND UNCLEAN: PURITY<\/p>\n
While holiness and purity are distinctive categories and notions, they also interlock sufficiently in Israelite religion so that neither concept and its experiential regulation can be understood without attention to the other. As Wright has observed, \u201cImpurity receives its dynamic definition in relation to the sacred; impurity is a threat to the holy and contacts between these two spheres bring grave punishments and effects.\u201d
\nMuch of the priestly structure of legislation is aimed toward the protection of holiness, which means its protection from impurity and the dangers to the sphere of the sacred that the encounter with impurity involves. Thus, while holiness had its opposite in the common or the profane (\u1e25\u014dl), it encountered its opposition in the presence of impurity (\u1e6d\u0101m\u0113\u2019).
\nThat does not mean that no distinction between pure and impure or between clean and unclean operated apart from the sacral sphere. But any impurity became a problem when it came in contact with the sancta\u2014the sanctuary, personnel, and things belonging to the realm of the holy. That is why an impure people or an impure land could not be joined with a holy God.
\nRecent study of the laws having to do with cleanliness or purity has suggested that there were two broad categories of these: impurities that were tolerated, regulated, and not dangerous, and impurities that were prohibited and dangerous because they either represented wrongdoing of some sort or they polluted the sancta. Regulation of these impurities was established also, involving ways of moving from an unclean state to a clean state, of overcoming the threat of impurity to the sacral sphere, and of cutting out or eliminating the threat, that is, eliminating the one who had brought about the pollution.
\nThe tolerated category had its own gradation and could be divided into minor impurities or defilements and major ones. Minor impurities, exemplified, for example, in a variety of pollutions that came from some kind of contact with a polluting agent (such as an animal carcass [Lev. 11:24, 27]) or a person with a major pollution (such as a person with a bodily discharge), were not contagious, and the restoration to a pure state customarily took a day. Further gradation is indicated for these minor or tolerated impurities by the fact that some required a more extended purifying process of bathing or washing. Thus, the touching of an animal carcass only required the passage of time until evening, when the individual returned to a state of purity (Lev. 11:24, 27, 39). It is not altogether clear whether one may infer bathing as a part of the process. That may be inferred because it was clearly expected in many of the other minor pollutions, such as those having to do with bodily discharges (Ezekiel 15). Carrying an animal carcass or eating some of it, however, required not only the passage of time until evening but also washing the clothes of anyone who carried or ate the animal (Lev. 11:25, 28, 40), and in Lev. 17:15, there is the explicit requirement of bathing as well as washing the clothes for the one who eats a carcass.
\nThe major pollutions, however, were contagious, so that contact with a person who was impure from a bodily discharge could pollute the one who made contact. These pollutions, which included such things as contact with a human corpse, skin disease, and bodily emissions from the genitalia, took longer to return to a state of purity, normally seven days. The purification process tended to happen by way of sacrifice rather than washing, especially the \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t sacrifice, the purpose of which was the purification of the sanctuary and the other sancta against the danger of pollution by contagion.
\nIt was at this point that the major defilements became not only contagious but dangerous. In itself, their contagion generally was not dangerous to the one who \u201ccontracted\u201d the impurity. It required isolation for a period of time and removal from contact with the holy, but such impurities, while significant enough to require an extended time for the return to purity, did not pose any threat of harm to the one who was so polluted. If, however, such pollution spread to the realm of the sancta, then the impure one was in real danger (Lev. 7:20\u201321; 22:3\u20139) because the sphere of the holy, which was Yahweh\u2019s domain, was in danger. Thus, the Priestly description of the regulations for Israelites encamped in the wilderness required expulsion from the camp of persons with the skin disease \u1e63\u0101ra\u2019at, or having a bodily discharge from the genitals, or having been in contact with a corpse because \u201cthey must not defile their camp, where I dwell (\u0161\u014dk\u0113n) among them\u201d (Num. 5:3). The conjoining of the impure and the holy was explosive and dangerous to the one responsible and to the whole community, which might suffer the effects of such violation of the sacral sphere.
\nThe prohibited impurities were dangerous by definition, threatening the welfare of the impure person and by extension the whole community because they threatened the holiness of the community in its parts, that is, the sancta, and as a holy people. Such pollution, when it occurred, whether intentionally or unintentionally, because it was a violation of a prohibition, effected guilt on the polluted one and polluted the sanctuary. But there is a difference in the further effects of the pollution, depending upon whether or not it was inadvertent. Wright has laid out these differences succinctly as follows:<\/p>\n
The general features of unintentional prohibited impurities are, then, the pollution of the sanctuary (outer altar or shrine) and the consequent requirement of sacrifices (always a \u1e25a\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101\u2019t) except in the case of some sins that have been repented of (which require an \u2019\u0101\u0161\u0101m). Since a sin has been committed, there is the potential for divine punishment (k\u0101r\u0113t). But inadvertency\u2014which implies a repentant spirit\u2014defers such a penalty, and allows reparation. When inadvertent sins involve bodily pollution arising from tolerated impurities, corresponding purification and restriction requirements are to be followed. With intentional prohibited impurities pollution increases and the evil-doer\u2019s life is forfeit. Not just the outer altar or the shrine is polluted, but the heart of the sanctuary as well, the most sacred room. Purification comes through the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement.<\/p>\n
The seriousness of this concern for purity and the danger of polluting the holy is well demonstrated by the penalty that was to be enacted against those who polluted by violating the prohibitions and engaging in wrongdoing, disobeying the commands of Yahweh. Two technical expressions indicate the extreme character of the penalty: \u201che shall bear his punishment\u201d (n\u0101\u015b\u0101\u2018 \u2019et \u2018aw\u014dn\u00f4) and \u201che [she, they] shall be cut off\u201d (nikrat). Both of these imply divine punishment. The former is a more general indication that the one who has violated the prohibitions protecting the purity and the sanctity of the community and the sanctuary is subject to punishment. The term k\u0101r\u0113t, however, indicates not only that the punishment is from God but that the individual shall be cut off from \u201chis people\u201d (Lev. 7:20, 21, etc.) or \u201cIsrael\u201d (Num. 19:13) or \u201cthe assembly\u201d (Num. 19:20). Specifically what such \u201ccutting off\u201d meant has been a subject of debate. It has been suggested that it once referred to expulsion from the community, from one\u2019s kin, but a more likely interpretation is that it had to do with cutting off one\u2019s life or one\u2019s line. That is, k\u0101r\u0113t may have involved either premature death by the intervention of God or the loss of one\u2019s progeny, cutting off the lineage. A further possibility is that the one guilty of violating the sacred was understood to be cut off from his or her ancestors in the afterlife. The fact that in two cases, the worship of Molech (Lev. 20:2\u20133) and the violation of the Sabbath (Ex. 31:14), there seems to be a requirement for both judicial execution and k\u0101r\u0113t suggests that the latter was not simply capital punishment.
\nWhile k\u0101r\u0113t was to be applied in quite a number of different offenses, the great majority of them clearly had to do directly or indirectly with matters of purity and the protection of the sacred. Thus, violations of the rules that kept the sacred times in order could invoke the k\u0101r\u0113t penalty: eating leavened bread during the festival of Unleavened Bread (Ex. 12:15\u201319), working on the Sabbath (Ex. 31:14), and working and not fasting on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 23:29\u201330). Failure to be cleansed after contact with a corpse resulted in k\u0101r\u0113t (Num. 19:13, 20). The holiness of the sanctuary was protected by making the eating of the fat of a sacrificial animal or blood a sin punishable by k\u0101r\u0113t (Lev. 7:25\u201327). The use of the anointing oil for ordinary purposes or the sacred incense for personal perfume was also punishable by k\u0101r\u0113t (Ex. 30:22\u201338). And while there is not always specific reference to k\u0101r\u0113t in the extant texts, there were other pollutions that stood under the pain of death, for example, the failure of the priests to wash their hands when they entered the tent of meeting to minister (Ex. 30:20\u201321).
\nIt would be a mistake to assume that specifically cultic matters or things related to the cult and to sanctuary ritual were the only or even primary modes of dangerous pollution. The sins of the people generally could pollute the community, the temple, and the land (Ps. 106:39; Ezek. 14:11; 20:43). Thus, idolatry (Jer. 7:30), adultery (Num. 5:11\u201331), improper sexual acts (Leviticus 18), rape (Gen. 34:5, 13, 27), and necromancy (Lev. 19:31) were understood to pollute the community and the land (Jer. 3:1\u20139). The prophets described Israel or the land as defiled because of the sins of the people\u2014religious and social\u2014but particularly because of idolatry, sexual sins, and profaning the Sabbath (Jer. 2:7; Ezek. 14:11; 20:43; 36:17; Hos. 5:3; 6:10; Micah 2:10; Hag. 2:13\u201314). Images of pollution became ways of speaking of the condition of the people: the impure woman (Jer. 2:23; Ezek. 36:17; Lam. 1:9; possibly 4:14) and the person with skin disease (Lam. 4:15; cf. Lev. 13:45). The paradigm of purity and pollution was so significant to Israel\u2019s religion that its whole history on the land could be understood in terms of that paradigm\u2014from the wilderness days (Ezekiel 20), to the taking of the land by virtue of the Lord casting out the inhabitants because their practices defiled it (Ezekiel 18), to the pollution of the land by the sins of the people leading to their loss of the land. Tikva Frymer-Kensky concludes, \u201cIn the face of such pollution, the temple and its cult could not be enough to save Israel, and thus necessitated the land being destroyed and the people sent into exile. The Exile is thus seen as a necessary result of the pollution of Israel.\u201d
\nA particular feature of the purity spectrum in Israel\u2019s religion was the system of dietary laws and the distinction between clean and unclean animals, the subject of much discussion in the contemporary analysis of the holiness rules operative in Israel\u2019s religion, particularly rising out of the ground-breaking work of Mary Douglas.
\nThese dietary regulations are found primarily in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, though there are scattered examples elsewhere. They prohibited the eating of certain quadrupeds (camel, hare, rock badger, and pig), water animals that do not have fins and scales, certain birds (e.g., eagle, vulture, osprey) and winged insects. In addition, these regulations identified an animal that dies of itself as unclean and forbade the eating of such a carcass (so Deut. 14:21; cf. below) or required washing and the passing of a day to rectify the impurity acquired in the act of eating (Lev. 11:40). Finally, Deut. 14:21b joins with Ex. 23:19 in the much-discussed but still enigmatic prohibition of boiling a kid in its mother\u2019s milk.
\nWhile it is possible to suggest reasons not identified in the texts for the resistance to eating some or all of the animals identified in the catalogs of dietary laws, some of which may have involved a quite specific social purpose (see below), the rationale that is given in virtually all of the texts is specifically the maintenance of the people\u2019s holiness. The limits on food that could be eaten was a manifestation of Israel\u2019s separation to the Lord. As Milgrom has put it, \u201cThe diet laws which limit Israel\u2019s edible flesh to only a few of the animals permitted to other peoples constitutes an experiential mnemonic, confronted daily at the dining table, that Israel must separate itself from the nations.\u201d Following this line of thought, Wright has made a cogent case for regarding the dietary laws as having a place in the system of sanctification in Israelite religion. But it was more symbolic. Existing in some form prior to and independent of the full formulation of Priestly legislation\u2014an earlier history perhaps reflected in Ex. 22:30; Deut. 14:3\u201314; and Lev. 11:2b\u201323 as an early stage of Priestly formulation\u2014the prohibitions against eating certain animals served to give symbolic character to the diet of the Israelites, which underscored and expressed their holiness, that is, their separateness and singularity among the nations.
\nThe determination of which animals were clean and edible and which were not is probably best understood as a combination of preexisting custom with regard to some animals, possibly the pig, for example, and the application of developed criteria in the case of others. There may have been various reasons for aversion to some animals. Wright suggests as possibilities hygiene, simple dislike or aversion (as, for example, modern aversion to brains and entrails), economic detriment (some animals competing for the same food as humans, for example, the pig), or nationalism (not eating something because a neighboring people eat it). He adds:<\/p>\n
Though, in my view, the criteria had a foundation in traditional aversions, they reoriented these traditional taboos and consequently included new animals among those considered abominations. The change from the traditional approach of designating particular animals as impure, to using criteria served to abstract and unify the perceptions about abominable animals. This abstraction, unification, or systematization of determination of such animals was accompanied by a new unified rationale for avoiding such animals (as Milgrom says): so that Israel might be a holy people.<\/p>\n
The conclusion of the Deuteronomic catalog of forbidden animals is worth noting in this regard. It forbids the eating of anything that dies of itself but allows the Israelites to give it to a resident alien or to sell it to a foreigner (Deut. 14:21). There was nothing wrong with the meat, no inherent aversion to it or some hygienic reason for not eating it. The reason the Israelite did not eat it is expressly stated in Deuteronomy at the conclusion of the verse: \u201cFor you are a people holy to the LORD your God.\u201d The final verses of Leviticus 11, probably a late stage of the text, also conclude that catalog by an extended grounding of the dietary laws in the holiness of the Lord and the consequent necessity for Israel to be holy (Lev. 11:43\u201345). Furthermore, the somewhat earlier piece of dietary legislation in the Book of the Covenant prohibiting the eating of any meat that had been \u201cmangled by beasts in the field\u201d is grounded in the prior claim, \u201cYou shall be a people holy to me, therefore \u2026\u201d (Ex. 22:30[31]).<\/p>\n
VARIATIONS IN THE IDEOLOGY OF HOLINESS<\/p>\n
While the above discussion has indicated the depth of concern over holiness and purity and some of the conceptual and practical complexity as the community attended to that concern, it is appropriate to identify a little more clearly some of the differences in the understanding of holiness that may be identified in the literary remains of Israel\u2019s religion. Some of these differences reflect changing developments in that religion, but they also apparently existed in some tension with each other over long periods of time. There will be no effort here, therefore, to place these differences in some precise chronological order. That involves achieving a level of certainty about dating the strata of the Pentateuch that is very difficult to do in the light of our present state of knowledge.<\/p>\n
Priestly Writings<\/p>\n
The concern for the maintenance of holiness and purity was a first order of business for those circles that came to dominance in the exilic and postexilic periods and worked to shape the community of Israel into a theocratic and sacral community. At the same time, it must be recognized that many of the fundamental notions expressed in the Priestly writings, both in regard to specifics and general conceptions, had antecedents. A starting point for articulating some of the particularities and differences in Israel\u2019s understanding of the realm of the sacred may be found in looking at the Holiness Code, itself a document out of priestly circles, in relation to other Priestly literature.
\nThe most obvious difference was the close tie between holiness and the sanctuary in the Priestly conceptuality generally, whereas the Holiness Code understood holiness as a characteristic of the land as a whole. Holiness in the Priestly order of things was found in the sanctuary and the sancta associated with it. That is, various persons and things were holy in relation to the sanctuary and the cultic rituals of purification that took place in the sanctuary or under the direction of the holy persons, the priests. The common or profane was the customary state for people and things generally until some particular step was taken that brought a person or a thing into the realm and category of the holy, a state that was often temporary. Within the ideology of the Holiness Code, however, the land and the people existed in a state of holiness and were always under obligation to demonstrate that holiness, to achieve or maintain it by the whole realm of human conduct, moral and social as well as ritual. Holiness, therefore, did not involve simply being set apart for participation or use in the cultic sphere, though that clearly happened also in the Holiness Code conceptuality. But sacrality was understood to permeate the people and the land and had to do with the totality of life. Thus, the Priestly source restricted holiness of persons to the priests and the Nazirites, while the Holiness Code, though recognizing and protecting the holiness of the priests in its regulations, expanded the holiness of persons to include the whole community, even as it expanded the sphere of holiness from the sanctuary to the land.
\nThe expansion of the realm of the holy in the Holiness Code to include the people and the land in distinction from the Priestly restriction of that realm to the sanctuary and the priesthood carried even further. Whereas holiness in the Priestly conceptuality was essentially tied to the cultic realm, in the Holiness Code the sphere of holiness included the moral as well as the cultic. Thus, members of the community aspired to a holiness like that of Yahweh in all aspects of their life. Matters having to do with sexual morality, prohibition of idols, proper treatment of parents, and social justice, joined with proper sacrificial procedure, avoidance of unclean things and animals, and participation in the appointed festivals to characterize the holiness of the people.
\nThe difference between the Priestly conception of holiness and that of the Holiness Code has been described as a distinction between static and dynamic, respectively. The same distinction could be described in terms of ascription of holiness and achievement of holiness. In the Priestly understanding, holiness belonged to the sanctuary and the priests. For the Holiness Code, holiness was that which the community constantly worked at by its conduct in all spheres of life: \u201cSanctification is an ongoing process for priests (21:8, 15, 23; 22:9, 16) as well as for all Israelites (21:8; 22:32).\u201d
\nWith regard to pollution, matters were similar. Milgrom has summarized the differences as follows:<\/p>\n
P [Priestly source] holds that the sanctuary is polluted by Israel\u2019s moral and ritual violations (42) committed anywhere in the camp (but not outside) and that this pollution can and must be effaced by the violator\u2019s purification offering and, if committed deliberately, by the high priest\u2019s sacrifice and confession (16:3\u201322). H [Holiness Code], however, concentrates on the polluting force of Israel\u2019s violation of the covenant (26:15), for example, incest (18; 20:11\u201324), idolatry (20:1\u20136), or depriving the land of its sabbatical rest (26:34\u201335). Pollution for H is nonritualistic, as shown by the metaphoric use of \u1e6d\u0101m\u0113\u2019 (e.g., 18:21, 24; 19:31) and by the fact that the polluted land cannot be expiated by ritual, and hence, the expulsion of its inhabitants is inevitable (18:24\u201329; 20:2).<\/p>\n
It is difficult to locate these differing understandings of holiness with certainty in social and historical settings. Views on the order and dating of both the Priestly source and the Holiness Code vary considerably. Certainly, the Priestly orientation seems to reflect a community that was dominated by a priestly leadership exercising significant control over the community as it sought to live and act before a holy God. There may have been various points in Israel\u2019s life when that was the case, from the late preexilic period to the late postexilic time. Clearly, the Priestly structure of holiness was a form of the official state religion, whether before or after the exile. Walter Houston has aptly sketched the hypothetical circumstances in which the Priestly and Holiness Codes could have come to dominance:<\/p>\n
But there will be no surprise that men in such a social position, officials and leaders in the most conservative of all social institutions, at a time when the traditional social structure was coming under tremendous pressure, or, still more, at a time when it had to be constructed anew out of the ruins of occupation and deportation should seek to mark out an area within society where role and action could still be governed by position and by traditional expectation, so old symbols could still retain their meaning, and pollution could be understood as something objective.\u2026 Others at the same historical turning point, their own roles governed far more by personal achievement and moral choice, saw salvation in attempting a very different kind of social planning.<\/p>\n
One can recognize in the Holiness Code\u2019s expansion of the sacral to the realm of the moral and the social a consistency with prophetic assertions about holiness. As Israel Knohl has pointed out, this is particularly the case with regard to the prophecy of Isaiah, where the holiness of God is the ground for an understanding of Israel\u2019s holiness demonstrated or manifest in its justice and righteousness, its treatment of widow, orphan, and poor (e.g., Isa. 1:4; 5:16, 23\u201324), though a number of prophets assert the holiness of Israel\u2019s deity as central to the character of the deity. Knohl sees a distinction between the Isaianic understanding of how holiness is to be demonstrated and that of the Holiness Code at the point of Isaiah\u2019s rejection of the sacrificial apparatus and the Sabbath and festivals. While that is indeed the case, this may have been a matter of weight and emphasis. The Holiness Code, with its prescriptive and ideological character, set forth the joining of the cultic and the moral. Isaiah preached in a context where only one of these spheres was perceived to be a matter of holiness\u2014whether ideologically or only in practice\u2014and his preaching was a corrective away from the emphasis reflected in the Priestly literature and toward the Holiness Code\u2019s insistence on the moral sphere as the locus of holy living.<\/p>\n
Deuteronomy<\/p>\n
It has become customary to think of Deuteronomy as representing a \u201csecularizing\u201d tendency when compared with other legal and ritual texts in the Pentateuch. An early expression of this notion is to be found in Gerhard von Rad\u2019s argument that the ark was \u201cdemythologized\u201d in Deuteronomy, moving from being treated as a sacral object because it was the dwelling place of Yahweh to being simply a box that contained the tablets of the Decalogue. Moshe Weinfeld has argued extensively that a process of demythologization and secularization was carried through in the book of Deuteronomy. To the extent that sacrality is understood to be centered in the sanctuary and the ritual of sacrifice, one could argue such a case.
\nBut there are significant problems with this \u201csecular\u201d reading of Deuteronomy. Even for von Rad\u2019s interpretation of the ark of the covenant, it will not work. While one seems to be far away from the picture of the powerful holiness of the ark that is described in 1 Samuel 4:1\u20137:1 and 2 Samuel 6, with its narrative of the destruction of individuals who look into or touch the ark of God (see above), that is not as much the case as it seems. In Deuteronomy, the ark is the receptacle for the tablets of the law, but Deuteronomy also so identifies the law with the promulgator of it, that is, with Yahweh, that the law is virtually a surrogate for Yahweh. The presence of the ark and the inscribed law within it is in some sense the presence of Yahweh with the people. The ark was still understood to be the place of the presence of Yahweh and so still sacral even if that point is not made explicit.
\nMore recently, Norbert Lohfink has argued for a more nuanced accounting of the Deuteronomic data, one that suggests Deuteronomy envisioned a different kind of sacrality than the sacrifice-oriented understanding of the Priestly circles. Rather than perceiving holiness as centered primarily in a sanctuary and cultic personnel responsible for a sacrificial ritual that maintained the sacredness of the community, Deuteronomy centered holiness\u2014in this respect not unlike the Holiness Code\u2014in the land and its people. The critical texts are found in Deut. 7:6; 14:2, 21; and 26:19. In all three, the declaration is made that Israel is a \u201choly people to the LORD your God.\u201d The repetition of this claim makes it difficult to argue for a \u201csecular\u201d mentality in the Deuteronomic ideology. The point is made at three quite different and significant places. The first is the demand for the ban or destruction of the \u201cseven nations\u201d because of the danger that they will turn the Israelites away from the exclusive worship of Yahweh (Deut. 7:1\u20136). Thus, the holiness of Israel was the ground to guard against apostasy. The second instance prefaces and concludes regulations that come more into the cultic sphere: laceration and tonsure for the dead and the dietary regulations of Deuteronomy. Here holiness is specifically set in relation to categories of cleanliness and pollution, as it is in the Priestly tradition, but obedience to these regulations is because of the existing sacral character of the community. The bracketing of these regulations by explicit reference to the holiness of the community does serve to weight them significantly on the scales of what manifested holiness in Israel. Finally, in Deut. 26:19, holiness is directly tied to the whole covenantal relationship, both its ground and its outcome.
\nWhat is clear from these texts is that the holy-profane distinction was not between priest\/sanctuary and people but between Israel and the nations. That is obviously the case in Deut. 7:6. But also in Deut. 26:18\u201319, the line that is parallel to the clause \u201cfor you to be a people holy to the LORD your God\u201d is \u201cfor him to set you high above all nations.\u201d Furthermore, in both texts, as well as in 14:2, Israel is called Yahweh\u2019s \u201ctreasured possession.\u201d In 7:6 and 14:2, the further point is made that \u201cthe LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.\u201d The specific holiness regulations that follow in chapter 14 relative to clean and unclean animals were regulatory for all the people. There is no particular reference to priests and a special sphere of holiness that they inhabited. Purity and holiness were features of Israel\u2019s existence that distinguished it from all other peoples, not a line of demarcation within Israel. As noted earlier, one of the specific signs of this identification of all Israel as the sphere of the holy, those who were \u201cbefore the Lord\u201d and separated out from all the rest of the nations, is the fact that in the Deuteronomic dietary laws, framed by the declarations of Israel\u2019s holiness (14:2, 21), food that might not be eaten by Israelites could be given to a g\u0113r, a resident alien, or sold to a nokr\u00ee, a foreigner. This allowance is immediately followed by the reminder: \u201cFor you are a people holy to the LORD your God\u201d (14:21).
\nAt this point, there is a congruence within various traditions. Both Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code laid weight upon the people as a whole as the holy or sacral sphere. The line between common and holy was that between Israel and all else. Being set apart was fundamentally the act of Yahweh to set apart a people to himself. The Holiness Code recognized within Israel the line between priest and layperson, but the fundamental distinction was between Israel and other peoples. This perspective is found within the Book of the Covenant also (Ex. 22:30[31]), specifically in regard to dietary restriction.
\nIt is difficult to tell when this understanding of the sphere of the holy as the congregation or assembly of Israel came to dominate Israelite religion. Some of these texts may well be dependent upon others. But it is fundamental to understanding Israel\u2019s religion that, while there is an interpretive tendency to identify Israel\u2019s understanding of holiness with the Priestly tradition\u2019s formulations and ritual, there was a dominant strain within that religion that placed the focus upon the people as a whole and understood holiness to be broadly applicable both in the sense of who was holy and also in the sense of what was required to manifest that holiness. This understanding continued to influence the life of Israel in the later postexilic period as the community under Ezra and Nehemiah saw the boundary line between holy and profane, pure and impure, as, once again, the distinction between the community of Israel, the returned exiles, and the peoples of the lands, that is, the nations. The conflict between the community of returned exiles and the peoples around them was an appropriate setting for the application of this understanding of holiness, but it would be a mistake to assume that the issue of Israel\u2019s relation to other peoples only came to the fore at that time. Indeed, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah indicate that the heavy focus on the difference between Israel and the peoples and the subsequent actions designed to keep that distinction a sharp one by complete separation of the community from the surrounding peoples\u2014such as sending away the foreign wives\u2014was specifically due to the reading of the ancient law (Neh. 13:1\u20133, 23\u201327), with Deuteronomy being explicitly quoted (Deut. 23:3\u20136; 7:3). That is, the separation from other nations was understood as a return to a longstanding religious tradition and its correlative practices.
\nThese various traditions cohere, therefore, in presenting one self-acknowledged rationale for the various laws that guard purity and holiness. They were there to mark the distinction between Israel and the other peoples. Other functions might be present and other distinctions operative, but this is the one that is made explicit and wide ranging in the religious traditions of Israel. Such weight upon the entire community as holy stood in some tension with the specific Priestly focus on sanctuary and priests. But these other ideologies did not preclude more specific recognition of holy things, places, persons, and acts within the broader framework of an understanding of the people as holy. That broader framework allowed for a more comprehensive understanding of the holy without negating very concrete encounters with the holy and the development of guidelines within cultic, personal and familial, and social spheres of life for the achievement and manifestation of holiness and purity. The tension between holiness ascribed and holiness achieved and between ritual and moral definitions of holiness was a perduring one that continued to be present in those religious traditions and practices that developed in different ways from the religion of ancient Israel.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 5<\/p>\n
Leadership and Participation in Israelite Religion<\/p>\n
RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL<\/p>\n
In any religious system, significant power and control are vested in the religious leadership. The leaders serve in no small way to define the religious practice of the community, whether in conformity to other dimensions of the system or in distortion of them. They provide varied forms of mediation between deity and people. They may be bearers of the continuities of religious practice in some instances\u2014for example, priests\u2014or they may be disruptive elements, breaking with the customary conventions, ideologies, and practices, as, for example, in some Israelite prophecy. An examination of their roles in ancient Israel is a necessary part of describing the religion of that community, especially with regard to its social functions.<\/p>\n
THE PRIEST<\/p>\n
Throughout Israel\u2019s history, the priest and the priestly community exercised a fundamental role in maintaining the order of life in the community and stood at the center of religious practice, whether carried out in a family setting or at local or state levels. Thus, one of the narratives of premonarchical Israel recounting priestly activity deals with the activities of a priest exclusively in relation to a house shrine and in direct relationship to the household rather than to any wider religious community (Judges 17\u201318). The priest is described as \u201chis priest,\u201d referring to the head of the household. On the other hand, Samuel is depicted as carrying out priestly responsibilities, specifically sacrifice, at what seems to be a local shrine at Ramathaim (1 Sam. 9:11\u201314). The presence of priests presiding over the national shrine and over the religious activities of the state is evident at a number of places in the history of Israel\u2019s religion.
\nAt all levels, priestly responsibility for ritual purity and proper order served to keep the community from the threats of impurity and disorder (see chapter 4). The anointing of the priest, and particularly the high priest, served to \u201csanctify\u201d him \u201cby removing him from the realm of the profane and empowering him to operate in the realm of the sacred, namely to handle the sancta.\u201d The priestly instruction and setting forth the norms for community life, individually and corporately, insured that the community would not fall apart by failure to keep the stipulations of the covenantal agreement between Yahweh and Israel and thus damage relations between people and deity and among members of the community. By the authority invested in them, the divine word could be spoken and the divine service properly carried out. Priestly authority and function were, by definition, set to maintain the order of the larger community and, where pertinent, smaller segments of that community. The mediation of the relation between people and deity lay heavily in their hands so that the priesthood bore a major responsibility for maintenance of that relationship\u2014and thus of the social order\u2014by the way in which they carried out their duties.
\nVarious narratives attest to the role that priests played or could play in maintaining the social order through their role as guardians of the temple and the cultic affairs of the community (plate 8). Thus Amaziah, chief priest at the national shrine at Bethel during the eighth century, sought to remove Amos from prophesying in the Northern Kingdom because of the social and political unrest it could provoke\u2014and possibly was in fact doing, though we have no record of that (Amos 7:10\u201317). His couching of Amos\u2019s prophecy as a conspiracy against the king and the national sanctuary, called by the priest \u201chouse of the kingdom\u201d and not \u201chouse of Yahweh,\u201d was a reflection of his role in maintaining political and social order.
\nIn a text from a later time, a prophet in exile, Shemaiah, addresses a priest in Jerusalem, Zephaniah, calling for him to rebuke Jeremiah for prophesying a long exile. The grounds for the prophet\u2019s address to the priest is that the Lord has appointed Zephaniah priest, \u201cso that there may be officers in the house of the LORD to control any madman who plays the prophet, to put him in the stocks and the collar\u201d (Jer. 29:26). The claim is that the priestly office has responsibility for oversight of those matters where the religious and the political collide. The line of authority is suggested by the sequence Yahweh (appointer of the) priest (who can regulate, even imprison the) prophet. Potential and real conflict arose out of the conflicting claims of the priest (under legitimate divine aegis) to oversee and overrule the prophet, who may have stood outside the structures of priestly authority but bore legitimate credentials of his own as the bearer of the word of the Lord.
\nBreakdown in the relationship between deity and people and thus in the order and life of the community inevitably found the priesthood culpable in some fashion (1 Sam. 2:12\u201336; 3:4\u201317: Amos 7:10\u201317; Jer. 1:18; 2:8, 24; 4:9; 5:31; etc.). The significant amount of criticism against the priests that is found in the biblical literature is a direct reflection of a history in which breakdown was a major dimension. The equally significant amount of priestly literature, that is, of rules and regulations that had to do with the functions of the priests, is an indication of how critical their responsibilities were in the religious life of ancient Israel. The line between responsibility for the religious life and responsibility for the sociopolitical life of the community, a line so very fuzzy in the work of the prophets, was also considerably blurred for the priests, particularly in light of the fact that the sociopolitical order and stability were understood to be intimately tied to the community\u2019s relationship with the deity.<\/p>\n
Plate 8. Partially marred inscription on an ivory pomegranate, apparently reading \u201cFor the house of the Lord, holy [to] the priests.\u201d (Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority)<\/p>\n
Priestly Responsibilities<\/p>\n
In what is probably a fairly archaic text, the blessing of Moses in Deuteronomy 33, the blessing given to the tribe of Levi in effect sets forth a job description for the priests in ancient Israel (Deut. 33:8\u201311). Three kinds of responsibilities are assigned to the priestly community in this blessing: divination, instruction, and sacrifice. These did not exhaust their duties, but they were at the heart of them. In other ways, they mediated the relationship between deity and people, for example, in the invoking of the blessing of Yahweh on the people (Num. 6:22\u201327 (see plate 9); cf. Deut. 21:5; 1 Chron. 23:12) or in the giving of an oracle of salvation in response to the lament or prayer of an individual or the people, but these activities are in various ways offshoots or dimensions of the three duties mentioned in Deut. 33:8\u201310 that lay at the heart of the priestly leadership of the community.
\nDivination. As indicated in Deuteronomy 33:8, priestly divination took place essentially through the form of designated lots or the \u201ccasting\u201d of the Urim and Thummim, devices on analogy with dice that seemed to function in binary fashion, that is, giving a yes or no answer to a critical question or issue, though it is possible that more complex responses were given by the different forms of lot. Priestly texts depict these divinatory devices as part of the priestly paraphernalia (Ex. 28:30; Lev. 8:8), along with the ephod, worn by the priest, whose character is quite obscure but whose function seems to have included divinatory activity (e.g., 1 Sam. 30:8; cf. Judg. 18:5, 14). Priestly leadership in divinatory activity is suggested by several texts. When David seeks the answer to questions having to do with the outcome of an expected conflict with Saul at Keilah, it is the priest Abiathar who brings the ephod forward (1 Sam. 23:6\u201312). There is no indication of how the priest dealt with the ephod, but its divinatory function in this text is clear. The involvement of a priest in divination via the Urim and Thummim is best indicated by 1 Sam. 14:23\u201346. This episode, having to do with Jonathan\u2019s violation of his father Saul\u2019s sacred oath and the consequences of that act, has been discussed in some detail by Huffmon. As he notes, the priest uses divination to uncover the violation of an oath for the king and to identify the culprit, that is, Jonathan. The question to be answered is a binary one, and the response Saul seeks\u2014\u201cgive Urim\u201d for one answer and \u201cgive Thummim\u201d for the other answer\u2014suggests something of the way the Urim and Thummim would have functioned to answer the question.<\/p>\n
Plate 9. Silver plaque from Ketef Hinnom with quotation of the priestly benediction from Num. 6:24\u201326 (seventh century). (Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority)<\/p>\n
It is important to recognize several features of this particular incident. One is that it arises out of the need to make a decision and to discern what will happen as a basis for making the decision. In fact, the priest\u2019s call for consultation is in order to manipulate the process so that the king will discover\u2014in this case by the failure of the process since no answer is given\u2014what the rest of the group knows, to wit, that Jonathan has violated the oath. The second stage of the divination process leads to the discovery of the violation. Huffmon notes in conclusion:<\/p>\n
In this procedure the outcome of the divination had to be Jonathan, as perhaps everyone but Saul knew. It is publicly seen as a discovery or uncovering of the truth by resort to divinely directed divination, but actually the outcome was controlled by the priest, responding to public opinion.<\/p>\n
In both this instance and the account of the procedure to determine who violated the ban at Jericho (Joshua 7)\u2014presumably by casting lots\u2014a strain in the societal situation is handled and necessary courses of action are sanctioned by depersonalizing and objectifying the decision, even if the community, and the individuals involved, were already aware of the necessary or appropriate outcome. The divination thus \u201cconstitutes a technique for establishing an effective consensus upon a rather particular project.\u201d
\nLater tradition assigned a continuing consultative activity via the Urim to the priest Eleazar, who stood beside the political leader, Joshua, and inquired of the Lord via the Urim in the sanctuary (Num. 27:21), a spatial restriction of priestly divinatory activity that is not surprising in the tradition but seems not to have been so restrictive at an earlier time (but cf. Judg. 20:27\u201328) The choice of a scapegoat in the Day of Atonement ritual, which probably comes from a later time than may be presupposed by the texts above, shows the priest casting lots to determine the divine decision to designate which goat shall be for the Lord and which for Azazel (Lev. 16:8).
\nIn summary, priestly divination may be said to have involved the determination of an answer to a question that involved either discovery, decision, or the discernment of the future on the basis of which decision could be made. The process seems to have been by way of technical manipulation, involving \u201ca pre-arranged code, using written lots or designating Urim and Thummim for binary questions.\u201d Divination thus served to give proper answers without there seeming to be a bias or individual control. In Parks\u2019s summary formulation:<\/p>\n
[D]ivinatory procedure has the effect of stamping with a mark of special legitimacy a particular decision or a particular kind of response to crisis. Paradoxically, divination appears to have a derandomizing function; establishing consensus, it renders action more predictable and regular.<\/p>\n
The involvement of the priest was critical precisely at the point of giving divine reassurance and divine legitimation to the actions taken. It insured the maintenance of the safety and order of the community by \u201cthe integration of anomalous, dangerous ventures into the traditional religious schema.\u201d
\nThe inquiry of the priest via lots or Urim and Thummim points to a broader phenomenon of inquiry already identified above, the oracle of salvation that came in response to a prayer to the deity. While there is not a lot of direct evidence connecting the priest to such words, some texts clearly suggest that (e.g., 1 Sam. 1:17; 2 Chron. 20:13\u201317; Joel 2:17\u201322). The response of the priest Eli to the prayer of Hannah in 1 Sam. 1:17 suggests a priestly function of mediating the divine response to a prayer for help. Eli\u2019s words to her\u2014Go in peace and the God of Israel will grant your request (1 Sam. 1:17)\u2014are not simply a pat on the back to a person in distress. This is a formal response assuring the one praying that God will respond to the prayer in some form of help. There are a number of such oracles, most of which center around the divine assurance, \u201cDo not fear,\u201d and the grounds on which that assurance can be based. Most of them do not identify the mediator of the divine word, but it is likely that such words were communicated by a priest, though it is possible that a prophet or some member of the community delivered them to the petitioner in a formal process of lament and response.
\nTeaching. A further responsibility of the priests according to the blessing of Levi in Deut. 33:10 was the teaching of t\u00f4r\u00e2, that is, of the ordinances and the law. This may well have grown out of more divinatory practices, inquiry of the priest bringing a decision via lots or Urim and Thummim as described above but also instruction about ritual or cultic matters, what was permissible and what was not\u2014matters of purity and holiness, for example. Some see such instruction as a later dimension of the priestly office, but the prophets make it clear that it was a well-known and fully assumed responsibility of the priests during the whole prophetic period and so probably much earlier. Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Malachi all characterize the priests specifically as the source of t\u00f4r\u00e2 or instruction and in some cases distinguish this function from the prophet\u2019s responsibility for word or vision and the elders for wise counsel:<\/p>\n
They shall keep seeking a vision from the prophet;
\ninstruction shall perish from the priest,
\nand counsel from the elders.
\n(Ezek. 7:26; cf. Jer. 18:18; Micah 3:11; Mal. 2:7a)<\/p>\n
Two texts from the early postexilic period provide examples of what such instruction by the priest may have been like and show its similarity to oracular inquiry. In Zech. 7:1\u20138, the people of Bethel send representatives to the priests at the temple (and to the prophets) to ask a question about cultic practice: \u201cShould I mourn and practice abstinence in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?\u201d (v. 3). The answer comes in this instance as a divine word through the prophet Zechariah to both priests and people. The substance of the inquiry is about proper cultic behavior. The means for determining that is through an oracle from the priests. Similarly, Haggai portrays the inquiry of the priests for decision and direction on cultic practice:<\/p>\n
Ask the priests for a ruling [t\u00f4r\u00e2]: If one carries consecrated meat in the fold of one\u2019s garment, and with the fold touches bread, or stew, or wine, or oil, or any kind of food, does it become holy? The priests answered, \u201cNo.\u201d Then Haggai said, \u201cIf one who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?\u201d The priests answered, \u201cYes, it becomes unclean.\u201d (Hag. 2:11\u201313)<\/p>\n
In both instances, the instruction of the priests is about ritual practice. A number of times in priestly ritual instruction in Leviticus, one encounters the introductory word: \u201cThis is the t\u00f4r\u00e2, the ritual\/instruction for the burnt offering \u2026\u201d (Lev. 6:2[9], 7[14], 18[25]; 7:1, 7, 11; cf. 11:46; 12:7; 13:59; 14:54\u201357). The various \u201cinstructions\u201d given in these instances have to do with types of sacrifice, distinctions between clean and unclean animals, a woman\u2019s uncleanness, and skin diseases. One may assume, in light of the various commonalities between the prophetic and legal texts, that such instruction was regularly a responsibility of the priests and a means for ordering and preserving the cultic apparatus, insuring conformity of the members of the community to the rules and regulations of the cultus and avoiding impurity and pollution, improper sacrifice or Sabbath observance, and in general the violation of ritual taboos that might endanger the community. This is confirmed by both Ezekiel (44:23; cf. 22:26) and the Priestly legislation (Lev. 10:10), which identify teaching the people the distinction between holy and common, clean and unclean, as a fundamental responsibility of the priests (cf. Deut. 24:8).
\nOne must not assume, however, that priestly instruction was confined to purely cultic matters, although the weight of specific evidence focuses on such matters. Hosea\u2019s critique of the priests for lack of knowledge and for forgetting the t\u00f4r\u00e2 of God (4:6; cf. Jer. 2:8), when placed alongside the specific indictment of the people for violation of the commandments in that same chapter, suggests that the priests were responsible for proper instruction in all dimensions of the law. Deuteronomy assigns to the priests responsibility for the preserving of the Deuteronomic law and a regular reading of it every seven years (Deut. 31:9\u201313, 24\u201326). To whatever extent such a process was carried out, it implicitly placed upon the Levitical priests a responsibility for the teaching of the whole of the law. If the entrance liturgies of Psalms 15 and 24 were to represent priestly questions to those who entered the sanctuary, as many presume, that would further identify the priestly instruction with moral as well as cultic behavior, or, to use the language of a later Jewish teacher, with \u201cthe weightier matters of the law\u201d (Matt. 23:23) as well as with the important ritual practices of right sacrifice, cultic purity, and holiness.
\nWhile it is not presented in the texts as a major function of the priestly office, Deuteronomy attests to a role that may be related to the teaching responsibility: the consultation of the Levitical priests, as well as the judge, who are at the central sanctuary, when a judicial decision is too difficult to resolve otherwise (Deut. 17:8\u201313). The involvement of the priests seems to be tied to their function and competence as teachers of the law (see v. 11). The Deuteronomic provision is similar to the reform of Jehoshaphat in the ninth century, establishing a superior or central court in Jerusalem for disputed cases and comprised of priests and elders under a dual leadership of chief priest and governor of the house of Judah. It may be that such a priestly responsibility came into being at this time. Ezekiel 44:24 attests to a judicial responsibility for the priests in the postexilic period.
\nSacrifice. The third of the priestly functions mentioned in Deuteronomy 33 is sacrifice. There is no specific reference to the priestly Levite in Judges 17\u201318 sacrificing, but the condemnation of Eli, priest at Shiloh, is because of the corruption of the priestly sacrificial responsibility on the part of his sons (1 Sam. 2:12\u201317) and testifies at an early stage to regulations and procedures for bringing sacrifices to the priest at the sanctuary and for the priest\u2019s carrying out a sacrificial ritual that included the priest\u2019s eating of some portion of the sacrifice. The Levitical legislation indicates various particular procedures that came to be the responsibility of the priest when sacrifices were made, including presenting the sacrifice on the altar and burning it and dealing with the blood of an animal sacrifice (Leviticus 1\u20137). The priest\u2019s involvement in the sacrifical procedures seems to have been closely associated with the altar as the place of most direct contact with the divine. There are even texts that speak about the priests\u2019 involvement in the sanctuary as simply \u201cgoing up to the altar\u201d (2 Kings 23:9; cf. 1 Sam. 2:28).
\nThe sacrificial system was also a major source of income and support for the priesthood (see chapter 3). While a priest might be paid a wage (e.g., Judg. 17:10), it was clearly understood that there was a \u201cpriest\u2019s due\u201d from the sacrifices that were offered (e.g., Lev. 2:1\u201310; 6:14\u201318; Deut. 18:3), a priestly portion that was carefully protected by financial penalties if eaten even unintentionally (Lev. 22:10\u201316). Some have argued plausibly that the expression used to speak of ordaining the priests, that is, \u201cto fill the hands,\u201d may refer to the priestly portion of sacrifices, though that is not the only possible meaning of this somewhat enigmatic expression.
\nAs Rodney Hutton has noted, there is a direct link between the social maintenance of the priest by a payment system rooted in the sacrificial system and the role of the priest in providing social maintenance by risking danger in<\/p>\n
\u201cbearing the sin\u201d of the offender and thereby purging the sancta of the contaminating effects of the offender\u2019s sin.\u2026 [A]ccording to priestly ideology the priest did exercise a crucial social function, fraught with danger from contact with the combined powers of the uncontrollably numinous and of deadly contamination. He was the equivalent of the modern nuclear reactor supervisor who must channel the tremendous energy of the reactor while at the same time facing potential death in preventing radioactive contamination, core meltdown, and nuclear catastrophe, and who must supervise the decontamination of the environment in the case of disaster, which in cultic terms was an everyday occurrence.<\/p>\n
Developments in the History of Priesthood<\/p>\n
In the course of the history of the priesthood in ancient Israel, there were developments that affected the roles and responsibilities of the priests. The most notable one was the demotion of the Levites from full participation in priestly functions to a secondary position with subordinate duties that did not include officiating at the altar. This is most pronounced in Ezekiel\u2019s vision of the temple in chapters 40\u201348 (Ezek. 44:10\u201316), as well as in Chronicles (e.g., 1 Chron. 23:2\u20136) and the Priestly legislation of the Pentateuch (e.g., Num. 3:5\u201310; 8:19, 22). The book of Deuteronomy does not seem to know a distinction between priest and Levite or a relegation of the Levites to a secondary position in the ritual and worship activity of the community, but that is a little deceptive when the evidence is examined more closely (see below).
\nThe literature gives different kinds of rationales for the distinction that came to operate in the postexilic period and may have been present earlier. On the one hand, it is grounded in the Levitical disobedience indicated at two points. One is found in Ezekiel\u2019s claim that the Levites went far from the Lord and were idolatrous like the rest of Israel (Ezek. 44:10, 12); the other is reflected in the rebellion of Korah and other Levites and their subsequent punishment (Numbers 16), which is seen in the end as a reminder \u201cthat no outsider who is not of the descendants of Aaron, shall approach to offer incense before the LORD, so as not to become like Korah and his company\u201d (Num. 17:5[16:40]). On the other hand, the subordinate role of the Levites is understood to be part of David\u2019s organization of the temple worship and its maintenance (1 Chron. 23:2\u20136).
\nWhile it is very difficult to uncover the history of the priesthood and account for the development described above, some observations may be made toward a sense of the whole. The careful order and classification of priests that is now found in the priestly oriented literature represents a somewhat later development and would not have been the way things were at the beginning if one can take a clue from the story of Micah\u2019s appointment of a family or household priest in Judges 17\u201318. Here priesthood is linked with a family shrine rather than with the later official national cult. Levitical descent is not required but seems to be a clear plus in that Micah believes himself to be in better stead with Yahweh for having now a Levite as priest and not just a member of the family. The fact that this Levite had lived in Bethlehem and thus was associated with Judah raises the question of whether the term \u201cLevite\u201d was originally a job title rather than a tribal name. On the basis of this story and other evidence, Lawrence Stager has suggested that the priesthood in early Israel performed an important socioeconomic function as it \u201chelped \u2018absorb\u2019 a surplus of young males, especially for those who were not firstborns and, as the frontier was closing, stood little chance of inheriting much of the patrimony or of pioneering new land.\u201d Samuel would have been another such \u201cyouth\u201d who became a priest. Many families from all over Israel would have dedicated their sons to the Levitical order, and, as Deuteronomy indicates (10:8\u20139; 18:1\u20138), they would have been landless and dependent upon patrons among the tribes or individual or corporate support for their livelihood, as was the case with the young Levite attached to the house of Micah. So while some were indeed born to the priesthood, others were recruited across clan and tribal boundaries.
\nThe development of an official state religion brought about a centralized priesthood associated with the court. The presence of two main priests in the court of David, Zadok and Abiathar, points to priestly rivalries that may have developed at an earlier stage. Both the Judean cultus with its two priests and the Northern Kingdom cultus with its two state shrines established by Jeroboam have been seen to reflect rivalries and conflicts between Aaronide (Zadok) and Mosaic (Abiathar) priestly lines, conflicts that are signaled in various Pentateuchal stories. Others would see these conflicts as indicating a rivalry involving an early Mosaic priesthood that served tribal interests and continued on into the monarchy under whom another and official state priesthood (Zadok\u2014Aaronide) was established alongside the Mosaic or Levitical priesthood (Abiathar) and eventually came to dominate, forcing the Levitical priests into a subordinate role.
\nThe evidence from Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History may point to a more complex development during the later monarchy than appears to be the case on the surface, as Steven Tuell has noted in a careful study of references to the Levites in Deuteronomy and Samuel\u2013Kings. On the basis of a number of texts he reaches the following conclusion:<\/p>\n
Already in the First Temple period, evidence of a very complex subsystem within the one category \u201cLevitical priest\u201d can be found. At the head of the priestly class is \u05d4\u05db\u05d4\u05df, the priest. Other subgroupings are headed by the elders of the priests. Then, there are the guardians of the threshold, and the second order of the priests: groups twice mentioned together, and in company with the chief priest. Finally, there are \u201cthe Levites,\u201d bearing the Ark in procession in Jerusalem and \u201cthe Levitical priests\u201d outside of the city, serving a vital function in the land: arbitrating disputes, pronouncing blessings, taking part in occasional rituals, and diagnosing leprosy.<\/p>\n
Tuell\u2019s analysis suggests that something more was going on than simply priestly rivalry, although that came to play a significant part. But the priestly responsibilities developed in more complex ways and produced various groups within the general category even before the dominance of the Zadokite priesthood and the clear relegation of the Levites to a subordinate role in the postexilic period. This is reflected not only in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History but also in the Priestly system\u2019s assignment of guard duty (Num. 1:50\u201353) and the \u201cwork\u201d or \u201cservice\u201d of assembling and disassembling the tabernacle and moving it (Num. 1:50\u201351; 3:5\u20139) to the Levites as well as in the law of the temple in Ezekiel 40\u201348.
\nIn any event, by the postexilic period the special place and roles of the Levites was firmly established. They were in charge of the work in the temple, tending to its furnishings, the sacred vessels, and the like. They were gatekeepers and they were musicians responsible for the musical praise of the Lord (1 Chron. 23:1\u20136; cf. 2 Chron. 5:12\u201314; 7:6). The Levites were in charge of the temple treasuries and storerooms (1 Chron. 26:20; 2 Chron. 8:15) as well as responsible for collection and distribution of offerings (2 Chron. 31:11\u201316) and the collection of the temple tax (2 Chron. 24:4\u20137; 34:9). In addition, they continued as scribes and teachers as well as administrators and judges (1 Chron. 26:29; 34:13).<\/p>\n
THE PROPHET<\/p>\n
At the point of the Levitical responsibility for leadership in music, one encounters an example of a priestly-Levitical function that overlaps with prophecy. In 1 Chronicles 25, the musicians \u201cprophesy\u201d with their musical instruments, a not uncommon connection between music and prophecy (e.g., 1 Sam. 10:5; 2 Kings 3:15). The customary sharp distinction between priest and prophet as religious roles covers or distorts ways in which these two leadership roles overlapped or shared functions. Such overlap is not too surprising when one considers, for example, that two of the major prophetic figures of ancient Israel, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, came from priestly lineage (Jer. 1:1) and, in the case of the latter, probably had that designation (Ezek. 1:3).
\nThe most obvious way in which priest and prophet functioned similarly in Israelite religion is the fact that oracle inquiry could be sought from either priest or prophet. The priest may have had particular devices by means of which a divine word or decision could be received, for example, Urim and Thummim or the ephod, but the prophet seems early on to have been a source of divine direction or an oracle. There is some indication that this was the earliest primary role of the prophet. That is, a prophet was a seer to whom people came and paid money or brought presents to get a divine word of some sort (1 Samuel 9). In the eighth century, Micah testifies to prophetic divination, which he condemned primarily because it was a monetary operation (Micah 3:11; cf. 3:6\u20137). The word \u201cpeace\u201d (\u0161\u0101l\u00f4m), which certain prophets are condemned for uttering, seems in Micah\u2019s context to have been a response to oracle inquiry. Jeremiah condemned prophets for saying \u201cPeace\u201d when there was no peace (and thus uttering a \u201cfalse\u201d prophecy), but in Micah the condemnation is because \u201cpeace\u201d was a positive response to the divinatory inquiry and one that came when suitable compensation was provided, whereas a negative word (\u201cwar\u201d) was given when there was not satisfactory remuneration to the prophet.
\nShared religious functions between prophet and priest are evident also in the way in which apparently priestly speech forms were used also by prophets, for example, the oracle of salvation, which appears in the prophetic literature associated with, among others, both Jeremiah and the prophet of the exile whose oracles are preserved in Isaiah 40\u201366 (e.g., Jer. 30:10\u201311; 42:11\u201312; Isa. 41:8\u201313, 14\u201316; cf. 1 Kings 22:5\u20136, 12), and the priestly torah (e.g., Isa. 1:10\u201317; 33:14\u201316; Micah 6:6\u20138). One needs to be careful about assuming that such forms are \u201ctaken over\u201d from priestly genres. They may have simply been shared modes of speech and oracular activity. The oracle of salvation was a common mode of speech among prophets or prophet-like figures in Mesopotamia in the Old Babylonian period at Mari and in the later Neo-Assyrian period as well as in the first millennium Aramean milieu (e.g., the Zakkur inscription ca. 800 B.C.). The fact that the basic prophetic speech form in the ancient Near East, including Israel, seems to have been some type of oracle of salvation announcing deliverance against or from an enemy has been one of the grounds for suggesting an even closer connection between prophet and priest, that is, the possibility that the prophets of ancient Israel, or at least some of them, were directly connected with the cult and under priestly supervision.
\nThere are numerous places in the literature where priest and prophet are paired in a way that suggests a close association of the two (e.g., Jer. 4:9; 5:31; 6:13; 13:13; 14:18). The prophetic bands or guilds, the n\u0115bi\u2019\u00eem or the b\u0115n\u00ea hann\u0115bi\u2019\u00eem (on which see below), may have been particularly associated with cult centers and under the supervision of priests. They were found at major cultic centers, such as Bethel (1 Kings 2:3) and Gilgal (2 Kings 4:38). And priestly control of prophetic bands as well as possibly of individual prophets is intimated in the eighth century in the effort of Amaziah, chief priest of Bethel, to control the activities of the prophet Amos in the Northern Kingdom (Amos 7:10\u201317) as well as in seventh-century Judah, where the prophet Jeremiah seems to be subject to, or presumed subject to, priestly control. On one occasion he was beaten and put in the stocks by a priest because of his prophesying (Jer. 20:1\u20132). Even more indicative of formal oversight of prophetic activity by priests is the written reprimand of the priest Zephaniah by Shemaiah because he did not rebuke Jeremiah, \u201cwho plays the prophet\u201d inasmuch as Zephaniah had been appointed priest \u201cso that there may be officers in the house of the LORD for any madman who plays the prophet\u201d (Jer. 29:26\u201327).
\nFurthermore, some of the individual prophets, whose stories are told in the historical books or whose writings are preserved in the prophetic books, engaged in cultic activity or had clear connections to the temple, the latter suggesting a possible significant involvement in cultic matters. Thus, Samuel, who is seen at one point standing at the head of a band of ecstatic prophets (1 Sam. 19:20) and engaging frequently in prophetic activities, also led in the ritual of sacrifice (1 Sam. 9:13, 23) and indeed is first encountered in the biblical record as \u201cministering to the LORD in the presence of the priest Eli\u201d (1 Sam. 2:11; 3:1). Elijah also both headed a band of prophets and officiated at a sacrifice (1 Kings 18).
\nProphets received visions (Isaiah 6) and gave oracles (for example, Jeremiah and Hananiah in Jeremiah 28) in the main temple of the state. Hananiah\u2019s oracle was a typical oracle of salvation, but both were uttered in the temple before priests and prophet. Elsewhere prophet and priest are spoken of in the biblical tradition as functioning together in some capacity in the temple, though there is no detail to determine the character of that relationship other than its locus in the state shrine (Jer. 23:11; Lam. 2:20). In one instance, the sons of a \u201cman of God\u201d (see below for this term) are reported to have had a chamber in the temple (Jer. 35:4). It has been argued that some of the prophets whose writings are preserved in the Bible were cult prophets, as evidenced by hymnic or liturgical elements, absence of criticism of the cult, and oracles of salvation against the enemy. The most likely candidates are Joel, Nahum, and especially Habakkuk, but the evidence is more suggestive than definitive. The involvement of prophets in cultic activity within a sanctuary may well have changed and modulated over the course of Israel\u2019s pre-and postexilic history. That is certainly suggested by the way in which \u201cprophecy\u201d seems to have become a part of second temple worship in the form of the Levitical musicians referred to above (1 Chron. 25:1\u20138; 2 Chron. 20:14; 29:25; 35:15).
\nBoth of these types of religious leadership shared the fundamental task of mediating the covenantal relationship between the God of Israel and the people. The dominant way of viewing the prophet in contemporary discussion, especially that influenced by anthropological and sociological analogies, is as intermediary or mediator, that is, as \u201clinks between the human and supernatural worlds.\u201d This may have happened most often in the communication of messages from the divine world to the human, whether solicited or unsolicited, but it may have involved healing acts as well, also mediating divine action (1 Kings 17:17\u201324; 2 Kings 4:18\u201337; 20:1\u201311 \/\/ Isa. 38:1\u20138).
\nThe common ground between priest and prophet, however, does not diminish the significant differences in their role characters and functions. Several biblical texts differentiate the role of priest and prophet as major religious figures in ancient Israel (Jer. 18:18; Ezek. 7:26; cf. Micah 3:11). Torah, or instruction, was the responsibility of the priest according to this traditional differentiation, counsel the task of the sage or wise person, and the prophet was the one who brought vision, word, or oracle. The prophet, therefore, was one whose primary function was to receive messages from the deity, possibly in ecstatic trance or through dreams or visions (see below). The vision was a means of prophetic reception and not a part of priestly mediation of the torah.
\nThere were some other significant differences between priest and prophet. In the classic analysis of Max Weber, it has been noted that the priest might assume the role by lineage or be appointed, while the prophet tended to be a figure whose authority was by divine calling and often involved spirit possession, suggesting a more charismatic kind of authority. The extended contemporary investigation of prophecy has rightly challenged some of Weber\u2019s conclusions, particularly the distinction between charismatic and institutional, indicating how often it can be seen that prophets may have had strong institutional bases and were under some external control by human authorities and not simply subject to possession by divine power (see above). Wilson\u2019s study of central and peripheral prophecy has suggested a more complex and nuanced view of the relation of prophecy to official establishments and institutional order. But there remained a core of difference in most cases between the calling of the prophet, which was constantly under attack, and the generally accepted appointment or inherited position of priests that is consistent with Weber\u2019s observation.
\nA further differentiation at the social level between priesthood and prophecy was the fact that women could and did become prophets even though they did not become priests, at least as far as the evidence indicates. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, women were found among the oracular speakers or intermediaries who most closely paralleled the prophets of Israelite history, at Mari and Emar, for example. Several examples of women prophets in Israel are attested in the biblical record, enough to suggest that the actuality was probably even more extensive. The most obvious example is the prophetess Huldah, whose oracle concerning Josiah is reported in 2 Kings 22:14\u201320. This account, in which several officials, including the priest Hilkiah, went to inquire of the prophetess and then reported the prophetic oracle back to the king, is reminiscent of the frequent report of oracles to kings or queens at Mari by third parties who received the oracle from the prophet and then passed it on, though in those cases the oracle was usually unsolicited. The prophet Isaiah was married to a prophetess (Isa. 8:3), and Ezek. 13:17\u201323 reports a judgment against certain women who \u201cprophesy out of their own imagination.\u201d Furthermore, named women are identified as prophets from the earliest period (Miriam and Deborah) to the latest (Noadiah). Insofar as any detail is given in the reports of these prophetesses, their activities correspond to the activities of male prophets. As Bowen has indicated, the somewhat peculiar references to bands and veils in regard to the female prophets of Ezekiel 13 may suggest a more specialized prophetic activity associated with pregnancy and childbirth. This would be in accord with indications of healing activities on the part of other Israelite prophets, for example, Elijah, Elisha, and Isaiah.<\/p>\n
The Character of Israelite Prophecy<\/p>\n
Terminology. While not a decisive indicator of role and function for professional figures, religious or otherwise, several terms give some clues to the character of prophecy in ancient Israel. The most common term is the Hebrew word most often translated as \u201cprophet,\u201d n\u0101b\u00ee\u2019, a noun from the Semitic root n\u0101b\u0101\u2019, \u201cto call, proclaim, name.\u201d The word has been understood as both an active participle, meaning \u201cproclaimer\u201d or, more likely, a passive participle, \u201cone who is called.\u201d Either definition fits the role. While the active participle is a less likely meaning, it would point to one of the main activities of Israelite prophets, the announcing or proclaiming of the divine word, whether solicited or not. The prophets were clearly often, if not always, persons who acted under some sense of divine call or compulsion, as is indicated in a number of the written records of Judean prophets (Isaiah 6; Jeremiah 1; Ezekiel 1; cf. Amos 7:14\u201315), and the call seems to have played a part in the authorization and authentication of prophecy (see below).
\nMore recently, Daniel Fleming, on the basis of new texts from the northern Mesopotamian cities of Mari and Emar that have provided us with the first formal cognates to the Hebrew noun n\u0101b\u00ee\u2019 in a West Semitic setting, has argued that the meaning of the word is \u201cthe one who invokes the gods,\u201d and points to several places in the biblical record where the prophetic activity was precisely calling on the name of God, particularly the famous contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18), where each party in the contest sought to invoke its god for a display of power. The contest was won when one of the prophets failed to invoke the deity or evoke his power.
\nTwo of the terms that designated prophets reflect their function as seers or diviners of the future: r\u014d\u2019eh and \u1e25\u014dzeh. Both of these are active participle forms of words for \u201cseeing.\u201d The former seems to have functioned earlier in the history of Israelite prophecy, gradually being displaced by the terms \u1e25\u014dzeh and n\u0101b\u00ee\u2019. This transition of terminology is reflected in 1 Sam. 9:9, where inquiry of the deity is identified as an activity involving a prophet (n\u0101b\u00ee\u2019), who was formerly called a \u201cseer\u201d (r\u014d\u2019eh). But the identification of a prophet as a \u201cseer\u201d did not disappear, and the term r\u014d\u2019eh continued to function alongside \u1e25\u014dzeh and n\u0101b\u00ee\u2019 to refer to prophetic figures (Isa. 29:10; 30:10).
\nYet a third term appears a number of times as a way of designating a prophet. It is the expression \u2019\u00ee\u0161 h\u0101\u2019\u0115l\u014dh\u00eem, \u201cman of God,\u201d that is, one who is seen as authorized by God and acting as God\u2019s representative. This term is used for, among others, Elijah (1 Kings 17:18) and Elisha (e.g., 2 Kings 4:10, 16, 21, 25). In some instances, the word \u201choly\u201d (q\u0101d\u00f4\u0161) is used to refer to the \u201cman of God.\u201d
\nFirst Samuel 9:5\u201310 gives a glimpse of all three of these terms in use, apparently at an early stage in the history of prophecy. It is the account of Saul\u2019s search for his lost donkeys. In the search, he and the boy with him consult a \u201cman of God\u201d who divines the future for a fee. The term \u201cman of God\u201d is the primary designation in the story for the figure Samuel, but he is also called a \u201cseer\u201d and it is in this context that a narrative insertion reports on the shift from \u201cseer\u201d to \u201cprophet\u201d to designate the person to be consulted when one wished to \u201cinquire of God.\u201d The factuality of the story is, of course, impossible to determine, but it is likely to preserve with some accuracy the way these terms were used at an early stage. The terms may represent some role differentiation in the early period, but the nuances of difference became lost and there was probably considerable fluidity in the applicability of the terms. The passage suggests a distinction, but it does so in terms of historical development in nomenclature rather than in terms of roles. While one may be tempted to draw sharp lines suggesting different types of prophecy or differences between early and later prophecy, the continuity of character and activity is more evident than any major distinctions, whether in terminology, manifestation of possession, function, or relation to official religion.
\nProphetic Groups. As already indicated, prophets functioned in ancient Israel both in groups and singly. That is, there are a number of attestations to bands or groups of prophets, sometimes called n\u0115b\u00ee\u2019\u00eem, \u201cprophets,\u201d and sometimes called b\u0115n\u00ea hann\u0115b\u00ee\u2019\u00eem, often translated as \u201csons of the prophets,\u201d but actually simply meaning \u201cbelonging to the prophetic group.\u201d These may have been connected with cult centers (see above) and were sometimes found in association with named prophets whose activities are reported apart from their connection with the prophetic bands, for example, Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha. The \u201cprophets\u201d often functioned in a central role, giving oracles to political leaders, as in the story recorded in 1 Kings 22. But they did not always function in relation to the establishment and may have lived and worked more on the margins of society or in relation to particular shrines or locales, that is, in relation to local religious activities rather than in connection with official or state forms of religious activity. The account of Amos\u2019s encounter with the priest of Bethel suggests that the chief priest may have had some control over the \u201cprophets,\u201d but the evidence there is quite indirect. Jeremiah\u2019s frequent references to \u201cthe prophets\u201d who speak a false word or give oracles of salvation may have reference to groups of prophets who functioned primarily in relation to the political establishment. But that seems less the case with the prophetic bands associated with Elijah and Elisha. In any event, as best one can determine, the prophetic bands, like individual seers and prophets, were expected to mediate between the deity and the community or the individual, giving a divine word about the future, especially announcing the outcome of wars or divine deliverance in the face of some threat or danger.
\nThat not all prophets were associated with prophetic groups is well indicated by 1 Kings 22, where the prophetic group is depicted under the leadership of a named prophet, Zedekiah, but the prophet Micaiah is portrayed as a completely separate figure, clearly outside the establishment though well known to it. So it was that Israelite society included throughout the monarchical period a number of prophets who functioned primarily or often as individuals, sometimes intimately connected with the political and religious establishment, as, for example, in the case of the prophets Nathan and Gad in David\u2019s court or the prophet Isaiah, who had direct connections with the kings over a long period of time and was consulted by the king or took the initiative in bringing divine words to the king. Even those individual prophets who were not centrally located vis-\u00e0-vis the state and official religion in the earlier period, that is, in the tenth and ninth centuries, sometimes directed divine words to kings while also being consulted by individuals in the communities. Classic examples of this combination, at least in the Northern Kingdom, are found in the legends associated with Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17\u20132 Kings 10).
\nRelation to the Social Order. The relation of the prophetic groups and the individual prophets to the society and particularly to religious and political dimensions was quite complex. Our understanding of that relationship has been illumined by Wilson\u2019s analysis of the function of prophets as either central to the political and religious establishment\u2014helping to provide maintenance of the social order and its stability, promoting social welfare\u2014or peripheral to the main social order and working often to effect change and to destabilize the existing structures. Such prophetic activities, however, cannot be understood simplistically. As Wilson points out, peripheral intermediaries or prophets might seek to arrest social change by reaffirming traditional values, working conservatively in behalf of the old gods and in the face of rapid social change. More often, they sought innovative changes in the society. Peripheral prophets even served a stabilizing function by allowing minority groups to express and vent their frustration, thus relieving their discontent. Furthermore, central and peripheral prophets could exist in the same society at the same time, as is probably reflected in the stories of prophetic conflict in ancient Israel (see below), and prophets could move in and out of these \u201cpositions,\u201d going, for example, from a more peripheral status to a more central role, as seems to be the case in the depiction of the prophet Elisha in the Deuteronomistic History.\u201d
\nSamuel seems to have been a member of the central cultic establishment who gave political and religious leadership and functioned at times as a prophet. His opposition to the institution of kingship can be understood as an effort to preserve and promote traditions associated with Shiloh and other cult centers. But the Saul constituency would not have seen his position as maintaining the social order. Elijah is fairly consistently presented as \u201ca peripheral prophet who used prophecy in an attempt to reform Israel\u2019s central cult, which had been infiltrated by the worship of Baal.\u201d Amos in the eighth century seems to have been a central prophet in Judah and a peripheral prophet in Israel. A classic case of the encounter of central and peripheral prophets is the account of prophetic conflict in 1 Kings 22, where the four hundred prophets under the leadership of Zedekiah are clearly related to the political establishment and serve to provide oracles of salvation, supporting divine words for the political leadership, in this case with regard to military endeavors. Over against this group and clearly distinguished from them was Micaiah, whose oracle arises out of a vision of the heavenly council in deliberation and its effect is a thoroughly destabilizing one, to wit, the death of the political leader.
\nIn all of these examples, it is clear that Israelite prophecy is to be seen in significant relation to social structures and groups. Validation of the prophet\u2019s role is, at least in part, provided by the society or elements within the society. The authority of the prophetic word or oracle was a critical factor in the response of the leadership or of the people. That authority was manifest in several ways, particularly through accounts of prophetic power such as miracles and predictions. Even the Deuteronomic law assumed the predictive power of the prophet as a test of prophetic authority. The denunciation of some prophets by the deity through the agency of other prophets (for example, Ezekiel 12) was because of their lying visions, prophesying out of their imaginations. They claimed a power and an intermediary power that they did not have, at least according to the opposing prophetic voice and in some instances according to the test of prophetic prediction by the ensuing events.
\nThe prophetic call narratives also dealt with the issue of prophetic authority and prophetic validation or authentication before the society. It has been suggested that the narratives themselves functioned only secondarily this way, with reference to the later collection of prophetic oracles rather than the actual career of the prophet whose call is reported. That is, the call narratives served to ground the authority of the prophetic book that grew out of the work of a particular prophet. The acceptance of the prophet by the people or the particular group with whom a prophet was associated was dependent more upon the prophet\u2019s activity or behavior. At the same time, there are some indications that the prophetic claim to be called served within the prophet\u2019s own experience to answer challenges to his or her claim to be the intermediary of the divine word. At least that seems to be the case with regard to Amos, who refers to his call in response to the effort of the priest Amaziah to bring him into line and prohibit his prophetic activity in the Northern Kingdom (Amos 7:10\u201317). In this conflict between priest and prophet, the attestation of a divine call or commission distinguishes the prophet\u2019s authority from the priest\u2019s oversight.
\nRelation to the Divine World. The stories of prophetic conflict, for example, the encounter between Micaiah and Zedekiah and the four hundred prophets (1 Kings 22), the encounter between Amos and the priest Amaziah, and the encounter between Jeremiah and the other prophets active in Judah (represented especially by the prophet Hananiah [Jeremiah 28]), may all be understood in relation to the social and political context of Israel and Judah, reflecting either conflicts between central and peripheral prophets or particular historical and social circumstances at the time of the conflict. Such analysis, however, is incomplete on its own. Israelite prophecy\u2014and perhaps ancient Near Eastern prophecy generally\u2014cannot be understood simply in terms of its social, religious, or political world. It has to be understood from a frame of reference outside the realia of social existence though never separated from them. Prophetic authority and prophetic activity were derivative of an experience that can only be understood as reflecting or claiming a transcendent ground. This is attested particularly in two ways. One was the call experience already referred to, involving the prophet\u2019s encounter with the deity through a theophanic experience in which the prophet was called or commissioned (perhaps more than once) and given a specific task even in the face of objection or resistance on the part of the prophet. There is little indication of Amos\u2019s validation by any social group, for example, though such may have been the case within his Judean context. The ground of his resistance to the representative of official state religion is solely his conviction of operating under a divine commission.
\nThe other indication of self and societal transcendence was the prophet\u2019s vision of the heavenly assembly and his or her role as a herald or messenger of the decree of the divine council with regard to events on earth. Prophetic oracles and prophetic narratives attest to a starting point for prophetic speech and activity in a transcendent world identified by the image of the council of the Lord, the heavenly assembly (e.g., 1 Kings 22:19\u201323; Isaiah 6; Jer. 23:16\u201322; Amos 3:7). Both formally and conceptually the prophetic oracle was a message, not simply from the deity but from the divine world, where the decrees of the council of Yahweh were set forth and transmitted as a divine proclamation or message by the prophetic herald: \u201cThus says Yahweh.\u201d This conceptuality is so much a feature of Israelite prophecy that it must be taken into account as much as defining a particular position for prophecy vis-\u00e0-vis society. The word of the prophet to the society in which the prophet lived and functioned was rooted firmly in a relationship to the divine effecting a mediation of the divine word to the contemporary community of the prophet. The sociopolitical and religious character of prophecy was not simply due to the particular concerns of the prophet or the prophet\u2019s group in addressing the human world. It came out of a sociopolitical transcendent world that was understood to be the source of governance for what happened in the royal court and the law court, in battle and exile, in the streets and the sanctuaries. Heaven spoke through the prophet; earth listened in anticipation. The social world of the prophet was to be found in heaven as much as on earth. This is the meaning of the intermediary role.
\nWhere conflict arose between prophets and prophetic groups, the issue was regularly understood as one of truthful message, authentic encounter with the divine, and access to the divine will and the divine word. While the accusation of false prophecy may have been in relation to whether or not the word of the prophet would come to pass, it was also a claim about whether or not the prophet had access to the transcendent world of the deity, whether or not the prophet was sent by the deity (Jer. 23:21\u201322, 32). That was the primary ground for prophetic intermediation. Thus, the groups of prophets were regularly identified not simply in relation to a particular prophet but also as prophets of a particular deity\u2014Yahweh (e.g., 1 Kings 18:4, 13) or Baal (1 Kings 18:19, 22, 25, 40; 2 Kings 10:19; cf. Jer. 2:8; 23:13) or Asherah (1 Kings 18:19)\u2014and prophesied in the name of the deity (Jer. 2:8; 23:13, 25), as indicated by the form of the prophetic oracle introduction: \u201cThus says \u2026\u201d This identification with a deity and orientation toward the divine world was as much a factor in prophetic conflict as the relative social positions of the prophets. It was possible for prophets to operate and function primarily in relation to the sociopolitical matrix of which they were a part rather than in relation to an experience of the divine world, but that could become the grounds for rejecting the prophecy as false. At the same time, it is clear from the record that prophets did announce contrary decrees from the same deity.<\/p>\n
Modes of Revelation<\/p>\n
The question of how a prophet received a message from the deity is difficult to answer. Often the text will say something like, \u201cThe word of the LORD came to \u2026\u201d (e.g., Jer. 2:1; Ezek. 17:1; 36:16; Zech. 6:5; 8:1, 18). This may have been by way of an audition or a vision. The latter is clearly indicated in a number of prophetic texts that represent visionary experiences (e.g., 2 Sam. 7:17; 1 Kings 22:17, 19\u201323; 2 Kings 6:16\u201317; Isa. 1:1; 6:1\u201313; Jer. 14:14; Ezek. 1:1; 7:13; Amos 7\u20139; Obad. 1; Nahum 1:1; Hab. 2:2; Zechariah 1\u20136; 13:4)\u2014whether or not in some sort of trance or ecstatic state, as seems to have been the case with Ezekiel\u2014and is further suggested by the prophetic superscriptions referring to what the prophet \u201csaw\u201d (Isa. 2:2; 13:1; Amos 1:1; Micah 1:1; Hab. 1:1). There is enough interchange of word and vision, of \u201csaw\u201d and \u201cheard\u201d in prophetic book superscriptions (Isa. 2:2; Amos 1:1; Micah 1:1) that it is difficult to distinguish in any significant way between auditory and visual reception of the divine message. First Kings 22:19\u201323 is a classic instance of a prophet\u2014in this case a peripheral prophet, not a part of the main group of prophets consulted by the political establishment\u2014recounting a vision of the heavenly assembly that served to provide a message to communicate to the king.
\nThe textual evidence from Israel and elsewhere leaves the relationship between vision (\u1e25\u0103z\u00f4n) and dream (\u1e25\u0103l\u00f4m) as prophetic revelatory vehicles very ambiguous. There is no doubt that dreams were a mode of divine revelation in the ancient Near East, and there are texts that associate prophecy and \u201cdreaming.\u201d But those that do, specifically Deut. 13:2\u20136(1\u20135) and 1 Sam. 28:6, set dreams alongside prophecy and, in one case, Urim and Thummim as different modes of divine revelation. The texts suggest differentiation between prophecy and dreaming even more than similarity. In any event, the textual data from Israel and other locales where prophetic activity was apparent do not show any fundamental difference in the character of prophetic vision and reported dreams when both things are actually described.
\nSome analysts of prophetic activity in the ancient Near East have called attention to the fundamental distinction between divination and prophecy precisely at the point of the means of revelation rather than the content. In Mesopotamian culture, for example, one can recognize two primary modes of revelation, both of which were also present in Israelite culture. One form of mediation and revelatory discernment was divination and particularly extispicy (examination of the entrails of animals for divination purposes), an activity carried out by professionals who dealt with critical matters of the kingdom, such as the security of the city, conduct of war and military enterprises, and gaining information from the gods by \u201ccareful analysis of material and physical evidence and omens by applying traditional and highly refined codes of interpretation.\u201d In the Israelite context, this would have been by such devices as Urim and Thummim or by lots. The other form of discerning the divine word or will was through \u201cintuitive divination\u201d or prophecy, where the word of God was ascertained through some sort of psychic experience of revelation, that is, communication or information received from the deity through immaterial means. The communication was requested or sought (e.g., 1 Kings 22; Jer. 37:17; 38:14\u201316; Ezek. 14:1\u20135; 20:1\u20133), or it could come spontaneously, either with oracles of salvation or with words of judgment (e.g., 2 Sam. 7:4; 12:1; 1 Kings 20:13, 28; Jer. 26:1\u20136).
\nThere are instances in which the prophetic word came in an experience of trance or ecstasy, and some forms of the verb \u201cto prophesy\u201d seem to refer to more ecstatic activities in which the prophet or prophets were posssessed by some power. Not only is that evident in the stories of early prophecy in Israel, as, for example, in the accounts of Saul\u2019s frenzy (1 Sam. 10:5\u201313; 19:20\u201324), but the depictions of Elijah (2 Kings 3:14\u201319) and Ezekiel, who experiences the \u201chand of Yahweh\u201d or the \u201cspirit of Yahweh\u201d upon him (Ezek. 2:2; 3:12, 22) and is transported from one place to another by the spirit (Ezek. 3:14), suggest that ecstatic or trance experiences were fairly common if not always the rule. Music seems to have played a role on occasion in stimulating the ecstatic experience (1 Sam. 10:5; 2 Kings 3:15), but there are also instances of self-laceration to accomplish the same end (1 Kings 18:28; Zech. 13:6). Efforts to distinguish between \u201cacceptable\u201d and \u201cunacceptable\u201d prophecy in ancient Israel, between legitimate and illegitimate or between true and false prophecy on the basis of the presence or absence of ecstatic experience will not work. Ecstasy was probably frequently but not always present, a part of the experience of those who were regarded as \u201ctrue\u201d prophets and those who were \u201cfalse,\u201d experienced by both central and peripheral prophecy.
\nNote should be taken of the different ways in which prophetic communication to others took place. Along with the proclamation of a message in verbal form with the messenger formula \u201cThus says \u2026,\u201d the prophet could and did communicate the divine word by means of symbolic acts, some of which were momentary, single acts (Jeremiah 19; 25:15\u201329; 28:10\u201311), some of which were prolonged endeavors (Isa. 8:1\u20134; 20:1\u20136; Jer. 16:1\u20134; Ezekiel 4; 24:15\u201327). Interpretation of the symbolic action may or may not have been a part of the communication.<\/p>\n
Prophetic Activity<\/p>\n
The particular activities of prophets in ancient Israel have already been indicated in the discussion above but need to be summarized here. The primary function of the prophet was the giving of oracles from the deity, oracles that had to do with military activities, illness and the threat of death, cultic faithfulness, and the responsibilities of king and people, of leaders and populace, to serve the deity in accordance with the deity\u2019s wishes. Cross has suggested that the prophetic agenda can be understood as falling into three primary tasks. As messenger from the divine assembly with the decree of the assembly and the deity, the prophet was responsible for:<\/p>\n
1. Representing the divine king to the human king (e.g., 1 Sam. 10:1ff.; cf. 1 Kings 11:29\u201339; Jer. 23:1\u20136)
\n2. Proclaiming God\u2019s justice and the requirements of covenant (e.g., 1 Sam. 15:26\u201329; 1 Kings 21; Micah 3:9\u201312)
\n3. Announcing and interpreting the deity\u2019s interventions (1 Samuel 7; 1 Kings 22; Amos 5:18\u201320)<\/p>\n
As with Near Eastern prophecy generally, much of the prophet\u2019s activity was in relation to the political leadership. That is consistently the case from Samuel and the prophets associated with David\u2019s court through Elijah and Elisha down to Jeremiah and the end of kingship in Israel. But from the start, prophets gave oracles to individuals who consulted them whatever their status, and, increasingly in Israel\u2019s history, they directed oracles to the wider community or to segments within the community.
\nEven as some of the oracle inquiry of the prophet was directed toward determining the prospects for recovery of health for someone ill or near death (e.g., 1 Kings 14:1\u201318; 2 Kings 1:2\u20134; 8:7\u201310; cf. 2 Kings 20:1), so it seems that prophets sometimes were involved in the healing of persons. Several narratives show prophets engaged in healing activities, specifically Elisha\u2019s healing of the Syrian commander Naaman (2 Kings 5:1\u201319) and Isaiah\u2019s healing of Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:7 \/\/ Isa. 38:21). But there are also reports of prophetic resuscitation of the dead (1 Kings 17:17\u201324; 2 Kings 4:18\u201337; 13:21). While the Elijah-Elisha stories are replete with legendary materials, they may be assumed to reflect understandings of prophetic activity with some authenticity. As Hutton has pointed out, the close association of healing with prophecy is suggested by 1 Kings 17:24 where the widow responds to Elijah\u2019s healing of her son by the words, \u201cBy this (\u2018att\u00e2 zeb) I know that you are a man of God.\u201d
\nThe fact that prayer accompanied the prophet\u2019s healing activity in some instances is a pointer to another intermediary activity on the part of prophets: intercession in behalf of others, especially intercession to seek the removal of the divine judgment upon the people. The association of prophecy with intercession is made even in a text that does not deal directly with prophecy. In the Genesis narratives, Abimelech is promised that Abraham will pray for him \u201cbecause he is a prophet\u201d (Gen. 20:7). But the association of prophecy with intercession to avert divine wrath or judgment, which is reflected also in the Mosaic intercessory prayers of the Pentateuch, was much more extensive than that nonprophetic text would suggest. There are several recorded instances of intercession on the part of such prophets as Elijah in behalf of a dying or dead child (1 Kings 17:20\u201321), Isaiah in behalf of the sick King Hezekiah (2 Kings 19:4), and Amos (Amos 7:2, 5) and Ezekiel (Ezek. 9:8; 11:13) in behalf of the people to save them from judgment. Even more indicative are the various texts that suggest that intercession was peculiarly a prophetic activity. Thus, Yahweh tells Jeremiah on several occasions not to intercede in behalf of the people (Jer. 7:16; 11:14; 14:11\u201312) and even swears that the intercession of Moses or Samuel, both prophetic figures whose prayers for the people are a part of the biblical tradition, would not be sufficient to avert the divine wrath announced against the people of Judah (Jer. 15:1). Perhaps the clearest pointers to the responsibility of the prophets for intercession in behalf of the people are two texts from Ezekiel in which the deity indicates a specific expectation that a prophet would intercede for the people in order to bring about divine relenting: \u201cAnd I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one\u201d (Ezek. 22:30). That the ones in the breach are assumed to be prophets is indicated by Ezek. 13:4\u20135: \u201cYour prophets have been like jackals among ruins, O Israel. You have not gone up into the breaches, or repaired a wall for the house of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Religious Dimensions of the Prophets\u2019 Messages<\/p>\n
While prophets were not always directly connected to the religious activities and practices of ancient Israel in a formal sense, it is clear from the above that their function within the society, whether on the center or the periphery, whether in behalf of social order and maintenance or disrupting that in behalf of either return to old values or the instigation of change, was a highly religious one. As intermediaries their role was to communicate the word and will of the deity and in some instances to mediate with the deity in behalf of the people, though primarily through prayer rather than through the procedures of sacrifice and the cult. In various ways they were influenced by and influential upon the religious practices of the cult.
\nOne of the clearest manifestations of the influence of the cult upon the prophets was the fact that their oracles were often shaped by the form and content of worship. Calls to worship were transformed into prophetic oracles of judgment (e.g., Amos 4:4\u20135) and priestly instruction or torah became a vehicle for calls to proper covenantal behavior (Isa. 1:10\u201317; Ezek. 33:14\u201316; Micah 6:6\u20138). The hymnic praise of the sanctuary greatly influenced the prophet whose message is preserved in Isaiah 40\u201355.
\nMore significantly, the critique of worship practices was a frequent theme of the prophet\u2019s oracles. This was directed toward worship that violated the covenantal obligation to worship Yahweh alone, as in the prophetic oracles announcing judgment against the people for the worship of Baal, the Queen of Heaven, Tammuz, or any other deity than the official and national god of Israel (e.g., 1 Kings 18; Jeremiah 2; 44; Ezekiel 8; 14:6\u20138; Hosea 2). The prophetic critique of the worship practices of the cult was also directed toward the incongruity between cultic activities and the treatment of others, between the worship of Yahweh and the treatment of the Israelite neighbor. Thus, Isaiah, Amos, and Jeremiah, along with other prophets, denounced various customary worship practices and announced doom on the sanctuaries where worship took place if the obligations to the deity were not carried out, specifically the just and compassionate treatment of other members of society.
\nBut the protest against formal religious practices was not a rejection of the cult per se, though some of the prophets\u2019 messages have been so interpreted. It is clear from what has been said above that a number of prophets had direct associations with the religious establishment and spoke their oracles in the sanctuary before the people. The loci of prophetic proclamation were many and varied. Not all of them were formally religious centers. But the temple was a major center of prophetic preaching, the proclamation about the temple dependent upon the practices of the people at any particular time. Both divine support of the central shrine (Isaiah) and threats to its continued existence (Jeremiah) were dimensions of the prophetic word. Further, in a later period, prophets, such as Haggai and Zechariah, were leaders in the move to reinstate the official cult in the postexilic period, though prophecy came to play a lesser role in the centuries after the return from exile, at least as far as the record indicates.<\/p>\n
THE KING<\/p>\n
While prophets and priests clearly played significant and varied roles in the religion of ancient Israel, it is much less clear what functions the king may have had in the Israelite cultus. Obviously, the question arises only for the official state religion of the United Monarchy and the Northern and Southern Kingdoms (see chapter 2), though the figure of the king influenced the later religious developments through the form of the messianic hope. Insofar as one can tell from the literary remains of Israel\u2019s history and comparative materials, the king seems to have played a part in the religious life of Israel in two broad ways.<\/p>\n
Cultic Legitimation of the Social Order<\/p>\n
As in other societies of the time, the Israelite king\u2014and that includes kings of both Northern and Southern Kingdoms\u2014provided a legitimation of the monarchy\u2019s social control and dominance through the royal temple cult. In the state religion, the king served as the chosen ruler of the national god of Israel, Yahweh\u2014symbolized and actualized in the king\u2019s anointing (e.g., Ps. 2:2)\u2014and thus exercised a representative function in behalf of the deity over people and land. The king\u2019s rule on earth was a reflection of the divine rule of the whole cosmos. The cosmic implications of the king\u2019s rule are vividly expressed in Psalm 72, where the fertility of the land and the existence of people in peace and well-being is dependent upon the king in Jerusalem. As the \u201cson\u201d and heir of the deity, the king claimed right over the land and its productivity to exercise in behalf of Yahweh (see Psalms 2; 72). Such oversight could be benevolent or malign, but it inevitably meant the king\u2019s drawing to himself the resources of the people in support of Yahweh\u2019s cultic establishment, for example, a lavishly appointed temple, as well as of the other rightful prerogatives of the king as Yahweh\u2019s anointed, such as a court and palace with staff and courtiers to maintain. As Keith Whitelam puts it:<\/p>\n
It is this portrayal of the king\u2019s fundamental position as the central symbolic figure in a well defined social and political order that allows royal ideology and ritual to address the twin problems of the justification for monarchy against opposition to its development as well as addressing the problem of any threats from urban factions who might try to usurp the king\u2019s position and claim the throne for themselves.\u2026 The significance of this royal world-view is that it provides religious sanction for the obedience of the state population to its king on the basis of the appeal to the rule of law.<\/p>\n
There were significant nuances of difference between the way in which the royal theology legitimated monarchical rule in the Southern Kingdom and the way it did in the North. The covenant theology of the tribal league carried over into the royal ideology and helped to provide the legitimation of the monarchy. This is especially reflected in the careers of Saul and David, where obedience to covenantal stipulations on the part of the king was an issue of fateful significance. The Northern Kingdom seems to have carried forward this covenantal ideology to some degree so that the monarchy did not have the stability it did in the South, though it is not altogether clear whether the instability in the North reflected older ideological forces at work or was motivated by \u201cdissatisfation with the performance of the existing king or by personal ambition.\u201d The very prompt response of the northern tribes to Rehoboam\u2019s perpetuation of Solomon\u2019s more despotic royal practices by completely withdrawing from the kingdom is indicative of a resistance to the ideology of kingship developing in the South, or at least to some of the practices of royal power implicitly undergirded by that ideology. There the earlier covenantal forms were transformed into the royal ideology of divine sonship by adoption and unconditional rule by eternal decree. Such an ideology, which had as its central foundations the choice of David and Zion, the king and the temple place, served to give powerful support to the structures and prerogatives of monarchy by linking them to the cult, what Cross has called the \u201cbet Yahweh-bet David typology\u201d:<\/p>\n
In its mythic dimension, the Temple of Zion and the kingship of the Davidic house are fixed in the \u201corders of creation,\u201d and thereby given eternal stability. Covenantal forms in their conditionality gave way to eternal forms in the royal cult. This applied both to the covenant of the league (the so-called Sinaitic covenant) and the covenant of David, which despite the continuance of the term b\u0115r\u00eet was transformed into an eternal decree in the new context of the Temple cult.<\/p>\n
The character of the national shrine at Bethel in the Northern Kingdom as both \u201ca\/the temple of the kingdom\u201d while also being regarded as \u201cthe king\u2019s sanctuary\u201d (Amos 7:13) is a sharp indicator of the overlap between state cult and royal position, even in the Northern Kingdom. The aim of Amaziah, the chief priest of the Bethel shrine, to force Amos to leave the country because of the political unrest his prophecies have stirred up or might do is a further indicator of the sociopolitical legitimation provided by the royal cultic establishment. The temple at Bethel was both royal and national shrine and thus the king could, through a representative cultic figure, exercise political and social control.
\nThe frequent building of sanctuaries on the part of the kings and their role in dedicating and setting up the cultic apparatus in these temples was a visible way of identifying the king with the divinely sanctioned order. Thus, David and Solomon were both involved in planning and building the temple at Jerusalem, but there were temples built by Jeroboam in the North at Bethel and Dan, and there may have been a royal sanctuary at Samaria or at Shechem, though the arguments for such are speculative in both instances. To the extent that the king may have been involved in organizing the cultic establishment, as the Chronicler reports David did extensively and as 1 Kings 12 also reports for Jeroboam in the North, he served further to exercise authority over the religious establishment and thus implicitly to provide a grounding for the monarchy\u2019s control of Israelite life. The leadership of the king in establishing the official state cult is especially noticeable in the case of Jeroboam, who drew upon ancient traditions in creating new cult images (bulls) to replace the ark, which was in the temple in Judah, setting them up in old sanctuaries in Dan and Bethel, installing new priests dependent upon him, and introducing a new major fall festival to rival the festival in Jerusalem (see chapter 2).
\nThe ideology and character of kingship in ancient Israel was not sharply dissimilar from its manifestation in other ancient Near Eastern societies. There existed in Israel, however, two significant checks on the dominance of the royal ideology: (a) the involvement of the people in the choice of kingship and of kings, and (b) the prophetic critique of kingship and of the worship practices of Israel in the temple in Jerusalem as well as in other shrines. Whereas in Mesopotamia, kingship was understood to have \u201ccome down from heaven\u201d as a gift of the gods, and individual kings were called and chosen by the gods, there existed in ancient Israel an old tradition whereby kingship was itself the choice of the people\u2014indeed, with divine resistance to its introduction\u2014and the people were seen to participate in some way in the choice of ruler as well as the national god. While the involvement of the people in the election of the king is most prominent in the relatively late law of kingship in Deuteronomy 17 and is absent from such sources of royal theology as the royal psalms, the will of the people played a role in the ascent of persons to the throne from the early stages in the history of kingship.
\nIn the Northern Kingdom especially, prophetic critique seems to have been effective at times in restraining, if not undoing, monarchical social control, as in the case of Jehu\u2019s rebellion (2 Kings 9\u201310). As others have noted, it was the prophets who seem to have been the primary bearers of the more conditional understanding of kingship in the North. In Judah that was less the case, although Jeremiah was apparently perceived as a serious threat to the social and political order, if the royal reaction to his prophecies as attested in the book of Jeremiah has any basis in reality.
\nIf the king led in the establishment of the official state religion, centered in the central sanctuary\u2014Jerusalem in the Southern Kingdom and Bethel in the Northern Kingdom\u2014but present also in other royal sanctuaries (such as the one at Arad in the South and Dan in the North\u2014see above and chapter 2), and the temple cultus helped to undergird the royal theology and the claim of the king, especially in the South, it is to be expected that the king would also take the initiative in matters of reform of the state cultus. A number of these are reported, not all of which are historically certain:<\/p>\n
Asa (1 Kings 15:9\u201324 \/\/ 2 Chronicles 14\u201316[14:2\u201316:14])
\nJehoshaphat (1 Kings 22:41\u201351 \/\/ 2 Chron. 17:1\u201312)
\nAthaliah (2 Kings 11 \/\/ 2 Chron. 22:10\u201323:21)
\nJoash (2 Kings 12:1\u201317[11:21\u201312:16] \/\/ 2 Chron. 24:1\u201314)
\nAmaziah (2 Chron. 25:14\u201316)<\/p>\n
Such enterprises are regularly couched in the literature as moves to bring the worship practices into conformity with the official theology as represented in both the Sinaitic and Jerusalem traditions. But they also functioned to maintain royal control of the religious institutions and establishment and thus served a sociopolitical purpose as much as or more than they did a religious one. Hezekiah\u2019s cultic reform in the eighth century in Judah involved actions intended to bring worship practices into line with the Yahwistic tradition, particularly the exclusive worship of Yahweh and the distaste for divine images, or to effect such exclusivism and rejection of divine images beyond previous practice. While the historicity of Hezekiah\u2019s reform has been debated, it is likely that it involved at least the destruction of the bronze serpent, Nehushtan, and the dismantling of altars throughout the kingdom. But there was a sociopolitical rationale for this reforming activity as well, as indicated in the following summary of Hezekiah\u2019s reform:<\/p>\n
This action can be seen as part of Hezekiah\u2019s plan to unify the kingdom of Judah, to centralize the cultic apparatus (with its fiscal infrastructure) in the Jerusalem Temple, and to attract northerners to Jerusalem\u2019s cause.<\/p>\n
One might well argue the same for Josiah\u2019s reform a century later, which seems to have had many of the same goals, although his ambitions for political unity seem to have been much larger, incorporating the Northern Kingdom into the kingdom of Judah. As Albertz has described this far-reaching effort to centralize the cult and purify it of elements foreign to the official state cult, or to eliminate features that had been previously acceptable in the state cult, \u201cit was at the same time a broad national, social and religious renewal movement which sought to use the historical opportunity offered by the withdrawal of Assyria to reconstitute the Israelite state fully.\u201d
\nIt is difficult to discern how accurate the reports of the Deuteronomistic Historian and the Chronicler are with regard to the reforms of such kings as Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, and Ahaz. The latter two kings, however, demonstrate some of the ways that political and religious dimensions of the national life were joined together. In the case of Joash, the reform, as reported in Kings, centered around repair of the temple (2 Kings 12:1\u201316). It shows the king as responsible for upkeep of the cultic apparatus and having final authority in determining how temple revenues would be handled. The passage suggests that there was a temple tax, assessed upon citizens for upkeep of the temple and dispensed by the priests. Joash\u2019s reform had its impetus in the tendency of the priests to hold onto the money and not use it for repairs. So Joash instituted what Lowery calls a \u201cuser fee,\u201d which was dispensed by a joint administration of bureaucratic and priestly elements (2 Kings 12:10). The interaction of priestly and royal elements in tending to and supporting the cultic establishment is evident in the story, but the dominance of the king is also a marked feature of the account, one that is consistent with the role the king played in the establishment of the central cultus.
\nAhaz\u2019s reform centered in his building of a second altar on a Syrian model. This apparently had to do with his accommodation to the Assyrians and the problem of how to assimilate the Assyrian gods to the stringent and intolerant Yahwistic state cultus. Ahaz managed this by a compromise that centered in his providing a new altar for the worship of Yahweh and moving the old altar to the side where the king could perform the rituals expected of an Assyrian vassal. Lowery concludes, \u201cThe brilliant double altar solution secured Ahaz\u2019s reputation as a loyal Yahweh worshiper and simultaneously showed him to be a loyal vassal to Assyria.\u201d<\/p>\n
The King\u2019s Participation in the Cult<\/p>\n
The other major religious role of the king was as a leader in cultic activity. While the biblical data do not give us a lot of information about this, what is there tends to confirm what one would expect from the practices of kingship elsewhere. In Ugarit, for example, the king was involved in ritual activities that included ablutions, prayer, and especially sacrifice. In Israel, also, the king on various occasions officiated at major cultic occasions, particularly in prayer and blessing and the offering of sacrifices. Both David and Solomon are depicted as leading the assembly of the people in standing at the altar and making sacrifices as well as blessing the people (2 Sam. 6:13, 17\u201318; 1 Kings 3:3; 8:5), both activities that were customarily in the hands of the priests. Elsewhere, kings are mentioned as presenting offerings and sacrifices in ways that suggest they officiated at the presentation (e.g., 2 Sam. 24:25; 1 Kings 12:32; 2 Kings 16:4). In Psalm 110, a royal psalm, the king is called \u201ca priest forever\u201d (Ps. 110:4). It cannot be inferred from these texts, however, that administering the sacrificial system was regularly a part of the royal responsibilities. In most of the cases mentioned above, the sacrifice went on in the context of the building of a new altar or a new sanctuary and thus was a one-time service of dedication and consecration. In one case\u2014Ahaz\u2019s building a new altar like the one in Damascus\u2014the text indicates that the king came to the altar and offered sacrifices, obviously to dedicate it, and then told a priest to offer the regular sacrifices at the great altar (each day understood), while the old bronze altar would be the king\u2019s personal entre to the deity or, as suggested above, the place where the king sacrificed to the Assyrian gods. The one suggestion of regular priestly duties associated with the royal house is a single note in one of the lists of persons in David\u2019s administration (2 Sam. 8:18) to the effect that \u201cDavid\u2019s sons were priests.\u201d
\nThe account of David\u2019s bringing the ark to Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 6 has often been read as evidence of a regular ritual procession of the ark into the temple. That narrative, however, is more likely to reflect a particular and standard ritual, \u201cthe introduction of a national god to a new royal city,\u201d something that was quite common in the ancient Near East. In this case, of course, the ark was the \u201ccult image\u201d of the national god. The Assyrian inscriptions that tell of such an event describe a pattern not unlike what one encounters in 2 Samuel 6: \u201cceremonial invitation of the national god into a royal city, the presentation of sacrifices and \u2018feasts and banquets of choice dishes\u2019 for all the people of the land.\u201d David\u2019s procession of the ark into the royal city of Jerusalem followed by sacrifices and offerings and then a feast for the people was just such an introduction of the deity into the new city. Even David\u2019s dancing, while clothed with a linen ephod, was a part of the ritual act. It is to be noted that in all of the Assyrian reports alluded to above, \u201cspecial emphasis is placed on the role in the proceedings played by the king, whose pious service to the deity in question is thus stressed.\u201d On the basis of the comparisons with the Assyrian texts, McCarter notes appropriately with regard to David, \u201cHe appears unambiguously as the patron and founder of the cult of Yahweh in Jerusalem.\u201d<\/p>\n
The King and the Central Festival<\/p>\n
The character of the central festival in the time of the monarchy has been one of the most debated topics in Israelite religion during the past century. Three hypotheses have dominated the discussion. H.-J. Kraus proposed that the feast of Tabernacles was the primary festival during the monarchy and centered in a celebration of Yahweh\u2019s choice of David as king and Zion as the divine abode. The basic textual grounds for this hypothesis are 2 Samuel 6 and 7; 1 Kings 8, and Psalm 132, all of which have to do with ritual celebration of the promise to David and the establishment of Jerusalem as the place of the divine dwelling. A counterproposal came from Artur Weiser, arguing that the center of the cultus was a covenant festival, celebrated at the new year in the autumn to renew the encounter between God and people as well as the covenant bond established at Sinai. The center of the festival, Weiser saw, was the theophany of Yahweh, but the occasion was liturgically complex and included such elements as the proclamation of the divine name, the rehearsal of the history of salvation, the putting away of foreign gods, and the renewal of the covenant. Many of the psalms are to be seen as having their setting in life in this festival.
\nWhile both of these reconstructions of the central festival have had some adherents, neither has claimed a large following. Nor has either one received as much vigorous debate as the third and earlier reconstruction of the central festival, which was Sigmund Mowinckel\u2019s argument for an enthronement festival of Yahweh as the central and large cultic event, again occurring at the new year feast of Tabernacles. According to Mowinckel\u2019s reconstruction, the festival centered in the declaration \u201cYahweh has become king,\u201d a declaration occurring in several psalms that have come to be designated \u201centhronement psalms\u201d (Pss. 47; 93; 96; 97; 99), but it includes celebration of the deity\u2019s creative activity, victory over all other gods, the judgment of gods and nations, the election of Israel, and the covenant made at Sinai. In addition to the enthronement psalms, Mowinckel saw many other psalms in connection with various aspects of the festival.
\nWhile it is not likely that one can find in one of these proposals a consensus about its appropriateness to the data available, which in this case are largely textual, several observations can be made from the discussion and the evidence about the central festival and its relation to kingship.
\n1. The few allusions to the fall festival suggest that it indeed had the prominence during the time of the monarchy that has been ascribed to it in these proposals. One may assume that a number of psalms and other hymns were related to it and played some part in the celebration of the festival.
\n2. There is a clear stress upon the rule or kingship of Yahweh as a central and climactic element not only in enthronement psalms proper but elsewhere in psalms and poetry. As noted in chapter 1, the kingship of Yahweh is a notion that belongs to earlier rather than later elements of Israel\u2019s religious thought and practice, as evidenced by its prominence in early Israelite poetry (Ex. 15:18; Num. 23:21; Pss. 68:25; 24:9; and possibly Deut. 33:5).
\n3. The expression yahweh m\u0101lak probably means \u201cYahweh has become king (and thus reigns).\u201d Such a translation neither denies the eternal character of Yahweh\u2019s reign nor implies anything about a dying and rising god. The expression is more a proclamation of Yahweh\u2019s enthronement and rule than an actual royal investiture.
\n4. In several poems (Exodus 15; Deuteronomy 33; Psalm 68), a pattern may be discerned that includes Yahweh\u2019s coming to deliver and create a people and his victory, which leads to the celebration of kingship and the establishment of his sanctuary. In this pattern, Near Eastern mythic elements and Israel\u2019s historical experience came together.
\n5. The emphasis on Yahweh\u2019s election of David and Zion that is at the heart of Kraus\u2019s proposal is appropriate, but in his reconstruction it is viewed too narrowly and in isolation from or over against other notes that are sounded in harmony with these themes. The choice of Jerusalem would inevitably and early on have had larger connotations than simply establishing this city as the place of the temple. It also was the place where Yahweh dwelled, was enthroned, and ruled. The ark went up in victory as well as to establish and choose a sanctuary. Mythic and cosmic overtones were there from the earliest times in the so-called ark narrative, and in Psalms 47; 68, and 132.
\n6. Along these lines, Cross has suggested a possibly fruitful direction in underscoring the joining of the motif of exodus and conquest with the motif of creation and kingship in the royal cult around the central festival. Yahweh entered in victory, having delivered his people, but this was also the ascent of the king to the throne. The institution of kingship and the temple brought the latter (which has many mythological overtones) more to the fore, and these were united with the interest in the choice of David and Zion. The actual ritual activities of the king or the specific place of the king in the drama of the festival are not evident from the texts themselves.<\/p>\n
THE SAGE-SCRIBE<\/p>\n
The prophecy of Jeremiah alludes to three categories of leadership alongside each other: priest, prophet, and the wise (18:18). This last category represents, in some respects, more of an intellectual leadership than a religious one. That is, the wise men and women were not directly associated with the cult; their sphere of operation was more the family, the school, the bureaucracies of the state, and the like. But their wisdom and instruction had to do with moral matters as well as court counsel and table manners, and to the degree to which wisdom was associated with \u201cthe fear of the LORD\u201d (e.g., Prov. 1:7; 9:10; Job 28:28) the wise were seen as instruments for the instruction in true Yahwism as it had to do with the wholeness of everyday life. (It is not always clear when one is talking about a profession that is schooled and trained and when one is dealing with a more nebulous group of those who have gained their wisdom in experience more than in formal training.)
\nThe book of Jeremiah also indicates that in speaking about a group called \u201cthe wise,\u201d it has in mind scribes who wrote and copied important texts and interpreted or taught them as well (8:8\u20139). Here one encounters a different term and a different role, describing persons who must have received some schooling and training in literary skills and perhaps in traditions of law and history. Scribes appear on the lists of royal officials (e.g., 2 Sam. 8:16\u201318; 20:23\u201326; 1 Kings 4:1\u20136; 18:18, 37; 2 Chron. 24:11\u201312). Their specific duties are not well spelled out, though it has been suggested on the basis of analogies that they drew up official edicts and that in the time of Hezekiah were involved in important diplomatic missions (2 Kings 18; Isaiah 36). One may assume that they functioned as secretaries of some sort (\u00e0 la Baruch with Jeremiah) in the general administration of the state.
\nThe association of scribe and wise suggests that while some distinction must be maintained between the roles of \u201cwise\u201d (\u1e25\u0101k\u0101m) and \u201cscribe\u201d (s\u0113per), there was significant overlap. Almost by definition, the scribe belonged to the learned and wise element of society and was so characterized. The particular point at which that impinged on the religious life and practice of ancient Israel was in the way that, running from Jeremiah in the seventh to sixth centuries through Ezra to Ben Sira in the second century, the scribes were persons associated with wisdom and with the keeping of the law, that is, with its preservation and transmission. Thus, in Jeremiah, the condemnation of the scribes is that they claim to be wise and to have the law with them, but they betray their wisdom and the law that has been entrusted to their keeping (Jer. 8:8\u20139). Ezra is called both priest (Ezra 7:11; Neh. 8:2) and scribe (Ezra 7:6, 11; 8:1) and sometimes both in the same context. What this dual role means for the actual profession of Ezra is unclear, but in both respects he is specifically identified with the law (Ezra 7:6, 10\u201312; Neh. 8:1\u20132). In Ben Sira\u2019s famous account of the duties of the scribe (38:34\u201339:11), he begins with the duty of devoting oneself to \u201cthe study of the law of the Most High\u201d (38:34) and goes on to describe the many ways the sage\/scribe seeks out wisdom and understanding.
\nIt is not surprising that the wise teacher and scribe should be associated with the law, for it was necessary both to preserve and hand it down and to teach it. The scribe was not alone in this enterprise. As we have noted, the priest also had responsibility for teaching the Torah. But \u201cthe pivotal position of scribes as tradents of traditions also put them in a primary position with respect to their meanings.\u201d This also meant that they could and did respond to the text, giving interpretive glosses or making scribal comments and corrections, a feature of the text that is evident in the present form of the Hebrew text of the Bible but even more visible in the Qumran texts, where it is possible to see the work of scribes correcting earlier texts. By Jeremiah\u2019s time, such scribal activity with regard to the biblical text, specifically the Torah, is evident. In the postexilic community, that role became even more prominent as the mode of revelation was increasingly centered in scripture and its interpretation. The more charismatic modes of revelation associated with prophecy fell back in favor of the more objective\u2014but not fully constricted\u2014interpretation of scripture as the way by which the community discerned the will of God. As that happened, especially in the postexilic community religion and onward, the scribes came more to the fore among the leadership of the community, a fact symbolized and actualized in the leadership role of Ezra and its focus on the law, both read and interpreted. As Fishbane has noted, this function was fully consistent with and supportive of \u201cthe Persian policy of reviving and restoring local legal traditions\u201d (see chapter 2). It also meant that the Torah, rather than becoming a dead letter, became the basis of teaching and interpretation. Out of such activity developed the rich store of interpretation that began in the biblical text itself and continued on in the life of the communities that studied it and lived by it.<\/p>\n
CULTIC PARTICIPATION IN ANCIENT ISRAEL<\/p>\n
The cultic assembly in ancient Israel was a gathering of the people for the worship of Yahweh. Its constituency would seem to be self-evident, but the biblical materials indicate that there were various ways in which participation in the formal worship of the deity was defined and delimited, both with regard to the most formal occasions of the official state cult and with regard to less formal or more ad hoc cultic moments. Two issues are implicit and explicit in various ways in the literary forms of narrative, legislation, and psalm and prophetic speech: (a) who was permitted to take part in the forms of worship and who was excluded; and (b) what were the requirements for participation in worship? While these matters have been touched on in the discussion of the role of women in family religion (chapter 2) and the cult of the asherah (chapter 1) as well as in the discussion of purity, a more focused examination will be offered here with particular attention to the formal elements of the cultus of Yahwism.<\/p>\n
Exclusion of Foreigners<\/p>\n
At several points in the legislative material and in the narrative accounts of Israel\u2019s worship practices, restrictions against the involvement of non-Israelites in the cultic assembly of Israel are articulated, sufficient to suggest that the line between Israelite and non-Israelite, which affected other aspects of social practice, also was determinative for participation in formal religious activity.
\nIn Deut. 23:3\u20137, a series of regulations prohibit some ethnic groups (Ammonites and Moabites) from being admitted to the \u201cassembly of the LORD,\u201d while others (Edomites and Egyptians) may be admitted at least by the third generation. Reasons are given for these distinctions, but they may be rationalizations, and it is very difficult to say when such regulations may have been operative in ancient Israel. What is important in this instance is that the \u201cassembly of the LORD\u201d can refer to a gathering for religious purposes, but it is by no means restricted to that. It seems to have in mind the adult males (see Deut. 23:1) meeting together in formal session for religious, military, or political purposes. In some ways, participation in the assembly was tantamount to citizenship. The regulations cannot be read as aimed primarily at exclusion of foreigners from cultic activity, though that may have happened.
\nFrom a later, postexilic context, there are indications of restriction of foreigners from temple worship. Ezekiel 44:5\u20139 purports to set guidelines for who may be admitted and who is excluded from the temple, specifically prohibiting \u201cforeigners\u201d from the sanctuary and from any duties in the sanctuary. Exodus 12:43 prohibits any \u201cforeigner\u201d from eating the Passover meal. The account of Nehemiah\u2019s angry removal of the Ammonite Tobiah out of his occupation of a room in the \u201chouse of God\u201d may reflect this development, though this act is presented as a response to a hearing of Deut. 23:4\u20139 and thus an interpretation of that text as excluding foreigners, at least an Ammonite, from the temple (cf. Lam 1:10). So also the prophetic declaration that foreigners may enter \u201cmy house\u201d to sacrifice and pray (Isa. 56:3\u20138; cf. 1 Kings 8:41\u201343) may represent a reaction to the postexilic restriction of foreigners from cultic participation, a move that developed out of a broader reading of the Deuteronomic regulation (cf. Lev. 22:25):<\/p>\n
The same broad construction of the law was evident during the period of the Return to Zion in the fifth century B.C.E. At that time, many Jewish men were found to have married foreign women, including Ammonites and Moabites but also others such as Ashdodites (from Philistia). Based on their interpretation of Deuteronomy 23:4\u20139 in combination with 7:1\u20134 and other verses in the Torah, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the leaders of the community insisted on the dissolution of all marriages.<\/p>\n
The reason for the dissolution of the marriages to foreign women (Ezra 9\u201310; Neh. 13:1\u20133, 23\u201329) may have been that there was no other way to comply with the law since there was apparently no formal process for conversion at that time. The exclusion continued, for in later second temple times, foreigners or Gentiles were barred from the inner courts of the temple in Jerusalem, but by this time there were procedures for conversion. In the tension reflected between the Ezekiel restriction and the Deutero-Isaianic inclusive vision of the Temple, the Deuteronomic-Ezekiel impulse won out.
\nThe situation is different with regard to the resident alien (g\u0113r) or stranger who resided in Israel on a relatively permanent basis. Milgrom has summarized the situation for the resident alien as follows:<\/p>\n
Though the ger enjoyed equal protection with the Israelite under the law, he was not of the same legal status; he neither enjoyed the same privileges nor was bound by the same obligations. Whereas the civil law held the citizen and the ger to be of equal status (e.g., Lev 24:22; Num 35:15), the religious law made distinctions according to the following underlying principle: The ger is bound by the prohibitive commandments but not by the performative ones. For example, the ger is under no requirement to observe the festivals. The paschal sacrifice is explicitly declared a voluntary observance for the ger: Whereas an Israelite abstains from the sacrifice on pain of karet, the ger may observe it provided he is circumcised (Exod 12:47\u201348; Num 9:13\u201314). In fact, the injunction to dwell in sukkot is explicitly directed to the \u201cIsraelite citizen\u201d (Lev 23:42), which, by implication, excludes the ger. Similarly, the ger may participate in the voluntary sacrifical cult if he follows its prescriptions (Num 15:14\u201316; Lev 22:17ff.)<\/p>\n
What this seems to mean is that the resident alien, for the most part, was not excluded from participation in the ritual practices of Israel\u2019s cultic life, specifically the festivals and the sacrificial cult. The critical thing, however, was that the alien was prohibited from activities that might create impurity in the land and endanger its holiness or reflect the worship of gods other than Yahweh of Israel. The resident alien was not required but was permitted to participate in those actions that involved the active worship of Yahweh. By the third century, the situation had changed as the possibility of formal conversion made it possible for a non-Israelite to become a member of the Israelite religious community, and so exclusion of non-Israelites became the pattern.<\/p>\n
Participation of Women<\/p>\n
The significant role of women in the family religion of ancient Israel and in the more heterodox aspects of Israelite religion, at least by the standards implicit and explicit in the main strands of the prophetic, Deuteronomistic, and priestly movements, has been observed in chapters 1 and 2. But there is the further issue of the place that women may have had in the cultic activities of Israelite worship more generally, a question that has been much discussed and debated.
\nAs Phyllis Bird has observed, the basic sexual division of labor and the distinction between the domestic sphere as the realm of women\u2019s labor and the public sphere, including the major social institutions, as primarily a male domain, means that women rarely occupied major leadership roles in the official cultus. What can be said then about women\u2019s participation in a cultus that was so regularly defined in terms of male leadership and male participation (e.g., Ex. 19:15; 23:17; 34:23; Deut. 16:16; 23:1; cf. Judg. 20:2)? Bird\u2019s summary generalizations, arising out of a sophisticated analysis of the data, come as close as one can probably get to an accurate answer:
\n1. While leadership of the cultus appears at all times to have been under male control, women were not excluded absolutely from cultic service or sacred space. There seems to have been an increasing level of restriction, correlating with increasing centralization, specialization, and power.
\n2. Males occupied the positions of greatest authority, sanctity, and honor, and performed tasks requiring technical skills and training. This is reflected particularly in the restriction of the priestly role to males (see above).
\n3. Women\u2019s service in the cult seems to have been confined largely to maintenance and support roles, probably such things as weaving and sewing of vestments, hangings, and other materials for cultic use (see Ex. 35:25\u201326); the preparation of cultic meals or food used in the ritual; and the cleaning of cultic vessels, furniture, and quarters.
\n4. Women had a more public involvement in official cultic activities as singers and dancers. While in the later period of the monarchy and the second temple period the musicians in the cultus seem to have been males (see above), at an earlier time two women (Miriam and Deborah) are depicted as leading in the singing of praise, both of whom are called \u201cprophet\u201d (Ex. 15:20\u201321 and Judg. 4:4; 5:1), and Ps. 68:25 indicates that women formed a recognized group among the temple musicians in the procession into the sanctuary:<\/p>\n
Your solemn processions are seen, O God,
\nthe processions of my God, my King, into the sanctuary\u2014
\nthe singers in front, the musicians last,
\nbetween them girls playing tambourines.
\n(Ps. 68:25\u201326[24\u201325])<\/p>\n
Young women dancing seems to have been an expected part of the yearly festival at Shiloh (see 1 Sam. 1:3), though the particular function or significance of this is not indicated by the text (Judg. 21:19, 21)
\n5. The social context for the involvement of women in some of these formal roles may have been their association with priestly houses, hence their living near sanctuaries and thus having access to the sacred space, or as women without families who placed themselves in the service of the sanctuary and under the guardianship of the authorities in the cultus. Such possible social settings are quite plausible but can only be speculative without more data to support them.
\n6. Although not all such religious acts were formally connected with the main cultus, women also prayed (e.g., 1 Sam. 1:10\u201316), sought oracles (1 Kings 14:2\u20135; 2 Kings 4:22\u201323), made vows (Num. 30:3\u201315; 1 Sam. 1:11, 24\u201328), pronounced blessings (Ruth 2:20; 4:14), and participated in the festivals, whether at local shrines or at the central sanctuary (e.g., Deuteronomy 16). Presumably in this last case, they contributed to the preparation of the meals for the festival celebrations. Women are specifically identified as a component of the assembly gathered for major occasions of covenant renewal, reading the Torah, and the like (e.g., Deut. 29:10; 31:12). In the time of Nehemiah and Ezra, women and wives were regularly a part of the assembly at the reading of the Torah (Neh. 8:2), the service of penitence (Ezra 10:1), the renewal of covenantal obligations (Neh. 10:29\u201330[28\u201329]), and the celebration of joy (Neh. 12:43). The participation of the women seems to have been confined to their presence, but nothing further is indicated for the male participants, except possibly in Neh. 12:43, where the sacrificial activity may be confined to the males. At some stage in Israel\u2019s religion, women could take the vow of a Nazirite, a provision specifically indicated in the Priestly legislation (Num. 6:2).
\nThe one major issue of debate in the current discussion is the nature of women\u2019s involvement in the sacrifical cult of ancient Israel. Both Bird and Winter have argued that their involvement was minimal, animal slaughter and sacrifice as an act of worship being confined to males. A distinction is drawn by Bird between the woman\u2019s presentation of a sacrificial animal to a priest at the end of her days of purification after the birth of a child and the priest\u2019s actual offering of the animal (Lev. 12:6\u20137). Nor does she regard the sharing of a sacrificial meal as an act of sacrifice.
\nThis reading of the place of women has been recently contested on several occasions by Georg Braulik, specifically in relation to the Deuteronomic legislation. Braulik has made theoretical, linguistic, and historical observations that are pertinent. The theoretical one has to do with the character of sacrifice. It is not to be seen as confined to a single act, for example, the actual slaughter of an animal, but includes the whole of the ritual that it encompasses. Braulik notes that the meal is central to the meaning structure of the sacrifice, and that this is a fully participatory event, comprising several ritual activities, not just sacrifice. The event described in 1 Samuel 1 is called a \u201csacrifice\u201d but obviously involves more than simply the slaughter. Clearly a meal is indicated. Every indication is that women were fully involved in such sacrificial meals. Both in the earlier period as reflected in 1 Samuel 1 and 2 and in Deuteronomy, this was a family event and the wife was fully involved. In the case of Elkanah and Hannah, while the text at one point describes Elkanah as sacrificing (1 Sam. 1:4), elsewhere it speaks of the two of them going up together to the sacrifice (2:20), even noting the fact when Hannah does not go up (1:22), and in one instance identifies both of them as sacrificing or slaughtering (1:25). In the Masoretic Text, Hannah is the dominant acting figure in the report of the bringing of Samuel and the bulls to the sanctuary in payment of the vow (1 Sam. 1:23\u20132:1).
\nThe Deuteronomic legislation includes the women generally and addresses the wife as well as the husband in the \u201cyou\u201d of the various statutes and ordinances. Noting that the wife is not listed in the various regulations that identify who was to participate in the pilgrimage festivals in the central sanctuary (e.g. Deut. 12:7, 12, 18; 14:26; 15:20; 16:11, 14), Braulik concludes,<\/p>\n
This can mean one of two things: either the free woman and housewife was included in the \u201cyou\u201d or the family mother had to stay at home alone, take care of the house and do all the work, while the whole family, including the slaves, went off on a pilgrimage, enjoyed the sacrificial meal and rejoiced in Jerusalem. The second alternative is highly improbable. Such an interpretation would run contrary not only to the older pilgrimage tradition (1 Samuel 1), but also to the equal esteem for men and women shown elsewhere in Deuteronomy.\u2026 Evidently, the \u201cyou\u201d (\u2018att\u00e2, \u2018attem) of the list addresses women as well as men.<\/p>\n
If one can make that assumption, then the following kinds of acts were part of the ritual in the legislation that includes the lists of participants:<\/p>\n
offering a burnt offering (12:14)
\npresenting burnt offerings on the altar, flesh and blood, and pouring out the blood of the other offerings on the altar (12:27)
\nsetting aside the tenth of the harvest (14:22)
\nconsecrating the firstborn of the herd and flock to Yahweh (15:19)
\ngiving a freewill offering (16:10)
\nkeeping the festival for Yahweh your God (16:15)
\nbringing the first fruits to Yahweh and the confession spoken before and after the presentation (26:5, 10, 13)<\/p>\n
When one turns to the Priestly legislation, the situation is not radically different. In addition to sacrifices that women brought in relation to purification after childbirth (Leviticus 12) or after menstrual periods or other bodily discharges (Lev. 15:19\u201333), it is clear that women were included in the provisions for other forms of sacrifice. Following clues from earlier rabbinic exegesis, Mayer Gruber has noted that \u201cone of the characteristic features of the cultic legislation of P is the use of the neutral, nonsexist expression nepe\u0161 and \u2019\u0101d\u0101m, both meaning \u2018person,\u2019 in referring to cultic acts which can or should be performed by either men or women or to cultic offenses committed by either men or women.\u201d Among those texts where these words are used and imply either male or female agents are Lev. 2:1; 4:2, 27; 5:1\u20134, 15, 17; 7:20; 20:6; and Num. 15:27, 30\u201331. This means that women along with men would be participants in offerings of grain as well as the procedures for purification offerings after unintentional sins. But one may infer that in fact many other sacrificial acts were open to women in the Priestly legislation, as the rabbis suggested long ago with reference to Lev. 1:5.
\nThere remain two other rather enigmatic references to women with possible cultic significance that should not be overlooked. One is the reference to \u201cthe mirrors of the women who served (\u1e63\u0115b\u0101\u2019\u00f4t) at the entrance to the tent of meeting\u201d (Ex. 38:8). This allusion to \u201cserving\/ministering women\u201d is given little interpretive context. The use of the term \u1e63\u0101b\u0101\u2019, which elsewhere not only refers to military service but to the cultic service of the Levites (Num. 4:3, 23, 30, 35, 39, 43; 8:24) when referring to an activity at the entrance to the \u201ctent of meeting,\u201d surely refers to a specific role for certain women in the cultus. The difficulty is defining what that is. Marie-Therese Wacker has noted that there are \u201cmaximalist\u201d and \u201cminimalist\u201d interpretations of the meaning and function of these women. Some have seen the mirrors as suggesting identification with a goddess, either Egyptian or Hittite and North Syrian, and one connected with the weather god. This might suggest these women were in the service of Yahweh and his consort. On the other hand, the mirrors might be understood simply as a further indication of the largesse of the community in giving of its fine things for the building of the tabernacle. In either interpretation, there is a clear indication that women functioned in some official way in relation to the main cultus.
\nThe second category of women in what might be an official cultic function is the q\u0115d\u0113\u0161\u00e2, a term that seems to mean simply \u201choly woman\u201d or \u201cconsecrated woman\u201d and has a male parallel, q\u0101d\u0113\u0161, but is often translated as \u201ccultic\/sacred prostitute.\u201d While much of modern scholarship has assumed that this reference was to women who engaged in sexual activities as a part of cultic rites, that is less and less certain in the light of more recent data and studies. The association of the term with prostitution arises primarily out of the fact that in all three instances where the term q\u0115d\u0113\u0161\u00e2 appears, the Hebrew word for \u201charlot\u201d (z\u00f4n\u00e2) occurs in a way that looks as if it is a synonym (Gen. 38:21\u201322; Deut. 23:18\u201319[17\u201318]; Hos. 4:14). Furthermore, Herodotus tells of a Babylonian custom whereby every woman in the land, sometime in her lifetime, had to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with a stranger. This claim was then picked up in other literature.
\nCognate terms are now known from Mesopotamia (e.g., qadi\u0161tu) and Syria (Ugaritic qd\u0161m and qd\u0161t). In both cases, the terms clearly indicate cultic functionaries, but in neither case does one find indication of sexual activity as a cultic function. All the instances of the two Hebrew terms, q\u0115d\u0113\u0161\u00e2 and q\u0101d\u0113\u0161, occur in contexts where they are identified as foreign and unacceptable practices or they are present but condemned. The association of the feminine term with the word for \u201charlot\u201d may reflect some degree of sexual activity, but it may also be a way of referring to its connection with worship practices that were regarded as idolatrous and apostate, the condemnation of which is often put in sexual terms, as, for example, in Jeremiah. Until further knowledge is gained, one must be content with seeing in the q\u0115d\u0113\u0161\u00e2 a female official or class in the formal cults of the Fertile Crescent, who may have also had an Israelite counterpart, but one that early on came to be condemned as reflecting foreign cults. Analogy with Mesopotamian parallels would suggest that the role may have involved such activities as wet-nursing and midwifery; analogy with the Ugaritic parallels might suggest a kind of Levitical service in the sanctuary.<\/p>\n
Torah Obedience<\/p>\n
Finally, a word must be said about the fact that participation in Israelite worship was dependent upon obedience to the Torah and that within the laws there were various restrictions upon participation that depended upon purity and holiness and required various ritual acts of sacrifice and purification before appearing before the Lord in worship for fear that the presence of the impure and the unholy might profane the sanctuary. This concern for pollution of the holy has been dealt with in chapter 4 in some detail and so does not need repeating here except to note its significance for the question of who may worship in the sanctuary. In addition, there were further restrictions on participation in the cultic assembly, such as genital impairment or birth by illicit union (presumably incest\u2014Deut. 23:1\u20132), or other forms of physical deformity, mutilation, or defect, such as blindness, lameness, broken limbs, itching disease, and the like (Lev. 21:16\u201323; 2 Sam. 5:8).
\nAlong with these requirements for purity and holiness there were the requirements for moral uprightness in relation to the neighbor and before God. Such prerequisites to cultic participation are well identified by the prophets, who denounce the people for their going to the sanctuaries to worship in the face of violation of covenant obedience in their dealings in the marketplace and the court (Amos, for example). A more formal indication of the necessity for moral uprightness is suggested by the entrance liturgies in the Psalms. These question and answer psalms, notably Psalms 15 and 24, seem to have had their setting in life in the entry of pilgrims into the temple, where the priest and the entrants antiphonally would ask the question about what requirements were necessary for entering the sanctuary and the answer would come back defining the requirements. Thus, one finds in Ps. 15:1\u20132:<\/p>\n
O LORD, who may abide in your tent?
\nWho may dwell on your holy hill?<\/p>\n
and then the response:<\/p>\n
Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right,
\nand speak the truth from their heart.<\/p>\n
A similar question and answer form in Psalm 24 suggests it served a similar function. Furthermore, there are prophetic texts that seem to have had a similar setting in life, such as Isa. 33:14\u201316 and Micah 6:6\u20138. All of these texts identify restrictions on cultic participation having to do with adherence to the requirements of the covenant for neighbor justice and fairness. So there were kinds of moral and human acts that also could determine participation, along with those qualities of person that might temporarily or by happenstance prohibit one from entering the sanctuary and thus profaning the holy place of the deity.<\/p>\n
Epilogue<\/p>\n
There is no clear point at which one can say that the religion of ancient Israel came to an end. On the contrary, the community that worshiped Yahweh of Israel in the cultus of the second temple and studied the Torah to discern the way of the Lord continued without interruption but in varying directions. In the Hellenistic era, various segments of the Jewish community gave emphasis to different dimensions of the religious tradition. Yet there was no cessation of the religious devotion that characterized the religion of Israel in the Iron Age before and after the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile and return of many Judeans. The decision not to present the religion of Israel in this volume in a primarily historical mode has at least some justification in the very fuzzy lines that mark the beginning and end of Israelite religion.
\nIn this study, the parameters of that religion have been defined largely by the literature of the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures and the religious movements and developments reflected in them and out of which those sacred writings grew. The canonizing of this religious literature insured some continuity in the religion underlying it. So it was that the worship of Yahweh\/Adonai\/the Lord remained powerful and compelling on into the centuries that followed. While other religions of early Israel\u2019s time and place disappeared from the scene, Yahwism took new forms in continuity and discontinuity with what has been described in these pages. Prophets moved off center stage as scribes moved on. The anointed of the Lord, the king, became a part of the hope for the future, for some not yet realized and for others revealed in Jesus, a Jewish carpenter from Galilee. Sacrifice became spiritualized in different ways in Judaism and Christianity, but it did not remain in the forms it had taken in the course of ancient Israel\u2019s religious history.
\nThree streams flowed out of Israel\u2019s religion, all of them lively to this day and each comprising a remarkable array of diverse forms. Judaism kept the same canon of scripture and placed the emphasis of religious life on obedience to God\u2019s Word as revealed in the Torah. Christianity kept the canon and added to it, placing emphasis not on torah, about which it has remained ambivalent to this day, but on the \u201cend\u201d of the law in the form of the incarnate Christ, who is for Christians the Word of God made flesh. Islam took up another canon as the Word of God, seeing in the Koran the confirmation of earlier revelations and thus their replacement, and setting forth a new and rigorous combination of law and doctrine. In each stream, the monotheistic thrust so central to the religion of ancient Israel perdured, securely at the center of Judaism and Islam and in Christianity leading to the central doctrine of the Trinity as a way of accounting for the revelation of God in Jesus Christ without abandoning what Jewish and Gentile Christians had come to know about the oneness of that God. In each stream, the character of God and God\u2019s way with the community of faith echoed the depiction of the gracious and compassionate Lord of Israel, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy but by no means acquitting the guilty. In each stream, prophetic voices rose up from time to time, and different claims were made in their behalf.
\nYet the tensions and conflicts discernable in the ancient religion of Israel became ever heightened as these different religious movements went their own way while claiming to be the true inheritors of the faith of Israel. Religious kinship has not made Jews and Christians and Muslims at home with each other. It may have exacerbated the conflicts that the combination of proximity and difference was bound to inspire. The treatment of the other remains at the center of the moral and ethical values of these three religious descendants of Yahwism, but the test that is often failed is the treatment of the other whose religious kinship seems not nearly as evident as the strangeness.
\nIn such fashion the religion of ancient Israel lives on, transformed, persistent, resilient, asking in its new forms about the faithfulness of those who walk the way of the Lord and pray to the Creator God. That faithfulness depends in no small measure on the contemporary community hearing rightly what its mothers and fathers in the faith said and did and believed. Better understanding of this past may offer some clues for the present and guide us into the future. It may also tell us a little more about why we are the way we are, inform us about the good and the bad of our religious history, and offer some clues for how to walk together in mutual respect and understanding.<\/p>\n
title The Religion of Ancient Israel
\nauthor Miller, Patrick D<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Foreword The historical and literary questions preoccupying biblical scholars since the Enlightenment have focused primarily on events and leaders in ancient Israel, the practices and beliefs of Yahwistic religion, and the oral and written stages in the development of the people\u2019s literature. Considering how little was known about Israel, and indeed the whole ancient Near … <\/p>\n