Judaism
Jerusalem and Judaism before the Return: Canaanite in Religion
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, September 16, 1999
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Masseboth
According to the bible, a popular Canaanite inspired apostasy from the cult of Yehouah was the worship of “masseboth” or standing stones. Eight of the Israelite cult places surveyed by Zevit featured standing stones, but hundreds have been found in the Negev and Sinai. They appear singly, but also in twos, threes, fives, sevens, nines, twelves, and even more. When there are two, one is often tall and the other shorter and squatter, and, sometimes, in the groups of threes, the third is a small stone, so they seem to stand for a holy family. It would likely be the influence of the Egyptian holy family of Osiris, Isis (Hathor) and the infant Horus. They may be inscribed with the word “masseboth” (msb or msbt) from the Semitic root “msb” meaning “to be erect”.
Bethel (Gk, baitylos) is literally the “house of God”, but it was a standing stone. At biblos, they often had niches cut into them into which figurines of the god or goddess were placed. Philo of Biblos who claimed what he had to say was from the priest Sanchuniathon, said that the stones moved! They had the same illusions then as the believers who see statues of the BVM move, but these were only roughly hewn or even unhewn stones. The use of stones was widespread over the world in primitive societies, and there is no reason to doubt that worshippers of Yehouah considered he lived in a stone at some time or other, the reason why there were standing stones in cult places in Israel. But no one knows it for sure. If we were to believe biblical proscriptions, we might think otherwise, but then unhewn stones are not “graven” in any way, so perhaps they were permissible images of Yehouah, and the prohibitions against masseboth generally meant stones that were the homes of other gods than Yehouah. That is Zevit’s view, though the evidence is weak. Since all the evidence in the ground is of Canaanite culture, the stones could have been any of the Canaanite gods and goddesses.
Both the bible and archaeological information testify to the presence in the religion of the Israelites before the exile of a Goddess—Anat or Asherah—as a consort of Yehouah. Papyri found at the Jewish Egyptian centre at Elephantine include an oath of Anat-Yeho or Anat-Bethel, Bethel evidently being a standing stone at the Elephantine sanctuary used as a cult symbol for Yehouah. A standing stone universally is a phallic symbol. Iron Age finds at Hazor included a standing stone of truly phallic proportions that seems to have been worshipped looking south, implying a solar connexion. Anat seems to have been the consort of both El and Yehouah, implying that the two were the same! Anat-Yeho is the “Queen of Heaven” who is defended by her worshippers (Jer 7:18; 44:17-19;44:25) as superior to the god, Yehouah, the version imported by the Persian “returners” from exile.
Archaeologists have also found Hebrew inscriptions at Kirbet el-Qom in the Judaean hills that speak of “Yehouah and his Asherah”. Asherah is also linked with Yehouah-Teman and Yehouah-Samaria in blessings inscribed at Kuntilla Ajrud in Sinai. Mesha of Moab also refers to an apparently dual god named “Ashtar-Chemosh”. Ashtar must have been a variant of Ishtar. Asherah was a Mother-Goddess known from the Canaanite Ras Shamra tablets. The “returners” were keen to be rid of images of the Asherim, phallic poles or pillars probably surmounted with an image, and Deuteronomy 12:3 orders their destruction. 1 Kings 18:19 and 2 Kings 21:7 prove that Israelites worshipped this goddess in both of the kingdoms of the Yehudim. Micah reiterates Deuteronomy in having Yehouah promise to destroy those who do not destroy these Asherim. Whether Asherah, when it occurs in the bible, refers to the goddess or to phallic pillars, the “returners” wanted to be shot of them, much to the annoyance of the Am ha-Eretz and their wives who, over the centuries, had grown fond of them.
It is this popular veneration of the goddess in her phallic form that explains the many cult fertility figurines found in Palestine but rarely spoken about—the pillar figurines. They are probably models of sanctuary images sold to worshippers for persoanl devotional purposes. The Astarte Plaques are low reliefs of the goddess often surrounded by a frame probably meant to be the recess containing the cult image in the sanctuary. The Astarte Plaques therefore depict the goddess in the context of her shrine.
Zevit thinks the use of living trees as asherah increased after the Persian occupation while the use of treetrunks or poles for them decreased. It is true that the Persians revered trees. Coins from Tyre show masseboth sheltered by carefully trimmed trees. It would be interesting to know whether they were pre or post Persian. Deuteronomy 16:21 seems to prohibit asherahs but it could be read that the prohibition was on the cut pole, not on the living tree.
You shall not set up for yourself asherahs of any trees, which you make for yourself near the altar of Yehouah your God.Dt 15:21
If so, it would match the Persian period better than centuries before when the bible might imply it was written. The same is true of Genesis 21:33 when Abraham planted a living tamarisk at Beersheba not merely a pole.
Icons
Religious imagery was an important aspect of identifying monarch, god and people. It only changed when the Persians came into world power with an aniconic god—the first of them. The Persians doubtless found it advantageous that they had no image of their god, because it was then easier to impose him without anyone noticing. A god who is not pictured is not an obviously different god!
Scholars of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, have chosen to examine the many icons and images that have been found in Palestine with a view to providing a basis for understanding Israelite religion independently of the tendentious hagiography called the scriptures. No one is suggesting that the biblical writings can be thrown away. Even though they are much later compilations than most of the faithful have been led to believe, they still contain fragments of much earlier work and so can still be valuable historical information. The difference is that whereas the scriptures were formerly accepted as the standard, they no longer are. The hints at religious practice deducible from icons is likely to be a sounder yardstick and biblical information will have to fit in with the archaeological work, not the other way around.
Doubtless the modern interest in images rather than words is related to the ease with which we communicate with images in the modern world of TV, cinema and computers. The earlier obsession with documented religion led to Protestant scholars particularly looking down on religions for which there was no such documentation. Religions of the “book” had been seen as having progressed beyond the primitive religions of mere sacerdotal ritual. The modern view is that images can be as valuable as text.
The religions of the Hebrew God were thought of as being free of images because this advanced god could not be pictured. Images of goddesses were found in Israel but not images of Yehouah, a strange and illogical imbalance. If the god could have a consort, both must have been visible. The standing stones were symbolic of the god but there seemed not to have been any recognisable images of Him. The “Calf of Samaria” of Hosea 8:6, apparently the image of a bull in the temple of Bethel, has been apologized for as the pedestal supporting… nothing! Or an image of the invisible god, if you like!
In fact, of course, the prohibition of graven images in the bible is late. There are no identifiable images of Yehouah, the Persian religion forbidding representation of the God of Heaven. The incident of the “Golden Calves” (“These be thy gods, O Israel”) in Exodus 32:4 is a legend written in justification of it, but proving that image worship had occurred. Both the original Deuteronomy 5:8 and Exodus 20:4 also forbid the making of images of anything in heaven, on earth or in the sea. Despite this, images of the Canaanite gods from the earlier phase are found. So, if this was an ancient prohibition, as believers think, it was never followed, although art work does not seem to have been highly valued in these countries to judge by their quality, unless it was simply a sign of their poverty.
The Norwegian scholar, Mowinckel, in the early part of the twentieth century was already telling people who wanted to listen that the Jewish proscription of images was late and that the temple of Jerusalem for long had an image of Yehouah in some form. More recently a number of scholars have pointed out that references to the appearance of God in psalms such as Psalms 27:4,
One thing have I desired of Yehouah, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of Yehouah all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of Yehouah, and to inquire in his temple,
imply that somewhere was a fine image of God to be seen! Here the implication is clear that the “beauty of Yehouah” is to be beheld in the temple, the “House of the Yehouah”. Cult statues of Yehouah must have been erected in his various sanctuaries. What signs there are of adoration of gods suggest they were local ones—Yehoauh of Samaria, Yehouah of Temen, “to the god who is in Dan” (a Greek inscription), as well as the place names suggestive of a local shrine such as Bethel, the House of El. The many towns called “Beth-something” in the bible must have been sites of sanctuaries to Yehouah or some other Baal. Only the “House” of a god is going to be remembered as a notable place. Evidently statues to Yehouah were present in the temples of Jerusalem, Samaria and Bethel. The capping evidence, that cannot be denied, is that Assyrian documents refer to cult images of the Israelites.
The favoured image of the old Canaanite Yehouah seems to have been a bull or a calf, and it seems at least likely that some of the earlier colonists from Persia saw nothing wrong in depicting Yehouah thus, probably because the Persians themselves revered their cattle and favoured them as sacrifices. Bull figurines have been found. Seated figures, gods or kings, smiting gods, animals and animal head’s, sphinxes, plamate trees, and lotus plants of Egyptian style are found but not a whisker of the splendour of Solomon. Jeroboam I in particular might be a legend based on such images being set up by an early colonist.
Israelite religion had, from beginning to end, much in common with Canaanite religion or even depended on Canaanite models.B S J Isserlin, The Israelites
Images were commonplace in the Canaanite religion as they were in others of the time. Ahab made an asherah (1 Kg 16:33). Maacah’s “abominable image” (1 Kg 15:13) was an asherah. Good king Hezekiah cut down an asherah set up in the temple (2 Kg 18:4), but bad king Manasseh replaced it (2 Kg 21:3,7), only for good king Josiah to chop it down again, and a lot of other asherim beside (2 Kg 23:6,14). Even Moses set up a bronze serpent (Num 21:8-9).
All of these images will have been of Canaanite deities, the Israelites being themselves, of course, no less Canaanite than a New Yorker is an American. The Israelites were Canaanites. It is the Jewish religion that differed from Canaanite models even though the Jewish god had a Canaanite god’s name. The model was Persian Zoroastrianism, but the convergence of the two ended with the defeat of Persia and the destruction of the power of the Magi by Alexander.
Israelites from the ninth century on worshipped at least one goddess, represented by the variety of pillar figurines both in the north and the south , but what is more likely, a few goddesses.Z Zevit
Besides the “goddess” figurines, many animal figurines have also been found, cattle and horses being among them, and possibly indicating a sun cult. The Jewish scriptures testify that families had household gods (described as “gods”—elohim) called teraphim. They were small enough to hide easily underneath a woman’s skirts in the story of Rachel stealing Laban’s (Gen 31:30-35). They are quite likely to have been the figurines found widely in Palestine. And just as “elohim”, a plural word often means God, so too teraphim, in at least one passage (1 Sam 19:13,16), is used similarly as a singular despite its plural form—the head (singular) of the teraphim (plural) is mentioned. Perhaps it was generally used thus before an editor “corrected” it, accidentally missing one instance. Genesis 30:2 suggests that part of their function was to represent the fertility of the family. Laban scolds Rachel that God had made her infertile, then the story of the stolen teraphim follows. The daughter of Saul, Michal, was barren and had an unuaually large teraphim, as big as a man ( a rare example of a biblical smutty joke?).
One biblical author (Ezekiel) used a derogatory expression (gillulim) loosely meaning “turds” for terephim presumably because of their colour and shape, particularly that they rolled because of their roundness (gll). In short , they were quite phallic! Many of the female figurines look like dildos.
The Bull Cult
Now despite all this religious imagery which ties in perfectly well with what we know of the history of the region, the Israelites had been told almost a millennium before by their great and revered leader, Moses, according to Jewish mythology, not to make images of their aniconic god, Yehouah, and he had destroyed images that his own brother had made in error. He brought down from a mountain, where Yehouah seemed to live in those days, tablets with the rule clearly inscribed on it, among others:
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
The bible has Moses making this clear when he first was handed the tablets (Ex 20:4), and later when he made his last speech summarizing their adventures before he departed this world (Dt 5:8). Both of these events he wrote down in full in his own works, supposedly the five books in which these two appear called the Pentateuch or Torah. These constitute the Jewish law of God that was held sacrosanct from then until today, except that the bible spends most of its time saying that no Jews took any notice of them until Ezra a Persian official told them to in the fifth century BC, 900 years after Moses had died. Some will say it was really good king Josiah who reintroduced the law of Moses when it had been forgotten, in which case it had been forgotten again a second time, because the bible is certain that Ezra had to read out the law again!
It is a matter of social bonding for Jews to believe this, and, for Christians, it is even a matter of the salvation of their immortal souls, so a lot of people do believe it, even though it is utterly unbelievable. Such is the power of religion. The original law might have been the curse on graven and cast images presented in Deuteronomy 27:15, as being called out along with other curses by the Levites, the Jewish Magi.
The law was taken to mean images of the god were forbidden but not other cult images such as the decorated ark, the cherubs and the menorah, seven branched lampstand. The biblical descriptions of Solomon’s temple include many more images such as the twelve bronze bulls that supported the molten sea, the cherubs, lions and bulls supporting basin stands, palms and pomegranates. J Gutmann surveyed all the evidence and deduced that Judaism was never against all imagery. What was forbidden were represenations of the god only. Cherubim did not stand for the god but only what supported him, so were not forbidden. Images of animals might have been controversial, some saying they did not stand for the god but only symbolized him, while others thought they could only be considered as representing the god and that was forbidden.
It is not true, as some have said, that images are not found in the archaeology of Israel. Female images of a crude kind but evidently cult objects are extremely common. Broken pieces of more substantial statues are also sometimes found, though rarely. This evidence is not evidence of a long time deep seated aversion to imagery but evidence of a culturally deserted place in which the making of images was at some stage suppressed, so that those that were made were destroyed leaving only fragments.
The Persians did not picture Ahuramazda except as a symbol of a winged figure, apparently with the face of the king, emerging from a winged circlet or disc. They must have seen this picture as only symbolizing the god, or was a picture of something associated with the god, but not the god himself such as his fravashi.
In the northern kingdom of Israel, the calf or young bull “yegel” was the icon associated with Yehouah.Z Zevit The Religions of Ancient israel
Yehouah in Canaan was a bull or a calf. The scriptural evidence is oblique at best but it is unmistakeably there suggesting that editors have tried to disguise it over the years. If it were not there more obviously at first, it is hard to see why it is there at all, oblique though it may be. Jeroboam, Aaron and the golden calf, Yehouah described in Balaam’s oracles as being “like the horns of a wild ox”, the imagery also being associated with the Exodus, Yehouah answering from the horns of an ox in Psalms 22 when correctly translated, the twelve bulls of the flaming dish of Solomon’s temple, the heads of calves modelled above Solomon’s throne (1 Kg 10:19) when “round behind” is correctly translated.
The god of the fathers called the “Mighty One of Jacob” appears five times in the scriptures (Gen 49:24; Isa 49:26; 60:16; Ps 132:2; 5) but the name is an outrageous mistranslation of the “Bull of Jacob”. The same word is a bull in Isaiah 10:13, 34:7, Psalms 50:13, and Psalms 68:31(30). So, the god of the fathers, or one of them, was the Bull of Jacob. Even the bible is clear that such images of Yehouah were set up at Dan and Bethel (1 Kg 12:28-29; 2 Kg 10:29). Jacob traditions in Genesis seem to center on Bethel (Gen 28:10-22; 35:1-15) where the god was worshipped as a bull. In Judges 20:28, Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron of the golden calves, ministers before the ark at Bethel. Jeroboam had identified his calf images with the “god who brought you up out of Egypt”—Yehouah, and should there have been any doubt Aaron, having made the golden calf, declares, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to Yehouah”, although Yehouah is mistranslated “The Lord” therefore seemingly just any old lord god, including a cow!
Believers have found the excuse that the bull was not Yehouah but the base upon which the invisible God stood. Ancient gods were sometimes depicted standing or riding on animals. The Goddess was often standing on a lion. Syrian cylinder seals from the end of the Bronze Age through into the Hellenistic age seem to show Baal Shaman, the sun god, as an empty throne. Lucian describes an actual empty throne at Hierapolis in Dea Syria, adding that there is a throne for the sun god in the temple…
…but there is no image upon the throne for the effigy of the sun and moon are not exhibited…
It was not a taboo, but it was vain to try to illustrate them when they could be seen in reality by everyone. So, even supposing that the bull was meant to be carrying an invisible god, what would simple country peasants imagine they were worshipping when they bowed before it? In fact, Jeroboam announced:
It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt!
The same sentence is found in Exodus 32:4, spoken by Aaron, and then repeated by Yehouah in Exodus 32:8 to Moses. Now “gods” is elohim in all these passages, the word usually translated as “God” in the context of Yehouah, and, in the two Exodus examples, the subject was the golden calf, a single calf. Aaron was saying, “Behold your God”, referring to the calf. Was he using the plural of majesty for the calf, or was he using a plural, as believers hope, because the calf carried the invisible God, or was the whole phrase being re-used from the earlier work 1 Kings? Even if he was using a plural because the calf was supposed to be carrying Yehouah, the calf was still a god! It seems, however you look at it, the bible is admitting that the Israelites worshipped a young bull.
Moses was, of course, outraged in Exodus and had 3000 people killed for the offence—except his brother Aaron, who had instigated it, and went on to found the family of inherited priests. Why should he have been, if the calf was only the footstool of Yehouah? His anger only makes sense if the calf was Yehouah or some other god, or the people took it to be the god. What seems more likely is that the story was written originally with two calves, and one has been edited out. It was a golden cow, and will have represented a goddess like Hathor (Isis). The golden calves were a bull and a cow, or a cow and a calf. Interestingly, the illuminated pithoi at Kuntillet Ajrud had images on them of a cow suckling a calf, and the two so-called Bes figures look very much like two cattle, walking erect like a man and a woman, and inscribed as being Yehouah Shomrom and his Asherah.
The modest deduction of some scholars is that Moses and Aaron were associated with a calf or bull cult. Ahuramazda, the name of the god of heaven of the Persians, seems to contain the names of both Aaron and Moses, a curious coincidence, unless it is not one. The Persians sacrificed cattle and held them in esteem as the epitome of the Good Creation among animals. The ox-soul was the soul of all being and the sacrifice of the primaeval bull set the world in motion. But, though the Persians had a high regard for their cattle, they never made them into gods, unlike the Iranians who went on to India. The later Persian goddess, Anahita was associated with a bull sacrifice, was confused with Mithras by Herodotus, and Mithras was associated with a bull sacrifice in the Roman cult of Mithras. With all this background relating the new Persian influenced god of Yehud to cattle, perhaps it is not surprising that some of the settlers thought it was an ox cult, and since that would fit in nicely with some of the Canaanite cult, they thought it would make their task of conversion, or rather adaptation, easier. Evidently later settlers did not like the direction that had been taken.
Hosea, whose name means salvation, argues against bull imagery (Hos 8:1-6; 10:1-6; 13:1-3) and he condemns altars, pillars and shrines, sounding much more orthodox Persian than Aaron. It seems that a backlash left Aaron carrying the can for the golden calf but it did not harm his standing with Moses although it led to the elevation of the Levites and the murder of many otherwise innocent people in the myth. Moses has been lifted out as politically correct, but the guilty party remaining already has a lmyth behind him, so remains unpunished.
Any erroneous bull imagery had now to be removed. Ahaz removed the bronze bulls from the molten sea before Solomon’s temple, but he was not known as a reforming king. He was obliged to remove the precious metal to melt it down to pay the tribute demanded by the Assyrians. (2 Kg 16:17). Hezekiah and Josiah were equally discomforted, no doubt.
In the legends, the destruction of the divine images by these kings was their own choice, a supposed deliberate return to wrongly abandoned practices contrary to aniconism. In fact they were probably obliged to continue what Ahaz had had to do, namely use whatever could be found to pay off the suzerain. Later, the absence of images out of political necessity was made into a virtue by the Deuteronomistic Historian who pretended that the kings had already introduced the “return” to aniconism that the Persian priests were insisting upon. The propaganda of the Deuteronomistic Historian was that the Persian colonists were not doing anything unusual. Yehouah was not supposed to be pictured and some of the last kings before the Babylonian conquest had realized it.
Cult Places and Altars
Biblical theology required the religion of the Israelites, sponsored, as it was, by God himself, to be vastly different—superior no less—to the religion of the other inhabitants of the Levant. The clerics therefore made a point of emphasising any difference they thought they saw between Israelitish religion and that of their contemporaries and compatriots, the Canaanites. Now a panther might be black all over but it is still in every other respect a leopard! To emphasize its different colour from other leopards is to miss every aspect of its true nature. Latterly, the fashion among biblical scholars has been precisely to examine the similarities between Israelitish religion and that of the Canaanites. Only the balance of similarities and differences can fairly suggest whether “God’s religion” was different in the beginning from Pagan religions. The Jewish religion had one god and only one official cult place—the Jerusalem temple.
Of the Iron Age cult sites so far found in Palestine, cult rooms at Lachish, Megiddo and Dan, and temples at Hazor and Arad, spanning the eleventh to the sixth centuries BC, all showed that more than one god was being worshipped. They had more than one altar, often in the same room, standing stones, offering tables, benches, pits and so on. What is remarkable is the utter lack of any common pattern among these cult centers. Zevit frankly admits that they simply cannot be generalized and no broad statement summarizing them would be valid. The only tentative rule is that cult places tended to be north of living spaces, a habit elsewhere associated with cults of death and the dead, but obviously not a unified one. Some of the cult sites were isolated from the urban center and in high places, not inaccessible but accessible with some hardship, like a one to three hour uphill walk. Model shrines are also quite often found too, and they also show a strange variery of forms. Concerning the temples, Zevit says:
What is remarkable about those whose general layout is clear, Arad, Dan, and Hazor, is how much they do not resemble each other.
It can hardly support any idea of a national, monotheistic cult in Palestine in this period. Moreover, there could have been no uniformity of ritual, and therefore probably of myth. In the Bronze Age, there was a general uniformity of temple layout, so the change could be attributed to a cultural change and therefore to an ethnic one, but unfortunately for the biblicists, it is the wrong way round. The variation of patterns of worship is more a sign of a breakdown of civilization, as is considered the cause of the Bronze to Iron Age division. Moreover, “literary data” suggest temples were more common in Israel “than is generally expected”. Deciphering Zevit’s euphemisms, he means they are more common in the ground than the bible.
To prove it, he gives the “literary” references in the bible based on the further assumptions that a lexical construction signifies the divine presence, and that the divine presence can only be encountered in a temple. Finding eight possible temples in this way in the bible, adding in Jerusalem and Bethel, also from the bible, and three vaguely possible archaeological sites to the three definite ones, yields 16. Zevit gets 17 but seems to count Dan twice. Of course, this list might not be complete so there could have been even more. So it is that by divine arithmetic, three definite temples found archaeologically multiply to more than 17. One of them, however was Gibeath, a mountain where the Divine Presence witnessed a ritual crucifixion or impalement. It refutes any idea of Jerusalem being the single acceptable temple in the Palestinan Hills, but the three definite ones do that anyway. What is significant is that ten temples can be detected in the bible itself. Read properly, the bible admits that the Jerusalem temple was not the sole center of a cult, and the archaeology confirms it:
The view that Jerusalem was the seat of official religion occupying a select trend-setting position is supported neither by textual nor archaeological data.Z Zevit
The euphemism “textual data” means, as ever, the bible. If Jerusalem was not the center of the cult, the supposed reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah are fictional. Plainly then, the biblical authors were trying to give an erroneous impression. They were writing down porky pies!
The scriptures speak of a variety of sacred utensils like jugs, jars, bowls and ladles, implying the sacerdotal use of liquids, though the bible prescribes no such rituals, and libations are actually proscribed in Exodus 30:9. All of the ritual associated with sacrifices is given, but, in most cultures, sacrifices were largely the excuse for a ritual slap up feast—mostly they were eaten, certain inedible and easily combustible parts being burnt to create the odour that God’s liked. The loaves of the “shewbread” were displayed on a table called a “sulhan”, and were replaced regularly doubtless to allow the priests to eat them. It was another way of rewarding priests for doing nothing very useful.
The table displaying shewbread with the apparently purposeless vessels suggest that an object of the ceremonies was a ritual meal of bread, some liquid—perhaps wine since Nadab and Abila, priests who died, seem to have been involved in offering a libation or beverage and illegally got drunk, whence their death—and pieces of meat cut from the sacrificed animals, served (Num 4:14) in large bowls (mizraqoth) with forks (mizlagoth). The messianic meal of the Essenes might have preserved an original rite of an holy meal after the Jerusalem priesthood had instituted a purely sacrificial ritual for them to make more money. The Essenes seem to have gone the other way, perhaps in response, because they eschewed animal sacrifice all together. So their messianic meal was one of bread and “new wine”, which was often, if not always, water. The shewbread was the “bread of presence”, and the Essenes must have thought that the bread was sufficient for God to be there, or at least His messiah, without having to sacrifice beasts. But god liked “sweet savours”, and so they used incense.
Altars were raised platforms for sacrificing animals. Saul corrects his soldiers who had slaughtered on the ground (1 Sam 14:32-35). It reflects the Persian veneration of the earth, as one of the sacred elements, earth, water, air and fire, that eventually became a world-wide dogma right into the middle-ages in Europe. It is why they used rock tombs, so that the bodily fluids of poutrefaction could not run into the earth, and the towers of silence, where carrion birds and scavenging animals removed the flesh before it liquefied. The Jewish regard of ha eretz is both “The Land” and “the earth”.
A magnificent four horned altar has been reconstructed from broken remains at Beersheba. Archaeologists think it was broken up in the ninth century. The altar is of accurately hewn stone, not of the prescribed unhewn stone (Ex 20:25), and is the wrong size to meet biblical specifications. Nor did it have the prescribed base or yesod for blood to be poured on to, an essential feature in the bible (Ex 29:12). The carved horn of an eighth century altar at Dan looks as if it was similar to the Beersheba ones. Even the stones of the Ebal complex, hailed as the first Mosaic sanctuary in the Promised Land, include some that had been worked. At Megiddo, carefully worked stone spheres were cut orthogonally to make eight curved horns for an altar, again violating Exodus 20:25. About forty small altars surveyed by S Gitin were all hewn from a single large stone. They were essentially cuboid but of different lengths and widths, varying from about half a meter to a little short of a meter in height (one to two cubits). Some had a yesod but many did not, and some had horns, some had mere bumps and some had none at all.
Biblicists puzzle over why the eighth century altar at Arad does not meet the detailed specifications of the bible’s priestly authors. It really does take a long time to get through to them. The altar at Arad was built in a corner, and so was not accessible from all four sides, to permit the specified priestly rituals. Indeed, it was accessible on only one side because the other exposed side must have had steps or a ramp for access to the top of it, it being too high to step on to.
Biblicists refuse to accept that all of it is evidence that the actual religions of the people were not those specified in the bible, and so the biblical prescriptions must have been later. Even in the bible, it is plain enough that few were following the laws of Moses, and the excuse is that the Israelites were always backsliding. Only believers could believe it! The rituals specified were set up only at the end of the period the bible purports to describe, when Ezra brought a law with him from Persia. Even the bible says so, so why should believers doubt it? The reason is they prefer the myth of Moses to the historical truth of Ezra which shows the rest is almost pure invention.
On the archaeological evidence, Zevit says Israelite religion was “extremely heterogeneous”:
The religion was practised differently in home, village, sanctuary, urban temple and extra urban sanctuary…
He considers the conditions similar to those described in Deuteronomy 13:2-16. So, as he thinks that Deuteronomy was the document found by Hilkiah in Josiah’s reign, the conditions are pre-seventh century. In fact, Deuteronomy was written in the fifth century, so the conditions were those pertaining before the Persian occupation.
Theophoric Names in Yehouah
Fundamentalists think the bible is inerrant—there is nothing wrong in it. M Noth checked all the theophoric names in Yehouah in the scriptures and discovered 1,112, of which 131 were mistakes by scribes and were not proper names at all. Twelve percent of what appear to be Jewish names in the bible are actually wrong!
What seems remarkable for a people who were devoted to Yehouah from before their stepping over the Jordan river around 1200 BC, and being expelled by the Romans in the second century AD, is that not a single town or place in the land referred to Yehouah in its name—perhaps one only did! Zevit says that of the 502 place names found in the Jewish scriptures “theophoric names are found, but none are Yahwistic”, with one possible exception in Nehemiah 11:32. About one in nine incorporates “El”. It suggests that all the places had already been named when the bible was written, and Yehouah was not among the popular gods in the pre-biblical era when the exclusive devotion to Yehouah was introduced. El was the chief Canaanite god, so senior that his name had come to mean “God”. Elijah means “my God” (Eli) is Yehouah (Jah).
Canaanite gods and goddesses who were anathema to the righteous Jews of the bible, such as Baal, Shamash, Anath and even Mot (death) appear in Israelite or Jewish place names. Now, a new people settling in a land by conquest could have called places anything they liked, yet they chose Canaanite names of gods that their scriptures rail against constantly. And the bible itself says that Dan was renamed from Laish—a place known in Egyptian execration texts and from Mari—and other names were changed (Num 32:38), so why were all the names thay hated not changed? Biblicists argue that the name of Yehouah was not to be taken in vain (Ex 20:7), but personal names used it, so that was not taking it in vain. Why then was using it in place names, especially when the names of idolatrous gods were so used. The fact is that Yehouah was not known as an exclusive, or even as an important god until the Persians imposed him, long after all the important places in the Hill country had been named. Some of the sites named after Canaanite gods have been excavated. The town, Anathoth, was found to be sixth century, but appears much earlier in the bible.
B S J Isserlin decided that certain toponymic words were purely Israelite because they did not occur in the languages of their neighbours, whether Canaanite or Egyptian and Assyrian. Zevit, however, did find some of the words in the lists of the Pharaohs Tutmoses and Seti. It throws doubt on the soundness of Isserlin’s method, and, if the method holds up, it suggests that the settlement was earlier than these Egyptian kings, perhaps in the time of the Hyksos, the older idea. On the presently held biblicist theory, in the Iron Age, settlements in the Palestinian hills increased, because of the ingress of the Israelites. If the earlier date for the settlement is correct, then what caused the pattern of settlement to change in the Iron Age?
Whatever cause biblicists are willing to accept, it will refute the hypothesis they currently have. The settlement pattern cannot have been caused by settlement from outside Israel and Judah as they now claim. They will then accept the arguments of the minimalists who say the pattern of changes in settlement can be explained by economic and climatic reasons. The point of Isserlin’s argument is that the Israelite settlers coined new words for some geographical features of the land they were entering, so they need not have accepted any existing names that upset them religiously. If the Israelites were responsibble for the names then they must have revered the gods and goddesses that they used to name the topological features. They then did not worship Yehouah as an exclusive God as the bible makes out, if they worshipped Him at all.
Theophoric personal names contain the name of a god. Parents would not give their children the names of a god that they hated, surely, and names theophoric in Yehouah are the large majority, but Yehouah does not appear in place names at all. The implication of theophoric names is that these were gods who were worshipped and especially respected by the parents, and they wanted their child to have some quality or association with the god:
Many with non-Yahwistic names were named by parents with Yahwistic names, and vice-versa.Z Zevit
On the basis of toponyms and theophoric names found in each of the areas allocated to the tribes of the Israelites, they worshipped Baal, Baalath, Mot, Shamash, Yam, Horus, Amun, Min, Ptah, Isis, On, Bes, Mar, Dagan, Reseph, Shalim, Qos and Anath, though some were of minor interest, perhaps of foreign residents:
At the times these designations were established, the deities involved were revered by their name givers.Z Zevit
Seals bearing the Egyptian charm, the Udjet Eye have also been found in Palestine. One can imagine when a change is first made out of choice rather than an imposition that old names will persist as a fashion or tradition, but eventually, especially if the cult is exclusive by policy, the older demonic or pagan names would fall out of favour. Roman Christians did not initially use Christian or biblical names for their children but eventually they did. It is curious then that the Israelites who were convinced Yehouahists from the outset should choose the names of forbidden gods for their kids. But Zevit guesses that the non-Yehouahist were no more than 20% of the population. D M Pike from the bible makes it 2%! if that is so, it is hard to understand what the biblical authors were arguing against. It evidently was not true, but the bible is endeavouring to make Israel impossibly devoted to Yehouah, so ends up contradicting itself. The Israelites and Judahites were not apostates and backsliders by the bible’s own evidence. It defines the bible as propaganda designed to keep an already almost 100% committed people strictly in line.
In reality, the people were Canaanites and worshipped the gamut of Canaanite gods in no standard way. Contrary to the evidence of its theophoric names, when Ahab was king of Israel, the bible says only 7000 had not bowed to Baal. It is a wonder it is not less, but it completely inverts the impression given by Pike’s bible data, if the population was 350,000. If people were in reality calling their kids by the names of these Canaanite gods then they were being worshipped actively. They cannot have been forbidden:
In Iron Age Israel, as distinct from the bible, a complex and rich mythology must have existed.Z Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel
It would be more satisfying if he kept Iron Age Israel distinct from the bible more often, but he draws the inevitable conclusion—Israel was Canaanite in religion. Deuteronomy shows it in its exhortations against Canaanite gods (Dt 7:25-26; 12:31; 13:1-18; 18:9-12; 20:18; 29:26). In the thesis of these pages, it means until the fifth century BC, but Zevit sticks by the seventh century invention of the book of the law found by Josiah in the bible—despite his own analysis.
Plainly, at some stage older Canaanite gods stopped being worshipped at named places, but they must have been worshipped by the people whom the bible says were already monotheistic worshippers of Yehouah when they entered the land with a strict code supplied by the God. The Deuteronomic Historian shows several occasions when Canaanite practices were purged, and one would have thought, if these names had arisen only by popular usage contrary to the norms of the land, they would have been changed by fiat to stop the people being reminded that such-and-such a place was a shrine to a forbidden god. It makes it hard to believe that these purges ever happened. Asherah does not appear, and Chronicles gives the impression that Levites were fond of Horus and Mot! Zevit concludes from this and the archaeological data that in the central highlands Canaanite gods…
…were revered in different times and places up to the fifth centuury BCE.
And what then happened? The Persians sent their colonists into Yehud! The evidence of archaeology and names “argues for a minimalist definition of Yahwism”. Despite it, Zevit then says that Yehouah was already well established in the tenth century as the stories of David in the bible testify. There is something profoundly irrational or perverse about biblicists. In spite of Zevit’s long introduction to his textbook on method, and his apparently good intentions, he cannot stop prefering his bible. Speaking of certain altar rituals in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, he asks rhetorically, “Is there evidence that such rituals were known in Iron Age Israel?” We expect an archaeological answer but he turns to 1 Samuel! The pure circularity of these believers is beyond belief. They must be gillulim!
What happened to Moses?
Israelite religion must therefore have been a variant of the religions practised by Canaanites in general. The main difference which arose between this religion and other neighboring ones was that the Persians selected Jerusalem as the centre of a pseudo-Zoroastrian cult based on the local god Yehouah. There was no particular slow variation from other Canaanite religions, but there was a sudden imposition of a foreign cult on to the local religion of Jerusalem. The imposition was resisted by locals for many decades but ultimately it triumphed, albeit in a highly fragmentated state.
This imposition is the reason why Yehouah became monotheistic and is probably why the religion also rejected images. As Herodotus noted, the religion of the Persians was relatively free of images. Christianity was far from shy of sacred imagery despite its Judaic roots and monotheism is seen by many progressive people today as symbolic of religious intolerance rather than fidelity. In particular, the submergence of the Goddess is seen by many religious people as a huge disservice to both men and women through neglect of feminine attributes that today are seen as desirable in both sexes, but which have been unnaturally suppressed in favour of an exaggerated masculinity.
Clearly, this history precludes the whole of the myth of Moses and the Exodus and, indeed, all of the bible until the Israelites were settled in Canaan. The Pentateuch or the five books of Moses, called by the Jews the Torah, are no longer thought by any scholars as early works as they once were. They were originally thought to have been written by Moses himself, a man who is supposed to have died about 1300 BC. Now they are thought to have been written no earlier than the “restoration”, and most probably in the third century BC.
Of course, it is possible that the books were written late but used much earlier sources. That seems quite likely but some will not even go that far. And even if true, no one can be sure which parts of it are genuinely old and which parts are not simply a much later romance. People about the time of Christ, or just before, were just as able as more recent authors like Sir Walter Scott or William Shakespeare at writing historical fiction, but no bible basher will consider the possibility.
The truth is that both halves of the Christian bible are sugar baskets of popular fiction holding nuggets of historical truth. Dissolve away the fiction and the history remains, but no one has a suitable solvent, and so no one knows what is true and what is not. What we can say is that there is not the least evidence for large chunks of the Old Testament as it is presented to us and therefore it is likely to be mainly fictional.
Norman Gottwald tries to retrieve something by saying that, although the people and specific places might be false, the cultural and social situation might be accurately represented. It is anoher way of admitting that the people who wrote these historical dramas were not fools. They had read poems, sagas, myths and books written in earlier times and just as any competent author can today, they were able to reconstruct a fair represention of a historical period. Into it they placed their fictional characters just as Scott or Shakespeare would.
Gottwald tries to give this contrivance a scientific air by calling people and places H1 and period detail as H2. So, all right, the period detail might be correct but we can only be sure by using independent sources, and even then, so what? The period detail is not the point of the stories in the Jewish scriptures. If Joshua or Deborah did not exist, what do their stories tell us? The answer is that the Persianized or Hellenized Jews had a talented Catherine Cookson, quite able to write good stories.
Apparently, the books of Samuel use the word “Hebrews” in a pejorative way that fits well with independent evidence that it meant bandits at that time. In other words, it is rather like the word “Viking” and who is to know that the word did not retain that connotation and that the Hebrews were not rather proud of it? It would fit in excellently with the self image of the Maccabees who probably sponsored the “Hebrew” scriptures and had stood as outlaws against the Greeks to win the independence of Palestine. The word Hebrew was never used as the name of a language until Jesus ben Sirach used it in the preface of Ecclesiasticus. To the Maccabees it was a complement.
This brings up the level of psychological truth that might be in the scriptures. They tell more about the writers than about the subject. Honest scholars will have a great deal more to discover about this aspect of the bible than they have hitherto. The themes throughout the scriptures are those of the people being liberated and returning to a promised land, of people who were lost and subject to the temptations of foreign gods, of people wandering and finding a home, of people crossing into a kingdom, all the time harassed by alien peoples. This is how the Maccabees saw themselves and the Jews, and it was their battles against the alien Greeks that the bible is a set of allegories about.
A Proper Historical Approach
When biblicists find something corroborated in the bible, they rejoice, but it is all the uncorroborated stuff that they should be concerned about. There is much more of it. By accepting the internal chronology of the bible, biblicists, even careful ones like Zevit, simply confuse the issue. He admits:
No hard data enable us to trace the “Israelites” back any earlier than the beginning of the Iron Age.
Does he mean slavery in Egypt, Moses and Joshua are really myths? Does it include the Judges? Why should anyone believe that Judges is saying anything true about the twelfth or eleventh centuries? It seems like a pastiche of random left over and partial tales bundled together. What is the point of persisting in believing in a “United Monarchy” when nothing has ever shown there ever was one. If anything, the “United Monarchy” was Samaria. It seems to have been the first set up, and so was the only one in the region for some time. The way to get consistency in all this is the scientific method. Regard nothing as true until it is shown to be so. It is something biblicists cannot do. They cannot bring themselves even to believe that God is trying to use them to correct ancient errors that have confused everyone and led them into grievous sin. The reason is that the bible is really their God.
There is not the least bit of evidence ever found that the Israelites were ever in captivity in Egypt and escaped to discover a Promised Land. It was the Maccabees who led the Jews to a promised land of their own, not Moses. What had happened in history and was known by Jewish writers at the time of the “restoration”, was that Palestine had been a colony of Egypt for long periods of history. The decline of Egypt and the rise of Assyria, culminating in the annexation of Egypt by Assyria under Esarhaddon in the seventh century, allowed the Palestinian mini-states to throw off the yoke of Egypt. The metaphor of the Exodus served as an allegory of the freeing of Palestine from the Egyptians, as an expression of the Egyptians as traditional enemies of the Jews and as a vehicle for the adoption of the laws brought by the Persians.
What the faithful do not like is that Palestine has a genuine history separate from the scriptural romances and the purpose of scholars should be to try to find out what it is. Once the bible is put on one side as untrustworthy, the way forward that suggests itself is to study all of the Palestinian mini-states together in a comprehensive study of the whole region between Egypt and the Euphrates. The religions in particular of the region should be studied independently of the major religions that later emerged because it has been the constant distortion of forcing everything through this unnatural sieve that has produced such a lot of incomprehensible intellectual spaghetti.
Already archaeology has shown that Israel and Judaea were not religiously or ethnically distinct from other small states in the region like Moab, Edom, Ammon and the rest of Canaan. Even if these states existed before the eighth century BC they would not have prevented the other people of the region from travelling. If they existed, they existed for trade because the economies of the hill countries were based on a narrow range of produce, olives, vine and sheep, necessitating trade. The region’s population must have had a certain mobility and must have continued to mix. Monotheism was not the norm until after the exile. It was the influence of Persia that created a distinctive Judaism stripped of earlier features such as a popular goddess, fertility rites, astrology and divination.
The Christian and Jewish “scholars” to whom this is anathema object that their critics are anti-religious, as if any criticism of these artificial and backward religions implies criticism of all religion. In fact, some of the critics are perfectly conscientious Christians and Jews but ones who put integrity ahead of paperhanging. That, though, is something that too many sanctimonious wafer-nibblers cannot understand. They cannot see Israel and Judah as anything other than the singular nations their bibles say they were, and are quite unable to draw the conclusions that the evidence insists upon.
A proper historical approach to this geographical area will show the growth of the mini-states and their religions in context and most importantly will allow us to see precisely how Judaism really began with the edict of Cyrus. If the Christian God really has a plan, it is time we all found out how it really developed. What is so disastrous if Zoroaster was God’s first prophet, not Moses?
Comment
From R Garcia
First of all I want to say I love your site. While I agree with most of the conclusions on the site one thing I can’t help but wonder is how a place like Judah, which spent so much of it’s time as a province of Egypt and was largely ignored by the Canaanites comes to be namewd after a Caananite God? Isn’t it more likely that the origin of the name Judah (or more properly Yehuda) derives from the Egyptian God Djehuty whose followers were known as djehuta?
We know that Judah had a long history of close ties to Egypt. This would explain the reason the Persians were so careful to demonize the Egyptians but it would also explain why the resistance the Am-Ha-Eretz show against the ’returnees’ is so persistant. Yehouah was a Caananite God brought by the refugees fleeing Assyria’s conquests in the North being imposed on a land that had started as a cult center for Djehuty.
This may just be a minor difference but I think it speaks to the real lack of history of the region. There really is nothing there until perhaps the end of the 8th century BCE when a sudden influx from Israel and other Caananite areas comes in. That is the group, barely settled in, that Babylon conquers and disperses leaving behind a mixture of Djehuty cultists and Caananite farmers.
From Mike
Our thinking gets close on this one. On my page on David, I say almost the same as you do here, but that David (DWD) is Thoth who is Djehuti. DWD would be pronounced dude or Jude whence Judah. Perhaps the god DWD was also Yehouah as you suggest. It is interesting but the evidence would be hard to come by, if there is any at all, other than our conjectures like these.
I am glad someone likes the website. It has taken a lot of work, so a bit of appreciation occasionally expressed is nice to read. Thanks.
Thank you for your kind reply. I suspect many of the e-mails you get are not very kind.
I did come across the bit in the section on David (after the e-mail I sent you). My suggestion though runs a little deeper perhaps. If we suppose that the indigenous population up until the Assyrians began conquering the northern realms was a Thoth cult I think it explains why the early attempt to make El the ’most high god’ failed.
What I am suggesting is that when the Caananites came into Judah they brought their gods with them. Refugees made up the majority of the population fairly quickly, especially in the late eigth century when those refugees would have included more noblemen fleeing the Assyrians. The point is that the incoming Caananites never replaced the Thoth cult, only overlaid it with their gods. Most of the people who were deported by the Babylonians were the descendants of these Caananite refugees.
The Persians didn’t know any better, they thought the people from the region were the Caananites whose high god was El not realizing that most of the people who were left had been worshipping Thoth. The reason it took a hundred years from the first ’return’ to the time of Ezra to get a religion established was because they had to find a way to correct this massive problem that the Thoth cult presented. I think the evidence suggests that the ’returners’ floundered with this until they realized that other cultures in the region had elevated Yehouah in their pantheons precisely because of the confusion between the names of the two Gods.
As you suggested it may even be that Yehouah was an adaptation of Thoth as a Caananite God. Perhaps Ea and Djehuty, because of the similarities in pronunciations, became dual sources.
I agree that so much of anything written about this period is conjecture. Where we have a minor difference is that I think what evidence we do have points to a difference between the ’returnees’ and Am-Ha-Eretz that took s couple of generations to subside.
Your train of thought seems to me worth recording, so I should be happy indeed to add it to the page you referenced with your name attached or a pseudonym, just as you wish. If you agree, I’ll add the notes to the page with some of the chit chat expunged to leave the relevant thoughts undiluted. So, I seek your permission. Otherwise I’ll just add a note paraphrasing what you say. I fully appreciate that Christians in the US are often on the fringe of insanity, so correspondents with these pages are chary of being recognized. Let me know what you think.
Fine. I’d have no problem with being referred to as R Garcia. I am currently working my way through your Christianity Revealed section. My focus has been on mystery religions and their influence on early Christianity. I’ve always been quite stricken with the ease with which one could construct the Christ Mythology from Jewish eschatology and the popular mysteries of the time.
