The Origin Myths and Holy Places in the Old Testament

A Study of Aetiological Narratives

Lukasz Niesiolowski-Spano, Jacek Laskowski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134938377
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

'Origin Myths and Holy Places in the Old Testament' examines the biblical narratives which describe the origins of holy places. It argues for the Hellenistic origin or redaction of most of these narratives. Three central questions are addressed: are there common features in biblical accounts about the foundation of places of worship; are there elements in the aetiological stories that reveal the 'real' mythology/rituals of the sanctuary; what were the circumstances of the creation of such narratives?

1.
Introduction

The aim of this study is to analyse aetiological myths in the Bible that deal with the origins of holy places in Palestine as well as the circumstances of their inception. The conclusions will allow us, I think, to see the religion of the inhabitants of Palestine, as well as the changes introduced within the Bible, in a new light. I will start by defining the key concepts used in this study. I will then reflect on the limitations that the source text imposes on the work.

Myth

In view of the exceptionally extensive literature that has grown up around the definition of, and social role of, myth (with contributions from history, religious studies, anthropology, literary studies, ethnology and other disciplines), I make no attempt to undertake a synthesis of this subject. I simply present those views which have shaped my own approach to the study of myth. For the purposes of this study, however, I must set down a definition, albeit a tentative one, on which I based my choice of source materials. In this book, the word “myth” is understood to mean a story which plays a particular role in the life of a society. It is difficult to draw precise boundaries between a myth and, for example, a story or a legend. Nor is it possible to formulate a universal definition applicable to all eras and all societies. Furthermore, the sheer variety of contents and functions that myths have in different cultures forces us to resort to partial definitions which may apply to just one specific text. The distinguishing feature of a myth as opposed to an ancient story is that it has a special place in a society’s consciousness. In religious thought, a myth is an account regarded as the truth. It is defined by its function, not its formal-literary qualities. For me, what is important is to examine the function that certain texts performed in an ancient society and not to look at the structural and formal elements that distinguish myths from other kinds of story.

The specific feature of a myth is its social reception. If a text is regarded by the society in which it functions as sacred, and therefore true, then we are dealing with a myth. This simplified definition is convenient but it does contain a danger in that it is left to researchers to determine whether or not a given text was indeed regarded as sacred. This kind of assessment creates difficulties in sociological and ethnographic studies, and it becomes particularly difficult (because of the paucity of source materials and their selectivity) in studies of the ancient world. The application of such a definition demands precision and the use of methods that allow it to be applied in a practical way, in this case to define a particular myth, which is to say one that was recorded in the Bible.

Myth in the Bible

The whole of the Bible has been (and is) treated as a sacred text. Following on from what I have said, the entire account should therefore be described as a myth. In this study, however, the Bible will not be understood to be “the word of truth” and so we cannot call the whole of the Bible a myth.

It is common knowledge that the biblical texts feature a wide variety of contents and forms. Our definition of myth is more applicable to some of these than it is to others. No-one will demur if we accept as a myth the account, for example, of the creation of the world (Gen 1:1–2:4a). The same applies to the material of the New Testament. Accounts of the birth, the teachings, the death and the resurrection of Jesus are articles of faith not called into question by believing Christians whose conviction it is that the Gospels contain the truth. This means that, using my proposed definition, they are myths. It does not, however, seem to be right to regard as myths the parables in the Gospels because they are presented in the form of metaphors. Faith is not needed here because the argument appeals directly to human reason; the text of the parable is presented not as a literal but as a rational address appealing to reason. The conclusion we can draw here is that it is a formal and necessary condition of a myth that it be received as a sacred text. A myth always appeals to faith and is not the subject of rational appraisal. Furthermore, if it becomes the subject of rational analysis and is not fully accepted by faith, then it stops being a myth. What it becomes then—whether it is literature, fairy-tale or make-believe—is not a question that concerns us here.

There is one other problem that needs to be resolved here, namely: how to establish whether or not a given people believe a text and regard it as sacred. An ethnographer can simply ask his informant. A historian, however, not having a contemporary account stating expressis verbis that such and such a faith exists, is in a more difficult situation and must be guided by his/her own investigative criteria. Despite the fundamental differences in the psychologies of ancient and contemporary peoples, we must not assume that people who are separated by eras, degrees of technical development and life experiences are significantly different. A historian must be equally wary of Eurocentrism and “modernocentrism.” The people of ancient times were neither more nor less stupid, or wise, than their descendants of the nineteenth, twentieth and even the twenty-first centuries. Just like people of nowadays, they were capable of rational deduction and assessment. It is true that their religious thinking was more characteristically theirs, but that is not to say that they were incapable of reasoning logically. They were capable of perceiving contradictions and assessing the probability of phenomena which, even if understood, did not rule out the preservation of their faith.

Biblical myths have been defined here as accounts of events that took place in ancient times in a reality which, to a person thinking rationally, might appear to be fabulous or invented. These accounts relate events that never took place but which are completely real in terms of religious thinking, determined as it is by the faith factor.

Reservations have occasionally been expressed about applying the concept of myth (and other anthropological terminology) to biblical studies. They are not, however, justified in terms of scientific research. To a large extent they result from treating myth as a manifestation of a lower form of religious thought which in turn often reveals the researcher’s own partisan approach. Anthropological terminology is, however, gradually entering Biblical Studies.¹ It was Edmund Leach who put forward the most persuasive argument in favour of granting equal status to myths that function among non-literate native Americans as well as those of the ancient Hebrews:

Lévi-Strauss uses a narrow definition of myth which makes it appear that the myths of contemporary Amerindians are cultural products of an entirely different kind from the mythical-historical traditions of the Jewish people in the first century BC. My own view is that this distinction is quite artificial and that the structural analysis of the myth should be equally applicable to both the time of men and the time of Gods.²

Aetiological Myth

We can regard as aetiology any explanation—on a religious basis—of the causes of, and circumstances leading to, the birth of a custom, law, place or any other thing or phenomenon. Every aetiology invokes some authority to give the truth it expresses its credibility. In the context of myths, this authority tends to be a religious one. Aetiology describes the causes and circumstances of the origins of any arrangement or institution whose inception demands (or is worthy of) explanation. It might appear from this, therefore, that the Bible in its entirety is of an aetiological character. It talks about the origins of various institutions; as a sacred text it is regarded as being the revealed truth; and in its account of the past it calls upon sacral authority.

The aetiological myths of the Old Testament are specified above all by the use of precise aetiological indications: “that is why X is called X,” “to this day this place is named Y,” “and he called this place Z” and so on. This, however, forms only part of the aetiological material. The aetiological function can also be seen in accounts which record the origins of various institutions, customs and laws but without such a form of words. Since the account is credible and talks of the first man to start viniculture, it means that it was indeed he who was the first to apply viniculture. The lack of an aetiological formulation does not alter the nature and function of the myth.³

To date, investigations of biblical aetiologies have concentrated on the internal ordering of their various manifestations, on analyses of them as a literary genre or on distinguishing the forms of words mentioned above when introducing accounts of their origin.⁴ These literary-critical studies, although they have provided a formal ordering of biblical aetiologies, have failed to resolve several specific questions. They have not, for example, answered the question of whether the aetiologies are an archaic form of mythical explanations of reality, or whether they are later attempts at “rationalising” an explanation of reality of unknown provenance. Did these aetiologies aim only to explain the beginnings or did they play some other role?

The most important works on this subject are still the studies by Burke O. Long⁵ and Friedmann W. Golka.⁶ More recent works have not improved on the synthesis they reached more than thirty years ago in their research into the collection of books Genesis to 2 Kings.⁷ Their aim was to research all the biblical material for instances of the aetiologies of various phenomena, places, institutions, names, nomenclatures and so on. Though there have been considerable changes in the field of biblical knowledge since the publication of their work, a whole series of conclusions and specific assertions remains valid.

Holy Places

In this work the term “holy place” is applied to all those places where— according to the Bible—ritual ceremonies were conducted. It is hard to establish their number since there was a wide variety of sanctuaries and temples in existence throughout Palestine. Just as the Bible changed shape through the centuries, so the religion of the inhabitants of Palestine underwent constant transformations. The biblical text itself provides information about numerous places where the Israelites worshipped various gods. The terms bamah and bamot indicate unnamed places of ritual. References to pilgrimages, holy days and sacrifices let us compile a catalogue of places where various religious practices were performed. My aim here is not to provide an exhaustive account of places of ritual in Palestine. The subject of this work is simply those myths which deal with the establishment of places that were regarded as holy at a certain period in Palestine’s history. Evidence of the existence of a rite quali es a place for this group, and the existence of a narrative explaining the beginnings of a rite quali es it as an aetiological myth.

The Bible as a Historical Source

The Bible is a work compiled over the ages by a Jewish intellectual elite. Although the development of the biblical canon and the changes introduced into the texts over a period of centuries have not been exhaustively examined, we do know that it was a long, slow process and, from a certain point onwards, rigorously controlled. When we talk about the creation of a Hebrew canon we have to distinguish two periods. The first includes the formation of Judaism, from the return of the refugees from the Babylonian captivity to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The second falls between the years 70 and 1008 CE, the period of mature Judaism as it moved through the phase of Phar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Beer-sheba
• 3. Bethel
• 4. Dan
• 5. Hebron, Mamre
• 6. Ophrah
• 7. Shechem and Gilgal
• 8. Holy Places in Transjordan: Galeed—Mahanaim—Penuel
• 9. Conclusions and Summary
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index of References
• Index of Authors