The Religion of the People of Israel (Routledge Revivals)

Rudolf Kittel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317431664
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

This book, first published in 1925, aims to demonstrate the ultimate roots of the many religious ideas of the Hebrews in Canaanite thought. This book will be of interest to students of theology and religious studies.

Routledge Revivals

The Religion of the People of Israel

This book, first published in 1925, aims to demonstrate the ultimate roots of the many religious ideas of the Hebrews in Canaanite thought. This book will be of interest to students of theology and religious studies.

THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL

CHAPTER I The Canaanite Background—The Indigenous Religion

DOI: 10.4324/9781315691954-1

The Significance of Canaan.

From whence the Israelites came is to a large degree veiled in mystery. It is hardly probable that they came from a single province or community. They are much more likely to have gathered from several different provinces, from the east as well as from the south. So also the influences, which go to the building up of the Hebrew religion in the form in which it is presented to us in the history of the Israelites, did not flow from one single source, but were derived from various sources.

Many questions remain unanswered with regard to their ultimate origin. On the other hand, it is quite certain that the Hebrew religion in historical times took shape on the soil of Palestine or Canaan, and in close connexion with the religion of the country.

It was here that the people's lot was cast since the time of Moses, it was here also that its religious life unfolded, it was here that according to tradition, whether in the land itself or on its borders, the tribes of its patriarchs had already dwelt. If tradition can be corroborated, then the religious life and thought of those ancestral tribes must have developed even in those days in frequent touch, and perhaps in contrast, with that of the Canaanites.

Thus we are shown the door through which alone we are able to investigate the religion of Israel. It is certain without qualification that the great factor from which we must seek to understand the post-Mosaic, and perhaps even the very earliest religion of Israel, is the religion of Canaan, Perhaps the religion of Moses and of his time may have been influenced from elsewhere, namely, from Arabia, the word being taken in its broadest sense. But Canaan was also near enough to the wilderness, and everything that after Moses' time contributed to the Hebrew religion or influenced it from foreign sources, whether from Babylon or from Asia Minor or from anywhere else, for centuries came to it through the mediation of the Canaanites.

Before the time of Solomon It was most exceptional for the Israelites to have immediate contact with the great civilizations. Thus it is proper that we first examine the Canaanite religion. At every turn we shall come into contact with the Hebrew religion of the Old Testament which will facilitate the understanding of our proper subject. ¹

Pre-semitic Religion.

The oldest forms of worshipping non-earthly or, at least, non-human beings on Canaanite soil appear to go back to the primeval pre-Semitic times. To estimate years or centuries is useless; enough to know that we certainly find them far into the third if not the fourth millennium before Christ. What we find here may be designated as simple polydemonism. Certain funeral customs in Gezer, by which an attempt was made utterly to destroy the body by burning, point to a primitive belief in a soul, namely, the conception of a soul within the body being inextricably bound up with it and able to cause trouble so long as the body continues to exist. In this period of the more ancient great stone monuments the cultus was practised, as far as we can see, chiefly at cromlechs or circles of stone (Gilgal?) and at menhirs or stone pillars and roughly pointed or upright stone blocks such as Jacob's stone at Bethel was thought to be. What form of religious worship was practised within the precincts of a holy place or at the upright stone blocks cannot accurately be told. Nevertheless it may be taken for granted that gifts were brought to the earth spirits and to the ancestral spirits who dwelt in these sacred spots. We have little information as to the nature of these gifts. From certain basin or dish-shaped cavities in stones and flat rocks drink-offerings seem most probable. Although many of these peculiar dishes may have served everyday purposes, a number of them can be explained only as showing the sacrificial dishes in which water, oil, and probably also wine and blood were brought to the spirits of earth, of springs, and perhaps even of fertility that dwelt in the neighbourhood.

Thus in all probability we are introduced to the oldest form of sacrifice in Palestine. Men simply placed their gift before the demon or god and left it to him to fetch it away. This procedure finds its way into the Old Testament; thus we already have here an example of the significance which the most primitive world of Canaan possesses for the understanding of Biblical religion. ²

The Semites.

All this still belongs to pre-Semitic times. With the incursion of the Semites not only did customs with regard to the dead change, but many customs connected with sacrifice and many religious views. The dead were now buried. All kinds of offerings, especially food and drink, show that they would continue their existence down below as they had lived here. So it came about that they were treated, perhaps not exactly with true worship, yet certainly reverentially, as becomes mysterious beings of an invisible world. Peculiar sacrificial customs such as human, especially child-sacrifice, and sacrifice when a house was built are not undisputed, but eminently probable. ³ So far as it is attested, the immuring of human beings in buildings would seem to give most probable evidence of the continued life of those earth-spirits in the belief of the Semites also: the life sacrificed was intended to satisfy the spirit as the possessor of the place and at the same time to protect future inhabitants from him; here we have the earliest, still absolutely naturalistic basis of the thought of redemption and propitiation. There was still a vast distance to travel before propitiation was grounded in ethics.

The Root Ideas of Clean and Unclean.

It may, perhaps, seem strange to many if we here call attention to certain ideas and customs that were powerful in later Israel. But they are only intelligible in the light of the stimulus of the belief in spirits in this earliest period and in the efforts of the Yahweh religion to prevent its continuance. The tenacity with which these primitive ideas continue to live is well known in all religions. If, for Yahweh's sake, a number of things were declared to be unclean in later Israel, the key to the prohibition is often found exclusively in the circumstance that such things or customs were forbidden, tabu, because they were intimately associated with that primitive religion which in principle had been overcome, but which still played a part in the life of many individuals.

Thus, much later times, as well as the data provided by the excavations, are an important source for the knowledge of primitive times. If we learn that the feeding of the dead was forbidden in Israel, our former observation concerning it is confirmed. If we see that contact with dead bodies or entering into a house in which a death had taken place or many other customs connected with the dead were defiling, as similarly birth, leprosy, and all sorts of secretions and processes of the human body, they are tabu, simply because in the days when the belief in spirits and kindred sinister powers was universal, these things were subject to their particular influence. The same belief accounts for certain intrinsically edible animals being looked upon as unclean, for certain people being kept away from military camps, for a portion of the harvest being reserved for the field spirits, and for many similar things. In saying this I do not wish to infer that all these customs and ideas were already fully developed in these earliest days, but they all have their origin here, and therefore are intelligible only in the light of these primitive times.

The Deity.

In connexion with sacrifice the custom of simply placing the offering for the gods to carry away seems at first to have been continued, but the Semitic dwellers in Canaan seem more and more to have superseded it, and to have gone over to the practice of burning the sacrificial gifts. Perhaps the stately stone altar, which still stands at Samson's birthplace, Zorea, and also the altar-like stone block excavated by Sellin in Taanak even then served such a purpose. At all events the change is closely connected with a fundamental change in view-point: a god takes the place of a spirit-being.

This leads us inevitably to the question of the Godhead itself. Gods properly so called are in no way presupposed by the above-mentioned traces of religious or quasi-religious life. Only impersonal or half-personal local spirit-beings after the manner of the spirits of the dead are implied. How far many primitive idols, which existed here and there in Palestine, prove more it is difficult to say, and in no case with certainty. The word " god" we hear for the first time at the end of the third and the beginning of the second millennium, and that, too, from a foreign source. A Babylonian colonist in Canaan, or more likely a true Canaanite, Atanaḥili, pronounces himself a worshipper of Nergal, that is, a worshipper of a Babylonian god of mischance. Nergal, however, was no mere demon; he was a god proper. We may assume that neither Atanaḥili nor his god Nergal stood alone. Simultaneously, or soon after him (Atanaḥili) others, including natives, will have followed his example.

Beside Nergal, Ishtar-Ashtart and other foreign deities will soon have celebrated their entry into the land, ⁴ especially among the steadily increasing Semitic population. So much the more remarkable seems the fact that up to the present time we know of no kind of pictorial representation of the deity at that period. This would lead us to suppose that the oldest Semites in Canaan like the oldest Arabs had, on principle or in fact, repudiated divine images.

We know of the Hyksos that they brought with them, at the time of their invasion into Egypt, their own god which the Egyptians called Sutech. Now this Sutech corresponds to the Canaanite Baal. From this we may safely assume that the Baal, with which the Old Testament and other sources have made us so familiar, was worshipped in Canaan between 2000 and 1500 B.C., indeed even earlier by an isolated few. ⁵

Besides Baal his female counterpart Baalah or Ashtart would not have been lacking. And since we can infer from old place-names the worship not only of this Baalah but also of 'Anat, as also of the sun and the moon, there is nothing to prevent our attributing their introduction to this period. Hadad and Ramman may have entered the land at the same time as the Assyrian 'Anat, but for the most part to be incorporated in Baal.

Spirit and God.

This course of events agrees with what was said above. Probably Baal and his like were previously nothing more than local spirit-beings. Their later character unmistakably shows their origin. We do not know what the pre-Semitic people called these earth and water spirits. The Semites who invaded the land called them in their own language Baal and Baalah, i.e. possessor, male and female. ⁶

But since real " gods " were known in the land, Baal and Baalah were no longer able to hold their old position. Certainly they remained for many what they ha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Table Of Contents
• The Religion of the People of Israel
• Index