Israelite Religions

An Archaeological and Biblical Survey

Hess, Richard S.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781441201126
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Archaeological excavation in the Holy Land has exploded with the resurgence of interest in the historical roots of the biblical Israelites. Israelite Religions offers Bible students and interested lay leaders a survey of the major issues and approaches that constitute the study of ancient Israelite religion. Unique among other books on the subject, Israelite Religions takes the Bible seriously as a historical source, balancing the biblical material with relevant evidence from archaeological finds.

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Introduction

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• Preliminary Perspectives
• Definitions
  » Religion
  » Israelite
• Outline of This Book
• Summary

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Preliminary Perspectives

The purpose of this work is to survey the major elements of the study of ancient Israelite religion and the methods that have been used to study them. Interest in Israelite religion has recently enjoyed a renaissance. Why have so many books and articles been written on the subject with no indication of a reduction in their number in coming years? Several factors have contributed to this development: renewed interest in the areas of the history of the study of Old Testament theology; the explosion in the archaeological excavation of what is often called “the Holy Land”; and the broader philosophical and cultural trends of our era, especially postmodernism.

I begin with the “pedigree” of the study of Israelite religion vis-à-vis the study of the Old Testament and especially Old Testament theology. Dissatisfaction with traditional approaches to Old Testament theology can be traced to the end of a major movement in this field—the Biblical Theology Movement—in the mid-twentieth century. This dissatisfaction, along with a gradual shift away from the pursuit of a single unifying theological principle, led to the identification of a plurality of theologies, whose contradictory approaches and interpretations are nevertheless grouped together within the collection of literature known as the Hebrew Bible.[1] This shift in thought led scholars to posit a radical disjunction between a late, idealized final edition of the Old Testament and its underlying multiplicity of parties and contentious views of worship and religious beliefs. From such a milieu, Israelite religion strengthened itself as a discipline independent of Old Testament theology. Those who studied it sought a path between two dangerous extremes: the Scylla of a “flattened out” Old Testament with no acknowledgment of its multiple voices and the Charybdis of an agnosticism that could not know anything about the history of early Israel and its religion.[2]

Thus Israelite religion as a modern discipline turned away from a fundamentally literary task aimed at distilling the principle teachings of the Old Testament for faith, life, and—especially in Christian contexts—a connection with the New Testament and Jesus Christ. In place of this, it focused on the growing body of textual and archaeological evidence addressing the subject of ancient Israel’s life. This result is the second factor contributing to general interest in the religion of Israel. The analysis of cult centers and burials in Palestine emerged with the astonishingly intensive archaeological exploration and excavation of the region that has occurred during the past century. The discovery of cult centers, whether mere assemblages of religious artifacts and altars or larger architectural structures, led scholars to ask how they relate to the inhabitants of the land, and especially to Israel. The same was true of the burial sites, where complements of eating utensils and cultic paraphernalia raised questions about a cult of the dead.

With an increasing accumulation of data there also emerged refined methods for the investigation and typological classification of these two phenomena. Hand in hand with the material remains there appeared significant new inscriptional evidence. While written texts from all periods continue to be studied and published, there is no question but that the evidence from ancient Palestine and its immediate neighbors has created the greatest interest. Above all, those ninth/eighth-century BC inscriptions from the northern Sinai site of Kuntillet ʿAjrud, commonly understood as mentioning “Yahweh and his Asherah” (where Asherah is understood as a goddess), have provided what is arguably the major catalyst for a revolution in our understanding of the beliefs of Israelites during their monarchy (c. 1000–586 BC). The inscriptions that mention this blessing, while not limited to this Sinai caravansary (a sort of ancient hotel) or cult center, constitute the centerpiece of discussion about the role of a goddess or cult symbol and its relationship to Yahweh.[3] It is, in fact, no longer possible to accept a simple division between those who worshiped Yahweh as a single and unique deity, on the one hand, and those who served Baal and a pantheon of deities, on the other. Yahweh has now become a member of the pantheon of Iron Age Palestine.[4]

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Chronological Divisions for the Ancient Near East

Early Bronze Age (EB)	c. 3300–2000 BC
Middle Bronze Age (MB)	c. 2000–1550 BC
Middle Bronze Age IIA	c. 1850–1750 BC
Middle Bronze Age IIB	c. 1750–1650 BC
Middle Bronze Age IIC	c. 1650–1550 BC
Late Bronze Age (LB)	c. 1550–1200 BC
Late Bronze Age IA	c. 1550–1450 BC
Late Bronze Age IB	c. 1450–1400 BC
Late Bronze Age IIA	c. 1400–1300 BC
Late Bronze Age IIB (LBIII)	c. 1300–1200 BC
Iron Age	c. 1200–586 BC
Iron IA	c. 1200–1100 BC
Iron IB	c. 1100–1000 BC
Iron IIA	c. 1000–900 BC
Iron IIB	c. 900–700 BC
Iron IIC	c. 700–586 BC
Neo-Babylonian	586–539 BC
Persian	539–332 BC
Hellenistic	332–53 BC

Note: I recognize and am pleased to affirm the legitimacy of the usage of BCE in place of BC and of CE in place of AD. Here I have chosen to use the traditional and widely recognized rubrics without regard to any philosophical or otherwise ideological agenda.

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A third and final factor in the emergence of interest in the study of Israelite religion has been the methodological and cultural impact of a cluster of philosophies and worldviews that may be grouped under the general term of postmodernism. Its wide-scale rejection of traditional authoritarian forms and acceptance of particular types of pluralism has driven the discipline and its interpretation of the extrabiblical evidence in a specific direction. Thus scholars of Israelite religion in the past generation have directed their research away from assumptions of a single authoritarian faith with a single deity. Rather than seeing the “Yahweh and (his) Asherah” material at Kuntillet ʿAjrud and elsewhere as an aberration in a predominantly Yahwistic society, the majority of scholars find more inviting and inherently more probable the presence of multiple religions existing side by side in ancient Israel. These religions remained continually in a state of flux and transformation as they were affected by political, economic, and cultural forces from outside and from within the society. At Kuntillet ʿAjrud, then, Yahweh had a wife named Asherah and he had children, all of whom were members of the divine council that was worshiped in ancient Israel. Given this prevalence of multiple deities, the student of the Hebrew Scriptures must penetrate behind such erudite sources as the Deuteronomist and priestly redactors to find evidence of this religious pluralism (on these “redactors,” see below).

How then should the question of the influence of postmodernism and prevailing philosophies on the study of Israelite religion be considered? Some have sought to examine it directly in terms of the philosophical rationale itself.[5] That task, however essential it might be, lies beyond the scope of this study. Others would emphasize again the role of biblical theology as a legitimate enterprise.[6] This too holds much promise but is not the direction of the present work. Rather, this study proposes to reexamine the extrabiblical and biblical evidence for the religions of the southern Levant in the Iron Age (c. 1200–586 BC) and to locate features that might be distinctive in terms of the religions of Israelites and Judeans. If it succeeds at all, it will at best serve as an initial body of data that can be used for the study of Israelite religion. It will not directly answer questions concerning the influence of philosophies upon the current models, but will rather address both what is customary and what remains anomalous on the landscape of this ancient religion. In the end it will argue that, while there existed a bewildering variety of religious beliefs and practices in the relatively tiny states that were Israel and Judah, this does not exclude, in terms of logic or of evidence, the possibility of a single core of beliefs among some that extended back, perhaps far back, into Israel’s preexilic past.[7]

Definitions

Religion

Up to this point I have begged the question of the definition of my terms, particularly the word “religion.” This having so far been a brief review of current trends, it has not been necessary to define this term. However, the selection of evidence that will proceed henceforth must force a consideration of this basic question. And it must be considered in the light of archaeology and epigraphy as well as the biblical sources, rather than merely as an abstract theological construct. A working definition of religion for the purpose of this study is the service and worship of the divine or supernatural through a system of attitudes, beliefs, and practices.[8] This dictionary definition is intended as a heuristic device to enable discussion to proceed.

Two major problems arise for such a definition in the context of the study of Israelite religion. First, there is the question of the relationship between Israelite religion and biblical theology. This problem is unique to the subject of Israelite religion. A study of religion elsewhere in the world or at another time would not consider this issue. Here it must be addressed. Israelite religion developed out of the study of biblical theology. In what is traditionally understood as the essay that distinguished biblical theology from dogmatic theology, Johann P. Gabler (2004, 506) observed in 1787, “biblical theology itself remains the same, namely in that it deals only with those things which holy men perceived about matters pertinent to religion, and is not made to accommodate our point of view.”

In light of Israelite religion, one might add that biblical theology would not accommodate the points of view of many of the ancient Israelites. There is a recognizable distinction between biblical theology on the one hand, which emphasizes the ideals that the biblical writers thought should constitute Israel’s religious beliefs and practices, and the study of Israelite religion on the other, which considers what ancient Israel actually did believe and do in matters of religion. The latter is how we will understand the term in our study. Although there can be significant overlap in the content of the two, in the final analysis the study of Israelite religion examines the biblical texts for evidence of beliefs and practices that diverge from those the texts advocate. In doing so it is necessary to supplement this material with extrabiblical sources, both written and archaeological. These assist in balancing the polemics of the biblical writers and they can provide a greater depth and illumination to their study. Furthermore, this material allows those who practiced religion an opportunity to “speak” for themselves through their own inscriptions and archaeological evidence. This is essential to understanding the whole picture, or as much of it as is available. Nevertheless, complete separation of theology from religion remains impossible.

The use of extrabiblical evidence points to the second problem or limitation that arises from my definition of religion: the sources for the study of the subject. A vast diversity...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Approaches to the Study of Religion
• 3. Previous Study of Israelite Religion
• 4. Pre-Israelite West Semitic Religion: Syria and Egypt
• 5. Pre-Israelite West Semitic Religion: Palestine and Jordan
• 6. Narrative and Legal Strands of the Pentateuch
• 7. Priestly and Cultic Strands of the Pentateuch
• 8. Early Israel and the United Monarchy
• 9. Written Sources for the Divided Monarchy
• 10. Archaeological Sources for the Divided Monarchy
• 11. Exilic and Postexilic Religion
• 12. Conclusions
• Notes
• Reference List
• Name Index
• Scripture Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover