The Origins and Gradual Adoption of Monotheism Amongst the Ancient Israelites

July19

I’ve been noticing that we’ve been getting a lot of traffic from http://noahdavidsimon.blogspot.com to this article. If that’s how you came here I appriciate your interest, but you should know that I denounce that moron and everything he stands for. He wholesale re-imagined this piece and bent it to his own delusional, misogynist agenda. I hope that, should you read this article, you can see that it’s really got nothing to do with sexual politics of the ancient near east, rather the ties between the common mythic traditions of Mesopotamia and the early ancient Israelites. I hope you enjoy the piece and can appreciate my desire to not be affiliated with religious nut cases.

The Torah

When we turn to significant landmarks in human cultural history it is often easier to acknowledge that a landmark occurred than it is to pin down the specific details of that landmark. It is an oft touted idiom that “history is written by the victor” and, even when we are not concerning ourselves with military victories, the same phenomenon of historical whitewashing occurs with cultural revolutions. While historians agree that the Western world is a predominantly democratic one, one would be hard pressed to find two who reached a consensus about the origins, birth and development of the concept. Did it begin with the Ancient Greek senate or was that such an alien form of democracy from that which we practice today that it doesn’t bare comparison? The same problems arise for any historian that attempts to trace the origins of the momentous cultural development that was Israelite Monotheism. This article will attempt to trace the roots of Monotheism in Ancient Israel and assess the speed with which it was adopted.

Before we can examine the rise of Monotheism in Israelite culture we must ask the crucial question of why such a belief system arose. Polytheism was and had been the accepted model of worship in every major civilization in the region, from the Egyptians to the Mediterranean to the Babylonians and Assyrians of Mesopotamia. It was not only an established model, but likely an apparently sensible one to those living in the ancient world, particularly those in the Ancient Near East. Firstly, the natural environment in which people found themselves was a harsh and contradictory one. Subject to droughts, floods, sand and dust storms as well as fierce electrical storms assailed the settlers of the Ancient Near East (Boadt 545). It would be difficult or near impossible for people to simply rationalise these natural occurrences as the work of a single deity. Such a deity was surely a cruel and fickle one who cared little for the plight of his people. It was almost certainly much easier to believe that these natural misfortunes were the work of several conflicting gods, some of whom were benevolent (or at least indifferent) towards human beings. Furthermore, when there is more than one entity which has an influence over the world of men it is easier to rationalize faults in those entities. Each god has their strengths and weaknesses, areas of responsibility and personal shortcomings (Boadt, 245). Across the entire pantheon these various strengths and weaknesses balance one another out in such a way that everything is under the control of a god and any discrepancies in the expected outcomes or events of these gods’s work can be explained away by inter-deity conflict or shortcomings. Finally, representing the gods as a community of interacting entities, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and interactions with one another creates a set of higher beings who are, ultimately, easier to understand and identify with. The question then, is why would a culture develop a need for Monotheism?

The answer lays in an unusual permutation of the common Near Eastern Practices of adopting and distorting the myths of neighbouring peoples and the tying of the actions of the Gods to the events in the world of men. The successes and defeats of the deities of the Ancient Near East were, naturally, tied to the successes and defeats of their earthly subjects. Let us examine the Canaanite pantheon as an example, as it is in this region that Israelite Monotheism would eventually arise. The Canaanite religion was typical of the Ancient Near Eastern polytheistic religions described above, with each god controlling a specific portfolio, each of which directly related to a component of the natural world and the impact that component had on the pantheon’s mortal subjects. A brief summary of each major god of the Canaanite pantheon follows:

A limestone statue of the God El, from Ugarit, c. 1300 bc.

El: The father of all gods and chief creator of all creatures. The authority figure of the gods, El is the chief judge of any dispute amongst the gods but is apparently distant from his human subjects.

Baall: The god of the storm. Baal is responsible for the annual rainfall and fertility cycle of the earth. Baal is often also depicted as the triumphant General and lord of War.

A carving of Asherah from Ugarith (Late Bronze Age)

Asherah: The Goddess of the Sea and wife of El. An important council to El with a minor association to fertility.

Anat: Sister and wife of Baal. Like the Babylonian Goddess, Ishtar, Anat combines the aspects of the goddess of love and war simultaneously.

Astarte: Another Goddess relating to fertility, strongly resembling Anat.

-All sourced from Boadt, 218.

We can see from this brief summary that, in this small sampling of Gods, each has a link to both the natural and human world. Baal is the god of storms (natural) and the god of war (human). Asherah is the goddess of the sea (natural) and the goddess of conciliation (human). Astarte and Anat are goddesses associated with both natural and human fertility, as well as human passion. Even in these god’s portfolios we find a direct relationship between the events of the human world and actions of the Gods. To further illustrate the relationship between the actions of the gods and the world of men, we must turn to the Epic of Baal, which accounts a conflict between Baal and Mot, the personification of death (Boadt, 219). Through a successful military campaign, Baal becomes the king of the gods. Unhappy with this and believing that he is more deserving of the kingship, Mot demands that the other gods to hand over Baal to him. Baal accepts the challenge and travels to the underworld to battle Mot, but eats the bread of death and is overcome. Without the god of storms, the earth wilts from lack of rain. Anat goes searching for Baal, finds him and frees him. Anat battles with Mot, who she defeats, shreds to pieces and sprinkles like seed across the earth. Baal returns and, with him, comes the rain that the earth was lacking. The rain of Baal causes the seeds of Mot to sprout and the earth is rejuvenated (Boadt, 219-220). We can see, very explicitly, in this story that conflict of wet and dry seasons in the Ancient Near East was tied directly to the trials and tribulations of the Gods. In order for civilization to prevail, Baal must prevail (Boadt, 220). We can see exactly the same thinking in the creation, depiction and evolution of Yahweh, the god of the Israelites.

It is crucial to understand that, for the Ancient Israelites, there arose a point in their history when, besieged from all sides, the most important and significant element of the divine to them was that which protected the Israelite people and destroyed their enemies (Boadt, 221). Many accounts openly steal from the other Near Eastern accounts of the triumphs of the Gods who were sympathetic towards human beings over those who were not (Boadt, 222). As Boadt astutely observes, “While rejecting the multiple gods and the nature myths of Canaan, Israel felt itself free to use many of the themes to enhance the power of Yahweh” (Boadt, 222). An excellent example of this is the manner in which the Israelites selectively condemned parts of Baal’s portfolio while adopting and attributing those that suited them to Yahweh. While the Israelites were uncomfortable with the fertility rights associated with Baal and his wives and condemned them, they were happy to adopt other aspects of Canaanite worship and adopt them to suit their needs (Boadt, 223). For example, both the Canaanites and Israelites placed a large significance on the power of sacrifice and the Israelites adopted many of the rites and details of Canaanite sacrifice (down to modelling their sacrificial altars in similar shape to those of the Canaanites) they dispensed with and forbade the Canaanite practice of child sacrifice (Boadt, 223). When we examine the development Israelite monotheism we can see that it appears to be an amalgamation of polytheism in which the powers and portfolios of all of the Gods are brought under the single name of Yahweh.

If we examine the early works of the Torah we can the pushing and pulling of these schizophrenic divine personalities pushing and pulling against one another. In Genesis we can see a suggestion of a dual male/female identity for Yahweh, despite the assertion that of Genesis 1:1 that “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” (King James Bible, Genesis 1:1). This position of a solitary creator is diametrically opposed to other Near Eastern creation myths, like the Babylonian Enuma Elish, in which creation results from the interactions and conflicts of many gods. We still see all of the portfolios of Near Eastern God’s represented in Genesis, except they are either subsumed by Yahweh himself or his actions/creations. For example, each of the stages of the Genesis creations myth mirrors the stages of creation in the Enuma Elish except that in the Enu Elish, a different god is responsible for each stage (Frymer-Kensky, 154). Instead of Apsu and Tiamat creating water from their mere presence in the chaotic void, Yahweh wills there to be water from the chaotic void. The end result is the same, but the origin has been subtly altered to allow for a single deity. Hooke presents and excellent example of this in his analysis of the story of the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis 3 and its similarity to the Babylonian myth of Enki and Ninhursag:

“According to Sumerian myth the only thing Dilmun lacked was fresh water; the god Enki (or Ea) ordered Utu, the sun-god, to bring up fresh water from the earth to water the garden… In the myth of Enki and Ninhursag it is related that the mother-goddess Ninhursag caused eight plants to grow in the garden of the gods. Enki desired to eat these plants and sent his messenger Isimud to fetch them. Enki ate them one by one, and Ninhursag in her rage pronounced the curse of death upon Enki. As the result of the curse eight of Enki’s bodily organs were attacked by disease and he was at the pain of death. The great gods were in dismay and Enlil [the chief god] was powerless to help. Ninhursag was induced to return and deal with the situation. She created eight goddesses of healing who proceeded to heal each of the diseased parts of Enki’s body. One of these parts was the god’s rib, and the goddess who was created to deal with the rib was named Ninti, which means “lady of the rib”.”

-Hooke, pp. 114-115

The parallels here to the tree of knowledge story in Genesis 3 are obvious. What is significant, for our purposes, is that rather than the eating of forbidden fruit and the consequences of such an action are not a collection of happenstance interactions between various gods, but stem from the deliberate action of Yahweh (who created the tree of knowledge), the folly of man who disobeyed him and the fallout from such disobedience. We see the same plundering of myth and absorption of foreign gods in the Genesis flood story and the flood stories found in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish (Hooke, 127).

We can see from these parallels in Genesis that there was no instant ‘switch’ between monotheism and polytheism. While lip service is paid to the notion of one God, the behaviour of that single god is drawn directly from the myths of polytheistic cultures. In many cases Yahweh behaves in contradictory or inexplicable ways, which are not easily rationalised in terms of a single god. It takes a long period of time until Yahweh is completely unified with a purpose for himself and the Israelite people and there is a gradual evolution of concrete monotheism. In Exodus 34:14, in which Yahweh commands “thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (King James Bible, Exodus 34:14) he does not deny the existence of other gods, merely prohibits their worship. This is immediately reinforced in Exodus 34:15 in which Yahweh forbids his followers from making “a covenant with the inhabitants of the land” and “whoring after their gods” (King James Bible, Exodus 34:15). By the time we reach Deuteronomy 4:39, however, the message could not be more absolute.

“Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the LORD he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else”

-Deuteronomy 4:39

Furthermore, when we arrive at the books of Joshua and Judges the classic model of Israelite Monotheism is complete, with the firm depiction of Yahweh as not merely a single god, but the God, with the Israelites as his chosen people (Herrmann, 155).

It is impossible for us to say precisely when the Israelites completely embraced monotheism (Garbini, 32). There are too many unknown variables at work. For example, let us entertain the question of whether there was a discrepancy in monotheism’s adoption in the cities over the rural areas? Centres of spiritual and military might, as well as being the symbol of centralization and streamlining, the cities were likely to adopt the notion of Monotheism faster. Conversely, rural farmers, shepherds and pastoralists were more intimately concerned with the themes present in and adopted from the Babylonian myths, specifically as fertility and the cycle of seasons. Surely, the people in these rural communities would take much longer to fully embrace the tenets of monotheism. We run into further problems when, as we have seen above, the nature of Israelite monotheism was not a static one. The faith begins with the amalgamation of many local deities and myths, under the banner of one God. Yahweh is not instantly a unified entity, but becomes one, slowly over time and under the supervision of countless authors and editors. All we can say, with any certainty, is that the introduction of Monotheism to the Israelites was definitely a gradual one.

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