Lecture #1: Background

Course: Old Testament

Lecture #1: Background

Neolithic religion: pastoralists and planters

The paleolithic culture covered approximately 1 million years which is followed by the Mesolithic or old stone age culture.
Neolithic culture (new stone age) began at different times in different places. The neolithic period marks the transition from food-gathering and hunter societies to food-producing societies.
in the middle east, the neolithic period began about. 5000 B.C. E and ended with the beginning of the bronze age about 3000 B.C.E. in Denmark the neolithic period covers the time 2500 B to 1500 B. and in Australia the aborigines have never begun the neolithic age.
In the Neolithic age the skills of domesticating animals, cultivating farmland, weaving cloth, and making pottery were developed.
This led to the emergence of two new kinds of society: pastoral and agricultural ones.
Pastoral societies tend to be "Uranian", that is the prime religious symbol is the sky, which is the abode of the gods.
These societies. view power of their deities in the sky, sun, thunder, and storm which are the forces which herders are much concerned about.
These societies and their gods are usually patriarchal.
This pattern is found in many early civilizations. Greek Zeus and Roman Jupitar, the semitic (Hebrew) YHWH, Indra and Varuna of the Aryans, Thor of the Scandinavians are examples of "High Gods" of the sky related to pastoral religion.
Agricultural or planter religions tend to stress the recurring cycles of springtime and harvest, of the regenerative and reproductive powers of nature.
The prime symbol is the Earth, not the sky. The feminine rather than the masculine.
The basic concern is with birth, fertility, growth, and maturation. Here a goddess often assumes preeminence over a god.
In various ways agricultural religions have oriented themselves toward symbols of a great goddess--"mother of wheat", or "Mother of Maize".
In later religions the Great Mother appears as the Greek Diana, Demeter, Hecate and Persephone, the Roman Cybele, the Indian Kali. She is Inanna to the Sumerians, Ishtar to the Assyrians and Babylonians, Isis to the Egyptians, and Mary to the Christians.
A key image in agricultural religion is the seed which dies in the earth, only to come to life again as a burgeoning crop.
The pattern of death and rebirth in endless alternation, just as the life of summer always follows the death of winter, is celebrated in myth and ritual.
Human and animal sacrifice played a significant role at times in agricultural religion. In order to influence, encourage, and participate in life processes that are fertile and bountiful, agricultural communities sometimes made ritual offerings of human beings, whose death was believed to release the powers of life and fertility in the community.
The patterns of agricultural religion later merged with those of archaic civilizations.

Mesopotamia and Egypt

Civilization is not a synonym for culture. a culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted behavior present in a human society. Thus, by definition, every society has a culture.
"Civilization" refers to a certain kind of social and cultural organization that emerged in the Near East around 3000 B.
Two basic characteristics of civilizations are the use of writing and the greater differentiation of the parts of the social complex when compared to a primitive society.
The development of cities, urbanization, is also a mark of civilization.
Finally, metallurgy developed in the bronze age starting around 3000 B. coincides with the rise of civilization.
From 3000 to 536 (the conquest by Persia) there was a succession of great archaic civilizations which emerged in the Tigress-Euphrates valley--the Sumerian, the Babylonian, the Assyrian and the Chaldean.
In the Nile valley during the same period the Egyptian civilization dominated from about 3000 to its fall to the Persians under Cyrus the Great in 525 B.
These civilizations exhibit a common religious form in which the political structure and the divine structure of the cosmos are considered as congruent parts of an external sacred pattern and process. i.e. the human political world is viewed as a microcosm of the divine macrocosm.
The religions of these Near Eastern civilizations are a fusion of religious forms operative in agricultural societies with forms concerned with the political life of the community centered in the great cities.
The city and the surrounding areas devoted to farming were parts of an integrated social system. In Mesopotamia many of the townspeople worked their own fields and their lives were regulated by a calendar which harmonized societies progress thru the year with the change of seasons.
The Sumerians worshiped a pantheon of gods that included Enlil, head of the pantheon who was the beneficent and fatherly creator of sun, moon, vegetation and implements essential to human control.
Enki and Ninke (lord and lady of the earth) are in some myths said to be the parents of Enlil.
Dumuzi is a hero who later assumes the role of a fertility god, representing the dying and reviving vegetation. He was, according to myth, the consort of Inanna, the love goddess, who sent him to the region of the dead to abide there in her place.
With the Assyrians and Babylonians, Inanna is called Ishtar or Astarte, and Dumuzi is Tammuz mentioned in the Bible in Ezek. 8:14 with the women weeping for him.
When the Babylonians became powerful the god Marduk assumes the role of the highest god.
In the document from that period called the Enuma Elish the epic of creation is given in which Marduk defeats the dragon Tiamut (female–representing salt water) and her consort Apsu (male–representing Fresh water) and creates the world with her body,(with wind gods who inflate Tiamut creates earth and heaven from her divided carcass) including humans. Thus he is the controller of the destiny of the world, including humans made as slaves to the gods, he founds Babylon and its temple and becomes its national god.
Genesis-depicts the uncreated as “Tohu Worohw“ (without form and void – the wind spirit, ruah) it is a response to the Babylonian myth Enuma Elish and an excellent example of a myth of transition when one civilization overwhelms another and replaces its gods with their own.
The myth of Adam and Eve (from ~900 BCE after Solomon, uses YHWH for god and is somewhat anthropomorphic) is another such myth in which the symbols sacred to the fertility religion of the Caananites (the fig tree, the serpent) are shown to be the cause of the fall of humans into sin.
The creation myth is connected with certain ritual ceremonies in which agricultural and political myths are combined.
Thus the Babylonian king begins his reign on New Year's day in the month of Nisan at the time of the spring rains.
the Akitu festival was usually performed. It apparently included ceremonies where the king was divested of his crown, ring, and scepter, only to be re-invested with them after he declared his innocence of wrong doing before Marduk.
This ceremony was correlated with other symbolic acts acknowledging the threat of chaos.
The Enuma Elish was read and the ritual enactment of Markuk's victory over Tiamat was performed.
Evidently at the end of this sacred festival, the king and queen or a selected priestess engaged in ritual intercourse symbolizing the union of Ishtar and Tammuz, which ensured the continued fertility of the earth.
These civilizations of the Near East were centered in the idea of kingship.
The king was the mediating point that joined the world of the gods and the world of human society into a single dynamic interacting process.
Through the agency of the king, human society functioned according to the norms and patterns decreed by the gods and which the gods also exemplified in their relations to one another.
The king in Mesopotamia was expected to deal justly and without favor, to 'defend the weak against the strong" and to take the part of the fatherless and of the widow.
Thus, the political patterns in human society reflected the pattern of authority that also operated among the gods themselves.
There is an important difference between Mesopotamia and Egypt in the idea of kingship.
In Mesopotamia the king was the agent of the gods and ruled in their name but he himself was human and subject to death.

Epic of Gilgamesh

The Famous Epic of Gilgamesh tells of the search for eternal life that even he cannot obtain.
The received text of the Gilgamesh epic was written down on a series of 12 clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform text used by the Sumarians, the Babylonians and the peoples of Assyria. Fragments have been found at many sites, including Hittitie and Hurian, both Indo European groups. It had to have been composed before 1800 BC as Marduk is not mentioned and his cult became the state religion under King Hammurabi.
The earliest versions stem from Sumerian texts of the late third millennium BC at which time it was probably not a continuous story, but a series of episodes in which Gilgamesh took a prominent part.
The historical position is firmly established by an episode in the Sumerian version of the story, which tells of a battle between Gilgamesh and Agga, King of Kish, a name found on the king lists.
From the poem we learn that Gilgamesh was a renowned and powerful king who had built the great walls of Erech, one of the most extensive cities of Sumer. Gilgamesh was an arrogant, oppressive and philandering ruler who had exasperated his subjects. In response, an appeal was made to the gods for a champion who would contend for their rights against the headstrong oppressor within their city.
Enkidue was the champion elected to liberate Erech. He was a Sumerian wild man who lived with animals. He was seduced by a courtesan, and he developed a taste for bread and strong drink.
On entering Erech he engaged in a wrestling match with Gilgamesh but after honor was satisfied, the two became firm friends and decided to embark on an adventure together
In a mountain of Cedars, they sought out the demon Humbaba and slew him. The two friends returned in triumph to Erech and the goddess Ishtar became enamored of Gilgamesh.
Unwisely, he spurned her advances. The goddess, scorned and enraged, induced the high god Anu to send down an avenging bull to trample the city but Enkidu killed it, thereby sealing his own doom. He is killed and an expensive funeral ensues.
Gilgamesh began to fear for his own life and resolved to go on a journey in search of the secret of immortality, even tho we are told (tablet nine) that he is two thirds god/one third man. He made a dangerous journey trying to find Utnapishtim, the Sumerian Noah who, as he hoped, would reveal the secret of his immortality to him.
He was advised by the sun god that it was a vain quest and advised him to seek what pleasures he could in life. "Day and night be thou merry, make every day a day of rejoicing"
Tablet 11, the famous deluge tablet, tells the flood story which may well reflect an historical event perhaps going back to at least 3000 BC.
With the advice of a ferryman Gilgamesh weighs his feet down with stones and dives into the sea and discovers a plant like a thorn, which will give perpetual youth. His triumph is short lived, for on his way home, while drinking by a pool, a serpent robbed him of his trophy and stole the secret of eternal life.

Egypt

Egypt on the other hand, has the Pharaoh himself regarded as one of the gods who had descended among men.
In the Egyptian scheme, the social order, through the authority of the divine pharaoh, has itself been divinized.
The Egyptian pantheon of gods included Horus depicted in human shape with a falcon's head. He was the god of political authority, and the pharaoh was sometimes regarded as the kingly incarnation of Horus on earth.

The Cult of Isis and Osiris

In the myth, Osiris is killed by his brother Seth. Isis his sister/wife mourns him and through magic spells gets herself impregnated by her dead husband.
She gives birth to Horus to whom the gods give the rights and dignity originally belonging to his father.
Osiris is then restored to life and made sovereign over the realm of the dead.
It seems the cult was directed toward the idea that the dying pharaoh assumes the role of Osiris and his successor that of Horus.
The vigor of Egyptian belief in life after death empowered the Egyptian religion to persist in some late as the sixth cent. A.D. in the cult of Isis and Osiris.
The Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) instituted a monotheistic cult centered on the worship of the sun disk under the name of Aton. It was short-lived and destroyed by the Egyptian priests on his death. This is where the curse on the tomb of Tutankhamen originates as he was the son of Akhenaten.

The Canaanites (Gen 9:25 cursed); Zec 14:21, Ex 15:15

The Canaanites are one of the most frequently mentioned groups in the Hebrew Scriptures but up until 1928 very little was known about their religion other than the few facts gleaned from the Bible and confirmed by archeology.
However, in 1928 a Canaanite temple library was discovered at Ras Shamra and knowledge of Canaanite religious practice increased a thousandfold.
The tablets were written in what was called Ugaritic and proved to be very close to Mosaic Hebrew.
The tablets were inscribed in the first half of the 14th century. BCE but reflect stories much older, the head of the Canaanite Pantheon is El who is violent and incestuous
He kills his brother and favorite son, decapitates his daughter, castrates his father and himself, and takes his 3 sisters as wives.
Despite his supremacy, Baal (which means lord) is much more popular.
He seems to be equated with Zeus of Greek Mythology, wielding a thunderbolt.
His lineage is uncertain and in fact he could be Indo-European, as I will mention later in discussing Abraham.
He is called the "son of Dagon" who was a god of agriculture (his name means grain). Sometimes he is called the son of El.
He is more adventurous than El, making El look tame by comparison.
He is captured by Mot, the god of death and rescued by his sister Anath who is a goddess of sex and war.
She is a virgin who nevertheless is perpetually pregnant.
As in other myths (such as Demeter and Persephone) the rescue of the divinity from the world of death wipes famine and drought from the land and restores fertility.

These various gods, goddesses and myths had a strong magnetism for the Hebrews settling the land of Canaan.
compared to the austere monotheism the Canaanite practices were temptingly lively and sensuous.
so insistently seductive was the cult that one of the Bible' main themes is that the Hebrew people reject all Canaanite practices, particularly idolatry, which was pernicious and widespread.
idols came in so many forms that there are more than a dozen Hebrew words used in the Bible for images.
The idols most commonly adopted by the Hebrews was the teraphim: small household figurines used throughout the ancient middle east to invoke fertility, as good luck charms, or as part of an ancestor cult.
there is some evidence that the family that held the teraphim was predominant in the clan and held property rights, which suggests there may have been more than religious zeal behind Rachel's eagerness to steal her father figurines (Gen 31:33-35)
Josiah (2 Kings 23:24) condemns them but there was much toleration of the teraphim by religious leaders.
Many have been excavated from Hebrew towns and the one characteristic that may explain their acceptance is they are nearly all abstract portrayals of women.
There is no indication that any attempt was made to create an image of YHWH, definitely a "he" in the Bible.
The idols not tolerated were the Asherah, usually a pillar of wood, or even a lewd female figurine, which represented the consort, wife and daughter of El.
A goddess of international reputation she was known to the Canaanites as Astart, to the Greeks as Astarte, and is related to Ishtar of Babylon.
Baal could be represented as anything from a phallic shaped stone to very ornate representational, gold covered statues.
One taboo growing out of observing Canaanite religious practice is "Thou shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk" (Ex 23:19; 34:26) this is probably directed at a Canaanite religious practice given in one of the Ugaritic texts which says: They cook a kid in milk, a Young goat in butter.
Some scholars suggest that this practice forms the basis for the rabbinical prohibition against eating meat and milk together (Kosher rules).
This, of course, is simply one example of the possible source of many of the Biblical injunctions.
However, it can be said with all honesty that everything in the Bible (both old and New Testament) was written in opposition to some other point of view, about which we may discover or about which we may only speculate.

Other Neighbors

Amalekites – a marauding nomadic tribe of the Negev and Sinai Peninsula that first attacked the Israelites during the wandering after the Exodus. they continued to be a nuisance during the settlement of Canaan and were last mentioned during the reign of Hezekiah of Judah (727-678 BCE) (Ex 17:14; 16; Num 24:20)
Ammonites – semitic nomads who settled the east end of the Jordan river and the Dead sea about the same time the Hebrews moved into Canaan (13th Cent. BCE)
They were related and the Bible says they were descended from Lot and mentions intermarriage with the Hebrews. they were apparently absorbed by the Hebrews and Arabs. (Ezek 25:5,10)

Amorites – a western semitic people who moved into Mesopotamia and mixed quickly with the Hittites and other non-semitic peoples.
They were aggressive and set up their capital at Mari in the Middle Euphrates. they destroyed Ur (Abraham’s home)
They set up a number of Amorite kingdoms including the Babylonian dynasty that produced Hammurabi.
When Babylon fell to the Hittites about 1550 BCE the Amorites temporarily disappeared from ancient records.
they reappear in the bible and the Amarna letters in Palestine.
they preferred mountains as their chief deity, Amurru, was a mountain god
it was because of the Amorites that the Hebrews had such a precarious hold on the north of Canaan; the Amorites ran trade routes between the Hittites and Egyptians, obtained Hittite aid in defending themselves against Egypt, and preferred to be under Hittite rather than Israelite sway. (Jud 11:23; Amos 2:9)

Arameans – were a group of tribes of obscure origin who settled between Damascus and Babylon by 2000 BCE and spread in many directions.
The bible says they were the descendants of Shem, i.e., Semites. probably related to the Amorites.
They were at first raiders, but later became such great traders that Aramaic became the chief language in Middle east trade.
they never founded an empire but had several little kingdoms that were strong between the lithe and 8th cent.
Sometimes allies, and sometimes enemies of the Hebrews. Syria and Syrians are synonymous with Arameans in the Bible.
The confession in Deut. 26 starts out: "My father was a wandering Aramean. (Jer 49:24;27)

Assyrians – were people of Semitic and Hurrian background who built an empire on the Tigris River. Assur and Nineveh rivaled Babylon.
they were most active and strong from the 9th to the 7th cent. BCE and caused the fall of Israel's ten tribes in 722-21 BCE. These ten tribes were then deported and resettled. (Is 14:25; Mir 5:6, Zeph 2:13)

Edomites – in the bible they are descended from Easu, Jacob's twin brother.
They engaged in chronic war with the Israelites and sometime: were under Hebrew domination.
their land was coveted because of Iron and copper mines.
after Babylon captured Edom in the 6th century. they were pushed west into southern Judah.
the Maccabeans in the 2nd cent. BCE forced them to become converts to Judaism.
Under Roman rule their land was called Idumea, and the most famous Idumean was Herod the Great. (Num 24:18, Jer 49:17)
Hittites – an Indo-European people who entered Asia Minor about 2000 and formed a cultural bridge between Mesopotamia and Europe.
They flourished from about 1600 to 1200 BCE in Asia Minor and Syria.
Their power was broken by the Assyrians.
They are mentioned as being in Canaan, In Hebron at the time of Abraham, in S. Palestine in Moses time, and among David's followers, and Solomon's forced laborers.
The Hebrews intermarried with them and among their contributions were an early law code, iron smelting, and the introduction of the war chariot. (E 23:28; (Ex 23:28; Judy 3:5-7)

Hyksos – from the Egyptian meaning "rulers of foreign lands", a Semitic people, possibly Amorite, who about 1720 BCE swept into Syria and Palestine with war chariots.
Hazor was their Palestinian capital, but their remains have been found in dozens of important archeological sites.
They invaded Egypt and set up their own capital in the Nile delta.
Their contributions included a beaten-earth fortress surrounded by moats, and the introduction of the composite bow.
They worshiped Baal, and cultic objects included fertility goddesses, serpents and doves.
In about 1570 they were driven from Egypt into southern Palestine. They either dispersed or were integrated with natives as by the time of the Egyptian campaigns in Palestine (1468-1431) the Hyksos are no longer mentioned in military records.

Midianites – nomadic, camel-riding traders of the desert south of the promised land.
They are considered to be descendants of Abraham thru one of the sons he exiled to the east.
Moses took refuge with them and married one of the daughters of their priests.
After the conquest of Canaan, they made annoying raids on Israelite settlements. they were probably absorbed by Arab tribes. (Judy 6:16; Deut 25:16-17)

Moabites – semitic people who settled east of the dead sea in the 14th century.
they, like the Ammonites, the bible says were descended from Lot
The only written document from Moab reveals the language was similar to Hebrew of the period.
hostility between Moabites and Israelites alternated with periods of friendship.
it also suffered under Assyrian, Persian and Babylonian conquest. (Jer 48:2, Ruth)

Philistines – were non-semitic "Peoples of the Sea" who settled the coast of Palestine in the 12th century. BCE.
Most scholars believe they came from the Aegean islands, notably Crete, but because they brought Iron-making techniques and war chariots they may have been in contact with the Hittites.
Egyptian reliefs show them as clean shaven, wearing skirts and elaborate feathered headdresses. They were assimilated with the Canaanites and maintained strong ties with Egypt and probably paid by Egypt to guard the coast.
They carried on sea trade and established military outposts to guard roads to the caravan routes to the east.
the Hebrews were never able to conquer them, so their control of the s. W. coast was not weakened until Egyptian and Assyrians began to vie for control of the coastal highway in the 8th to 7th cent. BCE.
Dagon ("little fish") was their main god--he had a man’s head and hands and a fish body
they also worshiped Ashtaroth
They gave their name to the country Palestine. (Is 9:12, Ezek 25:16)

Phoenicians – mainly associated with the cities Tyree and Sidon. They were in Palestine since the dawn of history and evidence of their trade with Egypt dates to at least 2800 BCE.
They had centers at Jericho, Jerusalem and elsewhere when Joshua entered to conquer.
gradually they were pushed to a narrow coastal strip north of Mount Carmel, and from the 12th cent on engaged in seagoing trade.
Tyree and Sidon were not captured until Alexander the Great laid a long siege at Tyree in 333-332 BCE.
in the bible they are often just called Canaanites or identified with their chief cities.
The bible is derogatory because of their religious practices, and the fact they assimilated foreign influences so readily from all countries. (Is 23:14-15) and finally the term

Semites is used in the bible as a term to designate the descendants of Noah's son Shem.
However, it covers a large number of ancient peoples whose languages are related and believed derived from a common tongue.
At the dawn of history, smites were semi nomads who scattered from the Arabian peninsula as early as 2500 BCE and settled throughout the Fertile Crescent.
Included are Acadians of Babylonians Arabs (descendants of Ishmael, brother of Isaac by Hagar), Arameans and related Hebrews; Assyrians; and Canaanites (including Ammonites, Amorites, Edomites, Moabites, Phoenicians, and various sub-groups mentioned in the bible.