Re: Book Review: The Myth of Nazareth
Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 8:05 am
A strong OT theme is the conflict between nomadic people and settled, agricultural civilizations of the ancient Near East, which also becomes a religious conflict between the fertility goddess worship of agricultural societies vs. a more abstract, male deity of patriarchal nomads.
The conflict starts early in the Bible, with Adam and Eve in Eden, through the depiction of the serpent as evil. In the ancient Near East agricultural, fertility goddess societies, serpents were sacred because the shedding and regrowth of skin was symbolic of the life and death cycles of seasons and of dying and resurrecting gods. In Genesis, however, the serpent is not only not sacred, but the source of evil in human beings, of the loss of innocence, and of punishment from God. Clearly the authors of the story held a low opinion of serpent worship and the fertility-oriented agricultural societies that practiced it. It’s the only religious story of any society anywhere that I know of that depicts serpents as evil. It appears to be a reaction of nomadic people to the sedentary agricultural civilizations that they encountered in their travels and eventually settled among.
Then in the story of Cain and Abel, Cain is a tiller of the soil and Abel is a pastoral herder. God is pleased with Abel’s offering of an animal, but displeased with Cain’s offering of vegetation. Cain becomes jealous and kills Abel. Message, as told from the pastoral viewpoint: We are God’s preferred people and they (farming societies) are murderers.
Human sacrifice has occurred in several societies throughout human history and prehistory. But, it’s closely associated with the religious practices of agricultural societies as part of the worship of dying and resurrecting gods, especially fertility goddesses. After Abraham leaves Ur (a city dependent on agriculture) for a nomadic life with his flocks and herds, and has a son, he prepares to sacrifice his son on orders from God (or his belief that it’s what God wants, based on his own experience of cultures that sacrifice their firstborn). But, as part of his new, God-commanded life as a nomad (God told him to leave the land of his father), God now tells him that he must not sacrifice Isaac and provides a ram for him instead. Message: Human sacrifice and worship of fertility goddesses is wrong. Animal sacrifices are good.
El and Asherah were a very ancient divine couple throughout Semitic societies of the ancient Near East. They were the supreme gods, the creators of all things. Although given separate male and female names, they represented a creative unity of male and female. Two gods in one, two sides of the divine forces of nature, but basically one supreme spirit over everything. Also referred to in the Bible as Elohim, a plural form that’s been given more than one interpretation. By some accounts, Elohim means the sons of God, children of El and Asherah, sometimes numbered as 70, each assigned as patron of a tribe or city, who had a covenantal duty to serve that community. By other interpretations, Elohim means God of gods, or supreme deity, above all others. It takes a singular verb, though, which might simply express the view of one supreme god made plural only by its dual male and female nature and names. Another Biblical deity term is El Shaddai, usually translated into English as God Almighty, but there was also a city named Shaddai, so it could have meant god of Shaddai (perhaps one of the Elohim?).
El and Asherah were conceived of as nature forces. El was associated with the wind as the breath of God giving life to all living things. Also with the destructive forces of storms. He was unseen, as the wind. A spirit force. Somewhat abstract because of his invisibility. But, among nomadic people, he was also personified as a being that lived in the mountains of desert regions. His aspect of the divine duo was favored by Semitic nomads. Asherah was his companion and co-creator.
Asherah became emphasized over El among the urbanized, agricultural Semitic people as a fertility goddess associated with fertility rites, and human sacrifice, a shift in roles for her from being El’s companion and supreme, original co-creator. Stories from the pastoral nomad perspective appear to object to this shift as immoral on the grounds of fertility and sacrificial rites.
El was originally a prototype of a monotheistic deity in his union with Asherah as supreme creators. Not just a local, henotheistic god of a specific town or tribe, but a creating god, acknowledged throughout the Near East by nearly all Semitic people, although they also had lesser gods. Then that unity was split by agricultural worshippers of Asherah. Nomads retained the original unity of El and Asherah. In the conflict between them, those who objected to the fertility and sacrificial rites of Asherah dropped her and El became the one and only God.
Then he changed his name to Yahweh.
So where did Yahweh come from? No one knows for sure but several suggestions exist. One is that he’s a Midianite mountain god because he first reveals himself to Moses on a mountainside after Moses’ marriage to the daughter of a Midianite priest. Another suggestion is that he’s a Jebusite god, from a Semitic tribe associated with Jerusalem as far back as Abraham up to David. Then there’s the hypothesis that he’s the god of an Arabic desert tribe in the southern regions of the Near East, who migrated northward with the influx of nomadic Arabs to Mesopotamia, especially to Babylon. That would explain his appearance in Biblical stories after the Babylonian captivity, and his back-dating to earlier times as a revelation to Moses.
Some sources say that Yahweh has Hebrew linguistic roots in a verb “to be.” That would fit Yahweh’s words to Moses when Moses asks, “Who shall I say sent me” and Yahweh answers, “Say that ‘I am’ has sent me.”
That’s more than enough for now.
The conflict starts early in the Bible, with Adam and Eve in Eden, through the depiction of the serpent as evil. In the ancient Near East agricultural, fertility goddess societies, serpents were sacred because the shedding and regrowth of skin was symbolic of the life and death cycles of seasons and of dying and resurrecting gods. In Genesis, however, the serpent is not only not sacred, but the source of evil in human beings, of the loss of innocence, and of punishment from God. Clearly the authors of the story held a low opinion of serpent worship and the fertility-oriented agricultural societies that practiced it. It’s the only religious story of any society anywhere that I know of that depicts serpents as evil. It appears to be a reaction of nomadic people to the sedentary agricultural civilizations that they encountered in their travels and eventually settled among.
Then in the story of Cain and Abel, Cain is a tiller of the soil and Abel is a pastoral herder. God is pleased with Abel’s offering of an animal, but displeased with Cain’s offering of vegetation. Cain becomes jealous and kills Abel. Message, as told from the pastoral viewpoint: We are God’s preferred people and they (farming societies) are murderers.
Human sacrifice has occurred in several societies throughout human history and prehistory. But, it’s closely associated with the religious practices of agricultural societies as part of the worship of dying and resurrecting gods, especially fertility goddesses. After Abraham leaves Ur (a city dependent on agriculture) for a nomadic life with his flocks and herds, and has a son, he prepares to sacrifice his son on orders from God (or his belief that it’s what God wants, based on his own experience of cultures that sacrifice their firstborn). But, as part of his new, God-commanded life as a nomad (God told him to leave the land of his father), God now tells him that he must not sacrifice Isaac and provides a ram for him instead. Message: Human sacrifice and worship of fertility goddesses is wrong. Animal sacrifices are good.
El and Asherah were a very ancient divine couple throughout Semitic societies of the ancient Near East. They were the supreme gods, the creators of all things. Although given separate male and female names, they represented a creative unity of male and female. Two gods in one, two sides of the divine forces of nature, but basically one supreme spirit over everything. Also referred to in the Bible as Elohim, a plural form that’s been given more than one interpretation. By some accounts, Elohim means the sons of God, children of El and Asherah, sometimes numbered as 70, each assigned as patron of a tribe or city, who had a covenantal duty to serve that community. By other interpretations, Elohim means God of gods, or supreme deity, above all others. It takes a singular verb, though, which might simply express the view of one supreme god made plural only by its dual male and female nature and names. Another Biblical deity term is El Shaddai, usually translated into English as God Almighty, but there was also a city named Shaddai, so it could have meant god of Shaddai (perhaps one of the Elohim?).
El and Asherah were conceived of as nature forces. El was associated with the wind as the breath of God giving life to all living things. Also with the destructive forces of storms. He was unseen, as the wind. A spirit force. Somewhat abstract because of his invisibility. But, among nomadic people, he was also personified as a being that lived in the mountains of desert regions. His aspect of the divine duo was favored by Semitic nomads. Asherah was his companion and co-creator.
Asherah became emphasized over El among the urbanized, agricultural Semitic people as a fertility goddess associated with fertility rites, and human sacrifice, a shift in roles for her from being El’s companion and supreme, original co-creator. Stories from the pastoral nomad perspective appear to object to this shift as immoral on the grounds of fertility and sacrificial rites.
El was originally a prototype of a monotheistic deity in his union with Asherah as supreme creators. Not just a local, henotheistic god of a specific town or tribe, but a creating god, acknowledged throughout the Near East by nearly all Semitic people, although they also had lesser gods. Then that unity was split by agricultural worshippers of Asherah. Nomads retained the original unity of El and Asherah. In the conflict between them, those who objected to the fertility and sacrificial rites of Asherah dropped her and El became the one and only God.
Then he changed his name to Yahweh.
So where did Yahweh come from? No one knows for sure but several suggestions exist. One is that he’s a Midianite mountain god because he first reveals himself to Moses on a mountainside after Moses’ marriage to the daughter of a Midianite priest. Another suggestion is that he’s a Jebusite god, from a Semitic tribe associated with Jerusalem as far back as Abraham up to David. Then there’s the hypothesis that he’s the god of an Arabic desert tribe in the southern regions of the Near East, who migrated northward with the influx of nomadic Arabs to Mesopotamia, especially to Babylon. That would explain his appearance in Biblical stories after the Babylonian captivity, and his back-dating to earlier times as a revelation to Moses.
Some sources say that Yahweh has Hebrew linguistic roots in a verb “to be.” That would fit Yahweh’s words to Moses when Moses asks, “Who shall I say sent me” and Yahweh answers, “Say that ‘I am’ has sent me.”
That’s more than enough for now.
