Monotheism and Yahweh’s Appropriation of Baal by James S. Anderson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Monotheism and Yahweh’s Appropriation of Baal by James S. Anderson Michael R. Simone S.J. james s. anderson, Monotheism and Yahweh’s Appropriation of Baal (LHBOTS 617; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). Pp. x + 147. $104. In this book, Anderson argues that the Yahwistic monotheism of the Hebrew Bible is the result of a long process that began in the ninth century b.c.e. and continued into the Hellenistic period. In contrast to scholars who argue for early Israelite monotheism, A. contends for a native Israelite pantheon until the postexilic period. He places the earliest recoverable stage of Yahwistic religion in the Omride period, during which began a long process of convergence that resulted in Yhwh appropriating the characteristics of other gods and becoming Israel’s sole deity. Relics of this process exist throughout the Hebrew Bible in narratives that transfer divine qualities from other deities to Yhwh. This book is a revision of the dissertation that A. wrote at the University of Sheffield under Diana Edelman. A.’s study is especially indebted to the work of Mark Smith, whose Early History of God is the starting point for the discussion of convergence. Although A. engages many of the major scholars of Israelite religion, he has a preference for English-language sources. Important European scholars of Israelite religion appear only briefly (Thomas Römer, Konrad Schmid) or not at all (Erhard Blum, Jan Christian Gertz). Anderson concentrates specifically on the process that Smith calls “convergence,” that is, the “coalescence of various deities and/or some of their features into the figure of Yahweh” (Mark Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel [2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002] 7–8). Smith himself does not detail the process, but A. finds in the works of Yairah Amit a typology by which he can do so (see Amit, Hidden Polemics in Biblical Narrative [trans. J. Chapman; BIS 25; Leiden: Brill, 2000]). A. presents Amit’s categories in his introduction: “explicit polemics,” “implied polemics,” and “non-polemical transfer” (p. 4). A. uses the first four chapters to establish the mise-en-scène of Yahwistic appropriation, arguing cogently for late development of Israelite monotheism (chap, 1), for a small but well-defined Israelite pantheon (chap. 2), and for the usefulness of Amit’s three categories of polemic (chap. 3). After a thorough presentation of Baal material (chap. 4), which A. argues is the source for so many of Yhwh’s appropriated features, A. investigates explicit anti-Baal polemics (chap. 5) and implied and [End Page 111] nonpolemical transfer texts (chap. 6). He concludes with a reconstruction of the history of Yahwism that provides the structure for a diachronic analysis of these different sorts of transfer narratives. The final two chapters are the most important part of this book and are the most problematic. Other scholars have studied explicit polemics against Baal, but A. is one of the first to investigate other rhetorical strategies of transfer in a systematic way. His first example, the transference of storm imagery from Baal to Yhwh, reveals how difficult it is to break new ground. He notes, for example, that Baal’s epithet rkb. ʿrpt, “rider of the clouds,” appears word-for-word in Ps 68:5 (p. 86). This is not quite the case, however, as Ps 68:5 calls Yhwh the rōkēb bāʿărābôt, “rider in the steppes.” The use of the title in this way might have little to do with Baalistic storm imagery, as F. Hossfeld argues, for example (F. Hossfeld and E. Zenger, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51–100 [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005] 164). Later in the same section, A. argues that the author of Psalm 104 treated the transference of Baalistic attributes to Yhwh as something new. The shift from second-person speech in Ps 104:1 to third-person speech in Ps 104:2–3, indicates a hesitancy on the part of the author to describe Yhwh “riding the clouds” in the manner of Baal. “It is clear, to this writer at least, depicting Yahweh as a storm-god riding the clouds was something...