The Hebrew Conception of the Kingship of God: Its Origin and Development

Abstract

It is generally recognized by informed scholarship that the discovery at Ras Shamra of so much of the literature of Canaan on the eve of the Hebrew settlement in Palestine inaugurated a new era in Old Testament study. To say nothing of the elucidation of the sociology of the ancient Near East by the administrative texts and the literary texts Krt and Aqht, and the illustration of religious practices such as seasonal rites and sacrifices, the longer mythological texts are of great value in helping us to a new appraisal of the poetry of the Old Testament. In the Psalms, Prophets, and the Book of Job the legacy of Canaan is particularly apparent especially in poetic structure, vocabulary, and imagery. Even the mythology of polytheistic Canaan was used to enrich orthodox Hebrew poetry as late as the post-Exilic period when the writer of the Book of Job refers to God's triumph over 'the primeval serpent' 1) which we know from the passage in Isaiah (xxvii 1) to have been 'Leviathan the primeval serpent..., Leviathan the tortuous serpent' 2), the same monster the death of which is celebrated in the Ras Shamra texts 3). If one reckoned all instances of form, style, and imagery common to Canaanite and Hebrew poets there is no doubt that one could not sufficiently emphasize the significance of the former for the study of the latter, and that is what ALBRIGHT has done repeatedly. MoWINCKEL, however, in his magisterial Offersang og Sangoffer is less