Biblical Monotheism Research Articles

The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCIl, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 276-279 Mark S. Smith. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.Pp. xviii + 325. Mark S. Smith is a gifted, prolific, and highly proficient scholar in the field of Hebrew Bible, and those qualities and qualifications are eminently visible in his most recent volumes, two of which appeared in the year 2001: Untold Stories: The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the 20th Century and the study under review here: The Origins ofBiblical Monotheism. Smith is mainly concerned with the emergence of the distinctive religion of the Bible out of an environment in which polytheism in its various forms and adaptations was dominant. And while the exact definition and evaluation of the biblical phenomenon remain in dispute across a whole spectrum of topics—from the definition of terms to the analysis of features and the application of all the criteria—most would acknowledge that biblical religion in its canonical organization and order is different from that of its neighbors, while at the same time exhibiting numerous points of contact and significant similarity. Defining and determining these differences and the distinction are not easy tasks, and the use of the traditional language of the classical arguments may not only not clarify issues and point to solutions , it may also impede progress toward a resolution. Thus, accepting the dichotomy between monotheism and polytheism, with its overtones of prejudgment and prejudice, may not be valid for this inquiry. The word monotheism itself may not be the best to describe biblical religion at any stage of its history or development (that is, if "development" is even an appropriate term). Smith's book is divided into three parts, the first of which deals with Ugaritic (Canaanite) religion—its literature and cultic organization and operation . The treatment is exemplary. The author brings a great mass of relevant material into focus and order. We are given a masterly combination of linguistic and literary analyses on the one hand and philosophical or theological and historical synthesis on the other. The polytheism of Ugarit (and by extension Canaan = Syria-Palestine) with its hierarchical structure, its family order, and conciliar constitution is presented in persuasive fashion. When all the requisite scholarly qualifications and reservations are noted, we feel quite comfortable with Ugarit brought back to life, as though we are at home with the gods and goddesses of the old city that is typical of the ancient Near East, and, more specifically, of the Mediterranean setting. While doubtless different in numerous important details, the general picture Smith presents must have been operational across a wide territory. SMITH, ORIGINS OF BIBLICAL MONOTHEISM—EREEDMAN 277 The last part of the book deals with Israel and its religion in the framework of Canaanite culture and religion. It is not difficult to see the numerous similarities or points of contact between Israel and its neighbors in all directions; after all, the language of the Hebrew Bible is a form of Canaanite . The vocabulary used to describe religion is much the same. The difficulty lies chiefly in explaining the essential differences. If we agree that the faith of the Bible (biblical religion) emerges from the matrix of Canaanite religion, and that in its origins it existed as a form of that religion, how do we explain the very different end-product that is found in or expressed by the final version of biblical literature, which is a product of the period of the monarchy down to and through the Exile? In the beginning, there was El, the name of the God of the Patriarchs and reasonably to be identified with EI, the chief god of the Ugaritic (= Canaanite ) pantheon. There are enough statements, allusions, and hints that this god was not alone in his heavenly abode that even so conservative a scholar as Albright thought of a triad of patriarchal deities in the familiar familial pattern of Father, Mother, and Son. Then there is Yahweh, who doesn't figure in the Ugaritic pantheon at all, but claims a homeland in the southern desert. Who is he, and where does he come from...

The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts

As the bible tells us, ancient Israel's neighbours worshipped a wide variety of gods. It is now widely accepted that the Israelites' God, Yahweh, must have originated as one among these many, before assuming the role of the one true God of monotheism. Mark Smith here seeks to discover more precisely what was meant by divinity in the ancient near-East, and how these concepts apply to Yahweh. Part One of the book offers a detailed examination of the deities of ancient Ugarit, known to us from the largest surviving group of relevant extra-biblical texts. In Part Two, Smith looks closely at four classic problems associated with four Ugaritic deities, and considers how they affect our understanding of Yahweh. At the end of the book he returns to the question of Israelite monotheism, seeking to discover what religious issues it addressed and why it made sense at the time of its emergence. He argues that within the Bible, monotheism is not a separate stage of religion but rather represents a kind of rhetoric reinforcing Israel's exclusive relation with its deity.

Monothéisme et Mémoire: Le Moïse de Freud et la tradition biblique

Dans son dernier livre, L'hommeMoïseet le monothéisme, Sigmund Freud établit une relation surprenante entre le monothéisme, la mémoire et le traumatisme. C'est le phénomène qu'il appelle le retour du refoulé, soit le processus qui, combinant le traumatisme et la mémoire, confère selon Freud à la religion monothéiste son pouvoir coercitif sur les masses et lui procure « le privilège d'être affranchie de la contrainte de la pensée logique » Pour Freud, l'histoire de la religion se présente donc comme un processus psycho-dynamique du refoulement et du souvenir. Ce qui se montre à la surface comme un travail d'archive gigantesque, la codification, la tradition et l'interprétation de textes canonisés, se dévoile au regard « archéologique » de l'analyste pénétrant la surface comme un drame psychique dont les origines remontent beaucoup plus loin que l'invention de l'écriture, plus loin même que la formation du langage, jusqu'à la première phylogenèse de l'humanité.

The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (review)

Book Reviews 151 from some type ofundefmed "Levitical circles" (BiblicaUnterpretation in the Book of Jubilees; CBQMS 18 [Washington, DC: Catholic BiblicalAssociation ofAmerica, 1987]). Kugler's monograph provides a wealth ofnew possibilities for viewing Levi, not only in Jubilees but in a variety of other documents from the same era. This book addresses the concerns ofspecialists in the areas ofBible, Qumran, and Pseudepigrapha, especially those who read biblical languages and enjoy the details of close textual readings. Students preparing to engage in their own research projects will learn much about defining a topic and setting out the textual basis oftheir projects. This book should be found in libraries for research into the Bible and Second Temple Jewish history and literature, and in seminaries. John C. Endres, S. 1. Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism, by Regina M. Schwartz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 211 pp. $22.95. A recent issue ofthe Sunday New York Times featured a half-page color image ofthe Hindu god Shiva. A god who can appear in many guises, he is depicted in this particular image as the Destroyer, wearing a garland of skulls. In the land of Gandhi, late twentieth-century Hindu nationalism espouses the expansive boundaries of a millennium ago. Religious sanctions for violence, political or personal, are hardly exclusive to monotheistic traditions. Yet Schwartz would have it otherwise in The Curse ofCain. She concedes in the Preface to her book that the damaging monotheistic way of thinking she exposes is "not simply or originally biblical"; she nonetheless assumes that virtually all violence in the world, even in "the climate of Eastern religions," is somehow fatally taintedby principles ofexclusivity she sees encoded inbiblical notions of one god. One can hardly question the claim that horrendous destructive acts by various polities in the last two thousand years have been carried out or justified as fulfilling biblical mandates, just as the exploitation and oppression of groups within a society (women, slaves) have been linked to scripturalprecedent orpronouncement. Discussing the presence and use of violence in any religious tradition is a worthwhile enterprise; assigning a causal relationship between biblical monotheism and the military horrors of nineteenth- and twentieth-century nationalism is another matter. The latter project, Schwartz's project, is fraught with dangers. It misrepresents and distorts both biblical monotheism and the hostile attitudes of ancient Israelites to many (but not all!) other groups, and it also provides fodder for the anti-Judaism tendencies thatpersistin various 152 SHOFAR Fa111999 Vol. 18, No.1 political and theological quarters in much the same way that critiques of patriarchy in the Hebrew Bible foster an insidious kind of feminist anti-Judaism. Furthermore, its basic assumption-an expectation that biblical tradition should somehow be pure, peaceful, and perfect-privileges the biblical legacy in a way that ironically conflicts with her lofty hopes for plenitude of cultures, none more exemplary than the other. Schwartz's analysis ofthe Hebrew Bible in service ofher thesis about monotheism and its negative consequences focuses on the issue of Israelite identity formation-on the way the Israelite construction of its particular, territorially based culture depended upon its separation from the Other. To do so, she examines five aspects of Hebraic culture, one each in the five chapters ofthe book: covenant, land, kinship, nationhood, and memory. As a literary critic trained outside the guild of biblical scholarship, Schwartz attempts valiantly to incorporate or interrogate works in that discipline. Such a task is daunting to insiders. To outsiders it is risky business, and she predictably rehashes some positions that are either dated or controversial and thus problematic as support for her arguments. Similarly, she inevitably fails to consult all relevant treatments ofthe areas of biblical studies that she examines. No loss, in many cases. But in other cases her omission of the most recent discussion leads her to make claims that can no longer be substantiated. Take her covenant chapter, for example. She rightly refers to the way the covenant idea is rooted in political documents known from other ancient Near Eastern societies. But her view of covenants is that they are monolithic, that they all involve oaths with violent...

Yahweh the Patriarch: Ancient Images of God and Feminist Theology (review)

102 SHOFAR Winter 1998 Vol. 16, No.2 Greek novels and early Christian novels; these comparative works are mentioned but described very briefly, probably too briefly, for the reader who has little familiarity with this body of literature. In addition to a traditional form-critical approach, Wills also asks the more sociologically oriented question ofwhy this particular geme ofliterature developed and became popular at this particular time. If"it is possible that Jewish novels were read by more Jews than any other type ofliterature" (p. 3), they provide a window into popular culture, a separate avenue ofentry from the more halakhic and theological literature of the "religious elite" that is often our basis of study. There is not space here to give a detailed comment on Wills' discussion of each individual book. Each chapter stands relatively independently and can serve as a helpful general introduction to the work under discussion. As might be expected, there is an emphasis on those features that are distinctive to the geme as Wills has defmed it, and a deemphasis on other elements that do not fit quite so neatly. Thus it seemed to me that Wills sometimes undervalued the didactic and religious elements of this literature, especially the significant prayer and hymnic passages in many of these works. In the first sentence ofhis introduction, Wills reminded us ofthe pioneering book of Elias Bickerman (1967) in which he explored Four Strange Books of the Bible, including Esther and Daniel. Wills has included even "stranger" books while at the same time demonstrating that none of this literature is so "strange" when it is placed within the broader context of literary developments in the Greco-Roman world. Eileen Schuller Department of Religious Studies McMaster University Yahweh the Patriarch: Ancient Images of God and Feminist Theology, by Erhard S. Gerstenberger, translated by Frederick J. Gaiser. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. 168 pp. $16.00. The prominence ofYahweh, the name for God in the Hebrew Bible, in the title does not mean that this book focuses solely or primarily on biblical images of God. Rather, its major concern is for contemporary theological problems, particularly among Protestant Christians in Germany. A distinguished professor of Old Testament and Theology at Marburg, Gerstenberger is acutely aware of gender and class inequality in church and society, and he argues valiantly for egalitarian structures in contemporary religious and political institutions. Nearly 40 percent of the book addresses itself to such issues. Yet Gerstenberger is fully aware of how contemporary sexism is grounded in western cultural history, going back to biblical times. Hence his scholarly approach to Book Reviews 103 the flaws in contemporary institutions is to ferret out the biblical patterns of sexism, particularly in the gendered attributes of the single god Yahweh worshiped in ancient Israel. At the same time, his diligence in assessing the time-bound and historically contingent nature ofbiblical images for God frees him to reject the authority ofIsraelite ideas about God that do not serve contemporary theological needs and also allows him to value as meaningful for today the ways in which both women and men experienced religious life at certain epochs in Israelite society. An importailt and widely accepted premise of Yahweh the Patriarch is that biblical monotheism almost certainly did not emerge until the exilic period (sixth century BCE), even though postexilic biblical writers and redactors attempt to project monotheism back into the earliest periods of proto-Israelite and Israelite history. Archaeological data, extra-biblical sources, and biblical texts together reveal that female and male deities-including Baal, EI, Milcom, Asherah, Astarte, and the Queen of Heaven (Ishtar)-were worshiped by many Israelites, including even members of the royal family. Furthermore, women apparently participated fully in the cultic activities associated with those deities and probably were in control ofthe rituals for at least one of them, namely Ishtar. Concomitant with multiple deities of both genders and with women' roles in religious life were several instances ofpublic female leadership as well as ofdomestic female importance in preexilic Israel. But, according to Gerstenberger, the emergence of Yahweh as a sole deity, represented almost exclusively by male language drawn in large part from military images of divine power and victory, while...

In the Wake of the Goddesses. Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth

Traces the development of conceptions of nature, gender and sexuality from the goddesses of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations to the one God of biblical monotheism.

Jesus and Judaism

The desire to consider Jesus from the perspective of Judaism may arise for various reasons. I have recently returned from New York City, where for years a formal and informal “Jewish-Christian dialogue” has been flourishing. Judaism is a major cultural force in New York, and the Church must relate to Jews if she is to engage the society in which she lives. Accordingly, this dialogue is not only historical and theological; its agenda is often determined by practical conflicts between Christians and Jews. A more purely theological root of the desire for such dialogue is, on the other hand, often expressed. The three great forms of biblical monotheism — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — have so much in common, it is frequently claimed, that each should be able to learn from the others, and certainly should appreciate enough about the others to avoid the sickening instances of religious oppression which deface the histories of each. Finally, there is a sound historical reason for Jewish-Christian dialogue. Jesus was Jewish, and the New Testament was written during the most crucial period in the development of Judaism. As we will discuss, one cannot be adequately understood without reference to the other. This basic, historical side of Jewish-Christian dialogue is our present concern, although we would by no means deny the importance of its theological and pastoral aspects.There is no doubt that Jesus was Jewish, not only ethnically, but also socially and theologically. We find him in the Gospels teaching and disputing as a rabbi, discussing questions of how Torah should be applied, using figures of speech and methods of argument also used by other rabbis. A recent volume by Geza Vermes, entitled Jesus the Jew (1973), represents a bold attempt to place Jesus in the context of Judaism. His work is subtitled, A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels, and certainly to understand Jesus as a Jew is historically crucial.