February 20th, 2023
I didn’t even finish the introduction. This is going to be some dense reading, I think. If I understand what I’ve read so far, then this is not really a book about where “Yahweh” comes from. It sounds like it will try to describe the time and place, the ideas and believes that allowed for a monotheistic religion to form out of the polytheistic. It will explore Semitic concepts of the divine and what type of pantheon may have existed. It will eventually get into what was the “chief deity” of Israel, and how Israel polytheism may have morphed from the worship of one of many to the worship of the one and only during the captivity. I could be way off, there’s a-whole-nother have to the introduction.
February 21st, 2023
Still haven’t finished the introduction. The guy has a lot to introduce. It’s kind of more of the same as before. Nothing really worth noting. He’s just explaining some of the choices he will make, such as using “West Semitic” as opposed to “Canaanite”, which at this point don’t mean much to me. Maybe if I had more prior knowledge it would matter, or maybe it will matter after I read the book.
February 22nd, 2023
Finally slogged through the introduction and began the first chapter. I’m not sure what kind of background is necessary to read this. I’m pretty unfamiliar with Semitic and Mesopotamian mythology. I’m not sure how “full” these Ugaritic texts are anyway. Possibly they are like The Epic of Gilgamesh where huge sections are missing. Anyway, the first part tries to define the definition of “realms”. There is the home, the local, the near, which in Ugaritic appears to be called the “sown”. Then there is the periphery, the distant, the “unsown”. The sown is good, the unsown is bad. Gods live on there holy mountains in the sown, while monsters and malicious deities live in the unsown.
Februrary 23rd, 2023
Read the rest of the first chapter. Right now I’m banking on not needing to read up on the Ugaritic texts, though maybe I will out of curiosity. I can’t imagine they are very long, if they are individual stories. The majority of it is probably not interesting. Some of the Bible references are also lost on me, not that I was ever a scholar of it. The rest of the chapter continues to explain what is meant by divine. Essentially, it is whatever is extra-human. The center of the universe is Baal’s holy mountain of Saapan. Home is blessed and protected, while enemies and those with destructive powers lurk afar. The home deities have power of the things that help man. The home deities are beautiful and are identified typically with domestic animals, while the peripheral deities are monstrous. Now the part I don’t follow is the “head” god. I assumed Baal was the most important, but I guess the supreme god is El. Baal (sky god) has his own cycle of stories where he fights monsters like Leviathan and some Tannin thing (serpents are bad guys), but also gods Yam (water) and Mot (death). El is the bull god, Baal is a calf, to show their domesticated animal form. El apparently favors Yam and Mot (his beloved) over Baal. These parallel the Bible, where the beloved of God is an important title for Solomon. Also a key difference is that Baal struggles with Yam (water) and Mot and the monsters. In Genesis, God simply arranges things effortlessly, showing his supreme power of all things before and after creation.
February 24th, 2023
The second chapter talks about what the author calls “the divine council”. In these Ugaritic and other Semitic texts, they often refer to the council or assembly of so-and-so god. Here, we see an assembly of El and an assembly for Baal, which seems to mean that these two chief gods have their own retinue in the pantheon. Possibly Baal’s council represents the entire pantheon, since his mountain of Sapan is the main divine location, while El’s is just his top tier family. El and his peers are the top tier, while the other powerful gods like Baal or Yam make up the second tier. This second tier tends to be the manifestation of natural forces or even things like fertility. The third tier is lesser and includes the smith god, I forget his name, who resides in Egypt or Cyprus. He is foreign, but provides useful weapons and tools for the higher gods. Then there is a fourth tier of minor deities who often go nameless, I think. Thus Ugarit. The next section will be discuss this concept for Israel.
February 27th, 2023
The rest of chapter 2 discusses the Yahweh connection to the Semitic divine council. There’s really two concepts, the polytheistic (around 800BC and earlier) and the monotheistic. The polytheistic has many similarities to the Ugaritic texts. There appears to be a chief council at the first tier, possibly led by El, and then there is the second tier, in which it seems Yahweh is part of. It appears that Yahweh falls under the “sons of El” and, as royal descendants, receive a nation to govern. Yahweh receives the nation of Israel and is their patron god. There is also reference to some sort of consort or wife, Asherah, who is the consort of El. Therefore, there is some combination of El and Yahweh over time until Yahweh becomes the chief and sole god. The later period either removes this consort or rewrites it as something metaphorical. Once the region becomes unstable, the concept of “a god of each nation” falls apart. When the nation loses its definition, so does the god. In the late kingdom and captivity period, these divine councils turn away from a multitude of deities in which Yahweh is one, into a council in which he is the sole power and all else exists through him. Angels and all that jazz. So the council concept remains, but its constituencies change to enforce the sole god concept.
February 28th, 2023
The next chapter discusses the divine family. The council from the previous chapter is essentially synonymous with the royal family. The top tier is El, the father, and Asharath or something like that, the mother. The second tier is their children (or children-in-laws). Baal, Yam, and others are all their children and each has his own household. Baal, as eldest and heir, has the more stressful situation, especially if his younger brothers are more favored. I guess the Baal Cycle is about him taking care of business. The third tier is just that foreign smith god. The lowest tier is the household retinue. That’s pretty much all that was said. The Semites loved to use terms like father and brother in more broader meanings than strict family relations.
March 1st, 2023
The last section spent a significant amount of time discussing the whether the Ugaritic gods are “astral”, but it doesn’t look like there is much evidence they are. Probably they are, everyone saw planets and stars as gods. Even Yahweh freezes the sun in the sky and acknowledges the heavens. The key point was the Baal seems to be explicitly NOT an astral god, solely the storm god and thus terrestrial. This would play into his role as an outsider and his conflict with the brothers of the second tier. Though there are times where Baal is called a son of Dagon. There is also a story where he is a son of El through a concubine, who then married Dagon. Thus Baal is a son but on a lower level of acceptance. It is through his strength and ability that he gains acceptance among the true sons.
March 2nd, 2023
Chapter 4 covers a lot of things. First it talks about retinues of Baal and Rephes or someone else and it was pretty boring. Military dudes or something. Then it talks about what may be a cult of the dead. The Rephaim may be dead spirits who are prayed to for help, and ancient Israel possibly also worshipped these same Rephaim. Later Israelite tradition would try to downplay this ancestor worship. Another item was the consort of Yahweh, which was mentioned earlier in the book. It’s kind of all over the place.
March 6th, 2023
I finished chapter 4 on Friday but didn’t get a chance to write anything. I don’t remember it, probably more of the same. Chapter 5 begins a new section about the aspects of divinity. It starts with physical aspects. The first, gods are big. In the Ugaritic texts they are generally described as superhuman in size. El and Baal are especially big. Baal is said to be as big as his mountain. The Temple of Jerusalem had a giant throne room for Yahweh. The next, which I didn’t finish yet, is on anthropomorphism, or looking like a person. The gods tend to do normal human activities, like eating, singing, dreaming, walking, banging. Their hands, or “the divine hand”, tends to be a euphemism for their power. Yahweh, as seen in Genesis, walks about and looks for Adam. He lacks the omnipresence and omniscience in the old stories. Even in the post-exile period there is regular talk about Yahweh’s human-like attributes. The priests fight these ideas. A psalm negates the idea that Yahweh actually consumes the sacrifices. More to come.
March 7th, 2023
There was more on divinity and anthropomorphism. It feels like I read a lot but I don’t really remember it. I think the main points on anthropomorphism were covered yesterday. The next section was on holiness, and it wasn’t that interesting. I guess for Western Semitics the holy ones existed in their own space but also as part of ours. They were manifested in the surroundings: rain, fire, disease. The holy ones or gods were not some distant object but were often nearby. Contrast this with the Biblical Yahweh who is does not really have form and is everywhere at all times. He exists “without” but can approach humans in a way that works for them. Gods are scary and their holy presence causes trembling etc. Stuff like that.
March 8th, 2023
The fifth chapter ends with the topic of immorality. It is common in most mythologies that gods neither age nor die and the Middle Eastern tradition is no different. Gods live forever, man does not. There are cases of divine beings dying, but often they appear again. Baal kills Mot and Yamm, yet they later appear without acknowledgement. Baal dies and returns, which is the topic of the next chapter. Divine monsters are killed and their bodies are used to create the cosmos. Most of these deaths occur “long ago” and are not relevant to life for man. They are narratives. Gods without worship are “dead”, meaning defunct. They are no longer relevant, so their existence does not matter. Yahweh is also immortal. There is a psalm where he declares the other gods “dead”. This may mean that in the era of polytheism, he makes the gods of other nations irrelevant. Only the god of Israel exists.
March 9th, 2023
The chapter discusses the concept of the “dying and rising god” and whether it applies to Baal. The author gives some background to Frazer, who wrote about this idea and popularized it. He claims the Middle Eastern cultures all had this same concept. Osiris, Baal, Adonis, and others fall under this (he even brings up Jesus). He first published his book in the 1890s. In modern times, this has been reanalyzed and criticized. Frazer generalizes cultures which he, and anyone who was not a part of them, had a poor understanding of and sees large scale patterns but misses the details that really break the theory. The author definitely does not agree with Frazer. The concept is that the dying god represents the death of plants and crops after harvest and during the ungrowable season, while the rising represents the return of plants. They call rituals that promote the growth “fertility rites”. The author than looks at some of these gods and explains why this doesn’t work. Osiris died and stayed dead. He lives in the underworld and never returned to the land of the living. He is associated with funerary rites and the dead pharaohs, not plants, though he is depicted with wheat sometimes. The next was Tammuz or something Akkadian. This may not have even been a god, but a deified king, a mortal. He was associated with flocks, not agriculture. There was definitely more, but I don’t remember.
March 10th, 2023
Still on this chapter and only got through the section on comparing between different gods. There was another one I don’t remember, Melqart or something. Never heard of him, but he’s probably more of the Tammuz/Dummuzi vein. Adonis is similar in that he may have been a deified king. His cult does seem to have something to do with agriculture, but again, there are no known rites for “resurrection”. The author notes that a lot of the classical authors are centuries removed from these religions and of a foreign culture.
March 13th, 2023
This is all about Baal’s death. The author does not consider Baal to be a dying and rising god (if any exist) because he is never shown to rise. He just is back. The categories may be “disappearing”, then “dying”, then “dying and rising”. The Hittie storm god disappears (to take a nap), and vegetation dies. He is awoken and placated to return. Baal, however, dies. He has a funeral. This story parallels the rituals involved with the death of the Ugaritic king (Baal is a king and the patron god of Ugarit). Thus it is possible that Baal is the mythological representation of the royal line. Baal dies, like the old king, but he lives and continues to reign, like the heir to the throne. This death seems unique to Ugarit. There is are many parallels between Yahweh’s story and Baal’s (fighting monsters Leviathan and others), but not this dealing with death. So maybe Ugarit developed a unique story to show the fragility of the royal system and explain its continuation. This ends section two.
March 14th, 2023
Now we’re getting to the point of the book. Where was El worshiped, when was he worshiped, and did Israel worship him? It was a lot of words and references to ancient documents I’ve never heard of, but here is my understanding. Most of the knowledge of El’s cult comes from the Bronze Age and second millennium BC. There is scant and conflicting evidence for cults during the Iron Age and first millennium. It’s important to know that the word for god is also El. That makes it difficult to determine if something is referencing THE El or an el. The Ugaritic texts say a lot about El. He is the creator god and is now an old man. He lives far away, where the cosmic seas meet, and may live in a tent-like structure. He heals, he creates, he feasts with the dead, he loves the ladies, but I don’t know if he is all powerful. His relationship with Baal is confusing, but seems tense. He prefers other gods like Yam as king, possibly because Baal is not one of his own. So is Yahweh El? Did El become Yahweh? Were they merged? I guess that’s the rest of the chapter. El may have existed in Iron Age Israel. Yahweh is also a creator and healer who lives far away and lives in a tent-like structure. In the older books he is referred to as El Shaddai and becomes Yahweh to Moses. I guess if there were hard evidence, it wouldn’t need a book, we’d just know it. Again, the El-el thing really confuses any scripture. We’ll see what the rest of the chapter says.
March 16th, 2023
The rest of chapter 7 was a discussion of El in Israel. As written earlier, a lot of words and names use have El in them as opposed to some form of Yahweh (which does exist in later names). Israel is a key point. The thought is that El was originally the chief god, as in Ugarit. Yahweh was a son of El and his inheritance was Israel. Yahweh, like Baal, was a warrior god. Somewhere in time the cult of El diminished and Yahweh was chief. Through some process, the two were merged, or El became obsolete. Thus El was no longer the father and Yahweh the son, because there was only one god. Something like that. Then the next question was: Was El the god of Exodus? Probably. The old books tend to give Yahweh traits of El, like the bull horns, and they use the word El more than Yahweh. Names like Moses and others are Egyptian and the cult of Yahweh seems to have formed in the Sinai and southern regions and spread north, possibly through trade and friendly methods. El was the family god, of Abraham and his lineage. As the Israelites became a people and expanded, the warrior god became more appropriate for worship. Since the books are written and edited by much later people, we may never know the original Yahweh and his connection to El. Chapter 8 is about the emergence of monotheism in the Judah. As discussed before, many parts of the Bible seem to acknowledge the existence of divine beings other than God. Some think this change to “there is only God” occurred in the Exodus, some think in the Kingdom period, but the author thinks in the Exile. To be continued.
March 17th, 2023
Read the rest of chapter 8 and it was pretty boring. I think a lot of it was said elsewhere in the book. Long story short, the Israelites were polytheistic and mainly worshiped Yahweh. Solomon screwed up by worshiping other gods, though this is never mentioned in the book. The point is, other gods existing is acknowledged. The author calls this monolatry. He quotes a bunch of sources and I don’t remember them. There are some discussions of divine kingship and parallels between Yahweh fighting with heavenly hosts and the king fighting his and God’s enemies on Earth. There isn’t a lot of true monotheistic literature in the Bible. The author again claims the monotheism became prominent around the exile when traditional borders eroded and the large empires destroyed the small kingdoms. Authority was needed to keep cultural identity.
March 20th, 2023
This book has become a bit of a slog. The penultimate chapter is on the formation (origins?) of monotheism in Biblical literature. I guess this chapter is just straight-up analyzing Biblical text. The last chapter looks like it will be even more narrow scoped and only about the book Isaiah. The 9th chapter starts talking about creation. In contrast to the standard Middle Eastern creation story about conflict between forces, Genesis is very tame. God says what he wants, and it happens. There is no vanquishing of the sea god to tame the seas, no fighting of monsters, just words. In contrast to king being the divine image, all mankind is created in God’s image. A lot of this setup in Genesis may be justification for the priestly rule and laws in the post-exilic period. There is no king anymore, no more parallel between the Divine Warrior and his earthly servant. Gensis creates a system that provides logic for priestly tradition (the sabbath, kosher eating, etc.). Paradise is set-up to be an allegory for Jerusalem and the temple, or something. That’s what I got out of it.
March 21st, 2023
The rest of the chapter is pretty dull. It makes a mention of how wisdom and the tree of life are personified as women, and that this may have been an attempt to erase goddesses with something monotheistic. Then it talks about the lack of myths in the Bible. There is a lot of mythical rhetoric, but the idea of epics and anthropomorphism has been wiped out. It is possible that myths existed in Israel outside the Bible and that those who compiled the Bible make some edits or omissions to enforce the monotheistic ideas. Stuff like that.
March 22nd, 2023
The final chapter is on “Second Isaiah”, or Isaiah 40-55, which was probably written by someone else, hence the name. It seems that the author considers this “the most” monotheistic text the Hebrew Bible. In short, it has a lot of lines that claim there is no god other than Yahweh and it mocks the polytheistic tendency toward idolatry. The Semitics would create idols out of wood or other material, typically a foot or two tall, and worship it. Sacrifices were given to it, it was brought food, it was paraded around. A new idol had to go through certain rituals in order to be able to contain the god. “Awakening” rituals. Of course, they did not believe that his thing WAS the god, but could at times be inhabited by the god. The god could go anywhere, it was a god. The god was in the cosmos. Isaiah just talks trash on this. He mocks how they make the idol and use the same wood to heat their food. He mocks how they have to carry their god around, where Yahweh carries the world. He makes some damn good points. It is silly to try to feed a piece of wood. There was some other stuff in there, too. Since this was in the exile, there was no more monarchy. The text writes out the monarchy as the conduit for Yahweh on earth. The people of Israel are to do the work of Yahweh, etc.
March 23rd, 2023
Finished the book today, for the most part. There’s probably over 100 pages of notes, but no way am I reading that. There wasn’t much more added in the few pages I had left. As stated yesterday, Second Isaiah talked trash a lot about Babylonian idolatry. But the main purpose may not have been to praise Yahweh in contrast to the Babylonians. Possibly, it was to convince the Israelite audience that nothing is gained by partaking in Babylonian idolatry. Generations were in exile in a foreign culture, and those born there probably adapted to it. This is to convince them to be part of their own culture. Guess it worked, Not only did this monotheistic approach successfully change Israelite culture, it clearly changed world history. Way to go, Isaiah. Going to stop writing while I read LOTR part 2.