Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

by Robert N. Bellah

  In the earliest phase of Israelite religion it would seem that religion was predominantly a matter of the family or the clan. The settlers of the central hill country lived in self-contained and largely self-sufficient communities … Family religion was focused on the god of the settlement. This god was the patron of the leading family and, by extension, of the local clan and the settlement. Allegiance to the clan god was concomitant with membership of the clan. The clan god was commonly a god of the Canaanite pantheon, El and Baal being the most commonly worshipped. The occurrence of Yahweh as clan god seems to have been exceptional.54

  Our knowledge of the “Canaanite pantheon” comes mainly from the rich trove of texts from the city of Ugarit in northern Syria in the second millennium BCE.55 There are clear continuities with Israelite religion, but also clear discontinuities-Ugarit was destroyed well before our earliest evidence for Israel and was a city well to the north of the Israelite hill country, so, though continuities can be found, they must be used with caution. In addition, the term “El” could be used as a proper name for the Ugaritic high god, or simply as the generic word for “god.” Similarly Baal, the proper name of an important Ugaritic god, is also simply the word for “lord” or “master.” Thus Rainer Albertz cautions against reading too much into terminological similarities:

  However, regardless of the names of the gods whom the families chose to be their gods, at the level of family piety they lost any specific characterization. Whether the early Israelite families worshipped El-Shaddai or El-‘Olam or another El, as a family god this god had little more in common with the great god of heaven in the Ugaritic pantheon than the name. The cultic, local, historical and functional differentiations within the world of the gods, which are a reflection of political and social differentiations [in urban Ugarit], hardly play any role at the level of the family with its relatively simple social structure.56

  Just as the Madonna of one village in rural Italy was not viewed as the same as the Madonna in the next village, the El of one locality was not necessarily identical with the El of another: for example, the El of Bethel relative to El Elyon of Jerusalem. The same was true for Baals and even local Yahwehs in early times.

  It is tempting to see the religion of early Israel, with its local, decentralized, clan “gods,” as similar to the tribal religions described in Chapter 3, and there is probably some truth in that idea. Early Israel was not, however, an isolated society or one surrounded only by tribal peoples. It was, rather, one of several “frontier societies,” as they have been called, close to and inevitably influenced by archaic societies with highly differentiated religious systems. Probably in premonarchical and certainly in early monarchical Israel something of archaic polytheism was present.17 Most unsettling has been the discovery that El’s consort Asherah was inherited by Yahweh when El and Yahweh were merged (more on that shortly). The existence of a Mrs. God, so unseemly to Jewish and Christian orthodoxy, has become widely, though not universally, accepted.

  There is reason to believe that Yahweh became important only with the early state, a matter we must carefully consider. (Tribal societies under great external pressure have come up with “prophetic movements” oriented to high gods, as we saw in Australia in Chapter 3, so that remains a theoretical possibility in premonarchical Israel. But the near marginality of Yahweh in earliest Israel argues against that possibility in my view.) Certainly Yahweh as the national god did not displace the lineage and local gods, at least not for a long time. Albertz points out that family religion persisted well into the monarchical period, perhaps all through it. Personal names often referred to gods, but, he writes, “It is still in no way customary in the early monarchical period to give one’s children names containing Yahweh; this only changes in the late period of the monarchy.” 58

  The Early State

  If we can speak of premonarchical Israel at all, it was a congeries of decentralized local kin groups of various sizes, primarily hill dwellers, some of whom came together fitfully under charismatic war leaders to defend themselves against incursions from neighboring groups such as the Ammonites and from the coastal cities of the Philistines. Like similar groups everywhere, such people treasure their autonomy, resist even permanent chieftainships, and devote themselves to evading state control. It would seem that increasing military pressure, particularly from the Philistines, finally stimulated the emergence of an early state as a means of more effective self-defense. Alexander Joffe refers to Israel and Judah, as well as the trans-Jordanian states of Ammon and Moab that also emerged in the early first millennium, as secondary states, developing out of interaction with older and more developed states in the area.59 Joffe characterizes these emerging states as “ethnicizing states,” suggesting that they are less the creation of state structures for pre-state ethnic groups, than part of the very process of the creation of ethnicity, which had not only political but economic and cultural, especially religious, sources.

  Evidence for Israel and Judah as independent states dates only from the ninth century. According to the Bible, they splintered from the “united monarchy” of Saul, David, and Solomon in the late tenth century. Working only from archaeological data, Joffe argues that there was indeed a fairly large tenth-century state that included what would later become Israel and Judah and probably trans-Jordanian areas as well, but that it was weak and ephemeral, a creation of a local elite influenced by Phoenician models, but lacking a clear ethnic basis. Like some other ancient Near Eastern monarchies, it was a heterogeneous creation of a ruling elite, and included within it quite diverse groups of which Israel and Judah, or their component elements, as it is debatable whether these had yet become entities, were only part. This tenthcentury state probably tried to establish some kind of royal ideology, but according to Joffe, it was “a fragile and perishable Potemkin Village, with a royal establishment that was not especially powerful.“60 Joffe cautions against a premature effort to relate archaeological and literary evidence, but if his archaeological argument is sound, Saul, David, and Solomon sink into the sands of legend, if not entirely, then almost so. But Joffe himself points out that, however inadequate this tenth-century state was at the time, the memory that there had been such a state may have had powerful ideological consequences, not only leading to the later provision of its alleged founders with fascinating biographies, but supplying a source for an ideological unity that was almost surely lacking at the time.

  In any case some significant actors in the ninth-century states of Israel and Judah, which began to take on a degree of historical substantiality lacking in their tenth-century predecessor, argued for a common religious culture between the two, even though a contested one. Archaeological evidence suggests that widespread literacy was lacking in Israel and Judah until the eighth century, so that earlier accounts were orally transmitted, always a problematic process, though written documents from the eighth or even the seventh century went though such a long process of editing and rewriting that they are scarcely more reliable than oral accounts.

  I have tried to show just how fragile our knowledge of the early monarchy is, and even more of the premonarchical period. And yet because of the importance of premonarchical Israel for all later Israelite and Jewish/Christian/ Muslim history, we must try to characterize some of its significant features. One such feature is that premonarchical Israel was, or was remembered as being, antimonarchical. The “judges,” who combined a number of roles, including law giving, were primarily war leaders, often with a charismatic aura. None of them, however, attempted to establish a chiefly, much less a royal, lineage. When the Israelites said to Gideon after he had led the successful war against the Midianites, “Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also,” Gideon refused, saying, “The Lord will rule over you” (Judges 8:22-23). But when Gideon’s son, Abimelech attempted to make himself king, there were rebellions that finally ended in his death.

  After Abimelech had proclaimed himself king, Jotham, his younger brother, before fleei
ng for his life, told the fable of the trees, satirizing kingship:

  The fig tree prefers to produce its delicious fruit and the vine to produce the wine that “cheers gods and mortals” rather than rule. Then the bramble accepts the offer, suggesting absurdly that the other trees “take refuge in my shade,” though he is likely to burst into flame and devour the other trees (Judges 9:7-15).61

  The most famous warning of the dangers of kingship came from Samuel just before he anointed Saul, the first king of Israel. Samuel is himself a complex figure, the last of the “judges,” but also priest and “seer,” that is, a prophet who can, among other things, foresee the future. Indeed, 1 Samuel tells us “the one who is now called a prophet was formerly called a seer” (1 Samuel 9:9). It would seem that Samuel, the last of the seers, was the first of the prophets, and that, as Frank Cross has argued, prophecy and kingship in Israel were born together and died together.62 In any case, Samuel’s response to the popular demand for a king is prophetic in the classic sense.63 When the people demanded that Samuel give them a king, Samuel was displeased and prayed to the Lord. The Lord told Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.” Then Samuel reports the words of God’s solemn warning to the people:

  These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you; he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be his perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day. (1 Samuel 8:6-18)

  If there are premonarchical memories here, we cannot be certain what they are. That Yahweh was considered king in tribal Israel and that the choice of a human king was a kind of apostasy is almost surely a later idea. Samuel’s graphic picture of royal oppression could represent the experience of the Israelites under the monarchy, but tribal Israel knew what monarchies were like-they had spent a good deal of energy avoiding them-so this negative image could be premonarchical. In the back and forth over the choice of a king the attitude of the Lord is not wholly negative. In telling Samuel to choose Saul, he seems to recognize the perils of the situation: “He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have seen the suffering of my people, because their outcry has come to me.” (1 Samuel 9:16)

  Even if the biblical account of Saul, David, and Solomon cannot be taken at face value, the depiction of these three figures may give us some idea of the process of creating the early state in Israel. First of all, Saul was not exactly king of “all Israel”; he was king over “Gilead, the Ashurites, Jezreel, Ephraim, and Benjamin” (2 Samuel 2:9). Neither the northernmost tribes nor Judah were included. He seems only modestly more powerful than the “judges” who preceded him: he ruled not from a capital city but from his own estate; he relied on levies from the tribes under his control but had no army of his own; he apparently had no system of taxes and corvee. In terms of what we saw in Chapter 4, Saul looks more like a paramount chief than a king.

  With David we begin to see the outline of an archaic monarchy: he had a personal army including non-Israelite troops (though we can’t read too much about ethnicity into this early period); he captured Jerusalem, a Jebusite city, that then belonged to him personally (the city of David) rather than to any tribe; in a rather strange addendum to the David story (2 Samuel 24), David ordered a census as the first step toward more intense political control, but he subsequently repented of it and God punished him for it.64

  With Solomon the outline was substantially filled in. With the help of Phoenician artisans he built a temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem, with an adjoining palace for himself. He established extensive relations with neighboring powers and undertook matrimonial alliances with several of them. Whereas David financed most of his activities with war booty, Solomon had to rely on taxation and forced labor. Whether the Solomon we know in the Bible was a real king or an archetype of kingship in Israel, his actions approximated Samuel’s dark warning to the Israelites about what life under a king would be like.

  According to 1 Kings 11-12, when Solomon died, the northern tribes requested of Rehoboam, Solomon’s son and successor, that he “lighten the yoke that your father put on us.” Rehoboam, however, ignoring the advice of the elders of Judah and following the rash advice of his age-mates, threatened the northern tribes with increasing, not lightening, their burden (heavy taxation and forced labor). The ten tribes of Israel thereupon revolted and chose Jeroboam to be their king. According to Rainer Albertz, one can see the revolt of Jeroboam and the northern tribes as an effort to return to the lighter rule of Saul, closer to the old tribal ideal of independence. A royal residence as a permanent power base in the north was not constructed for fifty years after the separation from Judah. It also seems that there was a reference to an early version of the story of Moses and the Exodus as part of the effort to legitimate the northern kingdom-the life of Jeroboam was even seen as paralleling the life of Moses as a liberator of his people from autocratic oppression.61 Again, whether these accounts contain some contemporary evidence or were constructed only considerably later, they testify to the continued ambivalence in the tradition about the institution of kingship.

  But in Judah, whether from David and Solomon or only later, the full outline of archaic Near Eastern kingship gradually took shape. Much of the symbolism of sacred kingship comes down to us as focusing on the figure of David, founder of the royal lineage of Judah, and of Solomon, his son and first successor, even if in fact the development was only gradual. Although elements of the old high pantheon of West Semitic gods had been known to tribal Israel, they became adapted to monarchical institutions in the developing royal theology of the early monarchy. Mark S. Smith has carefully described the process. El, the original god of Israel, was, in ancient Ugarit married to Athirat and surrounded by their children, including morning and evening star gods, as well as sun and moon gods, but also the somewhat ambiguous figure of Baal, sometimes seen as a son of El, sometimes as an outsider. In the Israelite version El had a consort, Asherah, and various children, including Astarte and Baal, but also Yahweh. This gave rise to a kind of cosmopolitan theology in which El or Elohim was the father of the gods of various peoples. Smith sees a remnant of this older idea surviving in the old poem included as chapter 32 of Deuteronomy:

  Other sons of El were gods of other peoples. In the context of this “world theology” the reputed presence of chapels to the gods of Solomon’s various foreign wives would not be blasphemous, but would represent on the level of divinity the pattern of international relations established by the new monarchy. In this schema, Baal, the god of Tyre, but long known in premonarchical Israel, would be no particular threat.67

  This rather tolerant cosmopolitan theology, appealing to moderns on that account,68 was, however, to be replaced gradually by something else suffi ciently different that reconstructing the earlier pattern has been difficult. Mark Smith characterizes the change as involving two parallel processes: convergence and differentiation.69 The primary example of convergence was the growing idea that El and Yahweh were two names for the same God; but it also involved the absorption into the figure of Yahweh of characteristics that had earlier belonged to Baal (storm god, war god). Differentiation involved the idea that two gods, Yahweh and Baal, for example, were incompatible, that it was wrong to worship both of th
em, even though the existence of the rejected god was not denied. It was convergence, not differentiation, that dominated the royal theology. In this it was similar to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, where it was common to elevate one god above the others, or to combine in one the attributes of others.

  Karel van der Toorn speculates that it was Saul who first raised Yahweh to the status of the national God, even suggesting an Edomite strain in Saul’s genealogy that would account for the elevation of this hitherto rather marginal god. Van der Toorn also notes that the place from which David brought the ark of God to Jerusalem was Kiriath-jearim, in the heart of Saul’s home territory.70 By bringing the ark into Jerusalem and placing it on the site where the temple would later be built, David unmistakably claimed Yahweh as the God of his own kingship.

  That Yahweh was the patron deity of the Judahite monarchy, and was exalted above all other gods, would seem to be the case, but does not imply that Yahweh was the only god. Psalm 89, one of the royal psalms, has the following to say in verses 3 to 7:

  The idea of a high god, above all other gods, but still a god among gods, is part of the old Near Eastern royal pattern. What this pattern looked like in Mesopotamia is suggestive of what was coming to be in Jerusalem: “It is no exaggeration to state that ancient Mesopotamian civilization idealized static urban cultures, where kingship, temple cult, and the status of privileged citizens maintained their formal Gestalten in the face of shifting political fortunes, and monumental architecture strove to replicate itself across the centuries as an anchor of collective civic vitality.“71 One additional feature was central in Jerusalem: the temple of Yahweh was located on a holy mountain: Mount Zion, a mountain whose name summed up the Judahite royal complex.