by Brian Godawa
The idea was that ritual enacted underlying mythology. Since Inanna was the goddess of fertility and fecundity, Douglas Frayne explains the central purpose of the Sacred Marriage rite “was to promote fertility in the land. The rationale of the ceremony was that, by a kind of sympathetic act involving the sexual union of the king, playing the role of the en, with a woman, generally referred to simply as Inanna, the crops would come up abundantly and both the animal and human populations would have the desire and fertility to ensure that they would multiply.”[191]
As Ugaritic scholar Mark Smith defines it, Sacred Marriage was either “between a deity and a human (ritually enacted with sexual relations)” or “between two deities (imitated by sexual relations between corresponding humans).”[192]
But did the Sacred Marriage continue unchanged for millennia into the time period of the Jezebel story in the ninth century B.C.? Some scholars argue that though there were changes over time, it remained in literature of the time period such as the Baal epic (KTU 1.23). In this famous text called “The Gracious Gods: A Sacred Marriage Liturgy,” the high god El is described as having sexual relations with the goddesses Asherah and Anat in connection with a ritual marriage feast consisting of human royal and priestly elites. I used this actual text in the novel when Ahab and Jezebel consummate their marriage at the high place in Samaria. A high priestess then takes the place of Asherah as Jezebel is the “Womb.”
Let me invoke the gracious gods,
Let them give a feast to those of high rank,
in the wilderness of the end of the world.
Greetings, king, greetings, queen, priests and qedeshim,
El enticed his two wives,
Asherah and goddess Womb.[193]
Lo, this maid bows down, lo, this one rises up,
This one shouts, “Daddy! Daddy!”
And this one shouts, “Mother! Mother!”
The organ of El grows long as the sea,
Yea, the organ of El as the flood.
The organ of El is long as the sea,
Yea, the organ of El as the flood.[194]
Though this text is hotly debated, some scholars such as Nicolas Wyatt contend that the myth is enacted through cultic drama in the human players of king and priestess.[195] This is not unlike the Babylonian myth of the Enuma Elish being recited and enacted at various points during the New Year Akitu festival in Mesopotamia.
Pirjo Lapinkivi compared similar Sacred Marriage texts over five thousand years from ancient Uruk to modern India, including ancient Israel, and he concluded there was a pattern of two different traditions.
Either we have a human bridegroom uniting with a goddess in order to bring blessings to the world and to himself, or a human bride (= human soul) who seeks union with a divine bridegroom. In the first case, the blessings can also be obtained indirectly—two deities uniting in order to bring blessings to the king (human) and the land. In the latter case, the bride is impure at first (a prostitute) but through the necessary preparations attains purity and is ready for union with the divine. The union is often co-celebrated by other people (cult personnel, scholars, or the general public), in which case the observers and devotees identify themselves with the bride uniting with the divine bridegroom.
Others disagree. But for the novel, I explored the possibilities of what this might have looked like adapted by Israel from her pagan influencers. I also drew from the ancient manuscript The Installation of the Storm God’s High Priestess in Emar as a Sacred Marriage text enacted by Jezebel’s own installation as high priestess in Tyre.[196]
Family Shrines
While doing research for the novel, one of the surprises I discovered was the idea that many ancient Jews had family shrines, rooms in their homes dedicated to religious cultic practices. Archaeologist William Dever has pointed out that previously archaeologists were preoccupied with public rather than domestic architecture, which resulted in a dearth of evidence for household shrines—until recently.
Excavations of private domiciles in a dozen Israelite cities such as Samaria, Hazor, Megiddo, Beersheba, and others from the 12th to the 7th centuries B.C. have uncovered such shrines used by single families or larger family compounds. They seem to be used for private worship as needed, and women appear to have played a significant role in their operation. The depiction of these family shrines in Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel was based on these artifacts.
Dever lists the artifacts found in these shrines containing some or all:
(1) Standing stones [massebot]
(2) Altars, some “horned”
(3) Stone tables and basins
(4) Offering stands
(5) Benches
(6) Jewelry
(7) Ceramic vessels, many “exotic”
(8) Animal bones and food remains
(9) Astragali (knucklebones)
(10) Terra cotta female figurines[197]
The last item on the list above, terra cotta female figurines, has proven to be enigmatic, hotly debated, and highly significant in understanding the folk religion of Israelite households. Three thousand of these clay figurines from the 12th to 6th centuries B.C. have been unearthed throughout Palestine. They average six inches tall, are all female with large pronounced breasts, and instead of feet, they have a pillar base, like a tree trunk. These figurines fall into two categories: those that have the female holding her breasts up and those that have the female clutching a disc-like shape in her hand.[198]
Most scholars consider these figurines to be representations of Asherah or Astarte for several key reasons. First, the females are nude with accentuated breasts, a most common way that the fertility goddess was depicted in Canaan as opposed to ordinary women. Secondly, the disc some of the goddesses are clutching to their chests bears perfect resemblance to the breadcakes that Israelites were condemned for baking for the “Queen of Heaven” (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:19).[199] Thirdly, these figurines also perfectly fit the description of teraphim, or household gods, that Jacob’s wife Rachel had carried with her and hid under her camel’s saddle when they fled Laban’s household (Genesis 31:33-35). In the time of Judges, the priest Micah had both carved images and teraphim in his home that were portable just like these figurines (Judges 17:5; 18:17-20).[200]
Dever concludes that these terracotta figurines must be images of Asherah that were appropriated by Israelites from the Canaanite goddess. The blatant sexuality of the Canaanite imagery of Asherah was restrained and redirected to a more chaste version of Asherah as the Great Mother patron goddess of Israelite mothers.[201]
In the Iron Age, the principal female deity was not Astarte, but Asherah. Nevertheless, these figurines are not Barbie-like dolls. They clearly have to do with reproduction: the desire of their users to be able to safely conceive, bear children, and lactate. These are in effect “prayers in clay”: talismans to aid women in having children, nursing them, and rearing them through childhood.[202]
Judean tombs of these periods have also included items used for divination and “magic,” including dice and sheep/goat knuckles used for casting lots, amulets, and other good luck charms considered “apotropaic” devices used to ward off evil. “Among the most conspicuous apotropaic devices in late Judean tombs are Egyptian-style glazed Bes figurines and Eye-of-Horus amulets, whose function as popular good-luck charms throughout the Levant is well known.”[203]
The Eye of Horus was known as an Egyptian symbol of protection and health. Bes was an ugly Egyptian dwarf deity with a lion face, bowed legs, and sometimes depicted with an enormous phallus.[204] Though Bes was not worshipped per se, his image could be found on vessels, household items, and amulets as a means of protecting children and pregnant mothers in their childbirth.[205]
The folk religion of many Israelites included household shrines that were more like their Canaanite neighbors’ religion than has previously been assumed.
Cult of the Dead
In his dissertation “Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit,” Th
eodore Joseph Lewis defines cults of the dead as “those acts directed toward the deceased functioning either to placate the dead or to secure favors from them.”[206] Such acts would include mediumship and necromancy (communicating with the dead), food offerings, libations, prayers, and various behaviors such as body modifications and self-lacerations—all activities of which the Old Testament indicated Israelites were guilty of engaging.
The following are activities that Yahweh had forbidden to the Israelites because they were part of the Canaanite abominable cult of the dead:
Cutting and shaving one’s self to be heard by the dead (Deuteronomy 14:1)
Divination, conjuring, consulting spirits (Deuteronomy 18:9; Isaiah 8:19-20)
oracles from the deceased (Deuteronomy 18:9)
Food offerings to the dead (Deuteronomy 26:14)
Passing children through the fire (2 Kings 21:6)
Libations (drink offerings) and other offerings (Isaiah 57:6)
Overnight grave vigils and eating pork (Isaiah 65:4)
Cutting the body, shaving, tattoos (Leviticus 19:26-32)
Necromancy and mediums (Leviticus 20:6, 27)
Marzeah feast: eating sacrifices for the dead (Psalm 106:28)
All of these forbidden elements are portrayed in the novel, being performed by Israelites. God had commanded them not to participate in these specific Canaanite practices in order to keep them from idolatry. One could say these commands were given before the Israelites encountered the practices in Canaan. They don’t indicate that the Israelites were actually doing them. Fair enough for those commands given before entering the Land. But a closer examination of the texts after Israel was already living in the Land indicate the need to reiterate the commands precisely because Israelites were engaging in these taboo practices in significant numbers. Some passages even explicitly tell us so.
Before entering Canaan, we are told that the Israelites yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor. They ate sacrifices for the dead long after Yahweh had commanded them not to (Psalm 106:28). This was most likely a reference to the marzeah feast, which we will address later.
By the time of King Saul, Israel must have been full of necromancers because Saul had to go to great effort to “expel the mediums and the necromancers out of the land” (1 Samuel 28:3).
Absalom erected a pillar (massebah) in his own memory (2 Samuel 18:18), similar to the Canaanite setting up of pillars to invoke the names of their divine ancestors (CTA 17.1.27).[207]
King Manasseh of Judah, who reigned from 697 B.C. to 643, was condemned for burning his son in fire sacrifice, practicing fortune-telling, interpreting omens, and consulting the dead through mediums and necromancers (2 Kings 21:6). He reigned for fifty-five years doing this.
After Manasseh, Josiah got rid of the necromancers and mediums that had been flourishing in Judah for God knows how long. The indication in the text is that Saul’s cutting off of the necromancers was only temporary in effect while Josiah’s was a more thorough elimination. Which means necromancy had continued throughout the Land for those several hundred years.[208]
Two hundred years before Josiah, consulting the dead was so popular that the prophet Isaiah mocked its well-known rituals as “chirping and muttering.” It was a common belief in the Near East that the dead spoke in birdlike whispers.[209] Noted Assyriologist Amar Annus explains that in the Ugaritic literature the spirits of the dead took the form of birds. “The rpum [Rephaim] are described as fluttering; they are startled like birds. Apparently they were believed to come like birds to the holy place to enter the company of the gods.”[210]
The following biblical condemnations and mockery of necromancy now make sense in that occultic worldview context.
Isaiah 8:19:
19 And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?
Isaiah 29:4 (NET):
4 [Jerusalem] will fall; while lying on the ground you will speak; from the dust where you lie, your words will be heard. Your voice will sound like a spirit speaking from the underworld; from the dust you will chirp as if muttering an incantation.
In the second passage, Jerusalem is described as a city of the dead (necropolis) lying fallen in the ground, another indictment that they will become like the chirping muttering dead with whom they consult in place of their creator.[211]
Isaiah then condemns Israelites for more of their idolatry, which includes, “sitting among the tombs and keeping watch all night long” (Isaiah 65:4 NET). Most commentators have seen this as a reference to incubation rituals of all night vigils at tombs waiting for an oracle from the dead,[212] another common activity of the cult of the dead.
What did necromancy in this time period look like in the ancient Near East? The Hebrew word for a necromancer was “Ob.” Cognate languages with Hebrew suggest the term ob was connected to …
… a pit dug in the ground, which served as a means of access between infernal spirits of gods or deceased persons and the upper world. Among the Hittites, rituals were carried out which involved the opening up of such pits in places selected by oracle, the lowering of offerings into the pits, and the luring up of spirits out of the pit to eat the sacrifices and drink the blood libations and show their favor and superior knowledge to the sacrificers.
Among the offerings lowered in the pit were foodstuffs, often including a black sacrificial animal (a hog or a dog), silver objects such as a model of a human ear (symbolizing the practitioner’s desire to hear from the underworld), and a ladder or staircase (to encourage the spirit to ascend).[213]
Again, the reader will recognize much of these elements as portrayed in the novel Jezebel. But now let’s turn to one of the strongest elements of the cult of the dead: the marzeah feast.
Marzeah Feast
One element of the cult of the dead discovered in the Ugaritic culture with corresponding echoes in the Old Testament was the marzeah feast, a banquet for the dead.
In Canaan and Syria, archaeological digs have uncovered special buildings outside of towns, sometimes near cemeteries, where an association of persons called “men of the marzeah” would meet for funerary meals for the dead. There is evidence of rituals performed at these locations and that deities were included in the liturgy, specifically Asherah. [214]
Ugaritic texts confirm these locations as “houses of marzeah.” They were often near vineyards because the men who had special membership in the religious guild would drink wine in excess during these marzeah banquets as they celebrated the passing on of their dead.[215] Marzeah is now considered to have been a well-known institution in Ugarit and most likely throughout Syria and Canaan.
Ugaritic scholar Mark Smith lists four elements that characterized the marzeah. First, it was a private association, often of members from the royal or upper class. Second, it met in a private domicile, usually the home of one of its members. Third, there was a leader of the marzeah called the “chief.” Fourth, the marzeah had a divine patron, usually El, the high god.[216]
This last element of divine involvement is rooted in the possible origin of the marzeah found in the Baal epic. In the text, labeled El’s Divine Feast, El invites the gods to a banquet at his house, called marzeah (or marzih). Asherah and Anat are there among others. El is described as drinking wine until he is pathetically drunk and falls on his own excrement and urine “as one dead.” Asherah and Anat then go out hunting and return with an unknown cure for El’s hangover.[217]
As is common in the ancient Near East, the principle of “as above, so below” applies to the marzeah. Humans have their counterpart of a human feast on earth that is based upon and indeed reflects the divine feast in the heavens. As scholar Loren Fisher explains, “El’s marzih is a projection of the human community standing under his patronage. Presumably El’s experience in his marzih mirrors that of his worshippers in theirs.[218]
The marzeah was mirrored i
n Hebrew culture as well. The biblical evidence shows a Jewish identification with the cult of the dead that is more than mere analogy.
The prophet Amos had his ministry during King Jehoram’s reign in Israel just before Jehu killed the king in the storyline of Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel. Amos gives a prophecy of Israel and Judah’s ultimate exile based on their pride of entitlement and careless indulgence in apostasy. He uses the description of a marzeah banquet of celebration to condemn Israel.
Amos 6:4–7:
4 Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory
and stretch themselves out on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock
and calves from the midst of the stall,
5 who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp
and like David invent for themselves instruments of music,
6 who drink wine in bowls
and anoint themselves with the finest oils,
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
7 Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile, and the revelry [marzeah] of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.
The notion of marzeah feasts was so well known in Israel that God used it as a metaphor to communicate a prophecy. Israelites were like fools celebrating the legacy of the dead without realizing their own deaths were hanging over their heads. We see four of the typical Ugaritic elements of the marzeah here: eating, heavy drinking, anointing with oil, and grieving. But there is a fifth aspect included, that of laying on luxurious “beds of ivory.” Ivory was a known commodity of Tyre brought to Samaria in abundance by the Phoenicians in order to upgrade the wealth status of the king’s palaces (1 Kings 22:39; Amos 3:15).
While there is no mention of the Rephaim in this Amos passage, the cult of the dead does show up in a prophecy by Jeremiah that also uses assumed familiarity with the marzeah ritual within Israel.