The Cities That Built the Bible

by Dr. Robert Cargill

  A maṣṣeboth, or set of standing stones (stelae), discovered in a temple at Tel Ḥaṣor, Israel dating from the fifteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE. Each stone in the shrine represents a deity venerated by the community. Note the horizontal offering stone lying in front of the standing stones. Image courtesy Israel Museum.

  Evidence of multiple gods appears elsewhere in the archaeological record in the form of maṣṣeboth. The Bible describes many maṣṣeboth (Heb. ), or a series of tall standing stones representing multiple deities worshipped in an area. The most famous in Israel are the monolithic standing stones at Tel Gezer and at Tel Dan and one from Tel Ḥaṣor presently on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Because there are multiple stones, they testify to the fact that multiple deities were worshipped in these cities.

  So how did ancient Israel go from the worship of multiple gods, to the command to worship only one God above all the other gods, to the belief in the existence of only one God? This question is addressed by examining the answer to another question: Why are there so many different names for God in the Hebrew Bible? And I don’t just mean his personal divine name, YHWH, first revealed to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3 (although it is used long before that in Gen. 2). And I’m not speaking of derivatives of YHWH like Yah () or YHWH Ṣaba’oth (, commonly translated as “Lord of Hosts,” but meaning “Lord of the Army”), or the etymology for YHWH given in Exodus 3:14, ehyeh-asher-ehyeh (), often translated “I Am Who I Am,” or more accurately, “I Will (Cause to) Be What I Will (Cause to) Be.”50 I mean truly different names like ’El and its plural, ’Elohim, and other derivatives like ‘Elyon and ’El Shaddai.

  New York University professor Mark Smith’s The Early History of God lays out how the many deities that were worshipped in ancient Cana‘an and Phoenicia came to be either rejected as “foreign gods” or synthesized into the Hebrew god YHWH. This is true not only for divine characteristics attributed to these deities, like power over the sea and water (Yam) or destructive storms and fertility in both crops and people (Ba‘al), but for the divine names as well. Simply put, the reason that there are so many different names for YHWH in the Bible is that many of the names of other gods were simply attributed to YHWH, so that when a text honors ’El, as in Genesis 35:751 or Psalm 82:1,52 readers simply understand ’El as another name for YHWH. Or when Abram tithes to the priest-king Melki-Ṣedeq (Melchizedek) in Genesis 14:18–20, who blessed Abram by his deity, ’El ‘Elyon, later biblical traditions interpret ’El ‘Elyon as simply “God Most High,” as is regularly done by the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), which translates ’El ‘Elyon with the Greek word ὕψιστος (hupsistos), or “most high.”53 So although one way to fight polytheism is to send prophets to rail against the Israelites and criticize them for worshipping ’El and Ba‘al and ’Asherah, a slightly more subtle way is simply to redefine the names of these foreign deities as alternative epithets for YHWH.

  We’ve traveled through the archaeological treasure trove of Ugarit, where we read stories with some remarkable “parallels” to what we read in the Bible, which scholars believe may have been the origin, or at least the inspiration, for many of the Bible’s stories. These texts also provide many of the names that would become the names of the Hebrew God as well as the backstories for other Cana‘anite deities that Israel was not supposed to worship. Thus, it is clear that Ugarit played a tremendous part in helping to build the Bible. Indeed, the title of R. W. L. Moberly’s book can be appropriated to describe Ugarit: Ugarit is essentially The Old Testament of the Old Testament!

  Next, we travel east to Mesopotamia and forward in time to encounter the two empires that influenced and ultimately destroyed ancient Israel and whose exploits (along with the Israelite and Judahite responses to them) contributed greatly to the text of the Bible.

  CHAPTER 3

  Nineveh

  The city of Nineveh is well known for different reasons. Many people are familiar with the writings of the Hebrew prophet Naḥum, who chastises the old Assyrian capital city. Nineveh is also verbally assailed by the prophet Ṣefanyah (Zephaniah; 2:13–15) and serves as the setting for the apocryphal book of Tobit. Most know Nineveh from its appearance in the story of Jonah, in which Jonah childishly despises God because he refused to destroy Nineveh as Jonah wanted. Unfortunately, far too many people are now familiar with Nineveh because of its present-day occupiers, Da‘esh (commonly called ISIS, or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), Islamic militants who are in the process of physically destroying the irreplaceable architectural and cultural remnants of one of the greatest civilizations of its time, ancient Assyria.1

  Nimrud (ancient Kalhu) was the ancient Assyrian capital while Israel and Judah existed as separate kingdoms. But Nineveh came to represent the foreign domination and ultimate destruction of Israel, the Northern Kingdom. The devastation of Israel at the hands of the Assyrians gave the later editors of the Bible the theological ammunition they needed to argue that God was displeased with Israel for rebelling against the United Kingdom of Israel, ruled by Sha’ul (Saul), David, and Solomon and for repeatedly embracing the “sins of Yarov‘am (Jeroboam), son of Nebat,” the Northern Kingdom’s first king. Because it served as the subject of critique for multiple Hebrew prophets, influenced the politics of ancient Israel, and ultimately represented the destruction of Israel, Nineveh was a city that greatly influenced the creation of the Bible.

  THE HISTORY OF THE NEO-ASSYRIAN EMPIRE

  When scholars speak of “ancient Assyria,” they distinguish between three Assyrian periods: an earlier one, a middle one, and a later one, the so-called Neo-Assyrian Empire. The first is referred to as the Old Assyrian Kingdom, traditionally said to be founded by King Puzur-ashur I, whose dynasty ruled in northern Mesopotamia from 2025 to 1809 BCE. The Old Assyrian Empire was displaced by the Amorites and then by the brief Old Babylonian dynasty, which gave us King Hammurabi, famous for his law code, which we’ll discuss in the next chapter. The Old Assyrian Kingdom was reestablished by King Adasi (r. 1726–1701 BCE) and lasted until 1451 BCE, when it fell into decline. The Middle Assyrian Kingdom essentially ended with the mysterious Late Bronze Age collapse, which saw the rapid decline of nearly every Mediterranean and Near Eastern empire.2

  The reign of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari II (r. 911–892 BCE) marks the beginning of what scholars call the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the third Assyrian period. The Neo-Assyrian Empire is the “Assyria” mentioned in the Bible, as it is contemporaneous with ancient Israel and Judah and directly affected their politics, economics, and religion. The Neo-Assyrian Empire exhibits the qualities of a true empire in that it ruled over a number of otherwise independent kingdoms and peoples, and it regularly campaigned against neighboring kingdoms in order to annex them, expand the Assyrian civilization, and increase revenue in the form of tributes to Assyria. When the Assyrian army showed up, the terms of the deal were pretty simple: you (small kingdom X) send Assyria money and goods annually, and we won’t kill you.

  Many noteworthy Neo-Assyrian kings influenced the political policies of ancient Israel, including Shalmaneser III (r. 858–824 BCE); Tiglath-pileser III (r. 745–727 BCE), who was known as “King Pul” in 2 Kings 15:19; and Shalmaneser V (r. 727–722 BCE). King Sargon II (r. 722–705 BCE) built a new capital at Dar-Sharrukin (the “Fortress of Sargon”) in present-day Khorsabad, about nine miles northeast of Nineveh. Following Sargon II’s death in battle, the capital was moved to Nineveh.

  Nineveh rose in importance as it became an increasingly critical crossroads on the lucrative trading route from the Indian Ocean along the Fertile Crescent, both north to Europe and south through the Levant and into northern Africa. Located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River (cf. Gen. 2:14), just across the river from the modern city of Mosul, Iraq, Nineveh was settled as early as 6000 BCE. By about 3000 BCE, Nineveh had become an important center for worship of the Akkadian goddess Ishtar, goddess of fertility, sex, love, and war, who was known in the Bible as h
er Aramean counterpart, ‘Astarte, whom King Solomon worshipped.3

  We can only imagine what ancient Nineveh must have looked like in its heyday. The closest parallel I can imagine is walking through the capitals of other famous empires like London or Paris or Rome. If you’ve ever had the good fortune to wander through these cities and their respective museums, you begin to ask yourself, “What are all these foreign objects doing here?”

  Empires bring back the spoils of imperial victories to their capitals for the same reason that emperors built up their capitals: this is the language of empire! Assyria was the first true empire in the world, and its next king, Sennacherib (r. 705–681 BCE), wasn’t just the king of Assyria; he was king of the world! And Nineveh came to represent the world-dominating empire of Assyria.

  King Sennacherib transformed this riverbank Assyrian town into the center of the Neo-Assyrian Empire by embellishing and expanding it. He fortified the city by building massive walls with multiple ornamental gates and by constructing an elaborate system of canals, including some of the world’s earliest aqueducts, which expanded the city’s water supply, facilitating city growth and the ability to withstand the effects of a siege. Sennacherib made Nineveh into one of the most impressive cities of its time in the world.4

  Archaeological work has uncovered two buildings that represent the ways Nineveh became the cultural and political center of Assyria: the Palace of Sennacherib and the Library of Ashurbanipal. The discovery of Sennacherib’s palace in 1849 and Ashurbanipal’s library in 1851 is credited to the English archaeologist (and later politician) Sir Austen Henry Layard and his assistant, Hormuzd Rassam. The buildings yielded thousands of clay tablets and fragments of seventh-century BCE texts, including what are considered the earliest great works of literature: the famous biblical flood parallel, the Epic of Gilgamesh; the Babylonian creation myth the Enûma Elish; and the myth of the first man, Adapa. The library today consists of fragments of about thirty thousand tablets, most of which are housed in the British Museum in London. However, the tablets from the two buildings were mixed up on their way to London, rendering it impossible to know for sure which tablets came from which building.5

  But perhaps most pertinent to our discussion, Sennacherib devoted an entire room in his southwest palace to large, alabaster artistic commemorations of the Siege of Lachish, which resulted in the destruction of the Judahite city, the exile of its inhabitants, and the torture and execution of its nobility (they were beheaded and flayed alive; heads were hanged on trees and stacked into piles, etc.). The panels from Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh are important because they provide detailed information about the Assyrians’ siege warfare, including the instruments and techniques they used to conquer their enemies’ cities. The Lachish Relief Panels depicting the Assyrian victory at the Siege of Lachish are now in the British Museum,6 and a partial replica of the reliefs is on display at the Israel Museum.7

  The rapid expansion of Nineveh under King Sennacherib, especially the public displays of his various conquests, reflects the rise of Assyria as an imperial superpower and explains the repeated allusions to Nineveh in the Bible. Nineveh was the Assyrian capital when Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem, and therefore it was Nineveh that became the symbol of Assyrian domination. Nineveh’s status as the symbol of foreign domination also explains why Judith 1:1 mistakenly claims, “Nebuchadnezzar . . . ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh.” Despite the fact that Nebuchadnezzar II ruled from Babylon after his father overthrew the Assyrians and destroyed Nineveh in 612 BCE, Nineveh remained the symbol of foreign oppression for many Jews of the Second Temple period (530 BCE–70 CE).8

  As the main player in the ancient Near East from the late tenth to the late seventh century BCE, Assyria dominated Cana‘an and single-handedly altered the history of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, when it sacked its capital, Samaria, in 722 BCE, essentially ending the kingdom. As a result, much of the Bible is written in response to havoc wreaked by the encroaching Assyrian Empire. Furthermore, the Assyrian menace caused the single event in the late eighth century BCE that changed Jerusalem, the capital of the small backwater kingdom of Judah, into the inviolable city that became the dwelling place of almighty God and the center of the Western world.

  When Assyria destroyed ancient Israel, it ironically catapulted Jerusalem into the position of sole remaining stronghold for the ancestors of the Jewish people. For this reason, Nineveh is partly responsible for the composition and the preservation of the Bible’s anti–Northern Kingdom, anti-Samaritan theology—a theological perspective that not only dominates the Old Testament, from edited stories of David’s usurpation of Israel’s throne from Saul and his descendants down through the writings of the late Second Temple period, but also shaped the beliefs of several Jewish sectarian offshoots, including the Qumran sectarians and the early Christians.

  ASSYRIA AND ISRAEL

  Following the death of King Solomon, recorded in 1 Kings 11:43, his inept son, Reḥav‘am (Reḥoboam), succeeded him on the throne. It was during King Reḥoboam’s rule that the ten tribes seceded and formed Israel. They did so because Reḥoboam wanted to demonstrate that he was every bit as tough (and endowed) as his father and continue his father’s harsh rule over his own people.

  I put the word “endowed” above in parentheses, because this is one of the funnier (albeit unwise) passages in the Bible. Note that, due to its frat-boy level of sexual boasting, even the Hebrew text resorts to using sexual euphemisms in recounting this episode. In 1 Kings 12:10, King Reḥoboam gets some bad advice from his contemporaries:

  The young men who had grown up with him said to him, “Thus you should say to this people who spoke to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us’; thus you should say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins (matnei).’”

  In this text, it is clear that the Hebrew word matnei (), which is the plural (technically dual) possessive form of the noun matnayim (), commonly translated as “lions” or “thighs,” is a euphemism for Solomon’s penis. The point of the passage is that Reḥoboam is attempting to convince his subjects that he’s tougher than his infamously virile father, Solomon (he of three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines). Thus, Reḥoboam is essentially resorting to the sophomoric locker-room claim that his little finger is bigger than his father’s penis.9 Needless to say, this boastful claim did not go over very well with the people of Israel.

  Reḥoboam’s refusal to lighten the tax and public-service burden on the people of Israel caused the ten tribes of the north to rebel and form into a separate kingdom, which kept the name “Israel.” This new nation set up a local labor leader, Yarov‘am (Jeroboam), son of Nebat, of the tribe of ’Ephraim, just north of Judah, as the first king of the Northern Kingdom. According to the Bible, Reḥoboam was left as king of only two tribes: the tiny tribe of Benjamin, and Judah, his kingdom’s namesake.

  It is here where we must address the theological disposition of the Bible as it relates to the socioeconomic and political reality of ancient Israel and Judah. Simply put, Israel had all the people, all the money, all the land, and all the power, while Judah had little more than Jerusalem and the hill country to the south of Israel. This is what the archaeological and extrabiblical literary records tell us, so, as the kids say, Israel was “where it’s at.” When Assyria became the main player in Cana‘an in the ninth century BCE, Israel became a strategic vassal state that could assist in Assyria’s battles with Egypt to the south and Phoenicia to the northwest.

  Although the Bible makes reference to alliances between the Northern Kingdom and its Assyrian overlords, the archaeological record makes Israel and Judah’s vassalage (i.e., the state of being a subject under the control of another, dominant country) to Assyria crystal clear. For example, artifacts such as the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which depicts King Jehu’ of Israel (whom we recognize from 2 Kings 9–10) bowing to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (r. 858–824 BCE)1
0 in defeat, represent Israel’s submission as a vassal state to Assyria.11 The Mesha Stele too provides archaeological evidence of Assyria’s influence in Israel’s politics. Dating to about 830 BCE, the 3-feet-8-inches-high basalt inscription contains thirty-four lines of text describing the Moabite king Mesha’s rebellion against Israel by refusing to pay taxes. This is significant because it demonstrates that Israel was perceived as a significant political player in Cana‘an at the time.

  The Assyrian king Sargon II ultimately conquered Samaria in 722 BCE, ending the Northern Kingdom, placing it under direct Assyrian control, and forcibly deporting many of its inhabitants to Assyria. The Nimrud Prisms, so called because they were discovered during excavations at Nimrud, tell of Sargon II’s actions in Samaria:

  [The inhabitants of Sa]merina (Samaria), who agreed [and plotted] with a king [hostile to] me, not to do service and not to bring tribute [to Aššur] and who did battle, I fought against them with the power of the great gods, my lords. I counted as spoil 27,280 people, together with their chariots, and gods, in which they trusted. I formed a unit with 200 of [their] chariots for my royal force. I settled the rest of them in the midst of Assyria. I repopulated Samerina (Samaria) more than before. I brought into it people from countries conquered by my hands. I appointed my eunuch as governor over them. And I counted them as Assyrians.12

  Using an archaeological lens that brings history and human experience into focus, we can clearly see how the Bible was written by people who were reflecting upon the political events of the day. The authors of the Bible had worldviews that were conditioned by war, power, and political struggles not only between the twelve tribes and foreign nations, but between Israel and Judah as well. We see this when the Bible regularly condemns Israel and favors Judah. This is due to one important event rooted in Nineveh; when the Assyrians conquered Samaria and the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE and yet spared the Southern Kingdom, the Judahite editors of the Bible felt justified in their condemnation of Israel, because they interpreted their survival as divine favor. So although the reality was that, of the two, Israel was the true power in the region and Judah played second fiddle, the Bible as it is written and edited for the most part favors Judah.