Frank Moore Cross
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Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel Frank Moore Cross Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England Preface The essays which follow are preliminary studies directed toward a new synthesis of the history of the religion of Israel. Each study is addressed to a special and, in my view, unsolved problem in the des- cription of Israel’s religious development. The barriers in the way of progress toward a new synthesis are many. While the burgeoning archaeological enterprise has increasingly uncovered materials which can be used to reconstruct the ancient environment of Israel, at the same time its discoveries have thrown the field into chaos. Great strides have been taken in the endeavor to interpret the new data from the centuries contemporary with ancient Israel and to view the history of Israelite religion whole in its ancient context; still, the sheer mass of new or unassimilated lore hinders synthetic treatment. Another obstacle in the way of attempts to rewrite the history of Israelite religion has been the obstinate survival of remnants of older syntheses, especially the idealistic synthesis initiated by Wilhelm Vatke and given classic statement by Julius Wellhausen. It is true that the idealistic and romantic presuppositions which informed the early development of literary-critical and form-critical methods have largely been discarded when brought fully to consciousness. Few today would follow Gunkel in presuming that the primitive Israelite was incapable of retaining more than a line or two ofpoetry. Not a few, however, continue to date short poems or poetic fragments earlier than longer poems. In this fashion the results and models based on the idealistic synthesis often persist unrecognized and unexamined. Particularly difficult and troublesome, for example, is the task of disentangling and removing antinomian tendencies of idealistic or existentialist origin from the analysis of law and covenant and their role in the religion of Israel. Hegel’s evaluation of Israelite law might as easily have been written by a contemporary scholar: “The liberator [Moses] of his nation was also its lawgiver; this could mean only that the man who had freed it from one yoke had laid on it another.” Unhappily, such a view is also wholly in tune with an older Christian polemic against Judaism. Yet another hindrance has been the tendency of scholars to overlook or suppress continuities between the early religion of Israel and the Canaanite (or Northwest Semitic) culture from which it emerged. There has been a preoccupation with the novelty of Israel’s religious con- VIII Preface sciousness. More serious, the religion of Israel has been conceived as a unique or isolated phenomenon, radically or wholly discontinuous with its environment. In extreme form these views root ultimately in dogmatic systems, metaphysical or theological, and often serve an apologetic purpose. Yehezkel Kaufmann’s monumental attempt to write a history of the religion of Israel comes under this criticism. The empirical historian must describe novel configurations in Israel’s religion as having their origin in an orderly set of relationships which follow the usual typological sequences of historical change. Kaufmann’s insistence that Israelite religion “was absolutely different from anything the pagan world ever knew” violates fundamental postulates of scien- tific historical method. Characteristic of the religion of Israel is a perennial and unrelaxed tension between the mythic and the historical. Concern with this aspect of Israel’s religious expression gives some unity to the essays to follow. Israel’s religion emerged from a mythopoeic past under the impact of certain historical experiences which stimulated the creation of an epic cycle and its associated covenant rites of the early time. This epic, rather than the Canaanite cosmogonic myth, was featured in the ritual drama of the old Israelite cultus. At the same time the epic events and their interpretation were shaped strongly by inherited mythic patterns and language, so that they gained a vertical dimension in addition to their horizontal, historical stance. In this tension between mythic and historical elements the meaning of Israel’s history became transparent. Perhaps the term “epic” best designates the constitutive genre of Israel’s religious expression. Epic in interpreting historical events combines mythic and historical features in various ways and propor- tions. Usually Israel’s epic forms have been labeled “historical.” This is a legitimate use of the term “historical.” At the same time confusion often enters at this point. The epic form, designed to recreate and give meaning to the historical experiences of a people or nation, is not merely or simply historical. In epic narrative, a people and their god or gods interact in the temporal course of events. In historical narrative only human actors have parts. Appeal to divine agency is illegitimate. Thus the composer of epic and the historian are very different in their methods of approach to the materials of history. Yet both are moved by a common impulse in view of their concern with the human and the temporal process. By contrast myth in its purest form is con- cerned with “primordial events” and seeks static structures of meaning behind or beyond the historical flux. Preface ix The epic cycle of the Israelite league was taken up into the prose Epic (JE) sources in the course of the early monarchy. The Pentateuch itself may be described as a baroque elaboration of these Epic sources. The Deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) and the Chronicler’s work (Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehe- miah) in effect extended the Epic, interpreting the later history of Israel in Epic patterns. Epic was, of course, a well-known literary genre in ancient Canaanite (Ugaritic) religious literature albeit of marginal interest as compared with the Canaanite mythic cycle which provided the libretto to primary rites of the cult. Israel’s choice of the epic form to express religious reality, and the elevation of this form to centra- lity in their cultic drama, illustrates both the linkage of the religion of Israel to its Canaanite past and the appearance of novelty in Israel’s peculiar religious concern with the “historical.” This volume is decidedly lopsided in the space it gives to problems belonging to the earlier stages of Israel’s history. The ancient era is the least known, of course, and its historical description is in the greatest need of revision. In any case, the study of origins always has a special fascination, and the writer has yielded to its blandishments in appor- tioning space. 1 wish to acknowledge indebtedness and express gratitude to many friends including colleagues and students, who have come to my aid in the preparation of this book. My chief scholarly debt is to William Foxwell Albright. “from whom I gratefully acknowledge myself to have learnt best and most.” I owe much, too, to the stimulus of G. Ernest Wright, my colleague for more than twenty years, and to the encouragement and criticisms of David Noel Freedman. Father Richard Clifford has kindly read my manuscript and saved me from many errors. Miss Carolyn Cross has typed the long and weari- some manuscript, handling with miraculous accuracy Roman, Greek, and Hebrew type. To her I offer my special thanks. My thanks go, too, to my daughter, Susan Elizabeth, who has given her precious vacation days to the improvement of my manuscript. F. M.C. July I, 1971 Contents Abbreviations xv I The Religion of Canaan and the God of Israel 1 I The God of the Fathers 3 2 ‘El and the God ofthe Fathers I3 ‘El in the Ugaritic Pantheon I3 The Epithets of ‘El I5 ‘El in the Canaanite Myth 20 ‘El and Ba’l Hamon 24 The Abode of ‘El 36 ‘El the Divine Patriarch 39 3 Yahweh and ‘El 44 ‘El in the Bible 44 ‘El Epithets in Patriarchal Narratives 46 The Name Yahweh 60 II The Cultus of the Israelite League 77 4 Prolegomena 79 The Myth and Ritual School 82 The History-of-Redemption School 83 5 The Divine Warrior 91 Psalm 24 and the Warrior-King 91 The “Ritual Conquest” 99 Transformations of the “Ritual Conquest” I05 6 The Song of the Sea and Canaanite Myth II2 The Mythic Cycle of Ba’l and ‘Anat 112 The Song of the Sea I21 III League and Kingdom I45 7 Yahweh and Ba’l 147 The Theophany of Ba’l 147 The Storm Theophany in the Bible I56 The Revelation at Sinai 163 History of the Tradition of the Storm Theophany 169 ‘El’s Modes of Revelation 177 Yahweh and the Council of the Gods I86 xii Contents Ba’l versus Yahweh 190 8 The Priestly Houses of Early Israel I95 The Classical View of Israel’s Early Priesthood I95 The Function of the Stories of Conflict I98 The Priestly Genealogies 206 The Priests of David’s National Shrine 207 IV Kings and Prophets 217 9 The Ideologies of Kingship in the Era of the Empire: Conditional Covenant and Eternal Decree 219 The Limited Monarchy of Saul and Monarchy in the Northern Kingdom 219 Davidic Kingship 229 The Imperial Rule of Solomon 237 The Judaean Royal Theology 241 The Typology of the Royal Ideology 264 A Brief Excursus on bt+it, “Covenant” 265 10 The Themes of the Book of Kings and the Structure of the Deuteronomistic History 274 The Contemporary Discussion of the Structure of the Deuteronomistic History 274 The Two Themes of the First Edition of the Deuteronomistic History (Dtr’) 278 The Theme of the Exilic Edition of the History (Dtr’) 285 The Two Editions of the Deuteronomistic History 287 V Exile and Apocalyptic 291 11 The Priestly Work 293 The So-Called P-Source of the Pentateuch 293 The P System of Covenants 295 Is P a Narrative Source? 301 Documents Used by P 321 Archaizing Language in P 322 The Date of P 323 The Composition of the Priestly Work 324 I2 The EarIy History of the Apocalyptic Community at Qumrrin 326 The Archaeological Context of the Qumran 326 Qumran and the Essenes 330 .