Forschungen zum Alten Testament Edited by Bernd Janowski (Tübingen) · Mark S. Smith (New York) Hermann Spieckermann (Göttingen) 63

Baruch Halpern

From Gods to God

The Dynamics of Iron Age Cosmologies

Edited by Matthew J. Adams

Mohr Siebeck Baruch Halpern, born 1954; 1978 PhD; 1976-1992 Lecturer through Professor of Humanities, York University; since 1992 Professor at Pennsylvania State University; currently Chaiken Family Chair of Jewish Studies, Professor of Ancient History, Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and Religious Studies; (Life) Fellow, Institute of the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University; member of Graduate Faculty, Near, Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies, University of Toronto.

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Frank Moore Cross, Jr.

Why, if ‘tis dancing you would be, There’s brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man. … There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings will sit to feast, They get their fill before they think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all that sprang to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, Sate the king when healths went round. They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. – I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old. A Shropshire Lad A. E. Houseman

Preface

The present volume reproduces a series of studies conducted by Baruch Halpern between 1981 and 2007 on social upheaval and cultural change in the early era of widespread literacy, the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. They comprise a body of work that contributes to the study of historiography in ancient Israel (and beyond) during Karl Jaspers’ Axial Age (see “Introduc- tion”). Specifically, this book is about the rejection of tradition, and the chapters have been arranged thematically around this topos. Part I: The Rejection of Tradition explores some of the social and polit- ical aspects of the evolution of monotheism and its inherent repudiation of the past. The opening chapter, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry,’” laid the groundwork for the studies that follow. In Part II: Cultural Transforma- tions and Composition, the premise of the rejection of tradition in the Axi- al Age is brought to bear on the historiography of the period, specifically on the composition of the biblical texts. Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion: Revolution and Reformation, contains only the monolith “Jerusa- lem and the Lineages;” my personal favorite and sound good sense I think it. As an historical synthesis of men and tribes and nations in the 8th and 7th centuries, it is the realization of the earlier studies and a demonstration of the explanatory power of B’s historiographical model. It is the centerpiece of and the raison d’être for this volume. Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmo- logical Thought in Iron Age Societies contains two studies that go beyond monotheism and composition to explore other avenues of the rejection of tradition in the Axial world, specifically through the power of divination for a new international elite. Several studies could not be included here, but should certainly be con- sidered part of the Halpernian canon represented by this volume: “The Centralization Formula in Deuteronomy (1981);” “‘The Excremental Vi- sion’ The Priests of Doom in Isaiah 28 (1987);” “A Historiographic Com- mentary on Ezra 1–6: Achronological Narrative and Dual Chronology in Israelite Historiography (1990);” “Sybil, or the Two Nations? Archaism, Kinship, Alienation and the Elite Redefinition of Traditional Culture in Judah in the 8th–7th Centuries B.C.E. (1996);” “The New Name of Isaiah 62:4: Jeremiah’s Reception in the Restoration and the Politics of ‘Third Isaiah’ (1998);” “Assyrian and Presocratic Astronomies and the Location of VIII Preface  the Book of Job (2002);” “Ezra’s Reform and Bilateral Citizenship in Athens and the Mediterranean World (2004);” “Fallacies Intentional and Canonical: Metalogical Confusion about the Authority of Canonical Texts (2006).” These, of course, should stand alongside his monograph-length works, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (1981), Emergence of Israel in Canaan (1983), The First Historians (1988), David’s Secret De- mons (2000), and the much anticipated A History of Israel in Her Land. We would like to offer our thanks to the following publishers, editors, and coauthors for permission to reprint here: The Regents of the University of California and the University of California Press for “Sacred History and Ideology: Chronicles’ Thematic Structure – Indications of an Earlier Source;” The Harvard Theological Review for “The Resourceful Israelite Historian: The Song of Deborah and Israelite Historiography;” the Harvard Semitic Museum and Scholars Press for “Doctrine by Misadventure. Be- tween the Israelite Source and the Biblical Historian;” Jacob Neusner, Ba- ruch Levine, Ernest Frerichs and Fortress Press for “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism;” Continuum Interna- tional Publishing for “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability;” Grateful acknowled- gement is made to the Hebrew Union College Annual and David S. Van- derhooft for agreeing to the reprint of “The Editions of Kings in the 7th-6th Centuries BCE;” Freiburger Universitätsverlag and Vandenhoeck & Ru- precht for “The Baal (and the Asherah) in Seventh-Century Judah: Yhwh’s Retainers Retired;” Koninklijke Brill N.V. for “Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile: The Evolution of a Biblical Tradition;” The So- ciety of Biblical Literature for “YHWH the Revolutionary: Reflections on the Rhetoric of Redistribution in the Social Context of Dawning Monothe- ism;” Joseph Aviram and the Israel Exploration Society for “The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 and the Birth of Milesian Philosophy;” Eisen- brauns, William G. Dever, Seymour Gitin, and the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research for “Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks;” the Israel Exploration Society and the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research for “The False Torah of Jeremiah 8 in the Con- text of Seventh Century BCE Pseudepigraphy: The First Documented Re- jection of Tradition.” The editor would like to thank the W.F. Albright In- stitute of Archaeological Research and the Educational and Cultural Af- fairs division of the U.S. Department of State for support during the com- pilation of this volume.

Matthew J. Adams Jerusalem, 2 November 2008 Contents

Preface ...... VII Abbreviations ...... XI

Introduction ...... 1

Part I: The Rejection of Tradition ...... 11 1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry”: The Development of Israelite Monotheism ...... 13 2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in Seventh-Century Judah: Yhwh’s Retainers Retired ...... 57 3. Yhwh the Revolutionary: Reflections on the Rhetoric of Redistribution in the Social Context of Dawning Monotheism ...... 98 4. The False Torah of Jeremiah 8 in the Context of Seventh Century BCE Pseudepigraphy: The First Documented Rejection of Tradition ...... 132

Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition ...... 143 5. The Resourceful Israelite Historian: The Song of Deborah and Israelite Historiography ...... 145 6. Doctrine by Misadventure: Between the Israelite Source and the Biblical Historian ...... 167 7. Sacred History and Ideology: Chronicles’ Thematic Structure: Indications of an Earlier Source ...... 202 8. The Editions of Kings in the 7th-6th Centuries BCE ...... 228 9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile: The Evolution of a Biblical Tradition ...... 297 X Contents  Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion: Revolution and Reformation ...... 337 10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability ...... 339

Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies ...... 425 11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 and the Birth of Milesian Philosophy ...... 427 12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks ...... 443

Cumulative Bibliography ...... 481 Source Index ...... 509 Author Index ...... 542 Selected Subjects Index ...... 548 Abbreviations

AASOR Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research AB Anchor Bible ABC Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Texts from Cuneiform Sources, A. K. Grayson (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J. Augustin, 1975). ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman ABL Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum ABRL Anchor Bible Reference Library AcOr Acta orientalia ADAJ Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan ADD Assyrian Deeds and Documents, C. H W. Johns (4 vols.; Cambridge, 1898– 1923). AfO Archiv für Orientforschung AJA American Journal of Archaeology AnBib Analecta biblica ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. J. B. Pritchard (3rd edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). AnOr Analecta orientalia AO Der Alte Orient AOS American Oriental Series AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament ArOr Archiv Orientální ASOR American Schools of Oriental Research ATANT Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments AUSS Andrews University Seminary Studies

BA Biblical Archaeologist BAR Biblical Archaeology Review BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research BASORSup Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research: Supplement Series BBB Bonner biblische Beiträge BEATAJ Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentums Bib Biblica BibOr Biblica et orientalia BIWA Beiträge zum Inscriftenwerk Assurbanipals, R. Borger (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996). BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester BJS Brown Judaic Studies BN Biblische Notizen BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament XII Abbreviations  BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Chicago, 1956–) CBOTS CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CH Church History ConBOT Coniectanea biblica, Old Testament CRAI Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres CRRAI Comptes rendus des rencontres assyriologiques internationale CTA Corpus des tablettes en cuneiforms alphabétiques découvertes à Ras Shamra-Ugarit de 1929 à 1939, ed. A. Herdner (Mission de Ras Shamra, 10. Paris, 1963).

DK Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, H. Diels (10th ed.; W. Krantz, ed.; Berlin: Weidmann, 1961).

EA El-Amarna tablets. Die el-Amarna-Tafeln, J. A. Knudtzon (Leipzig, 1908– 1915 [reprint, Aalen, 1964]. El-Amarna Tablets, 359-379, A. F. Rainey (2nd revised ed. Kevelaer, 1978). EAEHL The Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, ed. M Avi-Yonah (5 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Massada, 1975).

FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments

HAR Hebrew Annual Review HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament HB Hebrew Bible Hesperia Hesperia: Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens HS Hebrew Studies HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs HSS Harvard Semitic Studies HTR Harvard Theological Review HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual HUCM Monographs of the Hebrew Union College

ICC International Critical Commentary IEJ Israel Exploration Journal IES Israel Exploration Society

JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies JHNES Johns Hopkins Near Eastern Studies JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JR Journal of Religion Abbreviations XIII  JSem Journal of Semitics JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series JSQ Jewish Studies Quarterly JSS Journal of Semitic Studies JTS Journal of Theological Studies

KAI KanaanƗische und AramƗische Inschriften, eds. H. Donner and W. Röllig (3 vols;. 3rd ed; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971). KTP The Keilschrifttexte Tiglat-Pilesers III, P. Rost (Leipzig: Eduard Pfeiffer, 1893). KTU Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit, eds. M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín (AOAT 24/1; Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1976).

LXX Septuagint

MDOG Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft MT Masoretic Text

NEA Near Eastern Archaeology NEAEHL New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, ed. E. Stern (4 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Massada, 1993).

OBO Orbis Biblieus et Orientalis OIP Oriental Institute Publication OLA Orientalia lovaniensia analecta Or Orientalia OTL Old Testament Library OTS Oudtestamentische Studiën

PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly

Qad Qadmoniyot

R Die Vorsokratiker, J. Mansfeld (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1983). RB Review Biblique RE Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche RIMA The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods

SAA State Archives of Assyria SAAS State Archives of Assyria Studies SBL Society of Biblical Literature SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series SBLMS Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series SBLSBS Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Study SBLTT Society of Biblical Literature Texts and Translations SBLSS Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series SBT Studies in Biblical Theology Sem Semitica SHANE Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East XIV Abbreviations  SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament SR Studies in Religion SSN Studia semitica neerlandica SWBA Social World of Biblical Antiquity

TA Tel Aviv Tarbiz Tarbiz Them Themilios TLZ Theologische Literaturzeitung TRu Theologische Rundschau TynBul Tyndale Bulletin

UF Ugarit-Forschungen UUA Uppsala Universitetsårskrift

VT Vetus Testamentum VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum VTSup Vetus Testamentum Supplements

WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament WO Die Welt des Orient

ZABR Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins Introduction

It is, Francis Parkman famously observed, in the nature of great events to obscure great events. In his brilliant narrative history, Montcalm and Wolfe, he furnishes a series of examples. For these, some modern cases may stand in. The lessons and consequences of the High Age of Imperial- ism, not least smoldering conflicts in peripheries and rapid industrial diffu- sion leading to the First World War, were lost in the exuberance that fol- lowed. This in turn disappeared in the miasma of inflation and depression, social madness and peripheral conflicts in the 1930’s. The rise of fascism and communism, and the mobilization of military and dictatorial societies were forgotten when these next wars culminated in the truly Great War, which ended with a division of the world as the Powers then knew it into two spheres of influence. And so on, as intrusive technologies and Big Brother attitudes combined with bloated educational systems bursting with mediocrity – a step up, overall, from what preceded – to make a mockery of privacy even in societies that once modeled themselves on ideals of to- lerance and open discourse. Probably, to be fair, the models themselves existed only briefly, very locally, and mainly in theory: there is always room for more committeemen. Still, one can move forward from the death of an old world to the birth of a new in history at every turn: in the United States, Johnson and social justice to Nixon and social control to Carter’s timid return to isolation, to Reagan’s new internationalism, and then Bush- es, Clintons and whatever is coming next. Schoolmarm democracy, finger- wagging freedom, the death of the antihero in real life. Just call it Califor- nia: it’s not Chinatown anymore, Jake. I bet that dwarf director would serve a good 3 months for slitting your nose these days, 24 if he did it while intoxicated, and 48 for cultivating the image of being a nasty per- vert. The rise of safety nazis, as PJ O’Rourke once called them. The de- cline of Japan, the fall of Russia, the rise of China and India and Brazil. Horse to buckboard to train to car to airplane to – well, pick it, the FAA, airlines like United, 9/11. Over and over, though, people have formed communities, lived in fami- lies, and gotten along without too much in the way of government or taxes by relying on reciprocity, kinship and the reality of a somewhat dull com- munity in which all the members know one another fairly well. They be- 2 Introduction  come set in their ways, in the last 10,000 years or so mainly agrarian (Neo- lithic, to use the technical term), and they ratify the course of their life- times by means of a transmitted body of practice which we call tradition. Some of this is probably inherited; a great deal of it is sociobiologically adaptive under most circumstances, all of it the stuff of nostalgia. While those great events are obscuring older ones, people are bemoaning the shift from sailing ships to steamers, from trains to trucks, or the constant dumb- ing down of education and entertainment (reflecting entropy in the trans- mission of some information when conjoined with the addition of other information), or the Designated Hitter or the change from Bessie Smith to Tom Waits. Many of these changes, especially the challenges to tradition, come from new contacts or the influence of new technologies or even goods. Lynn White, Jr. dwelt on the influence of the stirrup, for example, in mak- ing medieval mounted shock warfare dominant, and thus paving the way to European feudalism; the heavy plough is of course a favorite, as are the discovery (or, really, exploitation) of the New World for silver, gold and furs, and, ultimately, hinterland, the use of gunpowder, the whole Social History of the Machine Gun and Guns, Germs and Steel nexus. But over and over, germs and machine guns aside, one sees the rise of canonized traditions, written traditions, scribal curricula as those nostalgia-genic tra- ditional societies grow wealthier and more ambitious, chiefly through trade and partly through technology, and always, of course, through greed – the distilled essence of counter-entropy that leads from Gordon Gecko to Gecko Insurers, and to the explosion of life in one or another form. Canons, such as the Bible – but its predecessors and congeners include a great variety of literatures and, in my imaginings, at least, of articulated sounds and musical scales among some animals – do not exist in and of themselves. They always come in the company of canon elites, which is to say, the guardians of the tradition. The guardians in wealthier societies and times are schooled in the canon, and assert its, and through its their own, authority. In the West, of course, the Catholic Church comes directly to mind. Before it there were Stoics or philosophers, before them Rabbis, be- fore them Magi and the scribal classes of Mesopotamia and Egypt and China and India. The Academy is such an elite today – its canon, except in certain humanistic areas, is that of Enlightenment Rationalism, our com- mon Western religion. Like all elites, however, canon elites, even in China, evolve. And occa- sionally they generate wholesale revolt on the part of new elites – like the new middle classes of 16th-century England who became the wellspring of the Reformation there. (Poor judgment on Henry’s part?) Or the Buddhists of India and China. Sometimes this occurs through fracture within the ca- Introduction 3  non elite, as in the case of the European Reformation. The cause is often contact, and especially trade. That is to say, an explosion of the canon, an access of foreign or new materials, creates among elements of the elite – because of dissatisfaction ranging from the purely intellectual to the na- kedly ambitious – a revolt against, a rejection of, tradition. There follows from the rejection of tradition a culture war; some mod- eled the heyday of political correctness in the American academy, now en- trenched but weakening (which referent is the subject of that qualifier?), as such a culture war. It was a Reformation and counter-Reformation. The Reformation tends to run along certain lines in Western history, as in India and China. For, along with the rejection of tradition one experiences a wholesale rejection of the imagery, the iconography, of the tradition. The iconography is depleted of its meaning, and exposed as empty symbol, as idolatry in the Reformationist’s vocabulary. (Your icon is of course my idol.) And so one has the very natural sequence of a renaissance, which is an explosion of the canon, or of access to it (the Gutenberg Revolution) or of alleged expertise in it (the Academy in the West), which must be fol- lowed, for practical as well as political reasons by a Reformation of the canon – a new limitation of its scope so that the canon experts have com- mon ground on which to argue and assert authority. They fight, of course, over the form of the canon, its content, even its function. But they Reform it. In the course of the Reformation, the critique that seems most common is the baselessness of tradition as compared with the (true, and thus arc- haized and reformed) canon. The symbols associated with tradition are ba- gatelles, distractions. Reality is interior, not a mere epiphenomenon. The world, or God, is One as well as many. But as this alternative way of ana- lyzing reality takes hold, it introduces a nasty and dangerous principle, which is that in defense of the Reformation one may turn reason and evi- dence on the tradition. And eventually, almost inevitably, reason then turns on the Reformation to produce an Enlightenment. In its most advanced form, Reason then turns on itself, and discovers, as it does in the work of Kurt Gödel and Wittgenstein for example, its own inherent limitations, its own arbitrariness. And here we have a pattern that we can trace back through modern philosophy, helped along by physics, and art and architec- ture, to the European reformation and beyond. So far as I know, the first explicit articulation of the essential critiques, and certainly the one that survives most fully, stems from the so-called Axial Age, which Karl Jas- pers defined as the time “when thinking became the object of itself.” It be- gins explicitly in the eighth century BCE. This Reformation is the earliest one in which we can document the op- eration of a Sprachkritik, a philosophical assault on the relationship be- 4 Introduction  tween symbols and the things they symbolize. Details will be found in some of the studies that follow. The phenomena characterizing the refor- mation, the rejection of tradition, include a vast array of activities and de- velopments. In the Near East and Greece, and probably a bit later in India and China, we have evidence for the consolidation or systematization of formerly divergent local traditions, for example. In Mesopotamia, this takes the form in part of the collection of anterior literature, but also of the systematic compilation of various kinds of omens, in a kind of sleepwalk- ing, to appropriate Arthur Koestler’s term, in the direction of what we would recognize as science. There was an ongoing search for, and in some quarters, particularly in Israel, an ongoing assertion of, a predictable and fundamentally unified causal principle. Reality was determined, even overdetermined, and not too complex, if studied properly, for predictabili- ty. Even if the search for signs of this consistency sometimes stemmed from traditional arts, such as liver reading, the relation of which to our- selves is a trifle opaque, the belief persisted and actuated further searching that causation, divine in character, was written into nature: the stars them- selves, for example, were divine inscriptions of fate, or at least of inten- tion, into the heavens. This view was attended by a number of renaissance-like phenomena: long-distance exploration and trade, principally but not exclusively Phoe- nician, brought new resources to mature manufacturing markets; trade in- creased in both volume and intensity, and together with it the relative size of surpluses, whatever their distribution within a particular environment. All this was accompanied by exchanges of intellectual and technical re- sources, including things like foundational cultural epics, theogonies and theologies, and forms of literature leading from royal display inscriptions and their accompanying art to narrative history transcending the rule of individual kings – to law, in fact, that transcended royal power, as it had never done when royal power was first introduced. Industry became fo- cused in localities to a degree never earlier witnessed – the oil production facilities of Tel Miqne (Ekron) in the seventh century are an obvious ex- ample, as are the emplacement of such facilities and techniques in smaller concentrations elsewhere; but one thinks, too, of the huge allocation of re- sources to beehives a century or more earlier at Tel Rehov, or the concen- tration of Assyrian mudbrick manufacture at a point probably in Lebanon for much of the West in the later eighth century. There developed, in other words, a truly international set of specializations out of which was sup- ported an urban and urbane elite culture, which, defensively, was always claiming the better to represent old verities, lost identities. This interna- tional elite culture, whatever its local manifestations, in reality rejected local tradition. New discoveries, newly-shared knowledge, the reproduci- Introduction 5  bility of technological achievements, reinforced the belief that man could accumulate enough knowledge to predict the future. Again, some of this evidence is reviewed below, and reference will be made to some of the material omitted. But it is no coincidence that found- ers’ names recur among kings especially of the eighth-seventh centuries in western Asia – names like Jeroboam, Hiram, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon – and names with archaic resonance, such as Manasseh (and Sargon), crop up as well. In Philistia, too, we see a resurgence, certainly at Miqne, of archaism in names (King Achaios), Nor is it surprising to see the Egyptians return- ing to Old Kingdom models for iconographic features, the Babylonians try- ing to resurrect priestly positions long in disuse (and temples), the Persians trying to rebuild communities, and almost everyone, so far as we can tell and a critical consideration of Thucydides and Herodotus discloses, reach- ing back either pseudepigraphically or in legend to the Late Bronze Age for their roots. From the list, we should not exclude the Etruscans, Sardi- nians and Sicilians, as well as the Philistines and their cult of curated Late Bronze items: all seem to have had, and rediscovered or reemphasized, ties with the People of the Sea, and probably with the Trojan War. Counterva- lent currents, all of them, as Ionians cut themselves off from Lydians, Athenians from Spartans and others, Jerusalemites under Ezra and Nehe- miah equally from former connubial partnerships (much along the lines of Pericles’s citizenship reform). The point is that the mixing of cultures and the development of regional canons – helped at least in some degree by Persian ratification of them at a later date – led to a dissolution of identity and to attempts to resurrect or “reform” it. One was a Greek, not a Milesian or an Ionian or a Dorian or a Spartan. One was a Judahite, or a (returned) exile, not a Jerusalemite or an Eshtemoan. The larger identities were formed under the sponsorship of elites overlapping, at one with and yet competing with those fostering a truly international culture – welcoming travelers such as Herodotus to Egyptian temples, affording access to high culture in the way that the Ro- mans, French, Britons and, only a bit later, the Russians and Americans, would do to dependent peoples, or to elites they hoped to recruit to their spheres of influence for trade and politics. Monotheism was the Internet of antiquity from the seventh century through the early Christian centuries. Elites made their peace with it differently – in China, it was fine to be a Taoist after 5 PM, so long as one turned up Confucian in the morning. Identity was, however, their bread and butter issue, when they were at home rather than wining and dining one another in Etruscan funerary ban- quets, or Greek, or Roman, or Phoenician or Israelite. A few studies should probably be appended to those that follow: one is a treatment of canon elites, “Fallacies Intentional and Canonical,” pub- 6 Introduction  lished in From Babel to Babylon, the Festschrift for the late Brian Peck- ham, a fine man and brilliant student of religion. It makes the link from canonization being the canonization of an elite, and its liberation from strict construction in favor of midrash, and, of course, New Criticism, “post-modernism” and dictatorialism in the absence of any grounded mor- al, as distinct from social, authority – it’s a history of the Academy, in drag. Another is an article devoted to “liberation theology” based on “revo- lutionary” passages in the Bible – all of which are state-sponsored and car- ry the king’s imprimatur: like the professoriate, revolutionary rhetoricians are for the most part the paid steam-valves of the state, and especially the king’s weapons against the “high corn,” the entrenched elites it would be convenient to budge. University presidents who appeal to the importance of undergraduate education without ever meaning a word of it are pretty much in this class – it’s easy to judge them by budgetary allocations rather than by the persiflage of bureaucratic activity. But rhetoric, applied to ca- non or to social norms in a cynical way, always conceals what is in fact at issue, namely graft and power, however real or sincere one’s ideological commitment. The study, “Yhwh, the Revolutionary” exposes one aspect of the rhetor- ic as just that: it is not uncommon that revolution leads from a mere purge to a Terror, a Pol Pot, a Lenin and Stalin, a Robespierre, and these are al- ways quickly followed, for reasons Weber detailed without dealing with 20th-century lunacies, by grey men, and now women, who refrain from killing one another but make do with graft on a sufficient scale, ideologues who have learned the advantages of corruption – this is, after all, the pat- tern in American politics, and will certainly follow an Obama election, for example, just the same as it will any further majority regimens of Republi- cans in Congress in the next decade. It is a fact, for example, that after Ka- ganovich disposed of Stalin, and put Beria into an impossible position, Khrushchev presided over a cultural change, not noted in any popular press because the New York Times and its various dependencies publish only what the State Dept. tell them to, and State is about as dependable as the Farmer’s Almanac, as these things go – well, not quite that dependable, to be fair. The change was that leaders could be retired, set aside, without be- ing killed. Enemies could be imprisoned, but rehabilitated rather than killed. The system was cruel, and gave as always too much power to men with limited intelligence – to the hired thugs of the state. But Khrushchev broke the cycle of Terror, and replaced it with one of Pensions, and that, in the end, led to Gorbachev, Yeltsin, for all their flaws, and the counter- reformationist, Putin, who, even in a position of ruthlessly disdainful pow- er, shrinks from reintroducing true terror back to the kulaks’ terroir (and then we could speak of French farmers, of course…). Introduction 7  The change from Terror to the representation of Terror to the threat of Terror to Pensions is one that permeates many of the societies under dis- cussion here, and throughout the ancient Mediterranean (the shift from his- tory to journalism occurs somewhere around 500 BCE). And one may doc- ument this with the rise of signed articles in the West. When Buddy Shenker first went to work for Time Magazine in Europe after World War II, managing their major bureau, in Paris (probably fun until the ‘70’s), for example, he forwent by-lines because the issue was not what he himself got credit for, but what he and his colleagues did: there was a corporatist sense of mission at work. Later, he moved to the New York Times, be- cause he wanted that sacred by-line. Somewhere in the eighth century, we start to get real by-lines, not just the names of copyists and “scribes,” which we do get earlier, and which mean more than they say, of course – but go prove that to a skeptical philologist whose background is in gram- mar, or a dogmatically sclerotic theologian, whose background is in syste- matics or philosophy. Those earlier hints of by-lines, that said, are evi- dence of a shift in an earlier age of intensive international exchange, albeit one more restricted to the palace. For this reason, and because of the nexus to canon, a few of the chapters below deal with issues of composition and its metamorphosis into some- thing resembling historical writing in Israel. Although I am an adherent to the school of thought that attributes an elite history of Israel to Hezekiah’s time – changed and expanded in that of Josiah – four of the studies docu- ment elements of that transition. The earliest of these is not included, “The Centralization Formula in Deuteronomy” (in Vetus Testamentum 31 [1981]), not least because of ongoing discussion of the matter of whether the reform really does have a Hezekiah background and some extraordi- nary analysis by Norbert Lohfink. However, my “Sacred History and Ide- ology” does make the argument on the basis of the structure of Chronicles versus Kings for a Hezekian (or, pre-Josianic) long historical source doc- ument for DtrH or, H(Dtr)jos. I do not believe that this case has been ad- dressed as a serious component of the argument. More traditional in its structure, although differing from others, including Helga Weippert to whom this area of study rightly should be traced, is David Vanderhooft’s and my “Editions of Kings,” which may not seal the case watertight (Graeme Auld’s and Brian Peckham’s alternatives are live options), but makes it strongly. In other works, such as David’s Secret Demons, I have addressed language evidence for dating such materials to the pre-exilic pe- riod en passant, sticking as much as possible to fields having little to do with evolving semantics, such as orthography, morphology and geogra- phies (this last also in Emergence of Israel in Canaan). But it was also, in my view, important to include studies that addressed literalization – “Re- 8 Introduction  sourceful Israelite Historian” and especially “Doctrine by Misadventure,” the latter heavily inspired, on a different plane, by Weber, with prosaic li- teralism replacing poetry and bureaucratization charisma (charisma leads to poetry/epic/art and then that’s actually a part of the routinization…). This material hangs beautifully together with larger cultural issues, such as the evolution of science and systematic natural philosophy. I have tried to explore the issue of regional variation in discourse on these issues in “Bib- lical versus Greek Historiography: a comparison,” in E. Blum, W. John- stone and Markschies, Das Alte Testament – Ein Geschichtsbuch (von Rad centenary; Altes Testament und Moderne, 10; Muenster: LIT, 2005), with a view to social embedment. But all this was accompanied by individualization – not just the naming of texts for authors, and not just the pseudepigraphic attribution of texts, but also the very idea that an employee of the king (earlier, god) might stand, in the tradition of Shamshi-Ilu, as an important and independent fig- ure in his own right. In a way, the comparison is to the role of individuals within the divine council, something early in many cultures, and then lost in some to the totalization of the pantheon. When individuation occurs – a subject below – there is a reason for it. Worse yet, like forms of iconoc- lasm, and especially the destruction of others’ icons, it has an earlier histo- ry. The earliest individuation we know of, outside of the biological realm purely, registers in the form of burial, a wonderfully symbolic and freighted behavior, around 3000 or so BCE in Crete. There are earlier indi- vidual interments, of course, particularly ones that we interpret as royal. But the generalization of the royal principle is something special, and takes place in Egypt rather early as well, albeit for officials. That is, someone, somewhere in EB I-II, discovered that there should be a different interment for Uncle Joe than we had previously had. Maybe, Uncle Joe expected something after death that previously was promised to a whole group, or even a lineage. But you can be sure that people hired by government officials (that is, people who take your money claiming to do good for you) have moved some corpse – not your favorite for the job, but why expect them to care? – into hallowed ground, which is to say, outside your house or even the midden for your household, and maybe even out- side town altogether. There, he might do better duty for your lineage, or even for the populations dependent on its success. The idea of a decollectivized afterlife – and even the group burials we encounter are chiefly those of the wealthy – can only reflect mimicry, or democratization, of royal ideals, and in particular the idea that personal identity remains important after death, probably in the form of immortali- zation. It is not out of the question that some examples imply a possibility of resurrection; but the presence of grave goods and indeed of funerary of- Introduction 9  ferings or even meals (at interment or annually) generally indicates that the afterlife was invisible and immediate, and usually identified, if our myths hold any water, with a subterranean world – not entirely unlike Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar. Every man a hero in the brave new underworld. The shifts in elite status – its restriction or extension – are a part of po- litical as well as social life. The idea that a tyrant should “cut down the tall grain” was not exactly new when it was given. States in tribal environ- ments, as Lucy Mair documented for post-colonial Africa, need to trample down the leaders of kin groups in order to assert their own authority; the same holds for other threats to that authority, whether stemming from ide- ology, wealth, marriage or business alliances, whatever. At the same time, the shifts probably have sociobiological significance – expanding the over- all genetic reservoir of elites as these emerge and then for the most part stabilize and maintain internal connubial boundaries based on status and wealth. There are other mechanisms at work, such as polygamy (and adul- tery). A relevant treatment of bilateral citizenship appears in the Fest- schrift for Donald B. Redford, dealing with the reforms of Ezra and Pe- ricles. But the genetic element is also mirrored in an ideational and general intellectual sense, certainly in the introduction of new points of view for discussion or consideration: changes to class structure are adaptive precise- ly because they change the breeding patterns modeled on old, often sclerot- ic, relations of production and of exchange. This volume addresses a moment of cultural change in which literacy clearly plays a role throughout the Mediterranean ecumene. The claims lodged for its importance in Goody and Watt are both hellenocentric and exaggerated, given the existence of literate classes almost three millennia earlier elsewhere. However, for the first time, in this era, our sources no longer exhibit the sort of reticence about individual contributions, or about individual moral liability, that older materials maintain silence about. What is more, they expose activities and beliefs having to do with the afterlife, with science, with philosophy and with symbols for which earlier materials afford only hints. If it remains the case that cave paintings, and henna body markings, represent our earliest evidence about human symbolic behavior, it is only in the Axial period that sources become explicit about the death of poetry, the rise of prose and literalism, the Sprachkritik of a Karl Kraus, that become the basis of Western civilization. To this root, we can trace the sprouts of modernity. And in examining it closely, we can see the possi- bilities and problems of a transition from traditional, tribal and Paleolithic or Neolithic to modern societies. It is not too much to suggest that one can understand life in Russia or China or Vietnam or Eastern Europe today better if one understands the history of ideas and politics described in the following pages. It is certain 10 Introduction  that one can understand religion and religious development in non-Western and in Western cultures most effectively on this basis. There are implica- tions for policy, for nation-building, and for the registration of ethnicity in politics, in all this material. Though the study is both historical and anthro- pological, as well as literary, the lessons for transitions from primitive po- lice states to modern states can profitably be applied not just in recently- freed or developing countries, but even in backward enclaves and institu- tions where technological change is sometimes unthinkingly equated with sociological progress. Part I The Rejection of Tradition

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry”: The Development of Israelite Monotheism*'

The dominant paradigms for the introduction of monotheism into Israel were all mis- guided when this study first appeared. One was the simple one of Abrahamic or, in scho- larly worlds, Mosaic, revolution. That was the idea that a leader, inspired with the unity of God, suddenly imposed the vision on an unprepared traditional culture, fortunately for the most part under his control, whether by dint of descent and piety (Abraham) or by dint of dependence for leadership (Moses); but in any case, the converted were over- whelmed by the person, the content, the evidence of divine intervention in the lives and in the mental lives of a whole community. In this view, Israelite monotheism was less a revolution than a revelation followed by believers, however materialist a spin one places on it. This was a group, of whatever size, all drinking the Kool-aid at once. Beyond all question, for his exploration of its corollaries and implications, the ablest defender of this orthodoxy was Yehezkel Kaufmann. The second model for Israelite monotheistic norms involved the existence of a move- ment, or party, of indeterminate antiquity, possibly tracing its roots to Moses, possibly later. This party insisted from the outset that Israelites worship no other god than Yhwh. The most able advocates of this position were Morton Smith and, a decade later, Bern- hard Lang. But the “Yhwh-Alone” party really consisted of the classical prophets, a few figures such as Moses, Elijah and Elisha in narrative, and, as a result, the later prophets and the book of Deuteronomy. How the Yhwh-alone party took the reins of government, in the period especially of Josiah’s reform, remained for the most part a matter of persua- sion rather than one of demonstration. In this case, it was persecution and persistence, as much as revelation or its appearance that led to the group’s success. And still, while the thesis is hardly incompatible with that represented in the following pages, it is at the same time essentially irrelevant to it, and indeed involves a timeliness and conservative view of the history of the religion that again, and perhaps even more closely than the first, approximates the overall outline of the Biblical account. The third approach differed from the first two in several respects, not least in denying the existence of monotheism at least until the exilic period (586–538 BCE) in Israel. In one incarnation, the Jews invented a monotheism with a top god precisely because they were themselves powerless. In another, the Exile incubated a change in elites and privi- leged that element whose emphasis fell on God’s universality and thus singularity. In  * Originally published in J. Neusner, B. A. Levine, and E. S. Frerichs (eds.), Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 77–115. ' This study was supported by the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew Uni- versity, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Albright Institute of Arc- haeological Research in Jerusalem (a branch of the American Schools of Oriental Re- search). 14 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  either case, the scholarly vision mirrored those who found the beginnings of almost all things Israelite – monotheism, law, national history-writing, prescribed ritual and ritual specialization, prophecy, literacy, myth, well, the list is endless – to the Exile or the Re- turn (or denied one or both ever occurred). In this view, somewhat weakened today by archaeological and comparative evidence, had it not been for the exile, the Bible would have been a mere pamphlet. In this essay, written originally in 1982, the emphasis was on treating the evolution of Israelite monotheism, in its various forms, as just that, evolutionary. The assumption was that Israelite history had been written from a Jerusalemocentric perspective, and that Israelite culture as a whole was traditionally similar to the cultures of the peoples in the vicinity, insofar as we knew them, and to the cultures of traditional societies in general. So far as I was aware, the work had no ideological purpose but this: to remove the nor- mative strictures imposed by the historiography on our reconstructions, particularly in the Albright School, without embracing what I still believe were the too radical continental reactions that completely unchained themselves from it. While my ken at the time of writing did not include archaeological indices processed in any sophisticated way, and thus remained exclusively textual, the essay was an attempt of an intellectual historian, in the instance of religion and culture, to make sense of the texts’ biases without reacting too negatively to them. I admit, however, that at the time and sometimes since, the into- lerance of monotheism, carried to a political and ideological extreme, did have me root- ing for the traditionalists. The result was a programmatic argument, an essay, rather than a full-scale study – a somewhat impressionistic exposition of a view that, whatever its debt to de Wette, Wellhausen and Kaufmann and their many interlocutors, was historical- ly synthetic and stood, so far as it could, aside from the prejudices of its sources. I trust that this approach, which resonates with that of Mark Smith, Saul Olyan, Rain- er Albertz, Eckhard Otto, and others since, is still of interest to the general reader. I should add that the essay was originally written for a volume edited by Jack Neusner, Baruch Levine (with whom I am often confused) and Ernie Frerichs, Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel. The volume was intended to be a Festschrift for Robert Gordis, and in the letter soliciting contributions, Jack wrote something to the effect that Gordis had been a pioneer in bringing Jews into the critical study of scripture “in his day.” Reading be- tween the lines, that was probably what led to a later communication informing the vo- lume contributors that Gordis – I paraphrase – preferred a Festschrift more closely fo- cused on his own circle. Being young, and excited about the essay, I accepted Jack’s promise that “we will poll the contributors” and decide to whom the Festschrift would be dedicated – Gordis, I think, was the only scholar I ever knew of (never met) who had the sense to turn down a Festschrift! In the end, the volume honored H. L. Ginsberg, which I did not know until I received my copy; but I still refer to it as the “Festschrift for the Un- known Scholar,” and, as such, it remains one of the best of the genre.

Introduction

In any academic discipline there are issues that are noticeably central and others that are noticeably peripheral for the mainstream of active scholars. In biblical studies the center of interest is and has always been the history of Israelite religion. Histories of Israel in the nineteenth century amounted most frequently to discussions of cultic and theological development, and 1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 15  we should elicit no substantial remonstration by observing that the single most influential work in modern biblical criticism has been Julius Well- hausen’s Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1878), a work dedicated to the history of the cult. Today, a glance at the professional journals or at classroom textbooks will establish that the history of Israelite religion re- mains the central node of scholarly and lay interest. Among the questions relating to Israel’s religious odyssey, that of the origin of monotheism is intellectually and theologically primary. It is, however, a complex matter. To date, the most comprehensive and convinc- ing attempt to deal with it remains that of Yehezkel Kaufmann. Still, Kaufmann’s work, formulated in conscious response to that of Wellhausen, has not enjoyed widespread acceptance. Clearly, any reevaluation of the entire question must inevitably involve the coordination of intellectual with political and social history. Only in the context of an analysis of in- ternational and domestic discussions can the whole course of the crystalli- zation of monotheistic theologies be understood. Kaufmann’s work, while cognizant of these complications, concentrated primarily in intellectual history. It is the point of this present study, as a prolegomenon to a full- dress history of the idea, to address and reassess Kaufmann’s and his con- temporaries’ notions of the development of monotheism in Israel. Our em- phasis here falls on the history of ideas; the sociopolitical provenience, dissemination, and socialization of the ideas that were developed remain to be treated. I hope to undertake that task in a subsequent work.

I

Pitched to a group of undergraduates, the question “What is monotheism?” almost invariably elicits the answer “belief in one God,” or “the belief that only one God exists.” Christians, Jews, Muslims – the respondent will tes- tify that since these embrace the Bible they are the identifiable monothe- ists. The Bible is the root of Western culture, and the Bible admits of no equivocation on this point; there is only one God. Westerners, it need hardly be said, pride themselves on their monothe- ism. They cherish derogatory but quaint ideas about polytheists (who wor- ship idols and other fetishes; practice sympathetic magic; see gods, almost paranoiacally, in every tree and under every bed; and sacrifice virgins to volcanoes). Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that the student who first furnished the definition of monotheism squirms skeptically on learning that Psalm 82 depicts Yhwh judging the gods in their assembly, that Psalm 29 enjoins the gods to praise Yhwh, and that according to Deu- teronomy 32 and much other biblical thought, each people had been allot-