WeeklyWorker

03.10.2024

They worshipped many gods

What Christians call the Old Testament depicts the ancient Hebrews being dedicated to the Yahweh cult, but also erecting altars on high places and sacrificing to Baal. Jack Conrad explores the origins of Judaism

Current scholarly opinion is firmly against the veracity of the idea of the wandering children of Yahweh, who, after departing from Abraham’s ancestral land of Haran, journeyed to and fro around the Middle East; whose 12 tribes descended from Jacob’s 12 sons; who entered, prospered, multiplied and then sank into servitude in Egypt; who, led by Moses, escaped, hotly pursued by the pharaoh’s chariots and cavalrymen; and who, after spending decades roaming the inhospitable wastes of the Sinai and Arabian deserts, seized Canaan under Joshua. All carefully manufactured myth.

Not that the Moses story was spun out of thin air. There is evidence of Canaanites drifting into Egypt and establishing themselves in the Nile delta around 1800 BCE. Later, for a hundred years, their elite ruled Egypt as the 15th dynasty during the period 1670‑1570 BCE. A resurgent Egyptian ruling class finally drove them out. These Canaanites were the Hyksos (foreign rulers). Their domination of Egypt and violent expulsion doubtless created an enduring folk memory in Canaan that echoed down the generations. Raw material for later myth-makers of the kind that produced the wonderful fables of Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, Guinevere and the triumphant Romano-British resistance to the Saxon invasion. Except that the Hebrews converted defeat not into victory, but heroic escape.

One thing seems certain though. There was no exodus of 600,000 Hebrews under the leadership of a man called Moses during the 14th or 13th centuries BCE.1 The numbers are simply impossible. On top of that, biblical descriptions reflect not those centuries, but Egyptian monarchs, place names and geopolitical realities of the 7th century BCE. A sure sign of politically expedient invention rather than real history.

Joshua’s genocide

The Bible relates how, with the death of Moses, a new commander-in-chief arose. Joshua served as a “minister” under Moses and it was he who appointed him as his successor. So nothing in the way of a democratic culture on display here. Underlining the point, anyone tempted to rebel against Joshua’s word is promptly threatened with “death”.2

Yahweh tells the newly installed Joshua to order the 12 Hebrew tribes to immediately prepare for the much delayed crossing of the river Jordan, so as to take possession of the land long ago pledged to them. Of course, Joshua does as he is told. Ominously, given present-day Israeli politics, the territory is described as stretching from “the wilderness and this Lebanon” to the “great river”, Euphrates, and all the lands of the Hittites to the Mediterranean, the “Great Sea” and “toward the going down of the sun”.3

Headed by Levite priests carrying the ark of god - a box within which Yahweh dwells - the invasion of Canaan begins. Yahweh miraculously stops the flow of the Jordan to allow the men-at-arms to safely cross, along with wives, children, animals and possessions. Encamped on the left bank of the river, Joshua oversees the circumcising of all uncircumcised males (a practice that seems to have lapsed, according to the account, because of 40 years spent in the Sinai and Arabian deserts).

Everyone surely knows the next episode of the story. Jericho is besieged and Joshua sends the ark, accompanied by seven priests, marching around the city each day. On the seventh they noisily blow their trumpets of rams’ horn and - hey presto - Jericho’s strong walls crumble to dust. The city is torched. There is much booty and much bloodshed: “men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and asses” are slaughtered.4

Next, the story moves to those who kept looted treasures for themselves. Guiltily they confess and are swiftly dispatched - stoned or burnt to death. These transgressors are blamed for a frustrating setback in battle. Yahweh had decreed that all gold and silver were his and his alone. Suitably purified, the Hebrews then target the city of Ai. Joshua carries out a clever military ruse. Once again there is total destruction and mass killing. Fearing the same fate, the people of Gibeon sue for peace. They plead that, being foreigners, they are not due to be exterminated. Joshua believes them and agrees terms. When their lie is exposed, the Gibeonites are spared, but cursed to be “slaves, hewers of wood and drawers of water” in perpetuity.5

The Hebrews go on to rout the combined might of the five kingdoms of the Ammonites - Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon. Yahweh rains deadly hailstones down upon them from the heavenly heights. And, so as to provide sufficient light for the almost industrial extermination of the terrified Ammonites, the sun and the moon are made to stand still. Joshua proceeds to sack, burn, massacre and terrorise his way through the rest of Canaan. Finally, the city of Hazor was taken and, again obeying Yahweh, the Hebrews “did not leave any that breathed”.6

Looking at passages such as these - approvingly cited on the Israeli right, including by Benjamin Netanyahu - the modern reader cannot but be struck by an eerie resemblance that exists between Yahweh’s genocidal programme and Adolph Hitler’s crazy plans, flagged in Mein Kampf, to expel all Jews from Germany and reduce the entire Slavic population to the east to slavery, so as to provide his beloved German yeoman farmers with labour and Lebensraum (living space).

Anyway, though there were still unexterminated Canaanites within their borders and god-sanctioned conquests to the west, north, south and east remaining to be accomplished, the tribes are each allotted their carefully delineated territory within what we can call ‘Israel’. Being otherwise privileged, the Levite priesthood have to make do with burnt sacrificial offerings, and pastures and towns specially put aside for them in the midst of other tribes.

So comes into being the post-conquest social order described in Deuteronomy, Judges, Ruth and Samuel. The loose confederation of Hebrew tribes were advised, guided and on countless occasions rebuked by the so-called judges. They acted as military leaders and a kind of collective conscience for the whole people.

Religiously sanctioned measures were put in place, presumably designed to prevent extremes of poverty and wealth: “there will be no poor among you”, confidently proclaims the book of Deuteronomy.7 In order to keep a due sense of proportion, it is worth adding that the same book contradictorily admits, just a few lines down, that “the poor will never cease out of the land”.8

Nevertheless, the egalitarian ethos is clear. Every 49 years (more likely every seven) a jubilee happened - a year of release from the chains of debt and indentured labour. Enslaved Hebrews were to “go free” and be furnished “liberally” with grain, wine, sheep and goats. Elsewhere we read about land and property. Each seventh year the land had to remain fallow and property was to be returned to its original owners (or heirs). Though slavery and debt bondage was a constant danger for the poor, given the period we are talking about, the people of Israel seemingly enjoyed a quite extraordinary social settlement: “In those days there were no kings in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.”9

We actually have no hard evidence that the Israeli inter-tribal confederation ever existed (or whether it was a much later biblical invention). “It is extremely difficult any longer to assert that it did,” remarks a doubting Thomas Thompson.10

Quite conceivably the general crisis of the late Bronze Age - that is, before the 13th century BCE - produced social chaos, along with a myriad of highly localised strongmen and rival tribal chiefdoms, before the re-emergence of state formations. But the fact is that Deuteronomy, Judges, Ruth and Samuel contain a strong egalitarian strand. And radical scholars have understandably made much of such passages and descriptions.

Three examples: George Mendenhall presented a pioneering argument for a revolutionary anti-monarchist Israel, founded on a direct treaty between each individual and Yahweh.11 Another American, Norman Gottwald, maintained that Hebrew society under the judges was “revolutionary and egalitarian”.12 Along the same lines, but with undoubted hyperbole, at least in my opinion, Jan Dus, a Czech theologian and anti-Stalinite dissident, even claimed that the judges oversaw the “first ideologically based socio-political revolution in the history of the world”.13 More about such ideas below.

Damning archaeology

The traditional dating for the Hebrew conquest is between 1230 and 1220 BCE. This neatly fits with the claimed flight from Egypt and references in the book of Exodus to Ramesside pharaohs. Yet, though there is an Egyptian victory stele of the pharaoh, Merneptah, mentioning a group called ‘Israel in Canaan’, which is believed to refer to the year 1207 BCE, the whole narrative of Joshua’s invasion and the destruction of its native population is now widely doubted - to put it mildly.

The archaeology is damning. There are “abundant records” from Egypt in the late Bronze Age (1550-1150 BCE), which show that the Canaanite city-states - and beyond them, to the north, the great Phoenician trading ports and the kingdoms of south-west Syria - were vassals.14 Clay accounting tablets, temple engravings and diplomatic correspondence prove that the pharaohs regularly issued orders and were in receipt of a steady flow of tribute. More than that, Egyptian administrators, Egyptian troops and Egyptian-paid mercenaries were stationed in towns and strongpoint’s in Canaan. And yet the book of Joshua completely fails to mention Egyptians outside the context of Egypt itself.

Perhaps because of gouging Egyptian tribute, perhaps because of hobbling Egyptian decrees, Canaanite cities were unfortified, much diminished and presumably pretty shabby at the time. No tall towers or intimidatingly thick walls, as recounted in the book of Joshua. Nor did they command vast armies. In fact they were “pathetically weak”.15

The pharaohs built an empire, which included not only Canaan: their domains reached into Libya and incorporated the whole of Nubia down to the fourth cataract. Tribute also flowed in from Cyprus, Crete and Syria. The Egyptian sphere of influence had hardly ever been so extensive. Visit the temple complex at Abu Simbel on the shores of lake Nasser and stand before the four colossal statues of Rameses II (reigned 1279-13 BCE) and you will appreciate something of the confidence, wealth and ego of its rulers.

Though its hold over Canaan was steadily weakening, this late Bronze Age superpower would have experienced no particular trouble in dispatching necessary reinforcements, if needed, through their well-managed and well-fortified Sinai coastal road into Canaan - had there been any sort of serious armed incursion by Hebrews (leave aside whether or not they were refugees who had fled Egypt decades before). Not surprisingly Merneptah’s stele reports that Israel was crushed. Apart from that, Israel and the Israelites go unmentioned in what Egyptian records we have available to us from the period.

Except from the Hittite empire in the north, Egyptian domination of Canaan met no strategic challenge. And Egypt came to a stand-off agreement with the Hittites despite the bruising a youthful Rameses II received at the battle of Kadesh (1274 BCE). Taking cognisance of this geopolitical balance of power, the idea of a raggle-taggle Hebrew population, who had been scratching out a precarious existence in the desert wilderness, storming their way through an Egyptian-dominated Canaan is simply not credible.

Circumstances were different in the middle Bronze Age. Then there was indeed a system of affluent, tribute-gathering and militarily powerful Canaanite city-states - despite their independence one from another, they were linked by alliances and shared a common culture. But during the late Bronze Age they fell into decline. Jericho, Ai and Megiddo were abandoned. Other urban centres were destroyed: eg, Ashdod, Aphek and Hazor. Nowadays this is not put down to Joshua. Rather, explanation is sought in ecological degradation, disease, social revolt due to over-exploitation and the raids and dislocation caused by the so-called sea peoples.16 Doubtless there was a combination of factors at play. But all that was several centuries before Joshua was supposed to have marched Yahweh’s chosen people across the Jordan.

The late Bronze Age general crisis hit the whole of the eastern Mediterranean during the close of the 13th century BCE. Archaeological excavations in Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt reveal a “stunning story of upheaval, war and widespread social breakdown”.17 The collapse of the western Roman empire in the 5th century CE was nothing in comparison: and it saw the severing of vital trade connections, a breakdown of the tax system, a general decline in material production and urban depopulation.

Though surviving the Bronze Age general crisis, Egypt was left a shadow of its former self, being stripped of all vassals. Tribute dried up, and so did international trade. However, the other superpower of the day - the Hittite empire, located in Turkey and northern Syria - disappeared entirely. Related tribute-gathering palace economies were likewise extinguished. Mycenae, the city of the famed Agamemnon, the overlord of the Achaeans in the Iliad, was overrun and destroyed. Subsequently Greece experienced a prolonged dark age. There was a loss of writing and rapid depopulation and not only in the few remaining cities, but in the countryside too. Sites in Crete, Cyprus and the Levant share the same characteristic blackened archaeological strata, indicating conflagration and a violent end - excavators find ash, charred wood and slag formed from melted mud bricks - and above that the replacement of a materially rich culture by one that is noticeably impoverished in terms of material objects.

The Bronze Age general crisis certainly left behind many enigmatic ruins scattered throughout Canaan. The German biblical scholars, Albrecht Alt (1883-1956) and Martin Noth (1902-68), reasoned that local stories peopled with legendary heroes and villains must have sprung up, which gave meaning to those gigantic wrecks. Both men thought that there was also the likelihood of genuine folk memories. Namely victories scored by hill-country militias over the declining Canaanite city-states, which had till then dominated and exploited them. The book of Joshua was, they concluded, a stitching together of these accounts into a single and much elaborated epic.

Apiru

Now let us ask an obvious question: who were the ancient Hebrews? Intriguingly, apart from the lone Merneptah stele directly mentioning Israel, there are records of two other named groups, who are of obvious interest here: people who lived on the margins of Canaanite society “between the desert and the sown”.18

The first is the Shosu. They kept flocks and herds and appear to have been something of an all-round nuisance. An Egyptian report tells of a punishment raid on the tented encampments of the Shosu, from which the pharaoh’s troops took away cattle “without number”.19

The other group was the Apiru (or Habiru). A term that crops up throughout the Middle East in the Bronze Age, but - and this is obviously significant - it does so especially with reference to Canaan. They seem to have been an amorphous collection of escapees from, or rebels against, war, taxation, famine and state power. Disparagingly, the Apiru are portrayed in official sources as criminals, brigands or mercenary soldiers ready for hire. Contending state formations loathed, dreaded and yet might choose to cynically use them. Surely, however, the Apiru would have had their own programme and ideology - an ancient combination of Robin Hood, the Luddites and the Sicilian mafia perhaps? Anyone familiar with Eric Hobsbawm’s Primitive rebels (1959) will get the point. Such honourable outlaws, self-defence associations, religious dissenters and bands of social avengers can arrive at the point where “class conflicts are dominant”.20

Various writers have speculated about a linguistic connection between the words ‘Apiru’ (‘Habiru’) and ‘Hebrew’ (the Israelites). Opinion is still divided. Nevertheless, even if there is no direct join, both the Shosu and Apiru might provide a clue about who the Hebrews might have been.

Archaeological literalists such as William Albright and Yigael Yadin believed they were proving, illustrating, filling in the fine details of the biblical account contained in Joshua. But, long before them, an iconoclastic Albrecht Alt argued, beginning in the 1920s, that the Hebrews did not originate in northern Mesopotamia, nor did they wander round wilderness before their spectacular invasion of Canaan. Hence Alt not only rejected the biblical account: he rejected the standard academic model of his time of grand people movements - a nationalist assumption which dominated history writing from the late 19th century onwards, when dealing with the ancient world.

Alt put forward the idea that the Hebrews were modest pastoralists, a loosely organised independent group of Shosu-like people, who regularly shifted between the Transjordan plateau and the Jordan valley. At the end of the Bronze Age they began to relocate, clearing areas in the next-door, heavily wooded, sparsely inhabited central highlands of Palestine. Given the lack of direct state control by the Canaanite cities, this sedentarisation - the voluntary settling down to a farming way of life - proceeded, in Alt’s model, without large-scale battles, prolonged sieges or mass slaughter. Instead he proposed a gradual process of peaceful infiltration.

As the population of the highlands steadily increased, the corresponding scarcity of land and water led the Hebrews down into the coastal plain. Only then came serious military conflicts with the Canaanite city-states. Here, or so concluded Alt’s theory, was the real background to the recurring struggles between the Hebrews (Israelites) and neighbouring peoples vividly described in the book of Judges.

In the 1960s and 70s Alt’s peaceful-infiltration theory was increasingly disputed. I am not talking about Christian or Zionist fundamentalists - that almost goes without saying. No, I refer to serious critics. Tellingly a range of biblical scholars, anthropologists, historians and sociologists pointed to field studies, which showed an intimate connection between semi-nomads and village farmers in the Middle East. Not unreasonably, Alt’s critics (friendly and hostile) argued that in ancient times the pastoralist population which regularly headed east from the fertile northern section of the Jordan valley with the coming of the winter rains, and those practising peasant agriculture, were quite possibly one and the same ethnic entity. More than that, while pastoralists might opt for a settled life - for example, because of climate change - once conditions allowed, they returned to their old ways. Semi-nomads certainly do not exhibit Alt’s land-hunger. They are reluctant peasants.

An alternative set of theories inevitably arose. George Mendenhall, like Alt, discounted the historicity of the biblical account of Joshua’s conquests. Yet, despite his background as an ordained Lutheran minister, Mendenhall developed an innovative class-conflict thesis. For Mendenhall there was neither violent invasion nor peaceful infiltration. Rather, he contended, internal conflict pitted the rural lower classes - those who called themselves, or were called, Hebrews or Israelites - against the exploiting “network of interlocking Canaanite city-states”.21 Mendenhall thought in terms of a religiously motivated peasant movement and gaining control over an established political economy.

While he hardly discounts social relations, Mendenhall’s hypothesis ultimately rests on theological explanation: in the beginning came the idea ... Yahwehism made Israel and in that spirit its operational precepts are conceived of as being nearer to Mahatma Gandhi than Thomas Müntzer. Mendenhall argues that the Hebrews withdrew from the Canaanite system “not physically and geographically, but politically and subjectively”. Through that inner refusal, an increasing swathe of the population no longer felt “any obligation to the existing political regime”.22 Legitimacy drained away (perhaps along with tax-gathering powers). And, though their final religious war swept away the latifundist-trading Canaanite ruling classes, this did not involve mass extermination by the Israelites. In percentage terms the aristocracy was, of course, insignificant anyway. Furthermore, Mendenhall insisted, the old society was not simply taken over intact: a radically novel anti-monarchist social order was constructed, centred on a covenant between Yahweh and those who were prepared to believe in him.

Symbolically, land ownership passed from the Canaanite aristocracy and was nominally given over to Yahweh. In practice one would hazard that there would have been something akin to what in Russia was called a ‘black redistribution’: a shattering division of the great agricultural estates into numerous smallholdings. The socio-economic foundation of Israelite society was therefore constituted by a mass of independent peasant farmers. Politically there was a matching rejection of centralised power. In religious terms this ‘regulated anarchism’ correspondingly enacted rules forbidding graven images - that is, images of kings and gods, and of gods giving authority to kings.

Others took over the baton from the “pioneering work” of Mendenhall, the most notable being Norman Gottwald.23 Like Mendenhall he is convinced that there was an Israelite revolution which finished off the Canaanite ruling classes (apart from the Philistines). Hence Joshua is treated not as history, but myth. Gottwald successfully synthesises Mendenhall and Alt by assiduously constructing a theory which has at its core ideologically motivated escapees colonising the frontier lands of Canaan. Gottwald argues that these people played a role analogous not to America’s westward-moving settlers, but Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army. The frontier constituted a base area from where a revolutionary return was carefully prepared, not a safety valve which attenuated class antagonisms.

Gottwald’s monumental study, The tribes of Yahweh (1979), is a paradigm-shifting work, historically-theoretically reconstructing Israel as a “major sub-system”. Crucial is understanding religion as a “social phenomenon”, related to other social phenomena “within the system”.24 The influence of Marxism is unmistakable and acknowledged from the outset. The riches, complexities and contradictions of the Yahwehite religion are therefore derived from social circumstances. Not the other way round.

Gottwald fully accepts Mendenhall’s idea that pre-monarchical Israel embraced a primitive anarchism - though he prefers to call it a peasant communitarianism or an “inarticulate tribal socialism”.25 Despite stressing extensive common ground with Mendenhall, Gottwald refuses to subscribe to what he calls his philosophical idealism. Pointedly, he chides Mendenhall for not pursuing class and social relations far enough.

Unfortunately this produced an infuriated, but sadly conventional, reply by Mendenhall (not further development of his original insight). Gottwald was accused of forcing “the ancient historical data into the Procrustes’ bed of 19th century Marxist ideology”. A banal charge endlessly thrown against Gottwald by the academic establishment, which insists for its own reasons on gutting the history of ancient Israel - and virtually everywhere else for that matter - of class content. Technological determinism, piecemeal evolutionary change and state teleologies are always preferred over real historical movement (which is always complex and involves dialectical contradictions, class conflict and revolutionary breaks). However, as Gottwald painstakingly shows, the facts tend to support the peasant revolution thesis.

Gottwald argues, crucially in his magnum opus, that the Israelites originated in the Canaanite lowlands. He depicts them as a revolutionary political movement which retreated from the stifling oppression and exploitation of the Canaanite ruling classes (and the Egyptian tribute system). These social revolutionaries organised a short march eastwards into the lawless uplands. Gottwald’s physical withdrawal could only have included relatively small numbers, especially to begin with.

Anyway, perhaps after a number of failures, the Israelite community finally establishes itself in the highlands rising from both banks of the Jordan river. Free at last, they align themselves with the semi-pastoralist population and constitute a beacon of liberty. Welcoming a steady trickle of those “yearning to breathe free” heading out from Canaan, the Israelite revolution steadily expands its political, military and economic base area. The ruling classes would surely have included this dissident body under the pejorative term ‘Apiru’.

Supporting his lowland origins thesis, Gottwald cites what he considers the best archaeology. Eg, William Dever was one of his “informants” in the mid-1970s. He had shown that pottery and buildings discovered in the Palestinian highlands exhibited a similar style to lowland finds of the same 13th and 12th century BCE period.26 For Gottwald observations such as this provided archaeological validation for his liberation theory (interestingly the philosophically “pragmatic” Dever agreed).

Not that Gottwald ignores the active role of ideas. His “liberated Israel” adopts, fashions or perfects Yahwehism: an ideology providing the cohesion, fervour and popular appeal which raises the Israelites from peasant discontent to the tipping point which delivers state power - despite seemingly impossible military odds. Theological inspiration for the Israelite revolutionary movement came, according to Gottwald, from an exotic intellectual elite, which inherited/carried with them doctrines of the kind that lay behind the fleeting monotheism of the god, Aten, promoted by pharaoh Akhenaten in 14th century BCE Egypt.

Peasant socialism

In Gottwald’s account the revolutionary highland vanguard of Israel successfully mobilised the lowland rural masses to overthrow the ruling classes in Canaan using Yahwehism. Like good multiculturalists, Israel positively encouraged collective recruitment. For Gottwald there is nothing exclusive about the worshippers of Yahweh in the late Bronze Age. Indeed whole peoples seek entry into the newly established social order.

After a prolonged period of fluidity this arrangement eventually hardened into the 12 tribes which Gottwald argues were finally institutionalised by king David (or maybe before him by Saul) and then given bureaucratic “rationality” by Solomon, with his monthly rotation of officials.27 Gottwald, let it be noted, draws inspiration from Lewis Henry Morgan and his classic study of the Iroquois confederacy of tribes.28

Albeit vastly more ambitious, wide-ranging and sophisticated, the central thesis advanced by Gottwald essentially corresponds with that of George Mendenhall. Israeli peasant socialism was a deliberately segmented social formation. Mutual aid, confederal relations, tribal intermarriage, tribal military levies, small-scale patriarchal landholdings and universal male cultic assemblies were, taken together, an anti-aristocratic, anti-imperialist defence mechanism. Constructed for the twofold purpose of keeping free from Egypt and preventing an internal revival of Canaanite aristocratic landlordism.

Following Mendenhall, Gottwald describes the new order as uniquely “progressive”, compared with “contiguous” and “antecedent” social systems in the region.29 I have already mentioned the possibility of a general land redistribution, the jubilees and textual indications of egalitarianism. Gottwald holds that Israel’s “inarticulate traditional socialism” overthrew the Canaanite tribute system without afterwards reproducing its steep social contours. That would indeed make Israel exceptional.

Peasant revolutions have happened throughout history.30 Two successful Chinese examples: one ancient, the other modern. First, Liu Bang (256/47-195 BCE) - born into a humble Chinese peasant family, he led a rural insurrection and in 202 BCE founded the Han dynasty, which began by freeing slaves and reducing taxes. Then there is Mao Zedong’s peasant-based People’s Liberation Army. It broke the power of landlords in the villages it took. After establishing itself in Beijing in 1949, Mao’s regime set about liquidating the landlords as a class. Between 1951 and 1952 they were expropriated. Peasants, in their turn, were organised into cooperatives.

The subsequent pattern is, suffice to say, sadly familiar, however. Despite lavish egalitarian promises, social stratification quickly re-emerges, as revolutionary cadre are forced to oversee, learn or mimic socially necessary functions. During the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age those functions would have included: supervising irrigation work; maintaining grain and other vital common reserves; drafting legal decrees; negotiating with foreign diplomats; serving as military commanders in order to protect against invading armies; etc.

Gottwald is convinced that there were tribal chiefs, priests and generals. Despite that, Israel was a “self-governing community of free peasants”, which provided “dignity and livelihood for all members”.31 That is why he feels able to call the mode of production “communitarian”. The ‘big men’, he says, did not exercise coercive powers. Hence, apart from the surplus production customarily given over for religious purposes and social aid for the needy, peasant labour did not support any kind of elaborate state machine. Tribal chiefs, priests and generals were probably better off than others in their immediate locality, but not by much. And, it should be added, even if their power positions were heritable, there would have been an obligation to give away any surplus product they had at their disposal to those around them because of the gift obligation rules outlined by Marcel Mauss.32

Without doing that, power would have drained away from the power-holders. Other leaders would have been found. Hence, we can safely conclude, there existed no socially embedded drive to constantly raise production. That is characteristic of peasantries facing high, or increasing, tax demands, marginal land thereby coming under the plough. Nor would there be a compulsion to accumulate forced onto the better-off. Surpluses have to be given away and are always limited. Understandably, peasants, in general, prefer to do as little necessary work as possible. An absence of forts, palaces and grand public buildings and the presence of small farmsteads throughout the highlands is cited by Gottwald as an archaeological pointer.

Nor, says Gottwald, did Israel pay tribute to Egypt, or any other imperial empire. Prefiguring ‘socialism in one country’, he believes Israel cut itself off from what survived of the tribute-gathering system of the day. It should be remembered that, though it survived the late Bronze Age general crisis, Egypt had been profoundly weakened. As always, periods of independence for small countries such as Israel were brief and resulted not so much from heroic internal class struggles, but more the contraction and retreat of big powers.

However, claims of an extended non-hierarchical peasant socialism have to be treated cautiously. Peasant rebel armies may be mobilised with all manner of fantastic millenarian predictions, egalitarian legal decrees and even substantial measures that seem to embody those ends. Popular passions are thereby ignited, directed and sustained.

If established, there is, though, the constant danger that outside powers will invade the peasant utopia in order to plunder, exact tribute and enslave. Hence the necessity of maintaining well drilled military forces, which, needless to say, are costly and inherently hierarchical. There is an unavoidable chain of command in all armies with those who issue orders and those expected to obey them. And those who habitually issue orders can easily be tempted to establish themselves as privileged rulers. Military coups are as old as armies.

Not that peasants are best placed to resist. They are subject to the tyranny of isolation. Their general way of life is disaggregated. Peasant families are separated one from another, as they work the land. Each peasant family also strives to be self-sufficient - consumption being obtained more through an exchange with nature than complex relations with wider society. That is not just the case with food: spinning and weaving would be done by the women of the household and, once the harvest had been gathered in, the men would take up brewing, leatherworking, carpentry, smithing and building work. Then there is the tyranny of time. If starvation is to be avoided there is no choice. Soil must be ploughed, seeds sown and crops harvested, according to the endless circular rhythm dictated by the seasons. And, to the degree peasant families are uninvolved with the urban centres and are fixed on the daily routine, they are incapable of enforcing common interests.

Nor do peasants really constitute a single class. Peasants are divided into different strata, each with mutually antithetical interests. At one extreme are those granted, holding, owning or renting considerable lands and who regularly employ auxiliary labour. At the other extreme are those languishing deep in debt and who possess less than nothing. These paupers must hire out their ability to labour (even sell themselves or their wife and children into slavery). So the peasantry includes exploited and exploiters - even within the peasant family, the basic unit of production, that is the case. Male patriarchs ruthlessly take advantage of dependent relatives and relations.

Unless established over a pocket-sized territory, peasant democracy proves impossible to maintain for long. Work, seasons and divergent interests tear solidarity apart. The peasant’s instinctive hatred of taxation and centralised authority - peasant anarchism - resolves itself into the acceptance of, or search for, a saviour, prophet, king or god, who will deliver them from disorganisation, internal conflicts, foreign threats, and send them “rain and sunshine from above”.33 Anti-statism thereby becomes statism.

I am more than prepared to accept that a late Bronze Age peasant revolution massively reduced and then institutionally maintained flattened social contours in Palestine - the most convincing way in my opinion to explain the surviving traces of an egalitarian ethos in the Bible. The social elite was confined to religious leaders and military commanders, who were in all likelihood related to their congregations and fellow fighters through ties of friendship, marriage or blood. In other words, social relations were ethnical, or personal, not those of political society. Israel could therefore be legitimately described as a non-state, or even post-state, peasant society.

However, peasant socialism does not - it needs emphasising - equate with a higher level of material civilisation. While the Israeli social revolution removed the main burden of exploitation from the individual peasant household, there was also an undoubted loss. Social flattening went hand in hand with cultural shrinkage.

Merchants, musicians, shopkeepers, poets, doctors, painters, perfumers, dancers, architects, dressmakers, jewellers, sculptors, etc - those whom we would now call the middle classes - found that the social surplus needed to support them full-time in those occupations evaporated.

Because they were primarily reliant on aristocratic-driven demand, there was bound to be a downward spiral. Falling numbers of peasants from one generation to the next and a reduction of the overall social surplus surely sealed their fate. And, seeing the past through the prism of material objects as they do, it comes as no surprise that mainstream archaeologists write of a darkness separating bronze and iron civilisations.

Yet - though remarkably successful and lasting a couple of centuries, according to Gottwald - the Israeli system of peasant socialism eventually proved militarily inadequate, when it came to meeting the growing menace posed by Philistine imperialism. To save egalitarianism, egalitarianism had to be sacrificed - hence, mourns Gottwald, the retreat into monarchy and centralism with Saul (and then David). Yahwehism, he says, had to be continued, so popular was it, but was effectively turned onto its head. Whereas kingship had been rejected because of Yahweh, now the king became Yahweh’s anointed representative on earth.

Counterrevolution

How did the monarchical counterrevolution happen? Biblical accounts blame the common people because, sinfully, they slid back into worshipping other gods. Yahweh, therefore, withheld his divine protection. That put foreigners, especially the Philistines, at a distinct military advantage. As described in the first book of Samuel, the Philistine armies twice routed the combined tribal levies of the Hebrews and on the second occasion they “captured the ark of god”.34

Thanks to heavenly intervention, the tribes recovered their sacred box after seven months. Nevertheless, because of this military humiliation, plus corruption and self-seeking, the days of the judges were finally coming to a close. The Hebrew elders insisted that they needed a king and a centralised state “like all the other nations”.35

The aged prophet, Samuel, issues what must surely be the most powerful anti-monarchist warning contained in the Bible: a king who rules over you “will take the best of your fields, olive orchards and vineyards”; he “will take a tenth of your grain and of your vineyards”; he will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers; he will take your sons “to run before his chariots” and serve as soldiers, armourers or forced agricultural labourers: he will turn you into “his slaves”.36 Despite Samuel’s eloquence, and foresight, the “people refuse to listen”.37 More than that, Yahweh too insisted upon a king. Samuel, naturally, felt obliged to fall in line. Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, was duly elected by lot and is anointed by Samuel.

Tall, handsome and charismatic, Saul proves militarily successful. He defeats the Ammonites, Amalekites and Philistines. But Saul is religiously suspect. When Samuel tells Saul that Yahweh has bidden that the Amalekites must be exterminated, he does as he is told … up to a point. The exact instruction was to “utterly destroy” them and all they have. Yahweh not only wants every man, women and child killed, but every “ox, sheep, camel and ass” too.38 Following orders, Saul puts the Amalekites to the sword. However, he spares their king, Agag … and the best of the lambs and oxen and “all that is good”.39 Yahweh is furious. And, though Saul hacks his royal captive to pieces, Yahweh rejects him and promptly informs Samuel that another king must be found.

Now, of course, we arrive at the story of David. Few readers will not know the basic outline. David, the youngest son of Jesse, comes from the Judean town of Bethlehem. Samuel anoints him and the spirit of Yahweh “came mightily upon him”.40

Yahweh torments Saul, who suffers bouts of severe depression. For consolation Saul gets David to play his lyre. This brings respite and a temporary return of mental stability. David enters into Saul’s service and wins the love of his son, Jonathan. The Philistines once again launch themselves against Israel. Their champion, the giant Goliath, challenges anyone in the ranks of Saul’s quaking army to single combat. Even though still a callow youth and working for his father as a humble shepherd, David volunteers. He kills Goliath with a single sling shot. David cuts off his head and the terrified Philistines flee.

David is acclaimed a national hero by the people. This provokes the murderous jealousy of Saul. To save his skin David seeks refuge amongst the Philistines, then the Moabites. But the prophet Gad advises him to go back to his native Judea.

Heading a band of 400-600 outlaws, David harries the Philistines, engages in a bit of extortion, saves various village folk and distributes booty. Hidden away in his upland stronghold, he manages to avoid capture by Saul’s forces. Once again, however, David exiles himself amongst the Philistines. As one of their vassals he is granted a ‘city’ and serves in their army. David and his followers raid neighbouring lands. In short he behaves like a classic Apiru chief.

After “a badly wounded” Saul commits suicide on the field of battle, and three of his sons, including Jonathan, are slain by the Philistines, David is proclaimed king of Israel. As with the deaths of Saul and his sons, David is shown in the Bible to be blameless in the killing of Jonathan’s crippled child, Mephibosheth, and Saul’s close lieutenants. There is a son who succeeds Saul, but we are told Ishbaal is assassinated by the Gibeonites. It hardly takes a Hercule Poirot to work out that in all likelihood David would have spared no effort to “root out” Saul’s male line.41

Anyhow, the Bible then tells how David cleverly seizes Jerusalem and establishes an extensive realm, “for the lord, the god of hosts, was with him”.42 During his dotage David behaves ever more appallingly, driving his son, Absalom, to revolt and descends into sexual depravity. Yet, despite such transgressions, he is succeeded by another of his many sons, Solomon, who extends the kingdom to the banks of the Euphrates and the borders of Egypt.

Unheard of riches flow into the royal treasury. The magnificent Jerusalem temple is built, along with numerous other impressive public works throughout the realm. Internationally Solomon is proclaimed the wisest and most admirable of rulers. Prestige brings exotic visitors to the king’s palace from far and wide. A golden age for Israel. And yet, like his father, in his later years Solomon succumbs to temptation. Breaking divine commandments, he “loved many foreign women”: we are told he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. As Yahweh had warned, they “turned away his heart”.43

For the sake of David, his father, Yahweh’s retribution is delayed till after Solomon’s death and the succession of his son, Rehoboam. Subject peoples rise up. Rehoboam had foolishly wanted to introduce harsh levels of extra taxation. Disastrously the core kingdom then cleaves into two. The 10 northern tribes break away and call themselves Israel. In the south the Judean kingdom is left to struggle on alone (by tradition it is made up of the tribes of Judah and Simeon). And yet Yahweh promises that David’s throne - ie, his royal line - will last “for ever”.44

Few historians, biblical scholars and archaeologists nowadays hold that this and other such stories are in any way an accurate description of early Israel. Indeed, today there is a school of thought which totally discounts David and Solomon, considering them pure invention. Exactly when the scribes are meant to have been given starting orders to begin their work of highly colourful fiction varies greatly - from the 6th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, Niels Peter Lemche representing the most recent dating.45 However, it is agreed, proceeding from nothing more substantive than a vague folklore, the political elite wanted a glorious past created as a popular focus for nationalist aspirations. This is the minimalist approach.46

Others take what I consider to be a more realistic approach. Because of the sheer abundance of stories, place names and personalities contained in the Deuteronomic books, the argument is that this reflects a real underlying history (or, in other words, the Bible has some real documentary value). Though it does not decide the matter conclusively, a much valued basalt block was discovered in 1993 by the archaeologist, Avraham Biran. Fragmented, written in Aramaic and consisting only of 13 remaining lines, the Tel Dan stone, carved in roughly 850 BCE, explicitly refers to the “House of David”. Hence its significance. Dan, it should be mentioned, was located in the far north of the ancient kingdom of Israel - presumably the place therefore frequently changed hands. The chiselled script boasts of [Hazal], king of Syria, Damascus, having [killed] the “son of” [Ahab], the “king of Israel”, and [Ahaz]iahu, son of [Jehoram] of the “the house of David”. Interestingly, the second book of Kings reports that Ahaziah, king of Israel, and Jehoram, king of Judea, were simultaneously killed - though this is put down to a coup by the Israelite general and later king, Jehu.47 Anyway, the triumphant Syrian monarch, the one whom the Tel Dan stone celebrates, goes on to turn [Ahaz]iahu’s, towns and “land”, into [desolation].

This, and accumulated indirect evidence, has helped to undermine the ultra-minimalists. There was, it seems, a monarchy which traced its lineage back to David (a real or imagined person) some one hundred years after his death in the generally agreed biblical chronology. That is, the kings of Judea, as opposed to those of Israel, of course.

The best book I have read on this subject is David and Solomon (2007), jointly written by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. According to the two authors, there is no material evidence of a strong, centralised state formation in Judea - not least based on Jerusalem - till towards the end of the 8th century BCE. That is more than 250 years after David in the standard biblical chronology. Archaeological digs - including those designed to illustrate the historical fact of the biblical accounts of David’s imperial capital and his son’s huge temple - reveal nothing more impressive than a modest hilltop settlement in Jerusalem. A minor chief’s political-religious centre, doubtless, but certainly not a city boasting a world-renowned temple.

Other critical-minded archaeological authorities - those whom we might call the advanced school - agree. Eg, William Dever writes of a real temple in the “age of Solomon”, built along Phoenician lines by Phoenician architects, “craftsmen and artisans”.48 But he too considers Jerusalem to be a modest affair. Hence Solomon’s temple is described as a “royal chapel”.49

Finkelstein and Silberman are more than willing to countenance David as a real historical figure and founder of a royal line - an Apiru chief who managed to carve out, or gain control of, a kingdom which had Jerusalem as its capital. However, not only was Jerusalem no more than a glorified township at the time (and for many years thereafter): the surrounding realm was diminutive and confined to the dry, rugged Judean hill country. Framed by the Dead Sea, the kingdom included Bethel, jutting slightly to the north, Aroer, on the borders of the Negev desert in the south, but to the west it stopped short with the hills of Shephelah, where it met the Philistine coastal strip. In other words, Judea amounted to little more than the highland area rising to the west of the Dead Sea.

So Finkelstein and Silberman feel confident in discounting biblical claims that David ruled over a territory that roughly equates with modern Palestine. Solomon’s empire - stretching from the Mediterranean coast to the Euphrates and to the borders of Egypt - is put down to much later bombastic invention.

Finkelstein and Silberman go on to convincingly show that David’s kingdom was economically poor and militarily weak. The entire population is estimated to have amounted to 5,000 people50 - small even by the Lilliputian standards of the day. Judea’s only advantage, when it came to the imperial ambitions of outsiders, was its uninviting terrain and economic unimportance.

The real Israel (Samaria) was in these times located to the north. Once again centred on the rugged highlands, this kingdom did though contain the fertile upper Jordan valley. Its population is thought to have been some eight times bigger than Judea’s and included the genuine cities of Samaria, Shechem and Megiddo. Israel really did enjoy a substantial influx of tax and tribute, which allowed the construction of imposing fortifications and marbled temples - wrongly attributed to Solomon by maximalist theology, history and archaeology.

Polytheism

Let us ask a few closely related questions. What was the actual religion of Hebrew peasant socialism and, following that, the kingdoms of Israel and Judea? Was Yahwehite monotheism universally accepted and woven into the social fabric? Were there only temporary and, to all intents and purposes, minor deviations from strict orthodoxy?

In the King James Bible - the ‘authorised’ English version - the ‘divine name’, or ‘Tetragrammaton’, is more or less consistently rendered as ‘Lord’ or ‘God’ (often printed in upper case). The same goes for earlier Greek and Latin translations. It should be added that biblical scholars freely admit that these titles substitute for the Hebrew letters, IHVH, in English translated as ‘YHWH’, which, of course, stands for ‘Yahweh’ (the vowels being omitted). The practice of replacing ‘Yahweh’ for an altogether vaguer term such as ‘Lord’ began “before the Christian era”: ie, with the Jews. As the preface to my 1973 revised standard version of the Bible further explains, this avoided using the proper name of “the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom He had to be distinguished”. That would be “entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church”.

Yet the Tanakh has numerous passages which simply take for granted the existence of other gods. The first commandment instructs the Israelites: “You shall have no other gods before me”.51 In other words, the various authors of what Christians call the Old Testament did think that Yahweh had to be distinguished from other gods. Indeed, evidence of an older, polytheistic, tradition still remains within the book of Genesis, albeit in negative form: eg, the attack on Baal and “idolatrous priests” in Zephaniah i,4; the mocking of stone and wooden idols in Habakkuk ii; the spirits mentioned in 1 Kings xxii,19; denunciations of Baal and Asherah in 2 Kings xxi and xxiii.

Such references to Baal, Yahweh’s arch-enemy, seem “to reflect Israelite worship of this god”.52 In the Bible an emotionally sensitive Yahweh rages against those making offerings to Baal. He specially selects prophets to extinguish his cult. And yet the Bible contains many revealing stories telling how the chosen people repeatedly turned to Baal: eg, 1 Kings xvi, 31-33. The Israeli monarch, Ahab, “went and served Baal and worshipped him. He, Ahab, erected an altar for Baal, in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria.”

Not that the southern kingdom was immune. 1 Kings xiv, 22-24, reports that the Judeans “also built for themselves high places, pillars, and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree. They did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.”

Despite the various theories that Israel originated in the desert margins, worship of Baal indicates a clear orientation towards arable agriculture. Baal symbolises fertility and has been anthropologically categorised as a “dying and rising god”. In The golden bough (1914) James Frazer coined this designation, abstracting from his forensic studies of Osiris, Tammuz and Adonis - all male gods representing nature’s cycle, who “annually died and rose again from the dead”.53

Whether Baal died and miraculously sprung to life again, or simply disappeared and then returned to view, is still a matter of debate amongst scholars.54 However, in the Ugaritic Baal cycle we read the following lines: “Baal is dead! What will return him to life; whereupon all nature blossomed again and El proclaimed: ‘Baal the conqueror lives; the prince, the lord of the earth, has revived.’”55

The Bronze age emporium city of Ugarit is located near Ras Shamra (on the coast of Syria, about 100 miles north of Beirut). At the height of its prosperity the city is variously estimated to have had a population ranging from 3,115 to 13,555 (at either margin impressive for the time)56. It was excavated in 1929 under the direction of Claude FA Schaeffer and several libraries of clay tablets were brought to light. They include the Baal cycle and other sacred texts. Ugarit and Israel were closely related culturally. Ugaritic and Hebrew constitute branches on the same linguistic tree. There is a distinct religious similarity too. Tell-tale parallel sayings, poems and stories crop up in the Bible and the Ugaritic texts. Eg, in the Ugarit texts one finds mention of “herem warfare”: that is, the type of warfare supposedly practised by Joshua, in which “all things connected to the enemy in a battle are consecrated to the god by killing them, either in the battle itself or afterwards”.57 Mark Smith makes the salient point: “the Ugaritic texts … offer significant gains for understanding the Israelite religion”.58

Baal is a storm god and is shown locked in an epic life-and-death struggle with Yam (god of stormy seas and chaos) and Mot (god of death). Yam kills Baal, but the tables are then reversed. Mot reluctantly submits to the risen/returned Baal. The god Baal has a long list of other adventures and enemies. Despite that, despite his list of successful struggles against them, in the Ugarit texts at least, he never becomes the chief god. He is always doomed to be the heir apparent (in that sense time remains frozen).

Seemingly the circular Baal cult involved orgiastic ceremonies and human sacrifice carried out at special sites called tophets. We are informed by the writers of antiquity, including Plutarch, about Carthage (a Phoenician colony) and the religiously prescribed, and redeeming, practice of roasting babies alive. If that happened - and most historians and archaeologists are convinced that it was not Roman black propaganda - such state-sanctioned infanticide would surely indicate a social crisis of some kind; but that way Baal was gratified or mollified.

The Bible itself contains stories both condemning and condoning child sacrifice. Jeremiah vii,31 has Yahweh rejecting the “abomination” of those who “burn their sons and daughters in the fire”. But that must be set against a theological background where Exodus xxii,29 commands that “the first born of your sons shall be given to me”. Also in Exodus, this time xxxiv, we read: “All the first-born of your sons you shall redeem.” Nor does Yahweh show the slightest compunction in cynically testing Abraham with the instruction to sacrifice his son, Isaac.59 In Judges the Israeli war leader, Jephthah, does kill his unnamed daughter and only child. Hubristically, Jephthah had vowed to Yahweh that, if granted military victory over the Ammonites, he would give as a “burnt offering” whomsoever first greeted him when he returned home.60

Working out the broad outlines of the original Hebrew religion does not rely on exegesis alone. Over many decades excavators have unearthed an impressive range of objects - amulets, carvings, seals, statutes - which show that ancient Israel/Judea was “thoroughly polytheistic”. Many of the figures depicted are thought to be gods and goddesses - though we cannot be sure - not mere mortals. Artistic interpretation thereby comes to the fore amongst contending academics.61

Then there was a wall painting and inscription found at Kuntillet Ajrud, in the Sinai, dated 850-750 BCE. It referred to the gods El, Baal and Yahweh … and “his Asherah”.62 An archaeological bombshell.

We are, however, as suggested above, provided with another, much wider, background picture of ancient Israel through the Ugaritic texts. The Ugaritic pantheon has four distinct levels. At the summit sits the supreme god and his wife (El and Asherah). Below them their 70 divine children (including Yam, Mot, Baal, Astarte, Dagon, Tirosch, Horon, Nahar, Resheph, Kotar Hosis and Anat, as well as the sun-goddess, Shapshu and the moon-god, Yerak). The stars of El. Then comes Kothar wa-Hasis, the chief minister. Finally lesser servants, those whom the Bible calls angels (in other words, messenger-gods). Outside the divine household the Ugaritic religion was inhabited by numerous evil spirits, devils and a Satan figure (Shachar). This arrangement would seem to be “intimately related” to the structure of the royal household in ancient Ugarit.63

Main god

Frank Cross (following Albrecht Alt) lists the various names of the main god of Genesis and Exodus as it originally appeared: El‑Shaddai, El‑Elyon, El‑Olam, El‑Bethel, El‑Elohay‑Israel, El‑Roi.64 Yahweh comes to dominance in other books, but many of El’s attributes, titles and relationships are assumed by, or transfer to, him. In 1 Kings xxii,19-22 we read of Yahweh meeting with his “host of heaven”. Then there is Asherah. In the Old Testament she is the wife of Baal. But, as we have already mentioned, archaeological evidence shows that, at least amongst some Judeans, the goddess Asherah was considered Yahweh’s co-ruler and spouse. A marital join continued in the ditheistic belief system of the Hebrew mercenary community based in Egypt down to the 3rd century BCE. Papyrus found on Elephantine - a little strip of an island located just above the first cataract in the Nile river - shows that they were worshipped as a couple.65

In terms of this discussion, the Hebrew word for death, ‘metu’, is instructive. Linguists say it is derived from Mot, the Ugaritic god of death.66 The word for sea, ‘yam’, is even more revealing, being an exact match for the Ugaritic sea god. Scholars have also noted that names such as Daniel, Ishmael, Michael and Israel are “theophoric in form” - that is to say, the suffix reproduces the divine name, in this case the god El.67 ‘Israel’ means something like “God rules” or “May god show himself as ruler”.68

In all likelihood, as tradition dictated, Hebrew clans continued to venerate their own particular family gods or goddesses (statues, etc were often clearly female and big-breasted). Numerous intimate shrines are thought to have existed, located within houses, villages, caves and groves of trees. The cults associated with these sites would seem to have involved an annual calendar of events: eg, “feasting, dancing and betrothals”.69

While the topmost pantheon has been considerably reduced in biblical references, the evidence shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the religion of ancient Israel closely matched those of neighbouring peoples in the Levant - including the opulent and sophisticated civilisation of Phoenicia. We know that hilltops and mountains were considered especially holy - the Bible contains many hints: Bethel, Gezer, Jerusalem, Arnon, Bamah and Gibeon were, we can gather, all important religious centres.

Saul, David and even Solomon are shown as patrons. Presumably, during visits to high places, they would have paid generously to have had sex with cult prostitutes, sacrificed animals or children, and sought favours from one or another of the “host of heaven”: El, Yahweh, Asherah, Baal, Yam, Mot, Astarte, Dagon, Shapshu, Yerak, etc.

There was also an unmistakable religious-cultural borrowing from Egypt. Looking at the various objects photographed, or drawn, by archaeologists that are reproduced in books and journals, or placed on the internet, one is instantly struck by an extraordinary similarity between pharaonic depictions of humans, animals and gods and those of ancient Israel/Canaan. Hardly surprising, though, given the prolonged periods of Canaanite vassalship to Egypt.

That aside, I think we can conclude, with some considerable degree of assurance, that notions of an exclusive Yahwehism providing the ideological inspiration for the Israelite peasant movement, and then constituting the monotheistic religion of a liberated Israel, are simply not credible. Ditto, notions of the early monarchs as defenders of an exclusive Yahwehite faith (albeit ideologically reversed).

Mark Smith has charted how Yahwehite henotheism slowly begins to emerge from polytheism (both modern concepts, of course, that would not have been understood by anybody living in the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age). The four heavenly levels went through a successive series of narrowing modifications. To begin with, Yahweh was merely one of El’s and Athirat’s children - El dividing the world “according to the number of the divine sons”. Supposedly there were 70 nations with Israel going to Yahweh, of course. Later redactors, it is suggested, “evidently uncomfortable” with the polytheism expressed in the phrase, “according to the number of the divine sons”, alter it to read: “according to the number of the children of Israel” (neatly, its patriarchal family heads are also said to number 70).

Psalm lxxxii shows the first surviving biblical narrowing of the divine family. It relates how the god, El, presides over a divine council/assembly, in which Yahweh stands up and makes his accusation against the other gods. Here the text shows “the older theology”, which the passage is “rejecting”.70

By the 8th century BCE, during which the Israeli state and monarchy comes to a shuddering end, it is “evident that the god, El, was identified with Yahweh”. As a result Yahweh-El becomes the husband of the goddess, Asherah-Athirat. As I have shown above, this is supported by archaeological evidence of a joint cult. Not surprisingly then, there are also biblical condemnations of the presence of her statue in Jerusalem. Ezekiel xiii,10 reports that the Jerusalem temple was full of “the idols of the house of Israel”.

In henotheistic form, the religious devotion to Yahweh puts him in the role of a divine king ruling over the other deities. This arrangement appears in psalm xxxix,6-8, where the “sons of god”, or “heavenly beings”, are called upon to heap praise upon Yahweh alone. Between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE other gods are increasingly depicted as adjuncts of Yahweh’s power: they shrink, turn into devils or disappear altogether.

Narrowing the hierarchy of heaven follows - or represents, albeit in idealised form - the emergence of kings from amongst the Israeli tribes. Smith argues that there were associated “traumatic” changes occurring in the legal framework; the individual becomes a legal personality, next to and alongside the extended family.71 He cites Deuteronomy xxvi,16; Jeremiah xxxi,29-30; and Ezekiel xviii. Old tribal structures and egalitarian relationships were collapsing, or undergoing rapid decay, and being subsumed by class interests and property rights.

Social stratification was getting wider and wider. The poor got much poorer, the rich got much richer. Such were the origins of Yahwehite monotheism.

This article is an edited extract from Jack Conrad’s Fantastic reality: Marxism and the politics of religion. It can be purchased at
www.lulu.com/shop/jack-conrad/fantastic-reality/paperback/product-20305419.html

  1. See DB Redford Egypt, Canaan and Israel in ancient times Princeton NJ 1992.↩︎

  2. Joshua i,18.↩︎

  3. Joshua i,4.↩︎

  4. Joshua xi,21.↩︎

  5. Joshua ix,24.↩︎

  6. Joshua xi,14.↩︎

  7. Deuteronomy xv,4.↩︎

  8. Deuteronomy xv,11.↩︎

  9. Judges xxi,25.↩︎

  10. T Thompson Early history of the Israelite people Leiden 1992, p45.↩︎

  11. GH Mendenhall Ancient Israel’s faith and history: an introduction to the Bible in context London 2001.↩︎

  12. NK Gottwald The tribes of Yahweh Sheffield 1999, pxxxv.↩︎

  13. J Dus ‘Moses or Joshua? On the problem of founder of the Israelite religion’ Radical Religion No2, 1975, p28.↩︎

  14. I Finkelstein and NA Silberman The Bible unearthed New York NY 2002, p77.↩︎

  15. Ibid.↩︎

  16. The sea peoples were apparently an ethnically mixed group who attacked and rampaged throughout the eastern Mediterranean in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE. Yet despite an “ever expanding” archaeological record, their origins, identity and material culture “remain elusive” (AE Killebrew and G Lehmann [eds] The Philistines and other ‘sea peoples’ in text and archaeology Atlanta GA 2013, p5).↩︎

  17. I Finkelstein and NA Silberman The Bible unearthed New York NY 2002, p83.↩︎

  18. Jeremiah ii,2.↩︎

  19. I Finkelstein and NA Silberman The Bible unearthed New York NY 2002, p103.↩︎

  20. E Hobsbawm Primitive rebels Manchester 1959, p4.↩︎

  21. G Mendenhall ‘The Hebrew conquest of Palestine’ Biblical Archaeologist Vol 25, 1962, p72.↩︎

  22. Ibid.↩︎

  23. N Gottwald, ‘Two models for the origins of ancient Israel’ in HB Huffmon, FA Spina and ARW Green (eds) The quest for the kingdom of god Winona Lake IN 1983, p5.↩︎

  24. NK Gottwald The tribes of Yahweh Sheffield 1999, p233.↩︎

  25. Ibid p473.↩︎

  26. WG Dever Who were the early Israelites, and where did they come from? Grand Rapids MI 2003, p53.↩︎

  27. NK Gottwald The tribes of Yahweh Sheffield 1999, p368.↩︎

  28. See LH Morgan Ancient society Gloucester MA 1974, chapters 2-5.↩︎

  29. NK Gottwald The tribes of Yahweh Sheffield 1999, p66.↩︎

  30. See R Hilton Bond men made free London 2003; ER Wolf Peasant wars in the 20th century New York NY 1969.↩︎

  31. NK Gottwald, ‘Early Israel as an anti-imperial community’ in RA Horsley (ed) In the shadow of empire Louisville KY 2008, p9.↩︎

  32. See M Mauss The gift London 1990.↩︎

  33. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 11, London 1979, pp187-88.↩︎

  34. 1 Samuel iv-v.↩︎

  35. 1 Samuel xiii,5.↩︎

  36. 1 Samuel viii,10-19.↩︎

  37. 1 Samuel xiii,19.↩︎

  38. 1 Samuel xv,3.↩︎

  39. 1 Samuel xv,9.↩︎

  40. 1 Samuel xvi,13.↩︎

  41. B Halpern David’s secret demons Cambridge 2004, pxv.↩︎

  42. 2 Samuel ix,10.↩︎

  43. 1 Kings xi,3.↩︎

  44. 2 Samuel vi,16.↩︎

  45. See NP Lemche, ‘The Old Testament - a Hellenistic book?’ Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Vol 7, No2, pp163-93.↩︎

  46. See P Davies In search of ‘ancient Israel’ Sheffield 1992; and T Thompson Early history of the Israeli people Leiden 1992.↩︎

  47. 2 Kings ix,14-27.↩︎

  48. WG Dever Did god have a wife? Grand Rapids MI 2005, p278.↩︎

  49. Ibid p98.↩︎

  50. I Finkelstein and NA Silberman David and Solomon New York NY 2007, p68.↩︎

  51. Exodus xx,3.↩︎

  52. bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/MSmith_BiblicalMonotheism.↩︎

  53. J Frazer The golden bough Ware 1993, p325.↩︎

  54. TND Mettinger, ‘The “Dying and rising god”’ in BF Batto and KL Roberts (eds) David and Zion Winona Lake IN 2004.↩︎

  55. bible-history.com/resource/the-worship-of-baal.↩︎

  56. See W Randall Garr, ‘A population estimate of ancient Urgarit’ - available at www.jstor.org/stable/1356929.↩︎

  57. MS Smith and WR Pitard The Ugaritic Baal cycle Vol 2, Leiden 2009, p175.↩︎

  58. MS Smith, ‘Recent study of the Israelite religion in light of the Ugartic texts’ in KL Younger jr Ugarit at seventy-five Winona Lake IN 2007, p20.↩︎

  59. Genesis xxii.↩︎

  60. Judges xi,31.↩︎

  61. See O Keel and C Uehlinger Gods, goddesses and images of god in ancient Israel Minneapolis MN 1998.↩︎

  62. Ibid p1.↩︎

  63. MS Smith and WR Pitard The Ugaritic Baal cycle Vol 2, Leiden 2009, p46.↩︎

  64. See FM Cross Canaanite myth and Hebrew epic Harvard MA 1997. Also WG Dever Did god have a wife? Grand Rapids MI 2005, pp257-60.↩︎

  65. There have been other archaeological discoveries pointing to a widespread belief in Asherah and considerable growth of academic literature on the subject. See, for example, O Keel and C Uehlinger Gods, goddesses and images of god in ancient Israel; N Wyatt Serving the gods; J Day Yahweh and the gods and goddesses of Canaan and WG Dever Did god have a wife? The pinnacle of this line of research is the landmark volume, Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible 1999.↩︎

  66. The word “‘metu’ may be derived from the word ‘mot’ meaning death and the ‘u’ is a suffix that means ‘their’ - ‘their death’” (web.archive.org/web/20100113080913/http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/emagazine/010.html).↩︎

  67. See M Magnusson BC - the archaeology of the Bible lands London 1977.↩︎

  68. R Albertz A history of Israelite religion in the Old Testament period Vol 1, London 1994, p76.↩︎

  69. WG Dever Did god have a wife? Grand Rapids MI 2005, p96.↩︎

  70. MS Smith The origins of biblical monotheism Oxford 2001, p49.↩︎

  71. See MS Smith The early history of god Grand Rapids MI, 2001.↩︎