The same sort of fluidity is attested in Mesopotamia. A hymn to the Mesopotamian god Marduk, written toward the end of the second millennium BCE, presents him as manifesting various other divinities in himself:
Sin (the moon god) is your divinity, Anu (the sky god) your sovereignty,
Dagan is your lordship, Enlil your kingship
Adad is your might, wise Ea your perceptions,
Nabu, holder of the tablet stylus, is your skill.
Your leadership (in battle) is Ninurta, your might Nergal . . .34
All the names mentioned belong to different gods; they are all, at least in this hymn, deemed to be present in the single deity Marduk.
Ancient treaties between two states often listed divine witnesses as potential enforcers of the treaties. This did not involve theological speculation or divine braggadocio; listing the witnessing gods was a down-to-earth matter, since properly identifying them was needed to ensure credible enforcement of the treaty. It is significant, therefore, that in some ancient Near Eastern texts, the same deity is sometimes mentioned more than once and connected to two or more geographic sites. In one case, for example, the treaty witnesses include “Ishtar of Arbela” but also “Ishtar of Nineveh,” as well as the planet Venus, which was generally equated with the goddess Ishtar. How many separate Ishtars existed in the eyes of the treaty makers?
A similar array of multiple manifestations of a single god—this time, of Ba‘al—are found in a treaty of King Esarhaddon of Assyria:
May Ba‘al-Shamēm, Ba‘al-Malagē, and Ba‘al-Ṣaphon raise an evil wind against your ships, to undo their moorings, tear out their mooring pole . . .35
Such multiple manifestations of deities in the ancient Near East are so much the rule that the Assyriologist Barbara Nevling Porter has suggested that the Akkadian word ilu—heretofore always translated as “god”—should really be redefined:
Like “gods,” ilu s are usually represented in Mesopotamian texts in anthropomorphic form, as divine persons who could eat, take trips, marry, and have adventures (the ilu Ea as king, for example). In addition, however, each ilu was also imagined as a force of nature or a human power (the ilu Ea represented fresh water, for example, and the ilu Adad, storm) and by extension, as the power in such phenomena (Ea was understood to be the power for life in water, for example, and Adad, the violent and destructive energy in storms). Ilu s were further identified with an array of objects and abstract entities, including for most great gods a number, a semi-precious stone, a mineral, an animal or emblem, a star, constellation, or other celestial entity. Ishtar, for example was not only a divine person and the embodiment of love, war, and a variety of other activities and forces, but was also identified with the number fifteen, the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, the mineral lead, and . . . the planet Venus—equations made explicit in god-lists, but also clearly reflected in hymns, royal inscriptions, mystical commentaries, and other types of texts, as well as in visual imagery . . .36
After having further illustrated the fluidity of these Mesopotamian deities,37 Porter concludes:
An Assyrian ilu, in short, was not a “god” in our sense, but a set of related but not completely congruent phenomena and qualities, only one of which was imagined as a divine person. Including in itself this array of aspects, a Mesopotamian ilu (and its Assyrian counterpart) thus had greater fluidity of manifestation and greater potential for identification with other ilu s who shared similar qualities or powers than the more strongly personified—and thus bounded— God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, or than the anthropomorphically conceived gods of Greek mythology.38
All this is of great importance to the present study. The very fluidity of the ancient ilu suggests that these divine beings occupied a kind of intermediate position between the ever-changing manifestations of the undifferentiated Outside and what Porter calls the “more strongly personified” (that is, person-like) sort of god that we know from the Bible, later Greco-Roman depictions, and other sources. The gods of Mesopotamia simultaneously existed in different places and different forms. Here is part of an oft-cited hymn39 of the late second millennium in praise of the warrior god Ninurta:
O lord, your face is Shamash (the sun god), your hair . . . ;
Your eyes, lord, Enlil and [Ninlin] (the wind god and his consort, who move across a set path in the sky),
Your eyeballs are Gula and Belet-il[i] (both of them mother goddesses and stars),
Your eyelids, O lord, are the twins Sin (the moon) [and Shamash (the sun)],
Your eyebrows are the corona of Shamash, which [. . .]
Your mouth’s shape, O lord, is Ishtar-of-the-stars,
Anu and Antu (the sky and his consort) are your lips, your speech [. . .]
Your discoursing tongue (?) is Pabilsag (a storm god), who [ ] on high,
The roof of your mouth, lord, is the circumference of heaven and earth.
It would certainly be misleading simply to say that Ninurta is a heavenly deity: in this hymn he is all the gods of heaven at once, indeed, as the last cited line asserts, he encompasses heaven and earth together.40 (Has the great Outside truly been differentiated, even here?)
The plural Be‘alim, Mother Israel’s lovers, thus seem to hark back to a conception of the gods that existed for centuries in Mesopotamia and ancient Canaan. The same god can exist in two or more places at once, or can be manifest in different forms simultaneously, in a star or planet, in a little statue, in an animal, an emblem, and so forth. Indeed, the Bible itself speaks of Ba‘al existing at different sites: Ba‘al Saphon (Exod 14:2) but also Ba‘al Pe‘or (Num 25:3). Other texts from this region invoke “Ba‘al of the Lebanon,” “Ba‘al of Ugarit,” and “Ba‘al of Sidon.”
The biblical scholar Benjamin Sommer has suggested that the best way to understand this fluidity in ancient gods might be to appropriate a concept from elsewhere:
We might borrow a phrase from Indian culture to describe these local Ishtars as something like avatars of Ishtar. This term is appropriate, because it “implies a certain diminution of the deity when he or she assumes the form of an avatāra. Avatāras usually are understood to be only partial manifestations of the deity who assumes them.”41
In other words, the ilus of Mesopotamia, as well as the various Be‘alim located here and there in ancient Canaan, were not the sum total of the god or goddess. Rather, they were fluid manifestations, genetically connected with other manifestations of the same deity elsewhere on earth or in the heavens, in stars and in statues. Perhaps, as with the Indian avatars, you could worship a god in one place and connect thereby to all that comprised his or her being, down here or on high.
This may also have been true of Israel’s own deity, YHWH. He is mentioned as “YHWH of Teman (the southland, that is, Edom) and his Asherah”* on a clay water jar discovered in the eastern part of the Sinai desert, at a site called Kuntillat Ajrud (“[isolated] hill of wells”), not far from the current Israeli-Egyptian border.42 The writing has been dated to the eighth century BCE. Another water jar there mentions “YHWH of Samaria and his Asherah,” and an inscription on a bench at the site likewise reads “YHWH of Teman.” It seems as if one element of the basic fog of a god’s being—namely, the ability of a god to be manifest simultaneously in two different locations—was shared, at least for a time, in the religion of Israel. Indeed, what may have been at stake in Hosea’s anti-Ba‘al polemic was not just the matter of calling the rain-bringing deity by the right name, but two rather different ways of conceiving of a god: the old, fluid way of the Be‘alim, or the apparently newer way of thinking of a god or goddess as equal to its sole, humanoid manifestation, what Barbara N. Porter described above as “the more strongly personified—and thus bounded—God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.”43
Asking About Marduk
If I could buttonhole an ancient Mesopotamian and ask him the question of this book, “How do you and the gods interact? Have you ever met one face-to-face?” I think I know what his answ
er would probably be. Certainly he has seen Marduk/Enlil face-to-face, in that indescribably sacred presence of the god who is condensed into a small, wood-and-metal being, the one that is carried out of the Esagila temple during the annual Akitu festival and paraded before the people—“Yes, I have seen Marduk.” But if he were asked: “Fine, but apart from that, what does Marduk, or any of the gods and goddesses, actually have to do with your life and the life of your family?” he would probably react with incomprehension, motioning skyward with a gesture that you can still see in the modern Middle East and which means, simply, “God.” “What do the gods have to do with me and my family? Everything! They are in my city, protecting its interests. They are in other cities as well, simultaneously in this shrine and that shrine and that one. Of course they are up in the skies, in the stars and planets that I can see with my eyes. So what are you asking about? Tell me how you can begin to make sense of the world without realizing that the gods control everything and we humans are almost nothing, their little servants subject to their will.”
This is, I believe, what an ancient Mesopotamian would say, and the answer of an ancient Canaanite or an early Israelite would probably not differ in kind. But there is one location in particular where the meeting between humans and deities was particularly revealing, a meeting whose character can thus shed further light on the reality of encounters with God as depicted in the Bible.
6
Eternity in Ancient Temples
CONTAGIOUS HOLINESS; SACRIFICING ANIMALS; A TABERNACLE IN THE WILDERNESS; CEREMONIES THAT DENY THE OBVIOUS
In the last chapter we caught a glimpse of who the gods were and what they were like. It remains to see where they lived, and how humans—not all humans, only those who were specially trained and prepared—could actually meet the gods face-to-face.
All manner of peoples in different places around the globe have reported actually encountering this or that deity. In fact, ancient societies have often devoted much of their precious resources to enabling such encounters to take place, creating a physical spot where gods and humans can meet in some close physical proximity. Some of the earliest material evidence of religions that we possess consists of the physical remains or accoutrements of ancient temples, or rooms in houses or other structures that were apparently intended as a meeting point for humans and gods.1
The very idea of such a meeting was fraught with danger. After all, gods and goddesses existed on the upper shelf of reality, infinitely superior to mere humans; why should humans have thought that the gods could be encountered at all? And even if that were possible, wouldn’t the humans be scared to death of such a meeting? The gods had all the power; one false move in their presence and they might kill you—so the best course no doubt would be to let the gods go about their business undisturbed. In fact, just touching a deity’s accoutrement—such as the large box (the “ark of the covenant”) identified with God’s presence2—killed a man named Uzzah in the time of King David:
When they came to the threshing floor of Nachon, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, since the oxen [pulling its cart] were stumbling. The anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down because he had laid his hand on the ark, and he died there, next to the ark of God. And David was greatly troubled because the LORD had burst forth in that way; he named the place Perez Uzzah [“the bursting forth against Uzzah”] [as it is known] to this day. Fright of the LORD seized David that day; he said, “How can the ark of the LORD ever be brought to me?” (2 Sam 6:6–9; 1 Chron 13:9–12)
All Uzzah wanted to do was prevent the ark from slipping off the cart. But the ark was permeated with holiness (just as emblems and statues were so permeated, as we saw in the previous chapter); touching it was like touching a high-tension wire. So no matter how noble his purpose, Uzzah’s uninvited touch cost him his life; dealing with deities was undeniably dangerous. And yet, as far as we can go back in history, people ran the risk: they met gods and goddesses (as well as dead ancestors, indwelling spirits, and the like), not only through chance encounters but at special, prearranged meeting points. Why did this happen, and when did it start?
The “why” part is easier to answer. Ancient humans were certainly aware of the dangers involved in encountering the powerful divinities, but they were also inevitably drawn to seek out such meetings. This attraction was due not only to what the German theologian Rudolf Otto termed the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (the mystery that both frightens and fascinates)3 of the divine, but also because of the simple fact that these divine beings ran the world. Evidence of their ceaseless activity was visible everywhere in what we would call natural phenomena. They were responsible for specific places and people and events—the tightening death-grip of a drought, for example, as well as the sudden, inrushing storm clouds that put an end to it—but also for the steady rhythms of the seasons and the skies, the waxing and waning of the moon (someone must be doing that), the ripening and withering of the fruits and grains, life and death itself. Everywhere was a buzzing, vibrant presence of gods or angels: “the sound of them goes throughout the earth, and their words to the edge of the world” (Ps 19:5).4 To actually meet these controllers afforded the precious opportunity to win their favor and, sometimes, to save one’s group from destruction. True, such meetings had sometimes ended in disaster, but this was hardly a reason to abandon them: on the contrary, the humans could seek to design the physical circumstances in which meetings with the gods would take place in such a way as to minimize the danger and maximize the possibility of a favorable reception.
Out of these considerations arose all of the characteristics of the ancient Near Eastern temple. A word of caution here: the very word “temple” may confuse modern readers, since most people nowadays think of a temple principally as a place where human beings gather together to worship.5 But the “house of prayer” type of temple is a relatively late idea; Christianity and Islam inherited it from Judaism’s synagogue, which first made its appearance sometime in the late biblical period.6 Long, long before that, however, was a different sort of temple in the ancient Near East, a grand house or palace that had one overriding purpose: to be the earthly residence of a god or goddess. As such, its every feature was designed to please the deity whose “house” it was while minimizing the potential danger inherent in encountering a supernatural being at close quarters.
Cadres of specially trained personnel (“priests”) officiated in the temple; their entrance was predicated on, among other things, their strict maintenance of ritual purity, so that no uncleanness, nor the slightest flaw, could repel the god or goddess.7 Inside the temple, all that was desirable in the world was offered to the deity—animal and vegetable sacrifices, some of them burned on an altar and thereby apparently vaporized for divine consumption; wine or beer libations of similar purpose; songs of praise and flattery sung to the divine beings in order to win them over. The inner part of the temple was the most sacred place, normally entered only by high officials of the priesthood and the royal court, since it was here that the god himself resided, inhabiting a small statue of wood, metal, and fabric and shimmering with divine power.8 Indeed, save for this statue, the items mentioned are all paralleled by the prescriptions and descriptions of temple worship in the Bible, particularly in the making of the desert tabernacle (Exod 25–40) and the laws of sacrifices and ritual purity found in the book of Leviticus (especially chapters 1–10) and elsewhere.
Holiness
People are somewhat stymied by the word “holiness.” Modern dictionaries fall back on synonyms, “the quality of being sacred” and the like, which really don’t tell us anything. In a way, this is all to the good; the indefinability of this word reflects our own, stuttering, human response to something that seems, if we try to take it seriously, overwhelming, inexpressible. But in the context of the Hebrew Bible, the dimensions of this quality can at least be set out schematically, in a widening set of concentric circles.
Holy i
s, first and foremost, what God is. This is, in fact, God’s primary characteristic, the adjective that describes Him. Thus, the seraphim surrounding God’s throne proclaim in unison, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts” (Isa. 6:3). This is His essence. But holiness is contagious. Anything that comes into close proximity to God becomes holy by dint of this proximity: a quality, or some sort of energy, jumps from Him to whatever is nearest, rather like the spark from a Van de Graaff generator. So God’s holiness sticks to the angels surrounding His heavenly throne; they are referred to simply as kedoshim, “holy ones.” In God’s earthly temple in Jerusalem9 was a small enclosure set off from the rest. It was known as the holy of holies (a kind of superlative meaning “the holiest place”). This was where God was deemed to appear, enthroned above the outstretched wings of the two cherubim atop the ark of the covenant. According to Leviticus 16, only one human being, the high priest, was ever permitted to enter this enclosure, and this only for a few moments on the holiest day of the year, the Day of Atonement. Anyone else would be overcome by the holiness and die.
The next concentric circle of holiness was that of the temple as a whole, which was also touched by God’s contagious holiness.10 It was called, among other names, the mikdash, “the holy place,” while its appurtenances are called kelei kodesh, vessels of holiness. Most of the temple compound was closed to all but the priests, the kohanim. They were the holiest people in Israel, having been appointed to mediate between God and ordinary Israelites. Priests could touch things in the temple, or see things there, that ordinary people could not—if non-priests did, they would probably go the way of Uzzah. In fact, in one historical incident, the people of the town of Beit Shemesh are said to have met a similar fate for merely seeing the ark:
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