The Great Shift
Page 47
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17. This is too broad a subject to take on properly here, but I will mention what seem to me to be three specific shortcomings: (1) To focus on the HADD-inspired imagining of specific agents is to define religious consciousness too narrowly. In the terms that I have been using, it is to begin with the hidden causers, which is to say, it begins too late, “after the Garden.” Surely it was those millennia of contemplating the undifferentiated Outside that were crucial in creating the basic sense of self characteristic of Homo religiosus, including his semipermeable mind—long before any human being began to differentiate individual gods and goddesses. (On this and the following point, see below, note 25) (2) Equating religion with the belief in humanoid deities is also far too narrow and, as just suggested, too late as well. (3) The equation HADD + ToM = belief in divine beings is altogether mechanical; it takes no account of the broader environment that was the “enchanted world”—most particularly, the still vivid sense of a living, breathing world all around that persisted long after the age of gods. All these, I think, are related to a more basic shortcoming mentioned earlier, the lack of religious imagination among those conducting the research.
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18. Malinowski worked principally in the Trobriand Islands, starting with Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (1922) and followed by a long series of books and essays. See in particular the collection Malinowski (1954).
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19. See especially his The Mind of Primitive Man (1937) and Race, Language and Culture (1940).
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20. In particular Evans-Pritchard (1937) and (1956); see also my brief discussion, Kugel (2011a), 124–26, 161–65.
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21. A student of Evans-Pritchard; see Lienhardt (1961).
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22. Among many: Lévi-Strauss (1955, Tristes Tropiques); (1964, The Raw and the Cooked); (1966, The Savage Mind).
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23. In particular the essays collected in Geertz (1973), esp. 87–125, 170–89; and in the present context, Geertz (2000), 167–86.
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24. Worthy of mention here is the work of Susanne K. Langer, whose interest in religion is well known (she described religion as nothing less than the “most typical and fundamental edifice of the human mind”: Langer (1942), 33. This book (often unacknowledged) opened the way to the whole modern approach to religion as symbol-making, reflecting the universal human tendency to create meaning out of the raw data of the senses through language and other means.
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25. The Egyptologist Jan Assmann has well captured the distinction between the first deities to emerge from the great Outside (which he calls “tribal” deities) and the much later stage represented by the polytheism of the ancient Near East and Egypt. “The polytheistic religions of the ancient Near East and Ancient Egypt represent highly developed cultural achievements that are inseparably linked to the political organization of the early state and are not to be found in tribal societies. Tribal religions are characterized by their scarcely humanized and only weakly articulated and differentiated concepts of the divine, which is worshiped in the form of ancestral spirits, and which is adored without any ritual worship in the form of a very remote high god . . . The great achievement of polytheism is the articulation of a common semantic universe. The gods are given a semantic dimension by means of mythical narratives and theocosmological speculation. It is this semantic dimension that makes the[ir] names translatable. Tribal religions are ethnocentric. The powers that are worshiped by one tribe are different from the powers worshiped by another tribe. By contrast, the highly differentiated members of polytheistic pantheons lend themselves easily to cross-cultural translation or ‘interpretation’”: Assmann (1997), 45.
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26. Burkert (1985), 10.
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27. The plurality of religious ideas and practices even within Iron Age Israel has been studied in, among other works, Z. Zevit’s wide-ranging survey of the archaeological and textual evidence: see Zevit (2001); the plural “religions” in his title well reflects not only the broad variety of religious practices, but the plurality of sources on which his study draws.
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28. See for example Burkert (1985), 82–84.
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29. Foster (1995), 55.
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30. Ibid., 57.
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31. See on this M. Smith (2002); Sommer (2009), 188–89, n. 79.
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32. Mark Smith correctly points out that these two verses are redactional, “dating probably to the second half of the monarchy,” while the reference to Ba‘al in Jud 6 “appears to be older, as it is integrated into the fabric of the story”: Smith (2002), 12–13.
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33. Cited in Baines (2000), 33.
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34. Cited in Sommer (2009), 16. This and subsequent examples are all drawn from Sommer, 13–37.
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35. Ba‘al-Shamēm is literally the “Ba‘al of heaven,” Ba‘al-Malagē is apparently the syncretistic association of Ba‘al with the tutelary Phoenician god of Tyre, Melqart (“king of the city”), while Ba‘al-Ṣaphon is identified with the sacred Mount Saphon (modern Jebel al-Aqra’, on the Syrian Turkish border). See further on this Sommer (2009), 24–25 and 188 n. 79, as well as Parpola and Parpola (1988) cited in Sommer (2009), 13–37.
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36. Porter (2000), 243–44.
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37. See on the same topic Pongratz-Leisten (n.d.), 6.
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38. Porter (2000), 247–48.
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39. Foster (1995), 713–14.
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40. As several scholars have pointed out: Porter (2000), 249–50; Pongratz-Leisten (n.d.), 6; Sommer (2009), 16.
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41. Sommer (2009), 15, citing Kinsley, “Avatāras,” in M. Eliade et al., Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1987) 14–15.
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42. Final publication of the excavation was reported in Meshel (2012).
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43. This is indeed the God of much of the Hebrew Bible, if not necessarily that of the above-cited inscriptional evidence (“YHWH of Teman” etc.). In the Bible, God is not omnipresent, but neither is He openly asserted to be present in two places at once. Instead, as we have already seen, He appears, delivers a message or does something else, and then disappears. He goes down from heaven to inspect the tower of Babel (Gen 11:5) or to find out what the inhabitants of Sodom are up to (Gen 18:21). He moves from place to place. Whatever its original meaning, the description of God in Deut 33:2 was certainly included there as a description of a sequence of actions, tracing His path into Canaan: “The LORD went forth from Sinai; He shone upon them from Seir; He appeared from Mount Paran; He entered from Ribbebot-kodesh.” This certainly accords with the narrative tradition: He was on Mount Sinai, but after some persuading, agreed to go along with the Israelites to Canaan (Exod 33:12–17), where He ultimately takes residence on another mountain, Zion. On what is called the Zion (or Zion-Sebaoth) theology, see Levenson (1985), 97–137.
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6. ETERNITY IN ANCIENT TEMPLES
1. Some have pointed to the Turkish site Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Anatolia, not far from the Syrian border, as giving the earliest evidence in the ancient Near East of a temple-like structure, going back to the tenth–eighth millennia BCE. At the same time, many scholars theorize that the earliest Mesopotamian shrines and temples might have been constructed of wood and reeds, perishable materials that would disappear without leaving a trace and thus might date back to far earlier times.
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2. Was the ark basically a container of objects sacred to God, like the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, or was it actually a kind of throne, the very throne that an invisible God would occ
upy when He spoke to Moses and his successors? On this, earlier scholars disagreed; see Haran (1985), 246–48. But the disagreement was in the biblical sources themselves: Deuteronomy and the texts that its theology influenced basically maintained the “container” position, while priestly texts adopted and adapted the “throne” position. For a clear presentation of the evidence: Sommer (2009), esp. 58–79.
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3. “Mystery” is only part of what mysterium designates, as Otto was well aware: it was also the hidden teachings or sacred rites that stood at the heart of ancient Greco-Roman religion, the thing that a mystagogus could impart to the initiate. As for tremendum, it means “to be trembled at.” The point is thus that the prospect of truly encountering the divine is one that simultaneously attracts and terrifies.
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4. On this psalm: Sommer (2015).
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5. In fact, our use of “temple” has a slightly prejudicial side to it: it usually designates the house of worship of people other than the majority. Thus, in English-speaking countries, Christians go to church; Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and other people have temples, whereas logically, their places of worship might likewise be called churches. In France, where most of the population is—if only nominally—Roman Catholic, non-Catholic Christians, a tiny minority in France, are said to worship in a temple protestant.
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6. See L. Levine (2000), who briefly considers the idea that the city gates may have served as a kind of forerunner of the synagogue (pp. 25–28), along with various other early datings of the synagogue (pp. 38–44) before getting to more solid evidence from pre-70 CE Judea (pp. 45–80). The role of the synagogue in Second Temple Judaism is connected to the practice of obligatory communal prayer, on which there remains considerable disagreement. One recent, thoughtful review of the evidence is that of Penner (2012), 3–72.
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7. These generalizations require some nuances. To begin with, the very category of priest covers a broad variety of temple personnel, so much so that the scholarly use of “priest” itself has been questioned. For example, one recent study that focuses on sixth-century Babylon distinguishes four main groups of priest-like functionaries: caterers (a category that included “brewers, bakers, butchers, milkmen, fishermen, oxherds, oil pressers, orchard keepers, and table setters”); artisans (including reed-workers, potters, weavers, washermen, goldsmiths, jewelers, and carpenters); ritual and prayer specialists (singers, lamentation priests, acrobats, exorcists, and temple-enterers); and other officials who, while not participating directly in cultic worship, were responsible for its smooth running (measurers, scribes, gatekeepers, and barbers). See Waerzeggers (2011). Moreover, the whole matter of cultic purity involved not only the absence of bodily impurities, but was related as well to the person’s descent (as in Leviticus, so too in Babylon, the “priesthood” was hereditary) and possession of a prebend (a share of a particular area of the cult). “Qualification depended on the candidate’s physical, mental, social, and legal status. Most requirements derived from purity concerns and involved the requirement of being whole, without blemish. Physically, the candidate had to be well-formed, showing no bodily defects, no signs of skin disease or illness. Mentally, he was expected to be devoted to his lord, not prone to criminal behaviour. Socially, the candidate had to descend from a consecrated priest. Purity of descent applied to all sons born within their father’s marriage, so the emphasis was on the mother’s virginity at marriage, not on her own descent, which was irrelevant. The fourth rule of admission was of a different nature as it did not relate to the candidate’s purity but to his legal status. Even before considering ritual qualifications, the experts checked whether the candidate was the owner of the relevant prebend. For instance, if the candidate applied for a position in the bakers’ division, he had to be in possession of a baker’s prebend. Concretely, this meant that the candidate was the legal successor of a retiring or deceased priest who owned that share before him. It was a custom in Neo-Babylonian temples for the retiring priest to introduce the young man personally to the temple board (kiništu) and propose his nomination. In normal circumstances, sons followed in the footsteps of their fathers, but it was not uncommon for an older priest to adopt his successor at a young age and introduce him to the craft”: ibid., 66.
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8. These statues have not survived, probably because the basic shape was carved out of altogether perishable wood, while precious metals and jewelry were looted; we do, however, have descriptions of the process of the god’s manufacture; see below.
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9. Of course there were others, at such places as Shiloh, Bethel, Dan, Beersheba, and into relatively late times, Elephantine in Egypt.
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10. As biblical scholars know, the picture here is rather more complex. Priestly sources indeed maintain that God has a kabod, a visible body, and that this body can be seen in the temple: nevertheless, the fact that it appears enthroned above the wings of the cherubim in what is otherwise an empty space would seem to imply that P’s God has something less than an ongoing, physical presence (otherwise, why not a real throne on which the embodied God might sit in permanence?). This notwithstanding, as we shall see, this priestly model of the deity and his temple does owe much to the old Mesopotamian one. (Later, in the priestly book of Ezekiel, God’s kabod departs its home for a throne-chariot that follows Israel into exile.) Deuteronomy, by contrast, locates God permanently in heaven; the temple is merely the place where God has “caused His name to dwell.” The precise significance of this repeated phrase in D is never made explicit; I find it difficult to believe that Deuteronomy’s “name theology” was merely the result of a misinterpretation of the Akkadian cognate šumšu šakān, which refers to the erection of a “display monument” marking a victory as well as a claim to the land on which the monument was erected. See Kugel (2007a), 727, n. 2. But the significance of God’s šem (“name”) in D is unspecified. It may not quite be a hypostasis of God (see Sommer [2009], 66), but God’s šem “connects heaven and earth” (ibid., 63), so that its presence in the temple refers to something real that simultaneously happens above—a bit like the later notion, attested in the late Second Temple period and for some time thereafter, that there exist two corresponding sanctuaries, a heavenly and earthly one. See Kugel (1998a), 712–17, 730–31. Apart from P and D, and more significant for the present study, is the older conception of a God whose presence is intermittent and fleeting, the God who appears, delivers a message, and disappears. Sommer points out that this conception is found most explicitly in passages attributed to E, but as we have seen (chapter 1), this conception is found as well in J.
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11. Haran (1985), 175–81.
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12. Note that while the Aaronid priests were permitted to touch the sacred objects of the tabernacle, their fellow tribesmen, the Levites, were not; indeed, at the time of breaking camp to move to another location, the “sons of Aaron” were ordered to cover all the sacred objects and temple appurtenances with cloths or skins before the Levites (in this case, the Kohathites) could enter and carry off the appurtenances (Num 4:15); apparently, the covers were designed to prevent the Levites from even seeing the holy objects.
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13. See Israel Knohl on the Priestly Torah (PT): “The cultic system of the PT takes place in a sacred sphere far removed from the masses. Barriers are maintained through taboos prohibiting the people from entering the area of intense and contagious holiness in the Tabernacle. Furthermore, PT assigns the people no role in the erection of the Tent of meeting . . . No outsider’s eye may witness the mysterious ceremony in the depth of the holy, and only vague bits of information on the cultic system filter out of Priestly circles”: Knohl (1995), 152–53.
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14. Pollock (1999).
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15. Oppenheim (1977), 183.
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16. As is said e
xplicitly in the Bible, e.g., Num 28:2, “My sacrifice, [that is,] My food as a fiery offering, My sweet savor—be sure to offer it to Me in its proper time.”
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17. For the common reference to sacrifices as “gifts” (e.g., Lev 23:38, Num 18:29, Deut 16:17, Ezek 20:26, 31, 39; Hos 8:13), as well as the dual sense of minḥah, see Anderson (1987), 31–33.
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18. Called by W. Burkert (1985), p. 58, the “shared guilt which creates solidarity” in the sacrificing community. For this shared aspect note again Hos 8:13.
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19. See Vernant and Detienne (1989).
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20. This approach, associated primarily with René Girard, has lately been justly criticized; see Klawans (2006), 22–27.
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21. In Ovid’s words, animam pro anima, taking “a soul for a soul.” See Burkert (1996), 54.
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22. See Kugel (1998a), 149–51, 158–59.
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23. Sallust, On the Gods and the World, chap. 16.
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24. The dimensions of the mishkan were not, as was once claimed, simply those of the Jerusalem temple divided in half; see Friedman (1980).
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25. Cross (1998), 84–95.
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26. Cited in Sommer (2009), 14.
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27. See Walker and Dick (1999), 55–121.
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28. See Sommer (2009), 19.
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29. Kugel (2003), 82–85, and sources cited on 222–23.
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30. Ibid., 82–85.
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31. The temple, dated to between the tenth and eighth centuries BCE, was unearthed at in modern Syria starting in 1956. See J. Monson (2000).
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32. Hallo (1981), 25.
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33. F. O’Connor (1979), 125.
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34. As is well known, Jereboam simultaneously set up two golden calves as divine thrones, one in Bethel and the other in Dan (1 Kings 12:29). Clearly, both were conceived as alternative worship sites to the Jerusalem temple; presumably, the deity could be present at all three (perhaps simultaneously, although this is not explicit). Quite apart from these, however, were other sanctuaries and “high places” that existed at various times, including the temple used by Jewish mercenaries in Elephantine (Egypt) in the fifth century BCE.