1/21/2020

PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

• Ancient Mesopotamia & Egypt

• Proto-Semitic gods to YHWH
• Reincarnation myths and search for
eternal life
• Evolution of Christianity & origins of Trinity
• Tribal stones to Allah
• Angry god - loving god

PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

Session 2
Proto-Semitic gods to YHWH
• Approximate Timeline
• Proto-Semitic Peoples & Languages
• Proto-Semitic Pantheon
• The Exodus Debate
• YHWH Appears on the Scene
• From One God to The Only God
• Discussion: Why Maintain the Myth?

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

FERTILE CRESCENT
Where cities, agriculture, irrigation,
animal domestication, etc. started

PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

First
Mention
of
ISRAEL

17th C BCE
3000 BCE 15th Dynasty 587-539BCE 0 ~200
In Egypt
SUMER/AKKAD MOSES? BABYLONIAN JESUS TRINITY
CAPTIVITY

Merneptah
DEUTERONOMISTS
Stele
1208 BCE

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

PROTO-SEMITIC PEOPLES
• Anthropological: Undefined origin (BIBLICAL: Descendants of Shem)
• Akkadians
• Assyrians & Babylonians
• Hyksos (Egypt)
• Canaanites
• Ethiopians
• Phoenicians
• Amorites
• Moabites
• Oasis People

PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

PROTO-SEMITIC LANGUAGES
• Earliest traces ~3500 BCE
• Akkadian slowly displaces Sumerian
• Assyrian appears around 2000 BCE
• Hebrew family (Proto-Canaanite) ~2000
BCE
(first written records ~1500 BCE)
• Hebrew ~1200 BCE
• Aramaic ~ 800 BCE
• Proto-Arabic dialects ~600 BCE

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

PROTO-SEMITIC PANTHEON

• Ilu (El, Elohim) • An (S) Ilu (AK)

• Atiratu (Asherah) • ?
• Attaru (Aster) • ?
• Attartu (Ishtar) • Inanna (S)
• Haddu (Bel, Baal) • Belu (AK)
• Shamsu (Shamash) • Shamash (S)
• Warihu (Yareah) • Nanna (S)

PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH
.

GODS & THEIR TRIBES (CITIES)

2nd MILLENNIUM - NO SIGN OF YHWH

• Tutelary gods / TRIBES • Place names / GODS

• Chemosh / MOAB • Anatoth / ANAT
• Qaus / EDOM • Carmel / EL
• Dagon / PHILISTINE • Beth Dagon / DAGON
• Moloch / AMMON • Jerusalem / SHALIMU
• Hadad / Aram-Zobah (DIMASQ’) • Jericho / Y(W)ARIHU
• … • Bth Shemesh / SHAMASH

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

ORIGINS OF YHWH (THEORIES)

• Historical:
• Egyptian docs mention Yahu in the land of Shasu nomads
• Some scholars claim Yhwh cult had reached Edom &
Midian by 13th C BCE (Rameses II reign)

• Etymological:
• “h-w-y”: blow, destroy – He who destroys (blows) Julius
Wellhausen
• “yhwh esher yhwh” – Moses’ reply to “ehye esher ehye”

• Biblical:
• The passages stating “he came from Seir / South / Sinai ..”
etc

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

PRECURSORS OF MOSES IN MYTHS

SARGON, KARNA, and OEDIPUS
• SARGON of AKKAD (or Assyria)
• Illegitimate child of a priestess
• Bitumen caulked basket into the river
• Saved by the king’s gardener, raised by him….
• Becomes a victorious king (Naram-Sin’s grandfather)

• KARNA (India) – basket, river, etc becomes a HERO

• OEDIPUS – no river, left in the mountains, rest of the story is also
different

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

THE EXODUS DEBATE

• Moses story follows a typical “myth” pattern
• No Egyptian records (Jan Assman, Egyptologist)
• Before or after the 15th Dynasty (Hyksos rule) not known
• “Moses is Akhenaten” story discredited (no evidence in Egypt)
• Historical facts:
• Hyksos (Semitic invaders) ruled Egypt during the 17th and 16th C BCE
• Hyksos were defeated and remnants of the “foreign people” were enslaved
• Major construction projects of Rameses II used slave labor (13th C BCE)
• Some of these slaves may have managed to escape the Egyptian territory

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

THE EXODUS A
DEBATE -
MAPS

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

MOSES & EXODUS (cont’d)

• THE MYTH ASPECT:
• No archeological evidence of the wandering (40 years without breaking a pot?)
• Need theophany proof: (miracles: snakes, plagues, tablets handed over, manna)
• If this happened centuries before Merneptah Stela, how did they “get away”
• Christine Hayes “… correct translation is Reed Sea, NOT Red Sea”
• BACK TO YHWH
• Somehow, some among the tribes of Israel adopt YHWH, a desert god
• However, evidence points to other gods, family and tribal idols, etc
• So the Cult of Yhwh is not exclusive (monolatry)

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

A KING CHOOSES A GOD FOR HIS TRIBE

• Saul is the first of the three kings of Israel and Judah
• No evidence of Saul outside the Bible
• He is helped by YHWH in his battle against the Philistines
• But Saul probably recognizes other gods
• His sons’ names: Ish-baal, Mephi-baal, Jonathan (Yahwistic)
• (1 Sam 19:23) Saul dances naked (fertility rite?)
• Ark of YHWH is kept by a specially consecrated priest
• In the meantime, king #2 David is down in Hebron

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH
.

YHWH MOVES TO JERUSALEM

• Scant evidence for David outside the Bible
• He is persecuted by Saul, why?
• Eventually David conquers Jerusalem and
• as king, brings the Ark of JHWH into Jerusalem
• BUT doesn’t build a temple to his tutelary god…
• David also dances naked as the Ark is being brought
(2 Sam 6:14-17)
• ¿¿ Either a remnant of fertility rites ?? OR
• ¿¿ To demonstrate “access to the divine sphere” in ecstasy ??

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

SOLOMON BUILDS A TEMPLE

• Until Solomon’s time, the Ark resides in a tent
• Solomon and the glorious palaces etc may be a later invention
• The language describing the temple construction implies an existing
sanctuary
• The Greek translation (Septuagint) implies the existing temple was
dedicated to Shamash
• The description in 1 Kings 7:39 implies an E-W orientation (sun)
• The Ark (or a statue?) was placed in the debir (sanctum sanctorum)

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

YHWH and HIS ASHERAH

• In Akkadian and Hittite texts a goddess Atrt (Athirat) - or
Ashiratu – appears (2nd Millenium BC)
• In Ugaritic texts she is the great goddess, paired with El
• In the OT she is paired with Baal and condemned
• Such insistent condemnation implies she may have been
associated with Yahwistic cult
• Excavations in many locations uncovered Asherah
statues in family and village shrines
• Asherah statue at the Temple together w YHWH a
possibility
Base of a family shrine from
• Other evidence: Poetry or inscriptions (Römer) Taanach near Megiddo

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH
YHWH & HIS ASHERAH

Hathor Capital Goddess on a Horse Village or Family Shrine

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

YHWH & HIS

ASHERAH

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

FROM STATUE TO ABSTRACTION

• What was in the ark before the two tablets??…
• Statues of Yhwh :
• Just tribal stones??
• Statues like seated El
• Statues like Baal
• Bull/Calf as the god or as pedestal for a statue

• Replaced gradually by
• Lampholder (Menorah)
4th C BCE Drachm w Yhwh image
• Torah scroll

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

THE GODDESS DISAPPEARS

• Through the 8th C BCE references to Yhwh and his Asherah persist
• Josiah’s time, probably late 7th C between the Assyrian domination and
Babylonian captivity Asherah disappears
• The remnants of temple harlots (and male prostitutes) also disappear
• Verses are added to condemn Asherah worship, asherim (the tree or post
like symbols of the goddess)
• Destruction of Jerusalem in 587 is interpreted by some as the “wrath of
the Goddess
• But the Goddess is permanently buried by the post-exile revisions

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

DEFEAT AND THE NEW DOGMA

• The defeat first by the Pharaoh Neco, followed by Nabucco
• The deportations of the elites to Babylon necessitate revised dogma
• 587-539 “the Exile”.. ends w repatriation by Cyrus, the Persian king
• During the Babylonian captivity and the Persian period the new dogma is
consolidated
• The disappearance of the goddess is now final and some of the female
attributes become implicit in Yhwh
• The MYTH of one and only god and his chosen people is now fully
established

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

Yaakov Malkin
The Significance of
Jewish Mythology

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

DISCUSSION TOPIC
The Cyrus precedent kept alive the belief in our ultimate return from exile; a hope
that came into being .. with the re-creation of the modern State of Israel.
Rabbi Mitchell M. Hurvitz
• Why still maintain the myths in Tanakh as “NATIONAL MYTH”?
• Does that help or hurt in the long run?

Book: Shlomo Sand “The Invention of the Jewish People”

Interesting but NOT directly related

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

PROTO-SEMITIC GODS TO YHWH

WRAP UP
• Archaeology can not confirm any of the biblical stories
• It does however link them to earlier Mesopotamian myths
• Yhwh’s origins are obscure
• Attributes appear to be a later synthesis of Babylonian gods
• Jewish bible was (re)written after the Babylonian captivity
• It is a literary work with a dual purpose:
• to create a tribal myth, and
• to replace the “temple” with something transportable

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PAGAN ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

NEXT WEEK
REINCARNATION MYTHS &
THE SEARCH FOR ETERNAL LIFE
• Egyptian Book of the Dead
• Sumer and Akkad Myths
• Afterlife in Canaan
• Zoroastrianism
• Olam HaBa

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