was a devoted worshipper. We also know that between 2000 and 1400 B.C. the Babylonian language as well as Babylonian civilization and ideas spread over Palestine (as the Tell el Amarna tables clearly testify). The ancient Babylonian psalms clearly reveal that the highest minds were moving out of polytheism to a monotheistic identification of various deities as diverse phases of one underlying essence. A remarkable Babylonian tablet discovered by Dr Pinches represents Marduk, the god of light, as identified in his person with all the chief deities of Babylonia, who are evidently regarded as his varying manifestations.[1]
Through the influence of Mosaic teaching and law a definitely ethical character was ascribed to Yahweh. It was His “finger” that wrote the brief code which has come down to us in the decalogue. At first, as Erdmanns suggests, it may have consisted of only seven commands. So also Kautzsch, ibid. p. 634. The most strongly distinguishing feature of the code is the rigid exclusion of the worship of other gods than Yahweh. Moreover, the definitely ethical character of the religion of Yahweh established by Moses is exhibited in the strict exclusion of all sexual impurity in His worship. Unlike the Canaanite Baal, Yahweh has no female consort, and this remained throughout a distinguishing trait of the original and unadulterated Hebrew religion (see Bäthgen, Beiträge, p. 265). Indeed, Hebrew, unlike Assyrian or Phoenician, has no distinctive form for “goddess.” From first to last the true religion of Yahweh was pure of sexual taint. The ḳedēshīm and ḳedēshōth, the male and female priest attendants in the Baal and ʽAshtoreth shrines (cf. the kadishtu of the temples of the Babylonian Ishtar) were foreign Canaanite elements which became imported into Hebrew worship during the period of the Hebrew settlement in Canaan.
Lastly, the earliest codes of Hebrew legislation (Ex. xxi.-xxiii.) bear the distinct impress of the high ethical character of Yahweh’s requirements originally set forth by Moses. Of this tradition the Naboth incident in the time of Ahab furnishes a clear example which brings to light the contrast between the Tyrian Baal-cult, which was scarcely ethical, and of which Jezebel and Ahab were devotees, and the moral requirements of the religion of Yahweh of which Elijah was the prophet and impassioned exponent. It was this definite basis of ethical Mosaic religion to which the prophets of the 8th century appealed, and apart from which their denunciations become meaningless. To this early standard of life and practice Ephraim was faithless in the days of the prophet Hosea (see his oracles passim—especially chaps. i.-iv. and xiv.), and Judah in the time of Isaiah turned a deaf ear (Isa. i. 2-4, 21).
4. Influence of Canaan.—The entrance of Israel into Canaan marks the beginning of a new epoch in the development of Israel’s religious life. For it involved a transition from the simple nomadic relations to those of the agricultural and more highly civilized Canaanite life. This subject has been recently treated with admirable clearness by Marti in his useful treatise Die Religion des A.T. (1906), pp. 25-41.
It is in the festivals of the annual calendar that this agricultural impress is most fully manifested. To the original nomadic Pesaḥ (Passover)—sacrifice of a lamb—there was attached a distinct and agricultural festival of unleavened cakes (maṣṣōth) which marks the beginning of the corn harvest in the middle of the month Abīb (the name of which points to its Canaanite and agricultural origin). The close of the corn-harvest was marked by the festival Shabhūōth (weeks) or Ḳāṣīr (harvest) held seven weeks after maṣṣōth. The last and most characteristic festival of Canaanite life was that of Asīph or “ingathering” which after the Deuteronomic reformation (621 B.C.) had made a single sanctuary and therefore a considerable journey with a longer stay necessary, came to be called Succōth or booths. This was the autumn festival held at the close of September or beginning of October. It marked the close of the year’s agricultural operations when the olives and grapes had been gathered [Ex. xxiii. 14-17 (E), xxxiv. 18, 22, 23 (J)]; see Feasts, Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. Another special characteristic of Israel’s religion in Canaan was the considerable increase of sacrificial offerings. Animal sacrifices became much more frequent, and included not only the bloody sacrifice (Zebaḥ) but also burnt offerings (kālīl, ʽōlah) whereby the whole animal was consumed (see Sacrifice). But we have in addition to the animal sacrifices, vegetable offerings of meal, oil and cakes (maṣṣōth, ashīshah and kawwān, which last is specially connected with the ʽAshtoreth cult: Jer. vii. 18, xliv. 19), as well as the “bread of the Presence” (leḥem happānīm), 1 Sam. xxi. 6. Whether the primitive rite of water-offerings (1 Sam. vii. 6; 2 Sam. xxiii. 16) belonged to early nomadic Israel (as seems probable) it is not possible to determine with any certainty.
Again, the conception of Yahweh suffered modification. In the desert he was worshipped as an atmospheric deity, who manifested himself in thunder and lightning, whose abode was in the sky, whose sanctuary was on the mountain summit of Horeb-Sinai, and whose movable palladium was the ark of the covenant. But when the nomadic clans of Israel came to occupy the settled abodes of the agricultural Canaanites who had a stake in the soil which they cultivated, these conditions evidently reacted on their religion. Now the local Baal was the divine owner of the fertile spot where his sanctuary (qōdesh) was marked by the upright stone pillar, the symbol of his presence, on which the blood of the slaughtered victim was smeared. To this Baal the productiveness of the soil was due. Consequently it was needful to secure his favour, and in order to gain this, gifts were made to him by the local resident population who depended on the produce of the land (see Baal, especially ad init.). Now when the Hebrews succeeded to these agricultural conditions and acquired possession of the Canaanite abodes, they naturally fell into the same cycle of religious ideas and tradition. Yahweh ceased to be exclusively regarded as god of the atmosphere, worshipped in a distant mountain, Horeb-Sinai, situated in the south country (negebh), and moving in the clouds of heaven before the Israelites in the desert, but he came to be associated with Israel’s life in Canaan. He manifested His presence either by a signal victory over Israel’s foes (Josh. x. 10, 11; 1 Sam. vii. 10-12) or by a thunderstorm (1 Sam. xii. 18) or through a dream (Gen. xxviii. 16 foll.; cf. 1 Kings iii. 5 foll.) at a sacred spot like Bethel. Accordingly, whenever His presence and power were displayed in places where the Canaanite Baal had been worshipped, they came to be attached to these spots. He had “put his name,” i.e. power and presence (numen) there, and the same festivals and sacrifices which had previously been devoted to the cult of the Canaanite Baal were now annexed to the service of Yahweh, the war-god of the conquering race. The process of transference was facilitated by two potent causes: (a) Both Canaanite and Hebrew spoke a common language; (b) the name Baal is not in reality an individual proper name like Kemōsh (Chemosh), Rammān or Hadad, but is, like Ēl (Ilu) “god,” an appellative meaning “lord,” “owner” or “husband.” The name Baal might therefore be used for any deity such as Milk (Milcom) or Shemesh (“sun”) who was the divine owner of the spot. It was simply a covering epithet, and like the word “god” could be transferred from one deity to another. In this way Yahweh came to be called the Baal or “lord” of any sacred place where the armies of Israel by their victories attested “his mighty hand and outstretched arm.” (See Kautzsch in Hastings’s D.B., extra vol., p. 645 foll.)
Such was the path of syncretism, and it was fraught with
- ↑ The tablet is neo-Babylonian and published by Dr Pinches in the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, and is cited by Professor Fried. Delitzsch in the notes appended to his first lecture Babel u. Bibel (5th German ed., p. 81 ad fin. and p. 82). On this subject of Babylonian influence over Israel see Jeremias, Monotheistische Strömungen innerhalb der babylonischen Religion, and E. Baentsch, Altorientalischer u. israelitischer Monotheismus. The text and rendering of the passage are doubtful in the cuneiform letter discovered by Sellin in Taʽannek (biblical Taʽanach, near Megiddo) addressed by Aḥi-jawi (? Aḥijah) to Ishtar-wasur, in which the following remarkable phrases are read: “May the Lord of the gods protect thy life. . . . Above thy head is one who is above the towns. See now whether he will show thee good. When he reveals his face, then will they be put to shame and the victory will be complete.” The letter appears to belong to about 1400 B.C. See A. Jeremias, Das A.T. im Lichte des alten Orients (2nd ed.), pp. 315, 316, 323. Sellin, Ertrag der Ausgrabungen im Orient.
