Jerusalem and Judaism before the Return , Faith or Myth ?
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Van der Toorn, a Dutch biblical scholar, is remarkably honest for those of his type. He says in Currents in Research: Biblical Studies—1998 that those involved in the study of religion always have, in one way or another, a personal stake in the matter and therefore cannot be expected to set an example of dispassionate scholarly enquiry.
Doubtless he says this because the study of Israelite religion is at present racked with ill-tempered disagreement between different factions. The central difference between them is whether faith requires the bible to be upheld or not—whether the bible really depicts the forward march of God's unfolding revelation. Otherwise the different parties are in almost total agreement! In these pages we make no apologies for taking the view that much of the bible is myth—indeed "myth" is perhaps too noble a word and "lies" would be better because, unlike myth which is intended to edify, the founders of these biblical "myths" always intended to fool people.
Most of the relevant material has been available from time immemorial and it might be surprising that these matters are not settled. They are, of course, settled for believers in Christianity and Judaism, but if belief were sufficient, we should all be still expecting Santa Claus to fall down the chimney every Christmas with his sack of goodies. Today, even more so than in the time of Celsus, those who merely believe are fools. Whatever way one imagines the Creator, we have been created with intelligence, so to turn round and say that we are not meant to exercise it in case it tests our belief is absurd—not just absurd, a blatant insult to God, if God is who created us.
What is new today is the results of a hundred years of archaeology in the Holy Land. As soon as it is accepted that some of the biblical material might be in error, it is necessary to decide what is. Evidence external to the bible and its proponents is needed and archaeology is the one which is most objective. No reputable scholars have the gall to claim that archaeology is not the prime method of discovering facts about early Israel that are not tendentious and can be dated to a particular time.
And that is the trouble for those "scholars" whose knees are permanently bent, and not by excessive trowelling! The history of Jerusalem and the inhabitants of the hill country of Palestine seems non-existent before about 700 BC, but whereas one faction sees this as evidence that much of the Old Testament is mythology written much later than most believers think, the other factions takes comfort in scraps of "proof," however indirect, that the Old Testament accounts are nevertheless true history.
Jerusalem
Much of the archaeological work that has failed to support the biblical story has been carried out in Jerusalem, notably under Kathleen Kenyon. Latterly skilled Israeli excavators have been busy in Jerusalem but much of their work has been left unpublished or even has been reportedly lost through disagreements. Not a little of this dissension will be due to the archaeologists not producing what Israeli nationalists would like to see.
The oldest part of Jerusalem is the hill south of the temple area where the city of David was considered to have been, and tombs found here have been dated to 3000 BC. A small building with benches along the walls might have been an early shrine but the evidence is that the people concerned were herdsmen. Several small villages dating to about 2000 BC have been found in the valleys around Jerusalem, but no sign of occupation in the city has been found at this period.
However, about 1800 BC signs of activity appear and several parts of a city wall have been found. The trouble is that very little of the town itself remains because of subsequent building work. Nevertheless Kenyon unearthed several large storage jars taken to indicate that the town was a regional centre of trade—a market town. This deduction ties in with the source of the clay of the jars being local farms of the period that seemed to produce sufficient milk for trade, that the jars were used for, and meat. Jerusalem at this time seemed to be quite prosperous to judge by the polished stone and faience beads that have been found and the inlaid bone for decorating furniture. It was obviously a regional centre of some wealth and importance with a popualtion between 1000 and 2500 people.
Egyptian References
Now a place called "Rushalimmu" has been noted on the Execration Texts found in Egypt and dated to this period. The Execration Texts were plainly some magic cursing ritual because the names of peoples, rulers and towns that the Egyptians wanted to defeat had been inscribed on to pots that had then apparently been deliberately broken. The magic is that commonly associated with names—that possession of the name gives possession of the owner of the name. This is a reason why the names of gods like that of the Hebrew god were kept secret. By forbidding anyone from uttering the name no enemies could discover the name of the god to get control of him.
The Egyptians were hoping that by breaking the names on the pots, they would facilitate the breaking of the resistence of the people, rulers or towns. Of course, there is no sure way of associating the excavated Jerusalem with Rushalimmu and, indeed, the excavated Jerusalem is hardly likely to have cause the Egyptians enough trouble to merit such a ceremony, but conceivably the excavated Jerusalem was the centre of a chiefdom and so might have been seen by the Egyptians as a potential nuisance. Unfortunately, this Jerusalem ceased to exist after a life of only about a hundred years. Perhaps Egyptian magic really worked!
About 500 years later the administrators of the Pharaohs were at the new town of Amarna busily archiving the Pharaoh's correspondence. In the Amarna letters were six received from the scribe of the prince of "Urasalim." If this is Jerusalem it was apparently a walled city and the assumption was that it continued the city of 1800 BC. Again, though, the excavations of Late Bronze Age Jerusalem do not bear out this deduction. There is no trace of a fortified city of this time. Not only are there no walls or towns, very few sherds of pottery can be definitely assigned to this time. There is a tomb on the Mount of Olives and traces of an Egyptian temple north of the city, but no city itself! If Jerusalem was occupied during the time of the Amarna letters, it was situated somewhere else.
Possibly, of course, the hills around Jerusalem at this period of history were all part of a chiefdom or small city state called Jerusalem. The main city itself perhaps was moved in 1800 for some reason and was still elsewhere when its scribe wrote to the Pharaoh. Since no trace of an alternative site for the town has ever been found either, a more likely solution is that the Urusalim of the Amarna letters was not a city at all but one of the Pharaoh's country estates. Such an estate, especially in wild country, might well have been fortified. The letters mention a tribute of slaves. If the estate managers were in the habit of taking slaves locally in payment of tribute, the fortifications might have been necessary.
The real point, though, is that there is no way that archaeology supports the old idea of an ancient Jerusalem continuously occupied from the Middle Bronze Age. The possible appearance of Jerusalem in Bronze Age documents must refer to the district rather than a specific city. Scholars of all persuasions now recognise that the culture of the Judaean hills was continuous from the Late Bronze Ages to the Early Iron Age, precluding any foreign invasion or infiltration, and it was a culture based on smallholdings and villages living by husbandry and organised on the basis of kin. All scholars see these people as partial bandits raiding the civilised valleys but otherwise sharing the culture of the region including practices that later would be condemned.
United Monarchy and After
In the couple of hundred years preceding the supposed kingdom of David, Jerusalem was, in the bible, the city of the Jebusites, a small but well fortified town that David decided could be his capital. Besides the bible there is no historical evidence for this belief and the archaeological work is equally negative. Kenyon found successive built terraces of some size, but no city walls, no signs of occupation and no buildings that might have been public buildings. The Iron Age date of the excavation is certain from a complete jar found on the floor of the site and other sherds. Margreet Steiner judges the terraces to be part of a fortification, but for what purpose? It is the only fortification in the hill country in that period. Nothing suggests it is an Egyptian fort, and, indeed, everything suggests it is local, but perhaps the Egyptians made the locals build a watch tower, or the locals built one to watch for the Egyptians!
Iron Age II is the designation of the period when the United Monarchy of David and Solomon ruled the Levant in a powerful empire. In fact, several buildings large enough to have been administrative buildings are dated to the period but no pottery considered previously to have been typical of David and Solomon is found there! However, a large rampart has been found thought by some to be the "millo" mentioned in the bible. Others date it to the earlier period. Several unused or discarded parts of buildings have also been found and some have reliably been dated on style to the ninth century. Interestingly a bronze fist was discovered that seems likely to have been part of a statue of a god.
All of these are exiting finds, especially for those who want to see David and Solomon emerge into history, but the city seems to have had no population—there is no evidence of occupation—no houses! The buildings and fortifications are all high on the hill with no space for dwellings above and no sign of them below. In the Middle Bronze Age occupation and the later permanent occupation from the seventh century onwards, the walls were lower down so that dwellings behind were protected. Possibly the domestic part of the city was further north, but nothing has been found of it. What has been found here dates from a century later.
So, the Jerusalem of David was a small apparently administrative centre with no attached domestic quarter. No more than 2000 people could have lived within and presumably were administrators and those who serviced them. It must have been an administrative centre for a statelet but could not have been the capital of a state such as that of Solomon. Other cities of the same type have been excavated from the tenth and ninth centuries like Geber, Hazor, Lachish and Megiddo, all with apparently public buildings and few dwellings. They suggest small city states that functioned mainly as administrative centres for a locality.
No trace has been found of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem and the United Monarchy has to be rejected as not historical. The earliest date for a temple in Jerusalem is the 700s BC when the city finally became established as the centre of a small state. On the eastern slopes of the "City of David," naturally outside its fortifications, houses for artisans and small traders at last appeared in the ninth century BC. The buildings were small and simple and were plainly not the homes of nobility. However, tombs found cut in rocks dating roughly 850 to 650 BC show that people were getting rich and one tomb is a fine multi-chambered mausoleum. A simple blessing like that of Numbers 6.24-26 has been found on silver funereal plaques from a tomb at Ketef Hinnom. Pottery and Jewellery show the tomb is later than the seventh century.
The destruction of the city by the Babylonians in 586 BC left a mass of debris that has yielded sufficient for life in the city just before its destruction to be reconstructed. It had grown enormaously in about a hundred or so years and could have reached a population of 10,000. Substantial walls had been built in about 700 BC and the water system was sophisticated. In contrast to the earlier city, no public buildings are found but many residential buildings, some obviously of wealthy families able to import luxuries from Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece and Cyprus.
The attack by the Assyrians had the effect of destroying most of the small towns that had earlier rivalled Jerusalem. The Assyrians therefore left Jerusalem as an unrivalled buffer city enabling it to prosper out of the misfortune of the others. There must have been a quid pro quo for this favourable treatment and whatever it was the victorious Babylonians a hundred years later did not appreciate it, but the Persians a half a century further on did. The Jews were eminent for their loyalty to the Persians, remaining steadfast to the "Great King" and regaining their prosperity as a consequence. Though the Assyrians are depicted as wolves in the scriptures, the inhabitants of Jerusalem obviously reached an accord with them and prospered as a result when all their rivals were destroyed.
Religious History
So what was the religion of the Jews before they were exiled and "returned" with a more sophisticated religion? Formerly, believers, not least among them professional biblical scholars, saw history as the evidence of God's progressive revelation as declared in the bible. Perhaps the sense that the earlier optimism was misplaced led to a backlash against history and a religious inclination towards biblical theology—religious interpretation of the mythology to find its theological importance vis-a-vis God's revelation. All formal religion was idolatrous and true religion came only as a personal revelation of God. Religious history was therefore irrelevant.
Latterly, the importance of history has returned but with a great deal more skepticism about revelation and a great deal more emphasis on history—what ordinary people, women and families were doing, considering where the Goddess had gone and seeking corroboration from different sources. Standard texts had concentrated on orthodoxy's definition of acceptable religion that had expunged whole areas of religious evolution that were considered unimportant or even embarrassing.
Christians see the pure worship of God in pre-exilic times when the strange figures of God's prophets were thought of as warning His people of their false steps. After the exile the Jews were thought to have got caught up in an excessive legalism that took all the spark out of God's revelation. Jews, of course, saw it quite differently—the prophets warned the Jews against straying from God's laws, so they applied them with firmness.
The seed of Abraham knew there was only one god from about two millennia BC, according to the clerics, and Christian clerics tell us that the Chosen People were truer to God's wishes from then until they returned from Babylon. This then is an important period for study, especially for Christians. What though is found? The evidence suggests that Israelites worshipped their ancestors and "local" gods, not any universal god!
Dead Ancestors and Local Cults
Though a few disagree, most students now see the cult of dead ancestors as an important part of the Israelite religion before the exile. Dead ancestors had divine qualities and were called "elohim"—divine beings. The family estate was passed down by the ancestors and so families were more or less wealthy depending upon their ancestors' endeavours. For this they had to be honoured whatever level the family began at. Even slaves became members of their master's family. Families kept little statuettes—terephim—that stood for their elohim or "gods" and who represented the family's identity and fortunes. Rights of passage involved ceremonies of presentation of family members to the terephim for recognition and approval.
Besides the cult of ancestors, successful families also had a cult of a founding "father" as a god. Plainly this was an extension of ancestor worship into a personal god of the family handed down by the father—the head of the household. By the early part of the final millennium BC, large clans had turned their family god into a localised cult with local shrines or temples. Generally he was called "Baal" meaning "Lord" because the senior member of a family is always addressed as Lord by his descendants, but he also had a toponym, a place name, or a clan name. Baal-Peor, the name of a Moabite god, was one such toponymic name.
The names of Yehouah were similarly distinguished as excavators at Kuntillet Ajrud found in 1976 when they found references to Yehouah-Samaria and Yehouah-Teman. Just as Baal was not a single god, Yehouah was not a single god but a set of regional gods. Yehouah seems to mean "He Lives" or "He Is," rendered for scriptural purposes as "I Am". Thus the God of the Christians and the Jews is always called "The Living God."
It seems he was originally a god of life or existence, a god who brought things into life, and therefore of fertility as scholars have long thought. Transfering the creation of everything to him when he displaced El as the creator was therefore easy. To his worshippers he was the "Lord of Existence."
In any event the plurality of Baals was matched by the multiplicity of Yehouahs. There is good circumstantial evidence for a Yehouah-Hebron and a Yehouah-Zion. The sponsors of the cult of the temple at Jerusalem wanted to gather all of the local Yehouahs into one, whence their slogan:
Hear, O Israel: Yehouah is one Yehouah (Deut 6:4),
which plainly shows that there was a multiplicity of Yehouahs, but it is not the message the clerics want to tell their monotheistic flocks, and so is deliberately mistranslated as:
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.
The Moabite Stone illuminates our ideas of pre-Persian Israelite beliefs. In the Bible, the Moabites and Ammonites were kinsmen of the Israelites, and the Moabite Stone shows they had the same language. Though their gods had different names, the two peoples shared similar beliefs. The national god of Israel and Moab, who controlled national affairs, was each shown as an angry tyrant to be obeyed and mollified. Chemosh, the god of Moab, ruled directly according to Mesha who did what the god told him to do. Moab was oppressed by Israel because Chemosh was angry at his people, and Moab prospered because Chemosh dwelt with his people. Substitute Yehouah for Chemosh and the bible appears. Chemosh ordered Mesha, "Go, take Nebo from Israel!" just as Yehouah ordered Joshua to take Ai (Joshua 8:1).
Both the Israelites and Moab used the "ban," or vow in warfare. The king would make a vow to kill the entire population of an enemy city, vowing also treasure for the god. Now the king had to enforce the vow. In Joshua 6:17-21, Joshua put Jericho under the ban and ended massacring them all, "men and women, young and old, even the oxen and sheep and donkeys." Saul failed to fulfil a "ban" by sparing the choice sheep and cattle, leading to his downfall. Jephthah vowed his daughter to Yehouah (Judges 11:30-40) and also could not avoid the outcome.
Mesha built houses such as the "house of Baal-Meon," a common element in Canaanite place names, apparently as the place of a shrine to a deity.
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