Conflicting
Biblical traditions about the name and worship of YHWH as seen through the
different layers of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic Historian[1]*
The Hebrew Bible we have today would have it that Israel’s “exclusive monotheism” was already a fact of life since the time of Moses, but the reality is that it only finally took shape after the Babylonian Captivity and was then projected backwards into the life of Moses and the people of Israel as if it had always been the norm and the rule. This theological view was taken over by Judaism, Christianity and Islam from early Judaism in the Second Temple period, and accepted as historical fact.
In this way, the theology of ancient Israel and Judah was based upon the premise that the ancestors march before the people and the people follow behind[2]. They did not see themselves as heading towards the future but guided by the past. For them, the past was the future, and only things that had the aura of antiquity about them could be accepted as having divine provenance, so if you needed to lay the groundwork for some new societal norm you had to find a precedent for it in the distant past. The ancients also made their laws appear very old, and the Torah itself was endowed with a distinctive archaic appearance. It was retrospectively attributed to Moses the lawgiver, who thereby proceeded at the head of the caravan. These attitudes acquired a significance of their own with the discovery of the Law Book in the Temple in 622 BCE during the reign of “good” King Josiah, considered in following pages.
So to the ancient Hebrews, Israel’s religion was just as it had been revealed on Mt Sinai, and even the patriarchs were stolid believers in One God. However, the Bible itself occasionally tells a different story, narrating how Rachel took the Teraphim, the household gods of Laban (Gen: 31.19, 34), how Laban and Jacob concluded a covenant by calling upon the God of Abraham and Nahor, the gods of their respective ancestors (Gen: 31.53-54), and most telling, Joshua reminds his people of the other gods that their ancestors had worshipped formerly on the other side of the River Euphrates (Josh: 24.2). Also, when Solomon built the Temple at Jersualem, he allowed two brazen pillars to stand at the porch, contrary to the Law of Leviticus. These were pagan emblems common in Canaanite and Phoenician religion[3].
A careful reading of the Bible reveals a complexity and pluriformity in ancient Israelite religion. Kings are severely criticised, not only because they tolerated foreign cults at their courts as Solomon and Ahab did, but because they propagated conservative cults of YHWH and his Asherah, viewed as unorthodox by the reformists.
The Bible itself is also contradictory about when the worship of Yahweh began and became commonplace. According to Gen 4.26, the descendants of Seth from before the Flood “began to worship YHWH by name”, but according to Exodus 6.3, YHWH was not known by name to the ancestors before the time of Moses. This is the text where YHWH reveals himself to Moses with the words “I am the one who I am”, and then “Thus you will say to the Israelites: ‘YHWH, the God of your fore-fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’. This is my name forever; this is my title in every generation”. In other words, the Yahwistic story holds that the name of YHWH was known to Moses and Israel from the time of Adam and Eve, but the interpretation in Exodus 3.7-15 creates the impression that the name was revealed to Moses for the first time.
Why are there these two conflicting Biblical Traditions?
A central tenet of the literary critical analysis of the Pentateuch is that the ‘Five Books of Moses’ underwent a lengthy period of growth and redaction. Like a mediaeval cathedral, it underwent a long and sometimes complicated history, of which the distinctive phases are still observable, even if it nowadays looks like a complete and coherent structure. It was until recently assumed that the Exodus 3:7-15 story signified a pre-Israelite veneration of YHWH belonging to the oldest layers of the Pentateuch: J (Yahwist). In a revised JE narrative a redactor called E (Elohist) extended this story: Exod 3, 7-15, where the divine name YHWH as introduced and explained to Moses and Israel, and was depicted as a ‘theological’ interpolation of the original J story whereby Moses was called to Egypt to approach Pharaoh along with the elders of the Hebrews to request permission to celebrate the annual festival in the desert.
Nowadays, scholarship no longer takes for granted that J represents the oldest layers in the Pentateuch. Some date it as a literary work composed just before or in the neo-Babylonian Era, in close association with the Deuteronomistic History (The Books from Joshua to Kings). On this hypothesis, J speaks of the new outlook of the Babylonian captives who retold and adapted ancient traditions in the light of their predicaments, developing a new diaspora theology. Sometimes even, the story of the Yahwist is set in time between the Deuteronomistic reinterpretation and redaction of Israelite history and the post-exilic Priestly History associated with the R-redaction of the Pentateuch, representing an alternative voice of the Jewish exilic and post-exilic communities.
According to Finkelstein and Silberman[4] both J and the Deuteronomistic History were written in the seventh century BCE in Judah in Jerusalem when the northern kingdom of Israel was no more, the former describing the very early history of the nation, while the latter deals with events of more recent centuries, with special emphasis on the Pan-Israelite idea, on the divine protection of the Davidic lineage and on centralisation of worship in the Temple in Jerusalem.
The revelation of the divine name is narrated in a different way in the P redaction, which selected and revised pre-exilic and exilic tradition and created the Pentateuch, by detachment of Deuteronomy from the Deuteronomistic History by writing a new epilogue (Deut 34.10-12). In this version: God spoke to Moses and said: “I am Yahweh! I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in (the form of) El Shadday, but I was not known to them by my name YHWH..” (Exod 6.203).
Here, the author is attempting to bridge a compromise between two conflicting traditions: a tradition with YHWH known to the Patriarchs and another in which YHWH’s name was revealed exclusively to Moses. In these two traditions, knowledge of YHWH comes from a direct revelation of YHWH from their respective outlets: in the Yahwistic story, from its first origin; and in the alternative tradition, from Moses and Sinai, and particularly from the origins of Israel as a people and religious community. In retrospect, the vision of the Yahwistic author seems to be closer to religio-historical reality, than the alternative tradition of the Priestly compromise[5].
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, this is a summary of ‘El, the God of Israel – Israel, the people of YHWH. On the origins of ancient Israelite Yahwism’, by Meindert Dijkstra in Only One God? – Monotheism in Ancient Israel and the veneration of the Goddess Asherah, by Bob Becking, Meindert Dijkstra, Marjo C A Korpel and Karel J H Vriezen, Sheffield Academy Press, London, New York (2001), with occasional interpolations from other sources, as indicated in the footnotes. See also Did God have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel, William G Dever, Eardmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, 2005.
* The successive redactions of the Pentateuch and the role of the Deuteronomictic Historian are considered later.
[2] Dr Susanne Glover, WEA Hebrew Bible in Crisis course, Lecture 4.
[3] Barnes, op cit, 77.
[4] Op cit, pp 46-47.
[5] From Dijkstra et al ‘El, the God of Israel – Israel, the people of YHWH. On the origins of ancient Israelite Yahwism’, op cit at 85.
In this way, the theology of ancient Israel and Judah was based upon the premise that the ancestors march before the people and the people follow behind[2]. They did not see themselves as heading towards the future but guided by the past. For them, the past was the future, and only things that had the aura of antiquity about them could be accepted as having divine provenance, so if you needed to lay the groundwork for some new societal norm you had to find a precedent for it in the distant past. The ancients also made their laws appear very old, and the Torah itself was endowed with a distinctive archaic appearance. It was retrospectively attributed to Moses the lawgiver, who thereby proceeded at the head of the caravan. These attitudes acquired a significance of their own with the discovery of the Law Book in the Temple in 622 BCE during the reign of “good” King Josiah, considered in following pages.
So to the ancient Hebrews, Israel’s religion was just as it had been revealed on Mt Sinai, and even the patriarchs were stolid believers in One God. However, the Bible itself occasionally tells a different story, narrating how Rachel took the Teraphim, the household gods of Laban (Gen: 31.19, 34), how Laban and Jacob concluded a covenant by calling upon the God of Abraham and Nahor, the gods of their respective ancestors (Gen: 31.53-54), and most telling, Joshua reminds his people of the other gods that their ancestors had worshipped formerly on the other side of the River Euphrates (Josh: 24.2). Also, when Solomon built the Temple at Jersualem, he allowed two brazen pillars to stand at the porch, contrary to the Law of Leviticus. These were pagan emblems common in Canaanite and Phoenician religion[3].
A careful reading of the Bible reveals a complexity and pluriformity in ancient Israelite religion. Kings are severely criticised, not only because they tolerated foreign cults at their courts as Solomon and Ahab did, but because they propagated conservative cults of YHWH and his Asherah, viewed as unorthodox by the reformists.
The Bible itself is also contradictory about when the worship of Yahweh began and became commonplace. According to Gen 4.26, the descendants of Seth from before the Flood “began to worship YHWH by name”, but according to Exodus 6.3, YHWH was not known by name to the ancestors before the time of Moses. This is the text where YHWH reveals himself to Moses with the words “I am the one who I am”, and then “Thus you will say to the Israelites: ‘YHWH, the God of your fore-fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’. This is my name forever; this is my title in every generation”. In other words, the Yahwistic story holds that the name of YHWH was known to Moses and Israel from the time of Adam and Eve, but the interpretation in Exodus 3.7-15 creates the impression that the name was revealed to Moses for the first time.
Why are there these two conflicting Biblical Traditions?
A central tenet of the literary critical analysis of the Pentateuch is that the ‘Five Books of Moses’ underwent a lengthy period of growth and redaction. Like a mediaeval cathedral, it underwent a long and sometimes complicated history, of which the distinctive phases are still observable, even if it nowadays looks like a complete and coherent structure. It was until recently assumed that the Exodus 3:7-15 story signified a pre-Israelite veneration of YHWH belonging to the oldest layers of the Pentateuch: J (Yahwist). In a revised JE narrative a redactor called E (Elohist) extended this story: Exod 3, 7-15, where the divine name YHWH as introduced and explained to Moses and Israel, and was depicted as a ‘theological’ interpolation of the original J story whereby Moses was called to Egypt to approach Pharaoh along with the elders of the Hebrews to request permission to celebrate the annual festival in the desert.
Nowadays, scholarship no longer takes for granted that J represents the oldest layers in the Pentateuch. Some date it as a literary work composed just before or in the neo-Babylonian Era, in close association with the Deuteronomistic History (The Books from Joshua to Kings). On this hypothesis, J speaks of the new outlook of the Babylonian captives who retold and adapted ancient traditions in the light of their predicaments, developing a new diaspora theology. Sometimes even, the story of the Yahwist is set in time between the Deuteronomistic reinterpretation and redaction of Israelite history and the post-exilic Priestly History associated with the R-redaction of the Pentateuch, representing an alternative voice of the Jewish exilic and post-exilic communities.
According to Finkelstein and Silberman[4] both J and the Deuteronomistic History were written in the seventh century BCE in Judah in Jerusalem when the northern kingdom of Israel was no more, the former describing the very early history of the nation, while the latter deals with events of more recent centuries, with special emphasis on the Pan-Israelite idea, on the divine protection of the Davidic lineage and on centralisation of worship in the Temple in Jerusalem.
The revelation of the divine name is narrated in a different way in the P redaction, which selected and revised pre-exilic and exilic tradition and created the Pentateuch, by detachment of Deuteronomy from the Deuteronomistic History by writing a new epilogue (Deut 34.10-12). In this version: God spoke to Moses and said: “I am Yahweh! I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in (the form of) El Shadday, but I was not known to them by my name YHWH..” (Exod 6.203).
Here, the author is attempting to bridge a compromise between two conflicting traditions: a tradition with YHWH known to the Patriarchs and another in which YHWH’s name was revealed exclusively to Moses. In these two traditions, knowledge of YHWH comes from a direct revelation of YHWH from their respective outlets: in the Yahwistic story, from its first origin; and in the alternative tradition, from Moses and Sinai, and particularly from the origins of Israel as a people and religious community. In retrospect, the vision of the Yahwistic author seems to be closer to religio-historical reality, than the alternative tradition of the Priestly compromise[5].
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, this is a summary of ‘El, the God of Israel – Israel, the people of YHWH. On the origins of ancient Israelite Yahwism’, by Meindert Dijkstra in Only One God? – Monotheism in Ancient Israel and the veneration of the Goddess Asherah, by Bob Becking, Meindert Dijkstra, Marjo C A Korpel and Karel J H Vriezen, Sheffield Academy Press, London, New York (2001), with occasional interpolations from other sources, as indicated in the footnotes. See also Did God have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel, William G Dever, Eardmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, 2005.
* The successive redactions of the Pentateuch and the role of the Deuteronomictic Historian are considered later.
[2] Dr Susanne Glover, WEA Hebrew Bible in Crisis course, Lecture 4.
[3] Barnes, op cit, 77.
[4] Op cit, pp 46-47.
[5] From Dijkstra et al ‘El, the God of Israel – Israel, the people of YHWH. On the origins of ancient Israelite Yahwism’, op cit at 85.