How did Yahweh Become God ? The Origins of Monotheism

the emergence of Yahweh as one of the major deities of the ancient and modern world is a historical tale as surprising as it was accidental originally a relatively minor Regional storm and Warrior God Yahweh would become the state deity of the ancient Israelite and judahite polity before undergoing significant mutations to Simply become God for billions of people the world over but in that process something truly astounding occurs Yahweh goes from Simply being a God among many other gods to Simply being God the god of what we now know as monotheism just how did Yahweh become God following up on my first video exploring the origins of Yahweh in this episode I want to trace out the origins of ystic monotheism and as we'll see the emergence of mon ISM in any form was certainly not the inevitable theological Destiny of yism but what are the origins of ystic monotheism and to what degree was the religion of ancient Israel ever really monotheistic at all if you're interested in Magic hermetic philosophy Alchemy cabala or the history of the occult or just Arcane dimensions of religiosity make sure to subscribe here to esoterica and check Che out my other content on topics in religious esotericism also if you want to support this work of providing accessible scholarly free content on topics and esotericism here on YouTube I'd hope you consider supporting my work over at my patreon you can take a look at maybe a one-time donation via Paypal you can use the super thanks option below the video or you can pick up some of our cool black metal merch think I'm making some ywei black metal merch ywe is pretty pretty metal from time to time but now let's turn to how a minor Regional Warrior storm God a God among Gods became simply God eventually the god of monotheism I'm Dr Justin Sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and religion [Music] [Music] so summarizing a bit from my first episode on Yahweh which would probably be helpful to watch before this one you can check it out in the card above what the earliest Israelite and archaeological evidence suggest is that Yahweh was not an indigenous Canaanite god that Pantheon is in fact very well attested in Bronze Age ugaritic myth Cycles with no sign of Yahweh he's just not there yet however the Israelites appear into history in the 13th century and Yahweh is attested as their National God by the midnight Century Misha stelli although in that case it's where go has been defeated and some stuff has been stolen but anyway yah's there the more archaic strata of Israelite literature preserved in the Hebrew Bible seems to stress Yahweh as a thunderstorm God a thunderstorm God not a Mediterranean storm God and a warrior God a raiding God associated with the region around Mount Seer and what is now Southern Jordan and Northwestern Saudi Arabia this deity was eventually imported into the cult Center at Shilo Shiloh probably through Caravan trade based on the earliest data from the earliest Israelite poetry with the power vacuum of the Bronze Age collapse and the relatively inaccessibility of the Judean Highlands to a large Imperial Army arose state-like polies for whom Yahweh was an important though not the only deity over time y was merged with the various ugaritic fatherly God specifically L before being assimilated and conflicting with the Canaanite storm deity Bal the northern Israelite and Southern judahite Cults would develop with some independence from one another and whether they were every connected into a United early monarchy is debatable the Northerners were much more comfortable even enthusiastically syncretistic and iconographical with the southerners while perhaps comfortable with Yahweh along with a consort a Shera were seemingly a bit less syncretistic and less comfortable with representations of Yahweh a position sometimes referred to as aniconism that is to say they don't like representations of their God but again the data is all over the place the general theological disposition of the region was probably a form of ystic henotheism that is to say Yahweh is our God even if other gods exist my dad can beat up your dad or even Yahweh monitors though that does seem to be a minority position until the Babylonian exile beginning in the 6th Century in short yeh is imported into this region of ancient Israel undergos a process of integration with a local Pantheon before emerging as the national God worshiped to varying degrees among other deities from the Canaanite Gods various astral deities the Queen of Heaven and other Regional deities that come and go how then from this theological situation does the trajectory towards monotheism take shape and that's going to be a big deal of what we'll be studying in this episode but first what do I mean by monotheism simply put I take monotheism to be a theological or philosophical position that affirms the existence of one and only one God thus denying ontological status to the other gods or significantly demoting them or demonizing them or something like that that deity is typically responsible for the creation of the world the natural and ethical laws that govern it and the fate of that world of course the Contours of all of that especially in a developing theological system couch largely in Poetic language is going to lack any I don't know analytic rigor for My Philosophy people out there and it's going of remain relatively vague in coet and especially in its earliest forms if we find just such conditions in the Primitive monotheism of the Hebrew Bible we shouldn't at all be surprised but should we expect to find monotheism of any form in the Hebrew Bible at all well yeah of course we think it's there one Camp argues that monotheism goes back to Abraham and Moses with the biblical text being the inherent word of God and it's been monotheistic from the beginning because there's just one God objectively another argues that no monotheism is to be found in the Hebrew Bible at all at most we find henotheism or Yahweh monolatry with monotheistic rhetoric something found in clearly polytheistic cultures like ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt allowing us following philosophical and Theological developments of centuries later to interpolate such positions back into the Theology theologies of the Hebrew Bible the position I take in this episode is one that tries to be most representative of the non-confessional non-dogmatic field as I understand it that is the evidence-based studies that have revealed the social and historical forces of the ancient Levant that came to produce ultimately something like judian monotheism in the context of the 6th Century Babylonian exile nearly solely represented by the prophet Theologian responsible for the authorship of Isaiah chapters 40-55 a great deal of the rest of the text most Scholars and myself take it are actually monotheistic like pronouncements from those previous periods like those in the Psalms along with similar exclamations made by the deuteronomist are likely either examples of rhetorically exaggerated statements of monolist theology or eelic period interpolations of actual monotheism made by later redactors into the text that is to say the general attitude of non-dogmatic academic Scholars is that monotheism of any form is a very very very late theological Innovation barely attested in the Hebrew Bible if at all and yet Judean the theology would certainly come to express a monotheism centered on Yahweh and this episode explores the origin of that theological on ramping and what if any primitive monotheism might be expressed in the Hebrew Bible so let's go make a lot of people as twice as angry as it should probably make them think twice at least twice now while it might sound odd the first thing worth pointing out is that the ancient Canaanites never really had a huge profusion of deities to begin with unlike other nearby regions the Canaanite Pantheon was always rather small it basically consisted of one Regal Divine family and a relatively small family at that thus in so far as monotheism was going to be a historical whittling down of a Pantheon until one God was left standing so to speak as opposed to some philosophical deduction of there being one and only one God which does seem to have occurred although much much later primarily in Greek speculation that whittling down process was just numerically going to be objectively easier in Canan rather than in Egypt or Mesopotamia they're just less Gods to get rid of I mean monotheism is the closest possible position to just atheism you're just one God away in effect the canite theological system consisted of a four tiered structure centered on a again relatively small Divine family at the top of that system was the fatherly God L and his consort aat the second tier were unsurprisingly his children such as Bal and anat Below them is a much less attested group of deities such as the Craftsman deity God Kar vasis and finally at the bottom of the system were the various semi Divine servants and the Warriors in addition to these deities there were primordial Divine forces such as sea and death who would eventually Be Tamed by the warrior God Bal in the Bal cycle of course other deities are also attested such as some astral deities are the war plague deity RF but in general the four tiered Pantheon seems to capture what the ugaritic texts denote as the assembly or Council of the Gods in one complete but not totally coherent totality what is interesting is what happens when Yahweh is introduced into that system an archaic section at Deuteronomy 329 seems to be an early memory of a period when Yahweh was part of this Divine ecology but still regarded as a son of L not the highest God Son of the god in fact the satuan and the dud scroll versions of this text probably preserve the more archaic poly theistic reading with the mastic text undergoing a later kind of anti- polytheistic censorship at least as argued by Manuel Tove who's to argue with Emanuel to apparently at this primitive period Yahweh was a second tier deity with Elon the highest God doing out his portion of the world for Yahweh to rule over however yahweh's second rate status was not to last with his assimilation to L something that the Israelites and appear to have been universally pretty comfortable with Yahweh would rise to the temp of the pantheon but not without a without a fight Mortal Combat for the gods it's clear in the Israelite literature that Yahweh had to contend in popularity with Baal they were just that similar they're both Warrior storm gods and frankly Baal was the incumbent Regional deity and the Elijah Elicia Cycles represent these theological contestations among Yahweh Mal and the cult of Bal further theological victory for Yahweh seems to have come with an interesting feature or bug depending on how you look at it recall that El had a wife and thus a wife consort aurat what appears to have happened is that Yahweh does eventually rise to the top of the pantheon like Rocky style at least for the Yahweh partisans but there Yahweh is kind of immediately wed in a sense with a consort the descendant of aat aser they're even linguistically connected Yahweh got a wife something attested in both archaeological inscriptions but also in the Hebrew Bible with a Shera devotion occurring in open air elevated shrines or beote but also within the Jerusalem Temple in the form of a tree or a tree symbol representing her much to the constant complaining of the prophet monol of Yahweh these mutations in the Divine household would however continue the concept of the Divine council is definitely retained the let us create in the first creation story Psalm 82 likely has Yahweh standing among the various Divine beings condemning them to death for them being unjust the framing sections of job feature the hassatan the Satan as a kind of prosecuting attorney in the Divine assembly and Yahweh sends a spirit of deception to trick a bunch of prophets to get aav or Ahab killed which is one of my favorite if not my favorite story in the Hebrew Bible along with a retinue of Messengers and Warrior beings the angels and even the title Yahweh saot the lord of the sabot this is just means Yahweh of the soldiers all revealed that while somewhat flattened out the Divine assembly descended from the older Canaanite Divine royal family was still pretty intact by the period of some the composition of some of the Hebrew Bible further this period also saw Yahweh ruling with his consort ashir though anat remember the other daughter of L although it's not clear who her mother was anat the most medal of all goddesses of the ancient world she seems to have functioned with Yahweh at the elephantine Shrine there on elephantine Island in Egypt we have yahu Ana mentioned there so she seems to have perhaps been kind of daughter consort although exactly what that relationship was down there at the Yahweh Shrine on alantin island is not clear for at least the Yahweh partisans what seems to have emerged is something of a compressed henotheism there are other gods but our God is the best remember that my dad can beat up your dad to something like monolatry we were only going to worship our group God thus a kind of henotheism to monolatry Spectrum though with tension as to kind of what to do with Asher it appears that her devotion was very strong and quite widespread I mean mother fertility goddesses are going to be extremely popular for obvious reasons if for nothing else given the infant mortality rate of this time it also appears that the eventual demotion and eventual elimination of ashir was quite a very slow process perhaps the monolist factions by focusing more on exclusive worship of yah way diminished her position ultimately producing a kind of theological divorce of course her devotion continued but this theological divorce would then allow her to be targeted for official state suppression such as at public shrines especially the yahwe Shrine in Jerusalem this tendency toward monolatry also compressed into fewer and fewer Divine and semi- divine beings a compression aiding even if unconsciously on the trajectory toward eventual monotheism centuries later so one motor here if you want to think about it that way is an alternating force of mythological compression the Divine family is just getting smaller and suppression elements of it are being attacked and picked off one by one more on this kind of religious suppression especially especially State back suppression in a moment however another development in the theological landscape of the anient World especially in the 8th century is also worth mentioning here most deities at this time were conceived of as Regional even literally dwelling in some sense in shrines specific to those regions they were literally the houses of those gods and they were specific to that local this was their Turf so to speak it's like the CPS and the Bloods but it's Yahweh and Bal while these various manifestations in various regions deities were largely taken to be Regional in character even if specific to certain shrines in those cities so Bal Hadad and balel might be just manifestations of ball in those areas however with the great Empire Building of especially the Assyrians an interesting theological shift begins to occur while previous theologies again usually had Regional deities fighting alongside or on behalf of their war and Kings these often local skirmishes over lands contested as belonging to that King or God it appears that the Assyrians however boasting of one of the first truly professional armies in the history of the world and using it with great brutality to create a vast Empire understood themselves as creating a unified imperial system whose Central State God especially ashure but to some degree ashure assimilated with Babylonian Marduk was increasingly conceived as a universal Divine being ruling over all the lands conquered by the Assyrian army this Assyrian Royal Theology of one universal Imperial King and one universal Imperial God thus not only Asher fighting alongside the Assyrian Kings but ruling over vast lands never initially associated with Assyrian royalty or their Divine geographical mandate this shift in Assyrian Royal theology seems to have made a huge impr impression on everyone around them because the Assyrian boot was on their neck and that makes an impression upon you of course the Israelites are going to be upon those for whom an impression is made the first is that the northern Israelite Kingdom would just be destroyed by the Assyrians by 722 B.C.E ending State yism there impr prompting a massive Refugee crisis with the southern Kingdom of Judah eventually itself becoming an Syrian vassel Israelite Royal theology as witnessed by numerous Psalms had a long seen a special relationship between the king as typified by King David and the Israelite National God Yahweh whose Throne home was Mount theion Mount Zion within the temple in Jerusalem now a lot of this Royal theology did draw on more archaic Canaanite mythology but also on yahweh's own history as a kind of warrior rating deity Yahweh as an ish a man of war these Psalms develop an elaborate Cosmic terrestrial parallelism where the terrestrial Ambitions of the Earthly King are mirrored in the cosmic combat led by Yahweh it's typical of the ancient world here Kings set out against their enemies while Yahweh is enjoined by Cosmic Angelic armies or by semi Divine beings like the war and plague hypostases de and RF and habakuk these are survivals by the way of the more archaic four tier Divine Council period with RF being part of that Divine Council way back in laric times this King God parallelism even becomes mythologically confed when the Divine will rise up the king to set his hand upon the sea and his right hand upon the river the king literally taking on a Titanic scale himself battling with with the Primal forces of watery chaos the Mediterranean and the Tigers and Euphrates indeed these mythological exaggerations for The Once and Future Israelite King they become the foundation for later Messianic hopes and aspirations this is rhetorical strategy made into theology evolving into theology it's very similar to the mechanisms that are going to ultimately produce monotheism but with the Imperial theological Innovations of the Assyrians with their universalizing God Ashu the Israelites could continue to expand the mythological power of their God that path had been blazed by the Assyrians the Assyrian theologians perhaps first conceived of a universal God still a God again among other gods but a real badass God but now free of regional or Shrine parochialism however it wouldn't be a powerful Empire that would make good on that universality it would be a kingdom sitting in the ashes of Exile that would effectuate monotheism it seems it's difficult to overstate just how fearsome the Assyrian Empire was and despite a northern Coalition joined by the Kingdom of Israel the entire region would fall under the Syrian Domination by 722 for his part the southern Judean King akaz wishing to basically be rid of his Northern enemies including his Northern enemies Israel and perhaps seeing the writing on the wall there's no stopping the Assyrian army akaz became a willing vassel of the Syrian Tigo peler all despite theological arguments to do the contrary by his court Prophet you may know him as Isaiah now his son A's son Hezekiah seems to have fallen a very different tract perhaps based on both the political realities of the time on the ground but also I suspect out of his own theological convictions or to put it another way his theological convictions might have been in a kind of dialectical relationship with his political concerns which was the defense of the judian state again Theology and politics at that time were simply Inseparable if they're ever really separable regardless it appears that hezekiah's Judean State absorbed a massive amount of population from the northern refugees he oversaw significant stateb building projects especially those anticipating an eventual Siege specifically the construction of what is called the broad wall and the salom tunnel for providing water for the rocky CAG city that is Jerusalem that tunnel by the way is still accessible still gets water in it and you can Splash around in there if you like we're also told of specific religious measures that hezekia took perhaps the behest of Yahweh partisans or Yahweh monol to destroy Yahweh shrines and to further centralize Yahweh Worship in the Jerusalem Temple such centralization had the Dual effect of further unifying the political and Theological registers of Judean Society and also again for providing a theological center in the eventuality of a Siege a siege that was coming it was always in the cards now biblical minimalists and maximalists debate about the exact nature and extent of these so-called reforms or Inquisition if you're a non- yist and little extra biblical Archaeology is forthcoming on the matter though some Scholars do point to an increasing anacon in the seals or bulle of the period but this could just be part of a shift from Assyrian influence to Egyptian cultural influence as um the Rebellion brood now Hezekiah was correct and The Siege did eventually come mostly because the western region of the Assyrian Empire revolted under Egyptian encouragement sarab's early 8th Century campaign in the Levant would see city after City fall he impaled everyone in in him his path the battle and fall of Lish would prove to be made into art in his Palace providing us our best glimpse into the siege Warfare of the time and I have to say there's something chilling about taking a stroll up the still existing Siege ramp left by the Assyrians up to the walls of that City eventually Sak laid Siege or at least subjected Jerusalem to a kind of blockade of some kind and records have it that Hezekiah sought purely theological relief from the situation with the Assyrian forces being tossed back after an Angelic Slaughter and Hezekiah paying 300 talents of silver and 30 talant of gold to the Assyrians stripping even the Temple of gold and silver to pay the price the Assyrians for their part record that after having Hezekiah pinned up like a bird in a cage a higher payment of tribute was due paid to the Assyrians declaring that the terrifying Splendor of the army brought the matter all to a swift conclusion now I suspect that the truth probably splits the difference of these narratives Hezekiah did pay Hefty tribute to avoid a nightmare of a Siege and sonakar was probably happy to avoid an assault on a basically well stocked walled Mountain Fortress which also now had a semi secet Underground Supply of water especially with the Egyptians at his back Judea remained a vassel something that the biblical narratives just happily don't mention they really like to preserve Hezekiah but they remained a vassel Jerusalem however was at least saved and it's very difficult to imagine again given the the unity of politics and religion at this time but such a miracle I mean it's literally described by the judeans as an Angelic Army routing the terrestrial forces of the Assyrian army that the religious measures that strengthen Yahweh worship at this time clearly at the expense of other deities that all must have paid off it must have been the case that the Yahweh monol are like Told You So now this Victory must have been a positive Boom for the yway partisans and perhaps they enjoyed throughout the reign of Hezekiah increased stateb popularity through this time and I don't think anyone can deny military victories especially surprising mil Ary reverses they they they put wind in the sails of theological Visions however while a theological Siege mentality might have worked well for a for a Siege it wasn't really going to work function for the general prosperity of the regime in general and it appears that incorporating elements of Astral Worship in deference of their position as Assyrian vassals but also having a more theologically ecumenical position with non ywe Worship in the Jerusalem Temple and Beyond at the bay Mo was just much more likely to solicit wider popular support for the regime supporting the booming olive oil trade in the region and appeasing their Assyrian overlords and the longest reigning Judean monarch and Son of Hezekiah Manasseh did just those things and it's best to consider that the Yahweh partisans while again still not monotheists as we would recognize them if at all were likely thought of as extremist iconic class by the general population for whom aera other gods were very popular and the nation around them their Glee in smashing ancient popular cult sites might have inspired the same horror that we experience when the Taliban destroys those great Buddha statues or Dash or Isis destroys all kinds of sites in the ancient near East that they deemed idolatrous the literature that has come down to us in the biblical text only tells one story edited from the position of those Yahweh partisans and later Yahweh partis partisans editing their ideas into the text and even y'all with triumphalism but there's still good reason to think that such positions weren't popular much less representative of the religious Sentiments of the general population and I suspect that Manassa theological policies given his long and successful Reign I mean how many these guys get a assassinated is much more of an indicator of their being representative of the population and the Nations around him his success probably proved him right despite what the yahs partisans would have liked to have believed in their backbiting bickering about him and after his long Reign his son Amon would be assassinated perhaps by yaha's partisans and his 8-year-old son Josiah who was now at this point 8 years old and could be manipulated and it would be that very Josiah that would lead another yist reform or Inquisition again depending on where you said on this whole issue further destroying non Yahweh shrines and non- Jerusalem Yahweh shrines just to the degree to which of again isn't quite clear I mean his contemporar is Jeremiah who doesn't really even seem to mention these kinds of things and that would have been the kind of thing Jeremiah would have been all about and Josiah is also not attested anywhere else outside the Bible however the biblical text tells us that he did over see Renovations of God's house the temple and during that work a scroll of the law was discovered and eventually vetted by the Israelite prophetes holda now many scholars including myself are rightly skeptical of this account you just happen to find a scroll in a wall considering that if this is probably much more likely that you later yall was actually produced a document very much like the book of Deuteronomy or perhaps its core chapters 12 through 26 six with the northern prophetes hula vetting the text acting as a kind of unifying force between the northern refugees and Southern religious life thus making Josiah at least symbolically a king of a reunified yist monarchy or a unified yist monarchy assuming there ever really wasn't One to begin with further the Theology of this document is subtly subversive of the existing order of the day by Josiah's rule the Assyrian Empire was collapsing the Neo Babylonian Empire was not yet fully on its feet but it was coming and Egypt was not yet able to establish Regional hegemony given its former conquest by the Assyrians thus the Judean Highlands were able to operate with a high degree of de facto autonomy this political autonomy was probably theologically enshrined in that deuteronomic code written or discovered in the wall by those folks that theology takes the form of a vassel contract something the judeans knew a lot about at this point in which Judea became a vassel of Yahweh following the laws laid down by that code in return for protection it's always a protection racket this Yahweh stuff land agricultural success and a large number of descendants this is a fascinating document because it represents a kind of theological anarchism along tradition frankly in Israelite literature in which the Israelites or judeans with this case would only ultimately answer to Yahweh and not some other Earthly power however the priesthood and the king would act as intermediaries in this vassal contract but what if that King in that priesthood with its Temple were destroyed by say uh I don't know a rampaging Neo Babylonian Army what happens if the vassel contract now is simply between Israel and Yahweh but a bit more about that priesthood and their contributions to this discussion among their ranks were the day-to-day servants and shock troops of the Yi partisans of course they served at the behest of the Kings and so the degree of their monolatry wasn't entirely up to them as attested by various prophetic condemnations of course many priests were almost surely also only lukewarm ysts and sure many of them happily served in the henotheistic environment of at least the Yahweh Ashera couple in the temple however it appears that at least some priests began to develop a highly sophisticated theory of something like sacred contagion where strict control of the spread of what was ritually fit from what was not must be very carefully maintained this was accomplished by maintaining and managing states of ritual Fitness and fulfilling a sacrificial cycle by which Yahweh was nourished physically nourished in some sense but also which by which contamination could be curtailed and repaired all of which was meant to maintain a state of cosmic homeostasis in fact when they envisioned the creation of the world they relied upon very common ancient neares tropes in which the Divine rests the world from watery chaos but rather than personalize those forces of chaos these priests seem to have demythologized them with the Divine world seems to have demythologized those elements with the Divine creating the world not from nothing that's a much much later idea but by separating out various Cosmic forces and entities from one another culminating in the ultimate separation of time itself into the weak and the Sabbath this separation creation structure would then be mirrored in the creation of the Tabernacle or the Mish time and in turn in the Jerusalem Temple especially as it's spelled out in Exodus 35-40 the dwelling of the Israelite Divine upon the earth now again this isn't monotheism the remains of the Divine Council can still be heard in the creation separation process along with there being chaos monsters inhabiting primordial uncreated Waters meaning that this deity is by no means alone in this creation separation process but what we do see here is yet another 10 tendency during this period of some degree of demythologizing where primeval chaos is no longer personified as in the chaos comp typically in the form of a snake or a serpent and where a Divine Council of we is acting in a singular fashion with that Creator separator eventually coming to have a singular dwelling points upon the Earth though you can still see lots of examples of God having to fight sea monsters in the Hebrew Bible you see it in job and you can see it in Psalm 7 before but again all in all the interest of the Priestly obsession with creating and maintaining a harmonious balance of the Sacred and the profane through the very careful management of the temple sacrificial system does reveal yet another aspect of this on ramping toward monotheism in the form of a demythologizing system of describing how the world was created through separation again not created from nothing that is a much much later probably 600 years later theological and philosophical innovation of really the Greek world and not the Israelite world but to return to Yahweh yahweh's fate was not going to be sealed by not only men but by non-israelites once enemies the Assyrians and the Egyptians joined forces against their now ascendant common foe the Neo Babylonians it appears that Josiah may have been killed in a battle with the Egyptian forces of Neco II at the megiddo on the way to haran around 609 but there's some doubt about whether that story is reliable Scholars really aren't sure about the exact way that Josiah perished regardless Judea briefly fell into Egyptian hegemony before the rampaging armies of the Neo Neo Babylonians led by Nebuchadnezzar II would lay Siege to the entire region while a small sample size I have to admit the ysm of the Lish letters is actually pretty undeniable those letters are a fantastic recovery that image of the of AA not being visible and the fires going out from the north is just horrifying and with the destruction of Jerusalem and its Yahweh Temple the Theology of the deuteronomist had come to its apocalyptic conclusion Yahweh had allowed Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Judea because of their violation of the vassel contract you still hear this horrifying theology being used today that the Holocaust was because of reform Jews you still hear it in circles ironically catastrophic Devastation being proof of ysm for the yis partisans this is a trait often shared by theological dead Enders however there was a theological Wrinkle In This Nebuchadnezzar II didn't have all the judeans put to the sword the kind of total Annihilation that one might have expected rather around 7,000 judeans or so many members of the priesthood and the aristocracy likely Advanced Crafts People and even farmers were all carted off to Babylonia to build their empire for them within that Empire one can imagine that if the annihilation would have been total the last deuteronomist monolit could have wagged their finger at the last syncretist as they both perished in the chaos but that that didn't happen they all kind of just went into Exile together all in one basket thus maintaining the theological ambiguity what in the world does any of this mean and perhaps forcing a solution to be forged in the exile for what had just happened I thought we were supposed to be destroyed and here we are what do any of this mean now I'm sure that many of the debores adopted the religious practices of Babylonia perhaps first through syncretism and then through full-blown assimilation that's just the fate of many displaced person through history and we should never blame them for surviving adoption of the dominant culture is often just the best form of adaption and survival of your family I don't blame those people in the least however it appears that the judeans were not randomly dispersed into Babylonia rather they were clustered into discreet communities with one even being referred to as judan Town Yehuda Jew town interestingly enough dozens of uniform tablets from the judan community in the Babylonian exile do survive down to us and while none of them record anything like religious literature and there's no evidence of them building a temple there though it could have been small they're these documents are all just records of Financial and trade transactions like most uniform tablets they do record a very important piece of data they record names of course people's names don't tell us about their religious lives but they might inform us of give us at least a hint of some dimension of public religious affiliation if a person named Pinas names their son Muhammad well one could make a pretty good guess that that Jewish person might very well have converted to Islam before their son was born and we get data like that a bit like that from these tablets so what does that data reveal in the yudu archive the Jew town archive dating from around 572 to 477 66% of Judean fathers and 82% of their children had ystic names the masu archive dating from 452 to 413 are 46 and 67% respectively in yudo region only 7% of fathers and only 5% of children had Acadian names and only 5% of fathers and only 2% of children had non Yahweh theophoric names but masu 22% of judeans Judean fathers that is had Acadian names and 177% had non Yahweh theophoric names but in their children that number had dropped to only 5% for both categories now what this data means exactly is difficult to pull out and it's just one or two sets of data but what they do show is it all seem to show an increase in Yahweh theophoric names during the exilic period one could conclude that rather than assimilation into the first generation of the Exile more Yahweh theophoric names might represent an increase of exilic Yahweh partisanship and that outcome wouldn't be surprising in a community struggling to recreate itself in a foreign land as a community what do you do you simply Double Down of what you thinks make you you theologically especially and otherwise however we also see judeans using seals that make use of nonstic imagery further marriage documents between judeans and Babylonians do summon Babylonian Gods to punish those who violate those agreements and no other gods who invoked in those documents including Yahweh Yahweh is just not mentioned in those marriage documents though I have to say in the documents I consulted at least it was always a Judean woman being wed to a Babylonian husband and I'm not sure if inverse documents are known to exist where a Judean man married a Babylonian woman one might expect to see Yahweh in those documents I'm just not sure if any of those survive also these documents include being stabbed with an iron dagger if you break the agreement so geez now Smith has also pointed out to a shift in the late pre-exilic period and obviously exilic period where the tightly controlled familial units and the land that they are attached to as a central unit of Sol soci selection has begun to break down under social economic and perhaps even theological collapse and well a region racked by constant social instability often at an apocalyptic scope brought on by vast Imperial armies in this every man for himself nightmare the literal lands upon which those very familial Bonds were set or now stripped out from underneath them by Empires the family is no longer the fundamental unit of society that's no longer tenable the elderly Grandparents were no longer just fonts of wisdom worthy of respect you rised for them as they entered into a room or the city of the the gates of a city those old people were just a liability in this period of social chaos independent men capable of immediate brutality May well have risen to the very top of the previous social system where other things like class origin mattered now if you could cut your way to the top you could be at the top and on the other side of the coin texts written near and within the Exile often Focus Less on communal and familial guilt for transgressions but upon the individual for their guilt you can note ezekiel's break with centuries of communal and familial guilt such that children can no longer inherit the sins of their fathers something in direct contradiction to the Torah what has emerged is a new focus on individuality that weakening of the terrestrial family structure may have been one of those more maybe one of the final forms of the compression again shrinking the size and scope of the archaic four tier Divine family focusing now more than ever on individual Divine beings being worthy of worship an individual Divine being like the individual tough dudes that survived all this again is such a shift sufficient for monotheism no of course not but like everything we've been discussing it's just another social Force lending in the direction in the direction of the theological overdetermination that will become accidental historical monotheism well if the ancient Assyrians were the first among the peoples to come to the idea of a universal God through the process of universal Empire Building though again we do find monotheistic rhetoric and perhaps even monotheism in the 14th century great hym to the Aton by aanan way back in the 14th century being another early Contender the judeans Came Upon the notion of a universal God through dialectical negation centuries of the theological compression cycles of theological suppression the now Exile left Judean theologians precious few theological options perhaps we can say that they were doomed to monotheism a history of Royal theology now a kingship of Ashes Yahweh is forced to employ foreign Kings to do his bidding what other option is there but ironically this greatly expands the power of Yahweh no longer the god king of the judeans but the god king of perhaps all God Kings one God King to rule them all with priest and King now powerless and eliminated that Royal theology shifted to a direct relationship of the people of Judea or of Israel written large Israel becomes the more direct servant of the Divine Law with individual responsibility now the ethical Compass much more so than familial or communal guilt and punishment or the Comm commun but from these two negations arises a synthesis through concrete negation the elevation of Yahweh as king over the Persians or the Egyptians implies a local negation of the operative power of those gods that underwrite those monarchies if Yahweh is to be king over them indeed over the entire Olam of entire world Cosmos it is no longer enough that those gods are inferior to Yahweh in power henotheism isn't going to do the lifting here they must be those other Gods Must Be utterly negated as gods and indeed as beings at all the radical universality of Yahweh logically implies the negation of all other divinities and it appears that such a theology attains just such philosophical escape velocity from Mere monotheistic rhetoric or henotheism or monolatry in the exilic Theologian prophet of the writer of Isaiah 40-55 this section of Isaiah 40-55 has been recognized as a separate composition since at least the 18th century than the previous book composed in the 8th Century BCE what we call First Isaiah the author of this duto Isaiah is living in the Exile in Scholars contend and I frankly agree is the best candidate for the development of primitive judian monotheism but how does this idea emerge precisely through a pmic with the very theological situation of the Exile Vis A the powers of those foreign Gods who apparently now rule over the judeans in Exile the clearest statements of this primitive monotheism appear in that pical context roughly in Isaiah 40-48 and 49-55 specifically those sections seem to inaugurate some core theological themes like one that Yahweh is the creator of the cosmos and is in control of the present State of Affairs specifically using Cyrus as his anointed or Messiah to direct worldly Affairs two Yahweh has specifically chosen Israel rather than any King as his servant upon the world and three Israel should choose Yahweh because there are simply no other gods to choose from as opposed to the vassal relationship of the deistic theology though of course that choice does involve some degree of redemption here it's a logical deduction there just no other gods but Yahweh pick Yahweh not pick Yahweh because you get stuff this positive theology however is built upon a larger religious polyic a negation of what is around them that poic and the rhetorical and Theological inversions that come along with it are aimed at a comparison of the anacon Yahweh with the created Idols of Marduk and Nabu recall that the Assyrians had assimilated Marduk to Asher in their theological universalizing project now however with Babylonian Marduk the ascendant deity in the regional world and in some sense the best candidate for the greatest god of that time well you come at the king he best not miss but in this pmic and through powerful rhetorical negation second Isaiah increasingly negates themselves into a universal monotheism as Smith points out so well Yahweh is a God who creates the world and crafts human beings while Marduk is the creation of hands the craft work of human beings Idol makers are afraid while Israel is commanded not to fear Israel's made the witness of yah why the idols they have eyes but they can't see anything Israel said to know that Yahweh is God alone whereas the idol makers know only their own handiwork like you know you made that that's not a god Yahweh is glorified through Israel while the Idols are beded in mere human conceptions of beauty the forest praised Yahweh but its dead wood is only fit for Idols the same wood discarded and burned the craft person declares that wood and stone are Gods but declares that Israel is their servant the Idols are mute and cannot declare their choice of worldly servants the immobile statues of Marduk and Nabu must be carried by beasts and humans while Yahweh carries Israel and the world over moving even King Cyrus by his command in effect the deeper the pical attack upon the Babylonian Gods there is an inverse logical rejoiner for the very ontological status of Yahweh the negation of the great gods of this time leaves little logical choice for the Judean Theologian the negation of their theological powerlessness and Exile the negation of the negation must result I think in monotheism not so much so because of the Theologian fancy or because their desire to be monotheists but really because their options have simply all run out monotheism wasn't a theological Choice born out of Triumph or dramatic Revelation but a theological dead end born out of defeat Exile and centuries of historical accidents indeed I'd argue that second Isaiah is driven in this logic further than most monotheisms are willing to go the writer has Yahweh declare at 458 that Shalom I form the light in the darkness I create the good and the evil I Yahweh do all these things I suspect that few monotheisms have risen to this height making God responsible for both good and for evil and indeed most so-called monotheisms recoil in theological horror that God has even the Capac capacity to create evil thus making evil the result of some other dagod like the devil or Satan oras or whatever human failure some kind of great fall in the Garden of Eden or philosophical negation incapable of being created as such the idea of Augustine that evil is simply negation even later rabbinical Judaism the direct inheritors of the theological tradition were so uncomfortable with this verse that they altered it before putting it into the prayer book yot there or EK o Shalom u h forming light and dark making peace and everything rather than just saying it evil raah in this sense Isaiah 458 May well be the Pinnacle of pure monotheism a monotheism so pure that it terrified future theologians having to betray it for philosophical negation or eschatological B theism with an inverse God of evil ultimately destroyed at the end of the world as a means of monotheistic Saving Face regardless the Persian Cyrus would prove to be the first and only effective mosiah or messiah in Judean history the judeans were allowed to repatriate their Homeland masses of Temple artifacts were returned and some section of the population did opt to return to Judea to rebuild things there many did not however preferring an apparently comfortable life in the Persian Empire I mean those uniform documents show a flourishing World there perhaps it was the remnants of the older Priestly conservative class Desiring to inaugurate the duton numistic temple theology that returned or perhaps even syncretist it wanted to go back to the old ways one could imagine the nent monotheist if they existed at this point frankly being content to worship Yahweh anywhere a central temple being more of an accessory to religious piety than a necessity inde indeed non Jerusalem Yahweh shrines would continue to exist well into the helenistic period however intermarriage and likely theological syncretism seems to have persisted through this period and it's not even clear that the population has a sense of how to be religiously judian whatever that meant in fact I think that they are inventing Judaism during this period with readings of the law of Moses seeming a rather novel Innovation at the time rather than some time honored tradition among the population I suspect that most things we think of as Judaism were pioneered during this period did not to be found in the Israelite period And while there does seem to be returned to the deuteronomistic theology in the Priestly sacrificial cycle by the theological conservatives though like all conservatives I'm sure they were just innovating the entire time all the while pretending this is the way that it's always been done another more radical theology was also emerging at this time perhaps born out of of the theological negation that flickered into existence as excelic Judean monotheism perhaps under the influence of the zarrian religion and then a whole new heap of social turmoil a new mode of Judean religion was appearing at the same time it was a religious mode marked by an interest in cosmogeny events in the primordial past what is called exive into prophecy couched in highly symbolic and polyic language a deep expressed anxiety about oppression and tribulation eschatological upheavals the judgment and eventual fate of the righteous and the wicked and maybe some other world Journeys to those other worlds a sense of dualism between good and evil the intervention into history by a kind of Messiah savior figure and then anti- Messiah characters the structures of the heavens and the hells that they had developed the hidden role of angels and demons in world the affair is a profusion of Angels and Demons not found in Israelite religion in a generally divinely deterministic Outlook things might be bad but God's in control all of which were pseudo Anonymous and alleged ancient authorship and most importantly what gives this genre this mode of religiosity its name the revealing the apocalypsis from the Greek meaning to reveal or to uncover all of this to a human agent often through an Angelic Emissary Jewish apocalypticism was beginning to Roar into existence within The Crucible of monotheism out of which the theological particularism of Yahweh himself would be negated as so much draw leaving behind the universal God the world has inherited for better and For Worse the next episode and what has apparently become a series on Yahweh not sure how that happened is going to explore Yahweh as Yahweh is transformed in that period of apocalyptic transformation the Yahweh of the Apocalypse for more on this subject if you're interested in Yahweh in the history and development of monotheism I really recommend you check out my reading list and those are basically my sources for this episode over in the description for this video so if you want to get into this literature from a academic and non-dogmatic point of view I'll point you in the direction of some fantastic texts and I hope you again as much as you might be outraged or curious I hope you would dump that energy not into arguing with me on the internet because you're not arguing with me you're arguing with all the scholars that I read and report back on i' hope you engage with those Scholars I'm just some guy I'm just reporting to you their scholarship and a little bit of my own ideas go check out their scholarship and argue with them send them angry emails not me but until next time I'm Dr Justin Sledge and thank you for for watching esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and religion [Music] [Music]

Channel: ESOTERICA

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Length: 60min 35sec (3635 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2024