The Origins of the Ancient Israelite Religion | Canaanite Religions | Mythology

[Music] ladies and gentlemen welcome to the study of antiquity and the middle ages as always i'm your host nick barksdale and today we are joined once again by dr aaron mayer many of you are going to be familiar with his work on the philistines and the interviews he's been on the channel i am very excited to say that this next series is going to deal with a subject that many of you have requested and that is ancient israel and the israelites dr aaron mayer thank you so much for coming on today it's my pleasure uh like always so let's talk religion this is a subject that people really love i myself included if it's a religion if i have the time i enjoy reading about it and there's nothing more fascinating than religion for me in the ancient near east and so that being said let's talk ancient israel the israelites judites and religion br had asked were they always monotheistic were they originally polytheistic or was it not that simple and did it vary according to region town and city um well let's start with that the most of what we know about israel religion shows that it's very heavily influenced by canine religion that uh so for example the names of the canaanite gods or some of the canaan gods such as uh ale and baal and are sometimes and their and their attributes are incorporated in the biblical text into um the attributes and even the name of the israelite god now the overall ideological framework of the bible is that it's a god and one god only and it's a god who has no form the big question is is that the original form of this religion or is or what we're receiving um and that on those two things is that something after many many processes and many developments and and this is basically second temple judaism um and we're you know taking it back towards the uh towards the iron age so we know that um during the iron age there is evidence of use of depictions of the israelite god there's figurines both male and female so this uh this an iconic judaism that we're familiar with from later stages of judea is not exactly um in place in iron age judah and israel that said there's a lot less iconography uh in june in israel than you have in many of the surrounding cultures so there is some sort of a difference now as far as uh monotheism both in the biblical text and here and there in some inscriptions and uh and artifacts there seems to be more than one god perhaps a god and a goddess and a and a you know a couple perhaps yahweh the name of the israelite god and perhaps ashe according to some another thing is both in the biblical texts and and other evidence um we they very often talk not of monotheism but altruism that means that it's not that you don't believe that there are other gods but the other gods are are weak or not strong or insignificant so if the bible talks about you know it's not there is no other god always sometimes they talk uh there is no god la there is no god like our god that means you know um there's the uh the god of ashore and the god of the uh ammonites and the but that's nothing compared to our god our god will beat them um so uh it it appears that there may have been the stages in development of the of this idea of monotheism that from polytheism and belief and there are various gods and perhaps an important god and his and his partner and and then believe that oh yes there are other gods but they're peripheral to the actual belief that there's only one god that's what we uh believe in now the big question is of course when did that belief in monotheism appear did it appear ready in the iron age and if it appeared in the iron age was it an internal development or was it for example influenced by the assyrians and the because in the late iron age the assyrians also have this uh phenomenon which uh assure is turned into a prima primary god other gods don't disappear but he becomes elevated there are some people who claim that perhaps hints to monotheism appeared in in the period of um illimarna uh when when that the god was was elevated first to being the most important god in egypt and then some claim even to the only god of egypt but that was in the late bronze age you know uh 350 years before before you know the time you know time we're talking about mainly some people have claimed there's might be some connection with uh zarah astralism and there is possibility of various influences uh what we do know is that when you come out of the iron age and in the persian hellenistic period judaism right is monotheistic and the question is when did that occur you know when when did transition uh you know go on you know is it already in the iron age and if in the iron age perhaps as as in the question there were those who believed in it and those who didn't believe it and perhaps the biblical text represents those who didn't believe in it those who did believe in monotheism and and the archaeology shows us that there are other um you know interpretations around so i think we have this very complex formation of monotheism and it's very hard to put your finger on the point uh whether it's somewhere in late iron age or later that we can start talking about really pure clear-cut monotheism and so i've seen this a lot online and you can read articles on the subject so on and so forth but i feel like this needs to be in youtube as well and that is my own personal question how old is judaism well um depends on what you define judaism because um judaism as we know it today rabbinic judaism or the various forms of judaism that we know today are based on traditions that go back thousands and thousands of years now for example we have ample textual and archaeological and physical evidence of judaism from now backwards back into the time of the hellenistic period no question about it now even so the traditions that were on the ground during the hellenistic enrollment period uh have evolved and they're very different from from you know what's currently professed by the various types of judaism uh but they're still the same uh it's still the same religion that's developed over time and and no religion stays the same you know if you look at uh you know catholicism today or or uh or islam today compared to what it was centuries ago it has gone through a process of of development now uh once you start going further back um before the hellenistic period we can see the the the connections and the continuity but there's a lot more evidence of major changes that occur so for example that's why many many people will talk about israelite religion up to the end of the rh and talk about judaism from the persian period onwards because there it's it is a continuity but there's a lot of change a lot of developments a lot of major of uh things that have gone on uh in that period and again it's not a clear-cut you know here it went here you know it's it's an ongoing process that's slowly changed with many many undercurrents and many many different uh viewpoints that every once in a while a certain viewpoint became you know more prominent and then you know for example rabbinic judaism of today uh to a large extent is uh is the continuity of a specific faction in second temple early roman period judaism uh and and while others sort of you know went into the desperate history um so that's how you know things never stay the same they develop and their influence etc so what i i think you can talk about that there is a clear-cut cultural connection between traditions that existed in the judith and israelite kingdoms in the iron age up until judaism and today it's completely different and if you would take an observant jew um today and put him in a time tunnel and take him back to jerusalem in the iron age and show him the temple he would have had he would probably have apoplexy and die because it's so different but uh but nevertheless you can trace the continuity and the traditions that as they evolved and that pretty much confirms my thought as well i mean if i were to look it up on let's say britannica for example it really gives you the example that it's it's really not black and white right and there's so much continuity between you know ancient israel and their religion and what we have today and so it's really awesome we were able to clarify on that now what do we know and this is a broad question and that is what do we know about ancient israelite religion and religious practices did it vary also according to city and region or was there more of a clear-cut practice and belief well um in the iron age um you could talk about um uh i would say you know uh grossly speaking of uh traditions of the israelite kingdom and the judaic kingdom but then you could also talk about urban traditions and rural traditions official religion and family religion you know there's a lot of variations and of course um if you're at a site which is on the border between the area where the philistines live and the area where the judith live and there's an intermixture between them what does it tell us you know you know who are they what are they you know are they you know mixing between uh you know mix and match you know so it's uh it's not always simple and i think in general you know we would like to think of things being very uniform because it makes it easy to understand but even today you know even though you know like the the pope will declare that all catholics do this and this and this not all catholics do this and this and that so troy von clemens had asked what do we know about the history of yahweh and how did it evolve in israel over time there are a couple of egyptian sources from the late bronze age which may mention tribes of yahweh or something like that so so yahweh was a god that existed apparently but he wasn't a very central and foreign god he's not mentioned in any way extensively in any of the canaanite uh texts or or significantly in egyptian texts so he apparently was a god of a very specific group of of people and they probably were one of the main components of the of israel now interestingly the name israel the l ending is another god but yahweh became the important god now what happened with time according in israelite uh religion yahweh took on names and attributes of other gods and incorporated into his you know into his identity so it could very well be that you know there was a group who believed in a god named yahweh there were groups that believed in other gods and they got together and over time the yahweh became the important god now by the way for example in the northern kingdom they pronounce yahweh in a different way than in the southern kingdom so it might indicate you know different traditions about that god you know it's it's a very complex uh you know and again our vision of yahweh as the single god you know that may be very much influenced by later uh understandings of who this god was and then we're projecting this back into the iron age that is really interesting actually i think a lot of people are really going to find this very insightful that is great is there a link veramrex had asked in your opinion between and old testament religious beliefs um well first of all um when you compare the history of uh let's say iron age um israel and zoroasterism so they appear more or less at the same time but if if i remember correctly the the earliest zoroastic texts are from the fifth or sixth entry bce so we're talking about the at the very end of the iron age or even post rna so that said in the persian period that means the late sixth fifth fourth century uh bce the persian empire which was substantially uh you know of the substantial part you know these important parts of it were that zoroastrianism was the main religion they controlled the land of israel and um they were they were both controlling people of jews who were in the land of israel but they were also controlling areas where exiles from the from the israelite and judi kingdom were in babylonia and beyond so there was probably interface um from that time onwards and we know that there was interface between jews uh living in babylonia and persia also in the hellenistic and enrollment um uh period so there it has over the age has been a lot of interface and at least you know neighbor you know uh and there's all kinds of aspects of interface between um iranian traditions and and jewish traditions there's a whole field of research that deals with that now there have been various claims that uh monotheism came from that and the concept of good and bad and uh the importance of fire and all kinds of aspects so one of the one of the things is you know you always people are always looking for you know what's the influence of that you know can we always put out everything basically everything is influenced by everything you know and you can always find some sort of influence on something so i would say probably persian traditions including zoroastrianism did come in contact with jewish traditions and there might have been um you know bi-directional influences uh i don't think though there are good chances that this influence occurred already in the rna should probably occur if it did occur occurred post rna then again the question is how deep and how you know profound these these connections were and that's already a more problematic issue do you think that akhenaten's attempt at a form of monotheism could have had an impact on kanan as well or no it has been suggested and for example the famous one is is uh is uh freud you know um i suggest this in his book um um moses and monotheism or something like that that's the name of the book uh that there is some connection that a tradition of monotheism entered israel through the of the the concepts that were um used in egypt during the a monarchy the only problem with that is that that's in the middle of the uh 14th century bce and evidence of monotheism in israel even if we say if i look at the biblical uh thing and we say that it occurred sometime in the you know right before the israelites came into the land you know under moses that's that's in the mid 13th uh late 13th early 12th century so there's quite a distance between the two uh and not to mention that archaeologically it would seem to be that monotheism really becomes uh more and more uh on the ground only in the later iron age so um it's a little hard to make that connection that said you never know you know you could have uh ideas undercurrents of ideas that don't appear in the official texts whether in egypt and other places that exist you know we're you know we're dependent on such a small portion of what's actually going on in the past so who are we to say that it's impossible that that the constant monotheism wasn't out there that's a good point i knew i needed to bring that up because i know that some of my subscribers would have instantly brought up akhenaten and his attempt at monotheism that's interesting i'm glad we were able to go ahead and cover that briefly now here's a another subject that i really enjoy and that is religion and violence and there's a i mean there's a lot of scholarship done it's really fascinating regardless of what culture regardless of the people and the old testament in many ways depicts a world of religious harmony that in many ways erupts into religious violence or military violence combined with religion and i was wondering how common was religious violence in ancient israel and how divided was israel on the subject of religion if we even know well i think um you have to remember that antiquity was a violent place um and uh although um the effectivity of weapons was not as it was today but um violence was there all the time um and you know there are studies that talk about how that even though even if you take into account the millions that were killed in the last hundred years in world wars and all et cetera the the world has become a less violent place over over the of the centuries and there's no question that violence was was rife in any any society and and if you could kill your enemy you kill them that's it's you know bottom line and i think a lot of that's depicted in the biblical text about religious related violence is either religious justification of things that occurred due to military conflict or ideological wishes that this is what will happen to my enemy or i can i kill my enemy and i do a horrible thing so i have to justify it you know with some religious uh uh story uh but i think i think you know you know one of the things is that if you remember when um just a few years ago when isis started executing people uh left and right you know in the most horrendous manners and and to our modern perceptions of what's fair play and war and what do you do with prisoners etc it was so you know jarring but they were just doing what people did three thousand years ago two thousand years ago a thousand years ago it was just you know it wasn't we didn't have intelligent coverage of it then uh and i think i think a lot of the way we uh try to understand the past is either uh on the one hand turn them into these perfect people who live this perfect life you know they have these perfect ideals etc or on the other hand they were these horrible barbarians who did ethnic cleansing they were um people who were living very complex difficult lives and they had to fight for their for their survival and and they fought tooth and nail and sometimes in what we would consider very very uh atrocious matters and that was life you know just you know the you know i think i think in general um there's a there's this um inclination to sort of see the past either as very rosy or very horrible and it was a combination of all but at the same time so you know you know i know i i made a comment about um about the um paleo diet in one of the previous things and a lot of people got mad about that uh uh so i think i think that's part of it you know painting this rosy picture which is very often based on your ideology and interpreting the past is is problematic you know this is great uh which was turned into a book the past is a foreign country they do things differently and they did things very differently from the way we do it and they understood it very differently and trying to impose our understandings on our ideologies in the past is exactly that and imposing our uh ideologies and understanding on the past so for example looking at the biblical texts of how the israelites slaughtered the canaanites when joshua conquered the land first of all did that conquest even incur uh if some of it occurred what happened and what is it saying that that the israelites want to ethnically cleanse their enemies perhaps it's a it's a reaction to someone who did that to them you know who knows um but just to say simplistically you know and and make your comparisons between the biblical texts there and modern day events today it's it's it's mixing between things that shouldn't be mixed yeah now let's talk about another particular favorite subject and that is sacrifice and not just referring to animals per se but the topic of human sacrifice as well when it comes to ancient religion do we have any evidence at all for human sacrifice within the borders or regions of what we consider ancient israel to be and if so is that due to the israelites or possibly due to floored borders of their neighbors there's a a very strong tradition in in roman sources but also an archaeological remains relating to the phoenicians of the uh of the um of the trophies that's and according to that the the phoenicians sacrificed infants to a god um and you know according to the roman depiction they were thrown into a fire or something of the sword and and there have uh have been found several cemeteries in various uh phoenician sites both in lebanon that perhaps in northern israel is perhaps a hint and also for example in carthage and other venetian sites uh in the mediterranean uh where um it has been suggested that they this was evidence of this uh infant sacrifice now there's debate about this some scholars accept it some scholars don't accept it um but the the biblical tradition is very clear in talking about that the that the phoenicians um birth their babies sacrifice their children and uh and there is a a biblical narrative saying that this tradition also came to jerusalem in the late iron age and castigating it this is a horrible thing that should be done uh so there seems to be a tradition that there was some sort of uh infant sacrifice practiced by some people in in iron age judah but we don't have um any evidence of this archaeologically and we don't have any evidence of other types of human sacrifice in in israel or judah during the iron age does that mean that it didn't occur at all it's hard to say but um it's not something that it's for sure i mean if if you think of the biblical text the one place where supposedly they were about to do a human sacrifice is is abraham and isaac you know uh on mount moriah but that that's put out there as sort of like the the horrendous thing that he's about to do because the god said et cetera and in the end he doesn't do it so again the question is what was the writer trying to convey there um you could argue that he was trying to convey that he was they're very much against that type of behavior um and again we don't have any other substantial evidence of this and archaeologically we don't have it as well uh on the other hand in other uh ancient cultures whether it's just turning some here and there in egypt to a certain extent here and there in sumer and and and manoan creek and other places there are hints of of human sacrifice so um you know sometimes it's archaeologically visible we don't have anything that tells us about this in in rna judah or israel if you read like the old testament you see like uh jericho for example only one family is spared and you're not allowed you're not supposed to take anything from the city right it's uh the one guy who does causes a military disaster and it's like uh the city of jericho and realistically everything in it is supposed to be almost like a uh an offering right to their god and saul i think it's the uh is it the ammonite king that he spares you know the supposed supernatural i guess uh curse on saul because he doesn't obey you know the commands to kill the king yeah and so it's interesting and it's like one there's the big debate did this even happen did jericho even happen but it's interesting to see this form of i guess you could say arguably this religious awareness i guess involving violence if that makes sense i don't know it's it's hard to put that in words if them well i think i think i think there's an all violence uh and and you know uh and let's say called state sanctioned or politically sanctioned violence um in integrity and until today is very often information with religion because religion gives you the um the ideology in which you can you can exist it enables you to explain your daily life and that also enables you to explain horrible situations whether you win them or you lose them you still try to explain them use your religion so if you have if you in the context of a religious explanation of events in a war you also explain it uh that way you know so i think it's just part of it's integrating um you know really in antiquity as in many traditional societies there's no separation between life and religion it's all intermeshed and you get up from the morning from the moment you wake up so then at the moment you go to sleep your daily life is is information with your religious beliefs and practices so i think it goes also goes for your uh conduct and war um but on this little topic because i feel like this is a really interesting one whenever saul doesn't kill the king and spare some of the livestock and stuff like that was it a prophet or judge that had told him he was supposed to i can't remember do you feel like this could be a reference to almost a power struggle between a priestly class and the kingship um very much so listen the the the way the biblical text describes the appearance of the of the monarchy as a struggle between uh various classes so i'm sure this is something that existed and as i said before you know it's like the kingship in antiquity and in ancient israel was not this one charismatic figure that controlled everything but he he had to uh muscle his way into the position based on charismatic leadership and coalition politics and i'm sure he had to convince uh or overcome other uh people who had claims to the leadership as well ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us today at the study of antiquity and the middle ages i hope you've enjoyed what we've done so far this is actually just the first part of the series on ancient israel we've got more stuff coming so stick with us it's going to be absolutely fantastic i can't wait to get into more and dr aaron mayer thank you so much for coming on today my pleasure great to be here so [Music] you

Channel: Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages

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Keywords: Bronze Age, Bronze Age Collapse, Judaism, Ancient, Ancient History, Ancient Canaan, Ancient Near East, Ancient Hebrews, Bible History, Hebrew, Biblical Archaeology, Baal, Yahweh, El, Carthaginians, Semitic, Indo European, Ancient Israel, Ashur, Assyria, Mythology, Ancient Mesopotamia, canaanite religion, canaanite gods, canaanites history, ancient canaanites, hebrew religion, akhenaten, ancient Egypt, Sumerian, Phoenicians, Zoroastrianism, Exodus, joshua bible, religious history, Israel, Bible

Id: zVnQqtYCS_M

Length: 31min 4sec (1864 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020