Religious practices and institutions

Nature: the framework of ideas and practices

Fertility of agriculture, of edible animals, and of the human population was a paramount factor in the life and religion of the ancient Middle East. The forms that the fertility rites assumed varied from region to region, depending on climate and geography. Rain and dew were all-important in Canaan but of little significance in Egypt. In both areas water was crucial, but the source of the life-giving water was entirely different. The agricultural year varied in the two regions. In Egypt the year was divided into three seasons: inundation, sowing, and harvest. In Canaan there were two seasons: the winter, characterized by rainfall, and the summer, characterized by dew. The year was punctuated by different agricultural activities, as is indicated in the Gezer Calendar, in which all 12 months are accounted for as times of profitable agricultural activity, with harvests in the rainless summer as well as in the green winter. Anxiety was caused by the uncertainty of rain in the rainy season and of dew in its season. All of the regions of the ancient Middle East schematized the blessing of good years and the threat of bad years in terms of seven-year cycles. A Mesopotamian text illustrating this is the Gilgamesh epic (8:101–113), in which the slaying of the hero Gilgamesh would initiate seven lean years. At Ugarit the slaying of the hero Aqhat evokes a curse depriving the land of rain and dew for seven (or, climactically, eight) years. The seven lean and seven fat years in the biblical story of Joseph in Egypt reflect the same system. In Egypt, of course, rain and dew are out of the picture; instead, generous Nile risings mean prosperity; inadequate risings in the season of inundation spells misery. A text of the Ptolemaic period (4th–1st century bc), purporting to record events of the Pyramid age, tells of seven lean years in the reign of Djoser (3rd dynasty; i.e., c. 2650–c. 2575 bc). The pharaoh appealed to the gods, who responded by restoring an abundant flow of the Nile.

The population desired the normal pattern of times and seasons, so that “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). But since the seasonal pattern is not dependable, the need for order evoked a system of cycles, notably the sabbatical, or seven-year, cycle. The sabbatical year was the seventh year, and the jubilee year followed seven sabbatical cycles. This was a pervasive system in the ancient Middle East. A Ugaritic liturgical text specially designed for this phenomenon aims at terminating a sabbatical cycle of privation and ushering in one of fertility by celebrating the birth and triumphal entrance of the deities Shahar (“Dawn”) and Shalim (“Dusk”), whose advent brings an abundance of food and wine.

It was only natural that fertility rites should include sexual myths that were acted out dramatically. The Ugaritic text just alluded to describes El, the head of the pantheon, copulating with two human women. This has echoes in Hosea and Ezekiel where God, as in the Canaanite literary tradition, is referred to as having a love affair with two women, symbolizing Judah and Israel. The Hebrews, however, eventually eliminated sex from their official theology as well as from their religious practices. Up to the time of King Josiah’s reform (621 bc) there was a women’s cult of Asherah (under qedeshim auspices [consecrated for fertility practices], according to 2 Kings 23:7) in the Jerusalem Temple, alongside the male cult of Yahweh. Asherah’s devotees considered her the chief wife of Yahweh, even as she was the wife of El, head of the Canaanite pantheon, for in the Bible El is identified with Yahweh. But Josiah eliminated the cult of Asherah, and official Judaism has since then left no place for other gods, which meant the elimination of every goddess. Popular religion, to be sure, persisted in the female fertility principle until the destruction of the Temple in 586 bc. In Judaean excavations Astarte figurines were found in private homes down to that time. Further purification of the Hebrew religion, which was intensified by the catastrophe of 586, put an end to the practice of pagan fertility rites, including the use of goddess figurines. Without goddesses there could be no sexual activity in the pantheon, and thus Judaism has developed without a divine mother figure.

The ancient Middle East made a place for homosexuality and bestiality in its myths and rites. In the Asherah cult the qedeshim priests had a reputation for homosexual practices, even as the qedeshot priestesses for prostitution. Israel eventually banned both the qedeshim and qedeshot, while in Ugarit the qedeshim and kohanim were priestly guilds in equally good standing. Baal is portrayed in Ugaritic mythology as impregnating a heifer to sire the young bull god. The biblical book of Leviticus (18:22–27) bans homosexuality and bestiality expressly because the Canaanite population had been practicing those rites, which the Hebrews rejected as abominations.

Phoenician/Punic sites include an area called the tophet that contains large numbers of infant burials. One explanation of the tophet is that it reflects a major aspect of a fertility cult in which the first-born child belonged to the deity. The deity rewarded the parents who had sacrificed their child with future fertility. In the Hebrew Bible, just as the firstfruits of the harvest belong to God, so do the first-born of the people and their domestic animals (Exodus 13:1, 12–13, 15).

The actual cases in the literature do not always specify infant sacrifice. The Bible describes how King Mesha of Moab sacrificed his crown prince to avert a military disaster (2 Kings 3:27). King Ahaz of Judah sacrificed his son in pagan fashion (2 Kings 16:3). King Manasseh of Judah sacrificed his sons by fire (2 Chronicles 33:6), filling Jerusalem with innocent blood.

The Jewish practice of redeeming a first-born son at the age of one month (Numbers 18:16–17) appears to be a milder substitute for the practice of child sacrifice. Another alternative to sacrificing a child was to dedicate it to the service of God. Hannah, by fulfilling her vow to dedicate her first-born, Samuel, to God’s service (1 Samuel 1:27–28) was rewarded by the birth of five other children whom she and her husband could keep for themselves (1 Samuel 2:20–21).

According to ancient views, the myth came first, and the rite imitated or reenacted it. This sequence, however, is not necessarily the order in which religion develops. Rites can be very tenacious, and when the origin of a rite has been forgotten, a myth has often been invented to explain it.

Types of religious organization and authority

Religion occurs at different levels of society: personal, familial, local, national, and international. At the personal and international extremes there is need for but little organization. And yet in religion, as the people of the ancient Middle East saw it, there was a progression from one stage to the next. In the early myths of Genesis, God and Noah have direct personal relations. This leads to a covenant between God and all who went out of the ark: birds and beasts as well as mankind (Genesis 9:9–10). Through the sons of Noah and their descendants, who form the nations of the world (Genesis 10), there is a theoretical progress to international religion. This scheme of the relations between God and mankind, from the personal to the universal level, mirrors the historical record of religion. Judaism (followed later by Christianity and Islām) traces “the Religion” back to Abraham, who had personal and direct relations with God, as was customary in the ancient Middle Eastern milieu. Abraham’s intimacy with God is similar to the intimacy between Odysseus and the Greek goddess Athena. The next step is a covenant between a particular deity and a particular person, binding the two together in a contractual relationship for all eternity from generation to generation. Such covenants were not rare; the Hittite King Hattusilis III made such a covenant with Ishtar. Abraham’s covenant is unique simply because it was the only one destined to last in history.

The descendants of able men who established a dynasty or tradition would worship the God of their father, or fathers, and adhere to the original covenant. Genesis 31 portrays Jacob and Laban swearing by their respective ancestral gods: Jacob by the god(s) of Abraham and Laban by the god(s) of Nahor. Once a group expanded into a federation of clans or tribes, religious organization became necessary. A central shrine (such as the one at Shiloh in Israel) for amphictyonic (religious confederational) pilgrimage festivals required a professional priesthood and other religious personnel to take care of sacrifices, give oracular guidance, interpret dreams and omens, as well as to provide instruction. In an amphictyony of 12 tribes, each tribe could render federal service for religious and secular purposes, one month each year. A special tribe (such as the Levites in Israel, or the Magians in Iran) could be dedicated full-time to cultic duties.

A greater degree of centralization and organization of the cult would generally follow from the establishment of a powerful state. The cult of Marduk of Babylon spread in importance and influence because Babylon became the capital of a powerful kingdom in the time of Hammurabi (18th century bc) and of a mighty empire during the reign of Nebuchadrezzar (604–562 bc). The Egyptian cult of Amon-Re not only became powerful but took on the form of a universal religion as a result of the military and political triumphs of the rulers of Thebes, particularly during the reign of Thutmose III (1479–26 bc). Under Solomon, Jerusalem became the centre of a great commercial empire. The Temple of Solomon and its God, the God of Israel, were catapulted into an international prominence that was quite different from the national status that marked the extent of Hebraic religion previously. The new internationalism of Israel’s involvements paved the way for the universality of the views of the prophets. The God of Israel was subsequently concerned with all mankind and not merely with one people in one small land. This ultimately meant the transformation of biblical religion from the cult of a single people to a more subtle, spiritual movement that required different organization and different personnel. The priesthood became defunct with the destruction of Herod’s Temple and the cessation of sacrifices in ad 70. The new religious leaders (rabbis) were rather teachers and spiritual guides who were united by dedication to the same scripture. The spread of the devotees over the face of the earth meant that they were now divided into regional groups, serving under different sovereigns, and the individual Jewish communities were organized independently, each with its own house of worship.

There were various devices for holding an ethnic-religious group together even though it might be fragmentized into scattered communities. Laws of purity, especially those pertaining to diet, kept different groups apart. Each normally respected the other’s rules, but the fact that each group had different taboos kept them from breaking bread together and mingling socially. They could do business with each other in the marketplace, but they could not fraternize in each other’s homes. Above all, laws of purity were deterrents to intermarriage, the major factor that breaks up religious communities and encourages homogenization.