Syrian and Palestinian religion

Syrian and Palestinian religion, beliefs of Syria and Palestine between 3000 and 300 bce. These religions are usually defined by the languages of those who practiced them: e.g., Amorite, Hurrian, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Moabite. The term Canaanite is often used broadly to cover a number of these, as well as the religion of early periods and areas from which there are no written sources. Knowledge of the religions of these groups is very uneven; it usually consists of mere glimpses of one or another aspect. Only from the city-state of Ugarit (14th–13th centuries bce) is there a wide range of religious expression. For historical background on the region, see the articles Jordan: History; Lebanon: History; Palestine; and Syria: History.

Nature and significance

Internally, the landscape of Syria and Palestine is broken into many different regions. In consequence, the population was generally divided among many polities, each of which had its own official religion. Externally, Syria-Palestine formed a land bridge between the great civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt and faced westward across the Mediterranean Sea toward the cultures of the Aegean. Syria and Palestine were subject to influences from these cultures and in turn contributed to them. As a result, the official religions of the area were often syncretistic and sometimes cosmopolitan. Particular cults and myths were carried westward and adopted by the Egyptians of the New Kingdom (1539–1075 bce), by the Greeks, and later by the Romans. Despite their many different outer forms, and the individual stamp given them by the various political powers, the religions of Syria and Palestine appear to have been typologically similar. Out of them, however, emerged the ultimately quite distinctive religion of Israel, from which in turn Judaism, Christianity, and, less directly, Islam were formed.

The evidence available is primarily the product of the small, wealthy, ruling elites of these societies. It bears witness primarily to their religion, giving only indirect testimony to the beliefs or practices of the vast majority of the population. This official religion is polytheistic, the anthropomorphic gods as a whole being referred to as an extended family, or an assembly, or by other collective terms. Most earlier sources come from more cosmopolitan contexts and reflect that fact in their attention to a variety of gods. The sources from the 1st millennium suggest a greater concentration on a few gods or indeed on one supreme god.

Some divine names appear through most of the period from 3000 to 300 bce. In other cases, different names appear in different periods and in different regions or languages, and often titles are used instead of names. Consequently, it is sometimes not possible to determine to what extent new names have been assigned to gods whose cult is continuous across these boundaries and to what extent different gods may lie behind the same title. In general, it appears that a few types prevailed and persisted over the centuries.

The most pervasive type was the storm god (Hadad, Baal, Teshub), who was associated with rain, thunder, and lightning—and thus with fertility and war. Another type was a more patriarchal creator god, bearing the simple name El (“God”). The major female deities appear to have been of either the belligerent type (Anath, Astarte) or the matriarchal type (Asherah). These often, but not always, served as the respective consorts of the two male types. Also prominent throughout the period were a solar and a lunar deity.

Consistent with the sources of documentation, the monarch emerges as a significant medium between god and people, acting on the people’s behalf in the cult of the god and on the god’s behalf in the care of the people. The cult was generally practiced in a “house” of the god, where a professional priesthood attended to the daily needs of the god, represented in effigy.

The most recurrent concerns in the written sources are (1) the good relations between monarch and god and the well-being of the monarch and his family (alive and deceased), on which the order of society depended, and (2) the natural conditions—rainfall, sunshine, fertility of soil, flocks, and herds—on which most people depended directly for survival and on which the agrarian economy as a whole depended.

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Sources of modern knowledge

Until the late 19th century most of the information about pre-Hellenistic Syria and Palestine came from the Hebrew Bible and from various Greek and Latin sources.

While the Hebrew Bible was largely completed by 300 bce, its attitude toward contemporary religions of the area was generally quite hostile, so that its references to these religions may not only devalue them but also exaggerate or distort various aspects of them. On the other hand, Israelite religion was itself an outgrowth of, as well as a reaction to, the religions of its neighbours, so that many features of Israelite religion found in the Hebrew Bible exemplify the religions of the larger area. The only sure guide to making such discriminations is the knowledge gained from indigenous documents.

Greek and Latin sources may be less hostile, but they are also much later, from the Roman period. While they may be more reliable in their description of the contemporary character of the religions of the area, that character may have been significantly different after several centuries of Hellenism from what it had been even in the middle of the preceding millennium. Notable among the Greek and Latin sources are De dea Syra (“About the Syrian Goddess”) from the 2nd century ce, attributed to Lucian of Samosata, and the section of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Praeparatio evangelica (“Preparation for the Gospel”; 4th century ce) that cites extracts from a history of Phoenicia by Philo of Byblos (c. 100 ce); Philo himself claimed to be translating the work of an early Phoenician priest, Sanchuniathon. While indigenous sources now confirm isolated elements of this allegedly early description of Phoenician religion, its distortions also have become more demonstrable. Philo’s history is in fact an attempt to recount early Phoenician history by constructing a systematic chronological sequence of events out of the various local traditions of his time and interpreting the latter euhemeristically—that is, by treating gods and myths as representative of historical individuals and events.

Beginning in the late 18th century, the finds of early explorers of the area and subsequently of archaeologists engaged in more systematic excavation have produced a rapidly increasing number of firsthand sources. Successive generations of epigraphers and philologists have deciphered the texts and attained an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the languages. Unfortunately, the texts that are best understood tend to be formulaic and yield only the most external kinds of information about the religion, while the more distinctive texts, which seem more interesting and promise to be more revealing, are usually more difficult to penetrate.

Cuneiform archives from various 2nd-millennium sites and from the 3rd millennium at Ebla in northwestern Syria provide some documentation of the religion. The most abundant documentation comes from the 14th- and 13th-century remains of the city of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra), on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. This includes the only native examples of extended religious narrative. It also comprises the widest range of genres, including myths, legends, liturgical texts, god lists, omens, and correspondence.

From the 1st millennium come scores of Phoenician inscriptions, both from the Phoenician coast and from other areas of the eastern Mediterranean; neo-Hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions and Aramaic inscriptions from northern Syria, almost all from the 9th and 8th centuries; and Moabite, Ammonite, and Hebrew inscriptions. These are very limited in genre, and relatively few are more than a few lines long.

Uninscribed materials from excavated sites throughout Syria and Palestine supplement the picture: they include the foundations of temples, temple furnishings, figurines, images of gods and their emblems, and scenes of gods, myths, and religious activities on reliefs and seals. However, criteria for identifying religious materials have not always been carefully considered, nor has discriminating attention been given to the question of the reflection of religious life in material remains in general. It is often difficult to correlate with confidence written and unwritten materials.

In spite of these new and ever-growing sources of knowledge, the resulting picture is still very irregular. While there is an unparalleled variety of sources, covering a century and a half, from the large cosmopolitan city of Ugarit, other written materials give a much more limited picture. For many periods, areas, and topics there are no written remains. Descriptions of the religion of any one period or area (with the exception of Ugarit) are extremely limited and superficial. Generalizations about the religions of Syria and Palestine may well prove to have significant exceptions as some of these gaps are filled by new discoveries.