The Israelites and the Ancient Near East Worldview

What I’m seeking to do is to place the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Israelites in the context of its surrounding Mesopotamian and Canaanite culture. In doing so I hope to explain the lost worldview of an ancient civilization and how their worldview shaped the Israelites and influenced the Bible we read today. With that said, I want to be upfront and honest with you. Somethings you will learn will be surprising to you, to others, it may be shocking. However, the subject is a fascinating one! It is my belief that you will never approach the Bible the same way again.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome. Your host is Lauren. Thank you for joining with me today. I appreciate your willingness to journey with me on this historical quest for insight of a lost and forgotten worldview. I hope that you will keep coming back as I expand the horizon of supernatural insight. It's important to say here that I'm taking the role of an historian, not a theologian. What I'm seeking to do is to place the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Israelites in the context of its surrounding Mesopotamian and Canaanite culture. In doing so, I hope to explain the lost worldview of an ancient civilization and how their worldview shaped the Israelites and influenced the Bible we read today. With that said, I want to be upfront and honest with you. Some things you will learn will be surprising to you. To others it may even be shocking. However, the subject matter is a fascinating one. It's my belief that you will never approach the Bible the same way again. Now I have a few objectives, an outline of objectives, and I want to cover those as a preliminary to the podcast. Number one, what you will learn from this session and others to come is a history of the supernatural world that is derived from research and writings of scholars, historians, and archaeologists. The result of their investigation of ancient artifacts and literature has opened up a whole new world of knowledge of the ancient premodern worldview which informs us in every area of the Bible, and it does so in a significant way. Number two, most of what Christians have been taught about the supernatural world, whether in Bible colleges, seminaries by pastors and teachers, and much of its understanding has been filtered by English translations which may lead to a misunderstanding of what was meant to be conveyed by the original language of the Bible. Three, here is a test question for our thirst for knowledge. Is my loyalty to the text or to a Christian tradition? Next, when you open your Bible, I want you to be able to see, see the things in it like the ancient Israelites or the first century Jews saw it. I want their supernatural worldview in your head, throwing away the filters of traditions and what you think it means or what you were told it to mean. Number five, the goal is to recover the supernatural worldview of the biblical writers, the people who produce the Bible. Now there are a few ground rules that is required in in order to obtain and retain the ancient mindset. We have a number of rules, ground rules, and number one, filtering the text, we view the Bible through the lens of what we know and what's familiar. Our traditions, however honorable, are not intrinsic to the Bible. The Bible is really a theological and literary mosaic. The pattern in a mosaic of often isn't clear up close. Only when you step back can you see the wondrous whole. See the pieces of scriptures as part of a mosaic so that the big picture can begin to take focus. three, obstacles and protocols. There is a pervasive tendency in the believing church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences. The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers, the context that produce the Bible. Now let's look at interpreting the Bible in context. Anyone interested in Bible study, from new believers to the Bible scholar, has heard that if you want to correctly interpret the Bible, interpret it in context. But there's a question we need to answer. What does that mean? Put another way, just what context are we talking about? There are many contexts which the reader needs to pay attention. The first one is the historical context, that is putting a passage in a specific time period against the backdrop of certain events. Cultural context, which concerns the way people lived and how they thought about their lives and world. Literary context is focusing on how a given piece of biblical literature conforms to how the same type of literature was written during biblical times. Now number four is the proper context. The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers, the context that produced the Bible and every other context is alien or at least secondary. Now let's get into the worldview of the ancient Near East. The biblical text was produced by people living in the ancient Near East and around the Mediterranean between the second millennium BC and the first century AD. To understand how biblical writers thought, we need to get the worldview of the ancient world shared by the biblical writers into our heads. The biblical context includes its supernaturalism. The biblical writers believe in an active animated spiritual world. Yes, an active animated spiritual world. That world was home to a lot more than the triumph god, angels, Satan and demons. It included other gods, and the pantheon of the gods were not merely idols. They were gods worshipped throughout the ancient Middle East, both inside and outside of ancient land of Israel. The ancient Near East was the home of early civilization within the region, roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East. Mesopotamia would include modern Iraq's, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran, northeastern Syria and Kuwait, along with ancient Egypt and ancient Iran and the Levant, which would include Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. The history of the Near East begins with the rise of Sumer. Sumer is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia over seven thousand years ago. In ancient times, Mesopotamia, meaning land between two rivers, was a vast region that lay between the Tigris and Euphrates River systems. Sumer produced the first writing system, the first alphabet, the first currency in history, organized governments, organized religion, law codes, strategic warfare, and laid down the foundations of astronomy and mathematics. With such rich history and diverse culture, the Mesopotamia world is truly fascinating. Religion was at the center of their daily affairs, believing the gods at a hand in absolutely every aspect of life. The men and women who lived in the ancient Near East took a different worldview of supernatural entities. They worship a massive patheon of gods with thousands of minor deities, many major gods and goddesses, and if we're going to reach an understanding of this obscure civilization and their concept of God or gods, we will have to try to wrap our minds around a different notion of divinity. Our modern understanding of what it means to be divine is shaped by hundreds of years of biblical imagery and Christian teaching. According to denominational creeds and doctrines, God transcends all creatures, and he is described as inexpressible, the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable. We cannot grasp who he is but only by who he has not. Christian theologies themselves accentuates the distance that separate us who lives today from Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Canaanites and Israelites who lived a millennial ago in the part of the world we refer to as the Middle East. To understand the cultural worldview of the ancient Israelites, we need to first look at the larger context of the ancient Near East. Religion shows similar forms and practices whether it is in Babylon, Syria, or Israel. The three Near Eastern civilizations shared cultural continuum. Ancient Syria and early Israel have common Semitic background. They differ in some ways, but the fact that they share a common culture heritage is not in doubt. Religion in ancient Babylon, Syria or Israel are not incomparable. The biblical writers give an account of the prehistory of Israel in Canaan, the patriarchal age. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all lived out their lives in Canaan long before Israelite times. The Genesis story begins with creation, the flood and the genealogies, the biblical account of Yahweh's people, and their destiny begins in Genesis chapter twelve with the migration of Abraham from the city of Ur in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan. So Abraham's story begins in Mesopotamia. The city of Ur came under the control of the Semitic speaking Akkadian Empire founded by Sargon the Great between the twenty fourth and the twenty second century BC. This was a period when the Semitic speaking Akkadians who had entered Mesopotamia and gained control over the Sumerians and indeed much of the ancient Near East. After the fall of the Akkadian Empire, Southern Mesopotamia came to be ruled for a few decades by the Gutans, a barbarian people originating in the Argos Mountains to the northeast of Mesopotamia. The historical reality for the citizens of Ur and the entire region is no doubt marked with political upheaval and great social unrest causing outward migration. Genesis chapter eleven says that Terra, along with his son Abram, his grandson Lot, the son of Huron, and his daughter-in-law Sari, the wife of his son, verse 31, migrated away from the city of Ur to the land of Canaan. And this happened around 2100 BC. So with Abraham's roots in Mesopotamia, it's reasonable to assume that many of the stories in the Sumerian mythology are parallel accounts. Yes, they are parallel accounts of the biblical narration in Genesis. The Genesis creation narrative is different, of course, in some aspects from the cuneiform writings, Sumerian writings, but they share common features. There is a close similarity between ancient Mesopotamian flood story and the story of Genesis. The ancient city of Eridu, near the city of Ur, has been tied with the biblical Eden. When comparing the two ancient narrative traditions, it becomes clear that Genesis' story is no doubt influenced by Abraham's Mesopotamian cultural and religious background. Now let's move along as we look at Abraham in Canaan. Canaan consists of a geographical region of the Middle East what is known as the Southern Levant, approximately the area of modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank, Israel, and Gaza. The peoples of this locale share basically the same culture. The term Canaanite with all the various groups of people which would include Canaanites themselves, Amorites, Israelites, Phoenicians, Amranites, Moabites, and Edomites. All of these are closely related. Indigenous West Semitic people. To say the ancient Israelites are a distinct people with a unique and religious culture within the mosaic of the Middle East is simply skewed. Let's examine the Israelites now and the Canaanites in their culture. An archaeological discovery in Syria has brought to light many ancient temple tablets of the Canaanite religion. The forgotten Canaanite city of Ugaret was discovered in 1928 that turned out to be an ancient seaport that was at its political, religious, and economic greatness around the twelfth century BC. On excavation of the city at Rash Shemra, Syria, several clay tablets of cuneiform were found all dating around twelve hundred BC. Although belonging to the Canaanite family, the Uyghuric cuneiform alphabet and consonant script is closer to the Hebrew Bible, both in context and language. Heroic stories in the Uyguretic and the biblical literature have much in common. The Uyguretic text shows certain cultural similarities with early Israelite material and thus provide some background regarding the development of the Israelite religion. Other tablets were written in an unknown Northwest Semitic language, and others found in the same location were written in other cuneiform languages. These languages are Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, as well as Egyptian. The tablets reveal an old Canaanite mythology naming three prominent deities El, the supreme deity, Asherah, the Lord of the Sea, and Baal, the Lord of the Heavens, who is better known as the Cloud Rider. Again, they are one big family with seventy sons, El and his consort, or you can use the word wife. El and his consort Asherah with sons. That would include Baal, Dagon, Yam, Mot, and Shafas, Yara and Reshef. These are gods and goddesses. Um Dagon's a green deity, Yum is a sea god, Mot is a death god, Shapas is a sun goddess, and Yara is a moon goddess, and Reshef is an underworld goddess. And there are many more we can refer to. Now let's look at El's divine family. The category used in both Mesopotamian and Syrian texts refers to groups of deities as council or assembly. This feature is dominant in the Mesopotamian or Mesopotamia and Ugaritic texts. The Divine Council has four levels in the pantheon. The supreme position is held by El, who is presiding over the assembly and issuing decrees. The members of the assembly belong to Divine Household of El. No, the concept of a divine family was deeply rooted in West Semitic thought world. The terminology of divine counsel and family are interchangeable concepts. For example, one text it says the council of the sons of Al, and in another it says the circle of the sons of Al. In general, the notion of family presents the Python as a cohesive religious reality. The Python is a large multifamily household headed with a patriarch with several competing sons. In the top level of the Python is the parents and their children. The bottom two levels are made up of lesser ranking gods serving in the household. Al and Asherah are the divine royal parents of the Python, and the dominant deities are generally regarded as their royal children. The divine children are the seventy sons of Asherah, who are of the leading members of the Divine Council. Other sons of Al may have their own family as well, which indicates there were multiple clans within the divine royal family. Of course, this divine family structure matches up with basic unit of Semitic society. A patriarch with multiple nuclear families with sons and other relations as well as workers and slaves. The traditions between Canaanite and Israelite is to a great extent centered upon the religion of the patriarchs. The reference in Genesis, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, indicate that the deity was worshipped by the family or clan. The clan deity was later identified as God Almighty Al Shaddai. Clearly the patriarchs called their god El, but under different titles. Thank you for listening.