the ancient bible

When I was studying the Bible, I became fascinated with how we knew some passages were older than other passages. While I never took Hebrew and don’t know it, more than one Hebrew professor explained it to me this way:

Hebrew is an incredibly old language, and the scribes were relatively faithful in their interpretation of it. Thus, certain passages of Hebrew are archaic and impossible to read without specialized training – much like a modern English speaker can’t read Old English without specialized training. We have manuscripts and fragments that have preserved this in the Hebrew (and from what I understand it’s preserved into the Hebrew translations – but again, I don’t know Hebrew so I can’t confirm this).

This is like Greek in a way – when I was studying Greek it became very apparent very quickly that you could see vastly different writing styles in the Greek that weren’t apparent in the English. The argument over Pauline authorship really comes into play when you begin to read the epistles in Greek and you see major changes in the writing style. Or in how it’s relatively easy to interpret the Gospel of John but incredibly difficult to interpret the Gospel of Luke or Acts.

With Greek the changes in language aren’t nearly as pronounced. Attic Greek had fallen out of style by the time the books and letters of the New Testament were written and Koine Greek was well-established as the lingua-franca of the eastern portion of the Roman Empire. Hebrew, however, had some time to develop and as such there’s actual language shifts in the older texts. Because of this shift, we can tell which passages of the Bible are older in time.

What’s so fascinating, and a little troubling for monotheists, is that the oldest passage of the Bible have their monolatry or henotheism built into it. What in the world do I mean by those terms? Monolatry is the belief in multiple gods but the worship of one while henotheism is the belief in multiple gods but the worship of the one you believe to be supreme.

When I studied this in seminary we completely skipped past these problems. We were taught that the Bible was a unified voice revealed to humans over thousands of years. Any talk of God being primary among the gods, or any recognition of other gods, was dismissed and hand-waived as “the language and parlance of the day.” But, it’s actually rather significant. Before looking at the passages, let’s understand a bit about Canaanite cosmology and religion.

From what we can put together in archeology, the Canaanites had a pantheon of gods (perhaps “pantheon” is a bad use as it wasn’t like the Greek pantheon), with El as the chief among the gods. The pantheon as it was called in the ancient city of Ugarit is ‘ilhm or, in Hebrew, Elohim. This idea is baked into the language and names of God. What’s interesting is that Yahweh was likely another god among these gods, but one imported into the Canaanite region.

For reasons beyond the scope of what I can write here – I do actually try to limit these things – there’s evidence to see that Yahweh was likely imported from the Siani or in the region around the Siani, likely in modern day Saudi Arabia. We have part of a piece of pottery found at Kuntillet Ajrud in the Siani that has the inscription “Yahweh and his Asherah.” It dates to somewhere in the 12th to 9th centuries BCE. Meaning that Yahweh likely had his origins outside of Canaan. What we can tell of Yahweh, however, is that he was a storm god. This became a problem rather quickly because Ba’al is also a storm god (at least Ba’al Shamin), and any respectable god won’t allow another to encroach on his territory.

With this set up, we can look at some of the older texts of the Bible. Exodus 15 might be the oldest text when looking at the literary evidence. If you’ve read any Sumerian or Egyptian literature that’s been translated into English, it reads very similar to this passage. While translations always muddle the appearance of age in a text, the translation itself sounds ancient, and the structure of sentences and imagery used are entirely foreign to modern readers.

The images that the author uses in the early verses of Exodus 15 all evoke floods, waters overcoming armies, winds, etc. You know, storms. Yahweh commanded the sea to swallow up the armies of the Pharoah – this is a story that’s similar to the one told at Kadesh of how the Egyptians beat the Sea People and the Sea People were “swallowed up” by the sea – and how it’s Yahweh’s fury that went before him. He is a man of war, according to the passage.

What’s most curious is verse 11 though. “Who is like you, oh Lord, among the gods?” Among the gods? We know from the Bible itself that the ancient Israelites often worshiped gods other than Yahweh, but that Yahweh eventually won out. However, despite the scrubbing the Bible almost certainly received while the Israelites were in captivity in Babylon, not all of it was erased or left out. This is one of those passage that slipped on through, comparing and exalting Yahweh above the other gods in the council of gods.

Later in Exodus, in a passage dated to be later than chapter 15, we get the fun little command to “…tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim…” Asherim were wooden posts associated with the goddess Asherah, also known as the wife of Yahweh. While in Exodus 15 Yahweh is the primary god, or the most victorious god (a war god) among the council of gods, we see that by Exodus 34:13 the scribes and priests are trying to get rid of Asher worship. Without knowing the history of this text, I’d guess that it was written during the Babylonian exilic period when Judaism began to transition from its version of polytheism to monotheism.

Another ancient passage would be Psalm 29, which opens by declaring that the “sons of God” or “heavenly beings” should ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength. More interesting is the focus on storms and fertility, motifs found in the Ba’al Cycle of Canaanite mythology. Again, Yahweh was a competing storm god against the native Canaanite god Ba’al so it makes sense that the Israeli writers would want to form this competing narrative. It’s why Ba’al is so often cast as the main villain in so many Old Testament stories.

In the way that some modern cities and towns have a “hometown team,” in the Ancient Near East cities had their designated gods. The temples to these gods are quite literally where those gods lived. When you went to war against another city, it was that city’s god vs your city’s god. When you read Ancient Near East literature it’s like reading Judges or Exodus or other older parts of the Bible – only a different god who is majestic and worthy of glory delivered a different city or people victory.

What’s interesting is that there are Jews and Christians who can look at this and it poses no challenge to their faith. This seems like a foreign concept to me – how could they not be challenged! And the reason is simple; they come from a faith tradition that doesn’t rest entirely on the validity of the Bible. But consider that I was raised on a healthy dose of Biblical inerrancy and inspiration. It was studying the history around the Bible and realizing that the various books and even fragments of text in the Bible were very much products of their time that dissuaded me of my belief in Biblical inerrancy. But for others, they would argue that God reveals himself or herself in various ways, and that these writings are sometimes a part of that. I can respect that belief.

If I put on my apologetics hat I would argue that these passages were just constructed in a way to appeal to the people in a way they’d understand. I’d argue that God just had to reveal this to them in a special way for their primitive minds to grasp. That he was working within their framework and thus revelation is a process over thousands of years, not a one-time thing.

Of course, this raises quite a few questions, such as why doesn’t revelation continue today? Why couldn’t the God of the Universe find a better way to get through to “primitive” people? What makes the people who existed just a few thousand years ago so much more “primitive” than us? How is this not special pleading? And the list goes on.

Really, you have to presuppose God exists, and not just God but the Abrahamic God, for any of this to work. And some people are comfortable with that, and again, I respect that. But I’m not willing to presuppose that. To me, it makes more sense that Yahweh was a Bronze Age god that was worshipped and eventually added to the pantheon of Canaanite gods. Through a fluke of history, the Israelites refused to adopt the Babylonian gods while in captivity and instead doubled-down on their Yahweh worship, eventually giving him the title Elohim and, under Persian influence, moved toward monotheism.

Oddly enough, for someone who used to study the Bible to learn how to live his life, understanding the Bible as a result of history helps me to appreciate and value it even more. Sure, I don’t turn to it for moral beliefs – just as I wouldn’t turn to the Epic of Gilgamesh. But, it does mean that the Bible is an ancient book that was beginning its composition relatively early in recorded history. And so it has historical value because it gives us insight into the views and thoughts of the people at the time. And that still has value.