The Invention of Israel's--and Our--Gods

 

            How many gods have graced human history? Probably many tens of thousands—perhaps even millions. From Marduk to Mars, Thor to Thoth, Bastet to Baal, and El to YHWH, the list is endless. Inventing gods is a uniquely, nearly universal, human activity.

 

            But why would I include El and YHWH on this list? After all, most Christians, Jews and Muslims would say that thinking of god as an “invention” is blasphemy. We believe our god, the god of Abraham, is the one and only, the compassionate and almighty, eternal and omniscient, and so on and so forth god of the universe and all that is beyond it, too. Really.

 

            Still, given the sheer multitude of gods humans have adored (read Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods for a fun take on this, and on what happens to gods who lose their audiences) isn’t it sheer hubris to think that we finally got it right? Did YHWH actually reveal himself to Adam and Noah and Moses? Did scripture objectively capture these theophanies? Did YHWH also reveal himself, later, via dreams and visions, to the prophets? Did the one god of the universe pour himself and his (always his) truth into scripture, and then into a man named Jesus? 

 

YHWH's Divine Council

           Most people will answer such questions based on what they were taught in Sunday school or hymns they sang in church. For years, I answered such questions based on the narrow but intense education I received in seminary. Scholars who suggested different truths were either ignored or panned. Everyone—whether persons of faith or not—answers questions about who god is based on their presuppositions. Presuppositions, after all, save a lot of time by winnowing and narrowing the evidence one has to consider to answer such questions.

 

            Nevertheless, over time, my presuppositions have been challenged and my theological paradigm has been overturned. I now doubt the Bible is an accurate historical record of anything that happened in the Old Testament. 

 

            Well, just for example, what sort of a god would use two bears to kill 42 young boys (or perhaps they were young men), just because they teased a prophet (2 Kings 2:23-25)? Did that really happen? Would you worship such a god if it did happen? 

 

            Why did god command Moses to kill 3,000 Israelites for worshipping a golden calf (Exodus 32)? It was, on their part, an honest mistake, given Moses’ absence and Aaron’s leadership. Or why did god send an angel of death to kill 70,000 Israelites just because their king counted the fighting men? 

 

            And these examples don’t even get us to a flood which is supposed to have killed off pretty much the whole human race and 99.9 percent (or more) of earth’s animals too. Where is the justice in such acts of god? The compassion? The kindness? And if such passages are to be explained not as history, but rather, as a bit of imaginative flourish by an unknown author or editor or scribe—well, what does that say about the rest of scripture’s dependability as a historical record? How can orthodox scholars defend this sort of god? 

 

            Why, if god is a spirit, does he so often appear as a human to people in the Old Testament, much as Zeus or Thor are often described? How is it that god is sometimes surrounded by a council of other divine beings (for example, Psalm 82, 89, 1 Kings 22)?

 

            Why, if the Israelites are god’s chosen people does he allow the Assyrians and Babylonians to destroy them? No freedom of religion for god’s people? But isn’t such freedom a universal human right? Wouldn’t a real god have known that? And, why should the Israelites stick with such a jealous god, anyway?

 

            Is there a better explanation for the Biblical god than that offered by orthodox evangelical scholars? I think so.

 

            Most contemporary (but not evangelical) scholars of ancient Near-Eastern religion believe that ideas about who or what the god of Abraham is all about have a history, and that history is partly visible in the mixed-bag picture of god in the Old Testament. In short, that history goes something like this—although there are scholarly variations on the details. Once upon a time—well over 3,000 years ago—a tribal people who lived south of present-day Israel (or perhaps closer, actually in Palestine) worshipped a storm god who went by the name of (or a variation of the name of) YHWH. 

 

            Certain tribes of Palestinian people—what would become Judah and Israel—worshipped this god along with others: Asherah, Baal, El, and so on. Everyone in what would become Judah and Israel worshipped and made images of these gods, putting these idols in high places and temples and even homes. Some of the stories they told each other about these many gods, including YWHW, had broad similarities to the mythic stories of neighboring ancient Near-Eastern peoples. At some point, for reasons that are disputed, the identities of YHWH and EL began to merge, although both names for God still appear in what Christians usually call the Old Testament.

 

            And, over time the relative importance of YHWH increased, especially in the North, where most of the Old Testament prophets worked. Though he was still seen as one among many gods, YHWH was also seen as a god who had a special place in his heart for Israel. This god also had a consort, Asherah, whose image, along with Baal’s and perhaps others, graced temples in both Jerusalem and Samaria throughout most of their histories.

 

            After the Assyrian defeat of the Northern kingdom, southern King Josiah undertook a reform of Judahite worship in order to centralize the cult in Jerusalem. He cleared the temple of gods other than YHWH, and perhaps even destroyed images of YHWH at this time. His scribes pulled together the many strands of oral and written myth and legend that existed at that time and began the job of editing it all from a monotheistic point of view. An early version of Deuteronomy, Moses’ farewell speech, was written at this time. 

 

            After Judah was also defeated and exiled, the remaining religious leaders—priests and scribes weeping by Babylon’s rivers—continued to refine the notion of YHWH. He was seen now not only as Israel’s god, but the god of the conquerors too—and by extension, the one and only god of the universe. This one, universal god was said to have used the conquerors to punish Israel for her sins. These religious leaders invented Israelite monotheism more or less as we know it. And the religious leaders of that time bequeathed this new, mono-, almighty god to Israel forever after. And eventually to Christians and Muslims, too.

 

            So, it turns out that the god of Abraham—the god Christians worship—has a history. This history explains Biblical texts that are mythic or contradictory—such texts come from different strands of memory, and so from different times, when people had different ideas and stories. Historically, the god of post-exile Israel was not always the one and only. 

 

            Does this reality undercut the claim that the god of scripture really is the sort of god the monotheistic religions of the world say he (or she) is?

 

            I think so. Seriously so.

 

            It has not been easy for me to come to this conclusion. It removes me from easy theological agreement with the Christian communities I love. It disorients me with respect to the shape of my own faith. It erases the easy back and forth I have enjoyed with many of my Christian friends. It makes me question the worth of my years of leadership in both evangelical and liberal denominations.

 

            So, what’s next for me, faith-wise? I don’t know. I still want to belong to a community of people who search for deeper spiritual and philosophic meaning. I love being part of a community that is focused on meaning and on social justice for neighbours both near and far. But communities that not only allow for, but invite, a wide range of serious religious flavors are rare. I’m searching. Wish me luck or providence, as the case might be, for you! 

 

            And stay tuned as I explore different possibilitities.

 

Post Script

 

            Interested in exploring this history of god more deeply, yourself? Here’s a top-six list of books that have influenced me. Although all of them are specialist books, any dedicated reader can manage them!

 

Thomas Römer, The Invention of God. Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 2015. (A very readable history of the idea of god in ancient Judah and Israel).

 

Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter. Translated by Peter Lewis. The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture. Cambridge. Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2021. (Great background read on the history of the Bible, which should be read in conjunction with Van Der Toorn’s book, below).

 

Karel Van Der Toorn. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 2007. (Somebody had to edit the Old Testament to combine the many strands of tradition, oral or written, that existed in Israel five- or six-hundred years before the birth of Jesus. This is their story.)

 

Robert Bellah. Religion in Human Evolution. From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge. Belknap Press of Harvard UP. 2011. (The notion of an axial age is disputed, even if there was a remarkable convergence of religious developments around the world from about 800 BCE to 200 BCE. Still, Bellah’s summary of what happened in Israel, written as it is by a scholar who is not a specialist in OT history or language, makes it very accessible.) 

 

James Kugel & Ellen Geiger. The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times. New York. Houghten, Miflin, Harcourt. 2017. (Kugel is a great scholar who has had a long career. This is likely his last book, and though he is less radical than Römer and others, it is a great introduction to the literary world of the Old Testament.)

 

Francesca Stavrakopoulou. God: An Anatomy. New York. Knopf Publishing Group. 2022. (A tour de force. An intense reminder of how our presuppositions about scripture can lead us to miss some of its—and god’s—most obvious features. In this case, it is the fact that throughout the early history of YHWH, he was conceived of as having a body, not unlike Zeus or Thor. The evidence of this permeates the Old Testament.)