The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts 1st Edition by Mark S. Smith (PDF)

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According to the Bible, ancient Israel’s neighbors worshipped a wide variety of gods. In recent years, scholars have sought a better understanding of this early polytheistic milieu and its relation to Yahweh, the God of Israel. Drawing on ancient Ugaritic texts and looking closely at Ugaritic deities, Mark Smith examines the meaning of “divinity” in the ancient near East and considers how this concept applies to Yahweh.

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Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I am in no position to judge the scholarship of this work. This is my first foray into the world of comparative West Semitic studies, and, so, I have no basis for comparison. Nonetheless, despite the thick and extremely scholarly approach – which pulls not punches for the popular audience – I was still sucked into the text and experienced not a few “gosh-wow!” moments.The core proposition of this book is that Israel’s Yahweh tradition started in the West Semitic culture and, therefore, it is profitable to examine the religion another West Semitic culture – that of Ugarit – to see what the formative Jewish religion looked like and compare its development with the “control” (my word) of the Ugaritic texts, including the “Baal Cycle.” By engaging in an exhaustive review of these two schemas – with some forays into Egypt and Babylon – Smith concludes that the Judaism we know was developed during the Exilic period of the “Babylonian Captivity” – when Israel’s political fortunes reached their nadir, but the rhetorical power of the Jewish God Yahweh reached its Zenith – leading ultimately to a reworking of the original traditions and stories into the Monotheism that we associate with Judaism.So, in a nutshell, Jewish monotheism dates from the 6th and 5th Century B.C., and not from an earlier time. That’s certainly a a “gosh-wow” proposition for anyone brought up on the conventional story of biblical monotheism.Nonetheless, the author, Mark S. Smith, does not appear to be some radical debunker of orthodox religion. Smith holds the Skirball Chair of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. In 2004 Professor Smith was the Catholic Biblical Association visiting professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. So, he seems to have solid Catholic bona fides, and his opinions were not so noxious as to disqualify him from teaching at the Pontifical Bible Institute.The first part of the book examines the Ugaritic source material. Ugarit was a port city in Northern Syria that was destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age. (See Eric Cline’s

⭐for more details.) Because of the sudden destruction of Ugarit, a treasure trove of documents were preserved dating to the end of the Late Bronze Age. (“LBA”) Among the documents discovered was the Baal Cycle, which preserved the Bronze Age religious traditions of Canaanite culture. Since Israel is in the land of Canaan, and since Ugarit and Israel are both West Semitic cultures, Ugaritic texts may offer a window onto the religious traditions of Israel during the Bronze age.The first part of the book was tough sledding for me because of its unfamiliarity. Also, Smith “goes to the mats” on Ugaritic words, etymology and semantics, which is not very useful for us who are never, ever going to recall the finer points of LBA Ugarit, but that is, frankly, what Professor Smith gets paid for, and it it supports the core of his argument.We learn, though, the Baal Cycle tells of the supplanting of the original leader god El by a foreign, upstart storm god named Baal. El had a wife, Atherat, who, according to Smith, is the biblical Asherat, and El and Atherat were the parents of a family of divinities. Baal supplanted El by fighting against Mot, (death) and Litan (the sea monster Leviathan.) Baal had a sacred mountain, Mount Sapan. Smith also describes the “Four-tier” divinity system running from Head god to divine family to specialized helper gods (including my new favorite Ugaritic deity, Kothar wa-Hasism, the smith of Baal) to the messengers or “angelic” figures. After Baals victory in the “Combat Myth” of defeating the monsters that were too tough for El to handle, El gradually becomes more obscure – a “deus otiosus.” (Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Location 3994). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.)In the first part of Smith’s book, he has an extensive discussion of a perennial topic of the “kind-of, sort-of” educated – the “Dying and Rising Gods.” I, certainly, grew up reading enough references to Frazier’s, The Golden Bough, to know that this was top-shelf stuff – known to those who were on the inside track of cultural sophistication (I mean, even Science Fiction author Tim Powers bases his novel

⭐on the “dying and rising gods” motif, or perhaps only on T.S. Elliott’s

⭐- which is interestingly referenced by Smith throughout this book. (I’ve wrestled with that text, and I may give it another go after reading this book.)) On the other hand, I have also heard that the “dying and rising god” motif is passe.In his discussion on the “dying and rising gods,” Smith debunks the notion. Many such purported gods never rose – Osiris, for example, remained in the land of the dead. Some gods disappear, and re-appear without explanation. We have no real idea what happened with Melquart, for example, Often the examples of the dying and rising gods derive from the Classical period rather than the Bronze Age, which brings into question their provenance. Other dying gods, didn’t die; they slept.Baal is often reported as a “dying and rising god,” but, again, no special rite or story is attached to the rising part. There is simply a living Baal and a Baal who dies. Smith suggests that this tracks the status of the Ugaritic King who dies, but is somehow alive in his successor. (“The extant Baal Cycle never recounts Baal’s return to life.” (Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Locations 3524-3525). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.).)In the second part of the book, Smith compares Ugaritic and Biblical tropes. Smith identifies vestigial remnants of the West Semitic theological system. Thus, there are, of course, the puzzling references by Yahweh to other gods and to his court. Likewise, there seems to both a nod to the fact of Yahweh’s wife and a four-tier divinity system in some otherwise obscure references in the Bible://At the top of the Judean pantheon stands the divine couple, Yahweh and Asherah. Many scholars believe that the asherah in the Jerusalem temple was none other than the symbol of the goddess (2 Kings 17:16), either a tree or wooden pole, and that the image (pesel) was hers (“the image of the asherah/Asherah,” 2 Kings 21: 7); this evidence would suggests that Asherah was a goddess venerated in the Jerusalem temple devoted to Yahweh and was therefore regarded as his consort.Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Locations 1462-1465). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.Here is the quote from 2 Kings 17://16 They forsook all the commands of the Lord their God and made for themselves two idols cast in the shape of calves, and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the starry hosts, and they worshiped Baal. 17 They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They practiced divination and sought omens and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.//And://21 Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. 2 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 3 He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. 4 He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.” 5 In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6 He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.7 He took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple, of which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon,//So, if this reflects the actual “folk religious” practices, it may be an indication of the continuation of the earlier West Semitic theology.Smith’s thesis is that prior to the exile, Jews were neither monotheist or monolatrists. They worshiped the gods in Israel and expected foreign gods to stay out of Israel. Hence, Smith writes://Moreover, as long as such gods remained in the foreign domain, the national theology was adequate for those monarchic period figures opposed to the cult of what they may have regarded as foreign deities on native soil. Hence, Elijah, a great prophetic figure of the ninth century, looks like a monotheist for the later biblical tradition. So too the eighth-century prophets, Amos and Hosea, oppose the cult of other deities in Israel, but they do not speak about foreign gods in their own territory. These prophetic voices might be regarded as monolatrous, but because of their polemic against others in ancient Israel, they may not have spoken for most people in ancient Israel. In other words, it is not clear that most ancient Israelites during the monarchy either were monolatrous or regarded all other deities as foreign. Indeed, the prophetic polemics point in the opposite direction.Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Locations 4704-4710). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.Smith suggests the following development. The original god of Israel was “El.” A hint of this fact can be found in the name “Israel” which incorporates “El” rather than “Yahweh.” There is a hint of the dichotomy between El and Yahweh in the Septuagint version of the Bible – and doesn’t that imply that the Septuagint was the earlier tradition -//This family view of the divine arrangement of the world is preserved also by the version of Deuteronomy 32:8-9 in the Greek texts of the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls:45 When the Most High (Elyon) allotted peoples for inheritance, When He divided up humanity, He fixed the boundaries for peoples, According to the number of the divine sons: For Yahweh’s portion is his people, Jacob His own inheritance.Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Locations 4506-4510). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.Yahweh was a southern storm god, whose cult moved north to the Israeli highlands. Yahweh started out in the “second tier.” As the cult moved north, it was incorporated and conflated with the older cult of El. Smith explains the basis for the outsider, southern origin of Yahweh://A common assumption is that El’s cult did not exist in Israel except as part of an identification with Yahweh. For ancient Israel, this question depends on whether Yahweh was a title of El37 or secondarily identified with El. Besides the grammatical objections sometimes raised against this view, the oldest biblical traditions place Yahweh originally as a god in southern Edom (possibly in northwestern Saudi Arabia), known by the biblical names of Edom, Midian, Teman, Paran, and Sinai.38 This general area for old Yahwistic cult is attested in the Bible (Deuteronomy 33:2; Judges 5:4-5; Psalm 68:9, 18; Habakkuk 3:3)39 as well as in inscriptional sources.Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Locations 4075-4080). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.Smith explains the proposition that the people of Israel originally worshipped El and not Yahweh as follows://5. Was El Israel’s Original God? The information in the preceding section makes this question reasonable, despite the apparent complications that this reconstruction may pose for later theology. Moreover, it is a reasonable hypothesis because of one basic piece of information: the name of Israel contains not the divine element of Yahweh but El’s name, with the element *’ēl. If Yahweh had been the original god of Israel, then its name might have been *yiśrâ-yahweh, or perhaps better *yiśrâ-yāh in accordance with other Hebrew proper names containing the divine name. This fact would suggest that El not Yahweh was the original chief god of the group named Israel. The distribution of El and Yahweh in personal names in many so-called early poems likewise points in this direction.54Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Locations 4157-4164). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.In the final part of the book, Smith develops the idea that the “sea-change” toward monotheism occurred during the Exile. He points out that the clearest earliest statements of monotheism are found in “Second Isaiah” (which, he says, may never have been intended to circulate separately from Isaiah). The monotheism of Isaiah seems clear://1. Isaiah 43:10-11 situates its monotheistic claims within a context of divine aid: Before Me no god was formed, And after Me none shall exist– None but me, the Lord; Beside Me, none can grant triumph.Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Locations 5157-5159). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.The occasion for the rise of monotheism was the change in the world and the change in Israel’s status://Looming empires made the model of a national god obsolete. Moreover, the rise of supranational empires suggested the model of the super-national god. As a result, the figures of Assur and Marduk assumed such proportions, the super-gods whose patronage of empires matches their manifestation as the sum-total of all the other deities. As noted in chapter 5 (sections 1 and 2), Mesopotamian authors are exploring the nature of all divinity in relation to a single major god. The response from Israel followed suit in one respect. The events leading to the Judean exile of 587 extended Israel’s understanding of its deity’s mastery of the world even as the nation was being reduced. This shift involves a most crucial change in different Judean presentations of the relationship between the mundane and cosmic levels of reality (or, put differently, between the immanence and transcendance of divinity).115 As Judah’s situation on the mundane level deteriorated in history, the cosmic status of its deity soared in its literature. The timing of the emergence of Israelite monotheism in the late Iron Age and exilic period fits Karl Jaspers’s the “Axial Age,” a period in world history (ca. 800-200) that “witnessed the emergence of revolutionary new understandings of human understanding,” including the awareness of “the separation between transcendant and mundane spheres of reality.”116Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Locations 4773-4784). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.How did the change happen? Smith explains://Perhaps some of the possible, older images of Yahweh (for example, having a consort) did not have survive generally in the later Israelite cult. The different priestly lines during this period found their own primary images of Yahweh (whether older or newer ones) sufficiently incompatible with some of the older images and chose not to preserve them, thereby functionally censoring them. Indeed, the presentation of Yahweh generally as sexless and unrelated to the realm of death was apparently produced by a priesthood who viewed this deity as fully removed from realms of impurity, especially sex and death.78 Holier than the holy of holies, the deity of the priesthood would have epitomized the fullest possibilities of sacredness and separation. Older views perceived to be incompatible with this presentation of the deity may have been modified precisely by those priestly groups responsible for the redaction and transmission of so much of the extant biblical texts.Smith, Mark S. (2001-07-13). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Kindle Locations 5088-5095). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.This is obvious a cursory reconstruction of Smith’s arguments, to the best of my limited abilities, time and background. My purpose, frankly, has been to assimilate, ponder and memorialize some of the things I have taken away from this deep and fascinating book.I was left with two questions, however.First, the implication we get is that the individual texts of the Old Testament date from after the Exile. Smith doesn’t offer a dating of, for example, Genesis, but the implication is that it was written, redacted, edited or whatever after circa 600 B.C.But that dating is based on his arguments, which seems to be a circular way of dating things. Are there any texts or ways of dating the Old Testament books based on extrinsic evidence? I wasn’t clear about that.Second, it seems that such a sea-change should have left more controversy and dissent behind. We know that Akhenaten tried for a monotheistic reform, which “washed away” upon his death…actually, it was bitterly undone.by conservative adherants of the old way. Were there no such adherents in Israel? That seems odd from a sociological perspective, given the typically conservative bias of religious adherents.Likewise, are there no biblical texts that date from before 600 BC? Smith does mention inscriptions, but are there no stories preserved somewhere that clearly reference the wife of Yahweh (or El)?This is a very fascinating book. As a somewhat casual reader of the Bible, I found that I learned quite a bit about the Bible from Smith’s pointing out the “what is all that about” passages and providing the West Semitic context. I do not believe that my Catholic faith has been challenged, but that may, in part, be due to the fact that I was already exposed to the polytheistic references in the Bible and to the idea of “development of doctrine.” On which point, if you want a way to come at the issue of biblical belief and Smith’s exploration of the Ugaritic precedents for the Bible, I recommend

⭐.

⭐This book is well researched, well referenced, well written, and is a great scholarly work. It provides a historical and theological overview of the area that was called by the Hebrew Bible “Canaan,” which included Phoenicia, Palestine, Israel, and what is now western Jordan (generally: the Levant”). The author relies on the most accurate archaeological findings, and not speculation or dubious studies, to explain how the Hebrew theology had emerged, or evolved, from older traditions (including early Hebrew polytheistic traditions). Mark Smith is among the few authors on the subject whose scholarly work shows no influence, subtle or obvious, of Christian or Jewish faith, or even atheism.

⭐Well done essay on the origins of Yahwism in the HB and subsequent development monotheism. However, the author gave me the impression that he was attempting to write for the novice, or at least lay readers with an interest in the field but not much knowledge about the basics of biblical scholarship. It is not for the novice or basic level scholars! At times Smith delves into arcane technicalities of Ancient Near Eastern texts, while at others he gives very basic definitions and descriptions of terms etc. In my opinion, the actual target audience for this book is those individuals with more than an introductory knowledge of the history and development of HB studies and the historical, literary, and theological issues surrounding the Documentary Hypothesis. For those readers, this volume is worthy of careful attention. Smith’s focus is to utilize the Ugaritic texts as a primary case study, calling upon other ANE texts through late Iron Age to develop a more nuanced and sensitive depiction of West Semitic (a term he argues for in contrast to the more ambiguous “Canaanite”) polytheism than has been heretofore assumed in Western culture, including academe. Within that picture Smith then makes a case for the West Semitic polytheistic character of Yahwism and argues that Yahwist monotheism per se (i.e., Yahweh alone is god, and there is NO other god) is a post-exilic development. In the process Smith also smashes icons in his own right, such as dispensing with the notion that the death-resurreciton of a god can be traced to Baal myths. The reader with more than rudimentary knowledge of the field will find this a stimulating read and source of reflection.

⭐This is a well put together piece of academic scholarship on the development of Hebrew monotheism in the ancient world

⭐The type set is far to small and faint , making it very very difficult to read.. It looks like they took a much bigger book and by reduction photocopying they crammed it into a small book.. Quarts into pint pots.. A good book destroyed by the publisher .. I would not have bought it if I’d seen it in my hand in a bookshop..

⭐technical but fascinating monotheism which tends to be fascistic (‘everyone else is wrong and heretic’ ) with its limited perception of everything (erm ‘god made it all’ ) wasn’t inevitable but a product of a particular society at a particular time

⭐Very good content. Very poor printing quality. In Italy it is available as a print-on-demand directly from Amazon, and it is so badly printed that it is very, very difficult to read… OUP should not allow such a low quality.

⭐After only 2 chapters, I had learned so many things that the book could end there and I would consider it worth every penny. And I still have 8 more chapters to go !

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