The establishment of monotheism in the Middle East is the result of a relationship, the relationship between a people and a divinity represented by its prophets. This triangular relationship will be so particular that it will turn the polytheistic religious world upside down. The way this divinity, Yahweh [9], will be defined, his function, his messages, will all be delineated by his prophets for a nomadic tribe, the Israelites.
Ever since his first apparition, Yahweh shows without ambiguity the role he wants to play in the life of this people, asking Abraham to move to the country of Canaan, several hundreds of kilometers away from the city of Ur where he resided [Ge 12:1-5]. Yahweh promises him a land and says that Abraham will be the father of a great nation [Ge 15:18]. He makes it immediately clear that he intends to take an active part in the life of this man, and indicates that he controls the future and holds the keys to his destiny.
However, there is nothing abstract or transcendent in what he proposes: a land and an abundant progeny. Just like his polytheistic counterparts, he is a functional god who responds to the aspirations of his believers. At his beginnings, his function, his feelings, and even his representation have a definite human touch [Ge 3:8; Ge 18:1-8]. Only later will his definition and his approach become more abstract. But during his first steps, he follows the path of polytheism, sharing the natural world and the reality of his followers in a functionalized relationship, as the story of the three strangers who appear before Abraham resting in front of his tent shows: one of the three personages is simply the god that he venerates [Ge 18:1-8]. This story dates from around 1,850. Anthropomorphism is also present when Yahweh walks in the Garden of Eden [Ge 3:8], but disappears when he dictates the tables of the law to Moses, symbolized by a burning bush.
It will be the task of the prophets to detach their divinity from his polytheistic context. Addressing their message to a nomadic people will ease this transition, since it eliminates the problem of localization. Besides, the absence of writing will allow the prophets to reformulate this people’s history.
The origin of the Israelites is not known. The nomadic populations [10] that orbited around urban centers remained, for most, out of range of the political and religious organization introduced by the Urban Revolution, although they certainly used its facilities such as the cities’ temples and markets. When kingdoms and empires went to war, these populations, caught between two fires, were probably the first victims of the marching armies. As a matter of fact, the nomadic lifestyle of the Israelites will play a determining role in the functions this people without land, without borders, without any political or religious structures, will attribute to their god.
Anthropological research shows that pastoralist nomads tend to generate a communal identity that is at the same time very distinct and quite opposite to that of settled communities. They often consider sedentary people as “impure,” and sometimes even “unhealthy.” [11] [Phillips, 2001] For them, the demarcation between the in-group and the out-group is very manifest [12].
For the Israelites, this divergence probably originated at the end of the Neolithic, when deteriorating conditions obliged populations of this region to diversify their economy. While one group continued its farming activities in the village, another group had to leave for several months to lead livestock in transhumance. The seals that appear at the end of the seventh millennium in different villages could be the first sign of distrust between the two groups. At the site of Tell Sabi Abyad (Syria) [see Part Two, endnote 22], seals were set on the clay closing bags or goatskins to indicate property and identify their owner during the period they were gone.
Dissensions certainly intensified during the Chalcolithic, when nomadic people maintained their traditional lifestyle and values, while settled populations got immersed in the motion of progress. For pastoralists, conditions became worse when kingdoms and empires drew up the boundaries of their territory, limiting a liberty of movement that had, until then, known no border. The exactions of conquering armies will only increase this animosity.
One of the oldest traces of divergence is mentioned in the Sumerian mythology in which a quarrel opposes Dumuzi, the god of pastors, to Enkimdu, the god of agriculturists. It reappears in the Old Testament with the story of Cain and Abel, Cain representing the agriculturists and Abel the shepherds. Yahweh accepts Abel's offering, but rejects that of Cain [Ge 4:4]. The text gives no explanation for such a decision, but it must have been so obvious to its author and to the audience for which it was meant that it was not judged necessary to provide further clarification. Thus, defining settled populations as the in-group of the Urban Revolution and the nomads living in its periphery being relegated to the role of out-group, the bias of Yahweh for Abel unveils the paradigm of a definition of the Chosen People as a community of nomadic shepherds who strongly rejects the settled populations represented by agriculturists [13].
Moreover, this partiality helps us understand how the prophets and authors of the early texts forming the Old Testament exercised their influence to incite the Israelites to adopt Yahweh as their unique god. Your god, they said, is not the god of agriculturists and of settled people, but it is the god of shepherds, the god of pastoralists. If you venerate him, he will provide for your needs, and he will be implacable with your enemies who will become his enemies. This represents a veritable tour de force of these prophets, who succeeded in reversing the roles by making a group situated on the margin of society and living on the periphery of history become the focal point of another history by simply redefining the in-group.
The first characteristic of this god is that he is not attached to a place, as his polytheistic counterparts were, but to a people: his jurisdiction is not geographical, but ethnic. It is a divinity that follows his believers, whereas the polytheistic tradition expected the believers to come to the divinity.
But the match between this god and his people does not end here. Originally a god of war, one finds his cult as god of the armies in Midian (Jordan). This function will procure him with a non-negligible advantage in the eyes of the Israelites, a people without a state, a people without an army: Yahweh will often be called to rescue them at perilous times. Those moments [1Sa 17:45; 2Sa 7:8] will provide him with his most convincing role and will allow him to assert his power.
He is also a god of the desert: having no affinity whatsoever with urban populations, he will be completely devoted to this nomadic people. Abraham, a shepherd himself, is the first person approached by Yahweh, and the shepherd theme will be constantly recurring in the Old as well as in the New Testament [14].
Still under the influence of the polytheistic culture at the beginning, Yahweh tries to grant the wishes of his believers, just like any other polytheistic divinity does, though more actively. He asks Abraham to leave Chaldea and to head toward Canaan [Ge 12:1-5] where he will obtain a land and become the father of a “nation.” Yahweh translates this way the aspiration of Abraham and of his people, which is not to prolong the ancestral tradition of pastoral nomadism, but on the contrary, to settle down, to possess a land, to become a nation [15], and, ultimately, to honor him by building a temple for him. It will become the leitmotif of the Jewish people during the millennia that follow.
Yet, once settled, the Israelites immediately turn to Baal, the powerful god of agriculture and of fertility, asking him to make their land and their women fertile. Yahweh might be most qualified to ensure their defense and their protection, but he is not worth much as god of fertility, and as soon as their security is assured, the Israelites turn to divinities better suited to answer their needs than a god who is thirsty for war and vengeance [see the thematic table below].
As a nomadic people, the Israelites did not have a place of worship or a religious organization of their own – two aspects that determined the relationship with the polytheistic divinities at the time. This, in turn, facilitated the introduction of the god that the prophets promoted – a god without temple or priests – and encouraged the emergence of a spiritualization of the divinity.
On the other hand, the Israelites were regularly in contact with other divinities as they used the religious amenities encountered on their path. The prophets will accuse them of ignoring the precepts dictated by their god whose first commandment is: “You shall have no other gods before me.” [Ex 20:3] Obliging the Israelites to renounce their customs will not happen without tears: “Don’t make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, lest they play the prostitute after their gods, and sacrifice to their gods, and one call you and you eat of his sacrifice; and you take of their daughters to your sons, and their daughters play the prostitute after their gods, and make your sons play the prostitute after their gods.” [Ex 34:15-16] The prophets, however, will not accept what they consider a treason, and will spend their time trying to convince their people that they do not need a divinity like Baal [16], Yahweh being able to fulfill all their demands [Ho 2:17]. In fact, fertility will become a real obsession in the mouth of Yahweh’s spokesmen, being branded as the ultimate reward after the Promised Land.
By putting these elements back into the context and perspective of the time, one understands that the imbalances found in the relationship between this god and his people do not come from a lack of goodwill on behalf of the Israelites, to whom the vision of the prophets is certainly difficult to grasp. They rather result from the will of the prophets to establish the monopoly of their divinity. The fact that they multiply the tests, from Abraham until Ezekiel, and that they constantly look for proofs, reveals how uncertain they are of their endeavor.
Another element missing by the Israelites is the political and hierarchical organization found in the surrounding cities, their communities still being organized around a tribal system. In the absence of a king, the prophets will confer the role of monarch on their divinity. In turn, they will be his spokesmen, transcribing and imposing his will and his law [Ex 15:18].
Assigning human features to Yahweh, the prophets will endow him with a jealous and revengeful character: as any other potentate of the time, he will not hesitate to use threats and force to establish his authority and eliminate all competition. The table below shows how often terms relating to vengeance, punishment, anger, sanction, war and enemy appear in the Old and in the New Testament. The considerable divergence in the frequency of these terms between the two books clearly illustrates the difference existing in the content of their message.
The relationship between Yahweh and his people rests on a balance of power, authoritarianism and diplomacy. He must impose himself inside as well as outside his jurisdiction, and uses various threats, from exile to destruction, to make his people obey. At the same time, his enemies – people hostile to his people or people possessing a hostile divinity – exploit every sign of weakness to enslave the Israelites. As all other polytheistic divinities, it is incumbent on him to show that he fits the function he claims to fulfill, that he is capable of protecting and defending his people's interests [Ps 76:4-9].
This functional relationship will last most of the historical period covered by the Old Testament. A new level will be reached when a more transcendental approach allows Yahweh to rise above the crowd and to break with the utilitarianism of polytheism by becoming unique, omnipresent, omniscient, and almighty. No recesses of time or space will then escape him [Ez 39:21-29].
This transformation takes place when the prophets conceive the exile of the Israelites as being part of the divine plan [17]. This way, they establish that divine law is independent of events, that it encompasses all reality [Ez 39:23; Me 31:33]. Starting from that moment, a holistic perception of this people's history is born, a history that spreads in time as in space, a history every instant of which is sustained by a unique goal, a goal that only revelation can apprehend.
Yahweh is a historic and tribal god who tries to establish a pact of exclusive rights with the Israelites. Little by little, they will accept this alliance and the conditions it imposes on them. It is a marriage of reason: a people without a land to which one promises a nation; a people without an army that forms an alliance with a god of war; a nomadic people and a god of the desert; a people without history that becomes the center of history. This marriage promotes the Israelites from a tribal state to the status of “people” and cements their new identity into the exclusive story that the prophets collect. This collective identity will ultimately allow them to create a state, to form a nation.
The different facets of this identity – religious, historical and geopolitical – will be founded on the norms defining the chosen people of course, but also on those demarcating who is excluded from the alliance. Yet, the populations of the Middle East were defined by their geopolitical identity: one belonged to a city, to a kingdom, to an empire. In the absence of any geopolitical context, the Israelites will use their religious alliance as basis for their collective identity.
The prophets will define the norms of this alliance, describing with much specificity on what ground someone is not accepted into the congregation. Depictions of this apartheid abound: “for whoever eats that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a foreigner, or one who is born in the land,” one can read in Exodus [12:19]. In Leviticus [24:16], it is the blasphemer that will be excluded not only from the alliance but from the world of the living, being condemned to die by stoning. An identical procedure awaits the one who gathers wood the day of the Sabbath [Nu 15:32-36].
But it is especially Deuteronomy that explicitly details who is to be excluded: “He who is wounded in the stones, or has his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the assembly of Yahweh.A bastard shall not enter into the assembly of Yahweh; even to the tenth generation shall none of his enter into the assembly of Yahweh.An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of Yahweh; even to the tenth generation shall none belonging to them enter into the assembly of Yahweh forever:because they didn’t meet you with bread and with water in the way, when you came forth out of Egypt…” [De 23:1-4] Further: “You shall surely set him king over yourselves, whom Yahweh your God shall choose: one from among your brothers you shall set king over you; you may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.” [De 17:15] And then: “There shall be no prostitute of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a sodomite of the sons of Israel.” [De 23:17]
It is interesting to note that the discourse of the prophets does not contain any intention of universality. On the contrary, they want to clearly and definitively differentiate the chosen people from the others. This principle of exclusion appears very early in their writings, more precisely in Genesis, during the second narration of the creation [Ge 2:4-3:24]. After a first creation in which Yahweh creates a universe where all is “good,” a second creation follows, laden with interdictions, punishments and sanctions. It is there that Adam and Eve are excluded from the Garden of Eden.
Why did the prophets then consider it necessary to write two versions of the creation, two versions so completely different that they almost contradict themselves?
The first creation occurs in six days and ends with one day of rest. It forms the first book of Genesis [1:1-2:3] [18]. The second creation comes immediately after the first one, without any transition or explanation, as if pasted after it without taking into account the continuity of the text and what has been said before. In addition, it recreates what has already been created in the first version, in a seemingly contradictory way: “This is the history of the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens.No plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Yahweh God had not caused it to rain on the earth. There was not a man to till the ground,” [2:4-5] whereas the first version says: “God said, ‘Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with its seed in it, on the earth;’ and it was so.” [1:11]
Further, in the second version, we read that “Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” [2:7] A little later, woman is also created [2:23], whereas both were already conceived in the first creation: “God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.” [1:27]
Why create nature, man and woman a second time, when Yahweh declares every day of the first creation that he is satisfied with his work. And if Yahweh says that he has done a good job, who would be so audacious as to pretend the opposite and ask him to start all over again?
It is commonly admitted that two authors are at the origin of the first texts composing the Old Testament (those of Genesis and Exodus): the first is assigned the initial ‘E’ because he names his god Elohim, while the second is called ‘J’, vocalization of the tetragram YHWH. These two authors seem to have lived during the seventh century, ‘J’ coming from the south of Judea, 'E' from the north of Israel. In the polytheistic tradition, a same divinity changes name from one locality to the other, and it is not at all surprising to see these two authors, living in different regions, call this divinity with a different name. Moreover, the polytheistic imprint can be read again in the name Elohim, which is the plural of a Hebrew word meaning “those who have power.” This plural probably refers to the divinities who reigned at the summit of the Canaanite pantheon at that time: El, Asherah and Baal [19].
However, the fact that these texts have been assigned to two different authors does not explain why two versions of the creation have been integrated into Genesis, whereas their obvious contradictions undermine the authority of its content, and by consequence, the authority of the god it presents: to contradict, in the space of a few lines, the actions of a god that is supposed to be almighty, can only weaken his authority and ascendancy.
But do these texts really recount the actions of a god? Do we not rather have here to deal with the staging of a very particular historical and mythical context into which the actions of Yahweh have been incorporated? Could these two creations form the different facets of a history whose significance would be anchored in the cultural heritage of the people to which they are addressed, recreating around the divinity an intelligible and recognizable universe for them?
The first creation remains in the tradition of its predecessors, except on one point: the primordiality of nature has been replaced by a divinity that precedes everything that exists. Even time and space factors are incorporated in the creation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…God divided the light from the darkness.God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ There was evening and there was morning, one day.” [1:1-5]
The second creation does not describe facts as those that cadence the creation in six days, each of them perfectly completed. It rather concentrates on the creation of a man, Adam, and is organized around a set of events that form a story, a myth. These events provide the dramatic elements that will prove to be crucial for the course Middle-Eastern monotheistic religions will take. They not only define the function of the new god, but also the role that humans assume in their relationship to the divinity.
In the first creation, the god of ‘E’ creates nature and everything that it contains, and ends up being satisfied with his creation. 'E' proposes a world in which humans are part of nature that has been created to feed them: “… I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food…” [1:29-30] This vision differs on all points from that of ‘J’ who establishes distinctions at all levels: among the trees in the garden of Eden, there is one whose fruit may not be eaten; among the animals, there is one more cunning and more deceitful than all others, the snake. Even among the two human beings a distinction is made, the woman being created afterwards to keep company to the man and help him. A hierarchy is also created between man and animals, since the animal world has to parade before Adam to be named by him [20]: “Yahweh God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.’Out of the ground Yahweh God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper suitable for him.Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.He made the rib, which Yahweh God had taken from the man, into a woman, and brought her to the man.The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of Man.’” [2:18-23] In the vision of ‘J,’ woman is not man's equal, but does not either belong to the animal world. She thus acquires an intermediate status in the hierarchy of the creation between the animal world and man who is placed directly below Yahweh.
The hierarchized creation of ‘J’ is at the opposite of the egalitarian balance that reigns in the creation of ‘E’. However, if one approaches the content of these texts in a historical perspective, one perceives that the worlds they describe do not contradict but prolong each other. Within a few lines, these two authors stage a large part of the history of their people, with the egalitarian and unified world of the Neolithic period, on the one hand, and the differentiated, hierarchized universe brought by the Chalcolithic era and the Urban Revolution on the other hand.
The fact that these two worlds are presented as an extension of one another is truly astounding. We must, nevertheless, keep in mind that these lines were written for a people still living in a tribal structure inherited from the Neolithic, a people out of phase with its context and that has kept its ancestral traditions alive [21]. Yet, there are more parallels that can be drawn.
With a creative god at the summit of his hierarchy, ‘J’ gives a place of choice to man, followed by the animal world, and then by nature that acts as support, as decor to the whole production. It is in this context that, out of Adam's rib, Eve is born, a last touch brought to conclude the creation. ‘J’ assigns to her a place of second rank in the divine order, since she has not directly been created by the divinity, but has been extracted from man and assigned a function.
In the creation according to 'E' on the other hand, there is neither Eve nor Adam, but a man and a woman, created at the same time and having the same status in the order of things [1:27]. In ‘E’s’ vision of the world, only the divinity is placed outside the creation, since Yahweh creates nature and everything that it includes. It also renews with the prehistoric tradition of the spirits: “God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.” [1:2] It was a time when nature fed all living beings as well [1:29]. No trace of hierarchy at any level, and no mention of work, whereas for ‘J’, man is created to work: “There was not a man to till the ground.” [2:5] [22] ‘J’ describes the world of the Chalcolithic period, a world whose economy rests in the hands of man and where the domestication of nature plays a prominent role, since man has for function to cultivate it.
As for the woman, her role is second to that of the man. Eve is created afterwards, in hindsight: “Yahweh God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”” [2:18] Man is here presented as an autonomous being, who does no