The Religion of Ancient Palestine Part 1

The Religion of Ancient Palestine.

by Stanley A. Cook.

PREFACE

The following pages deal with the religion of Ancient Palestine, more particularly in the latter half of the Second Millennium, B.C. They touch upon the problem of the rise and development of Israelite religion; a problem, however, which does not lie within the scope of the present sketch (pp. 4, 114 _sq._). The Amarna tablets, Egyptian records, and the results of recent excavation form the foundation, and the available material has been interpreted in the light of comparative religion. The aim has been to furnish a fairly self-contained description of the general religious conditions from external or non-biblical sources, and this method has been adopted partly on account of the conflicting opinions which prevail among those who have investigated the theology of the Old Testament in its relation to modern research. Every effort has been made to present the evidence accurately and fairly; although lack of s.p.a.ce has prevented discussion of the more interesting features of the old Palestinian religion and of the various secondary problems which arose from time to time. {vi} Some difficulty has been caused by the absence of any more or less comprehensive treatment of the subject; although, from the list of authorities at the end it will be seen that the most important sources have only quite recently become generally accessible. These, and the few additional bibliographical references given in the footnotes are far from indicating the great indebtedness of the present writer to the works of Oriental scholars and of those who have dealt with comparative religion. Special acknowledgements are due to Mr. F. Ll. Griffith, M.A., Reader in Egyptology, University of Oxford; to the Rev. C. H. W.

Johns, M.A., Lecturer in a.s.syriology, Queen's College, Cambridge, and King's College, London; and to Mr. R. A. S. Macalister, M.A., F.S.A., Director of the Palestine Exploration Fund's excavations at Gezer.

These gentlemen enhanced their kindness by reading an early proof, and by contributing valuable suggestions and criticisms. But the responsibility for all errors of statement and opinion rests with the present writer.

STANLEY A. COOK.

_July_ 1908.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

+The Subject.+--By the Religion of Ancient Palestine is meant that of the Semitic land upon which was planted the ethical monotheism of Judaism. The subject is neither the growth of Old Testament theology, nor the religious environment of the Israelite teachers: it antic.i.p.ates by several centuries the first of the great prophets whose writings have survived, and it takes its stand in the second millennium B.C., and more especially in its latter half. It deals with the internal and external religious features which were capable of being shaped into the forms with which every one is familiar, and our Palestine is that of the Patriarchs, of Moses, Joshua, and the Judges, an old land which modern research has placed in a new light.

Successive discoveries of contemporary {2} historical and archaeological material have made it impossible to ignore either the geographical position of Palestine, which exposes it to the influence of the surrounding seats of culture, or its political history, which has constantly been controlled by external circ.u.mstances. Although Palestine reappears as only a small fraction of the area dominated by the ancient empires of Egypt and Western Asia, the uniqueness of its experiences can be more vividly realised. If it is found to share many forms of religious belief and custom with its neighbours, one is better able to sever the features which were by no means the exclusive possession of Israel from those which were due to specific influences shaping them to definite ends, and the importance of the little land in the history of humanity can thereby be more truly and permanently estimated.

+Method.+--Although Palestine was the land of Judaism and of Christianity, and has subsequently been controlled by Mohammedanism, it has preserved common related elements of belief, which have formed, as it were, part of the unconscious inheritance of successive generations.

They have not been ousted by those positive religions which traced their origin to deliberate and epoch-making {3} innovators, and they survive to-day as precious relics for the study of the past. Indeed, the _comparative method_, which investigates points of resemblance and difference among widely-severed peoples, can avail itself in our case of Oriental conservatism, and may range over a single but remarkably extensive field. From the archaeology and inscriptions of Ancient Babylonia to Punic Carthage, from the Old Testament to the writings of Rabbinical Judaism, from cla.s.sical, Syrian, and Arabian authors to the observations of medieval and modern travellers, one may acc.u.mulate a store of evidence which is mutually ill.u.s.trative or supplementary. But it would be incorrect to a.s.sume that every modern belief or rite in Palestine, for example, necessarily represents the old religion: there have been reversion and retrogression; some old practices have disappeared, others have been modified or have received a new interpretation. This warning is necessary, because one must be able to trace the paths traversed by the several rites and beliefs which have been arrested, before the religion of any age can be placed in its proper historical perspective. Unfortunately the sources do not permit us to do this for our period. The Old Testament, it is true, covers this period, and its writers frequently {4} condemn the worship which they regard as contrary to that of their national G.o.d. But the Old Testament brings with it many serious problems, and, for several reasons, it is preferable to approach the subject from external and contemporary evidence. Although its incompleteness has naturally restricted our treatment, the aim has been to describe, in as self-contained a form as possible, the general religious conditions to which this evidence points, and to indicate rather more incidentally its bearing upon the numerous questions which are outside the scope of the following pages.

+Survey of Period and Sources.+--Many different elements must have coalesced in the history of Palestinian culture from the days of the early palaeolithic and neolithic inhabitants. It is with no rudimentary people that we are concerned, but with one acquainted with bronze and exposed to the surrounding civilisations. The First Babylonian Dynasty, not to ascend further, brings with it evidence for relations between Babylonia and the Mediterranean coast-lands, and intercourse between Egypt and Palestine dates from before the invasion of the Hyksos.[1] With the expulsion of {5} these invaders (about 1580 B.C.), the monarchs of Egypt enter upon their great campaigns in Western Asia, and Palestine comes before us in the clear light of history. The Egyptian records of the Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties furnish valuable information on the history of our period. Babylonia and a.s.syria lie in the background, and the rival parties are the kingdom of the Nile and the non-Semitic peoples of North Syria and Asia Minor ('Hitt.i.tes') whose influence can probably be traced as far south as Jerusalem. Under Thutmose III. (fifteenth century) Egypt became the queen of the known world and the meeting-place of its trade and culture. But the northern peoples only awaited their opportunity, and fresh campaigns were necessary before Amenhotep III. (about 1400 B.C.) again secured the supremacy of Egypt. His successor, the idealist Amenhotep IV. (or Ikhnaton), is renowned for his temporary religious reform, and, at a time when Egypt's king was almost universally recognised, he established in Egypt what was practically a universal G.o.d. Meanwhile, amid internal confusion in Egypt, Hitt.i.tes pressed downwards from Asia Minor, seriously weakening the earlier Hitt.i.te kingdom of Mitanni (North Syria and Mesopotamia). The cuneiform tablets discovered in 1887 {6} at El-Amarna in Middle Egypt contain a portion of the diplomatic correspondence between Western Asia (from Babylonia to Cyprus) and the two Amenhoteps, and a few tablets in the same script and of about the same age have since been unearthed at Lachish and Taanach. It is at this age that we meet with the restless Khabiri, a name which suggests a connection with that of the 'Hebrews.'

The progress of this later Hitt.i.te invasion cannot be clearly traced; at all events, Sety I. (Sethos, about 1320 B.C.) was obliged to recommence the work of his predecessors, but recovered little more than Palestine. Ramses II., after much fighting, was able to conclude a treaty with the Hitt.i.tes (about 1290), the Egyptian version of which is now being supplemented by the Hitt.i.te records of the proceedings.

Nevertheless, his successor, Merneptah, claims conquests extending from Gezer to the Hitt.i.tes, and among those who 'salaamed' (_lit._ said 'peace') he includes the people (or tribe) Israel.

[1] For approximate dates, see the Chronological Table.

The active intercourse with the Aegean Isles during this age can be traced from Asia Minor to Egypt (notably at El-Amarna), and movements in the Levant had accompanied the pressure southwards from Asia Minor in the time of the Amenhoteps. A similar combination was defeated by {7} Ramses III. (about 1200); among its const.i.tuents the Philistines may doubtless be recognised. But Egypt, now in the Twentieth Dynasty, was fast losing its old strength, and the internal history of Palestine is far from clear. Apart from the sudden extension of the a.s.syrian empire to the Mediterranean under Tiglath-pileser I. (about 1100 B.C.), no one great power, so far as is known, could claim supremacy over the west; and our period comes to an end at a time when Palestine, according to the Israelite historians, was laying the foundation of its independent monarchy.

Palestine has always been open to the roaming tribes from Arabia and the Syrian desert, tribes characteristically opposed to the inveterate practices of settled agricultural life. Arabia, however, possessed seats of culture, though their bearing upon our period cannot yet be safely estimated. But a temple with an old-established and contemporary cult, half Egyptian and half Semitic, has been recovered by Professor Petrie at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinaitic Peninsula, and the archaeological evidence frequently ill.u.s.trates the results of the excavations in Palestine. Excavations have been undertaken at Tell el-Hesy (Lachish), at various sites in the lowlands of Judah (including Tell es-Safy, perhaps Gath), at {8} Gezer, Taanach, and Tell el-Mutesellim (Megiddo), and, within the last few months, at Jericho.

Much of the evidence can be roughly dated, and fortunately the age already illuminated by the Amarna tablets can be recognised. Its culture a.s.sociates it with North Syria and Asia Minor, and reveals signs of intercourse with the Aegean Isles; but, as a whole, it is the result of a gradual development, which extends without abrupt gaps to the time of the Hebrew monarchy and beyond. Chronological dividing-lines cannot yet be drawn, and consequently the archaeological evidence which ill.u.s.trates the 'Amarna' age is not characteristic of that age alone.

+The Land and People.+--For practical purposes a distinction between Palestine and Syria is unnecessary, apart from the political results of their contiguity to Egypt and Asia Minor respectively. Egypt at the height of its power was a vast empire of unprecedented wealth and splendour, and the imported works of art or the descriptions of the spoils of war speak eloquently of the stage which material culture had reached throughout Western Asia. Even the small townships of Palestine and Syria--the average city was a small fortified site surrounded by dwellings, {9} sometimes with an outer wall--could furnish rich booty of suits of armour, elegant furniture, and articles of gold and silver.

The pottery shows some little taste, music was enjoyed, and a great tunnel hewn out of the rock at Gezer is proof of enterprise and skill.

The agricultural wealth of the land was famous. Thutmose III. found grain 'more plentiful than the sand of the sh.o.r.e'; and an earlier and more peaceful visitor to N. Syria, Sinuhe (about 2000 B.C.), speaks of the wine more plentiful than water, copious honey, abundance of oil, all kinds of fruits, cereals, and numberless cattle. Sinuhe was welcomed by a sheikh who gave him his eldest daughter and allowed him to choose a landed possession. Life was simpler and less civilised than in Egypt, but not without excitement. He led the tribesmen to war, raiding pastures and wells, capturing the cattle, ravaging the hostile districts. Indeed, 'lions and Asiatics' were the familiar terror of Egyptian travellers, and the turbulence of the petty chieftains, whose intrigues and rivalries swell the Amarna letters, made any combined action among themselves exceptional and transitory.

We gather from these letters that foreign envoys were provided with pa.s.sports or credentials addressed to the 'Kings of Canaan,' to ensure their speedy and safe pa.s.sage {10} as they traversed the areas of the different local authorities. Such royal commissioners are already met with in the time of Sinuhe.

Egyptian monuments depict the people with a strongly marked Semitic physiognomy, and that physical resemblance to the modern native which the discovery of skeletons has since endorsed. We can mark their dark olive complexion; the men with pointed beards and with thick bushy hair, which is sometimes anointed, and the women with tresses waving loosely over their shoulders. The slender maidens were admired and sought after by the Egyptians, and later (in the Nineteenth Dynasty) we find the men in request as gardeners and artisans, and some even hold high positions in the administration of Egypt. The script and language of Babylonia were still in use in the fifteenth century, although the supremacy of that land belonged to the past; they were used in correspondence between Western Asia and Egypt, also among the Hitt.i.tes, and even between the chieftains of Palestine. Apart from the tablets found at Lachish and Taanach, several were unearthed at Jericho, uninscribed and ready for use. But the native language in Palestine and Syria was one which stands in the closest relation to the cla.s.sical Hebrew of the {11} Old Testament, and it differed only dialectically from the Moabite inscription of Mesha (about 850 B.C.), the somewhat later Hamathite record of Ben-hadad's defeat, and the Phoenician inscriptions.

The general stock of ideas, too, was wholly in accord with Semitic, or rather, Oriental thought, and the people naturally shared the paradoxical characteristics of the old Oriental world:--a simplicity and narrowness of thought, intensity, fanaticism, and even ferocity.[2]

To these must be added a keen imagination, necessarily quickened by the wonderful variety of Palestinian scenery, which ranges from rugged and forbidding deserts to enchanting valleys and forests. The life of the people depended upon the soil and the agricultural wealth, and these depended upon a climate of marked contrasts, which is found in some parts (_e.g._ the lower Jordan valley) to be productive of physical and moral enervation. In a word, the land is one whose religion cannot be understood without an attentive regard to those factors which were unalterable, and to those specific external influences which were focussed upon it in the entire course of the Second {12} Millennium B.C. We touch the land at a particular period in the course of its very lengthy history; it is not the beginnings of its religion, but the stage it had reached, which concerns us.

[2] See Th. Noldeke, _Sketches from Eastern History_ (London, 1892), chap. i., 'Some Characteristics of the Semitic Race.'

{13}

CHAPTER II

SACRED SITES

+The Sanctuary of Gezer.+--Of the excavations in Palestine none have been so prolific or so fully described as those undertaken by Mr.

Macalister on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund at Gezer. This ancient site lies about eighteen miles W.N.W. of Jerusalem, and, between its two knolls, on a commanding position, one of the most striking which Palestine can offer, were found the remains of a sanctuary whose history must have extended over several centuries.

Gezer itself has thrown the strongest light upon the religion of the land, and a brief description of its now famous 'high-place' will form a convenient introduction to the cult and ritual of the period.

Looking eastwards we face eight rough monoliths, which stretch in a slightly concave line, about 75 feet in length, from north to south.

They are erected upon a platform of stones about {14} 8 feet wide; they vary from 5- ft. to 10 ft. in height, and have uniformly a fairer surface on the western (front) than on the eastern side. Number 1, on the extreme right, is the largest (10 ft. 2 in. high, and 4 ft. 7 in.

by 2 ft. 6 in.). Next (No. 2), stands the smallest (5 ft. 5 in. high, 1 ft. 2 in. by 1 ft. 9 in.), whose pointed top with polished spots on the surface speaks of the reverent anointing, stroking and kissing which holy stones still enjoy at the present day. No. 7, the last but one on our extreme left, is of a limestone found around Jerusalem and in other districts, but not in the neighbourhood of Gezer. Under what circ.u.mstances this stone was brought hither can only be conjectured (see p. 80). The pillar (7 ft. 3 in. high, 2 ft. 10 in. by 1 ft. 3 in.) bears upon its front surface a peculiar curved groove; No. 1, too, has a groove across the top, and four in all have hollows or cup-marks upon their surfaces. Nos. 4 and 8 are more carefully shaped than the rest, and the latter stands in a circular socket, and is flanked on either side by the stumps of two broken pillars. Yet another stone lay fallen to the south of No. 1, and there is some reason to suppose that this and the unique No. 2 belonged to the earliest stage in the history of the sanctuary. In front of Nos. 5 {15} and 6 is a square stone block (6 ft. 1 in. by 5 ft. by 2 ft. 6 in.), with a cavity (2 ft. 10 in. by 1 ft. 11 in. by 1 ft. 4 in.); a curved groove runs along the front (the western side) of the rim. It is disputed whether this stone held some idol, stele, or pillar; or whether it was a trough for ritual ablutions similar to those which Professor Petrie recognised at Serabit el-Khadem, or whether, again, it was a sacrificial block upon which the victim was slain.

In the area behind (east of) these monoliths are entrances leading to two large underground caverns which appear to have been used originally for habitation; their maximum diameters are about 40 ft. and 28 ft., and they extend nearly the whole length of the alignment. The caverns were connected by a pa.s.sage, so short that any sound in one could be distinctly heard in the other, so small and crooked, that it is easy to imagine to what use these mysterious chambers could be put. In the larger cave a jar containing the skeleton of an infant rested upon a stone, and close by were the remains of an adult. Further behind the pillars was found a bell-shaped pit containing numerous animal and human bones. In a circular structure in front of pillars Nos. 7 and 8, the bronze model of a cobra lay amid {16} potsherds and other debris.

A little distance to the south in a bank of earth were embedded several broken human skulls, cow-teeth, etc.; the heads had evidently been severed before burial, and there was no trace of the bodies. Below the whole area, before and more particularly behind the pillars, several infants were found buried head-downwards in large jars; they were mostly new-born, and two, as also two older children, bore marks of fire. Finally, throughout the debris that had acc.u.mulated upon the floor of the sanctuary were innumerable objects typical of nature-worship, representations in low relief of the nude mother-G.o.ddess of Western Asia, and male emblems roughly made of limestone, pottery, bone, and other material.

+Other Sacred Places.+--Scarcely fifty yards to the south of these pillars was a rock-surface about ninety feet by eighty, covered with over eighty of the singular cup-marks or hollows which we have already observed. One little group surrounded by small standing-stones was connected by a drain which led to a subterranean cave. Here, too, was another almost concealed chamber, and the discovery of a number of bones of the swine (an animal seldom found elsewhere in Gezer) gave {17} weight to the suggestion that mysterious rites were practised.

Although the monoliths of Gezer do not appear to have lost their sacred character until perhaps the sixth century B.C., they were not the only place of cult in the city. Above, on the eastern hill, were the remains of an elaborate building measuring about 100 ft. by 80 ft..

Its purpose was shown by the numerous religious emblems found within its precincts. In two circular structures were the broken fragments of the bones of sheep and goats--devoid of any signs of cooking or burning. Jars containing infants had been placed at the corners of some of the chambers; and below an angle of a courtyard close by, a pit underneath the corner-stone disclosed bones and potsherds, the latter bearing upon them the skull of a young girl.

At the north-east edge of the plateau of Tell es-Safy the excavations brought to light a building with monoliths; in the debris at their feet were the bones of camels, sheep and cows. At the east end of the hill of Megiddo, Dr. Schumacher found pillars with cup-marks enclosed in a small building about 30 ft. by 15 ft.; a block of stone apparently served as the sacrificial altar. Besides several amulets and small idols, at one of the {18} corners were jars containing the skeletons of new-born infants. The structure belonged to a great series of buildings about 230 ft. long and 147 ft. broad. At the same site also was discovered a bare rock with hollows; it was approached by a step, and an entrance led to a subterranean abode containing human and other bones. At Taanach, Dr. Sellin found a similar place of sacrifice with cavities and channel; the rock-altar had a step on the eastern side, and close by were a number of flint-knives, jars with infants (ranging up to two years of age), and the remains of an adult.

Continued excavation will no doubt throw fuller light upon the old sacred places, their varying types, and their development; even the recent discovery of a small pottery model of the facade of a shrine is suggestive. It represents an open fore-court and a door-way on either side of which is a figure seated with its hands upon its knees. The figure wears what seems to be a high-peaked cap; it is presumably human, but the nose is curiously rounded, and one recalls the quaint guardians of the temple-front found in other parts of Western Asia.

+Their Persistence.+--Whether the choice of a {19} sacred place was influenced by chance, by some peculiar natural characteristic, or by the impressiveness of the locality, nothing is more striking than its persistence. Religious practice is always conservative, and once a place has acquired a reputation for sanct.i.ty, it will retain its fame throughout political and even religious vicissitudes. The history of Gezer, for example, goes back to the neolithic age, but the religious development, to judge from the archaeological evidence, is unbroken, and although there came a time when the city pa.s.sed out of history, Palestine still has its sacred stones and rock-altars, buildings and tombs, caves and grottoes, whose religious history must extend over untold ages. At both Gezer and Tell es-Safy a sacred tomb actually stands upon the surface of the ground quite close to the site of the old holy places.

At Serabit the caves with their porticoes had evolved by the addition of chambers, etc., into a complicated series sacred to the representative G.o.ddess of the district and to the G.o.d of the Egyptian miners. It is estimated that the cult continued for at least a thousand years. In the neighbourhood of Petra several apparent 'high-places' have been found. They are perched conspicuously to catch the rays of the morning {20} sun or in view of a holy shrine; and the finest of them is approached by two great pillars, 21 to 22 feet high.

Although as a whole they may be ascribed to 300 B.C.-100 A.D., their altars, basins, courts, etc., probably permit us to understand the more imperfect remains of sanctuaries elsewhere.[1] But independently of these, from Sinai to North Syria an imposing amount of evidence survives in varying forms for the history of the sacred sites of antiquity. In the rock-altars of the modern land with cup-marks and occasionally with steps, with the shrine of some holy saint and an equally holy tree, sometimes also with a mysterious cave, we may see living examples of the more undeveloped sanctuaries. For a result of continued evolution, on the other hand, perhaps nothing could be more impressive than the Sakhra of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, where, amid the a.s.sociations of three thousand years of history, the bare rock, with hollows, cavities, channels, and subterranean cave, preserves the primitive features without any essential change.[2]

[1] G. Dalman, _Petra und seine Felsheiligtumer_ (Leipzig, 1908).