008. V. Israel’s Religious Heritage

V ISRAEL’S RELIGIOUS HERITAGE

I.Prominence of Religion in Early Semitic Life. The preceding studies have revealed the aggressive conquering, colonizing and commercial tendencies of the early Semitic peoples. Of these three tendencies the commercial was undoubtedly the strongest; but there was a still more powerful force in that ancient life. That force was religion. The earliest rulers were the priests of the tribe or nation, and the basis of their authority was their claim that they were the representatives of the gods. Kings fought and carried their victorious standards into unknown lands, and colonists followed to complete the work of conquest, that the glory and prestige of their god might be increased. The greater part of the fruits of conquest and commerce went to glorify the temples and service of the gods. The policy of the state and the activity of the people were directed by their religious leaders. Priests also acted as scribes, teachers, authors and judges. It is also deeply significant that the oldest records found in Babylon and Egypt are almost without exception religious in theme and spirit. The earliest mounds are filled with the ruins of temples and the symbols of worship. Ancient art and science were also both inspired by religion.

II.The Semitic Instinct for Religion. Among the primitive Semitic peoples the fact that man is by nature a religious being, finds its strongest illustration. The dearest possessions and even human life were all sacrificed to the gods. Though the beliefs of these early peoples were often absurd and their rites crude and repulsive, their fervent devotion reveals the spirit of true worship; for the essence of worship is not the intellectual belief, but the attitude of the worshipper. It was inevitable that in such an intensely religious atmosphere the faith of humanity should attain its earliest and most advanced development, and that out of it should ultimately spring the exalted religion of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus. Divine revelation is necessarily gradual and progressive, for each age and race can receive only the truth which it is capable of apprehending. In the life and religions of the Semitic peoples, whose traditions Israel inherited, it is now possible to study the earlier stages in that continuous process of divine revelation which has given us our faith of to-day.

III.Early Semitic Religions. The primitive Semites, and especially the Sumerians who preceded the Babylonians, worshipped many spirits of air, and earth, and water. It was a religion of dread, for the deities were for the most part believed to be malign. Man’s chief effort was to avert their jealousy and anger; but as civilization and culture advanced and man began to master natural forces, the gods were thought of, more and more, as friends rather than foes.

IV.The Many Local Gods. When history dawned in ancient Babylonia and Egypt, each city state or tribe had its local deity, who, it was believed, made its fields productive, prospered its industries, protected the individual from sickness and misfortune and the city from calamity, fought with his people against their foes, and appointed and directed its judges and rulers. The interests of the god and his people were identical. The chief aim of religion was to establish and maintain the right relation between the divine king and his subjects. The entire city life centred about the temple. Thus, in ancient Babylonia, Sin, the moon god, who guided the caravans by night across the sandy wastes, was worshipped at Ur, and also at northern Haran, beside the desert; Ea, the god of the great deep and of hidden knowledge, at Eridu, near the Persian Gulf; Bel, the lord of earth, at the sacred city of Nippur; Shamash, the sun god, at Larsa and Sippar; the goddess Ishtar at Uruk; Nabu, the god of learning, at Borsippa, and Marduk at Babylon. At each of these different shrines nearly the same forms of ritual and sacrifice obtained, and the common Semitic myths and traditions were handed down; but in each of the different versions the local god figured as the hero.

V.Development of the Pantheon. When some one of the cities conquered the rest, and a united kingdom and in time an empire arose, the god of the ruling city became the supreme deity of the realm. The local gods, however, continued to be worshipped by their subjects, and wise kings like Sargon I and Hammurabi won the favor and loyalty of the conquered cities by building temples and paying homage to these local deities. The natural result of the union of all the cities of Babylonia under one ruler was a pantheon. As has always been the case, theology was strongly influenced by the existing political and social organization. When Hammurabi made Babylon the head of an empire, Marduk, the god of Babylon, took his place at the head of the pantheon made up of the gods and goddesses of the more important cities of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. The theologians of that early day set to work to recast the old myths so as to give the supremacy to Marduk, to define the functions of the different deities, and to trace relationship between them. Each god was also provided with a divine consort. Thus, for example, corresponding to Bel was the goddess Belit. The result was a divine household, the prototype of the Greek Olympus.

Egyptian religions passed through the same stages, but more of the primitive worship of spirits and animals survived. Its theology and mythology were never so thoroughly systematized as the Babylonian, and its interest centred in the future rather than in the present life.

III.Transfer of the Religious Centre to Palestine. During the imperial period the Babylonians and Egyptians developed an exceedingly elaborate ceremonial system. Religion was defined more and more in the terms of ritual rather than of life and deeds. Priest-craft and superstition gained the ascendency, with the sad result that these great religions ceased to develop and so perished. In the freer, fresher atmosphere of Palestine the vital elements in the old faiths were destined to come to full fruition. Conquest, commerce, and literature had carried Babylonian customs, traditions, and religion to this western land. The dominant Amorite-Canaanite civilization in Palestine, because of its common Semitic origin, was also especially receptive of this powerful influence which radiated for centuries from the Tigris-Euphrates valley.

IV.Religion of the Canaanites. Recent excavations, the Egyptian inscriptions, the el-Amarna letters, and the biblical references together give a definite picture of the Amorite-Canaanite religion which the Hebrews found in Palestine. Each city or tribe had its local baal or lord and a corresponding goddess. These were worshipped at the open-air high places on some commanding height within or near each town. About the shrine were the asherahs or poles and sacred stones or pillars. A row of seven of these pillars has recently been found in the ruins of the old Semitic sanctuary at Gezer. The altars on which the sacrifices were offered were of earth or baked clay or stone. Here the people assembled in springtime and autumn to celebrate the ancient Semitic festivals and to present their offerings. Here also the inherited religious traditions of the race were doubtless perpetuated. In the absence of favorable natural conditions and a strong central power to unite all these little city states into one kingdom or empire, the peoples of Palestine never developed a local pantheon. While polytheism prevailed there, it was not of the complex type found in Babylonia or Egypt under the empire. Also ritualism had not destroyed the possibility of ethical and spiritual progress. On the other hand, the gross immorality and degeneracy of the local cults made imperative the demand for a purer and nobler religion.

VIII.Israel’s Religious Heritage. Thus through their Arabian and Aramean ancestors the Hebrews received the primitive religious ideas and institutions of the early Semitic races. From the Amorites and Canaanites, whom they in time conquered and absorbed, they inherited their early sanctuaries, and with these the beliefs and rites and traditions which had gradually been transferred to Palestine from Egypt and especially from ancient Babylonia. In their conception of the Deity and of men’s duty toward him and their fellow-men, these pre-Hebrew races had made vast progress, as is demonstrated, for example, by the Code of Hammurabi or by many of the noble Babylonian hymns and prayers. A prophet nation, however, was demanded to separate the true gold from the dross of superstition, to conserve that which was vital and eternal in the older Semitic religions and to become the agent of a new and far higher revelation. Not by chance nor by arbitrary divine choice, but as the result of a character and inheritance and training, which can be studied in the full light of its unique history, Israel proved to be that prophet nation.