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The First Temple Period in Israel

THE YEARS of our life are threescore and ten,

    or even by reason of strength fourscore;

yet their span is but toil and trouble;

    they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Who considers the power of thy anger,

    and thy wrath according to the fear of thee?

So teach us to number our days

    that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Ps 90:10-12)

THIS PSALM OFFERS us sobering thoughts to ponder. The advice of the Bible is to value our fleeting time alive. Its advice is similar to Sidduri’s advice to Gilgamesh, though it straightforwardly implores God for the wisdom to fear Him. In these few verses we can see the deep relationship between Biblical literature and Mesopotamian notions of the afterlife. Save for the monotheistic invocations, these verses might have served nicely as the moral to The Gilgamesh Epic. Furthermore, the Bible begins its discussion of the afterlife with the very same intuition we saw in Mesopotamia: Recognition of our mortality ought to lead directly to wisdom. The Mesopotamian version of this insight is, of course, much more ancient than the Bible and consequently couched in mythology, ritual, and polemic for the divination and exorcism guilds. The lyric poetry of Psalms expresses the relationship more privately, as does Wisdom Literature like Ludlul Bel Nemeqi in Mesopotamia as well. The psalms allude to the mythical background of Mesopotamia.

We are used to reading the Bible as discursive literature, meant for us and our moral improvement. The Bible cannot be fully understood without seeing it in its historical context-Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan for the First Israelite Commonwealth period (ca. 1200 BCE-586 BCE), Persia and Greece for the Second Temple period (515 BCE-70 CE). In this context, it is not the familiar guide to our moral lives but a strange and sometimes off-putting window into a culture that vanished long ago. In such an environment, it would be out of place to expect discursive arguments for or against the pagan world’s notions of our ultimate ends. Instead, the Bible will rely on its own narratives and myths to express similarity and contrast with the environment in which it was written. Reading the Bible, we must be sensitive to both the constitutive and the polemical role of mythical narratives.

The Bible, as its name implies (Ta Biblia in Greek, meaning “the little books”), is not a single work but collective work, an anthology selected from a greater output of ancient Israelite literary works for a specific, theological purpose. One of those purposes was to show the sinfulness of Canaanite culture. Another was to narrate the covenant between God and his people Israel. Yet, when we look behind the voice of the redactor, or the editor, we often see a great deal of similarity between Israel and the cultures around it. For example, Psalm 29 seems equally at home in a Canaanite context, and Psalm 104 has an uncanny resemblance to Akhenaten’s Hymn to Aten, so close, in fact, that several verses seem like direct borrowings.

That the Bible lacks a concrete narrative of the afterlife, as we have seen so often manifested in the pagan cultures around it, must, we suspect, not be just accidental or deficient; it must be part of the Biblical polemic against its environment. In contrast to the plethora of different ideas about life after death, in the great river cultures surrounding Israel, early Bible traditions seem uninterested in the notion of an afterlife. Practically every scholar who systematically surveys the oldest sections of the Biblical text is impressed with the lack of a beatific notion of the hereafter for anyone.

But that is not all that is missing: Virtually the entire mythological framework of cosmological discussion in the ancient world is lacking and the traces that remain are transformed. Everything-rain and dew, crops and increase of flocks, and historical events as well-is due to the Lord, the God of Israel. Gone is the exuberant pantheon of exalted, loving, quarreling, and warring gods. Gone too is most of the epic poetry, with its rich texture of myth glorifying the gods and ancient kings. Unlike the other ancients who reveled in the time of the gods, the illud tempus (Latin for “that time”), a mythical time at the beginning of the world when the gods and humans encountered each other directly, the Bible links the mythical past with the story of its historical figures by means of sturdy and understated prose. Everything seems to be part of the same story and narrative. The closest we get to in illo tempore (“in that time”) in the Bible is the so-called “J” source of the Pentateuch where God manifests himself directly to a few well-chosen people, in charming literary tales.

In place of the booming multiverse ruled over by unpredictable gods of the nations around them, the writers of the Bible eventually offered, in their mythology, a universe under the direction of a single, moral God. One might say that they created the notion of a universe in proclaiming that one God created and ruled it. How carefully the rest of the Israelites listened to this message depended on the time period and the circumstances. And how long it took the Israelites to reach this stage is moot.

All the myths we discussed in previous chapters took place in illo tempore, in that other mythical time, set off by epic poetry in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan. The primeval history in the Bible is a mythical time too but it pretends, in contrast to the epic poetry we have surveyed, to be attached to our own time by unbroken genealogies and continuous prose narrative. In comparison to the cultures we have just reviewed, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are written in the same brief, concise prose narrative, designed to seem just as everyday as the events in the marketplaces of Israel.

Or, looked at another way, the events happening in the marketplaces and courts of Israel were meant to be just as important to history as the temptation of Adam and Eve in mythic time; they are all part of the same historical and moral drama.¹

In the first instance this means that the rich geographical and climatic mythologies of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan, which link the natural world with death and regeneration, would take a backseat in Hebrew thought. We have no great epics that explain in narrative form why the rivers flood or the crops alternate or the dew suffices when the rains stop. Instead these are all due to the direct guidance of the one god, YHWH, the Holy One of Israel. YHWH is not so much present in the events of nature as He is the director of them. And He is present in an entirely new area of human endeavor which we have not seen before: He is the God of history. It is YHWH who directs the events which happen to Israel, as well as the fates of other nations.

The Bible suggests that the people Israel and its God, whose proper name is YHWH, usually designated by the word “LORD” in English Bibles, have entered into a specific agreement called a “covenant” (Hebrew: Berîth). The agreement says that YHWH will look after the people if they keep His laws, which include worshiping Him, Him alone, and observing a variety of laws for the religious, social, and moral benefit of the people, at least as those values were understood at that time. This covenant has a history; recounting the history of the covenant, in fact, is what creates the historical narrative of the Hebrew Bible. It also means that fortune and misfortune depend on controllable variables-the behavior of the people.

Not only does this make people responsible for their own fortunes in nature, it also has consequences for the conception of the self. In place of locating themselves geographically in the great forces of nature, the Israelites locate themselves in the unique history of Israel and, later, in the history of the dispersed Jewish people. That necessarily makes each individual more aware of the unique aspects of public and private moral experience. The Bible demythologizes nature and mythologizes history.

The Bible tells us that the Israelites found the path to the exclusive worship of YHWH difficult. Reading the Bible historically and in line with archeology shows us that it was even harder than it seems from the text alone. Archeology suggests that YHWH’S cult really did not take hold completely until after the Israelites returned from Babylonian captivity in 539 BCE and that, indeed, much of the writing of Bible was edited or formulated then.

Why the Silence about the Afterlife?

IT COULD BE that Hebrew culture foresaw no significant afterlife for the dead, that the covenant had nothing to say about the afterlife except to warn against believing that another god could supply one. That belief would make the Hebrews absolutely unique among world cultures and especially strange in the ancient Near East, where elaborate ideas about postmortem existence and even more elaborate rituals were everywhere part of literature, myth, and social life.

We are not only faced with a huge silence, we are left without conclusive evidence for a sure explanation. How could the Bible have avoided discussing this issue? Since the reasons for the lack of information are obscure, the Bible presents us with the scholarly predicament of a classic argument from silence. The best we can offer is speculation, based on what clues we can find in the text and in archeological records. We know that the Bible’s dislike of foreign cults and gods other than YHWH demythologized all the gods, turning them into created objects. Presumably, any extended discussion of life after death or the realm of the dead with its pantheon of divinities would open the door for idolatry or veneration of ghosts which the Bible, in its final and present form, has entirely forbidden.

This hypothesis is given some credibility by the fact that most Biblical terms for the dead can be found in the book of Isaiah-predominently positive terms like “souls,” “divine ones,” “healers,” “holy ones,” “knowing ones,” and “those who pass over.” A large number of scholars conclude from this usage that the dead had a powerful role in the lives of the living: They might even heal the sick and revive the dead for ordinary Israelites.² While some of these scholarly hypotheses may be exaggerated, it seems likely that the First Temple Israelites lived in a cultural continuum with the Canaanites and shared many beliefs with them. For instance, we find a certain amount of archeological evidence that suggests the Hebrew God YHWH was sometimes viewed as having a female consort-as in the graffito to YHWH-ANAT at Kuntillet ’Ajrud and in later inscriptions at Elephantine in Egypt (Jer 44:7-8).³

We find nothing but vituperation against such an idea in the Bible, although we sometimes find figures like Wisdom taking on the conventional epithets of goddesses, as in Proverbs 1:20, as well as chapters 8 and 9. The Bible itself records that the Israelites and Judeans again and again went off to worship the fertility gods of Canaan and condemns this as sinning against the covenant with YHWH, for which natural disasters, invasions, and finally exile were the punishments. The prophets tell us repeatedly of the crimes of Israelite commoners and kings.

The evidence suggests that the fight against ancestor worship was even more obvious and more dangerous, as it was actually a significant part of Israelite popular religion. In short, for all its honesty about the conflict, we shall see that the Bible gives us an idealized portrait of the battle between Yahwism and Canaanite religion, largely as it was remembered after the Babylonian captivity.

The Séance at Endor

THERE ARE SOME passages that hint at a more complicated relationship between the Israelites and their Canaanite environment. For instance, Saul, when he feared God’s disfavor, sought the services of a necromancer, following a practice that he himself had specifically forbidden, according to the narrative. Since exorcism and necromancing constituted a primary ritual supported by the myths of the afterlife in Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia, it is worthwhile to look at this passage in some detail:

When Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD did not answer him, not by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets. Then Saul said to his servants, “Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, so that I may go to her and inquire of her.” His servants said to him, “There is a medium at Endor.” So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothes and went there, he and two men with him. They came to the woman by night. And he said, “Consult a spirit for me, and bring up for me the one whom I name to you.” The woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the wizards from the land. Why then are you laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?” But Saul swore to her by the LORD, “As the LORD lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.” Then the woman said, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” He answered, “Bring up Samuel for me.” When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice; and the woman said to Saul, “Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!” The king said to her, “Have no fear; what do you see?” The woman said to Saul, “I see a divine being [emphasis added] coming up out of the ground.” He said to her, “What is his appearance?” She said, “An old man is coming up; he is wrapped in a robe.” (1 Sam 28:6-14a)

The most poignant part of this story is the way in which Saul must convince the woman to perform the ritual, which he has specifically forbidden and which she herself does not want to perform. Saul is so desperate to find out why the Lord is silent that he dares to use forbidden supernatural help. The entrepreneur he needs is described as a “medium,” which he instructs his servants to seek out: “Seek out for me a woman who is a medium,” literally a “mistress of ghosts.” He wants to “inquire” of her, a word with prophetic and divinatory implications. Additionally, he uses the phrase “Consult a spirit for me,” (literally, “enchant” a ghost for me).

In the eyes of the narrator, for Saul to have called upon the necromancer, traditionally the “witch of Endor” in English, is the last, most sinful act of a very desperate man. The woman’s powers are real, not imaginary, for she accomplishes the task for Saul. The woman, seemingly in an act of kindness, slaughters a calf for the abandoned king Saul, who has not eaten all day, a detail which suggests the ritual preparations for a necromantic séance, something akin to the marzeaḥ or marziḥ (the Canaanite commemorative feast), where the presence of the ancestor was greeted with a feast.⁴ So far as the Bible is concerned, then, the dead can be recalled, and there is a technology available for doing so; but it is sinful to do so, because they are “divine beings” and hence consulting them breaches the canons of Yahwism (1 Sam 28:13). As the book of Deuteronomy itself clarifies:

When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the LORD; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the LORD your God is driving them out before you. You must remain completely loyal to the LORD your God. Although these nations that you are about to dispossess do give heed to soothsayers and diviners, as for you, the LORD your God does not permit you to do so. (Deut 18:9-14)

The word “witch,” (mekaŝŝēpā) used in English to describe the enchantress in Exodus 22:17, is the same word used to describe the “enchanter” (Mekaŝŝēp) in Deuteronomy (see also Lev 19:31, 20:6, 27), except that the gender in Deuteronomy is masculine (the common gender in Hebrew) instead of feminine. Both are strictly forbidden under pain of death. The female version comes from the earliest law code in Israelite history (JE law code = Exod 20:2-23:19), the general term is from the Deuteronomic law code (D law code = Deut 6-24), promulgated in the reform of Josiah in 621 BCE.

Necromancy Forbidden Is Necromancy Affirmed

ON THE OTHER hand, there is evidence of a strong Deuteronomistic editing in the material with careful attention given to the sin involved. When Josiah cleanses the witches from Judah, he also throws out the mediums and necromancers, using the very vocabulary used in the story in Samuel (2 Kgs 23:24).

It is suspicious that the idolatrous practices, forbidden so often, are mentioned in Deuteronomy as practices of the early Israelites. One might argue that they were introduced during the Assyrian period for there is good evidence that Assyrian cults were introduced into Judah by Kings Amon and Manasseh.⁵ However, Saul’s encounter with the necromancer is a popular, native, rural practice, not a cult introduced by royal patronage. There are times and places in Israelite life where the practices seem perfectly appropriate. For instance, Jeremiah and the other prophets seem to know about them.

Under the specific practices forbidden by legislation and at least once carried out in practice are exactly those which the medium of Endor performs. One cannot “enchant,” “divine, intone, or cast spells,” “consult or ask ghosts or familiar spirits,” or “seek oracles from the dead.” The vocabulary used by Saul to hire her services is explicitly the same vocabulary used to forbid the practice in Deuteronomy, so there is evidence of a literary relationship between the two pieces. Note too that in true ancient Near Eastern fashion, what Saul wants from this encounter is knowledge and the wisdom to make the best decision as king. It was normal for kings of nations to seek oracular advice. What is not clear is how much of the abhorence is due to the Deuteronomic reform and how much comes earlier. In spite of the Deuteronomistic narrative, the phenomenon and some opposition is historical, much earlier because it appears in the JE epic law code.

We learn something else from the law codes. These practices are grouped with the wicked idolatrous practices of the Canaanites-including child sacrifice. They are forbidden not only because they are immoral and abhorrent, but also because they violate monotheism-more exactly, they insult (the cult of) YHWH. This is, evidently, a new religious idea, as we have seen that gods usually act in concert in the area. While the gods may argue and oppose each other and while the priesthood of one site may dislike the priesthood of another area, one has to look far in this area to see the notion that no other cult may be practiced at all. It may have existed among the other tribal peoples, but we have little evidence of exclusivism in their religions. The Bible tells us in many ways that the Israelites did participate in the other religions, though it is careful to give us as little information as possible about what the practices were.

The Bible, as we have it, incorporates these ambiguities into an unambiguous Kulturkampf, a battle against a foreign culture. The Israelites were to owe everything to one God YHWH, the LORD, and one God alone. The reason the Israelites were given the land, which belonged to the Canaanites, is that they had sworn in the covenant not to participate in the practices of those who preceded them and who were dispossessed by the LORD for their sinfulness. That means, according to the law codes, that they were not to consult their own nor the ancestors of the Canaanites who were to be found in the land.

But at a certain earlier point there was more ambiguity. Another name for YHWH could be El or Elohim, who could also be seen as the god of the ancestor deities.⁶ It is possible that the argument against invoking the dead was precisely against invoking the gods of the Canaanites, who were there first and who might have claimed credit for keeping the land and its inhabitants safe-or, at least, against not confusing the dead ancestors with YHWH.

Interestingly enough in 2 Kings 23, Josiah also throws out the terafim, ancestral spirits, known to be in the possession of Israelites in the patriarchal period and later. Since this occured in 621 BCE, not all the Israelites had hearkened to the law codes of earlier times. The ancestral spirits had altars and could be consulted and may have also been referred to as elohim (Gen 31:19, 30, 32; 35:2, 4; Judg 17:5; 18:14, 17, 18, 20; see Isa 8:19-20; Num 25:2; Ps 106:28). It seems quite likely that one of the meanings of the word elohim must also be “ancestral gods.”⁷ For instance, Laban’s teraphim represent his ancestral deities-that is, his elohim, which were going to be outlawed as “foreign gods” in the eyes of the Biblical editors.⁸

From whence the divine being (literally: elohim or figuratively: “divine ghost ancestor”) of Samuel comes in the Endor story is not specifically named, though he is pictured as “coming up,” as if from under the earth, which is precisely where the dead go to and come from in the Mesopotamian and Canaanite traditions. When the ghost arrives and is identified as Samuel, his first question concerns why his rest has been so rudely interrupted. The dead in Hebrew thought are resting quietly; or at least, the righteous ones are. No doubt this is one reason why Isaiah is so angry with the necromancers:

And when they say to you, “Consult the mediums and the wizards who chirp and mutter,” should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living for the teaching and for the testimony? ⁹ Surely for this word which they speak there is no dawn. They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry; and when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will curse their king and their God, and turn their faces upward; and they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness. (Isa 8:19-22)

The necromancers are even described as “chirping” with a word that normally describes the sound of birds and further suggesting the birdlike character of the transformed ancestors in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan. If so, Isaiah was satirizing the practice by describing the necromancers and not the dead as “chirping,” as if to say they are not contacting the dead, only making the sounds themselves.

Several laws in Israelite law codes prevented priests from serving actively in funerals. Leviticus ordains that priests can only attend the burials of their close kin (Lev 21:1-5). They should not indulge in ornate rituals of grief-appearing with dishevelled hair, rent garments, shaven heads, or gashed flesh (Lev 10:6; 19:27-28). The high priest is enjoined to even higher standards of abstention (Lev 21). These all seem designed to prevent the priesthood from serving in too prominent a way in rites for the dead or any cult divination. As Mary Douglas writes in her wise monograph on Leviticus:

Mediumistic consultation with the dead was to be punished by stoning (Lev 19:26, 31; 20:6, 27). The dead could neither help nor be helped. Any form of spirit cult was rejected. Seers, sorcerers, witches, and diviners, any who cross the divide between living and dead, were denounced as evildoers. The Pentateuch did not just ignore its ancestors. It violently hated to be in communication with them. And this too is in line with the prophet Isaiah: ’O house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the Lord. For thou hast rejected thy people, the house of Jacob, because they are full of diviners from the east and of soothsayers like the Philistines. (Isa 2:5-6) The surrounding peoples in the Mediterranean and Aegean regions all had cults of the dead, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, Ugaritic kings and commoners, and Canaan. But in the Pentateuch there is no sign of it. If it had been deliberately removed before the books were edited, why?¹⁰

This seems a true mystery until one considers the mind-set of the returning exiles. They see failure to heed to prophets as the cause of the disastrous end of the First Temple and the subsequent Babylonian exile. The main point is that YHWH does not allow necromancy, though there have been many Israelites who naturally think that their God not only allows it but sanctions it as a way to find out His will. Instead of finding food for the dead, the dead themselves, and the people who practice necromancy will themselves go hungry, for they have deeply offended the LORD. Furthermore, having dead around haunting the living would be even more disastrous.

The only question is: At what point in Israelite history does God actually forbid necromancy, and how many people hear the prohibition? There are precursors to the exilic campaign in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. For Mary Douglas, the radical change comes with the book of Leviticus, which she describes as “a totally reformed religion.”¹¹ We have already seen that there were voices in the prophets and the earlier documents that strove for the surety which was achieved by the priestly redactors of Second Temple times (539 BCE-70 CE). Since both the books, Deuteronomy and Leviticus, have preexilic roots, it seems to me that the process begins there and equally with the literary prophets. Douglas’ formulation of “a totally reformed religion” is the culmination of a process that had been developing in a variety of places throughout the First Temple period.

Back to the Witch of Endor

UNLIKE THE DEAD in Homer’s Hades, who know no more of the earth than humans and who depend on new arrivals for the news, the dead Samuel is still a prophet and knows the outcome of the forthcoming battle. Likely, all the revivable dead have prophetic powers because Saul uses the technical term “inquire” (dōrēš) before he names the particular ghost to be raised, as well as the general term “ask” (šō’ēl) for the activity, as do the ordinances forbidding all necromantic activity.

Samuel tells Saul the most horrible news possible. Saul had suspected the worst anyway, ever since he had stopped receiving prophetic dreams. God had truly abandoned him for reasons that are not entirely specified in this text. Arguably, the reasons are a matter of speculation in Israelite society, as Saul himself was killed in battle, and David was successful where Saul was not.

The answers that the text provides seem a little contrived, at least as far as the themes of sin and punishment are concerned. Saul previously angered God by sacrificing before Samuel arrives at his war camp, thus usurping the privileges of the Shilonite priesthood, a social blunder that the Bible reflects with great candor. We can see in this incident a power struggle between the traditional priesthood and the newly-appointed king. And now that Samuel is dead, it is he who tells Saul that God has left him.

It is the historical record of Saul’s defeat that the narrator must now explain. Saul’s sin, necromancy, is retrojected backwards by the court historians to explain his unsuccessful military campaign as divine punishment. In the Israelite epic, Saul becomes a kind of Macbeth, whose willingness to consult with witches for his private ambition presages his end. David manifestly has God’s favor because he succeeds where Saul failed and because he finally beats the Philistines to a standstill. Had Saul succeeded in battle we would never have had a story of the Witch of Endor and David would have remained a minor character in the narrative.

The entire Bible might have been edited so as to carefully keep out any reference to life after death, in line with its editorial biases. However it is a national literature, garnered from a variety of places under the scrutiny of an editor who evidently thought some traditions were too holy to leave out, even when they were scandalous. So we find many suggestions of a belief in ancestor cults as well as a life after death underneath the editorial suspicion of it. There were Israelites-a great many or there would not be such a polemic-who did precisely what the Bible warns them not to do. The Bible gives us sure evidence of a giant struggle against a religion like that practiced at Ugarit, a kind of “popular” debased religiosity in the eyes of the Bible. The creature that appears for our medium is not merely a ghost; it is a divine being (elohim). “Elohim” is a word which is very commonly used specifically for the God of the Hebrews. Israelites too, we now know, were consulting a god by necromancy, not Saul only. Or, to put it another way, some Israelites must have interpreted the term “elohim” to mean their own ancestors in the land; they may have prayed to them and thought they were worshiping their god.¹²

The marzeaḥ in the Mouth of the Prophets

IT DOES NOT seem possible that the story of the Witch of Endor was a marzeaḥ feast, rather a simpler, earlier ceremony of divination by necromancy. But there are two places where the preexilic prophets of the Bible explicitly mention the marzeaḥ, as well as a few more references that refer to them, both before and after the exile.¹³ The first is found in Amos:

[Woe to those] who lie upon beds of ivory,

and stretch themselves upon their couches,

    and eat lambs from the flock,

and calves from the midst of the stall;

    who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp,

and, like David, improvised on musical instruments;

    who drink wine in bowls,

and anoint themselves with the finest oils,

    but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

Therefore they shall now be the first of those to go into exile,

    and the revelry of those who stretch themselves shall pass

      away. (Amos 6:4-7)

The last line, which includes the word “mirzaḥ,” has been difficult to translate. According to McLaughlin, this line is better understood as: “and the ’sprawler’s’ marzeaḥ shall cease,” meaning that those who have “sprawled” on their couches (possibly, though not conclusively, implying intoxication, sexual excess, as well as idolatry) for this banqueting will be requited with exile.¹⁴ The passage is an oracle of woe, promising destruction to the affluent of the northern state of Israel who lie on their ivory beds and neglect the needy and hence the commandments of the LORD. The description of their insensitivity to the needs of the poor, lying around drinking and eating all day, together with a word which could be vocalized marzeaḥ, suggests, rather than states, the kind of drinking feasts that we saw in Canaanite culture. Yet it is not idolatry itself which is their sin. They are secure and confident; however their luxuriousness is nothing but sin and will be punished. So the existence of an explicit, sinful marzeaḥ, as in Ugarit culture, is moot, unless there is other evidence to support it.¹⁵

There is some. There are hints of the practice in Hosea 9:1-6 and Hosea 7:3-7 of the marzeaḥ, though there are no direct references to it. The only other direct reference to the marzeaḥ occurs in Jeremiah 16:5-9:

For thus says the LORD: Do not enter the house of mourning (marzeaḥ), or go to lament, or bemoan them; for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the LORD, my steadfast love and mercy. Both great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them or cut himself or make himself bald for them. No one shall break bread for the mourner, to comfort him for the dead; nor shall any one give him the cup of consolation to drink for his father or his mother.

You shall not go into the house of feasting (marzeaḥ) to sit with them, to eat and drink. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will make to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

The passage explicitly mentions the marzeaḥ and explicilty clarifies the funeral context, even without the RSV translating the exact words in an identifiable way. John McLaughlin finds this reference insufficient for proving the existence of the Canaanite marzeaḥ here because the religious context is not clarified.¹⁶ It may be that the term is being used ironically, and it may be that we do not adequately understand the context of this passage. But, contrary to McLaughlin, I find the relationship of the feast to the punishment convincing. Mourners are specifically mentioned, and the oracle of woe is promising death and destruction without proper burial to those who participate in the feasting. To me, this suggests a much more explicit funeral and ritual context than McLaughlin allows. It ironically states that the punishment for practicing such funeral rites will be the end of wedding joys.

So I conclude from these passages that there were a variety of funeral practices which offended the prophets, rites which resembled the funeral feasts of the Canaanites and Mesopotamians. Jeremiah 16:7 criticizes what appears to be banqueting: “No one shall break bread for the mourner, to comfort him for the dead; nor shall any one give him the cup of consolation to drink for his father or his mother.” Ezekiel 24 suggests the same, as well as questions other kinds of mourning customs: “Sigh, but not aloud; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban, and put your shoes on your feet; do not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of mourners” (v 17). Or again, “Your turbans shall be on your heads and your shoes on your feet; you shall not mourn or weep, but you shall pine away in your iniquities and groan to one another” (v 23). We may suspect that the bread of mourners is related to the meal of unleavened bread the witch of Endor fed Saul and related to Hebrew marzeaḥ, likely it is related to the offerings of bread in Mesopotamia and Canaan. Evidently, unleavened bread and ritual meals had a wide ritual context associated with the appearance of a god.¹⁷ We have already seen that Israelites were indulging in necromancy. For me, this is adequate demonstration of a religious connection, though exactly what was forbidden in the Biblical texts remain elusive.

It seems clear that these customs are at least parallel to Canaanite culture and existed in significant strength in the Israelite state to warrant continuous and strong legislation as well as prophetic denunciation. The Bible maintains that the religion of the North was effectively Canaanite, though they pretend to worship the God of Israel, and thus they incur terrible punishment which eventually comes to Judah as well. These polemics serve as an explanation of the disastrous events that God allows to come upon Judah when they are conquered by the Babylonians (587 BCE).

Such is the meaning of the story of the golden calf in the Exodus narrative. Though it purports to be an event in the time of Moses, it actually indicts the northern cult with its calf symbol for the God of Israel, implicating the northern Levites for the sin.¹⁸ That does not mean that Canaanite influence was absent in Judah, as we have already seen. Nor does it imply that idolatry was practiced by a small group of people, or that it was constantly diminishing. The Bible itself tells us that various kings were more open to Canaanite and Mespotamian religion and that the international diplomacy necessary to insure the survival of the Judean state brought with it detested religious practices, often through the agency of royal foreign wives. Archeology tells us that the culture of the Canaanites was widespread.¹⁹

Furthermore there are several exilic references (Ezek 8:7-13, 39:17-20) that may fit the marzeaḥ context, suggesting that it did not entirely cease with the destruction of the First Temple (587 BCE). The priestly source was not entirely successful in restricting it. The cult of the dead apparently continues to be an institution throughout the Hellenistic and Rabbinic periods as there are many suspicious references to symposia (Greek dinner parties, but a credible translation for marzeaḥ) in the LXX (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) and associated literature. The word “marzeaḥ” appears in Rabbinic literature as well.

Israel’s Sketchy Portrait of the Afterlife: Sheol and Gehenna

THE ISRAELITES grieved for the dead with the rest of humanity. We now know that grieving included cutting their clothes, wearing sackcloth, and invoking elaborate lamentations when they could be afforded, as in the other cultures of the ancient Near East. Israelites buried their dead with grave goods, though donating of the tithe or using it for grave goods is explicitly forbidden in the Bible: “I have not eaten of the tithe while I was mourning, or removed any of it while I was unclean, or offered any of it to the dead; I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God, I have done according to all that thou hast commanded me” (Deut 26:14). The relationship between these rules and burial practices is not well understood. But it seems likely that giving the tithe to the dead is forbidden because it implies again that YHWH might be identified with the ancestral spirits. It also prevents the tithe from delivery to the priests of YHWH. On the other hand, providing food for the dead itself is not explicitly forbidden and was likely practiced.

Under such circumstances, we can understand the Bible’s reticence to go into detail about the abode of the dead. The silence is not total, though the portrait of the final disposition of the dead is similar to the portrait of death in the Canaanite cities around them, not at all the optimistic notion of life after death which we find in Rabbinic Jewish and Christian writings.

In addition, there are not any notions of hell and heaven that we can identify in the Hebrew Bible, no obvious judgment and punishment for sinners nor beatific reward for the virtuous. Indeed, the most famous term for the abode of the dead in the Bible, Gē’ Hinnōm (Josh 15:8; 18:16) or Ge Ben-hinnōm (Gehenna, as it was known in Greek), is not associated with hell or afterlife in the Hebrew Bible. It refers to a geographical locale on earth—literally, the Valley of Hinnom—a large ravine which can be seen today on the southwestern corner of the old city of Jerusalem. Ge Ben Hinnom remains this site’s common name in modern Israel to this very day. In ancient times, it was apparently both a city garbage dump and the scene of an idolatrous cult where children were passed through fire (2 Kgs 23:10; 2 Chr 28:3; 33:6; Jer 7:31; 32:35).²⁰ In the Hellenistic period, and particularly in the New Testament, the location came to be used metaphorically for hell, full of fiery torment, which is probably why it is so familiar to us. But it does not yet have those connotations during the First Temple period.

To characterize the Biblical view of life after death, we must first investigate the use of the Biblical term “Sheol” (Hebrew: še’ōl). This is the term that is most often used in the Bible for the ultimate disposition of the dead (approximately 66 times and never to my knowledge in any other Semitic language) with its meaning clarified throughout the early period of Biblical history, although the terms “Abaddon” (perhaps forgetfulness or perdition), “pit,” and “ditch,” are used as well. It is likely that all these terms gather their implications from qeḇer, the more common term for “grave,” with which they are often linked in apposition. In the story of Korah in Numbers 16:30-33, the earth opens to swallow some rebels whole, who then “go down alive into Sheol.”²¹

No one completely understands the root meaning of the term “Sheol” but the best guess is that it comes from the widespread root š-’-l, meaning “to ask or inquire”-thus linking it with the story of the witch of Endor and the personal name “Saul” (Hebrew: Sha’ul), with which it shares the identical consonantal root. This immediately suggests a reason for Saul’s name: He has attempted to “inquire” about his fate from the dead. There are some oblique parallel usages in other ancient Near Eastern roots. Arabic records these roots in many senses; the Akkadian term “sa’ilu” denotes “one who consults spirits”; and the Old South Arabic word “m-s-’-l” connotes an oracle.²²

The other terminology seems less problematic. The abode of the dead is, as the various names imply, a region somewhere near the primal waters, under the earth (Num 16:30; Job 26:7), just as it was in Mesopotamia, as Hades was for the Greeks. Indeed, the Septuagint (hereafter LXX) routinely translates the Hebrew “Sheol” with the Greek, “Hades.” And, like the Greek Hades, it was neither a place of reward nor of punishment inherently, merely the final destination where the dead go. It is dark and disordered (Job 10:20-21), a land of silence (Pss 94:17; 115:17), sometimes a grim city with gates (Job 38:17; Isa 38:10) and far from the presence of God, exactly as in Mesopotamian and Canaanite myth.

The abode of the dead is sometimes personified as an insatiable demon with wide open, gaping jaws (Prov 1:12; Isa 5:14; Hab 2:5). This is, no doubt, due to borrowing from the Canaanites, where the picture is far more common.²³ In Canaanite mythology, the pit (ḥ-r), Arabic Ḥaur, and Akkadian Ḥurru all appear. In Ugarit the god Hauran appears, which no doubt contributes to the occasional Biblical personification. But nowhere in Hebrew society is the abode of the dead regarded as a place of special punishment. The notion of a fiery hell or place of punishment is a much later concept, likely due to Persian influence.

The Psalms and Hebrew Poetry about the Afterlife

THE BEST PLACE to see the importance of Sheol in Hebrew thought is in the book of Psalms. Unfortunately, Psalms is a composite work that does not easily yield up the date of each individual poem. Psalm 115 gives a short and very articulate view of the cosmos of the Hebrews:

The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has

    given to human beings.

The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down

    into silence.

But we will bless the Lord from this time on and

    forevermore. Praise the Lord! (Ps 115:16-18)

Sheol is the abode of the dead. The dead are not remembered and they are cut off both from the living and the presence of God:

For Sheol cannot thank you,

    death cannot praise you;

those who go down to the Pit cannot hope

    for your faithfulness.

The living, the living, they thank you,

    as I do this day;

fathers make known to children

    your faithfulness. (Isa 38:18-19)

This theme is repeated in Psalms 88 and 115:17 “The dead do not give praise to the LORD, nor do any who go down into silence.” And this idea continues right into the Greek period. Sirach 17:27 also reflects this belief in the virtual nonexistence of the dead.

Who will sing praises to the Most High in Hades,

as those who are alive and give thanks?

From the dead, as from one who does not exist,

thanksgiving has ceased.

Were this a Canaanite document, one could easily assume that the kingdom of the grave is not part of one god’s purview, being ceded to another power. Here one sees a similar thought expressed. But it is not openly stated; no opposing god could have any role under the watchful eye of the editor. In this touching petition, the Hebrew Bible recoils from discussing the kingdom of the dead.

Hidden Scriptural Evidence of the Polemic?

AS THE TEXTS from Ugarit have become more and more understandable and available, more and more possibilities for the relationship between cultures have emerged. The highwater mark was probably Mitchell Dahood’s Psalms for the Anchor Bible series, which has been characterized with some justification as “parallelomania.”²⁴ In it an enormous number of parallels between Ugarit and Israelite psalms were adduced.

Virtually every occurence of the word “land” in the Hebrew Bible has been claimed as a reference to the Canaanite underworld. Some claims have proved intriguing and others seem unlikely.²⁵ In like fashion, several interesting cruxes of Biblical statements that have heretofore been considered innocent are of interest to our inquiry into the Bible’s notions of the afterlife.

Even the commandment to honor “your mother and father” that “your”²⁶ days may be long in the land may originally refer to ancestor worship, honoring parents after they have died, instead of through acts of filial piety while they are alive, as we interpret it today.²⁷ The insistence on “monotheism” in our parlance is therefore a philosophical shorthand way of expressing a much more complicated religious struggle. The prohibition against recognizing the ancestor gods as anyone else than YHWH, to practice or perform the cults of the Canaanites, yields the phenomenon we first noticed, the Bible’s reticence to spell out notions of life after death. But, in spite of the reticence, there is no doubt that such practices were known to Hebrew culture, a notion that the editors of the Bible relied on but otherwise thought too dangerous (idolatrous) to include in their writings.

There are other places in the Bible where Sheol is depicted as not beyond the power of God (Job 26:6; Ps 139:8; Amos 9:12). Many of these passages again underline the constant Biblical refrain that God is the only God. They contradict the notion that Sheol contains no presence of God. It is hard to know whether this represents an evolutionary step in the development of monotheism or merely an alternative poetic trope which the psalmists and prophets could use. In any case, we should note that both statements occur in Biblical tradition. In many passages of the Bible, YHWH is God of the living and the dead, of this world and the next. These sentiments are most probably part of the Biblical polemic against other gods, in this case, against the notion that there is another god who is “Lord of the Underworld,” as there was in every other culture surrounding the Hebrews.

More Optimistic Views of Death

IT IS SUGGESTED by L. R. Bailey that “within the Hebrew Bible, descriptions of biological death fall into two basic categories: An individual may experience either a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ death.”²⁸ Abraham’s death at a ripe old age is an example of a good death, as he is “gathered to his ancestors” (literally: fathers). This suggests that death is, in some way, a family reunion. Eliphaz tells Job to seek the fate of the righteous: “You shall come to your grave in ripe old age, as a shock of grain comes up to the threshing floor” (Job 5:20).²⁹ Job does live to a ripe old age, seeing his children to the fourth generation, which is a rare privilege.

Wherever Sheol is mentioned, evil (böse), untimely death is invariably at hand.³⁰ Jacob, distraught over the presumed death of Joseph, says: “I will go down to my son, mourning into Sheol” (Gen 37:35) and when the brothers tell him they must bring Benjamin back to Egypt he says: “You shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol” (Gen 42:38). The brothers say the same things about their father (Gen 44:31). Yet in the end, Jacob has a peaceful death: “And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet unto the bed and expired, and he was gathered into his ancestors” (Gen 49:33). Perhaps this is indicative of the special use of language of the narrator of the E source in the Joseph legend. But it is shared by the narrator of the David/Solomon succession narrative.

In the succession narrative, David instructs Solomon not to allow Shimei ben Gera or Joab to live but to bring his gray hairs down to Sheol in blood (1 Kgs 2:9) and not in peace (1 Kgs 2:6). Afterward, David rests with his people and is buried in the city of David. The two deaths contrast with David’s.

The phrase “being gathered to one’s ancestors” (literally: fathers; i.e., forefathers, kin) appears to indicate proper burial and, if so, the term “fathers” is used as a common plural, including both genders as both men and women were buried in the same way and in the same places.³¹ It is possible that the phrase originally indicated the practice of mixing the bones of the family in common for final disposition, which is an Iron Age innovation, evidenced throughout the Biblical period.³²

A. Heidel and Philip S. Johnston have pointed out that the phrases “being gathered to one’s ancestors” and “resting with one’s ancestors” are not exactly equivalent with being buried, as Jacob is “gathered” several weeks before his body is buried in the land of Israel (Gen 50:1-13).³³ But it is possible that they merely anticipated the successful conclusion in the foreshortened narrative. If so, the expression outgrows its original context as immediate burial. It may even suggest that there was a ritual process of merging one’s individuality with the collective ancestry of the people.³⁴

This has yielded an interesting hypothesis from Eric Meyers that these phrases and practices indicate more firm Israelite control of the land.³⁵ It certainly seems to shed light on the language the Bible uses in describing the burials of the patriarchs: “Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his ancestors” (Gen 25:8). We see the same phenomenon with regard to Jacob’s death in Genesis 49:33. The Bible’s description may well imply separate actions: “dying in a good old age,” and being “gathered to his ancestors.”

The phrase also refers to kings. To sleep “with one’s ancestors” when describing the king evidently was meant to exclude death in battle, where the body could be lost. Peaceful burial with one’s ancestors is itself seen as a reward for a good life. It is conceivable, therefore, that “being gathered to one’s ancestors” refers to the whole primary inhumanation process, where the body is exposed in a tomb until only the bones remain and that “burial” proper referred to the secondary burial, the final disposition of the bones. This solution to the problem seems consistent with the text and the archeological evidence.

This may suggest that kings who died in battle were often buried where they fell, if their bodies could be recovered at all, whereas kings who died in “a good old age” were gathered to their ancestors, attaining the blessing of their bodies being available for proper burial near the capital. The burial of Josiah, arguably the best king that Judah enjoyed and the equal of David and Solomon, represents an interesting and more complicated case: Although he died in battle against the Egyptians at Megiddo (2 Kgs 23:29), the prophet Huldah had already prophesied that he would “be gathered to his fathers and be buried in peace” (2 Kgs 22:20). But there was nothing “peaceful” about his death, since he died in battle. After his death, his body was recovered and brought back to Jerusalem for burial in his own tomb (2 Kgs 23:30). And perhaps this is the sole consolation which the phrase “in peace” implies in this case.³⁶

To make matters even more complicated, there is some evidence that “being gathered with one’s ancestors” was a more generalized Canaanite conception as well. In Ugarit, the “gathered ones” (qabuṣi, KTU 1.161) represent the group of dead, divinized royal figures who are called upon with sacrifices to ensure peace for the land.³⁷ It may well be that the Ugaritic terminology sheds light on the later usage in the Hebrew narrative, especially as the patriarchs seem to have been especially remembered cultically in the various places where the narrative places them. The resulting conclusion about the Bible’s turn of phrase is that we cannot entirely tell what the Bible means when it says that a person was “gathered to his ancestors.” It is obvious that we will need to look at Israelite burial practices, but the archeological record contains enough variation to prevent many sure conclusions.

Material Evidence for the Disposition of the Israelite Dead

THUS FAR, we have been investigating the texts of the Hebrew Bible until the Babylonian exile. But, as has been suggested all along, the texts are not the only way in which to study the religion of a people; there was a popular side in which Canaanite religious practices held more importance, in spite of the objection of Biblical writers and prophets. This side is not easy to find, as all our texts come down to us from the cult of YHWH, which viewed itself as victorious but only after terrible penalties of destruction and exile were paid.

Archeological evidence gives us a less tendentious view of ordinary Israelite life. Israelite burial locations and styles, as everywhere, depended on the deceased’s station in life. There is also a great deal of variation in types of burial, including jar burials, individual burials in coffins (wood or ceramic) or without, cist tombs, pit burials, bench or niche burials, and communal or family tombs. Grave goods were very common. In the Late Bronze Age for Israel, during the settlement period (1200-1000 BCE), there is a distinct difference between lowland and highland patterns of burial, suggesting that the Israelite and Judahite patterns are more often seen in the hills, the strongholds of early Israelite tribal life.³⁸ The lowland patterns are considerably more sophisticated, as one would expect, since that is where the civilized Canaanite cities were.

Later on, Biblical cemeteries were often placed outside but near cities. In the Iron Age, they might contain fifty to one hundred tombs, with perhaps twice that many occupants, as tombs could be shared, often many times over. The tombs themselves ranged from rock-hewn to masonry-constructed to pits, and most commonly were composed of shafts with niche-like chambers, known to the Greeks as arcosolia (Hebrew: Kukhim). These niches were used for primary inhumation but afforded easy enough entry for collection of the bones afterwards. Quite often in the First Temple period (932-587 BCE), however, the bones were pushed to a stone groove at the back of the niche, which then allowed the niche to be reused. Secondary burial (collection of the bones in ossuaries) can be demonstrated in the First Temple period but became much more general in the Second Temple period (539 BCE-70 CE), when we have textual evidence and fine examples of ossuaries, as well as an occasional sarcophagus.³⁹

Burials under floorboards were also common in the Iron Age. Perhaps those buried there were more in need of care or more closely associated with the household, such as women and children. Infants were often buried in storage jars there, close to an adult.⁴⁰ Twenty percent of the burials were not found either in cemeteries or settlements but in open fields. It is hard to interpret this datum. They may just have been the owners or tenants of the land. But they may also have been the community’s leaders exclusively, who were perhaps understood to be the “guardians” of the crops. The practice of placing graves in fields was still common enough in the Talmudic period that it was mentioned without special legal comment in tractate Pe’ah.⁴¹

The poor could be buried in common graves (2 Kgs 23:6). Wealthy Israelites buried their dead in family tombs, like the Canaanites (Gen 23; 2 Sam 19:38; 1 Kgs 13:22). There are no obvious mortuary temples above the graves as in the royal houses of Ugarit, which is an important but inconclusive datum. Whether for the rich or the poor, the graves were often reused, especially in Iron Age times, with the bones being pushed aside or alternatively collected in pits where they were gathered for final disposition. In the Hebrew cases, we think that the bones were pushed aside more frequently than in the Canaanite cases. It is safe to say that in most respects the customs of the ordinary Israelites in burial scarcely differed from the Canaanites at all, and we often have difficulty distinguishing them in archeological sites, especially before the end of the eighth century BCE, when the effects of the prophets and finally the Deuteronomic Reform (621 BCE) began to enforce a purified religion.⁴²

The Soul, or Nefesh, and the Spirit, or ruaḥ

IF THE TERM “soul” (nefesh, npš, nepeš) in Hebrew means what it appears to mean, then there has to be something that survives death in the ancient Biblical world. Unlike the Canaanite cognate, the “nefesh” in Hebrew largely refers to a quality of a living person. Evidently, “nefesh” means what we would call a “soul,” generally meaning a human being’s personality or “personhood.”

The word for what survives death in ancient Hebrew is “refa’” (repa’, plural, refa’im), which essentially means “ghost” or “spirit.” Much has been made of these two word uses by scholars who question the consensus that the Hebrew Scriptures do not give us a doctrine of the afterlife.⁴³John W. Cooper is especially anxious to impart the notion of “an ensouled afterlife,” an intermediate state, to Hebrew thought. He is joined by James Barr who suggests in his provocative book on life after death that in Hebrew thought, the nefesh or refa’ survives death in a significant and important way.⁴⁴

Yet, there are not many grounds for optimism about what lies beyond the grave nor for thinking that this was the basis of later notions of immortal souls in a a beatific afterlife. The Bible does not describe an afterlife with anywhere near the intensity of the Mesopotamians or Canaanites, and if it existed in popular religion (as seems obvious), there is little reason to suspect that it would be any more beatific than the Canaanite notions.

True, refa’ (“ghost”) is logically a survival of the identity of the person. But to call nefesh an “intermediate state” is to assume that the ancient Israelites expected an amelioration in the afterlife or an intermediate state before the prophetic “end of days.” There is no ancient evidence for an intermediate state; how the dead were to participate in “the day of the LORD,” which the prophets sometimes predicted, is not evident. First, there are centuries of Hebrew thought before a “day of the LORD” in the sense of an eschatological end appears. Likely, it was to be enjoyed only by the living at first.

The real issue is not whether anything survives death but whether that something is punished for its sins or lives on in a beatific and desirable way. We must be careful of this distinction throughout: When “refa’” or “nefesh,” means nothing more than “shade,” “ghost” or “spirit” in describing the afterlife, then it is no different from a host of other words for ghost throughout world religions. If there is no beatific afterlife and no judgment, then it does not matter much whether the “soul” is a “wraith,” a “spirit,” a “ghost,” or a “shade.” It is not an afterlife to be desired.⁴⁵

Although nefesh occurs quite frequently in the Hebrew text, there is no evidence that the ancient Hebrews conceived of an “immortal” soul in our philosophical sense of the term. The notion of an immortal soul comes largely from Greek philosophers, especially Plato. We will discuss that concept when it is historically appropriate within Hebrew thought-that is, during the Hellenistic period, when Greek thought influenced Jewish thought deeply. The earlier, more native Hebrew notion was more inchoate and is tied to Canaanite notions; nefesh is even directly cognate with the Ugaritic term. It is important because it marks the identity of the person but not because it survives death for a beatific reward.

Besides the concept of soul, the Hebrews talked about the life principle as breath (rüah, ruaḥ), which God shares with humans (Gen 1:1). The notions of ruaḥ and nefesh must be very similar, as is logical considering that “nefesh” is derived from one of the Hebrew words for “breathing.” Basically, nefesh means something like “breath” or “life principle,” which is evident in the first references to it in the Hebrew Bible, when the LORD God breathes into the man’s nostrils the breath of life (nishmat ḥayyim, from nešāmâ, nishamah) and he became a living soul (nefesh ḥayyah, Gen 2:7). The word “nishamah,” in this context, appears to signify “inhalation;” so a living soul is created by the inhalation of life. Probably, “nefesh” in this context means something like “living” or “breathing” creature, since it is also used frequently of animals, especially in the creation stories. It only means “soul” in a casual way, as when when we say that a ship went down with all souls lost, meaning all persons or lives lost. Indeed, the term “dead soul” actually occurs in Hebrew writing, where it means a corpse.⁴⁶ In short the problem is that we use the term differently from the Hebrews: We think we have a soul; the Hebrews thought they were a soul.

Consequently the Hebrews did not automatically or characteristically distinguish between body and soul as we may do. Instead, they thought of the two as a kind of unity, an animated body, where the nefesh served as the animator, or perhaps something more, like what we would call the “person” or even the “personality,” rather than the life-breath, for which “neshamah” or “ruaḥ” served more explicitly. But it would be fruitless to seek exact understandings of these terms. Although the human person was thought of by the Hebrews to be a totality, as our term “person” implies, the Hebrews sometimes talked about the nefesh as departing or returning (Gen 35:18; 1 Kgs 17:21-22). Perhaps, at these particular times, it is better to think of it as a “self,” noting that when the Hebrews use it they are discussing an individual in one way or another.

If we understand nefesh as meaning personhood or self, we must again be careful not to import modern notions of consciousness to a Hebrew notion. As personhood, the soul in Hebrew thought can undergo a kind of increase or decrease in strength, corresponding with a person’s strength, character, or personality. To “pour out the soul” is to be faint, unconscious perhaps, or merely helpless (1 Sam 1:15; Ps 42:5). A strong soul can surpass human limitations by achieving a certain fortuitous grace, or “charisma” (Gen 23:8; 2 Kgs 9:15; Ps 33:20). Death is evidently the ultimate “soul-diminisher.” When someone receives the “spirit of the LORD,” it denotes a prophetic gift, not an ordinary quality of the personality, but a divine quality which gives the person an extraordinary strength, charisma, or skill.

In many ways, the ancient Hebrews thought of “soul” like “spirit,” though “spirit” is something that a few chosen messengers explicitly share with the deity (i.e., “the spirit of God was upon me”), in creation, in life, and perhaps later after death, but only on specific occasions. The Bible does not tell us how the spirit manifested in humans in any explicit way. It was one of the many mysterious qualities in the life of the Hebrew. When discussing the meaning of a human life, the Bible always talks about life before the grave and usually concentrates on the issue of descendants, land, and the favor of the Lord. Life after death was not a significant part of the First Temple conversation about the meaning of life, but proper burial is.

In short, the ancient Hebrew notion of “soul” has no relationship to the Pythagorean and Platonic notion of an immortal soul, which is deathless by nature and capable of attaining bodiless felicity.⁴⁷ Later on, the Hebrews used the word “nefesh,” which they had been using for centuries, to do the work of the Greek notion of the word “soul” and when they wanted to express an intermediary step for the dead before they resurrected. Therefore, all these later examples will be ambiguous and difficult for us to parse because the same word can stand for either the Greek immortal soul, the intermediary state without a Greek sense of immortality, or both alternately, or even at once, in the same document. Yet, even in the Hellenistic period, many Jews spoke of the body/soul as the unity in a person.

Explicit Revivifications in the First Temple Period

THERE ARE several revivifications in the Hebrew Bible. In the Elijah-Elisha cycle, three different people are, at least, resuscitated from the dead: the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kgs 17:17-24), the son of the Shunamite woman (2 Kgs 4:18-37), and the man who was thrown into Elisha’s grave (2 Kgs 13:20-21). These are all treated as resuscitations. They rise from the dead to live out their normal lives. They are miracles, nevertheless, extraordinary events which are worthy of special note and not the common fate of humanity. God is even praised as the author of miraculous resuscitations in Deuteronomy 32:39 and 1 Samuel 2:6 (see 2 Kgs 5:7).⁴⁸ None of them are specifically mentioned as the reward for a good life, though the mothers are praised. None are signs of a coming resurrection for all. They simply show the power of God over death and the extent of God’s favor to the prophets.

The notion that God is the author of all life and death is found in several places in the Psalms and never more poigantly than in Psalm 104:29-30:

When you hide your face, they are dismayed;

    when you take away their breath⁴⁹ (ruaḥ), they die and

      return to their dust.

When you send forth your spirit,⁵⁰ they are created;

    and you renew the face of the ground.

According to Psalms, human being is purely a terrestrial creature who exists only at the pleasure of the deity.⁵¹ In essence, when the Lord gives His breath to a person, that person lives. If He removes it, that person dies.

The Rewards of the Covenant

WHAT IS MOST obvious in the history of preexilic Israelite thought is that reward and punishment are certainties in this life. It is possession of the land, many offspring, length of days, and a favored life that is promised by God for obedience to his covenant. As God says to Abraham in Genesis: “As for you yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age” (Gen 15:15).

Land, length of days, descendants, and a happy life is what the covenant promises to the Israelites. The prophets communicate the same concept, unlike Deuteronomy, in the technical language of treaties, but in the broader language of a covenantal agreement. Many prophets speak directly of covenant but do not envision it as a treaty. When the prophet Amos delivers the words of YHWH, “You only have I known of all the families on earth. Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2), he is not referring to a treaty. Rather, he is speaking the words of YHWH, who is publicly claiming a legal grievance. Amos reminds his hearers that Israel entered into a contract with YHWH, sealed by an oath, on which the people have defaulted. YHWH must therefore seek redress by covenantal means. He is describing what we might call a divine lawsuit, undertaken to preserve an arrangement foresworn by one partner.

Job

THE BOOK OF Job is a major Biblical voice on the issue of afterlife, a fact that has been noticed by many scholars. What is not so obvious is that it is, in a way, a development of the Israelite covenant metaphor. Many of the prophets take up this metaphor of the prophetic law-suit against Israel. Hosea himself uses the notion of a marriage gone sour, which is another obvious contractual obligation sworn by an oath. In so doing, he again and again uses images of marriage that were used by the Canaanites beforehand. Indeed, Ba’al’s name itself literally means “husband” as well as “master.” But God is not a contented partner; He periodically contemplates suing his adulterous spouse for divorce, invoking stringent penalties and threatening the ultimate penalty for his adulterous partner.

Only in the book of Job is the converse notion ever articulated, that human beings can justifiably sue God for nonperformance of His contractual duties. For that particular argument to be at all logically convincing, there cannot be a notion of life after death of any real consequence. If there were an afterlife of substantial consequence, then Job’s suffering would not reach the level of a legally actionable suit against God. If there were an afterlife, Job could say that he is falsely accused by his friends, and that his predicament is painful. But he could not challenge God’s justice because the score would not be complete in this life. That is why one finds the notion of Sheol present in the book of Job-not postmortem reward or punishment, merely the final disposition of souls. Indeed, it is the book of Job that shows us the very limits to which the older metaphor can go. It was the solace of l’anclen regime. The solace which the book of Job provides was not one which the majority of the people of Israel understood or accepted in the Second Temple period, where God was viewed as having made far better provision for rewards in the afterlife.

An enormous amount of research has been done on the book of Job. It is one of the most arresting, puzzling, and provocative pieces of ancient literature to have reached modern eyes.⁵² Yet it is still not well understood. Part of our puzzlement is due to its composition, which is complex, layered, and not entirely consistent. The Job of the prose narrative at the beginning and end of the work finds an entirely different consolation and resolution to his plight-patience and acceptance-than the Job whose irascible words are part of the body of the text. Indeed, it is difficult to see where the notion of the patience of Job comes from at all, since he is irascible throughout the book. Then too, arguments which are discussed and dismissed are consistently brought up again by Job’s friends and by Elihu, only to be shown irrelevant again at the end of the poetic section and yet receive a kind of limited validation in the prose conclusion. No doubt this was an issue over which the ancient culture itself was deeply conflicted.

To explain these phenomena, we must understand that the poetry within the book of Job, with its arguments about wisdom and justice, was characteristic of the entire ancient Near East. A large part of Job is merely an anthology of interesting poetry, which the editors preserved by including it in this pseudodrama. Consequently, we should not look for the kind of character or thought development that we associate with Western drama.

THE ABSENCE OF SATAN IN JOB

Many scholars have pointed to the character of Satan in the story of Job to explain evil, suffering, and death. Since Christianity, especially evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity, lives with a lively sense of Satan’s kingdom in opposition to God, it naturally seeks confirmation for these beliefs in the book of Job. But the character of Satan, as he appears in Christianity and apocalyptic literature, is totally lacking in the book of Job. The character, who appears in the prose introduction, is not Satan but “the satan,” a phrase which in Hebrew means only “the antagonist” or “the adversary,” not a proper name of a character, and must be taken as a technical courtroom term such as “the prosecuting attorney.” In any event, since “the antagonist” appears consistently with the definite article (the), no one with the proper name Satan appears here. Hebrew usage of the definite article is quite like English in this one respect. That means there is no consistent evil character in the drama of Job, only one of God’s courtiers. The hassatanseems to designate the job description for a nameless member of God’s divine council, the heavenly court whose responsibility it is to argue against proposals. The title designates something like our term the “Attorney General,” referring to the office rather than the proper name of any particular attorney general, like John Ashcroft or Janet Reno.

THE LAWSUIT METAPHOR IN JOB

Some ideas in Job are surely developed by an editorial hand. A short but extremely suggestive article by J. J. M. Roberts gives us a significant suggestion about what that development is.⁵³ Roberts shows that a legal, courtroom metaphor is particularly important and relevant for Job 9. Actually I think the legal metaphor is even more important than Roberts suggests. It is one of the few themes that continues throughout the entire book. The book of Job is the only place in the Hebrew Bible that attempts to indict God for having failed at keeping a covenant.

Job begins his narrative by speculating on how to bring God into court. God is the judge; how can anyone enter into legal contention with Him, much less impeach him? God is quintessentially the person who is “wise in heart,” with the heart serving as the organ of thought, not emotion, in Hebrew literature. Job complains that he cannot even see God, who is invisible. God continuously passes by him without being perceived. Job also knows that he cannot live long enough for a sufficient trial since God kills all, the just and the unjust. Here is confirmation that the notion of life after death in any meaningful sense must be absent from Job.

JOB’S SEARCH FOR AN ADEQUATE VENUE AND LEGAL REPRESENTATION

Starting in Job 9:32, the issue of a trial is directly enjoined. Job complains that a trial between him and God is not possible. Who could bring Him into litigation? He designates an “umpire,” an arbitrator, who will take his cause before God. But this proves to be impossible. There are no possible intermediaries who can intervene. These themes will come up again in future speeches and will end Job’s words.

In Job 13, Job returns to these themes and decides that since there cannot be an “intermediary,” he will plead his own case (Job 13:3, 6), though he feels certain that God will kill him.

He begins with a stinging indictment of the opinions of his so-called friends who challenge Job’s innocence. He is innocent, he says, and so he will endeavor to do the impossible; he will plead his own case, though it kill him. He taunts God to show His face. He challenges Him to restrain Himself, so that Job himself can present his case and not be destroyed. He prays explicitly that God remove His terror. Then, Job proclaims his testimony (Job 13:20-22). He implies that he is being punished before his trial (13:26-28).

Showing His face is precisely what God eventually does. That is why the appearance of God, far from being an overwhelmingly authoritarian show of force, is actually meant to be an act of supererogatory grace on God’s part. God actually does show Himself to Job; He owes Job an explanation, which is exactly what Job receives, even though neither he nor we can fully understand it.

Furthermore, that is exactly what Job expected. All he wanted was the legal attention-to know that his suffering was for a purpose. That is what God’s appearance on the scene tells him. This episode of man visited by God is another example of a person who appeals to the heavenly court and receives wisdom as a solace for his suffering.

Job contends that he is too obedient a creature for God to bring before the court. In doing so, he states that there is no life after death worth having (14:1-2):

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last.

In chapter 14, Job provides a parable comparing trees to people. Job states that humans, unlike trees, have no chance for resuscitation. God allows trees to sprout new life even when their trunks are shrunken and their roots are dried up. At the scent of water, they freshen up and bring forth new shoots. But humans are different; when they grow old, they die. God changes their faces, allows them to age, then sends them away forever to a place where they cannot know even the honors that come to their children (Job 14:1-22). According to Job, a painful fate awaits us all. Nothing in the Bible tells us more clearly of the Hebrew notion of life and death. The notion was fatalistic in the sense that it understood life as a single, non-repeatable event, ending always in death, its natural finality.

THE HEAVENLY DEFENSE ATTORNEY TAKEN FROM GOD’S DIVINE COUNCIL

The theme of a heavenly counselor is touched upon several more times in Job, although no specific person is designated; perhaps this means that one of God’s angels could be appointed as a “court-appointed” attorney to bring Job’s case to the heavenly court. God is depicted as having a large retinue as well as a divine council. The satan, the antagonist, is a divine counselor. Job is saying he is entitled to representation in the divine council as well to God. It is crucial to understanding the notion of afterlife in the Hebrew Bible, or more precisely, how the lack of one functions in the Hebrew sensibility. We have several examples in the Hebrew Bible where various divine courtiers serve in specific roles, seemingly in the course of ordinary deliberations. Legal representation is immaterial because in the end it is Job himself who presents his own case.

Job slowly comes to the conclusion that a counselor in the court of God will represent him: “Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high” (Job 16:19) may imply that God Himself is his counselor or that he will find a special relationship with some other angelic creature. But the latter seems the most likely: “That he would maintain the right of a mortal with God, as one does for a neighbor” (Job 16:21). The issue which Job brings before a heavenly court cannot be resolved by ordinary courtroom procedure. It is an anomalous legal situation.

This situation puts the usual translation of Job 19:25 into sharp relief, which because of its relationship with Christianity has been seen as an affirmation of life after death. Actually the text has been garbled, and we cannot tell exactly what Job intended to say. But he is talking in legal vocabulary (qum of 19:25 has a legal context in Deut 19:15ff; Pss 27:12; 35:11; Isa 54:17; Mic 6:1; Job 30:28; 31:14). Verses 28 and 29 of Job 19 clarify that the setting is indeed a courtroom. The legal arbitrator (go’al), who is not yet present will eventually prove Job right, even if it occurs years after his death. Other than this, it is very hard to make good sense out of the following famous lines:⁵⁴

“O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book!

O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;

and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God,

whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!

If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him’;

be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.” (Job 19:23-29)

Part of Job’s predicament is, as he has said before, that he cannot find God nor see Him. Thus he asks for help from an appointed mediator. But it would be best if Job could present his case himself. He first considers sending a written deposition to the court. Then he says he would appear in person if he could. He would do so, even if his skin is seared off by his disease, by the presence of God, or by rotting in the grave.

The third party in this scenario, Job’s attorney if you will, has now been variously referred to as an “umpire” (Job 9:33), “witness” (Job 16:19), “interpreter” (Job 16:19; 33:23), and “redeemer” (Job 19:25). The very variety of words used to describe the figure suggests that Job’s savior is not a specific person but rather a “court-appointed attorney.” However, from the prose narrative, we know that God does employ counselors. “The satan,” the adversary, is an example of a member of the heavenly court whose function is to plead the negative side of causes.

Job fears that a hearing can never happen, even though simple justice demands that he have his day in court. And, of course, we understand from the beginning of the story what Job does not know: God already knows that Job’s case is just and that the whole predicament is arranged as a test of Job’s righteousness. It is, in a way, an exhibition of the contention that people can be good by nature and not merely good for the hope of reward.

However, an analysis of “self-justification” is an impossibility in the world Job inhabits. In Job’s world Martin Luther’s (1483-1546 CE) enormously influential Reformation arguments against self-justification make no sense at all. For in the end, God takes all our lives, sinner and saint and saves no one in the afterlife. Yet, the book of Job says that even in this world, there are people who are good purely for the sake of being good; Job is good and continues to be good, even though God is punishing him.

JOB’S CASE AGAINST GOD

Job’s last speech is a veritable indictment against God. The language he uses clarifies that it is a formal, legal complaint or indictment, even if we do not know in detail precisely what legal or courtly rituals are being described. Job takes pen and ink and signs the indictment (Job 31:35), just as he had wanted to do (Job 19:23). Job 31 is very much the same kind of negative confession as an Egyptian’s Ba could be expected to recite in the Court of the Two Justices. Note, though, that Job is asking for much more: He is asking for God’s vindication in this life.

Job again seeks an indictment against God and we as readers serve as the grand jury. As readers, we are privileged because we know that Job is innocent. What we do not know is exactly what kind of rituals Job was performing to validate his ancient indictment: He would wear the charge on his shoulders or bind it into a crown so he could show that he has been punished with cause. Is this the description of a public indictment or a punishment? Is it a suit to get back the property and loved-ones which God has snatched? We do not know. His subsequent oaths may bear some unspecifiable relationship to exorcism texts; but then again, exorcisms may themselves be a kind of divine court trial. In any event, since Job cannot obtain an indictment in God’s court, he will sign his own oath against God’s justice and hope to bring God into court.

It is this background that makes sensible the seemingly very authoritarian answer which God gives. Modern Americans react very badly to the overpowering way that God appears and silences Job by citing Job’s insignificance. We want a just, equitable, democratic answer with everyone having the same rights, powers, and possibility of redress. We demand an answer to God’s callous treatment of Job’s innocence. We want to know his family has not come to grief on his account. We want to know why God allows evil in the world. But Job has lesser goals. He merely wants to call God into court. We do not realize what an enormous request Job has asked-God’s presence while Job is alive.

GOD WAIVES HIS “EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE” AND APPEARS

And that enormous request is exactly what Job gets. The answer is precisely what Job hoped for but had no right to expect. The answer to Job is not that God’s ways are inscrutable; Job already knows that. The answer is that God is so merciful that He even allows Himself to be taken into court and sued; indeed He willingly comes into His own court to give testimony. God is far more merciful than any ordinary ancient Near Eastern monarch. Job is allowed to see God, if not directly then out of a whirlwind, and he does not even have to ascend to heaven to do so. Unlike the other ancient Near Eastern heavenly voyagers, God comes to Job. And so, even though Job has been frightened and awed by God’s power, he leaves court vindicated. And the text maintains that at least one innocent has been vindicated after his suffering, in this life. We expect so much more we miss the affirmation this text makes.

One may speculate as to what produced this timeless masterpiece. Was it the destruction of the Temple, or merely the considered suffering of a single individual? The text means the problem to be framed in the widest possible sense. Apparently, Job does not live in the land of Israel, rather the land of Uz. Although he fears God, he is obviously not an Israelite. So the text reaches a kind of universalism that is characteristic of some of the great prophets. Job is every righteous man asking questions of God. The text therefore asks its questions in the widest possible terms.

Nevertheless, the moral of the story is not only true of all righteous humanity, but is also just as true for the Israelites, those who have entered into a special covenant relationship with God. Ultimately Job was written for the people of Israel. In the end, the historian can go no further but the book stands as a monument to the furthest exploration that the Hebrew writer could go in understanding the covenant between God and his people. It tests the very extremity of the covenant metaphor, the very edge of what mythological thinking could express. Once one explores the notion that God himself could willfully break the covenant through his ations, the metaphor risks its own deconstruction.

Hints of a Beatific Afterlife and the Consolation of Love

ENOCH AND ELIJAH

There are two great exceptions to the Biblical notion that all must eventually die. They are Enoch and Elijah. There is no doubt that they are meant to be exceptions; they prove the rule by violating it in such circumstances as to clarify that they are the only two exceptions. In a sense they prove the rule by violating it just as Utnapishtim and his wife proved humanity mortal by reaching immortality in Babylonian culture.

The name “Enoch” is mentioned in Genesis 4:17-18 as the son of Cain (J source) but the figure who is important to us is described in Genesis 5 (P source):⁵⁵

When Jared had lived a hundred and sixty-two years he became the father of Enoch. Jared lived after the birth of Enoch eight hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years; and he died. When Enoch had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. (Gen 5:18-24)

The name “Enoch” appears to come from the root which means “to train,” “to educate,” or “to become wise” in Hebrew. Thus a relationship with the Enmeduranki, Etana, and Adapa, seems quite reasonable from the start because they are also famous figures of wisdom who experience heavenly encounters. Furthermore, Enoch occupies the same place in the genealogy as does Enmeduranki in the Babylonian Kings list. Enmeduranki is king of Sippar, a city devoted to the sun god. Enmeduranki is the eponymous ancestor of the baru divinatory priests of Babylon, one of the great sources of Mesopotamian wisdom. He gives wisdom through his form of divination. The Biblical Enoch has a solar lifespan, living 365 years, a seemingly foreshortened life in Biblical days.

The text says twice that Enoch walked with God, a phrase that the Bible also only uses of Noah (Gen 6:9), though Adam is described as having walked with God in Eden at the cool of the day (Gen 3:8). Judaism in the time shortly before the time of Jesus develops many interesting traditions that link Enoch to Noah on this basis. They suggest that God walks with Enoch and Noah in paradise, perhaps based on the scene between God and Adam in the garden of Eden.

Afterward the Bible mysteriously omits any reference to Enoch’s death. Instead, God “takes” him. Though we do not know the destination of this “taking,” several parallels suggest that Enoch is taken to heaven. First, God “takes” Adam and puts him in paradise (Gen 2:15). Then in the parallel assumption story concerning Elijah, Elijah says he will be “taken” and then, when the time comes, he “ascends” by fiery chariot into heaven (2 Kgs 2:11, see excerpt below). Although “take” is a very common word in Hebrew, a few of the other occurrences of the word also suggest something like assumption into heaven. The best interpretation of this puzzling verse is that God assumes Enoch into heaven directly and bodily before death, as Elijah is later assumed into heaven.

Many things about this short report are important, but for now it is important that Enoch does not go to the place where the dead usually go, because his death is not mentioned. Perhaps, like Utnapishtim in Mesopotamia, Enoch will live forever. A similar fate awaits Noah according to several later Jewish traditions. Noah becomes a figure of special veneration at Qumran, for instance (4Q Mess Ar). In any event, an enormous literature builds up around Enoch’s adventures in the cosmos. There will be a great deal more to say about the traditions that develop around Enoch in apocalypticism in future chapters.⁵⁶

The same direct assumption into immortality is proffered to Elijah in the Hebrew Bible, but here the Bible goes out of its way to describe the assumption with more dramatic effects than the account of Enoch:

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you.” And Elisha said, “I pray you, let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” And he said, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if you do not see me, it shall not be so.” And as they still went on and talked, behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and he cried, “My father, my father! the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and rent them in two pieces. And he took up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, “Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other; and Elisha went over. (2 Kgs 2:9-14)

Elijah is assumed into heaven in God’s own chariot, a divine conveyance we have already seen in Canaan, but Elijah does not die. The fact that he joins the heavenly host in this way was not without implication in Canaanite religious life. But it is left totally unexpressed in the text we have. Instead, Elijah’s assumption is understood as the justification for the miraculous powers given to his successor, Elisha, for whom this story functions as a great credential. Elijah’s popularity in later Jewish folklore is based on this 2 Kings passage. He can visit Jews at Passover every year because he has not died and can travel back and forth between humanity and God’s throne. These two stories represent special beatific afterlives which are not available to the rest of humanity in First Temple times.

THE SONG OF SONGS 8:6

In a different way a famous passage in the Song of Songs tells us an enormous amount about Hebrew views of the afterlife with an almost casual remark:

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

    as a seal upon your arm;

for love is strong as death,

    passion fierce as the grave.

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

    a raging flame. (Songs 8:6)

Marvin Pope, in his translation of The Song of Songs, has especially shown the Canaanite background to the love poetry in The Song of Songs.⁵⁷ The nut-garden and the two lovers, consolidating death with love, may be part of the ritual surrounding the memorialization of the rpa’um, in Hebrew the “Refa’im.” Is this an explicit reference to presumed sexual license in the marzeaḥ ritual? Pope may well be right in his version; there are certainly many difficulties in understanding the passage. In addition, the poem contains marks of the presence of Canaanite gods (i.e., the word “reshef,” also the name of a Canaanite god, occurs twice in v 6b). But the basic meaning is also clear to all without positing a marzeaḥ. The Canaanite context is scarcely predominant even to those who have read the ancient Hebrew documents.

More important than the message the poem proclaims about love is the message it gives about mortality. We normally assume that love is stronger than death. But this passage says nothing of the sort. Certainly not a paean to undying love, the passage actually assumes a mortal world in which death holds sway. In that context, to say that it is love-embodied, passion included-which can, in a desperate contest, be the equal of death is not an optimistic statement for us in the Christian west. This is a striking contrast to European and American poetic tropes where love conquers all, even death. This sentiment is not so in Hebrew thought. Death is the strongest force on earth other than God Himself. Not even love can conquer death, though love can briefly make a beautiful and awesome conflagration. The references to seals in Song of Songs are obscure but the passage says that love and lovemaking can equal death in power by making life worthwhile. It is the statement, rather, of a person who has accepted a fatalistic world and found in it one thing which gives partial consolation to short, and often painful human lives.

The Garden of Eden as a Myth of Lost Immortality: Our Myth or Theirs?

THE ISRAELITES tried to banish the nature myths of Canaan and the native ancestor worship after a great deal of trouble. But the Israelites also valorized an historical myth of YHWH’S covenant that bears investigating in the context of life after death. The creation stories in Genesis, indeed the first eleven chapters of Genesis totally, are nothing other than myths retold as if they were history. Ironically, however, the effect of the myth has been much stronger on our society than on that of the Israelites. The Israelites do not mention the garden of Eden often in subsequent literature. But we have so overlaid the story of the garden of Eden with commentary, so remythologized the story, that the Hebrews themselves would likely find it unrecognizable, if not embarrassing.

No story in history has had a more important effect on Western thought than the story of the garden of Eden. In its Christian version especially, it has been the source of the West’s assumptions about life, death, immortality, and sexuality. But, a great deal of what we associate with the story is actually absent from the text. These associations have been supplied by various interpretive contexts over the centuries. To take a trivial example, the “apple” of Western iconography is entirely absent from the Hebrew text. So is Satan absent, just as he is absent in Job. This time not even the word “Satan” appears in the text. This has not stopped Western culture from seeing the snake as Satan because that interpretation is much easier to accept and less ambiguous. But, difficult as it may be to explain, the snake of Genesis 2 and 3 is merely a snake, albeit a wonderful snake with the power of speech. It may be similar to the mysterious snake that steals Gilgamesh’s wonderful plant of rejuvenation, gaining the power to shed its skin. But it is not a god. Indeed, unlike the snake in The Gilgamesh Epic, it is punished.

Nor, as we shall see, is there any concept that can be remotely understood as “original sin.” These pregnant words, so important to Christian theology, do not appear in the text; rather, they have been supplied long after, by pious believers seeking to make sense of this simple and rather naive story. Meanwhile, the original subtle meanings of the text have been washed away by our larger conceptualizations.⁵⁸

THE FIRST IS THE LAST

To arrive at an approximation of what the story meant to those who told it orally and shaped its composition means that we must try to dismiss from our minds the accretions with which we are so familiar and whose resonances are so unwanted in our minds.

We must, first of all, separate the creation story of Genesis 1 from the creation story that begins at Genesis 2:3. The first story, the beginning of the Bible, is chosen to be a “Prologue in Heaven” to the story of Israel, a grand opening for the account of the history of Israel’s beginnings in Mesopotamia and YHWH’S gracious gift of the land of Canaan. The Hebrew editor’s concern to eliminate polytheism is repeatedly seen in comparison with Babylonian creation myths. There is no mythological combat or conflict in Genesis’s creation story. The gods of sky, earth, and heavenly bodies are merely reduced to objects of YHWH’S creation.

Nevertheless, the first creation account in Genesis is trying to express the place of humanity within the world. That is why I call it “a mythological account” in Rebecca’s Children.⁵⁹ Mythology is a narrative which attempts to get at the underlying assumptions of a society. It is not synonymous with fiction; indeed, it is the opposite. Only narratives believed to be true can function as myth. That means that the Eden story, the first 11 chapters of Genesis, and the entire account of the patriarchal period to the arrival of the children of Israel in Canaan, functioned as myth for the children of Israel settled in the land, no matter how much of it turns out to have a kernel of historicity.

So let us attempt to read the mythical code in the first chapter of Genesis. First of all, compare this story to the now familiar creation stories in Egypt and Mesopotamia and note how the sun has been demoted. This is striking because the sun is almost always a deity in other cultures (often the most important one). The sun god or goddess is certainly the most important deity in understanding the concepts of the underworld because the sun seemingly goes underground every night, only to rise the next morning from the other side of the earth. All the ancient cultures viewed this as a journey through the underworld and made the sun an important carrier of messages to and from the next world.

The Biblical account of creation, on the other hand, portrays the sun as just another object in the heavens, not even a demigod. The sun is not the lord of the underworld; it is merely a creation of God. The same is true with the sea, the earth, and the whole content of the heavens. This not only contradicts the mythologies of the surrounding cultures; it also contradicts much of earlier Israelite thought in which the stars especially are seen as angels, messengers of God. The natural order is no longer filled with squabbling divinities; it is all one large kingdom with everything designed in perfect rule and subordinate to the God of all.⁶⁰

Everything in Genesis is just as it appears in the normal, natural order. Indeed, that is the best clue for understanding the first creation story. What is created is the earth and heavens from our position as inhabitants of it. The whole story is told from the perspective of earth, where humanity lives. And the second obvious part of the story is its hierarchy. Everything is arranged according to an order imposed by the days of the week. The characters are ranked: first is God, the creator; that is evident. He creates by means of His word. Second in importance is the sabbath, the period of rest built right into the universe. And third is the human being, created at the last moment before the sabbath, the most important creature who was created male and female and in the image and likeness of God, whatever that may mean-looks, activities, and powers are all possible interpretations of the story. Every stage meets with God’s approval. The whole is described as “very good.”

Because human life is precariously dependent on sun and rain, crops and earth, and natural increase from herds, it is not trivial to say that these forces have godlike powers over us. Nevertheless, the Bible goes out of its way to debunk the idea that the natural world is filled with deities. Genesis demythologizes the natural world.

Absent in the Biblical account is special revelation-indeed, absent is the special revelation of the Exodus and the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai-human beings would naturally be led to the worship of the heavens. The Bible seeks to oppose and correct this perfectly natural human tendency from its first verse, by making the heavenly bodies creations of the one all-powerful God, thereby denying that the heavens or any other natural beings are worthy of human reverence. One God is better than many, according to this perspective, because it allows us to view the world as a unity and creation as a single, dynamic force.

In other words, the Bible is aware that nature is morally neutral. Not only is nature silent about right and justice, Genesis 1 goes on to say that no moral rules can be deduced from the fullest understanding of nature. Knowing even that humankind is the highest creature because we are free does not lead to any guidance about how this freedom is to be used. That is why there is an Eden story. The Eden story shows that moral discernment is a divine gift that comes from disobedience and has a cost: the price is our innocence.

ADAM AND EVE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN: AN EARLIER ACCOUNT OF CREATION

There are clearly two creation stories present in the Genesis narrative; one concludes at Genesis 2:4a, and the second begins immediately afterwards. The first story creates the man and woman together (Genesis 1:26); in the second, they are created separately, at different times. The first begins with the most famous beginning of all time, “In the beginning….” The second has its own, less well known formula of initiation: “These are the generations….” It is not nearly as dramatic but it is a convention for beginnings within the Bible; the first words of Genesis are not. The first account pictures the cosmos before creation as a watery chaos. The second pictures the world’s beginning as a dry desert, waiting for water to allow it to bear fruit. The first account dates from rather late in Biblical history, a Mesopotamian context, where the separation of saltwater from fresh water with a system of canals brought the beginning of city life in the Tigris-Euphrates Delta; it also betrays certain knowledge of Babylonian mythology. Most likely it was written after the Babylonian exile (587-539 BCE).⁶¹

The second creation account betrays little of this sophisticated scientific, Mesopotamian view of life. Locked within it are the countless experiences of sojourners in the rocky rain shadow of the Judean hills, the leeside of the mountains where fog and dew as much as rain brings what little moisture nourishes the winter grass. Also locked within it is the experience of coming out of the Judean desert to see the verdant cities of the plain, stuck between the sea and the mountains, which coax the rain out of clouds onto the Shephelah and northern valleys every winter.

In the same way, the two stories end quite differently. Genesis 1:1-2:3 ends with the sabbath and a moment of peace and blessing. But the garden of Eden story ends with curses and with a sense both of gained potential and lost potential. The first story moves by means of its architectonic, repeated, high literary form, imposed by repeated phrases: “There was evening and morning, one day”; or “and God saw that it was good.” We are led through a countdown of days, which imposes a tacit sense of evolution from good to better. The second story moves occasionally through the repetition of words but more often through dramatic presentation. In the first story, humanity is the most important piece of creation before the sabbath. In the second story, the man and his wife are part of the drama. The differences between the man and woman as thinking and interacting characters impels the whole narrative forward.

The garden of Eden story, which raises the issue of immortality even as it denies it, is by far the more complex story dramatically and is usually thought to be much older, being redacted in the monarchic period from traditions that go back several centuries to the northern and southern tribes. The first chapter of Genesis may be one of the last pieces to be added to the pentateuchal narrative, added by the final, priestly redactors, after having seen the great cities of Babylon, as an adequate prologue in heaven to the story they wanted to tell. The second story is merely a charming and amusing story, full of humor and irony, and also likely one of the earliest stories in the Bible.

The Eden story begins with a true moment of paradise. When the water wells up from the ground, creating what amounts to a desert oasis, the grasses begin to sprout and then the LORD God plants a garden for the man He has just made. Every tree grows pleasing to the sight and good for food with the tree of life in the middle of the garden. Here is the first reference to immortality, and this reference lets us know immediately that we are being transported into a fabulous imagined landscape, like the Mesopotamian myth of Enki and Ninhursag, which is the Sumerian myth of the loss of paradise. In Sumer, Eden was called Dilmun where Enki, the water god was allowed to eat eight plants. So there is a cultural context for the fabulous plants and the first of the two critical trees in Genesis, the tree of life.⁶² The second tree, seemingly its polar opposite in terms of the story, is “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” These two trees represent the two poles of movement in the story. The narrative moves us from paradisiacal amorality and immortality to awareness of good and evil within the limited, mortal world that we all know; the fantasy gives way to our familiar reality.

Indeed the Genesis description of paradise is a Middle Eastern pastoral landscape, familiar to us from the Arabian Nights as well as its ancient antecedents. The garden is filled with the great rivers of the world, including the Giḥon, the spring that waters Jerusalem with the great river valleys of the fertile crescent.⁶³ The lyrical, pastoral tone continues uninterrupted with the first speech of God: “Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat of it, for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die” (Gen 2:17). Though the fabulous description continues, the seeds of the drama are planted just as surely as the tree is.

The LORD God creates the man, as a potter might build a clay figure, but He breathes His spirit (ruaḥ) into him. The man needs companionship so God creates animals which the man names, showing his superiority over those who cannot name themselves. After creating the animals (again in contradistinction to the first story) the woman is created, supposedly to be one who is to be a helper-in Hebrew expressed much more mordantly as “a helper like/opposite him.” Some of the problems inherent in the drama are already expressed in the term used of the woman’s role. The institution of marriage is justified by the first speech of the man. It is very likely an oath of kin recognition:

This one at last

is bone of my bones

And flesh of my flesh.

This one shall be called Woman

for from man she was taken. (Gen 2:23)

This language expresses a publicly ratified relationship, as it also seems to in 2 Samuel: “And say to Amasa, ‘Are you not my bone and my flesh? God do so to me, and more also, if you are not commander of my army henceforth in place of Joab’” (2 Sam 19:13).

The mood of innocence is maintained even though the couple are married and may be functioning sexually. The man “tends the garden” rather than doing work for work proper would be a punishment for disobedience. Whoever is narrating is taking care to use words economically but exactly: “The two of them were naked but they were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). In the Biblical description, the man and his wife are adult children-a fact brought out more strongly when we notice the Bible’s frequent pairing of the images of children, nakedness, and not knowing good from evil (Isa 7:16, etc.). This is a dangerous, unstable state of innocence; it cannot last. Adam and Eve are as yet merely pets in a sheltered garden.

THE PLOT THICKENS, AND DRAMA IS THE THICKENING AGENT

The inherent imbalance of the paradise is brought out by wordplay, placed exactly when the mood changes abruptly. Just as they are naked (arumim, Gen 2:25) so is the snake the most shrewd (arum, Gen 3:1) of all the animals. The words for “naked” and “shrewd” are homonymns but their meanings could not be more opposite. The snake is the antagonist in the drama. He asks the woman: “Did God really say: ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” (Gen 3:1). She answers bravely and articulately, beginning a dialogue of misprision: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die’” (Gen 3:2).

The story proceeds quickly to the snake’s next statement, which is an ironic truth: He tells them that they will not die if they eat; rather their eyes will be opened and they will become like gods, knowing good and evil (Gen 3:4). Ironically, this was the exact truth. They do not die when they eat of the tree, and they do become like gods, knowing good and evil. As with the ancient Near East, wisdom and death are related. In Mesopotamia, wisdom is often the result of knowing our mortality. Death itself comes later.

The final damage comes when the woman sees how appealing the fruit is: “good for food,” … “a delight to the eyes,” … “and desirable to make one wise” (Gen 3:6). These are meant to underline the woman’s sensuousness. Certainly she is the better equipped intellectually of the two characters. But she is also more sensuous, and that sensuality is her undoing. She eats and gives to her husband who eats as well.⁶⁴ She is a much better realized character than is Adam.

It may be that the story is blaming the woman for the sin of disobedience, but there is hardly anything in the story to clarify that interpretation. She is sensually attracted to the beautiful fruit, as well as clever enough to be outwitted by the cleverer snake. But is she any more to blame than her husband? After all, Adam is standing next to her throughout her conversation with the snake, and he can think of nothing to say. He just obeys his wife. If Eve is beguiled by the snake, Adam is beguiled by Eve’s obvious intelligence and sensuousness. He is just as much to blame as she is. His inarticulateness and guilelessness has gotten him into this fix.

Not even the fruit makes Adam smart. What they get from the tree is not “intelligence”; their IQs are unaffected by the change. What they get is “knowledge of good and evil,” which is meant to signify moral discernment, for they are now ashamed of their nakedness and so find leaves in which to dress. This is a development of the relationship between mortality and wisdom in the ancient Near East.

“Knowledge of good and evil” also has developmental implications in Hebrew, since often when it occurs in the text, it subsequently indicates the achievement of moral majority, as when a child becomes old enough to be responsible for its actions (e.g. Isa 7:15-16). These are culturally determined moral judgments which make more sense to the Hebrews than they would to, say, the Australian bushmen. But the story builds moral judgments into the fabric of God’s promise. The moral discernment, newly won by Adam and Eve, also accounts for their guilt feelings, expressed by their hiding from the presence of the LORD God (Gen 3:10).

WHOSE IRONY IS IT?

More than a decade ago, the prolific literary critic, Harold Bloom, suggested that the author of this creation story was a woman. That was a sensational suggestion, very inspirational to the new women’s movement and just what a professor of religion at a women’s college (but part of a major university) would have liked to have happened. But the suggestion, upon reflection, seems farfetched. It is always possible, but there is nothing inherent in the story to make a woman author or narrator necessary.

The ironies here are not that of a woman writer’s having fun at a man’s expense, as Harold Bloom has too blithely assumed but, unfortunately, another kind of not so innocent fun designed by men, men in a very maledominated ancient, social world. Even when men are in charge, they reflect ironically on the power that women hold over them because of sexual attraction.

Though fabulous in wealth and fertility, Eden is meant to be a topsyturvy world, emphasized for comic effect. When I say that it is a comic vision, I do not mean that it has no serious purpose. I mean that like good comedy, this story tells us something serious and deep about our nature as human beings. It picks humor to show us that truth.

However I do mean to say that to valorize Adam’s position is to miss the point. Adam is duped, which makes him just as guilty of disobedience as Eve. I see no reason to think that the Hebrews blamed the woman any more than the man nor to think that human life was therefore considered depraved. Life, as we know it, is a punishment in this story. But there is no suggestion that there is a modicum of unatoned guilt in it. Indeed, if anything, the punishment for stealing fruit from the fruit bowl is already extreme, way beyond “measure for measure.” The story merely explains how we got into this fix called mortal life and why we do not live in an Eden, though we can all imagine a paradise. In short, unlike Candide, the Bible thinks we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. Indeed, even God must fight continuously to preserve his initial act of creation. The Eden story was not written for us; it was written for the people who also understood the story of Adapa, where, for committing a minor culinary offense, humanity learned wisdom by losing immortality. The result of Adam and Eve’s casual, childlike, disobedient credulity is terrible until we realize that this punishment merely defines life as we know it. Though sin is disobedience, the result is not the loss of immortality, which we can only imagine as an infantile fantasy, but the basic human predicament, as we all know it.

Now we see the effect of the comedy. The story comically implies that if the issue were native intelligence we would be living in a very different world, one in which women ruled. The reason that women are subject to men is that otherwise women would continuously lead unsuspecting men astray by their intelligence and seductiveness. Under the humor is a ferocious and discriminatory irony but it is as much a direct criticism of men as of women. The final effect of the story is to proof-text a world in which men are dominant; we could call this misogynistic after all (at least it must seem so to us, given our assumptions about the equality of women in work environments). But the story pokes fun at everyone and was written in a society that assumed that women were subject to the command of their fathers and husbands, not the society we live in.

In form, the story of the garden of Eden is quite like the story of Adapa, who followed Ea’s bad advice about eating the bread of immortality and so was led astray innocently. In this case, we can have no other god, so we just have a snake. But he is just a snake; certainly he is not Satan. Our purpose in looking at the story is to see what (if anything) it implies about life in this world and the next. Some things are more obvious when we reflect on what we already know about Hebrew notions of the afterlife: It is this life that is important; even primal, naive immortality is but a childhood delusion.

Some overriding questions need to be addressed: First we need to ask about immortality and mortality. Were the man and his wife (now perhaps better Adam and Eve in their post-lapsarian identities, 3:20) immortal in the garden because that was their natural state or did they gain immortality temporarily in the garden because they were continuously eating from the tree of life? Is the fruit of the tree of life like a daily vitamin, conferring immortality but only for a period? This may actually have been the intention of the narrator. The verbs in the Lord God’s banishment command support either interpretation: “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil now he might stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat [continually?] and so live forever….” The past tense of many of the verbs suggests that the act is to be a single one. Yet, the Hebrew present participle for “live” will support either the sense of present stative or present and future continuous action.

Eating from the tree of life was not forbidden until now. If the Lord God means that one bite of this fruit will make one immortal, then the real stupidity in the story is that Adam and Eve did not eat from it before God prevented them at the end of the story! Surely the story means for us to believe that we missed immortality by our own mistake; but this irony is a bit greater than the previous one, that our punishment is so much greater than our crime. I do not think that was the intent of the narrator. Everyone knows what the human condition really is; any other outcome would be seen merely as ridiculous and a waste of time. The narrator’s job is only to explain how we got this way.

THE QUESTION OF EVIL IS BEST UNDERSTOOD IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

More intriguing still is the question of why the snake enticed the woman, if he is just a snake and not a cipher for Satan. The one thing that the identification with Satan does is to clarify all the motivations in the story: Satan’s presence would say right from the beginning that we live in an eternal struggle between good and evil, present even in these childlike people. And it would say that Satan is stronger than God because he forces God to make people mortal, evidently opening up the rich possibility for a hell. That is the dominant interpretation of western Christianity. But it is enormously tendentious. When read properly, there is not a trace of this interpretation actually in the story with that doctrine in the background. Then why did the snake commit the crime?

A later text in the Bible sequentially, but perhaps one written around the same time, seems to suggest something rather more profound about the ways God picks His agents:

Then Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. And the LORD said, “Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Giliad? Then one said one thing, and another said another, until a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD, saying: “I will entice him.” “How?” the LORD asked him. He replied, “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. Then the LORD said, “You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it. So you see, the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the LORD has decreed disaster for you.” (1 Kgs 22:19-23)

The scene is the court of the evil King Ahab where we hear the true prophecy of Micaiah ben-Imlah, a historical prophet who unfortunately has left us no writings. But his is a powerful, very effective, and very complicated prophecy. He reveals that God has deliberately misled all the other prophets in Ahab’s court in order to accomplish the well-deserved death of Ahab. God has done so on the advice of one of His courtiers, a nameless spirit, who is then appointed “the lying spirit” for the specific purpose of misleading the prophets, just as “the satan” in Job apparently has the specific role of adversary in God’s court. In that case, the existence of the satan implies nothing more than God used an angelic assistant to accomplish his plan. In the case of the garden of Eden, the same is implied about the snake.

All the prophets have told Ahab that he will win if he goes out to battle for Ramoth-Gilead. The Bible later tells us that he died there. The Bible offers an example of revelation as a flashback. God has previously set up the situation as a trap. The verb for what God’s prophets do to Ahab is “entice” (1 Kgs 21, 22), not exactly the same “entice” which is used of the snake but a quite similar notion. Interestingly, the “enticement” of Eve has sexual connotations while the “enticement” of Ahab has the implication of being played for a fool. This is a particularly sharp irony against Ahab, who is portrayed as more stupid than Adam here, though he does not know it. In contrast the Judean king Jehoshaphat is a model of wise circumspection. Furthermore, the God of our Bible is quite capable of using both forms of enticement to refer to the foolishness of those who ignore His commandments.

The situation between Ahab and the primal couple is similar in that both are restrospective tellings of the facts of a situation in which God’s actions seem equivocal. Ahab is a great sinner but he has the upper hand in this story; he is the powerful and successful king, while the wise Jehoshaphat is his ally. And the ironies in the latter case are far more savage. Ahab will be killed terribly and without mercy; both he and his queen, Jezebel, will be eaten by dogs, forbidden even a decent funeral. The Ahab story means to warn us of a death equally ugly to all those who would insult the majesty of YHWH by playing the harlot to other gods.

In this case, as in Eden, the LORD God must do something which appears wrong in our eyes in order to accomplish His greater plan. He must deliberately mislead His prophets in order to trick Ahab into going out into battle to die. If the same concept of enticement is being used in both cases, the next question must be, why it should be in God’s interest for Adam and Eve to eat from the tree?

The answer appears quickly enough. Discernment of good and evil, the mark of mature human thought in the Bible, is a positive notion throughout. Had Ahab exercised his moral discernment, there would have been no need for a special emergency session in the divine throne room. He is rather like Eve but infinitely more demonic. He is a smart character who uses his intelligence rather than his moral discernment and winds up operating only for his own benefit.

The story says first of all that moral discernment gives us a divine nature, equal to YHWH in our ability to confront Him, though our intelligence operating without moral discernment is only a trap. In the case of Adam and Eve, the scene is played for laughs. In the case of Ahab, it is played as a revenge tragedy, an earnest moral tale. And though we think we have the upper hand, we are totally outclassed when we try to defeat YHWH using our intelligence. It also says that God favors the kingdom of Judah, at least sometimes, and he always hates the kingdom of Israel, even though they are far richer and more advanced.

And there is more to say than that. Not only does the ability to discern good from evil mark a mature human being, but there is a funny way in which the garden story is developmental in character. Like children, the primal pair learn right from wrong by being told to obey a rule, transgressing it, and receiving the punishment. The story is based on a simple observation about how we teach our children to make the same discernments. Such is the genius of myth worldwide.

The Covenant as the Reason for Moral Discernment

SIMILAR STORIES of coming to knowledge are found in Gilgamesh. Enkidu is shown learning from the prostitute, who effects his estrangement from the animals. Adapa is even misled into giving up mortality by a different god’s trick. The Bible has inherited a number of stories from Babylonia and elsewhere, tailoring them to its own task. The Bible, by comparison with Gilgamesh, is not interested nearly so much in the issue of immortality. Instead it emphasizes the issue of coming to moral discernment. It does so because its main themes-one God and covenant-are furthered by this treatment. Monotheism and protection against idolatry lead to the deemphasizing of alternative religions and their possible opponent divinities. There can be no realm of the dead in a monotheistic system, unless that realm is squarely within the power of God.

Even more important, the covenant theme of the Hebrew Bible demands that humans have moral discernment. The covenant is a formal agreement between God and humanity. It demands that human beings enter into the agreement of their own choice. In order to enter the covenant one needs moral discernment. It is absolutely necessary for the task. Thus, the story of Adam and Eve, far from being just the story of how we lost immortality, is more aptly entitled “the story of how we can live well,” having received the critical faculty of moral discernment and thus having evolved the aptitude to obey the covenant.

Notice that the covenant does not promise life after death beyond the commemoration of history and progeny to follow us afterwards. Life is the reward of the covenant, explicitly, not afterlife-certainly not the afterlife of Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Canaan. The Bible’s intuition about life is that it should be lived heroically without illusions of fantasies afterwards and certainly without the disgusting rites that characterize its neighbors’ views. The most obvious winners in this battle are the priests of YHWH who serve in Jerusalem. Their institution and their interpretation of Israelite history are what succeeds when this polemic is successful. The First Temple period may not have witnessed a pure Yahwism but, from the perspective of the later priests living in Second Temple times who redacted the Bible, this was the meaning of the conflicts between Israel and the Canaanites during the First Temple times.

Since we know that ultimately both Judaism and Christianity in its own way develop a notion of the hereafter which is moral and beatific, we need to ask ourselves a naive question: Could it really be that God spent so much time giving His prophets messages of antagonism to the notion of Canaanite afterlife only to reverse Himself later on? Changes in the concept of the afterlife over time argue against taking it literally. But reversals in the idea and existence of afterlife raise skeptical thoughts against the whole enterprise of describing heaven and hell as literal places where we literally go. Instead we must look to more sophisticated notions of the function and structure of the beliefs and defining the work they are designed to accomplish, both in society and in the development of our own consciousnesses.