| Yahwism Israelite religion | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Ethnic religion |
| Classification | Ancient Semitic religion |
| Theology | Polytheism[1] Henotheism Monolatry |
| Region | Ancient Canaan Ancient Israel and Judah[2] |
| Territory | Kingdom of Judah[3][4] Kingdom of Israel[3][4] |
| Origin | c. 12th – 9th century BCE |
| Separated from | Canaanite religion |
| Separations | Judaism Samaritanism |
| Part ofa series on |
| Ancient Near East mythology |
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Yahwism, also known as theIsraelite religion, was theancient Semitic religion ofancient Israel and Judah and theethnic religion of theIsraelites.[5] The Israelite religion was a derivative of theCanaanite religion and apolytheistic religion that had apantheon with variousgods andgoddesses.[6] The primarydeity of thereligion and thehead of thepantheon wasYahweh, thenational god of the kingdoms ofJudah andIsrael.[7] The majority of scholars hold that the goddessAsherah was the consort ofYahweh,[7] though some scholars disagree.[8] Following this divine duo were second-tier gods and goddesses, such asBaal,Shamash,Yarikh,Mot, andAstarte, with each havingpriests andprophets, and numbering royalty among their devotees.[9][10]
The practices of Yahwism included festivals, ritual sacrifices, vow-making, private rituals, and the religious adjudication of legal disputes.[11] For most of its history, theTemple in Jerusalem was not the sole or central place of worship dedicated to Yahweh, with many locations throughout Israel, Judah, and Samaria.[12][13] However, it was still significant to theIsraelite king, who effectively led the national religion as the worldlyviceroy of the national god.[14]
Yahwism underwent several recontextualizations and redevelopments as the notion of divinities aside from or comparable toYahweh was gradually degraded bynew religious currents and ideas. Possibly beginning with the emergence of Israel during the Late Bronze Age, the northernKingdom of Israel and the southernKingdom of Judah had a joint religious tradition comprising cultic worship of Yahweh. Later theological changes concerning the evolution of Yahweh's status initially remained largely confined to small groups,[15] only spreading to the population at large during the general political turbulence of the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. By the end of theBabylonian captivity, Yahwism began turning away from polytheism — or, by some accounts, Yahweh-centricmonolatry — and transitioned towardsmonotheism, and Yahweh was proclaimed thecreator deity and the sole deity to be worthy of worship.[16] Following the end of the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent establishment ofYehud Medinata in the 4th century BCE, Yahwism coalesced into what is known asSecond Temple Judaism,[17][18] from which the modernethnic religions ofJudaism andSamaritanism, as well as theAbrahamic religions ofChristianity andIslam, would later emerge.
The central element of ancient Israel's religion through most of the monarchic period was the worship of a god namedYahweh, and for this reason the religion of Israel is often referred to as Yahwism.[5] Yahweh, however, was not the "original" god of Israel. Rather it wasEl, the head of theCanaanite pantheon whose name forms the basis of the name "Israel" (Hebrew:יִשְׂרָאֵל),[19] and none of theHebrew patriarchs,tribes of Israel,Judges, or earlymonarchs have a Yahwistictheophoric name (i.e., a name incorporating the name of Yahweh).[20] It is unclear how, where, or why Yahweh appeared in the Levant; even his name is a point of confusion.[21] The exact date of his first appearance is also ambiguous: the termIsrael first enters historical records in the 13th century BCE with the EgyptianMerneptah Stele, and, while the worship of Yahweh is circumstantially attested to as early as the 12th century BCE,[22] there is no attestation of even the name "Yahweh" in the Levant until some four hundred years later with theMesha Stele (9th century BCE).[23][a] Because of this, Christian Frevel argues that Yahweh worship was rooted in the Kingdom of Israel and preserved by theOmride clan.[25] Nevertheless, many scholars believe that the shared worship of Yahweh played a role in the emergence of Israel in the Late Bronze Age (circa 1200 BCE).[26]
The earliest known Israelite place of worship is a 12th-century BCE open-air altar in the hills ofSamaria featuring a bronze bull reminiscent of the Canaanite El-bull.[22] Early Israel was a society of rural villages, but in time urban centers grew up and society became more structured and complex.[27] TheHebrew Bible gives the impression that the Jerusalem Temple was always meant to be the central (or even sole) temple of Yahweh, but this was not the case;[12] archaeological remains of other temples have been found atDan on Israel's northern border;Arad;Beersheba; andMotza in the southern region of Judah.[28]Shiloh,Bethel,Gilgal,Mizpah,Ramah, and Dan were also major sites for festivals, sacrifices, vow-making, private rituals, and the adjudication of legal disputes.[11]
During an era ofreligious syncretism, it became accepted among the Israelite people to consider the Canaanite god El as the same as Yahweh.[29] El was soon thought to have always been the same deity as Yahweh, as evidenced byExodus6:2–3.[29] Additionally, onomastic evidence indicates that some ancient Israelite families in the pre-exilic period seem to have syncretized the other Canaanite deities with Yahweh, a phenomenon which some scholars have described as "an inclusive sort of monolatry".[30] According to Theodore J. Lewis, different Israelite locales held different beliefs about El but viewed him as a "regional god" that was not entwined with the monarchic nation-state. Because of this, small-scale sacred places were built instead of temples.[31]
The worship of Yahweh alone began at the earliest with prophetElijah in the 9th century BCE, and at the latest with prophetHosea in the 8th; even then it remained the concern of a small party before gaining ascendancy in the exilic and earlypost-exilic period.[15] The early supporters of this faction are widely regarded asmonolatrists rather thanmonotheists;[32] believing Yahweh was the only god worthy of Israelite worship, not that Yahweh was the only god in existence—a noticeable departure from the traditional beliefs of the Israelites nonetheless.[33] It was during the national crisis of theBabylonian Exile that the followers of Yahweh went a step further and denied that any deities aside from Yahweh existed at all—marking the transition from monolatrism to monotheism, and, by extension, from Yahwism to Judaism.[16] Some scholars date the start of widespread monotheism to the 8th century BCE, and view it as a response toNeo-Assyrian aggression.[15][34]
In 539 BCE,Babylon fell to thePersians, ending the Babylonian exile. According toEzra 2, 42,360 of the exiled Israelites returned to Jerusalem. As descendants of the original exiles, they had never lived in Judah; nevertheless, in the view of the authors of the Biblical literature, they, and not those who had remained in the land, were "Israel".[35] Judah, now calledYehud, was a Persian province, and the returnees, with their Persian connections in Babylon, secured positions of authority. Though they represented the descendants of the old "Yahweh-alone" movement, the religion they came to institute was significantly different from monarchic Yahwism.[17] Differences included new concepts of priesthood; a new focus on written law and thus on scripture; and a concern with preserving purity by prohibiting intermarriage outside the community of this new "Israel". This new faith later evolved intoSecond Temple Judaism.[17] The competing religion ofSamaritanism also emerged from the "Yahweh-alone" movement.[18]
There is a broad consensus among modern scholars that the religion of ancient Israel was polytheistic, involving many gods and goddesses.[36] Israel's supreme god was first El[19] by dint of it being the original one, which was proceeded by Yahweh, whose name appears as an element on personal seals from the late 9th to the 6th centuries BCE.[37] Alongside El,[38] then Yahweh, was their consort Asherah[39] (replaced by the goddess "Anat-Yahu" in the temple of the 5th century Jewish settlementElephantine in Egypt),[40] and various biblical passages indicate that statues of the goddess were kept in Yahweh's temples in Jerusalem, Bethel, and Samaria.[41][42]
Below Yahweh and Asherah were second tier gods and goddesses such asBaal,Shamash,Yarikh,Mot, andAstarte, all of whom had their priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees.[9] A goddess called the "Queen of Heaven" was also worshiped: she was probably a fusion of Astarte and the Mesopotamian goddessIshtar,[43] although the phrase is possibly a title of Asherah.[44]
A third tier may also have existed, made up of specialist deities such as the god of snakebite-cures – his name is unknown, as the biblical text identifies him only asNehushtan, a pun based on the shape of his representation and the metal of which it was made[45] – and below these again was a fourth and final group of minor divine beings such as themal'ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became theangels of Christianity, Judaism and Islam,[10] and other heavenly beings such ascherubim.
Data was found to support scholar speculation of widespread worship of Baal and Yahweh coexistance, especially in the north, from theperiod of Judges until 722 BCE,[46] though support "severely ruptured" after the efforts of KingAhab and his queenJezebel to elevate Baal to the status of national god in the 9th century BCE,[15] and afterwards the cult of Baal did continue for some time.[47]
The practices of Yahwism were largely characteristic of other Semitic religions of the time, including festivals, sacrifices, vow-making, private rituals, and the adjudication of legal disputes.[11] The center of Yahweh-worship lay in three great annual festivals coinciding with major events in rural life:Passover with the birthing of lambs,Shavuot with the cereal harvest, andSukkot with the fruit harvest.[48] They became linked to events in thenational mythos of Israel: Passover withthe exodus from Egypt, Shavuot with the law-giving at Sinai, and Sukkot with the wilderness wanderings.[12] The festivals thus celebrated Yahweh's salvation of Israel and Israel's status as his holy people, although the earlier agricultural meaning was not entirely lost.[49]
Animal sacrifices played a big role in Yahwism, with the subsequent burning and the sprinkling of their blood, a practice described in the Bible as a daily Temple ritual for the Jewish people. Sacrifice was presumably complemented by the singing or recital ofpsalms, but the details are scant.[50] The rituals detailed inLeviticus 1–16, with their stress on purity and atonement, were followed only after the Babylonian exile and the Yahwism/Judaism transition. In reality, any head of a family could offer sacrifice as occasion demanded.[51] Prayer itself did not have a statutory role in temple ritual, but was employed on other occasions.[52]
Places of worship referred to ashigh places (Hebrew: במהbamah and plural במותbamot orbamoth) were found in many towns and villages in ancient Israel as places ofsacrifice.[53] From theHebrew Bible and from existing remains a good idea may be formed of the appearance of such a place of worship. It was often on the hill above the town, as at Ramah (1 Samuel 9:12–14); there was astele (matzevah), the seat of the deity, and aAsherah pole (named after the goddessAsherah), which marked the place as sacred and was itself an object of worship; there was astone altar (מִזְבֵּחַmīzbēaḥ "slaughter place"), often of considerable size and hewn out of the solid rock or built of unhewn stones (Exodus 20:21), on which offerings were burnt; acistern for water, and perhaps low stone tables for dressing the sacrifices; sometimes also a hall (לִשְׁכָּהlīškā) for the sacrificial feasts. Ancient Israelite religion was centered on these sites; at festival seasons, or to make or fulfil a vow, an Israelite might journey to more famous sanctuaries at a distance from home, but ordinarily offerings were made at the bamah of his own town.[54]
Talismans and the mysteriousteraphim were also probably used. It is also possible Yahwism employed ecstatic cultic rituals (compare the biblical tale ofDavid dancing naked before theArk of the Covenant) at times when they became popular, and possiblychild sacrifice.[55][56][57]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "High Place".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 456–457.AncientSemitic andMesopotamian religion | |||||||
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