The Oxford History of the Biblical World (14 page)

The significance of this tradition is that while the name
Yahweh
relates virtually exclusively to Israel, the god El was well known—across the Near East and in the Canaanite myths from Ugarit—as the king of the gods. In fact, as he is portrayed in the Ugaritic texts, El closely resembles the patron deity of the ancestors as described in Genesis. Although Baal and Anat are the primary subjects of the mythological tablets, El plays a critical role. He is the creator of the universe, and although Baal is sometimes portrayed as the de facto ruler, the status of El as the king is never actually questioned. The creator of creatures, the father of humanity, the father of gods and humans, the father of years, the kind, the compassionate—such are El’s attributes. He lives on a mountain, from the foot of which come forth the sources of all the fresh water of the world. He lives in a tent rather than in a temple. In the Kirta and Aqhat epics, El is the deity who alone can provide offspring to the childless.

The patron deity of the Bible’s ancestral narratives is portrayed in strikingly similar ways. The fundamental theme of El providing an heir for the heroes of the narrative is paralleled in both of the Canaanite epics found at Ugarit, those of Aqhat and Kirta. It is also striking that the characterization of Yahweh beginning in Exodus differs from the portrayal of the deity in the ancestral narratives. The biblical texts from Exodus on portray God primarily with storm-god imagery, the kind of imagery that was commonly used for Canaanite Baal rather than El. It is this transformation that the E and P sources recognized and explained in their accounts of the revelation of the name
Yahweh
to Moses. They perceived the disjunction between the religion of the ancestors and that of their contemporary culture, but wanted to emphasize continuity as well. Thus P, in the passage quoted above, explicitly insists that El and Yahweh are the same God. E emphasizes the same point in Exodus 3.13–16. It is reasonable to conclude, then, that the traditions preserved, if only vaguely, the memory that the ancestors of Israel worshiped the god El as their patron deity, and that the beginnings of the worship of Yahweh in early Israel were perceived as a break from the older tradition, a change that at least some parts of Israel could not ignore, but indeed felt called upon to explain.

Another area in which research on the second millennium
BCE
has illuminated the ancestral stories has been the understanding of the pastoralist way of life described in the narratives. The ancestors of Israel appear in Genesis as pastoral nomads living along the edge of settled society in the land of Canaan, having occasional dealings with city-dwellers, sometimes even briefly moving into a town. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modern biblical scholars tended to illustrate
the life of the ancestors by reference to the modern nomads of the Near East, the bedouin. They were often portrayed as fully nomadic wanderers, isolated from settled life and generally hostile toward the sedentary population. Scholars usually saw an evolutionary pattern at work in nomadic societies, in which the nomads would come out of the desert, clash with the sedentary population, but eventually give up the nomadic way of life and become town-dwellers themselves. This pattern was used to reconstruct the beginnings of the nation of Israel as it emerged from its nomadic origins. There was some skepticism about the accuracy of the depiction of the pastoral life in Genesis, since the stories have the families moving back and forth between nomadic and town dwelling with relative ease.

The past three decades have seen considerable anthropologically based research on the ancient pastoral way of life. This research has shown that pastoralism during the second millennium
BCE
differed considerably from that of the modern bedouin, and that the earlier evolutionary view of nomadism is incorrect. Of particular help have been the Mari tablets, which provide much information about the pastoralists who inhabited the middle Euphrates during the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries
BCE
.

The Mari tablets and other texts have shown that there was not a simple process of peoples moving from nomadism to sedentary life. Rather, members of tribal groups fluctuated between pastoralism and sedentary life, depending on their circumstances. In the ancient texts that have recently come to light, tribal groups largely characterized as pastoralists also had large elements within their tribes who were sedentary—some living in villages, and some found even in the large metropolises of the Near East. Nor is there evidence that the pastoralists were generally antagonistic toward sedentary life, regularly raiding and pillaging the towns. Rather, the texts point to a strong symbiotic relationship between the pastoralists and the inhabitants of the small towns, each providing goods that were necessary to the other. Pastoralists and smalltown-dwellers alike resisted the large cities’ attempts to impose political control over them.

This understanding of the pastoralist life seems reflected in the narrative of Genesis. The biblical ancestors camp near the towns, as one would expect (see Gen. 12.6–9; 13.12–18; 33.18–20), and at times even become sufficiently sedentary to carry out cultivation (26.12). They are portrayed as having close and cordial relations with townspeople (21.25–34), and in times of trouble they even come for a while to live in major towns as resident aliens (12.10–20; 20.1—18; 26.6–11). This mode of life was not restricted to the second millennium
BCE
and therefore cannot be used to argue for the authenticity of the ancestral narratives as historical documents. But information from other Near Eastern sources has given us a clearer understanding of the lifestyle described in these narratives.

The ancestral narratives provide few data about the background to Israel’s emergence as a nation. Their function is theological rather than historical, and while they performed that function well, caution must be used in extracting archaic memories that would illuminate historical matters. These tales provide the overture to the overarching themes of the Pentateuch: God’s creation of Israel and his grant of the land
to the nation. They also emphasize the unity of Israel, portraying the nation as the collected descendants of a single couple, Abraham and Sarah. From a historical point of view, such a notion can be shown as inaccurate, and later chapters in this book will examine the great complexity of the ethnic groups that eventually become Israel. But from the perspective of ancient Israel, such an emphasis was vital, and these stories made an important contribution toward defining the soul of the nation.

Our sources for understanding the background of Israel’s emergence come from archaeological excavations and the study of second-millennium epigraphic remains from the Near East. These provide considerable insight into the complex political, social, and cultural situation in Syria-Palestine during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, as Canaanite civilization, out of which Israel emerged, grew and matured. The decline and collapse of Late Bronze Age culture led to the conditions that would allow the formation of the Israelite nation in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries
BCE
.

Biblical Archaeologist
47 (1984): 65–120. A collection of four articles on Mari by Marie-Henriette Gates, Dennis Pardee and Jonathan Glass, Andre Lemaire, and Jack Sasson, which, although now dated, provides an excellent discussion of this important site.

Chavalas, Mark W., ed.
Emar: The History, Religion, and Culture of a Syrian Town in the Late Bronze Age.
Bethesda, Md.: CDL, 1996. The first substantial introduction in English to this important site and its archives.

Coogan, Michael David, ed. and trans.
Stories from Ancient Canaan.
Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978. Accessible translations of the major Ugaritic myths.

Cross, Frank Moore.
Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973. The classic discussion of the relationship between Canaanite and Israelite religion.

Eichler, Barry L. “Nuzi and the Bible: A Retrospective.” In
Dumu-e
₂
-dub-ba-a: Studies in Honor of Åke W. Sjöberg,
ed. Hermann Behrens, Darlene Loding, and Martha T. Roth, 107–19. Philadelphia: University Museum, 1989. A fine discussion of Nuzi’s place in biblical studies.

Gurney, O. R.
The Hittites.
Rev. ed. New York: Penguin, 1990. Excellent introduction to Hittite history and culture.

Klengel, Horst.
Syria: 3000 to 300
B.C
.: A Handbook of Political History.
Berlin: Akademie, 1992. The best description in English of Syrian history for this period.

Mazar, Amihai.
Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000–586
B.C.E
.
New York: Doubleday, 1990. Chapters 6 and 7 provide an excellent summary of archaeological material from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages in Palestine.

Moran, William L., ed. and trans.
The Amarna Letters.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Superb translation of these important documents.

Parker, Simon B., ed.
Ugaritic Narrative Poetry.
Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997. Solid translations of the major Ugaritic texts.

Pettinato, Giovanni.
Ebla: A New Look at History.
Trans. C. Faith Richardson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. The most recent general study of Ebla in English, with many controversial interpretations.

Singer, Itamar. “A Concise History of Amurru.” Appendix in Shlomo Izre’el,
Amurru Akkadian: A Linguistic Study,
2.135–94. Harvard Semitic Studies, 41. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991. Although included in a technical book, this very readable synthesis provides an excellent overview of a major region dealt with in the Amarna letters.

Vaux, Roland de.
The Early History of Israel.
Trans. David Smith. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978. After a quarter century, still a valuable discussion of the ancestral traditions in Genesis.

Wilhelm, Gernot.
The Hurrians.
Trans. Jennifer Barnes. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, 1989. Important introduction to the Hurrians, especially the state of Mitanni during the Late Bronze Age.

Israel in and out of Egypt

CAROL A. REDMOUIMT

E
xodus,
a Greek word, means departure or going out. The Exodus is the Israelite departure from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, and the subsequent eventful journey through the Sinai wilderness. This Exodus is a defining, pivotal episode in the Bible, a cornerstone of Israelite faith and historical understanding. According to biblical traditions, through the Exodus events Israel first takes form as a nation. During the wilderness wanderings between Egypt and the Promised Land of Canaan, the major tenets of Israelite belief and ritual are handed down by God to Moses, whose name becomes synonymous ever after with religious law. Throughout the Bible and its long developmental history, the Exodus saga operates as the national epic of ancient Israel. Critical to Israel’s understanding of itself and its relationship to God, the Exodus account constitutes Israel’s confession of faith; and its unfailing invocation, sometimes in no more than capsule form (“the
LORD
who brought your ancestors up out of the land of Egypt”; “the law of Moses”), provides a perpetual affirmation of that faith. In the Exodus narrative, we find the core doctrine at the heart of one of the world’s great religions.

The biblical Exodus account has been understood on a number of different levels. Literally, and apparently historically, the Exodus tells of the Israelites’ slavery under a harsh Egyptian pharaoh, followed by their freedom flight from Egypt to Canaan, led by Moses. During this flight, God intensifies his special relationship with Israel and sets forth a comprehensive set of regulations and religious precepts for the community. Theologically, the Exodus embodies the themes of God acting through history, of divine promise and fulfillment, of eternal covenant, and of human suffering and redemption. Finally, paradigmatically, the Exodus is a powerful image of what Northrop Frye called “the definitive deliverance”; as the archetype for all subsequent
redemption and liberation experiences, it has become a powerful symbol in Western political thought.

Two issues dominate contemporary scholarly discussion of the Exodus: the extent to which the narrative is historical in the usual sense of the word, and the placement of the various events in an ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern historical and geographical framework. Who was the pharaoh who did not know Joseph? What was the route of the Exodus? When did the Exodus occur? Are there any independent witnesses to the Exodus events? To answer such questions, it is first necessary to consider the character of the Exodus account itself, because its theological nature affected its recollection, literary formation, and interpretation, and because the ancient conception of history differed from our own. Only then can we evaluate historical issues as they relate to the biblical narrative, and place that narrative within a broader context.