"The Economic Consequences of Yahweh's Parasocial Identity"

The Bible and Critical Theory, 2018

The historical development of Israelite theology must be understood in relation to the social antagonisms that shaped the contexts in which people spoke about God. This article brings recent research on the historical development of different institutional forms in ancient Israelite society into conversation with recent arguments regarding the origins and evolution of the worship of Yahweh in the southern Levant.My aim is not to reduce theology to an epiphenomenal reflection or a direct expression of social realities, but to grasp it as creatively engaged with such realities. Yahweh appears to have originated among mobile bands on the social and geographical margins with respect to the centers of political and economic power in southwest Asia. Israel’s emergent monarchic state adopted this popular family god as its patron deity. The real social antagonisms between extractive state regimes and sustainable systems of allocation shaped—in various, indirect, and surprising ways—Israel’s...

Hebrew personal names suggest that it was during the Iron Age IIB that ancient Israel and Judah underwent an unusual religious change: the pantheon was drastically reduced to focus on a relatively new god, Yahweh. The nature and origin of Israel's religious distinctiveness are hotly contested, and names do not speak for themselves, but when integrated with contemporary evidence that helps us interpret them, an onomastic approach has special advantages. Despite their limits, inscribed names provide our single clearest source of evidence for early Israelite religion because, unlike edited literary texts, they can be precisely dated and confidently connected with society beyond Judahite scholarly circles. This clear pattern compels us to rethink both the recent notion that Iron Age Levantine societies were religiously uniform and the old assumption that monotheism was part of Israel's original essence.

2023

Is the Hebrew Bible purely a product of Jerusalem or were there various social groups who each played a role in its development during the Second Temple period? This is the guiding question of the present volume which fills a crucial gap in recent research by combining current literary-historical, redactional and text-historical analysis of the Hebrew Bible with the latest results pertaining to the pluriform social and religious shape of early Judaism. For the first time, the volume addresses the phenomenon of religious plurality by bringing together archaeological, (religious-)historical, and literary-critical approaches. The volume comprises thirteen articles by internationally renowned scholars and covers the panorama of currently known social groups of Yahwistic character and the impact of this phenomenon on the making of the Hebrew – from the Persian period down to the time of Qumran. Bibliography: Social Groups behind Biblical Traditions: Identity Perspectives from Egypt, Transjordan, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Israel in the Second Temple Period (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 167), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2023; hg. von Hensel, B., Nocquet, D und Adamczewski, B.

The question of Israel’s distinctiveness in the ancient Near East was a central concern of the biblical theology movement in the mid-twentieth century. The excessive claims and overstatements of that movement were corrected later in the twentieth century. Most scholars today assume the question is settled in a consensus that Old Testament Israel was not distinctive, and was completely at home in the ancient world in every respect. This paper explores three ways in which ancient Israel was indeed at home in ancient Near Eastern culture, while also suggesting ways in which Israel’s religious convictions led to a genuinely unique profile in the ancient world.

Forschungen zum Alten Testament 167, 2023

Is the Hebrew Bible purely a product of Jerusalem or were there various social groups who each played a role in its development during the Second Temple period? This is the guiding question of the present volume, which fills a crucial gap in recent research by combining current literary-historical, redactional and text-historical analysis of the Hebrew Bible with the latest results pertaining to the pluriform social and religious shape of early Judaism. For the first time, the thirteen articles in this volume address the phenomenon of religious plurality by bringing together archaeological, (religious-) historical, and literary-critical approaches. The articles by internationally renowned scholars cover the panorama of currently known social groups of Yahwistic character and the impact of this phenomenon on the making of the Hebrew Bible – from the Persian period to the time of Qumran.

Review of Biblical Literature, 2025

Amzallag presents a unique theory about the historical origins of YHWH and the development of the god's profile, stretching from the Bronze Age down through the Iron Age. The Introduction, subtitled "Idols of Knowledge," situates the book's intervention in the scholarly landscape and lays out the study's basic methodology. The author begins by criticizing the centrality of "monotheism" as a category for the study of ancient Israelite religion, especially the way some scholars use monotheism as a diagnostic criterion to date biblical texts and create evolutionary schemes for the development of Israelite religion (pp. 2-14). Amzallag concludes, however, that "no evolutionary trend toward monotheism may be traced throughout a millennium of worship of YHWH by the Israelites" (p. 9), such that "the concept of monotheism is inappropriate for the investigation of the ancient religion of Israel" (p. 13). Among other reasons, the author criticizes the evolutionary model in which YHWHistic monotheism emerges from an older Israelite polytheism through a process of "convergence" and "differentiation"-to use the terminology from Mark Smith, Early History of God (Eerdmans, 2002)-because it (1) supposedly renders YHWH's original identity inaccessible (pp. 10); (2) promotes the mistaken notion of YHWH's exclusive relationship with Israel (pp. 12-14); and (3) obscures the "material realities associated with YHWH's theophany and mode of action" and their expression of the deity's "identity and essential attributes" (p. 13). As a way forward, the author proposes a novel hypothesis: YHWH was, in origin, the esoteric patron god of the Canaanite guild of metallurgy. YHWH's cult, it is claimed, traces back to a small "corporation of South Levantine metalworkers" who later introduced YHWH's worship to Israel, reflected in biblical traditions about the Qenites as metalworkers from the deep south (but note Amzallag's later admission that the "metallurgical activity of the Qenites is not explicit in the Bible" [p. 153]). While this reconstruction may seem counterintuitive given ancient Israel's "agropastoralist lifestyle" (p. 15) and Canaanite cultural inheritances (p. 19), it integrates previously neglected data associating YHWH with metallurgy and centers the question of Israel's secondary adoption of . Methodologically, the study is intentionally interdisciplinary, integrating data and interpretive frameworks from a range of scholarly disciplines, including biblical studies, archaeology, epigraphy, history of religions, art history, etc. (pp. 17ff.). For Amzallag, the Hebrew Bible is potentially the most important source for reconstructing the origins of YHWH and Israel, but scholars today ascribe it a low historical value due to their flawed evolutionary schemes for the development of Israelite religion (p. 18). While the biblical texts admittedly come from later contexts, their supposed preservation of YHWH's original metallurgical background suggests to the author, at least, that some biblical sources, even very late ones, may preserve memories from before Israel's origins. Additionally, the author claims to focus on "the singularities of the Israelite religion in its beginning stages" rather than parallels with other ancient Near Eastern peoples, whose traditions scholars often exploit to fill gaps in knowledge

HE Priestly Writings (P) refer to terms in Israel's semantic field of kinship far more often than any other source or book in the Hebrew Bible. 1 Scholars remain ambivalent, however, about the value of evidence in P for understanding Israelite kinship organization. The problem is not simply that P was codified long after the period it purports to describe. Rather, many scholars agree that P projected a rigid, idealized social system onto Israel's post-Exodus past; such a social system, they argue, does not resemble the reality of any period. 2 Despite this widespread scholarly ambivalence, however, I contend that P remains a valuable source of data for analysis of Israelite kinship organization under the monarchy. To demonstrate this will depend on proving that P did not reconstruct Israel's post-Exodus social organization in a fantastical or capricious way. Rather, P presents a logical and internally consistent model of social organization, a model that derives from an accurate appreciation of Israel's social structure under the monarchy. P offers, in short, an elite perspective on the predominant familial patterns that shaped the lives of Israelites and Judeans in the era of the monarchies, a model that is not without value for being elitist.

IOSR Journals , 2019

Every religious group organizes the institutionalization of its various sources of authority (sacred writings, charisma, tradition and bureaucracy) that assist its leadership in helping followers accomplish their shared concern. Ancient Israel and Judah as religious entities engaged certain social dynamics in transforming the administration of their territories through power relations from ancient Aramean/Syrian origin. Existing studies have examined the rise of the Levites into prophetic authority, especially, charismatic leaders like Moses and Samuel. They have also surveyed the transformation of the Judahites into royal status under the Law/Torah. However, the employment of rituals for public legitimacy in both territories needs to be conjectured (the location of the sanctuaries around the migräš of Levites, the erection of the tabernacle/temple by kings, and the appointment and remuneration of sacred functionaries from Israelite land provision of the Sädeh to kings). Thus, this study employs an integrated hermeneutic of socio-historical exploration of the sacred historiography of ancient Israel and Judah within the literary and theological interpretive dimensions. It examines the rationalization of charismatic abilities of leaders and the organization of rituals and sacred groups for religious differentiations. It raises a conjecture of the struggle for public legitimacy by the bureaucrats of ancient Israel and Judah through the royal formation of communities by kings and the centralization of sacred rites by levitical priests.

Caminhando - Umesp, 2020

The characterization of the sacred space in ancient Israel makes it possible to highlight the dimensions of the religious phenomenon, and thus identify the divinity of the place. Using the literary sources of the Hebrew Bible we will demonstrate that space was constitutive of divinity; moreover, the foundational institutions of the people are based on ritual practices. This paper presents evidence of the process of objective elaboration of the divinity – its presence – considering the peculiarities of ancient Israel. Our hypothesis is that in ancient Israel, religious presentness should be researched in the context of multicultural relations – almost always conflicting – between northern Israelites and the Arameans peoples. Theoretically, Yahweh’s aesthetics, originating from warrior deities, exalts the monarchical period. During this period, political conflicts have the same intensity as conceptual conflicts involving cultural agents. Thus, situated in symbolic environments, ritualistic art stands out strongly.