Theodore J. Lewis - The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion Through the Lens of Divinity

THEODORE J. LEWIS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lewis, Theodore J., author.

Title: The origin and character of God : ancient Israelite religion through

the lens of divinity / Theodore J. Lewis.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2020. |

Includes bibliographical references. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2020015308 (print) | LCCN 2020015309 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190072544 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190072568 (epub) |

ISBN 9780190072575

Subjects: LCSH: God (Judaism) | JudaismHistoryTo 70 A.D. |

PalestineReligionHistory. | PalestineReligious life and customs.

Classification: LCC BM610 .L494 2020 (print) |

LCC BM610 (ebook) | DDC 296.3/11dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015308

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015309

For Dawn

Producing this volume was only possible due to a large support system of many people over many years. I was taught by stellar teachers who have left their imprint on my work more than they know. As the onomastic portions of the present work will illustrate, it is important to leave a record of the names of such giving people. I am deeply thankful for the efforts and the humanity of teachers from the University of WisconsinMadison (Michael Fox, Menahem Mansoor, Norman Roth, Keith Schoville, Barbara Fowler, Barry Powell), the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Shraga Assif, Moshe Greenberg, Sarah Groll, Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, Rafi Kutscher, Alexander Rof), and Harvard University (Michael Coogan, Frank Moore Cross, Paul Hanson, Thomas Lambdin, Patrick Miller, William Moran, Piotr Steinkeller). I also learned much from Douglas Gropp and Choon-Leong Seow, my classmates at Harvard, and from Marc Brettler and Bernard Levinson, my classmates at Hebrew University.

I found supportive colleagues helping me to grow at the University of Georgia in its Department of Religion (Alan Godlas, Kenneth Honerkamp, George Howard, Russell Kirkland, Sandy Martin, William Power, Shanta Ratnayaka, Thomas Slater, David Williams), in Athens, Georgia (Howard and Linda Abney, Chris and Cheryl Cornwell, Ed and Lucy Larson, William and Amburn Power, Henry F. and Karen Schaefer), and at Johns Hopkins University in its Department of Near Eastern Studies (Betsy Bryan, Jerry Cooper, Paul Delnero, Marian Feldman, Mike Harrower, Richard Jasnow, Jake Lauinger, Alice Mandell, P. Kyle McCarter, Glenn Schwartz, and Ray Westbrook). I am a historian of religion who was blessed to have been trained in Near Eastern languages and civilizations (not theology, as close readers will see) and even more so to have made my home for the past eighteen years in a Near Eastern studies department with colleagues in Assyriology, Egyptology, and Northwest Semitics as well as in Near Eastern archaeology and art history. I have had the privilege of editing Near Eastern Archaeology for the American Schools of Oriental Research (thanks are due especially to Billie Jean Collins), and serving with dedicated board members promoting the amazing work of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. For years I have also had the privilege of editing the Writings from the Ancient World series (SBL Press). Thanks to working with stellar WAW authors and editors, I have enjoyed learning of the entire ancient Near East broadly through a wide variety of literary genres. Special thanks for this endeavor go to Bob Buller and Simon B. Parker. I also thank the members of the Biblical Colloquium, who have provided rigorous feedback to my work for many years.

The list of scholars and researchers from whom I have learned is endless, as documented throughout the volume and in the lengthy bibliography. I fear I will leave so many out should I begin to list their names. Hopefully the citations of their work can underscore my indebtedness. I must mention five scholars who graciously read portions of my manuscript and provided me with substantial feedback: Daniel Fleming, David Noel Freedman, Peter Machinist, Kathryn Medill, and Sara Milstein. Taking the time to go through anothers work and offer incisive feedback is a hallmark of collegiality. Thank you. Those who know Daniel Flemings extraordinary investments to improve the research of others (faculty and students alike) will not be surprised to read of my deep indebtedness to him for covering my drafts at every turn with probing historical challenges to rethink my approach and the very categories of my analysis. I am also indebted to the numerous students who have pushed me in my thinking, especially those graduate students who read earlier drafts of the present work in seminars on ancient Israelite religion at Johns Hopkins University.

On an institutional level, I am indebted to Johns Hopkins University. The importance of strong institutional support for the humanities is needed more than ever, and I thank the numerous leaders who make this a reality at Johns Hopkins day after day, year after year. A special thanks to the Blum family for endowing the Blum-Iwry Chair, which I have the honor of holding, as it celebrates the life of Samuel Iwry. (See the oral history of his life, To Wear the Dust of War: From Bialystok to Shanghai to the Promised Land.) For the current volume, I also owe a large debt to fellowship support from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, from the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Words cannot begin to express my appreciation of Oxford University Press for agreeing to publish a manuscript of such length and with so many images. Special thanks to Steve Wiggins (truly a scholar and a gentleman), Drew Anderla, Amy Whitmer, Melissa Yanuzzi, the typesetting team at Newgen, and especially Sue Warga, who took on the herculean task of copy-editing such a large and technical manuscript. I am deeply indebted too to WordCo Indexing Services for producing the subject index and to Noah Crabtree for producing the citations index. I am delighted to give thanks to the many individuals who kindly helped in securing permissions for the images that occur in the volume, and in some cases the images themselves, as noted in the various credit lines. These thoughtful individuals include Susan Allison, Yael Barshak, Robert D. Bates, Adam L. Bean, Amnon Ben-Tor, Nelly Beyman, Stephen Bourke, Edward F. Campbell, Felicity Cobbing, Billie Jean Collins, Stefanie P. Elkins, Yosef Garfinkel, Garth Gilmour, Joseph A. Greene, Zeev Herzog, James K. Hoffmeier, Kathryn Hooge Hom, Sarah Horowitz, Jean-Baptiste Humbert, David Ilan, Yael Klein, Kay Kohlmeyer, Marilyn Lundberg, Valrie Matoan, Amihai Mazar, Nadine Meouchy, Michael Moore, Dick Osseman, Jaimie Owen, Nava Panitz-Cohen, Alan Paris, Zev Radovan, Seth Richardson, Lucia Rinolfi, David Schloen, Olaf Tausch, Gary Lee Todd, Christoph Uehlinger, Andrew Vaughn, Kim Walton, Ziony Zevit and Bruce Zuckerman. A special word of thanks goes to Kim Walton (of Walton Image Supply) for her heroic efforts in tracking down and organizing the many possible sources for images. I am indebted to Kim for her efficiency and many hours on my behalf. I also need to express a special word of appreciation to Amnon Ben-Tor and the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations, as I use more images from Hazor than from any other site.