Smith Mark S - The early history of God: Yahweh and the other deities in ancient Israel

Table of Contents

THE BIBLICAL RESOURCE SERIES

General Editors

ASTRID B. BECK

DAVID NOEL FREEDMAN

Editorial Board

HAROLD W. ATTRIDGE, History and Literature of Early Christianity

JOHN HUEHNERGARD, Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literatures

PETER MACHINIST, Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literatures

SHALOM M. PAUL, Hebrew Bible

JOHN P. MEIER, New Testament

STANLEY E. PORTER, New Testament Language and Literature

JAMES C. VANDERKAM, History and Literature of Early Judaism

ADELA YARBRO COLLINS, New Testament

THE BIBLICAL RESOURCE SERIES

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Colin J. Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in Their Local Setting

Anthony J. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees in Palestinian Society

Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel , Second Edition

Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions

1990, 2002 Mark S. Smith

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First published 1990 by HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers

Second edition published 2002
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The early history of God: Yahweh and the other deities in ancient Israel /

Mark S. Smith; with a foreword by Patrick D. Miller. 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8028-3972-X (paper: alk. paper)

1. God Biblical teaching. 2. Bible. O.T. Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Gods, Semitic. 4. Israel Religion. I. Title.

BS1192.6.S55 2002

291.2110933 dc21

2002024467

For my father,
Donald Eugene Smith,
with love

Everything God has made beautiful in its own time; also eternity God has given into their heart.

(cf. Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Foreword to the Second Edition

The last quarter century has witnessed a burgeoning of interest in Israelite religion, arising from significant new discoveries, both epigraphic and iconographic, as well as from renewed attention to the roots of monotheism in the Bible. No consensus has been reached on the origins of monotheism in ancient Israel. On the contrary, the distance between perspectives on this question may be farther than it has ever been. There are some who speak with ease of an early polytheism in Israelite religion, while others insist on the priority and generally exclusive worship of the god Yahweh from very early stages in Israelite religion.

No single study of Israelite religion during this period of time has contributed more informatively and constructively to the discussion of the issues than Mark Smiths volume, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. Its subtitle identifies not only the primary subject matter but the two perspectives that make this book so valuable. It is in a sense a study of the beginning of God, at least insofar as the contemporary understanding of deity in western traditions reaches back to the God of Israel. Smiths effort is not to write a history of Israelite religion but a history of God, with particular attention to the way in which the understanding of deity that has so shaped Judaism, Christianity, and Islam with influences far beyond those circles took shape at the earliest stages. The reference to the other deities is appropriate because Yahweh clearly came out of the world of the gods of the ancient Near East, so that kinship relations to these other deities are there from the beginning. Smith is particularly interested in the other deities as they found their way into Israelite religion as objects of worship alongside the national deity, Yahweh. But on the way to that analysis, he uncovers the roots of Yahweh and Yahwism and the ways in which the other deities found their way into the profile and character of Israels god. So the place of the other deities is not simply alongside Israels deity but within the god Yahweh as well as in differentiation and, at times, conflict with him. The development of a typology of convergence and differentiation, sketched in the introduction and then worked out in the rest of the chapters, is a major contribution to the possibility of a complex but coherent understanding of the origins of Yahweh and the place that deity had in the extended history of Israel up to the exile. Along the way, Smith is attentive to social context and typologies within Israelite religion, particularly with regard to family and popular religion in distinction from royal and state religion.

The further groundwork laid by this book is to be found in its focus on two aspects of deity that have come to be seen in much larger ways than previously. Already before Smiths work appeared, much discussion and some heat had been stirred up over the discovery of texts from two different areas in eighth-century Judah alluding to an asherah in relation to Yahweh. The clear connection of that term to the equivalent term in the Bible with its pejorative disdain as well as to a goddess well known from second-millennium West Semitic texts has raised the possibility of Israels god having had a recognized consort in pre-exilic Israelite religion. Smith takes this question up with perspicuity and careful attention to the various views on the topic, including now the most recent studies of the issue. The further dimension of Yahwehs profile that has grown in our awareness, in part because of Smiths own original research on the topic, is his solar character, an issue to which a chapter is devoted in this study.

While this major study of Israels god has not become outdated, the second edition is a welcome contribution to the further study of Israelite religion and the roots of monotheism. Characteristically attentive to the latest research, Smith has brought his study up to date at many points. Most important is the Preface to the Second Edition, itself a small monograph looking afresh at all the issues discussed in the book from the perspective of the most recent investigations. Even within the main text, however, especially in the notes, Smith has revised without shifting position an unnecessary move in his case because of the wisdom and judiciousness of his constructive and persuasive view of the origin and nature of Yahweh among the gods of Israels world. By a careful reading of this book, historians and theologians alike will learn much that they need to know in order to understand the biblical God and the religious world that brought forth the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

PATRICK D. MILLER

Preface to the Second Edition

It has been over a decade since The Early History of God first appeared, and many new developments have taken place that have altered the landscape of research on deities. Many new inscriptional, iconographic, and archaeological discoveries pertinent to research have been made. Important new epigraphic finds bearing on deities include several inscriptions from Tel Miqneh (Ekron), Finally, archaeology has further furnished students of Israelite religion with a new arsenal of data to ponder and integrate. As a result of more recent inscriptional, iconographic, and archaeological discoveries, many standard hypotheses are fading and new syntheses are emerging in their wake.