Covenant Class, Lesson 8-B

The Covenant Relationship Lesson Eight (part two)

The Religious Revolution of Moses:  We continue to unearth new findings that allow us to compare the religion of ancient Israel with other ancient cultures, and it is clear that Moses was revolutionary for his time and place (Canaan, 1400 BC).  Of course, we are really giving credit to God, the true God, as the real genius behind Moses.

Follow the Money!  Peter Berger, a sociologist, suggests that mythologies create a fictitious world designed to manipulate society, and always to someone’s advantage.  The “man-made” nature of mythology shows because it is always certain people who benefit.  Berger suggests that all religions should be treated with suspicion and given examination to see who really benefits.  This is similar to the wisdom that says the way to find out what politicians are up to is to “follow the money”!  Of course, we should do the same with Bible religion.  Who do you suppose benefits?

Mesopotamia:  The mythology was obviously a model of the king’s power.  The king had a wife; so did the god, Enlil.  The king had underlings to whom he delegated tasks; the god delegated to lesser gods.  The king had a palace; the god had a temple.  The god resembled the king “in the most human of terms” (Berman)—they would eat, sleep, wear clothes, have children, throw banquets.  Who benefitted from the myth?  By showing that the king had a counterpart in the invisible realm, the mythology supported the politics of the king and his authority!  The same mythology downplayed the common man.

 

The Mesopotamian mythology in the “Atrahasis epic” (1600 BC) told of two classes of gods; one elite group of lords and another group that did the labor, like excavating irrigation ditches.  The worker gods “groaned and blamed each other” and “grumbled over the masses of excavated soil.”  Finally after 3,600 years, they revolted against the lords and gather around the dwelling of Enlil.  Wise gods were called on to end the crisis and they came up with a great idea:  mankind would be created to take over the menial labor of the worker gods!

 Ea made ready to speak, and said to the gods [his brethren], “What calumny do we lay to their charge?  Their forced labor was heavy, [their misery too much]!  Every day [ ]  The outcry [was loud, we could hear the clamor].  [Belet-ili, the midwife], is present.  Let her then create a hum[an, a man]  Let him bear the yoke [ ], Let him bear the yoke [ ]!  [Let man assume the drud]gery of god.”

 

Berman describes what happens next, “A deliberation then ensues concerning just how to go about fashioning this new being, a human.  He must be closer to the gods than are animals, and thus a god is sacrificed, and his flesh and blood are mixed with clay.  The first human is displayed to the other gods for their approval, after which mass production of the new biotechnology commences, so that a corps of new workers will be able to relieve the lower-class Igigi gods of their former drudgery.”  Again, the political system that enslaves the common man to drudgery is backed up by religion, and the king truly benefits.

 

What stands out when this creation myth is set alongside the account by Moses, is that God created mankind not for drudgery and servitude, but to rule with Him over creation!  God gives mankind work that is for their own benefit, nourishment, and pleasure: 

And God said: Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. . . . And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.  And God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food. 

Berman notes that (as in Psalm 8) “to be created in the likeness of God means to share in His glory, to share in His dominion of the world.”

 

Interestingly, the same myth goes on to describe why the gods allowed sickness and death among the new human labor force.  As it turns out, humans make too much noise and it disturbed the sleep of the gods.  So to pursue population control, the gods sent a destructive flood, create infertility, raise infant mortality, and establish a class of priestesses that can be impregnated only by the king!  Would you be suspicious of such a mythology if you were a common man?  After the flood, the gods are concerned to further inhibit human reproduction and to use death to limit population.  Contrast this with Moses:

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.  The fear and dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky—everything with which the earth is astir—and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hand. . . .  For your life-blood I will require a reckoning:  of every beast will I require it; of man, too, I will require a reckoning for human life, of every man for that of his fellow man!  Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God was man created. 

 

Ugarit:  known as modern day Ras Shamra (1450 BC), was a small kingdom very close in time and place to the Israel of Moses.  Its society was based on family in a clan structure.  Their mythology is known from the “epic of King Keret” and the “epic of Aqhat.”  The patriarchal leader was the ultimate father of society.  He had control, but would reward loyalty with kind treatment.

 

The highest ranking god was El (pictured as an aging patriarch) and his divine wife was Athirat (known as Asherah in Hebrew).  They were on the top of four levels.  Beneath them were divine royal children (as with the clan king and his family), then a group of craftsmen gods, and on the bottom were the divine workers.  Again, the mythology is a mirror of the social structure of that culture.

 

Egypt:  Here the king, or pharaoh, was recognized as a demigod.  Only the king had access to the world of the gods.  He ruled over a complex society controlling trade and commerce, war and defense, and governmental administration that controlled a vast populace of laborers and craftsmen.  The mythology supported the Pharaoh and his administration.

 

Mythology and the Common Man:  In Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and Egypt, the different mythologies all focused on the king, not the common man.  The king had to take religious action in case of flood, drought, or other calamity thought to derive from the gods.  No religious action was required by regular people, as they were not capable of swaying or impacting the actions of the gods.  The common man paid the taxes that filled the king’s treasury and broke their backs in the labor of pharaoh’s service, but they were on the bottom rung of the divine and social hierarchies.  The gods were interested in the common man only as a baron or feudal lord would have been interested in his serfs—a commodity needed to maintain his estate.  The common man was assigned “a decidedly diminished and undignified role” (Berman).

 

It is in contrast to this that the truly revolutionary religion of Moses stands apart.  Israel did not allow its kings to be a closely identified with God as did other cultures.  The king is “adopted” by God (Psalm 2).  He is not the visible image of God, like Pharaoh.  The choosing of Saul as the first king (1 Sam 8-10) does nothing to glorify the kingship and the king is not viewed as a necessary link between Yahweh and the people of Israel.

 

The Sinai “Suzerainty Treaty” and the Common Man:  We have already established the similarity of the Sinai Covenant of Moses with Hittite suzerainty treaties.  Earlier in this lesson, we demonstrated that the low position of the common man (and the elevation of the king) was supported by the religious mythologies of other ancient cultures.   What remains in this lesson (and it will go into Part Three) is to spell out how the Hittite influence on Moses’ covenant deals with the place of the common man in religion and society.

 

Joshua Berman (in his book, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought) provides an astonishing analysis.  He notes that suzerainty treaties are made “king to king.”  A dominant suzerain enters treaty with his subordinate vassal king.  Only one of 18 Hittite treaties is between a suzerain and an entire people with no mention of a king, and this particular treaty differs in form (it has no historical prologue nor listing of blessings).  The Sinai covenant does not share this form.  So, Berman asks, at Mt. Sinai who exactly is it that plays the role of the “subordinate king” who enters treaty with the suzerain king, Yahweh?