The AssyriansTHE HEBREWS BETWEEN ASSYRIA AND EGYPT INTO THE LAND OF CANAAN The source that introduces us to people called Hebrews is the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament, Genesis 14:13 describing a man called Abraham as a Hebrew. Genesis describes Abraham as the son Terah and the brother of Nahor and Haran, a family that dwelled at Ur, in the land of the Chaldeans. According to Genesis, Terah took his family to Haran, where he died. And from Haran, Abraham migrated with his family into Canaan. Some believe this was toward the end of the 2000s BC, long before the Chaldeans established themselves in Sumer. Some others speculate that Abraham's migration from Haran came much later than 2000 BC. The term Hebrew perhaps originated with the word Hiberu found in writings sent to Egypt by the small independent states that Egypt left behind when it withdrew from Canaan in the 1300s. These states were disturbed by the arrival of nomadic tribes that came in waves across generations. "Hiberu" meant outsider and probably referred to a great variety of migrants. The Hebrews appear to have been semi-nomadic herders of sheep and goats and occasional farmers, without knowledge of metal working, sophisticated craftsmanship or a written language. Like other nomadic herders, they were tent dwellers -- as Abraham is described in Genesis 13:3. As was common among herders, the Hebrews had a masculine god of the sky and weather. The Hebrews organized themselves around their extended families, and Hebrew families were combined into kinship groups governed by a council of elders that left the head of a family with a sense of self-rule. These heads of families were males with absolute authority over their wives and children, and they were the priests for their families, each family having its own sacred images. Typical of pastoral peoples, Hebrews saw vengeance as necessary for justice -- an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And they believed in collective guilt: that an entire tribe or family was responsible for the acts of one of its members -- a view that was to color their picture of divine acts of vengeance. Like other peoples, the Hebrews saw their god of the sky as concerned with them rather than as a god for all peoples. Genesis 15:18 describes their god as making a covenant with Abraham, saying: To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. Like other pastoral peoples, the Hebrews had a portable, sacred box, which they called the Ark of the Covenant, described in the Old Testament as about 3 by 2 feet, with poles along its sides. And, like other peoples, they carried their sacred box into battle, believing that it would be bring divine intervention and victory. Like others, the Hebrews believed that a ritual killing of an animal sent the animal as a gift to the invisible world of the gods. Some people also sacrificed humans to their gods. According to chapter 22 of Genesis, Abraham was at least familiar with human sacrifice and he was tested by the Lord's command that he make an offering of his son Isaac. The Land of Canaan Canaan before the arrival of the Hebrews was a thinly populated land with relatively prosperous agricultural communities. In Canaan lived Phoenicians and Amorites, both of whom have been called Canaanites. The Amorites lived primarily in the hilly regions west of the Dead Sea and east of the Jordan River. As latecomers to Canaan, the Hebrews settled in the more sparsely populated and less fertile hills east of the coastal plains, and some settled in the dry plains of Galilee. Some Hebrews lived in tight communities led by priests or military chieftains, and others lived in Canaanite towns, including an Amorite town that was to be known as Jerusalem. Some Hebrews learned agriculture from the Canaanites. Some learned to become tradesmen, and they became involved with the caravans that carried spices, ointments and resin across Canaan. Others remained with the tradition of herding and wandered with their flocks to and from desert watering places. During the dry seasons some of these herdsmen migrated south to the greener pastures of Egypt's Nile Delta and then returned when pastures near home turned green again. Some Hebrews wandered into Egypt and stayed, and there they were despised for their foreign ways. Moses, Exodus from Egypt, and the Ten Commandments When the pharaoh Ramses II returned from Syria with his treaty of "everlasting peace," he put slaves to work on his creation of great buildings and monuments to celebrate what he claimed was his victory. Art work from this period depicts a tall and threatening Ramses holding a Semite, an Asian and a black man by their hair -- three slaves feeling the sternness of Ramses' rule. The Old Testament's Book of Exodus describes an unnamed pharaoh ordering the slaughter of all male Hebrew infants, and it describes a Hebrew woman trying to save her infant son, Moses, by putting him adrift on the Nile in a tiny boat of reeds caulked with tar pitch. The legend of Moses is the heart of Judaism -- Moses being to Judaism what Siddartha Gautama is to Buddhism and what Jesus Christ is to Christianity. According to legend, rather than the infant Moses being found by one of a multitude of common people who walked about the banks of the Nile, he was found by none other than the pharaoh's daughter -- the stuff of legend or myth, but suitable for those who believe in miracles. The pharaoh's daughter recognized the infant as a Hebrew, and the princess was allowed to adopt Moses, despite Egyptians believing that Hebrews were an inferior people. The Old Testament suggests more improbable transformation in royal family values by describing the grown Moses as having acquired an identity as a Hebrew, although having been reared by the pharaoh's family from infancy. The Book of Exodus describes Moses as flying into a rage when coming upon an overseer mistreating another Hebrew. Moses killed the overseer, and although Moses was a member of Egypt's ruling family he found it necessary to flee into the desert. There he joined the family of Bedouin people called Midianites. The head of the family was a priest, and Moses married the priest's daughter. One day the god of his father-in-law spoke to Moses from a burning bush that did not suffer the effects of fire, and the god described himself to Moses as the god of Abraham. It was then, according to the Book of Exodus, that the Hebrews acquired the god called Yahweh, to be translated in the Middle Ages as Jehovah. note 1 According to the Book of Exodus, rather than use his magic directly and immediately to free the Hebrews in Egypt, Yahweh instructed Moses to return there. Moses did so, and there he converted Hebrews to the worship of "the Lord" and convinced them to flee with him from Egypt. Yahweh chose to punish not only Egypt's pharaoh, who alone had the power to hold or release the Hebrews, he punished Egyptians far and wide, including all of the first-born there. Such was justice in the eyes of people who believed in collective guilt. And Yahweh is described as adding misery to the Egyptians in much the same manner that the goddess Innana punished Sumer for having been raped while she slept. Innana had sent three plagues against Sumer. Yahweh cast down upon the Egyptians plagues of frogs, insects, boils, hail, locusts and a disease that killed their cattle. To aid the escape of Moses and his fellow Hebrews, Yahweh opened the Red Sea to let the Hebrews pass. Then he closed it again, drowning the pharaoh and all his soldiers. This event was not corroborated by any mention in the extensive records kept by the Egyptians and known to modern historians. Nor has any mention of Moses in Egyptian writing has been found. Nor has there been found any mention of any great event involving plagues and other sufferings as described in the Old Testament -- with those wishing to believe the Old Testament account of Moses arguing that Egyptian royalty would not have wanted to admit any defeat associated with the Hebrews. Three months after leaving Egypt, Moses and his followers camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses climbed the mountain. And Yahweh told him that if he and his followers obeyed, they would be His "own possession among all the peoples." Yahweh told Moses that he would appear again in three days. And three days later, with Mount Sinai rumbling and smoking as if about to erupt, with thunder and lightening from the sky above and trumpets blaring (Exodus 19:16) Yahweh descended onto Mount Sinai and beckoned Moses to ascend the mountain. In agreement with the belief common in West Asia that nearness to the gods was the privilege of a few, Yahweh told Moses to let the priests come "near the Lord" to consecrate themselves. But he said that the others should not "break through to the Lord to gaze" because it would cause many to perish. Moses assured Yahweh. Then Yahweh delivered his Ten Commandments and numerous other laws. According to the Old Testament (Exodus 20:1-17), Yahweh commanded that Moses and his followers have no other gods, worship no idol "or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth." He commanded that they should not take His name in vain, that they should keep the Sabbath holy, that they honor their father and mother, not murder one another, nor commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, and not covet their neighbor's possessions, including wives and servants. According to the Old Testament's First Book of Kings, 6:1, Moses and his fellow Hebrews fled from Egypt 480 years before Solomon was to begin building his temple in Jerusalem. This would have placed the exodus from Egypt in 1446, around a century and a half before the rule of Ramses and during a time of no major building in Egypt. The Book of Exodus describes Moses as having come across the small kingdoms of Edom and Moab, which archaeologists believe came into being after 1300. Those believing that the Old Testament is without error cling to 1446 as the year of the exodus. Others estimate that it was under Ramses' successor, Merneptah, that the Hebrews might have managed to flee en masse from Egypt -- Merneptah having ruled from around 1224 to 1211. The mass exodus of Hebrew slaves might have occurred when Merneptah withdrew his troops from his frontier facing Canaan in preparation for a war developing on his frontier with the kingdom on his western border. . THE RISE OF ISRAEL The great migrations that pushed against the Assyrians and overran Asia Minor and the Hittites around 1200 BC also pushed on some seafaring people from the region around the Aegean Sea. These people -- described as "Sea People" by the Egyptians -- threatened Egypt during the reign of pharaoh Merneptah while he was warring with the kingdom on Egypt's western border. Egypt under Merneptah drove off these Sea People. Then around 1177 BC, in the eighth year of the reign of Merneptah's successor, Ramses III, more raids came by the sea, and Ramses III repelled the invaders, and he boasted of re-establishing Egyptian rule through Canaan as far north as the Plain of Jezreel. But by the time of pharaoh Ramses XI, who ruled from around 1100 to 1085, the Egyptian domination of Canaan had again ended, and along the southern coast of Canaan, in such towns as Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath and Gaza, were the sea peoples who had been driven away from Egypt. They were to become known as Philistines, from which the word Palestine is derived. The Philistines were literate people with a language that had been spoken in Crete, Cyprus, and the southwestern portion of Asia Minor called Caria. And the script of this language echoed the script of the Mycenaean Greeks, whose civilization was among those disrupted by the great migrations of around 1200 BC. Some have speculated that the Philistines were Greeks fleeing from the invasions that ended Mycenaean civilization. In Canaan, the Philistines mixed and probably intermarried with the Canaanites. They adopted the Canaanite language. They melded their religion with Canaanite religion and gave to their gods the names of Canaanite gods. Two of these gods were Ba'al and El. El was described on Canaanite tablets as the creator, the majestic father and the king of gods and men. Ba'al was his son and a god of life and fertility, in continual combat with the god Mot, a god of death and sterility. Ba'al was a god of the mountains, where rainstorms began. He rode the clouds. And worshipers of Ba'al saw him dying when the dry season came and vegetation disappeared, and they saw him as resurrected during the rainy season, when vegetation reappeared. In their coastal cities, the Philistines maintained some cohesion as a people, while the Hebrews remained scattered in the inland hills. The Hebrews were resisting occasional attacks by camel riding nomads from the east. Then the Philistines attempted to expand against them. The Philistines forced the Hebrew tribe of Dan to leave their home in the foothills and to migrate to the north. A legendary leader from the tribe of Dan who fought the Philistines is described in the Old Testament as Samson. The Book of Judges 16:17 describes Samson as a Nazirite. The Nazirites according to some scholars were originally a Canaanite fertility cult. Now they were a movement of holy men who worshiped Yahweh. Chapter 6 of the Book of Numbers describes the Nazirites as engaged in ecstatic frenzies and abstaining from wine, strong drink and cutting their hair. The Nazirites were zealous, and if they were strong enough they were inclined to take the lead in combating people they detested -- and they detested the Philistines for having refused circumcision. As described in the Old Testament, Samson was both a leader in the fight against the Philistines and had a weakness for Philistine women. The Book of Judges describes Samson as burning Philistine crops and killing a thousand Philistines in a place called Ramathlehi, which means with "the hill of the jawbone." Judges 15:17 describes this as the place Samson killed Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. According to the Samson legend, the Philistine woman Delilah learned from Samson that he was a Nazirite and that if his hair was cut he would lose his strength. As Samson slept, Delilah cut his hair. Here was a lesson for Yahweh worshipers about the dangers of foreign women. Having lost his strength, the Philistines overpowered Samson and gouged out his eyes. They took Samson to Gaza, bound him in chains and put him to work "as a grinder." There his hair grew back. And when the "the lords of the Philistines" assembled they had Samson brought to them so they could look upon him with amusement. Watching from the roof of the building were about 3,000 Philistine men and women. The Philistines put Samson between two pillars. Samson, according to the legend, pushed on the pillars, bringing the roof down, killing himself and all the Philistines in and on the building. Samuel, Saul, and the Rise of David The Hebrews disrupted Philistine caravans bringing goods from the desert, and the Philistines established military outposts between their cities and hills occupied by the Hebrews. Around the year 1050, the Hebrews combined their forces for the first time and confronted an army of Philistines near the Philistine outpost at Aphek -- the Philistines with iron weapons and horse drawn chariots, the Hebrews riding into battle on donkeys. As described in 1 Samuel 4:2, the Hebrews lost the battle. Hebrew elders wondered why Yahweh had allowed this, and they sent for the Ark of the Covenant so, the elders said, it would "deliver us from the power of our enemies." The ark came to the camp of the Hebrews, but it failed as the Hebrews were defeated again. The Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant and took it with them to their city, Ashdod. But, according to the Old Testament, this angered the Lord and he "ravaged and smote" the Philistines of Ashdod and its territories "with tumors." After the Hebrews had lost two battles, another Nazirite rose as leader among them. This was Samuel -- a holy man, an oracle and a soothsayer. Samuel's military units managed to remain outside Philistine control. Samuel, perhaps at the urging of Hebrew elders, arranged the making of a monarch for the Hebrews: a warrior king to better unite the Hebrews. The monarch they chose was Saul, who had been a leader in politics and religion. Saul's kingship was a common form of rule and the kind of kingship that the Canaanites had, but for the Hebrews it was a new institution. The First Book of Samuel, 9:15, described Saul as the Lord's choice. And in Chapter 10 of the First Book of Samuel, Saul is described as one of Yahweh's prophets. Saul appears to have been close to the Canaanite religion. He named one of his sons Eshbaal (meaning Ba'al exists) and another son he had named Meribaal (meaning Ba'al rewards). Also, one of Saul's Benjamite clansmen was Bealiah (which meant Yahweh is Ba'al). Saul successfully engaged the Philistines in at least three battles, which were followed by the Philistines withdrawing their garrisons from around Hebrew territory. With Saul was a former shepherd boy named David, who was attached to Saul's court as a musician and shield bearer. A Philistine named Goliath challenged Saul's army, and Goliath, according to 1 Samuel 17:4, was six cubits (nine feet) tall. David alone was unafraid of Goliath. He took up the challenge and slew Goliath. David rose in standing as a warrior and in further warfare, exceeding that of Saul. As reported in 1 Samuel 18:6,7: When David returned from killing the Philistines...the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with joy and with musical instruments. And the women sang as they played and said: "Saul has killed thousands. And David tens of thousands." According to the Old Testament, King Saul was jealous of David and tried to kill him, and David fled from Saul and his agents to a cave in the "southern wilderness," near Hebron. There, David gathered around him a band of adventurers and debtors. Already he was married to Saul's daughter, and now he took another wife -- the daughter of a local, wealthy herdsman -- that gained him more local support. And for more advantage, David allied himself with the Philistine king of Gath, Achish. At a battle beside Mount Gilboa, overlooking the Plain of Jezreel, the Philistines apparently lured Saul and his army down from the high ground, and the Philistines, with their chariots, horsemen and Canaanite allies, overwhelmed Saul's forces. Three of Saul's soldier sons were killed, and rather than be taken prisoner, Saul fell on his sword. When the Philistines found Saul, they cut off his head and posted it for display in the temple of their god, Dagon. They fastened his body to the wall at the town of Beth-shan. And the Philistines took possession of the greater part of Canaan. Saul was succeeded by his fourth son, Eshbaal, who ruled over territory that had been greatly reduced in size by the Philistines. War between the forces of David and those of Eshbaal ended with Eshbaal dead and David anointed priest-king in place of Eshbaal. From Hebron, David and his army ventured out to make his rule over Israel a reality. David captured the Amorite town of Jerusalem and various other towns. When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king of Israel, they turned against him. War broke out between the Philistines and David, and David triumphed against the Philistines, succeeding where Saul had failed. By force of arms, David expanded his rule -- while the great powers of Assyria and Egypt were too preoccupied to challenge his expansion. He conquered Edom, which extended south to the Red Sea, David gaining its mines of copper and iron. He conquered Moab, rich with cattle. He conquered Ammon, and he conquered north into Syria, to Damascus and beyond to the Euphrates River - which was the border of the Assyrian Empire. And, like other conquerors, as David conquered he took booty and demanded tribute. David's Rule -- and Tolerance in Yahweh Worship Like conquerors before him, David appealed for support among his subjects by claiming to be the agent of his god. He called himself the son of Yahweh. He acquired the trappings of a great potentate. His subjects prostrated themselves in his presence. He ruled in great splendor, including a great harem. In addition to Saul's daughter and the wife he took while at Hebron, David took wives from his conquered territories, ostensibly to help link his empire. And, enjoying his power, he took what women suited his fancy, including Bathsheba, the wife of a local neo-Hittite.note 2 And soon Bathsheba was to be the mother of David's son: a child to be named Solomon. In the Old Testament, David's rule is described as inspired by Yahweh. And David is described as bringing to Jerusalem the Ark of the Covenant and proclaiming his intention to build in Jerusalem a temple to house the ark. But like many Hebrews, David had been influenced by the religion of the Canaanites. He gave one of his sons, Beeliada, a Canaanite name. David kept in his house images of gods other than Yahweh. His "leaping and capering before the Lord" with music accompaniment, as described in chapter six of the Second Book of Samuel, was a Canaanite practice. No evidence exits that David knew of the Ten Commandments given to Moses. Doing service at David's court were a variety of peoples, including Philistines, people from Crete and neo-Hittites. And beyond the royal court more genetic blending was taking place. However much the Hebrews were already a mix of peoples, they were becoming more of a mix. During David's rule and after, non-Hebrews, among them the Amorites, were absorbed by the Hebrews. And -- like the Ubaidians and Sumerians -- the Amorites were to vanish as an identifiable people. David created what was to be called a golden age for the Hebrews. His rule benefited from the wealth taken from conquered peoples, and Israel benefited as had Egypt and Hammurabi's Babylon from a peace created by conquest. But it was a golden age that had, like other civilizations, antagonisms between rich and poor. David taxed his subjects and forced them to labor for the state. And David's subjects rebelled. According to the Old Testament, his discontented subjects were led by his own son, Absalom. The Second Book of Samuel describes a messenger reporting to David that the "hearts of the men of Israel" are with Absalom. But David crushed the rebellion, and with it the life of Absalom. King Solomon After David's death in 965, two of his sons, Solomon and Adonijah, vied with each other to succeed him. Solomon emerged as the victor, and he had Adonijah executed on the pretext that Adonijah had demanded a woman from David's harem. It was a kind of sibling rivalry common with monarchies. Like David, Solomon benefited from an era of peace and prosperity. He enjoyed alliances with his Egyptian and Phoenician neighbors. He encouraged trade and built a merchant fleet that he harbored at the Gulf of Acaba at the northeast end of the Red Sea. He acquired copper mines and built refineries for smelting metals. His ships brought goods from afar, and commerce passed through his kingdom from south, north, east and west. Solomon thought he should live as splendidly as the great king of Assyria, and to create many luxurious palaces for himself he imported the skilled craftsmen that he could not find among his subjects. According to the Old Testament, Solomon, like his father, had many wives, as many as seven hundred, including princesses from other kingdoms given to Solomon as gifts to promote good relations. And he had four hundred horses. A priest-king like his father, Solomon, according to the Old Testament, led sacrifices to the god Yahweh. To give Yahweh a home and to put Yahweh worship under his domination, Solomon had the temple constructed that his father had intended to build, a temple to be described in the Old Testament as "the House of the Lord." The temple was built on property on a hill north of Jerusalem that David had purchased, property that the Amorites had used as a huge threshing floor. The temple's design resembled the temples of other religions. It was decorated with sculptures and other works of art, and in the inner sanctum of the temple was the Ark of the Covenant. It was still a time of religious toleration among the Hebrews, and Solomon had temples built for his wives who worshiped other gods. To run his own temple in his behalf, he appointed a high priest named Zadok, the court priest who had performed religious duties for David. And Zadok became the first of a hereditary priesthood that would last for centuries to come. This was an age in which kings acted as a judge for the community, and the Old Testament describes Solomon as a judge who was wise. The First Book of Kings, 4:29, reads: Now God gave Solomon wisdom and a very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore. The Old Testament also finds fault with Solomon, fault with his love of luxury, his marrying pagans and his turning to idolatry. These later writings would describe Solomon as having enslaved his subjects. Solomon forced his subjects to work four months of every year on his projects, and, late in his reign, many of his subjects became displeased enough that they rebelled against him, as had the people of Israel against David. And like David, Solomon crushed the uprisings, while two of Solomon's vassal nations -- an Aramaean kingdom around Damascus, and Edom -- took advantage of the uprisings and broke from Solomon's rule. WRITING GENESIS Some Hebrews had learned the Canaanite language, and some of them adopted the writing of the Canaanites. This was a Phoenician language, which included words of Sumerian origin. The language that the Hebrews adopted was in later times to be called Hebrew. And in taking the Canaanite language as their own, Hebrew scribes acquired some of its poetry, and they may have borrowed from the Mesopotamian stories written in that language. The cherubim, or angels, mentioned in Genesis, Ezekiel, 2 Samuel and elsewhere in Hebrew sacred writings were known to the Canaanites. Some of what was to find its way into the Book of Proverbs matched Canaanite literature. The obligation of a man to marry the childless widow of a dead brother had been a part of the law of the Hurrians, who had influenced the Canaanites. The story in the Book of Genesis of Rachel stealing the gods of her father is similar to Hurrian custom. The Hebrew version of the story of the great flood that covered the earth had the ark grounding on Mount Ararat as did the Hurrian version of that story. The earliest known works by worshipers of Yahweh are the Book of Jashar and the Song of Deborah -- believed to have been written no sooner than the 1100s. Some believe that the Song of Deborah may have been a part of the Book of Jashar. The Book of Jashar vanished but is referred to in the Book of Joshua 10:13. The earliest Hebrew writing that archaeologists can actually date comes after 1000 BC, around the time that David acquired power. This archaeological find looks like a child's exercise in creating a calendar, the so-called Gezer Calendar, written on stone, an exercise that suggests that by now an elite among the Hebrews had acquired writing and was passing it to their children. This was writing that used a phonetic alphabet that had been used by the Phoenicians and Aramaeans. In work that remains highly controversial, scholars have separated authors whose work appears in the Old Testament -- a separation according to writing style, modes of thinking, and use of names. Four writing styles have been suggested by scholars: the Elohist, Deuteronomist, Yahwist and Priestly. Regarding different modes of thought, one contributor to the Old Testament described the Israelites as calling their god Yahweh from the time of Noah, and another contributor described Yahweh as becoming known to the Hebrews when he revealed himself to Moses. The Book of Genesis also has conflicting descriptions suggesting more than one author. note 3 The Creation described in the Book of Genesis is similar to the Creation described in the Enuma Elish: the world as a watery chaos, light coming before there were bodies that gave off light, and the heavens and earth becoming separated. The Creation described in Genesis is a poetic account that today is read as symbolism. But read literally the description of creation is compatible with the way people viewed the universe at the time that Genesis was written, when there was no awareness of hydrogen atoms trillions of years before the earth was formed; when the earth was seen as disk-like; when light and darkness were seen as different matters rather than darkness being merely the absence of light; and when rain was believed to come from waters above the atmosphere that were held back by an invisible shield. The Book of Genesis describes Yahweh as having created man (Adam) "in His own image" and Yahweh as having planted "a gar
|
