Thomas Romer - The Invention of God-Harvard University Press (2015)

THE INVENTION OF GOD
THOMAS RÖMER
T R A NSL AT ED BY
R AYMOND GEUSS
HARVARD UNIVERSIT Y PRESS

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSET TS
LONDON, ENGLAND
2015
Copyright © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First printing
Originally published in French as L'Invention de Dieu by Thomas Römer,

illustrations by Fabian Pfitzmann, copyright © Éditions du Seuil, 2014.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Römer, Thomas, 1955–
[Invention de Dieu. English]
The invention of God / Thomas Römer ; translated by Raymond Geuss.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-50497-4 (alk. paper)
1. Bible. 2. Monotheism. 3. God (Judaism) 4. Gods in the Bible. I. Title.
BS680.G57R6613 2015
296.3'11—dc23 2015012161
CONTENTS
Translator’s Note vii

System of Hebrew Transcription viii
Introduction 1
1. The God of Israel and His Name 24
2. The Geographic Origin of Yhwh 35
3. Moses and the Midianites 51
4. How Did Yhwh Become the God of Israel? 71
5. The Entrance of Yhwh into Jerusalem 86
6. The Cult of Yhwh in Israel 104
7. The Cult of Yhwh in Judah 124
8. The Statue of Yhwh in Judah 141
9. Yhwh and His Asherah 160
10. The Fall of Samaria and the Rise of Judah 173
11. The Reform of Josiah 191
12. From One God to the Only God 210
Conclusion 242
Notes 255
Index 295
T R A N S L AT O R ’ S N OT E
Names of persons and places have been standardized to those used in

the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. For those that do not
occur in the NRSV, the relevant volume of Cambridge History has been
used. All dates are BC (or BCE) except where otherwise specified. Given
that Thomas Römer often wishes to make substantive points that de-
pend on particular readings, translations are always of Römer’s French
versions of biblical texts, although I have usually consulted the King
James version and the NRSV for phrasing.
SYSTEM OF HEBREW TRANSCRIPTION
T HE CONSONANTS
Letter Name Transliteration Pronunciation
‫א‬ alef ʾ silent or glottal stop

‫ב‬ beth b /b/ or /v/
‫ג‬ gimel g /g/ (gourd)
‫ד‬ daleth d /d/
‫ה‬ he h /h/
‫ו‬ waw w /w/
‫ז‬ zayin z /z/
‫ח‬ ḥeth ḥ /ḥ/ (German Bach)
‫ט‬ ṭeth ṭ /t/
‫י‬ yod y /y/
‫כך‬ kaf k /k/ or /kh/ (kh like Bach)
‫ל‬ lamed l /l/
‫םמ‬ mem m /m/
‫נן‬ nun n /n/
‫ס‬ samekh s /s/
SYSTEM OF HEBREW TRANSCRIPTION ix
Letter Name Transliteration Pronunciation
‫ע‬ ayin ʿ voiced guttural (no English

equivalent)
‫פף‬ pe p /p/ or /f/
‫צץ‬ ṣade ṣ /ts/
‫ק‬ qof q /k/
‫ר‬ reš r /r/
‫שׁ‬ šin š /sh/
‫שׂ‬ śin ś /s/
‫ת‬ taw t /t/
THE VOWELS
Sign Name Transliteration Pronunciation
9 pataḥ a /a/ (father)

8 ḥatef pataḥ ă /a/ (father)
7 qameṣ ā /a/ (father)
7 qameṣ ḥatuf o /o/ (off )
6 ḥatef qameṣ ŏ /o/ (off )
4 segol e /e/ (end)
5 ḥatef segol ĕ /e/ (end)
‫י‬4 segol yod ê /e/ (end)
3 ṣere ē /a/ (fate)
‫י‬3 ṣere yod ê /a/ (fate)
2 ḥireq i /ee/ (meet)
ֹ ḥolem ō /o/ (zone)
1 qibbuṣ u /oo/ (boot)
‫וֹ‬ full ḥolem ô /o/ (zone)
‫וּ‬ šureq û /oo/ (boot)
0 vocal shewa ĕ /a/ (about)
INTRODUCTION
In the religious landscape of humanity, Judaism figures as

the most ancient monotheistic religion: it proclaims that there is only
one God, who is at the same time the par ticu lar god of the people of
Israel and also the God of the whole universe. This idea of a single,
unique God was then taken over and propagated throughout the world
by Christianity and Islam, each of which slightly inflects the original
conception in its own way.
When we read the Jewish and Christian Bibles1 or the Koran, we have
the impression that this God was unique since the very beginning;
after all, he is the creator of heaven and earth. Looking more closely,
though, we find texts in the Bible that admit the existence of other gods:
for instance, in the story of the conflict between a man named Jephthah,
a military leader of one of the tribes of Israel, and Sihon, the king of one
of the neighbors of Israel to the east, which is recounted in the book of
Judges. Jephthah uses a theological argument to resolve a territorial dis-
pute: “Do you not possess that which Chemosh, your god, has given into
your possession? And shall we not possess that which our God has given
into our possession?” (Judg. 11:24). Here the god of Jephthah is consid-
ered to be the tutelary deity of a tribe or people, in the same way in
which Chemosh is the tutelary god of Sihon. If we read on in the
2 THE INVENTION OF GOD
Hebrew Bible,2 we discover further curious texts. The audience for

which the book of Deuteronomy was originally written and to which it
is addressed, for instance, is often exhorted not to follow after other gods,
without it ever being asserted that these gods did not exist or were not
real. So the Bible itself retains traces of the fact that a plurality of gods
existed in the Levant, which means also in Israel, and that the god of
Israel, whose name was pronounced Yahweh or Yahu—we shall discuss
this issue in Chapter 1—was far from being the only god worshipped by
the Israelites.
The biblical narrative, however, contains other surprises. When Yah-
weh reveals himself to Moses in Egypt, he appears as a previously un-
known god. After all, he himself tells Moses that this is the first time he
has manifested himself under his real name. Is this a trace of the his-
torical fact that this god was not always the god of Israel? Why, after all,
does he reveal himself in Egypt or in the wilderness? Does he have some
special connection to these places, and if so, what connection?
On all these points the information provided by the Bible must be
supplemented from other sources: archaeological discoveries, inscrip-
tions, iconographic documents, Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian
chronicles, and so on. An examination of this documentation allows us
to retrace the path of a god who probably had his origin somewhere in the
“South,” between the Negev and Egypt. Originally he was a god of the
wilderness, of war and storms, but gradually through a series of small
steps he became the god of Israel and Jerusalem. Then eventually, after
a major catastrophe—the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah—he es-
tablished himself as the one god, creator of heaven and earth, invisible
and transcendent, who nevertheless loudly proclaimed his special rela-
tionship with Judaism. How did one god among others become God?
This is the basic, and theologically fundamental, enigma that this book
attempts to illuminate. Despite what certain theologians continue to as-
sert, it is now beyond doubt that the god of the Bible was not always
“unique,” the one-and-only God.
Our investigation will attempt to determine the origins and succes-
sive transformations of the god of Israel. To be sure, the results of our
investigation cannot be more than hypothetical, because we have at our
disposal only a handful of indirect pieces of evidence in the biblical texts
INTRODUCTION 3
themselves. Relying exclusively on this evidence can constitute a trap

that we must be careful to avoid, because the authors of the various books
of the Bible are obviously not impartial witnesses, but rather are very
keen to impose on readers their vision of history and of the god of Is-
rael. The Bible, then, must be analyzed historically without preconcep-
tion, just like any other document from antiquity. Furthermore, the
results of our analysis of biblical texts must be compared with the ar-
chaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic facts. This is the only way to
trace the career of a desert god who was originally venerated by groups
of nomads and eventually became the god with the unpronounceable
name of the Hebrew Bible.
This investigation will also break a taboo that has dominated recent
biblical studies. Since the 1970s, at least in Europe, the texts of the Pen-
tateuch, some of which had traditionally been thought to be extremely
ancient and to date back to the beginning of the first millennium, have
come to be assigned a much more recent time. For this reason we have
seen the advent of a perfectly understandable and healthy skepticism
about the historical value of these texts; they have come to be seen as
theological or ideological constructions rather than historical records.
Many parts of the Pentateuch presuppose the annihilation of the
kingdom of Judah, the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, and the
Babylonian exile in 587, and this has often been taken as a good reason
to consider it illegitimate to use these texts to trace the origins of Israel
and its god. To take this tack, however, is to ignore the fact that the nar-
ratives contained in the Pentateuch are not inventions proceeding
simply from the minds of intellectuals seated in their comfortable
chairs. Biblical literature is a literature of tradition: those who put these
traditional accounts into writing received them from others, and they
had all the freedom they needed to transform or interpret them, or to
rewrite them modifying older versions, sometimes in a very drastic way.
In most cases, however, the process of revision operated in a manner that
rested on certain archaic kernels of fact, which might perhaps have re-
ceived their definitive formulation only at a relatively late stage, but
which could still preserve “traces of memory” of events of the distant
past.3 The books of the Hebrew Bible do not bear the signature of spe-
cific authors; the anonymity and the lack of any signature of the texts
themselves confirms this. The author disappears behind the text, which
he transmits, revises, and edits.
In other words, although it is probably impossible to consider the bib-
lical narratives as objective sources, they nevertheless may conceal
within themselves references to historical facts that a historian may to
some extent be able to reconstruct. To do this, however, one must sub-
ject the texts to a critical analysis so as to extract the facts from the
surrounding mythological and ideological dross in which they are en-
cased. It seems to me, then, perfectly legitimate to reconnect to the older
tradition of historical interpretation of the Bible, which was still widely
cultivated at the start of the twentieth century whenever the question
of the origins of the god of Israel arose, but which has been relatively
neglected since the 1970s. Today we have better maps to guide us in our
quest because of the large number archaeological discoveries that have
greatly enriched our epigraphic and iconographic knowledge.
When we speak, then, of “the invention of God,” we should not
imagine either that a group of Bedouins met one day and huddled around
an oasis to create a god for themselves, or that some scribes, much later,
invented Yahweh out of whole cloth, so to speak, as their tutelary god.
Rather this “invention” should be understood as a progressive construc-
tion arising out of a particular tradition. Think of this tradition as a
series of sedimentary strata gradually laid down over the course of time,
which is then sometimes disrupted by historical events that disturb the
orderly sequence of layers, allowing something new and unexpected to
emerge. If we try, then, to understand how the discourse about this god
developed and how he eventually became the “one God,” we can observe
a kind of “collective invention,” a process in which the conception was
continually revised in the light of particular, changing social and his-
torical contexts.
Before beginning our inquiry with a discussion of the mystery of the
unpronounceable name of the god of Israel, let us briefly present the
structure and content of the Hebrew Bible, and also the way in which it
is assimilated, in different forms, by Christians as “The Old Testament.”
INTRODUCTION 5
THE HEBREW BIBLE: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
The Hebrew Bible is composed of three major parts: the Torah or Penta-
teuch (the Greek word for this collection of five books), the Prophets
(Nevi’im in Hebrew), and the Writings (Ketuvim).4 We can distinguish
two large complexes in the Torah. The first complex, the book of Gen-
esis, poses the question of origins: in this part God creates the world and
the humans (Gen. 1–3), but he is also at the origin of violence (Cain and
Abel, the Flood: Gen. 4–9) and of the diversity of languages and cultures
(Gen. 10–11). Then we have the stories of the patriarchs: Abraham (Gen.
12–25), Isaac (Gen. 26), and Jacob and his son Joseph (Gen. 27–50). These
figures are the ancestors of Israel, but not only of Israel: Abraham and
Isaac are also the forefathers of most of Israel’s neighbors. The second
major part of the Pentateuch tells the story of Moses, the liberation of
Israel from its servitude in Egypt and its sojourn in the desert on the
way to the Promised Land. Th is second part begins with the birth of
Moses and ends with his death. It comprises the whole of the four books
of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Moses has a special
status that is emphasized from the very beginning of the narrative: he is
a man who twice receives divine revelations about, among other things,
the name of the god who calls him and the meaning of this name.
The story of the patriarchs and the story of Moses and the exodus
from Egypt give the reader two different models of Jewish identity. Ac-
cording to the narrative in Genesis, Jewish identity is transmitted by bi-
ological descent: Jews are those who descend from Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob; this is why these texts are so full of genealogies. Turning to the
story of Moses, it will be noticed that the genealogies disappear. The
identity of the people of Yahweh is constituted not by their common de-
scent, but by their adherence to the Covenant between God and Israel,
of which Moses is the intermediary. This Covenant is concluded after
the liberation from bondage in Egypt, and is founded on divine stipula-
tions. The terms of these can be found in the various codes of law that
are sprinkled throughout the narratives of the sojourn of the Hebrews
in the wilderness. The difference between Genesis and the following
books is also visible in the differing way in which the deity is pre-
sented. In the first part of Genesis several texts depict a “universal”
deity, creator of the world, who later, in the story of Joseph, also
appears as the god of the Hebrews and Egyptians. In the narratives of
the Patriarchs, on the other hand, the god who appears seems often to
be the god of a clan, called the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but
also the god of Ishmael, of Esau, and of their descendants. In the story
of Moses and of the Covenant at Mount Sinai, a warrior god who mani-
fests himself in storm, fire, and thunder concludes a contract with his
people and promises to help them conquer a land. The actual conquest
of the Promised Land under the aegis of this violent god is recounted
in the book of Joshua. When Yahweh commissions Moses in the book
of Exodus, he promises him that he would lead the people into a land
“where milk and honey flows.” Nevertheless, at the end of the Penta-
teuch Moses dies outside the Promised Land. The Pentateuch thus ends
with the nonfulfillment of the promise.
The second part of the Hebrew Bible, called “The Prophets,” takes up
again the narrative thread and recounts—in the books of Joshua, Judges,
Samuel, and Kings—the story of Israel, starting with the military con-
quest of the land under the divinely ordained war chief, Joshua, pro-
ceeding, after a time of charismatic leaders (related in the book of
Judges), to the establishment of the unified kingdom under Saul, David,
and Solomon, and concluding with the fall of the kingdom of Judah and
the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 (related in the books of Samuel and
Kings). These books, which end with the sudden and complete destruc-
tion of the kingdom of Judah and all its political institutions, are fol-
lowed by the collection of prophetic books, in the proper sense of
the word;5 they are intended to allow the reader to understand better
the reasons for the catastrophe, which, according to the prophets, came
about because the people and its leaders rejected God’s demands for jus-
tice in the land and exclusive worship of him. So it is the god of Israel
himself who is the cause of the military defeats of his people, on whom
he imposes sanctions, just as he imposes them on their leaders, when
they fail to respect his commandments. At the same time these books
also contain promises of renewal, either of a restoration of the Davidic
Kingdom or of some more general, if unspecified, salvation to come.
The “Writings,” which make up the third part of the Hebrew Bible, are
a collection of books in a variety of different literary genres, particularly
INTRODUCTION 7
texts containing reflections on the human condition and on man’s often

difficult relation to god. The book of Psalms, which comes first in the
collection in most manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, contains hymns of
praise, but also what are essentially individual and collective lamenta-
tions, like those in the book entitled “Lamentations,” which specifically
recalls and mourns the destruction of Jerusalem. The “Song of Songs,”
a collection of erotic poems, also has its place in this third part of the
Hebrew Bible. Two further books have women as heroes. The book of
Ruth tells the story of a foreign woman from the land of Moab who
marries one of the ancestors of King David. The book of Esther recounts
how a young Judean woman intervened successfully with the Persian
King to save her uncle and her people from false accusations. The book
of Job tells of how a rich landowner revolted against a god whom he
found incomprehensible and draws the conclusion that the doctrine of
retribution that figures in some passages of the book of Proverbs—”the
wicked man shall be punished; the just man, however, will have a happy
life”—is at any rate not valuable as a description of what happens in
our world. Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth), the first Jewish philosopher, comes
to the same conclusion. He insists that God is inaccessible to us, and he
calls on man to recognize and accept his limits. One also finds among
the “Writings” the book of Daniel, which paints a picture of the final
judgment of the world by God at the end of time. The books of Chronicles
propose a new version of the history of the monarchy that was already
recounted in the books of Samuel and Kings. This narrative is continued
in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which tell the story of the return of
the exiles in the Persian period and the promulgation of the law of god
in Jerusalem. In most manuscripts this chronological order is violated
and the books of Chronicles are placed at the very end. Thus, the He-
brew Bible ends with the appeal of the Persian king to all the exiles from
Judea to return to Jerusalem and construct the “New Jerusalem.”6
It is often said that the Bible is a “library” in itself, because the word
“bible” derives from what is in effect a Greek plural “biblia,” books. The
original process in which the texts were written down, the redaction and
revision of those texts, and the collection of the different books in the
three parts constitute a process that extends over more than 500 years.
The various biblical texts emerged into the light of day in different
historical contexts; each text or revision of a text attempts to respond to

its own context while maintaining the memory of older traditions.
It is not possible here to enter into the exceedingly complex and com-
plicated question of the dating of each of the components of the Bible.
Suffice it to say that, along with most European scholars, we think it is
no longer possible to accept the “documentary theory,” which explained
the genesis of the Pentateuch by reference to the purported integration
into one narrative of four successive and parallel documents, the ear-
liest of which was thought to date from the period of King Solomon and
the latest from the Persian era.7 This view, unfortunately, continues to
flourish, especially in works addressed to a nonscholarly audience. The
model for the formation of the Pentateuch that we use retains from the
old theory of documents the date of the first version of Deuteronomy,
approximately 620, and also the assumption that there existed a priestly
narrative and ritual texts. It is possible that the oldest traditions in the
Pentateuch (about Jacob, Moses, and later Abraham) had been written
down sometime around the eighth century.
Recall that no book, or more exactly no scroll, of the Bible was de-
finitively formulated in one fell swoop. Papyrus and vellum are not du-
rable materials, and scrolls or sheets were therefore easily legible only
for a limited time. Their content, therefore, had to be recopied every few
decades on new scrolls or sheets. Each time recopying took place, it was
possible to add or suppress material, or to introduce modifications in
the text. The scroll containing Deuteronomy, for instance, went through
numerous editions from the end of the seventh to the fift h century. The
prophetic books also have a complex history of redaction, and many of
the texts we now find in these books derive not from the “historical”
prophet in question but from more recent editors. They received their
present form only in the Hellenistic period. The same observation
applies to the Psalms and other texts. This investigation will take account
of recent scholarship on the date and formation of the different parts of
the Bible texts, without entering into the details of this discussion. How-
ever, the reader should find in this work all the information necessary
to understand how these texts were used to reconstruct the different
historical situations that had such an important influence on the career
of the god Yahweh.
INTRODUCTION 9
To facilitate understanding of what follows, it is perhaps useful to give

the reader some explanation of the terms that will be used and also to
outline the main events in the history of the Levant from the end of the
second millennium to the Hellenistic era.8
TERMINOLOGY
The term “Israel” has a number of different meanings. About 1210 it ap-
pears in an Egyptian inscription referring to a relatively important group
(or tribe?) living in the mountains of Ephraim. Between the tenth cen-
tury and 722 it designates a kingdom whose capital is Samaria and that
includes neither Jerusalem nor any other territory in southern Palestine.
This Israel is also mentioned in Assyrian and other texts. Scholars also
call this kingdom “the kingdom of the north.” After the Assyrians had
eradicated this kingdom, the name Israel came to be a theological term
designating all those who venerated the god of Israel.
The name “Judah” is first applied to a region (also called “Judea”)
and to a tribe, then later to the “kingdom of the south” with its capital
at Jerusalem, ruled until 587 by kings claiming descent from the line
of David. After the destruction of this kingdom by the Babylonians and
its disappearance as an independent political entity, “Judah” or “Yehud”
becomes the name of a province that is part of the Persian Empire, and
then of various Hellenistic kingdoms.
We cannot speak of “Jews” or “Judaism” before the end of the Persian
era, or even before the Hellenistic period, because it is only toward the
end of the fourth century that we find a religious system in place that is
at all like what one designates today as “Judaism.” So it is better to avoid
using the terms “Jew” and “Judaism” for the earlier periods, but instead
to speak of “Israelite” or “Judean.”
The name “Canaan” occurs in texts from Egypt and Mari and then is
often used in the Bible in a rather vague way to speak of the territory that
encompasses most of Syria-Palestine west of the Jordan. In the Bible this
name appears sometimes in a neutral way as a geographic term, but some-
times, as when speaking of the “Canaanites,” meaning the indigenous
population of the Promised Land, with a distinct pejorative connotation.
The term “Hebrew” appears in the Bible as an archaic name for the
Israelites or Judahites, then for the Jews. The relation of this word to the
term ̒ apiru, a sociological term used in various Egyptian, Hittite, and
other texts of the second millennium to refer to marginal populations,
has been subject to much debate.9 In most of the biblical texts in which
the term “Hebrew” occurs—in the books of Exodus and Samuel—it is
applied by other populations to describe the Israelites. When it be-
comes current in the last centuries before the Christian era, it is used as
an archaizing name for the Jews, and this is the way it is employed in
the rabbinical literature and the New Testament.
FROM THE ORIGINS OF ISRAEL

TO THE HELLENISTIC ERA
The history of Israel and Judah unfolds in the geographic context of the
Levant, corresponding to the present-day countries of Israel/Palestine,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Throughout its history this region was much
coveted by the surrounding empires and was often controlled by them,
first by the Egyptians in the second millennium, then by the Assyrians,
the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans in the first
millennium. Geographically and politically the history of the Levant is
intrinsically tied to that of the “Fertile Crescent,” an expression refer-
ring to the fertile territory with ample rainfall that stretches from Mes-
opotamia (present-day Iraq and Iran) to Egypt, including the areas
around the Tigris and Euphrates.
It is interesting to note that from the very beginning the biblical nar-
rative tells of the travels of the patriarch Abraham throughout the
whole of the Fertile Crescent. His family originally leaves from the city
of Ur and then settles in Harran in Syria; from there Abraham wanders
through the land of Canaan, stopping at strategic places such as Schechem
and Bethel, then going down into the Negev to the south, and from
there finally to Egypt (Gen. 11–12). Geographically this covers the whole
of the Fertile Crescent; historically the territories Abraham visits are
places where in the Persian era (fift h and fourth centuries) there were
existing populations of Judean exiles or émigrés. This example shows
INTRODUCTION 11
M AC E D ON IA
Hattusa
GREECE
M I TA N N I
Mycenae C I L IC IA Nineveh
ASSY R IA
Ebla Assur
Ugarit
Mari
AKKAD
Damascus
Tyre Babylon
ELAM
Ur
Gaza
Memphis
Tayma
EGYPT
El Amarna
Thebes
The ancient Near East
that it would be wrong to read the texts of the Pentateuch as historical

records; they were written much later than the time they purport to
depict.
Books on the history of ancient Israel that are addressed to an aca-
demic audience or even simply to educated general readers almost all
follow the biblical chronology: the Patriarchs, Moses, and the exodus,
the conquest of the Promised Land, the era of the Judges, the unified
kingdom of David and Solomon, the two Kingdoms of Israel and Judah
up to the fall of Samaria in 722, the kingdom of Judah up to its destruc-
tion in 587, and finally the restoration of Jerusalem and Judah in the
Persian era. Nowadays we know with certainty that the stories of the
Patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, and the conquest of the Promised
Land, and also the stories from the era of the Judges, do not reflect suc-
cessive, datable periods. They are rather legends or myths of origin that
were arranged in a chronological order after the fact. To reconstruct the
history of Israel and Judah, we need to start from the facts, all the facts at
our disposal, and that means starting from the findings of archaeology.
The archaeology of the Levant has made enormous progress during
the past fift y years. In particular, it has emancipated itself from the yoke
of a “biblical archaeology” that was dominant for a long time, especially
in certain very conservative “Bible-oriented” circles where it was con-
ducted with the explicit aim of proving that whatever the Bible said was
true. The archaeology of Israel/Palestine, such as that practiced by the
new generation of scholars—Israel Finkelstein, Oded Lipschits, Aren
Maeir, and many others—insists on the autonomy of archaeology.10 It
cannot be simply an auxiliary discipline that is mobilized when needed
to legitimize one or another religious or political opinion. Thanks to the
work of archaeologists, we now have available a large number of inscrip-
tions and other written documents and also a significant amount of
iconographic material (seals, statuettes, ostraca, and so on) that are of
great importance for the historian.
As far as the use of biblical material in the reconstruction of the his-
tory of Israel and Judah is concerned, there have been polemic exchanges
for a number of years now between “maximalists,” who take the Bible
to be right until proven irrefutably wrong, and “minimalists,” for whom
the Biblical narrative has no cognitive standing as a source for recon-
structing the history of the period embracing the end of the second and
the first half of the first millennia. The most the “minimalists” will grant
is that the Bible gives us access to the ideological positions of certain
currents of Judaism as they evolved at the end of the Persian era and the
beginning of Hellenistic times. Each of these two positions is difficult
to maintain. The maximalist violates basic methodological principles of
historical research; the minimalist neglects the fact that no matter how
ideological the biblical texts are, they might nevertheless contain traces
of historical events and of earlier traditions.11
Putting things in archaeological context, the beginnings of the his-
tory of Israel in the thirteenth century fall into the time of transition
from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age.12 In the middle of the second mil-
lennium the Levant was controlled by Egypt. It was orga nized politi-
cally into city-states whose minor kings were vassals of the pharaoh.
There also existed some groups with minimal integration, notably the
INTRODUCTION 13
̒ apiru, who lived on the margins of the political system, in conflict with
one or the other of the minor Canaanite kings or chiefs or serving as
potential forced laborers for the Egyptians. Egyptian texts also mention
“shasu” (šзśw) nomads, and they sometimes use the term Yhw(з) to
characterize them. Scholars have often tried to connect this term—
probably a toponym—with the name Yahweh (Yahua?), which was to
become the name of the god of Israel.
The end of the thirteenth century was marked by upheavals during
which the city-states collapsed. New populations, “people of the sea”
arriving from the Aegean Sea or from Anatolia, the Philistines as the
Bible and we call them, established themselves on the southern coast of
Canaan in cities like Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Ekron. Their material
culture was markedly different from that of the other inhabitants of the
land, but they assimilated themselves quickly.13 Whereas most of the
cities of the Late Bronze Age suffered depopulation, the mountainous
zone of Ephraim and Judah experienced a notable increase in its popu-
lation. This is the context within which we fi nd the first traces of the
genesis of the “Israel” that is mentioned in about 1210 on the victory stele
of Pharaoh Merneptah. This “Israel” must have been a quite powerful
grouping, because the Egyptian king thinks it worth mentioning among
the people he boasts of having conquered. Although he proclaims that
he has put an end to Israel, in fact that entity was about to embark on a
course of growth and development. Its origins do not lie, as the book of
Joshua claims, in the military conquest of a territory by a population in-
vading from somewhere else; rather “Israel” resulted from a slow process
that took place gradually within the framework of the global upheavals of
the Late Bronze Age—that is, it had its origin in indigenous populations.
The opposition we find in the Bible between “Israelites” and “Canaanites”
was in no way based on an existing ethnic difference, but is a much later
theoretical construction in the ser vice of a segregationist ideology.
“Israel” is in the fi rst instance a kind of clan or tribal confederation,
joining together groups that probably thought they already belonged to
the same ethnic grouping. This is suggested, for instance, by the virtual
absence of the raising of pork for consumption, and by a distinct material
culture. However, the idea that Israel before the monarchy was composed
of twelve tribes is an invention of the biblical authors of the Persian and
Hellenistic periods, when this idea came to play an important role in at-
tempts to affirm the religious unity of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.
At the beginning of the first millennium in the whole of the Levant
there gradually came into being an exchange economy that replaced the
previously existing subsistence economy. This transformation was ac-
companied by a parallel development in the forms of political organi-
zation, which tended in the direction of monarchy. One can observe this
phenomenon, for instance, not only west of the Jordan but also to the
east in the creation of the kingdoms of Moab and Ammon.
The biblical narrative in the books of Samuel centers the story of the
origins of the monarchy around three exemplary figures: Saul, David,
and Solomon. This is mostly legendary material, but the narrative does
contain some traces of historical events. Saul, who is presented as the
first king of Israel, was able to resist Philistine domination and to create
in the territory of Benjamin and the mountains of Ephraim a kind of
state structure of which he was the head. David, who is represented as
having been in conflict with Saul, seems to have been a vassal of the Phi-
listines, who perhaps supported him in his conflict with Saul. In any
event, the Philistines tolerated the creation of a kingdom under David
located in Judah, first in Hebron, then in Jerusalem, and in competition
with that of Saul. According to the narratives of the books of Samuel
and Kings, which are partly taken up again in Chronicles, David and
his son Solomon were said to have reigned over a “united kingdom” with
a huge territory extending “from Egypt to the Euphrates.” This claim is
the result of an ideological choice made by the editors of the Bible, who
wished to show that Israel (the north) and Judah (the south) had in the
beginning been united in a single kingdom. The large building works at
Megiddo, Hazor, and elsewhere that have been attributed to King Sol-
omon, probably date to a period a century later than his death and are
the work of King Omri.
It is in the north that we find the development of something like a
significant “state,” which under Omri made the town of Samaria its
capital. In the south, in contrast, the political entity was much more
modest; estimates of the population of the south put it at about 10 per-
cent of that of the north. Jerusalem at this period was a small agglom-
eration that Pharaoh Sheshonq does not even deign to mention in the
INTRODUCTION 15
list of his military exploits after his campaign of ca. 930 in the region.
For more than two centuries Judah lived in the shadow of Israel, and
was probably often its vassal.
The historiography of the Bible, however, particularly in the books of
Samuel and Kings, has been edited from the perspective of the south and
presents the north and its kings in a negative light, accusing them of
worshipping gods other than the god of Israel and of establishing sanc-
tuaries that competed with Jerusalem.
In the ninth century under the Omrides,14 Israel became a powerful
presence among the kingdoms of the Levant, as is shown by the nu-
merous building projects these kings undertook, especially the con-
struction of the city of Samaria. The power of the Omrides extended all
the way to Transjordan and brought about conflicts with the kingdom
of Moab, as is attested by the stele of Mesha, which reports a quarrel
between Israel and Moab from the perspective of the king of Moab.
Omri and his successors pursued a policy of rapprochement with Phoe-
nicia. Th is is why the editors of the books of Kings accuse them of
worshipping a god named “Baal.” The editors of the biblical text hold
this transgression to have been the cause of the end of the Omrid dy-
nasty. According to a stele with an inscription in Aramaic found in Tel
Dan at the sources of the Jordan, Hazael, the king of Damascus, who
ordered the stele to be inscribed, is said to have triumphed over a co-
alition of Israel and Judah and to have defeated Israel and the “House
of David.”15
The books of Kings present the end of the Omrid dynasty as the
result of a coup led by of one of its generals, Jehu, to whom the editors
attribute a religious motivation: he is presented as being a fervent wor-
shipper of the god of Israel and an opponent of the cult of Baal. Histori-
cally speaking, Jehu was a weak king and the defeats he suffered at the
hands of the Aramaeans are attributed by the editors to his prede-
cessor, the Omrid Joram. Jehu became in fact a vassal of the Assyrians,
who, starting in the second half of the ninth century, were beginning
to try to control the Levant. In 853 a coalition between Israel and the
Aramaeans of Damascus succeeded in pushing back the Assyrian king
Salmanasar III at the battle of Qarqar, but the following decades and
the whole of the eighth century are definitively marked by the hegemony
Tyre
Dan
PHOE N IC IA
ARAM
Hazor DAMASCUS
Dor Megiddo
Samaria
Shechem
ISRAEL
Gezer Bethel
AMMON
Ashdod Jerusalem
Lachish
Hebron
PH I L I ST IA JUDAH MOAB
Beersheba
N
0 20 km
The kingdoms of Israel
and of Judah
of Assyria, which leaves numerous traces in the text of the Bible. An

obelisk of the Assyrian king Salmanasar III shows a king prostrate be-
fore Salmanasar with the legend “the tribute of Jehu, son of Omri.”16
The kingdom of Israel had another period of prosperity under the
reign of Jeroboam II (about 787–747),17 who accepted Assyrian hegemony
and acted as a loyal vassal. The well-off became even more prosperous
thanks to the increasing production of olive oil, but this kind of proto-
capitalism also brought with it a pauperization of those who were less
well off. Prophets such as Hosea and Amos denounced this turn of
events. In addition, Hosea conducted a polemic against the “calves” of
Samaria and Bethel, which strongly suggests that the titular deity of
INTRODUCTION 17
Israel was worshipped there in bovine form. It is possible that certain

traditions reported in the Bible, such as the story of Jacob (who was
later to become the ancestor of Israel) and the story of the exodus,
were first put in a written form in the sanctuary of Bethel during the
reign of Jeroboam II.18
After the reign of Jeroboam, the decline of the kingdom of Israel set
in. Around 734 a coalition of Levantine kingdoms led by Damascus and
Israel tried to force the king of Judah, Ahaz, to join a revolt against the
Assyrians. There are traces of this in various biblical texts. Ahaz, how-
ever, on the advice of the prophet Isaiah, sought protection from the As-
syrian king Tiglath-Pileser III, whose vassal he became. Tiglath-Pileser III
was easily able to defeat the Aramaeans and Israelites and truncated
both their kingdoms drastically. In 727 the last king of Israel, Hosea,
sought an alliance with Egypt, thereby provoking a military expedi-
tion by Salmanaser V against Israel and the fall of Samaria in 722. The
kingdom of Israel was divided up into four Assyrian provinces, and up
to 20 percent of the total population was deported, with other popula-
tions being settled in the territory of the former kingdom. This “mixed”
population is the distant ancestor of the Samaritans. We know almost
nothing about the situation in this region until the Persian era, except
that the cult of the god of Israel continued.19
For the kingdom of Judah, which continued to exist as a vassal of the
Assyrians, the fall of Samaria meant a rise in its status and especially in
the development of Jerusalem, which up to that time had been a rather
modest settlement. Its urban space increased significantly toward the
end of the eighth century and it became a genuine capital. This growth
was at least partly due to the influx of refugees from the former kingdom
of Israel. It was also during this period that traditions from the north
(Jacob, Exodus, Hosea, the narratives about the prophets Elijah and
Elisha and others) arrived in Judah, where they were revised from a
Judean perspective. The rise of Jerusalem began under King Hezekiah,
to whom the Bible attributes a number of public works that are attested
by archaeology, such as the famous tunnel at Shiloh, which contains the
first known monumental Judean inscription.20 We must assume that the
beginnings of systematic literary activity are also to be dated to this
period.21 Hezekiah’s policies toward the Assyrians were so reckless that
the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, eventually launched a military expedi-

tion against the kingdom of Judah, took Lachish, its second city, and re-
duced its territory massively. In 701, however, the Assyrians interrupted
their siege of Jerusalem and withdrew, for reasons that are unclear. This
event gave rise to the idea of the inviolability of Zion, the mountain on
which the Temple of Jerusalem is located. The inhabitants of Jerusalem
saw in it the proof that their god would protect his city against his
enemies.
Under Manasseh, a loyal vassal of the Assyrians, Judah became pros-
perous again and recovered parts of its lost territory. Although Manasseh’s
reign lasted more than fift y years (ca. 698–642), the editors of the books
of Kings devote only a few lines to him, in which they particularly de-
plore his impiety. However, he seems to have governed wisely and to
have allowed Judah to enjoy its last period of stable life.
When King Josiah (640–609) acceded to the throne, according to the
biblical narrative at eight years of age, the Assyrian empire had begun
to grow weaker because of the resurgence of Babylon. During the second
half of Josiah’s reign, the king and his counselors took advantage of this
power vacuum to put in place a policy of centralization in accord with
the new status of Jerusalem. The Temple of Jerusalem was proclaimed
the sole legitimate sanctuary of the god of Israel. The historicity of the
narrative found in 2 Kings 22–23 cannot be immediately confirmed, but
it asserts that Josiah removed all the Assyrian religious objects from the
Temple of Jerusalem and also destroyed the symbols of Asherah, a god-
dess associated with the titular god of Judah, and that he annexed a part
of the former kingdom of Israel.
The books of Kings claim that Josiah’s innovations in the spheres of
religion and politics were undertaken because of the discovery of a book
in the Temple. This story is probably a traditional literary conceit; how-
ever, it is highly likely that Deuteronomy, which is what this book found
in the Temple has always been assumed to have been, was in fact com-
posed in its original form in order to legitimize the policy of central-
ization and of monolatry, the exclusive worship of the god of Judah/
Israel. The idea of centralization prepares the way for establishing one
of the main pillars of what was later to become Judaism: the centrality
of Jerusalem and its temple. It is to the reign of Josiah that we must
INTRODUCTION 19
also look for the literary origins of some other texts, such as the nar-
ratives of the conquest of Canaan that make up the first part of the book
of Joshua; these are probably intended to legitimize Josiah’s expansionist
policies. The scribes of Josiah also wrote a history of the two kingdoms
to show that Josiah was a kind of new David. No doubt they also com-
posed a written “biography” of Moses and set down other traditions in
writing, too.
The origin of a large part of that literature, which was later to become
the Bible, lies, that is, in the Assyrian period. The significance of much
of this writing is restricted to a milieu of “intellectuals”—to the palace
and the temple. In the Judean countryside at the sanctuary of Hebron,
they will also have told stories about episodes from the life of the patri-
arch Abraham in a religious context that differed significantly from that
which was dominant in the palace of Jerusalem. The story of Abraham,
after all, is not an appropriate vehicle for a segregationist ideology,
because it insists on the fact that the patriarch was also related to Lot,
the ancestor of the Moabites and the Ammonites, and was the father of
Ishmael, the ancestor of the semi-nomadic peoples of the desert south-
east of Judah.
Josiah died in 609 while preparing for a confrontation with Egypt,
and this is the beginning of the decline of the kingdom of Judah. It even-
tually fell to the Babylonians, who from 605 on were beginning to make
themselves masters of the Near East. Numerous revolts by the kings of
Judah were the cause of the first fall of Jerusalem in 597: King Jehoiachin
avoided the destruction of the city only by opening its gates. He and his
court were deported to Babylon together with his high officials and ar-
tisans. A Babylonian document mentions the rations provided for King
Jehoiachin, prisoner of the king of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar II
then installed Zedekiah as Jehoiachin’s successor, but he too eventu-
ally joined an anti-Babylonian coalition. The book of Jeremiah contains
narratives and oracles that reflect the chaotic situation in Jerusalem in
the years immediately preceding its second fall.
In 587 the Babylonians took Jerusalem, destroyed the city and temple,
and decided to initiate a second wave of deportations. They installed
Gedaliah as governor at Mizpah in the territory of Benjamin. Archae-
ology shows traces of severe destruction at this time in the territory of
Judah and a significant reduction in its population. In contrast, the

territory of Benjamin seems to have suffered much less in this period.
In 582 Gedaliah was assassinated by a group bent on reestablishing in-
dependence, and according to the book of Jeremiah this event set off a
third wave of deportations and the flight of some of the inhabitants of
Judah to Egypt around 582. So toward the end of the sixth century there
are three centers with a significant Judean presence: Benjamin and Judah,
Babylonia, and Egypt (especially the Delta and Elephantine). In contrast
to the Assyrians, the Babylonians allowed the exiles to live together in
colonies and to form recognizable groups.
These various groups of exiles composed of members of the Judean
elite were to play an important role in the production of a certain number
of scrolls, which were in turn the ancestors of what would become the
Pentateuch and the prophetic books. The destruction of Jerusalem by the
Babylonians in 587 provoked an ideological crisis for these intellectuals.
The pillars on which the identity of any ancient Near Eastern people
would have rested—the king, the temple, the national god, and the land
itself—had been destroyed. So it was necessary to find new foundations
for the identity of a population deprived of its traditional institutions. It
is in this context that we should view the various responses to this crisis
that are contained in the “Deuteronomistic history,” the books of the
Bible starting from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings. The intention in this his-
tory was to show that the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation
of part of its population were not due to the weakness of the god of Is-
rael compared with the gods of Babylon. On the contrary, it was the god
of Israel himself who was making use of the Babylonians to chastise his
people and their kings for not having upheld the terms of his “covenant”
with them, terms formulated explicitly in Deuteronomy itself. Some
author or authors from the entourage of a group of priests eventually
composed a “history of origins” (often called the “priestly document”),
which is to be found especially in the books of Genesis, Exodus, and
Leviticus and which insists that all the characteristic national rituals
and institutions were revealed before the entry into Canaan and before
the monarchy, so that the monarchy is not really indispensable. For the
priestly authors, all the rituals that will come to define Judaism in the
Persian and Hellenistic periods (circumcision, Passover, the alimentary
INTRODUCTION 21
rituals and laws) were given by Moses in the desert even before there was
an established form of political organization. These two literary com-
plexes, the Deuteronomistic and the priestly narratives, prepare in a cer-
tain sense the way for monotheism, because they both affirm—each in
its own different way—the unity of the god of Israel.
In 539 the Persian king Cyrus took the city of Babylon, putting an end
to the Babylonian Empire. His religious policy was “liberal” in that he
permitted the reconstruction of destroyed temples and allowed deported
populations to return to their respective countries. Cyrus is celebrated
as the “Messiah” sent by the god of Israel in texts that are appended to
the scroll of the oracles of the prophet Isaiah, which are often called
“Deutero-Isaiah.”22 The Persians granted the Judean community the
same cultural and religious autonomy they accorded to other peoples
who were integrated into the empire. The Temple of Jerusalem was
rebuilt at the end of the sixth or the beginning of the fift h century, and
it is under the influence of the Golah, the Judean exiles in Babylon who
returned to Judea, that a quasi-theocratic temple-centered organization
of political and religious life was put in place. Many of the Judean exiles
preferred to remain in Babylon, and various documents found there
indicate that these Judeans belonged to the comfortable strata of that
city and were fully integrated into its life. Until the arrival of Islam,
Babylon was to remain an intellectual center of Judaism, as is indicated
by the Babylonian Talmud. In the same way the strong Judean presence
in Egypt was in no way diminished. Thus Judaism from its very birth
was a religion of the diaspora, and was to continue to develop as such
during the Hellenistic era around the whole of the Mediterranean
basin.
Between 400 and 350 a compilation was made of different writings
into a proto-Pentateuch, which became the founding document of na-
scent Judaism, but also for the Samaritans, whose central sanctuary was
located after the fift h century on Mount Gerizim. The biblical narrative
that reflects the consolidation of these diverse documents can be found
in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which present in an artificially
exaggerated way the hostility between Judeans and Samaritans and
which also insist on the positive and benevolent attitude of the Persians
toward the promulgation of the Law in Jerusalem.
In 332 Palestine was conquered by Alexander, who put an end to the

Persian Empire. After his death, war broke out between his successors,
and Palestine fell first under the control of the Ptolemies (or Lagides)
who governed Egypt, then under that of the Seleucids who ruled Syria.
This change, however, at first hardly affected the Jews. During the third
century, Judea experienced an economic upswing which benefited the
aristocrats in Jerusalem and the already well-off urban class. This was
also the time of frequent contacts between Greeks and Jews, and the Jews
living in Egypt adopted the Greek language as their own.
About 270, or somewhat later, the Pentateuch was translated into
Greek, and during the third century an abundant literature was pro-
duced. Some of these texts, such as the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes,
Esther, and so on, later entered the canon, but others, such as the book
of Enoch, did not.
T HE N AT URE OF T HE INQUIRY
Our inquiry about the god of Israel will cover about a thousand years of
history, from the end of the second millennium before the Christian era
up until the Hellenistic era. Initially we shall try to clarify the question
of the meaning of his name, which we shall cite in its transcribed form
using consonants alone as Yhwh. We will proceed by looking at the at-
tested forms of this name outside the Bible and by considering the ques-
tion of the geographic origin of the name. There are a number of signs
that point “to the south”—in the fi rst instance toward Egypt, where
there were nomads who apparently worshipped a deity by the name of
“Yahwa,” which is perhaps the name of a deified mountain. Then we
shall examine the curious tradition about a sojourn by Moses among
the Midianites, during which Yhwh presents himself to Moses. But how
did this god become the god “of Israel”? When did he acquire the status
of divine protector of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah? Was he wor-
shipped in those two places in the same way? How did he come to es-
tablish himself in the Temple of Jerusalem? Was he there alone, or did he
coexist there with other gods? Was he invisible from the start, as the
editors of the Bible assert, or were there representations of Yhwh? Did
INTRODUCTION 23
he have a wife? A mono-idolatrous cult came progressively to be de-

voted to him, but through what process and in reaction to which events
was this cult established, and how did it become dominant?
By responding to these questions we shall try to come to an under-
standing of how monotheism came to be invented, and in what way it
was able to integrate the polytheistic roots out of which it arose and of
which it preserves the legacy.
1
THE GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS NAME
If we look at translations of the Bible in English and other lan-

guages, we find various expressions used for the god of Israel, such as
“the LORD,” “The Eternal One,” or, in certain Catholic Bibles, “Yahweh.”
Does God then have a name? And why is there a prohibition in Judaism
about pronouncing his name? In order to clarify this question and ex-
plain why, in what follows, we use the transliteration Yhwh to designate
the god of Israel, we must start our story at its end, at the point in time
when the Hebrew Bible did already exist as a collection of “holy” books.
This anticipation will allow us to answer a question that might appear
to be merely technical but is actually also extremely important, the ques-
tion of the name of God, a question that has left a profound mark on
Judaism, and subsequently on Christianity and Islam.
THE ENIGMA OF THE NAME OF GOD
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Both the He-
brew and the Christian Bibles open with this well-known statement. In
the first chapter of Genesis, “god” has no proper name. This might seem
completely unsurprising if we assume that the Bible is a monotheistic
book. If there is only one god, why would he need a proper name?
THE GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS NAME 25
Upon closer inspection, however, we encounter our first surprise. The

Hebrew word that is translated as “god”—ʾĕlōhîm—has a plural ending
and could also be translated as “(the) gods.” One god or several gods?
The same word may express both the singular and the plural, and only
the form of the verb indicates which is intended. This ambiguity may
perhaps be intended to prevent us from making a firm decision on one
of these possibilities to the exclusion of the other. Could the author per-
haps be suggesting that the one god subsumes in himself a diversity of
gods?
If we move on to the second narrative in Genesis, which relates only
the creation of the first human couple and of animals, the translators
propose various further ways of designating god. In most Catholic
Bibles and also in some Protestant ones, the narrative relates what
“the LORD” did. In other Bibles this becomes a narrative about what
“The Eternal One” did, and still others speak about a god called “Jehova.”
Although this is not at all evident from the translations themselves,
these terms are in fact renderings of the same proper name, the precise
pronunciation of which is a mystery to us. Why?
When scribes began to write down the texts that, much later, were to
be put together to form the Bible, they wrote only consonants, just as is
the case today in modern Hebrew or Arabic, languages with purely
consonantal alphabets. In versions consisting only of consonants, the
proper name of the god who appears in Genesis 2 and then very fre-
quently in subsequent passages is written “Y-H-W-H,” and these four
letters are the origin of the term “tetragrammaton,” which is used to
refer to the name of the god of Israel. Only much later, between the third
and tenth centuries of the Christian era, did learned Jews called the
“Masoretes” (an Aramaic word meaning “guardians”) elaborate systems
of vocalization to ensure the correct pronunciation of the sacred texts.
Finally one of these systems—that developed by the family Ben Asher—
succeeded in establishing itself as the standard one.
This is how scribes came into possession of a system with sufficient
sophistication to allow them to add appropriate vowels to the words
in a given text, of which only the consonants had initially been written
down.1 To illustrate this procedure, imagine an English word written
gllws. We would easily recognize that this word was “gallows,” and so
we could represent what the Masoretes did as adding vowels like this:
ga llows. A written expression like fclt could be vocalized in at least two

different ways: facult y or facilit y. In certain cases like this, therefore, the
Masoretes had to make a decision about the meaning they wished to
attribute to the word or phrase. For the proper name of the god of Israel
they encountered a problem: starting in the third century, Judaism had
begun to prescribe that the name was no longer to be pronounced. This
prohibition is already attested in the translation of the Pentateuch
(the first five books of the Bible) into Greek, where one finds in place of
the tetragrammaton Yhwh either the word theós (“god”) or in most
cases kúrios (“lord”).
There are several reasons for this prohibition. Within the framework
of a monotheistic view it is inappropriate for the one god to have a proper
name, because if he had one, this might suggest that there was some
need to distinguish him from other gods. Of course, it was also thought
important to discourage magical practices in which the name of God
might be used. One of the Ten Commandments in fact demands, “Thou
shalt not take the name of thy god in vain,” which can be interpreted as
placing an interdict on the magical invocation of God.
It seems clear that this prohibition of pronouncing God’s name was
imposed gradually but progressively. In the Mishna, the collection of
rabbinical interpretative texts from the first and second centuries of the
Christian era, we find the idea that the high priest may pronounce the
divine name on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) in the Holy of
Holies, the inner sanctuary of the Temple (Treatise Yoma 6:2). This was
perhaps a practice current in the last decades before the Temple of Jeru-
salem was destroyed in ad 70. A Samaritan tradition states that the high
priest transmits the pronunciation secretly to his successor.2
Thus the Masoretes found themselves confronted with a huge problem
when it came to writing the divine name. They could not change the con-
sonants Yhwh because the consonantal text was considered sacred and
invariable. At the same time they could not introduce the vowels that
would have permitted a pronunciation of the divine name because
that would have been contrary to the developing theology of Judaism.
In order to have the possibility of correcting the consonantal text, they
invented a distinction between Kĕtîv (“what is written”) and Qĕrê (“what
is to be read”). Having done that, they then applied to the tetragram-
maton the vowels of ʾădōnāy, “my Lord” (which is in fact probably a plural
form), in order to indicate that one was to pronounce the word ʾădōnāy
when the text contained the name of God, Yhwh. This resulted in the
forms found in biblical manuscripts: YěHWaH or YěHoWaH,3 depending
on which manuscript one consults. This substitution corresponds to
the replacement of Yhwh with kúrios (“Lord”) in the Greek Bible.
It was, then, a mistake to try to pronounce Yhwh by using the re-
placement vowels of ʾădōnāy, which had been introduced into the text
by the Masoretes, and inserting these vowels between the consonants of
the tetragrammaton. This error resulted from a failure to understand
this scribal practice. It produced the pronunciation that the Dominican
friar Raimundus Mari in the thirteenth century rendered as Yěh(o)wāh.
This form was then reproduced extensively in translations of the Bible
and persists especially among Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In Judaism one also fi nds another replacement used in addition
to ʾădōnāy, namely haš-šem (“the Name”), and this is used also by the
Samaritans. For this reason some scholars have suggested that vowels
used to create the substitute for Yhwh are actually those of the Aramaean
šĕmā (“the name”), but for various reasons this is not plausible.4
So the most probable view is that the first form of vocalization used
the vowels of ʾădōnāy, but that certain Jewish scholars who had come to
mistrust the Septuagint (the Greek translation), especially in view of
the Christian appropriation of kúrios in the New Testament to refer to
Jesus, decided to use “The Name” in place of Yhwh. Recall, too, that cer-
tain Greek manuscripts use theós (“god”) in place of kúrios (“lord”).
This might also indicate that there was some desire to substitute ʾĕlōhîm
for the tetragrammaton. In the beginning, therefore, there will have ex-
isted a number of different ways of indicating that the tetragrammaton
was not to be pronounced.
YHWH, YHW, YH
Curiously, and despite the prohibition, the biblical texts retain some
traces of a pronunciation of the divine name. In addition to the tetra-
grammaton Yhwh, the Masoretic vocalization of which goes back to the
substitute “Lord,” there are numerous attestations of a short form Yhw,

which is found particularly in theophoric proper names—that is, names
constructed with an element derived from the name of the god of
Israel, such as Yirmĕyāhû (Jeremiah), Yĕša῾yāhû (Isaiah), Yĕhônātān
(Jonathan), and so forth. This suggests that the short form of the divine
name was pronounced “Yahu/Yaho.”5
To these two forms Yhwh and Yhw, should be added a third, Yh (Yāh),
which is found primarily in the liturgical exclamation hallĕlû-yāh
(“Praise Yāh”), but also in such biblical texts as Exodus 15:2 (“Yāh is my
strength and my song”), Isaiah 12:2 (“Yāh, Yhwh is my strength”), Psalms
68:19 (“You have mounted up the heights . . . to make there your dwelling-
place, Yāh, Elōhîm”), and so on. We can also find this combination of
Yhwh and Yh outside the Bible, in an inscription probably dating from
the end of the eighth century that was discovered at Khirbet Beit Ley,6
a place about 35 kilometers southeast of Jerusalem. Although the begin-
ning of the inscription is difficult to decipher, it is possible to make out
the following prayer: “Intervene on our behalf merciful Yhwh; acquit
us, Yāh, Yhwh.”7 Both in the Bible and outside it, then, the short form
“Yāh” appears, particularly in prayers and hymns. This indicates that
Yāh is a liturgical variant of the tetragrammaton that can in certain
cases appear together with Yhwh, no doubt because it creates a pleasant
alliteration. The two short forms Yahû and Yāh agree in that the vocal-
ization of the first syllable is an “a,” and this makes it likely that this was
equally the case for the tetragrammaton Yhwh. There remains then the
question of the vocalization of the second syllable in the long form Yhwh
and of its relation to the short form Yhw.
To answer these questions we must start from the only biblical text
that gives a kind of explanation of the divine name. This is the episode
of the calling of Moses in Exodus 3. According to this text Moses was
called by Yhwh while he was pasturing the herd of his Midianite father-
in-law, who was a priest. Yhwh appears to Moses in a burning bush and
tells him to return to Egypt, from where he had fled, and to announce
to the Hebrews their liberation and their imminent departure for a land
flowing with milk and honey. Moses first objects that he is not in a po-
sition to carry out this task, but Yhwh promises him his help (“I am/I
will be with you”).8 Then Moses asks about the identity of the god who
is speaking to him:
(11) Moses said to God (ʾĕlōhîm): “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and

bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?” (12) He said: “Truly I shall
be with you/I am with you (ʾehyeh ῾immāk), and this will be a sign
for you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the
people out of Egypt you will serve God on this mountain.” (13)
And Moses said to God: “I shall, then, go to the sons of Israel and
shall say to them: the god of your fathers has sent me, and they shall
say to me: What is his name? What shall I say to them?” (14) God
said to Moses: “I shall be who I shall be/ I am who I am (ʾehyeh
ʾašer ʾehyeh). And he said: “You shall speak thus to the sons of Israel:
‘I shall be’ has sent me to you.” (15) God spoke again to Moses:
“You shall speak thus to the sons of Israel; the god of your fathers,
the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, and the god of Jacob has sent
me to you. This is my name forever and this is the way one shall
invoke me from generation to generation.” (16) “Go assemble the
elders of Israel and say to them: Yhwh, the god of your fathers, has
appeared to me, the god of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob and he
has said: Truly I have been observing you carefully and what has
been done to you in Egypt.”
One might wish to follow Martin Buber and understand this “ex-
planation” of the name as a refusal of revelation: “I am who I am” and
what that is is none of your business. Nevertheless, in the following
verses this explanation seems to be explicitly put into a relation to the
name Yhwh. The expression ʾehyeh ʾašer ʾehyeh contains two wordplays.
The form ʾehyeh echoes fi rst of all the promise of assistance of verse
12, ʾehyeh ῾immāk. “I shall be” or “I am” refers in the first instance to the
god who “is with [Moses]” and promises Moses help. In addition, ʾehyeh
almost certainly also refers to the pronunciation of the name Yhwh,
which, following up on our observations about the first syllable of
this name, will have been pronounced by the author of Exodus 3 as
“Yahweh.”
YA H W E H O R YA H Ô/ YA H U: H O W WA S T H E N A M E
OF T HE GOD OF ISR AEL PRONOUNCED?
This traditional reconstruction can be found in some Christian Bibles,

but also in the scholarly discussion of the god of Israel, and has its
foundation primarily in the testimony of certain Fathers of the Church.
Clement of Alexandria (vv. 150–220) in referring to the narrative in
Exodus 3 writes: “The mystic name of four letters that was unchange-
ably imposed only on those who had access to the adytum [sanctuary]
is called Iaoue, which can be translated as ‘he who is and who will
be.’ ”9 In the fourth century Epiphanius of Salamina speaks of Iá and
Iabé.10 In the fifth century Theodoret of Cyr, a small village near An-
tioch, states that the Samaritans call god Iabé and the Jews call him Aiá,
which is an allusion to the ʾehyeh of Exodus 3:14.11 Photios, the Patriarch
of Constantinople in the ninth century, also attests the pronunciation
“Yabe” or “Yahweh.”12 Origen of Alexandria (185–253) in his commen-
tary on Psalm 2 discusses the prohibition on pronouncing the divine
name among the Jews, and refers to the name simply as the “tetragram-
maton” or sometimes as Iaḗ, which seems to correspond to “Yahweh.”13
Nevertheless, he also knows that in the case of theophoric proper names
ending in –yhw, the pronunciation of the divine name was –iaṓ. In his
Contra Celsum Origen cites the form Iaṓ as the pronunciation of the
Gnostics. Almost all of these testimonia about the pronunciation of
the tetragrammaton come from the Christian era. Apart from Exodus 3,
the most ancient testimony is probably to be found in the translitera-
tions into Babylonian of theophoric names of Judeans living in Babylon
at the end of the sixth century bce.14 These use either ia-a-ḫu-ú, which
would correspond to /yahu/, or ia-a-wa, which must indicate a pronun-
ciation of the divine name like “Yahwa,” a form that could become, via
the weakening of the a into an é, “Yahweh.”
Thus there exist some testimonia that suggest a pronunciation of
the tetragrammaton like “Yahweh,” but the majority of sources speak
rather in favor of a form like “Yahû” or “Yahô.” The Israelites and Ju-
deans who had been settled since the end of the seventh century or the
beginning of the sixth century on the island of Elephantine in Upper
Egypt, called their god Yhw, vocalized in proper names as “Yahô.”15 A
text discovered at Qumrân (4QpapLXXLevb) that contains a fragment

of the book of Leviticus in Greek (4:26–28) renders the tetragram-
maton as Iaṓ: “If anyone transgresses even one of the commandments
of Iaṓ and does not follow it . . .” (4:27). In Greek, Iaṓ contains two
syllables and is pronounced ia-o, which would correspond to the He-
brew or Aramaic Ya-hô.
This shows that at the time when the translation of the Pentateuch
into Greek was undertaken, this pronunciation was current and well
known. One might equally cite Diodorus of Sicily (first century), who in
his Bibliotheke (I.94.2) writes: “They say that . . . among the Jews Moses
said he had received laws from the god named Iaṓ.”16 In the same way
the pronunciation Yaō is frequently found in magic papyri, documents
reflecting a syncretism between the Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish reli-
gions, and also in texts of Gnostic forms of Christianity.17
This investigation leads to the conclusion that the ancient pronunci-
ation of the name of the god of Israel was “Yahô,” which amounts to
saying that the tetragrammaton was originally a trigrammaton.18 The
w in “Yhwh” was not a consonant, but a mater lectionis indicating the
sound “o.” The letter h at the end of the tetragrammaton Yhwh should
be understood as indicating a lengthening of the preceding o.
We shall return to the question of the testimony about the name of
Yhwh outside the Bible. For the moment we shall note that the texts from
the fifth century stemming from Egypt (Elephantine) mention a god Yahô,
thus documenting this short form, the equivalent of Yhw.
The most ancient documentation of the long form that we have at the
present time is found on the stele of Mesha, a stele of black basalt dis-
covered in 1868 and now in the Louvre. It contains an inscription in the
Moabite language dating back to the ninth century and describing
the victory of the Moabite king Mesha and his god Chemosh over Omri,
the king of Israel, and his god Yhwh.
The inscriptions discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai desert,
dating from the eighth century, exhibit both the short form Yhw and
also the long form Yhwh, and from the seventh century onward the
tetragrammaton is widely attested in extrabiblical inscriptions.19
It seems, then, that the two variants of the name coexisted and that the
short form was widely used in theophoric names. Moreover, theophoric
proper names attested in extrabiblical inscriptions show other varia-

tions, depending on their geographic origin. The majority of recorded
names ending in –yw (transliterated “Yau” in neo-Assyrian documents)
come from the north; those ending in –yh (Yāh or Yahû/ô) are mostly
from the south.20 Was the divine name pronounced differently in the
north and the south? This is possible, but we do not at the moment have
sufficient evidence to decide this question.
On the other hand, it does seem clear that the original pronuncia-
tion of Yhwh was “Yahô” or “Yahû.” Where then does the pronuncia-
tion “Yahweh,” which is particularly strongly represented in the texts
of the Fathers of the Church, come from? Is it simply a learned specula-
tion that arose from a study of the way god presents himself in Exodus
3:14 (ʾehyeh ʾašer ʾehyeh)? Or, as the learned Jew Theodotion (fi rst or
second century) claimed, is this simply the pronunciation current among
the Samaritans? Or should we imagine some kind of gradual evolution
from “Yahô” toward “Yahweh”? This evolution might be explained by
a theological hypothesis that seems to form part of the foundation of
the narrative of Exodus 3; this is the attempt to give an account of the
meaning of the name Yhwh by reference to the Hebrew root h-y-h, “to
be.” The pronunciation “Yahweh” in fact corresponds to the vocalization
of a causative form of the third-person singular (masculine) of the root
“to be.” “Yahweh,” then, would be “he who causes to be,” that is, he who
creates. This speculation may have led some scholars toward the pronun-
ciation “Yahweh.” Nevertheless, this pronunciation is probably of more
recent origin than “Yahô” or “Yahû.”
W H AT D O E S T H E N A M E YA H Ô/ YA H Û M E A N?
The question of the meaning of the name Yahô/Yahû raises issues that
have been the subject of passionate debate. However, it should perhaps
be put in perspective.21 Is it really so important, if one wishes to name
or invoke a god, to know the etymology of his name? The etymology
might have been forgotten, it might be unclear, it might play no impor-
tant role in the cult worship offered to him, and secondary etymologies
might well have been invented. In any case, the name does not neces-
sarily define the “nature” of a divinity. From the point of view of his-
tory of religions it is much more important to know what functions
people assign to some particular deity than it is to know his name. What-
ever the meaning of “Yhwh,” the question has raised any number of
hypotheses but there is no single answer that satisfies everyone.
We have just seen that the text of Exodus 3 presupposes a link between
the divine name and the root h-y-h. Pursuing this observation further,
many scholars have tried to explore a possible path from the root “to be”
to the name “Yahweh.”
In fact we do find names like “Yaḫwi-ilum” (“El is, manifests him-
self ”),22 “Yaḫwi-Adad (“Adad manifests himself ”),23 and so forth, in
Amorite proper names found at Mari, a town on the Euphrates in
present-day Syria that was important in the second millennium. Some
scholars infer from this that the verbal form “Yaḫwi” must be the origin
of the name Yhwh. The fact that in the case of Yhwh (“[He] exists”) the
name of the divinity who is claimed to exist is missing, is then taken
to prove that from the very beginning the Israelites had a more ab-
stract conception of their god than any of their neighbors did, be-
cause they invoked him without giving him a proper name. Th is idea
depends heavily on theological considerations and is historically very
implausible.
Other scholars have started from the “a” in the prefi x of the word
“Yahweh,” which indicates, according to the rules of Hebrew grammar,
a causative form:24 “he who causes to be,” “he who creates.” So the word
would presumably originally have described a certain manifestation of
the god El, whose complete name would have been ʾēl yāhweh yiśrā ʾēl:
“El gives life to/creates Israel.” There are two problems with this theory:
there is no causative form for the verb “to be” (h-y-h) attested in Hebrew,
and it is highly implausible that Yhwh was originally the name of a
creator-god.
Another solution starts from the short form Yāh. The Scandinavian
scholar Sigmund Mowinckel thought that the original form of Yhwh
would have been “Ya huwa”: “Behold! It is him.” Yāh would thus origi-
nally have been a cult exclamation that gradually became a substantive
to designate the god invoked.25 However, there are no parallels for this
kind of origin of a divine name.
The hypothesis that the name Yhwh comes from a verbal form that
is conjugated with a causative prefix remains perfectly plausible. Several
suggestions have been made about what root might be behind Yhwh.
Some scholars have postulated a link with the Semitic root ḥ-w-y (“de-
stroy”): “he destroys”—Yhwh would then be the god of destruction.
Another possible line of argument might be based on the idea—alluded
to earlier—that Yhwh originally came from the south, from an
Edomite or Arab context. Axel Knauf has made the observation that
pre-Islamic Arabs knew of deities whose name was construed as the
third-person form of a verb in a prefi x conjugation, such as Yaǵūt (“He
helps”) and Ya῾ūq (“He protects”).26
So the tetragrammaton might be connected to the southern Semitic
root h-w-y, which has three possible meanings: “to desire,” “to fall,” and
“to blow.” The two meanings “desire” and “fall” are found in biblical
Hebrew, but “blow” is not documented. It is conceivable that the reason
for this is precisely a desire to avoid a form that would be too close to
the divine name. As the great biblical scholar Julius Wellhausen noted
as early as the end of the nineteenth century, the meaning “blow” would
be especially appropriate for a storm god: “Er fährt durch die Lüfte, er
weht” (He flies through the air; he blows).27 Given our current state of
knowledge, this explanation is probably the most satisfactory, even
though it is not totally without difficulties.28
Yhwh, then, would be “he who blows,” he who brings the wind, a god
of storms, who might also have certain characteristics of a warrior and
a desert god. Th is would accord rather well, as we shall see, with the
primitive functions of Yhwh.
2
THE GEOGRAPHIC ORIGIN OF YHWH
What is the origin of the god Yhwh? According to the biblical ac-
count, Yhwh appeared to Moses while Moses was leading his father-in-
law’s flocks to pasture, lost his way, and arrived at a “mountain of god”
called “Horeb” (Exod. 3), or alternatively, when Moses found himself
again in Egypt (Exod. 6). Both of these narratives assert, then, that
the relation between Yhwh and Israel had not existed from the begin-
ning, but was instead the result of a certain encounter. The two dif-
ferent biblical accounts of the commissioning of Moses by the god
Yhwh both locate this event outside the land of Israel, either in Egypt
or in a region located between Egypt and Judea, which we shall have
to try to specify more clearly in what follows. The idea that the god
Yhwh has a non-Israelite origin has become the established consensus in
scholarly circles, and archaeological discoveries in the Levant and Meso-
potamia in the nineteenth century and especially in the twentieth
century have suggested a variety of hypotheses about this origin.
Many of these hypotheses are based on texts containing names that
some have thought could be linked to that of Yhwh. The various envis-
aged parallels would lead us particularly to Ebla, Ugarit, Mari, Egypt,
the region of the Sinai, and the south of the Negev as possible places of
origin of Yhwh.
EBLA (TELL MARDIKH)
Ebla was an important site in Syria from the third millennium onward,
and occupied a position of some geostrategic significance because it lay
on a pass over a hill controlling access to the Mediterranean. Excava-
tions conducted by Italian archaeologists have revealed archives com-
prising more than 17,000 clay tablets written in Sumerian and also in
Eblaite, the local dialect, which was written in the cuneiform script.
These documents concern especially the fi fteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies, and texts contain a number of personal names ending in –ya,
which Giovanni Pettinato, one of the leading experts on Eblaite, con-
strued as a short form of the name Yhwh.1 This interpretation, however,
has not found much favor with other scholars because the syllable –ya is
either a hypocoristic ending (that is, a diminutive) or it is a way of making
a name general, as in ili (“my god”).2 No god Yhwh, moreover, appears
in any of the lists of gods to whom sacrifice is offered. So there was no
god Yhwh at Ebla.
UGARIT
Ugarit is located in present-day Syria near the town of Lattaque; it was a

prosperous city-state during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries. Sys-
tematic excavations since the 1930s have brought to light an impressive
number of documents relating to administration, religious practice, and
myths. Some of these are in Ugaritic, a Semitic language written in an al-
phabet derived from cuneiform characters. In one of the mythological
texts there is a passage that seems to describe a banquet given by the god
El.3 Only fragments of the original text exist, but one phrase seems to mean
something like: “the name of my son, YW—goddess/god(s).” Some have
interpreted this as a shortened form of the name of the god of Israel. On
this reading, the god El would be saying: “The name of my son (is) Yhwh.”
If this were correct, there could be a connection between this frag-
ment and the original version of a verse from Deuteronomy where
Yhwh seems to be conceived as being the son of one of the Canaanite
gods, El. The Masoretic Hebrew text (Deut. 32:8), on which most modern
THE GEOGRAPHIC ORIGIN OF YHWH 37
Bibles are based, reads: “When the Most High gave to the nations their
patrimony, he fi xed the territory of the people according to the number
of the sons of Israel. The hereditary portion of Yhwh is his people; Jacob
is the portion that falls to him.” In contrast, the original text, which can
be reconstructed on the basis of the Greek version and a fragment from
Qumran, reads: “When Elyon (the Most High) portioned out the nations
as a legacy, when he divided mankind, he fi xed the territories of the
peoples according to the number of the sons of god (El). And the portion
of Yhwh is his people, Jacob is the part which falls to him.” According to
this text Yhwh is understood as the son of El, and this might also be the
case in the fragment from Ugarit.
We cannot therefore defi nitively exclude a link between Yw in the
Ugaritic text and Yhwh, which would suggest that in the thirteenth or
twelfth centuries Yhwh might have been known in Ugarit and (margin-
ally) integrated into the Ugaritic pantheon. However, this passage is too
fragmentary and unclear to support the thesis that there was worship of a
god Yhwh in Ugarit or even that Yhwh’s origins were in Ugarit.
André Caquot, who prepared the French edition of the text, has sug-
gested a link between this Yh and the god Ieuô, who, according to Por-
phyry of Tyre (234–ca. 305 of the Christian Era), had been an archaic
god worshipped in Beirut. Eusebius (ca. 265–339 of the Christian Era),
bishop of Caesarea, cites Porphyry in his Praeparatio evangelica (I.9):
“Sanchoniaton of Beirut composed a history of the Jews that has all the
hallmarks of veracity and gets all their names and localities right. On
these topics he had received memoranda from Hierombale, priest of
the god Ieuô.” The same passage (I.10) states that the city of Beirut be-
longed to Poseidon. From this Caquot concludes that YW is an allo-
graphic form, that is, a variant, designating Yam, god of the Sea in the
Levantine pantheon. The fact that Ym is mentioned in the Ugaritic
text one line later seems to add some support to this hypothesis.4 If
this is correct, one might go further and say that the passage KTU 1.1.iv
describes a banquet presided over by El during which he proclaims his
son Yam king, giving him the name YW.
Perhaps, however, there is an even simpler solution, which is that what
we have here is just a scribal error, Yw instead of Ym. Those errors occur
as frequently in the copying of Ugaritic texts as in other cases.
MARI
Mari (Tell Hariri) was an important city in the third and especially the
second millennium. Located on the Euphrates near the present border
between Syria and Iraq, it has revealed to archaeologists a magnificent
palace and an abundance of documents. Because the discovered docu-
ments contain references to proper names like “Yaḫwi-ilum,” some
scholars have come to believe that the god Yhwh was worshipped at
Mari.5 However, these names, derived from a root signifying “to manifest
oneself,” cannot be linked with Yhwh, because they contain no name of a
divinity, merely a verbal form signifying “He manifests himself.”
BET WEEN EGYPT AND SEIR
In an Egyptian papyrus dating from 1330–1230 there is a proper name

that might be thought to contain an abbreviated form of Yhwh, namely
Yah.6 This name could be a transcription of a Canaanite proper name
ʾadōnī-rō῾ē-yāh (“My lord is the shepherd of Yah”). Th is theophoric
name, however, is composed of three elements, contrary to the norm of
only two elements. One could therefore think of another interpretation:
that “Yah” is being used as a toponym. This would perhaps make it pos-
sible to link this name with the famous Shasu nomads, who are men-
tioned in Egyptian texts and are sometimes brought into connection
with the term Yhw. The word šзsw may derive from an Egyptian word
for “wander,” “to go, pass by.” In an inscription of Amenophis III of
Soleb in the Sudan (ca. 1370) there is a list containing various mentions
of these nomads with a specification of their territory; among these
appears “The country—of the Shasu—Yhw(h)” or “Yhw(h) in the country
of the Shasu.” The same designation occurs in another place in Soleb,
and also in a list inscribed in the hall of the temple of Ramses II at West
Amara (also in the Sudan).7
In these texts Yhwʒ seems to be a geographic term (referring to a
mountain?) and perhaps also a divine name. The explanation of this du-
ality might be that the god of a certain place could come to be identified
with that place and thus take its name from that place. In the lists
mentioned above, the territories of the Shasu are located particularly

in the Negev, that is, in the south, but according to other inscriptions
there were also Shasu further north in the Levant, as far as Qatna in the
territory that is now Syria. Following Manfred Weippert, we might
take the first place-name in the list “Seir” to be a name referring in gen-
eral to all the territory in which the specific places mentioned later in
the list are located.8 This would add further weight to the fact that the
oldest attested occurrences of Yhwh are from the south of Palestine,
the territory of Edom and Araba.
The papyrus Anastasi VI, which mentions the Shasu of Edom, whom
the pharaoh Merneptah authorized to sojourn in Egypt with their herds,
confirms this localization: “We have finished letting the Shasu tribes of
Edom pass the Fortress of Merneptah . . . which is in Tjeku, reaching as
far as the pools of Pitom of Merneptah . . . which are in Tjeku to keep
them alive and to keep their cattle alive through the great ka of Pha-
raoh.”9 To this we can add the Papyrus Harris I (from the era of
Ramses IV, about 1150) in which the pharaoh boasts: “I destroyed the
people of Seir among the Shasu tribes. I razed their tents: their people,
their property, and their cattle as well, without number; they were pin-
ioned and carried away in captivity, as the tribute of Egypt.”10
An iconographic attestation of the Shasu can be found in a damaged
relief in the temple of Amon at Karnak that represents the Palestinian
campaigns of Seti I (1290–1280). The Shasu are recognizable by their
goatees and their hair held back by a hairband. Th is military excursion
of the Egyptian king against the Shasu confirms their importance.
They seem to have been involved in the mining of copper in the area
around Araba, which had become the center of this industry as a result
of Egyptian expeditions into the area. Full excavations and surveys in
the valley of Timna, about thirty kilometers north of Eilat, have revealed
evidence of the extraction and smelting of copper in furnaces. Th is
mining activity in the valley of Timna was at its apogee in the fourteenth
to twelft h centuries. Another place, Punon (Feinan in Jordan), which is
mentioned in the book of Numbers (33:26) and has been linked with the
Shasu in the list of West Amara, is also located in this area.
So the archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic evidence all place
the Shasu in the territory of Edom or Seir, and in Araba at the time of
the transition from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age. And among these
Shasu there might have been a group whose tutelary god was called
“Yhw.” One can combine all this evidence with a biblical tradition that
represents Yhwh as a god coming “from the south.”
BIBLIC A L E V IDENCE T H AT Y HWH

CAME FROM THE SOUTH
There are four poetical texts in the Hebrew Bible that ascribe to Yhwh a
“southern” origin. First in Deuteronomy in a psalm attributed to Moses:
He said: “Yhwh came from Sinai, for them11 he shone forth from
Seir, he was resplendent from Mount Parān; he arrived at Meribat
of Qadesh;12 from his south toward the slopes,13 for them. (Deut.
33:2)
Then in the book of Judges in a song celebrating a military victory of

the tribes of Yhwh:
(4) Yhwh, when you came forth out of Seir, when you advanced from
the land of Edom, the earth trembled, the sky quaked, the clouds
poured down water; (5) the mountains fled before Yhwh—this
Sinai, before Yhwh, the god of Israel. (Judg. 5:4–5)
A very similar affirmation is to be found in Psalm 68 (vv. 8–9 and 18):
(8) Oh God, when you came forth at the head of your people, when
you advanced over the arid land—pause—(9) the earth trembled,
yes, the sky quaked before God—this Sinai—before God, the god
of Israel. (18) The chariots of God are counted by twenties of thou-
sands, by thousands and by thousands; Yhwh is with them, the
(= he who is?) Sinai14 is in the sanctuary.
Finally, chapter 3 of the book attributed to Habakkuk (3:3 and 3:10a)

contains a poetic text that takes up similar ideas:
(3) God comes from Teman, the Holy One comes from mount
Pārān. Pause. His splendor covers the sky, his praise fills the earth.
(10a) The mountains see you and tremble.
These four texts are linked by the presence of the same themes and
the same affirmation that the god Yhwh comes “from the south,” even
if they differ slightly in details. All of these passages are to be found in
poetic contexts: Judges 5:4–5 is the opening of the canticle of Deborah,
a song of war or victory; Deuteronomy 33:2 is part of a psalm that rec-
ords the blessings of Moses on the tribes of Israel before his death; Psalm
68 is a hymn celebrating divine intervention in a war; and Habakkuk 3
is also a psalm about war.
The texts of Judges 5 and of Psalm 68 are especially close to each other,
as one can see from this synopsis:
Judg. 5:4–5 Ps. 68:8–9

Yhwh, when you came out of Seir, O God, when you came forth at the
when you advanced from the land of head of your people, when you
Edom, the earth trembled, the sky advanced over the arid land—
quaked, the clouds poured down pause—the earth trembled, yes,
water; the mountains fled before the sky quaked before God—this
Yhwh—this Sinai—before Yhwh, Sinai—before God, the god of
the god of Israel Israel.
The most obvious difference between the two passages lies in the fact
that the tetragrammaton Yhwh does not appear in Psalm 68. The reason
for this is that Psalm 68 is a part of a larger literary context, which is
called “the Elohistic Psalter” (Pss. 42–83). At some point in the course of
a series of reworkings of these psalms, the editors gradually began re-
placing the name Yhwh with ʾĕlōhîm (God), either in the interests of uni-
versalism or to avoid having to pronounce the tetragrammaton during
the recitation of these psalms.15 Psalm 68 still retains traces of this
replacement at the end of verse 9, where the Hebrew text as we have it
repeats “Elohim, Elohim of Israel,” which makes no sense. It is clear
that this originally read: “Yhwh, the god of Israel.”
If we put the name Yhwh back into Psalm 68 in place of “Elohim,”
the two texts are in large part identical. Moreover, the tetragrammaton
has in fact been retained in other places in the psalm. In both texts Yhwh
“comes out” to engage in battle with his enemies. In both of them the
author first addresses Yhwh in the second person, then speaks about him
in the third person. We fi nd in both texts the same upheaval of the
heavens and the earth brought about by his manifestation as a war god.
There is also the same way of referring to Yhwh by putting his name in
apposition to the strange phrase zeh sînay. We shall return later to the
meaning of this expression.
The most important difference between the two passages is that the
text of the book of Judges describes Yhwh as coming out of Seir/Edom,
whereas Psalm 68 refers to a location described as yĕšîmôn, which is a
quite rare word meaning something like “arid place.” Is this an allusion
to the tradition of a sojourn of Israel in the desert, as one of the com-
mentators on the book of Judges, Walter Gross, suggests?16 If this were
the case, it is still not clear why the author did not choose the more
common word for desert, midbār, which immediately evokes that tra-
dition. Perhaps he wanted to put the emphasis rather on the function of
this advent of the god, who crosses the desert and in doing so brings rain
and fertility. Or perhaps it is simply a reference to a specific region that
we cannot identify.
How can we explain these parallels? Do the two texts depend on a
common source, or does one follow and rework the other? In fact, it is
not necessary to postulate a common source. Both the similarities and
the differences can easily be explained by the hypothesis that the pas-
sage at Judges 5 contains the older version of the text, which is taken over
and reworked by the author of Psalm 68. The latter adds at various places
some allusions to other passages from the Song of Deborah. Thus Psalm
68:13–14 (“Would you linger in the camp?”) refers to Judges 5:16 (“Why
did you remain with the baggage?”). The celestial army mentioned in
Psalm 68:12 evokes the combat of the stars in Judges 5:20. Judges 5, in
any case, is at least in its primitive form often considered to be one of
the oldest texts in the Hebrew Bible.
T HE T HEOPHAN Y IN JUDGES 5:4–5 IN T HE CONT E X T

OF THE SONG OF DEBORAH
The Song of Deborah celebrates the murder of the Canaanite general

Sisera by Yael, the wife of one of his allies. Sisera had taken refuge with
this ally after having been defeated by the armies of Israel led by Barak
and was then killed by Yael. Many experts today consider this text to be
particularly archaic, with origins in the period even before the institu-
tion of the Israelite monarchy. Others, however, claim that it is a late text,
composed on the basis of the narration of this episode in the previous
chapter (Judg. 4) in order to give that narration a poetic conclusion.
So the current dating of the song in Judges 5 varies from the twelfth
century to the Hellenistic era.17 It is extremely difficult to know whether
the text refers to a real historical event or whether, as some have sug-
gested, it is rather a mythological text.18 In Hebrew “Deborah” means
“bee,” “Barak” means “thunderbolt,” and “Yael” means “goat.” This sug-
gests parallels with Greek mythology, in which Melissa (the bee) nour-
ishes the young Zeus and Amalthea (the goat) gives him milk. In Judges
5 Yael gives milk to the Canaanite general Sisera, in order to lull him to
sleep and kill him. These similarities are certainly interesting, but they
do not really provide a guide to interpreting the text of Judges 5.
The Hebrew of this text presents many difficulties; it is either
archaic or consciously archaizing. It contains verbal forms that do not
correspond at all to standard Hebrew. It also contains terms that seem
to be of Aramaic origin and can be interpreted in two completely dif-
ferent ways.
The grammatical differences between certain passages of the poem
and other passages indicate that there were several stages in its compo-
sition and its final revision. For instance, it is easy to see that verses 2
and 9–11 are interpolations, because verses 6–8 and 12–14 form a nat-
ural sequence connected by the reference to the distress of Israel and
the call to arms. Similarly, in the description of the different tribes that
are involved in the war, verses 15–18 seem to be interpolated, because
the phrase about Zebulon in verse 14 finds its natural successor in verse
18.19 It is also possible that the hymn about the theophany in Judges
5:4–6 was originally an independent text, as it plainly interrupts the
exhortation to praise god in verse 3 and the description of the difficult

situation in verse 6. This hymn might represent an older tradition that
an editor has tried retrospectively to integrate into this song after it had
been composed. One can compare the text of Judges 5 to a patchwork
composed of different elements.
T HE ORIGINS OF Y HWH ACCORDING TO JUDGES 5

AND PSALM 68
In Judges 5:4 Yhwh comes from the territory of Edom, which is put in
parallel to Seir. The Hebrew word śēʿir means “hairy,” and when it is
used as a geographic term it refers to the interior of the territory of
Edom, which was forested. More particularly, Seir refers to the moun-
tain that extends from Wadi el Ḥesa (the Zered of the Bible), marking
the border with Moab, down to the Gulf of Aqaba (Eilat), whereas
“Edom” itself may designate a much larger territory covering a large
part of the area south of the Negev. However, in the Bible the names
“Edom” and “Seir” are often used as synonyms.
According to Judges 5, Sinai is also considered part of this territory,
because Yhwh, as we have seen in Psalm 68, is put in apposition to zeh
sînay. A literal translation of this formula would be: “Yhwh, that is Sinai.”
Sinai would be another name for Yhwh. It is conceivable that Yhwh orig-
inally was a place-name, the name of a mountain, and by extension, then,
the name of the god that lives there. But the word Sinai, the significance
of which remains obscure, has no etymological connection to Yhwh, so
one would have to imagine two different mountains that came to be
identified at some point. This, however, would make matters very com-
plicated, and so speaks against this suggestion.
A better proposal is to take zeh here on analogy with the determina-
tive pronoun ḏ in Ugaritic and the Arab languages. Then we could
translate zeh sînai as “he of Sinai.” Yhwh would be the divinity of Sinai
in parallel to the Nabatean god Ḏū eš-Šarā (Dushara): “he of (Mount)
Shara [one of the mountains near Petra].” This is the principal deity of
the Nabateans who was worshipped first in the form of a betyle, a holy
stone, and then, under Hellenistic influence, represented as a young god
with long hair (like Dionysus) or as an aged and bearded god—who was
sometimes identified as Zeus-Adad, but sometimes also as a solar deity
or as Dionysus. This identification shows his different functions: when
he is conceived as the tutelary god of the Nabateans, Dushara is Zeus or
a solar god; when he is invoked as the guarantor of fertility, he is Hadad
(god of storms in ancient Mesopotamia and Syria); when he is patron of
thiases (revels associated with the drinking of wine), he is Dionysus.
Taking the parallel seriously, then, the expression “he of Sinai” would
be a epithet used of Yhwh, who, as we shall see, just like Dushara, could
have a number of different names over the centuries and also a number
of different functions.
The original location of Mount Sinai remains a mystery. One has the
impression that the authors of the Bible themselves did not have a very
clear idea about this. The hymn in Judges 5:4–5 seems to imagine it as
located somewhere in Edom, not in the Sinai Peninsula, where later
tradition places the mountain on which Yhwh revealed himself. The
text of Deuteronomy 33:2 also places Mount Parân in parallel with
Seir: “he shone forth from Seir, he was resplendent from Mount
Parān; he arrived at Meribat of Qadesh, from his south toward the
slopes, for them.”
The word Parān is used in the Hebrew Bible in different contexts,
and its precise localization is impossible. Today there is a Naḥal Parān
in Araba. It is an “oued” (a riverbed, generally dry). The modern name
comes from the biblical name Parān, which in most texts refers to a
desert, but in the two texts in Deuteronomy and in Habakkuk it des-
ignates a mountain. According to Genesis 21:21, Ishmael went to live
in the desert of Parān, which, in the geographic context of the narra-
tive, must lie somewhere in the direction of Egypt, because his mother
Hagar has him marry an Egyptian woman. In Numbers 13 the desert
of Parān seems to be located near the oasis of Qadesh. In other bib-
lical texts, it seems to apply to a very large territory encompassing the
whole of the Negev. In 1 Kings 11:18 we find an account of the fl ight
into Egypt of Hadad, an Edomite adversary of King Solomon (“Leaving
Midian, they went to Parân, took with them men of Parān and ar-
rived in Egypt at the court of the Pharaoh”). Parān here designates a
stopping place on the way from Midian to Egypt. Th is place might be
the oasis Wadi Feran, which is on the way from Seir in the direction
of Egypt.
However, the odd expression Mount Parān, which is nowhere attested
in the Bible except in the two parallel texts of Deuteronomy 33 and
Habakkuk 3, indicates that what we have here is probably a learned
speculation about the location of Sinai and not a trace of an ancient
tradition.
The mention of Qadesh shows that the description in Deuteronomy
33:2 can be dated to the period of the monarchy, because Qadesh can be
identified with the oasis En el-qederat, a fortified site that was occupied
during three phases extending from the tenth century to the sixth. If
this is right, then perhaps the author of Deuteronomy 33 reworked the
passages in Judges 5 and Psalm 68, reinterpreting them in light of the
idea that the mountain of Yhwh must be located somewhere on the Sinai
Peninsula between Egypt and the Negev. The text of Habakkuk 3:3 lo-
cates the origin of Yhwh in Parān, but without mentioning Sinai. “God
comes from Temān, the Holy One comes from mount Parān. Pause. His
radiance covers the sky, his praise fills the earth.”20 Here mount Parān
is placed in parallel to Temān. The word “Temān” is attested in Genesis
36 as the name of a person or a clan in the genealogy of Edom. In other
biblical texts it seems to designate a locality or territory in Edom or is
even used as a parallel expression for Edom (Jer. 49:7, 20; Ezek. 25:13;
Amos 11:11–12; Obad. 8–9).
Outside the Bible an inscription from Kuntillet Ajrud (to which we
shall return) mentions in addition to the Yhwh of Samaria a Yhwh of
Temān, which might simply mean “the South.” The word temān (from
the root y-m-n) in the first instance simply means “south” in general,
then “the South” as the designation of a particular geographic area (“the
land of the south”). In Habakkuk 3, “Temān” may refer to the south in
general, or to the Negev, or—compare Judges 5, Genesis 36, and other
texts—to the territory of the Edomites.21 Because the localization of
Parân is not clear either, there seems no choice but simply to accept the
view that Yhwh is represented as coming from the “south.”
We can summarize the conclusions to be drawn from these four texts
about the provenance of Yhwh as follows: with the possible exception
of Deuteronomy 33 (“possible” because this text is itself unclear), Yhwh
is taken to be “located” in the south, in the territory of the Edomites,

or, more generally, in a territory situated southeast of Judah. It is very
possible that these four poetic passages reflect an old tradition according
to which Yhwh is a divinity associated with a mountain in the desert,
to the east or to the west of Araba.
Th is theory has been strongly contested by Henrik Pfeiffer, who
holds that the four passages under discussion all date to a later period
and that they presuppose the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in
587.22 He claims that these texts were created in order to soften the blow
of the loss of the sanctuary of Yhwh in Jerusalem by transferring him
outside the land of Judah, into the desert in “enemy” territory. However,
the idea that these poetic texts, which are also grammatically exceed-
ingly difficult, are a deliberate theological invention by editors in the
Babylonian or Persian era seems anachronistic. It is more probable that
they retain the ancient memory trace of a Yhwh localized in the “south.”23
T HE CHAR AC T ER OF Y HWH ACCORDING TO T HESE T E X TS
In Judges 5, Psalm 68, and also to some extent in Habakkuk 3 (which

prophesies a universal judgment of all the inhabitants of the earth), the
theophany is integrated into a context of war. Yhwh appears in the first
instance as a warrior god who intervenes in favor of his people.
At the same time, these texts deploy a vocabulary that evokes the ac-
tivities of a storm god or a god of fertility, like the Syrian god Hadad.
Habakkuk 3 seems, among other things, to allude to a combat between
the storm god, on the one hand, and the sea and its acolytes, on the
other, the kind of battle attested in Ugaritic texts describing the combat
of Baal and Yam, personification of the sea: “Is Yhwh angry with the
rivers? Your wrath is it against the rivers, your fury is it against the sea,
when you mount on your horses, on your victorious chariots?” (Hab. 3:8).
In Judges 5, Psalm 68, and Habakkuk 3:10, the coming of Yhwh is ac-
companied by tremors of the earth and the collapse of mountains, phe-
nomena typical of the theophany of a storm god: “The earth shook, even
the sky quaked, the clouds dripped with water; the mountains fled before
Yhwh” (Judg. 5:4–6); “The earth trembled, yes the sky quaked before
God” (Ps. 68:8); “The mountains see you and tremble” (Hab. 3:10a). In a
hymn to Hadad (from about 1780) the sky trembles and the mountains
collapse: “Hadad, the heroic son of Anum, to whom the great gods have
granted preeminently the exercise of force: a powerful roaring that
makes the sky and the earth tremble; with his head held high; and the
intensity of his frightening lightning flashes causes violent rain.”24
The idea of the divinity appearing in splendor is also expressed using
the same root (z-r-ḥ) as Deuteronomy 33:2 does, found in an inscription
from Kuntillet Ajrud, which was perhaps a former fortress of the kingdom
of Judah or more likely a caravansary. This inscription seems to describe
a theophany in a context of war and with an accompanying collapse of
mountains. Causing rain to drop down from clouds (Judg. 5 and Ps. 68)
on to the arid land (Ps. 68) is a major attribute of a storm god.
From this discussion we can deduce that these texts emphasize two
aspects of Yhwh: he is a warrior god and a storm god. So it is under-
standable that such a god would be worshipped by groups living in arid
regions and finding themselves frequently in military conflict with other
groups or with the power of Egypt.
YHWH AND SETH
If Yhwh is a god of the south, it is possible that he also had the charac-
teristics of a god of the steppes. Some seals in the form of scarabs found
in the Negev and in Judea show variants of the iconographic motif of
the “Master of the Animals.” There is little doubt that they are to be
linked with such a god of the steppes. Dating for the most part from the
eleventh and tenth centuries, they depict a person, probably a deity, who
is taming or in some way controlling ostriches.25 Othmar Keel and
Christoph Uehlinger suggest that this might be Yhwh.26 If this identifi-
cation were to be proved correct, that would indicate that Yhwh was wor-
shipped also as a god of the steppes and arid regions.
Can we then go further and link Yhwh with the Egyptian god Seth?
During the second millennium the worship of this god spread from
Egypt toward the south of the Levant. He had always been a god of limits
and boundaries, dwelling in the mountains, deserts, and oases. Seth was
an aggressive god, a god of war, and particularly the enemy of Osiris and
his son Horus. He thus symbolizes disorder, chaos, the state opposed to
the condition of mзʿt (the ordered society and an ordered world), but he
was also the companion and protector of the sun god. A widespread
iconographic motif shows Seth opposing the serpent Apophis and al-
lowing the bark of the sun god to take its course. In this role he bears the
name “the beloved of Rē.” A link between the sun god and Seth also
appears in the narrative of Wenamun, a legend from the beginning of
the first millennium telling the story of the voyage of a high func-
tionary to Byblos. Upon his arrival the Prince of Byblos says to him:
“Amon thunders in heaven, after installing Seth at his side.”27 This close
association between the sun god and a god of war and of storms is also
to be found, as we shall see later, in Jerusalem when Yhwh makes his
entry to take up residence there.
Seth, like Yhwh, is a god who has no children,28 although he is as-
sociated with the goddess Nephtys (goddess of the dead). Nevertheless
Seth is praised and invoked for his great sexual prowess; later he is
linked with foreign goddesses such as Anat and Astarte. Seth then be-
came for the Egyptians the god of the world outside Egypt and the tu-
telary god of Egyptians who found themselves abroad. The Egyptians
also identified with Seth certain gods of the peoples of the Levant (Baal,
Teshoub), and one can also easily imagine an identification of Seth
with Yhwh. Th is is attested in some late anti-Jewish texts from the
Hellenistic period.29
A careful analysis of an Egyptian document that has not yet been
published points to an even older rapprochement between Seth and
Yhwh. The papyrus in question—Louvre E 32847, which is a medical
text—mentions a foreign god who dwells on “Mount Laban” in a region
called Oûan (“the country of the juniper of Lebanon or the red juniper”),
which one can identify as Edom because that is the only place in Pal-
estine where this plant grows.30 An Egyptian text from the eighteenth
dynasty that lists the places occupied by the Shasu nomads (who have
already been discussed) mentions a “country of the Shasu and of Laban.”
So there seems to be a connection between these nomads and “Laban,”
which in this context functions as a geographic term. Is it, then, pos-
sible to connect Yhwh and this foreign god? This deity is represented in
the papyrus as particularly violent and is identified using the terms

Egyptians used for designating the god Babi/Baba (an ape god). Babi,
however, was a form of Seth and then finally of the god Thot. It is hard to
decide whether this violent deity without a name might possibly be
Yhwh, but it is interesting to note the connection made in this docu-
ment between Laban and Edom, a connection that is also made in the
biblical story of Jacob (Israel), who is the brother of Esau (Edom) and
the nephew of Laban.
These possible links between Seth and Yhwh31 all converge in a way
that underlines the “southern” origin of Yhwh, his status as a warrior
god, and his provenance from the steppes.
3
MOSES AND THE MIDIANITES
According to the narrative in Exodus 3, Moses first encoun-

ters Yhwh during a sojourn among the Midianites, with whom he has
taken refuge to escape the wrath of the pharaoh after killing an Egyptian
overseer. Yhwh reveals himself to Moses while Moses is working as a
shepherd for his father-in-law, Jethro (who appears elsewhere in the
Bible under other names), and according to Exodus 18 this same Jethro
visits Moses just before the great manifestation of Yhwh on Mount Sinai.
It is unlikely that this link between Moses and the Midianites is the
complete invention of a later age. It is hard to see how at a time when
“mixed” marriages between Jews and non-Jews had become problem-
atic, someone would have invented a Midianite wife for Moses. This wife
is even said to have saved him from a murderous attack by Yhwh, a story
that is extremely obscure and is placed in the text after the call of
Moses (Exod. 4:24–26). Nevertheless, this Midianite wife clearly made
the editors of the biblical text uncomfortable. Exodus 18 suggests that
she did not go with Moses into Egypt, but stayed in Midian (contrary to
what is assumed in the narrative of Exodus 4). According to Exodus 18:2
she was sent back (“Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, took Zipporah,
the wife of Moses who had been sent back to him”), and after the visit
of Jethro she disappears with him. Then Numbers 12 mentions another
(a new) wife of Moses, a Cushite woman. To have any chance of clari-

fying these paradoxes, we need first of all to ask who Moses was.
A STORY ABOUT MOSES
According to the biblical narrative, Moses has a dual identity: raised at

the court of Egypt, he nevertheless feels solidarity with his Hebrew
brothers. We shall not discuss in detail the thorny question of the his-
toricity of Moses. As the Egyptologist Jan Assmann has correctly em-
phasized: “Moses is a figure of tradition, of whom, however, there are
no historical traces.”1 Outside the Bible we have no explicit mention of
the man Moses in any ancient Egyptian or other texts, which is what has
given rise to the donnish witticism that the only thing we know about
the historical Moses is that he died.
What we do have is his name, which is of Egyptian origin. It is a
transcription into Hebrew of the Egyptian root msj (“to engender, to
beget”), which one fi nds, for instance, in the name Ramses (“Ra has
begot him” or “child of Ra”). During the second millennium and the first
half of the first millennium, Egyptian names were as popular in Syria-
Palestine as first names deriving from U.S. pop stars are now. Never-
theless, a philological detail might indicate that the name of the biblical
Moses is older than the texts in which he figures. The Egyptian conso-
nant “s” in the name “Moses” is rendered in Hebrew with the letter šin,
whereas in texts of the fi rst millennium this sound is normally ex-
pressed by the Hebrew letter sāmek. The name Moses thus takes us per-
haps back to the second millennium.
In the biblical tale Moses appears as a Hebrew occupying a high so-
cial status at the Egyptian court. This corresponds to the fact that Egyp-
tian texts mention several cases of “Asiatics” (ʿзmw) who had successful
careers in Egypt, often attaining high office.2 Toward the end of the
nineteenth dynasty a Canaanite instigated a revolt of Asiatics in the
town of Pi-Ramses. He was a high bureaucrat who had a double name:
the Semitic name “Beya” and the Egyptian name Ra-mses-khe-em-
neterow (“Ramses is the manifestation of the gods”?). Note that the
element “moses” (m-s-s) is a constituent of this name. This Beya makes
MOSES AND THE MIDIANITES 53
his first appearance in the documents in the reign of Sethi II (1203–

1197). After the death of this king, with the consent of the queen mother
Taoseret, who was also a Canaanite, Beya proclaimed the child Siptah,
pharaoh, but reigned himself in the infant’s place. The close relation
between Moses and the Egyptian court described in Exodus 2 may
well be a reflection of this situation. In a papyrus dating to the reign of
Ramses III (1188–1157), this period of the prominence of Beya is de-
scribed as anarchic and decadent: “Egypt belonged to princes and
magistrates. People killed each other, the highly placed and the low . . .
A Syrian, a parvenu (?),3 had become prince and wanted to subject the
whole country to himself . . . They despoiled the inhabitants and treated
the gods as if they were human beings.”4
When the infant Siptah died (recall that in the biblical narrative of the
exodus the tenth plague causes the death of the firstborn son of the pha-
raoh), Beya tried to invest Taoseret as reigning queen and a civil war
broke out. It seems that Beya was supported by some Asiatics, members
of the military, and by people doing forced labor in the delta of the Nile.
According to an inscription of Pharaoh Sethnakth that was found at
Elephantine, Beya hired Canaanite and Egyptian mercenaries (which the
Egyptian texts call ̒ apiru, a term that might be related to the word “He-
brew”). He is said to have taken control of Egyptian silver and gold to fi-
nance his revolt (in Exodus 11:2 and two other texts there is mention of
the silver and gold the Israelites take with them when they leave Egypt).
Apparently Sethnakth succeeded in driving out Beya and his troops,
without, however, being able to take them into custody. However, ac-
cording to a newly published document, it seems that Chancellor Beya
was executed in Egypt, which would make any identification with Moses
arbitrary, despite a certain number of common motifs in the stories.5
Another possible candidate makes his appearance under Ramses II:
a Semite originally from Transjordan who held the important post of
“Carver Esquire” (who cut up the royal meat), and whose name was Ben-
Ozen. He also had an Egyptian name containing the component “m-s-s.”
He intervened as a mediator in a confl ict between some groups of
Shasu who were performing forced labor and their Egyptian overseers.
This might bring to mind the episode in Exodus 2 where Moses comes
to the defense of the Hebrew slave.
However, none of the possible candidates could really provide a model

for all aspects of the biblical Moses, who must rather be understood as
a “construct” in which memory traces of various different historical
events and figures are combined.
In Exodus 2, the flight of Moses from Egypt begins with the episode
in which he kills the Egyptian overseer; this reverses the common
Egyptian iconographic motif, which presents the pharaoh or a high
Egyptian officer as striking down an enemy. The author of the biblical
tale certainly knew this convention and reversed it; by doing so he af-
firmed the authority of Moses vis-à-vis the power of Egypt. The narra-
tive of the flight and the reception among the Midianites is fashioned
with great artifice in the manner of a romance, and it is very difficult to
reconstruct any historical event that might lie behind this treatment. It
is perhaps based on a historical recollection of the importance of the
Midianites and of some kind of close contact between them and Moses.
WHO WERE THE MIDIANITES?
Before taking up again the narrative of Exodus about Moses and the
Midianites, it makes sense to look at the archaeological and geographic
information we have about these latter. To start with, we know very
little about them apart from what is presented in the Bible.
The meaning of the name “Midian” is not clear. Wolfram von Sodem,
followed by Ernst Axel Knauf, suggests that it is a substantive form of the
root m-d-y, “extend,”6 so that “Midian” would be “the extended (terri-
tory)” and the name would allude to the fact that this territory is com-
posed of extended valleys.
In the Hebrew Bible, 1 Kings 11 mentions a country of Midian:
(17) Thus it was that Hadad took flight with the Edomite servants
of his father in order to get to Egypt. Hadad was still a young man.
When they left Midian, they went to Paran; they took men of Paran
with them and arrived in Egypt at the court of Pharaoh, the king
of Egypt, who gave him a house, ensured his maintenance, and
gave him land.
According to this text, the land of Midian was south of Edom on the
way that leads from Edom to Egypt passing through Wadi Feran. Greco-
Roman and Arab geographers knew a town named “Midama Madyan”
to the east of the Gulf of Aqaba, which can be identified with al-Bad in
the Wadi A̒ fal. The land of Midian, then, could have been the region cen-
tered on this town. This region was traversed in antiquity by two impor-
tant commercial routes. The first starts at Aqaba, passes through the
oasis of Wadi A ̒ fal (al-Bad) and runs along the coast. Along the whole
course of this route there are archaeological remains dating from the
thirteenth century up to the Nabatean period (that is, the Roman era).
The second route crosses the Ḥismā following two tracks, one farther
west and the other farther east via Tabuk. The use of these routes across
the Ḥismā presupposes the domestication of the camel.
Wadi Sadr probably marks the southern frontier of the land of
Midian. In addition to al-Bad, Wadi Šarma constitutes a second center
where Midianites were present in great numbers; this can be deduced
from the pottery found there. Midianite pottery has also been dis-
covered at al- Qurayya in the Ḥismā.
The Midianites were “nomadic peasants” who also succeeded in do-
mesticating the camel; they combined agriculture and stock raising.
They seem to have lived in a confederation or a series of confederations,
where subgroups who were more nomadic coexisted with subgroups
who were more sedentary. It seems that the camel was first domesticated
in southeast Arabia in the third millennium. It was an animal especially
suited to carrying heavy burdens, which made long journeys with it pos-
sible, and it also furnished meat, milk, and camel hair. In the second
millennium the know-how needed for successful camel raising spread as
far as Babylon and into western Arabia; toward the end of the second
millennium it even gradually reached the Levant.
In the first millennium the region of Midian was known for its camel
raising. This characteristic is mentioned in one of the latest parts of the
book of Isaiah, where we find this message of salvation: “You shall be
covered with great herds of camels and dromedaries of Midian and
of Ephah” (Isa. 60:6). Job, according to the narrator of the biblical book
with the same name, lived not far from Midian and practiced both
agriculture and camel raising.
Sidon Damascus
Tyre
Shechem
Amman
Gezer
Gaza
Hebron
Beersheba
Arad
Pi-Ramesses
Fenan
Pithom Kadesh-Barnea Tawilan
Kuntillet Ajrud
Ayla
Geziret-Faraun
Tabuk
Al-Bad
Tayma
The Midianites and the Negev
At the end of the second millennium the Midianites already had a

commercialized form of ceramics production, traces of which have been
found as far afield as the Levant. There is a particular type of pottery
that can be distinguished from Edomite-style ceramics and that is found
primarily, although not exclusively, in “Midian.” This type of pottery,
which can be dated to the period of the thirteenth through the eleventh
century, included pieces decorated with representations of camels,
human figures, and ostriches. Camels and ostriches shared with nomads
a harsh and difficult life; the ostrich was highly esteemed because of its
speed, its highly useful feathers, and its much-prized meat.
The Midianites, like the Shasu (among whom the Midianites were
probably counted by the Egyptians), were perhaps also involved in
mining (gold and copper) at Timna (el-Mene̒ iye) under Egyptian con-
trol. What may have been a “Midianite” holy place has been discovered
on the site of what was an Egyptian sanctuary dedicated to Hathor, the
celestial cow who each day gives birth to the god of the sky and his son,
Horus. The later occupants of this site seem to have tried to erase the
Egyptian hieroglyphs and to have turned the sanctuary into a kind of

tent, because traces of colored textiles, folded around the east and west
walls of the sanctuary, have been found. The later occupants also put
maṣṣebôt (cultic stones) inside the sanctuary as well as a basin for water—
a form of furnishing that recalls the “tent of meeting” in the book of
Exodus, which Moses enters to receive oracular responses from God. In
the inner chamber the excavators found a small serpent (12 centimeters
long) with a gilded head and an ithyphallic figure. This would have
been an offering placed before a statue or stele that has disappeared.
Their advanced skill in domesticating camels suggests that the Midi-
anites were involved in commerce, and the wide area within which
Midianite ceramic wares have been found also supports this conclu-
sion. In the Hebrew Bible we can fi nd a reference to the Midianites as
traders in the story of Joseph (Gen. 37), where they are mentioned in
parallel to the Ishmaelites:
(26) So Judah said to his brothers: “What profit would there be in

killing our brother and hiding his blood? (27) Come, let us rather
sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lift a hand against him, for he
is our brother, our flesh.” His brothers listened to him. (28) Some
Midianite merchants were passing and they drew Joseph up and
brought him out of the cistern. They sold Joseph to the Ishmael-
ites for twenty pieces of silver and the Ishmaelites took Joseph to
Egypt . . . (36) So the Midianites had sold Joseph in Egypt to Poti-
phar, a high official of the Pharaoh, commander of the guard.
According to verse 28 the Midianites sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites

and it is the Ishmaelites who in turn sell him in Egypt, whereas according
to verse 36 it is the Midianites themselves who turn over the young
Hebrew to a high Egyptian official. This confusion results from the fact
that in verse 28 the arrival of the Midianites ironically deprives the
brothers of their profit because it is the Midianites who draw Joseph out
of the cistern and sell him to the Ishmaelites, whereas verse 36 summa-
rizes the story elliptically when it emphasizes that it is because of an
initiative of the Midianites that Joseph arrives in Egypt. Apparently the
author of this text, who already knew the Midianites as traders in incense
(something not attested, to be sure, before the eighth century), tried to

conflate Ishmaelite caravans and Midianite caravans, which were for
him just two variants of Arab commerce. It is, however, also possible that
the parallel mention of Midianites and Ishmaelites results from two
different authors or redactors.
In summary, the Midianites were organized as a tribal society that
had only a very weakly hierarchized structure (although certain biblical
texts speak anachronistically of Midianite “kings”). According to Exodus
2, they raised cattle (see also Jth. 2:26), and certain clans were nomadic
or semi-nomadic (Hab. 3:7). Other clans, however, were settled and en-
gaged in agriculture around oases. They were also involved in gold and
copper mining and in some commercial activities.
MIDIAN AND THE MIDIANITES IN THE BIBLE
Biblical “ethnography” reflects in a number of ways a connection be-

tween “Israel” and Midian. The most important texts for the question
of the origin of Yhwh and his links with the Midianites are Exodus 2–4
and 8. Before embarking on a detailed analysis of these passages, let
us review other mentions of Midian and the Midianites. The biblical
sources draw an ambiguous picture. There are some neutral or even
positive texts, but also others that present the Midianites as among the
very worst enemies of Yhwh.
The Negative Texts

Chapter 25 of the book of Numbers deals with sexual irregularities on
the part of the Israelites and with worship offered to other gods. The
Israelites are seduced by the daughters of Moab and by a Midian woman,
who is then killed by the priest Pinhas. Numbers 25 has a complex history
of composition: the story of the Midianite woman was inserted into it
after the final large-scale redaction of the text at the end of the Persian era;
even later, a further editor added verses 14–18 to explain the names of the
protagonists.7 The story ends with an appeal to prepare for war against the
Midianites, a war that is related in Numbers 31: all the men, including five
kings, are killed (the names of these kings mentioned in verse 8 are taken
up again in Joshua 13:21), and all the women are made prisoner. Moses
criticizes the decision to allow the Midianite women to live because they
incite the Israelites to infidelity and debauchery (31:13–14). Because Moses
orders that all the men be killed, one must conclude that they were sup-
posed to have been exterminated, but this contradicts the text of Judges
6–8, which recounts a victory of Gideon over the Midianites.
In parallel to the above history of transmission, a glossator on Num-
bers 31:16 mentioned the matter of Balaam. In the biblical narrative about
Balaam (Num. 22), there is no mention of Midianite women, but there
is mention of the Elders of Midian, who consult with the Elders of Moab
and demand that Balaam curse the Israelites (22:4 and 7).8 These three
texts are certainly interlinked and they all date from the Persian era,
although the history of Balaam is originally older; the addition of the
Midianites to the story of Balaam is due to the influence of Numbers 25
and 31. In these texts the term “Midianite,” like “Amalekite,” designates
not so much a particular group, but the paradigmatic enemy, and in this
case the enemy who is a nomad.
The second narrative complex in which the Midianites appear as the
enemies of Israel is in the story of Gideon in Judges 6–8. This passage,
too, has a complicated editorial history. Its oldest version, which recounts
the exploits of Gideon against the Midianites, is probably based on real
conflicts between Israelites and Arab tribes. A later version of the story,
which is ascribed to the so-called Deuteronomistic editors, transforms
the Midianites into “instruments” of Yhwh sent to punish the Israelites
for having done what is evil in his eyes.9 In Judges 6:3 and 7:17 the
Midianites are associated with the Amalekites and the “sons of the
East.” When the Israelites cry out to Yhwh, he calls up Gideon to de-
liver them from the hands of the Midianites.
The authors of verses 7:12 and 8:26 know that the Midianites use
camels. Gideon, with the help of a small group of Israelite tribesmen,
defeats the Midianites and their chiefs Orev and Zeev, who figure again
in Psalms 83:12 (both of them) and in Isaiah 10:26 (only Orev). “Orev”
either means “the crow” or is a personification of “the Arab” (in Hebrew
the two words have the same root). The first sense of Orev is more plau-
sible here because Zeev means the wolf, and “wolf and crow” is appar-
ently a well-attested pairing in Arab poetry.10 Verses 5 and 12 of Judges
8, on the other hand, mention as kings of Midian Zevah (“sacrifice” or
“sacrificer”?) and Ṣalmunna (“the shadow—protection—has failed”; if

this is not a totally invented name, one might connect it with the god
Ṣalm, worshipped at Tayma in Arabia from the sixth century onward).
Even though the reference to Midianite kings is anachronistic, the nar-
rative of Judges 6–8 may have retained traces of some conflicts between
Midianite tribes and Israel.
Finally, the text of Isaiah 9:3, which evokes a “day of Midian,” seems
to be referring to a victory against Midian, perhaps the same one de-
scribed in Judges 6–8.11
Positive or Neutral Texts

Apart from the traditions about Moses and Sinai, the text of Habakkuk 3,
which has already been analyzed in Chapter 2, mentions Midian in the
context of a theophany of Yhwh who comes from Temān; so it confirms
the link between Yhwh and Midian.
In Genesis 25:2 (which has a parallel in 1 Chron. 1:33) Midian appears
as one of the sons whom Qetura gives to Abraham, and verse 4 (= 1 Chron.
1:33) contains a list of the four sons of Midian. Chapter 25 of Genesis
is part of the priestly version of the story of Abraham, which was per-
haps intended to rehabilitate the Midianites, in view of the negative tradi-
tions about them in Israel, by showing that there were kinship relations
between Midian and “Israel”; both, after all, had a common ancestor in
Abraham. This would immediately make the marriage of Moses with a
Midianite woman (in Genesis 25) permissible, because in the priestly mi-
lieu from which Genesis 25 emerged, intermarriages between descen-
dants of Abraham would have been accepted. According to Knauf, the
names given to the sons of Midian in this text have parallels in north
and south Arabic languages and thus they may go back to an older tra-
dition, or may even go back to tribes who were still in existence at the
time when this text was written down.12
Moses’ Arrival in Midian

According to the story told in Exodus, Moses had close ties with the
Midianites. The narratives of Exodus 2–4 and 18 are the result of another
complex editorial history, the details of which are difficult to trace. Let
us recall the various episodes recounted in chapters 2–4. Moses was born
in Egypt in the context of the oppression of the Hebrews by the Egyp-
tians. Hidden in a basket by his mother, he was adopted by the daughter
of the pharaoh and became an Egyptian prince (2:1–10). When he came
of age, he struck down an Egyptian and took flight because the pharaoh
threatened to kill him (2:11–15a). He settled in the land of Midian and
married Zipporah, daughter of a Midianite priest (2:15–24). While
tending the herds of his father-in-law, he came to “the mountain of God,”
where Yhwh revealed himself to him, called him to his ser vice, and gave
him the order to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of servitude
(3:1–4:18). On the road back to Egypt, Yhwh, strangely enough, tried to
kill Moses, who was saved by his wife (4:19–26). After surviving this at-
tack, he was joined by his brother, Aaron, and both of them arrived in
Egypt (4:27–31).
The story of Moses’s call in Exodus 3:1–4:18 is not part of the original
narrative. First of all, it is noticeable that Moses in 4:18 says to his
father-in-law that he must return to Egypt and the latter gives him his
blessing, although the following verse contains another order from
Yhwh to Moses, instructing him to return to Egypt. The best explana-
tion of this doublet is that the episode narrated in Exodus 3:1–4:18 was a
later insertion into an older text. In fact one could move straight from
2:23 to 4:19:13 “During this long period the king of Egypt died” (2:23a).
“Yhwh said to Moses in Midian: Go, return to Egypt because those who
sought to kill you are dead. Moses took his wife and his sons, mounted
them upon asses, and returned to Egypt. He took the staff of God (with
him).” (4:19–20). The first version of the story of Moses in Midian would
then have contained 2:11–23a, followed by 4:19–20.
The departure of Moses from Egypt toward the Levant has parallels—
for instance, in the story of Sinuhe (ca. 1900), which recounts the flight
of this high Egyptian official, describing how he passed the fortified
frontier in the direction of the Sinai Peninsula. He hid from the frontier
guards and eventually came into the region of the bitter lakes: “I was
dying of thirst and my throat was parched. I said to myself, ‘This is the
taste of death.’ I heard the sound of lowing of cattle and sighted Setyu
(semi-nomads) . . . Their leader who had been to Egypt recognized me.
Then he gave me water, and after I had gone with him to his tribe, he had
them cook me some milk. They treated me well.”14 Like Sinuhe, Moses,
who is also identified by Midianite girls as an Egyptian (Exod. 2:19),
meets some semi-nomads beyond the Egyptian border.
A meeting at a well is a literary motif that is repeatedly used in the
Bible and also outside it, often as a prelude to marriage, so we might
wonder whether this episode (2:15b–20) has been added to an earlier
story to add more color to the narrative. Exodus 2:15 might in fact sug-
gest this: “Moses escaped from Pharaoh; he settled (wayyēšeḇ) in the
Land of Midian and he sat down (wayyēšeḇ) beside the well.” The same
verb is used here twice. The first suggests that Moses had already set-
tled in Midian,15 whereas seating himself beside a well would seem to
be a preparation for a process of gradually being integrated into the
family of the Midianite priest and marrying his daughter, as described
in verses 16–20.
The story shows us a Moses who, in contrast to how he acted in Egypt,
does not take flight, but defends the seven daughters of the Midianite
priest against hostile shepherds. The fact that the text speaks of seven
daughters, that is, a “round” number of daughters, is no doubt intended
to suggest that the priest has no sons and so Moses can easily become
his son-in-law.
THE PRIEST OF MIDIAN WHO HAS MANY NAMES
Exodus 2:16 speaks only of a priest of Midian, and verse 21 only of “the
man.” However, this figure appears under a variety of names in the Bible:
Reuel (Exod. 2:18); Jethro, priest of Midian (Exod. 3:1 and 18:1–2), and
the variant Jether (Exod. 4:18—other manuscripts and textual witnesses
have “Jethro” here); Hobab, son of Reuel, the Midianite, father-in-law
of Moses (Num. 10:29); Keni, father-in-law of Moses (Judg. 1:16—some
manuscripts of the Septuagint have Hobab here); Hobab, father-in-law
of Moses, apparently belonging to the tribe of the Kenites (Judg. 4:11).
This diversity shows that an attempt was made to identify this Midianite
in different ways.
Reuel appears several times in Genesis 36 (= 1 Chron. 1:35, 37) as the
name of one of the sons of Esau/Edom and means “friend of El.” The
name is attested in different linguistic regions of the Semitic-speaking

world.
Jethro (with its variant Jether attested in Judg. 8:20 for a son of Gideon;
1 Kings 2:5, 32; and 1 Chron. 2:17, 32; 4:17, and 7:38 for one of the descen-
dants of Judah) means “rest, his rest” (used for a baby that survives a
difficult birth) and is a western Semitic name. Another variant of the
name, “Jithran,” appears as the name of a clan of Seir (Gen. 36:26 = 1 Chron.
1:41), and Jithra or Jether is attested as an Ishmaelite name (2 Sam. 17:25;
1 Chron. 2:17).
Hobab (“friend”) is a south Semitic name. Keni/Kenite refers to a tribe
that knows how to work with iron.
None of these names is typically “Midianite.” Still we might note the
connection made with the Kenites and the fact that the name Reuel is
also known to be Edomite, which directs our attention again toward the
south. It is impossible, however, to recover any historical person from
behind the different names.
What is important in the biblical narrative is the link between
Moses and some Midianite priest. Thus, according to the story told in
Exodus 3:1–4:18, which was inserted later between 2:23 and 4:19, the
revelation of Yhwh took place while Moses was working as a shepherd
in the ser vice of this priest of Midian. According to Exodus 3 the moun-
tain of god, where Yhwh dwells, is therefore to be found in Midianite
territory.
The episode narrated in Exodus 4:24–26, a late addition to the text
that tells of Yhwh’s attempt to murder Moses, remains an enigma. For
our inquiry it is significant that this attack takes place on the road from
Midian to Egypt and that it is his Midianite wife who saves Moses by
circumcising his son and smearing her husband’s penis with the blood.
Does this episode reflect the fact that the Midianites practiced circum-
cision? Yhwh is presented in this text as a dangerous god, against whom
one must know how to protect oneself. But how can one explain this hos-
tility? A comparison with Genesis 32:23–32, where the patriarch Jacob
is attacked by a mysterious entity who later is identified as God, empha-
sizes the fact that this encounter should be seen as a kind of initiation.
But whereas Jacob survives and emerges from the encounter relying only
on his own resources, Moses has need of help and support from his Mid-
ianite wife. Exodus 4:24–26 draws special attention to the role of the
Midianite wife in the practice of circumcision, which is here seen as a

protection against an extremely dangerous Yhwh.
The Cult of Yhwh Founded by a Midianite Priest

The close association of Yhwh and the Midianite priest is brought to the
fore again in Exodus 18, which is placed immediately before the great
revelation at Mount Sinai in Exodus 19–24:
(1) Jethro, priest of Midian, father-in-law of Moses, learned all that

God16 had done for Moses and for Israel his people . . . (2) Jethro,
father-in-law of Moses, took Zipporah, the wife of Moses, who had
been sent back to him, (3) also their two sons: the name of the one
was Gershom because he said: “I am an immigrant living in a for-
eign land”; (4) the name of the other was Eliezer because “The god of
my father has come to my aid and delivered me from the sword of
the Pharaoh.” (5) Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, with his sons
and his wife came to Moses in the desert, to the place where he was
camping at the mountain of god. (6) He said to Moses: “I, your
father-in-law, come to you with your wife and your two sons.”
(7) Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, bowed to him17 and
embraced him. They asked each other how things were with
each of them, then.18 (8) Moses told his father-in-law all that Yhwh
had done to the Pharaoh and to Egypt for the sake of Israel, all the
tribulations they suffered on the road, from which Yhwh deliv-
ered them. (9) Jethro rejoiced at all the good Yhwh had done to
Israel, which he had delivered from the hands of the Egyptians.
(10) Jethro said: “Blessed be Yhwh, who has delivered you from
the hands of the Egyptians and the hands of the Pharaoh *and
who has delivered the people from the hands of Egypt.*19 (11) And
now I know that Yhwh is greater than all the gods. The evil that
they did has fallen back on them. (12) Jethro, the father-in-law of
Moses, made20 a holocaust and sacrifices for god. Aaron and all21
the elders come to eat a meal with the father-in-law of Moses be-
fore the god . . . (27) Moses sent his father on his way and he went
to his own country.
Exodus 18 is composed of two large segments that are linked by the

figure of the father-in-law of Moses: verses 1–12 (and 27), which we have
just translated, tell of the visit Jethro made to Moses and of a sacrifice
offered to Yhwh, whereas verses 13–26 deal with the establishment of
judges on the advice of Jethro, who realizes that Moses cannot by him-
self settle all the disputes that arise among the people. This last part was
added later to Exodus 18 and is based on a text from Deuteronomy, which
also recounts the establishment of judges, although it does not mention
Jethro (Deut. 1:9–18).
Exodus 18:1–12 has always astonished and puzzled commentators.
Already in the Middle Ages the Jewish scholar Abraham ibn Ezra noted
that there were serious problems here. In the passage, Israel is already
at the mountain of god, whereas it is only in the following chapter that
we are told about its arrival at Mount Sinai; also, verse 12 of chapter 18
presupposes the existence of an altar for sacrifices to Yhwh, but this altar
is not set up until Exodus 24:4. This is why attempts have sometimes
been made to locate this story later in the narrative of the divine revela-
tion at Mount Sinai. But if this was its original position, why would later
editors have inserted it in such an awkward place? A better explanation
would be to suppose that there was some memory of a Midianite con-
tribution to the cult of Yhwh that it was impossible simply to ignore; so
the only way it was possible to include it was by placing it before the
“true” revelation of Yhwh at Sinai.
If we read the story in its present form, we see immediately that it pre-
supposes Exodus 2–4, as well as the narrative of the flight from Egypt.
However, it also contains some elements that do not converge with the
account of Exodus 2–4, in particular the fact that Moses’s wife did not
accompany him to Egypt (contrary to what is asserted in 4:20) and that
Moses had sent her back to her father, which looks like a form of di-
vorce. This surprisingly detailed information was perhaps added by a
later editor to prepare for Numbers 12, where there is a mention of a
(further) marriage of Moses with a Kushite woman. The text of Exodus
18 mentions two sons of Moses by name, but Exodus 2 speaks only of
one son (Gershom), Exodus 4:20 mentions sons (without naming them),
and 4:25 once again refers to a single son. Verses 18:2–4 are perhaps an
addition to the original story made in order to harmonize the various
different references to the sons of Moses while insisting that the Midi-
anite family of Moses stayed with his father-in-law and were not with
Moses at the moment of the decisive revelation at Mount Sinai.
The comparison between Exodus 18:5 and Exodus 3:1 suggests that the
mountain of god was located in Midianite territory and that Jethro was
there to greet Moses when he arrived. It is striking that Jethro knows
the name of Yhwh, although it is nowhere stated that Moses had com-
municated this name to his father-in-law.
The “confession of faith” of Jethro in Exodus 18:10–11 is, in its present
form, certainly a later addition that has similarities with the confes-
sion of Rahab, the prostitute of Jericho who appears in chapter 2 of the
book of Joshua. These texts from the Persian period put forward the
idea that foreign peoples recognize the superiority and unicity of the
god of Israel.
Exod. 18:10–11 Josh. 2:9–11

Blessed be Yhwh who has I know that Yhwh has given the land to
delivered you from the hand of you . . . for we have heard it said that
the Egyptians and from the Yhwh dried the waters of the sea of
hand of the Pharaoh and who reeds before you, when you came out of
has delivered the people from Egypt . . . the breath of each of us is
the hand of Egypt. And now I taken away before you, for Yhwh, your
know that Yhwh is greater god, is God the highest in the heavens
than all the gods. and down here on earth.
The episode of Exodus 18:1–12 ends with a sacrifice to Yhwh before

the construction of the sanctuary described in chapters 35–40 and be-
fore the revelation of the different types of sacrifice and the official in-
stallation of the priests in Leviticus 1–9. The presence of Aaron and the
elders at the scene of sacrifice can be explained as an attempt on the part
of the editor to harmonize this text with Exodus 24. This text tries to
emphasize the privilege of Aaron and the elders, who in this chapter
have an immediate access to the god of Israel. Nevertheless, even in this
much revised text the priest of Midian plays a decisive role in the sac-
rifice: “Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, took (wayyiqqaḥ; in the sense
of “made”) a holocaust and sacrifices for god.”
Commentators have conducted lengthy discussions about the ques-

tion of who was the “chief celebrant” of this sacrifice. Some transla-
tions have “he participated in the sacrifice” rather than “he took/made
the sacrifice,” which betrays a certain embarrassment. There seems
no possible alternative to taking the Hebrew text to mean that it was
Jethro who took the initiative in this sacrifice. Even the editors who
inserted Aaron did not give him the initiative. The original version of
the story of this meeting between Moses and Jethro must be taken to
culminate, then, in a sacrifice made by the priest of Midian to Yhwh.
Starting from this observation, the next step would be to assume that
the priest of Midian was a priest of Yhwh. Putting all the observations
together, we can reconstruct the most ancient tradition behind Exodus
18 grosso modo in this way:
(1) Jethro, priest of Midian and father-in-law of Moses, learned all

that god had done for Moses and Israel, his people. (5) Jethro went
to find Moses in the desert, where he was camped. (7) Moses went
out to meet his father-in-law, bowed to him and embraced him.
Each asked the other how things were going, then they entered
the tent. (8) Moses told his father-in-law all that Yhwh had done to
the Pharaoh and to Egypt. (19) Jethro said: “Blessed be Yhwh, who
delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and the hand of the
Pharaoh.” (12) Jethro, father-in-law of Moses, made a holocaust and
sacrifices to god.22
The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis

In the nineteenth century the observation of how important the Midi-
anites were for the origin of the worship of Yhwh gave rise to what is
called the “Midianite-Kenite hypothesis.”23 Th is hypothesis was fi rst
formulated by the historian and publicist Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany,
who published the first volume of his Theologische Briefe an die Gebil-
deten der deutschen Nation (Theological letters addressed to the educated
members of the German nation) under the pseudonym of Richard von
der Alm in 1862. Following its original formulation, this hypothesis
was developed in several variants by different specialists of the Old
Testament, but the basic idea remained unchanged, namely that

Moses and the Israelites came to know of the cult of Yhwh through the
mediation of the Midianites.
Because in certain biblical texts the father-in-law of Moses is identi-
fied as a Kenite, some scholars have postulated a connection between
the traditional stories about Midian and the story about Cain (q-y-n),
whose name exhibits some similarities with the name “Kenite.” At the
end of the story of Cain, who kills his brother and thereby becomes
the founder of civilization, the author of the text reports that at that
time Yhwh began to be venerated by all mankind: “From that time on
people began to invoke the name of Yhwh” (Gen. 4:26). However, any
relation there might be between this story and the narratives about
Moses and the Midianites/Kenites is very weak.
Another link with the Kenites is perhaps more interesting. In Num-
bers 24:21 the Kenites are contrasted with the Amalekites: the latter are
cursed by Balaam, whereas the former are assured of a secure dwelling
place (v. 21). Similarly, in 1 Samuel 15:6 Saul calls upon the Kenites to dis-
sociate themselves from the Amalekites because when the Israelites
came up from Egypt, the Kenites are said to have acted toward them with
ḥesed, “loyally.” Yael, who in Judges 4 and 5 kills Sisera, army commander
of the enemies of Israel, was the wife of a Kenite (Judg. 4:17, 5:24), and
according to 1 Chronicles 2:55 the Rekhabites, a group of Yahwists who
pursued a nomadic ideal, were of Kenite origin. Caleb, according to
Numbers 32:13, was a Kenizzite, the member of a clan that might be
connected to the Kenites.24 Caleb is, in addition, presented as someone
who serves Yhwh faithfully (Num. 13:13); this is why he receives the ter-
ritory of Hebron (Josh. 14:14). So it appears that the Calebites, like the
Kenizzites, are a clan linked with Judah. Perhaps Judah itself (or parts
of it) was originally one of those Arab tribes installed in the south and
with connection to the Midianites, the Kenites, and the Edomites.
YHWH, ISRAEL, AND EDOM
We saw that the papyrus Anastai VI mentions the Shasu of Edom during
the reign of Sethi II. Here the Shasu are linked with Edom, and in Gen-
esis and other texts (for instance, Deut. 2:2–8) there is an insistence that
Jacob (Israel) and Esau (Edom) are brothers. These texts give the impres-
sion of a privileged connection between Israel and Edom compared
with their relations with their other neighbors. Deuteronomy 2:5 states
that it is Yhwh who has given Seir to the sons of Esau, and there is a
similar remark in Joshua 24:4. In Deuteronomy 23 the Edomites are con-
sidered as a people to be “brothers” of the Israelites: “You shall not con-
sider the Edomite to be abominable because he is your brother” (23:8).
The Bible repeatedly condemns the national gods of the Moabites and
Ammonites, Chemosh and Milkom, but never the god of Edom. The
author of the text of 1 Kings 11:11–19 criticizes King Solomon for his
numerous wives who draw him toward the cults of their national gods.
Curiously, despite the presence of Edomite women among his wives,
the text mentions only the names of the gods of the Ammonites, the
Moabites, and the Sidonians, and not that of the god of Edom.
Following this line of argument, it seems that, in contrast to what is the
case for Moab and Ammon, the Bible makes a point of not mentioning
the national god of Edom, whose name was Qaus or Qos. This name is
not attested directly before the sixth or fifth century, but he was probably
already worshipped during the Assyrian period, as is indicated by the fact
that we find in the records the names of kings like Qosmalak and Qos-
gabri during this period. The importance of this god can be seen in Egyp-
tian lists that deal with, roughly, the region of Edom: qśrʿ (“Qos is my shep-
herd”), qśrbn (“Qos is brilliant”), and so forth.25 His popularity reached its
zenith in the Idumean or Nabatean period (from the fourth century on).
The name “Qaus” or “Qos” has “Arab” connotations and signifies “bow.”
Either he is a deified bow or he is simply a god of war. The discovery of an
Edomite sanctuary near Arad (in the north of the Negev) has provided us
with inscriptions mentioning Qos and some statuettes that one can iden-
tify with this god or its parhedros (associated female deity).
We have observed that there was a close link between Israel and Edom
and that Qos was a rather late arrival on the scene. We might then specu-
late that Yhwh was also worshipped in Edom and that Qos stepped in
only when Yhwh became the national god of Israel and Judah. Or is it
possible that Yhwh and Qos were two names for the same divinity? Any
such speculation, however, would need further argument to support it.
In sum, what we know about Moses and Midian confirms the evi-
dence provided by the biblical texts that suggest a provenance of Yhwh
from the south, and possibly a connection with the Shasu, the group
of semi-nomadic tribes that may include the Midianites and the Kenites.
We have seen that Judges 5 has Yhwh come from Seir. A link between
Yhwh and Edom can also be found in a late text from the final part of
the book of Isaiah: “Who is he who comes from Edom, from Bozrah,
with scarlet on his vestments, stretching out his torso under his gar-
ments, arching it with the intensity of his energy?——It is me who speaks
of justice, who unleashes strife in order to save” (Isa. 63:1).
It is more difficult to know what degree of historical plausibility we
should attribute to the narratives about Moses and Midian. Moses was
perhaps the leader of a group of ̒ apiru who, when they had left Egypt,
encountered Yhwh in Midian and passed on the knowledge of him to
other tribes in the south. We shall take up this question again later.
4
HOW DID Y HWH BECOME T HE GOD OF ISR AEL?
THE MEETING OF YHWH AND ISRAEL: MEMORY TRACES
According to the biblical narrative contained in Exodus 19–24, Yhwh

became the god of Israel following his revelation on Mount Sinai through
the conclusion of a contract or “covenant.” During this theophany the
Hebrews heard the voice of Yhwh in the midst of thunder, and he com-
municated to them the Ten Commandments. Then, because the people
could not tolerate this proximity to the divine, they asked Moses to
become the mediator between Yhwh and Israel. Yhwh, in this narra-
tive, presents himself as the god who conquered Egypt: “You yourselves
have seen what I did to Egypt, how I carried you on the wings of eagles
and brought you to me” (19:4). He then announces his name to all the
people, the name that up to that point he had revealed only to Moses:
“I am Yhwh, your god, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from
the house of slaves” (20:2). The new relation between Yhwh and Israel is
ratified by a ritual in which Moses sprinkles the people and the altar
with blood. This story of the theophany at Mount Sinai, like the narra-
tives of the calling of Moses, retains the memory of the fact that Yhwh
had not always been the god of Israel; this relation is the result of a par-
ticular encounter.
The encounter between Yhwh and Israel is described in the biblical

texts in different ways. In the book attributed to the prophet Hosea, we
find the simple claim that Yhwh “found” Israel in the desert: “I found
Israel like grapes in the desert. I looked upon your fathers as on early
figs, the first fruits of a fig tree” (9:10). According to Ezekiel 20, the story
of Yhwh and Israel began in Egypt with a choice by Yhwh: “You shall
tell them: Thus spoke the Lord Yhwh: ‘The day I chose Israel, I raised
up my hand to swear an oath to the descendants of the house of Jacob
and I made myself known to them in Egypt; I raised my hand to swear
an oath: I am Yhwh, your god.’ ”
Although these texts do not agree on the place where this link was
first formed, they do agree that Yhwh chose Israel at a particular point
in history and that this people had not been his people from all time.
This leads us to think carefully about the name Israel and its meaning.
What can we say about this name? When and under what historical
circumstances can we imagine this meeting to have taken place?
THE NAME ISRAEL
“Israel” contains the theophoric element ʾēl. This can be understood as

the proper name of a god, El, who is known in Ugarit as the creator
god or the head of a pantheon, but it could also in certain cases be used
as a generic term for “god.” The name “Israel” is composed of the same
elements as “Ishmael” (Yišmāʿ-ʾēl), which means “May El hear.” This is
a verb in the third-person singular of the preformative conjugation
in the jussive form (expressing an injunction), combined with the name
of the deity.
The etymology of the name Yiśrā-ʾēl is a subject of controversy. In
the book of Genesis the author of the story about Jacob’s struggle with
a mysterious entity who eventually reveals himself as God proposes a
folk etymology: “He said: They will no longer call you Jacob, but Israel,
because you have struggled with God (kî śārîtā ̒ im ʾĕlōhîm)” (32:29).
The same explanation is given in Hosea 12:4: “In his prime he strove
with god” (ûbʾônô śārāh ʾēt ʾĕlōhîm). This etymology construes the name
from the root ś-r-h (“hit,” “combat”). In this case the primary sense
HOW DID YHWH BECOME THE GOD OF ISRAEL? 73
would be “May El/God combat,” because in theophoric names the name

of the god is the subject, not the direct object. However, this root is at-
tested in the Bible only in the two texts just cited, and there are few oc-
currences in any other Semitic languages. Apparently the name iś-ra-il
is attested in Ebla (with a possible meaning connected to a root meaning
“combat”).1
Other suggestions have been made. The name can be construed from
the root y-š-r (“to be just”). This would be a construction in the affor-
mative conjugation: “El is just.” This root is found again in two poetic
texts in Deuteronomy, which affirm: “None is like El of Yeshouroun
(ʾên kā-ʾēl Yĕšūrûn)” (32:15; 33:5, 26). The name Yeshurun is used as a
poetic name for Israel2 and seems to have been constructed from the
root y-š-r (“to be just”). An explanation in terms of this root is also sup-
ported by a fragmentary tablet from Ugarit, which gives a list con-
taining the names of a corporation of military charioteers. One of these
soldiers is named y-š-r- ʾi-l.3 This tablet was still in the oven at the mo-
ment when Ugarit was destroyed and can thus be dated to the end of
the thirteenth century, so it is contemporary with the first attestation of
Israel in Egypt. However, a name on a list in Ugarit need not necessarily
be in any way connected with the biblical Israel,4 and the vocalization
of the name Israel in the biblical texts speaks rather in favor of a name
constructed in the preformative conjugation.
This line of thought, however, opens up another possibility, namely
the explanation of the name by reference to the root ś-r-r (“rule, govern,
command, impose oneself as master”). The name then would mean:
“May El impose himself as master, let him reign.” The Hebrew Bible has
perhaps preserved a trace of this meaning. The Masoretic text of Hosea
12:5 (“He struggled with an angel and he had the upper hand [wayyāśar
ʾel-malʾāḵ wayyūḵāl]” is the result of a dogmatic revision. The Maso-
retes wished to avoid too great a closeness between Jacob and God, and
so they inserted the word malʾāḵ (“angel”), thereby transforming the
sense of the consonants ʾl, which in the original text meant the god
El (ʾēl), and by a small change in vocalization they made it into the
preposition ʾel (“toward, in the direction of”).5 So we can reconstruct
the original text as “El imposed himself and gained the upper hand”
(wayyāśar ʾēl wayyūḵāl).
The Bible does attest some other proper names from the root ś-r-r,
such as Śĕrāyāh or, in its long form, Śĕrāyāhû—“Yhwh reigns”—which
is the name of a priest in 2 Kings 25:18 and also of an official of King
Zedekiah in Jeremiah 36:26.
The folk etymology using the root ś-r-h (“combat”) in the texts of Gen-
esis 32 and Hosea 12 was able to supplant the original etymology at the
moment when Yhwh, a warrior god, became the tutelary god of the
group “Israel.” The root “reign,” “impose himself as master,” would other-
wise have been appropriate for El, the chief god of the pantheon and
king of the gods.
THE STELE OF MERNEPTAH
The first clearly attested occurrence of the name “Israel” outside the Bible
that refers to the “biblical” Israel is to be found on the stele of Pharaoh
Merneptah, which can be dated to between 1210 and 1205. This granite
stele, which is 3.18 meters high, 1.6 meters wide, and 31 centimeters thick,
tells of the victories of the king of Egypt in a campaign in the Levant.
Part of the text reads:6
A great joy came to Egypt and the jubilation increased in the towns
of the well-beloved land. The women speak of the victories won by
Merneptah over the Tjehenu [Libyans]7 . . .
The leaders fall, saying: Peace (š-l-m)! Not a single one raises up his head
among the Nine Bows.8
Defeated is the country of the Tjehenu. Hatti9 is peaceable.
Canaan is deprived of all the evil it had.
Askalon is taken. Gerer is seized, as if it had never existed.
Yenoam10 has become as if it had never existed.
Israel is destroyed, its seed is no longer.
Syria (Ḫurru) has become widows for Egypt.
All the countries are united; they are in peace.
Those who once wandered around are now bound by the king of Upper
and Lower Egypt, Beanre, the son of Re, Merneptah, endowed with
life,
like Re every day.
A recent publication claims that the name Israel has been found, in
a very different transliteration from that on the stele of Merneptah, on
this pedestal, now in Berlin, of a statue that might be older than the stele,
possibly from the era of Ramses II. Ashkelon and Canaan are clearly
named on this pedestal, as they are on the stele of Merneptah; the third
cartouche might possibly contain the name Israel,11 in the suggested re-
construction: Ia-cha-ri, that is, Ia-cha-l. This toponym does seem rather
different from the Isrial of the Merneptah stele. The same is true of the
proposed reading of Manfred Görg: a-chi-ru. The fact that in all these
reconstructions the divine name “El” is missing is explained by the hy-
pothesis that it is presupposed in this name, which designates a group
devoted to the ser vice of this god. Görg holds that the Egyptian text is
a transliteration of a word from the root š-y-r, “to sing,” and that the initial
“a” corresponds to the first person, so a-chi-ru would mean “I will sing
(for El).” This would fit with the biblical story where, after crossing the Sea
of Reeds, the people begin to sing for Yhwh (in Exod. 15:2 the same root
occurs in the first-person plural).12 This construction is rather speculative,
primarily because it depends on the idea that a proper name could be
formed from a verb in the first-person singular. Note furthermore that
on the Berlin pedestal the toponym is written inside a sign that looks
like a stylized bastion, which usually indicates that it is the name of a
defeated country, city, or fortress. On the stele of Merneptah the name
Israel is written as an ethnonym using the determinative for “ethnic
group,” an image of a man and woman. At best, in the inscription on the
pedestal in Berlin, we might have a quasi-contemporary variant; at the
worst it is a completely different toponym.13
The stele of Merneptah is notable for the elegance and the witty word-
play of the inscription, both of which are typical of the royal rhetorical
style. First of all, the name “Israel” is given a determinative consisting
of a man and woman, then three vertical strokes indicating that it is
plural. This does not mean that it is a group of nomads, but rather that
it is the name of a definite group rather than of a region or locality. The
inscription states that this “Israel” no longer has pr.t, which is a term
with two meanings: seed/semen or wheat. The Egyptians had the habit,
as did many other peoples, of destroying the wheat fields in conquered
territories. The statement that Israel no longer has seed may also refer
to the Egyptian practice of cutting off the penises of the dead bodies of
(?) Yenoam
ISRAEL?
Gezer
Ashkelon
0 50 km
Places mentioned on the stele
of Merneptah
its enemies. The text is perhaps deliberately ambiguous, because the

scribe could have clarified what was meant by adding the sign consisting
of three kernels of grain if “wheat” was intended, or a phallus if what
was meant was “sperm.”14
Th is passage is marked by alliteration and the personification of
“Syria” (the land in which Israel is located) as a collection of widows
(plural) in mourning. Israel appears as a “man” (seed/sperm) and “Syria”
as a “woman.” At different levels this verse claims that Israel (a group)
and Syria (a country) have collapsed because of Egypt.
The precise identity of Israel in this inscription is an open question,
so what should we take “Syria” to be? Is it a synonym for Canaan or for
only a part of Canaan? The inscription seems to locate Israel between
Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yenoam (Yanoam). If, in this geographic enumer-
ation, Ashkelon and Gezer designate the extreme south and Yanoam
the extreme north, then Israel is located in the mountains of Ephraim,
that is, in the region where Saul will found his “kingdom.” “Israel” at
any rate seems to have been a group that was known by name to the
Egyptians and was considered by them to be a potential factor of dis-
order, but also an enemy sufficiently important for it to be necessary that
it be quickly defeated.
The mention of the name “Israel” on this stele in no way presupposes
an “exodus” or any kind of emigration of this group from the land of
Egypt. Nothing at all is said about the possible provenance of this group
from outside Palestine. One question remains: This group’s name indi-
cates that its members worshipped the god El, the chief god of the
Canaanite pantheon, but did they also already worship Yhwh?
THE IDENTIT Y OF THIS ISRAEL
André Lemaire has claimed that the origin of Israel lies in the name of
a clan “Asriel,” which lived in the mountains of Ephraim. The name
“Asriel” is mentioned in Numbers 26:31 as the name of one of the clans
of Galaad, and in Joshua 17:12 and 1 Chronicles 7:14 as the name of a son
of Manasse. It also occurs on two ostraca from Samaria, 42 and 48. This
clan, so the argument goes, became so important that it gave its name
to a coalition of clans, just as the Franks gave their name to France and
the tiny region of Schwyz gave its name to Switzerland.15 Th is thesis,
which is certainly interesting, is, however, also very fragile. The bib-
lical texts that mention this clan are not very numerous, and without
exception they date at the earliest from the Persian period. The change
of the letter alef into yod is also a rather late linguistic phenomenon.
Finally, it is unclear how such a marginal clan could have been the or-
igin of the name Israel.
As far as the “Israel” mentioned on the stele of Merneptah is con-
cerned, it may well have been a coalition of clans or tribes that wor-
shipped as tutelary deity the god “El” and that had its own identity, or
even ethnicity, that distinguished it from the city-states of the plains
of Palestine.16 It might have been a “segmentary society,” to use the term
coined by the sociologist Émile Durkheim and then used by the anthro-
pologist Edward Evans-Pritchard.17 Segmentary societies are composed
of groups of about the same size and power, which tends to limit con-
flicts between them and to encourage negotiations. The name of Israel—
“May El reign” or “May El be master”—might then be thought to express
the ideals of this type of society. Certain biblical traditions about the
resistance to the establishment of a monarchy in Israel could also be
thought to preserve the memory of these ideals of an egalitarian society
without a permanent chief.18
THE DEIT Y EL IN GENESIS AND IN THE HEBREW BIBLE
The worship of a deity like El, which preceded the worship of Yhwh, is
partially reflected in the stories of the patriarchs, especially that of Jacob,
who, by struggling with “god” and changing his name, became “Israel.”
The name of “El” is used very often in the narrative about the patri-
archs in Genesis 12–50: about 1.06 times per 1,000 words of text,19 which
is the highest frequency for all the books from Genesis to the books of
Kings.20 Thus, according to chapter 33 of Genesis, Jacob erected an altar
for El, god of Israel, near Shechem, apparently to mark out his territory:
“He erected there an altar and called it ‘El, god of Israel’ ” ( ʾēl ʾĕlōhê yiśrāʾēl)
(33:20). If any historical recollections from the clans of the era at the end
of the second millennium actually lie behind this story about Jacob, we
should assume that these “sons of Jacob” worshipped one or several of
the manifestations of the god El. The expression “El, god of Israel”
might be founded on an ancient tradition. Most of the passages from
Genesis and the other biblical books that mention various manifesta-
tions of El are to be found in rather recent texts, and presuppose that
the reader understands “El” as the equivalent of “God,” that is, “Yhwh.”
This does not exclude the possibility that these texts preserve the traces
of worship of the great god El. Genesis contains various epithets of
this deity.
El Elyon (Genesis 14:18–22)

Genesis 14, which has Abraham play a part in a kind of world war, is
one of the very last sections to be added to the story of this patriarch.
The episode of the encounter with Melchizedek is probably even more

recent than the first version of Genesis 14. The text tells how Melchizedek,
king of Salem21 and priest of El Elyon, blesses Abram22 in the name of
El Elyon. Abraham then swears an oath by this god: “I raise my hand
toward (Yhwh)23 El Elyon, creator of the heavens and of earth” ( ʾēl
̒ elyôn qōnēh šāmayim wāʾāreṣ) (14:22).
Commentators have often wondered whether “Elyon” was really a god
who was distinct from El, given that the name is also attested without
“El.”24 In fact there is mention of a god Elioun, called Hypsistos (“the
most high”) in Greek, who appears in the “Phoenician history” com-
posed by Sanchuniaton, extracts from which have reached us via the
Church father Eusebius, who cites them in his Praeparatio Evangelica
1.10.15–29. Of interest is an eighth-century treaty concluded between Bar
Ga’al and Mati’el, king of Arpad. An inscription of this treaty in Ara-
maic has been found on a stele discovered at Sfire, 25 kilometers south-
east of Aleppo;25 the list of the gods who are called to witness includes
“(before) El and Elyon.” Either these are two different gods or the con-
junction waw is used in its explicative sense: “El, that is to say Elyon.”26
“Elyon,” then, is probably an epithet that later developed into an inde-
pendent name. This title (“Elyon” = “The most high”) is not limited to
El; at Ugarit it was also used for Baal.27 In the Hebrew Bible it can
also be associated with Yhwh: “For you, Yhwh, you are Elyon on all
the earth, you are raised like a sovereign above all the gods” (Ps. 97:7).
However, other texts, notably Deuteronomy 32:8 and Genesis 14:22,
show clearly that El Elyon was originally a god distinct from Yhwh. In
the book of Numbers, the foreign seer Balaam uses two epithets for El
in parallel: “The declaration of him who hears the words of El, of him
who has knowledge of Elyon and of him who sees the vision of Shadday”
(24:16). In Psalms 107:11 we find, also in parallel, “the words of El” and
the “counsels of Elyon.”
These texts furnish a number of pieces of evidence of the popularity
of El Elyon in Israel and Judah, although the title “El Elyon” was even-
tually claimed by and transferred to Yhwh.
El Roi
The name “El Roi” (which can be translated “El of the vision” or “El sees
me”) is attested only in Genesis 16. Hagar, servant of Sarah, has encoun-
tered the emissary of Yhwh in the desert and she thereupon gives this
name to the god who revealed himself to her via the angel. She takes this
god to be a manifestation of the god El. The title El Roi is not attested
anywhere else. It might be an invention of the author of the text who
knew that El could be worshipped by Arab tribes, who are Hagar’s des-
cendants, under any number of diverse appellations. The author might
wish to show that this El is identical to Yhwh, because the name Hagar
gives to her son, Ishmael (a name that means “May El hear, listen”), is
explained in the narrative as meaning “Yhwh has heard (the cries of)
your suffering.”
El Olam
In Genesis 21 we find the story of an alliance between the Philistine king
Abimelek and Abraham. At the end of the narrative we are told: “He
planted a tamarisk at Beer-Sheba and in that place he called upon the
name of Yhwh El Olam.” In the Hebrew text, the subject is not clear;
some versions add “Abraham,” which is the most logical suggestion be-
cause the text is trying to connect the sanctuary “in the open air” with
the patriarch. Just as in the story of Jacob—Jacob invoked Yhwh at Beth-
El (“house of El”)—so Abraham also with this invocation identifies
Yhwh with “El Olam” (“El of all time,” “El of Eternity”).
The same title is found at Ugarit, where it is applied not to El but to
Shapsu, a sun goddess (KTU 2.42). This is also the case in an Aramaic
inscription from Karatepe that mentions šmš ̒ lm (Shamash Olam). So
outside the Bible this seems to be a title for a sun deity. Its application to
El, and then to Yhwh, is linked to the “solarization” of the cult of Yhwh,
which we will discuss later.
El Shadday
The title “El Shadday” is found several times in Genesis (28:3; 35:11; 48:3),
in Ezekiel (10:5), and very frequently in the book of Job in the form
“Shadday” (without “El”). Its etymology remains unclear. Generally,

scholars take Shadday to be related to the Akkadian šadū (“mountain”),
so the title would mean “he of the mountain.” Another possibility is that
the term comes from the Hebrew śādeh, the “field” (which one cannot
cultivate). It is even possible that these words have the same origin and
designate a place where man can live only with great difficulty.28 Allu-
sions to this deity may be present in some proper names attested at
Ugarit, such as B̒ lšdy—“Baʿalshadday.”29 Another text reads: “El Shadday
hunts.”30 So El Shadday would seem to have a privileged connection with
desert regions, and this would put him in proximity to the kind of di-
vinity who is depicted as a “master of the animals,” a frequent icono-
graphic theme. This connection with regions that are sparsely inhabited
is also confirmed by two further testimonies: an inscription from Deir
̒ lla that contains a reference to šdyn (apparently some minor or subor-
A
dinate gods), and an inscription in Thamudian (a north Arabic language)
from the neighborhood of Teima, containing ʾl śdy, which seems to have
been produced by Bedouins who had become sedentary, dating from the
fift h to third centuries.
The rabbinic etymology of El Shadday—“he who is sufficient unto
himself ”—probably also already underlies the Masoretic vocalization
and is a theological speculation. The Greek version of the Old Testament,
which often renders El Shadday as pantokratōr, has inspired many of the
modern translations that render “El Shadday” as “God Almighty.”
In Genesis the title El Shadday seems to be used exclusively in the
priestly texts from the early part of the Persian era, and it is used as an
epithet of Yhwh. The priestly authors used this archaic name, which in
their time still had a reference to a god worshipped in Arabia, in order
to construct a history of revelation. They did this by trying to show that
in the period before Yhwh’s appearance to Moses (Exod. 6), the patri-
archs and their various offspring worshipped different manifestations
of the god El. These offspring included the Arab tribes who were de-
scended from Ishmael and also from the union between Abraham and
Keturah (Genesis 25), but also the Edomite tribes who were descendants
of Esau.
The importance of the references to El31 in the stories about the pa-
triarchs and the different attempts to identify El with Yhwh may pre-
serve memories of the worship of the god El under different forms by
the ancestors of Israel. And if the traditions about Jacob do go back to

this memory of a group who worshipped El but who later adopted Yhwh,
then that might explain in the same way the close link between Jacob
and Edom, although this is speculation.
For scholars who are interested in the way, and in the historical
contexts in which, the traditions of the Patriarchs, and notably of Jacob,
came to be written down, the relation of Jacob to Esau (Edom) has al-
ways posed a special problem. If we date the story of Jacob to the period
of the Israelite (Northern) kingdom, it is difficult to explain how the au-
thors of the biblical text came to posit a close relation between Jacob
(Israel) and Esau (Edom). For this reason many scholars have begun to
point out that the tense but close relations between the two brothers
make sense if the story arose in the Babylonian or Persian period, when
Jacob had in a theological sense become the ancestor of “all Israel” (in-
cluding Judah). Should we then trace to that epoch the origin of these
stories about the hostility of the two brothers?32 Our own investigation
might be thought to point in another direction: if Yhwh was localized
as dwelling among the “Edomites,” the link between Jacob and Esau
might be intended to signal that the “sons of Jacob” had adopted Yhwh,
a god with connections to “Esau.” This speculation receives a certain de-
gree of support from inscriptions at Kuntillet Ajrud, the final report on
the excavations of which are now published.33 Here one finds references
to a “Yhwh of Samaria” (that is, of Israel) and a “Yhwh of Teman” (that
is, of the south).
H O W W A S Y H W H I N T R O D U C E D I N T O “ I S R A E L” ?
Let us start with the assumption that a god Yhwh, conceived as dwelling
on a mountain in the territory of Edom or Midian, was adopted by one
of those groups whom the Egyptians call “Shasu” or “Hapiru.” In Hit-
tite treaties from the second millennium we fi nd, among long lists of
gods, the expression “the gods of the Hapiru”; this corresponds to the
phrase ʾĕlōhē ̒ iḇrîm (“god[s] of the Hebrews”), which is also found
in biblical texts such as the narrative of the Exodus. For instance, in
Exodus 5:3: “They [the Israelites in Egypt] said: ‘The god of the Hebrews
has presented himself to us. We must go for three days’ march into the
desert to sacrifice to Yhwh, our god, otherwise he will attack us with
pestilence or the sword.’ ”
This text presupposes the identification of Yhwh, conceived as a vio-
lent god, with the god of the Hebrews, but it is possible that the expres-
sion “god of the Hebrews” at first simply designated one or more gods
who had no precise name. This might explain Moses’s question at the
moment when Yhwh gave him the injunction to go to the Israelites in
Egypt. Moses says: “I shall go to the sons of Israel and shall say to them:
the god of your fathers has sent me. But they will ask me: what is his
name? What shall I say to them?” (Exod. 3:13). This god of the Hebrews
apparently had a sanctuary in the desert and was a fierce god of war.
The request made of the pharaoh at Exodus 5:3 is not to allow the Isra-
elites to leave Egypt for good, but rather to grant them a kind of leave of
absence to sacrifice to this god. Is this a memory of the fact that a group
of Shasu/Hapiru came to know of Yhwh during a sojourn in the terri-
tory of Midian/Edom?
The meeting between this group and Yhwh might also be part of the
background to the story of the revelation at Mount Sinai. The Hebrew
text we have of Exodus 19–24 is a very late formulation, but it states that
it was at the time of this encounter at Mount Sinai that the Hebrews who
had come out of Egypt became the ̒ am Yhwh, “the people of Yhwh.”
The Hebrew word ̒ am, which is translated “people,” expresses a very
strong kinship relation: it can be used to designate a clan or, in a mili-
tary context, have the connotation “troop or platoon.” It is surprising
that in the narratives of the encounter between Yhwh and Israel in
chapter 19 and also in the stories of the making of the covenant between
Yhwh and Israel in chapter 24, the word used to designate those to whom
Yhwh reveals himself and with whom he concludes a treaty is usually
̒ am and only infrequently “Israel.”
Exodus 19: (7) Moses went and called the elders of the people . . .
(8) All the people replied: We shall do all that Yhwh has said. Moses
recounted what the people had said to Yhwh. (9) And Yhwh said
to Moses: “I shall come to you in a thick cloud, so that the people
hear when I speak to you . . .” Moses reported these words of the
people to Yhwh. (10) And Yhwh said to Moses “Go to the people;
sanctify them today . . . (11) for on the third day Yhwh shall descend
before the eyes of all the people on Mount Sinai. (12) You must fi x
boundaries for the people all around . . .” (14) Moses descended
from the mountain to the people; he sanctified the people . . . (15)
And he said to the people: “Be ready in three days; do not go near
a woman.” (16) On the third day in the morning, there were peals
of thunder, lightning, and a dense cloud on the mountain; the
sound of the trumpet resounded loudly, and all the people who
were in the camp were seized with terror. (17) Moses led the people
out of the camp to meet god . . . (21) Yhwh said to Moses: “Go down
and strictly forbid the people to approach Yhwh to look at him, lest
a great number of them perish.” . . . (23) Moses said to Yhwh: “The
people will not be able to climb up Mount Sinai . . .” (24) . . . Yhwh
said to him: “Prevent the priests and the people from rushing for-
ward to mount up to Yhwh, lest I strike them dead.” (25) Moses
went down to the people and told them these things.
Exodus 24: (2) . . . and the people shall not climb up with him.
(3) Moses went and told the people all the words of Yhwh and all
the laws. The whole people responded with one voice: “We shall
do all that Yhwh has said.” . . . (7) He took the book of the cove-
nant and read it in the presence of the people . . . (8) Moses took
blood, and sprinkled the people saying: “This is the blood of the
covenant which Yhwh has concluded with you upon [= on condi-
tion that you conform to] all these words.”
This redundancy in the use of the term ̒ am, which one finds even in
passages attributed to very different “sources,” or “strata,” might go back
to a preliterary tradition.34 We might deduce from this that the group
who worshipped the god Yhwh called itself ̒ am Yhwh. It seems that this
̒ am Yhwh is constituted by a covenant, a pact, and a ritual of blood that
is virtually unique in the Hebrew Bible.35 This ritual serves to create a
blood relation between “the people” and Yhwh. Rituals like this are
common enough in pre-Islamic Arabia, as William Robertson Smith has
emphasized: “In ancient Arabic literature there are many references to
the blood covenant, but instead of human blood that of a victim slain in
the sanctuary is employed. The ritual is in this case that all who share in
the compact must dip their hands into the gore, which at the same time
is applied to the sacred stone that symbolizes the deity, or is poured
forth at its base.”36
These texts from the book of Exodus may preserve the memory traces
of a ritual by which a group of Shasu/Hapiru constituted itself via a
mediator as ̒ am Yhwh, the people of a warrior god to whom they attrib-
uted their victory over Egypt. This group then introduced the deity
Yhwh into the territory of Benjamin and Ephraim, where Israel was
located. An allusion to this encounter can perhaps be found in the poem
of Deuteronomy 33:2–5: “Yhwh came from Sinai; he shone forth from
Seir, he was resplendent from Mount of Paran . . . Indeed, he loves37 his
people (̒ am)38 . . . He became king in Yeshurun39 when the chiefs of the
people assembled together with the tribes of Israel.” This last verse seems
to indicate a kind of union between the chiefs of the ̒ am Yhwh and
the tribes grouped together under the name “Israel.” The chiefs of the
̒ am Yhwh meet with the tribes of Israel and Yhwh thus becomes the
god of Israel. Can we detect in this passage a trace of the installation of
Yhwh as the premier god of Israel?
This ascendency seems to have occurred at the beginning of the Isra-
elite monarchy—at the turn from the second to the first millennium—
and this is how Yhwh became the tutelary god of Saul and David, who
introduced him into Jerusalem.
5
THE ENTRANCE OF YHWH INTO JERUSALEM
Judean and Israelite toponyms, most of which date from the

second millennium, appear to confirm that Yhwh did not become the
god of Israel until the turn from the second to the first millennium, be-
cause these toponyms are not constructed using the element “Yhwh.”
These place names do testify to the existence of other gods, such as Anat
(Anatoth, Jer. 1:1–2, the place of origin of the prophet Jeremiah), Baal
(Baal-perazim, 2 Sam. 5, the place where David defeats the Philistines),
Dagon (Beth-Dagon, Josh. 15:41, a place in the territory of Judah), El (Beth-El,
one of the major sanctuaries of Israel), Yariḥu (Jericho, Josh. 6, a city con-
quered by Joshua; its name derives from that of a moon god), Shalimu
(Jerusalem), and Shamash (Beth-Shemesh, 1 Sam. 6, a place dedicated to
the sun god, near Jerusalem, that served as a resting place for the Ark of
the Covenant). These names also indicate the worship of a whole series of
gods who are linked with fertility, the time of reaping and the harvest.
YHWH IN SHILOH
The sanctuary of Shiloh appears for the first time in the book of Joshua,1
which gives a purely legendary account of the conquest of the land of
THE ENTRANCE OF YHWH INTO JERUSALEM 87
Canaan by the Israelites.2 According to Joshua 18:1, after taking posses-

sion of the land the Israelites erected there the first sanctuary, the ʾōhel
mô ̒ēd, the “tent of meeting.” This verse belongs to a late stratum of the
text and presupposes the priestly idea of a mobile sanctuary constructed
in the desert, which is also a place of meeting between Moses and
Yhwh. The same idea is presupposed by Joshua 22:29, where the tribes
beyond the Jordan give up the idea of constructing an altar and admit
that the only legitimate altar is in front of the miškān, the sanctuary.
The sanctuary here is probably an allusion to Shiloh.3 It appears again
in the final chapters of Judges (18–21), which are often considered an ap-
pendix to the book. Judges 18:31 evokes the era when the house of god
(ʾĕlōhîm) was at Shiloh.
These texts seem to have retained the memory of a Yahwistic sanc-
tuary in this part of the territory of Ephraim, and archaeology confirms
that there was an important cult site there in the period of transition
from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age. Shiloh is located on a site that had
been occupied in the second millennium, and that became very impor-
tant again in the mid-twelfth to mid-eleventh centuries. It was then de-
stroyed about 1050, apparently by fire, possibly by the Philistines. The
site was then repopulated, though very sparsely, in about the eighth and
seventh centuries.4 The authors of the Bible seem to have been concerned
to emphasize the importance of this site and of its destruction; they
were also haunted by the memory that Shiloh had been once the home
of a sanctuary of Yhwh. Later the editors came to interpret the destruc-
tion of Shiloh as having been caused by Yhwh himself (Jer. 7 and 26).5
When these texts were written down in the sixth century, the memory of
Shiloh as a sanctuary of Yhwh was still very much alive.
In the Bible Shiloh plays a very important role in connection with the
prophet Samuel, who, according to the first chapters of the 1 Samuel, was
charged by Yhwh to anoint Saul as the first king of Israel. The first chap-
ters of this narrative tell us that Samuel had been offered by his mother
to the sanctuary at Shiloh, which is described not as a tent but as a temple
built with proper walls,6 a Yahwistic sanctuary to which people made a
pilgrimage and where Yhwh revealed himself to Samuel. This neutral
or even positive view of the temple at Shiloh in the Bible can be explained
as a revival of an ancient tradition containing some strong historical
memories. Shiloh seems to have been an important Yahwist sanctuary,

perhaps even containing a statue of Yhwh, and it is possible that it is be-
cause of this holy place (or because of the prophet Samuel) that Yhwh
then became the god of Saul.
YHWH, THE GOD OF SAUL AND THE GOD OF DAVID
The problem of the historicity of the fi rst three kings of Israel and of
Judah is complex and would require longer treatment than can be given
here.7 The following remarks will have to suffice in this context. Out-
side the Bible there is no direct attestation of these kings. The only ex-
ception is the famous stele of Tel Dan from the eighth century, of which
three important fragments have been found. The inscription in Aramaic
most likely celebrates the victory of Hazael,8 king of Damascus, over an
Israelite-Judean coalition. Here we can read: “. . . king of Israel and I
killed [ʾAḥaz]yahou son of [Joram k]ing (of) btdwd. And I placed . . .”9
The phrase btdwd is interpreted by most scholars as meaning “house of
David,”10 which, to be sure, tells us nothing about the historical figure
of David but does show that the Aramaeans in the eighth century called
the kingdom of Judah “house of David,”11 just as the Assyrians called the
kingdom of Israel “house of Omri.”
It is very difficult to discern the concrete historical facts behind the
biblical narratives of the origins of the monarchy. The three kings Saul,
David, and Solomon have been constructed by the editors of the Bible
as paradigmatic types: Saul, the rejected king, who prefigures the vision
of the northern kingdom presented by the editors of the books of Kings;
David, the warrior king, the chosen of Yhwh and founder of the united
kingdom and the Davidic dynasty; and Solomon, the king who is a
builder and a sage. Nevertheless, there are several traits in the narrative
of the books of Samuel and of Kings that cannot be pure invention. The
passage from Iron Age I to Iron Age II (about 1000) coincides with the
origin of kingdoms in the Levant (Moab, Ammon, the Aramaean king-
doms). The fact that an Israelite “kingdom” arose in an area under strong
influence from the Philistines is certainly an element of the stories that
has some historical basis. The books of Samuel themselves show that the
territories of Saul and of David were located in the sphere of influence

of the Philistines, and David is represented as having been one of their
vassals, even though the biblical texts try to give an apologetic interpre-
tation of this fact.
The Bible constructs the origins of the monarchy around the two fig-
ures of Saul and David. Closely related to Saul is the figure of Samuel,
who is both a prophet, as we have seen, with his links to the sanctuary
at Shiloh, and at the same time a “judge”—that is, a charismatic military
figure waging war against the Philistines. Even though the Bible con-
tains very divergent accounts of the rise of Saul (1 Samuel 8–12), Samuel
is, in different ways in the different accounts, always connected to the
installation of Saul as “king.” Although the etymology of Samuel’s
name (“El is exalted” or “His name is El”) is not very clear, it contains a
theophoric element referring to El, whereas that of Saul (“he who is
asked for,” a name also attested in neo-Assyrian: Sa ʾuli and in Phoeni-
cian: š ʾl) has no theophoric constituent.
It is striking that the places mentioned in the story of Saul refer to a
very limited territory. There is a note in 2 Samuel that belongs to one of
the older strata of the text and that contradicts the official version ac-
cording to which David was said to have “succeeded” Saul directly: “Then
Avner, son of Ner, chief of the army of Saul, took Ish-baal,12 son of Saul
and conducted him across to Mahanaim. He established him king ‘[in the
regions] toward’ (ʾel ) Galaad, and the Asherites,13 and over (̒ al ) Ephraim,
over Benjamin, that is, over all Israel” (2 Sam. 2:8–9). The shift of preposi-
tion (from ʾel to ̒ al ) may indicate an important difference: ̒ al would
designate the territory under the direct sovereignty of Saul, and ʾel those
territories that recognized his sovereignty without being directly inte-
grated into Saul’s kingdom.14 The territory of Saul may correspond to the
“Israel” presupposed by the stele of Merneptah.15
The names of the sons of Saul show, in any case, that he worshipped
Yhwh: Jonathan (meaning “Yhwh has given”) has a Yahwistic name,
whereas Ish-baal (“Man of Baal”) contains the theophoric element
baʿal, and one of Jonathan’s sons is named Mephi-baal (“Well-beloved
of Baal”). Is this “Baal” a different god from Yhwh, or was baʿal (“Master,
lord”) one of Yhwh’s titles? We shall take up this question again later.
YHWH AND THE ARK
In the biblical account Yhwh is linked, before his arrival in Jerusalem,

to the “ark” (the Hebrew word ʾărôn simply means “box” or “chest”). In
later revisions this ark became the “Ark of the Covenant” (ʾărôn hab-
berît), but the original older name was perhaps “Ark of Yhwh.” Authors
from priestly circles took the ark to have been built at Mount Sinai at
the time of the construction of the mobile sanctuary.
The book of Joshua reports that the ark was carried by the priests
during the conquest: it disappears completely from the book of Judges,
but figures again frequently in two sections of each of the books of
Samuel (1 Sam. 4–6 and 2 Sam. 6). These chapters form a separate unit
in themselves, called “the ark narrative.” Did this story originate as an in-
dependent tradition? This is perfectly possible, although it is difficult to
date these narratives.16 According to this history, the ark played an impor-
tant role in the military conflicts of Israel with the Philistines. It seems to
have served to manifest the presence of Yhwh in these wars. When the
Philistines captured it and placed it in the sanctuary of their god Dagon,17
Dagon’s statue broke to pieces; the ark was then transferred from Ashdod
to Ekron, where the inhabitants were struck down with tumors, which
was an indication of the power of Yhwh, who seems to have been thought
to dwell in the ark or whose presence materialized in the ark. This is why
the Philistines decide to send the ark back to the Israelites:
The Philistines asked the priests and soothsayers: “What shall we

do with the ark of Yhwh? Tell us how we can send it back where it
was.” They replied: “If you send the ark of the god of Israel back,
do not send it back with nothing. On the contrary, take care to add
to it something in reparation. Then you shall be healed and you
will know why he did not stay his hand from you.” (1 Sam. 6:2–3)
The dangerous and sacred character of the ark may also turn against
the Israelites, as is shown in the story of its return to them:
Yhwh struck the people of Beth-Shemesh because they had looked

at the ark of Yhwh. Among the people he struck seventy men—fifty
thousand men.18 The people went into mourning because Yhwh

had struck thus so grievously. The people of Beth-Shemesh said:
“Who can maintain himself in the presence of Yhwh, that holy
god?” (1 Sam. 6:19–20)
The ark was thus sent to Kiriath-jearim and placed in the house of a
certain Abinadab, whose son was consecrated as a priest to take care of
it. This shows that one needed special qualities to be able to approach
with safety the place where the god was present. The ark was originally
a transportable war sanctuary, and the fact that it was so dangerous
confirms the idea that it represented the god of Israel.
The ark has often been connected with the portable sanctuaries of no-
mads, but its presence in the sanctuary at Shiloh does not require us to
accept that any special connection exists here. Rather, there is perhaps
a link to the sacred chests attested in Egyptian iconography or to the
war standards of the Assyrians, or to other kinds of objects representing
a deity. The standards of Luristan (in Iran in the territory of Mount Za-
gros), dating from the ninth to the sixth century, represent in a stylized
manner a deity in the form of the “master of animals,”19 and a chest
mounted upon a chariot seems also to be attested among the Phoeni-
cians. Philo of Byblos (ca. 65–140) in his Phoenician History relates that
two gods named “Fields” (agrós, corresponding perhaps to šaddāy) and
“Rustic” (agrótēs) are associated with a chest (naós) pulled by two beasts.
We also have numismatic documentation of an image or statue of a god
in a portable sanctuary on a coin from Hieropolis, a Greek settlement
around a hot springs in Turkey from the second century.
WH AT WA S IN T HE A RK OF Y HWH?
According to 1 Samuel 6, the ark was placed on a chariot drawn by cows,

which is a further sign that it was an object of some importance. A
priestly text from Exodus (25:10) states that the ark measured about 112
by 67 by 67 centimeters, but this is a very late text, as is that of Deuter-
onomy 10:1–5, which states that the ark was the box within which were
kept the two tablets of the law. In a similar way, the first book of Kings
comes to the same conclusion in an apologetic manner: “There is

nothing in the ark apart from the two tables of stone deposited by
Moses at Horeb” (1 Kings 8:9).
These texts show clearly that the tablets of the law are a substitute for
something else. Perhaps they took the place of two sacred stones, of the
kind found in the chests of pre-Islamic Bedouins. Among certain Arab
tribes these were the two goddesses ʾal-Lat and ʾal-Ouzza, who were also
replaced later by copies of the Koran. There were also chests for just one
deity. So it is possible that the ark transported two betyles (sacred
stones), or two statues symbolizing Yhwh and his female companion
Ashera20 or a statue representing Yhwh alone.
DAVID AND JERUSALEM
David, the rival of Saul, initially settled in Hebron in the territory of

Judah. He must have taken control of the city of Jerusalem, which would
have been a relatively modest settlement. For the sake of comparison,
at that time Ashkelon covered 50 or 60 hectares, Ekron 20 hectares,
Jerusalem 4 to 6 hectares, and the recently excavated site of Khirbet
Qeiyafa, 2.3 hectares, but the city at this later site was fortified with a
double wall. If David really did definitively vanquish the Philistines,
why did he not make Ashkelon his capital? The answer is that he prob-
ably remained their vassal during his reign as king.21
The town of Jerusalem has existed from the eighteenth century,22 and
its name probably means “foundation of Shalem.” Shalimu is attested
in Ugaritic texts as a god of the dusk. From the Amarna correspondence
(diplomatic tablets exchanged by the kings of Egypt with various for-
eign sovereigns in the Levant), we learn that in the fourteenth century
the town was governed by the kinglet Abdi-Cheba, who was a vassal of
Egypt and complained to the pharaoh about attacks mounted by the Ha-
piru. This Canaanite town went into decline in the second half of the
second millennium. This would explain why it was possible for David
to take it so easily. If David did choose Jerusalem as his capital—“city
of David”—it will have been for strategic reasons. Because it was a
Canaanite town, Jerusalem was a “neutral” territory and did not belong
to any of the various tribes or clans who accepted David as king. So he

was probably able to make the city his own by allying himself with the
“local aristocracy.” At the time of David and Solomon, the town would
have consisted only of a small settlement around the east hill, facing
the Mount of Olives.
The second book of Samuel describes how David transferred the ark
of Yhwh from Kiriath-jearim to Jerusalem, a distance of about 10 kilo-
meters (2 Sam. 6). This move is presented in the text as a festival with
erotic and sexual overtones. When David’s wife Michal criticizes him for
dancing naked, clothed only in a priestly ephod,23 she is punished for
this by being made sterile, which may be a way of underlining the im-
portance of this ritual for fertility. If the transfer of the ark signifies the
entrance of Yhwh into Jerusalem, these themes of fertility and sexuality
would not be at all surprising, especially if Yhwh here is conceived of as
a god of storms on the model of “Baal.” David’s nakedness is the coun-
terpart to Saul’s. Thus 1 Samuel 19 tells us that Saul, while pursuing his
enemy David, met a group of prophets, fell into an ecstatic trance, took
off all his clothing, and remained naked all day and all night:
(20) Saul sent out men to take David. They saw a company of
prophets who were prophesying and Samuel stood at their head.
The spirit of god took control of the men sent by Saul and they en-
tered into a trance themselves (21). This was reported to Saul who
sent out other men; they, too, fell into a trance . . . (23) The spirit of
god took control of him too and he continued to march in a state
of trance until he reached Nayoth of Rama. (24) He too took off
his clothes and went into a trance, dancing in front of Samuel.
Then, still naked, he collapsed and stayed that way for a whole day
and a whole night. This is why one says: “Is Saul, too, among the
prophets?”
It seems very clear that the redactors are suggesting a parallel here
between the nakedness of Saul and that of David before Yhwh. Read in
the light of 1 Samuel 19, the dance of David in 2 Samuel 6 can be also
understood as a sign of ecstasy, and this state may have the function of
legitimizing him as king, because the king as mediator between the
people and the tutelary god would have needed to show that he had access
to the “divine sphere.” 1 Samuel 19 assimilates Saul to the bearers of a kind
of prophetic mediation; 2 Samuel 6 attributes to David a sort of priestly
mediation via the ephod. David is also “seized” by Yhwh when he ap-
proaches the ark, but in contrast to what happens to the Philistines and the
people of Beth-Shemash, he does not die. Some more recent priestly texts
prohibit priests from showing their sexual organs,24 even inadvertently,
but traditionally nakedness in the face of the divine25 poses no problem.
Y HWH AT JERUSA LE M —WIT HOUT A T E MPLE ?
According to the biblical account, David, the founder of the dynasty, did
not build the official sanctuary of Jerusalem. The books of Samuel state
that the ark was first sheltered in a kind of tent because the temple had
not yet been built. The fact that the founder of a royal dynasty did not
construct a sanctuary for his tutelary god is very surprising, and the
biblical texts try out various explanations for this anomaly. 2 Samuel 7
reports that when Yhwh promised to David that his dynasty would en-
dure forever, the god himself told him that he wanted to dwell, not in a
temple, but in a tent. The dynastic promise is constructed around a word-
play: it is not David who will built a house for Yhwh, but Yhwh who
will build a house, that is, give David descendants and establish a dy-
nasty for him. Thus, only David’s son will build Yhwh a sanctuary. In
the books of Chronicles, written about 200 years later, there is a different
explanation. First of all, David is said to have sketched out, like an ar-
chitect, the plan for the temple, which he transmitted to his son Solomon,
and then he is said not to have been able to build the sanctuary because,
as a man of war, he had shed too much blood.26
The historical explanation for why David did not build a temple may
perhaps be very simple, namely, that when he annexed Jerusalem there
was already a large sanctuary there, but it was occupied by another god.
The text of 2 Samuel 12 seems to presuppose the existence of a temple in
Jerusalem at the time of David. Thus, after David’s adultery with Bath-
sheba, Yhwh causes the first son of this union to die. On learning of the
death of the child, “David rose up, washed himself, anointed himself,
changed his clothes, then went to the house of Yhwh and fell down upon
his face” (12:20). Either this is an anachronistic addition, or it transmits
a memory that David actually did frequent an existing sanctuary. The
biblical tradition, though, has it that it is Solomon who built the temple.
T HE CONST RUCT ION OF T HE T EMPLE BY SOLOMON
Anyone who reads the story of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible will be
struck by the ambiguity of the picture that emerges. Solomon is the wise
king par excellence who gives exemplary judgments (1 Kings 3:16–28)
and who is keen to acquire all forms of knowledge (1 Kings 5:9–11). He
is also exceedingly rich and reigns over a world empire (1 Kings 5:1), and
is admired by monarchs from the farthest corners of the world (1 Kings
10). In building the Temple of Jerusalem he accomplished faithfully
what his father David intended but was not able to achieve, and estab-
lished at Jerusalem a splendid sanctuary for the god of Israel (1 Kings
6–8). He was thus “the greatest of all the kings of the earth in wealth and
wisdom” (1 Kings 10:23). No other king of Israel or Judah is given such
praise. However, at the same time, in 1 Kings 1–11 one can note a number
of reported traits that darken the picture. Solomon comes to power
as a result of intrigues and murders (1 Kings 1–2), not to mention his own
rather shocking origins (2 Sam. 11–12). Th is exemplary king contra-
venes the prescriptions of Deuteronomy by taking a number of for-
eign wives (1 Kings 11:1–6), and by establishing cult places outside Jeru-
salem (1 Kings 11:7–10). He also imposes a harsh regime of forced labor
on his people (1 Kings 5:27, contradicted by 9:22), and he is responsible
for the collapse of the “United Kingdom of Israel and Judah” (1 Kings
11:11–13). One may of course argue that one biblical author wished to
give a sophisticated and differentiated picture of the greatest king of
Israel and to make him an image of all the ambiguities in the history of
the Judean kingdom.27 However, it is more plausible to connect these
differing perspectives to different moments in the formation of the his-
tory of Solomon.
Even though some scholars still try to reconstruct a history of Sol-
omon dating from the tenth century, this is an impossible project. It is
now clear that the idea of a “Solomonic Empire” is a pure fiction, and
that 1 Kings 3–11 projects the realities of the neo-Assyrian Empire back
on to an imaginary “Israel” in order to endow it with a glorious past.28
The great buildings at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, which were often
taken to be “archaeological proof” of the existence of an empire under
Solomon, most probably date to the ninth rather than the tenth cen-
tury.29 And though the debate about a “low chronology” has not yet
been definitively settled,30 it is undeniable that the context for the bib-
lical narrative is the Assyrian era rather than the tenth century. In the
tenth century Jerusalem was simply not large enough to be the capital
of an empire.
Solomon, it is claimed, had relations with the Phoenicians, who are
said to have furnished him with wood for his building works, and he also
had numerous contacts with Egypt. These links are all compatible with
what we know of for the neo-Assyrian period.31 A Hyram of Tyre is men-
tioned in 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles, but the only personage
with a comparable name and origin who is historically attested is Hi-
rammu, who appears in the annals of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser
in about 730.32 Parallels to several elements of the narrative of the con-
struction of the temple of Solomon (1 Kings 6–8) can be found in nu-
merous Mesopotamian documents. The story itself is “particularly similar
to Assyrian building accounts,”33 in that it is structured around a subdivi-
sion of the process into the following sequence of stages: the decision to
build (1 Kings 5:15–19), the acquisition of construction materials (5:20–
26), the description of the building process itself (5:27–32), the descrip-
tion of the temple and its furnishings (1 Kings 6–7), and the dedication
of the sanctuary (1 Kings 8).
Parallels such as these strongly suggest that the first version of the
story of Solomon can be dated to the neo-Assyrian period, and it is
highly likely that it was redacted in the seventh century.34 It is perfectly
possible that the scribes had some older documents at their disposal, but
not a history of Solomon in a fully constituted form. The reconstruc-
tion of any such ancient documents is a difficult task. Annals of Solomon,
like those mentioned in 1 Kings 11:41, may indeed have existed in the
palace or the Temple of Jerusalem, and some ancient traditions about
Solomon may perhaps exist in some of the lists in 1 Kings 4.35 The story
of the construction of the sanctuary, which culminates in its conse-

cration (1 Kings 6–8), is, at any rate, largely the work of the so-called
Deuteronomistic editors. It may, however, contain some traces of older
material.
We shall not enter here into the debate about the historicity of
Solomon, who, in contrast to David, is not mentioned anywhere outside
the Bible. There are, to be sure, some arguments in favor of thinking
that he existed, notably the scandalous story of his birth. It is possible,
as Timo Veijola and Ernst Axel Knauf have argued, that he was a
usurper and that the story about David’s adultery with Bathsheba was
invented to show that he actually did descend from David, even if it
was not through the “official” wives of the king.36 If Solomon was not
the biological son of David, the whole dynasty would be a mythic con-
struct, but that does not actually make much difference.
A TEMPLE FOR YHWH?
The center of the biblical account of King Solomon is the long narrative
of the construction and inauguration of the temple (1 Kings 6–8). This
narrative is highly detailed but not always comprehensible. In addition,
the Greek text differs in important ways from the Masoretic, which
might suggest that the Greek translators did not understand the Hebrew
text very well either, or that they were working from a Hebrew text that
was different from the one we now find in the Hebrew Bible.
First of all we might wonder whether this account of a “construction”
in 1 Kings 6–7 does not really refer to a renovation or rearrangement of
an existing sanctuary.37 Konrad Rupprecht has shown that, apart from
the very beginning of the narrative (1 Kings 6:2–3), which gives the di-
mensions of the temple, the rest of the text speaks rather of the construc-
tion of an annex: “He built on to the wall annexes of the House, all
around the walls, all around the walls, all around the temple and the
dĕḇîr38 and also made lateral pieces all around” (v. 5). Verse 7 also makes
no sense unless we envisage that there was a building already in exis-
tence: “When they built the House, they used rough stone, prepared in
quarries; one did not hear a hammer, an axe, or any iron tool in the
House, when they were building it.” It is likely, then, that Solomon’s
edifice was built onto an existing sanctuary—and that would also have
been the case for the “construction” of most other sanctuaries in the an-
cient Near East. It is also possible that Solomon transformed a sanctuary
in the open air into a temple. The narrative of 1 Kings 6–7 contains, how-
ever, more evidence in support of the first of these hypotheses.
The ancient kernel of the story about the inauguration of the temple
in 1 Kings 8 is to be found in verses 1–13, 39 which perhaps read like
this:40 “(2*)41 All the men of Israel assembled around King Solomon in
the month of Ethanim for a festival—this is the seventh month. (3*) All
the elders of Israel arrived; they brought up the ark of Yhwh. (6*) They
put the ark of Yhwh in its place, in the dĕḇîr under the wings of the
cherubim.” This ancient version would have ended with the dedication
of the temple pronounced by the king.
In the Masoretic text this dedication is described in verses 12–13; how-
ever, in the Greek text it is in a completely different place, at verse 53
(3 Kingdoms 8:53a), after the long prayer of Solomon. It is highly
probable that the Greek text is based on a Hebrew version that is very
different from the Masoretic text, and older.42 This Greek text can be
translated as follow
At that time Solomon said about the house, when he had finished
building it: “[It is] the Sun [which] the Lord has made known in
the heavens, he said he wanted to dwell in the darkness. Build my
house, a magnificent house [or, house of governance] for you, to
dwell therein always anew.” Behold, is this not written in the Book
of songs?
The Masoretic text in the present Hebrew Bible seems slightly clearer:
Thus Solomon said: “Yhwh has said that he will dwell in thick dark-
ness! Therefore to build, I have built a house of governance, a
place for you, so that you may dwell in it forever.”
The Greek text is so convoluted that it is questionable whether the

translator understood correctly what he was translating. The first phrase
after the introduction (beginning with “[It is] the Sun [which] the Lord
has made known¨) is abstruse. If the Greek is actually following the se-
quence of words in the Hebrew Vorlage,43 then one might wonder
whether the word for Yhwh, “the Lord,” did not actually belong in the
next line down, which is how the Masoretic text takes it. In that case
“sun” would not be the grammatical direct object in the sentence (in the
accusative case in the Greek text) as the translator thought, but it
would be the grammatical subject, and the Hebrew text would then
originally have been:
The Sun (Shamash) has made it known from the heavens: “Yhwh
has said that he wishes to dwell in darkness.”
From this reconstruction we can conclude that the house that Sol-
omon built—that is, renovated—was first of all a house for Shamash,
which would accord with the east–west orientation of the Temple of Jeru-
salem as is indicated by 1 Kings 6:8, also 7:39: “He put five supports on
Plan of a traditional temple (on the left) and a palace (on the right) in the Levant.
the right [= south] side of the house and five on the left [= north] side of
the house.” And in this temple there was to be a kind of lateral chapel, a
second dĕḇîr, reserved for Yhwh. So the whole sanctuary would shelter
not one god, but two.
What is perhaps a further piece of evidence for the cohabitation of
two gods in the temple at Jerusalem comes from the Greek text de-
scribing the construction. The Masoretic text has it that the temple was
built in a thoroughly traditional way,44 divided into three parts: an en-
trance (covered or not), a main chamber (hêḵāl), and the final room
(dĕḇîr) or the Holy of Holies (qōdeš ha-qŏdāšîm). This conception is pre-
supposed in the priestly text about the sanctuary at Mount Sinai in the
second part of Exodus, and in Ezekiel 40–48.
Let us compare these two texts, Hebrew (1 Kings 6) and Greek (3 King-
doms 6):
Masoretic text Septuagint, original text45

1 Kings 6:16–19 3 Kingdoms 6:16–19
(16) He built, over 20 cubits, the foundation He built 20 cubits from the
of the house in planks of cedar, from the top of the walls the side (tò
floor up to the top of the walls, and in the pleurón), one [side] from the
same way he built the interior to make floor up to the rafters; and he
within it the sacred chamber (dĕḇîr), built from the dabir to the
the Holy of Holies. (17) The 40 cubits in Holy of Holies. The sanc-
the front formed the House, that is to say, tuary (naós) was 40 cubits in
the Temple. (18) The cedar wood inside the front of the dabir in midst of
house had sculptures of gourds and open the house within, to set there
flowers; it was all of cedar, one saw no stone. the ark of the covenant of the
(19) He made the sacred chamber inside the Lord.
House, to place there the ark of Yhwh.
This quite complicated description suggests that Yhwh (or his statue?)
would originally have been placed in a lateral chapel of the temple, but
it has to be said that the Greek text is rather confused.
A parallel for this text exists in Mesopotamia, where Marduk issues
the command to build a sanctuary for a lunar deity. Thus, on the cyl-
inder from Sippar (i.8–ii.25) the king Nabonidus of Babylon (556–539)
describes the restoration of three temples as follows: “Marduk spoke to

me: . . . rebuild Ehulhul and cause Sin, the great lord, to establish his
residence in its midst.”46 According to 3 Kingdoms 8:53a, the solar god
tells Solomon that Yhwh wishes to dwell in “thick clouds,” in the dark-
ness (in Greek: gnó!hōi; in Hebrew ʿărā!el), which is the proper do-
main of Yhwh as god of storms and war, as is attested, for instance, by
Psalms 18:10: “He cleft apart the skies and descended, a thick cloud
under his feet.”
Moving now to the second part of this dedication, who or what is the
subject of the expression “to dwell therein always anew”47—the solar god,
or Yhwh, or the king? Conceivably the ambiguity was deliberate. The
temple is also a royal sanctuary, the sacred central point of the kingdom.
If the king is considered to be the son of god, the house of god is also in
some sense his house. The idea of “living there forever anew” may also
refer to the succession of kings and express the idea of a never-ending
dynasty. The Masoretes corrected this assimilation of king and deity by
adding the clarification that really only Yhwh could dwell in the temple
at Jerusalem.48 Of course, they also deleted any reference to a solar deity:
the desire to dwell in darkness comes from Yhwh himself. The expres-
sion of the Masoretic text “so that you shall dwell in it forever” takes up
a psalm found in Exodus: “You will lead them and will plant them in
the mountain of their patrimony, in the place which you have prepared
to dwell there, Yhwh; to the sanctuary, Lord, which your hands have es-
tablished” (15:17). Here it is obviously a question of a house for the throne
of Yhwh, not of the king.
In short, it seems rather clear that the Greek translation was made
from a different and probably older Hebrew version of the dedication of
the temple; in this older dedication it was clear that the sanctuary was
first of all that of a sun god and that Yhwh was added as an associate
god. Cults of the sun existed everywhere in Mesopotamia and Egypt in
different variants: the sun is the creator and guarantor of life, but also
the judge of the good and bad deeds of men. A seal found at Jerusalem
in a tomb of the seventh century shows a solar god flanked by two minor
gods: “Righteousness” and “Justice.”49
The conception of a solar god of justice is found in the Bible in a cer-
tain number of psalms and also in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah,
Stele from the north of Syria (Til Barsip/Tell

Ahmar) from the first centuries of the first
millennium, showing a storm god holding in
his hand a lightning bolt and thunder (or a
weapon); above him, the symbol of the sun god.
where the divine punishment is meted out at the moment when the sun
rises. It is even possible that the two messengers and the deity in the story
of Genesis 19 represent the sun god and his two acolytes.
In the first chapter of Isaiah (1:21, see also v. 26), Jerusalem appears as
the city where righteousness and justice dwell. “How the faithful city
has come to be a prostitute! She was filled with righteousness (mišpāṭ)
and justice (ṣedeq) spent the night there.” These texts may preserve traces
of the presence in Jerusalem of a sun god, who however was quickly as-
similated to Yhwh.
The idea of conjoint worship of a sun god and a storm god finds fur-
ther support in iconography, not only in the south but also in several
steles from the north of Syria and Anatolia, which depict the storm god
with his attributes and above him the solar disk.
To summarize, when Yhwh entered Jerusalem and took his place in
the temple, he was not immediately the principal god there. Rather, he
only became the chief god during the following centuries, when two
kingdoms laid claim to him.
6
T H E CU LT O F Y H W H I N IS R A E L
The history of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah is related

by the biblical authors of the books of Kings and (somewhat differently)
in the books of Chronicles from a fundamentally “southern” perspec-
tive, that is, from the point of view of Judah. Consequently it is difficult
to form a conception of the original form of the traditions and the reli-
gion of the north. There is, however, evidence that the worship of Yhwh
in the north was actually quite different from what is said about it by
the editors of the books of Kings, whose reaction from the first was to
consider the cult of Yhwh in the north to be idolatrous and contrary to
the divine will. This is why the fall of the kingdom of Israel in 7221 is
explained as a divine punishment for the “sin of Jeroboam,” that is, the
cult of Yhwh in the form of a bull. King Jeroboam, according to the Ju-
dean authors of 1 Kings 12, was responsible for bringing about the de-
viation from the correct form of the cult of Yhwh in the north when he
built sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan in competition with the Temple of
Jerusalem.
These southern authors were convinced of the superiority of Judah,
although it also finally succumbed to the attacks of the Babylonians.
That Yhwh was better disposed toward Judah is explained by the fact
that he had chosen David and his dynasty, even promising in 2 Samuel
T H E C U LT O F Y H W H I N I S R A E L 105
7 that their reign would last “forever.”2 Nevertheless, given that Jeru-
salem was also destroyed in 578, it was necessary to explain this defeat
in a similar way by reference to a deviation for which certain kings had
been responsible and that made them guilty in Yhwh’s eyes. According
to the authors of the books of Kings, the true worship of Yhwh had two
properties: Yhwh had to be worshipped exclusively, and the sacrificial
cult was limited to and centralized in Jerusalem. Certain kings, notably
David but also Solomon and some other Judean kings (especially Heze-
kiah and Josiah), are asserted to have respected this “cultural purity,” but
still their behavior and actions did not succeed in averting catastrophe.
This biblical vision is largely the creation of the Deuteronomistic edi-
tors who revised the scrolls of Samuel and Kings during and after the
period of the Exile in the sixth century. It does not correspond to his-
torical reality, for a number of reasons. First of all, the idea that Yhwh
was the sole god to be worshipped and Jerusalem the only legitimate
sanctuary is not a very old idea, but—as we shall see in more detail in
what follows—one that arises at the earliest in the seventh century. In
addition, the books devoted to the kings present them in a way that
takes no account of their political successes or their failures. To take
just two examples, Manasseh is presented as the worst of all the kings of
Judah, but he reigned for fifty-five years and during his reign Judah was
both at peace and prosperous. The editors of the books of Kings devoted
a short passage to these fifty-five years and were at pains to enumerate in
a stereotypical way the horrors that this king, who was a faithful vassal
of the Assyrians, is said to have committed. His predecessor Hezekiah,
highly praised by the Deuteronomistic redactors, pursued a policy of re-
sistance to the Assyrians. Although this policy was suicidal and led to
an occupation and a drastic reduction in the territory of the tiny
kingdom of Judah, it is precisely because of this anti-Assyrian policy
that he is presented so positively.
During the two centuries when the two kingdoms coexisted, Israel
was the geopolitically dominant one, while Judah was a tiny monarchy
that seems to have often been in the position of a vassal to its “big brother”
in the north. Israel contained fertile land where it was easy to cultivate
both wheat, in the valley of Jisreel, and olives and wine in the moun-
tains of Galilee. It very quickly established trade relations with the
Aramaean kingdoms and with Phoenicia, whereas the Judean economy

was much more fragile.
Finally, as we have seen, the idea of a great kingdom, united under
David and Solomon, comes more from the imagination of the authors
of these books of the Bible than from any historical reality. If this is the
case, we must ask why the same national god was worshipped in both
kingdoms. It seems that during the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon,
parts of Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim found themselves united around
a king and a tutelary god. But “shared gods” existed elsewhere in the
Levant. This was particularly the case for the god “El,” but also for Yhwh
himself, who had also been worshipped outside the territory of Israel and
Judah. The cults of Yhwh in their various local forms were highly di-
verse, as can be seen from inscriptions3 and from the biblical texts them-
selves: the texts of Kuntillet Ajrud mention a Yhwh of Samaria and a
Yhwh of Teman, that is, of the south outside Israel and Judah; the in-
scription of Khirbet Beit Lei speaks of a Yhwh, god of Jerusalem; 2 Samuel
15:7 mentions a “Yhwh at Hebron,” Psalms 99:2 tells of a “Yhwh in Zion”;
and Genesis 28:10–22 explains the veneration of Yhwh at Bethel.
To grasp the complexity of ancient religiosity, we must distinguish
three levels of analysis. First of all, at the level of the individual, the
family, or the clan, one turned to divine protectors, personal gods, and
deified ancestors, and others. There is no need for a sanctuary or temple
here: the pater familias takes care of the ritual acts. The grouping to-
gether of several clans brings forth a new level of religious activity that
is practiced on a local level. There are local sanctuaries; these are gener-
ally not very important and are often in the open air. It is these local
sanctuaries against which certain biblical texts conduct a fierce polemic,
calling them cults “on every hill” and “under every green tree.” Religion
on a national level is expressed in a set of cult ceremonies of which the
king is the mediator, and it is organized around the national god and
other deities who are associated with him in one way or another.
Regarding the third level, an important question is whether the offi-
cial royal cult was the same in Israel and Judah. Some specialists in
biblical studies think that the cult of Yhwh in Judah was in effect very
different from that of Israel: the Yhwh of Israel was worshipped rather
on the model of Baal, that is, as a god of storms and fertility, whereas in
the south, he had incorporated the traits of the old sun god who was the
tutelary deity of Jerusalem. This picture needs qualification—rather than
strict opposition, it is more likely that there were differences in relative
emphasis between the cult in the north and in the south. Let us look first
at the cult of Yhwh in the kingdom of Israel between 930 and 722.
YHWH, GOD OF THE EXODUS
The kingdom of Israel came into existence on a territory corresponding

more or less to the realm of a chief called Labayu or Labaya of Shechem,
who is mentioned in the Amarna Letters. Some have tried to identify
him with such biblical figures as Abimelek in the book of Judges, who
tried, according to chapter 9 of that book, to rule over Israel but failed.
Or he is even taken to be Saul. But these identifications are not con-
vincing, because the letters of El-Amarna, three of which were actually
written by this Labayu,4 are very much older than the beginning of the
Israelite kingship. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note the correspon-
dence grosso modo between the “state” of Labayu and the regions inte-
grated into the kingdom of Israel.
The Bible designates a man named Jeroboam as the “founder” of the
kingdom of the north. This Jeroboam, according to 1 Kings 12, first re-
volted against Solomon and then had to flee to Egypt. At the death of
Solomon he returned and negotiated as the spokesman of the tribes of
the north with Roboam, the son and successor of Solomon, and when
these negotiations failed, he became king of Israel. He lived fi rst at
Shechem before fortifying Penuel and adopting it as his residence.
The same narrative then recounts that Jeroboam, after having founded
his own kingdom among the tribes of the north, constructed two sanc-
tuaries, at Bethel and at Dan, where he set up boviform statues repre-
senting the god who had led the Israelites out of Egypt.
(28) The king Jeroboam took counsel and had made two calves
of gold and said to the people: “You have gone up too often to
Jerusalem; these are your gods, Israel, who have brought you out
of the land of Egypt.” (29) He set up one in Bethel and one in
Dan (30)—this was his sin. The people marched in procession

before one [of the calves] as far as Dan.
Here the national god of Israel is identified with the god of the ex-
odus. The installation of the statues at Bethel and Dan means at the ex-
treme northern and extreme southern boundaries of the kingdom. For
archaeologists, the mention of Dan as the place where a sanctuary was
supposedly set up at the end of the tenth century is problematic because
Dan probably did not become Israelite until the eighth century.5 If that is
right, the story about the founding of a sanctuary at Dan is probably a
retrojection from the era of Jeroboam II, who, during his reign in the
eighth century, may well have been able to annex Dan and establish a Yah-
wistic sanctuary there. The editors of the books of Kings simply attributed
this event to the “first” Jeroboam, who may altogether be an invention.
The exact chronology is not important, but what is significant is
that the biblical authors suggest that Yhwh was considered to be the god
of the exodus in both sanctuaries, the one at Bethel and the one at Dan.
The plural in Jeroboam’s exclamation (“here are your gods”) is surprising,
but this motif is taken up again in the story of the golden calf in Exodus
32, which transfers the “sin of Jeroboam” to Mount Sinai and presents it
as the “original sin” of the north. The plural presumably refers to the
fact that there were two cult statues, one for each of the two sanctuaries.
Exodus 32 would then take up, or perhaps “quote,” the words of Jeroboam
and put them into the mouths of the Israelites at Mount Sinai, who
wished to have a visible god:
1 Kings 12:28 Exod. 32:4

hinnēh ʾĕlōhêḵā yiśrā ʾēl ʾăšer ʾēlleh ʾĕlōhêḵā yiśrā ʾēl ʾăšer
he ̒ ĕlûḵā mēʾereṣ miṣrāyim he ̒ ĕlûḵā mēʾereṣ miṣrāyim
‘Here are your gods Israel who “These are your gods Israel who
brought you up from the land of brought you up from the land of Egypt”
Egypt”
However, the narrative of 1 Kings 12 seems to imply that it is the same

god Yhwh at Bethel and Dan. Another hypothesis would be that this
is a divine couple whose two members were enthroned on zoomor-
phic pedestals.6 The other member of the couple might be the parhe-
dros of Yhwh, a goddess who, like Asherah, is associated with him.
Th is, however, is mere speculation, and there is no reason to postulate
an association of Yhwh with Asherah or another goddess in regard to
the exodus. Perhaps the simplest explanation would be that the orig-
inal text read: “Behold your god who brought you out of Egypt.” And
in fact the Hebrew form ʾĕlōhêḵā can mean either “your gods” or “your
god.” It is only the causative form of the verb (“bring up”) that is
slightly different for singular and plural. It is possible that the Maso-
retes retouched an original singular and made it into a plural in order
to accuse the Israelites of the north not only of using a graven image,
that is, of idolatry, but also of worshipping many gods.
The worship of a bull in the capital of Israel, Samaria, is attested in
the book of Hosea. So, did the narrative in 1 Kings 12 simply transfer the
bull of Samaria to Bethel, or was there also a bull in the sanctuary there?
The statue of a bull may either play the role of a pedestal for Yhwh or it
may represent Yhwh himself. At Ugarit Baal is represented either an-
thropomorphically, as one can see on a stele in the Louvre where he
holds his weapons, thunder and lightning, in his hands, or in the form
of a bull; he is thus sometimes called “Bull,” and in the epic “Baal and
Death” he copulates with a cow before descending to surrender himself
to the god of death, Motu. The god of the exodus and a bull are also
linked in an oracle of the prophet Balaam cited in Numbers: “El brings
them out of Egypt; he has the horns of a wild ox.”7 An ostracon from
Samaria (no. 41) contains the proper name ̒ glyw, which means “calf of
Yhwh” or “Yhwh is a calf.”
The iconography allows for these two possible ways of understanding
the boviform statues: either the bull is a pedestal for Yhwh, or it repre-
sents Yhwh himself. On a seal from Ebla we find a bull seated on a throne,
flanked on the left by a person in an attitude of prayer and on the right
by a storm god. This means that man encounters the storm god or god
of war via the bull. The book of Hosea, which we have just cited, often
alludes polemically to a bull, as in this oracle: “He has rejected your calf,
Samaria! I am angry with them. For how long still shall they remain inca-
pable of attaining purity? (6) For it comes from Israel, an artisan has made
it, it is not a god. Yes, the calf of Samaria shall be shattered” (8:5–6).
Seal from Ebla showing the worship of a bull on an altar.
Philological and diachronic analysis of this oracle shows that it is

composite. The underlined part is the original oracle. It is in the third
person, contains a criticism of a statue in the form of a calf, and an-
nounces that it will soon be destroyed, probably by the Assyrians. This
text was then augmented by adding a speech by god in the first person,
which attributes the destruction of the statue expressly to the wrath of
god. Finally the passage was worked over again (with the parts in italics
added) and turned into the polemic against images that we find in the
second part of the book of Isaiah, dating from the Persian period.
Another text contained in the book of Hosea seems to refer to the pro-
duction of small statuettes of young bulls for use in the family as ob-
jects of devotion. “But they continue to sin, they make themselves an
image of molten metal with their silver, they make idols of their own
invention, all are the work of artisans. They say about these people:
‘Those who engage in human sacrifice may as well also embrace young
bulls’ ” (13:2). This text suggests a connection between the worship of the
bull and human sacrifice; such sacrifices, as we shall see, were not com-
pletely unknown in the cult of Yhwh.
To summarize, it seems incontrovertible that in Israel at Bethel and
later also at Dan, Yhwh was worshipped in the shape of a bull, just as
Baal was in Ugarit. The exodus from Egypt, which seems in the first in-
stance to have been a tradition of the northern kingdom, was ascribed
to this god. In the eighth century Bethel was the most important sanc-
tuary of Israel, as is attested by the references in the scroll attributed to
the prophet Amos. Amos was a Judean smallholder who came into the
sanctuary of Bethel, announcing the death of the king and the end of
the kingdom of Israel. The priest of Bethel wished to get rid of this Ju-
dean, and thus forbade him to enter the sanctuary, which he says was
the most important in Israel: “Do not continue to prophesy in Bethel,
for it is a sanctuary of the king and a royal temple” (7:13).
Nevertheless, there must also have been a temple in Samaria; this is
shown by the inscription of the Assyrian king Sargon, who speaks of
deporting the statues of Samaria, and also the inscription of Kuntillet
Ajrud, which mentions a “Yhwh of Samaria.” 1 Kings also attests a sanc-
tuary in Samaria when it reports that King Ahab “raised an altar to
Baal in the house of Baal which he had built in Samaria” (1 Kings 16:32).
The double reference to Baal is slightly curious; why specify that the king
has installed an altar to Baal in the temple of Baal? It seems that we have
a case in which the text, which spoke of the “house of God” (bêt ʾĕlōhîm)8
or the “house of Yhwh” (bêt Yhwh), has been altered. So the original text
would have read: “He raised an altar to Baal in the house of Yhwh which
he had built.” The subject at the end of the phrase is probably Ahab’s
father, Omri—a king whom the editors abhor—who had made Samaria
the capital of Israel. In his new capital he would have constructed a
temple for Baal, inside which he would have provided space for the wor-
ship of other gods. Omri and Ahab, then, would have favored the cult
of Phoenician Baal, but would also have included within the structure a
place for sacrifices to Yhwh, whose principal temple was at Bethel. Later
the books of Kings describe the destruction of the temple of Baal at Sa-
maria by Jehu, who put an end to the dynasty of Omri and became king
of Israel himself (2 Kings 10:21–27). Archaeologists have not discovered
any clear evidence of the existence of a sanctuary, but excavations have
not been undertaken on the whole of the territory. It is possible that ex-
cavations being undertaken on an area about 650 meters to the east of
the acropolis, which was occupied during the Iron Age, will find evi-
dence for the existence of a sanctuary there.9 Whatever the results of
these excavations, though, the capital of a kingdom must have had an
important sanctuary.
Y HWH AND ISR AEL ACCORDING TO

THE STELE OF MESHA
The stele of Mesha is made of black basalt and is over one meter high. It
was discovered in 1868 at Dhiban in Jordan by an Alsatian missionary
by the name of Frederick A. Klein. Before this stele was smashed by
Bedouins who thought it contained a treasure, Charles Simon Clermont-
Ganneau was able to make a papier-mâché impression of the text, which
served as the basis for reconstructing it. Nowadays the authenticity of
the stele is no longer subject to serious doubt, although that was not al-
ways the case.10 The stone has an inscription purportedly dictated by
the Moabite king Mesha (tenth century). The text is 34 lines long, which
makes it the longest inscription yet discovered in the Levant. It is an ad-
dress of thanksgiving addressed by the king to his tutelary god Che-
mosh. The inscription describes the victories of Mesha during the course
of his rebellion against the kingdom of Israel after the death of King
Ahab:11
I am Mesha, son of Chemosh, king of Moab, the Dibonite. My

father ruled for thirty years over Moab and I have ruled after my
father. And I have built this sanctuary for Chemosh at Qerihoh, a
sanctuary of salvation for he has saved me from all aggressors and
made me rejoice over my enemies.
Omri was the king of Israel and oppressed Moab for a long time,
because Chemosh was angry with his land. His son succeeded him
and he too said: “I will oppress Moab.” In my days, he said so. But
I looked down on him and on his house, and Israel has been de-
feated; it has been defeated forever! Omri had taken over the land
of Madaba and dwelled there12 during his reign and the reign of
his son, for forty years, but Chemosh restored it in my days. And I
built Baal-Meon and I built the water reservoir there and I built
Kiriathaim. The men of Gad lived in the land of Atarot from an-
cient times; and the king of Israel built Atarot for himself, and I
fought against the city and captured it. I killed all the people of
the city as a sacrifice for Chemosh and Moab. I took away from
there the hearth of the altar (ʾrʾl) of his Well-Beloved (dwdh) and
I dragged it in front of Chemosh at Kerioth where I made the
man of Sharon and the man of Maharot to dwell. And Chemosh
said to me: “Go take Nebo from Israel.” And I went in the night
and fought against it from daybreak until midday, and I took it
and I killed the whole population: seven thousand male subjects
and aliens, and female subjects, aliens, and servant girls because
I had dedicated (ḥ-r-m) them to the Ashtar of Chemosh. I took
from there the vessels of Yhwh and I dragged them in front of
Chemosh. The king of Israel had built Yahaz, and he stayed there
throughout his campaign against me; and Chemosh drove him
away before my face. And I took two hundred Moabite men, its
entire division, and I led it up to Yahaz. And I have taken it in
order to add it to Dibhan.
I built Qeriho, the wall of the park and the wall of the citadel. I
have built its gates; and I have built its towers; and I have built the
king’s house; and I have made the double reservoir for the spring
in the innermost part of the city. There was no cistern inside the
town of Qerihoh and I said to all the people: “Make each of you a
cistern within your house.” And I cut the moat for Qerihoh by using
Israelite prisoners. I have built Aroer, and I constructed the road
in Arnon. I built Bet-Bamot, because it had been destroyed. I built
Bezer because it was in ruins, with fift y men from Dibhan because
all Dibhan were in subjection. I have reigned . . . hundred with the
towns which I have added to the country. I built . . . Madaba, Beth-
Diblaten and Bet-Baal-Meon. I raised up there . . . herds of the
country. And Hauranen where there dwelled . . . Chemosh said to
me, “Go down, fight against Hauranen!” I went down . . . and Che-
mosh restored it in my days.
This inscription is dated to between 850 and 810 and is informed by

a theology very much like that of the books of Kings and other texts in
the Bible: victory over an enemy is the work of the national god, whereas
defeat or occupation by another people is the wrath of the national god
who has turned away from his people. Chemosh plays for Moab a role
like that of Yhwh for Israel. The inscription also tells us that Israel and
Moab were in dispute about a territory east of the Jordan. This is the ter-
ritory attributed to Gad between A ̒ tarot and Nebo, which in the ninth
century had a fate like that of Alsace, changing hands several times be-
tween Israel and Moab.
Mesha’s inscription claims that he had retaken the town occupied
by Israel. He boasts about the town of Nebo: “I took from there the
vessels of Yhwh and I dragged them before Chemosh.” The word trans-
lated as “vessels” (kly) is sufficiently indeterminate that it can designate
all kinds of cult objects, including perhaps statues. What is relevant is
that this remark presupposes that there was a sanctuary of Yhwh at Nebo
that Mesha destroyed, and whose ritual objects or statues he moved, as
was the custom, to the temple of Chemosh. As the book of Joshua also
claims about the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, the booty
was dedicated to Ashtar-Chemosh and banned from all profane use by
destruction (ḥerem). A god Ashtar is known from Ugarit,13 but in this stele
the connection with Chemosh suggests rather a goddess. Ashtar is at-
tested as a goddess in the Shumu’il confederation of Arab tribes; she
appears as Ashtar-Shamaim in the oasis of Duma, where she has her
place at the top of the pantheon.14 So we should understand the expres-
sion “Ashtar of Chemosh” on analogy to Asherah of Yhwh, as the parhe-
dros of the god Chemosh.
As far as the taking of the city of A ̒ tarot is concerned, Mesha speci-
fies that he carried off the altar ( ʾrʾl) of dwhd and dragged it in front
of Chemosh at Qeriyot. The term ʾari ʾel designates the top part of an
altar for holocausts;15 the meaning of d-w-d is, on the other hand, much
less clear. It might be a title for Yhwh (the “well-beloved”), who would
therefore also have had a sanctuary in Atarot. However, it would be sur-
Bezer
KiriathaimNebo
Madaba
Baal- Diblataim
Meon
Atharot
Yaha[ (?)
KeriotI
Aroer
MOAB
Places mentioned in the

0 20 km
inscription of Mesha
prising if Mesha used that title when he had not yet even mentioned
Yhwh. If this was just another way of calling on Yhwh, his proper name
ought to have preceded the title. So it is possible that d-w-d (Dôd) actu-
ally designated another god, perhaps the local god of A ̒ tarot wor-
shipped by the Israelites. Such a god is attested in the original text of
Amos 8:14. The Masoretic text states: “They swear by the sin of Samaria
and they say: ‘Long live your god, Dan! Long live the path (d-r-k) of Beer-
Sheba!” However, the word d-r-k (path, trail) makes no sense in this
context. The Greek version reads theós (god) instead of “path,” and so
we can deduce that the original text had d-d-k (dôdeka) meaning “your
Dôd” or “Your well-beloved” in place of d-r-k: “Long live your god, Dan!
Long live your Well-Beloved (dwd), Beer-Sheba.” So the stele of Mesha
attests to an official royal sanctuary for Yhwh at Nebo in the ninth cen-
tury, and a local cult of Dôd at A ̒ tarot. It confirms that there was a di-
versity of cult places in Israel under the dynasty of the Omrides.
THE SANCTUARIES AND DIVINITIES OF ISRAEL
Yhwh, then, was worshipped in the kingdom of the north in the form
of a bull or anthropomorphically as a storm god. Yahwist sanctuaries
existed in Samaria, Bethel, Dan, Shechem, and Transjordan, as we have
seen. It is also certain that Yhwh was not the only god worshipped in
the north; this is attested in the books of Kings and in various of the
prophetic books that criticize the kings of the north for worshipping
other gods in addition to Yhwh. In an inscription from Tell Deir A ̒ lla
on the Jordan (a place that is now part of the kingdom of Jordan), which
was put up when this area was part of Israel, there are the names of the
following gods: El, the goddesses Ashtar, Shagar, and possibly also
Shamash. There is also an occurrence of the plural šdyn, which can be
translated as “those who belong to Shadday,” which is either another
independent god or a title for El.
At a sanctuary in Dan it seems there was worship of “the god of Dan”
(ʾĕlōhê dan), and this cult is still attested in the second century in a
bilingual inscription in Greek and Aramaic that reads in Greek: Theōî
tōî en Dánois. Ostraca from Samaria, bits of pottery used for writing,
show a number of proper names containing the element b̒ l (Baʿal).16
It is hard to say whether in these proper names the term b̒ l is used as
a title for Yhwh or whether it designates another deity. Kings asserts
that Mount Carmel had an important sanctuary of Baal. This was the
place where in the story of Elijah there was a competition between Baal
and Yhwh.
YHWH AND BA AL IN ISRAEL
Let us accept, then, that in the kingdom of Israel, Yhwh was worshipped
as a “baal” and a storm god like “Hadad.” In certain psalms and other
poetical texts that were perhaps composed in the kingdom of the north,
Yhwh looks indeed very much like the “baal” of Ugarit. Like Baal, who
in Ugaritic has the epithet rkb ̒ rpt, “cloud rider,”17 Yhwh uses the clouds
to ride through the skies: “clouds are his chariot” (Ps. 104:3).18 Psalm 29,
which probably originated in the north and was then subject to a southern
revision, clearly describes Yhwh as a storm god who tames the waters
as the Baal of Ugarit had:
(3) The voice of Yhwh resounds over the waters . . . Yhwh is upon
the great waters. (4) The voice of Yhwh with magnificence, (5) the
voice of Yhwh breaks the cedars; Yhwh breaks the cedars of Leb-
anon (6) He makes them jump like a young steer, he makes Leb-
anon and Sirion jump like a young bull. (7) The voice of Yhwh
makes flaming fi res burst out. (8) The voice of Yhwh makes the
desert tremble; Yhwh makes the sacred steppe tremble.19 (9) The
voice of Yhwh makes hinds give birth; it strips the leaves off
the forests. And in his temple everyone shouts: “Glory.”
This psalm affirms the power of Yhwh, who is compared to a young

bull, over water and over nature in general. At Ugarit a hymn like this
could have unproblematically been used for Baal.
This worship of Yhwh in terms that could also apply to Baal is also
accompanied, according to the account given in the books of Kings, by
a determined struggle of Yhwh against Baal. The biblical authors locate
this struggle in the era of Ahab, son and successor of King Omri, who
is considered by the Assyrians to be the true founder of the dynasty of
the north. Archaeology reveals an impressive amount of building work
that can be attributed to this king. As we have already seen, it was Omri
who founded the capital of Samaria and constructed a palace and also
probably a temple there. Omri tried to create a modern state and formed
an alliance with the Phoenicians by marrying his son Ahab to Jezebel,
who appears in the Bible as the daughter of the king of the Sidonians
(1 Kings 16:31). According to other sources, Ethbaal, her father, was king
of Tyre. Without giving details on the question of which of these two
reports is correct, it is clear that the marriage of Ahab symbolized an
opening of Israel toward Phoenicia. So one can reasonably ask whether
the worship of Baal, which is the reproach made against Ahab in the
Bible, was not in fact worship of the Phoenician god Melqart. In a treaty
the Assyrian king Asarhaddon concluded with Baal, king of Tyre, a va-
riety of Phoenician gods are mentioned as guarantors of the treaty: Baal
Shamen, Baal Malagê, Baal Saphon, Melqart, and Eshmun.20 Melqart
seems to have been the tutelary god of Tyre par excellence. This Melqart
had the title bʿl Ṣr, “Lord of Tyre.” It is, then, perfectly plausible to sup-
pose that this is the god that became the tutelary god of the dynasty of
the Omrides and also became popular with the army and other mem-
bers of the court of Samaria.
However, this identification of the baal of the Omrides with Melqart
has been contested21 because the name of Melqart is never mentioned
in the Bible. Nevertheless, the well-documented links between the Om-
rides and Phoenicia lend a certain plausibility to the identification. There
is also the fact that Melqart appears, accompanied by Astarte, in an in-
scription of the Phoenician king Eshmun’azar II (about 475): “We have
built houses for the gods of Sidon in Sidon-by-the Sea, a house for the
Lord (baal) of Sidon and a house for Ashtarte in the name of Baal.22 This
kind of association of Baal and Astarte can also be found in certain bib-
lical texts.23
The biblical sources claim that the introduction of the worship
of the Phoenician Baal as the god of Samaria provoked a revolt by
groups attached to the worship of the baal Yhwh. Th is revolt is pre-
sented in the books of Kings as epitomized by the actions of the
prophet Elijah and then of Jehu, who put an end to the dynasty of
the Omrides.
It seems that the stories of the prophets Elijah and Elisha were inserted
later into the books of Kings. This is compatible with the fact that they
were written down for the first time and formulated independently in
the kingdom of the north after the fall of the Omrides, as a kind of “black
book of Baal,” a book that was constituted in large part by the stories
about Elijah.24 Elijah’s activity is situated under the reigns of Kings Ahab
(875–853) and Akharias (853–852), respectively son and grandson of
Omri. Elijah, who is called “the Tishbite,”25 appears as the protagonist
in the struggle of Yhwh against Baal. 1 Kings 17 reports a divine com-
mand sending Elijah to the Phoenician city of Sidon, to the house of a
widow. There Yhwh, through the mediation of his prophet Elijah, pro-
cures for her oil and flour, something the Baal of Sidon was not able to
do. This text is intended as a counterweight to the idea, expressed in the
treaty between Asarhaddon and the king of Tyre, that Baal Melqart is a
god who provides nourishment and clothing.
In Phoenicia Elijah also resuscitates the son of the widow to whom

he has been sent. This story is intended to show that Yhwh has power
over death. This is in contrast to the Baal of Ugarit (and of Phoenicia?),26
who, according to the cycle “Baal and Death,” must descend for part of
the year into the kingdom of Mot, god of death.
The superiority of Yhwh over Baal is confi rmed defi nitively in
chapter 18 with a description of a contest between Yhwh and Baal, which
is played out in the form of a competition between Elijah and the prophets
of Baal on Mount Carmel. Despite the ecstatic rites of the prophets of
Baal, their god does not intervene. In contrast, Yhwh sends fire from
heaven to consume the sacrifices that are destined for him. Elijah mocks
the god of his adversaries by wondering if he is perhaps asleep and needs
to be woken up. Scholars have sometimes tried to connect this polemic
with a ritual in which Melqart is awakened, although the sources that
reveal the existence of such a ritual are quite late.27 In any case the in-
tention of the story is to show that Yhwh is “the real Baal,” he who com-
mands the two elements most often associated with Baal: water and fire.
Th is story, which is particularly brutal,28 ends with a massacre of the
prophets of Baal as a prelude to the Yahwistic revolt under Jehu. This
text exhibits the same ideology as a text of Exodus that stipulates:
“Anyone sacrificing to any gods, except Yhwh and Yhwh alone, shall be
placed under interdict”29 (22:19). Similarly the law of Deuteronomy re-
quires that the prophets of any other gods be put to death (13:2–6).
The final scene of 1 Kings 18 (verses 41–46) relates an encounter be-
tween Elijah and King Ahab which emphasizes once again the baal-like
powers of Yhwh. It is Yhwh who has caused a long famine in the land
and Ahab has to recognize that it is Yhwh who has the power to put an
end to the drought and make the rain come. This again is in contrast to
Baal, who, according to the Ugaritic myth, needs the help of his parhe-
dros Anat and of the sun god Shapash in order to assert himself as the
master of rain.
The prophetic stories inserted into the books of Kings claim that Elijah
and especially his successor Elisha were implicated in the Yahwistic
putsch against the dynasty of Omri. This putsch was led by Jehu, who
made Yhwh the national baal of the kingdom of Israel after killing the
members of the house of Omri and the adepts of the Phoenician baal.
Like Elijah, Jehu begins by assembling all the prophets of Baal (2 Kings
10:19)30 and, as in 1 Kings 18, the sacrificial assembly ends with the mas-
sacre of the priests of Baal. Certain stories about Elijah and Jehu thus
reflect the birth of an intransigent Yahwism, which will find its apogee
in the book of Deuteronomy and that attributed to the prophet Hosea.
The question remains whether it was only as a result of the revolt of
Jehu that Yhwh first became the tutelary god of the kings of Israel. For
many scholars, the answer to this question depends on the way one in-
terprets the biblical account of the alleged division of the unitary
kingdom in 1 Kings 12, which we have already commented on. Is it cor-
rect that we must actually attribute to Jeroboam II (787–748) what the
biblical narrative ascribes to Jeroboam I, or is there a kernel of histor-
ical truth in the claim that Jeroboam I established a Yahwist cult at Bethel
in about 930? We might also imagine that there was a rivalry in the
kingdom of Israel between Bethel (Yhwh) and Samaria (Melqart or a
“Phoenician Baal”), up until the putsch by Jehu, which definitively im-
posed Yhwh as the national god and the titular deity of the kings.
Despite the fact that he was a fervent Yahwist, Jehu had to submit to
the Assyrians, and that meant also recognizing the supremacy of their
gods. An inscription of Salmanasar (841) numbers Jehu among those
who must pay a tribute to the great Assyrian king. For the Assyrians this
struggle between Yhwh and Baal, or between a Yahwist faction and the
dynasty of the Omrides, was not thought to be of the slightest impor-
tance, because Salmanasar calls Jehu the “son” of Omri, that is, his suc-
cessor”: “Tribute from Jehu [Ia-ú-a] son of Omri [Ḫu-um-ri]; I received
from him silver, gold, a golden saplu-bowl, a golden vase with pointed
bottom,31 golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king.”32
Within the kingdom of Israel the struggle between the baal Yhwh
and the Phoenician baal must have provoked discussion about how to
worship Yhwh. Was he to be considered merely as a cousin of the nu-
merous storm gods of the Levant? The polemics against Baal that find
expression in the book of Hosea are probably actually directed against
certain cults of Yhwh. This was a Yhwh, to be sure, who was worshipped
as “Baal” and in a bovine form, and the fact that these cults became in-
tolerable to some must be taken to be a sign of a change in mentality. In
addition, during the eighth century we can observe a change in the ico-
nography with significant modifications of the way in which gods are

represented in the territory of the kingdom of Israel. A carved piece of
bone from this period, found at Hazor, shows a young god with a pair
of wings. Images like this, which betray a strong Phoenician influence,
are also to be found in a number of seals. The use of objects like these
seems to have been limited to the north, and for the moment, at any rate,
there is no evidence of anything like this being found in Judah. The
god is holding some vegetables, which represent the means by which he
sustains the life of nature. The two wings are characteristic of a god of
the “Uranus” type, a god of the heavens, perhaps a solar god. This image
illustrates the evolution of Baal toward “Baal Shamem,” the Baal of the
heavens, a deity well attested in Phoenicia.33 The images could represent
either Baal or Yhwh.
In proper names found on seals with such images we find several with
Yahwist roots, such as Yoab (“Yhwh is father”)34 or Padah,35 which is an
abbreviated form of Padayahu (“Yhwh saves”). It is possible, then, that
the owners of these seals saw in the images representations of Yhwh as
their tutelary deity. This kind of “solarization” of Yhwh in the north can
also be found in a number of poetic texts in the Bible—for instance,
Psalm 104, where Yhwh appears as a “Baal Shamem,” a combination of
a storm god and a sun god surrounded by winged servants: “(2) He covers
himself in light as with a mantle; he spreads out the heavens like a canvas.
(3) He has founded on the waters his upper chambers, he takes the clouds
as his chariot, he advances on the wings of the wind. (4) He makes the
winds his messengers, the flaming fire is at his ser vice.”
Similarly, in the book of Hosea, which criticizes the worship of the
bull and of Yhwh as a baal, Yhwh is compared in chapter 6 to the rising
of the sun: “(3) Let us know, let us seek to know Yhwh; his coming is
established like that of the dawn.” And the original text of verse 5 com-
pares the divine judgments of Yhwh to light itself.36 So we have in place
a conception of Yhwh that combines the traits of a storm god with the
attributes of a solar deity. This brings us back to the topic of the forms
of representation of Yhwh in the kingdom of Israel.
REPRE SENTAT IONS OF Y HWH IN ISR A EL
In contrast to the keen and partisan interest of scholars in the modes of

worship of Yhwh in Jerusalem and in the kingdom of Judah, the ques-
tion of the existence of representations of Yhwh (statues, images on seals,
and so forth) in the north arouses fewer polemics and less passion. Many
experts consciously or unconsciously simply follow the lead of the edi-
tors of the Bible, who considered the cult of Yhwh in the north to be
simply idolatrous and “deviant.” We have already mentioned at various
stages of our account that there were numerous images of Yhwh in the
sanctuaries of the north, so it will suffice to mention some of these again.
An inscription of Sargon II, the “prism of Nimrud,” which was re-
dacted in 706 and refers to the destruction of Samaria, mentions among
the booty brought back “the gods in which they had put their trust.” This
inscription should be juxtaposed with two neo-Assyrian bas-reliefs on
which can be seen soldiers of Sargon and of Sennacherib, respectively,
transporting statues of gods among their booty.37 Although the town
from which the statues have been taken has not been securely identified
for the first relief,38 we might try to connect it with the inscription of
the prism of Nimrud and see in it a representation of statues of gods like
those of Samaria. In these reliefs the statues are anthropomorphic, but
other texts, some of which have already been mentioned,39 seem to at-
test the worship of Yhwh in the form of young bull, which perhaps ex-
plains also the statue of a bull found in Israel near the site of Dothan
and dating to about 1200–1000.40
The story of the calling of the young Samuel as prophet of Yhwh in
the sanctuary of Shiloh, as related in 1 Samuel 2, furnishes indirect evi-
dence for the existence of an anthropomorphic statue of Yhwh. As we
have seen, Shiloh was the home of the ark, which symbolized or materi-
alized the presence of Yhwh. The author of this ancient narrative of the
commissioning of Samuel describes with great precision the cultic activi-
ties associated with this sanctuary, both before and after the birth of
Samuel. The remark, repeated at 1 Samuel 2:11 and 28 and also at 3:1, that
Samuel was “in the ser vice of Yhwh” is of particular interest. The Mas-
oretic text of 2:11 is grammatically particularly difficult. Literally it
reads: “the boy served Yhwh, the face of Eli, the priest.” It is highly
likely that the Hebrew text was deliberately altered, and that we should
reconstruct it on the basis of the Greek version, which reads: “the boy
served the face of Yhwh before Eli, the priest” (which would correspond
to the remark in 2:18).41 It would seem that the Masoretes wished to avoid
any possible allusion to a divine statue.42 In fact the primary meaning
of the root š-r-t is “take care of,” “serve,” in a very concrete sense.43 As
Claus Westerman has remarked, “this ser vice of Yhwh is directed at a
concrete object . . . If one ‘serves,’ this means taking care of his statue,
as is the case in Egypt.”44 Samuel’s job, then, would have been the “main-
tenance” of the statue of Yhwh in the sanctuary of Shiloh. Starting
from this, we might then ask whether the expression “to stand before the
face of Yhwh to serve him,” which is used in Deuteronomy (10:8) to
explain the function of the Levites, did not also have this meaning, namely
that they were to take care of his statue.45
In sum, then, with the putsch of Jehu Yhwh definitively became the
most important god in Israel. At first he was worshipped in the north
as a “Baal,” a storm god who in certain respects resembled the god Baal
of Ugarit. He was not the only god worshipped in Israel; probably he was
at first subordinated to El (especially in the sanctuary of Bethel). Under
the Omrides two baʿalim were in competition with each other: the Phoe-
nician Baal (perhaps Melqart) and the Baal Yhwh. Later Yhwh seems to
have integrated the attributes of El and also some features of a solar deity.
He became baʿal shamem, a “Lord of the heavens.” Up until the fall of
Samaria in 722, the cult of Yhwh was not exclusive. This is shown by the
prism of Nimrud in which Sargon II recounts his sacking of the capital
of the kingdom of the north: “I counted as prisoners 27,280 persons, also
their chariots and the gods in which they had put their trust.”
7
T H E CU LT O F Y H W H IN J U DA H
In contrast to the north (Israel), Yhwh does not seem to

have been worshipped in the form of a bull in Jerusalem. In the capital
of the kingdom of Judah, he appeared particularly as a royal figure, sit-
ting in state on a throne, rather like the god El. He seems gradually to
have taken the place of an existing solar deity, and to have become the
supreme god not just of Jerusalem, but also more generally of the whole
territory of Judah. A graffito that was found on the inside of a tomb from
Khirbet Beit Lei, a site 8 kilometers to the east of Lachish, shows the final
state of this evolution. The dating of this text, which was discovered
during excavations for roadworks, is unclear, but it must fall somewhere
in the eighth to sixth centuries. It is also not easy to read, probably be-
cause it was written in darkness inside the tomb, but the meaning seems
to be: “Yhwh is the god of the whole country (of all the earth); the moun-
tains of Judah belong to the god of Jerusalem.” So, although Yhwh still
carries the title “god of Jerusalem,” this inscription shows that some
people, including the anonymous author of this inscription, are begin-
ning to make claims to a much larger territory for him. This might be
taken to confirm the theory that in Judah Yhwh was first the god of Jeru-
salem, and inherently linked to the Davidic dynasty. This link would also
explain the royal images of Yhwh that seem to dominate in the south.
T H E C U LT O F Y H W H I N J U D A H 125
ON T HE DIVERSIT Y OF YAHWIST
SANCTUARIES IN JUDAH
In Judah, Yhwh was not worshipped only at a single site any more than
he was in the north. There were other important sanctuaries outside Je-
rusalem, even if censorship prevented them from being mentioned di-
rectly in the Hebrew Bible. The Bible mentions bāmôt, “high places,” in
the north, but even more frequently in the south. These bāmôt appear
particularly in the books of Samuel and of Kings (and in parallel texts
in the books of Chronicles). They were local sanctuaries, not under the
supervision of the king, often constructed on hills or small rises. The
text of 2 Kings 23:8 mentions “bāmôt of the gates,” which might refer to
sanctuaries built inside fortified parts of the city wall. Most of the time,
however, these were sanctuaries in the open air in which one might
find one or more steles (maṣṣēbôt) and an ʾăšêrāh (a tree or sacred pole).
A passage from the first book of Kings describes one of these sanctu-
aries: “They, too, construct high places with statues and sacred poles on
every raised hill and under every green tree” (14:23). In some of these
sanctuaries there were also covered places for taking meals.1 These high
places were in most cases Yahwistic sanctuaries. Only one text criti-
cizes Solomon for having constructed “on the mountain which faces
Jerusalem a high place for Chemosh, the abominable god of Moab”
(1 Kings 11:7). The editors of the books of Kings confirm that the bāmôt
were Yahwistic sanctuaries; while commenting favorably on a certain
number of kings of Judah, they remark: “And yet the high places did
not disappear; the people still offered sacrifices and perfumes there”
(2 Kings 12:14). Two kings, Ezekiel and Josiah, are credited with a desire
to destroy these sanctuaries. The situation illustrates the irony of his-
tory: these high places were probably typically “Israelite” or “Judean,”
but they had finally to cede their places to the Temple of Jerusalem.
Other Yahwistic temples were probably to be found in the south at
Arad, a sanctuary with one or two maṣṣēbôt (representing perhaps Yhwh
and his parhedros Asherah). The interpretation of the archaeological finds
at this site is still difficult,2 because the steles had been thrown down out-
side the Holy of Holies. When it was originally discovered, scholars
thought that this was the result of a destruction of the sanctuary by Josiah,
or by the Assyrians, but it now seems that it was part of a strategy to cam-
ouflage the sanctuary in order to save it from devastation by the Assyrian
army. During the period of the Judean monarchy, Arad was a royal gar-
rison, so it would be natural for it to have a Yahwistic sanctuary.
There was probably also a temple in the city of Lachish, the royal ad-
ministrative center of Shephelah. On an Assyrian relief depicting the
sacking of Lachish, Assyrian soldiers carry away an extremely large in-
cense burner, one much too big for private use, which probably came
from a place where there was a cult, most likely of Yhwh.
Finally, at Beer-Sheeba, there are the remains of an impressive altar
with four horns, which also indicates that it was probably a Yahwistic
sanctuary.
YHWH’S RISE IN JERUSALEM
As we have repeatedly emphasized, even in Jerusalem Yhwh was not the

only god worshipped. He at first occupied the temple together with a
solar god, to whom he was perhaps even subordinated. When did Yhwh
become the national god of Judah? In comparably sized kingdoms to the
east of the Jordan, such as Moab,3 and possibly also Ammon, the mem-
bers of the Canaanite pantheon (which was certainly less developed than
the great pantheons of the Assyrians) began to some extent to fade away
behind the dynastic god who took up more and more space, and a sim-
ilar development will also have taken place in Jerusalem.
The royal cult must gradually have established the superiority of Yhwh
over the sun god. Evidence for this evolution can perhaps be found in
an episode from the book of Joshua: chapter 10 describes a battle between
the Israelites, led by Joshua, against a certain Adoni-Zedek (“My lord is
Zedek”),4 king of Jerusalem, and a coalition of Amorite kings. Yhwh in-
tervenes in this war by throwing stones from the sky:
Then Joshua . . . said before the eyes of Israel: “Sun (Šemeš), stand
still over Gabaon, Moon (Yārēaḥ) stand still over the valley of Ai-
jalon!” And the Sun stood still and the Moon held himself (im-
mobile) until the people had taken vengeance on their enemies. Is
this not written in the Book of the Just? (Josh. 10:12–13a)
One can interpret this episode in two different ways. Either this is a
text from the seventh century that insists on the superiority of Yhwh
over solar and lunar gods, both of which were very popu lar with the
Assyrians, or it is an older text that still shows traces of the competi-
tion between Yhwh, god of the army of Israel, and the tutelary deities
of Jerusalem. It is difficult to decide which view is more plausible. If
the “Book of the Just” actually did exist, it probably contained a collec-
tion of poetic texts. These texts might have included the one we have
already cited about the dedication of the temple,5 which also contains a
reference to the Sun. These, then, would be fragments of an older collec-
tion that attempted to define the relation between Yhwh and the other
gods of Jerusalem.
EL AND YHWH IN JERUSALEM
We have already seen that the episode in Genesis 14 describes an en-

counter between Abraham and the priest of El Elyon at Salem, which is
unmistakably Jerusalem. In the Masoretic text El Elyon is identified with
Yhwh, but it seems that this identification had not yet been made in the
Hebrew text from which the Greek version is derived, so it is possible
that this passage, which is actually rather late, preserves a memory of
the fact that a god named El Elyon was worshipped in Jerusalem in the
way in which El had been worshipped at Ugarit, and that only later Yhwh
came to be identified with this god, El. The book of Psalms also retains
some traces of this progressive identification. Thus Psalm 82 opens with
a description of an assembly of gods presided over by El: “Elohim is gath-
ered in the assembly of El, he gives judgment among the gods.” Who is
this Elohim? Because this text occurs in the “Elohist psalter,”6 it is pos-
sible that we should construe this as referring to a primitive version of
Yhwh. If that is the case, then this scene indicates the growing ascen-
dency of Yhwh within the assembly of the gods.
It is not clear whether verses 2–5 are addressed to authorities on earth
or to gods; in any case, the psalmist reproaches them for failing to re-
spect the law and do what is right. After these verses, verse 6 states that
all the gods are sons of Elyon: “I have said: ‘You are all gods, you are all
sons of Elyon.’ ” If all the gods of the Levant are sons of El Elyon,7 then
Yhwh, too, is one of his sons. If it is Yhwh who is speaking this verse, he
is now placing himself above all the other gods, and he announces to
them that they will die: “Indeed, like humans you will die, and like one
of the princes you will fall.” There is a Mesopotamian parallel for this
in the ascent of the god Marduk, originally the tutelary god of the city
of Babylon, who eventually became the most important god in the
Babylonian pantheon.8
Psalm 82 ends with a commentary on the assembly (v. 7): “Arise
Elohim, judge the earth, for it is you who have all the nations as your
patrimony.” If in this psalm Elohim is identified with Yhwh, this last
verse claims for Yhwh the powers of El Elyon. Although the original
version of the poem at Deuteronomy 32:8 has it that Yhwh receives Is-
rael as his patrimony (naḥălāh) from Elyon, verse 7 of Psalm 82 states
that all the nations are the naḥălāh of Elohim/Yhwh, which reflects his
claim to superiority.
Traces of an identification of Yhwh with El Elyon also occur in Psalm
89, which treats the great exploits of Yhwh and also calls him the dy-
nastic god of the house of David. Verse 7 once again praises Yhwh as a
god to whom no other can compare: “Who, then, among the clouds can
measure himself against Yhwh? Who is comparable to Yhwh among the
sons of the gods?” In this verse Yhwh is still one of the sons of the gods,
but he is the greatest. The next verse, to be sure, speaks of El: “El is ter-
rible in the counsels of the holy ones, feared by those who stand about
him.” Is Yhwh here being identified with El or is El still the supreme god
despite the increasing importance of Yhwh? It is difficult to decide, but
perhaps it also does not much matter. These two examples drawn from
the psalms retain the traces of the process by which Yhwh grew in im-
portance within the assembly of the sons of El.
SOL A R T R A IT S OF Y HWH AT JERUSA LE M
As Yhwh grew in importance, he took over traits and functions of the

sun god with whom up to that time he had shared the Temple of Jeru-
salem. Probably the influence of Egyptian religious conceptions, among
other factors, explains the importance of the cult of a sun god at Jeru-
salem. The transfer of solar traits to Yhwh is visible in theophoric

proper names in use during this period, in the iconography, and in the
descriptions of manifestations of Yhwh.
A certain number of proper names are constructed from the root
ʾ-w-r (“shine, gleam, light”)—for instance, Ûriyyāh (“Yhwh is my light”),
the name of one of David’s generals, but also of a priest in the Persian
era, or Nēriyyāhû (“Yhwh is my lamp”), the name of the father of the
scribe Baruch, or finally Yizraḥyāh (“Yhwh gleams”), a musician in the
Persian era. Some seals of the eighth century show a sun god in the form
of a winged scarab.9 We also find the name Yw’r (“Yhwh is [my] light”)
on a seal with unknown provenance (Hebron?). This seal shows a scarab
carrying the solar disk (an image of Yhwh?). The link between the name
of the owner and the iconographic motif is clear. Of particular interest
is a seal without any iconographic motif and with unknown provenance,
but which is inscribed “Of Yizrayah [‘Yhwh gleams’] son of Hilqiyahu,
minister of Hezekiah.” These examples show that the characteristics of
a sun god are beginning to be attributed to Yhwh.
This evolution can also be found in stamped storage jars inscribed
l-mlk (“for the king”) together with the name of a locality (particularly
Socho, Hebron, Lachish, Sif, Mmšt—a place that can perhaps be identi-
fied as Ramat Rahel).10 The seals “l-mlk” originating from Lachish at the
time of Hezekiah have an image of the sun. This shows that the tutelary
god of Jerusalem and Judah could be presented as a sun god with the
aid of an Egyptian-style iconography.
Psalm 19 also attests that images of a sun god who watches over re-
spect for the law and for justice are beginning to be used of Yhwh:
(6) He is a young husband coming out of the bed chamber, a cham-

pion joyous to run the race. (7) At one end of heaven he arises, he
sweeps around to the other and nothing escapes his warmth. (8) The
law of Yhwh is perfect, it gives life; the charter of Yhwh is sure; it
makes the simple man wise.
Verse 12 of Psalm 84 calls Yhwh a sun: “For Yhwh Elohim is a sun and
a shield. Yhwh gives grace and glory, he does not refuse any good
thing to those who follow the path of integrity.” In verse 14 of Psalm 85
(“Justice shall walk in front of Yhwh and mark out his steps on the path”),
Ṣedeq (Justice) walks in front of Yhwh as the Egyptian goddess Ma’at
walked in front of the Egyptian sun god. The book bearing the name of
the prophet Zephaniah also illustrates this same transfer to Yhwh of
the function of a sun god who guarantees justice: “In the midst of [the
city] Yhwh is just, he does not act unjustly, morning after morning he
causes his judgment to appear in the light, without ever failing” (3:5).
THE “THEOLOGY OF ZION”
The book attributed to the prophet Jeremiah contains a liturgical excla-

mation that expresses theological conceptions dominant in Jerusalem
during the era of the monarchy: “A throne of glory, placed on a height
from the beginning, the place of our sanctuary!” (Jer. 17:12). This identi-
fies the throne of Yhwh with the divine mountain, or the original hill (a
“height from the beginning”) on which the sanctuary was located. The
mountain of Yhwh at Jerusalem is often called “Zion,” and the etymology
of this term has been explained in a variety of ways. Some scholars have
claimed that it is derived from a Hurrite word meaning “water,” but
others have suggested that it is related to the root ṣ-y-y, “to be dry, dried
out,” which would make Zion “the dry place.” However, a more plau-
sible root would be ṣ-w/y-n; a comparison with the identical root in
Arabic suggests that this would mean “protect,”11 so Zion would be “the
fortress.”
In the Hebrew Bible the term “Zion” does not appear at all in the
Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, or 1 Samuel.12 In 2 Samuel and the books of
Kings the word occurs only rarely, but it then becomes frequent in the
Psalms and Isaiah. In these texts Zion often appears in parallel to Jeru-
salem. Originally the word designated the hill at the northeast of the
town (Ophel), and only in the Christian era was the name transferred
to the hill in the southwest, where what is now called Mount Zion is
located.
Jerusalemite theology states that Yhwh reigns over Zion, where his
sanctuary is located, and that the king, his representative, has his place
at Yhwh’s right hand, to the south in the city of David. Attributing a
mountain to Yhwh keeps alive the memory of his original mythic place
of origin.
YHWH ENTHRONED UPON THE CHERUBIM
In contrast to what was the case in the kingdom of the north, the Yhwh
of Jerusalem was frequently represented as seated on a throne, flanked
by cherubim or surrounded by seraphim. In many texts Yhwh is even
called “he who is seated (y-š-b) on the cherubim.”13
Who are the cherubim? The Hebrew word kĕrub is related to the Ac-
cadian kuribu (“protecting spirit,” “divine spirit”) and karibu (“greet
with respect”). These terms designate the subordinate gods and statues
set up at the entrance of a sanctuary for protection. Assyrian iconog-
raphy shows that they were hybrid entities like sphinxes, with a human
head and the body of an animal, often a lion. Assyrian spirits of the
kind seen in the British museum and elsewhere are called Lamassu
and Shedu, and the received scholarly view would have it that these
hybrids combined intelligence (human head), power (body of a lion),
and mobility (wings), but this is a perhaps too modern and anachro-
nistic a way of seeing them. In the ancient Near East the intellectual
and spiritual capacities of man were thought to reside in the heart (as
in Aristotle), not in the head. In neo-Assyrian iconography the cherub
is a dangerous creature, a threat to plants and animals. It is important
to emphasize the terrifying aspect of these hybrid creatures; that is
the reason they are placed as guardians at the entrance of palaces and
temples.14 If they are used as pedestals for thrones, their function is
either to protect the person seated on the throne or to show the power
of him who, by seating himself above them, demonstrates that he has
tamed them. In the second of these cases the cherubim can also repre-
sent the confusion, disorder, or chaos that a god or the king must combat
and dominate.
In the Levant, thrones with cherubim are attested on a thirteenth-
century ivory carving from Megiddo, which shows the king of the city,
and also on the sarcophagus of the Phoenician king Ahiram, which is
dated to the ninth to seventh centuries. A Phoenician seal found in
Sardinia shows the god Baal-Melqart enthroned on cherubim with a

solar disk above his head. A piece of terracotta from Cyprus (about 700)
shows a female figure, perhaps a goddess, seated on a throne carried by
cherubim. The story of the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem
mentions the existence of cherubim in the sanctuary (1 Kings 6).
(23) In the sacred chamber he made two cherubim of olive wood;

their height was ten cubits. (24) One wing of the first cherubim:
five cubits, the other wing: five cubits; ten cubits from the end of
one wing to that of the other. (25) Ten cubits for the second cher-
ubim; the same dimensions and the same form for both cherubim.
(26) The height of the first cherubim was ten cubits; the same height
for the second. (27) He placed the cherubim in the middle of the
House, in the inside. The cherubim had their wings unfolded, the
wing of the fi rst touched the wall. And the wing of the other
touched the other wall; their two wings, those toward the center
of the House, touched each other, one wing against the other. (28)
And he coated the cherubim with gold.
Chapter 6 states that these cherubim serve as protectors of the ark,

but originally they were probably components of a throne. They are, in
any case, part of the royal image of Yhwh, which is visible in other titles
that were given to him in Jerusalem.
Y H W H Ṣ Ĕ Ḇ Ā ʾÔ T
Th is title is very frequently used in the Hebrew Bible—a total of 285

times, in fact—especially in Jeremiah (82 times), Isaiah 1–39 (56 times),
Zachariah (56 times), Malachi (24 times), the Psalms (15 times), Haggai
(14 times), and the books of Samuel (11 times). On the other hand, it is
totally absent from the Pentateuch and the book of Ezekiel. This statis-
tical overview strongly suggests that the title has its origin in the Temple
of Jerusalem, because the books that use it most frequently were those
that were composed in Jerusalem, or were most deeply concerned to in-
tegrate traditions from Jerusalem into the text.
The plural ṣĕḇā’ôt comes from the word ṣāḇā, “army.” This explana-
tion is more or less universally accepted. The only dissenter is Manfred
Görg,15 who suggests that the term originates in the Egyptian word ḏbзty,
“he who sits on the throne.” This hypothesis, however, is far-fetched and
does not take account of the fact that the word is most often used in a
military context. Some scholars consider the received translation “Yhwh
of the armies” (“Yhwh of the heavenly hosts”) to be problematic, because
in Hebrew a proper name cannot be used with a genitive in this way.
This is why some have suggested that the title originally was “Yhwh
ʾĕlōhê ṣĕḇāʾôt” [“Yhwh, (the god of) armies”]. Another possibility is that
the plural is part of a nominal proposition, “Yhwh, he is the armies,” or
an abstract plural, “Yhwh the powerful; Yhwh the all-powerful.” There is
some support for this hypothesis in the translation of the Septuagint,
which usually renders the word as pantokrátōr but in some cases simply
transliterates it as sabaoth. However, the translation “Yhwh of the
armies” is not impossible. The texts of Kuntillet Ajrud, which have al-
ready been mentioned, show that constructions with a dependent geni-
tive (Yhwh of Temān, Yhwh of Samaria) are possible. To be sure, this
does not answer the question which armies are intended.
If the armies in question are supposed to be terrestrial armies, the
title would take us back to the function of Yhwh as god of war (as in
1 Sam. 17:45: “David said to the Philistine: ‘You come at me with sword,
lance, and javelin; I come at you in the name of Yhwh of the Armies,
god of the troops of Israel, whom you have defied.’ ”) Because the title
sometimes appears in conjunction with the sanctuary at Shiloh, it has
been conjectured that it was originally connected to this sanctuary,
where Yhwh was worshipped as a war god in conjunction with the ark.16
Perhaps the title originally referred to a Yhwh associated with war, like
the title ṣbʾi for Resheph at Ugarit, which we can translate as “Resheph
the warrior” or “Resheph (lord) of the army.” It is possible, then, that the
title originally applied to the conventional armies of the “people of
Yhwh” and was later transferred to the heavenly realm, to which most
of Yhwh’s other titles refer.
Statistically, the term ṣĕḇāʾôt is used most frequently of Yhwh as chief
of the celestial armies. In addition, the word ṣāḇā is often used to de-
scribe the divine council, which is the context presupposed in Psalm 89:
“God is terrible in the secret council of the holy ones, feared by all those
around him. (9) Yhwh, god of Armies, who is as powerful as you are,
Yah? Your constancy is all around you. (10) It is you who masters the
pride of the sea, when its waves rise up, it is you who calms them.” In
this Psalm the title Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt is also connected with the idea of a
god who creates through struggling with monstrous natural forces, an
idea to which we shall return later. The question of the origin of the title,
then, does not need to be resolved definitively. As war god, Yhwh has
under his command a heavenly army, but he also commands and leads
the earthly army of those who worship him.
The divine council is also in the background of the vision of Yhwh
Ṣĕḇāʾôt, which one finds in the book of Isaiah (6:1–8; the “we” in verse 8
presupposes a divine assembly):
The year of the death of king Ozias, I saw the Lord seated on a high
throne, the lower part of his garment fi lled the temple. (2) Sera-
phim17 hovered above him; each one had six wings; with two of
them they covered their faces; with two of them they covered their
legs, and two of them they used to fly. (3) They called out to each
other saying “Holy, holy, holy is Yhwh of the Armies. All the earth
is filled with his glory!” (4) The foundations of the thresholds trem-
bled at the voice of him who called out and the house [Temple]
was fi lled with smoke. (5) I said, “Woe is me, I am lost for I am a
human being with impure lips and I dwell In the midst of a people
with impure lips, and my eyes have seen the King, Yhwh of the
Armies.” (6) But one of the seraphim flew to me holding in its hand
a burning ember which it has taken from the altar with a pair of
tongs. (7) It touched my mouth and said: “This has touched your
lips. Your failings are taken away; your sin is expiated.” (8) I heard
the Lord who said: “Whom shall I send? Who shall go for us?”
I replied: “Here I am, send me.”
In this scene the prophet sees Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt seated on a throne in the
Temple of Jerusalem. The link with the temple is reinforced by other texts
that speak of Yhwh of the Armies as of him who dwells on Mount Zion
(as Isa. 8:18). The title also appears frequently in the “Psalms of Zion,”
which describe Yhwh as dwelling in and protecting his holy mountains.

Often Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt occurs in texts that project a royal image of Yhwh.
YHWH AS KING
A certain number of Psalms take as their theme the kingship of Yhwh,18

and all of them contain the acclamation Yhwh malak, “Yhwh is [or, has
become] king.” The Scandinavian scholar Sigmund Mowinkel saw in
this a link to the festival of the New Year in Babylon; these psalms, too,
had their origin in a ritual in which, on New Year’s Day, there was a cel-
ebration as the tutelary deity assumed the kingship of the city.19 How-
ever, the existence of such a festival in Israel or Judah has never been
demonstrated. On the other hand, these “Psalms of the Kingship of
Yhwh” may well have a connection with the myth of Baal at Ugarit, who
accedes to the throne after his victory over Yam (the Sea) and also Mot
(Death). At Ugarit, the affirmation that Baal is king expresses the alter-
nation between two seasons (a dry season and a wet season).
Certain psalms that have clearly been repeatedly reworked still con-
tain traces of the motif of Yhwh’s ascent to the kingship. In the original
version of Psalm 47,20 this is described as follows: “Clap your hands, all
of you [peoples]! Acclaim god with shouts of joy. God has ascended
amidst acclamations! Yhwh to the sound of the trumpets. God is king
[over the nations]. God is seated on his sacred throne” (verses 1*, 6*, 9*).
Th is link between the roots ascend, sit down, and be/become king
in the psalms about the kingship of Yhwh is also found in poems
about Baal—for instance, “Baal and the heifer”:21 “Ball ascended the
moun[tain . . . ] the son of Dagan to the [heavens?], Baal is seated on the
throne [as king], the son of Dagan on the seat [of his sovereignty].” After
his victory over Yam, Baal becomes king: “Yam is dead and Baal shall
be [king].”22 In the Hebrew Bible this theme of the victory of Yhwh over
the sea is connected with the kingship of the god of Israel. References to
it occur in Psalms 89, 93, and especially 74:
(12) Still, God, you are my king since the beginning, author of
victories in the middle of the land. (13) It is you who broke the
Sea (yam) with your strength, you smashed the head of the
Dragon (tannîn)23 on the waters. (14) It is you who shattered the
heads of Leviathan (liwyātān), you have given it to the people of
wild beasts to eat. (15) It is you who have broken open the springs
and torrents, you who dried up rivers (nahărōt) that never fail.
(16) The day is yours, the night is yours. You have established moon
and sun. (17) It is you who have fi xed all the frontiers of the earth,
the summer and winter, it is you who have formed them.
In its present form the Psalm presupposes the destruction of Jeru-

salem, which is described in its introduction; however, it takes up and
restates the older tradition of a combat in which the chief god defeats
the Sea. At Ugarit, the title m-l-k is applied to Baal because of his domi-
nation of Yam and Mot, and something similar is the case in the Bible.
Psalm 74 clearly comes from Jerusalem and is intended as a reworking
of the Canaanite idea that the storm god is king.
T HE DAVIDIC KING A S MEDI ATOR OF KING Y HWH
Although we really do not have an enormous amount of information

about the north, in Judah, as elsewhere, the king is considered as the rep-
resentative of Yhwh, whose rule he “incarnates.” According to Psalm 2,
the king is held to be the son of Yhwh: (6) “It is I who have invested my
king on Zion, my sacred mountain.” (7) I shall proclaim the decree of
Yhwh. He said to me: You are my son. It is I who have begot you today.”
When this psalm says that Yhwh “begets” the king, it means that Yhwh
adopts him at the moment of his ascent to the throne; there is no impli-
cation that any biological process of engendering was involved.
The king sits at the right hand of Yhwh: “Declaration of Yhwh to my
lord [the king]: ‘Sit down at my right side until I have made of your en-
emies your footstool.’ Yhwh shall hold from Zion the scepter of your
power: ‘Dominate in the midst of your enemies’ ” (Ps. 110:1–2). The Davidic
kingship, which, according to the promise of 2 Samuel 7, is destined to
last forever, is the visible sign of the kingship of Yhwh. Psalm 132 states
that Yhwh chose Zion and the Davidic dynasty at the same time, and
will protect both of them.
(13) For Yhwh has chosen Zion, he has desired to make his dwelling
place there. (14) “This is my place of rest forever; I shall dwell here
for I desire it . . . (17) There I shall make a horn grow for David,
I shall place a lamp for the man who has received my anointing.
(18) I shall clothe his enemies in shame and his diadem shall
shine radiantly.”
YHWH MELEK AND MOLEK
Four biblical texts mention the word Molek in connection with the sac-
rifice of children.24 Traditionally the view was that Molek was a blood-
thirsty god, eager for human sacrifices. Otto Eissfeldt took molek to be
etymologically connected with the Punic word molk, which, in his view,
simply designates a particular type of “sacrifice,” not necessarily a human
sacrifice.25 The biblical texts, however, do not really support such a view,
because they are clearly intended to refer to sacrifice to a particular god,
and so scholars have tried to identify Molek with one of the gods already
known from other sources. A god Maliku seems to have existed at Ugarit,
but there are very few references to him, and there is no special reason
to connect his cult with human sacrifices. The identification of Molek
with the Ammonite god Milkom is not plausible either.26 Jeremiah 32:35
evokes Baal and Molek in the same context, but they seem to be two dis-
tinct gods.
The simplest solution, although it is only very rarely proposed, would
be to assume that molek was originally pronounced melek (king), one
of Yhwh’s titles. As we have seen, the word melek is used in the Hebrew
Bible more than fift y times as a description of Yhwh. So it is possible
that human sacrifices of children were made to him as Yhwh-Melek.27
Certain texts place the passing of children through the fire in a royal
context. There is further confirmation of this in the Greek translation
of molek in the book of Leviticus. The translator read not molek but melek
in verses 18:21 and 20:2–5 and interpreted it as a title for Yhwh. Prophetic
and priestly critics from the Persian era also confirm that the “sacrifices
of Molek” were offered to Yhwh: “You shall not give one of your chil-
dren to make him pass to Molek [Melek] and you shall not profane
the name of your god” (Lev. 18:21). In this interdiction Molek appears in
parallel to Yhwh. The sacrifice of children to Molek is here denounced

as a profanation of the name of Yhwh; this, however, makes sense
only if melek can be construed as a title of the god of Israel. The text
of Jeremiah 7:31 points in the same direction: “They build high places
of Taphet28 . . . for burning their sons and daughters with fire, some-
thing I have never commanded and which never even occurred to me.”
The author of this passage states that Yhwh never ordered any sacrifices
of children, which means that for the opponents, against whom he is
arguing, that is exactly what they think Yhwh did.
Human sacrifice by immolation occurs in a story from the books of
Kings, where it is attributed to the Moabite king Mesha: “When King
Mesha saw that the battle was lost for him . . . he took his first-born son
who was to rule after him, and offered him as a holocaust on the walls.
There was a great anger against Israel. They broke camp and returned
to their own country” (2 Kings 3:26–27). In the context of a military
crisis, Mesha saw no other solution than to offer up what was most dear
to him: his son, the successor to the throne. The text does not say to
which god this holocaust was dedicated: whether to Chemosh or Yhwh.
This brief story, which survived censorship by the editors,29 provides the
explanation of the practice of passing children through the fire: it is a
sacrifice of last resort in situations of grave crisis. In contrast to the
offering of fi rst fruits, which was (theoretically) a regular practice,
sacrifices involving “passage through the fire” were rituals intended to
invoke the intervention of a god on occasions of great danger.
Those who dedicated these sacrifices to Yhwh-Melek, in so doing em-
phasized his sovereignty and expressed a hope that he would intervene
as savior in a situation of crisis. In the Persian era, human sacrifice be-
came taboo, and the editors tried to dissociated it from the cult of Yhwh.
As part of the same project, the Masoretes later changed Melek to Molek.
Y HWH A ND DE AT H
At Ugarit, Sea (Yammu) and Death (Motu) are the two great enemies of
Baal, and some texts in the Bible indicate that something similar was
the case with Yhwh. We have already mentioned several texts that al-
lude to a combat between Yhwh and the Sea, and Death was also con-
sidered an enemy of Yhwh. In the oldest texts Yhwh does not have con-
trol over the realm of Death, where the dead continue to exist in a kind
of merely vegetative state in a place called “sheol.” The etymology of this
word is not clear: outside the Bible it occurs only once during the first
millennium, in a text from Elephantine.30 One frequently suggested pos-
sibility is that the word is connected with the root šʾl (“ask”), and thus
that “sheol” is the place where one can question the dead. Another
possible origin would be a Semitic root expressing the idea of the desert.
In the Bible, “sheol” is used as a proper name (never with a definite ar-
ticle), and so it might perhaps designate a god or the personification of
the nether world. Life in sheol is conceived as if the corpse had gone to
live underground, as it were, in the family’s subterranean vault, a cold,
wet, dark place.
The descent of the dead person to sheol means first of all a total sepa-
ration from Yhwh. The author of Psalm 30 appeals to the idea that Yhwh
cannot intervene in the realm of the Dead in order to implore Yhwh to
cure him of sickness: sickness is presented as the antechamber of death,
and if he is dead, he will not be able to praise Yhwh. The author of Psalm
6 uses a similar argument: “For in death one will not invoke your name;
in the dwelling of the dead who will celebrate you?”
In these texts, then, sheol is an autonomous realm, not created by
Yhwh; rather, it escapes his power. A passage from Isaiah 28 claims that
some representatives of the aristocracy of Jerusalem were tempted to
enter into an alliance with Sheol, a god whom they took to be more pow-
erful than Yhwh:31 “We have made a pact with Sheol, the unleashed
scourge when it passes shall not touch us” (v. 14). More recent texts that
perhaps reflect religious transformations that took place in the eighth
and seventh centuries claim that Yhwh is stronger than death, and also
express the hope that he will be able to bring the dead back from the
realm of Sheol: “God will buy back my soul from the hand of Sheol”
(Psalm 49:16).
The graffito of Khirbet el-Qom, which can be dated to the end of the
eighth century, contains a wish that Yhwh and his Asherah might give
their blessing: “May Yhwh bless Uriyahu; Yhwh, through his Asherah,
has saved him from his enemies.” This blessing, found at the entrance
to the tomb, shows that Yhwh was thought to have the power to bless
even after death, as he had in life. In the same way, the silver amulets
found in the tombs of Ketef Hinom,32 which had been buried with the
dead, were intended to protect them in the kingdom of the Dead. On
these amulets is inscribed a blessing of Yhwh on the dead, a blessing that
was later transferred to the living in the form of the priestly blessing of
Numbers 6:20–24: “May Yhwh bless you and keep you, may Yhwh shine
his face upon you and give you peace.”
In summary, we find that in Judah Yhwh became the principal deity,
the god of the Davidic dynasty and the national god of Judah during the
ninth and eighth centuries. He absorbed the functions of the sun god
and combined the functions of two further kinds of gods, El and Baal.
The Temple of Jerusalem became the center of the kingship of Yhwh,
although there were also other Yahwistic sanctuaries, and, particularly in
the countryside, especially the bamôt. Toward the end of the eighth cen-
tury Yhwh began to assert his superiority over the god of the under-
world. Human sacrifices were offered to Yhwh in times of military
crisis. Was he, then, worshipped in Jerusalem in a visible or invisible
form? And was he the only god in the temple?
8
T HE S TAT UE OF Y H W H IN JUDA H
According to the Hebrew Bible and to numerous commenta-

tors, the cult of Yhwh was aniconic; one could not make images of him.
However, our inquiry has shown that as far as the kingdom of the north
is concerned, theriomorphic, and surely also anthropomorphic, images
were clearly part of his cult. This is unambiguously indicated in biblical
texts, and was not considered problematic, because the authors and edi-
tors of these texts were writing from the perspective of the “south” and
thus felt free to present the cult of Yhwh in Israel as illegitimate and idol-
atrous in the original sense of the term. The worship of Yhwh in Israel,
as described in the Bible, took the form of veneration of boviform statues.
Those who hold that Yahwism was originally aniconic have nothing to
say in the face of this biblical evidence except to claim that the bulls in
question were construed as serving merely as pedestals for an invisible
god.1 But this is a petitio principii. We do know of images of gods en-
throned on bulls or other animals,2 but there is no clear evidence of a
statue of an animal serving as pedestal of an invisible god.3 So the con-
clusion to be drawn is that the bull in the sanctuaries of the north rep-
resented Yhwh, who, as a storm god and chief god of the pantheon, was
represented in the same way Baal or El were, namely as a bull. But the
question about the existence of images of Yhwh can also be asked about
the kingdom of Judah.
STANDING STONES:
V E S T IGE S OF A CULT W IT HOU T IM AGE S?
Should one imagine an original aniconic cult in the kingdom of Judah?

Defenders of this view often claim that there was an aboriginal “de facto
aniconism” in Judah, as is shown by the cult of massebes, the standing
stones frequently mentioned in the biblical texts (maṣṣēḇôt) and discov-
ered in great number by archaeologists.4
Standing stones are well attested in the second millennium in Syria,
especially at Mari, and they can have different functions. Biblical texts
allow us to distinguish four ways in which they were used. First of all,
they could be funerary markers that played a role in the cult of the dead:
according to Genesis 35:19–30, the patriarch Jacob put up a stele on the
tomb of his wife Rachel. In 2 Samuel 18:18, Absalom, son of David who
had no children, had a stele put up so that his name would be remem-
bered. Standing stones could also serve to commemorate an event: in
Exodus 24:4, Moses puts up twelve steles to represent the twelve tribes
who are the parties to the covenant concluded between Yhwh and Is-
rael on Mount Sinai. Similarly, in chapter 4 of the book of Joshua, Joshua
sets up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan to commemorate the
passage of the river by the twelves tribes. Then, one finds maṣṣēḇôt in
the context of the ratification of a contract: in Genesis 31:43–45 a standing
stone serves as witness to the treaty between Laban and Jacob about the
division of their respective territories. But it is their last function, the
role they can play in the worship of a god, that is the most important
for our inquiry. Th is function is strikingly illustrated in Genesis 28,
which tells how the patriarch Jacob founded the sanctuary of Beth-el.5
He marked this act by setting up a masseba there, which he anointed
with oil: “Jacob got up early and took the stone which he had used as
his pillow and set it up as a masseba and poured some oil on its top. He
called this place by the name of Beth-el . . . He said: “This stone which I
have set up as a stele shall be a house of god (bêt ʾĕlōhîm)” (28:18–19a
and 22).
The Hebrew word beth-el (“House of El or of God”) is the origin, via
Greek, of the term “betyle,” which designates stones used in religious
rituals. There have been a variety of answers to the question what func-
THE STATUE OF YHWH IN JUDAH 143
tion these stones had and what they symbolized. Were they used in fer-
tility cults, as is suggested by the phallic form most of them had? Were
they conceived as a kind of (temporary) dwelling for a god? Or were they
images of the god himself? Following out this line of thought, one can go
on to argue that the cult that was practiced around these stele was ani-
conic.6 This kind of cult could then be considered as having its origin in
nomadic populations who worshipped their protective deities without
the aid of theriomorphic or anthropomorphic images, and in this way
were very different from the sedentary people of the ancient Near East.
The following observations, however, prove that this theory is incorrect.
Already in the second millennium at Mari, betyles and statues of gods
coexist in close proximity to each other, which at any rate shows that it
would be a mistake to oppose aniconism and iconism sharply in this pe-
riod. At Mari the standing stele are called sikkanum (the term deriving
possibly from a root meaning “set up,” which is the equivalent of the He-
brew n-ṣ-b, the root of masseba). The Assyrians called a stele ṣalmu, a
word that recurs in Hebrew (ṣelem) as a word for statue.
Was the cult of betyles really aniconic? At Mari, archaeologists have
found a standing stone that is also sculpted in a rudimentary way to rep-
resent the features and, in particular, the sexual organs of a woman.7
Traces of painting have been found on the massebas of the sanctuary of
Arad in the Negev. This could indicate that they were covered with
painted images of the gods who were worshipped there. A stele from
Petra in Jordan, which represents either the deity Dushara or an associ-
ated deity, may be taken to confirm this hypothesis.8
To return to the Bible, it seems clear enough that the masseba was a
way of representing the god Yhwh; this is most probably particularly true
outside of Jerusalem. The clearest example of this is the one already cited
from the site at Arad. This sanctuary contained two steles representing
Yhwh and another deity, unless the second stone was intended as a re-
placement for the first.
The privileged locations for the cult of standing stones are the “high
places,” the bāmôt. When speaking of the open-air sanctuaries, the bib-
lical authors often refer to steles and “sacred poles” (maṣṣēḇôt waʾăšērîm).
Because these bāmôt are Yahwistic sanctuaries, it is plausible to assume
that the maṣṣēḇôt in these places represented in one manner or another
the god Yhwh. The presence of standing stones is no evidence at all in

favor of assuming that there was an aniconic cult of Yhwh, especially
because when the prohibition on sculpting statues of Yhwh was for-
mulated, it was also immediately applied to massebas. Thus, we find in
Deuteronomy the injunction “You shall not set up any masseba; Yhwh
your god hates it” (16:22). And Leviticus draws a parallel between the
words referring to sculpture and to massebas: “You shall not make
false gods (ʾĕlîlîm), you shall not put up a sculpture (pesel) or a stele
(maṣṣēḇāh) and you shall not place in your land any sculpted rock
(ʾeḇen maśkît) to prostrate yourself in front of, for I am Yhwh, your
god” (26:1). In this prohibition the terms pesel and maṣṣēḇāh refer to the
cult of Yhwh,9 and that is probably also the case for the hapax legomenon
ʾeḇen maśkît, a term that might be linked to the sikkanum of Mari men-
tioned above.
In this text, which comes from the Code of Holiness (Lev. 17–26), a
document composed in the sixth century, a standing stone is to some
extent equated with an image, because both terms appear as parallels,
just as in a text from the book of Micah: “I shall suppress from among
you your sculptures (pĕsîlêḵā) and your standing stones (maṣṣēḇôtêḵā)”
(5:12).
Other, more recent texts seem to exhibit more tolerance toward the
masseba than toward statues. Thus, in a text from the book of Isaiah,
written down at the end of the Persian era or the beginning of the Hel-
lenistic period (between 350 and 300), one can find the following vision:
“On that day there shall be an altar of (or: for) Yhwh in the middle of
Egypt and near the frontier of the country a masseba of (or: for) Yhwh”
(19:19). Here the standing stone is to be thought of as an altar having the
function, no longer of any representation, but simply of a “memorial.”
Originally, however, the stele associated with the cult of Yhwh were most
likely considered as representing him and symbolizing his presence.10
T HE REPRE SENTAT IONS OF Y HWH
Let us return to images that specifically represent Yhwh. In the kingdom

of Judah there are a significant number of representations of deities on
A coin (ca. 380) showing Yhwh. On the left, where one can see a deity seated on a
throne with wheels, the inscription reads “Yehud” (Judah) or “Yahô.” On the right
one sees the head of a man in a Corinthian helmet, perhaps a satrap of
Transeuphratene.
all kinds of supports, but none is explicitly identified with Yhwh. For
the moment let us set aside images that may represent the divine couple
Yhwh and Asherah, to which we shall return later, and concentrate on
images to be found on seals and coins that have been claimed to repre-
sent Yhwh. As early as 1906 Gustav Dalman claimed to be able to iden-
tify an image of Yhwh on a Hebrew seal that had belonged to a certain
Elishama, son of Gedalyahu.11 The seal shows a god seated on a throne,
flanked by two trees of life. Since then, other seals of the same type have
been found, and Benjamin Sass of the University of Tel Aviv has revived
this idea by suggesting that two seals dating from the seventh century
might represent Yhwh with lunar attributes. Because these seals date
from the period of Assyrian hegemony, this association with attributes
of the moon would not be at all surprising.12 The image might also
be thought to refer to El, except that the Yahwistic names of the owners
of these seals would suggest rather an identification of the seated god
with Yhwh.
A coin from the Persian era shows a god seated on a winged wheel.
Because this coin comes from Judah, the deity represented is probably
Yhwh,13 and it is perfectly possible that we have here an image of Yhwh
as “god of the sky” depicted with iconographic conventions deriving
both from the Levant and from Greece.14 If this interpretation turns out
to be confirmed, that would mean that even as late as the Persian era,
some circles had not accepted the prohibition that proto-Judaism wished
to impose on the representation of Yhwh.
In conclusion, representations of gods existed in the territories of both
Israel and Judah. Among these we may find portraits of Yhwh, but in
most cases the images are so stereotypical that they might also repre-
sent other gods. The documents provided by the Bible itself give the most
conclusive evidence for the existence of statues of Yhwh in the kingdom
of Judah.
“YOU SHALL NOT MAKE ANY SCULPTED IMAGE”
Biblical texts frequently criticize the images of Yhwh as a bull that were
to be found in the kingdom of Israel, but in contrast, no biblical text
speaks of the existence of a statue of Yhwh in the Temple of Jerusalem
or anywhere else in the kingdom of Judah. This is partly to be explained
by the Judean perspective of the authors and redactors of the biblical
texts, and by their theological commitments: they wished to suggest that
the “legitimate” Judean cult of Yhwh had never been associated with
images of him. However, upon closer inspection, there are fairly many
indications that the prohibition on making images of Yhwh was an in-
novation, and that there had existed statues of Yhwh both in the Temple
of Jerusalem and elsewhere. The first indication is the prohibition itself.
Why prohibit what had never been done? The edited forms of the Deca-
logue and of chapter 4 of Deuteronomy are revealing on this point.
Polemic against Idols

The first part of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, which in the
Pentateuch occurs in two variants,15 can be seen as an attempt to for-
mulate the basic principles on which Judaism, which begins to take shape
in the Persian era, would be founded. In the past it was often assumed
that the Decalogue was one of the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible, but
more recently scholars have begun to insist that the Ten Commandments
in the (different) forms in which we find now them in the text, are better
understood as a summary of the various collections of laws given in

the Pentateuch, and consequently that they are the work of editors in the
Persian era. These editors were especially keen to harmonize several pre-
existing legal traditions, so as to produce a set of large-scale principles
for what was developing into the religion we now call “Judaism.” It is,
however, possible that certain of these commandments are much older,
and that they were also repeatedly revised and transformed in the course
of their transmission.
The commandments given in the opening of the Decalogue are ex-
plained and justified, in contrast to the simple prohibitions in the second
part. This shows that the commandments that need explanations are
new theological inventions. They, however, are the ones that become
characteristic features of Judaism. These innovations deal with such is-
sues as the exclusivity of the Yahwistic cult, the prohibition of represen-
tations of the divine, the theology of the “name” of Yhwh, which will
eventually lead to a full prohibition on pronouncing it, the Sabbath,
which becomes a new mark of identity for Judaism in the diaspora, and
the transformation of the religious cult of ancestors into the command-
ment to honor one’s parents while they are alive.
As far as the prohibition of images is concerned, one should note that
this commandment is not formulated in one single stroke, but is the result
of a revision of an older text. The version of the prohibition in Exodus
20 reads:
(3) You shall not have other gods before my face

(4) You shall not make any sculpted image (pesel)
nor anything that has the form (tĕmûnāh) of what is in the
heavens above, down here on earth or in the waters under the earth.
(5) You shall not bow down before them, and you shall not serve
them, for I am Yhwh, your god, a jealous god, pursuing the sons for
the faults of their fathers over three and four generations, if they
hate me.
The need to prohibit sculpted images (pesel) and other representations

(tĕmûnāh)16 presupposes first of all that such representations existed
among the Judeans. The prohibition seems to have been imposed in two
or three stages.17 The specific formulation of the prohibition that we now
read is the result of the work of the Masoretes, and in this formulation
what is being expressed is a general opposition to “idols,” such as we find
also in the second part of Isaiah (chapters 40–45), which dates from the
Persian era. By looking at the passage very carefully, it is possible to re-
construct the older form of this commandment, which is indicated in
italics. The intention is to prohibit the installation of statues of other dei-
ties in the sanctuary of Yhwh, literally facing him, and the attempt to
exclude other gods from the temple of Yhwh would correspond well with
what we know about the religious reforms of king Josiah at the end of
the seventh century, a reform we shall discuss later.
In the original version of this prohibition, Exodus 20:3 (corresponding
to Deut. 5:7) was probably immediately followed, in verse 5 (or verse 9
of chapter 5 of Deuteronomy), by the exhortation not to prostrate one-
self before these gods. The prohibition “You shall not make any pesel”
(first part of Exod. 20:4 and Deut. 5:8), which is given in bold typeface
above, is perhaps a first addition to the original text, which is aimed at
prohibiting from then on the production of any (new) statue of Yhwh.
The extension of this commandment to include a general prohibition
on making an image of anything that lived under the sky, on earth, or
in the sea (the underlined part of the text above) perhaps originally
meant that Yhwh could not be represented in any way. However, be-
cause this addition was inserted before Exodus 20:5 (Deut. 5:9), it was
quickly taken to be a general polemic against any kind of images. So,
by looking at the prohibition of images in the Decalogue, we can trace
an evolution that starts from the desire to rid Yhwh’s temple of the
statues of other gods. At the point at which the two versions of the
Decalogue were redacted, there was a radicalization of this process of
evicting the images of other gods, and the editors added to the orig-
inal text a further prohibition: the prohibition to represent Yhwh via
images. This prohibition was eventually interpreted as a polemic against
all idols.
Chapter 4 of Deuteronomy confirms this hypothesis. It is a treatise
on the prohibition of images, which appeals to the revelation at Mount
Sinai. In Deuteronomy this reminder of the original revelation of Yhwh
to Israel presents itself as a discourse by Moses. In verse 12, he insists on
the fact that the people did not see the form or face of Yhwh when he
revealed himself: “Yhwh spoke to you from the midst of a fire: a voice
spoke and you listened to it, but you did not perceive any form (tĕmûnāh);
there was nothing else apart from the voice.” From this, the author of
this text draws the conclusion that his audience may not make any statue
of Yhwh: “(15) Take care for yourselves; because you did not see any form
(tĕmûnāh) on the day on which Yhwh spoke to you at Horeb from the
midst of the fire, (16a) do not corrupt yourselves by making for your-
selves a sculpted image, any form of statue whatever (pesel tĕmûnat kol
sāmel).”18 The only possible conclusion to be drawn from this text is that
what is being discussed here is a statue of Yhwh. Because the people did
not see any form of Yhwh, they cannot make a statue with that form.19
This text asserts that the exile and deportation took place precisely be-
cause the people had made a statue of Yhwh:
(25a) If you corrupt yourselves by making a statue of any form

whatever (pesel tĕmûnat kōl), if you do that which is evil in the eyes
of Yhwh your god so as to offend him, (26) then I take as witnesses
against you today heaven and earth, you shall quickly disappear
from the land of which you will take possession by crossing the
Jordan, you shall not prolong your days there; you shall be com-
pleted exterminated.
Away from their land the Israelites will have to serve other gods, made
by those who deported them: “(28) Over there you shall serve gods who
are the work of men’s hands, gods of wood, of stone, unable to see and
hear, to eat and sense.”
So the reinterpretation of the history of Israel and Judah given in
chapter 4 of Deuteronomy takes the existence of one or many statues of
Yhwh to be the cause of the catastrophe that took place in 587 when the
Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and deported a large part of its popu-
lation. This text, which dates from the Persian era, thus constitutes an
important argument for the thesis that there was a statue of Yhwh during
the Judean monarchy.
The Vision of the Prophet Isaiah

The author of chapter 6 of the book attributed to the prophet Isaiah le-
gitimizes Isaiah’s prophetic status by reporting a vision of Yhwh in his
sanctuary, couched in the first-person singular:
In the year of the death of Osias, I saw the Lord (Yhwh) seated on
a high and loft y throne, his robe fi lled the temple. Seraphim hov-
ered above him; each with six wings, two for covering their faces,
two for covering the feet,20 and two for flying. One cried out to the
other: “Holy, holy, holy is Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt, all the earth is fi lled with
his glory.” The hinges of the doors began to tremble at the voice of
him who cried and the house filled with smoke. I said: “Woe is me,
I am lost, for I am a man with impure lips, I dwell in the midst of
a people with impure lips and my eyes see (saw) the king Yhwh
Ṣĕḇāʾôt.” (6:1–5)
Some commentators have interpreted this scene as a vision during

which the prophet was raised by the spirit of God into heaven. Th is
reading of Isaiah 6, which can already be found in the Targumim (com-
mentaries on the biblical texts by the first rabbis), is intended to avoid
any allusion to a vision of Yhwh in the temple, which might in turn sug-
gest that there was a divine representation in the temple. This is per-
haps also the reason the Masoretes replaced the tetragrammaton Yhwh
in verse 1 with ʾădōnāy, “The Lord.”21
The text of Isaiah 6 itself, however, clearly locates the prophet in the
temple in Jerusalem at the time of the vision.22 Th is is indicated by
the use of terms like hahêḵāl (the “palace”/”temple,” v. 1) and habbayit
(the “House,” v. 4), both of which are frequently used to designate the
sanctuary. The narrative additionally presupposes the division of the
temple into three parts: the “Holy of Holies” (the throne), the “central
hall,” and the “entrance” (hinges of the doors). Furthermore, the smoke
mentioned in verse 4 makes sense only for a temple on earth, not for
one in the heavens, as is also the case for the altar mentioned in verse 6.
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to construct an opposition be-
tween the residence of a god in the heavens and his dwelling place on
earth, because the earthly sanctuary serves to connect heaven and earth.
The temple offers access to the domain of the heavens. This conception
is widespread in the ancient Near East and also finds expression in bib-
lical texts, such as Psalms 11:4: “Yhwh is in his holy temple; Yhwh has his
throne in the heavens.” The earthly temple is put in parallel to the place
where Yhwh has his celestial throne. An iconographic example of this
conception can be found on a tablet from the time of King Nabu-apal-
iddin of Babylon (885–850),23 which shows the king accompanied by
two priests approaching the sun god Shamash at Sippar. Shamash, who
is represented as much larger than the humans, is seated on a throne sur-
rounded by the symbols of the “heavenly hosts,” the sun, the moon,
and the planets. The god is in his heavenly palace, but this palace is con-
nected to the temple on earth in which the king and the priests are
standing. A kind of support or pedestal with the emblem of the sun god
manifests his presence in the temple space.
We may imagine a comparable scenario in Isaiah 6: the prophet sees
the statue of Yhwh, which gives him access to Yhwh in heaven. Yhwh is
so huge that his robe fills the whole central hall of the temple. The smoke
mentioned in verse 4 is a sign that this is a theophany,24 a manifestation
of Yhwh, who is sometimes symbolized by the smoke issuing from the
altar. The exclamation of the prophet, “I am lost . . . because my eyes
have seen king Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt,” means that he apparently had access to
the statue of the god, a privilege normally reserved for the priests or for
others who had been appropriately prepared. This is the reason the
prophet then says he needs “sanctification” or “purification.” Yhwh is
so holy that even the seraphim—winged serpents frequently represented
on seals in Judea during the Iron Age, but originally of Egyptian prov-
enance (the uraeus)—need to cover their eyes. In the book of Isaiah they
appear as hybrids who serve, as in Egypt and the ancient Near East, to
protect sanctuaries. In the text of Isaiah they are half serpents, half
human, and are in the ser vice of Yhwh, whose throne is not described
in any detail.
Our earlier inquiry into exactly what is meant when the texts speak
of Yhwh as enthroned upon the kĕrûḇîm has led us to the conclusion
that there was a throne flanked by cherubim. The text of Isaiah 6 sug-
gests that the dĕḇîr (the part of the temple where the god resides) of the
Temple of Jerusalem contained a throne with a statue of Yhwh, perhaps

represented in the manner of El enthroned and surrounded by cherubim
and seraphim.
The Throne of Yhwh

Something like this is also presupposed in the vision of the prophet
Micaiah,25 reported in 1 Kings 22. This prophet announces to the kings
of Israel and Judah that they will lose the battle they are about to ini-
tiate against the Aramaeans; he tries to justify this oracle of doom by
explaining how he received it from Yhwh, and he recounts a vision
similar to that of Isaiah: “I saw Yhwh seated on his throne and the
whole army stood around him to his right and his left” (v. 19). In view of
the numerous literary parallels, it is not impossible that the author of
this vision was directly inspired by that of chapter 6 of Isaiah or that he
was taking up what was a traditional topos in Jerusalem.26
The vision of the prophet Amos (recounted in Amos 9), speaks of
the Lord ( ʾădōnāy”) “placed” (niṣṣāḇ) above or beside the altar: “I saw
the Lord (Yhwh) placed on the altar. He said: ‘Strike the capitals! Let
the thresholds be shaken and let them all be broken above their heads!
I shall kill the rest with the sword’ ” (v. 1). Is this an allusion to a statue of
Yhwh, standing like the image of Baal surrounded by lightning bolts
in the sanctuary at Bethel? This would explain the reference to the
sword as a reference Yhwh as war god. This vision, however, is too un-
clear for us to draw any certain conclusions from it.
In the prophetic books from the Babylonian and Persian eras, direct
visions of Yhwh gradually disappear.27 The prophet Ezekiel sees only a
movable throne carried by hybrid creatures and cannot “discern” the
face of Yhwh behind the fire and the clouds (Ezek. 1):
(15) I looked at the living creatures and I saw on the ground beside
these creatures one wheel for each face. (16) This is what the wheels
looked like and their form: They sparkled like chrysolith and all
four of them were alike. That was what they looked like. As far
as their form was concerned, they overlapped each other . . .
(19) When the creatures advanced, the wheels advanced with them;
and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose too.
(20) They moved in the direction the spirit wished them to go, and
the wheels were raised at the same time, because the spirit of the
creatures was in the wheels . . . (22) Above the heads of the living
creatures there seemed to be a firmament, sparkling like a re-
splendent crystal; it spread over their heads well above them. (23)
Below the firmament their wings were spread toward each other.
Each had two wings that covered it, each had two that covered its
body. (24) And I heard the sound their wings made as they ad-
vanced; it was the noise of great waters, the voice of Shadday; the
noise of a multitude, the noise of an army. When they stopped,
they let their wings droop down. (25) There came a voice from the
firmament which was above their heads. (26) And above the fir-
mament which was over their heads like a stone of lazulite, there
seemed to be a throne; this was what it looked like, like the ap-
pearance of a man up above, high up there. (27) Then I saw like
the sparkling of vermillion, what looked like a fi re which envel-
oped everything all around, and starting from and below what
seemed to be his waist I saw what seemed to be a fire and a radi-
ance all about him. (28) It looked like a rainbow which appears in
the clouds on rainy day: this is what the surrounding radiance
looked like. This is what it looked like, the appearance of the glory
of Yhwh (marʾēh dĕmût kĕḇôd-Yhwh). I looked and threw myself
on my face on the earth; I heard a voice that spoke.
Th is vision is inspired by Assyro-Babylonian and Persian iconog-

raphy, in which one often sees a divine figure on a movable throne car-
ried by hybrid creatures. The author of Ezekiel 1 takes up this motif and
suggests that the prophet saw Yhwh in a confused way, but he describes
the scene with enough precision to allow readers to understand in what
way the prophet “saw” Yhwh. It is a Yhwh enthroned; the mobility
of the throne is an allusion to the fact that according to the book of
Ezekiel, Yhwh left the city of Jerusalem, when it was taken, to accom-
pany the exiles to Babylon.
The Substitution of the Lamp Holder for the Statue

The visions of the prophet Zechariah, redacted during the Persian era,
no longer mention Yhwh, but are centered on a menorah, a seven-
branched lamp holder.28 In chapter 4 the prophet imparts the following
revelation:
(1) The angel who was speaking to me came back to wake me like
a man whom one must rouse from sleep. (2) He asked me: “What
do you see?” I replied: “I have a vision; it is a lamp-holder made
completely of gold, with a reservoir for oil in the top part, and above
that at the very top seven lamps and seven pipes for these lamps;
(3) at its sides two olive trees, one on the right of the reservoir and
one on the left.” . . . (13) He said to me: “Don’t you know what they
represent?” I replied: “No, my Lord.” (14) He then said to me: “These
are the two men designated for the oil, those who stand before the
lord of the whole of the earth ( ʾădôn kol-hāʾāreṣ).”
Herbert Niehr has concluded that the lamp holder replaced the statue of
Yhwh in the reconstructed temple.29 This function is particularly clear
in verse 14, where the interpreting angel explains that the two “mes-
siahs,” symbolized by the two olive trees, stand before the “Lord of the
whole earth.”30 If there is a substitution in this chapter of Zechariah,
this would reinforce the theory that the most ancient versions of divine
visions contained allusions to a statue of Yhwh.
The Face of Yhwh

More than eighty verses of the various texts in the book of Psalms men-
tion the face of Yhwh or of God. Many of these texts contain laments
that god “hides his face” or requests that he no longer cover his face;31
alternatively there are supplications or expressions of thanksgiving for
prayers granted that make reference to the face of Yhwh as shining or
radiant.32
This form of speech is already attested in the royal correspondence
at Ugarit, where it expresses the fact that the king is willing to grant an
audience or bestow certain benefits.33 In the Psalms, as in other texts,

the same idea occurs. Some scholars have seen this as a metaphorical
usage that shows the influence of a solar theology on the worship of
Yhwh at Jerusalem.34 We might emphasize the cultural connotations35
of this expression and interpret it in a very concrete way as referring to
the possibility of getting access to Yhwh, that is, to his statue. The same
idea might underlie those psalms that evoke those who “seek” the face
of Yhwh.36 The psalms that mention having a vision of the face of Yhwh
are best understood against the background of this set of assumptions,
namely that there existed a real statue of Yhwh in his temple that could
be seen. In the ancient Near East the expression “see the face of God” had
its roots in the ideology of kingship. To “see the face of the king” meant
to be admitted into the royal presence; in the context of a religious cult,
then, the expression “see the face of god” described the entrance into the
sanctuary where the statue of the god was located.37 The same meaning
would seem to apply to the use of the expression in the Hebrew Bible. ‘To
see the face of god’ was widely used not only in Mesopotamia but also in
Egypt, especially in the ritual of revealing the face of the god during
which the statue of the god was unveiled for the attendant priests: “As a
cultural phenomenon ‘seeing god’ usually means seeing or desiring to
see, his statue for instance, during a procession.”38
These parallels from Mesopotamia and Egypt make it plausible to
assume that the expression “see the face of Yhwh” used in the Psalms
originally meant see the statue of Yhwh. This does not mean that all the
psalms that mention the face of Yhwh need to be read in this way—those
dating especially from the period between the fift h and second centu-
ries may be using the expression in a merely symbolic sense. Neverthe-
less, most are best understood with reference to an existing statue of
Yhwh. Thus Psalm 17 traces a development that proceeds from an ini-
tial lament during the night: “You investigate my heart, you inspect it
during the night” (v. 3), to a state of fulfillment in the morning at the
moment of waking: “With justice I shall contemplate your face and when
I wake I shall have my fill of your image (tĕmûnāh)” (v. 15). This psalm
uses the term tĕmûnāh for “image,” but this is precisely the word that is
used in the Decalogue in the prohibition of representations of god, and
also in chapter 4 of Deuteronomy (vv. 16, 23, and 25). So the epiphany in
Psalms 17:15 takes the concrete form of a vision of the statue of Yhwh in
the morning. The same idea recurs in Psalms 63:2–3, which also speaks
of a morning vision: “From the break of day I have desired you; my soul
thirsts for you . . . Thus I saw you in the sanctuary, looking at your power
and your glory.” These verses also celebrate the privilege of having had
access to the statue of god. Similarly, the consonantal text of Psalms 42:3
is most plausibly rendered as “When might I come and see the face of
god?”39 One can add to these examples those texts that refer to acts of
praise before “the face of Yhwh.”40 Psalms 61:8 speaks of a king who is
“always” seated in front of the face of god. This verse expresses the priv-
ileged relation between the king and his tutelary god, which is symbol-
ized by his access to the Holy of Holies.
Further support for the view that the term pānîm, “face,” refers in cer-
tain cases to a statue of Yhwh can be found in the use of the expression
leḥem pānîm (“bread of the face”), which does not occur in the Psalms
but is used in the prescriptions for organizing the sanctuary.41 There will
originally have been bread placed before the statue of the god to serve
as nourishment for him.42
To return briefly to the Psalms, recall that some of them seem to de-
scribe the practice of moving the statue of Yhwh in a procession. Pro-
cessions of statues of gods on the occasion of festivals or at other times
are well attested in the Near East and Egypt.43 Psalm 24 would make
good sense in the context of a procession with the cult statue: the ap-
peal to the gates to open and let the king of glory, Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt, enter
(vv. 7–10) would naturally accompany the return of the god to his sanc-
tuary after a procession:
(7) Gates, lift your head! Raise yourselves up, ancient portals! Let
him enter, the king of glory! (8) Who is the king of glory? Yhwh,
strong and mighty, Yhwh, mighty in war. (9) Gates, lift your head!
Raise yourselves up, ancient portals! Let him enter, the king of
glory! (10) Who is he, this king of glory? Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt, it is he
who is the king of glory.
Psalm 68 refers to a similar event: “We have seen your processions,

God, the processions of my God, of my king (entering) into the sanc-
tuary; first the singers, last the musicians, in the middle the young
women beating the tambourine” (vv. 25–26). These two texts add fur-
ther weight to the claim that there was a statue (or statues) of Yhwh in
the kingdom of Judah during the monarchy.
The Destruction of the Temple and the Departure of Yhwh

It is true that no biblical text mentions either the destruction or the de-
portation of a statue of Yhwh when the Babylonians sacked the Temple
of Jerusalem in 587. This, however, is no proof that a statue of Yhwh did
not exist, because later editors projected their religious ideas back onto
the monarchic times and construed the whole history of Israel and Judah
according to these ideas. Starting from their Judean perspective, they
castigated the cult of the north (for instance, in the book of Hosea
there is an announcement of the destruction of the bull of Samaria),
but they are much more reticent about the details of the Yahwistic cult
in the kingdom of the south. One can observe, though, that at the end
of the books of Kings great emphasis is placed on the deportation of the
“utensils (kĕlê) of the temple” to Babylon (2 Kings 25:14–15). One might
speculate whether this very general term could not include one or sev-
eral cult statues, all the more so given that the text of Isaiah 52:11 speaks
of the return from Babylon of those who bear the kĕlê Yhwh: “Depart,
depart, come out from there! Do not touch anything impure. Come
out from the midst of Babylon! Purify yourselves, you who carry the
utensils of Yhwh (kĕlê Yhwh)!” The expression used here is peculiar;
the more usual formulation would have been “utensils of the house of
Yhwh.”
Further evidence in favor of the view that the statue of Yhwh had
been deported along with other utensils can perhaps be found in the
description given in Ezekiel 10:18–19 of the departure of the glory of
Yhwh from the Temple and city of Jerusalem: “The glory of Yhwh de-
parted from the threshold of the temple; it stood above the cherubim.
So the cherubim opened their wings and raised themselves from the
earth. Before my eyes the wheels came out at the same time.”44 This vi-
sion takes up again the motif of the deity standing on a cherub. Verse
4 in fact speaks of a single cherub (“the glory of Yhwh raised itself above
the kĕrûḇ on the threshold of the House”),45 whereas verse 18 mentions

cherubim in the plural and alludes perhaps to the throne flanked by
cherubim on which the god is seated. The composition of Ezekiel 10 is a
vexed question and we shall simply mention that it certainly does not
have only one author.46 Suffice it to say that the two iconographic motifs
just mentioned are traditionally associated with a statue of the god lo-
cated above the cherubim. In Ezekiel and elsewhere in the Hebrew
Bible, the statue has been replaced by the kāḇôd, the glory of god. How-
ever, the text in Ezekiel retains some traces that point to a deportation
of a statue of Yhwh by the Babylonians.
Did the Statue of Yhwh Return to Jerusalem

or Did It Disappear in the Persian Period?
Judaism, which was about to constitute itself as a distinctive religion
during the second half of the Persian era, counted the prohibition on
the use of graven images as one of its most characteristic features, one
that was later to attract the interest, but also the contempt, of the Greeks
and the Romans. However, this prohibition was not immediately en-
forced in all Jewish circles. The Judean coin mentioned above, which
probably bears an image of Yhwh, indicates that even in the fourth cen-
tury this type of representation was not unthinkable.
In addition, a number of prophetic texts seem to express a hope for
the return of the statue of Yhwh47—in a mode similar to that which one
fi nds in various Assyrian, Persian, and Ptolemaic texts that describe
the return of deported cult statues to their place of origin. In Jeremiah
31 the consonantal text of the divine oracle given in verse 21 should be
read as: “Pay attention to the route, to the road on which I shall walk.”48
Placed in the context of the Near Eastern tradition of a return of cult
statues, this verse may refer to a return of Yhwh (by way of a return of
his statue) together with the returning exiles, as in the verses of Deutero-
Isaiah: “With their own eyes, they see Yhwh returning to Zion” (Isa.
52:8).49 To be sure, such texts may also simply express a general wish that
Yhwh be present once again in Judea, but it is not out of the question
that some voices were raised demanding that this presence be made vis-
ible with the aid of a statue. Christoph Uehlinger claims that the desir-
ability of erecting a new statue of Yhwh was still debated in the Persian
era.50 The intellectual elite of nascent Judaism, however, opted for
radical aniconism. The origin of this decision to renounce the idea of
having a statue of the god, might be found in the fact that after the de-
struction of the temple no one any longer knew how to represent Yhwh.
We might compare this situation to that described in a tablet of a king
of Babylon, Nabu-apal-iddin, which states that the temple of Shamash
had been destroyed by the Suteans, a tribe known from the Mari texts:
They have destroyed the reliefs . . . his form and his representation
have disappeared: no one has seen them. Simbar-shipak, king of
Babylon, made inquiries about his form, but did not see his face;
because he did not find his image (ṣalam) and his representations.
This is why he set up a disk of the radiant sun before Shamash.51
In contrast with the situation in Assyria there was no longer a king in

Judah, and this led to a renunciation of the idea of having a statue of
Yhwh. This break with the epoch of the monarchy is emphasized in a text
that speaks of the lost ark: “One shall say no more: ‘The Ark of the cove-
nant of Yhwh.’ It shall no longer come to mind, one shall no longer re-
member it, one will pay no attention to it; it shall not be made again. In
that time one shall call Jerusalem ‘throne of Yhwh,’ all peoples shall rush
together toward it” (Jer. 3:16–17). This oracle substitutes the city of Jeru-
salem for the ark in its function as throne of Yhwh.52 Jerusalem as a whole,
then, is to become the “seat” of the god of Israel, the center of the world.
After the prohibition of images was imposed, other substitutes were
found for the statue of Yhwh, such as the “glory” of Yhwh or the lamp
holder. As we shall see in what follows, the most important substitution
was the scroll of the Torah, which, by formulating in writing the rela-
tion between Yhwh and Israel, made “visible” the word of god, which
up to that time had been invisible.53
9
YHWH AND HIS ASHERAH
To be the only true god means to have no partners. Thus, Yhwh

is traditionally considered to be an “unmarried” god, and the allusions
to goddesses in the Bible, notably to Asherah, have been interpreted as
referring to non-Yahwist cults. This is the way the editors of the Bible
finally decided to present matters. For the historian, however, the situ-
ation looks very different. It is highly likely that Yhwh had a goddess
associated with him in Judah and consequently also in Israel. To be sure,
Yhwh was worshipped as the national god and that gave him a privi-
leged place at least in the official cult, but that would not at all exclude a
goddess as a companion. Thus on the stele of Mesha a goddess named
Ashtar is associated with the national god Chemosh:
I took it and I killed the whole population: seven thousand male

subjects and aliens, and female subjects, aliens, and servant girls
because I had dedicated (ḥ-r-m) them to the Ashtar of Chemosh.
Ashtar here is obviously a goddess, probably a parhedros who accompa-

nies Chemosh in his military exploits.1
A certain number of inscriptions associate an “Asherah” with Yhwh,
and she is also mentioned in biblical texts. To understand the exact na-
YHWH AND HIS ASHERAH 161
ture of this association, it is necessary to start with a description of the

nature and function of Asherah in the ancient Near East.
ASHER AH IN THE ANCIENT LE VANT

AND THE NEAR EAST
The origins of the goddess Asherah are probably western Semitic, al-
though the first references to her are to be found in Mesopotamia in the
era of Hammurabi (eighteenth century). In Akkadian and Hittite she ap-
pears as Ašratu(m), Aširatu, and Aširtu. In Mesopotamia she is also
attested in three ritual texts from the Seleucid period.2 In the letters of
El Amarna a king of Ammuru named Abdi-Aširta appears ninety-two
times. However, it is Ugaritic texts that form the principal source of our
information about the goddess in the second millennium. Her name is
written ʾaṯrt, vocalized as ʾAṯirat(u). In the Baal-cycle (KTU 1.1–6), she
appears as the great goddess, parhedros of the god El and mother of
minor gods in the pantheon who are called “the seventy sons of Aṯirat”:
“He (Baal) summons his brothers to his dwelling, his peers to his palace.
He calls the seventy sons of Aṯirat.”3 In the legend of Keret (or Kirtu), the
heir to the throne of Keret is described as “he who shall suck the milk of
Aṯirat,” which suggests that she could have been connected to fertility
and may have played a role in the ideology of kingship.
In southern Arabian inscriptions from the first millennium, the
term aṯrt also occurs either as a divine name in general or as the name
of a specific goddess. So it is possible that in certain cases Asherah
does not designate a specific goddess, but simply means “goddess” in
general.4
ASHERAH IN THE HEBREW BIBLE
The word ʾăšērāh occurs forty times in biblical texts, mostly with the
article. It occurs eighteen times in the singular; in the plural two forms
are attested: ʾăšērîm (a masculine plural, nineteen times) and ʾăšērôt (a
feminine plural, three times). The masculine plural is surprising. Some
have speculated that the masculine form is used when “asherah” refers
to a sacred pole, a kind of stylized tree (we will come back to this). An-
other proposal has been made by Oswald Loretz, namely that the mas-
culine plural is an artificial creation of the editors of the Bible in order
to avoid any possible allusion to the goddess Asherah.5
We can group biblical references to Asherah into four categories: (a)
the plural in stereotypical exhortations to destroy the altars, statues, and
the asherim of other peoples;6 (b) texts in which Asherah is associated
with Baal;7 (c): ʾăšērîm mentioned in connection with maṣṣēḇôt, standing
stones;8 and finally (d) Asherah in connection with the altar or house of
Yhwh.9 So the biblical texts make no direct link between Asherah and
Yhwh. Nevertheless, they do associate the asherahs with standing stones,
and we have seen that standing stones played a role in the Yahwistic cult
practiced in sanctuaries in the high places. In addition, the texts listed
under (d) above do suggest a possible integration of Asherah into the
cult of Yhwh.
The fact that certain biblical texts associate Baal and Asherah has led
some to conclude that in the fi rst millennium the goddess Asherah
had become the parhedros of Baal (although in the Ugaritic texts she is
the parhedros of El). The only support for this hypothesis is the handful
of biblical texts listed under (b) above; however, the fact that all the
cited passages come from editors of the Deuteronomistic school strongly
suggests that this association was invented to break the link between
Yhwh and Asherah.
THE INSCRIPTIONS OF KUNTILLET AJRUD

A N D K H I R B E T E L- Q O M
In sharp contrast to the biblical texts, a close link between Yhwh and
Asherah is attested in the inscriptions found at Kuntillet Ajrud and
Khirbet el-Qom. Kuntillet Ajrud is located about 50 kilometers to the
south of Kadesh-Barnea, not far from the ancient route leading from
Gaza to Eilat. In 1975–1976, excavations conducted by scholars from Tel
Aviv University discovered remains that they tried to interpret as those
of a sanctuary or school. The most likely hypothesis is that it was a cara-
vanserai, probably dating to the beginning of the eighth century.10 This

site has yielded inscriptions on the walls and on pottery vessels (pithoi).
Pithos A 1
1. Says/Said . . . (proper name 1) . . . : “Say to Yehalle[l?]” (proper
name 2), Yoaśah (proper name 3) and . . . (proper name 4?): I bless
you [or, have blessed you]
2. by Yhwh of Samaria (šmrn) and his Asherah.
Pithos B 2
1–2. Amaryahu says/said:
3. “Say to my Lord:
4. “Are you well?
5–8. I bless you [or, have blessed you] by Yhwh of Temān ([h]tmn)11
and by his Asherah.
Let him [i.e., Yhwh] bless (you) and keep you safe
9. and let him be with my lord”
Pithos B 3
[I bless you [I have blessed you]] by Yhwh of Teman and by/his
Asherah. All that he shall request of someone, may he [i.e., Yhwh]
grant it . . . and may Yhwh give to him according to his will.
There is now a broad consensus about the meaning of the two phrases
Yhwh 8mrn and Yhwh (h)tmn. These are associations of the name of
Yhwh with the name of a place—such as, for instance, “Ishtar of Nineveh.”
So here there is a reference to two local manifestations of the national
god of Israel, who had a sanctuary in Samaria and also in a region or city
named Temān, located in the southeast of the Negev or in Edom.
The inscriptions on these pottery vessels are accompanied by some
drawings, but it is not clear that there is any connection between the in-
scriptions and the drawings, and even if there were, it would still be
unclear what that connection was.
Some scholars have claimed to see in the drawing on Pithos A a repre-
sentation of two divine—or demonic—beings: Yhwh and his Asherah.12
Two figures under the inscription on

Pithos A, found at Kuntillet Arjud; they
perhaps represent Yhwh and Asherah.
Mordechai Gilula identifies the figure on the right, which in his view
has bovine features, with Yhwh. The figure on the left was originally sup-
posed to represent Asherah, but in an attempt to censor this, someone
later “masculinized” the goddess by giving her a penis. It is true that in
older publications, the second figure seemed to have a male sexual organ.
However, in the most recent publication of the drawing by Zeev Meshel,
it is not clear whether or not this figure really has a penis. If it does not,
then the interpretation of this as a representation of the couple Yhwh
and Asherah would become more plausible again. Some have also ar-
gued that the two figures on the left, who seem to be entwined or in some
way doubled, in fact represent the Egyptian god Bes, who often appears
in the form of twins. What, however, is one to make of the figure on the
right who seems to be playing the lyre? Is this simply a male or female
musician, or is it Asherah installed on her throne? This would be a rash
claim to make, because the gender of the person on the right is unclear
and in the mythological texts Asherah does not appear as a goddess of
musicians. We might, however, wonder whether the painting on the
other side of the vessel might not have included a representation of
Asherah.
Judith Hadley suggests that the stylized tree is the symbol of Ash-
erah.13 That would also explain the presence of the lions, which are often
attested as the favorite animals of the goddess. However, even if the
iconographic material does not permit a defi nitive resolution of this
Pithos A of Kuntillet Arjud (verso): a stylized tree flanked by ibexes and supported
by a lion.
issue, the inscriptions leave no doubt about the existence of an Ash-

erah associated with Yhwh.
A comparable inscription from about the same time as the texts from
Kuntillet Ajrud was found in Khirbet el-Qom, 13 kilometers to the west
of Hebron: “Uriyahou the rich has written it: May Uriyahou be blessed
by Yhwh, who has saved him from his enemies through his Asherah.”
Certain authors have claimed (probably for theological reasons) that the
term “asherah” in these inscriptions refers not to the goddess but to some
cult objects.14 However, there is little point in such a contrast. Even if
the reference was to a sacred pole or a stylized tree symbolizing the god-
dess, this would make little difference, because in the ancient Near East
anthropomorphic statues of gods or their symbols could both equally
be objects of a religious cult.15 Some scholars have interpreted “Yhwh
and his Asherah” as meaning “Yhwh and his sanctuary,” but this usage
of “asherah,” although it does exist in other Semitic languages,16 is not
attested for Hebrew and does not make sense in the biblical texts.17
The simplest solution, then, is still to assume that these inscriptions
refer to the divine couple “Yhwh and his Asherah.” The possessive ad-
jective “his” may signal a certain subordination of Asherah, but that is
surely just the traditional conception of the relation between man and
woman.
REPRE SENTAT IONS OF T HE COUPLE Y HWH

AND ASHERAH?
It is possible that we already have some further references to the couple

Yhwh and Asherah in the existing iconographic material. Christoph
Uehlinger has identified one such on a fragment of terra cotta about 16
centimeters high; its provenance is not completely clear, but it may have
been found at Tell Beit Misrim in Judah.18 The image is of a divine couple
seated on a throne with the male figure occupying the central place and
the woman beside him, both of them surrounded by sacred animals:
lions or sphinxes. If the piece does represent Yhwh and “his” Asherah,
it would be an image from the eighth or seventh century. This identifi-
cation is interesting but remains very uncertain.19
A Judean seal from the Assyrian period also represents a divine couple
that might be Yhwh and Asherah, who is identified as the “queen of
heaven” mentioned in some biblical texts.20 Judith Hadley has proposed
that we identify two figures on a cult object found in 1968 at Ta’anakh
in the southern part of the valley of Jisreel in Galilee as the couple Yhwh
Couple seated on a throne

(eighth to seventh century);
they can perhaps be
interpreted as Yhwh and
Asherah.
and Asherah.21 This object, which dates from the tenth or ninth century,
is on four levels. The top two levels show a stylized tree and a solar disk
with what seems to be an accompanying horse.22 It is possible that we
have here the symbols of Asherah and Yhwh. In Hadley’s view the female
goddess at the bottom is Asherah. She concludes that an opening in
the object with a depiction of two sphinxes on both sides guarding it
might be a way of symbolizing the presence of Yhwh not with an image
but by means of the smoke that was allowed to escape from the opening.
This would be parallel to the literary references to the “glory of Yhwh,”
which was conceived as a kind of cloud representing a manifestation of
the god. This is a possible interpretation, but it is hard to be sure.23
Finally, and most recently, Garth Gilmour has argued for an identi-
fication of Yhwh and Asherah in a stylized image on a tessara found in
the excavations of the city of David during the 1920s.24 Gilmour takes
the figure on the right to be masculine and the four arcs at the bottom
to represent mountains or the tops of a throne. He takes the stylized
figure on the left to be a woman: the upper triangle representing the face,
Stylized image on a potsherd

from the city of David: on the
right, a male figure enthroned,
perhaps on mountains; on the
left, two triangles perhaps
symbolizing a female figure.
and the lower the sexual organs. The two figures are connected by an-
other triangle. Once again, this is an interesting proposal, but it remains
speculative.
JUDEAN FEMALE FIGURINES
Pillar figurines have been found in many Judean towns from the eighth
and seventh centuries—for instance, in Jerusalem, Arad, Beer-Sheba,
Beth-Mirsim, Beth-Shemesh, and Lachish. More than a hundred have
been found. Outside Judean territory only isolated instances of this
kind of figurine have been discovered. The most frequently found form
is that of a column, usually handmade, to which is affixed the bust of a
woman, which is always handmade; then a molded head has been added.
The breasts are always in relief, often supported by a pair of hands.25
These sculpted pillars are a characteristic expression of Judean piety es-
pecially in the seventh century. They are found most often in private
houses, but also in tombs. They have often been interpreted as represen-
tations of a goddess, who is perhaps Asherah.26 That would make sense
of the prominent breasts, which would emphasize the nurturing aspect
of the goddess. It is the breasts as sources of nourishment that are of
central importance here, and, in contrast to full representations of the

naked goddess, their possible erotic role is secondary. The pillar can also
be interpreted as a tunic; in any case the pudenda of the goddess are in-
visible. If these figurines can be identified with Asherah, they would
provide proof that there had been anthropomorphic representations of
the goddess, which is what seems also to be claimed, at least indirectly,
in certain biblical texts.
T HE WORSHIP OF A SHER AH ACCORDING TO

THE BIBLICAL TEXTS
We have seen that in the inscriptions of Kuntillet Ajrud, Asherah is as-

sociated with the Yhwh of Samaria. 1 Kings 16:33 reports that King Ahab
erected an Asherah,27 probably in the temple at Samaria. This Asherah
continued to exist under King Jehoahaz (ca. 814–798), if we are to be-
lieve the critical remark by the editors of the books of Kings: “They did
not take away the sins that the house of Jeroboam committed in Israel,
they persisted in them; even the Asherah remained standing in Sa-
maria” (2 Kings 13:6).
In the kingdom of Judah we learn that the queen mother Maacah in-
stalled in the temple an “abominable thing for [the worship of] Asherah,”
which King Asa (ca. 910–869) is said to have destroyed: “He withdrew
even the title of queen mother from Maacah, his grandmother, because
she had made this abominable thing for Asherah. Asa cut down her
representation and had it burned on the banks of the stream of Kidron”
(1 Kings 15:13). King Manasseh (ca. 687–642), whom the editors of the
books of Kings abhor, is said to have had the statue of Asherah refash-
ioned, after it had been destroyed by his predecessor Hezekiah (2 Kings
18:4): “He placed the statue of Asherah which he had made in the
temple” (2 Kings 21:7). If Hezekiah did actually try to eradicate the cult
of Asherah, which is far from certain, there was obviously a revival of
it under Manasseh.
Even though the editors of the Bible criticized the kings who are
alleged to have favored the worship of Asherah, this cult continued to
be important up to the end of the seventh century. Asherah was
associated with Yhwh; she most probably had a statue in the temple
beside his.
THE “QUEEN OF HE AVEN”
In Judah in the seventh century there existed a popular cult of a god-

dess called “Queen of Heaven.” Women seem to have played a central
role in this cult. Two texts in the book of Jeremiah, which have been
transmitted to us by the Deuteronomistic editors, criticize this cult se-
verely. Chapter 44 of Jeremiah is presented as a discourse by the prophet
to those who have taken refuge in Egypt after the destruction of Jeru-
salem. The speaker explains to them that the catastrophe occurred be-
cause the Judeans would not stop worshipping other gods. The Judeans
to whom this speech is directed, for their part, strongly contest this in-
terpretation of the fall of Jerusalem:
We shall do what we have decided to do: burn offerings to the

Queen of Heaven, pour her libations, as we have done in the cities
of Judah and the alleys of Jerusalem . . . at the time when we had
bread in abundance and lived happily without knowing any mis-
fortune. From the time when we stopped burning offering to the
Queen of Heaven, we have suffered want of everything and per-
ished by the sword and famine. (vv. 17–18)
On this interpretation it was precisely the prohibition of the cult of

the goddess—part of the reforms of Josiah, to be discussed shortly—that,
by inciting the anger of the Queen of Heaven, justly caused the fall of
the kingdom of Judah. It is possible that the Queen of Heaven was a
manifestation of the goddess Asherah. The importance of women in
the cult of Asherah is noted in 2 Kings 23:6–7, which report that women
wove robes for Asherah in the Temple of Jerusalem.
We should probably envisage a duality in the representation of
Asherah, anthropomorphic in the Temple of Jerusalem and the temple
at Samaria (? and elsewhere?), and in the form of a stylized tree (“sacred
pole”) in the bāmôt and other places. The links between the goddess
Seal from Lachish representing a goddess,

probably Asherah, with a stylized tree;
above her a solar disk, perhaps repre-
senting Yhwh.
Asherah and the stylized tree are well attested iconographically, starting
from the late Bronze Age. Thus on a pendant from Tell al-Ajul we see a
branch protruding from the navel of the goddess.28 A jug from Lachish29
carries the inscription: mtn.šy. [l?] [rb]ty ʾlt—“an offering, a present for
my Lady Elat [or, the Goddess].” Under the inscription there is a drawing,
and the word ʾlt (Elat) is placed just above the tree flanked by creatures
who look like goats. The goddess here can be identified with Asherah: rbt
(“lady”) and ʾilt (“goddess”) are epithets of Asherah in Ugaritic mytho-
logical texts. A figurine of the goddess, found at Revadim, shows her with
her sexual organs exposed; high up on her thigh there is a palm tree
flanked by a pair of these goatlike creatures. The goddess suckles an
infant at each of her two breasts. This image of the goddess represents
the idea of fertility in a number of different ways. We can connect her
attributes to various mythological texts from Ugarit, where Asherah is
called “creatrix of the gods.” She appears repeatedly as a nursing mother
and also bears the name Raḥmay—literally “the maternal breast.” On a
seal from Lachish (now lost) the goddess could be seen with a stylized
tree on one side and a female worshipper on the other, and above her
the disc of the sun god. If this is Asherah, the solar disk above her may
be interpreted as a representation of Yhwh.
This seal shows clearly that the anthropomorphic “goddess” and the
“sacred pole” should not be seen as mutually exclusive. Asherah could
be represented in two ways, just as Yhwh could be, by either a masseba

or a statue.
In conclusion, the goddess Asherah was associated with Yhwh as his
parhedros, but she was also worshipped independently of him, especially
by women, in the form of the “Queen of Heaven. It is only with the be-
ginning of the reign of Josiah that we will find Yhwh alone without his
Asherah.
10
THE FALL OF SAMARIA AND THE RISE OF JUDAH
The influence of the neo-Assyrian empire increased without

interruption from the ninth century onward, and by the reign of Tiglath-
Pileser III (745–727) all the kingdoms of the Levant found themselves de
facto under the domination of the Assyrians.
The kingdom of Israel, with a more developed economy and political
structure than Judah’s, was of correspondingly greater interest to the
Assyrians, and it was rapidly forced to become a vassal state although it
tried several times to escape this. Following a military campaign by
Tiglath-Pileser III in 738, the kings Menahem of Samaria and Reṣîn of
Damascus appear on the Assyrian lists as tributaries of the Assyrian
king.1
THE END OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL
There are numerous traces in the Bible of the attempt to form an anti-
Assyrian coalition led by the Aramaean kingdom of Damascus; Israel
joined this coalition. As a result of a coup d’état in Samaria, which
was supported by Damascus, someone named Peqah took the throne
and joined the alliance to which the Edomites (and possibly also the
Nineveh
ASSY R IA
Ebla Assur
Mari
Samaria
Jerusalem
0 200 400 km
under Shalmaneser III

under Ashurbanipal
The neo-Assyrian Empire and its extension
Philistines) then also adhered. In order to force the kingdom of Judah

to join too, a military campaign was launched against it. This is often
called the “Syro-Ephramitic War,” an expression coined by Martin
Luther. According to the reports in Kings and Isaiah, the prophet
Isaiah played an important role in this affair in his capacity as a coun-
selor to the king. Thus Isaiah 7 contains an exhortation to the Judean
king Ahaz to put his trust in Yhwh and not to yield to compulsion
from Aram and Samaria:
(5) Do not be troubled because Aram has decided to injure you,

because Ephraim and the sons of Remaliah say: (6) Let us rise up
against Judah, let us sow panic there, let us make our way there by
force and proclaim the son of Tabeal king. (7) This is what the
Lord has said: This shall not happen, it shall not take place. (8) To
be sure, Damascus is the head of Aram and Rezin the head of
Damascus, but by 65 years from now Ephraim shall be broken
as a people—(9) Samaria is the head of Ephraim and the son of
THE FALL OF SAMARIA AND THE RISE OF JUDAH 175
Remaliah the head of Samaria. If you do not have trust, you shall
not survive.
The original oracle, which probably was pronounced in the context

of the assault by the anti-Assyrian alliance against the kingdom of Judah,
exhorts the king to keep his distance from this coalition. The passage
in italics was certainly added after the disappearance of the kingdom of
Israel.2
2 Kings 16 refers to the same situation. King Ahaz paid a voluntary
tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III3 and became his vassal (vv. 6–7), as is also
indicated by the Assyrian list of 729, which show the Judean king as a
tributary of the Assyrian king. So Judah sided with Assyria, and this al-
lowed it to retain a kind of pseudo-autonomy and prevented it from
being simply absorbed into the system of Assyrian provinces. This was
not the case for the kingdom of Israel, however. In 733 the Assyrians
took the kingdom of Damascus, capturing and impaling the king and
his dignitaries. As far as Israel was concerned, its territory was reduced
(2 Kings 15:29), and the areas annexed were integrated into the system
of Assyrian provinces. In this difficult situation King Peqah was assas-
sinated and replaced by an usurper called Hosea, who also had to pay a
heavy tribute to the Assyrian Empire. An Assyrian source describes the
putsch in the following terms: “Peqah, their king [I/they killed] and I
installed Hosea [as king] over them. 10 talents of gold, 100 talents of silver
I received.”4
The death of Tiglath-Pileser III in 727 gave rise to internal struggles
at the court, and the Assyrians were compelled for a short time to re-
duce their pressure on the western periphery of their empire. The king
of Israel, Hosea, seems to have been able to suspend his tribute. The ac-
count in 2 Kings 17 states that he tried to find support from a certain
“Sô,” king of Egypt.5 The idea of seeking the help of Egypt would seem
plausible, since such attempts are condemned in the book attributed to
the prophet Hosea (who is not to be confused with the king of the same
name). This policy provoked an Assyrian intervention. The siege of the
city of Samaria began in 724 and lasted about three years until the city
fell in 722.6 The city fell probably while Salmanasar V was still king, but
his successor Sargon then put in place the new administrative structure
that incorporated the rest of the former kingdom of Israel directly into
Assyria. The Assyrian overlord deported some of the inhabitants of Sa-
maria and reorganized the city, as is indicated in the biblical narrative
and also the Prism of Nimrud:
With the power of the Great Gods, my lords, I fought against

them . . . I counted as spoil 27,280 people together with their char-
iots and the gods in whom they trusted. From among them I formed
a unit with 200 chariots for my royal force; I settled the rest of them
in the midst of Assyria. I repopulated Samerina and made it greater
more than before. I brought into it people from countries conquered
by my hands. I appointed my eunuch as governor over them.7
The forced movement of populations was part of the military and po-
litical strategy of the Assyrians. These deportations were presented as a
punishment of those who had broken treaties, but they also had another
political function. The deportation of a part of the intelligentsia—priests,
high officials, generals, and highly skilled artisans—allowed the Assyr-
ians to dismantle the existing social structure. The defeated army was
partially integrated into the Assyrian army, which at a stroke became
more cosmopolitan, as is clearly indicated by certain reliefs that show
soldiers of a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The exiled populations were
settled in urban centers like Nineveh or Nimrud, but also in the new
city Dur-Sharrukin, which Sargon intended to make his capital.
Settling other ethnic groups in place of the deported populations also
allowed the Assyrians to keep better control of the annexed territories.
The communities implanted by the Assyrians were considered by the rest
of the population, who had been permitted to stay in the country, to be
a part of the structure of Assyrian power, so these people, deported from
elsewhere but now settled in Samaria, had no choice but to collaborate
closely with the Assyrians.8 The annals of Sargon describe the deporta-
tion of Arab tribes to Samaria in 715:
The Tamudi, the Ibadidi, the Marsimanni, and Hayapā, the distant
Arabs who live in the desert who knew neither overseer nor com-
mander, who never brought their tribute to any king, with the help
of Assur, my Lord, I defeated them. I deported the rest of them. I

settled them in Samerina.9
This mixing of populations is the origin of the pejorative term “Sa-

maritan” for a people who were thought by the Jews to practice a syn-
cretistic cult. Nevertheless, the cult of Yhwh will have continued in the
territory of the former kingdom of Israel, even though we have virtu-
ally no information about the religious situation in the kingdom until
the Persian era. The polemic text of 2 Kings 17:24–33, however, indicates
despite itself the persistence of a Yahwist cult in Samaria:
(24) The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah,

Avva, Hamath, and Sepharwaim and settled them in the cities of
Samaria in place of the sons of Israel. They took possession of Sa-
maria and inhabited the cities there. (25) However at the beginning
of their settlement in that place, because they did not fear Yhwh,
he sent lions against them who killed them. (26) They said to the
king of Assyria: “The nations whom you have deported and set-
tled in the cities of Samaria do not know the way to honor the god
of this country. This god has sent lions against them, who make
them die because they do not know the manner of honoring the
god of the country.” (27) The king of Assyria gave this order: “Send
back there the priests of Samaria whom you have deported, let
them go and dwell there, and let them teach the way of honoring
the god of the country.” (28) One of the priests who had been de-
ported from Samaria then came back and lived in Bethel. He taught
them how they ought to fear god. (29) Each nation made its own
god and placed it in the houses of the high places which the Sa-
maritans had built. Each nation did the same in the cities in which
they lived: (30) the people of Babylon made Succoth-Benoth,10 those
of Cuthah, Nergal,11 those of Hamath Ashima 12 (31), the Avvites
Nibhaz13 and Tartak;14 the Sepharites burned their sons in the
fire for Adrammelech and Anammelech,15 the gods of Sepharwaim.
(32). They feared Yhwh and made from among their own people
priests for the high places to celebrate in their name in the houses
on the high places. (33) Although they feared Yhwh, they served
their own gods according to the customs of the nations who lived
from whence they had been deported.
In its current form the text dates from the Persian era and is influenced
by the anti-Samaritan polemics of that time.16 The style of the Hebrew
used in this text confirms that it dates from this late period: for instance,
the verb “to be” is used with a participle to replace the usual narrative
form, which is a feature typical of postbiblical Hebrew and betrays
Aramaean influence. Nevertheless, the text may retain some historical
memories of the situation in Samaria after its incorporation into the
Assyrian Empire. The text informs us that the king of Assyria tried to
repopulate Samaria with groups coming from Babylon and also perhaps
from Syria,17 and an Assyrian source mentions that Arab tribes were
also settled in Samaria. The name Hamath may designate a city on the
Orontes, but if that is true, it is not really very far from Samaria, or it
may refer to Amati in the south of Mesopotamia.18 Sepharwaim is either
Sippar or Sipir’ani, a town not far from Nippur. This town is mentioned
in the documents of Murashu,19 which also contain references to some
people with Judean names in Babylon during the Persian era. It seems
that some of the deported people who were settled in Samaria came
from southern Mesopotamia.
2 Kings 17 combines this enumeration of the deported populations
with some historical anecdotes, and contains a passage that shows that
the Yahwistic cult continued to be practiced in the country: Yhwh sent
an invasion of lions as a punishment for the neglect of his cult. As a re-
sponse, the king of Assyria sent back an Israelite priest to be respon-
sible for the cult of Yhwh at Bethel. Although the author of this text can
barely hide his negative attitude toward the sanctuary at Bethel, it is
probable that this sanctuary continued to play an important role even
after 722. Its history is recounted in 2 Kings 17 with a touch of irony: the
high officials of the king of Assyria speak to him of the “nations whom
you have deported,” and the king answers by telling them to look for a
priest from among those whom “you have deported” as if he were un-
willing to accept responsibility for the deportations himself. The author
of this episode clearly intends to put into relief the power of Yhwh, who
keeps watch over the continuity of his own cult. Some have thought that
the invasion by lions was an actual historical event, arguing that the de-
population of an area could well allow lions to proliferate there. How-
ever, this motif could just as well and even more easily be explained as
an invention by the author.20 It might also be a kind of literary reworking
of one of the terms of a treaty concluded between the Assyrian king
Esarhaddon and a certain Baal, king of Tyre (ca. 676), which specified
that one of the punishments in case of noncompliance would be an in-
vasion by lions: “May Bethel and Anat-Bethel deliver you to the paws of
a man-eating lion.”21
Bethel appears in this text as a divinity, a kind of materialization of
a “betyl.” This treaty is probably the oldest attestation of this divinity,22
who was worshipped in Phoenicia, among the Aramaeans, and also by
various Aramaean and Judean communities in Egypt.23 It is possible that
the god Bethel also had a cult in Israel, as is suggested by the oracle of
Jeremiah 48: “Moab will be ashamed of Chemosh just as the house of
Israel is ashamed of Bethel in which it put its trust” (v. 13). In 2 Kings 17
Bethel clearly designates the sanctuary of the former kingdom of the
north. The author of this passage admits that the cult of Yhwh continues
in Samaria, despite the importation of other deities, some of whom are
difficult to identify. Unfortunately we have very little information, and
what we do have comes from sources that often have a polemical bias,
but the existence of a Yahwistic sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, which is
attested archaeologically from the Persian era, confirms this continuity.
T HE SIT UAT ION IN JUDA H A F T ER 722 A ND

THE REIGN OF KING HEZEKIAH
The defeat of the “big brother” in the north can hardly have failed to
elicit a number of different reactions among the priests and high offi-
cials of the court at Jerusalem. Was it not a sign that the gods of the
Assyrians were stronger than Yhwh and the tiny pantheon of Israel? Or
had Yhwh rejected Israel, handing it over into the hands of the Assyr-
ians in order to show that his “true” people were those who lived in Judah
and in Jerusalem? We find an instance of this idea in Psalm 78: “(67) He
[Yhwh] put aside the family of Joseph, he refused to choose the tribe of
Ephraim [the kingdom of Israel]. (68) He chose the tribe of Judah, the
mountain of Zion which he loves.” In this way the sense of being the
true people of Yhwh, the true Israel, took root in Judah in the court at
Jerusalem. It is possible that it is starting from this period that Judah
began to lay claim to the name Israel and thus also to the heritage of the
former kingdom of the north. Th is sense of being the true people of
Yhwh will have been reinforced by the unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem
in 701, which we shall discuss again later.
The events of 722 had a significant impact on the demography of
Jerusalem: “in a matter of a few decades—surely within a single
generation—Jerusalem was transformed from a modest highland vil-
lage of about ten or twelve acres to a huge urban area of 150 acres of
closely packed houses . . . In demographic terms the city’s population
may have increased as much as fifteen times, from about thousand to
fifteen thousand inhabitants.”24 Demographic change brought with it a
reorganization of the political structures of the kingdom of Judah: the
traditional system of a purely agricultural economy founded on the
clan was increasingly challenged by the centralized power of a state.
The Judean administration underwent significant developments in the
eighth century, and was progressively professionalized, reflecting the
city’s growing size.25
It is not known for certain when Jerusalem spread to include the
western hill (nowadays Jewish and Armenian quarters, and what is
now called Mount Zion). The reasons for this spectacular expansion are
certainly connected with the events of 733 and 722. There was most
likely a large number of refugees from Israel, fleeing the Assyrians, who
arrived at this time.26 Other authors cite politico-economic reasons.
One theory is that the administration in Jerusalem regrouped the pop-
ulation in cities in order to be able to offer better resistance to the As-
syrians.27 It is also possible that the economic boom in Jerusalem and
the lack of cultivatable land in the rural areas attracted a population
that would otherwise have been threatened with pauperization.28 How-
ever, excavations have revealed the existence of small villages in the
environs of the city toward the end of the eighth and during the sev-
enth century, so it does not appear that the small villages were all com-
pletely abandoned.29
We should not discount the possibility that there were several dif-
ferent reasons for the spectacular growth of Jerusalem, but it is hard
to avoid assuming that there was a movement of populations from
the north to the south. The Hebrew Bible mentions a group called the
Rekabites, who are said to have participated in the revolt of Jehu against
the Omrides;30 according to Jeremiah 35, this group was settled in Jeru-
salem at the end of the seventh century. 2 Kings 22:14 speaks of a ʿîr
hammišneh, a “new [literally second] city,” in which the prophetess
Huldah and her husband lived. The symbol of this new Jerusalem was
king Hezekiah, who enjoys the almost unreserved approval of the edi-
tors of the Bible: “He did that which is right in the eyes of Yhwh, exactly
as his ancestor David had done . . . of all the Kings of Judah who came
before or after him, none was his equal” (2 Kings 18:3 and 5). It is not
known when Hezekiah’s reign began.31 If it was in 728, this would have
given him enough time to complete his building works at Jerusalem. It
is possible that a new wall was built around Jerusalem or a reinforced
rampart, and the biblical texts claim that Hezekiah also constructed a
tunnel 533 meters long to bring water from Guihôn to Jerusalem.32 An
inscription tells of how the tunnel was built, starting from each of the
two ends at the same time:
. . . the piercing . . . And this is the history of the digging. When . . .

the pickaxes one against the other. And when there were only three cubits
more to cut through, the men were heard
calling from one side to the other; [for] there was zedah in the rock, on the
right and on the left. And on the day of the
piercing the workmen struck each to meet the other, pickax against pickax.
And there flowed
the waters from the spring to the pool for a space of 200 cubits. And
[100]
cubits was the height over the head of the workmen.33
Was this tunnel cut for reasons of defense or simply because the city,
whose population now exceeded 15,000 inhabitants, needed a new
source of water?34 E. A. Knauf claims that the construction of this tunnel
would have taken a very long time, so long in fact that it would not have
been possible for it to have been initiated and completed during the
reign of Hezekiah, so it was probably constructed under Manasseh,
who wanted to use it to irrigate a royal garden on the Assyrian model.
It is highly likely that most of the public works attributed by the biblical
authors to King Hezekiah were actually carried out under Manasseh.35
Because the editors of the books of Kings utterly detested Manasseh, it
makes perfect sense of them to have attributed these achievements to
his successor. This thesis gains increased plausibility if Hezekiah did
not in fact begin his reign until 715. The inscription on this tunnel is the
fi rst monumental inscription known at Jerusalem.36 Also from this
period is the fragment of an inscription on a large stone, intended for
public display, on which words like ṣ-b-r (“accumulate”) and ̒ -š-r
(“wealth”)37 can still be deciphered. In addition, an important inscrip-
tion on the threshold of a tomb, at the entrance to the village of Shiloh,
mentions a “master of the palace,” who has a Yahwistic name.38 There
is an increase in the number of inscriptions toward the end of the
eighth century, which is further evidence of the growing importance of
Jerusalem at that time.
THE FOREIGN POLICY OF HEZEKIAH
The editors of the books of Kings approved of Hezekiah because of his

anti-Assyrian policy. It seems that as a direct act of provocation toward
the Assyrians he fortified the city of Lachish and reinforced the
defenses of Beer-Sheba. The exact date of his revolt against his Assyrian
overlords is not known: “He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did
not serve him any more” (2 Kings 18:7). The following verse mentions an
Assyrian campaign against the Philistines that took place in 701.39 It is
possible that Hezekiah had intended to revolt before 701. Perhaps he had
planned to join the rebellion organized by Ashdod, against which the
prophet Isaiah issued a warning:
(1) The year when the commander-in-chief sent by Sargon, king of

Assyria, came to attack Asdod and he took it . . . (2) At that time
Yhwh spoke through the mediation of Isaiah, son of Amos: “Go,”
he said, “unknot the sackcloth you have around your waist, take
off the sandals you have on your feet” and he did this, going naked
and barefoot. (3) Yhwh said: “My servant Isaiah has gone naked
and barefoot for three years—a sign and omen to Egypt and to
Nubia. (4) Similarly, the king of Assyria will lead away the Egyp-
tian prisoners and the Nibuan deportees, young people and old,
naked and barefoot, their bottoms uncovered—naked in Egypt!
(5) People will be surprised and confounded because of Nubia,
to whom they looked and because of Egypt in which they glo-
ried.” (6) But the inhabitants of these regions shall say: “Behold
these to whom we looked so as to find refuge among them, and
help and to be delivered from the king of Assyria. And we, how
shall we escape?” (Isa. 20)
This oracle seems to suggest that the rebels tried to ally themselves
with Egypt. After he came to the throne, Sennacherib (705–681) had to
crush a revolt in Babylon, and so he was less active in the Levant. The
Philistine cities, notably Ekron and Ashkelon, attempted to revolt once
again, relying on help from Egypt, which wanted to regain control over
the cities of Philistia, and perhaps also make Judah a buffer zone against
the Assyrians. Popular support for Egypt in Judah toward the end of the
seventh century is indicated by the significant number of Egyptianizing
seals from this period that have been found by archaeologists.
In 701 Sennacherib undertook a campaign against Palestine that is
very well documented archaeologically, especially at Lachish. There are
even Assyrian reliefs at Nineveh that represent the siege and fall of
Lachish.40 Further evidence is provided by the annals of Sennacherib,
the oracles in the book of Isaiah, and two different narratives of the
aborted siege of Jerusalem in 2 Kings 18–20.
Assyrian texts assert that the people of Ekron deposed King Padi, a
loyal vassal of Assyria, from the throne and gave him over to Hezekiah.
This shows that the Judean king played an important role in this revolt,
in which Egypt, too, was firmly engaged. Sennacherib intervened against
Ekron and put Padi back on the throne:
The high officials, the, nobles, and the people of Ekron who had
thrown into fetters Padî their king, who was loyal to the treaty and
oath with Assyria by friendship and had him handed over to
Hezekiah the Judean . . . I fought with and inflicted a heavy defeat

on them . . . I made Padî their king come out from Jerusalem . . .
As to Hezekiah, the Judean, who did not submit to my yoke, I laid
siege to 46 of his strong cities . . . Himself I enclosed in Jerusalem,
his royal city, like a bird in a cage . . . His towns, which I had plun-
dered, I separated from his territory . . . I reduced his country.41
Th is inscription admits that Jerusalem was not conquered, some-

thing the biblical narrative explains as a result of the miraculous
intervention of Yhwh.42 On the other hand, numerous towns were
taken, notably Lachish. The annals and the biblical text concur in as-
serting that Hezekiah had to pay a heavy tribute that, according to
the Bible, required the destruction of certain doors to the Temple of
Jerusalem:
The fourteenth year of the reign of Hezekiah. Sennacherib, king

of Assyria, attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.
Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent a messenger to say to the king of As-
syria at Lachish: “I have done wrong. Depart from me. Whatever
you shall impose on me I shall bear.” The king of Assyria imposed
on Hezekiah a tribute of 9 tons of silver and 900 kilos of gold.
Hezekiah gave all the silver which was in the house of Yhwh and
in the treasuries of the royal palace. This was the time when Heze-
kiah took away the chasings of gold which had covered the doors
and lintels of the temple of Yhwh to give them to the king of As-
syria. (2 Kings 18:13–16)
Although the size of the kingdom of Judah had been to some extent
reduced,43 and it seems that there was a not insignificant deportation of
population, the biblical author considers the events of 701 to be a sign of
the omnipotence of Yhwh. Next to nothing is known about the deportees
of 701; the Assyrian numbers (200,150 deportees) are much too high. In
contrast to the way they had dealt with the Babylonians, the Assyrians
did not settle the deportees together, but dispersed them. Some were en-
rolled in the army, which integrated and assimilated them into the As-
syrian Empire.
Detail of a relief from

the time of Sargon II
showing the siege of a
city; one can see a
figure holding a scroll
who is standing in a
chariot before the
gates of the city.
Although the events of 701 constituted an unmistakable defeat for

Judah, the fact that Jerusalem remained untouched must have reinforced
the comforting conviction among the religious and political leaders of
the capital that Yhwh had protected his Mount Zion. The biblical nar-
rative states that during the siege of Jerusalem a high Assyrian official
gave a propaganda speech before the gates of the city. This was probably
a genuine Assyrian practice, as documented on a relief showing a person
in a chariot who is holding a scroll that would have contained the speech
to be read to the inhabitants of the city.
(28) The messenger stood up and shouted with a loud voice in the
Judean language. He spoke as follows: “Listen to the words of the
Great King, king of Assyria!” (29) Th is says the king: “Let not He-
zekiah take advantage of you, because he cannot deliver you out
of my hand!” (30) Let not Hezekiah persuade you to place your
trust in Yhwh, saying: ‘Surely Yhwh shall deliver us; this town shall
not be delivered into the hands of the king of Assyria.’ (31) Do not
listen to Hezekiah, for so speaks the king of Assyria: ‘Associate

yourself in friendship with me, give yourselves over to me, and each
of you shall eat the fruits of his own vine and his fig tree and shall
drink water from his cistern (32) while waiting for me to come to
take you to a country like your own, a country of wheat and new
wine, a country of bread and vineyards, a country of fresh oil and
honey, and thus you shall live and shall not die.’ Do not listen to
Hezekiah for he deceives you by saying ‘Yhwh shall deliver us.’ (33)
Were the gods of the nations able to deliver their own countries
from the hand of the king of Assyria? (34) Where are the gods of
Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharwaim, of Hena,
of Iwwah? Did they deliver Samaria from my hand?” (2 Kings 18)
The logic of this speech suggests that if the Assyrians were to abandon
the siege of Jerusalem, that would be proof that Yhwh was more powerful
than they and their gods were. It is difficult to know why the siege of
Jerusalem was not continued to the end. 2 Kings 20:35–37 claims that
the angel of Yhwh struck the Assyrian army, a demonstration that Yhwh,
contrary to what the Assyrians pretended, was stronger than Assur and
his armies. Historians have developed a number of different hypoth-
eses to explain the Assyrian failure to take Jerusalem: the Assyrian army
was weakened by its combats with the Egyptian rebels,44 or the Assyr-
ians never really intended to destroy Jerusalem but wished to keep it in
a reduced state as a buffer.45 According to another version of the biblical
narrative, Sennacherib withdrew because of a conspiracy hatched against
him in Assyria (2 Kings 19:7).
However this might be, in the consciousness of the Judeans this quasi-
defeat was transformed into a triumphant victory. These events of 701
are the origin of the symbolic importance of Jerusalem as the city of
Yhwh.46 First of all, it is this intervention of the Assyrians in Judah that
in fact caused a centralization of the cult and the administration in Je-
rusalem, which remained the only city in Judah that the Assyrians did
not conquer. The fact that Jerusalem was spared also gives rise to the
“theology of the remnant” we find in Isaiah: this theological view as-
serts that in all the cataclysms of history Yhwh has always protected a
“remnant” in Jerusalem.47 However, the events of 701 signify in partic-
ular a strengthening of the theology of Zion, the idea that Yhwh will
always watch over his sacred mountain. Psalm 48, a song celebrating the
protection of Zion, might well have been composed just after the events
of 701:
(2) Yhwh is great, he is worthy of all praise, in the city of our god,
his holy mountain. (3) Beautiful is the hill, it is the gaiety of the
whole earth, mount Zion, far in the north, the city of the great king.
(4) In the palaces of the city God is known to be like a citadel.
(5) For the kings were in league: they advanced together. (6) They
looked on stupefied, stunned they took flight. (7) There a trembling
took hold of them, like the pains of a woman in labor . . . (9) That
which we have heard we have seen in the city of Yhwh Ṣĕḇaʾôt, in
the city of our God; God will keep her strong forever.
It is this ideology of the uniqueness of Jerusalem and the hill of the

Temple that will later become the foundation for the centralization of
the cult of Yhwh.
THE REFORMS OF HEZEKIAH
The books of Kings describe Hezekiah as a reformer who prefigured

King Josiah, in that they attribute to him the initiation of the process of
centralizing in Jerusalem a cult of Yhwh to the exclusion of all other
gods. There is much debate and disagreement about the historicity of
these biblical claims which, except for one detail, are couched in very
general terms. It is nevertheless not inconceivable that the reforms of
Hezekiah did stand in some relation to the theology of Zion which we
have just described: “He [Hezekiah] destroyed the high places, broke the
massebas, cut down the Asherahs and smashed the bronze serpent which
Moses had made, because the Israelites had up to that time burned
incense before it; they called it Nehushtan” (2 Kings 18:4). Politically, the
“reforms” of Hezekiah, particularly the closure of the high places, may
simply have been a response to the geopolitical situation. After 701 nothing
remained of Judah but Jerusalem and its hinterland. The biblical narrative
also claims that Hezekiah destroyed a “serpent of Bronze.” This is prob-

ably not an invention. This serpent attributed to Moses48 shows the in-
fluence of Egyptian conceptions,49 although serpents are worshipped in
a number of different religious contexts. It may be connected with the
seraphim in the vision of Isaiah 6, who surround the throne of Yhwh
in the Temple of Jerusalem, but the fact that this serpent has a name
(although Nehushtan simply means “serpent”) suggests rather that this
is an instance of a particular cult of a serpent as healer. The fact that
Hezekiah disposed of this statue might simply be a sign of his forced
reversion to the status of vassal of the King of Assyria; it might have
seemed politically wise to get rid of this Egyptian symbol.50
THE WORSHIP OF YHWH IN THE REIGN OF MANASSEH
Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, had a very long reign of 55 years, but we have
remarkably few details about it. For the editors of the books of Kings,
he is the very model of a bad king who did everything “that displeased
Yhwh.” Historically speaking, his acceptance of Assyrian dominance
guaranteed a period of calm and stability for the kingdom of Judah. It
is even possible that certain of the most remarkable achievements
which the Bible attributes to Hezekiah are actually his doing. He prob-
ably rebuilt Lachish and put in place a series of fortresses dependent
on Jerusalem, and it is possible that Assurbanipal restored to him some
annexed Judean territory, notably the Shephelah, as a reward for his
loyalty.51 In 2 Kings 21 Manasseh is explicitly compared to the king of the
north, Ahab, for reintroducing Assyrian practices and also a cult of
Asherah into the temple. The long enumeration of the faults of Manasseh
in 2 Kings 21:1–9 and 16–19,52 in which he is presented as violating all the
important laws of Deuteronomy, is, in the view of the editors of the
books of Kings, the prelude to the reforms of Josiah.
2 Kings 21:2: Deut. 18:9:

Manasseh “followed the abominable “You shall not learn to imitate the
practices of the nations whom Yhwh abominable practices of these
had driven out before the Israelites.” nations.”
2 Kings 21:3 and 7: Deut. 16:21:

“Manasseh made a statue of Asherah.” “You shall not plant a tree (as
symbol) of Asherah.”
2 Kings 21:3 and 5: Deut. 17:3:

“He constructed altars for all the army “If someone goes to serve and
of the heavens.” adore other gods, the sun and
the moon or the army of
heavens, I prohibit him from
doing that.”
2 Kings 21:6: Deut. 18:10.11:

“He made his sons pass through the “One should not find among you
fire; he practiced incantation and anyone who makes his son or
divination and he frequented necro- daughter pass through the fire or
mancers and magicians.” who practices divination or is a
soothsayer, diviner, or sorcerer . . .
or a necromancer.”
2 Kings 21:16: Deut. 19:10:

“Manasseh shed much innocent “The blood of an innocent person
blood.” may not be shed.” (see also 21:8–9)
So clearly the editors of the books of Kings wish to make Manasseh

out to be a king who, in contrast to Josiah, did not observe a single one
of the commandments of Deuteronomy. It is hard to say what really
happened historically. Given that Manasseh was a loyal vassal, it is
possible that he increased the presence of cult symbols that had As-
syrian connotations. The army of the heavens mentioned in 2 Kings
21:15 might include the worship of sun, moon, and stars. The sun god
was very popu lar at Haran, the “western capital” of the empire in the
seventh century, and one finds his symbols on a significant number of
seals dating from that era from all over the Levant, including Judah. So
it is also possible that such astral cults were promoted under Manasseh,
and that in Judah, that is Jerusalem, a moon god came to be identified
with Yhwh.53 In general, the cult symbols in the seventh century are of
Assyrian inspiration, just as they were of Egyptian inspiration in the

eighth century.
We have little information about Amon, the successor of Manasseh.
His name is perhaps Egyptian, which means that Egypt probably retook
control of the Levant during his brief reign, which ended with a putsch.
As a result of this putsch, the young Josiah mounted the throne, thanks
to the support of the ̒ am hā ʾāreṣ, a coalition of large-scale landowners
and other influential personages. It is probably during his reign that
Yhwh definitively became the one God.
11
THE REFORM OF JOSIAH
THE REIGN OF JOSIAH
The beginning of the reign of Josiah coincides more or less with the
beginning of the decline of the Assyrian Empire. About 627 Babylon
recovered its independence and the Assyrians relaxed their grip on the
Levant, which returned for a brief period to Egyptian control. It is possible
that the Assyrians and Egyptians concluded a pact under Psammetichus
I (664–610), and that in return for military support the Assyrians gave the
Levant back to Egypt. We need to understand the reign of Josiah in this
context. The biblical narrative that is devoted to him, however, is con-
cerned only with the “reform” that he is said to have undertaken.
Chapters 22 and 23 of the second book of Kings tell of the discovery
of a scroll during renovation works in the Temple of Jerusalem during
the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign. The discovery of this scroll by the
priest Hilkiah and the reading of the book to the king by the high of-
ficer Shaphan caused a strong reaction in Josiah, who seemed deeply
troubled by the curses contained in the book. He therefore sent Hilkiah,
Shaphan, and some other high officials to consult the prophetess
Huldah about the meaning of the scroll. She responded to the delega-
tion with words that have many parallels with texts in Jeremiah. She
announced in particular a misfortune that would befall Jerusalem be-

cause the Judeans had abandoned Yhwh, but she also pronounced an
oracle of peace for Josiah:
(16) Thus speaks Yhwh: “I shall send a misfortune to this place and
its inhabitants, accomplishing all that is contained in the book
which the king of Judah has read. (17) Since they have abandoned
me and have burned incense before other gods so as to offend me
with all the diverse works of their hands. My fury is enraged against
this place and shall not be quenched.” (18) However say this to the
king of Judah who has sent you to consult Yhwh: “Thus says Yhwh,
the god of Israel. You have well understood these words (19) since
your heart was touched, you abased yourself before Yhwh . . .
(20) because of this, I shall reunite you with your fathers; you shall
be reunited with them in peace in the tomb and your eyes shall not
see the misfortune that I shall bring upon this place.” (2 Kings 22)
After the officials had transmitted this message, Josiah himself read
the book to “all the people” and engaged himself by treaty with Yhwh
(2 Kings 23:1–3). Then Josiah undertook important modifications of the
religious cult in Jerusalem and Judah, eliminating symbols such as the
heavenly army and discharging the priests of Baal and Asherah. He de-
sacralized and also destroyed the “high places,” the bāmôt, the open-
air sanctuaries consecrated to Yhwh and also the tōphet, which seems
have been a site of human sacrifices. According to 23:15 he even demol-
ished the altar at Bethel, the ancient Yahwist sanctuary of Israel. These
acts of destruction had as their positive counterpart the conclusion of a
(new) treaty between Yhwh and the people and the celebration of a Pass-
over (23:21–23).
THE KING WHO RESTORED THE SANCTUARY

AND T HE RECOVERED BOOK
Some ancient Jewish commentators and Church Fathers had already

identified the book that in 2 Kings 22–23 was said to have been found
THE REFORM OF JOSIAH 193
in the temple as the book of Deuteronomy, because the acts of Josiah and
the centralizing ideology that was at work in his “reforms” seem to follow
the prescriptions of the Deuteronomic law.1 This theory was used in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries to date the first edition of Deuter-
onomy to the reign of Josiah. It proposes that the first edition of Deu-
teronomy was written to promote the reforms of Josiah, and the scroll
was then disguised as a testament of Moses and hidden in the temple
in such a way as to ensure it would easily be found. The whole exercise
was a kind of “pious fraud.” The theory presupposes, of course, that it is
a historical fact that the book actually was discovered in the temple, but
this assumption raises some difficulties. The narrative in 2 Kings 22–23
is primarily a “foundation myth” produced by the biblical editors, the
“Deuteronomists,” who wrote the history of the kingdom through the
lens of the theological options set out in Deuteronomy. The narrative
cannot therefore be used naively as if it were the report of an eyewitness
of events that took place about 620. In its present form this text already
contains references to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian
exile, and thus must have been redacted after 587, as is indicated, for in-
stance, by the oracles of the prophetess Huldah in 2 Kings 22:16–17.
The motif of “discovering” a book is very well known from ancient
literature,2 and generally serves to legitimize changes in the religious,
economic, or political order. We might note here, among other possible
examples, a Hittite text from the fourteenth century in which the priest
Murshili explains in a prayer that he had found two tablets that made
him understand why the Hittite lands had been struck with an epidemic.
One of these tablets made great play of an oath that Murshili’s father
had sworn but had not kept.3 The Church father Eusebius cites the work
of a certain Philo of Byblos (first or second century) who claims to have
translated a history of Phoenicia written by someone named Sancho-
niathon. This history is supposed to have been based on very ancient
tablets of Taant (Thoth) that had been hidden by the priests and were
now rediscovered.4 An Egyptian version of this motif appears in the
final rubric of chapter 64 of the Book of the Dead, which did not take
its standardized form until the Saite period (664–525). Th is chapter is
presented as having been found in the temple of Sokaris and going back
to the period of the very origins of Egypt itself.5
So it is possible that the first version of the description of the reforms

of Josiah did not contain the account of the finding of the book.6 In fact,
the narrative about the priest Hilkiah finding the book in verse 8 is in-
troduced very briskly in the text and interrupts the first scene (vv. 3–7
and 9).7 So it is probable that, as many scholars have suggested, we
should distinguish two stories in 2 Kings 22: the story of the restoration
and reorganization of the temple and the story of the finding of the book.
The latter may be a later insertion8 by a redactor of the Persian period,
who in the context of emergent Judaism wanted to show how the book
(the Pentateuch) gradually substituted itself for the traditional cult.
This motif of “the finding of a book” also has parallels in the tablets
deposited in the foundations of Mesopotamian sanctuaries, which are
also often “discovered” by kings undertaking restoration works. The in-
scription of Nabonidus (556–539), the last king of the neo-Babylonian
Empire, who wished to style himself as the finder of numerous docu-
ments, is of particular interest. Here is the story he tells of the reconstruc-
tion of the temple of Shamash at Sippar:
An earlier king [Nebuchadnezzar] looked for the old foundation

but did not find it. He had a new temple built for Shamash on its
own, but it was not worthy of his lordly rank nor fitting for his
status as god. The pinnacles of that temple fell down prematurely;
its upper parts crumbled . . . I prayed to him [Shamash], offered
him sacrifices and inquired of his decision. Shamash, the most sub-
lime lord, had waited for me from the beginning . . . The elders of
the city, the sons of Babylonian, the architects, the wise men . . .
and I said to them: “Seek the original foundation.” . . . The assembly
of the wise men saw the old foundation . . . They returned to me
and said: “I have seen the old foundation of Naram-Sin, a king from
distant time, the steady sanctuary of Shamash, the dwelling of his
deity.” My heart exalted and my face shone.9
According to the text, the foundation stone contained a plan of the

“original temple,” and this plan allowed King Nabonidus to undertake
restoration works. In 2 Kings 22–23 the foundation stone is replaced by
the book. Th is indicates that the story is an invention and cannot be
taken literally as an account of the events of 622. In addition, the narra-

tive of how the pious king Josiah restored the temple in 622 is derived
word for word from an earlier passage in the Bible, namely from the re-
port (in 2 Kings 12:10–16) about a previous restoration of the temple
under the Judean king Joas.10 The story of the restoration of undertaken
by Joas, who had been crowned at the age of seven, concludes the his-
tory of the interlude during which Queen Athaliah held power. It seems
that this narrative served as a model for the description of the resto-
ration work of Josiah, who became king at the age of eight. Joas is also
evaluated positively by the authors of the second book of Kings, al-
though during his reign the high places did not disappear (2 Kings
12:3–4). The editors of the books of Kings are trying to show that Josiah
actually succeeded in achieving what Joas was not able to do. More gen-
erally speaking, the works on the sanctuary are part of a ritual through
which the king shows his devotion to the gods.11 2 Kings 22 employs
this topos, adding to it some further Near Eastern motifs (the king as
renewer of the temple, the discovery of ancient documents) in order to
present Josiah as an exemplary king.
So what should we make of the famous reforms of Josiah? Are they a
pure invention of the editors of the books of Kings, as many commen-
tators have maintained? It is true that we have no firsthand evidence of
any reorganization of politics or reform of cultic practices that might
have been associated with a purported set of “Josianic reforms.”12 There
are, however, significantly many pieces of indirect evidence that make it
plausible to suppose that the reign of Josiah did correspond to some
major changes in the mode of worship of Yhwh.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE?
Archaeology cannot contribute much to proving the historicity of the

reforms of Josiah. Some scholars have tried to see in the decline of
the sanctuary at Arad evidence of a policy of centralization, purport-
edly pursued by Josiah.13 Because archaeologists found the altars and
two massebas of the sanctuary lying on the ground, this was taken as
an indication that the sanctuary had been destroyed by the armies of
Josiah, but there is no need to adopt this interpretation. David Ussishkin

reports that the sanctuary had not been established until the seventh
century, and that it remained in use until the sixth century.14 Zeev
Herzog claims that we must date the construction of the sanctuary and
its retaining wall to the middle of the eighth century. The fact that the
two horned altars and the massebas were carefully placed on the earth
means that in fact they were probably being hidden in the place where
they were found. This could well indicate a desire to make the sanctuary
difficult to find during the period of the Assyrian invasion under Heze-
kiah.15 These contradictory claims show that the archaeological evidence
is difficult to interpret. A fort was built at Arad under Manasseh or Jo-
siah, but the sanctuary was not reestablished, which may perhaps be
connected with the increasing importance of Jerusalem and thus with
the reforms of Josiah.
GLY P T IC A ND EP IGR A P HIC E V IDENCE
The reforms of Josiah may be reflected in a change in the kinds of en-

graved images on seals found in Judah in the seventh and sixth centu-
ries. In the seventh century the seals of aristocrats and high officials
frequently exhibited astral motifs and anthropomorphic representa-
tions of gods. In contrast, in the corpus of about 260 seals we have from
the sixth century, there is not a single astral symbol or image of a god,
but only more abstract motifs. This implies that at the beginning of the
sixth century, anthropomorphic and astral motifs suddenly went out
of fashion among the elite of Jerusalem.16 More significantly, after the
end of the seventh century, we no longer find designs that can be iden-
tified as representing the couple Yhwh and Asherah. Epigraphically, too,
there are no inscriptions mentioning this couple in Judah after those
in Khirbet el Qom and Kuntillet Ajrud.17 In the inscription at Khirbet
Beit Lei (8 kilometers east of Lachish) there is a reference to Jerusalem.
This inscription is difficult to date, but it seems to assert that Yhwh is
the god of the whole country, the god of Judah and Jerusalem.18 If this
inscription were to be found to date from the end of the seventh cen-
tury, it might to some extent be thought to support the hypothesis of a
centralization of the cult of Yhwh. It is also noteworthy that in this in-

scription Yhwh is called the god of Judah and Jerusalem.
E V IDENCE F ROM T HE N A RR AT IV E OF 2 KINGS 23
2 Kings 23 states that Josiah suppressed a number of religious elements

related to the worship of heavenly bodies. Interestingly, the astral cult
was an important part of neo-Assyrian religious ideology. The reference
to the horses and chariots of Shamash, the sun god (v. 11), is historically
plausible in the context of a Judea dominated by Assyria: “He suppressed
the horses which the kings of Judah had installed in honor of the Sun at
the entrance to the house of Yhwh, near the room of the eunuch Nathan-
Melek, in the annexes; he burned the chariots of the sun.” The impor-
tance of this sun cult in Jerusalem is also indicated in a passage from
the book of Ezekiel: “At the entrance to the temple of Yhwh between the
vestibule and the altar, there were about 25 men who turned their backs
to the temple of Yhwh and their faces to the east; they prostrated them-
selves toward the east before the Sun” (8:16).
The iconography of the ancient Near East and the Levant furnishes a
significant number of representations of horses and horsemen and also
of images of the sun god, who is associated with horses. There is a par-
ticularly interesting engraving on a tridacna shell that was found in
Sippar but originally came from the Levant and dates from the seventh
century. It shows two horsemen flanking a solar deity, who appears in a
kind of nimbus.19 Because Yhwh had already been assimilated to a sun
god, the Assyrian solar motifs could be understood in Judah as standing
for manifestations of Yhwh.
The narrative of the reform also mentions a special class of priests
called kĕmārîm. According to verse 5, Josiah “suppressed the kĕmārîm
whom the kings of Judah had established to burn incense on the high
places of the cities of Judah and the area around Jerusalem. He also sup-
pressed those who burned incense in honor of Baal, the Sun, the Moon,
the constellations, and also the army of the heavens” (2 Kings 23:5).
The word kĕmārîm comes from the akkadian kumru, but is probably
originally of Aramaean origin, and is rare in the Bible. It does occur in
Aramaean on two funerary steles from the seventh century. The kĕmārîm
seem to have been a special group of priests particularly connected with
the cult of astral deities, the sun god, and the moon god. This might be
a historical memory of a class of priests “imported” into Judah in the
context of the Assyrian occupation.
The comment in verse 12 that “the king demolished the altars in the
chamber of Ahaz which the kings of Judah had made on the terraced
roof” may be a reference to a cult devoted to the army of the heavens
that was practiced on the roofs of Jerusalem. King Ahaz had been a vassal
of the king of Assyria, and it is possible that he had erected a place of
worship on a terrace to show his loyalty (2 Kings 16).20 Th is may have
been a large altar to which there was access via a staircase, so that ap-
proaching the altar would be like ascending to a terrace. The book of
Jeremiah also mentions this cult in private houses, all of which will have
had terraces: “All those houses on the roofs on the terraces of which they
offered incense to the whole army of the heavens and poured out liba-
tions for other gods” (Jer. 19:13). Numerous texts assert that these cults
continued after the reforms of Josiah, but always outside the temple in
private houses.21
THE QUESTION OF SACRED PROSTITUTION
The reform of Josiah also affected “sacred prostitution.” Verse 7 of

chapter 23 states that Josiah “demolished the houses of the ‘saints’
(qĕdēšîm) in the house of Yhwh and where the women wove cloth22 for
Asherah.” It is clear that the word qādeš is an expression for male pros-
titutes23 and qĕdēšāh for female prostitutes. The demolition of the houses
of prostitution harks back to the earlier notice about the first king of
Judah, Roboam. During his reign at the end of the tenth century, he es-
tablished various cults, which displeased the editors of the Bible, and in
particular he was accused of having installed the practice of male pros-
titution: “wĕgam qādēš hāyāh bāʾāreṣ,” “there were prostitutes24 in the
country” (1 Kings 14:24).
The term q-d-š also occurs in Ugaritic texts, where it seems to
designate people who are not priests but are dedicated to a deity. They
may marry, have children, and be freed from their ser vice by royal de-
cree. The Ugaritic texts do not insist on the sexual activities of these per-
sons, but this seems to be presupposed by a biblical text that is perhaps
contemporary to Josiah’s reforms and that prohibits prostitution in the
sanctuary: “There shall be no female ‘saints’ (qĕdēšāh) among the daugh-
ters of Israel, nor any male ‘saints’ (qĕdēšîm) among the sons of Israel.
You shall not bring into the house of Yhwh, your god, to fulfi ll a vow,
the pay of a prostitute (zônāh) or the price of a dog (keleḇ). Indeed one
and the other are an abomination to Yhwh, your god.”25 This prohibition
suggests that these are current practices, which there are now efforts to
eradicate. The parallelism of the prohibition shows that the female “saint”
is a prostitute (zônāh) and the “dog” a male prostitute. Sacred prostitu-
tion has given rise to a number of debates, and seems to have had a spe-
cial tendency to stimulate the imagination of commentators. Karel van
der Toorn thinks that the reference is to “normal prostitution,” which the
temple conducted, as it were, to supplement its other income, and that
one should read 2 Kings 23:7 as indicating that the prostitutes had their
own special places, perhaps rented spaces in the Temple of Jerusalem.26
The question is whether there is a connection between the two parts
of verse 7. Often the second part, which mentions the women weaving
clothing for Asherah, is considered to be a gloss, but it is not necessary
to read the text in this way. If the house of the qĕdēšîm is also the place
where women make clothing for the goddess, the qĕdēšîm might be un-
derstood on the model of the transvestites and eunuchs who were known
to be in the ser vice of the goddess Ishtar; Asherah was, after all a sim-
ilar goddess.27 Note, too, that Deuteronomy prohibits not only prostitu-
tion, but also transvestism: “A woman shall not wear the clothing of
a man and a man shall not put on the clothing of a woman, for he who
does this commits an abomination against Yhwh, your god” (Deut. 22:5).
In Mesopotamia the expression “house of Ishtar” may also designate a
brothel, and there is probably a close connection between the cult of
Ishtar and prostitution. Neo-Babylonian texts from Uruk seem to indi-
cate that the clergy rented out women to well-to-do men, apparently as
a source of extra income.
It is then a plausible assumption that there were male and female
prostitutes in the temple at Jerusalem, and if there was thought to be a
connection between prostitution and Asherah, it is understandable
that Josiah will have tried to ban prostitutes from the temple.
T HE ELIMIN AT ION OF T HE GODDE SS
The reforms of Josiah seem to imply the disappearance of the goddess

from the official cult in Jerusalem. 2 Kings 22:6 states, more exactly, that
Josiah “brought out the Asherah from the house of Yhwh and took it
outside Jerusalem to Wadi Kedron; he burned it in the Kedron and re-
duced it to dust. He threw the dust on the tomb of the common people.”
This elimination of the statue of the goddess makes sense as part of the
plan behind the reforms of Josiah, namely to introduce monolatry. The
eradication of the cult of the goddess represented a significant break in
tradition that could not easily be accepted by the inhabitants of Judah
and Jerusalem. The text already cited from Jeremiah 44 expresses the
conviction that the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 should be inter-
preted as vengeance by the goddess whose cult Josiah had tried to pro-
hibit: “Since the time when we stopped offering incense to the Queen of
Heaven and pouring out libations for her, we have suffered a lack of ev-
erything and have been exterminated by famine and the sword” (v. 18).
This text seems to refer to an attempt to prohibit the cult of the Queen
of the Heaven, who, as we have already mentioned, may be another name
for Asherah.
REFORMING KINGS
A further comparativist argument also supports the view that there was
a cultural change under Josiah. Several reforming kings are known in
the ancient Near East during the second and first millennia.28 Akenaton
(1353–1337) undertook a “centralization” of religious cults in his new city
of Aketaten, and preached the worship of a single god (Aton). Nebuchad-
nezzar (1125–1104) had the epic poem “Enuma Elish” rewritten, re-
placing Enlil with Marduk, whom he wished to establish as the central
god of the Babylonian pantheon. Under the Assyrian king Sennacherib
(705–681), Marduk was replaced by Assur, who became the “god of
heaven and earth,” and a new temple was built outside the city of Assur.
But Sennacherib’s successor, Esarhaddon, who had himself crowned
king of Babylon, reestablished the cult of Marduk and the other Baby-
lonian deities. Nabonidus (556–539) reinforced the cult of Sin, a moon
god, and restored a number of temples. Other gods were “degraded” rela-
tive to Sin: Shamash became the son of Sin, and Ishtar the daughter of Sin.
The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 put an end to this evolution.
All of these reforms, which aimed at elevating a certain deity to the
status of principal god, took their initiative from the king. The reforms
of Josiah did not last, but in this they were no different from the parallel
cases we have cited, so their transiency is no argument against their his-
torical existence.
A HISTORICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE

OF JOSIAH’S “REFORM”
Should we interpret the reforms of Josiah, particularly those concerning

“Assyrian” elements in the religious cult, to be a sign of an anti-Assyrian
policy? We cannot exclude this possibility, but it is equally true that
the changes in the religious cult in Judah at the end of the seventh cen-
tury are simply a sign of the significant decline in Assyrian influence
in Syria and Palestine. The progressive disappearance of the structures
through which Assyria exercised its power and the resulting momen-
tary vacuum created in Syria-Palestine in the final decades of the sev-
enth century make it plausible to assume that Josiah, or rather his ad-
visers, might have undertaken a reorganization of the politics and
religion of Judah.29
In this context we may also assume that there was an attempt to cen-
tralize the religious cult, political power, and the structures of taxation
(the sanctuaries were, after all, also responsible for levying taxes) and
to bring them all under the direct control of Jerusalem. The relative in-
dependence of Judah in about 620 may well have caused some people to
think that Josiah might be the founder of a great independent Judean
kingdom.30 It has often been asserted that he was able to annex the As-
syrian provinces that had been established on territory of the former
kingdom of Israel, but there are few traces of any such annexation.
2 Kings 23:15 mentions the destruction of the sanctuary of Bethel, but
the historical significance of this note is unclear. In any case it would
not necessarily mean that there had been any Judean occupation of the
Samaritan provinces of Samerina, Magidu,31 and Gal’aza.
Nevertheless, it is possible that Josiah and his counselors laid claim

to the title of legitimate heirs of “Israel.” The territory of Benjamin, in
which the sanctuary of Bethel was located, may have been annexed by
Josiah, because in the book of Jeremiah the oracles of Yhwh are often
addressed to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Judah, and Benjamin. An-
other indication that Benjamin had been incorporated into the terri-
tory of the kingdom of Judah is that after the destruction of Jerusalem
the Babylonians established the seat of the provisional government at
Mizpah, a place located in Benjaminite territory.
Even though the reforms of Josiah, or rather of his counselors, were
not lastingly established, they were one of the most historically impor-
tant moments in the evolution of the cult of Yhwh. From that time on,
Yhwh became “one” god (not yet unique, but singular), and Jerusalem
became the only place in which his sacrificial cult could be legitimately
practiced. This new vision of Yhwh also began to manifest itself in an
abundant literature that became the origin of the biblical corpus, and
that was edited by the members of groups who supported Josiah’s reli-
gious changes.
DEUTERONOMY AND THE REFORMS OF JOSIAH
The original version of Deuteronomy was not found during works on

the temple, but rather was written in order to promote the ideas behind
Josiah’s reforms. It opened with the affirmation that can be found in
chapter 6 of the version of the book that has come down to us: Šĕmaʿ
yiśrāʾēl yhwh ʾĕlōhēnû yhwh ʾeḥād. After the call to listen (“Hear O Is-
rael”) the rest of phrase can be translated in different ways: “Yhwh, our
god, Yhwh is unique,” or “Yhwh, our god, Yhwh alone,” or “Yhwh, our
god is the one Yhwh.” The most plausible way to read it is to take this
nominal proposition as being comprised of two distinct assertions:
“Yhwh is our god” and “Yhwh is ONE.” These two assertions are easily
understandable in the context of the reforms of Josiah: Yhwh is the (only)
god of Israel and he is one—that is, there is only the Yhwh of Jerusalem,
but there is no Yhwh of Samaria, Yhwh of Temān, Yhwh of Bethel, and
so on. The claim that Yhwh is “one” corresponds to the fact that there is
only one place where he has a legitimate cult, as Deuteronomy goes on

to explain, notably in chapter 12. The opening of the original version con-
tinued: “(4) Hear, Israel! Yhwh is our god, Yhwh is ONE. (5) You shall
love Yhwh your god with all your heart, with all your being, with all your
strength.”
These verses are clearly connected to the reforms of Josiah. First of
all, the notice in 2 Kings 23:25 that gives a final appreciation of Josiah’s
reign claims that he was the only king who exactly satisfied the prescrip-
tions of Deuteronomy 6:4–5: “There was no king before him who came
back to Yhwh as he did with all his heart, all his being and all his strength.”
“ Y HWH IS ONE” A ND A SS Y RI A N T RE AT IE S
OF VASSALSHIP
The affirmation of the unity of Yhwh is first of all to be understood as a

statement of the unity of the Yahwistic cult. The original version of Deu-
teronomy opposes the plurality of cult places and of manifestations
of the divine by claiming that there is only one unique place to celebrate
the cult of Yhwh. This was the slogan of Josiah’s reforms: Yhwh is One,
that is, there is only one place where his cult is located. Jerusalem be-
came the only Yahwistic sanctuary, in which, from then on, Yhwh was
to be worshipped exclusively. The insistence on the unity of Yhwh is ac-
companied by the requirement of total love for this deity and for him
alone. This commandment does not demand of man a sentimental love
of this god; what it requires is absolute loyalty vis-à-vis the god of Israel.
The language of Deuteronomy 6:5 comes from that of Assyrian trea-
ties of vassalage, which oblige the vassals of the great king “to love” their
sovereign. The closest parallels are with the oath of loyalty that Esar-
haddon required his vassal kings to take in 672 in favor of his son As-
surbanipal:32 “(266) ‘You shall love Assurbanipal . . . king of Assyria,
your lord, as yourself’; (195) ‘You shall hearken to whatever he says and
do whatever he commands, and you shall not seek any other king or
other lord against him.’ ” Deuteronomy largely follows the style and
structure of this treaty, which the author of the book may well have
known.33 The parallels concern warnings against attempts to revolt
and against submitting oneself to other lords (as in Deuteronomy 13), but
also curses, which Deuteronomy 28 takes from the Assyrian treaty and
applies to Yhwh:
Let Ninurta, the first among the gods, strike you down with his
ferocious arrow; Let him fi ll the plain with your blood, let him
nourish the eagle and vulture with your flesh . . . Let all the gods
named in this tablet of treaty make your soil as hard as a brick . . .
Also let not the rain fall from a sky of bronze . . . in place of dew,
let burning charcoal rain down on your land.
We finds the same threats in Deuteronomy 28:34
May the skies above you be of bronze and the earth below you of
iron. Yhwh shall make the rain on your country be of dust and
sand; it will fall until you are destroyed . . . Your dead bodies shall
be food for all the birds of the sky and all the beasts of the earth.
Clearly the author of the first version of Deuteronomy was inspired by

the oath of Esarhaddon. In applying the requirement of absolute loyalty
to Yhwh, however, Deuteronomy makes a “subversive” move: Israel now
has a suzerain, which she should obey absolutely; this, however, is not
the king of Assyria, but Yhwh, the god of Israel.
T HE IDEOLOGY OF CENT R A LIZ AT ION
The summons of Deuteronomy 6:4–5 (the Šĕmaʿ yiśrāʾēl)35 is closely

related to the law about centralization that is formulated in chapter 12.
This important text has clearly been revised several times, but the oldest
version, containing the basic idea behind the centralization of the cult,
occurs in verses 13 to 18.36 To this core passage have been added first of
all verses 8–12, which presuppose the Babylonian exile, and then verses
2–7, which insist on a strict separation from other peoples and seem
to make more sense in the context of the preoccupations of the Per-
sian era.
This chronological sequence (first verses 12–18, then 8–12, finally 2–7)
is confirmed by the evolution of the formula used for the one sanctuary.
Verse 14 speaks of the “place (māqôm) which Yhwh shall choose in one
(ʾeḥād) of your tribes”; verse 11 mentions the “place (māqôm) in which
Yhwh, your god, will chose to make his name dwell (šakkēn),” and in
verse 5 we find mention of “the place (māqôm) that Yhwh, your god,
will choose from among all your tribes to place there his name and
make it to dwell (š-k-n)37 there.” This increasing emphasis on the motif
of the chosen place shows the editors’ intention to insist, after the de-
struction of the temple, on the fact that Yhwh let only his name dwell in
some chosen place, whereas he himself resided in heaven. Let us ana-
lyze the passage containing the oldest commandment about centraliza-
tion that comes from the era of Josiah:
(13) Take care not to offer your holocausts in any place you might
see; (14) it is only at the place chosen by Yhwh in one of the tribes
that you shall offer your holocausts; it is there that you shall do all
that I command. (15) However, you may, as you will, kill animals
and eat meat in all the towns, according to the benediction that
Yhwh your god shall give you. He who is impure and he who is
pure shall eat it as if it were gazelle or deer. (16) Yet you shall not eat
the blood; you shall pour it on the ground like water. (17) You shall
not eat in your towns the tithe of your wheat, of your new wine, or
of your oil, nor the fi rst fruits of your large and small animals,
nor any of your votive offerings, nor your spontaneous gifts nor
your voluntary contributions. (18) It is only before Yhwh your god
that you shall eat these at the place Yhwh shall choose; you shall
eat of these with your son, your daughter, your male servant, and
your female servant and the Levite who is in your towns, you shall
be in joy before Yhwh, your god for all your undertakings.
This prescription first of all contrasts all the many sacred places (kol-
māqôm) with the sanctuary that Yhwh will choose in the territory of
one single tribe. The māqôm intended here can be none other than the
Temple of Jerusalem, and the “one” tribe (the kingdom of) Judah.38 The
same ideology occurs in Psalm 78, where Yhwh refuses to choose Ephraim
(the north), but chooses “the tribe of Judah, the mountain of Zion which
he loves” (v. 68). The author of the law on centralization takes up once
again the tradition of the election of Zion and makes it his own, but he
makes of it an exclusive choice, which prohibits the existence of any
other Yahwistic sanctuary.
However, this passage also, and principally, treats the direct conse-
quences of the proposed centralization. The closure—at any rate, in
theory—of the slaughterhouses in the local sanctuaries now makes it
necessary to give permission for “noncultic butchering.”39 The regula-
tion of this innovation takes up more space than the promulgation of
the project of centralizing the cult. At the same time we might wonder
whether the passage at Deuteronomy 12:13–18 contains the original de-
cree or whether it is a later attempt to deal with the consequences of
the law that centralized sacrifice in Jerusalem and prohibited it else-
where.40 Of course, we cannot exclude the possibility that the original
law was so extensively retouched that it is impossible to reconstruct it.
Nevertheless, it seems reasonable that the decree establishing that there
be only one sanctuary would also have had to regulate the slaughtering
of animals outside Jerusalem.
If it is accepted that the original version of Deuteronomy, written to-
ward the end of the seventh century, contained at least the kernel of the
laws formulated in chapters 12–16, preceded by the Šĕmaʿ yiśrāʾēl in
Deuteronomy 6:4–5, and followed by the benedictions and maledictions
of chapter 28, then we can read the Šĕmaʿ yiśrāʾēl and the beginning of
the law on centralization as a coherent unity.
Hear, Israel, Yhwh is our god, Yhwh is ONE ( ʾeḥād). You shall
love Yhwh your god with all (bĕ-kol) your heart, all (bĕ-kol) your
being, all (bĕ-kol) your strength. Take care not to offer your holo-
causts in any (bĕ-kol) place you see. Only in the place that Yhwh
shall choose in ONE ( ʾeḥād) of your tribes, it is there that you shall
do all (kōl) that I shall command you.
This passage is organized around a shift back and forth between kol
and ʾeḥād. Yhwh is one, and therefore each worshipper must attach
himself to this god with all his person. To this one god there corresponds
the selection of a unique sanctuary in a unique tribe and the rejection

of all the sacred places and, tacitly also, of all the other tribes (which
means the kingdom of the north). This passage is addressed to relatively
well-off people, who possess slaves and who are established on their own
lands. The identity of the speaker is not clear. Is it Moses, Yhwh, the king,
or an anonymous “I”? The Šĕmaʿ yiśrāʾēl in Deuteronomy 6:4–5 is
probably intended as being spoken by Yhwh, but it is not impossible that
in the first version of Deuteronomy, it was the king (Josiah), who was
the imagined speaker. This will have been before the great revision of
Deuteronomy during the period of the exile, when the scroll was trans-
formed into the testament of Moses.
T HE N A RR AT IV E OF T HE CONQUE S T
AND THE LIFE OF MOSES
Other scrolls appeared during the reign of Josiah, such as the narrative
of the conquest of the land, which is now to be found in the first part
(the first twelve chapters) of the book of Joshua. This history takes up
elements and themes of Assyrian propaganda, using its images and
texts.41 Another striking feature of this text, in addition to the parallels
with Assyrian material, is that the detailed narratives relating to the
conquests are all located in the territory of Benjamin. This is probably
to be explained as an attempt to justify the conquest of Benjaminite ter-
ritory by Josiah in the seventh century via a narrative about the origins
of Israel’s conquest of the land and presenting Yhwh’s role during the
conquest in a similar way as the intervention of the Assyrian gods in
favor of their people. In fact Joshua, whose historical existence is in no
way certain, is just Josiah slightly disguised,42 and the fact that he con-
quers all the territories promised by Yhwh shows the superiority of the
god of Israel to the other gods. The use of Assyrian themes and ide-
ology makes the book of Joshua a “counterhistory” in the sense in
which that term has recently come to be used.43
Another history written in the reign of Josiah may be the first ver-
sion of a life of Moses. The narrative of Moses’s birth follows very
closely that of Sargon, as described in texts written during the epoch
of Sargon II.44 So we can conclude that the end of the seventh century

marks the beginning of an important part of biblical literature. Para-
doxically, it is the Assyrians, deeply detested as they are by the bib-
lical authors, who furnish a large part of the material needed to con-
struct this literature and who thus contribute to forging the new
image of Yhwh.
THE END OF JOSIAH AND OF HIS REFORMS
The biblical authors are terse about the end of their favorite king, which
seems to have been rather less than glorious:
During these days the Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, came up to

join the king of Assyria near the river Euphrates. King Josiah
marched out to meet him, but the Pharaoh, as soon as he saw
Josiah, had him killed at Megiddo. When he was dead, his ser-
vants transported him on a cart and took him from Megiddo to
Jerusalem. They buried him in his tomb. (2 Kings 23:29–30)
It is not clear whether Josiah wanted to challenge the Egyptian king,

which is one possibility, given that Megiddo was part of the territory
controlled by Egypt, or whether he had been summoned by Necho, who
thought he was an unreliable vassal. The version found in Chronicles
tries to make sense of events in the following way:
(20) After all this, when Josiah had put the House back in order,
the king of Egypt Necho came up to give battle at Carchemish on
the Euphrates and Josiah went out to meet him. (21) Necho sent
messengers to say to him: “What is there between us, King of
Judah? It is not against you that I have come today but against my
usual enemy. God has told me to make haste. Do not oppose god
who is with me, otherwise he shall destroy you. (22) But Josiah did
not change his mind because he was seeking an occasion to fight
against him. So he did not listen to the words of Necho, inspired by
God, and he went to offer battle in the pass of Megiddo. (23) The
archers shot at King Josiah and he said to his servants: “Take me

away for I am seriously wounded.” (24) The servants took him out
of his war chariot, put him in a second chariot, and took him to
Jerusalem. He died and was buried in the tombs of his fathers and
all Judah and Jerusalem made lament over Josiah. (2 Chron. 35)
According to this version Josiah died because he did not listen to the
words of the pharaoh, Necho, which were inspired by Yhwh. In addi-
tion, he did not die at Megiddo, but in Jerusalem. The death of Josiah
seems also to have been the end of his reforms, at least in the short
term. There is no reference to it in the book of Jeremiah, nor in Ezekiel,
and in fact a sanctuary to Yhwh existed at Elephantine during the Per-
sian period, that is, at a place clearly completely outside Jerusalem. It
is even possible that there was one at Babylon, where the Judean exiles
may have constructed a temple to Yhwh. This is not even to mention
the Yahwist sanctuary at Gerizim.
Nevertheless, the reforms of Josiah mark in a broad sense the begin-
ning of Judaism, because of the theologically central place given to Je-
rusalem in these reforms, the affirmation of the unity of Yhwh, which
is recited in Jewish prayers up to this day, and finally, the monidolatric
idea of the exclusive worship of Yhwh, which can easily mutate into
monotheism.
12
F R O M O N E G O D T O T H E O N LY G O D
THE ORIGINS OF BIBLICAL MONOTHEISM
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE PERSIAN PERIOD
F ROM T HE DE AT H OF JOSI A H
TO THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM
After the death of Josiah in 609, the Babylonians quickly took control
of the Levant, although the Egyptians tried to contest this with them
for a short time. Josiah’s son, Jehoahaz, succeeded him, but Pharaoh
Neco deposed Jehoahaz and replaced him with his brother Eliakim,
whose name he changed to Jehoiakim (609–598), which is a Yahwistic
name meaning “May Yhwh be exalted.” According to the account of the
redactors of the books of Kings, the pharaoh recognized that Yhwh was
the national god of Judah. Jehoiakim quickly became a vassal of Nebu-
chadnezzar II, who in 609 defeated the Egyptian army at Carchemish.
The king of Babylon now controlled Syria-Palestine, but left Jehoiakim
in place, probably because he was keen to ensure some political stability
in Judah. And it seems that at the beginning Jehoiakim was a faithful
vassal to Nebuchadnezzar. But in 601 the Babylonian campaign against
Egypt failed, which may have caused Jehoiakim to try to shift his po-
F R O M O N E G O D T O T H E O N LY G O D 211
litical alignment and seek Egyptian support for greater independence

from Babylon. This was a mistake, because the Babylonians quickly re-
asserted their control and pushed the Egyptians back. The second book
of Kings asserts that “the king of Egypt no longer came out of his country
because the king of Babylon had taken all that had belonged to the king
of Egypt from the torrent of Egypt to the river Euphrates” (2 Kings
24:7). Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem to punish Jehoiakim, but
Jehoiakim died during the siege. He was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin,
who ruled for only three months, surrendered to the Babylonians, and
thus, in 597, avoided the destruction of Jerusalem. Nevertheless the
Babylonians decided to implement a policy of large-scale deportation,
focused particularly on the city of Jerusalem. The king was exiled with
the court elite: high officials, clergy, artisans. This first deportation was
the most important one. The Babylonians installed in power Zedekiah
(Mattaniah),1 another son of Josiah and uncle of the exiled king. Was
he still considered to be a king or merely a governor? The editors of the
book of Ezekiel seem to consider Jehoiachin to have been Judah’s last
legitimate king.
During the reign of Zedekiah, a revolt in Babylon and various other
problems reduced the Babylonian presence in the Levant. There was a
rebellion, most probably encouraged by the Egyptian king Psammeti-
chus II (595–589), in which Zedekiah took part. The book of Jeremiah,
which in chapters 37–43 recounts the last days of Jerusalem, shows that
there was an anti-Babylonian faction at the court, although the prophet
Jeremiah himself preached submission to the Babylonians, which caused
him to be branded a traitor. Zedekiah himself seems to have been un-
decided, but he finally took the part of those who favored revolt. The
Babylonians reacted immediately by destroying the Temple, the city, and
the walls of Jerusalem. This was in 587. Jerusalem was not the only city
to be destroyed. The Babylonians razed several other centers in Judah,
and then organized a second deportation. They established a new ad-
ministrative center in the small town of Mizpah in the territory of Ben-
jamin (which had suffered less destruction than Judah), and installed
Gedaliah, a member of the family of Shaphan, as governor.
The demographic situation in Judah is difficult to evaluate. Oded
Lipschits estimates that as a result of death, deportation, and flight, the
Table 1.
2 Kings 24–25 Jeremiah 52
Number of deportees Number of deportees
597 24:14: 10,000 52:28: 3,023

24:16: 8,000
587 “the rest of the population” 52:29: 832
582 52:30: 745
population decreased from about 100,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, but

Benjamin seems to have been less severely affected.2 We do not know if
the Babylonians gave a specific name to the former kingdom of Judah.
It is clear that part of Judah, especially the south, was invaded by Arab
and Edomite tribes. The governor Gedaliah was assassinated by mem-
bers of the anti-Babylonian party soon after he was installed, and the
Babylonians reacted with a third deportation in 582. The biblical texts
which deal with the final days of Judah—2 Kings 24–25, and Jeremiah
37–44 and 52—are not in agreement about the relative size of the var-
ious waves of deportation.
The numbers at the end of the book of Jeremiah seem to be more exact
than those in 2 Kings 24–25, but they seem quite low and not consistent
with the apparent fall in Judah’s population. One possible explanation
of the difference between 2 Kings and Jeremiah is that Jeremiah gives
figures for the number of heads of households, and if we multiply these
by five or six, we get figures that correspond roughly to those given for
the first deportation in 2 Kings 24.
Although some biblical texts give the impression that the Judah was
completely empty during the period called the “Babylonian exile,”3 life
actually continued in Judah and especially in Benjamin. The impor-
tance of Benjamin and Mizpah at this period may also have led to a
revitalization of some of the traditions associated with Saul, who had
been a Benjaminite; some people may have wished to promote him in-
stead of giving prominence to the continuity of the Davidic line.4 We
know very little about the life of the population that remained in the
country. Babylonian sources tell us nothing, but it is plausible that they
appointed another governor after the assassination of Gedaliah. As far
as biblical texts are concerned, with very few exceptions they report
essentially from the perspective of the exiles in Babylonia, the elite who
considered themselves the “true Israel.” Thus, we find virulent polemics,
especially in the book of Ezekiel, against those who remained in the
land. They are considered to have been rejected by Yhwh, who, according
to the editors of the book, had abandoned his country to go with the
exiles to Babylonia. In contrast to the practice of the Assyrians, the
Babylonians allowed the exiles to remain in groups derived from their
place of origin, and the Judean high officials were probably also used
for administrative tasks. The biblical texts mention several places in-
habited by deported Judeans: Tel-Aviv on the Kebar canal (Ezek. 3:15),
probably in central Babylon not far from Nippur; Tel Melah, Tel Harsha,
Kerub-Addan, Immer (Ezra 2:59); Kasifya (Ezra 8:17). Unfortunately,
these places are otherwise unknown. Flavius Josephus refers to a city
called Nearda5 (which is also mentioned in the Talmud), that is, Tell
Nihar, located on the left bank of the Euphrates, above Sippar, which
was the seat of a famous academy in the third century of the Christian
era. A Babylonian cuneiform tablet from the Moussaïeff collection,
which, if it is genuine,6 would date from the Persian period, contains a
contract for the sale of animals that involved some people with Yahwistic
names. In addition, this contract is said to have been concluded in a city
named “Al-Yahûdû” (“[New] Judea”) in “the 24th year of Darius, king
of Babylon, king of the land.”7 This name corresponds to the name used
in a Babylonian chronicle to designate Jerusalem. So it is a “new Jeru-
salem” founded by Judeans in Babylon. We cannot determine its exact
location, but it does show the economic importance and prosperity of
the Babylonian Golah.8
IDEOLOGIC A L CRISIS A ND T HE LIT ER AT URE OF CRISIS
The events of 597 and 587/586 must have produced a major crisis in the
collective identity of the Judeans. The destruction of Jerusalem and the
movements of population were significant, but it is also true that they
mainly affected the members of the elite, who were deported, rather
than the rural population and the poor, who remained in the country.9
The elites and particularly the royal officials10 had been cut off from
Table 2.
Prophet Priest Mandarin
Situation Marginal Representative of High official

former authorities
Legitimation Personal Tradition High level of formal
knowledge intellectual training
Semantics of Hope for a better Return to mythic Construction of a
crisis future origins history
Reference Utopia Myth “History”
the source of their power. More generally, after the events of 597/587 the
traditional political and ideological pillars of a monarchical state in the
ancient Near East had collapsed. The king had been deported, the Temple
destroyed, and the geographic integrity of Judah was compromised by
the deportations and voluntary emigration. One way of explaining the
situation was that the gods of Babylon were stronger, and had won a vic-
tory over the national god Yhwh, who had clearly been defeated. Another
possible explanation was that Yhwh had abandoned his people.
Different groups in the Judean aristocracy tried to deal with and over-
come the crisis by producing ideologies that endowed the fall of Judah
with theological meaning. We can order these attempts according to a
model proposed by Armin Steil. Steil, who was influenced by Max Weber,
developed his model by analyzing the semantics of crisis in the context
of the French Revolution;11 however, this model is also very helpful for
understanding the reactions to the fall of Jerusalem that we find in the
Hebrew Bible. Steil distinguishes three types of attitude toward a crisis:
that of the prophet, that of the priest, and that of the mandarin. The pro-
phetic attitude consists in declaring the crisis to be the beginning of a
new era. The main proponents of this attitude are members of marginal
groups, who are nevertheless capable of formulating and communicating
their convictions. Conservative representatives of the social structures
that are collapsing are more like to adopt a priestly attitude. For those
who take this posture, the way to overcome the crisis is to return to the
sacred origins of society, given by God, and to ignore the new reality.
The mandarin posture expresses a choice by high officials, who are trying
to understand the new situation and accommodate themselves to it in
THRACIA
GR EEC E
LY D IA
Thermophylae
Sardis C A P PA D O C IA
IO N IA A R M E N IA
C I L IC IA
Trans-
ASSY R IA H Y RC A N IA
Euphrates M E DIA
Sais Gaza PA R T H I A
EGYPT Susa
Memphis
Pasargadae
Tema Persepolis
PERSIA
Extension of the Persian Empire
order to preserve their existing privileges. The “mandarins” try to ob-

jectify the crisis by giving a historical account of it that explains the col-
lapse of the old social structures. These three attitudes are summarized
in table 2.
Instances of all three of these attitudes are clearly visible in the
Hebrew Bible and its interpretations of the destruction of Jerusalem.
These reactions were perhaps put down in writing during the period
called “the exile” (587–539),12 but it is more reasonable to think that they
date from the later Persian period, when socioeconomic conditions had
somewhat stabilized.
In 539 Babylon was taken by Cyrus (559–529), with the support of the
priesthood of Marduk (the principal god of the Babylonian pantheon),
who were dissatisfied with the religious policy of Nabonidus. Cyrus’s
rule was characterized by a certain tolerance vis-à-vis subject popula-
tions, and thus permission was given to exiles to return to their coun-
tries and to restore and practice their local cults. Many of the most
important biblical texts that try to explain the destruction of Jerusalem
and the role of Yhwh in that catastrophe were most likely written by
Judean intellectuals in the Babylonian Golah.
T H E “ D E U T E R O N O M IS T I C H IS T O R Y ”:
T HE PAT H TOWA RD MONOT HEISM
The biblical version of the “mandarin” position toward the crisis is the
Deuteronomistic school. Its members are the descendants of scribes and
other officials of the Judean court—that is, of the very people who sup-
ported or even initiated the reforms of Josiah. This group is obsessed by
the end of the monarchy and the deportation of the elites of Judah, and
it seeks to explain the exile by constructing a history of Yhwh and his
people, from the beginning under Moses up to the destruction of Jeru-
salem and the deportation of the aristocracy. Th is is the story the
Hebrew Bible tells from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings.13
The Deuteronomists reworked the old scrolls dating from the As-
syrian epoch in order to construct a coherent history divided into dif-
ferent periods: Moses, the conquest of the land under Joshua, the period
of Judges, the charismatic leaders in the time before the kingdom, the
rise of the monarchy, the period of two kingdoms, and the history of
Judah from the fall of Samaria to the fall of Jerusalem. The guiding prin-
ciple of this historical reconstruction was that all negative events—the
division of the “united kingdom” into Israel and Judah, the Assyrian
and Babylonian invasions—were the “logical” consequences of the
disobedience of the people and its leaders to the will of Yhwh. The
will of Yhwh is precisely expressed in Deuteronomy, where it is called
the “covenant”14 or the original treaty between Yhwh and Israel. It is
Yhwh himself who set in motion the Babylonian invasion, in order to
punish Judah for its worship of other gods (2 Kings 24:2 and 20).
The Deuteronomists seek to rebut the suggestion that Marduk and
the other Babylonian gods had vanquished Yhwh, and in this way the
“Deuteronomist history” constitutes the first attempt at writing a com-
plete history of Israel and Judah from the origins to their respective
ends.
There are many other instances in antiquity of a connection between
a crisis and the writing of history. Thucydides wrote his History of the
Great War between Sparta and Athens in the fi ft h century, and ad-
dressed it to “those who desire an exact knowledge of the past to help
them interpret the future” (I.22). Similarly, Herodotus composed his
History in order to present the general reasons for the wars with Persia
and the reasons for the individual dramatic events that occurred during
these wars.15 Obviously, the Deuteronomistic history is not a work of
historiography in the modern sense of that term—for instance, in the
sense in which the nineteenth-century historian Leopold von Ranke
claimed that history must to be devoted to finding out “what really hap-
pened.”16 The Deuteronomist history is, nevertheless, a serious attempt
to construct the past so as to explain the present.
Exile and deportation are the global themes of this history, which puts
together various traditions and makes connections between different
periods in order to culminate in the narrative of the end of the mon-
archy, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the loss of the country. All of
these events, according to the Deuteronomists, resulted from the anger
of Yhwh toward his people and their leaders. Judah and Jerusalem had
not been able to resist the Babylonian attack because Yhwh himself had
sent this army to annihilate them.
(2) Thus Yhwh sent against him the troops of the Chaleans, the
troops of the Aramaeans, the troops of the Moabites, and the troops
of the Amorites; he sent them against Judah to make it disappear
according to the word that Yhwh had spoken through the inter-
mediary of his servants, the prophets . . . (20) It is because of the
wrath of Yhwh that this had happened to Jerusalem and Judah; his
anger was great enough to cause him to push them out far from
his presence. (2 Kings 24)
In this passage the authors of the Deuteronomistic history are trying

to show that the fall of Jerusalem in no way means that the Babylonian
gods have defeated the national god of Judah. The events of 597 and 587
can only be explained, they claim, if one assumes that the wrath of
Yhwh was the real agent in bringing about the collapse of the kingdom.
But if Yhwh did use as his instruments the king of Babylon and his gods,
this means that he was in control of them; they were no more than his
tools. This idea prepares the way for the “monotheistic” statements in
the parts of the Deuteronomistic history that were revised and retouched
last of all, in the middle of the Persian period.
Many texts of Deuteronomy demand that their readers or listeners

“not run after other gods.” The perspective presented in these texts is
clearly one of monolatry, exclusive worship of one god: it is in no way
denied that other gods exist, but Israelites were simply prohibited
from following them. The expression “following them” probably re-
fers to participation in processions, during the course of which the
statues of these gods were exhibited. In the very latest texts added to
the Deuteronomistic history during the Persian era, there is by con-
trast an insistence that Yhwh is the only god, and that no others exist
apart from or beside him: “Recognize it today and reflect on it: it is
Yhwh who is god, on high in heaven and down on earth, there is no
other” (Deut. 4:39).
But if Yhwh is not only the tutelary deity of Israel, but also the only
“true god” in the universe, as is claimed in Deuteronomy 4, what about
his privileged relation with Israel? The Deuteronomists find the answer
in the idea of election. Yhwh has chosen Israel as his special people from
among all the nations. In the late monotheistic texts found in Deuter-
onomy, the affirmation that Yhwh created the heavens and the earth is
often linked with the assertion that he had chosen Israel.17
(14) Yes, the heavens and the heavens beyond the heavens, the
earth and all that is found there belong to Yhwh, your god. (15)
Yhwh attached himself to your fathers alone to love them, and
after them to their descendants, that is, to you, whom he has
chosen among all the people as one can see today. (16) So cir-
cumcise your heart 18 and do not stiffen your neck. (17) For it is
Yhwh, your god, who is the god of gods and lord of lords, the
great god, powerful and redoubtable, impartial and incorrupt-
ible. (Deut. 10)
Thus for the Deuteronomists Yhwh is certainly the god who reigns
over all the nations, but he also entertains a special relation with
Israel. This is a truly ingenious way of maintaining the old idea of Yhwh
as the national or tutelary god while also affi rming that he is the only
true god.
THE MONOTHEISM OF DEUTERO-ISAIAH
The most highly developed set of monotheistic speculations in the

Hebrew Bible is to be found in the second part of the book of Isaiah
(chapters 40–55), which is often called “Deutero-Isaiah.” It is a collection
of anonymous oracles that was revised over and over again during a
period of at least two centuries.19 The kernel of the text we now have is a
piece of propaganda celebrating the arrival in Babylon of the Persian
king Cyrus the Great (II) in 539. This kernel takes its inspiration from
the “Cyrus cylinder” on which the Persian king has himself celebrated
(by the priests of Marduk) as having been chosen by Marduk to govern
the nations and restore peace.20 Just as the Cyrus cylinder says that
Marduk took Cyrus by the hand, one can read in Isaiah 45:3, “I hold
Cyrus by his right hand.” Just as Marduk “names” Cyrus, so Yhwh calls
him by his name. The cylinder asserts that Marduk “subjected to his feet
the land of Guti and the troops of the Medes”; Isaiah 45:1 states that Yhwh
chose Cyrus “to abase all nations before him.” According to the text on
the cylinder, Marduk “makes Cyrus appear unceasingly with justice and
righteousness”; Yhwh says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd” (Isa. 44:28).
The text on the cylinder asserts that Marduk goes always at Cyrus’s side,
whereas Yhwh promises to Cyrus, “I myself shall walk in front of you”
(Isa. 45:2). The cylinder emphasizes that Cyrus sent back all the exiled
peoples: “I assembled all the people and I sent them back,” which cor-
responds to the speech of Yhwh in Isaiah 45:13 about the Persian king:
“He shall send back all those of my people who were deported to their
native places.” The author of this text exhibits a very robust universalism
in presenting Cyrus as the Messiah of Yhwh, despite taking his inspira-
tion from the propaganda of the Persian king, which was itself a re-
working of the Assyro-Babylonian royal ideology.
Other texts from the corpus of Deutero-Isaiah go even further by
proposing a “theoretical demonstration” of monotheism; this is virtu-
ally the only place in the Hebrew Bible where such a thing can be found.
In the first chapters of the collection, the peoples and their gods are
summoned to present themselves before Yhwh so that they can come to
realize that there is no god other than he: “So that they might recognize
that from the rising of the sun to its setting, apart from me there is:
nothing! It is me, Yhwh. There is no other” (Isa. 46:6). All other gods
are nothing but chimeras, “wood for the fi re” (Isa. 44:15). The author
mocks the sale of statues of the gods, the only use of which is to enrich
the artisans who made them: “Those who make idols are all nullities,
the figures they spend so much time on are of no use . . . Who has ever
fashioned a god in the absence of profit?” (Isa. 44:9–10). This demonstra-
tion of the uniqueness of Yhwh, whom texts in Deutero-Isaiah often
identify with El,21 is presented as a kind of theological revolution. The
manifestation of Yhwh as the only god of all the peoples of the earth
and of the entire universe amounts to a new revelation:
(14) Thus speaks Yhwh, he who paid your ransom, the Holy One of
Israel: “Because of you I am launching an expedition against Bab-
ylon, I shall cause them all to flee as fugitives, yes, the Chaldeans
on those boats where their shouts of acclamation resounded. (15)
I am Yhwh, your Holy One, he who created Israel, your king.”
(16) Thus speaks Yhwh, he who made a way in the middle of the
sea, a path in the center of the unchained waters, (17) he who mo-
bilized chariots and horses, troops and assault teams all together,
caused them all to fall over never to rise again, snuffed out like a
wick and extinguished: (18) “Do not recall any more the first
events, do not cling to the memory of things done in the past.
(19) I shall make something new that is already breaking into bud;
do you not recognize it? Yes I shall make a way through the
middle of the desert, paths through the barren places: (20) the
wild beasts shall give me glory, the jackals and ostriches, because
I shall procure water in the desert, rivers in the barren places to
provide drink for my people, my elect (21), a people whom I have
formed for myself and who will give me praise.” (Isaiah 43)
The exhortation not to remember the first events may be read as a

criticism of the Deuteronomistic obsession with the destruction of Jeru-
salem and the exile.22 For the author of this passage, that page has been
turned, and Yhwh will manifest his power by putting in place a “new
Exodus” and bringing (through the actions of Cyrus) the deported
people back out of Babylon.23 The monotheism of Deutero-Isaiah insists
that the unique god cultivates a special relation with Israel. In this, many
texts of Deutero-Isaiah come close to the Deuteronomists. Deutero-
Isaiah, however, or at any rate the view expressed in Isaiah 40–55, tries
also to resolve two major problems to which the assertion of a unique
god gives rise: the question of the “feminine” aspects of the divine and
the question of the origin of evil.
IS T HE F E MININE TO BE INT EGR AT ED INTO

MONOT HEIST IC DISCOURSE OR E XCLUDED?
The emergence of monotheism is accompanied by the disappearance

of the goddess, whom the partisans of the reforms of Josiah had in any
case wanted to ban from the official cult in Jerusalem. A vision of the
prophet Zacharias (Zech. 5:5–11) may give us a glimpse of the process by
which the goddess was evicted from the cult.24 The prophet sees a
woman named rišʿāh (impiety),25 who is enclosed in a barrel and taken
outside the country by two winged women. They take her to Babylon,
where she will have a sanctuary and where she will be immobilized on
a pedestal. This vision looks like a metaphor of the eviction of the cult
of the goddess from Judah; henceforth she shall have a place only among
the pagan peoples.26
Still, this disappearance of the goddess poses a problem about how
to deal with the feminine in this “new” monotheistic religion, which was
eventually to become Judaism. Yhwh became the only god, a transcen-
dent god, yet he was to keep his specifically male titles, such as “lord”
“king,” “master,” and so forth. It is no accident that one finds, in Deutero-
Isaiah passages that express with the greatest clarity the monotheist
idea, the greatest number of feminine images applied to Yhwh. This is
how Yhwh responds, through the mouth of his prophet, to the expressed
fear that he had forgot his people: “Does a woman forget her baby? To
show tenderness to the son of her belly? Even if these women do forget,
I shall not forget you” (Isa. 49:15). The attitude of Yhwh toward his people
is compared here to the love of a mother for her children. Also in verses
2 and 24 of chapter 44 and in verse 3 of chapter 46, Yhwh is presented as
having formed Israel at his maternal breast. The metaphor of giving birth
is also present in Isaiah 42.14. Here the exile of the Judeans is explained
by the fact that Yhwh has remained inactive, but this period is over and
he will now act: “Like a woman in labor I shall breathe, breathe in and
breathe out at the same time.” The return of the exiled community to
its own country is assimilated to a new birth, and Yhwh is the goddess-
mother who creates something new in the travails of childbirth. To be
sure, in the preceding verse (13) this same Yhwh arises like a warrior who
smites his enemies, so here we have a clear transition from a male war-
rior god to a maternal god who gives birth to her people. There is a com-
parable passage in a poem inserted into Deuteronomy 32. This poem
was written by a poet who was a contemporary to the collection called
Deutero-Isaiah and in it Yhwh appears, first of all, as a father: “Is he not
your father, who has given life to you?” (v. 6). But then later we find this
accusation: “You have forgot the god who brought you into the world”27
(v. 18), so Yhwh appears simultaneously as father and mother of Israel.
We can also observe this integration of female traits into Yhwh in the
final chapters of the book of Hosea, which was reworked and re-edited
at about the end of the sixth century or early in the fi ft h.28 Chapter 11 of
the book assimilates Ishtar and Yhwh.29 In verses 3–4 Yhwh clearly ap-
pears as a nourishing mother: (3) “It is I who have taught Ephraim to
walk, taking him in my arms, but they have not realized that I was taking
care of him (4) . . . For them I was like those who lift a baby up to their
cheek and I gave him sustenance.” It is Yhwh who taught Ephraim (i.e.,
Israel) to walk, who lifts him up like a baby against his cheek, protects
and nourishes him. In verse 9 of chapter 14 Yhwh is compared to a fer-
tile tree (“I am, myself, like a cypress, always green and it is from me
that your fruit proceeds”), but the fertile tree is the symbol of the god-
dess Asherah. The beginning of this verse is perhaps corrupt, although
whether by accident or because it was intentionally tampered with, is
not clear. Julius Wellhausen thought that the passage would have begun
originally with this affirmation by Yhwh: “I am myself his ‘Anat’ and
his ‘Asherah.’ ”30 If this conjecture is correct, we would have here another
instance of the attempt to integrate the functions of goddesses into Yhwh
himself.
The priestly document, which we shall soon discuss, begins with a nar-
rative of God’s creation of the world, of animals, and of humans. When
God decides to create the human being, he says he wishes to create him
in his “image.” The execution of this decision is recounted as follows:
“God created man in his image, he created him in the image of god. He
created them male and female” (Genesis 1:27). The fact that “man” in the
image of god is male and female may refer to the tradition of the divine
couple (Yhwh and Asherah), transposed to the human couple, or it may
express the idea that god himself contains within himself male and fe-
male functions.31
Another way of compensating for the disappearance of the goddess
is the personification of the concept of wisdom (ḥokmāh), which begins
to be observable at the end of the Persian era and becomes pronounced
in the Hellenistic period.32 In Proverbs 8, Wisdom herself speaks, pre-
senting herself as a goddess who was at the side of Yhwh even before
the creation of the world:
(22) Yhwh engendered me, first fruit of his activity, prelude to his
ancient works. (23) I have been consecrated from the beginning of
time, from the origins, from the first times of the earth. (24) When
the abysses did not yet exist, I had been born . . . (30) I was always
at his side, the object of his delectation each day, playing in his pres-
ence all the time, (31) playing in his earthly universe; and I find
my pleasures among men.
Wisdom appears here as a daughter of Yhwh, begotten by him to ac-

company him during the creation of the universe; to some extent she is
a mediatrix between Yhwh and men. So the goddess did not completely
disappear, she just came back in other forms.33
MONOTHEISM AND THE QUESTION OF EVIL
In polytheistic systems, where what happens in the universe depends

on the action of a multitude of divinities, the existence of evil and of suf-
fering can be attributed to particular malevolent gods or demons. Human
beings have to appease or defend themselves against these gods, and
they can do that in a number of ways, for instance by the use of amulets.
Polytheistic views admit that the gods are unpredictable and that their
actions toward humans may well be harmful, even though humans
have not been in any way at fault in their relations with them. However,
as soon as one admits the existence of only one god, the question of the
origin and reason for evil arises in a very pointed way, and biblical texts
give different responses to this question.
Some texts claim that evil and suffering are divine punishments of
those who have committed reprehensible acts, but others question this
theology of retribution. Thus, in the book of Job the author shows that
Job, contrary to what his friends say, does not merit the fate that befalls
him. However, the author never does give a real answer to the question
about the origin of the evil Yhwh inflicts on Job.34 In addition, the nar-
rative of the creation that opens the book of Genesis suggests that
darkness, chaos, and the abyss—symbols of evil or of primordial chaos—
are not created by god but “tamed” by him, because he is able to inte-
grate them into his creation. These texts concede a certain autonomy to
evil, without, however, developing a dualist system of theology.
One passage in Deutero-Isaiah, in contrast, proposes a radical solu-
tion in that it affirms that it was Yhwh himself who created evil:35
It is me Yhwh, there is no other, apart from me no one is god. I

have put the belt around you36 though you do not know me, so
that it may be recognized, from the rising of the sun to its setting:
apart from me there is nothing! I am Yhwh, there is no other, I
form the light and I create the darknesses, I make the good (šālôm)37
and the evil (raʿ), I, Yhwh, I do all that. (Isa. 45:5–7).
This text is practically the only one in the whole of the Hebrew Bible38
to affi rm explicitly that God not only created šālôm, the harmonious
order, but also its contrary, evil or chaos. Deutero-Isaiah is the collec-
tion of texts that approaches most closely to what Steil calls the prophetic
attitude to a crisis. The author of this text insists that all powers, even
destructive ones, originated in Yhwh and are under his control. Because
there is only one god and nothing apart from him (v. 5), nothing can
escape God. However, in the overarching context created by the writ-
ings in the Bible, an assertion like this remained marginal.
T HE MO NOT HEISM O F T HE P R IE S T LY M IL IEU
The model proposed by Steil distinguishes a third category of reaction

to a crisis, that of the “priest.” This attitude does in fact correspond very
well to that exhibited in what is traditionally called the “priestly docu-
ment” in the Bible. This priestly work includes texts that today are part of
the Pentateuch, that is, sections found in Genesis, Exodus, and the first
part of Leviticus. These texts were drawn up by a group of priests or
persons very close to priestly circles either in Babylon or Jerusalem at
the beginning of the Persian era.
For the members of these priestly circles the only thing that really
counted was the time of origins (the origin of the world, the time of
the Patriarchs and Moses). In contrast to the Deuteronomistic history,
the priestly writings show no interest in the history of the monarchy
or the loss of the country. The priestly authors treat everything as es-
tablished since the origins of the world and humankind: the prohibi-
tion on consumption of blood (a rule established after the Flood), cir-
cumcision (a ritual imposed on Abraham), and Passover (established
at the moment of the departure from Egypt). The same is true of the
various ritual and sacrificial laws: all was revealed to the people in the
desert through the mediation of Moses. The first edition of this priestly
text, which was later augmented, probably concluded with the account
of the ritual of Yom Kippur (“Day of Atonement”), which is now to be
found in Leviticus 16.39 In this account, great emphasis is placed on the
need for the high priest to purify the sanctuary and the community
regularly. In contrast to Deuteronomistic conceptions, which insist
on a strict separation between the people of Yhwh and other peoples,
the members of these priestly circles put forward an inclusive mono-
theism, which tries to define the place and role of Israel and of Yhwh
among all the peoples and their respective gods. To this end, the priests
used a theory of the divine names to develop a system of “three circles”
or three stages of the revelation of Yhwh.40
In the priestly narratives of the origins of the world and of humanity
and also in the story of the Flood, Yhwh reveals himself to all human-
kind as ʾĕlōhîm. This term can be translated as “(a) god,” “(the) gods,” or
“God.” Probably the members of this priestly milieu were the first to
use the term ʾĕlōhîm in the sense of “(the one, unique) God.”41 One can
see this very clearly in the story of creation in the first chapter of Gen-
esis. Because the name ʾĕlōhîm is at the same time both a singular and a
plural, in a sense all gods can be seen as manifestations of the one God.
For the members of these priestly circles, this means that all people who
worship a creator god are actually, without knowing it, worshipping the
god who will manifest himself later to Israel under the name of Yhwh.
According to the priestly document, Yhwh revealed himself to the Pa-
triarchs and their descendants as “El Shadday”; by using this name, the
authors of the “priestly writings” claim that the god who revealed him-
self to Abraham was also the one known to Ishmael, the first son of
Abraham and the ancestor of the Ishmaelites. In referring to “El Shadday,”
the priestly editors make use of a name that they knew was archaic,
but that at the time was still used for a god venerated in Arabia.42
To Moses alone, and then through him to Israel, God reveals himself
under his name “Yhwh.” This is the sole privilege of Israel, which is
thereby put in a position to worship this god properly. However, Israel
is not permitted to derive an inappropriate “profit” from this knowledge,
so during the second part of the Persian era, a prohibition is gradually
elaborated on pronouncing the name of Yhwh.
This priestly construction also implies that the immediate neighbors
of Israel who stand in a relation of kinship to “Israel” via Abraham and
Jacob—that is the Arab tribes (through Ishmael), the Moabites, the
Ammonites (through Lot), and the Edomites (through Esau)—are closer
to Israel with respect to kinship, language, and customs than nations
living farther off.43
The priestly narrative views all the most significant cultural and ritual
institutions as having been given to the Patriarchs and Israel before the
political organization of the tribes. This means that there is no need of
a country or a king in order to worship Yhwh in an appropriate way.
This uncoupling of the cult of Yhwh from political institutions and from
a connection with a particular country prepares the way for the idea of
a separation between the domains of religion and of politics.
The institutions whose origins the priestly narrative is concerned to
describe are thought to be differentially binding on different human
groups. The prohibition of blood after the Flood should apply, according
to the priests, to all humanity under the authority of “Elohim”; circum-

cision should apply to (and was in fact practiced by) all the descendants
of Abraham who worship “El Shadday”; finally Passover, the sacrificial
rituals and the alimentary prescriptions, as well as Yom Kippur, are the
specific rites by which Israel organizes its cult worship of the one and
only god, who revealed himself to Moses under his name “Yhwh.”
Thus at the beginning of the Persian period we see the elaboration of
a number of ways of redefining the worship of Yhwh as the one and only
god, while continuing to affirm his special relation to Israel. We shall
now turn to the question of possible Persian influences on this redefini-
tion of the god Yhwh.
PERSIAN INFLUENCES ON BIBLICAL MONOTHEISM
It is very difficult to form a clear idea of the religious system adopted by

the Achaemenid kings.44 Added to that, there is a problem in dating
Zoroaster, and in discovering where he lived and what his original “mes-
sage” was. The oldest manuscript of the Avesta, the sacred book of
Mazdeism and of the Zoroastrianism that succeeded it, dates from the
thirteenth century ad, and the difficulties surrounding the composition
of this text recall in several respects the difficulties confronting inter-
preters of the Hebrew Bible. At present it seems unlikely that there was
a corpus of Mazdean writings at the time of the Achaemenids, although
most scholars seem confident that we can trace the Gathas (the sayings
of Zoroaster) back to the beginning of the first millennium. However,
even if we adopt the views of the “minimalists” who accept the tradi-
tional view that Zoroaster lived 258 years before Alexander, this would
not cast any doubt on the existence of some kind of Mazdeism during
the Achaemenid period. Mazdeism is clearly attested as part of the of-
ficial royal religion since the time of Darius (521–486), who in the famous
inscription in Behistun legitimizes his royal standing by reference to the
will and support of Ahura-Mazda. In the inscription of Elvend he calls
Ahura-Mazda “the great god, who created this earth, who created yonder
heaven, who created men, who created happiness for man.” In addition
to Ahura-Mazda, though, this inscription also mentions “all the other
gods who exist.” It also seems that the Persian overlords permitted the
subjects in their empire to worship local gods. One might well wonder
whether a constellation like this should be called “monotheism,” unless
of course it is simply assumed that the Mazdeism of the Persians was a
kind of syncretistic or inclusive monotheism in which a variety of other
gods were taken to be merely local manifestations of Ahura-Mazda.
On the other hand, the authors of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah
put great emphasis on the strong and positive connection between the
Persian Empire and the eponymous protagonists of these two books: the
governor Nehemiah, and the scribe and priest Ezra. The text calls Nehe-
miah a royal official at Susa, capital of the Achaemenid Empire, and a
royal cupbearer, which was a post with high social status.45 Ezra was a
scribe and priest in Babylon, and was recognized in that capacity by royal
authority. Chapter 7 of the book of Ezra narrates how he went to Jeru-
salem to proclaim there a law that was at the same time the law of “the
God of heavens” (v. 12) and the “law of the king” (v. 26). It makes little
difference in this context whether these two personages historically ex-
isted or were fictions;46 they symbolize in one way or another the idea
of a close collaboration between the Judean and Persian authorities. In
any case, no text in the Hebrew Bible takes an openly critical position
toward the Achaemenid overlord. In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah,
the Persian kings appear as instruments of Yhwh, enlightened sover-
eigns who permitted and favored the restoration of the Yahwistic cult
at Jerusalem. So we can say that the proto-Judaism of the Persian period
accepted the idea of a translatio imperii (as it would be called in the
Middle Ages), interpreting it in favor of the Achaemenid kings.47
The question of a direct influence of Mazdeism on early Judaism is
difficult to resolve. On the one hand, it is true that in many psalms of
the Persian period Yhwh appears enthroned in the midst of a heavenly
assembly and overshadowing all other gods, who are reduced to the
status of “angels” or “saints” (Pss. 89:6 and 103:20). The retention of the
old pantheon can be explained, at least in part, as resulting from Per-
sian influence in two dimensions. First, Yhwh is envisaged here after the
image of the Persian king, who is in fact the only true king, because he
dominates all the kings of other peoples.48 In addition, however, Yhwh
also corresponds to Ahura-Mazda, at least to the Ahura-Mazda who is
worshipped after the Zoroastrian reforms, because each of them is imag-

ined as the only true god, who is established and holds sway at the
summit of the traditional pantheon.
It is also now unanimously recognized that the figure of Satan as a
member of the celestial court is not attested in biblical texts until the Per-
sian period. He appears for the first time in the prologue to Job, where Yhwh
is shown enthroned in the sky surrounded by his ministers. Among these
ministers is a “śātān,” an “adversary,”49 who is a bit like the secret agents
of Persian kings. The figure of śātān is inserted here in the prologue in
order to remove from Yhwh the suspicion of having been responsible for
all the disasters inflicted on Job for no apparent reason.50
The same tendency to make evil an independent power is visible in
the way an old narrative from 2 Samuel is rewritten in the books of
Chronicles.51 The story starts when David undertakes a census that in-
curs divine punishment, and ends with his discovery of the place where
the future temple will be built.52 The older version of the narrative in
2 Samuel 24 opens as follows: “The wrath of Yhwh was inflamed once
again against the Israelites and he excited David against them.” So here
it is Yhwh himself who initiates the action as a result of which thousands
of people will die, because David will be punished by a plague that de-
scends on Israel. In 1 Chronicles 21, the same story is told as follows:
“Satan stood up against Israel and he incited David to take a census of
Israel.” It is difficult to tell whether Satan is conceived of here as a kind
of negative counterpart to Yhwh, standing over against him, or whether
he is a kind of hypostasis of the divine wrath. The insistence on Satan
as a protagonist, as an agent of evil, nevertheless introduces a dualism
in which evil could come to appear to be almost as powerful as God,
the creator of good. The appearance of Satan on the scene might be in-
fluenced by the form of Persian dualism we find in the confrontation of
Ahura-Mazda and Angra-Mainyu (Ahriman). In the texts of the Hebrew
Bible, this dualism is not developed, but it does come more and more to
the surface in certain currents of Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman
periods,53 and it is not impossible that there might be a strong Iranian
influence in some of the more apocalyptic of these sects.54
It is also possible to detect other Persian influences in the Judaism that
develops starting in the sixth and fift h centuries. This might be the way
to interpret a text such as the book of Malachi, which views Yhwh as if

he were the Persian Great King: “ ‘For from the East to the West great is
my name among the nations. In any locality a sacrifice of incense is made
to my name, and a pure offering, for great is my name among the na-
tions,’ says Yhwh of the Armies” (Malachi 1:11). Yhwh is the universal
god to whom all people present offerings. The replacement of animal
sacrifices by the sacrifice of incense might also be a result of Persian
influences, because Mazdeism is characterized by a distinct preference
for vegetable sacrifices over bloody sacrifices.55
In summary, it is highly likely that there were some Persian influences
on the elaboration of Yahwist monotheism in early Judaism, although
this influence is not as easily demonstrable as some scholars have claimed.
RESISTANCE TO MONOTHEISM
In the Hellenistic period monotheism becomes more and more the dis-
tinctive marker that gives Judaism its identity. This monotheistic reli-
gion begins to fascinate Greek and Roman intellectuals, and also has an
attraction for some members of the aristocracy of the Roman Empire.
Nevertheless, the monotheist conception did not fully impose itself im-
mediately. The most obvious example of deviation from monotheism
within a Judean community comes from the colony of Elephantine on
an island in the Nile in the south of Egypt, vis-à-vis Syene. Documents
from this community show that in addition to worship of Yhwh, they
also worshipped a goddess called A ̒ nat. Thus an oath sworn about the
sale of a donkey that was owned jointly by two individuals and then sold
by one of them reads: “Oath [of] Menahem, son of Shallum . . . which
he swore to Meshullam, son of Nathan by Yahu the God, by the temple
and by ʿAnat-Yahu.”56 Pierre Grelot holds that A ̒ nat, a goddess known
at Ugarit as a parhedros of Baal, is identical to the goddess A̒ tti, who
also appears in the documents from Elephantine, and he identifies both
of them with the “Queen of the Heavens.”57
A divine triad appears in one list of cultic payments: “The money
which arrived today into the hands of Yedonyah, son of Gamaryah, in
the month of Pamenhotep:58 a sum of 31 kars,59 8 sicles. Of this, 12 kars,
̒ nat-Bêt-ʾēl.” 60 We
6 sicles for Yahô, 7 kars for Ašim-Bêt-ʾēl, 12 kars for A
can conclude from this that the Jewish colony worshipped Yahô
(Yhwh) and Bêt-ʾēl, who is probably a god of the Aramaeans of Syene.
These two form a triad with the goddess A ̒ nat, who was Yahô’s parhe-
dros, with Ašim-Bêt-ʾēl apparently being their son.
Despite the fact that this form of worship of Yhwh was not exactly
orthodox, the leaders of this community kept up contact by letter with
the authorities in Jerusalem and Samaria, who seem to have reached an
accommodation with this economically well-off community. When the
Jewish temple at Elephantine was destroyed by the Egyptian priesthood
with the collaboration of the Persian satrap, the leaders of the commu-
nity wrote—in 407—to the Persian governor of the province of Yehud
(Judea), asking permission to rebuild their sanctuary.61 The documen-
tation about this community breaks off about 399.62 The evidence we
have, though, shows that even at the end of the fift h century it was pos-
sible to practice a sacrificial cult of Yhwh outside Jerusalem, and to wor-
ship Yhwh together with other gods.
So polytheism did not disappear that easily. As Pierre Gibert reminds
us, “monotheism is very difficult to understand,”63 and even the word it-
self reflects modern conceptions. The Hebrew Bible does not use the
term “monotheism” or its opposite, “polytheism.” The first writer to use
the word “polytheism” was Philo of Alexandria, when in the first century
he contrasted the dóxa polutheï ́a of the Greeks with the message of the
Bible.64 The term “monotheism” seems in fact to be a neologism coined in
the seventeenth century. The deists speak of “monotheism” as a way of
referring to their universal religion of humanity; Thomas More and
others then apply this to Christianity in order to distinguish it from other
beliefs systems that were current in antiquity, and to defend it against the
Jewish criticism that Christianity does not respect the commandment of
the exclusivity of God.65 Whereas the deists used the concept of mono-
theism in an inclusive sense, partisans of the revealed religions attributed
to it the function of excluding other beliefs—monotheistic faith was sup-
posed to allow one to distinguish the biblical religions from others.
So there have been two ways of construing monotheism from the very
beginning: an exclusionist reading and an inclusivist reading. We can
find both of these tendencies in the discussion of Yhwh. As we have seen,
the Deuteronomistic school developed a segregationist theory, whereas

the priestly authors preached an inclusive monotheism.
A MONOTHEISM BEFORE THE BIBLE?
Was there any kind of monotheism before the Bible? The Mesopotamian
religions produced huge epics, which greatly influenced the authors of
the texts collected in the Bible. Th is shows that the boundaries be-
tween monotheism and polytheism are porous. The epic of Gilgamesh,
the stories of the creation and of the Flood, all served as models for the
authors of the biblical texts, who took over these narratives and rein-
terpreted them from the point of view of monotheism.
To take merely one example, in the Mesopotamian stories about the
flood, which were very widely disseminated from the Sumerian period
(third millennium) onward, we find that the roles in the narrative are
split up: the “wicked” gods decide to exterminate humanity, but a “good”
god, a friend of men, warns his chosen one of the catastrophe to come,
allowing humankind to survive. In Genesis, Yhwh, the god of Israel who
then eventually became the one god, assumes both of the two roles: he
decides to destroy all humanity, but also to save Noah and his family.
So the one god must also integrate into himself these dark, incompre-
hensible aspects of divinity. Th is is, to be sure, not something that is
completely alien to Assyrian and Babylonian polytheisms. In these tra-
ditions, too, there are texts in which an individual laments the fact that
he has been abandoned by his tutelary god or is even being set upon by
him in a way that prefigures the book of Job.66
Despite the fact that Mesopotamian culture is marked by a very highly
elaborated form of polytheism, we can nevertheless find some tenden-
cies in the direction of a “henotheistic” view, that is, a special attach-
ment to one god that does not imply a denial of the existence of others.
Nebuchadnezzar I (1125–1104) wanted to make the god Marduk, who was
in the first instance the tutelary god of the city of Babylon, the central
god in the Babylonian pantheon. Nabonidus (556–539) tried to make
the sun god Sin the principal god of the Babylonian Empire. Then, of
course, there is the reform of the religious cult undertaken by Pharaoh
Akhenaton (Amenhophis IV, 1353–1337), who is often represented as the

first monotheist. The origins and motives of the monotheistic revolu-
tion of Amenhopis IV are only partially understood. In the sixth year
of his reign this pharaoh abandoned Thebes and founded a new capital,
Akhetaton (Tell El-Amarna), devoted to the exclusive worship of Aton,
the disk of the sun. The king set in motion a great iconoclastic move-
ment, which had as its immediate goal the complete eradication of
any trace of the god Amon, the god of Thebes and principal deity of the
Egyptian pantheon up to that time. Other gods, however, were also tar-
geted. The hymn to Aton67 shows a sort of cosmic monotheism that
prefigures the deism of certain representatives of the enlightenment:
Aton-the-light is the one and only god who “created millions of forms
(the rays of the sun) while remaining a unity.” The new religion was
strongly marked by the royal ideology: Akhenaton was the son of Aton,
the only one who had proper knowledge of the god. Other texts and im-
ages give the impression that the royal couple sometimes formed a divine
trinity with Aton, like that which existed in some traditional pantheons.
There have been those who have tried to locate the origins of biblical
monotheism in the revolution of Akhenaton, although we know Akhena-
ton’s reforms were quickly undone by his successors. Those who have
pursued this line of thought have generally done so by making Moses
the disciple of the iconoclast pharaoh or even by claiming that the two
were really one and the same person. However, biblical monotheism
manifests itself in a completely different way from that of Akhenaton.
First of all, it has its origin about 800 years later, and it is impossible to
trace any chronological line of contact from it back to the earlier Egyp-
tian form of monotheism. Second, Yahwistic monotheism has no roots
in a royal ideology, but is instead a reaction to the disappearance of king-
ship and the collapse of the traditional national religion. So there is re-
ally no genealogical relation between the two forms of monotheism. The
noted Egyptologist Jan Assmann makes it very clear that there is no
causal connection between the monotheist revolution of Akhenaton and
Yahwist monotheism.68
There were, however, some “memory traces” of the monotheism of
Akhenaton, and these may have influenced the authors of the biblical
books when they set about redacting their foundational history of the
departure from Egypt and the revelation on Mount Sinai. The asso-
ciation of the figures of Moses and Akhenaton probably goes back to
Manethon, a Hellenized Egyptian priest who wrote during the third
century ad. Manethon discusses a priest named Osarsiph, who became
the leader of a community of lepers condemned to forced labor. This
Osarsiph he claims, gave his community laws that were the exact op-
posite of all traditional Egyptian practices: in particular, he is supposed
to have prohibited the worship of the gods. Manethon ends his narra-
tive by stating that this leader of a band of unclean laborers “changed
his name and took the name of Moses.”69 Osarsiph seems, then, to be a
caricature of Akhenaton, which shows that the trauma Akhenaton in-
flicted on traditional Egypt was having effects even a thousand years
after his death. The vision of Manetho, that Moses was an Egyptian
misunderstood by his countrymen, prepares the way for a conception
that can count Sigmund Freud among its best-known adherents.70
The Hebrew Bible, in the form in which we have it today, presents
itself in all three of its parts as a “monotheistic document,” but the
authors and editors of the various texts of which it is composed also
retained traces of polytheism—for instance, in Job and in numerous
psalms, where Yhwh appears surrounded by his heavenly court. Thus,
there is at least a partial integration of the polytheist heritage into the
Bible’s monotheistic discourse. The authors of the New Testament and
also those of the Koran were going to be confronted with the same
problem, namely how to deal with plurality within the framework set
out by the confession of a single, unique god. Biblical monotheism, there-
fore, is not really a closed philosophical doctrine—it is pluralist, and
invites the readers of its texts to reflect on the difficult relation between
unity and diversity.
THE GENESIS OF THE TOR AH AND THE ESTABLISHMENT

OF JUDAISM AS A “RELIGION OF THE BOOK”
The tiny province of Yehud could not be expected to be of much interest

to the Persians, so our information about this region comes mostly from
biblical sources that express the ideology of the Judean elite during the
Persian era.71 If we accept the accounts given in the books of Chroni-

cles and Ezra, immediately after his victory over Babylon in 539 king
Cyrus promulgated a decree authorizing Judean exiles to return to
Judea and encouraging them to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. This
is certainly an ideological construction72 that is intended to show how
concerned the Persians were with the well-being of the exiled Judean
community. The construct was not a complete invention, though, be-
cause it was based on the established fact that the fi rst Persian kings
did claim to have restored local cults and resettled the exiles in their
former homes. Even if these claims were part of royal propaganda, it is
clear that the religious policies of the Persians were different from those
of their predecessors. One might even speculate that Persian syncre-
tism allowed them easily to identify local deities as manifestations of
Ahura-Mazda.
After Judea’s integration into the Babylonian Empire, the seat of pro-
vincial government of the former kingdom was at Mizpah. We do not
know when or why Jerusalem was, then, once again made the capital of
the province (medina) of Yehud,73 but it is clear that the reconstruction
of the temple and the other construction projects undertaken in Jeru-
salem under Nehemiah are an indication of the growing importance of
the city during the first Persian period. One of the first governors (peḥāh)
of Yehud seems to have been Zorobabel, a descendant of the royal lin-
eage of David, who had been deported. He was appointed by the Per-
sians, who may have thought that his royal pedigree would be likely to
persuade the indigenous populations to collaborate with him. It is pos-
sible that his arrival in Jerusalem generated some hopes of a possible res-
toration of the Davidic monarchy.74 There may even have been some
desultory attempts at realizing this hope, but there is no trace of any se-
rious anti-Persian revolt, as has sometimes been claimed.75 The very
sudden disappearance of Zorobabel from the Biblical texts suggests,
though, that the Persians quickly deposed him again to neutralize any
messianic expectations. Some of the following governors are epigraphi-
cally known, but it is unclear whether they were all Judeans, or whether
some of them were Persians.76 The real power in domestic affairs, in any
case, seems to have lain with the priestly and lay elites centered around
the Temple of Jerusalem.
Lod
Bethel
Beth-Gilgal
Mizpah
Gezer Gibeon
Jericho
Jerusalem
Netofa
Lachish (Ramat Rachel)
Azekah
Keila
Beersheba
A.
0 5 10 km
Lod
Bethel
Mizpah
Gezer Gibeon
Jericho
Jerusalem
Netofa
(Ramat Rachel)
Azekah
Keila
Beersheba
B.
0 5 10 km
Two reconstructions of the extension of the province of Yehud: (A) following E. Stern,

(B) following L. Grabbe
We have no precise information about the boundaries or the popula-

tion of Yehud in the Persian period. The number given for returned
exiles in Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 9, namely 42,000, is clearly unrealistic.
In the first part of the Persian era, there were fewer inhabitants than
that in all of Yehud.77 There is now a heated debate about the popula-
tion of Jerusalem during the Persian period with minimal estimates
ranging from 200 to 300 persons, but others claiming figures as high as
1,000.78 It is possible that Jerusalem at the time was no more than the
temple itself and the site of Ramat Rahel, which had already been im-
portant in the Assyrian and Babylonian periods, was where the Persian
administration was located.
As we have already remarked, the members of the Babylonian Golah
were in no hurry to return to Jerusalem. The Babylonian archives of the
Murashu family contain a large number of Jewish names, and the exis-
tence of the recently discovered “City of the Judeans” (Al-Yāhūdu) near
Nippur79 also indicates the importance of the Babylonian Jewish dias-
pora in the Persian period. The Jews who returned from Babylon may
even have been encouraged to do so by the Persians, and in any case they
maintained close relations with them. The economic and ideological
power, though, clearly lay in the hands of this Golah, who had returned
to the country and controlled the restored city of Jerusalem.
It is also important, however, not to forget the province of Samaria,
even though the biblical writings make little reference to it, and, when
they do mention it, are highly negative. Archaeological excavations
strongly suggest that there was a Yahwistic temple at Gerizim from the
fift h century on.80 This means that at the time at which the Pentateuch
was promulgated, there actually were two sanctuaries dedicated to
Yhwh: Jerusalem and Gerizim. The Samaritans must have contributed
more to the promulgation of the Pentateuch than the biblical authors
admit. Future research will no doubt bring us greater clarity about what
this means. It is clear, though, that although the Pentateuch is very firmly
wedded to the idea that there is one and only one sanctuary (Deuter-
onomy 12), it never actually mentions Jerusalem by name. Genesis make
an allusion to Jerusalem, particularly in chapter 14, when Abraham
encounters the mysterious king and priest of Salem, but at the end of
Deuteronomy it is Mount Gerizim that appears as the site of sacrifice.81
So the Pentateuch, which was accepted by both Jews and Samaritans as

a foundational document, allows for two different localizations of the
single unitary sanctuary. Some kind of compromise must, therefore,
have been reached, not only between the various currents of Judaism,
but also between Jews and Samaritans.
It was probably between 400 and 350 that the priestly writings, the
book of Deuteronomy, and other traditions such as the story of Joseph
(Gen. 37–40), were put together to form the Pentateuch, the Torah. At
the beginning the prophetic scrolls and the histories from the conquest
to the Babylonian exile (that is, the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and
Kings) were excluded, and that seems to have been the result of two fac-
tors. First, the religious and lay elite were highly suspicious of the
prophets and their messages, because some of them announced events
such as the restoration of the Davidic dynasty, which were unacceptable
both to the rulers of the temple and to the Persians. Second, for the Sa-
maritans the books of Samuel and Kings were unacceptable, because
they asserted that the true sanctuary of Yhwh was at Jerusalem.
The Pentateuch closes in Deuteronomy 34, with the death of Moses,
who never did enter the promised land. He thereby became a symbol
for Jews in the diaspora, and his life could be seen as implying that it
did not matter much whether or not one lived in a foreign land, pro-
vided that one had showed oneself faithful to the divine command-
ments passed down by Moses. This is another peculiarity of Judaism
in the early stages of its development. In the ancient Near East, it was
the kings who received from their tutelary divinities laws that they were
to teach their peoples, as can clearly be seen on the stele containing the
law of Hammurabi, which shows the Babylonian sovereign in front of
the god Shamah, who is giving him his laws. But in the Hebrew Bible, no
king ever receives a law; this function has been transferred to Moses.
Another way of defining Judaism, then, is as a religion that has no need
of royal, that is, state, legislation. The Pentateuch puts itself in the place
of political institutions, but also in the place of a country, so that it be-
comes, in the famous words of the poet Heinrich Heine, a “portable
fatherland,” which allows Jews to worship Yhwh by observing the laws
to be found in the Torah and which can be read anywhere where there
are synagogues.
The book of Ezra attributes the promulgation of the Pentateuch to the

scribe and priest Ezra, who came to Jerusalem with a letter of accredita-
tion from the king of Persia and with the task of enforcing the “law
of the god of the heavens” and the law of the king (Ezra 7). Peter Frei
has proposed that the Persian administration had itself authorized and
commanded the different populations of the empire to edit their religious
traditions and submit them for approval to the Achaemenid rulers.82 But
this theory rests on a fragile evidentiary base;83 none of the examples
cited by Frei can be directly compared with the Torah, because they are
all brief documents and are often concerned only with details of local
cults. The formulation of the Torah is, in the first instance, an internal
phenomenon concerning Judeans and Samaritans, with some strong
implications for the Golah. Members of the Golah could recognize
themselves in the figure of Ezra and derive a sense of legitimacy from
the picture he painted of Persian benevolence toward the promulga-
tion of the Pentateuch.
With the Torah, Judaism became definitively a mobile religion suit-
able for the diaspora. Yhwh no longer needed a temple, but he never-
theless retained a special relation with his people insofar as they lived
according to the prescriptions of the Torah.
Y H W H A S E XCL USI V E A N D U N I TA R Y, I N V ISI B L E ,

T R A NSCENDENT, A ND UNIVERSA L GOD
We have defended the view that there was a statue of Yhwh in the first
Temple of Jerusalem, and that Josiah’s reforms were in no way incom-
patible with the continued existence of this statue. The original com-
mandment, which was eventually integrated into the Decalogue as “you
shall have no other gods before me,” was directed primarily at the pres-
ence of statues of other gods facing the statue of Yhwh. When the temple
began to be rebuilt at the start of the Persian period, the construction of
a (new) statue of Yhwh was doubtless discussed. A text from the collec-
tion called “Deutero-Isaiah” that announces the return of Yhwh from
Babylon states: “The voice of your watchmen! They raise their voices,
together they shout out an acclamation, for with their very own eyes
they see Yhwh in the process of returning to Zion” (Isa. 52:8). The most
obvious way to interpret this is that it imagines the arrival of a statue of
Yhwh in Jerusalem. But the option that prevailed was not to refashion a
statue of Yhwh. The preeminent importance of the Torah, in fact, made
a statue pointless. For this reason the author of Deuteronomy 4 insists
that the people did not see any “form” or shape or representation when
Yhwh revealed himself to Israel: “(15) Take good care: You did not see
any form (těmûnāh) on the day when Yhwh spoke to you at Horeb in the
midst of fire. (16) Do not corrupt yourselves by making a graven image
(pesel) a form representing anything whatever (tĕmûnat kol-sāmel tabnît).”
This passage can in fact be read as a programmatic statement opposing
the fashioning of a statue of Yhwh during the Persian period.84
Aniconism became a fascinating mark of Jewish identity in the Hel-
lenistic and Roman contexts. When Pompey entered the Temple of Je-
rusalem in 63, he discovered to his stupefaction that it was empty,85 a
thing that seemed inconceivable.86 Another decision, which underlined
the transcendence of Yhwh, was that taken by Judaism in about the
fourth century no longer to pronounce the name of Yhwh, but instead,
as we saw in Chapter 1, to substitute “the Lord” or “the Name.” This de-
cision, which must have been taken before the translation of the Penta-
teuch into Greek, is also a result of the new monotheistic creed: because
a proper name serves to distinguish one person or god from another,
the one and only God does not need a proper name; on the contrary,
even giving him one would be a concession to polytheism.
The translation of the Pentateuch into Greek definitively made Yhwh
a universal god. The so-called Letter of Aristeas states that the transla-
tion was completed by 72 scholars in Alexandria about 270 in the reign
of Ptolemy II. This is the origin of the name “Septuagint,” which is given
to the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek, and then, by extension,
to all translations into Greek of other parts of the Hebrew Bible. The 72
scholars are said to have worked independently of each other, but to
have produced the same text. This story is clearly a fiction—we know
that the different books of the Pentateuch were not all translated in a
single continuous process and that they were not all translated by the
same translators. Nevertheless, it is plausible that the work of transla-
tion started in the third century. With this translation, Yhwh, or rather
kúrios and théos, came to be known to the Greek world and became,
once and for all, the universal god. His cult expanded throughout
the Mediterranean basin as Jews settled in various places and built
synagogues. He also fascinated and attracted many non-Jews. Thus
Yhwh became a god who transcended the Semitic context, although
Judaism continued—and continues to this day—to affirm its special
link with him.
CONCLUSION
Our inquiry has covered the origins of Yhwh, his adoption as

the god of Israel, his rise as the tutelary god of the kingdoms of Israel
and Judah, his transformation into a single god under Josiah, and then
his evolution into the unique and exclusive god after the collapse of the
Davidic kingdom and the geographic explosion of the “people of Yhwh.”
The story has covered roughly a millennium, from the end of the
thirteenth century until the Hellenistic period. We concluded our inves-
tigation with the translation of the Torah into Greek in the third cen-
tury, and this development marks the conquest of the Western world by
Yhwh, a god who from then on would be called kúrios, “Lord.” We
could, of course, continue the story through the following centuries,
but our aim here is simply to describe the invention of monotheism.
Judaism, then, was constructed in its different currents and sensibilities
on this monotheistic foundation, as were, later, Christianity and Islam.
By way of a conclusion, let us sketch the historical evolution of Judaism
up to the Roman period.
In about 200 Palestine passed into the control of the Seleucids, al-
though at that time Rome was already beginning to extend its power
over the whole of the Mediterranean. Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who was
de facto already a vassal of Rome and was supported by a part of the
CONCLUSION 243
Jewish aristocracy, undertook the Hellenization of Jerusalem. In 167

he tried to transform Jerusalem into a Greek polis by force, and at-
tempted to rededicate the temples of Yhwh in Jerusalem and Samaria
to different manifestations of Zeus, whom he would surely have tried
to identify with Yhwh. Some years later he entered the Temple of Jeru-
salem, in an attempt, it seems, to acquire the money he needed for his
tribute to Rome. These turmoils gave rise to an apocalyptic literature,
though very few traces of it are preserved in the Hebrew Bible. The
best example is the book of Daniel, which depicts an epoch in crisis
under Antiochus IV. The book was redacted in 164, just before the
death of Antiochus.
The “apocalypse,” a word that means “revelation,” was a literary genre
with its roots in the prophetic movement but also in the wisdom litera-
ture of the Near East. Using a pseudonym,1 the author of an apocalyptic
work tried to instruct his readers about events that would come before
the end of time. These events were interpreted as signs of a victory of
God against the forces of evil. In the book of Daniel, the end corresponds
to a judgment on all humanity, as a consequence of which the just who
had not been rewarded during their lifetimes would come back to life.
This is the first clear attestation of the idea that God will make the dead
come back to life. The god of Israel appears in Daniel 7 as the “Ancient
One,” seated on a throne with wheels,2 and accompanied by another
heavenly figure called the “Son of Man.” The Son of Man receives from
the Ancient One sovereignty over all the earth. Th is configuration is
strikingly similar to that of the couple El and Baal at Ugarit, where El is
also described as an ancient who leaves his son Baal to take care of the
affairs of the world. The figure of the “Son of Man” will play an impor-
tant role later in messianic expectations where the expression comes to
mean the messiah, the ideal king who is to come. In apocalyptic lit-
erature Yhwh is not alone in heaven: The book of Daniel mentions
Michael, commander of the army of Yhwh and called “prince of the
first rank,” which means, presumably that he is to be counted as one of
the archangels. Speculation about a heaven populated with all kinds of
angels is highly developed in the first book of Henoch.3 This book was
not finally accepted into the canon, but the older parts of it are prob-
ably contemporary with or even earlier4 than the period during which
the book of Daniel was redacted. The part of Henoch called “The Book
of the Watchers” contains the oldest extant list of the seven archangels.5
Like the book of Daniel, the book of Henoch describes a judgment to
come, but this judgment is not only one in which God intervenes, but
also one in which all kinds of celestial entities participate. The idea of a
final battle between the good God and his army against the forces of evil
and darkness was a constitutive element of the belief system of the com-
munity at Qumran. One of the writings from this community, called
the “war scroll,” describes the combat between the “sons of light” and
the “sons of darkness.” The same scenario will be found again in the New
Testament, notably in the Apocalypse of John, which describes the battle
between the heavenly army against Satan (in Greek, diabolos: the devil)
and his army. This battle will end with a new creation.6 This dualistic
vision, which has it that God must confront the forces of evil, ends with
a description of the battle to come, in which the divine army is victo-
rious over the armies of darkness. This is a conception shared by the
authors of the book of Daniel, who come from the same milieu as the
Maccabees. The Maccabees were Jewish militants who engaged in armed
struggle against Hellenization: in 162 they succeeded in taking the city
of Jerusalem and purifying the temples, which in their view had been
defiled by Antiochus IV and the Hellenistic party. As a religious move-
ment, the Maccabees represent an attempt to return to a non-Hellenized
Judaism, an attempt that quickly showed itself to be doomed to failure.
The dynasty of the Hasmoneans, which arose from the Maccabees, even-
tually adopted precisely the Hellenistic culture and ideology that the
Maccabees had originally attacked. Under this dynasty there was a
Jewish state that, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (103–76), had
about the same geographic extent as the territory the biblical narratives
attributed to David or Solomon. The independence of the state of the
Hasmoneans, though, was only relative. Their kingdom was tolerated by
the Romans because they provided a counterweight against the Seleu-
cids. This tolerance ended in 63 when Pompey took Jerusalem, entered
the temple, and discovered that it was empty. The Hasmoneans were re-
placed by the Herodians, Hellenized Idumeans (inhabitants the region
of Edom) who had converted to Judaism and were supported by Rome.
Herod the Great enlarged the Temple of Jerusalem between 27 and 20,
CONCLUSION 245
but was detested by the Jews because of his Idumean origins and his sub-
mission to the Romans. The historian Flavius Josephus claims that on
the threshold of the Christian era Judaism was divided into four ideo-
logical currents, reflecting four very different general religious views. The
Sadducees,7 a priestly elite linked to the temple at Jerusalem, were fairly
open to Greek influences, but they defended the Torah, the Pentateuch,
as the only authority in matters of religious practice, and thus refused
to accept such new doctrines as the resurrection of the dead. They also
held a doctrine of retribution, according to which every man was re-
warded or punished for his actions during his life on earth. This group
was therefore in conflict with the Pharisees,8 a group fundamentally op-
posed to the Hellenization of Judaism. In contrast to the Sadducees,
whose religiosity was centered on the temple, the Pharisees focused on
the study of the Torah and its application to everyday life.9 The Essenes,10
who were at first allied to the Pharisees, were originally religious frater-
nities, of which Qumran is the best-known example. They followed very
strict rules, rejected the sacrificial cult of the Temple of Jerusalem, had
their own calendar, and awaited the coming of one, or perhaps two, mes-
siahs and the end of the world. It is usually assumed that this sect dis-
appeared after the destruction of the temple in ad 70, but it is possible
that certain groups continued to exist during the second and third centu-
ries ad.11 The Zealots12 were an armed resistance movement against the
Romans. Flavius Josephus counts them as a “fourth sect” and states that
they were very close to the Pharisees:
Except that those who profess [Zelotism] hold that it is only god
alone whom one should recognize as lord and king. They have such
an indomitable passion for liberty that provided they do not have
to give to any man the name of lord and master, they are indifferent
to most extraordinary kinds of death and the most atrocious tor-
tures which they suffer themselves or which they inflict on those
persons whom they do not approve.13
This group, which is at the origin of the revolt against the Romans, pur-
sued a theocratic idea and did not recognize any earthly power apart
from the divine government. Thus they can be seen to prefigure other
radical or fanatic movements, which appear throughout the history of

the three great monotheistic religions. The revolt in ad 70 finally led to
the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. However, in contrast to the
situation following the destruction of the first temple in 587, there al-
ready existed an institution that could replace it, namely the synagogues,
which then became once and for all the places in which Judaism found
its identity.
A final revolt, that of the proclaimed messiah Bar Khokba from 132–
135, resulted in another defeat. The Jews, driven out of Jerusalem, had
now definitively become a minority group within Judea, and settled all
around the Mediterranean basin. The Sadducee, Essene, and Zealot ten-
dencies disappeared or became tiny minorities. Pharisaic Judaism be-
came dominant and then turned into “rabbinical” Judaism. The word
“rabbi” means master or teacher. In order to define the identity of this
form of Judaism and also as a reaction against incipient Christianity,
the Pharisees decided, during the second century ad, to define exactly
what the sacred books of Judaism were, and it is in this period that we
find the origin of the Tripartite Bible, which is composed of Pentateuch
(Torah), Prophets (Neviʾim), and Writings (Ketuvim). It is important,
however, to remember that for Judaism, in contrast to what is the case
for Christianity, these three parts do not have equal authority. The Pen-
tateuch constitutes the central part, and it must be read in its entirety
during religious ser vices in the synagogue, whereas the Prophets and
Writings are considered to be complementary to the Torah.
For Judaism, then, God reveals himself primarily through the 613
commandments of the Torah as transmitted to the people through the
intermediacy of Moses. Therefore it is primarily the observance of these
divine commandments and the search for their true meaning that char-
acterize Judaism and its God, whose name is not pronounced, but
whose interaction with Israel is commemorated through reading of the
Pentateuch. And it is precisely the Pentateuch that had retained the
memory traces of a god who at the beginning was completely different
from the transcendent, one-and-only god now professed by the mono-
theist religions.
The goal of this inquiry was to trace the path of the god Yhwh, a desert
war god who became the one unique God of the monotheistic religions.
Let us summarize the most important results of our analysis, while em-
CONCLUSION 247
phasizing their fallible character. The very fact that the biblical god
originally had a proper name, Yahu, Yaho, or Yahweh, indicates that he
was not originally understood to be the one-and-only God, but merely
one god among others who were worshipped by various peoples in the
Near East.
The narratives in Exodus suggest that this god had not always been
the god of a group called “Israel.” The name of this group itself contains
the divine name “El,” not “Yhwh.” The two narratives about the vocation
of Moses show that he did not know the name of the god who was to
become the god of Israel. Various biblical texts suggest that Yhwh
came from the south; he comes “from Seir,” “from Edom,” or “from Mount
Paran.” Two texts even seem to identify Yhwh with Mount Sinai, al-
though we cannot say exactly where the authors of these texts14 would
have located this mountain. That Yhwh was identified with a mountain
might perhaps also be reflected in the following fact: Egyptian texts of
the last third of the second millennium mention Shasu nomads; some
of them are described using an Egyptian word, which probably corre-
sponds to the name “Yhwh” and probably also designates a mountain.
This would be, then, the oldest attestation of the name of the god who
was to become the god of Israel.
The “foreign” origin of Yhwh is also indicated by the fact that, ac-
cording to Exodus 3, he manifests himself to Moses while Moses is so-
journing in the land of Midian in the ser vice of his father-in-law, who
is a priest. This suggests that Yhwh was worshipped first in Midian and
probably also in Edom. The inquiry has also turned up some pieces of
evidence that Yhwh was first the tutelary deity of the Edomites before
becoming the god of Israel. In addition, the cult of a “southern” Yhwh
existed at least until the eighth century, as is shown by the graffiti from
Kuntillet Arjud that mention a certain Yhwh of Temān or Yhwh of the
south.15 The late arrival of Yhwh in the territory of Israel is also indicated
by the fact that there are practically no Yahwistic names to be found for
places in Canaan. The divine names that one does find there as part of
place-names are those of other deities: Carmel (“vineyard of El”), Baal-
hazor (“village of Baal”), Anatot (derived from the name of the goddess
Anat), Jericho (recalling the name of a moon god), and many others.
Yhwh may have come to the territory of Israel with a nomadic group
who worshipped him, before he came into contact with the federation
of tribes called Israel. We have no clear attestations of this encounter out-

side the Bible. The poetic text of Deuteronomy 33:5, “He became king in
Yeshurun16 when all the chiefs of the people were assembled, the tribes
of Israel,” may perhaps refer to the adoption of Yhwh by Israel. This,
however, might also be the case for the conclusion of an alliance be-
tween Yhwh and “his people,” which is related in Exodus 24. Although
the text in its present form was put into writing very much later, it is not
impossible that it does reflect that initial encounter.
Apparently there is a connection between Yhwh and the establish-
ment of the Israelite monarchy. The stories of the books of Samuel at-
tribute the victory of Saul over the Philistines to the intervention of
Yhwh. The warlike character of Yhwh, who was also a god of storms,
makes him a particularly appropriate god to exercise the function of pro-
tector of the first king of Israel. It is also highly likely, though, that Saul
worshipped other gods too, because one of his sons bears the name Ish-
baal, “man of Baal”; unless, of course, “Baal,” which originally means
“master” or “lord,” is understood here as one of Yhwh’s titles. When
David took Jerusalem, Yhwh came with him in an ark, a chest in which
Yhwh was present beside the army of his people. This once again shows
the military character of Yhwh, as does his title Ṣĕḇāʾôt (“Yhwh of the
armies”).
Oddly enough, David, who is presented by the biblical authors as the
founder of the Davidic dynasty chosen by Yhwh, did not construct a
temple for his tutelary god. The narrative found in the books of Samuel
states that he transported the ark to Jerusalem, but that it was Solomon
who built the temple there. Careful analysis of the narrative of the
building of the temple in 1 Kings 6–8, and particularly a comparison of
the Masoretic text with the Greek, strongly suggests that this was not
really a new construction, but instead the renovation of an existing sanc-
tuary. The Greek text of the dedication of the temple even suggests that
Yhwh was not originally the only god worshipped there. He perhaps
shared the site with a sun god, Shamash, whose function he gradually
took over.
In order to arrive at a proper understanding of the process by which
Yhwh came to be ascendant during the first centuries of the first mil-
lennium, we must invert the presentation made by the biblical authors
CONCLUSION 249
and read it against the grain. The authors impose on the history of Is-
rael and Judah a Judean, southern perspective, which held that the only
legitimate sanctuary of Yhwh ought to be the Temple of Jerusalem. This
study, however, has shown the importance of Yhwh in the kingdom of
the north, as witnessed by the stele of the Moabite king Mesha, which
proves the existence of sanctuaries dedicated to Yhwh in the Moabite
territories annexed by Israel. There were several Yahwist sanctuaries
in Israel: the most important was Bethel, to which must be added the
temple in the capital Samaria, and also one in Dan, although that one
may have existed only in the eighth century. In the north, Yhwh was
worshipped primarily as a “baal,” a storm god. Omri and his successors
seem to have preferred a Phoenician baal (Melqart?) to the baal Yhwh,
and this provoked a Yahwistic putsch carried out by Jehu, who then very
quickly became a vassal of the Assyrians. In the kingdom of Israel, the
worship of Yhwh was marked by Phoenician and Aramaean influences,
whereas in the south it was instead Egyptian motifs and concepts that
made themselves felt. The polemics against the “calf of Samaria” con-
tained in the book of Hosea show that in Samaria Yhwh was represented
in bovine form. But Yhwh was also “the god who led us out of Egypt.”
1 Kings 12 asserts that it was Jeroboam I who had these boviform statues
made, but it is possible that this is a retrojection of an initiative by
Jeroboam II, during whose reign in the eighth century Israel experi-
enced several decades of prosperity.
The stories about the patriarch Jacob, who changed his name to “Is-
rael” (Gen. 32), and his “discovery” of the sanctuary of Bethel (Gen. 28)
show the transformation of a tradition about Jacob into a national Isra-
elite tradition. This text also expresses the claim that the sanctuary at
Bethel now belongs to Yhwh. Most likely in the north, Yhwh later took
on traits of Baal-Shamem, “Baal of the Heavens,” who was well known
in Syria and Phoenicia. This was in the first instance a title for the storm
god, but it eventually became the name of an autonomous deity. It is pos-
sible that in the north the baal Yhwh also took over some traits that
were, in Ugarit for instance, attributes of El. The tendency of Yhwh to
take over the functions of other gods did not produce monidolatry in
the north. We know this because when the Assyrians in 772 deported a
part of the population, they also, by their own assertion, deported “the
gods in which they had put their trust,” which shows that there was a
diversity of gods in Samaria. The Bible gives no information at all about
the history of the former kingdom of Israel during the following centu-
ries, but we know that the cult of Yhwh continued, because archaeology
has revealed a temple of Yhwh on Mount Gerizim that existed in the
fift h or fourth century.
In the kingdom of Judah there also was a series of other sanctuaries
outside Jerusalem, notably at Lachish, at Arad, and also at various “high
places.” These were open-air sanctuaries, more modest than the great
ones and no doubt well distributed throughout the countryside, and
they responded to the needs of smaller population centers. In the books
of Kings, the sanctuaries of Lachish and Arad are not mentioned and
the high places are condemned, even though these were sanctuaries
where Yhwh was worshipped, together, we can assume, with other
gods. The vision of the editors of the Bible presupposes the idea, devel-
oped at the end of the seventh century, of a centralization of the cult
and of political power in Jerusalem. Before this period the worship of
Yhwh was like that of the tutelary gods of neighboring peoples to the
east and north.
Although it would have been anathema to the editors of the Bible, and
also is anathema to certain theologians, Yhwh had a parhedros, the
goddess Asherah, who was also called the “Queen of Heaven.” It is also
likely that there was a statue of Yhwh in the Temple of Jerusalem, per-
haps of a Yhwh seated on a throne of cherubim, like El at Ugarit. Th is is
the configuration that underlies the vision of the prophet Isaiah and the
description of the throne of Yhwh in the first chapter of Ezekiel. The ex-
istence of a statue of Yhwh is also confirmed by the prohibitions con-
tained in texts from the Persian period, because what would be the point
of prohibiting something that had never existed? In the “high places,”
and also perhaps in the sanctuary of Arad, Yhwh and Asherah were wor-
shipped in the form of standing stones, or perhaps a stele and a stylized
tree symbolizing the goddess. During the ninth and eighth centuries
Yhwh defi nitively became the head of the pantheon, taking over the
functions of the other gods, such as the sun god, who is also the divine
judge. There are in fact psalms that transfer the characteristics and func-
tions of the sun god to him. Yhwh was first considered to be a son of
CONCLUSION 251
El,17 but then he took over the functions of the head of the Canaanite
pantheon, becoming, like El, the divine creator of heaven and earth. The
evolution of the Yhwh of Judea, that is, of Jerusalem, in the direction of
becoming the most important god worshipped by the Judeans was ac-
celerated by the fall of Samaria in 722.
The defeat of the big brother in the north caused the clergy and the
high officials in Jerusalem to begin to think that the “true” Yhwh was
the Yhwh of Jerusalem, and the abortive siege of the city by the Assyr-
ians in 701 reinforced the conviction that Yhwh would defend Zion,
his mountain at Jerusalem, forever. Although Hezekiah’s anti-Assyrian
policies caused the Assyrians to annex significant parts of the kingdom
of Judah and deport part of its population, this defeat was transformed
by the authors of the Bible into a victory. The events of 701 are the or-
igin of the idea of an indissoluble link between Yhwh and Jerusalem.
This was reinforced by the reform of Josiah about 620. After the fall of
Samaria, Jerusalem grew significantly and became a real city. The poli-
cies of centralization pursued by King Josiah and his advisors made the
temple in Jerusalem the only legitimate sanctuary, which required them
to authorize the practice of non-cult-related slaughter of animals for
consumption, on the condition that appropriate taxes were paid to the
temple. When Assyrian power grew weaker, the king and his advisors
took advantage of this situation to clear the temple of statues and
symbols that reflected Assyrian religious practices. The slogan of the
reforms of King Josiah was “Yhwh is ONE,” which is clearly stated in
Deuteronomy 6:4, and this functioned as a kind of preamble in the
original edition of the book. This slogan means that there is only one
Yhwh—the Yhwh of Jerusalem. It seems that attempts were also made
to eradicate the popular cult of the “Queen of the Heavens,” the god-
dess Asherah. Later when Jerusalem was destroyed, certain Judeans
took the catastrophe to be a manifestation of the wrath of that goddess,
whom they had been forced to stop worshipping.
Behind Josiah’s reforms we can see the desire to establish a mono-
latric cult. Attempts like this are also known in other parts of the Near
East: the existence of other gods would not be denied, but cult worship
would be given to only one god. Although Josiah’s reforms were not an
immediate success, they represent a crucial moment in the career of the
god Yhwh, and together with the idea of the centrality of Jerusalem and
the exclusive worship of Yhwh, they constitute one of the foundations
on which Judaism was later to be constructed. Recall, too, that under
Josiah something like literary activity in the proper sense fi rst arises,
with the first editions of the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Samuel, and
Kings, the history of Moses, and other texts.
The event that was decisive in turning Yhwh, the one god, into Yhwh,
the unique God, was the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 and the geo-
graphic dispersion of the Judeans—first between Palestine, Babylon, and
Egypt, but then also to the rest of Asia Minor and eventually to the whole
Mediterranean basin. The absence of a king, of a functioning temple, and
of an autonomous country made it impossible to worship Yhwh as a na-
tional god or as the tutelary god of a royal family. As the second part of
the book of Isaiah states, many Judeans had come to believe that the
“arm of Yhwh” was very short,18 and that it therefore made sense to look
for some other gods to worship. It is, paradoxically, in this situation of
crisis that various groups, comprising former members of the clergy and
high officials of the court, conceived different explanatory models to help
them deal with the crisis, and to invent a new way of understanding the
relation between Yhwh and Israel.
The work of the Deuteronomists forms an enormous historical
fresco comprising the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Samuel, and
Kings. The aim of this history is to show that the destruction of Jeru-
salem and the exile were not the result of Yhwh’s weakness, but instead
were the work of Yhwh himself, who was at the origin of the catas-
trophe: he used the Babylonians to punish his people and his kings,
because they had not respected the divine commandments, which had
been entrusted to them in Deuteronomy. If Yhwh can make use of the
Babylonians, that means he can control them; therefore, he is more
powerful than the gods of Babylon. This is the prelude to the monotheist
idea, which can be found in Isaiah 40–55. This part of the book of Isaiah
insists on the claim that Yhwh, identified with El, is the only true god
and that statues of other gods are nothing but chimaeras made by the
hands of man.
In contrast to Deuteronomistic forms of thought, the priestly writing,
devoted to describing the period of the origins, defend an inclusive
CONCLUSION 253
monotheism, affi rming that all peoples worship the same god, even
without knowing his real identity. Only Israel knows the true identity
of this god, and this made of Israel a people apart. The monotheistic
idea does pose the question of the particular relation that might exist
between the one-and-only god and a single people, and this relation is
explicated in various biblical texts, especially in Deuteronomy, by refer-
ence to the notion of election. Yhwh chose Israel among all the peoples
and made of her “his own special portion.” Polemic against the statues
and images of other gods could be expected to lead to the invention of
an aniconic cult of Yhwh and thus to the absence of a statue in the re-
built Temple of Jerusalem. Beside the Temple the synagogues developed,
probably during the Persian period, where the cult of Yhwh was based
not on the clergy and bloody sacrifices, but on a reading of the Torah.
The first version of this Torah, the Pentateuch, was edited and began to
circulate during the Persian period about 400–350. It put together
priestly writings, a portion of the Deuteronomistic texts, and some
others, and its coherence lay in the fact that it contained all the divine
commandments transmitted to the people by Moses at Mount Sinai.
That meant that knowing the will of Yhwh no longer required there to
be a king or a country (the Pentateuch stops before the conquest of the
country).
In a certain sense incipient Judaism invented the separation of po-
litical power and religious practice and also the distinction between re-
ligious practice and a specific territory, allowing Judaism to function as
the religion of a diaspora. The transformation of Yhwh into the unique
god was effected by the refusal of Judaism to call him by his name, and
especially by the translation of the Torah into Greek. This is what per-
mitted the whole world, seen from the Greco-Roman perspective, to dis-
cover and eventually turn toward him.
NOTES
introduction
1. The plural is used here to indicate that the Christian Bibles differ among them-
selves: The Catholic Old Testament is different from the Old Testament of
Protestants, and the different Orthodox Churches include in their Old Testa-
ment various further books, different ones depending on the regional variant
of Orthodoxy in question.
2. Th is confessionally neutral term will be used in place of “Old Testament,”
which derives from Christian usage and presupposes a conception of the
Hebrew Bible as the first part of the Christian Bible.
3. “Traces of memory” (Gedächtnisspuren) is an expression frequently used by the
German Egyptologist Jan Assmann, who has shown great interest in the ori-
gins of biblical monotheism.
4. Judaism lacks a single simple term to designate the whole of their Scripture,
and generally resorts to the acronym “TaNaK” composed from the initial let-
ters of the three parts.
5. The books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets.
6. This Hebrew Bible in three parts does not entirely correspond to the Chris-
tian Old Testament, which is divided into four parts. There are, however, at
least three different Old Testaments, one for each of the three main denomi-
nations of Christian religion: Catholicism, Protestantism, and the Orthodox
Churches. The structuring and organization of the texts and the decision to
include or exclude particular texts results from the particular theological pref-
erences of each denomination.
256 NOTES TO PAGES 8–16
7. The text of the Jahwist (J), who uses the name “Yahweh” (Jahwe in German)
for god, was supposed to date from around 930; that of the Elohist (E), who
prefers to call god “Elohim,” was attributed to the eighth century. It was as-
sumed that the Deuteronomist (D) wrote in the time of King Josiah (end of the
seventh century); and finally the priestly writings (P) were assigned to the time
of the Babylonian exile or the beginning of the Persian period. For further
details, see Albert de Pury and Thomas Römer, “Le Pentateuque en question:
Position du probleme et brève histoire de la recherche,” in de Pury and Römer,
La Pentateuque en question, 3rd ed. (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2002), 9–80.
8. For more details, see Jean-Daniel Macchi, “Histoire d’Israёl: Des origines à
l’époque de la domination babylonniene,” and Arnhaud Sérandour, “Histoire
du judaїsme aux époques perse, hellénistique et romaine: De Cyrus à Bar
Kokhba,” both in Introduction à l’Ancien Testament, ed. Thomas Römer, Jean-
Daniel Macchi, and Christophe Nihan, 2nd expanded ed. (Geneva: Labor et
Fides, 2009), 51–82 and 83–121.
9. Oswald Loretz, Habiru-Hebräer: Eine sozio-linguistische Studie über die
Herkunft des Gentiliziums ̒ Ibri vom Appelativum habiru (Berlin: De Gruyter,
1984); Nadav Na’aman‚ “Habiru and Hebrews: The Transfer of a Social Term to
the Literary Sphere,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45 (1986): 217–288.
10. Israёl Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archeolo-
gy’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York:
Free Press, 2001); Oded Lipschits, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under
Babylonian Rule (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005). For Aren Maeir,
see his marvelous lecture on the role of archaeology in the study of the
biblical stories about origins: https://www.youtube .com /watch? v=3eWq
MX716Zs.
11. Thus, a significant number of the events narrated in the books of Kings are
also mentioned, in another contexts, in Assyrian and Babylonian records and
inscriptions.
12. The Iron Age ends for the archaeologists of the Levant with the Persian era.
13. The biblical texts call them “the uncircumcised” because, in contrast to the
populations of the Levant, they did not practice circumcision.
14. Kings Omri, Ahab, and Joram.
15. We will return to discuss this stele and that of Mesha in more detail in what
follows. The majority opinion among scholars holds that it contains the first
mention of the name “David” outside the Bible.
16. Jehu was not in fact the son of Omri, but for the Assyrians Omri was the
founder of the kingdom even after the end of his dynasty. It is also possible
that the Assyrians simply were not much interested in the internal politics of
Israel and questions of genealogy.
17. It is impossible to establish exact dates for the reigns of the kings of Israel and
Judah, so all the dates given must be considered merely approximate.
NOTES TO PAGES 17–30 257
18. These two traditions are juxtaposed and contrasted with each other in
Hosea 12.
19. 2 Kings 17 admits this.
20. It is possible that certain of the works attributed to Hezekiah are actually to
be assigned to Manasseh, a king whom the editors of the books of Kings abhor.
21. The second part of Proverbs (25:1) claims in its title to have been compiled
during the reign of King Hezekiah.
22. These texts constitute chapters 40 to 55 of the present book of Isaiah.
1. the god of isr ael and his name

1. Before the signs designating vowels were invented, it was possible, in certain
contexts, to use some of the consonants to indicate the pronunciation. These
were called matres lectionis (mothers of reading).
2. Martin Rösel, Adonaj: Warum Gott ‘Herr’ genannt wird (Tübingen: Mohr Sie-
beck, 2000), 5–8.
3. The ĕ is used because the first vowel a in the word ʾădōnāy is preceded by a
shewa, a sign that indicates that it is to be pronounced like the “smooth aspi-
ration” in Greek: a brief glottal stop before the a. In certain manuscripts only
the first and last vowel are indicated (ĕ—a), but in some the o is also added.
4. Certain Masoretic vocalizations of the tetragrammaton when it is preceded
by a preposition clearly speak against this theory. See Martin Rösel, Adonaj:
Warum Gott ‘Herr’ genannt wird (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 2–5.
5. In the transcriptions the sound u corresponds to the u in German or Italian.
6. As a side note: this location has significance for Mormons, who believe that
its name refers to Lehi, a prophet mentioned in the Book of Mormon.
7. André Lemaire, “Prières en temps de crise: Les inscriptions de Khirbet Beit
Lei,” Revue Biblique 83 (1976): 558–568.
8. Biblical Hebrew does not make a clear grammatical distinction between
future and present.
9. Stromates (ca. ad 220) V.6.
10. Epiphanius II, Panarion haer. 34–64, 40:5.8.
11. Quaestiones in Exodum (XV). This same Theodoret takes up the question again
in Haereticarum Fabularum compendium (V:3) where he states: “Aiá means ‘he
who is.’ This name was never pronounced among the Hebrews . . . The Samar-
itans, who did not understand the meaning of the word, read it as Iabé.” This
quotation clearly shows that the name Aiá refers, not to the tetragrammaton,
but to the expression ʾehyeh (I am / I shall be) in Exodus 3:14.
12. Amphilochia 162.
13. Comm. In Ps. 2:2 (PG 12:1104).
14. Josef Tropper, “Der Gottesname *YAHWA,” Vetus Testamentum 51 (2001):
81–106.
15. A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century b.c. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1923), e.g., 16, 71, 86.
16. The pronunciation Iaō (“Ya-hô”) is probably also found on a votive stele from
the Roman era (third century) dedicated to Zeus Serapis (a god created by
Ptolemy I as the national god of Greece and Egypt), who retrospectively was
identified with Iaō. The stele in question is in the museum of Léon in Spain.
17. For more details, see David E. Aune, “Iao,” in Reallexikon für Antike und
Christentum, vol. 17 (Stuttgart: Hierseman, 1996), cols. 1–12.
18. This is also the view of Martin Rose, Jahwe: Zum Streit um den alttestamentli-
chen Gottesnamen (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1978).
19. Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Röllig, Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik:
II. Die althebräischen Inschriften. 1. Zusammenfassende Erörterungen: Päleog-
raphie und Glossar (Darmstadt: Wissenschaft liche Buchgesellschaft , 1995),
89–90, gives a good summary of extrabiblical testimonia.
20. Manfred Weippert‚ “Jahwe,” in Jahwe und die anderen Götter: Studien zur Re-
ligionsgeschichte des antiken Israel in ihrem syrisch-palästinischen Kontext
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 35–44.
21. Karel van der Toorn, “Yahweh,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the
Bible, 2nd ed., ed. K. van der Toorn et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 910–919.
22. In the Pantheon of Ugarit/Ras Shamra, El (Ilu) is the chief deity. However ʾilu
can also mean simply “god” or “divinity.”
23. Adad was a storm god.
24. William F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: A Historical Analysis of
Two Contrasting Faiths (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994 [1968]), 147–149.
25. Sigmund Mowinckel‚ “The Name of the God of Moses,” Hebrew Union Col-
lege Annual 32 (1961), 121–133. Similarly, Alvaro Lopez Pego, “Sobre el origen
de los teónimos Yah y Yahweh,” Estudios biblícos 56 (1998): 5–39.
26. Ernst Axel Knauf, “Yahweh,” Vetus Testamentum (1984): 467–472. These two
forms are attested in the Koran and the Kitāb al-aṣnān, The Book of Idols, in
which Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (737–819) speaks of the idols of the Arabs in the
pre-Islamic period.
27. Julius Wellhausen, Israelitische und Jüdische Geschichte (Berlin: Georg Reimer,
1914), 25 n. 1.
28. In the ancient Semitic world, divine names construed with causative prefi xes
are rather rare.
2. the geogr aphic origin of y hwh

1. Giovanni Pettinato, “Il calendario di Ebla al tempo del re Ibbi-Sipiš sulla base
di TM.75.G.427,” Archiv für Orientforschung 25 (1974–1977): 1–36.
2. Hans-Peter Müller, “Gab es in Ebla einen Gottesnamen Ja?,” Zeitschrift für
Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 70 (1980): 70–92; K. Van der
Toorn, “Yahweh,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed.,
ed. K. van der Toorn et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 910–911.
3. Th is text is cata logued as KTU 1.1.IV:13–20 according to the international
system of reference for Ugaritic texts.
4. André Caquot et al., Textes ougaritiques: Mythes et légendes, vol. 1 (Paris: Cerf,
1974), 309.
5. André Finet, “Yahvé au royaume de Mari,” Res Orientalia 5 (1993): 15–22.
6. Thomas Schneider, “The First Documented Occurrence of the God Yahweh
(Book of the Dead ‘Roll 5’),” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions
7 (2008): 113–120.
7. West Amara was the Egyptian administrative center of upper Nubia (Kush)
from the reign of Sethi I (1294–1279) and was also known as “The house of
Ramses, the well-beloved of Amon.”
8. Manfred Weippert, “Semitische Nomaden des zweiten Jahrtausends: Über die
Šʒsw der ägyptischen Quellen,” Biblica 55 (1974): 265–280, 427–433.
9. Translation adapted from James Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating
to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1955), 259.
10. Translation adapted from ibid., 262.
11. Refers to the tribes mentioned in verse 5.
12. The Hebrew expression mĕrîḇōt qādēš is difficult to understand. Some trans-
late the Masoretic text as “he has come from the holy myriads,” which really
does not make much sense. The semitic poetic figure, which is called “parallelism
of members,” would suggest that this expression has a geographic meaning.
The Septuagint takes Qadesh as a proper name so as to read: “with the myriads
of Qadesh.” Some scholars correct the Hebrew text, making it mēʿarḇōt (“from
the steppes”), which at any rate makes sense, or mimmĕrîḇat [“from Meribat”],
which is also possible, because Meriba is mentioned in verse 8, which recalls
the revolt of the people at this place (see also Exod. 17:7).
13. The end of this verse is virtually untranslatable. The Masoretic vocalization
suggests something like: “from his right hand a fire of law emerges.” The term
dāt (“law”) is a Persian loan word, which could mean that this might be a gloss
or a later addition. The Septuagint has “angels with him” probably in order to
create parallel with the “myriads of saints.” The possible reading adopted here
takes the word as a feminine plural ʾašdôt, which means something like “the
slopes,” the place of transition between the mountains and the desert.
14. The Masoretic text is not very clear. One has sometimes corrected the Hebrew
bām sînay (“with them—Sinai”) and replaced it with bāʾ missînay (“he has
come from Sinai”), but there are no manuscripts or other versions that attest
this reading.
15. This substitution of “Elohim” for “Yhwh” may possibly be the result of a theo-
logical decision of the Asaphites, a group of Levites (a tribe of priests who
provided the cantors for religious ser vices). They collected and edited this
collection of psalms. The number of these psalms—there are 42 of them—
probably also played a role in their organization. It is possible, according to
certain experts, that the Elohistic Psalter contained 42 occurrences of the tetra-
grammaton. In the Talmud, Treatise Qidushin 71a, one finds the idea that the
divine name consists of 42 letters, which probably refers to different ways of
naming the god of Israel. In Mesopotamia the number 42 is often used to di-
vide long hymns. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead there are 42 divinities
and 42 sins it is necessary to avoid; in the Hebrew Bible and also the New Tes-
tament the number 42 is reputed to be unlucky. For further details, see Laura
Joffe, “The Answer to the Question of the Meaning of Life, the Universe, and
the Elohistic Psalter,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27 (2002): 223–
235; and Joel Burnett, “Forty-Two Sons for Elohim: An Ancient Near Eastern
Organising Principle in the Shaping of the Elohistic Psalter,” Journal for the
Study of the Old Testament 31 (2006): 81–101.
16. Walter Gross, Richter (Freiburg: Herder, 2009), 306–307.
17. Christoph Levin, “Das Alter des Deboralieds,” in Fortschreibungen: Gesam-
melte Studien zum Alten Testament (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 121–141; Bernd-
Jörg Diebner, “Wann sang Deborah ihr Lied? Überlieferungen zu zwei der
ältesten Texte des TNK (Ri 4 und 5),” Amsterdamse cahiers voor exegese en bij-
belse theologie 14 (1995): 106–130.
18. Giovanni Garbini, “Il cantico de Debora,” La parola del passato 33 (1978): 5–31.
19. The interpolated verses take up descriptions that are to be found in the po-
etic text of Genesis 49:13–16. The thesis that holds that the mention of the
other tribes in Judges 5:15–18 is due to a later editor might also be supported
by the texts of Judges 4, where only the tribes of Nephtali and Zebulon are
mentioned.
20. The word used for “God” here, “Eloah,” is found most frequently in the book
of Job.
21. Ernst Axel Knauf, Midian: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Palästinas und Nord-
arabiens am Ende des 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr. (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1988),
52 n. 260.
22. Henrik Pfeiffer, Jahwes Kommen von Süden: Jdc 5, Hab 3, Dtn 33 und Ps 68 in
ihrem literatur-und theologiegeschichtlichen Umfeld (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2005).
23. The debate has continued in a recent number of the Berliner Theologische
Zeitschrift 30 (2013): Henrik Pfeiffer, “Die Herkunft Jahwes und ihre Zeugen,”
is a further defense of Pfeiffer’s position, but Manfred Krebernik‚ “Die Anfänge
des Jahwe- Glaubens aus altorientalischer Perspektive,” holds that an origin
from the south remains the most plausible hypothesis.
24. IV R 28 N 2. The translation follows Dominique Charpin, “Chroniques bibli-
ographiques 3. Données nouvelles sur la région du petit Zab au xviiie siècle av.
J.C.,” Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale (2004): 151–178, quotation

at 153.
25. We shall see the significance of ostriches in Midianite pottery in Chapter 3.
26. Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God
in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).
27. Following the French translation of Jacques Briend and Marie-Joseph Seux,
Textes du Proche-Orient ancien et histoire d’Israël (Paris: Cerf, 1977), 73–81.
28. This changes in the New Testament.
29. See Willem Pleyte, La religion des pré-Israélites: Recherches sur le dieu Seth
(Leiden: T. Hooiberg & Fils, 1865 [1862]).
30. Thierry Bardinet, “La contrée d’Ouân et son dieu,” Égypte nilotique et médi-
terranéenne 3 (2010): 53–66.
31. In the book of Genesis, Seth appears as the third son of Adam (Gen. 4:25). There
is probably no connection between this Seth and the Egyptian god, even
though in Greek the two names are identical.
3 . moses and the midianites

1. Cited in number 124 (1999) of the journal Le Monde de la Bible, which is de-
voted to Akhenaton and monotheism, p. 31.
2. For more details, see Thomas Römer, Moïse: Lui que Yahvé a connu face à face
(Paris: Gallimard, 2002), 62–65.
3. Some scholars take the term “Irsu” translated here as “parvenu” to be a proper
name.
4. Papyrus Harris I (see James Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to
the Old Testament, 3rd ed. [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1969], 260).
5. Pierre Grandet, “L’exécution du chancelier Baÿ,” Bulletin de l’Institut Français
d’Archéologie Orientale 100 (2000): 339–345; Stefan Timm, “Der Tod des
Staatsfeindes: Neues zu Bзj*,” Vetus Testamentum 58 (2008): 87–100.
6. Wolfram von Soden, “Mirjām—Maria ‘(Gottes-)Geschenk,’ ” Ugarit For-
schungen 2 (1970): 269–272, at 270; Ernst Axel Knauf, Midian: Untersuchungen
zur Geschichte Palästinas und Nordarabiens am Ende des 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr.
(Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1988), 77–78.
7. Ludwig Schmidt, Das 4. Buch Mose: Numeri Kapitel 10,11–36,13 (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 144–148.
8. The association of Midian and Moab is also found in the notice in Genesis 36:35
(= 1 Chron. 1:46) that one of the kings of Edom struck down Midian during a
campaign in Moab.
9. The “Deuteronomistic editors” were a group of scribes and editors who, after
the destruction of Jerusalem in 587, re-edited a certain number of older texts
in an attempt to explain, as the book of Deuteronomy does, the fall of Judah
and the deportation as divine punishment for transgression of the law of

Yhwh.
10. Manfred Ullmann, Das Gespräch mit dem Wolf (Munich: Verlag der Baye-
rischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981), 54–57.
11. Two passages seem to make an allusion to this. Isaiah 10:12: “Yhwh of the
Armies will swing his whip against him, as when Midian was defeated at the
rock of Orev.” Psalm 83:10–12: “(10) Treat them like Midian, like Sisera, like
Yabin at west Qishon . . . (12) Treat their nobles like Orev and Zeev and their
princes like Zevah and Ṣalmunna.”
12. Knauf, Midian, 84–86.
13. Verses 2:23b–25 are generally ascribed to the priestly narrative, which is a later
addition to the older narrative.
14. Translation follows, with some differences, http://jennycarrington.tripod.com
/JJSinuhe/text.html.
15. This difficulty was avoided by the Syriac and the Greek versions, which replace
the verb “settled” with “went in the direction of.”
16. “Yhwh” in the fragments of the Genizah at Cairo and in the Greek.
17. According to the Samaritan Pentateuch it is Jethro who bows, but this is doubt-
less a theologically inspired correction of the original story.
18. In the Samaritan Pentateuch and certain Greek manuscripts: “he invited him
into his tent.”
19. This last part of the verse (between the asterisks) is lacking in the Septuagint.
20. The Syriac version, the Targum, and the Vulgate propose “brought a holo-
caust,” but this is also a dogmatic correction.
21. The Samaritan Pentateuch reads: “some of the Elders.”
22. This reconstruction is close to that proposed in Knauf, Midian, 156–157.
23. Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the
Origins of Judah,” Journal of the Study of the Old Testament 33 (2008): 131–153.
24. In Genesis 15:19 the Kenites and Kenizzites are mentioned together.
25. E. A. Knauf, “Qaus,” Ugarit-Forschungen 16 (1984): 93–95.
4 . h o w d i d y h w h b e co m e t h e g o d o f i s r a e l ?
1. Manfred Görg, “Israel in Hieroglyphen,” Biblische Notizen 106 (2001): 21–27,
at 26; Peter Van der Veen et al., “Israel in Canaan (Long) before Pharaoh
Merneptah? A Fresh Look at Berlin Statue Pedestal Relief 21687,” Journal of
Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 2 (2010): 15–25, at 24 n. 66. Others connect
the name with the root “be just” or “protect.”
2. See also Isaiah 44:2.
3. UT 2069:3=KTU IV.623:3.
4. Philip R. Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel” (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press,
1992), 57–58.
5. Grammatically this is not completely unproblematic. One ought really to have

ʾēl to mark the direct object.
6. Translation inspired by Claire Lalouette, L’Empire des Ramsès (Paris: Flam-
marion, 2000 [1985]), 267.
7. The “Libyans” refers to the peoples who live immediately east and south of the
Nile valley.
8. “Nine Bows” designates the traditional enemies of Egypt.
9. The Hittites in Anatolia.
10. The identification is uncertain here. The name is attested in several Egyptian
documents. Joshua 16:6 mentions a town by the name of Yanoah as part of the
frontier with Ephraim, but it is not certain that this is to be identified with the
name on the Egyptian stele. It seems that “Yenoam” designates a region in
northern Palestine or in Transjordan (Manfred Weippert, Historisches Text-
buch zum Alten Testament [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010]), 102
n. 136).
11. Van der Veen et al.‚ “Israel in Canaan.“
12. Manfred Görg, “Weitere Beobachtungen und Aspekte zur Genese des Namens
‘Israel,’ ” Biblische Notizen 154 (2012): 57–68.
13. This latter is the considered view of the Egyptologist Youri Volokhine of the
University of Geneva. His colleague Thomas Schneider of the University of San
Diego is even more categorical in his rejection and considers this attempt to
identify the place mentioned on the pedestal with “Israel” as a speculation
without any foundation. I wish to thank these two colleagues for their com-
ments and help.
14. Ludwig D. Morenz, “Wortwitz—Ideologie—Geschichte: ‘Israel’ im Horizont
Mer-en-ptahs,” Zeitschrift für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 120 (2008): 1–13.
15. André Lemaire, “Asriel, šrʾl et l’origine de la confédération israélite,” Vetus
Teatamentum 23 (1973): 239–243.
16. Kenton L. Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the
Study of Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expression in the Hebrew Bible (Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998), 105–108.
17. Edward Evans-Pritchard, The Nuers: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood
and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1969).
18. The book of Judges, although it contains a collection of legendary tales about
the charismatic leaders of various tribes of Israel, presents the era before the
monarchy as a period without a central or permanent power structure.
19. This statistic does not distinguish between occurrences of ʾĒl as a proper name
and of ʾēl as a generic term.
20. These books, which are held together by a single narrative framework, are often
called the “Enneateuch.”
21. An allusion to Jerusalem.
22. In Genesis, Abraham is called “Abram” until he changes his name in chapter 17.
23. Th is word is lacking in the Septuagint, in Syriac manuscripts, and in the
Genesis-Apocryphon found at Qumran. It is probable that the original text
did not contain the name of Yhwh. Copyists probably added it to affirm the
identity of Yhwh and El.
24. In the Bible at Deut. 32:8, Isa. 14:14, and Ps. 9:3.
25. For the text and a translation, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscrip-
tions of Sefîre, Biblica et orientalia Sacra Scriptura antiquitatibus orientalibus
illustrata, 19, rev. ed. (Rome: Pontificial Biblical Institute, 1995).
26. Side A, line 11; note the parallel expression “Shamash [the sun] and Nour
[light].”
27. KTU I.16 iii: 5–8.
28. Ernst Axel Knauf, “El Šaddai— der Gott Abrahams?,” Biblische Zeitschrift
(1985): 97–105.
29. Frauke Gröndahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit (Rome: Pontificiae
Universitatis Gregorianae, 1967).
30. KTU 1.108.12. However, it is also possible to read this as “El, in the desert,
hunts.”
31. See also “El-Berith” (“El of the Contract”) in Judges 9:46. However, the orig-
inal version of the Greek translation has Baal, not El, here, as at 8:33 and 9:4.
32. Ernst Axel Knauf, “Esau,” Neues Bibel-Lexikon, vol. 4 (Zurich: Benziger, 1990),
587–588.
33. Zeev Meshel, Schmuel Ahituv, and Liora Freud, Kuntillet A ̒ jrud (Horvat
Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border (Jerusalem:
Israel Explorations Society, 2012).
34. As is suggested by Klaus Koch, “Jahwäs Übersiedlung vom Wüstenberg nach
Kanaan: Zur Herkunft von Israels Gottesverständnis,” in Der Gott Israels und
die Götter des Orients: Religionsgeschichtliche Studien zum 80. Geburtstag von
Klaus Koch, ed. Friedhelm Hartenstein and Martin Rösel, 171–209 (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 194.
35. “Moses took half of the blood, which he put into basins; he sprinkled the other
half on the altar . . . Moses took the blood and sprinkled the people with it,
saying: ‘Behold the blood of the covenant which Yhwh has concluded with you
upon these words’ ” (Exod. 24:8).
36. William Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: The Funda-
mental Institutions, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: A.& C. Black, 1927), 314.
37. The verb used here for “love” is a hapax legomenon (ḥ-b-b); compare the Ar-
abic word Habib (friend). It is also used in the Bible as a proper name “Hobab”
for the father-in-law of Moses and as the name of the Kenite (Num. 10:29; Judg.
4:11).
38. The Masoretic text has the plural, the Septuagint the singular.
39. As we have seen, this is a poetic name for Israel.
5. the entr ance of y hwh into jerusalem

1. Josh. 18:1, 8–10; 19:51; 21:2; 22:9, 12.
2. As we shall see later, the book of Joshua was originally composed in the sev-
enth century. There never was a conquest, because, as we have already noted,
the entity “Israel” was composed originally of autochthonous populations who
were then joined by fragments of the Shasu and Hapiru, bringing with them
their god Yhwh. The book of Joshua, however, may reflect some military con-
fl icts, which certainly did develop between “Israel” and various towns in
Canaan.
3. Trent Butler, Joshua (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983), 249–250.
4. Israel Finkelstein, “Seilun, Khirbet,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 5 (New York:
Doubleday, 1992), 1069–1072.
5. The same idea can be found in Ps. 78:58–61: “They roused him to anger with
their high places; their idols incited his jealousy. He left his dwelling in Shiloh,
the tent which he had set up among men. He gave over his power to captivity
and his majesty into the hands of enemies. He abandoned his people to the
sword, he was angry against his patrimony.”
6. Jürg Hutzli, Die Erzählung von Hanna et Samuel: Textkritische und literarische
Analyse von 1 Samuel 1–2 unter Berücksichtigung des Kontextes (Zurich: TVZ,
2007), 213.
7. For a first orientation one may consult Israel Finkelstein and Neil A. Silberman,
David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the
Western Tradition (New York: Free Press, 2006).
8. According to George Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New
Interpretation (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), which presents all the
documentation and the various interpretations in a very complete way, it is
probably a victory of the son of Hazael, that is, of Bar Hadad.
9. Fragment A, line 8–9.
10. Together with Albert de Pury and Axel Knauf, I have myself insisted on the
difficulties of this reading; we have proposed instead “Beth Dôd”; Dôd meaning
“Uncle” or “Well-beloved.” This reading would follow the style adopted in the
stele of Mesha for describing a person’s tutelary deity. See Ernst Axel Knauf,
Albert de Pury, and Thomas Römer, “*Baytdawid ou *baytdwd? Une relecture
de la nouvelle inscription de Tel Dan,” Biblische Notizen 72 (1994): 60–69. How-
ever, I do not wish to insist on this in the face of a general consensus against it.
11. According to G. Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription, the expression would refer to
the city of Jerusalem. But the parallel with “house of Omri” speaks in favor of
the traditional interpretation.
12. This is the name of the son of Saul (“Man of Baal”) according to the Greek
version. The Masoretes changed the Hebrew text to make this pejorative: Ish-
Boshet (“Man of Shame”).
13. In the Masoretic text “Ashurites.” The name is not clear. Is this intended to be
a reference to the Assyrians? In that case it would be an anachronistic gloss.
The editors did not understand this word and tried to emend it in various ways.
Judges 1:32 mentions a clan of Asherites, who were perhaps the group referred
to in the original text.
14. Diana V. Edelman, “The ‘Ashurites’ of Eshbaal’s State,” Palestine Exploration
Quarterly 117 (1985): 85–91; Ernst Axel Knauf, “Saul, David, and the Philistines:
From Geography to History,” Biblische Notizen 109 (2001): 15–18.
15. The spectacular site of Khirbet Qeiyafa, which has recently been excavated
by Yosef Garfi nkel and was situated in an area where Philistine influence
was very strong, might, as Israel Finkelstein has suggested, be part of a zone
also under the influence of Saul’s kingdom. It might correspond to Saul’s
place of encampment, the Valley of the Terebinths, mentioned in 1 Samuel
17 (see Israel Finkelstein, The Forgotten Kingdom: The Archaeology and His-
tory of Northern Israel, Ancient Near East Monographs [Atlanta: Society of
Biblical Literature, 2013]). Th is hypothesis, however, has not found uni-
versal assent. For further discussion of the interpretation of the site at Qei-
faya by Finkelstein, which shows that archaeology can have surprises in
store for the historian and scholar of the Bible, see Yosef Garfi nkel et al.,
“Khirbet Qeifaya 2009 (Notes and News),” Israel Exploration Journal 59 (2009):
214–222.
16. The language typical of the Deuteronomistic editors is absent from 1 Samuel
4–6. Perhaps it is an older tradition integrated into the Deuteronomistic his-
tory, or a more recent addition made after the Deuteronomistic redaction.
17. Dagon (Dagan) was a Levantine god connected with fertility and possibly also
agriculture. In the Bible he appears as the god of the Philistines. If this has any
historical basis whatever, the attribution would be a further indication of the
rapid way in which the Philistines adopted autochthonous deities.
18. The end of this verse (“fift y thousand men”) is missing in many manuscripts.
In others is it attached in a grammatically very awkward way to what comes
before it. It is certainly a gloss that was originally in the margin of a scroll and
was intended to emphasize the force of Yhwh’s attack. A later copyist put it
into the main text, which had originally read only “seventy men.”
19. One can find pictures of this in Ernie Haerinck, Bronzes du Luristan: Énigmes
de l’Iran ancient, IIIe-Ier Millénaire av. J.-C. (Paris, Paris Musées, 2008).
20. We will return to the question of a goddess associated with Yhwh later.
21. Knauf, “Saul, David, and the Philistines.”
22. It is at this time that one finds the first traces of a wall. There are some indica-
tions that the site was inhabited from about 3100.
23. According to the priestly sources, the ephod is a kind of corset worn by the
priest over his clothing. It also has a function in divination: two bones, called
ʾurim and tummim, are in some way contained within the corset and are
used to determine the divine will. In other texts the ephod is a statue of a
deity.
24. Compare what is written in Exod. 28:42–43: (42) “Make for them (= Aaron and
his sons) linen knickers to cover their nudity, reaching from the kidneys to
the thighs. (43) Aaron and his sons shall wear these when they enter the tent
of the Presence or when they approach the altar to officiate in the sanctuary;
thus they shall avoid sin and shall not die.”
25. Theodore W. Jennings, Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature
of Ancient Israel (New York: Continuum, 2005), 83–86.
26. 1 Chronicles 28, esp. verse 3.
27. Thus, for instance, Jacques Cazeaux, Saul, David, Salomon: La Royauté et le
destin d’Israël (Paris: Cerf, 2003).
28. See especially Finkelstein and Silberman, David and Solomon.
29. Gregory J. Wightman, “The Myth of Solomon,” Bulletin of the American Schools
of Oriental Research 277/278 (1990): 5–22; Finkelstein and Silberman, David and
Solomon, 153–159, 255–261.
30. For a discussion of the debate, see Jan Christian Gertz, “Konstruierte Erin-
nerung: Alttestamentliche Historiographie im Spiegel von Archäologie und
literarhistorische Kritik am Fallbeispiel des Salomonischen Königtums,” Ber-
liner Theologische Zeitschrift 21 (2004): 3–29.
31. Jacques Briend, “Un accord commercial entre Hiram de Tyr and Salomon:
Étude de 1 R 5, 15–26,” in Études bibliques et Proche Orient ancien: Mélanges
offerts au Rvd. Père Paul Feghali, ed. Ayoub Chehwan and Antoine Kassis
(Beirut: Fédération biblique, 2002) 95–112.
32. Finkelstein and Silbermann, David and Solomon, 173–174.
33. Victor Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the
Bible in the Light of Mesopotamian and Northwestern Semitic Writings (Shef-
field, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 313; for the details, see 130–310.
34. Nadav Na’aman, “Sources and Composition in the History of Solomon,” in
The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium, ed. Lowell
K. Handy (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 76–77; Finkelstein and Silberman, David and
Solomon, 175–176.
35. These lists might have existed in different forms, as is shown by the fact that,
in contrast to the Masoretic text, the Septuagint preserves two nonidentical
lists of the officials of Solomon, in the third book of Kingdoms, chapters 2:46
and 4:2–6. In the Greek Bibles the two books of Samuel and the two books of
Kings are grouped together as four books of Kingdoms. Thus the Hebrew text
of 1 Kings corresponds to the third book of Kingdoms in the Greek version.
See Adrian Schenker, Septante et texte massorétique dans l’histoire la plus an-
cienne du texte de 1 Rois 2–14 (Paris: Gabalda, 2000), 34–35.
36. Timo Veijola, “Solomon: Bathesheeba’s Firstborn,” in Reconsidering Israel and
Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomic History, ed. Gary N. Knoppers
and J. Gordon McConville (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000 [1979]), 340–

358; Ernst Axel Knauf, “Le roi est mort, Vive le roi! A Biblical Argument for
the Historicity of Solomon,” in Handy, The Age of Solomon, 81–95.
37. Konrad Rupprecht, Der Tempel von Jerusalem: Gründung Salomons oder
jebusitisches Erbe? (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1977).
38. The most sacred part of the temple.
39. This kernel was later reinterpreted by an editor in the priestly style. See Ernst
Würthwein, Die Bücher der Könige 1–16 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1977), 84–91.
40. Following ibid., 84–85.
41. The asterisk indicates that this is a reconstructed form of the text, whose exis-
tence is deduced.
42. For what follows, see Schenker, Septante et texte massorétique; Othmar Keel,
“Der Salomonische Tempelweihspruch: Beobachtungen zum religionsge-
schichtlichen Kontext des Ersten Jerusalemer Tempels,” in Gottesstadt und
Gottesgarten: Zur Geschichte und Theologie des Jerusalemer Tempels, ed.
Othmar Keel and Erich Zenger (Freiburg: Herder, 2002), 9–22.
43. Vorlage is used as a technical term to refer to the Hebrew text, which the Greek
translators actually had before them and used.
44. Its size is probably exaggerated to conform with that of the temple of the sev-
enth century, at a time when Jerusalem had become an important city. The Hit-
tite temple of Tell Tayinat in Anatolia (today in southeast Turkey) has a com-
parable size. According to 1 Kings 6, the main chamber measured 60 cubits,
which means 30 m., and would have been enormous.
45. Adrian Schenker, “Une nouvelle lumière sur l’architecture du Temple grâce à
la Septante? La place de l’arche de l’alliance selon 1 Rois 6:16–17 et 3 Règnes
6:16–17,” Annali di Scienze Religiose 10 (2005): 139–154.
46. See www.livius.org/na-nd/nabonidus/cylinder.html.
47. The Greek word kainótēs is attested only in the Septuagint, apart from this pas-
sage also in Ezek. 47:12, where it refers to the new moon.
48. See also in Ezek. 43:8 the criticism of the kings who lived cheek-by-jowl next to
Yhwh: “They put their thresholds next to my threshold, the jambs of their
doors next to the jambs of mine, and there is no more than a wall between
them and me; they have also made impure my sacred name by the abomina-
tions they have committed; this is why I have exterminated them in my wrath.”
This oracle makes allusion to the fact that the royal palace was next to the
temple.
49. For an image, see Othmar Keel, Die Geschichte Jerusalems und die Entstehung
des Monotheismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 278.
6 . t h e c u lt o f y h w h i n i s r a e l
1. At this date the Assyrians, who had annexed part of Israel ten years or so ear-
lier, destroyed Samaria, deported some of the population, and integrated the
rest of the former kingdom into the system of Assyrian provinces.
2. In Hebrew the word ̒ ôlām signifies a very long time, but this is not necessarily
the same as the Greek notion of “eternity.”
3. We shall come to these inscriptions later.
4. Letters numbered 252–254. For a translation, see William L. Moran, The Am-
arna Letters (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992).
5. Eran Arie, “Reconsidering the Iron Age II Strata at Tel Dan: Archeological and
Historical Implications,” Tel Aviv 35 (2008): 6–64.
6. Ernst Axel Knauf, “Bethel,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 4th
ed., vol. 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), cols. 1375–1376.
7. Num. 23:22 and 24:8. The word used here is “El” not Yhwh. Because this is a
rather late text, “El” may simply mean “God.” Perhaps the editors also wanted
to avoid putting the tetragrammaton into the mouth of a pagan prophet.
8. Stefan Timm, Die Dynastie Omri: Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte
Israels im 9. Jahrhundert vor Christus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1982), 32–33.
9. Detlef Jericke, Regionaler Kult und lokaler Kult: Studien zur Kult- und Reli-
gionsgeschichte Israels und Judas im 9. und 8. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2010), 90–91.
10. The discovery of this stele generated a whole series of false inscriptions called
“Moabitica.” At the end of the nineteenth century, suspicion fell on the orig-
inal stele itself, and a number of scholars, particularly German scholars,
thought it was a forgery because it contains a certain number of turns of phrase
that are very close to biblical expressions.
11. The translation follows that available at http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS
/westsem/mesha.html.
12. This means that Moabite territory was annexed to Israel.
13. In the cycle “Baal and death” he is mocked because he aspires to the throne of
Baal, for which he is too small. He seems to have been a deity of the desert
associated with drought.
14. For more details, see Ernst Axel Knauf, Ismael. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte
Palästinas und Nordarabiens im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Wiesbaden: Harras-
sowitz, 1985), 81–83.
15. As one can see from the description in the book of Ezekiel: “The hearth of the
altar (hāʾăriʾēl) was 12 cubits long, 12 cubits wide and formed a square on all
sides” (43:15–16).
16. Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Röllig, Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik I
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaft liche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), 79–110.
17. KTU 1.3 II 40.

18. Ps. 68:5, which in its Masoretic version contains the expression rōḵēḇ bā ʿărāḇôt
(“rider of the steppes”), reflecting perhaps the original title rkb b̒ rpt (bāʿărāpôt)
or b̒ abt (be̒āḇôt) (“rider of the clouds”), which the psalmist will have changed
deliberately or the later editors thought it necessary to censor.
19. The “sacred steppe,” which is also attested in Ugarit in the myth of Shahar and
Shalimu (gods of the dawn and the dusk), has been transformed in the Maso-
retic text into “the desert of Qadesh.”
20. For a translation of this treaty, compare http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao
/saa02/corpus.
21. Dany Nocquet, Le Livret noir de Baal: La polémique contre le dieu Baal dans
la Bible hébraïque et dans l’ancien Israël (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2004), 291–
292, 295.
22. Following James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East: Supplementary Texts and
Pictures Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1969), 662.
23. Judg. 2:13 and 10:6, also 1 Sam. 7:3–4. These texts, to be sure, use the plural forms
for “baals” and “astartes,” so they are intended to designate all foreign gods,
male and female.
24. See Nocquet, Le Livret noir de Baal.
25. It is often thought that this is a reference to the region from which he came,
but no such place is known. “Tishbite” is probably a wordplay depending on
toshab, a term designating a foreigner or a person who has no land of his own
and is thus dependent on others.
26. Unfortunately we have little information about Phoenician mythology.
27. Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet, Les relations entre les cités de la côte phénicienne
et les royaumes d’Israël et de Juda (Louvain: Peeters, 1992), 306–309. The frag-
ments in question have been attributed to Menander (fourth century) but are
actually much later.
28. The story is corrected in the following chapter (1 Kings 19), added later. In the
later chapter Yhwh manifests himself not in fire or storm or earthquakes but
in a soft rustling.
29. This is the same expression one finds on the stele of Mesha; it requires that,
for the honor of Yhwh, anyone who shall have profaned him by participating
in any other cult shall be put to death.
30. “Prophets of Baal” are not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible except in 1 Kings 18
and 2 Kings 9.
31. This is perhaps a vessel with a narrow base coming together at the bottom in
a point.
32. James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 281.
33. Herbert Niehr, Ba̒ alšamem: Studien zu Herkunft, Geschichte, und Rezeptions-
geschichte eines phönizischen Gottes (Louvain: Peeters, 2003).
34. O. Keel and C. Uehlinger, Dieux, déesses et figures divines (Paris: Cerf, 2001),
seal no. 212b.
35. Benjamin Sass, “The Pre-Exilic Hebrew Seals: Iconism vs. Aniconism,” in
Studies in the Iconography of North-West Semitic Inscribed Seals, ed. Benjamin
Sass and C. Uehlinger (Freiburg: University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1993), 194–256, seal no. 141.
36. The Masoretic texts reads: “Your judgments: a light will shine out from them,”
whereas the Greek version gives the original text: “My judgments are like light.”
37. For further details, see C. Uehlinger, “Anthropomorphic Cult Statues in Iron
Age Palestine and the Search for Yahweh’s Cult Images,” in The Image and the
Book: Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of the Book Religion in Israel and the
Ancient Near East, ed. Karel Van der Toon (Louvain: Peeters, 1997), 124–128.
38. The candidates are Samaria, Hamat, Qarqar. The relief of Sennacherib shows
the sack of Ashkelon.
39. 1 Kings 12, Exod. 32, the book of Hosea.
40. Amihai Mazar, “The ‘Bull Site’—An Iron Age I Open Cult Place,” Bulletin of
the American Schools of Oriental Research (1982): 27–42.
41. The Masoretic text reads: hannaʿar hāyāh mĕšārēt ʾet-yhwh ʾet-pĕnê ʿēlî
hakkōhēn. The reconstructed text would read: naʿar hāyāh mĕšārēt ʾet-pĕnê
yhwh lipnê ʿēlî hakkōhēn.
42. Jürg Hutzli, Die Erzählung von Hanna und Samuel (Zurich: TVZ, 2007), 81.
43. In Ezek. 20:23 and 44:12 the same root appears to express cult activities asso-
ciated with other deities.
44. Claus Westermann, “Šrt—dienen,” Theologisches Handwörterbuch zum Alten
Testament, vol. 2 (Munich: Kaiser, 1984), col. 1020.
45. This hypothesis can be supported by two further considerations. The first de-
rives from textual criticism. The Septuagint suppresses the suffi x at the end of
the verb and translates it in a very general way as “for performing ser vice,”
which might reflect a desire to efface all traces of an allusion to a statue. Other
texts in Deuteronomy that describe the function of the Levites have also been
altered. Verses 18:5 and 7, and also 21:5, speak of ser vice “in the name” or “for
the name” of Yhwh, so verse 10:8 seems to have escaped censorship.
7. t h e c u lt o f y h w h i n j u d a h
1. The text of 1 Sam. 9:19–25 mentions a meal at the bāmāh of Rama.
2. Ze’ev Herzog, “The Date of the Temple at Arad: Reassessment of the Stratig-
raphy and the Implications for the History of Religion in Judah,” in Studies in
the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel and Jordan, ed. Amihai Mazar (Shef-
field, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 156–178.
3. On the stele of Mesha, only the tutelary god Chemosh and his parhedros are
mentioned.
4. A god associated with the Sun.
5. The Greek version in 3 Kingdoms 8:53 mentions a “Book of songs,” which may
perhaps refer to the same scroll.
6. Recall that in the “Elohist Psalter” the editors have replaced most mentions of
Yhwh with “Elohim.”
7. The same idea can be found in the original version of Deut. 32:8.
8. This takes place in the epic called “Enuma Elish,” which tells the story of the
creation of the world, which results from the victory of Marduk over the sea
monster Tiamat. For a translation, see Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses:
An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2005), 472:
“The Great Gods convened, they made Marduk’s destiny highest, they pros-
trated themselves . . . they granted him exercise of kingship over the gods, they
established him forever for lordship of heaven and netherworld.”
9. Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Je-
rusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1997), 1175.
10. Oded Lipschits and David Vanderhooft, The Yehud Stamp Impressions:
A Corpus of Inscribed Impressions from the Persian and Hellenistic Periods
in Judah (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011).
11. The root is not attested in Hebrew.
12. In one sense this is perfectly “normal,” given that according to the biblical nar-
rative Jerusalem was not incorporated into Judah until the time of David.
However, Genesis 14 does mention “Shalem,” and Joshua 10 describes a battle
by Joshua against a king of Jerusalem.
13. 1 Sam. 4:4; 2 Sam. 6:2 (= 1 Chron. 13:16); 2 Kings 19:15 (= Isa. 37:16); Pss. 80:2
and 99:1.
14. In the story of the expulsion from the garden at Genesis 3, Yhwh places cher-
ubim at the entrance of the garden to prevent humans from entering it again.
15. Manfred Görg, “ṣb’wt als Gottestitel,” Biblische Notizen 30 (1985): 15–18.
16. 1 Sam. 4:4 speaks of the “ark of the covenant of Yhwh ṣĕḇāʾôt.”
17. Flying snakes, well known in Egyptian iconography.
18. Psalms 93:1; 96:10; 97:1; 99:1. A number of others also describe Yhwh as a grand
king seated in his celestial council.
19. Sigmund Mowinckel, Psalmstudien (Kristiania: J. Dybwad, 1922).
20. This psalm is part of the Elohist Psalter in which Yhwh is in most cases re-
placed by “Elohim” (god).
21. KTU 1.10 III 12–15.
22. “Baal and Yam,” KTU 1.2 IV 30–35.
23. It is better here to depart from the Masoretic text and read the singular in
order to preserve the parallelism with verse 14 and because the word tannîn is
often construed as a proper name.
24. Lev. 18:21, 20:2–5; 2 Kings 23:10; Jer. 32:35.
25. Otto Eisfeldt, Molk als Opferbegriff im Punischen und Hebräischen und das
Ende des Gottes Moloch (Halle: Niemeyer, 1935).
26. This identification was based only on 1 Kings 11:7, but the apparent reference
to Molek there is a scribal error.
27. Johan Lust, “Molek and Arkhôn,” in Studia Phoenici IX: Phoenicia and the
Bible, ed. Edouard Lipiński (Louvain: Peeters, 1991), 198–208.
28. Tophet is a pejorative vocalization based on boshet (“shame”); the original form
is Taphet.
29. The editors no doubt revised the phrase “There was a great anger toward
Israel,” suppressing the name of the god who was angry, probably
Chemosh.
30. “Your bones shall not descend to šĕ’ôl,” CIS II.145. See Nicholas J. Tromp, Prim-
itive Conceptions of Death and the Netherworld in the Old Testament (Rome:
Pontifical Institute, 1969), 21–23.
31. Thomas Römer, “Jugement et salut en Ésaïe 28,” Positions Luthériennes 43
(1995): 55–62.
32. The excavator Gabriel Barkay dates these amulets to the seventh century (“The
Challenge of Ketef Hinnom: Using Advanced Technologies to Reclaim the
Earliest Biblical Texts and Their Context,” Near East Archaeology [2003]: 162–
171), but this dating is not universally accepted: Angelika Berlejung (“Ein Pro-
gramm fürs Leben: Theologisches Wort und anthropologischer Ort der
Sílberamulette von Ketef Hinnom,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissen-
schaft 120 [2008]: 204–230) proposes the fifth century; Nadav Na’aman (“A New
Appraisal of the Silver Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,” Israel Exploration Journal
61 [2011]: 184–195) argues in the same direction. The dating to the Hellenistic
epoch by Ferdinand Dexinger (“Die Funde von Gehinnom,” Bibel und Liturgie
59 [1986]: 259–261) seems implausible.
8 . t h e s tat u e o f y h w h i n j u d a h
1. Thus Ronald S. Hendel, “Aniconism and Anthropomorphism in Ancient Is-
rael,” in The Image and the Book in Iconic Cults: Aniconism and the Rise of the
Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. Karel van der Toorn
(Louvain: Peeters, 1997), 216–219; André Lemaire, The Birth of Monotheism: The
Rise and Disappearance of Yahwism (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology
Society, 2007), 63–76.
2. See also Chapter 5, the drawing of a Syrian storm god enthroned on a bull.
3. Silvia Schroer, In Israel gab es Bilder: Nachrichten von darstellender Kunst im
Alten Testament (Freiburg: University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1987), 101 n. 147.
4. Trygve N. D. Mettinger, No Graven Images? An Israelite Aniconism in Its An-
cient Near Eastern Context (Stockholm: Alquist & Wiksell International, 1992);
see also Mettinger, “Israelite Aniconism; Developments and Origins,” in Van
der Toorn, The Image and the Book, 173–204.
5. The same event is recalled in Genesis 35:13.

6. Mettinger argues in this way in No Graven Images?
7. See Jean-Claude Margueron, Mari, métropole de l’Euphrate au troisième et au
début du deuxième millénnaire av. J. C. (Paris: Picard, 2004), 56, plate 36.
8. For an image, see www.civilisation.ca /cmc/exhibitions/cmc/petra /petrae
.shtml.
9. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27 (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 2280–2282.
10. This was also the case for other gods, as is attested in 2 Kings 3:2 and 10:7, which
mention a masseba of Baal.
11. Benjamin Sass, “The Pre-exilic Hebrew Seals: Iconism and Aniconism,” in
Studies in the Iconography of North-West Semitic Inscribed Seals, ed. Benjamin
Sass and C. Uehlinger (Freiburg: University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1993), 232–234.
12. Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Dieux, déesses et figures divines (Paris:
Cerf, 2001), § 178.
13. Diana Edelman, “Tracking Observance of the Aniconic Tradition through
Numismatics,” in The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 185–225, esp. 187–196. See also Ya’akov Meshorer, An-
cient Jewish Coinage, 2 vols. (Dix Hills, NY: Amphora Books, 1982), § 1.25.
14. Erhard Blum, “Der ‘Schiqquz Schonem’ und die Jehud-Drachme BMC Pales-
tine S. 181, Nr. 29, Biblische Notizen (1997): 13–27, esp. 23–24.
15. Exod. 20 and Deut. 5.
16. The rare word tĕmûnāh, which occurs in apposition in Deuteronomy (5:8) but
in conjunction in the version in Exodus (20:4), appears in the Pentateuch only
in the late texts of Numbers 12:9 and Deuteronomy 4 (verses 2, 15, 16, 23, 25).
Outside the Pentateuch it occurs only in Psalms 17:15 and Job 4:16.
17. See Felix Garcia Lopez, Le Décalogue (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 31–32; Christoph Ueh-
linger, “Exodus, Stierbild und biblisches Kultverbot: Religionsgeschichtliche
Voraussetzungen eines biblisch- theologischen Spezifikums,” in Freiheit und
Recht: Festschrift für Frank Crüsemann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Rainer Kessler
and Andreas Ruwe (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser- Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2003),
42–77, esp. 69–71; H. Niehr, “Götterbilder und Bilderverbot,” in Der eine Gott und
die Götter: Polytheismus und Monotheismus im antiken Israel, ed. Manfred
Oeming and Konrad Schmid (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2003), 227–247.
18. What follows this passage is a later addition, which, as in the Decalogues
(second part of Exod. 20:4), is intended to transform the prohibition in verse
16a into a general interdiction of any representation: “(16a) the image of a man
or woman (17) the image of any animal on earth or any bird which flies in the
sky (18) the image of any animal who crawls on the earth, or of any fish who
lives in the waters below the earth.” See Dietrich Knap, Deuteronomium 4: Li-
terarische Analyse und theologische Interpretation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1987), 36–37; Matthias Köckert, “Vom Kultbild Jahwes zum
Bilderverbot: Oder: Vom Nutzen der Religionsgeschichte für die Theologie,”

Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche (2009): 371–406, 386.
19. Note in passing that the commentary on Numbers 12:6–8 states that only Moses
saw the tĕmûnāh (“form”) of Yhwh. This is intended to distinguish him from
the prophets and indeed all other men.
20. Euphemism for genitals.
21. A certain number of the manuscripts give the original version with “Yhwh,”
rather than “Adonay”; see Hans Wildberger, Jesaja 1–12 (Neukirchen: Neu-
kirchener Verlag, 1972), 231.
22. See Othmar Keel, Jahwe-Visionen und Siegelkunst: Eine neue Deutung der
Majestätsschilderungen in Jes 6, Ez 1 und Sach 4 (Stuttgart: Katholisches
Bibelwerk, 1977), 46–52.
23. For a reproduction of this bas-relief, see http://fr.wikipedia .org /wiki /Ban
%C3%BB-apla-iddina.
24. For a comparable theophany, see Exod. 19:19 and 20:18.
25. This Micaiah, son of Yimla, is not the same prophet as the one who gives his
name to the book of Micah.
26. Micaiah is a prophet of the north but the books of Kings were redacted by Ju-
dean scribes, and since Micaiah has a “true” word of Yhwh’s to pronounce,
this should be legitimated by an “orthodox” vision and not by reference to cult
practices from the north that the Deuteronomistic scribes considered to be
illegitimate.
27. The kernel of the book of Amos probably dates to the eighth century. This book
contains some material that is older than that found in the prophetic books
of the Babylonian and Persian periods.
28. Françoise Smyth-Florentin, “L’espace d’un chandelier: Zacharie 1,8–6,15,” in
Le livre de traverse: De l’exégèse biblique à l’anthropologie, ed. Olivier Abel and
Françoise Smyth-Florentin (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 281–289.
29. Herbert Niehr, “In Search of Yhwh’s Cult Statue in the First Temple,” in Van
der Toorn, The Image and the Book, 90.
30. See also verse 10, where the two lamps of the lampholder represent the eyes
of Yhwh.
31. Psalms 10:11, 13:2, 22:25, 27:9, 30:8, 31:21, 44:25, 69:18, 88:15, 102:3, 104:29, 143:7.
32. Psalms 4:7, 31:17, 44:4, 67:2, 84:4, 84:8, 84:20, 89:16, 119:135.
33. KTU 2:13 and 2:16.
34. Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalmen 51–100 (Freiburg: Herder,
2007), 67, commenting on Ps. 67:3.
35. Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Die Psalmen: Psalm 1–50 (Würzburg:
Echter Verlag, 1993), 198.
36. Psalms 24:6, 27:8, 105:5.
37. Friedrich Nötscher, “Das Angesicht Gottes schauen” nach biblischer und baby-
lonischer Auffassung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaft liche Buchgesellschaft , 1969
[1924]). Oddly, Nötscher claims rather arbitrarily that there is no allusion to a

statue in the Psalms because the presence of Yhwh is merely an invisible pres-
ence (89).
38. Youri Volokhine, “Le visage dans la pensée et la religion de l’Égypte ancienne”
(doctoral thesis, University of Geneva, Faculty of Letters, 1998, rev. version
2000), 536.
39. For considerations that point in the same direction, see Hossfeld and Zenger,
Die Psalmen, 267–268, and some of the Hebrew manuscripts. The Masoretes
vocalized the verb “to see” so as to construe it as expressing a passive (“When
shall I be seen by the face of God?”), which does not make much sense and which
the Greek and Syriac versions have suppressed. These operations show that the
allusion to a statue of the god was thought to be too clear in this passage.
40. Psalms 16:11, 68:4, 95:2, 98:6.
41. Exod. 25:30, 35:13, 39:36, 40:23; 1 Sam. 29:8; 1 Kings 7:48 (parallel in 2 Chron.
4:19); Jer. 52:33.
42. Niehr, “In Search of Yhwh’s Cult Statue,” 88.
43. Eiko Matsushima, “Divine Statues in Ancient Mesopotamia: Their Fashioning
and Clothing and Interaction with the Society,” in Official Cult and Popular
Religion in the Ancient Near East, ed. Eiko Matsushima (Heidelberg: C. Winter,
1993), 209–219; Angelika Berlejung, Die Theologie der Bilder: Herstellung und Ein-
weihung von Kultbildern in Mesopotamien und die alttestamentliche Bilderpo-
lemik (Freiburg: University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998).
44. See also verse 4 and 11:22–24.
45. The Greek version has a plural, but this is probably an attempt at harmonizing
this passage with others.
46. For one possible hypothesis about the growth of this chapter, see, for instance,
Karl-Friedrich Pohlmann, Das Buch des Propheten Hesekiel (Ezekiel), Kapitel
1–19 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 149–156.
47. Bob Becking, Between Fear and Freedom: Essays on the Interpretation of Jere-
miah 30–31 (Leiden: Brill, 2004); and Becking “The Return of the Deity from
Exile: Iconic or Aniconic,” in Essays in Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Con-
text: A Tribute to Nadav Na’aman, ed. Yairah Amit et al. (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2006), 53–62.
48. The Masoretic vocalization (the qĕrê) takes the verb to apply to Israel, which
in this poem is compared to a woman. Although this is a comprehensible
reading, it may still well be a correction intended to bring the text into line
with later religious ideas.
49. See also 45:2, 52:12, etc.
50. Uehlinger, “Exodus, Stierbild und biblisches Kultverbot,” 70–71.
51. The translation follows Berlejung, Die Theologie der Bilder, 141–145. Obviously
Nabu-apal-iddin eventually does receive a revelation about the form of the
statue of Shamash and is able to have it made.
52. In certain biblical texts the ark itself serves the function of a cult statue, e.g.,
in 1 Sam. 4.
53. Karel van der Toorn, “The Iconic Book: Analogies between the Babylonian Cult
of Images and the Veneration of the Torah,” in The Image and the Book, 229–
248; Thomas Podella, “Bild und Text: Mediale und historische Perspektiven
auf das alttestamentliche Bilderverbot,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Tes-
tament 15 (2001): 205–256.
9. yhwh and his a sher ah

1. Sa-Moon Kang, Divine War in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989), 77. See also the discussion of the stele of Mesha in
Chapter 6 above.
2. Nicholas Wyatt, “Asherah,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible,
2nd ed., ed. K. van der Toorn et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 101.
3. KTU 1.4 vi: 44–46.
4. Inscription 3350 of the Répertoire d’épigraphie sémitique (RES) mentions a
temple of Wadd (a moon god) and of Athirat; inscription 3689 mentions a
couple “Amm and Athirat.”
5. Manfried Dietrich and Oswald Loretz, Jahwe und seine Aschera: Anthropomor-
phes Kultbild in Mesopotamien, Ugarit und Israel: Das biblische Bilderverbot
(Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1992), 82–85.
6. Exod. 34:13; Deut. 7:5; 12:3.
7. Judg. 3:7 (plural), 6:25–30; 1 Kings 18:19 mentions in parallel with the 400
prophets of Baal, 400 prophets of Asherah; 2 Kings 21:3.
8. 1 Kings 14:23; 2 Kings 17:10, 18:4, 23:14, and parallels in 2 Chron. 14:2 and
17:6.
9. Deut. 16:21; 1 Kings 15:13, 16:33; 2 Kings 13:6, 21:3, 7, and 23:6–7.
10. Israel Finkelstein and Eli Piasetzsky “The Date of Kuntillet Ajrud: The 14c
Perspective,” Tel Aviv (2008): 135–185. The report on the excavations has just
been published: Zeev Meshel and Liora Freud, eds., Kuntillet Ajrud (Ḥorvat
Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border (Jerusalem:
Israel Exploration Society, 2012).
11. “Temān,” which is used with an article, may perhaps signify the south in a gen-
eral sense.
12. Mordechai Gilula, “To Yahweh Shomron and His Asherah,” Shnaton 3
(1979): 129–137 (in Hebrew), xv–xvi (in English); Brian Schmidt, “The Aniconic
Tradition: On Reading Images and Viewing Texts,” in The Triumph of Elohim,
ed. D. V. Edelman (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 76–105.
13. Judith Hadley, “Yahweh and ‘His Asherah’: Archaeological and Textual Evi-
dence for the Cult of the Goddess,” in Ein Gott allein? JHWH-Verehrung und
biblischer Monotheismus im Kontext der israelitischen und altorientalischen
Religionsgeschichte, ed. Walter Dietrich and Martin Klopfenstein (Freiburg:

University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 235–268.
14. André Lemaire, “Who or What Was Yahweh’s Ashera?,” Biblical Archaeolog-
ical Review (1984): 45–51.
15. Worship of the goddess Asherah is also reflected in theophoric proper names
containing “Asherahs” as a component that can be found on seals dating from
the eighth and seventh centuries: ʾšrḥy (“Asherah is my life”); see N. Avigad
and B. Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: Israel Academy
of Sciences and Humanities, 1997), 486.
16. Aširtum in Akkadian; ʾšrt in Phoenician; šrt or ʾṭrt in Aramaic.
17. For a critical evaluation of this etymology, see Sung Jin Park, “A Short Note
on the Etymology of Asherah,” Ugarit Forschungen (2010): 527–534.
18. C. Uehlinger, “Anthropomorphic Cult Statuary in Iron Age Palestine and the
Search for Yahweh’s Cult Image,” in The Image and the Book, ed. K. van der
Toorn (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 150–151. The provenance is uncertain because
the object was purchased on the “grey market.”
19. C. Uhelinger, “Eine anthropomorphe Kultstatue des Gottes von Dan?,” Bib-
lische Notizen 72 (1994): 85–99. This article also canvasses the possibility that
fragments of a statue found at Tel Dan might have belonged to the statue of a
god, possibly Yhwh. This is a highly conjectural interpretation that depends
in part on reading the phrase byt dwd in an inscription found on the same site
as meaning “House of Dod” and not “House of David,” which is the reading
preferred by the great majority of scholars.
20. O. Keel and C. Uehlinger, Dieux, déesses et figures divines (Paris: Cerf, 2001),
§ 197.
21. Judith Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a
Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
22. For a similar structure, see also 2 Kings 23:11.
23. See also the criticism in Izak Cornelius, “In Search of the Goddess in Ancient
Palestinian Iconography,” in Israel zwischen den Mächten: Festschrift für Stefan
Timm zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Michael Pietzsch and Friedhelm Hartenstein
(Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2009), 77–98.
24. Garth Gilmour, “An Iron Age II Pictorial Inscription from Jerusalem Il-
lustrating Yahweh and Asherah,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 141 (2009):
87–103.
25. For an image see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ashera._Eretz _Israel_ Mus
.jpg.
26. Raz Kletter, “Between Archaeology and Theology: The Pillar Figurines from
Judah and the Asherah,” in Studies in the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel
and Jordan, ed. Amihai Mazar (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001),
179–216.
27. In Hebrew with the article.
28. For a picture, see the website for the British Museum. The website presents the
goddess as Ashtarte, but she should be identified with Asherah.
29. Israel Finkelstein and Benjamin Sass‚ “The West Semitic Alphabetical Inscrip-
tions, Late Bronze II to Iron IIA: Archaeological Context, Distribution and Chro-
nology,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 2 (2013): 149–220, quotation on 153.
10. the fall of sa m aria and the rise of judah

1. William H. Shea, “Menahem and Tiglath-Pileser III,” JNES 37 (1978): 43–49.
2. Willem A. M. Beuken, Jesaja 1–12 (Freiburg: Herder, 2003), 199. The reference
to sixty-five years poses a problem because the kingdom of the north was cer-
tainly defeated about ten years after the Syro-Ephramite war. The addition
would have been made by a copyist who was revising the roll of Isaiah after
the deportation of the foreign population of the former kingdom of the north
under Assarhaddon (680–669) and Assurbanipal (668–627).
3. Ḥayim Tadmor, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria (Jeru-
salem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), 68–69.
4. Ibid., 138–141.
5. The identity of this person has been vigorously discussed. There was no pha-
raoh of this name. Some have thought that this refers to a person named in
Assyrian sources as Sib’e, an Egyptian general (see John Gray, I & II Kings: A
Commentary, 3rd ed. [London: SCM Press, 1977], 583). The Hebrew name may
also be an allusion to the Egyptian city of Sais or simply a transcription of the
Egyptian word for king (nj-swt).
6. The Annals of Sargon II state that it is Sargon who took the city, but both the
Hebrew Bible and the Babylonian chronicles state that the fall of Samaria was
the doing of his predecessor, Salmanasar V. In view of the difficulties Sargon
had in taking power, it seems plausible that he would have tried for ideolog-
ical reasons to appropriate the credit for the fall of Samaria.
7. Prism of Nimrud, translation following William W. Hallo, ed., The Context of
Scripture: Canonical Compositions, Monumental Inscriptions, and Archival
Documents from the Biblical World, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 295–296.
8. See Morton Cogan, Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the
Eighth and Seventh Centuries b.c. (Missoula, MT: Society of Biblical Litera-
ture, 1974).
9. Following Hallo, The Context of Scripture, 2:293.
10. Sukkot-Benot has not been identified. Some have postulated a goddess Banitu
(Morton Cogan, “Sukkoth-Benot,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the
Bible, 2nd ed., ed. K. van der Toorn et al. [Leiden: Brill, 1999], 821–822), but it
is also possible to understand the name, which means “huts of the girls,” as an
allusion to prostitution. The list given here, then, would start with practices
involving young girls and end with the sacrifice of sons by fire.
11. God of the underworld, also attested in the proper name of a high official at
Babylon; see Jer. 39:3 and 13.
12. Ashima is a deity also attested among Arab tribes at Teima. The name, which
itself means “The Name,” is a substitute for the proper name of the goddess
(see Amos 8:14). Others see in Ashima a parody of Asherah.
13. Apparently an Elamite deity.
14. Deity who is otherwise unknown, perhaps Elamite, which would explain the
association with Nibhaz.
15. The names of these two gods have the lexeme melek as a component. As the
text states, they are gods to whom human sacrifices are made and thus sim-
ilar to molek or Yhwh-melek (see Chapter 7).
16. Jean-Daniel Macchi, Les Samaritains: Histoire d’une légende; Israël et la prov-
ince de Samarie (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1994), 56–71.
17. See the discussion of the identification of the place-names in Volkmar Fritz,
Das erste Buch der Könige (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1996), 101.
18. Ran Zadok, “Geographical and Onomastical Notes,” Journal of the Ancient
Near Eastern Society 8 (1976): 117.
19. Ibid., 115.
20. The sanctuary of Bethel was already associated with lions in 1 Kings 13, and
the lion is also the animal who symbolizes the tribe of Judah.
21. Translation following http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa02/corpus.
22. For further details, see Wolfgang Röllig, “Bethel,” in van der Toorn et al., Dic-
tionary of Deities and Demons, 173–175.
23. A letter found at Hermopolis mentions the temple of Bethel and the temple of
the Queen of Heaven; at Elephantine one finds the trinity Yaho, Ashim-Bethel,
and Ana-Bethel.
24. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman‚ The Bible Unearthed (New York:
Free Press, 2001), 243.
25. This is also supported by the finds of a significant number of fish bones in Je-
rusalem, which show that there was considerable commerce toward the end
of the ninth or the beginning of the eighth century. For more details, see Ronny
Reich, Excavating the City of David: The Place Where the History of Jerusalem
Started (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2011).
26. Magen Broshi, “The Expansion of Jerusalem in the Reigns of Hezekiah and
Manasse,” Israel Exploration Journal 24 (1974): 21–26.
27. Baruch Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century b.c.e.:
Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability,” in Law and Ideology in
Monarchic Israel, ed. Baruch Halpern and Deborah W. Hobson (Sheffield, UK:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 11–107, 25–26.
28. Larry G. Herr, “Archaeological Sources for the History of Palestine: The Iron
Age II Period; Emerging Nations,” Biblical Archaeologist 60 (1997): 114–151, 154–
183, esp. 155–157.
29. Wolfgang Zwickel, “Wirtschaft liche Grundlagen in Zentraljuda gegen Ende

des 8. Jahrhunderts aus archäologischer Sicht: Mit einem Ausblick auf die
wirtschaft liche Situation im 7. Jahrhundert,” Ugarit Forschungen 26 (1994):
564–586.
30. 2 Kings 10:15 and 23.
31. 2 Kings 18:19 states that Samaria fell in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign, which
would put the beginning of his reign in 728. However, 2 Kings 18:13 states that
the siege of Jerusalem took place in the thirteenth year of Hezekiah, which
would indicate that he ascended the throne in 715/714. It is hard to decide.
32. 2 Kings 20:20; Isa. 22:9; 2 Chron. 32:3–4.30.
33. For translation, see http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13662-siloam-inscrip
tion.
34. David Ushishkin, “The Date of the Judean Shrine at Arad,” Israel Exploration
Journal (1988): 141–157.
35. Ernst Axel Knauf, “The Glorious Days of Manasseh,” in Good Kings and Bad
Kings: The Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh Century b.c.e., ed. Lester L. Grabbe
(London: T & T Clark, 2005), 164–188.
36. Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Röllig, Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik,
vol. 1 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaft liche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), 190.
37. According to Philip R. Davies and John W. Rogerson, “Was the Siloam Tunnel
Built by Hezekiah?,” Biblical Archaeologist 59 (1996): 138–149, the inscription
is no earlier than the Hasmonean period, a view that has not recommended
itself to a majority of scholars. For arguments against this thesis, see Stig Norin,
“The Age of the Siloam Inscription and Hezekiah’s Tunnel,” Vetus Testa-
mentum 48 (1998): 37–48.
38. J. Briend and M. J. Seux, Textes du Proche- Orient ancien et histoire d’Israël
(Paris: Cerf, 1977), 117.
39. “He attacked the Philistines all the way up to Gaza and devastated their terri-
tory, both their simple watch-towers and their fortified cities” (2 Kings 18:8).
40. David Ussishkin, The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib (Tel-Aviv: Institute
of Archaeology, 1982).
41. For translation, see W. Mayer, “Sennacherib’s Campaign of 701 bce: The As-
syrian View,” in “Like a Bird in a Cage”: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce
(JSOT S 363), ed. Lester L. Grabbe (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 196;
or James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1968), 288.
42. 2 Kings 20: “(35) That night it happened that the angel of Yhwh went out and
struck down 180,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. The next morning
when they arose there was nothing but cadavers and dead men. (36) Sennach-
erib, king of Assyria broke camp; he returned to Nineveh where he remained.”
43. Some think that nothing was left of Judah apart from Jerusalem and its hin-
terland; see, for instance, Gösta Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine
from the Paleolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press,
1993), 717–730 and map 21.
44. Ernst Axel Knauf, “Who Destroyed Beersheba II?,” in Kein Land für sich allein:
Studien zum Kulturkontakt in Kanaan, Israel, Palästina und Ebirnâri für Man-
fred Wieppert zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Ulrich Hübner and Ernst Axel Knauf
(Freiburg: University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 188.
45. Ludwig Massmann, “Sanheribs Politik in Juda: Beobachtungen und Erwä-
gungen zum Ausgang der Konfrontation Hiskias mit den Assyrern,” in Hübner
and Knauf, Kein Land für sich allein, 169–172.
46. Yairah Amit, “When Did Jerusalem Become a Subject of Polemic?,” in Jeru-
salem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period, ed. Andrew G.
Vaughan and Ann E. Killebrew (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003),
365–374.
47. Jutta Hausmann, Israels Rest: Studien zum Selbstverständnis der nachexilischen
Gemeinde (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1987).
48. Num. 21:4–6, which is probably a very much later source, gives an etiology of
this serpent. Moses is said to have fashioned it in the desert to save the Israel-
ites from the attacks of serpents that Yhwh sent against them because they were
disobedient.
49. For discussion of the importance of representations of serpents influenced by
Egyptian models in Judah during the eighth century, see Othmar Keel, Die
Geschichte Jerusalems und die Entstehung des Monotheismus (Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 422–429.
50. Kristin A. Swanson, “A Reassessment of Hezekiah’s Reforms in Light of Jar
Handles and Iconographic Evidence,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 64 (2002):
460–469.
51. Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman, “The Judahite Shephelah in the Late
8th and Early 7th centuries b.c.e.,” Tel Aviv 31 (2004): 60–79; Alexander Fan-
talkin, “The Final Destruction of Beth Shemesh and the Pax Assyriaca in the
Judahite Shepelah: An Alternative View,” Tel Aviv 31 (2004): 245–261.
52. Verses 10–15 are certainly an editorial interpolation intended to make Manasseh
the principal, if not the unique, king responsible for the fall of Judah.
53. For a seal from this period perhaps representing Yhwh under a lunar as-
pect, see B. Sass, “The Pre-exilic Hebrew Seals: Iconism vs. Aniconism,” in
Studies in the Iconography of North-West Semitic Inscribed Seals, ed. Ben-
jamin Sass and C. Uehlinger (Freiburg: University Press; Göttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 232–234.
11. the reforms of josiah

1. Deut. 17:1–3 and 2 Kings 23:4–5; Deut. 12:2–3 and 2 Kings 23:6 and 14; Deut.
23:18 and 2 Kings 23:7; Deut. 18:10–11 and 2 Kings 23:24.
2. See Bernd Jörg Diehner and Claudia Nauerth, “Die Inventio des sepher hat-
torah in 2 Kön 22: Struktur, Intention und Funktion von Auffindungslegenden,”
Dielheimer Blätter zum Alten Testament 18 (1984): 95–118.
3. The text can be found in Pritchard, The Ancient Near East (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1968), 394–396.
4. Katherine Stott, “Finding the Lost Book of the Law: Re-reading the Story of
‘The Book of the Law’ (Deuteronomy–2 Kings) in Light of Classical Literature,”
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 30 (2005): 153–169.
5. In a chapter that is extremely difficult to translate and that exists in a long and
an abbreviated version. The rubric of the papyrus of Nu contains the following
story: “This formula was found at Hermopolis . . . under the feet of that god
(= Thoth) at the time of the majesty of that king of Upper and Lower Egypt,
Mycerinus triumphant, by prince Dejdefhora triumphant who found it when
he went to inspect the temple . . . He took it as a wondrous thing to the king
when he saw that it was something very secret which had not been seen or
known about. Let he who reads this formula be pure and without blemish.”
This translation follows Paul Barguet, Le Livre des Morts des Anciens Égyp-
tiens (Paris: Cerf, 1967), 104–105.
6. Nadav Na’aman, in “The ‘Discovered Book’ and the Legitimation of Josiah’s
Reforms,” Journal of Biblical Literature 130 (2011): 47–62, claims that the dis-
covery of the roll was an essential element in allowing the reforms to proceed,
but the parallel narrative to 2 Kings 22–23 in 2 Chron. 34 recounts first the re-
forms of Josiah and only then the discovery of the book.
7. “(3) In the 18th year of his reign, king Josiah sent the secretary Shaphan, son
of Azaliah, son of Meshullam to the house of Yhwh saying: ‘(4) Go up to the
high priest Hilkiah, so that he might collect all the silver brought to the
house of Yhwh and which the guardians of the threshold have received from
the people. (5) Let them put this silver into the hands of the supervisors,
those responsible for the works at the house of Yhwh, so that they may pay
those who work in the house of Yhwh to repair damages to it: (6) the carpen-
ters, builders, masons to buy beams and dressed stones to repair the house.
(7) And let them not demand an accounting of the silver put into their hands
because they are acting on conscience.’ (8) The high priest Hilkiah said to the
secretary Shaphan: ‘I have found the book of the law in the house of Yhwh.’
Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan who read it. (9) The secretary Shaphan
came to fi nd the king and gave an account in these terms: ‘Your servants
have spent the silver found in the house and have put it into the hands of
the supervisors of work, those responsible for the house of Yhwh.’ ” It is
easier to follow this passage without verse 8 (in italics above), which is an
interpolation.
8. Which is to be found in verses 8, 10–11, 13*, 16–18, 19*, and 20* of chapter 22
and in verses 1–3 of chapter 23.
9. The first part of the inscription (until “crumbled”) follows Richard Ellis, Foun-
dation Deposits in Ancient Mesopotamia (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1968), 181. The second part is adapted from the German translation of H.
Schaudig, Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros’ des Grossen, samt
den in ihrem Umfeld entstandenen Tendenzschriften: Textausgabe und Gram-
matik, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 256 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001),
392.
10. See especially Hans-Detlef Hoff mann, Reform und Reformen: Untersu-
chungen zu einem Grundthema der deuteronomistischen Geschichtsschreibung
(Zu rich: Theologischer Verlag, 1980), 169–270. The process of initiating the
works, the mention of the workers and their honesty, is in parallel in the two
passages. See, for example, 2 Kings 12:16: “No account was required of the
men to whom the money was given so that they could hand it on to those who
actually did the work, because they acted with probity”; and 2 Kings 22:7: “Do
not demand of them an account of the money put into their hands because
they act in good conscience.”
11. Victor A. Horwitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the
Bible in the Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings (Sheffield,
UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992).
12. For the distinction between primary and secondary witnesses, see Ernst Axel
Knauf, “From History to Interpretation,” in The Fabric of History: Text Artifact,
and Israel’s Past, ed. Diana V. Edelmann (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1991), 26–64.
13. Yohanan Aharoni and Ruth Amiram, “Arad: A Biblical City in Southern Pal-
estine” Archaeology 17 (1964): 43–53.
14. David Ussishkin, “The Date of the Judean Shrine at Arad,” Israel Exploration
Society 38 (1988): 142–157.
15. Zeev Herzog, “The Date of the Temple at Arad: Reassessment of the Stratig-
raphy and the Implications for the History of Religion in Judah,” in Studies in
the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel and Jordan, ed. Amitai Mazar (Shef-
field, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 151–178.
16. Christoph Uehlinger, “Was There a Cult Reform under King Josiah? The Case
for a Well- Grounded Minimum,” in Good Kings and Bad Kings, ed. Lester L.
Grabbe (London: Clark International, 2005), 279–316.
17. One must note, however, the existence of the goddess Anat associated with
Yhwh in the Elephantine community during the Persian period.
18. André Lemaire, “Prières en temps de crise: Les inscriptions de Khirbet Beit
Lei,” Revue Biblique 83 (1976): 558–568.
19. Rolf Stucky, The Engraved Tridacna Shells (Sao Paulo: Museu de Arqueologia
et Etnologia, Universidade de Sao Paolo, 1976), no. 21.
20. The text of Isa. 38:3 also mentions a staircase of Ahaz, which may be the same
construction.
21. The book of Jeremiah was written down about half a century after the reforms
of Josiah. The text of the book of Zephaniah is also much later than the end of
the sixth century. Zephaniah 1:5 denounces all kinds of cults: “Those who bow
down on the terraced roofs before the army of the heavens, those who pros-
trate themselves while binding themselves by an oath to Yhwh while also
taking an oath by Milkom.”
22. The Masoretic text has bātîm here, “houses,” which makes no sense. One
should take this term in a more abstract sense to mean “covers,” or one must
postulate an incorrect and tendentious vocalization of a word meaning
“clothing” (compare the Arabic word battun).
23. Some scholars have questioned the existence of prostitution in the temple; for
instance, Christine Stark, “Kultprostitution” im Alten Testament? Die Qedeschen
der hebräischen Bibel und das Motiv der Hurerei (Freiburg: University Press;
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006). Stark admits, however, that the
qĕdēšîm were an integral part of the religious staff for the service of Asherah,
which makes it likely that they can be identified with the assinu (transvestites?)
in the service of Ishtar.
24. In Hebrew the term “prostitute” is here in the collective singular.
25. This passage from Deut. 23:18–19 was redacted by someone in the circle of those
who were at the origin of Josiah’s reforms.
26. Karel van der Toorn, “Cultic Prostitution,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary,
ed. D. N. Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 5:510–513.
27. Hermann Spieckermann, Judah unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 221.
28. Nadav Na’aman, “The King Leading Cult Reforms in His Kingdom: Josiah and
Other Kings in the Ancient Near East,” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Bib-
lische Rechtsgeschichte 12 (2006): 131–168.
29. According to 2 Kings 22:1, Josiah began his reign at the age of eight. If this is
historically accurate, his counselors, among whom must we must place the
family of Shaphan and the priest Hilkiah, will have governed in his place.
30. See Gösta W. Ahlström et al., The History of Ancient Palestine from the
Palaeolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1993),
778.
31. Ephraim Stern suggests that the fact that Josiah was killed at Megiddo by a
king of Egypt might signify that Josiah had effectively governed this region
for a brief time (Stern, Archeology of the Land of the Bible, vol. 2: The Assyrian,
Babylonian, and Persian Periods, 732–332 bce [New York: Doubleday, 2001], 68).
However, it makes more sense to suppose that Megiddo was under Egyptian
control. See Ahlström, History of Ancient Palestine, 765.
32. For a translation of this loyalty oath, see S. Parpola and K. Watanabe, Neo-
Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA II) (Helsinki: Helsinki University
Press, 1988), 28–58.
33. Very recently a copy of this treaty was found at Tall Tayinat in southern Turkey,
which shows that it was recopied and deposited in the temples of the vassal
states, so it is easy to imagine that a copy of it would have been available at
Jerusalem and that Manasseh had committed himself to respect it. See Jacob
Lauinger, “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty at Tell Tayinat: Text and Commen-
tary,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 64 (2012): 87–123; also Hans U. Steymans,
“Deuteronomy 28 and Tell Tayinat,” Verbum et Ecclesia 34 (2013), http://www
.ve.org.za.
34. For details, see Hans U. Steymans, Deuteronomium 28 und die adê zur Thron-
folgeregelung Asarhaddons: Segen und Fluch in Alten Orient und in Israel
(Freiburg: University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995).
35. This text is nowadays a part of the liturgical prayers of Judaism.
36. See Martin Keller, Untersuchungen zur deuteronomisch-deuteronomistischen
Namenstheologie (Wertheim: Beltz Athenäum, 1996), 25–44; Bernard M.
Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 21–28.
37. The Masoretic vocalization of l-š-k-n-w poses problems. In putting the main
caesura after šām (“there”), the Masoretes took š-k-n as object of the following
verb. In the original text, however, l-š-k-n-w would have been intended as an
infinitive expressing intensifying purpose to carry out all that was enjoined
in the formula of centralization. See Keller, Untersuchungen, 15–17.
38. See Andrew D. H. Mayes, Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans/ Mar-
shall, Morgan & Scott, 1981), 227.
39. This term is to be understood in opposition to “slaughtering in the context of
a religious cult.” “Noncultic” slaughtering takes place outside the central sanc-
tuary and is thus not an integral part of the cult, although of course it too will
be accompanied by various rituals.
40. Norbert Lohfink, “Fortschreibung? Zur Technik von Rechtsrevisionen im deu-
teronomischen Bereich, erörtert an Deuteronomium 12, Ex 21,2–11 und Dtr
15,12–18,” in Das Deuteronomium und seine Deutungen, ed. Timo Veijola (Hel-
sinki: Finnische Exegetische Gesellschaft ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 1996), 139–142.
41. K. Lawson Younger Jr., Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near
Eastern and Biblical History Writing (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1990).
42. Richard D. Nelson, “Josiah in the Book of Joshua,” Journal of Biblical Litera-
ture 1004 (1981): 531–540.
43. Amos Funkenstein, “History, Counter-History and Memory,” in Probing the
Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,” ed. Saul Friedlander
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 66–81.
44. T. Römer, Moïse: Lui que Yahvé a connu face à face (Paris: Gallimard, 2002),
27–31.
1 2 . f r o m o n e g o d t o t h e o n ly g o d
1. Just as the pharaoh had done for Jehoiakim, the king of Babylon also
changed the name of the king of Judah, probably in order to illustrate his
power.
2. Oded Lipschits, “Demographic Changes in Judah between the Seventh and the
Fift h Centuries b.c.e.,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Pe-
riods, ed. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisen-
brauns, 2003), 323–376.
3. For instance, 2 Kings 25:21: “It is thus that Judah was deported far from its
lands.” On the myth of the empty land, see Hans Barstad, The Myth of the
Empty Land: A Study in the History and Archaeology of Judah during the “Ex-
ilic” Period (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1996).
4. Diana Edelman, “Did Saulite-Davidic Rivalry Resurface in Early Persian
Yehud?,” in The Land That I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archae-
ology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of J. Maxwell Miller, ed. J. Andrew
Dearman and M. Patrick Graham (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press,
2001), 69–91.
5. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities xv:1.2.
6. This collection comes from the “grey market,” the open market of buyers and
sellers of “antiquities.”
7. Francis Joannes and André Lemaire, “Trois tablettes cunéiformes d’onomastique
ouest-sémitique (collection Sh. Moussaïeff ) (Pls I-II),” Transeuphratène 17
(1999): 17–27, 33.
8. Term used for the Babylonian exiles settled in the country to which they were
deported.
9. The book of Jeremiah contains some evidence that the poor might actually have
benefited from a redistribution of the land of the exiles by the Babylonians.
10. The text of 2 Kings 24:14 and 16 does not explicitly mention priests among the
deported. According to 2 Kings 25:18–20, two important priests are said to have
been killed after the destruction of Jerusalem. It is possible that some mem-
bers of the priestly class stayed in Judah and that a kind of sacrificial cult was
permitted to continue there, as is suggested by Jer. 42:5.
11. Armin Steil, Krisensemantik: Wissenssoziologische Untersuchungen zu einem
Topos moderner Zeiterfahrung (Opladen: Leske & Buderich, 1993).
12. This chronological scheme, to be sure, is deceptive, because although the fall
of the neo-Babylonian empire in principle provided the opportunity for ex-
iled populations to return, many Judeans remained in Babylon or Egypt, two
places that became intellectual centers of Judaism.
13. For more detail, see Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History:
A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (London: T & T Clark; New
York: Continuum, 2005).
14. The Hebrew word bĕrît, which is usually translated “covenant,” actually covers
the same semantic field as the Assyrian adê, which means treaty or loyalty oath.
15. See the introduction to book 1.
16. Even if it is true, as Richard Evans claims, that Ranke’s famous formula “wie
es eigentlich gewesen” ought rather to be translated “how things essentially
were” (Evans, In Defence of History [London: Granta, 1997], 17).
17. This was clearly shown by Rolf Rendtorff, “Die Erwählung Israels als Thema
der deuteronomischen Theologie,” in Die Botschaft und die Boten: Festschrift
für Hans Walter Wolff zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Jörg Jeremias and Lothar Per-
litt (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981), 75–86.
18. Deut. 10:16 puts great emphasis, as 30:6 does, on the motif of the “circumci-
sion of the heart.” Th is might be connected with a polemic against priestly
attempts to transform the ritual of circumcision into a distinctive sign of
Judaism at this period when Judaism was only in its initial stages of devel-
opment.
19. Odil H. Steck, Gottesknecht und Zion: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Deuterojesaja
(Tübingen: Mohr, 1992).
20. A English translation is available at www.britishmuseum.org /explore
/highlights/articles/c/cyrus _cylinder_-_translation.aspx.
21. “El” here has probably the general sense of “God.”
22. Jean-David Macchi, “ ‘Ne rassassez plus les choses d’autrefois’: Ésaïe 43, 16–21,
un surprenant regard deutéro-ésaïen sur le passé,” Zeitschrift für die Alttesta-
mentliche Wissenschaft 121 (2009): 225–241.
23. The victory of Yhwh over the Babylonians is described using the same images
as those applied to his victory over the pharaoh and his army in the book of
Exodus.
24. On this topic, see Diana V. Edelman, “Proving Yahweh Killed His Wife
(Zech. 5:5–11),” Biblical Interpretation 11 (2003): 335–344.
25. The very word riš̒āh may be understood as a pun on the name of the goddess
Asherah (ʾăšērāh).
26. The deportation of the goddess to Babylon makes sense in light of the view
that the great goddess (Ishtar) was originally from Mesopotamia. According
to Zechariah she should return there.
27. The exact meaning of the verb utilized is “put down in labor,” which is used
here as a masculine participle.
28. See Marie-Theres Wackert, Figurationen des Weiblichen im Hosea-Buch
(Freiburg: Herder, 1996).
29. Martti Nissinen, Prophetie, Redaktion und Fortschreibung im Hosea-Buch: Stu-
dien zum Werdegang eines Prophetenbuches im Lichte von Hos 4 und 11 (Kev-
elaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neuenkirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), 268–276.
30. Julius Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten: Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, 3rd ed.,
vol. 5 (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1963 [1889]), 134.
31. Some of the shifts one find in this passage are that much easier to make be-
cause the author of Genesis 1 uses the term ʾělōhîm, which can be read as ei-
ther singular or plural.
32. A comparable phenomenon can be found in Egypt, where ma’at, originally a
concept expressing the just order of the world, is transformed into a young god-
dess with a feather in her hair, symbol of ma’at.
33. Later in Judaism there is a similar evolution with regard to the idea of shekina,
which first signifies the divine presence among men, but then also takes the
form of a hypostasis.
34. In the framing chapters 1–2 and 42, the sufferings of Job are said to result from
a wager between Yhwh and the Adversary (“satan”), an agent provocateur of
the celestial court. We shall return to this.
35. Martin Leuenberger, “Ich bin Jhwh und keiner sonst”: Der exklusive Monothe-
ismus des Kyros-Orakels Jes 45, 1–7 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2010).
36. This refers to the Persian king Cyrus.
37. Th is expression, often translated as “peace,” signifies the just order where
everything is in its place, a state without perturbation.
38. Only Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) two centuries later will go in the same direc-
tion by giving the following advice to its readers: “On the good day, be
happy, on the bad (rā̒ āh) day consider this: the one is also the other, God
has made them, so that man cannot discover what shall come after him”
(7:14).
39. Christophe Nihan, From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Compo-
sition of the Book of Leviticus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 340–378.
40. The theory behind this idea can be found in the priestly version of the revela-
tion of Yhwh to Moses in Exodus 6: “(2) God spoke to Moses. He said to him: ‘It
is me, Yhwh. (3) I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shadday,
but did not make myself known to them under my real name ‘Yhwh.’ ” This
text refers back to chapter 17 of Genesis, which also belongs to the priestly
narrative and where Yhwh presents himself to Abraham as “El Shadday.” Be-
fore this revelation to Abraham the priestly editors used the word ʾělōhîm to
refer to God.
41. Albert de Pury, “Gottesname, Gottesbezeichnung und Gottesbegriff: ʾělōhîm
als Indiz zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Pentateuchs,” in Abschied vom Jah-
wisten: Die Komposition des Hexateuchs in der jüngsten Diskussion, ed. Jan
Christian Gertz, Konrad Schmid, and Markus Witte (New York: De Gruyter,
2002), 25–47.
42. Ernst Axel Knauf, “El Šaddai: Der Gott Abrahams?,” Biblische Zeitschrift
29 (1985): 87–105.
43. This proximity is also illustrated in Genesis 17 in the priestly narrative of the
institution of circumcision, which is presented as a sign of the covenant be-
tween Yhwh and Abraham. However, not only Isaac, but also Ishmael, is
circumcised, which shows that the priestly authors knew that this practice
was common among Arab tribes. The fact that Ishmael is circumcised at the
age of thirteen, whereas Isaac is circumcised on the eighth day after his birth,
shows the evolution in Judaism of a rite of passage at puberty into a ritual
marking the entry of the newborn boy into a community.
44. For a first orientation, see Muhammad A. Dandamaev and Vladimir Lukonin,
The Culture and Social Institutions of Ancient Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989); J. Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia: From 550 BC to 650 AD
(London: Tauris, 1996).
45. Lester Grabbe, Ezra-Nehemiah (London: Routledge, 1998), 160.
46. See Herbert Niehr, “Religio-Historical Aspects of the ‘Early Post-Exilic’ Pe-
riod,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformations of Religious Tradition
in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times, ed. Bob Becking and Marjo C. A. Korpel
(Leiden: Brill, 1999), 243. The historical existence of Erza poses a number of
problems; that of Nehemias seems more plausible.
47. For details, see Albert de Pury and Thomas Römer, “Terres d’exil et terres
d’accueil: Quelques réflexions sur le judaïsme postexilique face à la Perse et à
l’Égypte,” Transeuphratène 9 (1995): 29–30.
48. The relief and inscriptions of Behistun, which describe the conquests of Darius,
show this very clearly.
49. In the narrative given here in the book of Job, “satan” is not (yet) a proper name,
but designates a function.
50. It is obvious that the verses containing the interview of God and satan were
added after the fact to the original narrative in which Yhwh is directly respon-
sible for the calamities inflicted on Job. It is perfectly possible to read the first
chapter of Job without the scenes in the celestial court and have the sense that
nothing is missing. This impression is confirmed when one notices that the
pronoun suffi xes in verse 13 (“his sons and daughters”) cannot refer to the im-
mediately preceding verse (“Satan withdrew from the presence of Yhwh”).
Rather these pronouns make sense only if one connects them with verse 4
(“this Job always did”). In addition, the epilogue of chapter 42 does not con-
tain any reference to the wager between Yhwh and satan, but is rather devoted
to a reckoning of accounts between Yhwh and Job’s friends. The retrospective
integration of satan into the story of Job can be understood as an attempt to
extract evil out of the divine nature and “personify” it.
51. The books of Chronicles are of later origin than the books of Samuel and were
probably composed at the end of the Persian era or the beginning of the Hel-
lenistic age.
52. Colette Briffard, “2 Samuel 24: Un parcours royal; Du pire au meilleur,” Études
théologiques et religieuses 77 (2002): 95–104.
53. An instance of this would be the dualism asserted by the Qumran commu-
nity, which expected an eschatological struggle between the opposing “sons
of light” and “sons of darkness,” and “popular” religion at the time of Christ
had a very complex demonology.
54. Frantz Grenet, “Y a-t-il une composante iranienne dans l’apocalyptique judéo-
chrétienne? Retour sur un vieux problème,” Studia Archaeus 11–12 (2007–
2008): 15–36.
55. Jacques Briend, “Malachie 1,11 et l’universalisme,” in Ce Dieu qui vient: Mé-
langes offerts à Bernard Renaud, ed. Raymond Kuntzmann (Paris: Cerf,
1995), 191–204.
56. A. E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1923), 148, doc. 44.
57. P. Grelot, Documents araméens d’Egypte (LAPO) (Paris: Cerf, 1972), doc. 10.
58. Seventh month of the Egyptian calendar, corresponding to the Babylonian
Tishri.
59. Sum calculated in Persian monetary units with a value of 10 sicles. A “sicle”
was the equivalent of a Greek drachma.
60. Grelot, Documents araméens d’Égypte, p. 383, doc. 89.
61. Th is papyrus is in Berlin. See http://cojs.org /cojswikiwp/the _ elephantine
_temple-_407_bce/.
62. Lester Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period.
1: Yehud: A History of the Persian Province of Judah (London: T & T Clark,
2004), 318–319.
63. Pierre Gibert, “Le monothéisme est très difficile à penser,” Le Monde de la Bible
124 (2000): 50–51.
64. See Gregor Ahn, “ ‘Monotheismus’–‘Polytheismus’: Grenzen und Möglich-
keiten einer Klassifikation von Gottesvorstellungen,” in Mesopotamia-
Ugaritica-Biblica: Festschrift Kurt Bergerhof, ed. Manfried Dietrich and Oswald
Loretz (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993), 5–6.
65. For more details and a bibliography, see Fritz Stolz, Einführung in den biblischen
Monotheismus (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996), 4–22.
66. Samuel Terrien, Job, 2nd ed. (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2005), 60–62.
67. Some have tried to find traces of this hymn in Psalm 104, but the parallels cited
are rather insubstantial.
68. Jan Assmann, The Price of Monotheism (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2010).
69. For the fragments of Manetho, see Gerald Verbrugge and John Wickersham,
Berossos and Manetho Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient
Mesopotamia and Egypt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
See also Jan Assmann, “Exodus und Amarna: Der Mythos der ‘Aussätzigen’
als verdrängte Erinnerung der Aton-Religion,” in Ägypten-Bilder: Akten des
Symposiums zur Ägypten-Rezeption Augst bei Basel, vom 9.–11 September
1993, ed. Elisabeth Staehelin and Bertrand Jaeger (Freiburg: University Press;
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 11–34.
70. Sigmund Freud et al., The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works
of Sigmund Freud: Moses and Monotheism, an Outline of Psycho-Analysis and
Other Works (London: Hogarth Press, 1975).
71. The books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah.
72. Jacques Briend, “L’edit de Cyrus et sa valeur historique,” Transeuphratène 11
(1996): 33–44.
73. It has often been claimed that at the start of the Persian era Yehud was not au-
tonomous, but was part of a larger province of which Samaria was the capital,
and that Yehud separated from Samaria only under Nehemiah. This view is
not tenable. There are several indications of the existence of an independent
province of Yehud from the neo-Babylonian era.
74. Both the biblical account and the consensus of traditional specialist opinion
agree that the temple was rebuilt in 520–515. Diana Edelman, however, has
maintained that it would be more reasonable to date the reconstruction to the
period during which Nehemiah was active—that is, in the fift h century. This
does seem a reasonable assumption in light of the important changes intro-
duced into the province of Yehud by the Achaemenid king Artaxerxes I
(465–424). See Diana Edelman, The Origins of the “Second” Temple: Persian
Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (London: Equinox, 2005).
75. See chapter 2 of Haggai; compare also the importance of Zorobabel in the vi-
sions described in the book of Zechariah.
76. André Lemaire, “Administration in Fourth- Century bce Judah in Light of
Epigraphy and Numismatics,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Cen-
tury B.C.E., ed. Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 53–74.
77. It is difficult to form an exact idea of the population as long as one does not
know how far Persian Yehud extended. Charles E. Carter, in his Emergence of
Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study (Sheffield, UK:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 246–248, estimates the population of Yehud
at about 20,000 to 30,000.
78. See Lipschits, “Demographic Changes,” 39–54.
79. Laurie Pearce, “New Evidence for Judeans in Babylonia,” in Judah and the
Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 399–411.
80. Ephraim Stern and Yitzak Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage
of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” Israel Exploration Journal 52
(2002): 49–57.
81. In Deuteronomy 27, the Masoretic text states that the altar should be built on
Mount Ebal, but the Samaritan Pentateuch specifies Gerizim. The Samaritan
version is the original, as is confirmed by a fragment from Qumran. See Chris-
tophe Nihan, “The Torah between Samaria and Judah: Shechem and Gerizim
in Deuteronomy and Joshua,” in The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Un-
derstanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, ed. Gary N. Knoppers et Ber-

nard M. Levinson (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 187–223.
82. Peter Frei, “Zentralgewalt und Lokalautonomie im Achämenidenreich,” in Peter
Frei and Klaus Koch, Reichsidee und Reichsorganisation im Perserreich, 2nd ed.
(Freiburg: University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 5–131.
83. Jean-Louis Ska, “Le Pentateuque et la politique impériale perse,” Foi et Vie 103,
Cahiers Bibliques 43 (2004): 17–30.
84. See above and Matthias Köckert, “Die Entstehung des Bilderverbots,” in Die
Welt der Götterbilder, ed. Brigitte Gronenberg and Hermann Spieckermann
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 272–290.
85. Tacitus, Histories V:i.
86. This is the origin of all kinds of anti-Jewish polemics, claiming, for instance,
that the Temple at Jerusalem contained an ass or the head of an ass. On this,
see Philipe Borgeaud, “Moïse, son âne et les Typhoniens: Esquisse pour une
remise en perspective,” in La Construction de la figure de Moïse: The Construc-
tion of the Figure of Moses, ed. Thomas Römer (Paris: Gabalda, 2007), 121–130.
co n c l u s i o n
1. Thus, the book of Daniel, written about 164 bce, was attributed to a sage and
visionary who lived during the time of the Babylonian captivity. Th is was
thought to reinforce the authority of his visions of the End. In certain visions
one finds, in a form easy enough to decipher, the idea of a succession of em-
pires up to the epoch of Antiochus IV. Because this “vision,” which suppos-
edly took place in the Persian period, had at the time of writing already been
realized, the same could be expected to be true of the visions concerning the
end of the world.
2. This recalls the vision of the prophet Ezekiel in the first chapter of the book
attributed to him.
3. The complete text of this book was preserved only in Ethiopian manuscripts
from the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the discovery of fragments of the book
at Qumran shows the antiquity of certain parts of the book, which were origi-
nally written in Aramaean.
4. This part of the book is often dated to the second century.
5. Uriel watches over the path of the stars and the angels in Tartarus. Raphael
protects human spirits and knows the dwelling places of the dead. Raguel ex-
ecutes justice in the world of luminaries. Michael is the chief of the heavenly
army. Sariel is the prefect of evil spirits. Gabriel watches over Paradise and over
the Cherubim and also plays the role of messenger of the divine will. Remiel
is prefect of those brought back to life.
6. From the point of view of the history of religions one can observe the recurrence
here of a theme already found in Mesopotamia in the second millennium: the
creator god must vanquish one or more aquatic monsters (of a serpentine or
dragonlike kind) who symbolize chaos. Only then can he initiate the creation
of the world.
7. The word occurs for the first time in 1 Maccabees 12:18 and probably derives
from “Sadoq,” which appears in the books of Samuel and then that of Ezekiel
as the name of a high priest.
8. The name comes from a Hebrew word meaning “place separately, put apart.”
9. In a certain sense Sadducees and Pharisees are successors of the priestly and
Deuteronomistic currents that one can discern in the Bible.
10. Information about this group comes primarily from Flavius Josephus, Jewish
Antiquities 13:171–173; 15:371ff ; 18:11–25. Their name perhaps derives from an
Aramaean word meaning “pure, holy.”
11. Emile Puech, “Khirbet Qumrân et les Esséniens,” Revue de Qumrân 25 (2011):
63–102.
12. The name is Greek and means “zeal.”
13. Jewish Antiquities 18:23.
14. The location of Sinai that is now used is founded on a Christian tradition of
the fourth century.
15. One of the inscriptions adds an article before “Temān,” which suggests that
the word is understood not as a proper name but as a substantive.
16. Poetic name for Israel.
17. See the remarks above about the original version of Deut. 32:8, where Yhwh
appears as one of the sons of El.
18. In Isaiah 40–55 one finds repeatedly the assertion attributed to Yhwh: “No,
my arm is not short.”
INDEX
ʾAdōnāy, replacing Yhwh, 27 Heaven,” 170–172; seals, 278n15;

Ahab, Yhwh, and Baal, 117–119 worship according to biblical
Akhenaton, 233–234 texts, 169–170; and Yhwh,
Am Yhwh, 83–85 representations of couple, 166–168
Aniconism: as mark of Jewish Ashtar-Chemosh, 114
identity, 240; and standing Assyria: annexing Israel, 175–176;
stones, 142–144 and building of Temple, 96–97;
Apocalyptic literature, 243 decline in influence, 201; Heze-
Archaeology: inscriptions of kiah’s revolt, 182–187; influence
Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet on book of Joshua, 207–208;
El-Qom, 162–166; recent progress, introduction to era, 15–19; Judah’s
12 resistance, 179–180; Manasseh’s
Archangels, 243–244, 293n5 acceptance, 188–190; resistance,
Ark of Yhwh, 90–91, 93–94, 98–100. 105; spread of empire, 173–179
See also Temple of Jerusalem
Asherah, 250; in ancient Levant and Baal: and Asherah, 162; as model
Near East, 161; in Bible, 161–162; for Israel’s Yhwh, 106–107, 109,
connection to sacred prostitution, 111–112, 123; poems about king-
198–199; cult, 188–189; eliminated, ship, 135; worship in Samaria,
200, 251; inscriptions regarding, 111–112; and Yhwh, in Israel,
162–166; qualities transferred to 116–121; Yhwh vs. Phoenician,
Yhwh, 222–223; as “Queen of 120–121
296 INDEX
Babylon, as center of Jewish Centralization, as ideology, 204–207

intellectualism, 20–21 Chemosh, 113–114
Babylonian exile, 210–213, 252; Cherubim, 131–132, 151–152, 157–158
crises, 213–215; during Persian Circumcision, 63–64, 289–290n43.
era, 237; as punishment from See also Covenant, blood
Yhwh, 216–217; scrolls produced, Commandments: prohibition
20 against sculpted images, 147–148;
Bethel: during Assyrian rule, 246, 613
177–179; sanctuary, 107–108, 249 Covenant, blood, 84–85; laid out in
Betyles, 92, 142–143 Deuteronomy, 216
Beya, 52–53 Cult of Yhwh: differences between
Bible: Asherah in, 161–162; and north and south, 106–107, 124,
attitudes toward exile, 215; and 249; in and out of Israel and
Christian Old Testament, 255n2; Judah, 106; Jerusalem as central,
edited historiography, 15; efforts 251; Midianite priest as founder,
at dating, 8; El in, 78–82; exis- 64–67; unity in Deuteronomy,
tence of multiple gods, 1–2; 202–204
feminine integration, 221–223; Cult of Yhwh, reforms. See Josiah,
historical interpretation, 3–4; reforms
introduction, 5–9; maximalist Cyrus: authorization to rebuild
and minimalist approaches, 12; Temple, 235; “cylinder,” 219; victor
monotheism predating, 232–234; over Babylon, 21, 201, 215
placing Yhwh from south, 40–42;
structure, 255n6; terminology Dan, sanctuary to Yhwh, 107–108
used, 9–10; Tripartite, 246. See Daniel, book of, as apocalyptic
also Pentateuch; Priestly writings; literature, 243–244
Prophets; individual books David: chosen by Yhwh, 136–137,
Blood ritual, 84–85, 264n35 248; and Jerusalem, 92–94; Yhwh
Book, “discovering,” 191–194 as God, 88–89
Bull worship, 122; statues at Dan Death, 138–140
and Bethel, 109–111; Yhwh Decalogue, prohibition against
depicted in north, 141 sculpted images, 146–148, 239
Butchering, cultic and noncultic, Deportations, 211–213; as Assyrian
205–206, 286n39 strategy, 176–178; as punishment
from Yhwh, 216–217
Calf. See Bull worship Deutero-Isaiah: and God’s creation
Camel, domesticated by Midianites, of evil, 224; monotheism, 219–221
55, 57 Deuteronomistic history, 20–21, 105;
Canaan, historical meaning, 9 and path toward monotheism,
Caquot, André, 37 216–218
INDEX 297
Deuteronomists, 193, 252, 256n7 Enemies of Israel. See Assyria,

Deuteronomy: and ideology of Egypt; Midianites
centralization, 204–207; Esau. See Edom; Jacob and Esau
reflecting reforms of Josiah, Essenes, 245
202–204 Evil: battling, 243–244; question in
Deuteronomy 4: polemic against monotheism, 223–224; Satan, 229
idols, 148–149; and statue of Exile. See Babylonian exile
Yhwh, 240 Exodus: link between Moses and
Deuteronomy 33, and geographic Midianite priest, 62–67; Yhwh
origin, 40–41, 45–47 and El, 247; Yhwh as god, 107–112.
Diaspora, Torah imparting legiti- See also Midian; Moses
macy, 238–239 Exodus 18, Jethro as Midian priest,
64–67
Ebla, as origin of Yhwh, 36 Exodus 19 and 24, references to ̒ am,
Edom, connection to Yhwh and 83–84
Israel, 68–70 Exodus 3, God’s name revealed to
Egypt: and Babylonia, 210–211; Moses, 28–32
control of Levant, 12–13; exodus, Exodus 20, prohibition of idolatry,
107–111; gods, 48–50; Joseph’s 147–148
arrival, 57; liberation, 5–6; origin Ezekiel 1, vision of Yhwh, 152–153
of Yhwh near, 38–40, 45–46; Ezra: as Golah, 239; Persian influ-
power, 54 ence, 228
Egypt, Moses in. See Moses
El: connection to Israel, 72–77; Fathers of the Church, testimony on
in Genesis and Hebrew Bible, God’s name, 30, 32
78–82; and Yhwh in Jerusalem, Feminine qualities of Yhwh,
127–128 221–223
El Elyon, 78–79, 127–128 Fertile Crescent, defined, 10
Elephantine, resistance to mono- Flood narratives, 232
theism, 230–231
Elijah, as champion of Yhwh, Genealogies, 5
118–120 Genesis: El in, 78–82; question of
Elohim: in Jerusalem, 127–129; origins, 5
priests’ use, 125–126; substitution Genesis 25, legitimizing Midianites,
for Yhwh, 27, 41–42; used by 60
psalmists, 259–260n15 Geographic origin hypotheses: Ebla,
Elohist (E), 256n7 36; between Egypt and Seir,
El Olam, 80 38–40; Mari, 38; from the south,
El Roi, 80 40–42; outside Israel, 35, 247–248;
El Shadday, 80–82 Ugarit, 36–37
298 INDEX
Gideon, Midianites portrayed Idols: aniconism, 239–240; bull

negatively, 59 statues, 107–111, 122, 141; in
God of Israel. See Yhwh; Name of Deutero-Isaiah, 219–221; divine
God couple, 166–168; female figurines,
Gods: reforms of Josiah, 200–201; of 168–169; in northern sanctuaries,
steppes and arid regions, Yhwh 122–123, 141; polemic against,
as, 48–50; storm, 47–48, 116–117, 146–149, 218. See also Standing
248; sun, 99–103, 126–130; stones; Statues
warrior, 47–48, 248 Images of Yhwh: and Asherah,
Goddesses, 109, 160–161: eliminated 166–168; Isaiah’s vision, 150–152;
by Josiah, 200; excluded from in Israel, 122–123; prohibition,
monotheism, 221–223; Queen of 274–275n18; reconciling feminine,
Heaven, 170–172. See also Asherah 221–223; seals and coins, 144–146;
Golah, Babylonian, 213–215, 237 in Temple of Jerusalem, 146. See
Greek: Pentateuch translated, 22, also Bull worship; Idols; Prophets:
240–241; and pronunciation of visions of Yhwh; Statues of Yhwh;
God’s name, 31; struggles against Yhwh: face
Hellenization, 242–245 Isaiah, warning against revolt,
182–183
Habakkuk 3: character of Yhwh, Isaiah 40–55, monotheistic asser-
47–48; and geographic origin, tion, 219–221
40–41, 45–47 Isaiah 7, exhortation to Judah,
“Hebrew,” historical meaning, 10 174–175
Henoch, book of, 243–244 Isaiah 6: vision of Yhwh, 150–152;
Henotheism, 232–233 and Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt, 134
Hezekiah: foreign policy, 182–187, Israel: as chosen people, 218; first
251; public works, 17, 181–182; attested occurrence of name,
reforms, 187–188 74–77; first traces, 13–14; histor-
Historical analysis, methodology, 2–4 ical meaning, 9; history to
History, written in response to Hellenistic era, 10–22; identi-
crisis, 216–217 fying, 77–78; meaning of name,
Hobab, as priest of Midian, 63 72–74; name found on pedestal,
Horse imagery, 197 75; original meeting point with
Hosea, feminine qualities of Yhwh, Yhwh, 71–72; Yhwh’s introduc-
222 tion, 82–85. See also Kingdom of
Huldah, pronouncement, 191–192 Israel
Human sacrifice, 137–138
Jacob: and Esau, 68–70, 81–82;
Iaṓ, pronunciation of God’s name, struggle with God, 72–73
30–31 Jehu, revolt, and Yhwh, 118–120
INDEX 299
Jephthah, 1 Judah, historical meaning, 9l.

Jeremiah 44: and Queen of Heaven, See also Kingdom of Judah
170 Judaism, as “religion of the book,”
Jeroboam, 104, 107–108 234–239
Jeroboam II, 16–17 Judges, book of, and centrality of
Jerusalem: as central to cult of power, 263n18
Yhwh, 202, 251; centralization Judges 5: character of Yhwh, 47–48;
under Josiah, 204–207; and David, placing Yhwh’s origin in south,
92–94; destruction, 211–212; 40–42, 44–46; theophany in
effects of 701 siege, 184–186; El and context of Song of Deborah,
Yhwh, 127–128; Hellenization 43–44
undertaken, 242–243; response to Judgment, in apocalyptic literature,
ideological crisis, 214–215; rise and 244
fall, 17–19; transformed into large
city, 180–181; Yhwh’s rise, 126–127. Kĕmārîm, 197–198
See also Kingdom of Judah; Kenites, connection to Yhwh,
Temple of Jerusalem 67–68
Jethro, as priest of Midian, 63–67 Khirbet el-Qom, inscriptions
Jewish identity, in Genesis narra- regarding Asherah, 162–166
tives, 5–6 Khirbet Qeifaya, 266n15
Joseph, sold by Midianites, 57 Kingdom of Israel: decline, 17;
Joshua: book of, and military falling to Assyria, 175–179; more
conflicts, 265n2; narrative of dominant than Judah, 105–106;
conquest and life of Moses, prosperity, 14–17; representations
207–208; and Shiloh as house of of Yhwh, 122–123, 141; Yhwh and
Yhwh, 86–87 Baal, 116–121
Josiah, 18–19; death, 208–210; as Kingdom of Israel, sanctuaries and
Joshua, 207; reign, 191–192 divinities, 116. See also Sanctu-
Josiah, reforms, 251–252; Deuter- aries for Yhwh
onomy, 202–203; elimination of Kingdom of Judah: decline, 19–20;
goddess, 200; and “found” book, diverse sanctuaries for Yhwh,
192–195; historical argument for 125–126, 250; history from
existence, 201–202; ideology southern perspective, 104–106,
of centralization, 204–207; 249; life during exile, 212–213;
inscripted evidence, 196–197; kings post-722, 179–182; prosperity,
and principal gods, 200–201; 17–19, 22; standing stones,
question of archaeological 142–144; and Syro-Ephramitic
evidence, 195–196; sacred prosti- War, 174–175. See also Jerusalem
tution, 198–199; in 2 Kings 23, Kings: Davidic as mediator for
197–198 Yhwh, 136–137; origins, 88–80,
300 INDEX
Kings (continued) Midianite priest: as founder of cult

248; reform of gods, 200–201; of Yhwh, 64–67; by many names,
Yhwh as monarch, 135–136. 62–64
See also Melek; individual names Midianites: camel raising, 55, 57;
Kings, books of: depiction of cult of commercial activities, 55–58;
Yhwh, 104–106; historical negative portrayal in texts, 58–60;
relevance, 14–15. See also 1 Kings; positive portrayal in texts, 60;
2 Kings wife of Moses, 51, 63–64
Kuntillet Ajrud, inscriptions Monotheism: of Deutero-Isaiah,
regarding Asherah, 162–166 219–221; in Deuteronomistic
history and priestly document,
Lachish, siege and fall, 183–184 20–21; excluding goddess,
Levant, defined, 10 221–223; path toward, 216–218;
Levites. See Priests Persian influences, 227–230;
predating Bible, 232–234; of
Manasseh: accomplishments priestly milieu, 225–227; and
attributed to Hezekiah, 182; question of evil, 223–224;
worship of Yhwh during reign, resistance, 230–232; use of
188–190 term, 231
Mandarin attitude to exile, 214–215. Moses, 5; arrival in Midian, 60–62;
See also Deuteronomistic history Egyptian name, 52; fi rst account
Marduk: compared to Yhwh, 219; of life, 207–208; God’s name
and lunar deity, 100–101 revealed, 28–29; Midianite wife,
Mari, as origin of Yhwh, 38 51, 63–64; possible sources,
Masoretes, system of vocalization, 52–54; and priest of Midian,
25–26 62–67
Massebas, 142–144 Mountain of God: in Edom, 81–82;
Mazdeism, influence on early in Midian, 63–66
Judaism, 227–229 Mount Sinai. See Sinai
Melek, relation to Molek, 137–138 Mount Zion. See Zion
Menorah, as substitute for statue of
Yhwh, 154 Nakedness, in books of Samuel,
Mēriḇḇōt qōdeš, 100, 259n12 93–94
Merneptah, stele, 74–77 Name of God, as enigma, 24–29;
Mesha, stele inscription, 112–115 prohibition of pronouncing,
Midian: identifying region, 54–55; 26; pronunciation, 30–32. See
Moses’s arrival from Egypt, also ʾAdōnāy; El; El Elyon;
60–62 Elohim; El Olam; El Roi; El
Midianite-Kenite hypothesis, Shadday; Iaṓ; Tetragrammaton,
67–68 Yaho, Yhwh
INDEX 301
Nehemiah, Persian influence, 228 Priestly attitude to exile, 214–215

Numbers 25, Midianites as enemy, Priestly writings, 20–21, 225–227,
58–59 252–253, 256n7
Priests: function, 123, 271n45;
Old Testament. See Bible; Penta- Midianite, 62–67; monotheism of,
teuch; Priestly writings; Prophets; 225–227
individual books Prism of Nimrud, 122–123, 176
Omrid dynasty: 14–16; defeated, Prophetic attitude to crisis, 214–215,
112–113. See also Ahab 224
1 Kings 6: cherubim in sanctuary, Prophets: as complement to Torah,
132; construction of temple, 100 246; Isaiah’s visions, 150–152;
Origins, priestly concerns, 225–227 story of Israel, 6; visions of Yhwh,
152–153. See also individual
Parân, and geographic origin of prophets
Yhwh, 45–46 Prostitution, sacred, 198–199, 285n23
Patriarchs, 5 Proverbs 8, Wisdom as female, 223
Pentateuch: central role, 246; Psalm 82, and El, 127–128
Decalogue, 146–147; difficulty Psalm 132, Yhwh choosing David
in dating, 8; genesis, 234–239; and Zion, 136–137
translation into Greek, 22, Psalms, containing Yhwh’s king-
240–241; two main parts, 5–6; ship, 135
value as source, 3–4. See also Psalm 74, and Yhwh’s victory over
Deuteronomy; Exodus; Genesis sea, 135–136
Persian era: autonomy granted to Psalm 68: character of Yhwh, 47–48;
Judah, 21; early, and priestly placing Yhwh’s origin in south,
circle, 225–227; influences on 40–42, 44–46
biblical monotheism, 227–230; Psalm 24, and statue of Yhwh, 156
return to Jerusalem, 235; and Psalm 29, Yhwh as storm god,
statue of Yhwh in Jerusalem, 116–117
158–159. See also Cyrus
Pfeiffer, Henrik, 47 Queen of Heaven, 170–172. See also
Pharisees, 245 Asherah
Polytheism: in Bible, 1–2; discred-
ited in Deutero-Isaiah, 219–221; Religiosity, ancient, three levels, 106
and existence of evil, 223–224; Reuel, as priest of Midian, 62–63
reforms of Josiah, 200–201; storm Revelation: and existence of other
god, 47–48, 116–117, 248; sun god, gods, 2; placement in Exodus,
99–103, 126–130; use of term, 231. 65–66; and prohibition of images,
See also Idols 148–149; three stages, 225–227.
Pottery, Midianite, 56 See also Sinai
302 INDEX
Rituals: blood, 84–85, 264n35; priestly Seth, connection to Yhwh, 48–50

concerns, 225. See also Sacrifice Shasu nomads, and placing geo-
Roman era, Judaism up to, 242–246 graphical origins, 38–40
Sheol, 139
Sacred pole, 143; Asherah as, Shiloh, as sanctuary of Yhwh,
170–172 86–88
Sacrifice: centralized, 205–206; Sinai: and geographic origin of
child, 137–138; in Exodus 18, Yhwh, 44–46; placed in Midian,
66–67; incense vs. animal, 230; 63–66; Yhwh introduced to
priestly concerns, 225 Israel, 83–84. See also Moses;
Sadducees, 245 Revelation
Samaria: Baal worship, 111–112; Solar deity. See Sun god
deportations and mixed popula- Solomon, as builder of Temple,
tions, 177–178; possible sanctuary, 95–97
111–112; siege, 175–176, 279n6 Song of Deborah, and theophany in
Samaritans, contribution to Judges, 43–44
Pentateuch, 237–238 “Son of God,” 243
Samuel, and Shiloh, 87–88 Standing stones, 142–144
Samuel, books of: and connection Statues: Asherah, 169–170, 200; bull,
between kings and Yhwh, 88–89; 109–111, 141; female Judean,
David’s and Saul’s nakedness, 168–169. See also Idols; Images of
93–94; depiction of cult of Yhwh, Yhwh; Standing stones
104–106; historical relevance, Statues of Yhwh, 250; deported
14–15 from Jerusalem, 157–158; and
Sanctuaries for Yhwh: added to sun destruction of Temple, 149;
god, 101; Dan and Bethel, 107–108; Deuteronomy 4, 240; fate in
diversity in Judah, 125–126, 250; Persian era, 158–159; in Israel,
Elephantine, 209, 230–231; Nebo, 122–123, 141; in Judah, 155–157;
115; Samaria, 111; Shechem, 107. lamp holder as substitute, 154.
See also Temple of Jerusalem See also Standing stones
Satan: first appearance, 229; Steil, Armin, model for crisis
interview added, 290n50 reaction, 214–215, 224–225
Saul, Yhwh as God, 88–89 Steles: Merneptah, 74–77, 263n10;
Scrolls, copied and edited, 8 Mesha, 112–115. See also Standing
Ṣĕḇāʾôt, 132–135 stones
Segmentary societies, Israel as, Storm god, Yhwh as, 47–48, 116–117,
77–78 248
Seir, as geographic origin, 38–40 Sun god: and Temple of Jerusalem,
Šĕmaʿ yiśrā ʾēl, 202, 204–207 99–102; traits in Yhwh, 128–130;
Sennacherib, 183–184 Yhwh’s evolution over, 126–127
INDEX 303
Synagogues, and “portable” 2 Kings 22–23, and Josiah’s reforms,

Judaism, 238, 246, 253 191–195, 197–198
Syro-Ephramitic War, 174–175
Ugarit, as origin of Yhwh, 36–37
Temple, connecting heaven and
earth, 151 Vowels, adding, 25–26
Temple of Jerusalem, 18–19; built by
Solomon, 95–97; cherubim, 132; Warrior god, Yhwh as, 47–48, 248.
destruction, 19–20, 157–158, 211, See also Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt
252; and ideology of centraliza- Wisdom, as goddess, 223
tion, 204–207; not built by David, “Writings,” 6–7, 246
94–95; partial destruction by
Assyrians, 184; probable origins, Yaho, 30–34
125–127; proximity to palace, Yehud, during Persian era, 235–237
268n48; question of which god’s, Yhwh: as associate to sun god,
99–103; reconstruction, 21, 235, 101–103; attempt to murder
292n74; renovation of existing Moses, 63–64; connection to
sanctuary, 97–101; second, Elyon, 79; as exclusive, unitary,
destruction, 244–246; statue as invisible, transcendent, universal
cause for destruction, 149; and God, 239–241; face, 154–157;
Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt, 134 introduction into Israel, 82–85;
Ten Commandments. See Decalogue Midianite priest’s role, 64–67;
Terminology, 9–10 nature of inquiry, 22–23; as
Tetragrammaton, 25–28. See also protector, 186–187; and variations
Yhwh Yhw and Yh, 27–29. See also Cult
3 Kingdoms 6, construction of of Yhwh; Name of God
temple, 100 Yhwh-Melek, 137–138
Throne of Yhwh, 131–132, 151–153 Yhwh Ṣĕḇāʾôt, 132–135
Torah. See Pentateuch
Tree, stylized, representing Ash- Zealots, 245
erah, 170–171 Zechariah, vision of menorah,
Tunnels, Hezekiah’s, 181–182 154
2 Kings 17, cult of Yhwh in Samaria, Zion, as theology, 130–131; strength-
177–179 ening, 186–187
2 Kings 21, Manasseh’s depiction, Zoroaster, problem in dating,
188–189 227

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THE INVENTION OF GOD

THE INVENTION OF GOD

HARVARD UNIVERSIT Y PRESS

Originally published in French as L'Invention de Dieu by Thomas Römer,

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Translator’s Note vii

Names of persons and places have been standardized to those used in

Letter Name Transliteration Pronunciation

‫א‬ alef ʾ silent or glottal stop

Letter Name Transliteration Pronunciation

‫ע‬ ayin ʿ voiced guttural (no English

Sign Name Transliteration Pronunciation

9 pataḥ a /a/ (father)

In the religious landscape of humanity, Judaism figures as

Hebrew Bible,2 we discover further curious texts. The audience for

themselves. Relying exclusively on this evidence can constitute a trap

THE HEBREW BIBLE: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

texts containing reflections on the human condition and on man’s often

historical contexts; each text or revision of a text attempts to respond to

To facilitate understanding of what follows, it is perhaps useful to give

FROM THE ORIGINS OF ISRAEL

The ancient Near East

that it would be wrong to read the texts of the Pentateuch as historical

of Assyria, which leaves numerous traces in the text of the Bible. An

Israel was worshipped there in bovine form. It is possible that certain

the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, eventually launched a military expedi-

Judah and a significant reduction in its population. In contrast, the

In 332 Palestine was conquered by Alexander, who put an end to the

he have a wife? A mono-idolatrous cult came progressively to be de-

THE GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS NAME

If we look at translations of the Bible in English and other lan-

THE ENIGMA OF THE NAME OF GOD

Upon closer inspection, however, we encounter our first surprise. The

ga llows. A written expression like fclt could be vocalized in at least two

substitute “Lord,” there are numerous attestations of a short form Yhw,

(11) Moses said to God (ʾĕlōhîm): “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and

This traditional reconstruction can be found in some Christian Bibles,

text discovered at Qumrân (4QpapLXXLevb) that contains a fragment

proper names attested in extrabiblical inscriptions show other varia-

THE GEOGRAPHIC ORIGIN OF YHWH

EBLA (TELL MARDIKH)

Ugarit is located in present-day Syria near the town of Lattaque; it was a

BET WEEN EGYPT AND SEIR

In an Egyptian papyrus dating from 1330–1230 there is a proper name

mentioned above, the territories of the Shasu are located particularly

BIBLIC A L E V IDENCE T H AT Y HWH

Then in the book of Judges in a song celebrating a military victory of

A very similar affirmation is to be found in Psalm 68 (vv. 8–9 and 18):

Finally, chapter 3 of the book attributed to Habakkuk (3:3 and 3:10a)

Judg. 5:4–5 Ps. 68:8–9

T HE T HEOPHAN Y IN JUDGES 5:4–5 IN T HE CONT E X T

The Song of Deborah celebrates the murder of the Canaanite general

exhortation to praise god in verse 3 and the description of the difficult

T HE ORIGINS OF Y HWH ACCORDING TO JUDGES 5

is taken to be “located” in the south, in the territory of the Edomites,

T HE CHAR AC T ER OF Y HWH ACCORDING TO T HESE T E X TS

In Judges 5, Psalm 68, and also to some extent in Habakkuk 3 (which

YHWH AND SETH

the papyrus as particularly violent and is identified using the terms

MOSES AND THE MIDIANITES

According to the narrative in Exodus 3, Moses first encoun-

(a new) wife of Moses, a Cushite woman. To have any chance of clari-

A STORY ABOUT MOSES

According to the biblical narrative, Moses has a dual identity: raised at

his first appearance in the documents in the reign of Sethi II (1203–

However, none of the possible candidates could really provide a model

WHO WERE THE MIDIANITES?