Trinity Episcopal Church
Hattiesburg, Mississippi
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CLASS 1
March 1, 2009:
Introduction to Christianity and the History of Early Israel
A Class Assembled and Taught By Bill Stroop
Introduction | Early History of Israel | Israel from 1000 B.C.E. to 586 B.C.E. | Bibliography
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CLASS 1:
All of us have some basic or nascent ideas about what Christianity is. One place to start is a dictionary. Adrian Hastings wrote an entry for The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (see the Bibliography) that provides us with some starting points for our discussion of Christianity. Hastings writes,
Christianity is best understood as composing the entire range of beliefs and practices which, across two thousand years, the followers of Jesus have subscribed to in defining their following, or as consequent upon it. The sense of discipleship is fundamentally constitutive of Christianity has made it continually debatable whether a 'true Christian' is primarily identifiable in terms of belief or in terms of loving, but many seemingly contradictory things have been taken for granted by Christians as characteristic of their religion: the multiplication of ritual yet profound suspicion of ritual; a passion for icons yet hardly less passionate waves of icoconoclasm; pacifism yet a cult of military honor; glorification of virginity and celibacy yet the hardly less absolute glorification of monogamous marriage; intense internationalism yet hardly less intense involvement in national identity. How can Christianity at different times and places be perceived as including so many diversities without self-evidently being untrue to itself? (pages 112-113)
The followers of Jesus came to be known as "Christians" quite soon after his death, indicating that identification with Jesus is at least one irremovable characteristic of being a Christian. But admiring Jesus, or reading the New Testament accounts of Jesus' life and ministry does not make one a Christian, any more than reading the works of Plato makes one a philosopher (although that certain would help!). One can admire Jesus and his teachings just as one can admire Plato, or Socrates, or Descartes. That does not make one a Christian. The criterion of Christianity seems to be acceptance of him as the Christ, the savior, or the Word of God. However, acceptance of Jesus is more than an individual matter of commitment, for Christianity from its very beginning was a community-based fellowship (often referred to as the Body of Christ after the pattern described in 1 Corinthians 12). That was the beginning of the Church.
Other criteria have been put forth to define a Christian, including belief in the divinity of Christ, the practices of baptism and the eucharist, and the authority of scripture (acceptance of the Bible). But these have been (and continue to be) contentious among different Christian sects (or denominations). Insistence on sacramental practices for example excludes Quakers. The authority of scripture would seem important, but even this is problematic - even the books considered canonical (that is, important enough to be included in The Holy Bible) - differs among Christian groups. Some Christian groups do not hold the Old Testament as authoritative, and give primacy to the New Testament (the books containing the stories about Jesus and the work of the early church, as well as letters from important pastoral leaders of the early church). Indeed, to require that Christians hold the New Testament as authoritative makes little sense, because many important martyrs and hundreds of thousands more followers of Jesus lived and died before the New Testament was formulated as such.
All of this points to the fact that Christianity is an "open historical reality." That is to say that defining Christianity is not going to be easy because we will have to delve into history to find its roots, and hope that analysis of the roots will help us understand and define the rest of the plant. If we assume that Christ is crucial to Christianity, then we must start there. But since Jesus left no written records himself (at least that we know of), we have to rely on the words of others, and other interpreters. this means that there will ALWAYS be a gap between Jesus as THE WORD and Jesus recorded in the words of the apostles or the evangelists.
Hastings concludes that ultimately, Christianity is, as a matter of fact and of theology, as everything Christians have made of it with or without the guidance of God or the Holy Spirit.
It must be a religion defined inclusively, not exclusively, as a living oscillation between a series of contrasting poles rather than one straight and narrow road, legal or doctrinal. Christianity is the most authentic when it best integrates the polarities which have constantly reappeared in its history - incarnation with transcendence, the New Testament with the Old, the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) with the Gospel of John, Paul with Peter, Martha and Mary, marriage with virginity, church with kingdom, mysticism with social responsibility, faith's leap with reason's argument, this world with the next.
To begin our discussion of Christianity, we therefore need to look at the background and history of the Near Middle East and the world of ancient Judaism - the religion that was Christ's own.
Christianity is one of the three monotheistic religions extant today that trace their roots to the patriarch Abraham. The other two are Islam and Judaism, the religion of Jesus. The bulk of what follows is a brief history of Judaism, which is important, because Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism
According to the work of Karen Armstrong, Abraham is thought to be one of the wandering chieftains who left the country of Ur in Mesopotamia and led his people to Canaan near the Mediterranean sometime between 1900 and 2000 B.C.E. (B.C.E. stands for "before the common era" and is equivalent to A.D.) (Armstrong, 3-12; see the Bibliography). Abraham was probably one of several nomadic peoples called Abiru, Apiru, or Habiru. These wanderers spoke Semitic languages, of which Hebrew was one. According to the Biblical record, Abraham bought land in Hebron (on the West Bank) after his wife, Sarah, died.
Prehistorical Paganism and Polytheism
The Biblical record, reinforced by archeological records, suggests that the settlement of Canaan came in three stages. The first was associated with Abraham about 1850 B.C.E.; the second was associated with Abraham's grandson, Jacob (renamed Israel). Jacob settled in Shechem (near the modern town of Nablus on the West Bank). Jacob's sons who became the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel, emigrated to Egypt during a severe famine in Canaan. The third wave of migration came from these peoples who arrived in Canaan from Egypt under their leader Moses, who followed the god Yahweh. These peoples, who were ethnically diverse, were bound together in a confederation and held together principally by their loyalty to Yahweh.
The world that produced Abraham was inhabited by many peoples since about 4000 B.C.E. The first major group to live there were the Sumerians. Over the next several centuries, groups of peoples exercised political and military power there (see the map below). The Sumerians were conquered by the Semitic Akkadians, and then in about 2000 B.C.E. by the Amorites. Babylon was the capital city of the Sumerian-Akkadian empire. In about 800 B.C.E., the Assyrians settled in Ashur, and eventually conquered Babylon in about 800 B.C.E.
A curious religious tradition of the kingdoms from which Abraham came was their connection between the celestial world and the earthly one. Babylon itself was an image of heaven, where each of its temples was a replica of a celestial palace. Each year, during the month of Nisan (our April), an annual New Year Festival was celebrated in which the king was solemnly enthroned and his reign was established for another year. The political stability of Babylon endured only because it participated in the more enduring and effective government of the gods, who had brought order out of chaos when the gods created the world. The creation stories of Genesis parallel the creation stories of the ancient Babylonians as recorded in their Enuma Elish. The main god of the Babylonians, Marduk, made his home at the top of the largest temple, called a ziggurat, in Babylon. Thus Babylon was a sacred place. The idea of a holy city where the sacred seemed especially close to the secular became an important feature of the three monotheistic religions. This is similar to the great reverence with which Jerusalem would be held by the Israelites and the Muslims in later times.
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The Ancient Near East. (The Harper Collins Study Bible. San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1993). |
El, The Transcendent Chief God
The religions of the indigenous peoples of Canaan the descendants of Abraham. The indigenous peoples included the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Girgashites, and Jebusites. The stories about their god, Baal-Habad, were similar to the stories of Marduk. The chief god of the Canaanite region was El. El was male, patriarchal and a ruler. Unlike the other gods in the pagan Canaanite pantheon, El was not identified with a force of nature (as were most of the other gods). The gods of the Babylonians and the Sumerians were distant figures who lived in a celestial realm. El sat at the head of the council of the gods and pronounced the councils decisions. Humankind was created almost as an afterthought, although the human creation story of Babylon involves the mixing of divine blood with dust. The concept of resurrection also appears in early Canaanite religion; Baal dies, and is later brought back to life.
The Rise of Yahwism
During the 19th century, several independent scholars noted that the first five books of the Bible were authored by four principle people (or groups). The two earliest writers, dating from the 8th century B.C.E. are termed J and E. J used the word "Yahweh" to describe God, and E used the word Elohim. J lived in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, while E lived in the northern Kingdom of Israel. It was in the 8th century (as best we can tell) that the Israelites were beginning to develop a theology that was unique from the Babylonian and/or Sumerian influences in Canaan. Israelite theology would eventually evolve into the distinct form of religion we know as ancient Judaism. One of the things that makes the theology of J and E unique is that human history and earthly events are not separate from the sacred doings of Yahweh. In other words, Yahweh was not uninterested in human beings. Indeed the God of Israel made his powers effective in current human events. He was, in the words of Karen Armstrong, "experienced as an imperative in the here and now" (Armstrong, 14).
The Covenant Between Yahweh and the Hebrews
The immediacy of Yahweh (or immanence as we might say today) is likely what led to the covenantal relationship between Yahweh and the people of Israel. The Israelites eventually promised to worship Yahweh alone as their elohim and in return, God, speaking through God's prophets - especially Moses, promised that they would be his special people, and that he would protect them. Yahweh warned them that if they broke the covenant, Yahweh would destroy them mercilessly. They were convinced by their own history that Yahweh was unique. No other god had ever been so effective on behalf of his worshippers. Moses and his successor Joshua warned the people that Yahweh was jealous, and if they neglected the terms of the covenant, they would be destroyed. The people stood firm and chose Yahweh.
But the people were not true to the covenant. As Armstrong wrote,
They remembered it in times of war, when they needed Yahweh's protection, but when times were easy, they worshipped Baal, Anat, and Asherah - the old Babylonian gods - in the old ways. Although Yahweh's religion was different in its belief that Yahweh was active in history, it often expressed itself in terms of the old paganism. When King Solomon built a temple for Yahweh in Jerusalem, the city his father, David, had captured from the Jebusites, it was similar to the temples of the Canaanite gods. It consisted of three square areas, which culminated in the small, cube-shaped room known as the Holy of Holies which contained the Ark of the Covenant, the portable altar the Israelites had with them during their wilderness years under Moses. Inside the Temple was a huge bronze basin, representing Yam, the primeval sea of Canaanite myth, and two free standing pillars representing the fertility cult of Asherah. The Israelites also continued to worship Yahweh in the ancient shrines they inherited from the Canaanites at Beth-El, Shiloh, Hebron, Bethlehem, and Dan, where there were frequent pagan ceremonies. The Temple soon became special, and under Deuteronomic reform, became the central shrine of Israelite worship. The Temple became the replica of Yahweh's heavenly court.
A Brief History of Israel from 1000 B.C.E. to 586 B.C.E.
The Israelite Monarchy and the First Temple
As Richard Friedman wrote, the Israelites' political life was organized around clans or tribes (Friedman, 1-70). There were 13 tribes, twelve that had territory and one, the Levites, that was a priestly group whose members lived within the geographical boundaries of the other tribes. Priests were always male, and were often Levites. The office of priest was hereditary. Each tribe also had its own leaders. There were also persons who had authority in tribes by virtue of their social position or personal qualities. These people were called judges or priests. Judges were not justices, but were rather military leaders, and could be male or female. The third person within a tribe who had special power was the prophet. Being a prophet was not an office or a profession like a priest or a judge.
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| The Divided Kingdom (from Hershel Shanks. Ancient Israel, 1999, p. 135) |
At about 1200 B.C.E., and before J and E wrote their stories, a coastal people began to rise in power. These were the Philistines (the Biblical person Goliath was a Philistine). When their power became too great for any one or two Israelite tribe to oppose, the people sought a leader who could unite and lead all the tribes. This person was Saul, the first King, and he was appointed king by the prophet-priest, Samuel in about 1000 B.C.E. When Saul overstepped his authority by assuming priestly powers, another King rose to power: King David. Under David and his Son Solomon, the tribes united into one Kingdom. The Temple described above was built by Solomon at great expense. Solomon was a syncretist, meaning that he blended together religious practices of the native Canaanite peoples as well as Yahweism.
The Divided Monarchy
After Solomon's death, the Northern Kingdom of Israel separated from the Southern Kingdom of Judah (see the map to the right). It was during this period of separate Kingdoms that J and E wrote their stories. In 722 B.C.E., the Assyrian nation conquered Israel and took the ten tribes that lived there into exile. The monarchy in Israel was very stable and lasted until it too was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., and the ruling aristocracy of Judah was exiled in Babylon.
The religion of the exiles is thought to have been largely monotheistic; Yahweh was worshipped as the sole god. The exile itself posed a serious problem to the Judeans. Previously in their history they, like their Canaanite neighbors, worshipped god in a place (like Jerusalem). Now that they were in exile, was their god left behind in the destroyed city, or was Yahweh a universal god (Friedman, 154)? Also, a serious question of theodicy was raised by the exile. If Yahweh is a universal god, then why did Yahweh allow the Babylonians to take them away? The answer came to them that it was their fault. They had failed to keep the covenant with Yahweh. The Babylonians then became Yahweh's tools to mete the covenant curses that Yahweh promised upon them if they violated the covenant. The Israelites now had to reformulate their religion and worship Yahweh without the Temple.
Armstrong, Karen. A History of God. New York, NY: Ballentine Books. 1993.
Friedman, Richard Elliott. Who Wrote the Bible? New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1997.
Hastings, Adrian. "Christianity." The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason, and High Piper, eds. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Shanks, Hershel (ed.). Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall-Biblical Archeological Society, 1999.
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