Moore Cross Frank. Canaanite Myth and Hebrew. Epic Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel

Harvard University Press, 2009. — 394 p.The essays which follow are preliminary studies directed toward a new synthesis of the history of the religion of Israel. Each study is addressed to a special and, in my view, unsolved problem in the description of Israel's religious development. The barriers in the way of progress toward a new synthesis are many. While the burgeoning archaeological enterprise has increasingly uncovered materials which can be used to reconstruct the ancient environment of Israel, at the same time its discoveries have thrown the field into chaos. Great strides have been taken in the endeavor to interpret the new data from the centuries contemporary with ancient Israel and to view the history of Israelite religion whole in its ancient context: still, the sheer mass of new or unassimilated lore hinders synthetic treatment.
Another obstacle in the way of attempts to rewrite the history of Israelite religion has been the obstinate survival of remnants of older syntheses, especially the idealistic synthesis initiated by Wilhelm Vatke and given classic statement by Julius Wellhausen. It is true that the idealistic and romantic presuppositions which informed the early development of literary-critical and form-critical methods have largely been discarded when brought fully to consciousness. Few today would follow Gunkel in presuming that the primitive Israelite was incapable of retaining more than a line or two ofpoetry. Not a few, however, continue to date short poems or poetic fragments earlier than longer poems. In this fashion the results and models based on the idealistic synthesis often persist unrecognized and unexamined. Particularly difficult and troublesome, for example, is the task of disentangling and removing antinomian tendencies of idealistic or existentialist origin from the analysis of law and covenant and their role in the religion of Israel.
Hegel's evaluation of Israelite law might as easily have been written by a contemporary scholar: "The liberator [Moses] of his nation was also its lawgiver : this could mean only that the man who had freed it from one yoke had laid on it another." Unhappily, such a view is also wholly in tune with an older Christian polemic against Judaism.
Yet another hindrance has been the tendency ofscholars to overlook or suppress continuities between the early religion of Israel and the Canaanite (or Northwest Semitic) culture from which it emerged. There has been a preoccupation with the novelty of Israel's religious consciunique or isolated phenomenon, radically or wholly discontinuous with its environment. In extreme form these views root ultimately in dogmatic systems, metaphysical or theological, and often serve an apologetic purpose. Yehezkel Kaufmann's monumental attempt to write a history of the religion of Israel comes under this criticism. The empirical historian must describe novel configurations in Israel's religion as having their origin in an orderly set of relationships which follow the usual typological sequences ofhistorical change. Kaufmann's insistence that Israelite religion "was absolutely different from anything the pagan world ever knew" violates fundamentaL postulates of scientific historical method.
Characteristic of the religion of Israel is a perennial and unrelaxed tension between the mythic and the historical. Concern with this aspect of Israel's religious expression gives some unity to the' essays to follow. Israel's religion emerged from a mythopoeic past under the impact of certain historical experiences which stimulated the creation of an epic cycle and its associated covenant rites of the early time.
This epic, rather than the Canaanite cosmogonic myth, was featured in the ritual drama of the old Israelite cultus. At the same time the epic events and their interpretation were shaped strongly by inherited mythic patterns and language, so that they gained-'a vertical dimension in addition to their horizontal, historical stance. In this tension between mythic and historical elements the meaning of Israel's history became
transparen.
Perhaps-the term "epic" best designates the constitutive genre of Israel's religious expression. -,Epic in interpreting historical events combines mythic and historical features in various ways and proportions. Usually Israel's epic forms have been labeled "historical." This is a legitimate use of the term "historical." At the same time confusion often enters at this point. The epic form, designed to recreate and given meaning to the historical experiences of a people or nation, is not merely or simply.historical. In epic narrative, a people and their god or gods interact in the temporal course of events. In historical narrative only human actors have parts. Appeal. to divine agency is illegitimate.
Thus the composer of epic and the h:istorian are very different in their methods of approach to the materials of history. Yet both are moved by a common impulse in view of their concern with the human and the temporal process. By contrast myth in its purest form is concerned with "primordial events" and seeks static structures of meaning behind or beyond the historical flux.
The epic cycle of the Israelite league was taken up into the prose Epic (JE) sources in the course of the early monarchy. The Pentateuch
itself may be described as a baroque elaboration of these Epic sources. The Deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy~ Joshua~ Judges~ Samuel,
and Kings) and the Chronicler~s work (Chronicles~ Ezra~ and Nehemiah) in effect extended the Epic~ interpreting the later history of Israel
in Epic patterns. Epic was~ of course~ a well-known literary genre in ancient Canaanite (Ugaritic) religious literature albeit of marginal
interest as compared with the Canaanite mythic cycle which provided the libretto to primary rites of the cult. Israel~s choice of the epic form
to express religious reality~ and the elevation of this form to centrality in their cultic drama~ illustrates both the linkage of the religion of
Israel to its Canaanite past and the appearance of novelty in Israel's peculiar religious concern with the "historical".
This volume is decidedly lopsided in the space it gives to problems belonging to the earlier stages of Israel"s history. The ancient"era is the
I.east known, of course, and its historical description is in the greatest need of revision. In any case, the study of origins always has a special
fascination, and the writer has yielded to its blandishments in apportioning space.
I wish to acknowledge indebtedness and express gratitude to many friends including colleagues and students~ who have come to my aid
in the preparation of this book. My chief scholarly debt is to William Foxwell Albright ""from whom I gratefully acknowledge myself to
have learnt best and most.'l~ I owe much~ too, to the stimulus of G. Ernest Wright.. my colleague for more than twenty years, and to
the encouragement and criticisms of David Noel Freedman. Father Richard Clifford has kindly read my manuscript and saved me
from many errors. Miss Carolyn Cross has typed the long and wearsome manuscript, handling with miraculous accuracy Roman~ Greek~
and Hebrew type. To her I offer my special thanks. My thanks go, too, to my daughter~ Susan Elizabeth, who has given her precious
vacation days to the improvement of my manuscript.
F.M.C.
July L 1971Abbreviations
The Religion ofCanaan and the God of Israel
1 The God ofthe Fathers
2 JЈI and the God ofthe Fathers
El in the Ugaritic Pantheon
The Epithets of >El
El in the Canaanite Myth
El and BaCl Hamon
The Abode of >El
El the Divine Patriarch
3 Yah~'eh and >Ј1
El in the Bible
El Epithets in Patriarchal Narratives
The Name Yahweh
II The Cultus of the Israelite League
4 Prolegonlena
The Myth and Ritual School
The History-of-Redemption School
5 The Divine Warrior
Psalm 24 and the Warrior-King
The HRitual Conquest"
Transformations of the ~~Ritual Conquesf'
6 The Song ofthe Sea and Canaanite Myth
The Mythic Cycle of Bacl and cAnat
The Song ofthe Sea
III League and Kingdom
7 Yahweh and BaC!
The Theophany of Bacl
The Storm Theophany in the Bible
The Revelation at Sinai
History of the Tradition of the Storm Theophany
Ers Modes of Revelation
Yahweh and the Council of the Gods
Bacl versus Yahweh
8 The Priestly Houses ofEarly Israel
The Classical View of Israel's Early Priesthood
The Function of the Stories of Conflict
The Priestly Genealogies
The Priests of David's National Shrine
IV Kings and Prophets
9 The Ideologies ofKingship in the Era ofthe Empire:
Conditional Covenant and Eternal Decree
The Limited Monarchy ofSaul and Monarchy
in the Northern Kingdom
Davidic Kingship
The Imperial Rule ofSolomon
The Judaean Royal Theology
The Typology ofthe Royal Ideology
A Brief Excursus on berlt, HCovenant
I0 The Themes ofthe Book ofKings and the Structure ofthe Deuterononlistic History
The Contemporary Discussion of the Structure of the Deuteronomistic History
The Two Themes of the First Edition of the Deuteronomistic History (Dtrl )
The Theme of the Exilic Edition of the History (Dtr2)
The Two Editions of the Deuteronomistic History
V Exile and Apocalyptic
II The Priestly Work
The So-Called P-Source of the Pentateuch
The P System ofCovenants
Is P a Narrative Source?
Documents Used by P
Archaizing Language in P
The Date of P
The Composition of the Priestly Work
12 The Early History ofthe Apocalyptic Community at Qumran
The Archaeological Context of the Qumran
Qumran and the EssenesThe Essenes: Priestly Apocalyptists
Essene Origins
A Note on the Study of Apocalyptic Origins
Index of Biblical Citations
Indexof Ugaritic Citations
Index ofTechnical Terms
Index of Authors
General IndexHarvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, England395 pages