Seven Origins of Christianity: A Short History from Genesis to the Trinity

By Patrick McMurray

Let us tread some dusty ancient roads, as walked by the disciples and indeed by Jesus Christ himself.

Along the way, we will discuss the ancient Jewish world in all its fascinating complexity, as we chart Israel’s rich unfolding. So too, our conversation will foray more broadly into the ancient Mediterranean, to briefly savour some of its strangeness and dispute.

The Bible itself will guide our path. The very structure of the canon directs us towards a series of foundational texts. These, our journey’s stepping stones, shall furnish us with the broadest historical panorama, but yet will nonetheless permit us to pause and dwell upon the juiciest points of curiosity and intrigue.

Distilling 100 years of scholarship, this book’s unique combination of breadth with depth offers a superb introduction to the historical underpinnings of both theology and of the Christian faith. As such, this absorbing narrative draws together a huge amount of insight, encapsulating this within just one handy volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrick McMurray
• Release date: Dec 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9780956845672

Patrick McMurray

Patrick McMurray teaches New Testament and Greek at the Scottish Episcopal Institute, based in Edinburgh. A graduate of the University of Oxford, he pursued his PhD research at the University of Edinburgh. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife Emily and their three children.

Book preview

Seven Origins of Christianity

A Short History from Genesis to the Trinity

Patrick McMurray

Adelphoi

Copyright © 2023 Patrick McMurray

All rights reserved.

Aside from quotations of under 200 words in length, no part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Cover art: Fra Angelico - The Crucifixion

Cover design by: Adelphoi

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter 1: Seven Origins of Judaism

Chapter 2: Genesis

Chapter 3: Isaiah and Jewish Hopes

Chapter 4: The Dead Sea Scrolls within Second Temple Judaism

A Brief Interlude: Seven Characteristics of Greco-Roman Cult

Chapter 5: Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Chapter 6: The Gospel of Matthew

Chapter 7: From Humiliation to Victory

Epilogue: Luther

A Final Quotation

Further Reading

Acknowledgements

Introduction

As it happens, I have always been one of those people who spend much of their life trying to figure out the world and its meaning. When I was a teenager, I used to read what I thought of as understanding books, and I never really stopped. My interest in Christianity has been part of this broader impulse, and has been a constant throughout my own chequered history.

Christianity seemed important, and of course is important, as perhaps the major answer to life, the universe and everything that has emerged within the west. I certainly got through a decent number of books about Christianity during these earlier years. However, I must admit that I never really felt that I was getting much of a handle on it. Despite my best efforts, progress remained elusive.

Later in life I returned to the study of the New Testament, and indeed pursued it to PhD level at the University of Edinburgh, publishing my research as a specialist contribution to the field. My earlier book is called Sacrifice, Brotherhood, and the Body: Abraham and the Nations in Romans, and was published by Fortress Academic. 

At heart, however, I am still that teenager who wanted to understand how it all fits together. Even now, I remain far from confident that I could answer all of that teenager’s questions. This, however, is the book that I wish I had been able to read almost thirty years ago.

The tricky thing about Christianity is that there is so much to understand. A big part of the difficulty is simply quantitative. The sheer number of texts within the Bible means that it is difficult for anyone to grasp them, and to hold them in one’s head simultaneously. This biblical literature derives from a broad historical period and - rather inconveniently - tends to be written in Greek or Hebrew.

In addition, the amount of secondary literature written by academics about these works is quite frankly mind-boggling, and would take many lifetimes to digest. Generally, then, the level of complexity involved in both the primary and secondary literature is stunning, and becomes only more intimidating the more one learns about it.

So can we turn to a reliable guide? Well, again, this is not entirely straightforward. Yes, of course, there are excellent academics who have produced these vast quantities of secondary literature about the Bible. Unfortunately, however, in my opinion they have generally not succeeded particularly well at communicating their findings to non-specialist readers. Most academic publications have a tiny readership; they are written by specialists, for specialists.

To be fair, there are some noble exceptions; academics who write more accessible works – and I have listed a number of these in the Further Reading section of this book. The snag is that these books often tend to lack breadth. So, for example, you might read a book on the New Testament, but yet be left wondering about who the Jews really were, or where they came from in the first place. Consequently, to grasp Christianity in the round, you might have to read five or six shorter studies. In addition, of course, you would need to know which ones to choose.

This present book, however, will cover a broad range of relevant material, but will do so in just one volume. My aim, admittedly ambitious, is to provide something of an overview, while going into enough detail to make the journey worthwhile. As such, this book will try to be something of a one stop shop; broad, yet also detailed. In substance, this book will attempt to come to an understanding of Christ within his broader Jewish and Greco-Roman context. The basic role of the historian, as I see it, is that of trying to understand people and events in context.

But - you might ask - would such a book not need to be about 3000 pages long? Or perhaps even more? Yes, absolutely. Indeed it would. My solution, however, will be that of adopting a highly selective approach. Only selectivity will allow us to combine the broader sweep of history with the depth of focus that will allow us to at least sample some of the fruits of specialist academic research.

So how to choose with which subject-matter to engage? How can this selection be carried out fairly? Well, we will let the Bible choose for us. Given the centrality of texts within the Judaeo-Christian tradition, it seems appropriate that we should turn to the holy scriptures themselves for guidance. In substance, we will engage with the first book of the Bible (Genesis), the first of the major prophets (Isaiah), the first of Paul’s letters as they appear within the New Testament (Romans), and also the first Gospel that we encounter (Matthew). Our subject-matter, in other words, will be guided largely by the canon.

And why Seven? Seven is a biblical number; as are its multiples of fourteen and forty-nine, and indeed seventy, not to mention 777. In Genesis 7, of all places, God told Noah to "take with you seven pairs of all clean animals … and seven pairs of the birds of the air also…For in seven days I will send rain on the earth" (Genesis 7:2-4). So too, at the other end of the canon, Revelation is structured by its seven messages, seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. The number seven signifies completion and harmony, and is a sacred number. Such perfection lies some distance beyond what this present contribution can offer. Nonetheless, it does seem like an appropriate schema for a book of this kind.

Our journey, which takes the longest of views, historically speaking, will allow us to come to some understanding of Christ’s significance within broader Jewish tradition, and will even consider the origins and genesis of the Jewish world itself. This fundamental story of God’s relationship with Israel constitutes the lion’s share of the origins to which the title of this book refers. To focus upon a comparatively small number of texts will allow us to get a sense of Christ’s and Christianity’s historical development, and to draw upon contemporary academic research, but yet while delivering this within the confines of just one volume.

As such, this book labours under some rather profound limitations. Perhaps most fundamentally, it has no aspiration towards being complete. Instead, our focus upon a smaller number of texts will allow us to dig just a little more deeply. Nor does the present work pretend, in any way, to be presenting material that is especially original in nature. Rather, we will draw upon present-day academic contributions, mostly from the past two or three decades, attempting to convey these in a more accessible form. In this way, I hope to provide a bridge between the ivory towers of academia, and intelligent readers who have developed their interests in other fields. Generally speaking, however, if any academic from a top institution were to pick up this book and flick through it, then I hope that they would think: Well, yes, that’s more or less right.

In reality, then, this book is little more than an act of translation, or perhaps a distillation, of many eminent works into one handy volume. As such, it draws upon a number of the contributions that I, personally, have found to be the most illuminating over the years, when trying to come to some understanding of Jesus, and Christianity, in context. I will list these principal works in the bibliography, should you care to explore them for yourself.

If you, the reader, were subsequently to embark upon a decade’s worth of theological study then, yes, of course you would encounter a great deal of interesting new material. But I like to think that you would not come across too much that would really, in any serious way, surprise you. These limitations, therefore, may turn out to be something of a blessing in disguise.

Chapter 1: Seven Origins of Judaism

To the inquiring mind, the idea that Jesus emerged from Judaism is not an entirely satisfactory conclusion.

Please do not get me wrong, however. For the present generation of scholars, the idea that Christianity emerged largely from the Jewish world, doing so in the context of Greco-Roman culture, is uncontroversial. In fact, from the second half of the twentieth century, scholars have stridently - and correctly - insisted upon Christ’s thoroughgoing Jewishness.

This broad point is reflected in the titles of some of their books, including Jesus the Jew by Geza Vermes, Jesus and Judaism by E.P. Sanders, and indeed more recently in The Misunderstood Jew by Amy-Jill Levine. If we wish to engage with the origins of Christ and of Christianity, then we absolutely must look more closely at the Jewish world itself. And we will do exactly that within this present volume.

A nagging question remains, nonetheless. To recognise that Jesus emerged from the Jewish world raises the logical but yet slightly awkward question as to where Judaism itself came from. Jesus was a Jew; yes, and in later chapters we will see that this understanding very much holds water. Historically, however, this characterisation, while accurate, simply pushes the question one step back. If Jesus came from Judaism … … then where did Judaism itself actually come from? Both logically and chronologically, that is the prior question. In this sense, to state that Jesus was a Jew simply kicks the can a little further back down the road.

Consequently, within this initial chapter we will embark upon our journey by considering the origins of Israel itself, and also by situating them within the broader context of Ancient Near East through discussion of Enuma Elish, the Babylonian story of creation.

The first part of our analysis will consider the relationship between the nation of Israel and Canaanite religion. Canaan itself would in fact become the promised land, towards which Moses led the Israelites in their exodus from captivity in Egypt. But how did the Jewish God, and the Israelite people, relate to the gods and peoples found within this land? Scholars have discerned that their relationship was complex. But what was the relationship between the Israelites and the Canaanites in reality? And how did the Israelites come to develop their own understanding of God? What started to make it unique?

The second part of this chapter is more comparative in nature. The creation myths and laws of Babylon provide an important context for the material contained within the Hebrew Scriptures. Methodologically, all good comparison contains both similarities and differences. Our engagement with Enuma Elish will help us to see the ways in which the Israelites drew upon the narratives of their Babylonian neighbours. But it will also help us to discern the ways in which Israel would generate an understanding of their God that was distinctive, original, and new.

In both these respects, then, we will begin to see how the Israelites’ thinking developed in dialogue with and resistance to surrounding cultures within the Ancient Near East. This dynamic of cultural interaction constitutes the underpinning theme within the present chapter. Indeed, it will serve as something of a touchstone throughout.

El and Israel

El was the highest god and patriarch of the Canaanite pantheon. He was portrayed as both elderly and benevolent, and was accompanied by Asherah, his queen within the divine family. Their son Baal and daughter Anat were warrior gods. The Sun was also worshipped, which was not unusual within the Ancient Near East; the Sun was a central figure in Egyptian religious culture, and would be worshipped in both Greece and Rome.

When we use the term Canaanite, there is a danger of assuming that there is a neat distinction to be drawn between Canaanite and Israelite. Earlier generations of scholars had tended to proceed on this basis. New archaeological discoveries, however, and particularly the Ugaritic tablets discovered in 1929 at Ras Sharma in Syria, have provided a great deal of information about Canaanite practices, circa 1500-1000 BCE, calling this distinction into question.

 The ancient port city of Ugarit actually lies some way up the coast to the north of Canaan, and is located in modern-day Syria. For that reason, the usefulness of these Ugaritic discoveries for understanding Israelite religion lies mostly in the furnishing of context. Nonetheless, they indicate that there were in fact some profound connections between Canaanite and Israelite culture.

Perhaps most basically, the languages of Canaanite and Hebrew were extremely similar, to the extent that scholars dispute whether certain inscriptions were written in one language or the other. Essentially, Hebrew was a Canaanite dialect, and so we are talking about languages that were very closely related indeed. This is evidenced within the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. Isaiah 19:18, anticipating an Israelite victory over the Egyptians, looks forward to the day when there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord of hosts. So too, on the level of material culture, for example in terms of house design and styles of pottery, there is no clear line to be drawn between the Canaanite and the Hebrew.

Most relevantly, scholars have also noted considerable overlap within religious and sacrificial conceptualisation. So for example, the Canaanites had a ritual of expiation similar to that found within Leviticus 16, and they too were concerned with the question as to how to receive divine forgiveness.

Generally speaking, historians are now often unwilling to make the assumption that the Canaanites and the Israelites were two different peoples with contrasting cultures. Instead, the situation seems to be one of overlap, or perhaps even identity, with Israelite culture being understood as a subset of that of Canaan, and as being intimately related to it. Reflecting this, some scholars are actually uncomfortable with the term Canaanite, due to its implication that the Canaanites were different, preferring instead the term West Semitic. Canaan would be the Israelites’ promised land, but this story of Israel’s national origins may perhaps be best understood in terms of homecoming.

The very name Israel is itself deeply suggestive here. This is in a sense one of the most basic of questions; what does a people actually call itself? Astonishingly, the name Israel contains the name of the chief god within the Canaanite pantheon – it contains the very name of El himself. This, when we are considering the origins of Israel, is a seismically important fact. In the words of the Oxford Professor John Day:

The very name Israel, meaning probably 'El will rule', is a name already attested in the late thirteenth century BCE on the stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah. It is surely an indication of El's early importance that the very name of the people incorporates the name of the God El.[1]

Along similar lines, Princeton’s Professor Mark Smith inquires:

Was El Israel's Original God? … … It is a reasonable hypothesis because of one basic piece of information: the name of Israel contains not the divine element of Yahweh but El's name… … This fact would suggest that El not Yahweh was the original chief God of the group named Israel.[2]

As such, the clue may indeed be in the name. Why, otherwise, would Israel have a Canaanite god actually as part of what it decided to call itself?

Moreover, even within the Hebrew Scriptures, God is repeatedly referred to as El, and is actually named as such on a number of prominent occasions. In Genesis 17:1-2 God is referred to as El Shaddai, this term being used in six subsequent instances within the Hebrew texts (the reference to El here is obscured by the English translation as God Almighty). In Genesis 33 Jacob erected an altar for El the God of Israel (El-Elohe-Israel). In Isaiah 9:6, El-Gibhor is often translated merely as Mighty God. Generally, the God of the Israelites would come to be known as Yahweh, this being the name by which God revealed himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14. However, these repeated references to El indicate a complexity here.

More broadly, God’s promises of providing children and descendants to the patriarchs are comparable and similar to promises made by El within the Ugaritic texts. Strikingly, also, some specific symbolism linked to El is shared by Yahweh. El is frequently represented as an aged figure, referred to as the Father of Years. Admittedly, within the Hebrew Scriptures there are only three instances where Yahweh’s years are referred to (Job 36.26; Psalm 102.25; Job 10.5). Notably, however, in the first two of these three instances, he is also referred to as El.

Another possible connection relates to Yahweh’s status as creator God. True, it is unclear whether Yahweh was thought of as being a creator god when people originally started to worship him. However, Genesis 14:19 talks of God as creator of heaven and earth. Scholars have thought it significant that on this occasion, referring to the specific activity of divine creation, he is referred to as El-Elyon.

The ultimate significance of all this is, however, open to question. Undoubtedly, the primary terms that are used to refer to God within Genesis are those of Elohim and Yahweh, not El. Further complicating the analysis, is the point that El would come to refer to God in a more general sense during this period. So for example, the jealous God of Israel el qanna, as mentioned in Deuteronomy 4:24, is thought to be simply making a point about the God of Israel, and bears no relation to the Canaanite God. This jealousy was not particularly a shared characteristic, and was not necessarily any kind of reference to Canaanite origins.

Nonetheless, the fact that the Israelites - at least sometimes - called their God El remains a hugely important point. This is particularly so given the close relationship between Israelite and Canaanite culture more generally. Even the Israelites’ subsequent uses of el as applied to God could constitute historical traces of Israelites worshipping the high God of the Canaanite pantheon. Why, after all, would they have chosen the name El to refer to God, if there were in fact no connection here?

A Plurality of gods within the Hebrew Bible

Canaanite religion, as we have seen, involved multiple gods. In fact, it revolved around a divine family, which was a very standard way of thinking about gods within the ancient world. This broader context, then, was polytheistic. How did the Israelites fit within this framework? Nowadays, of course, we think of Israel’s devotion to one God as being perhaps its defining characteristic, enshrined within the very first of the Ten Commandments. But had this always been the case?

In Genesis 1:26, God gives the following command:

Then God said, Let us make humankindin our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

Intriguingly, God seems to refer to himself in the plural (let us make). Indeed, the very term for God is also in the plural (elohim, used in 1:26, is the plural form). Why, then, is God in the plural?

In modern English one sometimes talks about the royal we, with an individual’s actions being expressed in the plural to indicate their elevated status. This practice, however, is not strongly evidenced within ancient Israel. Most scholars think that the plural is being used here because God is referring to the activities of the divine council, who would have carried out God's wishes. Note, for example: God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgement among the gods (Psalm 82:1).

The idea of a divine council is actually found in many different religious frameworks. Other gods who presided over councils included Zeus, Jupiter, and Odin (one of the principal gods within Norse mythology). Within these systems, therefore, divinity seems to have been somewhat dispersed; it was not just found in God, but was spread more widely throughout the council, and was perhaps shared by the God’s female companions also. So, for example, Psalm 89:6-8 asks:

Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord,

a God feared in the council of the holy ones,

great and awesomeabove all that are around him?

O Lord God of hosts

Here the council, staffed by holy and presumably divine beings, is once again referred to. So too, the Canaanite chief god El was also conceived of as being head of a divine assembly. In and of itself, this is not hugely significant, but yet it is another point of coherence between El and the Israelite God.

Similarly, in Isaiah 6:1-3 we are told of:  

the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the Temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.

Such plurality of divine beings is standard within the Hebrew Scriptures, and of course angels continue to play their part within the pages of the New Testament. The distribution of divinity, however, seems to have developed and changed over time. As monotheism became increasingly prominent, the gods of the heavenly council were demoted in status, coming to be referred to merely as angels. As monotheism became more absolute, the constellation of divine beings surrounding God needed to shine a little less brightly, so as not to distract from the luminescence of the one true God.

The title God of hosts is also of interest. Hosts were armies, and this indicates another aspect of Yahweh, as a God of War. Within the Canaanite pantheon Baal and Anat were gods of battle, but Yahweh accrues this aspect to himself, and it comes to constitute one of his many facets. This term is used frequently throughout the Hebrew Scriptures - on no fewer than 285 occasions, in fact - but yet, rather strangely, it is completely absent from the first five books of the Bible (or the Pentateuch). We will not encounter it at all within Genesis, for example. This nicely demonstrates the evolving ways in which God came to be thought of within different strata of the Hebrew texts.

More broadly, the Hebrew Bible quite often refers to heavenly beings and calls them gods. Genesis 6:2-4, moreover, talks about the sons of God taking wives for themselves from mortals. This idea that God might have a son, or sons, will of course be rather important to our discussion of the New Testament, but it is present even within the primeval narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Generally, then, divinity was more dispersed than we have often come to think of it today. It was possessed by a more diverse range of beings, within a broader context which took polytheism for granted, and in which gods were often to be found in families. But what of the God of the Israelites? Did he exist in unique and splendid isolation, or was he, at one point, rather more like the other gods of this time and place?

Yahweh and his Asherah: Did God once have a wife?

The idea that Yahweh may once have had a divine partner has drawn considerable attention during recent decades. The possibility that Yahweh had a consort does seem a little unnerving to those of us brought up in the Christian tradition, the God of which has generally seemed rather distant from any hint of sexual matters.

Nonetheless, this was a fairly standard feature within the divine pantheons of the eastern Mediterranean and the Greco-Roman world. To worship both male and female deities was the normal pattern for ancient religions. But yet, when we pause to think about it, the notion of a divine family clearly underpins our familiar characterization of Christ as son of God. True, the infant Jesus is, as we shall see, rather chastely conceived through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20). But if Yahweh can be thought of as generating children, then why should he not have had a wife?

Most scholars, in fact, think that once upon a time he did. It is generally considered that Asherah was at one point worshipped as a goddess within monarchic Israel, but that this notion was later rejected by the later editors of the Hebrew Scriptures, who wished to acknowledge Yahweh alone. As such, it looks as if, within an earlier part of his history, Yahweh had appropriated the wife of the Canaanite God El. So, then: did Yahweh steal El’s wife? Actually, if Yahweh was equated with El, as suggested within our earlier discussion, then this may not be quite as scandalous as it perhaps sounds.

The evidence, however, can be a little trickier to pin down than is sometimes recognised. Yes, remarkably, the Hebrew Scriptures contain no fewer than forty references to Asherah. More specifically, however, Asherah is used in the plural on twenty-two occasions and in the singular upon eighteen. This introduces some complexity. Considering this evidence as a whole, it is not quite clear whether Asherah was being referred to as a single goddess in any neat sense. Within the Bible, the term asherah often seems to refer to a cultic pole that was stuck in the ground as part of the cultic furniture that was involved within worship. The real issue is as to whether this symbol of the asherah was associated with the goddess. Did it represent the goddess Asherah, or was it just part of the cultic apparatus, without this association?

Looking more closely, we can see that most of these references pertain to a wooden object which seems to have symbolized the goddess. This pole was part of the cultic furniture, and was used in worship. So, for example, in 2 Chronicles 15:16 we hear that: King Asa also deposed his grandmother Maakah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive image for the worship of Asherah.

On the other hand, there remain a number of passages where the goddess herself is quite clearly and specifically referenced. So for example, Judges 3:7 states that: The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, forgetting the Lord their God, and worshipping the Baals and the Asherahs. Here Asherah is clearly an object of worship, and not just a cultic pole; Asherah is being worshipped alongside Baal, as a goddess in her own right. So too, 2 Kings 21:7 condemns King Manasseh for having put in the Temple: The carved image of Asherah that he had made. Here again, this is an image of the goddess. To state the obvious, Manasseh would not have placed an image of a stick in the Temple; it must have been the image of the god.

In 1 Kings 16:31-33 we are told that King Ahab:

…took as his wife Jezebel daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. Ahab also made an asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him.

Here then, the sacred pole, or asherah, is linked with the worship of Baal, not Yahweh, and is presented in a negative light. Nonetheless, this sort of evidence is useful because it suggests that both the worship of Baal (and possibly Asherah) were actual historical realities at the time (King Ahab reigned between 874 and 853 BCE). Subsequent authors and editors may not have liked what King Ahab was doing, but Asherah has not been entirely excised from the historical record.

Further, 1 Kings 18:19 talks of the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah. This, again, carries the fairly clear implication that Asherah was being worshipped as a goddess. The Bible’s negative portrayal means that we are certainly not receiving an unbiased account of Asherah and Baal, but it seems clear, at least, that they were in fact being worshipped.

The most notable connection between Asherah and Yahweh, however, is found in a series of inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud, located in the northeast part of the Sinai Peninsula. This evidence dates from around 800 BCE. Within these inscriptions we find two references to Yahweh and his Asherah, one of them specifying that this is Yahweh of Samaria, the other referring to Yahweh as my Lord. Both are articulated in connection with blessing.

But what exactly does this mean? Certainly, it could possibly refer to Asherah as Yahweh’s consort. But yet this is not explicitly stated, and so rests upon something of an assumption. In theory, it is also possible that and his Asherah could simply refer to the wooden cult symbol. However, it would seem a little odd for Yahweh himself to possess the cultic symbol of another god.

There are also some grammatical complexities. Specifically, the form his Asherah, while present in other semitic languages, has never similarly been evidenced in Hebrew as applied to a personal name. Strictly, therefore, the sentence could merely refer to Yahweh and the Asherah, again suggesting the cult object, as opposed to the goddess herself.

Additional archaeological evidence has, however, emerged to suggest that the goddess herself was indeed being referred to. Figurines have been unearthed from many Judean towns, dating back to the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. Some scholars think that these figurines represent the goddess Asherah, and that their being found in both private houses and also in tombs indicates the ongoing veneration of Asherah within Israelite society, and particularly within the private religion of Israelite families. Household gods, as we shall see, were also well-known within the Greco-Roman world.

As so often, however, the evidence is rather difficult to interpret. The figurines depict a woman with prominent breasts, suggesting a goddess connected with nurturing or fertility. So, yes, these figurines may indeed indicate ongoing veneration of Asherah, but - as so often, in the pursuit of ancient historical truths - absolute certainty remains frustratingly elusive.

That said, the special relationship between Yahweh and Asherah is, however, hard to overlook. Deuteronomy 16:21 orders that: You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God which you shall make. There is, quite clearly, an exclusivity here, between Yahweh and Asherah, and this point applies even if the Asherah is now being thought of as a cult object. Some kind of special relationship is being invoked, and when evaluating this, we cannot overlook the Canaanite context, within which Asherah was the consort of El.

By this point, within Israelite cultic activity, it has become Yahweh - and not El - who is thought of as enjoying a special relationship with Asherah. Viewed in context, this seems to be a kind of extension of the relationship found within the Canaanite pantheon, albeit taking a new form, metamorphizing over time, and developing within the context of new cultic practices.

But how exactly had this come to pass? How was the name of Asherah now being applied to a cultic pole or stick? Many scholars think that Yahweh came to absorb and accrue the qualities of Asherah, and indeed those of other gods, as time went on. These characteristics converged upon Yahweh. Over time, the goddess herself may have come to be forgotten, Asherah ultimately being rejected by the authors and editors of the Hebrew Scriptures. Yahweh himself, however, had grown more complex, and stronger.

Yet Asherah herself had perhaps not entirely left the scene. Yahweh’s absorption of Asherah’s female characteristics arguably later manifests itself in the female figure of divine Wisdom that we find in Proverbs 8. We find this female figure beside Yahweh from the very beginning of creation, seeming to be in some ways rather like his consort. So could Asherah have in a sense re-emerged in this later female aspect of God? If we take the time to listen carefully, might we hear an echo of Asherah whispering to us through this later female figure of Wisdom?

Does not wisdom call,

and does not understanding raise her voice?

On the heights, beside the way,

at the crossroads she takes her stand;

beside the gates in front of the town,

at the entrance of the portals she cries out:

"To you, O people, I call,

and my cry is to all that live.

O simple ones, learn prudence;

acquire intelligence, you who lack it. (Proverbs 8:1-5)

The Lord created me at the beginningof his work,

the first of his acts of long ago.

Ages ago I was set up,

at the first, before the beginning of the earth. (Proverbs 8:22-23)

when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

then I was beside him, like a master worker [or little child]

and I was daily [his]delight,

rejoicing before him always,

rejoicing in his inhabited world

and delighting in the human race. (Proverbs 8:29-31)  

Origins of Yahweh: Moses and the Midian Connection

So, from where exactly did Yahweh actually originate? This is a question that has certainly puzzled scholars. Yahweh does not appear to have been a Canaanite god, unlike El, Asherah, and Baal. The name of Yahweh does not appear alongside theirs in the Ugaritic pantheon lists. Where, then, was Yahweh first worshipped? If he was not native to Canaan, then from where exactly did he emerge?

Perhaps the Hebrew Scriptures themselves can help us. Towards the beginning of Exodus, we find the story of Moses and his initial worship of Yahweh. To state the obvious, the very story of the exodus is underpinned by movement and geographical displacement, with all the cultural interactions this would involve. If the Israelites left Egypt for Canaan, then what might they have brought back with them from these southern climes?

At the beginning of Exodus, the Israelites were being oppressed by the Egyptian king. Moses is hidden by his mother, due to the Pharaoh’s decree that all male babies should be killed. She places him in the bullrushes, where he is found by Pharaoh’s daughter. Within the ancient world, it was quite usual for the early lives of great leaders to have involved an extraordinary birth. Indeed, the Egyptian goddess, Isis, also hides her child in the papyrus thickets of the Nile Delta. Pharaoh’s daughter names him Moses, a name that is of Egyptian origin.

Years later, now a man, Moses kills an Egyptian whom he finds beating a Hebrew. This incident, scholars have noted, subversively reworks a common Egyptian depiction of the pharaoh striking down his enemy. The idea of reworking and appropriation will, in fact, become something of a theme throughout this book. Within our present day, it can be seen in the Hollywood film industry’s endless retellings of stories revolving around certain particular characters, for example. Back in Exodus, Moses then flees to Midian, to the east of Egypt, across the Red Sea, where he marries the daughter of a Midianite priest (Exodus 2:21). To state the obvious, this narrative has already involved a number of conspicuous cultural interactions.

Despite their difficulties, God nonetheless still has a covenant with the Israelites, who are suffering as slaves in Egypt. God appears to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:2). God identifies himself to Moses, saying: I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Exodus 3:6). Then God explains that he will deliver the Israelites, doing so through Moses, and that afterwards the people will offer their worship upon this mountain. We are not told which mountain is actually being referred to here, but the practice of God being encountered on mountains will become a recurring theme, both within the Hebrew Scriptures and also in the New Testament. Mountains were, after all, closer to heaven, and hence provided a fitting meeting place between heaven and earth.

Moses then asks God: If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them? (3:13). God replies to Moses, I am who I am, identifying himself as Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (3:14-15). Strikingly, then, Moses was initially unsure as to the identity of the God who was addressing him.

Subsequently, Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt, just as God had promised. This God is quite clearly deserving of worship, which raises the question as to how exactly to go about this. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer would revolve around the usual mode of worship within the ancient world, which was that of sacrifice. In Exodus 18, we are told that this sacrifice is carried out by Moses’ father-in-law:

Jethro said, Blessed be the Lord, who has delivered you from the Egyptians and from Pharaoh. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because he delivered the people from the Egyptians, when they dealt arrogantly with them. And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God; and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law in the presence of God. (Exodus 18:10-12)

Perhaps a little strangely, therefore, this early worship of Yahweh was actually carried out by a Midianite priest. That is a very considerable and intriguing point. What, then, does this tell us about Yahweh, and about Midianite influences upon the worship of Yahweh by the Israelites? Even the fact that these details have been preserved is somewhat curious in its own right. It is certainly an awkward detail, so why, over the years, did someone not think to edit it out?

At the beginning of Exodus 18 we encounter another slightly puzzling fact. Moses, we are told, sent away his wife Zipporah, who returned to her father Jethro. But what exactly is the nature of this information? Does it simply reflect historical fact, with Moses and Zipporah having decided to go their separate ways? Or could Moses’s marital difficulties instead constitute a creative insertion by a later scribe seeking to somewhat distance Moses from the Midianite connection? Could this part of the story have perhaps been too familiar to be removed entirely?

So what is the bottom line here? Does this Midianite connection suggest that Yahweh was first worshipped within the land of Midian itself? Some scholars reckon that, given that Yahweh was first offered sacrifice by a Midianite priest, this sacrifice having being offered within Midian itself, it is quite plausible that Midian was indeed the initial location of Yahweh’s cult. They think that the original home of Yahweh was found within this region, before his subsequent assimilation into the Canaanite pantheon, alongside El and Asherah, Baal and Anat.

More generally, then, this story suggests that ideas surrounding Yahweh emanated from the south. In relation