Was There a Cult of El in Ancient Canaan (original) (raw)
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This volume is the outcome of my fifty years of study in Ugaritic language. I began my Ugaritic study at Brandeis University with Professor Cyrus H. Gordon in 1969 and wrote my dissertation on KTU 1.23 (UT 52) under his supervision, finishing in 1973. After that, I taught Semitic linguistics, especially comparative linguistics, at the University of Tsukuba. After fifteen years there I switched the center of my research to Biblical studies, and since then have taught Biblical exegesis as a full-time teacher at Japan Bible Seminary. During the past decades I have worked especially on the Chaoskampf problem in Genesis 1 and published The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2 (Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), as the outcome of the Genesis Project of Tyndale House, Cambridge, revised as Creation and Destruction (Eisenbrauns, 2005), as well as various articles, as those in Conversations on Canaanite and Biblical Themes (De Gruyter, 2022) and Congress Volume Aberdeen 2019 (Brill, 2022). While teaching the Bible and writing commentaries on 1 and 2 Samuel (NICOT; Eerdmans, 2007, 2019) in the cultural context of Japanese polytheism, I became more and more aware of the many similarities between the Canaanite-Ugaritic religion and the Japanese polytheistic religious traditions such as ancestor worship and kami-worship, that is, god-worship, both of which are real and active religious practices even in modern Japan.
On Gods and Scribal Traditions in the Amarna letters, Ugarit-Forschungen 22 (1990), pp. 247-255.
The Amarna Letters, discovered more than a century ago, are still our main source for the history and culture of Canaan in the Late Bronze Age. Many details concerning the land and its inhabitants have been extracted from these letters and the overall picture is to a certain extent based on the analysis of this source material. Due to its central position in scientific research, the archive still deserves special attention and progress in the understanding of difficult passages and terms could contribute to a better understanding of the historical and cultural situation. On the other hand, mistaken interpretations may lead scholars to stray far from ancient reality, since in certain cases there are no other sources against which these conclusions and inferences may be checked.
Stages of Ancient Israelite Religion: From Polytheism to Monotheism
Open Journal for Anthropological Studies, 8(1), 21-32, 2024
In the past scholars traced monotheism to the time of Moses, around 1200 BC. But in the last decades that date changed to 7 th-6 th century BC. Further, the discovery of the Ugaritic texts in 1928 on the north coast of Syria has helped historians of religion to notice the development of Israelite religion from a polytheistic Canaanite stratum to monotheistic Yahwism. Through examining biblical and extra-biblical texts, archaeological material, and inscriptions, this study traces the religious similarities of the Israelite and Canaanite culture. Genesis 49, Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32:8-9 are thoroughly analyzed and conclusions are made about Israel's original God, and the original tiers of the pantheon. In the pre-exilic period (and perhaps as early as the 8 th century BC) Israel enjoyed perhaps a lesser pantheon than that in the Ugaritic texts, but certainly it was considerably more extensive than what the biblical record reports. The God of Biblical Israel may not actually be very different from the gods of the neighboring nations, but claiming that he is, is an important part of the rhetoric promoting devotion to that God alone.
In the Hebrew Bible words like ים להִ ֱ א ל ֵ א and אלוה are often encountered in the generic sense as a classification of the type of entity יה וה and other related beings were assumed to be. But what, according to the Hebrew Bible, was meant by calling something an ֵ א ל ? Is it possible to define the phenomenon of generic ל ֵ -אhood? What were assumed to be necessary and/or sufficient conditions for being classified as a member of the ים להִ ֱ ?א What criteria were used to determine whether an entity should be called an ֵ א ל or not? In this paper the author provides an introduction to the concept of generic ל ֵ -אhood in the Hebrew Bible with reference to perplexing questions involved in its understanding, related research and the gaps therein and the need for philosophical (conceptual) analysis in future inquiries.