The Israelites Worshipped Other Gods??? Really?

Small figurine head of goddess; picture by Justin Singleton (2009)

It probably isn't much of a surprise to you or me, but the archaeological record shows an Israel that wasn't exactly up to par when it came to worship. Not too surprisingly, there are quite a few "less conservative" scholars who try to make this into a big deal.

In his book, _Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?_ (http://goo.gl/AgMMmH), Bill Dever describes an Israel that didn't leave Egypt in an Exodus but who were just normal Canaanites who wanted a change. A part of his evidence for this was the very wide acceptance of Canaanite worship practices. In fact, here in this book and in another one (_Did God Have a Wife?_ [http://goo.gl/yV47MC]), Dever talks quite a bit about the archaeological evidences containing phrases such as "Yahweh and his Asherah." Now, just in case you didn't know, Asherah was the wife of the god El (the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, but she eventually became the wife of Ba'al (also mentioned in the Bible).

So what gives? Why is there so much evidence of Canaanite worship in the archaeological record? Does this point to a different truth other than what the Bible teaches us? Were the Israelites just Canaanites in disguise?

Let me answer that last question first. Yes. ... Okay, the Israelites weren't actually Canaanites, but when we read the Bible we learn that the children of God left their God, Yahweh, and began to follow after "foreign" gods ... those of the land of Canaan. as a matter of fact, the larger than life reality presented to us in the Scriptures is the idea that Israel is doing just about everything wrong! They rejected God as their king wanted an earthly king; many rejected Jerusalem as their worship center, so they built others; they rejected Yahweh as their deity, so they started worshiping others.

The little figurine head you see in the picture is one that we dug up at Tall Jalul (Jordan) back in 2009. The area where we were digging belonged to the northern kingdom of Israel at the time, and as would be expected, we find a nice little goddess. The persona of the goddess is unknown, but there she is! She was worshipped by the people.

In the end, the liberals who claim that the Bible is wrong because the archaeological evidence points toward Canaanite worship more so than Yahweh worship are really just verifying what the Bible tells us. If anything, they are helping our cause! Remember, if there is one lesson you are to take away from the books of Kings in the Old Testament, it is this: Israel never needed kings to guide them (they just led them astray); instead, they needed the leadership of the one true God - Yahweh.

Writing!

Erica holding a small bulla (2009); Photo by Justin Singleton

It isn't every day that we find things with writing, but when we do, we get quite excited. Back in 2009, a friend of mine (Erica, pictured here covered in dirt [she is going to kill me for posting this, lol]) found a very small, clay bulla, what most people call a "seal." The difference is that the seal is the object used to make the impression in the clay - the bulla.

As you can see in the picture, she is extremely happy (this was her last day in the field, as she was heading home soon!). Why do we get excited? Well, the writing on the bulla can tell us a whole lot.

Writing is how we corroborate what we find in the dirt. Whether the writing comes in the form of bullae, ostraca (pottery with writing), or whatever, we can match what we find with what we think we know. For example, we may think that a certain object belongs to a certain time period, but if we find something with writing that gives us a completely different story, ... well ... we might need to rearrange what we previously thought.

We have actually found entire libraries of information that has helped us to change and rework what we believed about the past. These libraries have helped us to understand certain cultural practices as well. There was found a small limestone plaque with a calendar on it that helped us figure out the planting, reaping seasons in ancient Israel/Canaan.

As some of you may know, I own a backup business (helping people backup their computer files for an extremely inexpensive cost; it is one of my ministries). As I was helping a friend setup her account the other day (yesteday? I can't remember), I was thinking about some of the ancient libraries, like the one at Alexandria. Wouldn't it had been really nice if they had their entire library backed up! But .. they did not. In all honesty, we have no idea what all was in that library because the entire library was destroyed by fire. Maybe the library would have contained works that would have completely changed the way we think about history? Maybe texts older than the ones we now know to exist would have been found there? It is really quite sad to lose so much information, but what can we do? Once data is gone... its gone.

I typically tell people to backup their family photos, home videos, etc. (and then help them get setup doing that), but we can't forget about all those important documents as well. ... Writings (documents) were extremely important to the ancients, but what about our own documents? Take this time to think about what all could be lost if your library (computer) caught fire!

If you need a service to backup your documents, I can hook you up ... just let me know. See the link below or chat with me.

(Use HHBT at www.boundlesscloud.com to save 25% on the first year)

Hey now ... those are men's clothes!

Beni Hassan tomb paintings depicting Asiatics selling goods in Egypt; Photo snagged from Google :)

I wrote a paper (http://goo.gl/xJISa) not too long ago about a Super Bowel advertisement attempting to convince men to "wear the pants" once again (it was a Docker's ad). This was one of those highly controversial but at the same time not too controversial advertisements that turned a lot of heads. What were they trying to say? Was Docker's trying to convince the world that only men should wear pants, that pants are somehow inherently masculine? Well, no, actually they were just selling pants, but this does raise an issue. What is gender distinct clothing? Did you know that Deuteronomy 22:5 commands that we dress like our own sex and not like the other? Well, however that plays out (read my paper!), I thought about how this actually worked in the ancient world ... I mean, didn't they all just wear robes anyway?

The answer might actually be surprising. The gist of it all is that in most (if not all) ancient Near Eastern cultures there existed a very specific gender distinction in clothing practices, except when involved in cultic/religious ceremonies. A rather interesting Neo-Sumerian hymn “Hymn to Inanna” (fourth kirugu, verse 60) describes a male prostitute who is “adorn[ed] with women’s clothing.” Rather than show a specific style of masculine or feminine clothing, this hymn acknowledges that the ancient Neo-Sumerians at least had a division between male and female dress. In the image I have uploaded, we see Asiatics from about the time of Abraham selling goods in Egypt. What I found rather striking is the difference between male and female dress. Yes, there isn't much, but does there have to be? The point is that there is actually a difference.

I find it fascinating that there is only one instance in ancient Near Eastern literature of transvestism outside of religious practices. In ancient Babylonian literature, “The Assyrian Collection,” we find an instance of transvestitism not associated with the cult. It appears that a man and his wife switch roles in order to woo each other – foreplay. So the only time this occurred outside of religious ceremonies was in a closed door situation ... it was not something people did publicly on the streets.

This is where someone gets mad at me and begins to abuse me verbally in the comments section, lol, but hang in there. Yes, I do actually have a very conservative view on this topic, but all I am trying to do here is point out what is considered "_normal_" in the ancient Near East and to address why Deuteronomy 22:5 actually existed.

I think that the bottom line with Deuteronomy 22:5 is that the Israelites were to avoid non-Hebraic cultic practices, but that doesn't mean that this isn't also a command to avoid transvestism. There really was no need to command that as no one ever did it!

We do find transvestism in later cultures, but even those are considered devious.

So, didn't the ancients just wear robes? How could we tell which is male and which is female? How we can tell isn't the point; the point is that they could tell. However we apply those same principles in our day is actually hotly debated. ... Feel free to debate it in the comments, but keep it civil.

Patriotism

Our grill at Al Asad, Iraq (2006); Photo by Justin Singleton

Well, to be a little more patriotic today, I am uploading a picture of the grill we used while I was stationed in the Anbar province of Iraq. Isn't she a beauty? One of the guys in my platoon would make deals with people from some of the smaller Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) around the province, and we would trade whatever we had on our base for things like lobster tail and steaks (the smaller FOBs got great meals like this as a way to equal out the fact that they didn't have some of the luxuries that larger bases had). ... Yes, it was just like M.A.S.H.

We had quite a few barbecues here. To the right is a kind of gazebo that we built, and behind is our horse shoe pit. We had plans to build a volleyball court, lol, but I can't remember if we ever did that or not.

No, it was not all hard times and living outside the wire, at least not for my platoon. We would go on missions outside the wire ever other day or every three days for one-day missions, but when we came back we "let our hair down" (yeah, that's kind of weird to say about a bunch of guys with almost bald heads).

Typically, it is during these times that we get to think. We miss our wives, kids, families, whoever. We try to think of what we will be doing when we get home, jobs that wait, jobs that don't wait. I (being called Preacher by most) had to think of other things, like answering the question posed to me, "Will God forgive me for being so angry in battle and enjoying the fight?" ... Good question.

How did I answer that? Well, I looked to David. King David was a master warrior. He killed tens of thousands of people, but yet he kept the faith through all of that. Actually, David was said to have had a "perfect heart" - which is a phrase denoting that he only served God and never in his life served a false god (it had nothing to do with his moral character).

David was known to have killed at will (look what he did to the guy who claimed to have killed Saul!), and as an infantryman who also enjoyed the battle, I am assuming that David had what we call the battle rage. Did David sin in this? I don't think he did.

I explained this to my friend who asked me the question while deployed, but I also told him of Romans 13, which speaks of God giving governments the sword to avenge wrong doing (a sword was used to kill, not spank). When soldiers, we were a part of that government using our swords (rifles, machine guns, whatever) to kill the enemy. As representatives of the governing authority, we fell well within the rights to take lives. ... But then I told him something else.

Yes, we are going to enjoy the killing, but there is a line that can be crossed. We can only kill those who deserve to die. Obviously, killing randomly is a violation - we would become wolves and not sheep dogs at that point. He understood that, of course, but the fact is that afterward he felt like a wolf because he had a blood thirstiness. ... Again, though, don't you think David had that same blood thirst?

We in America often confuse two types of people in our world. Well, let me first describe all three. There are sheep who are the everyday people who live day in and day out. There are the wolves who desire to hurt the sheep, take their stuff, and sometimes even kill them. There are also the sheep dogs; I am a sheep dog. The sheep dogs bark like the wolves, bite like the wolves, kill like the wolves, but we kill to help the sheep of the world.

No, liking the act of killing the enemy isn't really a bad thing. Enjoying combat isn't either. There are a lot of people in this world who have a sheep dog mentality, and more often than not the sheep confuse us with the wolves, but we are not the wolves.

How Old Are You?

Audrey with fishing net weight at Kourion, Cyprus (2013); Photo by Justin Singleton

How Old Are You? What Will You Really Find
This is a dear friend Audrey. She is 83 years young, and she has been digging for I don't know how long. Audrey is my inspiration. In 2009, I was standing next to her (looking the opposite direction) when she was bitten by a camel on her arm. One of the teeth went clean to the bone. She let out a little squeal, and I turned to see what was wrong. There she was standing there a little shaky and she said that she had gotten bit by the camel ... I was shocked, until I saw the blood pouring down her little arm. Surprisingly, she had just broken her foot in Israel a short time before that and had a cast on her foot for a while early in the season.

What did she do afterward? Well, the very next year she went to the field again. And she went every year until I saw her this year, and I'm sure she will keep going in the future.

She is holding what looks like a weight for a fishing net (the hole is more to one side and it is unlike a loom weight). Audrey found this as we were digging in a huge pile of rocks (that someone else had dumped about 20 years ago). This is a good reminder that excavations don't always catch everything. This little weight is an important find, but the guy who dug 20 years ago just threw it out, probably never seeing it.

A bit later in the season, another friend of mine Dr. Randy Younker was dumping a wheel barrow of dirt that the workers had filled. As he dumped it, something caught his eye. He searched back through the dirt and found a complete 1st century oil lamp! Again, something was almost lost.

The problem with archaeology is that it is a destructive sport. When we excavate, we destroy everything we find. If we don't keep great records, then what we have done is simply devastated the earth so that no one will ever know what happened.

A lot of people ask me what I think about treasure hunters like those who search for Noah's Ark or the "real" Mt. Sinai. I typically have the same response each time: I don't think about them, lol. One of the reasons that I dislike these treasure hunters is that whatever they find, they simply rip it out of the ground and destroy any scientific value that it might have had. They don't keep records; they don't take soil samples; they don't take proper photographs; they don't take location readings; they don't do anything that would actually help our cause.

In addition, they make serious and unfounded claims that can be easily debunked. Unfortunately, many Christians simply believe what the treasure hunters say because they have made a really nice video about the "finds." This makes Christians look bad to the world around us.

I highly suggest looking into some real archaeological organizations like some of the academic organizations (Andrews University, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, etc.) and even some church focused organizations (like Associates for Biblical Research [www.biblearchaeology.org] of which I am a part). These places can lead you into many years of study without making the rest of the church look like nut cases!

Prayers Needed

Photo by Marianne Lopez - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mandalatour/sets/7215)

Prayers much appreciated. It looks like I might be spending the next few summers in Sicily digging in Phoenician cultural material. I have some prerequisites to accomplish this fall, but then I will spend a few weeks in Sicily during the spring to prepare the site (site survey and plan), and then start digging in Sicily in the summer (either 4 or 8 weeks over the next four years minimum).

There aren't that many people digging in Sicily at present, so this is a great opportunity for me and my peers (one or two other students). We will be trail blazing in a lot of ways. This could be the project I spend the next ten years on, not sure yet.

(Not my image as I haven't been to the site yet. Photo by Marianne Lopez - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mandalatour/sets/7215

Daily Life

Bronze Age grinding stone and pestle; Photo by Justin Singleton

People don't often think of life in ancient times. How did they live? How did they manage? How do we manage? lol.

Life, in general, was tough. What you see here is a grinding stone and hand grinder. This one has been worn almost all the way through. We walked onto a Bronze Age (prehistory) site in Cyprus to explore a bit, and I found about eight or nine of these. It was quite interesting, really. What would you do with these once they were "finished"? Well, I found two set as seats on a bench against the wall of a house. Several were also used to repair walls.

A friend of mine, Bill Weir (PhD [ABD] from University of Cincinnati) is writing his dissertation on common uses of pottery beyond the norm. When we see things in the archaeological record, we typically think, "Oh, that's a grinding stone; it was used to grind grains so that they could eat," or, "Oh, that's a topper/stopper for a small juglet." What we don't typically think is, "I bet they used this butt shaped grinding stone as a seat in their house," or, "I bet this topper was reused by the kids as a game token," but that is exactly what happens quite frequently.

I don't know about you guys, but when my dish washer went out a couple of years ago, I wasn't ready to buy a new one. The door wouldn't stay closed, so I put a bungee strap on it. The trigger wouldn't press, so I stuck a fork inside to catch the trigger better. ... We do so much "fixing" in our world with duct tape or hot glue guns or whatever, but we have to also imagine that the ancients were the same way. They were normal people. Husbands and wives argued about the finances. The kids would run and scream and beg for things that the neighbor kids had. ... But they survived.

We (humans) have always been very resilient people. We are pushed into corners, and we come out swinging for ourselves and for our families. You can go back archaeologically and find the same thing has always been true. From the Ice Ages (what I would argue is right after the flood) until today, we find people making a way to survive with what little they have. God knew what He was doing when He made us as we are.

Making the leap

Justin Singleton jumping off a cliff; Photo by Justin Singleton

Every once in a while it is fun to just let yourself go ... in this case, I am jumping off a cliff (that's the Mediterranean Sea in the background). No, I was not jumping into the sea fully clothed, but I did walk into the sea fully clothed (boots and all) just for the fun of it ... but I need to get back to the story.

A lot of people are interested in archaeology, and in my case Biblical archaeology, but they don't have how to get started. For me, it started when I was still an undergraduate. I fell in love with the history of the Bible (the culture of that time was like a puzzle to me, and I wanted to solve it). Right before I graduated, I spent a tour of duty in Iraq in combat. While there, I fell in love with the Arab people, the land, and the general culture (it too was a puzzle).

After returning from the war, I finished college and started graduate school toward a Master's in Biblical Cultural Settings. For this degree, I spent six weeks in Jordan digging at Tall Jalul.

Now, I am a late bloomer in the field, having five kids, having gone to war, having to work for a living - all this made it somewhat difficult to become an archaeologist. I have studied archaeology for some time, but I really needed to be in the dirt to be labeled an "archaeologist." This past summer I took the leap and went on another excavation, this time in Cyprus. I met great friends, and I established great connections. What's next? Well, I have finally found a way to make the PhD feasible, and so next year I will (inshallah) be heading either to Jordan again or to Sicily to officially begin PhD work.

How about you? For those of you interested in becoming archaeologists, how can you get started? Is it too late to get started? Nah ... I dug this past season with a woman who was 82 years old, and she outworked anyone there. But what about the training? ... I've got you covered there. I am working on a plan to create an 18 credit cognate in Biblical Cultural and Archaeological Studies with the regionally accredited college where I teach. This means that either someone can add the 18 credit cognate to their BA in Biblical Studies degree program or someone can just take the courses to learn as much as possible about the cultural and archaeological background of the Bible. The best part is that 3 of those credits will be archaeological field work joining me or my partner in the field.

If you are interested in taking any of these courses, contact Mark Bird (513-721-7944) and ask him about any of these courses specifically: Archaeology and the Old Testament, Archaeology and the New Testament, Archaeological Field Work, Religions of the Ancient Near East, People and Literature of the Ancient Near East, and/or Biblical Cultural Settings. Dr. Bird is the director of the Aldersgate Distance Education Program (www.gbs.edu/adep) at the college. ... Now, he will only know about one of these courses, but if you ask him about the others then he will get the point that we need to hurry up and finish them.

Translation of the gods

Horned god found at Enkomi, Cyprus; photo by Justin Singleton

I mentioned before the "translation" of the gods in the ancient world, but I never really explained what that was. The idea is that all over the ancient world, one culture would translate another culture's deities into their own deities. The Egyptians would make a treaty with Hatti, and in the treaty would call on both sides' gods to make the pact (they believed in both sets of gods), and often they would compare their gods (Shemesh the God of the sun is the same as Re in Egypt). Many of these local deities represented international ideas, and therefore when those people clashed with other cultures, they would note that the other culture also worshipped the same kind of deity ... who is obviously the same.

We see the same thing happening in ancient Israel. Whereas God (Yahweh of the Old Testament) specifically said that there are no other gods but Him, the people (in general) didn't fully comprehend this until the time of the Exile. Instead, they would see things from the local deities (like Ba'al) and simply translate those ideas onto Yahweh. It wasn't too long before they started comparing Yahweh to Ba'al in other ways. In fact, we have inscriptions talking about Yahweh and his wife, Asherah (Ba'al's wife).

I have uploaded a picture of one of the two horned gods of Enkomi in Cyprus. Just like Ba'al, this unknown horned god is also Canaanite. The Phoenicians made it a point to not only explore the sea, but to spread their culture every where they went. They were so good at it that Ba'alism lived on outside of Canaan long after it died out inside Canaan. As a matter of fact, and I somewhat doubt the full truth to this, Philo of Byblos claims that the Roman gods who are the Greek gods were originally based on the Phoenician gods. Philo relates Chronos to El in Canaan.

It is easy to see how these gods translate between the different cultures, and it is even easier to see how Israel simply grabbed onto the world around them and made it their own. I wonder how much of this we do today in our own culture. We are, after all, supposed to live in the world but not be of it.

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