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.

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.

Catch me on Google+ or Facebook