Israel and the Ancient Near East
The ancient Near East is the world the Old Testament was written in: Egypt, Canaan, Assyria and Babylon, with their gods, their law codes and their stories of creation and flood. Six scholars who work with those texts show where Israel's Scriptures overlap with the neighbors and where they break away.
- Mesopotamia
- Egypt
- Ugarit and Canaan
- Assyria
- Babylon
The neighbors
who shaped it.
Tap an era to see what it left behind, where it touches the Bible, and which guest digs into it. Dates are approximate.
Sumer and Old Babylon
What it leftCenturies before Moses, Mesopotamian kings were publishing collections of law. Dr. Joshua Bowen, who holds a PhD in Assyriology from Johns Hopkins, sets the Laws of Hammurabi, Ur-Namma and Eshnunna beside the legal material in the Torah, down to the law of the goring ox, which turns up in nearly identical form across several collections (compare Exodus 21:28-32).
Dr. Christopher Hays adds the contrast: in the Torah, God himself is the lawgiver, a radical departure from ancient Near Eastern norms, and he reads the covenant at Sinai against ancient treaty forms. Dr. Richard Averbeck works in Sumerian and Akkadian and takes listeners inside the Sumerian King List.
Egypt
What it leftHays, who also holds an MA in Egyptology from UCLA, says Egyptian influence on the Bible has been massively overlooked. The Instruction of Amenemope runs strikingly close to a section of Proverbs (compare Proverbs 22:17 to 24:22), and the Memphite Theology, read alongside Babylon's Enuma Elish, helps show what Genesis 1 is doing.
Dr. Matthew Lynch looks at Akhenaten, the pharaoh who raised the sun disk Aten above the other gods in the 14th century BC, and asks what his reign says about whether Israel invented monotheism.
Ugarit and Canaan
What it leftFrom 1929 onward, excavators at Ugarit, modern Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast, recovered mythological texts that tell us more about Canaanite religion than the Old Testament does, says Dr. John Day, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament Studies at Oxford. El was the high god. Baal, the storm god, was where the action was. Day argues Israel identified Yahweh with El, which is why the name Israel contains El, while Baal was rejected.
An inscription at Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai blesses by "Yahweh and his Asherah," evidence that some Israelites paired Yahweh with a goddess, a practice the Hebrew Bible condemns. Dr. Michael Hundley adds that the divine council in Scripture looks a lot like the council of gods around El in these texts.
Assyria
What it leftAssyria destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and its capital Samaria in 722 BC. Hays shows Isaiah taking Assyria's own imperial propaganda and turning it on the empire, and argues Isaiah 24 to 27 is not apocalyptic but describes the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the time of Josiah. Lynch notes the prophets aimed their fire at empires, Assyria, Egypt and Babylon, as well as at other gods.
Day dates Josiah's reform, which removed the cults of Baal and Asherah from the Jerusalem temple (2 Kings 23), to 621 BC. The best-known copy of Gilgamesh Tablet 11, with its flood story, came from the Assyrian royal library at Nineveh, and Averbeck reads it beside Genesis to show what Genesis does that no other flood story could.
Babylon and the exile
What it leftBabylon took Jerusalem in 586 BC, destroyed the temple and carried Judah into exile. Its creation epic, Enuma Elish, exalts Marduk after a war among the gods. Averbeck, Bowen and Hays all set it beside Genesis 1, where there is no battle at all and the sun and moon are not even named, only the greater light and the lesser light. In Bowen's telling, Yahweh does not even have to fight. Averbeck argues the battle shows up instead in Genesis 3, as the serpent's attack on the image of God.
Day sees the exile as the setting where full monotheism is stated, in Isaiah 45:5: "I am the LORD, and there is no other." Bowen argues the exile shaped Israelite identity and the final form of the Hebrew Bible. Cyrus of Persia took Babylon in 539 BC and let the exiles go home.
Many gods
to one.
The Old Testament keeps naming other gods: Baal, Asherah, the gods of the nations. Dr. Matthew Lynch argues four terms change how you read those passages. Three guests then ask when Israel landed on one God alone, and they do not agree.
Polytheism
Many gods exist and many are worshipped. Hundley calls it the universal norm of the ancient world: a high god, major gods, minor gods and wild gods at the edges.
Henotheism
Many gods exist, but one stands supreme, often a nation's own god. Day lists them: Chemosh of Moab, Milkom of Ammon, Qaus of Edom.
Monolatry
Other gods may exist, but only one may be worshipped. Hundley compares it to marriage: you know other people exist, and you belong to one.
Monotheism
Only one God exists at all. Day finds it stated outright in Isaiah 45:5. Lynch adds that the Hebrew word Elohim also covers angels and the dead.
A slow climb
Day traces a path from Israelites who worshipped other gods alongside Yahweh, through a "Yahweh alone" party reaching back to Elijah in the 9th century BC, to full monotheism during the Babylonian exile. He tells believers who find this unsettling that faith can be revised without being given up.
"One achieves a more honest faith."
Worship first
The Bible almost never says other gods do not exist. It says you do not need them. As Assyria and Babylon crushed Israel, its God had to be presented as greater still, and in Hundley's view monotheism grew as an effect of exclusive worship, not as its goal.
"Not monotheism, monolatry."
Earlier than you think
The standard scholarly story says monotheism arrived late, forged in the exile. Lynch says that timeline is wrong. His evidence is a rare Hebrew word Isaiah uses to strip the gods of the nations of their dignity, and he shows Genesis 1, the Psalms and Ezekiel each silencing rival gods in a different way.
The gods disappear.
Isaiah, the Psalms and Job get their own page: Job, Psalms and the Prophets.
Babylon,
briefly.
Quick answers on the ancient Near East, the Babylonian exile and monotheism, with the full conversations waiting in the episode rail below.
What is the ancient Near East?
The term scholars use for the lands and peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia in antiquity: Egypt, Canaan and the wider Levant, Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates with Assyria and Babylon, and Anatolia to the north. Israel sat on the land bridge between Egypt and Mesopotamia, which is why the empires kept marching through. Dr. Richard Averbeck notes that Akkadian served as the common language of that world for about fifteen hundred years.
Did the Bible borrow from Babylonian myths?
The guests agree the overlap is real and disagree that it is a problem. Dr. Joshua Bowen argues that drawing on an earlier flood story does not undercut the theology, because Israel used its neighbors' stories as a polemic, arguing through them. Dr. Richard Averbeck shows where Genesis parallels the Babylonian accounts and where it stands completely against them. Dr. Christopher Hays describes Scripture breathing in the surrounding culture and breathing it back out in a new form. For Genesis itself, see Genesis and Creation.
When did Israel become monotheistic?
Scholars disagree. Dr. John Day places full monotheism in the Babylonian exile, pointing to Isaiah 45:5. Dr. Matthew Lynch argues the standard late timeline is wrong and finds earlier evidence in Isaiah. Dr. Michael Hundley says the better question is about exclusive worship, monolatry, which he sees as what set Israel apart, with monotheism following from it.
What is the difference between monotheism and monolatry?
Monotheism is the belief that only one God exists. Monolatry is the worship of one God alone while allowing that other gods exist. Dr. Michael Hundley argues much of the Old Testament reads as monolatry: the warnings against other gods assume they are real temptations, and the message is that Israel does not need them.
Who was Asherah?
A Canaanite goddess known from the Ugaritic texts. Dr. John Day points to an inscription from Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai that blesses by "Yahweh and his Asherah," to Deuteronomy 16:21, which forbids planting an Asherah beside the altar, and to 2 Kings 23, where Josiah removes her cult from the Jerusalem temple. Day concludes some Israelites thought Yahweh had a wife, a belief the Hebrew Bible rejects as an abomination.
What was the Babylonian exile?
Babylon deported leaders of Judah in 597 BC, then destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 586 BC and carried many more into exile. Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon in 539 BC and allowed the exiles to return. Dr. John Day says the prophets read the exile as judgment, which pushed the people toward a more faithful worship of Yahweh, and Dr. Joshua Bowen argues it shaped Israelite identity and the final form of the Hebrew Bible.
Six scholars,
one world.
Context changes
everything.
Every Monday a new scholar puts the Bible back in the world it came from. Subscribe on YouTube so the next conversation finds you at 6:15 AM ET.
Prefer audio? Find the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.