Scripture in Context of Ancient Near Eastern Religion

The Scriptures cannot be separated from the historical, religious, or cultural setting in which it was written. If it is, then an essential message is missed. A vital importance as to the purpose of Scripture goes unrevealed, and thinkers then hold a lower view of Scripture than is warranted. This is not to suggest that its context as it relates to space and time has no real bearing for those of another space and time, like the modern reader. On the contrary, Judeo-Christian theology is set apart in that it uses history as a vital vehicle to teach theology, and that is just the point. God uses real, unrepeatable history to teach us of His nature, and He begins His teaching on a great scale with Israel. Thus, to understand the Bible, we need to understand Israel and how they saw the world.

Just as a nation's history is of utmost importance to the future decisions of that community, so the Scripture is of utmost importance to the Christian community, giving us a trajectory and purpose. Without historical context, we might wrongly appropriate or miss portions of Scripture for our life today. Furthermore, and more important for this particular discussion, if the historical context is ignored, then one will never see the stark contrast and uniqueness of Scripture as compared to the various pagan religions of the day when Scripture was actually written, a contrast that is purposefully demonstrated by the Scripture. By coming to understand that much of what is said in Scripture, although applicable to the modern reader, was primarily important for the purpose of giving the ancient reader a set-apart  (holy)worldview from the entire rest of the world, we might come to understand how the Judeo-Christian faith differs from all other religions of old, and seeing this contrast demonstrates the importance of the Judeo-Christian worldview.

In modern times, with the applications of critical scholarship, which has many merits, many persons see the emergence of all world religions as coming from some common and basic human need to explain reality in order to have comfort or control. The main focal point of the conversation would be in discussing how Israelite religion, what we might call YHWHism (remembering that Judaism is a particular later development of the overall belief of all Hebrews, the religion shared by all twelve tribes, not just Judah), the beliefs shared in the OT canon, came from the same starting point that all Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) religions come from. It is a convoluted conversation, filled with many errors, but if the secular scholar concludes that Israelite religion had to have a different origin than its ANE contemporaries, then he or she has to face the reality of that origin. Instead, many secular, critical scholars begin with a priori idea that Hebrew faith had to come from the same humanistic concerns as all the other ANE religions.

In other words, all religion is just an expression of a shared, inner human desire to have purpose and guidance. In light of this claim, many have come to the conclusion that religion is a manmade device and is a hindrance to coming to know truth. In many of these persons’ minds, humanity needs to come to grips with our finitude and take responsibility in light of such truths. One of the biggest proponents of this worldview in more modern times is Simon De Beauvoir (1908-1986). In her book, The Ethic of Ambiguity, she contends that humans, as the highest life form, have a responsibility to develop an ethic that benefits life in general. We take God's place in deciding what is right and wrong. Others of the same mindset (that religion is a ploy for control/comfort and that human life has no purpose or value assigned by a creator ) differ from Beauvoir and the like and simply suggest that life came about by chance and has no real purpose and cannot be given any value by any means. Nihilism then becomes their lens to view the world. Either conclusion makes since in light of the assumption that all religions are essentially the same and that humans are alone in their intellect. One simply demonstrates a more optimistic view than that of the other. However, is it true that all religions are the same? And what would it mean if one foundational, ancient religion were different than all other ancient religions?

The earliest historical worldviews, other than those given in Scripture, revolved around the influence of paganism, and monotheism did not take hold (in any lasting sense) until the Israelite community was formed. Some might suggest that the only distinction between monotheism and the polytheism of the pagans was the number of gods. This is a very uneducated claim, and has little to do with reality. The idea of how many gods exists is intrinsically related to the worldview/philosophy of the religion. There do exist others, scholars at that, that suggest that Hebrew thought did emerge from ancient near Eastern (ANE) myth, but over time they developed their own thinking, paganism evolving into monotheism. To suggest such comes from that a priori philosophy that all religion emerged from the same origins, and this too has little to do with reality. To think that the Hebrews ever borrowed from others to create the basis of their culture is to misunderstand the Hebrew people. They have always distinguished themselves, and they account all their misfortunes to times when they have assimilated. There is almost no illusion to myth in Scripture, and when there is, it is contrasted with the transcendent thought of the Hebrews. Thus, the theory of myth as foundation for the Hebraic worldview has to contend, with little backing, that the Hebrews’ thoughts over time changed so drastically that they swiftly and completely ridded themselves of this mythical undergirding. In other words, what is being suggested is the wild theory that while the Hebrew sources for Scripture and earliest thoughts revolved around mythic thinking of the pagan world, the Hebrews eventually completely removed all this talk as they developed their own religious writings, the Old Testament. This is to say that they eventually removed their whole foundation. This fantastic view of the development of Hebraic thought is all based on a philosophy, and this is proven by the claim that, while there is no evidence anymore due to the radical stripping of all evidence by these Semites, the foundation used to be there, even if we cannot see it. Now that is faith, misplaced as it is.

The reality is that it is much easier to affirm Hebraic thought was radical and revolutionized thought from the outset, not that it began one way, but totally went against its foundations so that no record shows a strain of its old self. Monotheism did not just bring with a new idea of the number of the gods, but the idea of God as transcendent and the creator of nature, not nature itself. This idea was revolutionary for human thought. It was completely different than anything ever thought of before. Before talk of the uniqueness of Hebraic thought might be expressed, we must first speak of the worldview of pagan myth, a reality very often not understood by modern thinkers. It is truly foreign to our thought process, but it used to be all that existed, as far as broad sweeping worldviews are concerned. History is clear on this fact. This is not to say that God was not at work in the lives of humanity, but humanity before the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant had wondered very far away from God and had developed humanistic views of reality.

The Pagan world did not distinguish between subject and object. People were simply part of one great whole. Individuals interacted with the world and saw the world as an extension of everything else. The world, and the things in it where not just things for the ancients. They did not see things in nature as objects, but other individuals like themselves. The overwhelming reality for the ancients was a sense of continuity. While there was recognition of nature, humanity, and deity, there was not a distinction made between the three in the sense of separateness. They are all parts of one whole. The conclusions that are made from this sort of thinking lead to a wholly different worldview than that of the modern thinkers’. For example, since all things are essentially the same, human value is downplayed (this view of religion is still evident in Hinduism). For the vast majority of the ANE, with the one exception of the Hebrews, the reality was that everything is in the same realm and somewhat connected to the divine, pantheism. Therefore humans had some interaction and bearing on nature and the divine. This is why they created idols. If something looked the same or sounded the same, then it was the same. If the idol represented a god, and looked like that god, and the ANE pagan thought it did, then the idol bearer could manipulate the god by manipulating the idol. Incidentally, this is why one of the Ten Commandments suggests that humans are not to make idols. God is saying that such an idea is wrong. God cannot be controlled. For the pagan, this intellectual idea had a very practical function. If I am like the gods, and my reality reflects theirs’ and vice versa, then I have some control. If I do something here, then it is done in the heavens. This is the thought behind magic as a religious practice.

Two of the greatest distinctions for the ancient thinker were 1) their view, or lack thereof of history, and 2.) their idea of continuity. For the ancient pagan, the only reality that had any bearing upon the person was the present. There was no value given to human history. While there was a primeval history of the gods creating this realm, that had no bearing on reality in the present. While there are examples of "historic" writings in the ANE, the value of such writing was not as it is today. the ANE thinker did not view history as something to learn from, rather it is something to manipulate (just like the gods) in order to determine certain outcomes. Neither did the future have any value. Only what happened to “me” had any bearing on the self. Greeks did find social value in history, but not in any real transcendent sense, at least not as early as the Hebrews (Undoubtedly the Greeks eventually bring a high level of sophistication to this way of thinking). History did not pertain to the gods as a tool to teach humans. The Oriental world also recorded history, but found no eternal value in history because it always changed. The idea of God and history as intricately related was unique to the Hebrews.

Continuity, as previously explained, meant that there existed in the earliest history of the world no distinction in the minds of people between subject and object. There was only continuity, and this recognition was of utmost importance for the self. Others had no real value since they are just a small part of everything else. When God reveals Himself as other and distinct from the world, the Hebrews begin to understand themselves as distinct as well. For the first time, people were observing objects as other, and they contemplated how things worked. This is the most fundamental realization for modern science, and it was the Hebrews who first made this distinction. The Greeks later develop this thought from their own philosophy, but it is the Hebrew people who, as a whole, first note this as a reality. The majority of the people who upheld myth denied the early Greek philosophers their recognition. Only the Hebrew culture can claim that as a people they were the first to introduce the importance of history and subject-object distinction across their whole culture (as primitive as it might have been). And this reality is attributed to the event, some merely recognize it as a story, of YHWH’s revelation to Abraham, when God reveals that He is other. It did not take long before the Hebrews realized that if God was different from them, that they might be different from other things as well. In other words, they are not the same as the trees, the rocks, and other objects of nature.  The Hebrew Scripture stands alone in the ancient world as holding a subject-object distinction, which is the common view of the modern world that we take for granted. Without the contribution of Monotheism no one can be sure when a high regard for history and subject-object distinction would have entered the world.

Again, the Greek philosophers were the closest to the Hebrews in thought, but the Hebrew people still hold the genesis of many thoughts we take for granted today. No other ancient people other than the Hebrews thought of the idea that reality had a beginning. For the Greeks, the world was assumed eternal. Today most persons believe in creation ex nihilo, whether these persons are atheistic or believers. Moreover, the Greeks were trying to figure out who their gods were. The Hebrews knew their God and worked from there. Their God was the maker of all things, and He was not that which He made. If God made humanity, humans have worth, and if He is personal then He is part of history, and history is important (this is not to say He is subject to history, but He is a part). With all this in mind, we can explore our world, but we cannot manipulate fate. On so many fronts, the biblical worldview, first revealed to the Hebrews, stands alone as a way of thinking in the ANE. Thus, the Bible is not just one of many books written, but it stands alone as a whole other system of thinking altogether. Therefore, one is not warranted to toss out Christianity based on his or her view of religion as a whole.

Many scholars will point out that the myths of the pagans and the stories of the Bible have similarity, but they do not continue to speak to the differences. When the stories seem to have similar qualities, the thought that should come to mind is to see where they differ. For example, most ANE creation accounts, which do not really focus on creation at all, but the gods’ interactions and the accidental making of humanity, focus on gods creating reality from chaos and battle. When the Genesis account opens, God is not at war. There are no other gods over which he must establish Himself. He does not have to struggle to create, and He creates all that is, not just placing things into some order. Moreover, everything is purposeful. Man is not an accident, but the crown jewel of creation. Where else is this expressed in the ANE? On a superficial level, similarities can be seen, but the messages of each are completely different. The ANE, just like our world today, has shared vocabulary and constructs (such as literary genres). It is not that these documents share a common vocabulary of sorts or a common structure that we should take note. It is how they use these constructs to speak their thoughts, and, as shown above in this one example, Pagans and Hebrews thought very differently. They did not come from the same starting point. 

The Bible stands alone, and any self-respecting scholar should deal with it as such. This means that the Bible has a whole separate genesis than all other religions and that the Hebrew people, by some means, became the first people of recorded history to make the subject-object distinction, the distinction we base most of our value of truth (especially in the practice of science) today. Were the Hebrews just that much more in tune with reality and smarter than everyone else? That is a possibility. However, it is unlikely that these people that spent so much time in captivity, exile, and wandering would find the time to philosophize on their own. It is much more likely that someone revealed to them these truths, and since there were no ANE contemporaries in their world that held this belief and the Greeks only developing similar ideas later in history, there were no people capable to give the Hebrew people such a thought, a more plausible idea is that it came from elsewhere, and the Hebrews suggest that this elsewhere is the mouth of the divine, transcendent God. We have no better explanation, no matter how hard we try. It is probably prudent, then, to take them at their world.

For more on this topic: Oswalt, John: The Bible Among the Myths (Grand Rapids: Zondervan. 2009).