rob117

I've been reading a lot of books about the evolution of Israelite religion (especially Dever and Smith), and there doesn't seem to be any kind of agreement on just when the worship of gods other than Yahweh began to be opposed, and especially on when monolatry became the official policy of monarchic religion. All agree that it was sometime during the monarchic period- monotheism is, after all, just cult centralization taken to its most extreme- and the threat of the Tyrian Baal in the Omride era is also very frequently given importance. There is less agreement on what happened after the Baal threat. Did the ninth century prophets (Elijah, Elisha, etc.) oppose the worship of all gods other than Yahweh, or just the foreign ones, like Melqart (the Tyrian Baal)? Was Hezekiah's cult reform the earliest royal endorsement of monolatry, or simply an attempt to force the already-existing royal cult on the general population. How should Manasseh's pagan reaction be viewed- was Manasseh returning the royal cult to its former state, or was he simply incorporating elements of popular Judean paganism into the cult that had formerly been absent? How should the existence of J- a linguistically early text, pre-dating the classical prophets, favorable toward the Jerusalem royalty, and yet still apparently monolatrous (in its Ritual Decalogue, Exodus 34) be interpreted in light of the nonexistent evidence for royal endorsment of monolatry before Hezekiah?

Anat

Personally I think the religious agenda of Elijah is for the most part anachronistic. I have seen an analysis of the Elijah story cycle which concludes that the original story was the one about Nabot's vineyard (criticism of Ahab for abusing his power to distort justice and kill an innocent man that stood in his way to some desirable property), and the whole story about Elijah's struggle against Ba'al worship is mythical - later stories that were ascribed to a familiar character.

As for the cultic reforms in Judah - it had several aspects, not all of which necessarily took place in one step - one was regarding place of worship - local shrines (high places) vs the one temple in Jerusalem, the other was which god(s) to honor. Whatever had been the original position of the earlier kings of Judah, I cannot see how a text that allows competitors for Yahweh could get canonised, so whatever J's original laws had said it got straightened out in the redaction at the latest. But Ashera was OK all the way to Josiah. TMK J and E are less pedantic about the place of worship, compared with D and P.

Teh Hobbit

From a base reading of the Torah, it seems that the worship of other "gods" has always been prohibited. However, the existence of such was not denied. The word translated as "god" from Hebrew also has a much wider meaning - "elohim" can refer to any sort of ruler - judges, kings, angels, etc.

rob117

Actually Hezekiah got rid of her, according to 2 Kings 18 (JPS translates Asherah as "sacred post" in most instances except when it explicitly refers to the goddess; this translation is misleading IMO, because the cult object is generally accepted as the goddess's symbol). After Hezekiah's death Manasseh reinstalled her along with the rest of "the heavenly host" until Josiah repeated Hezekiah's reforms (2 Kings 21-23). Except for allowing the local shrines to be rebuilt (and thus implicitly allowing traditional Judean paganism to be resumed among the masses), Josiah's four successors do not seem to have reversed his reforms in the Jerusalem temple, so it seems the Yahweh-alone movement held sway in the royal cult until the very end, albeit with less force.

It seems to me that J, being so early (late 9th century?), was probably not from Yahweh-alone circles, and that the only place in J that forbids the worship of other gods (the First Commandment of the Exodus 34 decalogue) is clearly expanded from its original text (which probably only necessitated the destruction of foreign cult places). E is probably from Yahweh-alone prophetic circles of the 8th century, as shown by its condemnation of the golden calf, but was apparently unable to part with Nehushtan (a subordinate member of the heavenly host?), so instead chose to de-divinize it.

That Elisha seems to have held official status in the court of Jehu and his son and grandson, who, apparently, made no attempt to get rid of Asherah, suggests that he was not strictly for "Yahweh-alone" so much as against any threat Yahweh's supremacy, which Asherah, unlike Baal, was apparently not viewed as at this point. The Yahweh-alone movement probably sprang from Elisha's successors, but not from Elisha himself.

Also, check out the Wikipedia article on Manasseh. It reads like something out of a nineteenth-century Bible dictionary.

pharoah

From the above link:

:notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

rob117

D'oh!:Cheeky:

rob117

An interesting reconstruction of the movement's history by Baruch Halpern:

The Baal (and the Asherah?) in Seventh-century Judah