Mythology

Although the episodes related in this book are set in the court of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon at a period after the first captivity of 596 B.C., it is generally recognized today that the book belongs to the period of Antiochus Epiphanes and was written by an unknown author in order to encourage his fellow-countrymen at a time when those Jews who were resisting the Hellenizing policy of Antiochus were undergoing severe trials and persecutions. The book is divided into two parts and is written partly in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic. The first part of the book (Chapters I-6) consists of a series of episodes in which a young Jew and his three companions resist all attempts to induce them to conform to the heathen religion of their captors, and are delivered by divine intervention out of the most desperate situations. They demand to be allowed to eat kosher food and refuse the food provided from the royal table. They are vindicated by appearing, after ten days’ trial, ‘fairer and fatter in flesh’ than those who had fed on the heathen food. Daniel’s three companions refuse to worship the golden image which the king had commanded all his subjects to worship and are thrown into a fiery furnace. The king sees them standing unharmed in the midst of the fire accompanied by a figure whom the king describes as like ‘a son of the gods’, and is converted to the worship of the Jewish God. As a punishment for his pride Nebuchadnezzar is turned into a subhuman creature for seven years and eats grass like an ox When he is restored to his human shape he acknowledges the universal dominion of Israel’s God. During Belshazzar’s feast, at which the gold and silver vessels of the Temple at Jerusalem, carried off by Nebuchadnezzar, are brought out and used as drinking ‘cups by the assembled guests, a hand appears and writes a mystic inscription upon the walls of the banqueting hall, which none of the king’s wise men can read. Daniel is summoned and interprets the inscription; it announces the fall of the Babylonian kingdom and its replacement by the Medo-Persian power. It is then stated that Belshazzar was slain that night, and that Darius the Mede took the kingdom. It is well known that Cyrus the Persian king captured Babylon without a fight, and that no such person as Darius the Mede is known to history. Finally, the mythical Darius is persuaded by his courtiers to issue a decree announcing that anyone who asked a petition of any god or man except the king for thirty days should be thrown into a den of lions. When Daniel heard of the decree, he went into his chamber where his windows were open towards Jerusalem, and prayed to his God according to his daily custom. He was found by the courtiers in the act, denounced, and duly thrown into the lions’ den. In the morning, the king comes to the mouth of the den and ‘with a lamentable voice’ asks Daniel if his God has been able to deliver him from the lions. Daniel assures him that his God has sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths. Darius has him taken out, and orders all the courtiers who had accused Daniel to be thrown into the den with their wives and children, a macabre touch. Then the king issues a decree that all men throughout his dominion are to worship and fear the God of Daniel. In these stories, so patently unhistorical, we have a new use of myth. It is being used as propaganda in a Gentile environment. Yahweh is displayed as Pantocrator, as having universal dominion, raising up and putting down kingdoms at his pleasure, and able to protect his servants under every kind of danger so long as they remain faithful to him. This use of the myth is developed in a somewhat uncontrolled fashion in later Jewish midrashic literature where, for example, Abraham is represented as undergoing similar experiences to those of Daniel and his companions. The same tendency is seen at work in the early Christian apocryphal gospels where both the childhood and passion of Jesus are enveloped in mythological elements.

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Other Apocalyptic Uses Of Myth But there is another aspect of the use of myth in Jewish apocalyptic which calls for notice. Its beginnings are to be found in such passages as Isa. 27:1 and 51:9-II, where the eschatological activities of Yahweh are described in terms of the ancient myth of the slaying of the chaos dragon. Its development in the book of Daniel and in the extra-canonical book of jubilees takes the form of the transformation of past and contemporary history into mythological terms. In the second part of Daniel both the empires of the past and the contemporary empire of Greece under Alexander are portrayed as beasts of various kinds, lions, bears, leopards, rams, he-goats, and the final beast is described as a dreadful monster with ten horns, teeth of iron, and nails of brass. He speaks ‘great words’ against the Most High, oppresses ‘the saints of the Most High’, that is, the Jewish people, and attempts to change ‘the times and the law’. The Jewish people are portrayed as a human figure, ‘like a son of man’, who comes with the clouds of heaven before the Ancient of Days and receives the dominion which is to endure for ever. Here the apocalyptic writer sees contemporary history and its consummation in purely mythical terms. The same process can be seen developing in the various Jewish apocalyptic books, Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and reaches its climax in the great Christian Apocalypse of St John, where all the images of the ancient myth and ritual pattern, the ritual combat, the slaying of the dragon, the sacred marriage, the triumphal procession, and many others, are gathered up into one tremendous description in wholly mythical terms of the winding up of human history. [1] —- 1. Hooke, S. H., ‘The Myth and Ritual Pattern in Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic’ (The Labyrinth), pp. 213 ff. ———————————– Mythological Elements In The New Testament Chapter 7 We have seen that, in the development of the religion of Israel, mythology played an important part. Myths were borrowed from the religions of neighbouring countries and used by Hebrew writers to express in symbolic form their beliefs about the origin of the universe, and above all to present the history of their people as a ’salvation-history’, a record of the developing purpose of God who had called Israel to be the vehicle of that redemptive purpose. In the Gospels, the history of Israel reaches its supreme crisis. Certain events took place which brought into existence a new movement of world-wide importance; those who witnessed the events and sought to interpret their meaning, spoke of them as a ‘new creation’, and described the community which came into existence as the result of these events as a new Israel. They described the central figure of the movement as a second Adam, a new Moses, another Joshua whose name he bore. We have seen that the mythological elements in the Old Testament gather round certain focal points: the creation of the universe, the fall of man and its consequences, the Exodus from

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who live and move in the full light of historical events. There is one exception in the case of Isaiah who is credited, as we have already seen, with having caused the shadow on the dial of Ahaz to go back ten degrees, in order to give a sign to King Hezekiah that he would recover from his sickness. The mythical element reappears in an altered form in late Jewish apocalyptic literature. We have seen that in attempting to give an account of the divine activity in Creation, the Hebrew writers were obliged to fall back on the language of myth, and drew their mythological material largely from the myths of their neighbours, especially from Mesopotamian and Canaanite sources. So when they attempted to describe what they ; believed would be the shape of things to come, they were again compelled to fall back upon mythological language, now enriched by borrowings from Persian sources, as may be seen from the one completely apocalyptic book of the Old Testament, the book of Daniel. —- 1. See p. 45. 2. See p. 82. 3. See p. 86. 4. Johnson, A. R., op. cit, p. 81. 5. Kramer, S. N., From the Tablets of Sumer, pp. 170 ff. 6. Frazer, J., Folklore in the Old Testament, p. 45. 7. Harrison, J., op. cit., p. 142. 8. Thureau-Dangin, F., Rituels accadiens, p. 141. 9. Lev. 16:15-22. 10. Zech. 13:4-6. 11. judges 4:11-17. 12. Smith, S., op. cit., p. 17. 13. Judges 1:17-18, ‘He was the first among men that are born on earth who learnt writing and knowledge and wisdom.’ 14. Smith, S., op. Cit., p. 21. 15. Pritchard, J. B., The Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 104. 16. Burrows, E., The Labyrinth, p. 60. 17. Isa. i :9; 13: 19; Amos 4:11; Jer. 50 :40. 18. Cook, S. A., The Religion of Ancient Palestine in the Light of Archaeology, p. 95. 19. Pedersen, J., Israel III-IV, pp. 728 ff. 20. Mowinckel, S., La Decalogue, p. 121. 21. Henton Davies, G., ‘An Approach to the Problem of Old Testament Mythology’ (Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 1956), pp. 87-3. 22. Widengren, G., Sacrales Konigtum im A. T. and im Judentum, p. 30 ff. 23. Hooke, S. H., The Siege Perilous, pp. 57-8. 24. Goodenough, E. R., Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, VI, 2, p. 139; Hooke, S. H., ‘The Myth and Ritual Pattern in Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic’, The Labyrinth, pp. 213 ff. ———————————– Mythological Elements In Jewish Apocalyptic Chapter 6 The Book Of Daniel

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cruse of oil last throughout the three and a half years of the famine, and he restores her dead son to life. The climax of the saga is reached in the account of the prophet’s departure from this world. The narrative is a masterpiece of the storyteller’s art. Elijah and Elisha start out from Gilgal, and Elijah tries to persuade his servant Elisha to stay behind while he himself goes on by divine command to Bethel. Elisha refuses to leave his master. When they reach Bethel the sons of the prophets, who have a community there, come out to meet them and tell Elisha that Yahweh is going to remove his master from him that day; ‘I know it,’ he replies. ‘Hold ye your peace.’ Again Elijah tries to persuade him to stay behind, and again he refuses to be separated from his master. At Jericho the same thing happens, and together they reach the Jordan. Here Elijah wraps his mantle together and smites the Jordan; it divides and they pass over. On the other side Elijah asks Elisha what parting gift he desires from him, and Elisha asks that a double portion of his master’s spirit may come upon him. ‘Thou hast asked a hard thing’, says the prophet, ‘nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.’ Then a chariot (or ‘chariots’) of fire and horses of fire separate the two, and Elijah is caught up to heaven by a whirlwind. As he ascends his mantle falls and is taken up by Elisha who then returns to the Jordan, smites it with the mantle and, repeating the miracle of Elijah, crosses the river, and begins his own career of prophetic activity. The mythological colouring which had enveloped the tradition of Elijah’s activity is heightened in the case of Elisha. He begins by j healing a spring at Jericho which produced barrenness; he curses the children of Bethel who had mocked him, and two ‘’ she-bears come out of the forest and kill forty-two of the children. He multiplies the widow’s oil, raises the Shunamite’s son from the dead, multiplies loaves to feed unexpected visitors, makes an axe- head float, smites his greedy servant Gehazi with leprosy, and, finally, his sepulchred bones raise a dead man to life (2 Kings 13 :21). There is one important mythological feature which has become attached to the figure of Elijah and has survived in Jewish belief up to the present time. This is the belief that Elijah would return to earth immediately before the apocalyptic Day of Yahweh to repeat the scene on Carmel and bring about a national repentance. The belief in the return of Elijah was current in the time of Jesus, who interpreted it to his disciples as fulfilled in the ministry and death of John the Baptist. In the Jewish ritual of the Passover at the present day four cups of wine are placed upon the table, each of which has a special symbolic meaning; the third, filled with wine, is known as ‘the cup of Elijah’, and is left un-tasted by any one. It is supposed to await the return of Elijah before the coming of the Messiah. An interesting Hasidic legend connected with the cup of Elijah is quoted by Professor Goodenough; [24] a certain Rabbi Mendel was celebrating Passover with a Marano in a cave in Spain. A sudden light filled the cave, and the cup of wine which, according to custom, had been left standing upon the table for Elijah, rose high into the air as though someone were putting it to his lips, and then sank back on to the table empty. As the result of this experience Rabbi Mendel taught that Elijah would return as the herald of redemption on the same night in which Israel was liberated from Egypt. In a niche in Jewish synagogues there stands a chair which is known as ‘the throne of Elijah’, awaiting his return to occupy it. When a child is brought to the synagogue to be circumcized, he is placed upon this chair while the ceremony is performed. With the saga of Elijah and Elisha the mythological material of the Old Testament comes to an end. No myths have collected round the figures of the eighth- and seventh century prophets

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Ark, this time safely, to the tent which he had prepared for it in Jerusalem. Ps. 132 is recognized to be a processional liturgy, and, while no doubt both incidents have some historical foundation, it is clear that a cult myth has grown up round the tradition, possibly containing an aetiological element explaining the sanctity of the sacred stone at Bethshemesh, and the place-name Perez-uzza. It is interesting to note that the demythologization of the myth of the Ark is to be found in one of the oracles of the prophet Jeremiah. In Jer. 3:16 we have the announcement, ‘In those days said the Lord, they shall say no more, The Ark of the covenant of the Lord; neither shall it come to mind; neither shall they remember it; neither shall they miss it; neither shall it be made any more.’ The prophet evidently regarded the Ark as a cult object to which a superstitious reverence had become attached, and which would cease to have any meaning for those who would receive the fuller knowledge of Yahweh implied in the terms of the new covenant. The Elijah And Elisha Myths There is no question of the historicity of these two prophetic figures, but a considerable amount of myth has grown up round them. During the prosperous period of the Omri dynasty in the ninth century B.C., Elijah suddenly appears, without any indication of his background, or of his call to be a prophet, as the leader of a movement of protest against the increasing syncretism of Israelite religion. He and his successor Elisha were behind the revolt of Jehu which brought about the overthrow of the Omri dynasty. We have a reference in the books of Kings to prophetic communities known as ‘the sons of the prophets’ established in the Jordan valley. Here the traditions relating to Elijah and Elisha may have been preserved. They bear some resemblance in type to the cult myths which we have been studying. Their purpose is to magnify the power of Yahweh and his mighty acts performed by the hands of his prophets. We have first the great scene on Mt Carmel, where Elijah challenges the priests of the Tyrian Baal, whose cult Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, had introduced into Samaria, to a contest in order to prove the superiority of Yahweh over the foreign god. Elijah proposes that each party to the contest shall erect an altar and lay a sacrifice thereon, and that the god who is able to send down fire to consume the sacrifice shall be declared the true god and worthy of Israel’s sole worship. The priests of Baal spend all day in frenzied and fruitless efforts to induce Baal to bestir himself, while Elijah mocks them. Then, ‘at the time of the evening oblation’, an ancient and wide-spread Semitic custom, Elijah rebuilds the altar of Yahweh with twelve stones for the twelve tribes of Israel; he lays the firewood and the pieces of the slain bullock upon it; he orders those present to pour twelve jars of water over the sacrifice and in the trench round the altar; he then invokes Yahweh who sends down fire from heaven consuming the offering, the wood, the stones of the altar, the dust, and even licking up the water that had been poured over everything. The people then acknowledge Yahweh to be God and, at Elijah’s command, massacre the four hundred priests of Baal. There is no evidence that Carmel had ever been a place where Yahweh was worshipped, and the various details, such as the twelve stones of the altar and the twelve jars of water, point to the growth of a cult myth round an episode in the life of Elijah which may well have had some basis in reality. The account of Elijah’s flight to Horeb and his experience there is coloured with mythological elements. The forty days of the journey, a common symbolical number, the angelic visitant, and ‘the still, small voice’ which elsewhere in Hebrew is a phrase used to describe the thin murmur or whisper of a spirit from the underworld (Isa. 29:4; Job 4:16), [23] are all suggestive of the mythological element which has clothed the historical figure of the prophet. Other similar elements appear in the saga. Elijah makes the widow’s barrel of meal and her

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the books of Samuel and Kings, we find it in Shiloh, and the myth or legend which now enfolds it was probably preserved in the traditions of that sanctuary. The first episode is the capture of the Ark by the Philistines. In an engagement between Israel and the Philistines, Israel is defeated. The elders decide to send for the Ark, and it is brought into the camp by the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. The Philistines hear of this and are dismayed; they say, ‘Who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty gods? these are the gods that smote the Egyptians with all manner of plagues in the wilderness.’ However, they rally and attack Israel, defeat them with great slaughter, and capture the Ark. They carry it off and deposit it in the temple of Dagon in Ashdod. When the priests enter the temple in the morning they find the image of Dagon fallen upon its face before the Ark. They replace the image upon its base, and the next morning they find it lying broken with its head and its hands lying on the threshold of the temple. Here the narrator remarks that this is the reason why no one ever treads on the threshold of Dagon’s temple ‘unto this day’. There seems to be a reference to this custom in Zeph. 1:9 where Yahweh is represented as saying, ‘I will punish all those who leap over the threshold.’ The story goes on to tell how the Ark was carried from one Philistine city to another, and that wherever it went the inhabitants were smitten with plagues like the Egyptians. After seven months of affliction, the priests and diviners advise that the Ark should be sent back to its own country accompanied by trespass-offering. So they put it on a new cart, to which two milch cows are harnessed, and say that if the cows take the cart with the Ark back to its home, they will know that it is the hand of Israel’s God that has smitten them; if not, then it has happened by chance. So they shut up the calves and started the cart off on the road to Israel, the lords of the Philistines following to watch what would happen. The cows, lowing for their calves as they went along, took the straight road to Bethshemesh, ‘and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left’. The inhabitants of Bethshemesh were in the fields reaping their barley harvest and rejoiced to see the Ark come home. The legend ends on a tragic note. Yahweh is said to have smitten the unfortunate Bethshemeshites with a heavy slaughter because they had looked inside the Ark; the mythical character of the story is shown by the impossible number, 50,070, of the slain. It is clear that the story is a cult myth intended to glorify the God of Israel and to magnify the untouchable sanctity of the Ark. A similar tendency is seen in the next episode in which the Ark is concerned. A tradition is preserved in Ps. 132 that, during the unsettled years of Saul’s reign and the struggle with the Philistines, the Ark had disappeared, and that, when David planned to bring the Ark to his new capital of Jerusalem, a search had to be made for it. This would seem to be the implication of Ps. 132:6, ‘Lo, we heard of it in Ephrathah : we found it in the field of Jaar.’ Here ‘the field of Jaar’ is clearly a reference to Kirjathjearim, the place to which the Ark had been carried after the disaster at Bethshemesh, and where it had remained forgotten until David, informed perhaps by an oracle, sent to fetch it. In 2 Sam. 6 we have an account of how David brought the Ark, on a new cart drawn by oxen, from Kirjathjearim, with music and a ritual dance. A disaster happened, similar to that which had taken place at Bethshemesh. The oxen stumbled, or became restive, perhaps excited by the music and dancing, and there was a danger that the Ark might be overturned; one of the men who accompanied the Ark, Uzza, put out his hand to steady the Ark, and was immediately stricken dead, to the great alarm of David and all who were present. David had the Ark taken into the house of Obed-edom, a man from Gath, and waited for three months to see if any misfortune befell the family of the Gittite. As nothing happened, David brought the

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using the same words which had been addressed to Moses in Midian (Exod. 3:5). Then comes the account of the capture of Jericho, an episode conceived in wholly mythical terms. Joshua is told to give orders that the host of Israel, preceded by seven priests bearing seven jubilee trumpets of rams’ horns and carrying the ark, is to march round the city once a day for six days; on the seventh day they are to do this seven times; then the priests are to sound a long blast on the rams’ horns and, at that signal, the people are to give a shout and the wall of Jericho will fall down flat. Joshua carries out these orders and the promised result follows. One of the features of the New Year cult-festival in the autumn was a ritual blowing of trumpets on the first day of the seventh month. It is probable that, in this account of the capture of Jericho, we have another cult myth associated with the feast of the blowing of trumpets. Other early references in the book of judges suggest that the possession of Jericho, called ‘the city of palm-trees’, was a matter of some uncertainty (cf. Judges 1:16 and 3:13). One more striking feature in the Joshua myth calls for notice. In the ninth chapter we have a story of how the inhabitants of Gibeon, by a ruse, induced Joshua to make a peace-treaty with them, and how Joshua, on discovering the fraud, kept the treaty but reduced the Gibeonites to a condition of bondage, evidently an aetiological tale explaining the traditional subservience of the Gibeonites to the tribe of Ephraim. The story then goes on to relate how five Canaanite kings attack the Gibeonites who thereupon appeal to Joshua for protection. Joshua’s victory over the five kings is described in mythical terms similar to those in which the capture of Jericho is described. The rout of the Canaanite forces is mainly accomplished by a hail-storm, ‘the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with the hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword’ (Joshua 10:11). But the completion of the victory is made possible by Joshua’s commanding the sun to stand still until the enemies are totally annihilated. We are told in what is a fragment of ancient Hebrew poetry, that ‘the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies.’ The compiler records that this stanza is taken from the book of Jashar, generally understood to be an ancient collection of Hebrew songs. He ends the story with the words, ‘There was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man.’ This episode also has been rationalized in various ways, but it seems more in keeping with the general tenor of the Joshua myth to regard it as a fragment of ancient myth which has been used to glorify the figure of Joshua and to represent him as possessing powers which not even Moses had possessed. Although the narrator represents the incident as unique in the annals of Israel, a similar incident is recorded in the life of the prophet Isaiah. King Hezekiah was sick, and Isaiah predicted that he would recover and live another fifteen years; the king asked for a sign that the prophet’s words would be fulfilled, and the prophet offered him a choice, should the shadow on the dial of Ahaz go forward or back? The king said that the latter alternative would be a greater marvel; the narrator accordingly relates that Isaiah ‘cried unto the Lord, and he brought the shadow ten degrees (Hebrew ’steps’) backward by which it had gone down on the dial (Hebrew ’steps’) of Ahaz’ (2 Kings 20:4-11). The author of Ecclesiasticus refers to this incident (Eccles. 48:23), and also alludes to the parallel miracle wrought by Joshua, ‘Did not the sun go back by his hand, and did not one day become as two?’ (Eccles. 46:4). It is interesting to note a resemblance between the relation of Joshua to Moses, and that of Elisha to his master Elijah. Elisha is represented as receiving a double endowment with his master’s

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powers after Elijah had been taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire, and Joshua does something more wonderful than anything Moses had done. The Myth Of The Ark Closely related to the myth of the Shekinah is the myth of the Ark. In the early traditions of Israel the Ark has a double association. One line of tradition connects it with the wilderness wanderings and the early stages of settlement in Canaan; the other line connects it with David and the Jerusalem cult. It is well established that nomad Arab tribes from very early times were in the habit of transporting their tribal gods in a wooden chest in a special tent on camel- back. Hence, during the early period of settlement, when the tribes were moving about independently, as the book of judges shows to have been the case, each tribe may have had its own sacred chest. The cult myth of the epiphany on Sinai represents the whole of Israel with its twelve tribes as assembled at the foot of Sinai to receive the law and enter into the covenant. But we know that only a comparatively small part of the Hebrew tribes went down into Egypt and experienced the deliverance under Moses; we also know that the organization of Israel into twelve tribes was not fully achieved until long after the settlement in Canaan, possibly not until the time of Solomon. Hence the tradition which represents the encampment of Israel in the wilderness as a symmetrically arranged square composed of the twelve tribes, with the Ark in its ritual tent at the centre of the square, belongs to the cult myth rather than to history. According to that line of the tradition which connects the Ark with the wilderness journeys, the Ark, borne by the priests, led the march of the twelve tribes and went ahead of them a three days’ journey to find out a camping-place for them (Num. 10 : 33). This procedure continued during the whole of the forty years of the wilderness sojourn, and culminated in the crossing of the Jordan and the capture of Jericho. What reality lies behind the myth is hard to say. In Exod. 33 : 7 we are told that Moses pitched a tent outside the camp and called it the Tent of Meeting; when he entered into the Tent the pillar of cloud, the Shekinah, descended and stood at the door of the Tent and Yahweh talked with Moses out of the cloud, while all the people watched from their tent- doors. In Deut. 10 1-5 Moses is represented as telling Israel that after the making of the golden calf and the breaking of the first tablets of the law, he was told by Yahweh to fashion a wooden ark or chest in which to put the second tablets. He goes on to say that he did as he was commanded and that the tablets are still in the chest. We, therefore, seem to be dealing with a tradition concerning a tent and an ark very different from the elaborate Tent and Ark of the cult myth. It is to be noted that in the directions for the blessings and cursings at the sanctuary of Shechem, no mention is made of the Ark. We have only one mention of the Ark in the book of judges, although it might have been expected that we should hear of the Ark taking part in the various campaigns and struggles in which the tribes were involved during the period of settlement. This reference comes at the end of the book and is at variance with the tradition in Joshua 18:1, where the Tent of meeting and, presumably, the Ark, are said to be at Shiloh. In a parenthesis, which is evidently a gloss by the compiler of the book of judges, it is stated that the -’Ark of the covenant of God’ was in Bethel, and that the grandson of Aaron was the priest in charge there (Judges 20:27). When the parallel line of tradition, connecting the Ark with David and the kingship, is taken up in

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as the Paschal cult legend. It recurs over and over again in the poetry of Israel. In the very ancient ‘Song of Deborah’, celebrating a victory over the Canaanites, and, according to some scholars, sung at a cult-festival, there is a description of the epiphany of Yahweh on Sinai. It occurs in Ps. 18:9-14, and in many other passages of Hebrew poetry. On the Babylonian monument known as the stele of Hammurabi, the king is represented as receiving from the god Shamash the ancient collection of laws commonly called the Code of Hammurabi. The sanctity of the code was affirmed in the myth of its reception from the hand of the deity. So in the case of the early legislation of Israel, contained in Exod. 21-3, generally called the Book of the Covenant, the laws are embedded in a narrative framework which is based on the cult myth of the epiphany on Sinai. The laws are represented as inscribed on tables of stone and handed to Moses by Yahweh, thus establishing their sanctity. We pass now to other mythical elements in the traditions of Israel. Before we do so, it may be useful to say a few words about the rationalization of the myths in Hebrew tradition. It is possible, and has often been attempted, to explain both Old and New Testament ‘miracles’ in terms of natural phenomena. Thus the ten plagues of Egypt ‘have been explained as purely natural phenomena exploited by Moses to cause superstitious awe in the minds of Pharaoh and his people. The collapse of the walls of Jericho has been explained as the result of an earthquake shock which had also caused the temporary damming up of the bed of the Jordan, enabling the Israelites to pass over dry-shod. But such an approach to these episodes may cause those who adopt it to lose sight of the real significance of the myth and of the attitude of mind of those who recorded the events of the history of Israel in terms of ’salvation history’. For those who believed, as the prophets of Israel did, that God had really been active from the beginning in the call and subsequent history of their people, the myth was an extension of symbolism. The activity of God in creation, for example, could only be described in symbolic terms, and the traditional myths, borrowed from Mesopotamia, were ready to their hand to supply them with a vocabulary in which to describe the divine activity. The same vocabulary of myth was used to describe what the writers interpreted as divine acts of power, and it was also the only available language in which they could clothe their eschatology, their vision of what the end of history would be like. The dragon, which Yahweh had slain in the beginning to bring order out of chaos, would be slain again by him to restore order in the end. The Joshua Myth The mythical element which had surrounded the figure of Moses had also to some extent included his attendant and successor, Joshua. Thus we find interesting mythical elements connected with the figure of Joshua as the kingly war-leader of Israel as they enter the land of Promise. One of the characteristics of the King-image as we find it delineated in Deut. 17:18- 19 is the study of the law, and in the opening verses of the book of Joshua we find that Joshua is enjoined not to let the book of the law depart out of his mouth, but to ‘meditate therein day and night’, a curious qualification for a war-leader, but a recognized feature of the King- image. [23] Then we have an epiphany to Joshua in terms resembling those used to describe the epiphany to Moses at the burning bush. A figure with a drawn sword appears to him, and on being challenged by Joshua announces that he is there as a ‘prince’ of the Lord’s host; he orders Joshua to take his shoes from off his feet for the place whereon he stands is holy ground,

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the Feast of Tabernacles. The Israelite brought his offering and handed it over to the priest who placed it before the altar. Then followed what might be called the festal liturgy with antiphonal responses. The worshipper recited before the priest and the altar the cult myth of the Exodus and the entry into Canaan. The implication of this interesting Deuteronomic passage is that the tradition of what had happened to Israel in the remote past had been preserved by the priests in the local cult-centres, thrown into liturgical form, and imparted to successive generations of Israelites. Just as the myth of Marduk’s victory over Tiamat was recited at the Babylonian New Year Festival, so at the seasonal festivals of Israel the muthos, the ritual recitation, of the mighty acts of Yahweh, was a central feature of such occasions. It is relevant here to point out that the prophets of Israel, who were the interpreters of Israel’s past in terms of ’salvation-history’, have used the mythological imagery of Babylon to describe the deliverance of Israel from Egypt by the mighty hand of Yahweh. Egypt has become the dragon smitten by Yahweh’s sword (Isa. 51:9-10). This has been called the historicization of myth, but it would be more accurate to regard it as the conversion of myth to a new use. The most important of these cult myths call for some account here. The Passover Cult Myth [19] While it cannot be doubted that historical events underlie the narrative in Exodus of the sojourn of Israel in Egypt and their escape from it, yet the form in which the story has been transmitted is not history. The account of the ten plagues by which Pharaoh was finally forced to let Israel go, of the dividing of the Red Sea to allow Israel to pass through, of the power displayed by Moses’ rod, and of the Pillar of cloud and fire in which Yahweh manifested his presence among his people, is the form in which the mighty acts of Yahweh were preserved and recited in liturgical antiphony at the cult-festival of Passover year after year in the spring. From Exod. i2 :24-27 and i3 : r4-IS it may be seen that the myth accompanying the Passover ritual had been thrown into the form of liturgical responses, and the whole ’service’, as it is here called, was designed to be the glorification of Yahweh and the memorial of his redemptive activity. While the feast may have begun as a family ritual, it soon developed into a festival celebrated at a central sanctuary, and finally could only be celebrated within the precincts of the Temple at Jerusalem. A careful examination of the details of the ten plagues will show that it is not history which is being presented here. For instance, after Moses has turned all the waters of Egypt into blood, we are told that Pharaoh’s magicians did the same, which is obviously impossible since all the water in Egypt, including the Nile, had already been turned into blood. The a general pattern of the Passover cult myth is repeated several times in liturgies in the Psalter, for example in Ps. 78, 105, 106, and notably in Ps. 136 where the antiphonal character a of the liturgical responses is very marked, the congregation a answering each utterance of the priests with the refrain ‘For his mercy endures for ever’. In these Psalms we have the cult myth preserved in its fixed liturgical form, while 2 in Exodus it is used by the editors of the Pentateuch as the basis of the ’salvation- history’ which records for Israel the redemptive activity of Yahweh. The Myth of the Epiphany on Sinai It has been pointed out that the cult myth which we have described above contains no reference to a most important feature of the ’salvation-history’ in the Pentateuch, the epiphany of Yahweh on Sinai and the establishment of the covenant with Israel. The suggestion, which has much to commend it, has been made that, underlying the confused narrative in Exod. 19- 34, we have a cult myth independent of the Paschal cult myth and attached to another important cultic occasion. We have already alluded to the fact, established by archaeological

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