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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Yahwism (was: their altar)
  • Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 23:47:40 +0000

On 08/03/2005 19:13, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

...

... In that case, yes, we may suggest
that Kuntillet Ajrud was a pilgrim site for non-Israelites. ...

I didn't suggest a pilgrim site. What I had in mind was a trading centre where trade routes met, and where a non-
typical group of international travellers may have set up shrines nominally to their home deities but also have mixed in elements from the different religions they had come across during their travels. In other words, classic
syncretism.


What evidence do you have that it was a trading center? What evidence is there of international trade routes crossing
this point? ...


See for example the map of trade routes in http://nabataea.net/eborder.html, showing KA close to a junction of trade routes, and http://www.theology.bham.ac.uk/guest/Ancient%20Israel/asherah.htm.

... Why would only relics consistent with Yahweh worship be preserved? ...


Not true. The latter article above shows representations of Egyptian goddesses.
...

Given that we are agreed on the goals, then, I proceed
as follows (taking no position on what Asherah means):

I ask, "Is there evidence that Yahweh worship included
Asherah in the late 9th century?" The answer is yes,
and Kuntillet Ajrud is the example.


Agreed - if we don't dispute the date.

Now I ask, "Is there evidence that Yahweh worship did
not include Asherah in the late 9th century?" The
answer is no. ...


The answer here is in fact yes (at least if we take this as "...not always and everywhere include..."), because we have historical records in the books of Kings, as well as the Mesha stela. The evidence from Kings needs to be examined critically, but it is nevertheless evidence.

...

Now I ask, "Is there evidence that this was done as
opposed to the establishment view?" Well, I know
the establishment view in the Deuteronomist time.
That could be dated anywhere from Hezekiah to
Josiah to later. But in any of these cases it tells
me nothing of the establishment view during the late 9th century BCE. ...


Not necessarily nothing. The evidence it gives cannot be relied on in detail, but it is evidence. Your reference to J as a coherent document shows that you accept that in principle information about earlier times may be included in a document heavily redacted at a later time. So why not apply this same principle to Kings and accept that it includes historical information, even if there is no way that we can be sure now of what is historical and what is not?
...

I ask, "Is there evidence that Yahweh worship as
represented in Kuntillet Ajrud was done in line with
the establishment view?" This is where the
comparison to J becomes useful. J is an
independently identified document for which various
arguments have been given that convinced scholars
for many years it was written during the early
Monarchic period in the South. ...


I accept that J was identified independently of the discoveries at KA. But I do not accept that it was correctly identified - my mind is open on this point. Those who identified J did so on the basis of their own hypotheses of the development of Israelite religion, according to which they for example assigned material to J/E or to P (or D) depending on whether it fitted with their picture of religious devlopment. This tends to imply that the picture of religion reflected in the supposed J tells us more about their hypotheses than about anything in the real world. While one might argue that the KA finds support some aspects of those hypotheses, other aspects of them have been thoroughly discredited.

... There is also some
reason to believe that the Deuteronomist viewed J
as authoritative, because he probably quotes him. This would mean that the establishment of Deuteronomist time was a heir to the establishment view of J's time. ...


Hypothesis (D quoting J implies that D was heir to J) on hypothesis (D quotes J) on hypothesis (the existence of J), none of which have any secure basis.

... So the comparison to J provides
some reason to believe that Kuntillet Ajrud was not
simply an apostate border site. Even if Kuntillet
Ajrud is not the home of J, the fact that J may not
disapprove of things that were done at Kuntillet
Ajrud suggests that perhaps they come from the
same theological mindset regarding Yahweh.


Or rather than Wellhausen et all had the same theological mindset regarding Yahweh.

Arguing that Kuntillet Ajrud was not representative
of "real" Yahweh worship is just as much a claim as
arguing that Kuntillet Ajrud was representative of
"real" Yahweh worship. ...


I don't make any definite negative claims, only that we cannot safely assume that KA was representative. We just don't know. The best you have come up with is a trace of evidence that it might not have been totally unrepresentative.

... This is where I ask,
"Is there any reason at all to believe that Kuntillet
Ajrud is 'apostate'?" Just pointing to lack of
evidence is not enough, since there is some
evidence to the contrary. And simply accepting
the Deuteronomistic claims (that "real" Yahweh worship was Asherah-less from King David onwards) is not very realistic.


The D claims are not certain, I agree, but nevertheless they are admissible evidence in favour of the hypothesis, and at least as strong as the very weak evidence you present the other way. So, sorry to repeat myself, but we have to accept that we just don't know how KA relates to the rest of Israelite religion, and so we cannot treat it as representative.

...

Yes. Writing at this period was mostly on perishable materials.

It's not so simple. How come we also have so few bullae and
seals from this period, then? If we argue that writing was not
as widespread, hence a lesser need of authentication, we
still conclude that writing was not as widespread in the 10th-
9th centuries than in the 8th-7th.


Perhaps they used seals etc made of some perishable material e.g. wood? Or just signatures? Who knows?

...

What does such a parallel show? In my opinion, if a site
selected at random appears to match the beliefs of the
independently conceived "J", it should give you a hard
time explaining why the independently conceived "J"
has no basis in reality. "Just a coincidence" is not very
convincing, since logical arguments were used to
separate J from amongst the verses of the Torah.


I accept that you would have a point if there was a clearly demonstrable parallel between J and KA. But the parallel is so weak and general as to be meaningless. As far as I can tell it is limited to the failure of J to condemn Asherah worship (an incredibly weak argument from silence when we remember that only fragments of J have survived) and the links of both of them (but highly speculatively in the case of J) to both the far south and to the northern kingdom. Such links are quite general enough to be coincidental.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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