OLDER OLD TIME RELIGION.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY CULT?
The archaeology of cult is centric to understanding ancient Israel’s actual practice of religion and social history. Cult, in the religious studies sense of the word, does not refer to drinking kool-aid or living on a compound… it means the ritual and practice of religion.
In the ancient Near East this looks like sacrifice, be it animal, grain offering, or libation (pouring out a drink onto a mini-altar). While cultic information is valuable, preconceived ideologies by archaeologists and interpreters can overshadow an objective interpretation of the artifacts. For example, if your starting point is that Israel was and always was monotheistic… you are going to have do do some dodgy interpretation to explain a lot of religious artifacts.
This blog post kicks around the methods employed by archaeologists and pitfalls which nuance scholarly interpretations. Finally, we’ll try to reconstruct religion in Judah and Samaria from 1000 to 586 B.C.E. based on the material evidence.
HOW WE DATE RELIGIOUS...STUFF
Archaeological methodology has made significant strides towards being more scientific and objective. Gone are the days when some guy crosses the ocean and makes bold claims about whatever he happens upon. Today, trained archaeologists are suspicious of the antiquities market (black market ancient artifacts) and reject artifacts which are not found in situ (in context). This caution is especially warranted concerning cult, since reconstructing an artifact’s purpose in a religious ritual is next to impossible without its context. Whether the object was found in a tomb, near an altar, in a domestic shrine, et cetera all comes to bear in the object’s interpretation. Without this context, we are just guessing at what an artifact was used for.
In dating the cult temples and shrines, vessels and implements, archaeologists use pottery assemblage chronology, at times scarabs (these sweet little beetle jewelry things everyone seemed to like…), and occasionally, carbon 14 dating (high cost makes C14 dating reserved for necessary cases). Pottery is by far the best method for establishing the chronology of a tell (a tell is a mound containing layers of civilization). Ceramics preserve well when they have been fired in a kiln in antiquity. Sherds from identifiable features give a trained archaeologist a narrow range for dating the stratum from which the object was yielded. Just like we could line up cell phones from he last 25 years and put them in a pretty close sequence, we can line up pottery. Different styles come in and out, and a slow advance is style and method is discernible.
In cultic contexts, pottery found in proximity to cult object can be a sure peg for dating the site. Cultic pottery can be particularly decorative and may periodically have an inscription or depiction which helps us understand the mindset of the religious adherents.
INTERPRETIVE PITFALLS
Once cultic objects and sacred places are identified and dated as confidentially as possible, there are interpretive pitfalls which stand in the way of objective reconstruction. Often this has to do the ideological starting point of the scholars weighing the evidence. On one side we find scholars whose theological convictions will not allow them to consider fairly any object, site, or inscription which suggests polytheism, or at least syncretism. On the other side, we find scholars so adamant that the Bible may not be used to accurately understand the past that their interpretations reject archaeological evidence which may corroborate the literature. Finally, even neutral scholars may find themselves working to support an academic hypothesis of past publications or current proposals.
When we keep an eye out for ideological and academic pitfalls, we can reconstruct the religions of ancient Israel with some degree of certainty. We’ll call it a “soft” model of ancient Israelite religions. “Religions” because it seems there were both ideal expressions of faith promoted by religious priests in centralized cults, and at the same time, a syncretistic folk religion evinced by local shrines, burial sites, and domestic dwellings. Simply stated, some people did what the Biblical authors wanted and many others did not, When we lean into this fact, the text of the Bible makes a lot more sense. We will consider briefly some places and artifacts which suggest a varied cultic observance.
CENTRALIZED, IRON AGE YAHWEH WORSHIP (1200-586 B.C.E.)
Unearthed temples and cultic centers suggest centralized Yahweh worship, although not always in keeping with the wishes of the writes of the Bible. Dan is one of the two centralized shrines attributed to Jeroboam I in the Bible (1 Kings 12:26-33), and has been excavated as a major cultural and cultic center in Iron II. Entering the gate system of Dan, supplicants met a low, small altar in the presence of five māṣṣābōth. Inside the city, Dan had an extraordinarily large high place, or bāmāh, with a four horned altar in a central courtyard, and a smaller horned altar found nearby. Finally, a three roomed building seems to have served as a shrine. Dan is important because outside of the Bible’s strong tradition of Solomon’s temple, for which we have no material remains, it is a clear example of centralized royal cult. Not to mention, it is being excavated by the Pines School of Graduate Studies at HUC-JIR.
Similar to the four horned altar at Dan, is the one excavated at Beer-Sheba. Both altars, incidentally break the Biblical mandates against building altars with hewn stones (Exod 20:25-26; Deut 27:5-6). What is more, it looks as if the Beer-Sheba altar was destroyed and reused to build a wall. Perhaps the removal of the Beer-Sheba altar has to do with one of the two reforms in the Bible under Josiah or Hezekiah. Germane to our discussion, is a glimpse of biblical writers giving laws specifically to curtail what they see as deviant cultic worship, and archaeological remains demonstrating that it was a very living debate.
At Arad, which appears to be a military outpost or garrison, we find an unsanctioned temple complete with a courtyard, an altar, and a holy of holies (I sat there once and no lightning struck me…still I felt I was playing with fire :D). The holy place was flanked by two altars and most likely contained two māṣṣābōth. One of the hundred or so ostraca found at the Arad Temple, references the “temple of Yahweh,” which Bill Dever understands to refer to the Arad Temple itself. If Dever is correct, we have a temple which is at least monolatrous (believes in many gods, but worships Yahweh exclusively) in its dedication to Yahweh outside of the royal cultic system.
POLYTHEISTIC, DOMESTIC AND LOCAL CULT
If these examples illustrate varied centralized state and local shrines dedicated to Yahweh worship, there are other artifacts, cult paraphernalia, and domestic shrines which suggest a polytheistic religion outright. Many dig sites have yielded rooms used as private shrines. Vast amounts of feminine, breasted “pillar figurines” have been found throughout Israelite sites in domestic worship settings. At times, these figurines even come with model shrines which could sit in the home. Many figurines which may well be Asherah statues are also attested throughout Judah. Whatever they are, we have hundreds of them.
Terra cotta implements such as rattles, kernoi, cylindrical stands for incense or libation offerings, unique pottery assemblages, or luxury items from other materials, which were used for sacred rituals and divination are also ubiquitous at local shrines and domestic settings. Two cylindrical stands (these look like ancient end tables, except they’re for small offerings not your cup of coffee…), one found in Megiddo and another found in Tanaach, are marvelously preserved and clearly polytheistic. They combine motifs from Canaanite art, and depict Asherah with her lions alongside some other divine imagery, like sun discs, bull calfs, and trees of life flanked by ibex or deer.
We also have bronze plaques found at Dan depicting a goddess riding on a bull, although her identity is open for debate. Finally, oil lamps, cult objects, drink altars, and comfort features found in many bench tombs support scholarly opinion that we may have a robust cult of the dead in ancient Israel. Cult of the dead as in they brought food and drink to their dead ancestors and consulted them as though alive. One tomb inscription mentions Yahweh in questionable relation to Asherah, which many scholars believe corroborates that early on Yahweh had a consort like many ancient Near Eastern deities. Serious study of not only archaeology, but the Bible itself, yields an evolving understanding of monotheism rather than an original distinction.
THE PRIESTLY IDEAL AND "OLD TIME RELIGION"
An honest reconstruction of cult practice in Israel and Judah during Iron II, requires being as objective as possible. We have to suspend what we would like to think or what we grew up thinking to really take a good look. The Bible gives readers the official ideal of priestly writers in urban temple-cities, which vies for either monotheistic or at least monolatrous worship of Yahweh. However, we have demonstrated that the ideal of these writers was not realized all that well.
Most ancient Israelites practiced "old time religion" (not your grandma's...) outside of the centralized cult, and seemed to have trouble with exclusive worship of Yahweh, may have viewed Asherah as the consort of Yahweh, and may have invoked other deities and spirits. Understanding ancient Israel as religiously layered and complex makes some scholars uncomfortable, but it seems to make sense that we observe biblical writers working so hard to centralize and control worship. Foreign gods and goddesses, unregulated divination, and consulting the dead are serious problems for priestly writers of the Tanakh; perhaps we should expect this in the archaeological record.
This should not surprise us in any way really, the national epic of Israel in Genesis through 2 Kings is ultimately an indictment against straying after foreign gods over and against Yahweh's revelation and command. The writers of the Pentateuch or Torah (Genesis- Deuteronomy) and the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua-2 Kings) explain the exile by this infidelity to Yahweh, particularly blaming the kings who did little to guard Israel's covenenant with the living God. And so we have the priestly ideal and normative Canaanite religion both being practiced at once in the Iron Age. Were this not true, the Bible would not have to constantly call people to Yahweh fidelity.