and theology of Joshua 1–12 make clear that it was a story composed to empower a much later Israelite people who had been repeatedly humiliated and oppressed by the superpowers of their day. Chapter 5 of this textbook will feature more discussion of the biblical picture of conquest, since it focuses on the time in which the book of Joshua was written.
All this leads us back to the origins of the Israelite people and their culture – in Canaan. Our evidence shows every sign that the vast bulk of the earliest Israelites came from Canaan and shared its language, its material culture, and – to some extent – its religion. To be sure, there may have been a “Moses group,” themselves of Canaanite extraction, who experienced slavery and liberation from Egypt, but most scholars believe that such a group – if it existed – was only a small minority in early Israel, even though their story came to be claimed by all. The rest of the early Israelites did not come from outside the land through conquest or gradual settlement. The architecture and pottery of early Israelite settlements show close connections to pre-Israelite, “Canaanite” architecture and pottery. Prior attempts to identify a distinctively different “Israelite” pottery, house type, or other feature have failed. The Hebrew language, including its more ancient forms, is so closely related to neighboring languages that a student who learns Hebrew is well on his or her way to reading Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite, etc.
Finally, both archaeological remains and the much later evidence from the Hebrew Bible indicate that the oldest forms of Israelite religion were not as distinct from non-Israelite, “Canaanite” religion as scholars once thought. The Canaanites worshipped various gods, such as the creator and father god, El, his wife Asherah, the storm god Baal, and the goddess of love and war Anat. Anat is not particularly prominent in biblical traditions, but the other three all appear to have played significant roles in early Israel, alongside Israelite worship of a non-Canaanite God, “Yahweh.” For example, ancient Israelites often expressed their theology by giving their children pious sentence names. The Bible records that Saul, one of Israel’s earliest leaders, had descendants named “Ishbaal” (Hebrew for “man of Baal”) and “Mephibaal” (“from the mouth of Baal”). In this case, these names of Saul’s descendants probably indicate reverence for Baal in his family. The name “El” is yet more prominent in biblical tradition, forming part of the name “Israel,” and of several important place names (e.g. Bethel – “house of El”). One biblical text even uses a frequent epithet of El, “the Most High,” to describe how El assigned Yahweh to Israel:
When the Most High assigned the nations,
when he divided humankind,
He determined the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of the gods.
Yahweh’s own portion was his people,
Jacob was his assigned share. (Deut 32:8–9)
Israel’s worship was probably not confined to male deities such as Baal, El, or Yahweh. Archaeologists have found remains in early Israelite settlements both of female figurines and of early Israelite depictions of trees, a frequent symbol in ancient Canaan of female reproductive power (see Figure 2.5). Many scholars think these early images of trees/women were representations of the goddess Asherah, the wife of the creator god El. Worship of Asherah appears to have been widespread in earliest Israel. Each ancient village probably had its own hilltop sanctuary, a raised platform for sacrifice, featuring both a pillar to symbolize male deity and a tree to symbolize divine female power. Asherah, whose symbol is the tree, was the probable focus of the tree symbolism.
FIGURE 2.5 Animals feeding on trees, an early Israelite reflection of a yet earlier artistic pattern seen in pre-Israelite remains where the same animals were fed by a goddess figure, possibly Asherah. Redrawn from Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Göttinnen, Götter und Gottessymbole: neue Erkenntnisse zur Religionsgeschichte Kanaans und Israels aufgrund bislang unerschlossener ikonographischer Quellen (Quaestiones disputatae). Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1992, page 134.
The Name “Israel”
The name “Israel,” like most ancient Hebrew names, is a sentence. It is formed from the divine name “El,” and may mean “El rules” or “May El prove his rulership.” It reflects the potential focus in earliest Israel on El’s role in helping early tribal groups resist the “rulership” of surrounding cities and their armies.
Traces of the Most Ancient Israelite Oral Traditions in the Bible
Because a tribal society like early Israel did not produce extended literary texts, the Bible does not contain many traditions from this early period. Instead, the Bible, even parts that talk of Israel’s early history, is a corpus of texts written down centuries later, long after the conclusion of the tribal period. Nevertheless, these ancient villages had their own oral traditions, passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. These traditions, constantly evolving to fit the hopes and fears of the performers and their audiences, expressed the deepest values of their community. The following sections of this chapter discuss three sets of biblical texts that are good candidates for providing a view, however blurry and indistinct, of distinctive elements of early Israel’s theology and traditions.
The Oral Background of Genesis
Stories of the Endangerment of the Matriarch: compare Gen 12:10–20, 20:1–18, and 26:6–11
Abraham and Lot Cycle of Stories: Genesis 13, 18–19
Stories of Hagar and Ishmael: compare Gen 16:1–14 and 21:8–19
Skim stories about Jacob, his family, and his Journey to Haran: Genesis 27–32.
We turn now to look at how stories in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, are built on oral traditions, including some trickster elements. Notably, the stories we will discuss here do not come from the first chapters of Genesis, narratives of primeval beginnings (creation, etc.) found in Genesis 1–11. We will discuss those chapters once we come to the development of writing in later Israel. Rather, the parts of Genesis that most reflect oral origins are narratives about Israel’s ancestors in Genesis 12–50 – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their families.
Of course the written biblical text contains no such oral tradition in pure form. The often-repeated idea that people in oral cultures perfectly remember and repeat their traditions was long ago shown to be untrue (see above pp. 40–41). That said, blurry forms of ancient Israelite traditions can be seen in biblical texts, especially in ways that those texts feature one or more accounts of how such figures survived by means of deception and trickery. Take, for example, the multiple accounts of how a patriarch worked to avoid being killed by a king because of his beautiful wife by telling the king that she actually was his sister. The Bible preserves two versions of this story about Abraham (Gen 12:10–20 and 20:1–18) and one version about Isaac (Gen 26:6–11). At least one biblical author seems to have found Abraham’s lying on this point problematic, since the second version of this story (in Genesis 20) has Abraham claiming that she was his half-sister (Gen 20:12). Nevertheless, the Bible’s own narrative says nothing of the sort about her (see Gen 11:29–30), and this additional part of Abraham’s speech is probably evidence of the discomfort that some later authors had with the trickster traditions that they adapted.
As we move to the section of Genesis focused on Jacob (Genesis 25–35), we see more places where the Bible’s written