Monotheism

Review of the previous post

The previous post, post number 4 of 22, was post number 2 of 7 posts discussing Yahwism, and discussed Yahwism after the time of the Patriarchs.

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This post, post number 5 of 22, is post number 3 of 7 posts discussing Yahwism, and discusses the origins of Yahwism in the people who were living in Canaan when the Jewish Nation immigrated into that region.

The Origins of the people living in Canaan at the time of the Exodus

It is first assumed that there was an indigenous population in the land of Canaan when the Moses-led Hebrews initially arrived[1].

Archeological excavations in the highlands of present-day Israel (encompassing the long backbone of mountains, and valleys as opposed to the coastal plane, the Jordan Valley and the Transjordan Plateau) that run from the North to the South in central Palestine have discovered hundreds of small un-walled villages that appeared after 1250 B.C.E^[2]. Historians now recognize these villages as the precursors of the “Chosen People” as identified by the Biblical authors.

The initial settlers of this land may have been fleeing the tributary economy of oppression from rulers and aristocrats and their agents in cities whose centralized rulers often imposed laws and rules that were at odds with the customs and laws of the local villages, clans or families, and attempted to siphon off as much of the food production from the villages as possible, as well as conscript men into work projects or into an army fighting a battle far removed from the village or its goals^[3]. They fled to land that they could farm and make lives free from oppression and to live on their own ((much like the Moses-led Hebrews fled oppression in Egypt, or even the American Pioneers who moved into the West) and establish a communitarian economy in which they could freely dispose of and control their own resources and plan their own destiny. Following the general model of early Iron Age villages, these settlements moved from band, where hunting and gathering groups wonder in the same territory but have not settled into a village pattern, to tribal where self-supporting families live in an agricultural village setting, to a chiefdom and state where one individual or group manages to centralize and monopolize economic and political power under its own control. This could be the pattern followed by the description of the Jews provided in the Bible for a progression from a band, under Abraham and Isaac, to a village under Jacob, to a chiefdom under the Judges, and state under Saul, David and Solomon, specialized ruling elite who had the power to coerce and channel human resources toward a particular economic, political, or military goal. As the villages grew, they coalesced into a larger unit and finally into a country, or nation.

Preview of the next post

The next post, post number 6 of 22, is post number 4 of 7 posts discussing Yahwism, and continues the discussion of the origins of Yahwism in the people who were living in Canaan when the Jewish Nation immigrated into that region.

[1] In addition to the indigenous Canaanites, other people also may have been arriving in this area, including Philistines who came from the area of the Aegean and settled along the coast and especially in the Sothern coastal plain of Palestine. Some of the Canaanites may have moved to the north in the area now known as Lebanon, where they were called Phoenicians. Other people in the area might have included Ammonites (modern day Jordan) as well as Moabites and Edomites.

[2] Note that this date matches the date attributed to the Exodus from Egypt.

[3] Thus by fleeing the centers and attempting to achieve liberation and build a new social order that that emphasized social justice for the downtrodden such as themselves, these people defined themselves as outsiders, “others,” and sought to achieve and maintain such outsider status. Perhaps this is the beginning of the Jewish religion being that of outsiders and others. As has been noted in many places, including many essays in this work, this status as an outsider, or other, has given rise to anti-Semitism and all the evils associated with this. This observation raises a thought:  perhaps, it is the Jewish people themselves that are partly to blame for the view that they are outsiders, others.