Instead of looking back to their own battles, they commemorated Yahweh’s struggle against the forces of chaos at the beginning of time. In their temples throughout the Near East, the battles of such gods as Marduk and Baal were commemorated annually in elaborate ceremonies, which were at one and the same time an exultant celebration of the divine victory and an attempt to make this power available in the present, since only a heavenly warrior, it was thought, could establish the peace and security on which their city depended. The rituals of the ancient world were not simply acts of remembrance: they reproduced the mythical stories in such a way that they were felt to occur again, so that people experienced the eternal, unseen struggle at the heart of existence and participated in the primordial divine conquest of the chaos-monsters. Again, as in the building of a temple, likeness was experienced as identity. Imitating these divine battles in symbolic dramas brought this action into the present or, more properly, projected the worshippers into the timeless world of myth. The rituals revealed the harsh reality of existence, which seemed always to depend upon pain and death, but also made it clear that this struggle would always have a creative outcome. After emerging victoriously from his mortal encounters with Yam and Mot, Baal had been enthroned on Mount Zaphon, which had become his home forever. From Zaphon, Baal had established the peace, fertility, and order which his enemies had sought to overcome. When this victory was commemorated in Ugarit, the king took Baal’s place, anointed like his heavenly prototype for the task of establishing peace, fruitfulness, and justice in his realm. Each autumn, Baal’s enthronement was celebrated in the month of Ethanim, and this festival made the divine energies which had been unleashed in those primal struggles at the dawn of time available in Ugarit for another year.
Before Solomon’s Temple was built in Jerusalem, there was, as far as we know, little or no interest in Yahweh as a creator-god. The myths of the Exodus showed him creating a people, not the cosmos. But once he had been ritually enthroned in the Devir on Mount Zion, his cult took on many of the aspects of the worship of Baal El Elyon which had preceded it. Possibly under the influence of Zadok, Jebusite ideas fused with the old Israelite mythology. Like Baal, Yahweh was now said to have battled with the sea monster Lotan, who became “Leviathan” in Hebrew.2 He had tamed the primal waters of chaos, which would otherwise have flooded the earth, and had “marked the bounds it was not to cross and made it fast with a bolted gate.”3 Like Marduk, he had split another sea monster—this one called Rahab—in two when he laid the foundations of the world.4 Later these myths of a violent creation were replaced by P’s calm and peaceful account of the establishment of primal order in the first chapter of Genesis. But the Bible shows that the people of Judah also had stories that conformed more closely to the spirituality of their neighbors and that in times of crisis they turned readily to this “pagan” mythology. The combat myth was consoling because it proclaimed that however powerful the forces of destruction, order would always prevail. It would not do so automatically, however. Priests and kings had a responsibility to renew this primal victory annually in their Temple in order to bring the embattled city of Jerusalem an infusion of divine power. Their task was to put their people in touch with the great mystery that sustained the world, face up to the unavoidable terror of existence, and learn to see that what appeared to be frightening and deadly had a positive aspect. Life and order would triumph over violence and death; fertility would follow a period of drought and sterility, and the threat of extinction would be averted because of the divine power in their midst.
The early psalms show how thoroughly the people of Judah had absorbed this spirituality. Sometimes they are simply a restatement of the old myths of Ugarit:
Yahweh is great and supremely to be praised:
in the city of our God
is his holy mountain, its peak as it rises
is the joy of the whole world.
Mount Zion is the heart of Zaphon,
the city of the Great King,
here among her palaces
God proved to be her fortress.5
Yahweh would fight for Jerusalem, just as Baal had fought for his heritage at Ugarit: his presence made the city an inviolable enclave against the enemies that lurked without. Jerusalemites were told to admire the fortifications of Zion—“counting her towers, admiring her walls, reviewing her palaces”—as the people of Uruk had admired the bastions built by Gilgamesh. After their tour of inspection, they would conclude that “God is here!”6 At the beginning of time, Yahweh had set up boundaries to keep everything in its proper place: walls and security arrangements had a similar religious value in keeping the threat of extinction and chaos at bay. The city could never fall: Yahweh was the citadel of his people and would break the bow and snap the spear of their foes.7 They would not even have to fear if the whole cosmic order crashed around them: God was their shelter and strength. The people of Judah need not worry if the mountains tumbled into the sea and the waters roared and heaved.8 Within their city, Yahweh had established a haven of shalom: wholeness, harmony and security. In the Jerusalem liturgy, the people saw the old Exodus myths in the context of Yahweh’s creation of the world. He had made himself the king of the whole earth when he had defeated Leviathan and Rahab, and he sustained it in being. Liberating the people from Egypt revealed his plans for the whole of humanity.9
Critics have attempted to reconstruct the liturgy from the psalms, but their more detailed claims are probably extravagant. We know very little about the Jerusalem cult in this early period. Yet there does seem to have been a focus on Yahweh’s kingship on Mount Zion. It is likely that the feast of Sukkoth was a celebration of his enthronement on the sacred mountain during the dedication of the Temple by King Solomon. Just as Baal’s return to his palace on Mount Zaphon after the defeat of Mot had restored fertility to the land, Yahweh ensured the fertility of Zion and its environs, and this too was celebrated in this ancient agricultural festival. With music, applause, and acclamation, Yahweh was felt to rise up to his throne in the Devir, accompanied by the blast of trumpets.10 Perhaps the braying instruments, the cultic shout, and the clouds of incense filling the Temple reproduced the theophany on Mount Sinai, when Yahweh appeared to his people in the midst of a volcanic eruption.11 Perhaps there was a procession from the Gihon to the Temple, which retraced Yahweh’s first journey up Mount Zion. He was experienced in this liturgy as so great a force that he was not only King of Zion but “the Great King of the whole world.”12 He was acquiring preeminence over other deities:
For you are Yahweh
Elyon over the world
far transcending all the other gods.13
Long before the Israelites developed the formal doctrine of monotheism, the rituals and ceremonies on Mount Zion had begun to teach the people of Judah at an emotional if not a notional level that Yahweh was the only god who counted.
But the Zion cult was not just a noisy celebration. The early pilgrimage psalms show that it was capable of creating an intensely personal spirituality. A visit to the Temple was experienced as an ascent (aliyah). As they climbed from the Valley of Hinnom, making their way up the steep hills of Jerusalem toward the peak of Zion, they prepared themselves for a vision of Yahweh.14 It was not just