xxxvi | Major Background Issues from the Ancient Near East
4. Revelation and Manifestation of Deities. The gods in the ancient word were generally believed to not be forthcoming— that is, they were not believed to reveal themselves broadly( with exceptions in responding to divinatory inquiries). Consequently, one could never be sure exactly what the god expected from people( except to be pampered). Whenever something went wrong, people in the ancient world would assume that they had somehow offended a petty deity. Even though the gods did not reveal themselves or their expectation, they did manifest themselves in diverse ways. The sun, moon, planets and stars, for example, were all considered manifestations of various gods. The most important manifestation of the deity was in the image, which was commissioned by the god, manufactured from the finest of materials with the help of the god, and then ritually energized so that the essence of the god took up residence in the image. The image was not the god, but a manifestation of the god, and therefore it was capable of serving as mediator for the presence of the deity, for the care of the deity and for the worship given the deity. The Israelites were to have no such mediators— no man-made image could accomplish such things and Yahweh had no needs to be met through the image.
5. Spirit world. In the ancient world the reality of spiritual beings extended beyond the gods themselves. Other classes of spirit beings included chaos creatures, demons, servants of the gods, and spirits of deceased humans. These beings were generally not considered to be morally flawed or evil. Sometimes their intrinsic nature just wreaked havoc. Some could serve apotropaic functions whereas others were more inclined to devour. None of this fits in to how we think about demons today as evil fallen angels. The Old Testament lacks demons almost entirely and considers chaos creatures less free of Yahweh’ s control.
6. Natural versus Supernatural. Today we are inclined to separate our understanding of events and phenomena into the categories of“ natural” or“ supernatural,” the former of these two being the result of natural laws and explainable as natural cause and effect; the latter being acts of God beyond scientific explanation. In the ancient world there was no such classification system. Nothing would have been considered purely natural with God / the gods uninvolved. They would not speak of miracles( i. e., supernatural occurrences), but rather of signs and wonders that were manifestations of God’ s power. Israel was very much like the rest of the ancient world in this regard.
7. Deep Reality. Corresponding to the previous point, in the ancient world people did not circumscribe reality within the category of historical events. Today it is not uncommon for us to think that reality is defined by events: we ask ourselves,“ Did it really happen?” In the ancient world people considered events as a small slice of a reality that transcended events of history. What we call their mythology was more real to them than their history. When ancient people talked about events, they often found the most significant reality in what God / the gods had done, not in what people had done. We misunderstand when we think of mythology as made-up stories about gods that did not exist and therefore treat them as fairy tales. Ancient Israel’ s thinking was very similar to the ancient world in this regard.
8. Creation and Order. Since we modern readers tend to be materially focused, when we think of creation and origins we think in material terms. In the ancient world people were much more inclined to think of creation not so much as manufacturing the material cosmos, but of establishing order in the cosmos and making it function with a particular purpose in mind. Gods were the source of order; wisdom was the pursuit of order; creation was the establishment of order. Israelites would have thought about the cosmos and God’ s creative work in similar terms, but, of course, Yahweh was the Creator.
9. Religion and Magic. Religion and magic were not different categories in the ancient world and it is not possible to separate them from one another. Magic entailed the exercise of power( in spells, hexes, exorcisms, sorcery, necromancy, etc.) but operated primarily on the power associated with the name of a person and the name
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