Constitutional Law

Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”

Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”

109. Inventing God and Law: Yahweh Is.

Title: Part C: Yahweh Is.

Panel 1: An amorphous, abstract rendering of tumultuous clouded heavens, with bits and pieces of mythological gods from old-master paintings cut-and-pasted all over the place. A bolt of light from the distance blasts the gods all ahoo.

NARRATION:

Gods replaced other gods all the time, of course. Whenever a new dynasty took over a kingdom, or a new migrating/conquering people dominated a land, it was normal for them to rewrite their predecessors’ founding myths with their own gods as supreme.

The new gods might defeat the old ones in a cosmic battle. As when Zeus and his Olympians defeated the Titans… who had defeated the primordial deities…

Or the preceding pantheon might get demoted, reduced to mere children of the new dynasty’s cult god. The Egyptian pharaohs did that all the time.

But that is not what happened when Yahweh merged with El!

-=-

Panel 2: Yahweh, with long beard and flowing hair, has a thin golden halo encircling his head.

NARRATION:

This merger erased the father-son relationship between El and Yahweh.

Yahweh now had no father.

He wasn’t even his own father.

Nobody had sired him. Nothing had created him. Not even himself.

Yahweh just…

…was.

This would have some unexpected consequences.

YAHWEH:
Odd.

How did I get…

here?