Constitutional Law
Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”
Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”
107. Inventing God and Law: Yahweh in the Bronze Age
Title: Part A: Yahweh in the Bronze Age
Panel 1: A sunset view of two mound-like hills. A tiny fort-like town sits on one hillside. The last colors of sunset are to the left, and a single bright star like the one the Three Wise Men followed hangs in the sky to the right.
NARRATION:
When Jerusalem was founded some time in the middle Bronze Age, it was the cult site of the evening star, Venus—Shalim. Yahweh hadn’t been invented yet.
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Panel 2: A man and a woman in an Eden-like setting. The man has a gray beard, wears an Egyptian-style Shmoo-shaped crown, and is seated on a golden throne, making gestures like those seen in ancient figurines of El. Standing beside him, resting one hand on the back of the throne, is a topless woman wearing a long slit skirt. She has long, somewhat unkempt black hair. She is gently holding the head of a snake that is descending from its coils in a tree beside her, and she is faintly smiling at it.
NARRATION:
Shalim was one of many gods worshipped by the Semitic peoples who had settled the region. Their chief god was a father god, El. El’s wife was the (far more ancient) mother-wisdom-fertility goddess Asherah.
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Panel 3: The view from inside a hillside cave, looking out on a barren Arabian desert plain with more arid hills and mountains ranged in the distance.
NARRATION:
There’s a rocky, mountainous region to the south, alongside the Gulf of Aqaba in what is now northwestern Saudi Arabia.
In the later Bronze Age, these mountains became home to raiding nomadic peoples whom the Egyptians called the “Shasu.”
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Panel 4: A view of the mountain peak Jebel al-Lawz, with smaller rocky crags in the foreground, and silver clouds beyond against a tin-gray sky.
NARRATION:
The Shasu had their own gods.
One was a storm god they called Yahweh (“He Blows”) whose home was on top of a mountain they called “Sinai.”
Most likely the two-toned peak known today as “Jebel al-Lawz.”
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Panel 5: A panorama of storm clouds advancing across a long plain. In the front of the… uh, front… a bolt of acid-green lighting strikes the ground.
NARRATION:
At some point during or after the Bronze Age Collapse, Yahweh became a war god as well. (Lots of storm gods became war gods back in the day—it’s only natural.)
The cult of Yahweh probably spread north with trade—though if the Bible’s “Song of Deborah” (in the Book of Judges) is anything to go by, Yahweh’s military prowess also made quite an impression.
YEHUDAN VOICE (reacting to the lightning):
Whoa! The divine warrior from the south brought them victory with a thunderstorm!
NARRATION:
However it happened, the cult spread north—especially in hilly regions where Yahweh’s narrative was easy to adopt.
