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Words words words words words words words…
Constitutional Law
Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”
Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”
115. Inventing God and Law: Yahweh. Only Yahweh.
Title: Part I: Yahweh. Only Yahweh.
Panel 1: The golden doors of the temple are open, revealing the interior with its Mesopotamian-influenced designs, including an Asherah tree that resembles a menorah. Inside the temple, people are hauling out the statue of a god seated on a throne. Outside, people are hauling a sun god’s chariot, complete with golden disc, up the steps to the altar. At the top of the altar, a man is toppling a statue of Ba’al with a golden head and Egyptian-style crown into a blazing fire.
NARRATION:
Endorsed by the temple priests, the discovered “Book of the Law” now justified a massive cultic reform throughout Yehudah: The absolute eradication of everything that wasn’t Yahweh. They started by removing and burning all the temple idols.
MEN INSIDE TEMPLE:
Even this one? Of Yahweh himself?
MAN AT ALTAR:
Man-made things? We only worship Yahweh, whom nobody made.
Toss it on the fire, boys.
-=-
Panel 2: The countryside all around Jerusalem. Smoke rises from every hilltop. In the foreground, a horned altar and an Asherah pole have been burned to cinders.
NARRATION:
To focus the religion (and centralize the government) on the temple in Jerusalem, they destroyed all other altars, every hilltop shrine and its Asherah, all the idols in every little place…
-=-
Panel 3: Sis and Joe as talking heads.
NARRATION:
They abolished the cult prostitutes, the oracles, child sacrifice…
SIS (shocked):
Child what?
JOE:
Child sacrifice. It was commonplace in that whole region, and despite Josiah’s best efforts, it wouldn’t really die out here until well into the post-exile period. You’d sacrifice a woman’s firstborn to Yahweh, to ensure that she’d have many more children. You’d sacrifice beloved children to various gods in satisfaction of a vow. Kings would sacrifice sons to ensure protection of their kingdom (Josiah switched to animal sacrifice). And oh! did you know “Passover” was a common euphemism for child sacrifice? That adds some interesting context to the Exodus sto…
I’ll shut up now.
-=-
Panel 4: Josiah gestures with irritation towards a large stone horned altar behind him, where two priests are burning the body of another person.
NARRATION:
…and they slaughtered the priests of all other gods, burning their remains on their own altars.
PRIEST 1:
Let’s see how their gods like this offering.
PRIEST 2:
Heh.
You’re fired!
NARRATION:
Josiah’s rule was now absolute, and made legitimate by Yahweh’s sovereignty.
JOSIAH:
Who can complain?
I’m only doing what God wants.
JOSIAH:
“Fired.”
Very funny. Toss him on there, too.
-=-
Panel 5: With a THOK!, a young David shoots Goliath in the head with a bullet from a sling. As Solomon looks on, two women pull on an infant.
NARRATION:
As a rule, new political realities require new founding myths. Josiah’s kingdom was no exception. So stories now told of long-ago glory days—of an astonishingly wealthy and powerful “united kingdom,” ruled by the larger-than-life epic heroes David and Solomon. (No such kingdom had ever really existed, but that wasn’t the point.)
SOLOMON:
Time to split the baby.
WOMAN 1:
Don’t split the baby!
WOMAN 2:
Split the baby.
NARRATION:
Plus, it fostered team spirit in a people who were still forming a new, unified ethnic identity of their own. Tales of splendor offered a way to boast “look how awesome we once were,” and “see how awesome we could be!”