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!”