{"id":7201,"date":"2023-02-22T05:41:06","date_gmt":"2023-02-22T10:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=7201"},"modified":"2025-11-13T14:36:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T20:36:11","slug":"115-inventing-god-and-law-yahweh-only-yahweh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=7201","title":{"rendered":"115. Inventing God and Law: Yahweh. Only Yahweh."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Legitimized<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Words words words words words words words\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Constitutional Law<\/p>\n

Part 2: \u201cWhat Were They Thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n

Digression: \u201cA History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia\u201d<\/p>\n

115. Inventing God and Law: Yahweh. Only Yahweh.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Title: Part I: Yahweh. Only Yahweh.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019al with a golden head and Egyptian-style crown into a blazing fire.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

NARRATION:<\/p>\n

Endorsed by the temple priests, the discovered \u201cBook of the Law\u201d now justified a massive cultic reform throughout Yehudah: The absolute eradication<\/strong> of everything that wasn\u2019t Yahweh<\/strong>. They started by removing and burning<\/strong> all the temple idols.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

MEN INSIDE TEMPLE:<\/p>\n

Even this one? Of Yahweh himself?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

MAN AT ALTAR:<\/p>\n

Man-made<\/strong> things? We only worship Yahweh, whom nobody<\/strong> made.<\/p>\n

Toss it on the fire, boys.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

-=-<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

NARRATION:<\/p>\n

To focus the religion (and centralize the government) on the temple in Jerusalem, they destroyed<\/strong> all other altars, every hilltop shrine and its Asherah, all the idols in every little place\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

-=-<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Panel 3: Sis and Joe as talking heads.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

NARRATION:<\/p>\n

They abolished<\/strong> the cult prostitutes, the oracles, child sacrifice\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SIS (shocked):<\/p>\n

Child what?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

JOE:<\/p>\n

Child sacrifice. It was commonplace in that whole region, and despite Josiah\u2019s best efforts, it wouldn\u2019t really die out here until well into the post-exile period. You\u2019d sacrifice a woman\u2019s firstborn to Yahweh, to ensure that she\u2019d have many more children. You\u2019d 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 \u201cPassover\u201d was a common euphemism for child sacrifice? That adds some interesting context to the Exodus sto\u2026<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll shut up now.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

-=-<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Panel 4: Josiah gestures with irritation towards a large stone horned altar behind him, where two priests are burning the body of another person.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

NARRATION:<\/p>\n

\u2026and they slaughtered<\/strong> the priests of all other gods, burning their remains on their own altars.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

PRIEST 1:<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see how their gods like this<\/strong> offering.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

PRIEST 2:<\/p>\n

Heh.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re fired!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

NARRATION:<\/p>\n

Josiah\u2019s rule was now absolute,<\/strong> and made legitimate by Yahweh\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

JOSIAH:<\/p>\n

Who can complain?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m only doing what God wants.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

JOSIAH:<\/p>\n

\u201cFired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Very funny. Toss him on there, too.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

-=-<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

NARRATION:<\/p>\n

As a rule, new political realities require new founding myths.<\/strong> Josiah\u2019s kingdom was no exception. So stories now told of long-ago glory days\u2014of an astonishingly wealthy and powerful \u201cunited kingdom,\u201d ruled by the larger-than-life epic heroes David and Solomon. (No such kingdom had ever really existed,<\/strong> but that wasn\u2019t the point.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SOLOMON:<\/p>\n

Time to split the baby.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

WOMAN 1:<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t split the baby!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

WOMAN 2:<\/p>\n

Split the baby.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

NARRATION:<\/p>\n

Plus, it fostered team spirit<\/strong> in a people who were still forming a new, unified ethnic identity of their own. Tales of splendor offered a way to boast \u201clook how awesome we<\/strong> once were,\u201d and \u201csee how awesome we could be!<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>View Transcript<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. Words words words words words words words\u2026 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,35,63,60,1,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-brief-history-of-government","category-constitutional-law","category-inventing-the-law","category-the-institution-revolution","category-uncategorized","category-what-were-they-thinking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10586,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201\/revisions\/10586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}