Middle Eastern religion

Types of religious organization and authority

Religion occurs at different levels of society: personal, familial, local, national, and international. At the personal and international extremes there is need for but little organization. And yet in religion, as the people of the ancient Middle East saw it, there was a progression from one stage to the next. In the early myths of Genesis, God and Noah have direct personal relations. This leads to a covenant between God and all who went out of the ark: birds and beasts as well as mankind (Genesis 9:9–10). Through the sons of Noah and their descendants, who form the nations of the world (Genesis 10), there is a theoretical progress to international religion. This scheme of the relations between God and mankind, from the personal to the universal level, mirrors the historical record of religion. Judaism (followed later by Christianity and Islām) traces “the Religion” back to Abraham, who had personal and direct relations with God, as was customary in the ancient Middle Eastern milieu. Abraham’s intimacy with God is similar to the intimacy between Odysseus and the Greek goddess Athena. The next step is a covenant between a particular deity and a particular person, binding the two together in a contractual relationship for all eternity from generation to generation. Such covenants were not rare; the Hittite King Hattusilis III made such a covenant with Ishtar. Abraham’s covenant is unique simply because it was the only one destined to last in history.

The descendants of able men who established a dynasty or tradition would worship the God of their father, or fathers, and adhere to the original covenant. Genesis 31 portrays Jacob and Laban swearing by their respective ancestral gods: Jacob by the god(s) of Abraham and Laban by the god(s) of Nahor. Once a group expanded into a federation of clans or tribes, religious organization became necessary. A central shrine (such as the one at Shiloh in Israel) for amphictyonic (religious confederational) pilgrimage festivals required a professional priesthood and other religious personnel to take care of sacrifices, give oracular guidance, interpret dreams and omens, as well as to provide instruction. In an amphictyony of 12 tribes, each tribe could render federal service for religious and secular purposes, one month each year. A special tribe (such as the Levites in Israel, or the Magians in Iran) could be dedicated full-time to cultic duties.

A greater degree of centralization and organization of the cult would generally follow from the establishment of a powerful state. The cult of Marduk of Babylon spread in importance and influence because Babylon became the capital of a powerful kingdom in the time of Hammurabi (18th century bc) and of a mighty empire during the reign of Nebuchadrezzar (604–562 bc). The Egyptian cult of Amon-Re not only became powerful but took on the form of a universal religion as a result of the military and political triumphs of the rulers of Thebes, particularly during the reign of Thutmose III (1479–26 bc). Under Solomon, Jerusalem became the centre of a great commercial empire. The Temple of Solomon and its God, the God of Israel, were catapulted into an international prominence that was quite different from the national status that marked the extent of Hebraic religion previously. The new internationalism of Israel’s involvements paved the way for the universality of the views of the prophets. The God of Israel was subsequently concerned with all mankind and not merely with one people in one small land. This ultimately meant the transformation of biblical religion from the cult of a single people to a more subtle, spiritual movement that required different organization and different personnel. The priesthood became defunct with the destruction of Herod’s Temple and the cessation of sacrifices in ad 70. The new religious leaders (rabbis) were rather teachers and spiritual guides who were united by dedication to the same scripture. The spread of the devotees over the face of the earth meant that they were now divided into regional groups, serving under different sovereigns, and the individual Jewish communities were organized independently, each with its own house of worship.

There were various devices for holding an ethnic-religious group together even though it might be fragmentized into scattered communities. Laws of purity, especially those pertaining to diet, kept different groups apart. Each normally respected the other’s rules, but the fact that each group had different taboos kept them from breaking bread together and mingling socially. They could do business with each other in the marketplace, but they could not fraternize in each other’s homes. Above all, laws of purity were deterrents to intermarriage, the major factor that breaks up religious communities and encourages homogenization.