A History Of God Part 1

A History of G.o.d.

By Karen Armstrong.

Introduction.

As a child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in G.o.d. There is a distinction between belief belief in a set of propositions and a in a set of propositions and a faith faith which enables us to put our trust in them. I believed implicitly in the existence of G.o.d; I also believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of the sacraments, the prospect of eternal d.a.m.nation and the objective reality of Purgatory. I cannot say, however, that my belief in these religious opinions about the nature of ultimate reality gave me much confidence that life here on earth was good or beneficent. The Roman Catholicism of my childhood was a rather frightening creed. James Joyce got it right in which enables us to put our trust in them. I believed implicitly in the existence of G.o.d; I also believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of the sacraments, the prospect of eternal d.a.m.nation and the objective reality of Purgatory. I cannot say, however, that my belief in these religious opinions about the nature of ultimate reality gave me much confidence that life here on earth was good or beneficent. The Roman Catholicism of my childhood was a rather frightening creed. James Joyce got it right in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: I listened to my share of h.e.l.l-fire sermons. In fact h.e.l.l seemed a more potent reality than G.o.d, because it was something that I could grasp imaginatively. G.o.d, on the other hand, was a somewhat shadowy figure, defined in intellectual abstractions rather than images. When I was about eight years old, I had to memorise this catechism answer to the question, 'What is G.o.d?': 'G.o.d is the Supreme Spirit, Who alone exists of Himself and is infinite in all perfections.' Not surprisingly, it meant little to me and I am bound to say that it still leaves me cold. It has always seemed a singularly arid, pompous and arrogant definition. Since writing this book, however, I have come to believe that it is also incorrect.

As I grew up, I realised that there was more to religion than fear. I read the lives of the saints, the metaphysical poets, T. S. Eliot and some of the simpler writings of the mystics. I began to be moved by the beauty of the liturgy and, though G.o.d remained distant, I felt that it was possible to break through to him and that the vision would transfigure the whole of created reality. To do this I entered a religious order and, as a novice and a young nun, I learned a good deal more about the faith. I applied myself to apologetics, scripture, theology and church history. I delved into the history of the monastic life and embarked on a minute discussion of the Rule of my own order, which we had to learn by heart. Strangely enough, G.o.d figured very little in any of this. Attention seemed focused on secondary details and the more peripheral aspects of religion. I wrestled with myself in prayer, trying to force my mind to encounter G.o.d but he remained a stern taskmaster, who observed my every infringement of the Rule, or tantalisingly absent. The more I read about the raptures of the saints, the more of a failure I felt. I was unhappily aware that what little religious experience I had, had somehow been manufactured by myself as I worked upon my own feelings and imagination. Sometimes a sense of devotion was an aesthetic response to the beauty of the Gregorian chant and the liturgy. But nothing had actually happened to me from a source beyond myself. I never glimpsed the G.o.d described by the prophets and mystics. Jesus Christ, about whom we talked far more than about 'G.o.d', seemed a purely historical figure, inextricably embedded in late antiquity. I also began to have grave doubts about some of the doctrines of the Church. How could anybody possibly know for certain that the man Jesus had been G.o.d incarnate and what did such a belief mean? Did the New Testament really teach the elaborate - and highly contradictory - doctrine of the Trinity or was this, like so many other articles of the faith, a fabrication by theologians centuries after the death of Christ in Jerusalem?

Eventually, with regret, I left the religious life and once freed of the burden of failure and inadequacy, I felt my belief in G.o.d slip quietly away. He had never really impinged upon my life, though I had done my best to enable him to do so. Now that I no longer felt so guilty and anxious about him, he became too remote to be a reality. My interest in religion continued, however, and I made a number of television programmes about the early history of Christianity and the nature of the religious experience. The more I learned about the history of religion, the more my earlier misgivings were justified. The doctrines that I had accepted without question as a child were indeed man-made, constructed over a long period of time. Science seemed to have disposed of the Creator G.o.d and biblical scholars had proved that Jesus had never claimed to be divine. As an epileptic, I had flashes of vision that I knew to be a mere neurological defect: had the visions and raptures of the saints also been a mere mental quirk? Increasingly, G.o.d seemed an aberration, something that the human race had outgrown.

Despite my years as a nun, I do not believe that my experience of G.o.d is unusual. My ideas about G.o.d were formed in childhood and did not keep abreast of my growing knowledge in other disciplines. I had revised simplistic childhood views of Father Christmas; I had come to a more mature understanding of the complexities of the human predicament than had been possible in the kindergarten. Yet my early, confused ideas about G.o.d had not been modified or developed. People without my peculiarly religious background may also find that their notion of G.o.d was formed in infancy. Since those days, we have put away childish things and have discarded the G.o.d of our first years.

Yet my study of the history of religion has revealed that human beings are spiritual animals. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that h.o.m.o sapiens is also h.o.m.o religiosus. Men and women started to wors.h.i.+p G.o.ds as soon as they became recognisably human; they created religions at the same time as they created works of art. This was not simply because they wanted to propitiate powerful forces but these early faiths expressed the wonder and mystery that seems always to have been an essential component of the human experience of this beautiful yet terrifying world. Like art, religion has been an attempt to find meaning and value in life, despite the suffering that flesh is heir to. Like any other human act.i.tivity, religion can be abused but it seems to have been something that we have always done. It was not tacked on to a primordially secular nature by manipulative kings and priests but was natural to humanity. Indeed, our current secularism is an entirely new experiment, unprecedented in human history. We have yet to see how it will work. It is also true to say that our Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us; like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be cultivated. Humanism is itself a religion without G.o.d - not all religions, of course, are theistic. Our ethical secular ideal has its own disciplines of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more conventional religions.

When I began to research this history of the idea and experience of G.o.d in the three related monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, I expected to find that G.o.d had simply been a projection of human needs and desires. I thought that 'he' would mirror the fears and yearnings of society at each stage of its development. My predictions were not entirely unjustified but I have been extremely surprised by some of my findings and I wish that I had learned all this thirty years ago, when I was starting out in the religious life. It would have saved me a great deal of anxiety to hear - from eminent monotheists in all three faiths - that instead of waiting for G.o.d to descend from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself. Other Rabbis, priests and Sufis would have taken me to task for a.s.suming that G.o.d was - in any sense - a reality 'out there'; they would have warned me not to expect to experience him as an objective fact that could be discovered by the ordinary rational process. They would have told me that in an important sense G.o.d was a product of the creative imagination, like the poetry and music that I found so inspiring. A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that G.o.d did not really exist - and yet that 'he' was the most important reality in the world.

This book will not be a history of the ineffable reality of G.o.d itself, which is beyond time and change, but a history of the way men and women have perceived him from Abraham to the present day. The human idea of G.o.d has a history, since it has always meant something slightly different to each group of people who have used it at various points of time. The idea of G.o.d formed in one generation by one set of human beings could be meaningless in another. Indeed, the statement: 'I believe in G.o.d' has no objective meaning, as such, but like any other statement it only means something in context, when proclaimed by a particular community. Consequently there is not one unchanging idea contained in the word 'G.o.d' but the word contains a whole spectrum of meanings, some of which are contradictory or even mutually exclusive. Had the notion of G.o.d not had this flexibility, it would not have survived to become one of the great human ideas. When one conception of G.o.d has ceased to have meaning or relevance, it has been quietly discarded and replaced by a new theology. A fundamentalist would deny this, since fundamentalism is anti-historical: it believes that Abraham, Moses and the later prophets all experienced their G.o.d in exactly the same way as people do today. Yet if we look at our three religions, it becomes clear that there is no objective view of 'G.o.d': each generation has to create the image of G.o.d that works for them. The same is true of atheism. The statement 'I do not believe in G.o.d' has always meant something slightly different at each period of history. The people who have been dubbed 'atheists' over the years have always been denied a particular conception of the divine. Is the 'G.o.d' who is rejected by atheists today, the G.o.d of the patriarchs, the G.o.d of the prophets, the G.o.d of the philosophers, the G.o.d of the mystics or the G.o.d of the eighteenth-century deists? All these deities have been venerated as the G.o.d of the Bible and the Koran by Jews, Christians and Muslims at various points of their history. We shall see that they are very different from one another. Atheism has often been a transitional state: thus Jews, Christians and Muslims were all called 'atheists' by their pagan contemporaries because they had adopted a revolutionary notion of divinity and transcendence. Is modern atheism a similar denial of a G.o.d' which is no longer adequate to the problems of our time?

Despite its other-worldliness, religion is highly pragmatic. We hall see that it is far more important for a particular idea of G.o.d to work than for it to be logically or scientifically sound. As soon as it ceases to be effective it will be changed - sometimes for something radically different. This did not disturb most monotheists before our own day because they were quite clear that their ideas about G.o.d were not sacrosanct but could only be provisional. They were man-made -- they could be nothing else - and quite separate from the indescribable Reality they symbolised. Some developed quite audacious ways of emphasising this essential distinction. One medieval mystic went so far as to say that this ultimate Reality - mistakenly called 'G.o.d' - was not even mentioned in the Bible. Throughout history, men and women have experienced a dimension of the spirit that seems to transcend the mundane world. Indeed, it is an arresting characteristic of the human mind to be able to conceive concepts that go beyond it in this way. However we choose to interpret it, this human experience of transcendence has been a fact of life. Not everybody would regard it as divine: Buddhists, as we shall see, would deny that their visions and insights are derived from a supernatural source; they see them as natural to humanity. All the major religions, however, would agree that it is impossible to describe this transcendence in normal conceptual language. Monotheists have called this transcendence 'G.o.d' but they have hedged this around with important provisos. Jews, for example, are forbidden to p.r.o.nounce the sacred Name of G.o.d and Muslims must not attempt to depict the divine in visual imagery. The discipline is a reminder that the reality that we call 'G.o.d' exceeds all human expression.

This will not be a history in the usual sense, since the idea of G.o.d has not evolved from one point and progressed in a linear fas.h.i.+on to a final conception. Scientific notions work like that but the ideas of art and religion do not. Just as there are only a given number of themes in love poetry, so too people have kept saying the same things about G.o.d over and over again. Indeed, we shall find a striking similarity in Jewish, Christian and Muslim ideas of the divine. Even though Jews and Muslims both find the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation almost blasphemous, they have produced their own versions of these controversial theologies. Each expression of these universal themes is slightly different, however, showing the ingenuity and inventiveness of the human imagination as it struggles to express its sense of 'G.o.d'.

Because this is such a big subject, I have deliberately confined myself to the One G.o.d wors.h.i.+pped by Jews, Christians and Muslims, though I have occasionally considered pagan, Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of ultimate reality to make a monotheistic point clearer. It seems that the idea of G.o.d is remarkably close to ideas in religions that developed quite independently. Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of G.o.d, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human mind and the nature of our aspiration. Despite the secular tenor of much Western society, the idea of G.o.d still affects the lives of millions of people. Recent surveys have shown that ninety-nine per cent of Americans say that they believe in G.o.d: the question is which 'G.o.d' of the many on offer do they subscribe to?

Theology often comes across as dull and abstract but the history of G.o.d has been pa.s.sionate and intense. Unlike some other conceptions of the ultimate, it was originally attended by agonising struggle and stress. The prophets of Israel experienced their G.o.d as a physical pain that wrenched their every limb and filled them with rage and elation. The reality that they called G.o.d was often experienced by monotheists in a state of extremity: we shall read of mountain tops, darkness, desolation, crucifixion and terror. The Western experience of G.o.d seemed particularly traumatic. What was the reason for this inherent strain? Other monotheists spoke of light and transfiguration. They used very daring imagery to express the complexity of the reality they experienced, which went far beyond the orthodox theology. There has recently been a revived interest in mythology, which may indicate a widespread desire for a more imaginative expression of religious truth. The work of the late American scholar Joseph Campbell has become extremely popular: he has explored the perennial mythology of mankind, linking ancient myths with those still current in traditional societies, is often a.s.sumed that the three G.o.d-religions are devoid of mythology and poetic symbolism. Yet, although monotheists originally rejected the myths of their pagan neighbours, these often crept back into the faith at a later date. Mystics have seen G.o.d incarnated a woman, for example. Others reverently speak of G.o.d's s.e.xuality and have introduced a female element into the divine.

This brings me to a difficult point. Because this G.o.d began as a specifically male deity, monotheists have usually referred to it as 'he'. In recent years, feminists have understandably objected to this. Since I shall be recording the thoughts and insights of people who called G.o.d 'he', I have used the conventional masculine terminology, except when 'it' has been more appropriate. Yet it is perhaps worth mentioning that the masculine tenor of G.o.d-talk is particularly problematic in English. In Hebrew, Arabic and French, however, grammatical gender gives theological discourse a sort of s.e.xual counterpoint and dialectic, which provides a balance that is often lacking in English. Thus in Arabic al-Lah (the supreme name for G.o.d) is grammatically masculine, but the word for the divine and inscrutable essence of G.o.d - al-Dhat - is feminine.

All talk about G.o.d staggers under impossible difficulties. Yet monotheists have all been very positive about language at the same time as they have denied its capacity to express the transcendent reality. The G.o.d of Jews, Christians and Muslims is a G.o.d who -in some sense - speaks. His Word is crucial in all three faiths. The Word of G.o.d has shaped the history of our culture. We have to decide whether the word 'G.o.d' has any meaning for us today.

Note: Since I am looking at the history of G.o.d from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim perspective, the terms 'BC' and 'AD', which are conventionally used in the West, are not appropriate. I have therefore had recourse to the alternatives 'BCE' (Before the Common Era) and 'CE' (Common Era).

1 - In the Beginning.

In the beginning, human beings created a G.o.d who was the First Cause of all things and Ruler of heaven and earth. He was not represented by images and had no temple or priests in his service. He was too exalted for an inadequate human cult. Gradually he faded from the consciousness of his people. He had become so remote that they decided that they did not want him any more. Eventually he was said to have disappeared.

That, at least, is one theory, popularised by Father Wilhelm Schmidt in The Origin of the Idea of G.o.d The Origin of the Idea of G.o.d, first published in 1912. Schmidt suggested that there had been a primitive monotheism before men and women had started to wors.h.i.+p a number of G.o.ds. Originally they had acknowledged only one Supreme Deity, who had created the world and governed human affairs from afar. Belief in such a High G.o.d (sometimes called the Sky G.o.d, since he is a.s.sociated with the heavens) is still a feature of the religious life in many indigenous African tribes. They yearn towards G.o.d in prayer; believe that he is watching over them and will punish wrong-doing. Yet he is strangely absent from their daily lives: he has no special cult and is never depicted in effigy. The tribesmen say that he is inexpressible and cannot be contaminated by the world of men. Some people say that he has 'gone away'. Anthropologists suggest that this G.o.d has become so distant and exalted that he has in effect been replaced by lesser spirits and more accessible G.o.ds. So too, Schmidt's theory goes, in ancient times, the High G.o.d was replaced by the more attractive G.o.ds of the Pagan pantheons. In the beginning, therefore, there was One G.o.d. If there is so, then monotheism was one of the earliest ideas evolved by human beings to explain the mystery and tragedy of life. It also indicates some of the problems that such a deity might have to face.

It is impossible to prove this one way or the other. There have been many theories about the origin of religion. Yet it seems that creating G.o.ds is something that human beings have always done. When one religious idea ceases to work for them, it is simply replaced. These ideas disappear quietly, like the Sky G.o.d, with no great fanfare. In our own day, many people would say that the G.o.d wors.h.i.+pped for centuries by Jews, Christians and Muslims has become as remote as the Sky G.o.d. Some have actually claimed that he has died. Certainly he seems to be disappearing from the lives of an increasing number of people, especially in Western Europe. They speak of a 'G.o.d-shaped hole' in their consciousness where he used to be, because, irrelevant though he may seem in certain quarters, he has played a crucial role in our history and has been one of the greatest human ideas of all time. To understand what we are losing - if, that is, he really is disappearing - we need to see what people were doing when they began to wors.h.i.+p this G.o.d, what he meant and how he was conceived. To do that we need to go back to the ancient world of the Middle East where the idea of our G.o.d gradually emerged about 14,000 years ago.

One of the reasons why religion seems irrelevant today is that many of us no longer have the sense that we are surrounded by the unseen. Our scientific culture educates us to focus our attention on the physical and material world in front of us. This method of looking at the world has achieved great results. One of its consequences, however, is that we have, as it were, edited out the sense of the 'spiritual' or the 'holy' which pervades the lives of people in more traditional societies at every level and which was once an essential component of our human experience of the world. In the South Sea Islands, they call this mysterious force mana mana; others experience it as a presence or spirit; sometimes it has been felt as an impersonal power, like a form of radioactivity or electricity. It was believed to reside in the tribal chief, in plants, rocks or animals. The Latins experienced numina numina (spirits) in sacred groves; Arabs felt that the landscape was populated by the jinn. Naturally people wanted to get in touch with this reality and make it work for them, but they also simply wanted to admire it. When they personalise the unseen forces and made them G.o.ds, a.s.sociated with the wind, sun, sea and stars but possessing human characteristics, they were expressing their sense of affinity with the unseen and with the world around them. (spirits) in sacred groves; Arabs felt that the landscape was populated by the jinn. Naturally people wanted to get in touch with this reality and make it work for them, but they also simply wanted to admire it. When they personalise the unseen forces and made them G.o.ds, a.s.sociated with the wind, sun, sea and stars but possessing human characteristics, they were expressing their sense of affinity with the unseen and with the world around them.

Rudolf Otto, the German historian of religion who published his important book The Idea of the Holy The Idea of the Holy in 1917, believed that this sense of the 'numinous' was basic to religion. It preceded any desire to explain the origin of the world or find a basis for ethical behaviour. The numinous power was sensed by human beings in different ways -sometimes it inspired wild, baccha.n.a.lian excitement; sometimes a deep calm; sometimes people felt dread, awe and humility in the presence of the mysterious force inherent in every aspect of life. When people began to devise their myths and wors.h.i.+p their G.o.ds, they were not seeking to find a literal explanation for natural phenomena. The symbolic stories, cave paintings and carvings were an attempt to express their wonder and to link this pervasive mystery with their own lives; indeed, poets, artists and musicians are often impelled by a similar desire today. In the Palaeolithic period, for example, when agriculture was developing, the cult of the Mother G.o.ddess expressed a sense that the fertility which was transforming human life was actually sacred. Artists carved those statues depicting her as a naked, pregnant woman which archaeologists have found all over Europe, the Middle East and India. The Great Mother remained imaginatively important for centuries. Like the old Sky G.o.d, she was absorbed into later pantheons and took her place alongside the older deities. She was usually one of the most powerful of the G.o.ds, certainly more powerful than the Sky G.o.d, who remained a rather shadowy figure. She was called Inana in ancient Sumeria, Ishtar in Babylon, Anat in Canaan, Isis in Egypt and Aphrodite in Greece, and remarkably similar stories were devised in all these cultures to express her role in the spiritual lives of the people. These myths were not intended to be taken literally but were metaphorical attempts to describe a reality that was too complex and elusive to express in any other way. These dramatic and evocative stories of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses helped people to articulate their sense of the powerful but unseen forces that surrounded them. in 1917, believed that this sense of the 'numinous' was basic to religion. It preceded any desire to explain the origin of the world or find a basis for ethical behaviour. The numinous power was sensed by human beings in different ways -sometimes it inspired wild, baccha.n.a.lian excitement; sometimes a deep calm; sometimes people felt dread, awe and humility in the presence of the mysterious force inherent in every aspect of life. When people began to devise their myths and wors.h.i.+p their G.o.ds, they were not seeking to find a literal explanation for natural phenomena. The symbolic stories, cave paintings and carvings were an attempt to express their wonder and to link this pervasive mystery with their own lives; indeed, poets, artists and musicians are often impelled by a similar desire today. In the Palaeolithic period, for example, when agriculture was developing, the cult of the Mother G.o.ddess expressed a sense that the fertility which was transforming human life was actually sacred. Artists carved those statues depicting her as a naked, pregnant woman which archaeologists have found all over Europe, the Middle East and India. The Great Mother remained imaginatively important for centuries. Like the old Sky G.o.d, she was absorbed into later pantheons and took her place alongside the older deities. She was usually one of the most powerful of the G.o.ds, certainly more powerful than the Sky G.o.d, who remained a rather shadowy figure. She was called Inana in ancient Sumeria, Ishtar in Babylon, Anat in Canaan, Isis in Egypt and Aphrodite in Greece, and remarkably similar stories were devised in all these cultures to express her role in the spiritual lives of the people. These myths were not intended to be taken literally but were metaphorical attempts to describe a reality that was too complex and elusive to express in any other way. These dramatic and evocative stories of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses helped people to articulate their sense of the powerful but unseen forces that surrounded them.

Indeed, it seems that in the ancient world people believed that it was only by partic.i.p.ating in this divine life that they would become truly human. Earthly life was obviously fragile and overshadowed by mortality, but if men and women imitated the actions of the G.o.ds they would share to some degree their greater power and effectiveness. Thus it was said that the G.o.ds had shown men how to build their cities and temples, which were mere copies of their own homes in the divine realm. The sacred world of the G.o.ds - as recounted in myth - was not just an ideal towards which men and women should aspire but was the prototype of human existence; it was the original pattern or the archetype on which our life here below had been modelled. Everything on earth was thus believed to be a replica of something in the divine world, a perception that informed the mythology, ritual and social organisation of most of the cultures of antiquity and continues to influence more traditional societies in our own day. {1} In ancient Iran, for example, every single person or object in the mundane world (getik) was held to have its counterpart in the archetypal world of sacred reality (menok). This is a perspective that is difficult for us to appreciate in the modern world, since we see autonomy and independence as supreme human values. Yet the famous tag post coitum omne animal tristis est still expresses a common experience: after an intense and eagerly antic.i.p.ated moment, we often feel that we have missed something greater that remains just beyond our grasp. The imitation of a G.o.d is still an important religious notion: resting on the Sabbath or was.h.i.+ng somebody's feet on Maundy Thursday - actions that are meaningless in themselves - are now significant and sacred because people believe that they were once performed by G.o.d.

A similar spirituality had characterised the ancient world of Mesopotamia. The Tigris-Euphrates valley, in what is now Iraq, had been inhabited as early as 4000 BCE by the people known as the Sumerians who had established one of the first great cultures of the Oik.u.mene (the civilised world). In their cities of Ur, Erech and Kish, the Sumerians devised their cuneiform script, built the extraordinary temple-towers called ziggurats and evolved an impressive law, literature and mythology. Not long afterwards the region was invaded by the Semitic Akkadians, who had adopted the language and culture of Sumer. Later still, in about 2000 BCE, the Amorites had conquered this Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation and made Babylon their capital. Finally, some 500 years later, the a.s.syrians had settled in nearby Ashur and eventually conquered Babylon itself during the eighth century BCE. This Babylonian tradition also affected the mythology and religion of Canaan, which would become the Promised Land of the ancient Israelites. Like other people in the ancient world, the Babylonians attributed their cultural achievements to the G.o.ds, who had revealed their own lifestyle to their mythical ancestors. Thus Babylon itself was supposed to be an image of heaven, with each one of its temples a replica of a celestial palace. This link with the divine world was celebrated and perpetuated annually in the great New Year Festival, which had been firmly established by the seventeenth century BCE. Celebrated in the holy city of Babylon during the month of Nisan - our April - the Festival solemnly enthroned the king and established his reign for another year. Yet this political stability could only endure in so far as it partic.i.p.ated in the more enduring and effective government of the G.o.ds, who had brought order out of primordial chaos when they had created the world. The eleven sacred days of the Festival thus projected the partic.i.p.ants outside profane time into the sacred and eternal world of the G.o.ds by means of ritual gestures. A scapegoat was killed to cancel the old, dying year; the public humiliation of the king and the enthronement of a carnival king in his place re-produced the original chaos; a mock-battle re-enacted the struggle of the G.o.ds against the forces of destruction.

These symbolic actions thus had a sacramental value; they enabled the people of Babylon to immerse themselves in the sacred power or mana on which their own great civilisation depended. Culture was felt to be a fragile achievement, which could always fall prey to the forces of disorder and disintegration. On the afternoon of the fourth day of Festival, priests and choristers filed into the Holy of Holies to recite the Enuma Elish, the epic poem which celebrated the victory of the G.o.ds over chaos. The story was not a factual account of the physical gins of life upon earth but was a deliberately symbolic attempt to suggest a great mystery and to release its sacred power. A literal account of creation was impossible, since n.o.body had been present at these unimaginable events: myth and symbol were thus the only suitable way of describing them. A brief look at the Enuma Elish gives us some insight into the spirituality which gave birth to our own Creator G.o.d centuries later. Even though the biblical and Koranic account of creation would ultimately take a very different form, these strange myths never entirely disappeared but would re-enter the history of G.o.d at a much later date, clothed in a monotheistic idiom. The story begins with the creation of the G.o.ds themselves - a theme which, as we shall see, would be very important in Jewish and Muslim mysticism. In the beginning, said the Enuma Elish, the G.o.ds emerged two by two from a formless, watery waste - a substance which was itself divine. In Babylonian myth - as later in the Bible - there was no creation out of nothing, an idea that was alien to the ancient world. Before either the G.o.ds or human beings existed, this sacred raw material had existed from all eternity. When the Babylonians tried to imagine this primordial divine stuff, they thought that it must have been similar to the swampy wasteland of Mesopotamia, where floods constantly threatened to wipe out the frail works of men. In the Enuma Elish, chaos is not a fiery, seething ma.s.s, therefore, but a sloppy mess where everything lacks boundary, definition and ident.i.ty: When sweet and bitter mingled together, no reed was plaited, no rushes muddied the water, the G.o.ds were nameless, natureless, futureless. {2} {2} Then three G.o.ds did emerge from the primal wasteland: Apsu (identified with the sweet waters of the rivers), his wife Tiamat (the salty sea) and Mummu, the Womb of chaos. Yet these G.o.ds were, so to speak, an early, inferior model which needed improvement. The names 'Apsu' and 'Tiamat' can be translated 'abyss', 'void' or 'bottomless gulf. They share the shapeless inertia of the original formlessness and had not yet achieved a clear ident.i.ty.

Consequently, a succession of other G.o.ds emerged from them in a process known as emanation, which would become very important in the history of our own G.o.d. The new G.o.ds emerged, one from the other, in pairs, each of which had acquired a greater definition than the last as the divine evolution progressed. First came Lahmu and Lahamn (their names mean 'silt': water and earth are still mixed together). Next came Ansher and Kishar, identified respectively with the horizons of sky and sea. Then Anu (the heavens) and Ea (the earth) arrived and seemed to complete the process. The divine world had sky, rivers and earth, distinct and separate from one another. But creation had only just begun: the forces of chaos and disintegration could only be held at bay by means of a painful and incessant struggle. The younger, dynamic G.o.ds rose up against their parents but even though Ea was able to overpower Apsu and Mummu, he could make no headway against Tiamat, who produced a whole brood of misshapen monsters to fight on her behalf. Fortunately Ea had a wonderful child of his own: Marduk, the Sun G.o.d, the most perfect specimen of the divine line. At a meeting of the Great a.s.sembly of G.o.ds, Marduk promised to fight Tiamat on condition that he became their ruler. Yet he only managed to slay Tiamat with great difficulty and after a long, dangerous battle. In this myth, creativity is a struggle, achieved laboriously against overwhelming odds.

Eventually, however, Marduk stood over Tiamat's vast corpse and decided to create a new world: he split her body in two to form the arch of the sky and the world of men; next he devised the laws that would keep everything in its appointed place. Order must be achieved. Yet the victory was not complete. It had to be re-established, by means of a special liturgy, year after year. Consequently the G.o.ds met at Babylon, the centre of the new earth, and built a temple where the celestial rites could be performed. The result was the great ziggurat in honour of Marduk, 'the earthly temple, symbol of infinite heaven'. When it was completed, Marduk took his seat at the summit and the G.o.ds cried aloud: 'This is Babylon, dear city of the G.o.d, your beloved home!' Then they performed the liturgy 'from which the universe receives its structure, the hidden world is made plain and the G.o.ds a.s.signed their places in the universe'. {3} These laws and rituals are binding upon everybody; even the G.o.ds must observe them to ensure the survival of creation. The myth expresses the inner meaning of civilisation, as the Babylonians saw it. They knew perfectly well that their own ancestors had built the ziggurat but the story of the Enuma Elish articulated their belief that their creative enterprise could only endure if it partook of the power of the divine. The liturgy they celebrated at the New Year had been devised before human beings had come into existence: it was written into the very nature of things to which even the G.o.ds had to submit. The myth also expressed their conviction that Babylon was a sacred place, the centre of the world and the home of the G.o.ds - a notion that was crucial in almost all the religious systems of antiquity. The idea of a holy city, where men and women felt that they were closely in touch with sacred power, the source of all being and efficacy, would be important in all three of the monotheistic religions of our own G.o.d.

Finally, almost as an afterthought, Marduk created humanity. He seized Kingu (the oafish consort of Tiamat, created by her after the defeat of Apsu), slew him and shaped the first man by mixing the divine blood with the dust. The G.o.ds watched in astonishment and admiration. There is, however, some humour in this mythical account of the origin of humanity, which is by no means the pinnacle of creation but derives from one of the most stupid and ineffectual of the G.o.ds. But the story made another important point. The first man had been created from the substance of a G.o.d: he therefore shared the divine nature, in however limited a way. There was no gulf between human beings and the G.o.ds. The natural world, men and women and the G.o.ds themselves all shared the same nature and derived from the same divine substance. The pagan vision was holistic. The G.o.ds were not shut off from the human race in a separate, ontological sphere: divinity was not essentially different from humanity. There was thus no need for a special revelation of the G.o.ds or for a divine law to descend to earth from on high. The G.o.ds and human beings shared the same predicament, the only difference being that the G.o.ds were more powerful and were immortal.

This holistic vision was not confined to the Middle East but was common in the ancient world. In the sixth century BCE, Pindar expressed the Greek version of this belief in his ode on the Olympic games: Single is the race, single Of men and G.o.ds; From a single mother we both draw breath.

But a difference of power in everything Keeps us apart; For one is as nothing, but the brazen sky Stays a fixed habituation for ever.

Yet we can in greatness of mind Or of body be like the Immortals.

Instead of seeing his athletes as on their own, each striving to achieve his personal best, Pindar sets them against the exploits of the G.o.ds, who were the pattern for all human achievement. Men were not slavishly imitating the G.o.ds as hopelessly distant beings but living up to the potential of their own essentially divine nature.

The myth of Marduk and Tiamat seems to have influenced the people of Canaan, who told a very similar story about Baal-Habad, the G.o.d of storm and fertility, who is often mentioned in extremely unflattering terms in the Bible. The story of Baal's battle with Yam-Nahar, the G.o.d of the seas and rivers, is told on tablets that date back to the fourteenth century BCE. Baal and Yam both lived with El, the Canaanite High G.o.d. At the Council of El, Yam demands that Baal be delivered up to him. With two magic weapons, Baal defeats Yam and is about to kill him when Asherah (El's wife and mother of the G.o.ds) pleads that it is dishonourable to slay a prisoner. Baal is ashamed and spares Yam, who represents the hostile aspect of the seas and rivers which constantly threaten to flood the earth, while Baal, the Storm G.o.d, makes the earth fertile. In another version of the myth, Baal slays the seven-headed dragon Lotan, who is called Leviathan in Hebrew. In almost all cultures, the dragon symbolises the latent, the unformed and the undifferentiated. Baal has thus halted the slide back to primal formlessness in a truly creative act and is rewarded by a beautiful palace built by the G.o.ds in his honour. In very early religion, therefore, creativity was seen as divine: we still use religious language to speak of creative 'inspiration' which shapes reality anew and brings fresh meaning to the world.

But Baal undergoes a reverse: he dies and has to descend to the world of Mot, the G.o.d of death and sterility. When he hears of his son's fate, the High G.o.d El comes down from his throne, puts on sackcloth and gashes his cheeks but he cannot redeem his son. It is Anat, Baal's lover and sister, who leaves the divine realm and goes in search of her twin soul, 'desiring him as a cow her calf or a ewe her lamb'. {5} When she finds his body, she makes a funeral feast in his honour, seizes Mot, cleaves him with her sword, winnows, burns and grinds him like corn before sowing him in the ground. Similar stories are told about the other great G.o.ddesses - Inana, Ishtar and Isis - who search for the dead G.o.d and bring new life to the soil. The victory of Anat, however, must be perpetuated year after year in ritual celebration. Later - we are not sure how, since our sources are incomplete - Baal is brought back to life and restored to Anat. This apotheosis of wholeness and harmony, symbolised by the union of the s.e.xes, was celebrated by means of ritual s.e.x in ancient Canaan. By imitating the G.o.ds in this way, men and women would share their struggle against sterility and ensure the creativity and fertility of the world. The death of a G.o.d, the quest of the G.o.ddess and the triumphant return to the divine sphere were constant religious themes in many cultures and would recur in the very different religion of the One G.o.d wors.h.i.+pped by Jews, Christians and Muslims.

This religion is attributed in the Bible to Abraham, who left Ur and eventually settled in Canaan some time between the twentieth and nineteenth centuries BCE. We have no contemporary record of Abraham but scholars think that he may have been one of the wandering chieftains who had led their people from Mesopotamia towards the Mediterranean at the end of the third millennium BCE. These wanderers, some of whom are called Abiru, Apiru or Habiru in Mesopotamian and Egyptian sources, spoke West Semitic languages, of which Hebrew is one. They were not regular desert nomads like the Bedouin, who migrated with their flocks according to the cycle of the seasons, but were more difficult to cla.s.sify and, as such, were frequently in conflict with the conservative authorities. Their cultural status was usually superior to the desert folk. Some served as mercenaries, others became government employees, others worked as merchants, servants or tinkers. Some became rich and might then try to acquire land and settle down. The stories about Abraham in the book of Genesis show him serving the King of Sodom as a mercenary and describe his frequent conflicts with the authorities of Canaan and its environs. Eventually, when his wife Sarah died, Abraham bought land in Hebron, now on the West Bank.

The Genesis account of Abraham and his immediate descendants may indicate that there were three main waves of early Hebrew settlement in Canaan, the modern Israel. One was a.s.sociated with Abraham and Hebron and took place in about 1850 BCE. A second wave of immigration was linked with Abraham's grandson Jacob, who was renamed Israel ('May G.o.d show his strength!'); he settled in Shechem, which is now the Arab town of Nablus on the West Bank. The Bible tells us that Jacob's sons, who became the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel, emigrated to Egypt during a severe famine in Canaan. The third wave of Hebrew settlement occurred in about 1200 BCE when tribes who claimed to be descendants of Abraham, arrived in Canaan from Egypt. They said that they had been enslaved by the Egyptians but had been liberated by a deity called Yahweh, who was the G.o.d of their leader Moses. After they had forced their way into Canaan, they allied themselves with the Hebrews there and became known as the people of Israel. The Bible makes it clear that the people we know as the ancient Israelites were a confederation of various ethnic groups, bound princ.i.p.ally together by their loyalty to Yahweh, the G.o.d of Moses. The biblical account was written down centuries later, however, in about the eighth century BCE, though it certainly drew on earlier narrative sources. During the nineteenth century, some German biblical scholars developed a critical method which discerned four different sources in the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

These were later collated into the final text of what we know as the Pentateuch during the fifth century BCE. This form criticism has come in for a good deal of harsh treatment but n.o.body has yet come up with a more satisfactory theory, which explains why there are two quite different accounts of key biblical events, such as the Creation or the Flood, and why the Bible sometimes contradicts itself. The two earliest biblical authors, whose work is found in Genesis and Exodus, were probably writing during the eighth century, though some would give them an earlier date. One is known as 'J' because he calls his G.o.d 'Yahweh', the other 'E' since he prefers to use the more formal divine tide 'Elohim'. By the eighth century, the Israelites had divided Canaan into two separate kingdoms. J was writing in the southern Kingdom of Judah, while E came from the northern Kingdom of Israel. (See Map p.8). We will discuss the two other sources of the Pentateuch - the Deuteronomist (D) and Priestly (P) accounts of the ancient history of Israel - in Chapter Two.

We shall see that in many respects both J and E shared the religious perspectives of their neighbours in the Middle East but their accounts do show that by the eighth century BCE, the Israelites were beginning to develop a distinct vision of their own. J, for example, starts his history of G.o.d with an account of the creation of the world which, compared with the Enuma Elish, is startlingly perfunctory: At the time when Yahweh G.o.d made earth and heaven, there was as yet no wild bush on the earth nor had any wild plant yet sprung up, for Yahweh G.o.d had not sent rain on the earth nor was there any man to till the soil. However, a flood was rising from the earth and watering all the surface of the soil. Yahweh G.o.d fas.h.i.+oned man (adam) of dust from the soil (adamah). Then he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and thus man became a living being. {6} {6} This was an entirely new departure. Instead of concentrating on the creation of the world and on the prehistoric period like his pagan contemporaries in Mesopotamia and Canaan, J is more interested in ordinary historical time. There would be no real interest in creation in Israel until the sixth century BCE, when the author whom we call 'P' wrote his majestic account in what is now the first chapter of Genesis. J is not absolutely clear that Yahweh is the sole creator of heaven and earth. Most noticeable, however, is J's perception of a certain distinction between man and the divine. Instead of being composed of the same divine stuff as his G.o.d, man (adam), as the pun indicates, belongs to the earth (adamah).

Unlike his pagan neighbours, J does not dismiss mundane history as profane, feeble and insubstantial compared with the sacred, primordial time of the G.o.ds. He hurries through the events of prehistory until he comes to the end of the mythical period, which includes such stories as the Flood and the Tower of Babel, and arrives at the start of the history of the people of Israel. This begins abruptly in Chapter Twelve when the man Abram, who will later be renamed Abraham ('Father of a Mult.i.tude'), is commanded by Yahweh to leave his family in Haran, in what is now eastern Turkey, and migrate to Canaan near the Mediterranean Sea. We have been told that his father Terah, a pagan, had already migrated westward with his family from Ur. Now Yahweh tells Abraham that he has a special destiny: he will become the father of a mighty nation that will one day be more numerous than the stars in the sky and one day his descendants will possess the land of Canaan as their own. J's account of the call of Abraham sets the tone for the future history of this G.o.d. In the ancient Middle East, the divine mana was experienced in ritual and myth. Marduk, Baal and Anat were not expected to involve themselves in the ordinary, profane lives of their wors.h.i.+ppers: their actions had been performed in sacred time. The G.o.d of Israel, however, made his power effective in current events in the real world. He was experienced as an imperative in the here and now. His first revelation of himself consists of a command: Abraham is to leave his people and travel to the land of Canaan.

But who is Yahweh? Did Abraham wors.h.i.+p the same G.o.d as Moses or did he know him by a different name? This would be a matter of prime importance to us today but the Bible seems curiously vague on the subject and gives conflicting answers to this question, J says that men had wors.h.i.+pped Yahweh ever since the time of Adam's grandson but in the sixth century, 'P' seems to suggest that the Israelites had never heard of Yahweh until he appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush. P makes Yahweh explain that he really was the same G.o.d as the G.o.d of Abraham, as though this were a rather controversial notion: he tells Moses that Abraham had called him 'El Shaddai' and did not know the divine name Yahweh. {7} The discrepancy does not seem to worry either the biblical writers or their editors unduly. J calls his G.o.d 'Yahweh' throughout: by the time he was writing, Yahweh was the G.o.d of Israel and that was all that mattered. Israelite religion was pragmatic and less concerned with the kind of speculative detail that would worry us. Yet we should not a.s.sume that either Abraham or Moses believed in their G.o.d as we do today. We are so familiar with the Bible story and the subsequent history of Israel that we tend to project our knowledge of later Jewish religion back on to these early historical personages. Accordingly, we a.s.sume that the three patriarchs of Israel - Abraham, his son Isaac and grandson Jacob - were monotheists who believed in only one G.o.d. This does not seem to have been the case. Indeed, it is probably more accurate to call these early Hebrews pagans who shared many of the religious beliefs of their neighbours in Canaan. They would certainly have believed in the existence of such deities as Marduk, Baal and Anat. They may not all have wors.h.i.+pped the same deity: it is possible that the G.o.d of Abraham, the 'Fear' or 'Kinsman' of Isaac and the 'Mighty One' of Jacob were three separate G.o.ds. {8} We can go further. It is highly likely that Abraham's G.o.d was El, the High G.o.d of Canaan. The deity introduces himself to Abraham as El Shaddai (El of the Mountain), which was one of El's traditional tides. {9} Elsewhere he is called El Elyon (The Most High G.o.d) or El of Bethel. The name of the Canaanite High G.o.d is preserved in such Hebrew names as Isra-El or Ishma-El. They experienced him in ways that would not have been unfamiliar to the pagans of the Middle East. We shall see that centuries later Israelites found the mana or 'holiness' of Yahweh a terrifying experience. On Mount Sinai, for example, he would appear to Moses in the midst of an awe-inspiring volcanic eruption and the Israelites had to keep their distance. In comparison, Abraham's G.o.d El is a very mild deity. He appears to Abraham as a friend and sometimes even a.s.sumes human form. This type of divine apparition, known as an epiphany, was quite common in the pagan world of antiquity. Even though in general the G.o.ds were not expected to intervene directly in the lives of mortal men and women, certain privileged individuals in mythical times had encountered their G.o.ds face to face. The Iliad is full of such epiphanies. The G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses appear to both Greeks and Trojans in dreams, when the boundary between the human and divine worlds was believed to be lowered. At the very end of the Iliad, Priam is guided to the Greek s.h.i.+ps by a charming young man who finally reveals himself as Hermes. {10} When the Greeks looked back to the golden age of their heroes, they felt that they had been closely in touch with the G.o.ds, who were, after all, of the same nature as human beings. These stories of epiphanies expressed the holistic pagan vision: when the divine was not essentially distinct from either nature or humanity, it could be experienced without a great fanfare. The world was full of G.o.ds, who could be perceived unexpectedly at any time, around any corner or in the person of a pa.s.sing stranger. It seems that ordinary folk may have believed that such divine encounters were possible in their own lives: this may explain the strange story in the Acts of the Apostles when, as late as the first century CE, the apostle Paul and his disciple Barnabas were mistaken for Zeus and Hermes by the people of Lystra in what is now Turkey."

In much the same way, when the Israelites looked back to their own golden age, they saw Abraham, Isaac and Jacob living on familiar terms with their G.o.d. El gives them friendly advice, like any sheikh or chieftain: he guides their wanderings, tells them whom to marry and speaks to them in dreams. Occasionally they seem to see him in human form - an idea that would later be anathema to the Israelites. In Chapter Eighteen of Genesis, J tells us that G.o.d appeared to Abraham by the oak tree of Mamre, near Hebron. Abraham had looked up and noticed three strangers approaching his tent during the hottest part of the day. With typical Middle Eastern courtesy, he insisted that they sit down and rest while he hurried to prepare food for them. In the course of conversation, it transpired, quite naturally, that one of these men was none other than his G.o.d, whom J always calls 'Yahweh'. The other two men turn out to be angels. n.o.body seems particularly surprised by this revelation. By the time that J was writing in the eighth century BCE, no Israelite would have expected to 'see' G.o.d in this way: most would have found it a shocking notion. J's contemporary, 'E', finds the old stories about the patriarchs' intimacy with G.o.d unseemly: when E tells stories about Abraham's or Jacob's dealings with G.o.d, he prefers to distance the event and make the old legends less anthropomorphic. Thus he will say dial G.o.d speaks to Abraham through an angel. J, however, does not share this squeamishness and preserves the ancient flavour of these primitive epiphanies in his account.

Jacob also experienced a number of epiphanies. On one occasion, he had decided to return to Haran to find a wife among his relatives there. On the first leg of his journey, he slept at Luz near the Jordan valley, using a stone as a pillow. That night he dreamed of a ladder which stretched between earth and heaven: angels were going up and down between the realms of G.o.d and man. We cannot but be reminded of Marduk's ziggurat: on its summit, suspended as it were between heaven and earth, a man could meet his G.o.ds. At the top of his own ladder, Jacob dreamed that he saw El, who blessed him and repeated the promises that he had made to Abraham: Jacob's descendants would become a mighty nation and possess the land of Canaan. He also made a promise that made a significant impression on Jacob, as we shall see. Pagan religion was often territorial: a G.o.d only had jurisdiction in a particular area and it was always wise to wors.h.i.+p the local deities when you went abroad. But El promised Jacob that he would protect him when he left Canaan and wandered in a strange land: 'I am with you; I will keep you safe wherever you go.' {12} The story of this early epiphany shows that the High G.o.d of Canaan was beginning to acquire a more universal implication.

When he woke up, Jacob realised that he had unwittingly spent the night in a holy place where men could have converse with their G.o.ds: 'Truly Yahweh is in this place, and I never knew it!' J makes him say. He was filled with the wonder that often inspired pagans when they encountered the sacred power of the divine: 'How awe-inspiring this place is! This is nothing less than a house of G.o.d (beth-El); this is the gate of heaven." {3} He had instinctively expressed himself in the religious language of his time and culture: Babylon itself, the abode of the G.o.ds, was called 'Gate of the G.o.ds' (Bab-ili). Jacob decided to consecrate this holy ground in the traditional pagan manner of the country. He took the stone he had used as a pillow, upended it and sanctified it with a libation of oil. Henceforth the place would no longer be called Luz but Beth-El, the House of El. Standing stones were a common feature of Canaanite fertility cults, which, we shall see, flourished at Beth-El until the eighth century BCE. Although later Israelites vigorously condemned this type of religion, the pagan sanctuary of Beth-El was a.s.sociated in early legend with Jacob and his G.o.d.

Before he left Beth-El, Jacob had decided to make the G.o.d he had encountered there his elohim: this was a technical term, signifying everything that the G.o.ds could mean for men and women. Jacob had decided that if El (or Yahweh, as J calls him) could really look after him in Haran, he was particularly effective. He struck a bargain: in return for El's special protection, Jacob would make him his elohim, the only G.o.d who counted. Israelite belief in G.o.d was deeply pragmatic. Abraham and Jacob both put their faith in El because he worked for them: they did not sit down and prove that he existed; El was not a philosophical abstraction. In the ancient world, mana was a self-evident fact of life and a G.o.d proved his worth if he could transmit this effectively. This pragmatism would always be a factor in the history of G.o.d. People would continue to adopt a particular conception of the divine because it worked for them, not because it was scientifically or philosophically sound.

Years later Jacob returned from Haran with his wives and family. As he re-entered the land of Canaan, he experienced another strange epiphany. At the ford of Jabbok on the West Bank, he met a stranger who wrestled with him all night. At daybreak, like most spiritual beings, his opponent said that he had to leave but Jacob held on to him: he would not let him go until he had revealed his name. In the ancient world, knowing somebody's name gave you a certain power over him and the stranger seemed reluctant to reveal this piece of information. As the strange encounter developed, Jacob became aware that his opponent had been none other than El himself: Jacob then made this request, 'I beg you, tell me your name.' But he replied, 'Why do you ask my name?' and he blessed him there. Jacob named the place Peni-El [El's Face] 'Because I have seen El face to face,' he said, 'and I have survived." {4} {4} The spirit of this epiphany is closer to the spirit of the Iliad than to later Jewish monotheism, when such intimate contact with the divine would have seemed a blasphemous notion.

Yet even though these early tales show the patriarchs encountering their G.o.d in much the same way as their pagan contemporaries, they do introduce a new category of religious experience. Throughout the Bible, Abraham is called a man of 'faith'. Today we tend to define faith as an intellectual a.s.sent to a creed but, as we have seen, the biblical writers did not view faith in G.o.d as an abstract or metaphysical belief. When they praise the 'faith' of Abraham, they are not commending his orthodoxy (the acceptance of a correct theological opinion about G.o.d) but his trust, in rather the same way as when we say that we have faith in a person or an ideal. In the Bible, Abraham is a man of faith because he trusted that G.o.d would make good his promises, even though they seemed absurd. How could Abraham be the father of a great nation when his wife Sarah was barren? Indeed, the very idea that she could have a child was so ridiculous - eventually Sarah had pa.s.sed the menopause - that when they heard this promise both Sarah and Abraham burst out laughing. When, against all the odds, their son is finally born, they call him Isaac, a name that may mean 'laughter'. The joke turns sour, however, when G.o.d makes an appalling demand: Abraham must sacrifice his only son to him.

Human sacrifice was common in the pagan world. It was cruel but had a logic and rationale. The first child was often believed to be the offspring of a G.o.d, who had impregnated the mother in an act of droit de seigneur. In begetting the child, the G.o.d's energy had been depleted, so to replenish this and to ensure the circulation of all the available mana, the first-born was returned to its divine parent. The case of Isaac was quite different, however. Isaac had been a gift of G.o.d but not his natural son. There was no reason for the sacrifice, no need to replenish the divine energy. Indeed, the sacrifice would make a nonsense of Abraham's entire life, which had been based on the promise that he would be the father of a great nation. This G.o.d was already beginning to be conceived differently from most other deities in the ancient world. He did not share the human predicament; he did not require an input of energy from men and women. He was in a different league and could make whatever demands he chose. Abraham decided to trust his G.o.d. He and Isaac set off on a three-day journey to the Mount of Moriah, which would later be the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. Isaac, who knew nothing of the divine command, even had to carry the wood for his own holocaust. It was not until the very last moment, when Abraham actually had the knife in his hand, that G.o.d relented and told him that it had only been a test. Abraham had proved himself worthy of becoming the father of a mighty nation, which would be as numerous as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the sea-sh.o.r.e.

Yet to modern ears, this is a horrible story: it depicts G.o.d as a despotic and capricious s.a.d.i.s.t and it is not surprising that many people today who have heard this tale as children reject such a deity. The myth of the Exodus from Egypt, when G.o.d led Moses and the children of Israel to freedom, is equally offensive to modern sensibilities. The story is well-known. Pharaoh was reluctant to let the people of Israel go, so to force his hand, G.o.d sent ten fearful plagues upon the people of Egypt. The Nile was turned to blood; the land ravaged with locusts and frogs; the whole country plunged into impenetrable darkness. Finally G.o.d unleashed the most terrible plague of all: he sent the Angel of Death to kill the first-born sons of all the Egyptians, while sparing the sons of the Hebrew slaves. Not surprisingly, Pharaoh decided to let the Israelites leave but later changed his mind and pursued them with his army. He caught up with them at the Sea of Reeds but G.o.d saved the Israelites by opening the sea and letting them cross dry-shod. When the Egyptians followed in their wake, he closed the waters and drowned the Pharaoh and his army.

This is a brutal, partial and murderous G.o.d: a G.o.d of war who would be known as Yahweh Sabaoth, the G.o.d of Armies. He is pa.s.sionately partisan, has little compa.s.sion for anyone but his own favourites and is simply a tribal deity. If Yahweh had remained such a savage G.o.d, the sooner he vanished, the better it would have been for everybody. The final myth of the Exodus, as it has come down to us in the Bible, is Dearly not meant to be a literal version of events. It would, however, have had a clear message for the people of the ancient Middle East, who were used to G.o.ds splitting the seas in half. Yet unlike Marduk and Baal, Yahweh was said to have divided a physical sea in the profane world of historical time. There is little attempt at realism. When the Israelites recounted the story of the Exodus, they were not as interested in historical accuracy as we would be today. Instead, they wanted to bring out the significance of the original event, whatever that may have been. Some modern scholars suggest that the Exodus story is a mythical rendering of a successful peasants' revolt against the suzerainty of Egypt and its allies in Canaan. {15} This would have been an extremely rare occurrence at the time and would have made an indelible impression on everybody involved. It would have been an extraordinary experience of the empowerment of the oppressed against the powerful and the mighty.

We shall see that Yahweh did not remain the cruel and violent G.o.d of the Exodus, even though the myth has been important in all three of the monotheistic religions. Surprising as it may seem, the Israelites would transform him beyond recognition into a symbo