Salvation Story. David R. Froemming

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I am lifting up these texts to show how the work of the reformers who write Deuteronomy are essentially dealing with the same problem of idolatry as earlier writers and that their editing of books at this time reveals that the Israelites were not a monotheistic religion in the united kingdom of Israel and Judah, nor even in Judah. It is not until after the fall of the Southern Kingdom in 587 BCE to the Babylonians that we begin to see the rise of monotheism and the belief in just one God. In his book The Hebrew Goddess, Raphael Patai tells how the Hebrew people could not abandon the Canaanite goddess Asherah, who was originally the consort of the Canaanite god El. Instead, the Israelites made Asherah the consort of Yahweh.38

      The goddess Asherah was connected to the belief that human sex and fertility were related to the fertility of the land. Thus the people engaged in sexual ritual practices and believed the practices had a bearing on the success of their produce from the land and trees. The reformers of Deuteronomy try to denounce the ritual practices centered around the goddess Asherah, but to no avail. Here is some of their editing in the books of 1 Kings and Isaiah, where they have inserted their condemning of Asherah. Here the translation is “pole,” but it is Asherah, a pole-like figurine of the fertility goddess.

      1 Kings 14:23 For they also built for themselves high places, pillars, and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree;

      Isaiah 17:8 they will not have regard for the altars, the work of their hands, and they will not look to what their own fingers have made, either the sacred poles or the altars of incense.

      Isaiah 27:9 Therefore by this the guilt of Jacob will be expiated, and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin: when he makes all the stones of the altars like chalkstones crushed to pieces, no sacred poles or incense altars will remain standing.

The reformers from the era of Deuteronomy reveal how religion and culture are intertwined and cannot be separated. Karen Armstrong makes this argument in her book titled Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. Armstrong argues that warfare was indispensable to the ruling class of all agrarian civilizations.39 Likewise, goddess worship was indispensable to agriculture. Thus we see in the biblical world that the copying of culture and ritual practice is stronger than any religious prohibitions. Sexual fertility rites centered on the goddess Asherah persisted among the Israelites all the way up to the Babylonian exile in 587 BCE, where we find the prophet Jeremiah still taking up the issue.

      Jeremiah 17:2 while their children remember their altars and their sacred poles, beside every green tree, and on the high hills,

It is a modern day misperception and misrepresentation of the bible that it is a morality book. For if it is, it failed miserably! I would argue that the violence and sex we see practiced in the bible are essentially religion/culture. And I agree with Rene Girard’s disciple Jean-Pierre Dupuy that what emerges in the God of scripture and Jesus Christ is essentially not religion, but rather “the end of religions.”40 Dupuy argues that Christianity is not a morality, but rather an epistemology that is revealing to us the source of our violence and striving to deprive it of its power over us.41

Dupuy points out how the power of human mimetic rivalry threatens our existence in such secular realms as economics, technology, nuclear deterrence, the electoral process, and genetic engineering. The ongoing polarized argument between religion and evolution has blinded us from seeing the human problem of mimesis beneath it all. The salvation story is not a morality lesson. The salvation story is the dynamic interplay between scripture and culture where both demand our interpretive skills and in doing so work upon us to uncover the game of human rivalry and violence so that we may live and not perish. Richard Dawkins is right about natural selection and evolution having no design and being blind.42 Yet Dupuy would add, “The future may have no need of us, but we very much need the future for it is what gives meaning to everything we do.”43

      The reformers of Deuteronomy give us a lesson in how moral claims have no power over the human rivalry within culture and religion. Something is needed beyond law and commandment to deliver our humanity from its violence. I maintain that it is the story, the creative living Word that transforms the vision of who we are in the eyes of a God who is becoming—a God who can transform our tragedy into life and, yes, even laughter.

38. Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 10–41.

39. Armstrong, Fields of Blood, 15.

40. Dupuy, The Mark of the Sacred, 93.

41. Ibid., 124.

42. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 9.

43. Dupuy, The Mark of the Sacred, 63.

      Genesis 39

      6 So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge; and, with him there, he had no concern for anything but the food that he ate. Now Joseph was handsome and good-looking. 7 And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” 8 But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Look, with me here, my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my hand. 9 He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” 10 And although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not consent to lie beside her or to be with her. 11 One day, however, when he went into the house to do his work, and while no one else was in the house, 12 she caught hold of his garment, saying, “Lie with me!” But he left his garment in her hand, and fled and ran outside. 13 When she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled outside, 14 she called out to the members of her household and said to them, “See, my husband has brought among us a Hebrew to insult us! He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice; 15 and when he heard me raise my voice and cry out, he left his garment beside me, and fled outside.” 16 Then she kept his garment by her until his master came home.

      The story of Joseph in Potiphar’s house represents the transformation of violent tragic Egyptian mythology into Hebrew comedy. Joseph was hated by his brothers on account of his dream telling and the robe his mother made especially for him (Genesis 37:1–8). His brothers sold him into slavery. They took Joseph’s robe, put animal blood on it, and told their father that a wild animal devoured him (Genesis 37:12–36). The above passage is where the story turns into comedy.

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