We need a currency exchange in Chattanooga

The “Tennessee Waltz” and “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” in the Philippines, the Chattanooga Restaurant and Coffee Bar in pre-Revolution Tehran, Iran, the Tennessee Café in Paris…these examples from an earlier article of mine are but a few of the name recognition Tennessee in general and Chattanooga in particular have worldwide.  Name recognition that can easily be parlayed into dollars from tourism, especially given the wide variety of attractions available in three main genre (natural scenic, historic, man-made) across the “Chattanooga Country”.

In the summer of 2011, university students from all over the world took part in a leadership training program at U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.  Two of them were friends of mine from Facebook.  Nurana and Aytan live in the Caucasus country of Azerbaijan, whose eastern border is the Caspian Sea. 

Formerly a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, aka Soviet Union) when that nation still existed, it is sometimes called North Azerbaijan in opposition to the provinces of Iran named Azerbaijan to the south.  Before that it had been part of the Russian Empire since the Shah of Iran from the Qajar dynasty surrendered it in the 1913 Treaty of Gulistan along with Daghestan and Eastern Georgia.

To meet my two friends in RT (“real time”), I would not have had to travel to Huntsville.  As part of their exposure to America, Nurana, Aytan, and the other students took a field trip here to Chattanooga, where they visited parts of the National Park and toured the Tennessee Aquarium, which impressed them very much, along with riding the Incline, sailing on the Southern Belle, and eating in one of the local restaurants.  However, I was 4358 miles away in Paris, France, at the time instead of here.  I did get messages from both of them on Facebook (and, if I remember correctly, talked to them on Skype briefly), though, raving about how much they loved the city and enjoyed their visit, especially the Aquarium.

Had my two friends not been part of that group, visiting all those attractions and amenities would have been very difficult for a simple reason: there is nowhere in the area for them to exchange money.  The one and only financial institution in the city that does any form of currency exchange is SunTrust Bank, but you have to have an account there AND even then it takes a ponderous TWO WEEKS to accomplish the exchange. 

This is not a situation which tells foreign tourists and other visitors that they are welcome here or that we are interested in their patronage of what we have to offer.  To cite another example, while taking up the offering as usher one Sunday at Christ Church, I encountered visitors from Belgium to family in the city who could only give euros because they had nowhere to change their money into dollars.  With a place for visiting upper management from Germany to easily change money without having to do so in transit, the managers at the Volkswagen plant might be more inclined to expand operations in the immediate vicinity, to cite yet another reason.

In short, without a money exchange Chattanooga is currently nothing more than a side trip to any foreign visitor to the United States here for tourism rather than a “final destination” and an inconvenience to foreign businesspersons seeking to start or expand ventures here.  Once we get such a facility, our city and the whole local region will likely see an increase in both areas.  In addition, I will finally be able to change over the euros I still have from my trip to Paris.

Israelite polytheism

Scholars have little doubt that the religion of the Hebrews developed out of the surrounding Canaanite religion, as did their culture and themselves.  To deny this is absurd and impossible if one is to be honest given the staggering amount of archaeological and literary evidence. 

Though the people of highland Canaan may have first been exposed to monotheism during the reign over Egypt of Pharoah Akenaten (1353-1336 BCE) when the New Kingdom dominated the southern Levant during the latter’s Late Bronze Age, the evidence in both cases suggests that the actual turn toward monotheism began after the conquest by Iran, home of the monotheistic religion of Zarathustra.

Scholarly consensus holds that the Hebrews went from polytheism (“thou shalt have other gods including me”) to henotheism (“thou shalt have no other gods before/above me”) to monolatry (“thou shalt worship no god but me”) to monotheism (“there are no other gods but me.”).

Since it was among the inhabitants of Yehud (or Judah/Judea) that the claims for everlasting exclusive monotheism have been strongest and loudest while in Samerina (Samaria) the religion was widely known to be ecletic, inclusive, and syncretic, most of our attention will be focused on evidence from the southern of the two Hebrew lands.

Literary evidence

A great deal of literary evidence for the polytheism of the Hebrews comes from the Tanakh/Old Testament itself.  Much of what those scriptures demonstrate involves the struggle of the clerical hierarchy of the cult of the Hebrews’ national god, Yahweh, for preeminence among Canaanite deities, then for dominance, then for singularity, and, ultimately, for universality.  Which made sense, because their own fortunes followed that of Yahweh.

The following quotes are all from the King James Version not because I prefer it, I do not, but because there is no copyright upon it.  Both the translators of the Septuagint and the Masoretes attempted to airbrush out surviving remnants of polytheism from the Hebrew scriptures they found embarrassing, but they usually targeted different passages.  This list of quotes is not all-inclusive; there are numerous examples strewn throughout the myriad texts which make up the Tanakh/Old Testament.

Deuteronomy 32:8

Woven into the farewell speech of the mythological Moses to the children of Israel is this bit:

When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

That’s the English translation of the corrupted Masoretic text.

The older text before its airbrushing by the Masoretes read (according to the Septuagint version, the Samaritan Torah, and fragments of Deuteronomy found as Qumran):

When Elyon divided the nations, he separated the sons of Adam according to the number of the sons of El.

Elyon was an epithet of El, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon before he abdicated in favor of Ba’al Hadad, who then bore the epithet.  Here, the father of the gods is dividing humanity into its seventy nations (which there were, according to Canaanite as well as “Hebrew” legend) and giving each one to one of the seventy “sons of El”.  Israel, or the Hebrews, was given to Yam (aka Yaw/Yahu/Yahuweh/Yahweh) just as Edom was given to Qaws, Moab to Chemosh, Ammon to Milcom, Tyre to Melqart, Sidon to Eshmun, Byblos to El, Shechem to Resheph, Jerusalem to Shalim, Philistia to Dagon, Carthage to Hammon, and the fifty-nine other pairs, and later the Nabateans to Dushara.

The theme of seventy nations survives today in the post-agricultural mythology surrounding the Jewish festival of weeks, or Shavuot (Pentecost), which now commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai/Horeb/Paran in the languages of the seventy nations.  Similarly, in the rebooted Christian version of Pentecost the preaching of the apostles to those gathered was said to be heard in seventy languages.

Genesis 1:26

Toward the very beginning of the Bible, in its first related version of Creation, we find this: 

And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Here the word God is Elohim, plural for El, and is one of the many occasions in which the verbs are for a plural subject rather than singular and therefore the subject nouns also.  In modern English this might read: And the Elohim (gods) said [to each other], “Let us make humanity in our image, to look like us.  Give them have dominion of the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over cattle, over all the Earth and every animals that lives upon it.”

Genesis 6:1-4

An interesting passage that both the Masoretes and the Septuagint translators either failed to airbrush or didn’t know how is found at:

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

Giants of myth and legend were often said to be the result of unions between divine beings and human females.  As I mentioned, the “sons of El” is unchanged from the original, leaving only the question of whether it was all seventy or just some of them.

Genesis 49:25-26

Here is a direct reference to Asherah, not by name but by the symbols which were universal assigned to her throughout the Levant:

Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb: The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren.

Her symbols are the breasts and the womb mentioned above, Asherah being mother not only of the gods but of the human race.

Exodus 20:3

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

If there were no other gods, why would Yahweh worry about being displaced?

Exodus 22:28

 Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people.

Clearly the Hebrew word here is Elohim, which the KJV and other translators render as “gods” rather than “God”.  Others, as you might expect, follow the examples of the Masoretes and corrupt this to the singular and capital, but others, unable to get themselves past what is to them an obviously plural noun, mistranslate the words as “judges”.  This is clearly an acceptance that there are more gods than Yahweh and that all of them should be respected.

Exodus 23:32

Thou shalt make no covenant with them [the people of Canaan], nor with their gods.

There we have another explicit recognition of the existence of other Gods.

Judges 11:24

Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess.

Here is yet another recognition of other gods, and not only that but that other gods had assigned peoples and lands.  Only in this case, the writer got gods and peoples mixed up, because Chemosh is the god of Moab while the god of Ammon, to whom Jephthah is speaking is Milcom.

Psalm 82

This psalm is an adaptation of a story in the Canaanite Baal Cycle:

God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.  How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.  Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.  Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.  They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.  I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.  But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.  Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.

In the Baal story, Baal (whose proper name is Hadad) comes before the court of El, surnamed Elyon (the Most High), in the presence of all the other gods to accuse them of injustice.  In the Psalm, Yahweh plays the role formerly played by Hadad, son of Dagon; El appears in the psalm as “the mighty”. 

The question in the story where Hadad plays the central role was whether he was qualified to replace his father El as Elyon, or king of the gods.  Hadad’s challenger in the earlier Canaanite story was Yam, or Yaw, an early form of Yahweh.  Like Yahweh in Psalm 82, Hadad played the role of both prosecutor and judge, an arrangement I’m quite sure a lot of district attorneys in America would salivate over.  Being both prosecutor and judge, Baal Hadad quite naturally won and became the supreme deity.

Yaw, who was one of the sons of El, still had his day, however.  Hadad later battled Mot and lost, dying in the process.  El was finally able to put his son on the throne, where he gained the title and additional name Judge Nahar.

Job 1:6

Here we find a bit different view of the heavenly court:

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.

Here is another explicit mention of the “sons of El” along with perhaps the earliest mention of the character known as Satan.  In the opening scenes of Job, Satan plays the first half of the role played originally by Hadad and in the later adaptation by Yahweh, that of prosecutor.  Clearly he is a member of the heavenly court, and an important one.  Indeed, the Talmud teaches that he (Satan) is God’s right hand and most loyal servant.

The following three passages expand Satan’s role further:

Zech. 3:1

And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.

Psalm 109:6-7

Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.  When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

Revelations 12:7-10

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

In these three passages, Satan again plays half the role formerly played by Hadad and later by Yahweh, but with that role now seen as oppressive at worst, a necessary evil at best.  A bit of a detour from the main topic, but sometimes one should explore a side road that may lend an additional insight into the overall road trip.  Especially since the two quotes from the Jewish Tanakh and the Christian New Testament show the divergence of light in which the role is viewed by adherents of the two religions.

Job 28:14 & 22

In these two verses, we have further evidence of lingering polytheism:

The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me.

Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.

In the first verse, “depth” refers to the god Mot and “sea” refers to Yaw; in the second verse, “destruction” refers to Yaw and “death” to Mot.

Psalm 97:7-9

Here we have evidence of henotheism, dominance of one deity over others:

Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols: worship him, all ye gods.  Zion heard, and was glad; and the daughters of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, O Lord.  For thou, Lord, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted far above all gods.

Here Yahweh plays solely the role of judge, with the other gods admonished to serve him.

Isaiah 14:12-15

In this passage, we have yet another implicit reference to the Baal Cycle, only this time without any role for Hadad to have played:

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!  For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.  Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

Many Christian writers have compared this to the passage from Revelations given above to describe Satan being cast out of heaven.  Judaism has never taught any such thing.  The so-called name Lucifer is a Latin form from the Vulgate of the Hebrew word Heylel, which means “morning star”. 

This passage is a reference to the Canaanite deity Attar, god of the morning star and son of the dawn (Shachar).  In the Baal Cycle, while Yaw (forerunner of Yahweh) reigns over the sons of El, Attar tries to take the throne but fails, except that he doesn’t go to any hell.

We know that Samerina was always syncretic and inclusive in its religion, but in Ezekial 8:14, we see a graphic example that even in Yehud inclusive polytheism remained:

Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.

Tammuz, later fused with Adonis to become the central figure of a Levantine version of the Mediterranean Mystery Cult, came from Babylonia originally.  He also gave his name to the tenth month of the Jewish calendar.

Ezekial 14:14 & 20

In these two verses, three heroic figures from Canaanite legend are mentioned:

Though these three men, Noah, Danel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God.

 Though Noah, Danel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness

Ezekial 28:3

Here, one hero is singled out for special mention:

Behold, thou art wiser than Danel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee:

In all three verses, the Masoretes corrupted “Danel” to “Daniel” in order to reflect the Jewish figure of legend and putative author of the pseudepigraphal Book of Daniel.  In the Septuagint and in the Qumran version, “Danel” remains in its original form.  In fragments surviving from the Late Bronze Age northern Canaanite town of Ugarit, Danel is a legendary figure who is most famous for his wisdom.

Habakkuk 3:3

There’s an interesting reference in:

God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran.

Here the word “God” is Elahu in the Hebrew original, while “Holy One” is Qadesh.  Elahu is a form of the name El, father of the Canaanite gods, while Qadesh is the main epithet for his consort, the goddess Asherah, whose worship was widespread across both Hebrew kingdoms.

Habakkuk 3:5

This verse mentions two ancient Levantine deities.

Before him went Dabir, and Resheph followed close behind.

The first, Dabir, was the patron of the city of Ebla, while the second, Resheph, was a major battle god popular even among Egyptians who provided protection against plague and war, as well as the patron deity of Shechem.  But you won’t find that in most English translations which usually render the names ‘pestilence’ and ‘plague’.

Psalm 78:48

These two get another mention.

He gave over their cattle to Dabir, and their flocks to Reshephim.

Usually translated as ‘hail’ and ‘thunderbolts’.

Deuteronomy 32:23-24

I will heap disasters upon them, spend my arrows against them: wasting hunger, burning consumption, bitter pestilence.

An better translation provides the names of four deities: I will heap disasters upon them, spend my arrows against them: the ravages of Ra’ab and Lahmu, or Resheph and bitter Qeteb.

Psalm 91:5-6

You will not fear the terror of the night, or Resheph that flies by day, or Dabir that stalks in darkness, or Qeteb that wastes at noonday.

Dabir is usually translated as ‘pestilence’, Qeteb as ‘destruction’, Resheph as ‘arrow’.

Hosea 13:14

Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol?  Shall I redeem them from Mot?  O Mot, where are your Reshephim?  O Sheol, where is your Qeteb?  Compassion is hidden from my eyes.

Sheol was a Canaanite god of the underworld; Mot was the Canaanite god of death; Resheph the god of plague; Qeteb the god of destruction.

2 Kings 18:4

He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

In this verse we have another indirect but certain mention of Asherah.  The groves that Hezekiah cut down were actually idols to that goddess, probably here meant as Yahweh’s consort.

Jeremiah 7:18

The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.

In this verse we have a more direct reference to Asherah, Queen of Heaven being one of her divine titles.

Judges 17 & 18

In a passage from the Book of Judges, chapters 17 and 18, one Micah of Ephraim made a molten image and a graven image to place in the shrine at his home at which he consecrated one of his sons to be priest.  Later, he managed to acquire a Levite as for that duty.  A band of Danites, men of the tribe of Dan, later stole them and set up both images in their own shrine in the city of Dan.

What is astonishing about this story is that in the text itself there is no condemnation at all of Micah for his “idolatry” nor for his taking upon himself the right to consecrate his own son (an Ephraimite) as a priest.  Likewise, there is no condemnation in the text for the Levite, not the scion of a tribe supposedly set apart to be priests of Yahweh but one consecrated from the tribe of Judah, who agrees to serve at Micah’s shrine with its graven and molten images.  In fact, at the end of chapter 17, it seems that Yahweh looks kindly upon Micah’s undertaking.

These passages also mention the teraphim, cult figures which Israelites used well into the Hellenistic era in Samerina, Yehud, and Egypt.

There is also no condemnation for the Danites who later steal both images as well as the priestly vestments and ritual articles along with the Levite and take them to the city of Dan.

1 Corinthians 8:4-6

Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.”  Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

The key phrase here is: “as in fact there are many gods and many lords”.  This is Paul acknowledging that while for Christians there is only one God, other gods do indeed exist.

Micah 4:5

For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.

This verse come just after the famous passage containing the clause, “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares…”.

Multiple Yahwehs

Even Yahweh himself had multiple forms.  The archaeological site at Kuntillet Ajrud (see below) offered up an inscription to “Yahweh of Teman” and “Yahweh of Samaria”.  In the Tanakh, 2 Samuel 15:7 mentions “Yahweh of Hebron” while Psalm 99:2 mentions “Yahweh of Zion”.  In fact, there was a different manifestations of Yahweh at every shrine site mentioned in the Tanakh, such as Dan, Bethel, and Shiloh, as well as Gilgal, Bethlehem, Nob, Gibeon, Mizpah, and Beersheba.  Archaeological evidence and passages in the Tanakh show this also to have been the case for Baal and for El.

In this light, the titular verse of the Shema Yisrael, Deuteronomy 6:4—Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our God is one Yahweh—takes on a whole new meaning, especially in the context of the standardization and centralization of worship at Jerusalem and at Shechem.

Archaeological evidence

There is little need to relate surviving archaeological evidence from Samerina that polytheism existed to a late date in the kingdom ruled from Samaria since nearly everyone agrees that was the case.  In fact, temples to several gods existed in that city, including those dedicated to Yahweh, to Baal Hadad, to Asherah, and to Kore (Persephone), among others.  Our focus should be on the land of those claiming to have been monotheists from the dawn of the first millennium BCE, or at least the earliest known date of occupation. 

There was no settlement of Hebrews in the area later called Yehud until after the Philistine city of Gath was destroyed by the armies of Hazael, king of Damascus, in 830 BCE.    Since Gath was 22 miles northwest of modern Hebron, it was while it existed a major impediment to Hebrew expansion south from Samerina.  A few examples should suffice.

Tel Arad

Shortly after Hebrew colonists began to migrate to the area, a citadel was built at what is now called Tel Arad which included one of only three known temples called “House of Yahweh” that have been discovered to date.  The citadel overlooked a city on the plain below.  Within the citadel, the sanctuary held graven images to Yahweh and to Asherah, who was now apparently considered consort of Yahweh rather than El.  The citadel was built around 820 BCE and destroyed around 587 BCE.

Kuntillet Ajrud

Built around 800 BCE, just three decades after Gath fell, Hebrew-speaking people built a shrine in the northeast of the Sinai Peninsula.  Inscriptions and images depict Yahweh, El, Baal, and Asherah.  Two inscriptions specifically mention blessings “by Yahweh of Samaria and by Asherah” and “by Yahweh of Teman and by Asherah”. 

The identity of Samaria is obvious, in all likelihood referring to the greater country than to the city.  The identity of Teman, on the other hand, is more problematic.  Several have suggested an unidentified town in the country of Edom, though their national god was Qaws.  On the other hand, Hebrews are known to have already inhabited communities all across the southern part of Arabia, with their descendants still being referred to as the Temanim, “Teman” being Hebrew for “south”.

Khirbet el-Qom

Inscriptions at tomb built here around 750 BCE in the Har Yehuda west of Hebron one “Uriyahu” mention Yahuweh and Asherah together as at the previous site.

Egypt

As mentioned elsewhere, Hebrew military colonies arose here around 650 BCE in the wake of the Nubian withdrawal.  The biggest was at the island of Elephantine in the south, near Nubia, and there were others at Memphis, the capital, and Pathros, and in the northeast border towns of Migdol and Tahpanhes-Daphnae.

The colony at Elephantine hosted a Hebrew temple side-by-side with an Egyptian temple to the god Khnum.  A collection of documents named the Elephantine papyri provide excellent contemporary evidence of the colony’s happenings.  From these we know that Yahweh was worshipped here alongside his consort Anath (another Canaanite goddess).  In addition, the Canaanite gods El, Baal, Bethel, Harambethel, and Asambethel were worshipped as was the Egyptian god Khnum.

Among some of the papyri, letters have ended with blessings from Yahweh and Khnum, while some from Tahpahnes have ended with blessings from Baal Tsaphon and Elohim.

Relations between the Hebrew colonists and their descendants and their Egyptian neighbors were not always harmonious. 

In 411 BCE, a century and a half into Iranian rule of the Levant and Egypt, the temple at Elephantine (identified in papyri as “House of Yahweh”) was destroyed by local devotees of the god Khnum, who were roused to action by their priests.  Kind of like when Christians in Alexandria went on a rampage and destroyed the Serapeum, the Museum, and the Library in 391 CE after exhortations by the Patriarch, Pope Theophilus. 

Four years later, in 407 BCE, tensions had calmed enough for the Hebrews at Elephantine to seek permission for and assistance with rebuilding of the temple there.  These appeals were sent both to the joint Samaritan governors of Samerina, Dalaiah and Shelemiah (sons of the previous governor Sinballidh)and to Bagayavahu (Bagaos or Bagoses), Iranian governor of Yehud. 

In both cases, permission was given and assistance provided, with no sign that these were contingent upon the temple’s taking up monotheism, though such may have already been the case, which might explain the wrath of the Khnum devotees.

Day of Atonement

One notable instance in the Torah not only reveals a latent polytheism but ordains it be carried out is the prescriptions for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  After the temple sacrifices for the occasion were made, the high priest took one of two goats and sacrificed it to Yahweh.  The other, according the passage in Leviticus 16, carried the sins of all the children of Israel and was carried out to the wilderness.  The Torah passage does not say what became of the second, but the Mishnah and midrash do: it was not merely driven out to starve and/or thirst to death but led to a cliff and pushed it over to its death.  Every Christian translation into English glosses over the this fact, often with the word “scapegoat”, but English translations in Jewish versions do not; the second goat was actually sacrificed to Azaz’el, either a lesser god or a demon of the wilderness.

Addendum:

Pre-exile cult stands at the religious centers of Lachish, Tel Halif, Megiddo, Tel Kedesh, Ta’anakh, and Shechem indicate that Yahweh may have been identified as a solar deity, and that Asherah was considered his consort.

Numerous cult figurines from the pre-Exile period of a quite voluptuous female that have been identified as Asherah have been found at Megiddo, Ta’anakh, Tell Tirzah, Ai, and Lachish.

Hebrews in ancient Egypt

Hebrews = Judeans (Jews) and Samaritans

There was no Exodus of Israelites escaping from slavery in Egypt in 1450 BCE led by a prophet named Moses, or in any other year or century.  This is clear from the utter lack of evidence in contemporary records, archaeological studies, and infrared satellite photography.

The Exodus  is fiction, as is Moses.  The name Moses, in fact, is a Greek rendering of the name Mazas, Aramaic for Mazas, which in Old Persian becomes Mazda.  Mazda was the deity of the Iranian religion of Zartosht (modern Farsi), or as he was known in Avestan, Zarathustra, whom the Greeks called Zoroaster.

The Israelites were not wandering Arameans from Mesopotamia, they were Kana’anites whose culture developed in situ in the southern Levant.  The ancient Hebrew language is virtually identical to ancient Canaanite, and Hebrew is, in fact, classified as a Canaanite language along with Edomite, Moabite, Ammonite, Phoenician, Punic, and, of course, Canaanite itself.

The Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt and they certainly did not build the pyramids, which preceded their existence as a people by several centuries and were built by free laborers.

The Phoenicians’ name for themselves was Kananayim, or Canaanites in English.  The Punic version of the name used by the Carthaginians was Chanani.  The Levant is a name for the geographic area that takes in the modern nation-states of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan.  It’s a politically neutral term for the region I prefer, but I also like Kana’an when talking about its past because that was what the people who originated there called their land.

And in case you’re wondering what the proper name for the territory south of Lebanon, east of the Mediterranean Sea, west of the Jordan River, and north of the Sinai Peninsula, there is only one choice according to history: Palestine.  The Greeks knew it by the name Palestina as far back as Herodotus (5^th century BCE) and under the Romans, Arabs, and Turks that was the name by which the area was called.

In the latter part of the Levant’s Middle Bronze Age (1800-1550 BCE), the Hyksos ruled Egypt as its 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th dynasties from 1620-1530 BCE.   By various archaeological means, these people have been identified as Kana'anite, many of whom may have been ancestors of the Ishiriar, or Israelites.  The Levant at this time was dominated by two coalitions of city-states: one in in the north led by the city of Qatna and another in the central region by the city of Hazor.

The years 1530-1200 BCE were the Late Bronze Age in the Levant.  Kana’an was now dominated by two different coalitions, Qdesh in the north, led by Kadesh (in southern Syria), and Djahy in the Central Levant, led by Megiddo.  Hazor was also prominent in Djahy.  The Southern Levant during this period lay completely under the suzerainty of Egypt, much less prominent and greatly reduced but still inhabited.  It was dominated by the cities of Urusalim (Jerusalem) and Shachmu (Shechem).  The Egyptian administration center was in Gaza, which had a temple to Amun, and the authorities in Gaza worked mostly through local kings.

The heyday of the independent collection of city-states known to history as Phoenicia began during the Early Iron Age, lasting around 1200 BCE to its conquest by Cyrus the Great of Iran in 539 BCE.  These city-states stretched from modern Lebanon down to the coasts of Israel and the Gaza Strip.  One of the colonies of the city of Tyre, Carthage, founded around 800 BCE ultimately became one of the three greatest cities of the Mediterranean region. 

In about 1175 BCE, a group of what is known in ancient Egyptian chronicles as the Sea Peoples invaded and conquered the Mediterranean coast from the Sinai peninsula to Ashkelon, settling down to assimilate in both language and culture, their lands becoming known as Philisitia, or Palestina to the Greeks.  The rest of southern region became virtually deserted, probably since the Philistine cities included Gath, not far from the modern city of Jerusalem.

After the death of Ramses IX in 1078 BCE, Egypt disintegrated into several rival states until the Kushite Empire was thrown out by the Assyrian king Esarhaddon in 671 BCE.  Never intending to establish direct control, the Assyrians left Egypt to several vassals.

Though it may been the end for a long while of Egyptian domination of the region, various Pharaohs did interfere and even campaign in Kana’an, Phoenicia, and Syria.  In 925 BCE,

Pharoah Sheshonq I campaigned in these areas, concluding with an egangement referred to as the Battle of Bitter Lakes.  Inscriptions on the side of the Great Temple of Karnak referring to the campaign include among his vanquished foes Gaza, Megiddo, Aijalon, Gibeon, Gathpadalla, Byblos, Damascus, and many others, but no mention of Jerusalem, Shechem, Jericho, Israel, or Judah.  Corresponding archaeological evidence (statues and inscriptions) has been found at Megiddo, Byblos, and Damascus.

At the turn of the era (BCE/CE), colonies of Hebrews had been in Egypt for over six centuries, since the mid-7^th century BCE. 

After the native Egyptians kicked out their Nubian overlords from the 25^th Dynasty, they imported warriors from Kana’an, both from the independent land known in Aramaic as Yehud (Judea) and that conquered in 722 BCE by Assyria known in Aramaic as Samerina (Samaria), many of whose surviving warriors had relocated southward. One of these colonies was at the capital, Memphis, and there were others in the northeastern border towns of Tahpanhes-Daphnae and Migdol, to the south in Pathros, and last, but not least, on the island of Yeb, better known as Elephantine.

While some provision for worship and maybe sacrifice must have been made in the first four colonies, the one at Elephantine is the only one known to have its own fully functioning temple, immediately adjacent to an Egyptian temple to Khnum.  Called “Beth Yahweh” (House of Yahweh) in official correspondence, it functioned continuously 650-407 BCE, the faithful worshipping not only Yahweh and his consort Anath along with El, Bethel, Harambethel, and Asambethel, as we know from various Elephantine papyri.

It is the only temple known to have been called Beth Yahweh found to date outside of the one in the sanctuary of the citadel at Tel Arad in southern Palestine/Israel, and apparently there Yahweh was worshipped alongside Asherah.  At the time, there were also cult centers in central Palestine at Mizpah, Gibeon, Shechem, and Bethel (the most significant), and in southern Palestine at Lachish, Ta'anek, Beersheba, Deir 'Alla, and other places. 

Yehud rose in revolt against Babylonian domination in around 588 BCE with the support of Pharoah Apries of Egypt’s 26^th Dynasty.  The Egyptian forces were easily routed by Nebuchadnezzar II, who took Yehud after an 18-month long campaign.  Carrying off a substantial portion of its population, he brought in colonists and appended it to the province of Samerina as a sub-province.

But the military service of the Hebrews from Kana’an in Egypt continued uninterrupted.  In 407 BCE, the temple at Elephantine was burned down in a riot, and temple officials wrote letters to both Dalaiah and Shelemiah, the sons of Sinballidh (aka Sanballat the Horonite), the joint governors of Samerina, and Bagayavahu, Iranian governor of Yehud, asking permission for and help with the rebuilding.  Both forms of assistance were granted by both governors.  It is unknown how long the temple at Elephantine continued to function after that time.

After Alexander’s conquest of Egypt in 331 BCE, he founded the city of Alexandria on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.  His Ptolemaic successors established their seat in the city and it eventually became the second-largest city in the Mediterranean world.  Ptolemy had his king and general’s body brought to the city after his death, and his tomb was a major site of pilgrimage during ancient times.  Two of its five districts were allotted to Hebrews from Palestine, who had been instrumental in the conquests of both Egypt and of Phoenicia.

Alexandria rapidly became the center of Hebrew culture and philosophy, if not necessarily of traditional religion.  In a fairly short time, its synagogue became the largest in the world.  The Hebrew Torah was first collated into its five-book form, the Pentateuch in Alexandria for the Great Library attached to its Museum, in the late 3^rd/early 2^nd century BCE.  The rest of the sacred texts, divided by the Jews into Prophets and Writings, were gathered and translated during the 2^nd century BCE and finished around 132 BCE.

Oxyrhynchus (Behnehseh) in upper Egypt, its third largest city after Alexandria and Memphis, was another major center for Judean and Samaritan settlement.

Hebrews, both Judean and Samaritan, spread throughout Egypt and over to the west into neighboring Cyrenaica (eastern Libya), a former tribal area colonized by Greeks from the island of Thera in 631 BCE, conquered by Cambyses and Alexander in turn, and absorbed into Egypt by the Ptolemies.  The Romans divided it off again.

As previously stated, in 198 BCE Palestine passed from the Ptolemies to the Seleucids, based in Antioch.  The Seleucid king Antiochus IV invaded the Egyptian heartland of the Ptolemies in 168, but was forced to withdraw by the legions of the Roman Republic.  Returning to Antioch through Palestine, he stopped in Jerusalem to return to the throne of high priest Menelaus, who had been temporarily deposed by his brother Jason.

Onias IV, son of Menelaus and final claimant to the high priesthood from the Oniad dynasty, fled from the Seleucid realm to Ptolemaic Egypt after his father was assassinated, probably by Hasmoneans, in 161 BCE.  With the permission of his hosts, he built a temple at Leontopolis in Egypt around 154 BCE.  Leontopolis and its region became known as the Land of Onias.

The Roman Republic conquered Egypt in 30 BCE. 

In 38 CE, there was a pogrom against the Jews in Alexandria, at least according to preeminent Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Flavius Philo Judaeaus.

The procurator of the province of Iudaea during the uprising in 46-48 CE by Jacob and Simon, the sons of previous rebellion leader Judas the Galilean, was an Alexandrian Jew named Tiberius Julius Alexander.

The Hebrews in Egypt took no part in the Great Jewish War of 66-73 CE, but the Temple of Onias at Leontopolis was still destroyed in 73 CE lest it become a center of dissent.

There was another pogrom against the Hebrews in Egypt in 68 CE.

In the Kitos War of 115-117 CE, a Jewish would-be messiah in Cyrenaica named Lukuas began an uprising against the Gentiles in the region, attacking their pagan temples and slaughtering thousands.  Lukuas and his followers swept across Egypt, burning, pillaging, and killing, with some of the Egyptian Jews joining in but few of thosee in Alexandria, which the rebels burned. 

When a new Roman general appeared on the scene, Lukuas moved to Iudaea.  Fighting in Egypt did not end until 117 CE.  Cyrenaica was almost completely depopulated and Alexandria destroyed.  The former was repopulated and the latter rebuilt, including its Jewish Quarter, which actually took up two of five districts.

Around 134 CE, the emperor Hadrian Augustus wrote a letter of advice to his consul which shines an interesting light on Alexandria and insight into the early days of Christianity.

From Hadrian Augustus to Servianus the consul, greeting.

The land of Egypt, the praises of which you have been recounting to me, my dear Servianus, I have found to be wholly light-minded, unstable, and blown about by every breath of rumor.

There those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are, in fact, devotees of Serapis. There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or an anointer. Even the Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Christ. 

They are a folk most seditious, most deceitful, most given to injury; but their city is prosperous, rich, and fruitful, and in it no one is idle. Some are blowers of glass, others makers of paper, all are at least weavers of linen or seem to belong to one craft or another; the lame have their occupations, the eunuchs have theirs, the blind have theirs, and not even those whose hands are crippled are idle. 

Their only god is money, and this the Christians, the Jews, and, in fact, all nations adore.  And would that this city had a better character, for indeed it is worthy by reason of its richness and by reason of its size to hold the chief place in the whole of Egypt. 

Though their rights were suppressed to varying degrees, depending on prevailing winds of opinion and local rulers, both Judeans and Samaritans remained numerous throughout Egypt as long as it remained in the Roman Empire, until Egypt was conquered by the armies of the Rashidun Caliphs in 639 CE.  Afterwards, the treatment of both improved dramatically.