23. The Kingship-of-heaven
motif
The classical fight for the kingship
of heaven is the myth about how Cronos, on the instigation of his mother,
castrated his father, Uranos, and took over the kingship of the gods, but was finally
dethroned by his son, Zeus, born in secrecy and hid among shepherds on Mt. Ida
in Crete. Later, on the instigation of a goddess, Typhon is born, and
challenges Zeus to the final fight over the “kingdom of heaven”.
Now, in Dan
7 we have a similar text: also a succession of demon monsters called kings
(7,17), ruling the universe, the Typho-like monster threatening to swallow up the whole earth, and then finally
the kingdom is given to the“Son of Man”. Note the many times the word malku “kingdom” is repeated in the text
v.14a.d,18a.b,22,23,24,27a.c. It is identical in meaning with the word shultan v.6,12,14a.c,26,27a.c. Like the
Typho-monster, the 4th monster in Dan 8,10 throws the stars to the earth, i.e.
breaks up the order of cosmos. Like Typho being able to win the first round of
the fight, it is told of the 4th monster, that “it made war against the holy
ones and overcame them” 7,21. Now, Typhon is linked to the winter storm, and
the Typho fight is a close parallel to the myth about Baal fighting Jam
(“sea”). During the winter and the rainy season the Mediterranean Sea is mostly
so beaten by stormy weather that sailing is impossible. The rough weather can
look like a fight between the thunderstorm and
the deep sea, with its waves rising to swallow up the land.
T.H.Gaster[1]
has eagerly defended the thesis that the Baal epos of Ugarit “is a nature myth
and its theme is the alternation of the seasons”. Baal is the king of spring
taking over the “kingdom”(mlk) from
Jam, the roaring sea of winter, who has taken over the kingdom from ´Athtar,
the sterile light of the morning star. Note that ´Athtar has no wife like the
other gods, and his fall is announced by the sun.
The theogony
from Dunnu in Mesopotamia can be dated to the early 2.mill B.C.: it tells the story
of how Plough (Accadian harab) was
the first to establish his rule in Dunnu, then Shakkan after killing his father
and marrying his mother, then the god of the flocks of cattle, then Kush, then
Haharnum, then Hajjashum. Like the previous one, the last mentioned takes over
the kingdom of his father, but as the only one not killing his father, only
imprisoning him. Note the role played by the god of the cattle and his
murderer, Kush. Harab seems to be the Semitic word hrb = “sword” taken over in
Greek as harpê = “sickle-sword”, the
weapon used for cutting up primordial unity. Shakkan was born “by the furrows
in the earth” on their own initiative, that is by female earth. Cf. the
tradition of Typho born by the earth and Hera giving birth to Ares and his sister
Eris without any man: the leopard, the androgynous hunter is the son of the
goddess alone trying to create life without a male partner (the same myth plays
an important role in later gnosticism).
Now, all
this has something to do with the months from December to March as can be seem
from the days mentioned in the text and as proved by Thorkild Jacobsen[2].
And its culmination is a parallel to the enthronement of Marduc as “King over
all the gods of heaven and earth”[3].
The victory
over Tiamat and her followers caught in the net of Marduc is a motif taken over
from Syria: the sea in Mesopotamia is nowhere felt as a chaotic threat. This
makes it possible also to understand the whole motif of the fight for the
kingdom as a take over from the Westsemitic area, and then it is possible that
Hajjashum is the “The Name” given to both Jam and Typho, and also given to Zeus
as the “greatest couros child” born in Crete, coming to give juice to all the
plants of spring: Jaw/Jao/Jo.
The History
of Phoenicia written by Philo of Byblos has this long description of the “kingdom” going from Eliun (“the Highest”)
to his son, Uranos, to his son, El Cronos and finally given to Zeus Demaros.
They were all men living around Byblos and Beiruth, but after their death
honoured as gods. By some scholars (Cumont, Baudissin) these fragments by a
Hellenistic history writer were considered a worthless imitation of Hesiod and Euhemeros.
A.J.Baumgarten[4] thinks that
the fragments are of a rather late origin, but contain old material (which can
be seen from parallels with the Ugarit texts). His main argument is the
description of the third king, El Cronos, “He travelled through all the world”.
The same is said about the third king (Zeus) by Euhemeros: “…he came to most of
the nations”.
Now, this is
important: what Euhemeros has to tell about Zeus is a parallel to the things
Hecataios of Abdera and Megasthenes tell about Dionysos: Hecataios tells about
Osiris-Dionysos that “he collected a great army to march through the whole
world…to wipe out human wildness”. He gave weapons against the wild animals and
cultivated the land, Diodor II,15-7. Megasthenes says about Dionysos that he
came to India in command of a great army (cf. the vast army of Krt marching
towards the city of the reddish glow of dawn) and conquered the whole country,
but was struck by the heat and a pestilence connected to it. He withdrew to the
mountain Meros, where his army regained its strength by the fresh wellsprings
on this mountain. Dionysos was then made the first king[5].
Behind the
descriptions of both Hecataios and Megasthenes we find the Asiatic
Baal-Dionysos, who, as the sun warrior, travels to the rising of the sun (and
acc. to Hecataios he came both to Ethiopia and India, where he buildt Nysa),
creating cosmos in a chaotic universe full of wild animals. He is nearly killed
by the demon-god whose weapons are burning heat and pestilence, but regains his
strength on the paradise mountain by drinking from the well of life.
Megasthenes says further that Dionysos founded cities and gave laws, and
introduced agriculture, ploughing, cymbals, drums and dances of satyrs, a
tradition familiar to what the Bible tells about Cain and his family Gen
4,16-22.
When
Euhemeros calls the two sons of Uranos Pan and Cronos, it is the primordial
twins, “Enkidu and Gilgamesh”, as Pan to a Greek mind is not expected in this
position in the theogony. And when Euhemeros makes Zeus travel through the
world and come to the island with the “Stele of Heaven”, the background is the
journey of the sun hero towards the top of the world mountain. Beside the stele
stood a bed: the world mountain is the psycho cosmic mountain, and to the
ascension, which is also an apotheosis, is linked the union of male with female
gender[6].
We do not share the opinion of M.Persson Nilsson[7]
that Euhemeros is an atheist wanting to mock at all religion. Acc. to Athenaios
of Naucritis[8] he had taken
his teaching from Sidon in Phoenicia. And Philo can even, when he is extremely
“euhemeristic”, be authentically Semitic. E.Renan speaks about “the euhemerism
natural to Semites”[9].
To the fact
that El Cronos has to have help from Hermes, who gives the god-king weapons,
Baumgarten asks: “Why Hermes = Taautos = Thot was competent to advise in making
weapons is not clear”[10].
But also in the Ugarit text about the fighting for the kingdom, the 3rd king
has to have help from the god of handicraft, who fashions weapons for him. A little later El Cronos
has a son named Mot, a name unknown to the writers of Hellenistic Syria, but
also found as a god in Ugarit. The conclusion is clear: the story of Philo is
much nearer to the Ugarit archives than to the world of the Hellenistic
writers, which is also the allegation of Philo. He has his information from a
priest, Sanchunjaton, living before the Trojan war (that is before 1200 B.C. –
the Ugarit texts are from 1400 B.C.)
On a tablet
from Ugarit, acc to Virolleaud with a genealogical content, names like Msr
(Misor mentioned by Philo), Sdqn (Sydyk by Philo) are mentioned together with
Bn ´n, “Son of Well”, acc to V. to be compared with the young women Anobret
(“Daughter of Well” by Philo) and Qdmn (Cadmos), by V. translated into “Man
from the East”[11].
The
development of culture and society put into a genealogy[12]
is also known from Gen. 4. So Gen. 4 and the Ugarit poem about Shahar and
Shalim, the twins who were the first to found a city in the wilderness, is much
closer to the milieu creating the tradition of Sanchunjaton than the
Hellenistic authors.
The
kingship-of-heaven motif has been dealt with by several scholars, but the most
important point seems to have been missed: apart from a rather pale god taken
as the first (Eliun by Philo, Alalu in the Hittite version), it is mostly three
gods fighting:
The High God
(Uranos in Philo, Anu in the Hittite vers.)
The Demoniac
God (El Kronos in Philo, Kumarbi in the Hittite vers.)
The High
God´s Son (Zeus Demaros in Philo, “3 great gods” in the Hittite vers.).
That the
high god is castrated and his wives taken from him has a certain purpose: to
prevent him from getting a son who can take revenge and dethrone the king of
chaos. This is especially evident in the Hittite version where the demon god,
Kumarbi, bites Anu in the “loins”, but, through the cunning of Anu, becomes
pregnant with no less than 3 gods growing inside him. Gods begotten by Anu.
About Uranos it is told that one of the wives taken from him was pregnant, she
was given to Dagan and bore him the son, Demarus, who became the successor of
Cronos on the throne of the gods (but in reality was the son of Uranos). This
is also the point of the Osiris myth. In spite of the torn and maimed condition
of her husband, Isis succeeds in becoming pregnant with him, and in spite of
Bata’s being dead, he succeeds in making his wife pregnant with a boy, who
becomes the successor on the Egyptian throne.
Of course
the demon god knows that he has to be aware of the divine child, which is why
it mostly has to be hidden away among shepherds, that is, among people
belonging to the boucolic milieu of the highgod. But in Byblos this is not
necessary. El Cronos gives the throne to Demaros voluntarily, and he rules with
the acceptance of Cronos.
23a. Abraham, four kings,
five kings and king Sedeq
A.Jeremias has drawn attention to the
cosmic dimension in the victory of Abraham, 1.Mo 14. The 4 kings are the
superpowers of this period representing universal kingdom: four is the number
of the world corners, and their rule lasts 12 years. The five revolting kings
are the five epagomen-days, the 5
days of chaos in some Near Eastern calendars following the order of the 12
months. The pit, the cave of the underworld as the room where the demons are
cast down and imprisoned, is behind the pits of tar by the Dead Sea, where two
revolting kings are trapped. The chaotic interregnum
of the Rephaim is hidden behind the nations enumerated in v.5f.: the
Rephaim in "Ashtaroth-with-the-Horns", the Zuzites from Ham,
obviously a negro tribe from somewhere in Africa, the ´Emim ("the scary
ones"), acc to Exod 2,10 also Rephaim, the Horites
("cave-dwellers")[13].
Jeremias
attaches great importance to what he calls the "the motif-word" ´br = "transit", "passing
through"(the same word as "Hebrew"), acc. to Jeremias also to be
translated by "culminate" in
the mythical meaning of going through the pass between the two halves of the
world mountain (ibd. p.761). He thinks that the word in Gen 12.6 and 13,17 and
the description of the wanderings of Abraham from the great city of Ur in the
Far East to the Far West of Egypt is styled after the wanderings of the moon
(p.314). But it is more reasonable to see Abraham as the sun hero travelling
towards the sunset, and the ´br-motif
is the transitus-motif well known from
the mysteries of Mithras. In the centre of the world he dwells at the
holy tree by the well and calls upon the "God of Eternity". After
being victorious in his struggles he receives ambrosia and nectar 14,18, and
his men are called hanikim =
“initiated”[14].
As we have
seen, the usual "fight for the kingdom of heaven" myth is structured
in the following way:
The old king
ruling - the interregnum of the chaos-king or chaos-powers - the young son
re-establishing universal order.
But here in
Gen 14 we have a more complicated worldview:
Abraham has
victory over the old world powers, the four kings.
But he
refuses to associate himself with the chaos power represented by the king of
Sodom.
In the
"King's vale" he stands like Heracles at the cross-road between the
two kings of Sodom and Salem, paying tribute to the last mentioned and refusing
to receive anything from the former. In stead of re-establishing the old world
order, he goes back to the very first king of the universe: Elioun, = “The
Highest”, the creator of heaven and earth. The structure is somewhat similar to
the line of kings given by Philo:
1) Elioun
2) Uranos
3) El Cronos
(the cruel killer)
4) Demaros
(son of Uranos, the sun hero)
Instead of
re-establishing the old world-order, the text looks forward to a distant future
where the descendants of Abraham shall be the owners of the country forever
(13,14f.), and even be the mediators of blessings to the whole cosmos. Through
his descendants "God, the Highest" will extend his power and his
blessing over the whole universe, cf. Dan 7: after the ruling of four
superpowers the universal kingdom will be given to the "Holy people of the
Highest".
In the book
of Judges is found the tragic story of the first king of Israel, Abimlk. The
name must mean “My father is Malik (lord of the underworld)”. He has links to
the fire, he is the fire that
breaks out of the thornbush and eats the “Cedars of Lebanon”, the lords of
vegetation. At the beginning of this century the land of Israel was covered
with thousands of thorny bushes each year in the period of the summer heat[15].
Like Mot in Ugarit, Abimlk is killed by a woman with a grinding stone. Several
times he uses fire to exterminate his enemies. He is the demon god with the
assembly of the 70 sons of El as his enemies. One of the sons escapes the
massacre and hides. He bears the name Jôtam, cf the son Jaw in Ugarit. The
historical core has been overshadowed by mythical thinking, and the story has
become a severe criticism of the kingship of the Canaanean culture where the
king is more or less one with Resheph, the great hunter.
That God
becomes king by overcoming the powers of darkness, death, and chaos is the
great theme of the psalms and the burning hope of the prophets. This REX
GLORIAE motif was originally celebrated in the short springtime at the end of
the rainy period when wild flowers were seen everywhere, and the vine was
blossoming, Cant 2,11-13. Later it was moved to the feast of Tabernacles,
1.Chron 16,30-33.
The
culmination of the kingship-of-heaven motif is the birth of the divine saviour
among shepherds in the cowshed. He will receive the divine name, John 17,6 cf.
8,24, with cosmic kingship Phil 2,9ff.
[1] Thespis, 1950, p.124
[2] Mesopotamiske Urtidssagn, 1978, pp.66-72
[3] p.85
[4] The Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos, 1981
[5] Diodor III 63
[6] The main sources to the work
of Euhemeros are Diodor VI, 1 and the fragments in Latin trans. by Ennius.
[7] Geschichte der griechischen Religion, II,
2.ed., p.288
[8] XIV 658f.
[9] "Mémoire sur l´origine et le
charactere véritable de l´histoire phénicienne". Mémoire de l´institut impérial de France, académie des inscriptions et
belles-lettres 23, 2, 1858, p.263
[10] p.194
[11] "Table Généalogique provenant
de Ras-Shamra", SYRIA 15, 1934,
pp.244ff.
[12] Philo I, 10, 7-14
[13] Das Alte Testament im Lichte des A.O., 4.ed., 1930, pp.321f.
[14] p.319
[15] L. Schneller, Kender du landet, 1902, p.57