I begin this section of the course with "Hills of Morning" by Bruce Cockburn because it provides us with an appropriate image. The Israelite people and their story, this people animated by God's breath called to be God's light to the nations, lived as a small and seemingly foolish people who claimed that their God was all powerful, the creator of all, and in the end, the only God. They lived as an insignificant people who contributed neither political and economic might nor advanced technology and culture to the Ancient Near East. They were surrounded and threatened by the mighty Ancient Near Eastern empires led by their divine warrior kings. They danced in the dragon's jaw singing songs of praise to their mighty warrior king, YHWH.

Standing on this side of "Christian Triumphalism", we loose sight of the context in which God was proclaimed victorious king. In the colonial age, we put forward the arguments made by the empires of the past. Our God is the true god because we have triumphed. We have the superior technology; we have the political and economic might; we have the authority to conquer the world and bend it to our will.

If we are to find the God of peace in a text that depicts him as the divine warrior, we must set this claim in the context in which it was first made. We must recognize that this is the proclamation of a mouse surrounded by lions and tigers and bears.

The Divine Warrior King

Baal au foudre: a bas-relief found in 1932 at Ras Shamra in a sanctuary west of the temple. In the left hand is a lance which flowers into a plant; in the right hand is a club.

The biblical notion of peace is like the Ancient Near Eastern notion preserved in Greek and Roman language about peace insofar as it is the result of the victory or the king, it is something brought by a king. While peace is not the opposite of war, the fact that the Bible uses the imagery of divine war and battle to describe God's act of taming the chaos that threatens shalom demands that we examine this tradition closely. Since the images of violence attendant with this metaphor or myth will dog us throughout the course, we will deal with them at the onset.

Christians of the modern age do not like the word myth. They have used it to refer to other peoples' religions and claim that the Bible is history. This distinction reflects a modern preoccupation with certainty and has spawned less than fruitful debates about creationism and evolution. Our concern is not between myth and history but between the ways in which myth relates to history. The image of God as a warrior king has been used to legitimize political institutions and human wars. I will argue that the biblical use of the divine warrior king tradition delegitimizes human acts of coercion and aggression.

What is a myth? The following definition is provided by Paul Ricoeur:

"Myth will here be taken to mean what the history of religions now finds in it: not a false explanation by means of images and fables, but a traditional narration which relates to events that happened at the beginning of time and which has the purpose of providing grounds for the ritual actions of men of today and, in a general manner, establishing all the forms of action and thought by which man understands himself in his world. For us, moderns, a myth is only a myth because we can no longer connect that time with the time of history as we write it, employing the critical method, nor can we connect mythical places with our geographical space. This is why the myth can no longer be an explanation; to exclude its etiological intention is the theme of all necessary demythologization. But in losing its explanatory pretensions the myth reveals its exploratory significance and its contribution to understanding, which we shall later call its symbolic function -- that is to say, its power of discovering and revealing the bond between man and what he considers sacred. Paradoxically as it may see, the myth, when it is thus demythologized through contact with scientific history and elevated to the dignity of a symbol, is a dimension of modern thought." Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, (Boston: Beacon, 1967), p5.

Ricoeur's study of symbolic myth lays out a sort of methodology or a path of study in which the first step is to understand the narrative of the symbols or metaphors. The second step is to look carefully at how the actions described in the narrative actually happen or affect the realm of human experience. The third stage is to enter into a second naïveté in which one retains the learning of step two without forgetting the story that provides meaning.

In order to retell the narrative of God as the divine warrior king, we will first turn to earlier forms of the myth, the most famous of which is found in the Enuma Elish.

Enuma Elish

site 2

NINURTA LUGAL-E "O Warrior King": A Babylonian Myth

HYMN OF PRAISE TO SHULGI the founder of the third dynasty of Ur

Wondering Where the Lions Are by Bruce Cockburn

Virtual Reconstruction of Ishtar Gate

Photo of entrance archway

Gilgamesh, supreme king,

judge of the Anunnaki,

Deliberative prince ... of the peoples,

Who surveys the regions of the world, bailiff

of the underworld,

lord of the (peoples) beneath,

You are a judge and have vision like a god,

You stand in the underworld and give the

final verdict.

Your judgment is not altered, nor is your utterance neglected.

You question, you inquire, you give judgment, you watch and you put things
right.

Shamash has entrusted to you verdicts and
decisions.

In your presence kings, regents and princes
bow down,

You watch the omens about them and give the decision.

The king is divine. (12 tablet version)

Translated cited in Gilgamesh: Hero, King, God and Striving Man by Tzvi Abusch (Biblical Archaeological Review (July/August 2000))

 

Tzvi Abusch: "As the Gilgamesh epic evolved (or simply changed) over time, however, different
themes took the forefront and provided the principal crises faced by the hero: In the
Old Babylonian version, the conflict involves a hero who must become a man; in
the 11-tablet version, the hero must become a king; and in the 12-tablet version, the
hero must become a god. The principal themes, respectively, are fame and the good
life, the value of civilized life and kingship, and the meaning of death and divinity."

The human king is granted divine status through these myths. He is either the offspring of a god or is transformed through ritual into a god. It is his status as a god that confers the authority of law maker upon him. He bridges the realm of the mundane and the sacred through his divine marriage to Innana, represented in the cult through his union with one of his consorts. The king is the chief priest in the cult. For example, the Enuma Elish was recited in the festival of the New Year as king, priests, and people participated in the recreation of the world. In his role as the leader of the army, he is the incarnate Marduk, the sky god, who subdues chaos and enslaves those he conquers to his purpose. He asserts his will over his kingdom.

The Egyptian Myth of Kingship

The basic dogma of the ruler-cult proclaimed that the pharaoh was the earthly manifestation of the sky god Horus. So the myth of transmission of kingship from Osiris via the machinations of Isis to her son Horus is vital to understanding the status and power of the sovereign in ancient Egypt. George Hart, Egyptian Myths The central myth of importance in this chronicle is the family feuds of Isis, Osiris, Set and Horus. A highly condensed version follows (see any book about Egyptian mythology for more details): Osiris and Set were the sons of Nuit and Geb. As Ra retired Osiris ascended to the throne, becoming the ruling god. But Set wanted the power, and lured Osiris into a trap and killed him. He scattered his body into pieces, throwing them into the Nile and crowning himself as the new ruler. But Isis, Osiris' widow, managed to gather the parts of Osiris' body with the help of her friends, and then revived it with the magic of Anubis (Set's son) and Nepthys (Set's wife and Isis sister); this was the origin of the mummification ritual. Although she could not restore Osiris to true life, he could ascend to the throne of the underworld, becoming the ruler of the dead. He also sired a son with his wife. When Set heard about it he was enraged and sent his warriors after the fleeing Isis. After many adventures and dangers she found sanctuary in the delta, where she gave birth to Horus. The god grew up in secret, protected and instructed by his mother. Finally he was old and strong enough to confront his uncle, claiming his right to the throne. The dispute turned into a great duel of which many stories have been written, but in the end Set was defeated and humiliated, and Horus ascended to the throne, becoming the new ruler of gods and men. http://www.d.kth.se/~nv91-asa/Mage/Egypt/Gods.html

Many passages in the Bible use images comparable to those in the ANE creation myths:

Genesis 1-2

Isaiah 27; 51

Psalms 68; 74; 104

Heb 4:12-13

Revelations

Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (1883) and Johannes Pederson, Israel: Its Life and Culture (1940), conclude that Israel is a big army.

Metaphors and texts that substantiate this conclusion:

• God is lord of Hosts (literally armies) 200X
• The Ark of the Covenant symbolizes god's presence in the battlefield as his people fight (Num 10:35-36)
• The spoils of war are dedicated to God (1 Sam 15)
• The law contains an exhortation to war (Deut 7)
• The law contains a military policy of conquest (Deut 20)
• Several wars are described as "wars of the Lord" (Num 21:14; 1 Sam 18:17)
• Booty is consecrated after battle.

Wellhausen: "It was most especially in that graver moments of its history that Israel awoke to full consciousness of itself and of Jehovah. Now, at that time and for centuries afterwards, the high water marks of history were indicated by the wars it recorded. The name "Israel" means "El does battle," and Jehovah was the warrior El, after whom the nation styled itself. The camp was, so to speak, at once the cradle in which the nation was nursed and the city in which it was welded into unity; it was also the primitive sanctuary. There Israel was, and there was Jehovah. " p. 434

If we follow Wellhausen's reading, the Bible does not set up an alternative vision to that of the city-states of the Ancient Near East. It is the same thing. From here the steps toward the justification of war on the basis of the Bible are few. In the rhetoric of war, armies typically identify themselves as agents of the Divine Warrior King.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

Julia Ward Howe

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps
They have built Him an altar in the evening dews and damps
l can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish`d rows of steel,
"As ye deal with my contemners, So with you my grace shall deal;"
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

He has sounded form the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

ln the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A PROCLAMATION

The Allied armies, through sacrifice and devotion and with God's help, have wrung from Germany a final and unconditional surrender. The western world has been freed of the evil forces which for 5 years and longer have imprisoned the bodies and broken the lives of millions upon millions of free-born men. They have violated their churches, destroyed their homes, corrupted
their children, and murdered their loved ones. Our armies of liberation have restored freedom to these suffering peoples, whose spirit and will the oppressors could never enslave.

Much remains to be done. The victory won in the West must now be won in the East. The whole world must be cleansed of the evil from which half the world has been freed. United, the peace-loving nations have demonstrated in the West that their arms are stronger by far than the might of dictators or the tyranny of military cliques that once called us soft and weak. The power of our peoples to defend themselves against all enemies will be proved in the Pacific war as it has been proved in Europe. For the triumph of spirit and of arms which we have won, and for its promise to peoples everywhere who join us in the love of freedom, it is fitting that we, as a Nation, give thanks to Almighty God, who has strengthened us and given us the victory. Now, therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, do hereby appoint Sunday, May 13, 1945, to be a day of prayer.

GENERAL EISENHOWER'S Order of the Day to the Troops.

Paris. May 8, 1945. [7] The crusade on which we embarked in the early summer of 1944 has reached its glorious conclusion. It is my especial privilege, in the name of all nations represented in this theatre of war, to commend each of you for the valiant performance of duty.

While a case can be made that God is the Divine Warrior King of Ancient Near Eastern myth, I contend that to do so is to paint an incomplete picture. Each parallel calls for a qualification that once examined gives us a more adequate picture of the notion of peace painted with the use of the image of the divine warrior. Moreover, the narratives about conquest and kings do not support the
use of the imagery to justify violence.

Gerhard von Rad,in contrast to Wellhausen, argues that the holy war or Yahweh war tradition was part of the prophetic critique of the royal courts. That is, God is all powerful; human beings can accomplish nothing. Holy War in Ancient Israel (Eerdmans, 1991).

Peter Weimar (cited in Ben Ollenburger's "Introduction" to Holy War in Ancient Israel by Gerhard von Rad) finds a pattern in Exod 14; Josh 10; Judges 4; and 1 Samuel 7:

• An enemy takes action against Israel
• Israel becomes discouraged;
• A prophet urges confidence and faith in Yahweh
• Yahweh intervenes and puts the enemy to rout
• Israel's only action is to pursue the routed enemy

In the myths of the Divine Warrior Kings, the gods build the king's sacred city and the gods supply the king with the arts and technology. Inanna gains gifts including the following from her father Enki to give to her beloved city Uruk: the crown and throne of kingship, descent to and ascent from the underworld, sexual intercourse and prostitution, legal and illegal speech, art, music,carpentry, metal work, writing, leatherwork, masonry, basket-weaving. The Enuma Elish describes how Marduk builds Babylon after defeating Tiamat. The foundational stories of Genesis attribute technology and art to human ingenuity. Culture is not divinely given. Superior technology does not signify divine favor.