Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [78]
Under the specific practices forbidden by legislation and at least once carried out in practice are exactly those which the medium of Endor performs. One cannot “enchant,” “divine, intone, or cast spells,” “consult or ask ghosts or familiar spirits,” or “seek oracles from the dead.” The vocabulary used by Saul to hire her services is explicitly the same vocabulary used to forbid the practice in Deuteronomy, so there is evidence of a literary relationship between the two pieces. Note too that in true ancient Near Eastern fashion, what Saul wants from this encounter is knowledge and the wisdom to make the best decision as king. It was normal for kings of nations to seek oracular advice. What is not clear is how much of the abhorence is due to the Deuteronomic reform and how much comes earlier. In spite of the Deuteronomistic narrative, the phenomenon and some opposition is historical, much earlier because it appears in the JE epic law code.
We learn something else from the law codes. These practices are grouped with the wicked idolatrous practices of the Canaanites-including child sacrifice. They are forbidden not only because they are immoral and abhorrent, but also because they violate monotheism-more exactly, they insult (the cult of) YHWH. This is, evidently, a new religious idea, as we have seen that gods usually act in concert in the area. While the gods may argue and oppose each other and while the priesthood of one site may dislike the priesthood of another area, one has to look far in this area to see the notion that no other cult may be practiced at all. It may have existed among the other tribal peoples, but we have little evidence of exclusivism in their religions. The Bible tells us in many ways that the Israelites did participate in the other religions, though it is careful to give us as little information as possible about what the practices were.
The Bible, as we have it, incorporates these ambiguities into an unambiguous Kulturkampf, a battle against a foreign culture. The Israelites were to owe everything to one God YHWH, the LORD, and one God alone. The reason the Israelites were given the land, which belonged to the Canaanites, is that they had sworn in the covenant not to participate in the practices of those who preceded them and who were dispossessed by the LORD for their sinfulness. That means, according to the law codes, that they were not to consult their own nor the ancestors of the Canaanites who were to be found in the land.
But at a certain earlier point there was more ambiguity. Another name for YHWH could be El or Elohim, who could also be seen as the god of the ancestor deities.6 It is possible that the argument against invoking the dead was precisely against invoking the gods of the Canaanites, who were there first and who might have claimed credit for keeping the land and its inhabitants safe-or, at least, against not confusing the dead ancestors with YHWH.
Interestingly enough in 2 Kings 23, Josiah also throws out the terafim, ancestral spirits, known to be in the possession of Israelites in the patriarchal period and later. Since this occured in 621 BCE, not all the Israelites had hearkened to the law codes of earlier times. The ancestral spirits had altars and could be consulted and may have also been referred to as elohim (Gen 31:19, 30, 32; 35:2, 4; Judg 17:5; 18:14, 17, 18, 20; see Isa 8:19-20; Num 25:2; Ps 106:28). It seems quite likely that one of the meanings of the word elohim must also be “ancestral gods.”7 For instance, Laban’s teraphim represent his ancestral deities-that is, his elohim, which were going to be outlawed as “foreign gods” in the eyes of the Biblical editors.8
From whence the divine being (literally: elohim or figuratively: “divine ghost ancestor”) of Samuel comes in the Endor story is not specifically named, though he is pictured as “coming up,” as if from under the earth, which is precisely where the dead go to and come from in the Mesopotamian