Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel

by Frank Moore Cross

The essays in this volume address key aspects of Israelite religious development. Frank Moore Cross traces the continuities between early Israelite religion and the Canaanite culture from which it emerged; explores the tension between the mythic and the historical in Israel’s religious expression; and examines the reemergence of Canaanite mythic material in the apocalypticism of early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Genres: Religion, History, Mythology, Biblical Studies, Judaism, Theology, Nonfiction

396 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Frank Moore Cross Jr. (1921–2012) was the Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages Emeritus at Harvard University, notable for his work in the interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, his 1973 magnum opus Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, and his work in Northwest Semitic epigraphy. Many of his essays on the latter topic have since been collected in Leaves from an Epigrapher's Notebook.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank Moore Cross starts this book with an essay on how Yahweh is the god of the fathers and what that means in the context of those that wrote these texts. What does it mean when the Bible speaks of El or Yahweh? What about the "Bull of Jacob?" If you are picking up this book as the first reader on Semitic deities this may be a bit much to handle. I would recommend something lighter for a first strike, something like Peter Enns' book "The bible tells me so" as a first run at this material.

I did enjoy how Cross identified that Egyptian and Canaanite deities, he discussed Asherah/Astarte/Anat, and illustrates how Jehovah/Yahweh is very much a repackaged or actualized Baal myth. Hebrew religion comes out of the soil of Canaanite texts and religion.

I really liked his chapter on Yahweh and El, and it reminded me of Mark Smith's "The Origin's of Biblical Monotheism" and "The Early History of God," both excellent reads. Cross writes, "the accumulated evidence strongly supports the view that the name Yahweh is a causative imperfect of the Canaanite-Proto-Hebrew verb hwy, "to be." (p. 65)

"Our evidence also points strongly to the conclusion that Yahweh is a shortened form of a sentence name taken from a cultic formula... "I will prevail over the heroes," and... "He drives out," and ... "Ho, he routs"... (p. 66-67) In other words, Cross identifies Yahweh as a god who acts, who creates, who causes things to be. He makes things come into being.

On Hebrew religion coming out of the soil of Canaanite theology, Cross writes:

"The very cultic establishment of Yahweh and its appurtenances- the Tabernacle, its structure... its curtains embroidered with cherubim and its cherubim throne, and its proportions according to the patter of the cosmic shrine - all reflect Canaanite models, and specifically the Tent of El and his cherubim throne." (p. 72)

All of Cross' material on the Divine Warrior motif in the Bible was excellent. I call this idea that Israel remade this earlier material and used it for their own purposes "repackaging"... we see this throughout the Biblical narrative: writers, poets, and scribes repackaged material from their world to make sense of divinity and the political tension that they faced as they tried to see God in their conflicts, blessings, and their future. Much of the Bible is repackaged from a blend of divine discourse and culture.

I was intrigued by Cross' belief in two Deuteronomistic editors/redactors that he mentions on page 287. I wanted him to go into more depth regarding this, as I have felt that there were at least two editions of the Deuteronomistic History that were edited and adapted to correlate with the needs of the community - one edition that was associated with the changes made by Josiah (640-609 B.C.E.) and one after. As to my belief and understanding of what the Deuteronomistic historian was trying to do in the construction of his first edition, see my short post here: https://ldsscriptureteachings.org/201...

Overall, I liked Cross' work, I just felt that it could have been written for a more general audience if it had some slight adjustments to how he presented his material. I am a fan of making sense of complex things to a general audience, then providing more details that may be a bit more challenging in the footnotes. That way, more people have exposure to these ideas, and if they want to dig a bit more, the footnotes offer this possibility.

A simpler version of this book that anyone who reads this review might enjoy would be "Who wrote the Bible?" by Richard Friedman or "Authoring the Old Testament" by David Bokovoy.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book treads roughly the same ground as Mark S. Smith's The Early History of God and The Origins of Biblical Monotheism. It is a tour de force of historical reconstruction from biblical sources. It deals with many of the thorny problems of the disparate historical books of the Bible (Chronicles and Joshua-2Kings). It includes the crucial paper on the dual redaction of the Deuteronomic History (Deuteronomy and Joshua-2 Kings). That paper alone is worth the purchase of the book, because it has been so influential over the years. Furthermore, he shreds the fashionable Jebusite hypothesis regarding the origins of Zadok, David's high priest.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

State-of-the-art scholarship for its era, and one of the few books I read in college that stayed with me. The two things that stand out most in my memory are a fragment of Ugaritic poetry in which El, head of the pantheon, wiggles his toes with glee on seeing his consort (his sort-of descendant Yahweh was a lot less likable) and an immense footnote on the divine name "El Shaddai" that covers what must be the entirety of the world's knowledge about the history of "s" sounds in southern Semitic languages.

[Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with a lot of essay collections, this book is all over the place. I found certain chapters helpful to varying degrees (e.g., those dealing with the chaoskampf motif, themes in Kings, and the origins of the Qumran sect), and others less so. Sometimes Cross helpfully surveyed the basic history of scholarship on his topic, but sometimes he left me without any context. Sometimes he stated his thesis clearly at the start, sometimes he didn't state I until toward the end (if at all).

What most struck me was the hermeneutic, no doubt typical of much historical-critical work. To my mind, literary context should always control interpretation. If v23 contradicts my understanding of v14, I assume that I misunderstood v14 and need to revise my reading. Cross, on the other hand, takes texts in piecemeal and interprets every statement so literalistically that there's no way vv14 and 23 could be harmonized. I noticed that this frequently led him to pick apart the text in ways that seemed to me overly complicated. He often noted a number of unifying features in a text, only to override those features by his literalistic interpretation of specific details. I tend to think most of these complications could have been resolved with greater literary sensitivity.

I was also frustrated at how often and how freely he made emendations and alterations to the biblical text, and then based his interpretations on those changes. I almost always found his reasons for emendation uncompelling. This usually didn't make a massive difference, as far as I could tell, but it's still a very precarious method. The effect is that Cross frequently comments on the text he wants rather than the text that he has.

At any rate, while I didn't always find it useful, I see why this book has become a classic textbook in more critically-minded circles.

[Станислав · Rating 4 out of 5]

Франк Мур Кросс (1921-2012) - профессор Гарвардского университета, основной круг научных интересов: древнееврейский язык, еврейский эпос, рукописи Мёртвого моря. За своё научную карьеру у него учились многие известные библеисты : Эмануэль Тов,Джон Коллинз, Джо Энн Хаккет, Джон Хюнергард, Уильям Девер, Ричард Эллиотт Фридман. Тезисы исследований Кросса по религии Древнего Израиля собраны в книге "Ханаанский миф и еврейский эпос" (первое издание 1973). Основная тема: поиск в Библии компонента древнесемитского эпоса, от предполагаемых времён Патриархов до апокалиптических текстов 1го века до н.э. Книга исследует, например, такие мотивы как описание моря в Библии (Потоп, расступившееся море в Исходе, Левиафан в Иове и т.д.) и прямые текстуальные параллели с семитским мифом о борьбе бога грома (Баала или другого) и бога моря, который олицетворяет первобытный хаос. По мере исследования семитских мифологий многие места Библии предстают в другом свете, обнаруживаются многочисленные заимствования. Книга рассчитана на читателя хорошо знакомого с документарной гипотезой, для которого понятия "Яхвист", "Элохист", "Жреческий документ" понятны без объяснений. Видно, что это сборник статей, которые были преобразованы в книгу, так что приходится переключаться между частями и в конце не будет определённого вывода. Кросс скорее задал тему, которая будет разработана его учениками и другими исследователями в более удобной форме.

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in my Hebrew Bible class and it was so helpful in finally learning to put those writings in their historical/social/literary context. I had begun to do that when my Humanities professor (legendary University of Northern Iowa professor John Eiklor) had us read the Epic of Gilgamesh in order to begin to understand that context. This book deepened that understanding.

[Batseba · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book. It concludes with the sovereignty of Yahweh. At the same time, it discusses the surrounding cultures in line with the history and theology of the Old Testament, as well as the so-called JEDP sources. It also briefly discourses the Essenes and the Qumran communities. It is difficult for me to draw conclusions from this book, but it has made me curious for further reading.

[J]

Had to skim through a lot, since I don't understand ancient Semitic grammar, lol. But really interesting look at the inner mechanics of Biblical source criticism. The most interesting part was the deep, muddied, but clearly identifiable strata of Canaanite myth behind the early images of Yahweh.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s always tough to review of collection of essays. A number of these are excellent, but as a whole, the first half seems rather disconnected from the latter half. I would have preferred to have read the few essays I was looking for.

[Michael Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was not quite prepared for this thick and chewy read. The first half was awesome. The role of Canaanite myth as the foundation upon which the Hebrew epic was built was rich and juicy. The second half dealt largely with the conflicting voices present in the pentateuch, for which I was unprepared.