Musings on Deuteronomy/Joshua (Old Testament Lessons 17 and 18)

As I was studying recently about the “transfer of power” from the prophet Moses to his young aide, Joshua, it hit me that there was a similarity in this motif with the ideas presented in a paper by Julian Morgenstern  that I recently read called “The King-God among the Western Semites and the Meaning of Epiphanes.” This is quite an intriguing, even if somewhat old and outdated, work that looks at the ancient ideology of the Near East regarding kingship. I must preface my thoughts here by explaining that I don’t necessarily share all of Prof. Morgenstern’s reasoning or conclusions, but I found the pattern he describes strangely applicable to the Moses-Joshua narrative.

Morgenstern’s argument is that the religious traditions of the Ancient Near East, which he sees as background to, and an influence on, Israel’s religious thought, were associated with their understanding of the patterns of nature.  More specifically, the life-cycle of their gods, in their view, was reflected in, for example, the annual cycles of the sun that provide the different seasons, or the vegetation cycles of death in the winter and rebirth in the spring.  Examples of these traditions pervade the religions of the ancient world.

Morgenstern explains that, for example, in the ancient Tyrian (western-Semitic) religion, Baal-Haddad was the reigning god, the god of the storms, who brought rain and fertility to the earth. His consort was Astarte, the mother goddess who was represented as a type of Mother Earth. Their offspring was Tammuz, who was represented by the yearly crops. According to the myth, in the spring, Tammuz, the divine child, was born and grew to maturity to the point where he was identified with, or even supplanted, the Father god. In the autumn, the old god was seen as dying and being buried, only to be born again in the spring as the young god. The cycle repeated itself annually as the young god rose up from the soil (from the Underworld), grew up to become the old Father god, died, and then was born again with new and vigorous life.  (For me, personally, I think it is hard for us to know if this is how the ancients actually saw their gods, as dying and resurrecting each year, or if they saw the cycles of nature as merely reflecting a more archetypal divine example)

Later on, the Tyrian king Hiram, who had so much influence on Solomon and the building of his temple, supposedly reformed his people’s religion so that it no longer followed the pattern of the vegetation cycle, but followed the solar phases. The main phases of this new belief were following the steadily increasing light of the winter/spring sun and then the receding radiance of the summer/autumn sun. The summer/autumn sun, representing the god Baal-Shamem, grew older and dimmer as the year went on, until at the winter solstice, the point of least light in the year, the old god was believed to have died, fallen asleep, or departed on a journey.  The sun-god journeys to the darkness of the Netherworld through the portals of the West, only to be reborn far in the East. When he is reborn as the winter/spring sun, he is Melcarth, the Lord of Heaven, the young warrior god that brings new life as he grows in brightness and strength throughout these seasons of the year. Essentially, according to Morgenstern, the two gods, Baal-Shamem and Melcarth, were the same god, but in two basic phases — one mortal and one immortal. Often, the old god never truly dies but is replaced in the world of the living by the young god, who rules from his throne. The old god continues to rule, but more remotely, from the realm of the Afterlife. This general pattern can be seen in similar Egyptian beliefs regarding the dying Osiris who is avenged and “replaced” by his son Horus, the Greek traditions of the son god killing and replacing the father god, Zeus and Heracles, the Phoenix, Babylonian beliefs regarding Marduk, and so on.

While Morgenstern goes on extensively to then compare this pattern to ancient Israelite religion, including yearly temple rites in the autumn and spring at the Temple of Solomon, I will only briefly relate some of his ideas that concern the Israelite concept of kingship.  Morgenstern argues that the kings throughout the region of the Near East followed a similar pattern for their transfers of power, imitating the trajectory of the gods.  As the reigning king became old, he would appoint his son, his heir, to rule in his stead. The son symbolically “became” his father, the king, ruling on his throne. The old king would die and the new, young king would continue ruling in his stead, the embodiment of his father. Although the old king had died and journeyed to the Underworld, he would continue to rule, in a sense, through his seed who occupied his throne.

Similarly, the new reigning king would go through an annual cycle represented in the great religious festivals at the temple.  In these festivals, there were dramatic re-enactments in which, according to Morgenstern, the king would play the role of the god, as the embodiment of the god. At the Autumn New Year Festival, on the day of the autumn equinox, the king-god would, in a dramatic presentation, die and be buried in the earth (which Morgenstern seems to be saying would have been represented by the king entering the temple, the pillars of which represented the gates to the world of the dead). At the festival of the vernal equinox, there would have been a celebration of the god/king’s “awakening” or “resurrection” when, at the point of greatest light hitting the temple, he would emerge from its eastern entrance and appear to his people, glorious and radiant (the sun likely reflecting brightly off his throne and/or silver or gold colored crown/clothing) and full of new life, giving new hope to his people. (If such ideas were ever represented in Israelite religion, which I believe that they were, at least to an extent, they were greatly modified over time. According to some theories, all of these themes were represented in one great Autumn festival, and the Spring festival represented different ideas altogether).

I could go on and on about Morgenstern’s interesting analysis of these themes, but my point in bringing this up is that the idea of the old dying god/king and the rise of the young, vibrant god/king seems to have had some influence on the Israelite traditions regarding Moses and Joshua. We could say that history does have a tendency to repeat itself, or perhaps it is a case of ancient stories recontextualized to shape narrations of historical events, but the story of the transfer of power between Moses and Joshua does seem to follow this ancient pattern of cyclical transition as described by Morgenstern.  Moses, the old prophet (who was, for all intents and purposes, Israel’s earthly king), having lived a full life in service of the Lord, reaches the point when it is time for him to die and be replaced by a young, vibrant new leader.  There is a period where Moses is commanded to “share” the authority of his office with Joshua, in preparation for the transition. It is interesting that this takes place just as the people of Israel are reaching the promised land. It is as if God, when bringing his people into a new land for a new life, wants them to be led by a new, younger Moses into the promised land.  Just as Moses had, in earlier years, been both the spiritual and military leader of Israel, Joshua comes as a young warrior-prophet ready to lead the people to further conquests. This is how the resurrected, young god of the ancient traditions was depicted — as a warrior who comes to deliver his people.

However, as some traditions affirm, Moses does not really die, but was “translated” — he is essentially deified and continues ruling, in a sense, from beyond and afar, guiding still his young replacement through the prophetic mantle passed on, through the law that he had recorded, and perhaps, like the succession of Elisha following Elijah, through the endowment of a portion of his “spirit” to Joshua. Certainly, the same prophetic Spirit that had guided Moses was now operating in the Lord’s new servant.