Week 1

Question 1

Mesopotamia

Answer 1

-Tigris and Euphrates River (Modern day Iraq)
-Difficult area to live in due to little rainfall
~Rivers provide fresh water to the region
-As early as 6000 BC there was evidence of farmers in the region
~Farmers had to dig canals to reach the rivers
*Due to artificial irrigation this help attract migrants to the region
**Sumerians were migrants to the regions
-By 5000 BC they were construction elaborate irrigation networks in the area
-Cities (circa 4000 BC)
~The first cities developed their own government and forms of organized religion

Question 2

Why did the cities develop?

Answer 2

-Irrigation is one theory
~In order to support algaculture, the Sumerians needed to create a vast network or reservoirs and canals leading from the rivers
~In order to create and maintain these systems required large number of individuals working together
Rivers brought silt and sediment downstream tend to clog the canals and render them useless
**Silt and sediment is wonderful for agriculture
**The canals needed to be consistently maintained which required a great deal of work
**Due to maintaining the canals this required people to work together and become organized
**Makes sense due to how important water it to survival in the region
-Religion is the second Theory
~Due to natural disasters Sumerians believed that there were gods and that the gods would use these natural forces to occasionally punish humans
The Sumerians believed all but one human died in a flood; which has been sent because humans were too noisy
**Humans need to offer food to the gods on a regular basis
**Priests mad regular offerings of food to the statues of the gods, the gods would consume the food and then the priests would eat the rest
*To honor the gods, the offerings would be preformed at the temples like Ziggurats massive stepped pyramids that dominated the skyline of the cities
*In order to provide the food and building Ziggurats which required enormous resources

Question 3

Social Hierarchy

Answer 3

-Samarian cities quickly developed into monarchies
~Quickly lead to cities fighting against one another in search of resources
-Over 4000 years succession of empires and cultures developed, rose, and fell Mesopotamia
-The civilizations had similar religious and cultural traditions, buy they certainly changes and developed over the centuries
-Societies in Mesopotamia were extremely hierarchical
~The kings and religious elites were on top
~Farmers and other workers were in the middle
~Slaves were at the bottom
*Slaves often a result of war or due to non-payment of debts
**Slavery was not racial in nature
**Slaves were often given their freedom after a few years of service.

Question 4

Mesopotamia Patriarchal

Answer 4

-Men stood at the top of society and most authority was placed in their hands

Question 5

Law Code

Answer 5

-They could sell children or even their wives into slavery and severely punish their wives and children to protect their reputation
-Children and wives were expected to obey the wishes of their father or other mela relatives and any disobedience could be punished

Question 6

Opportunity for women

Answer 6

-High priestesses
-Positions that commanded enormous power
-Midwives
-Brewers
- Tavern keepers
-Textile manufacturers

Question 7

Writing

Answer 7

-Cuneiform (wedge shaped) is one of the earliest forms of writing
~Sometime after 3000 BC
~Writing probably developed as pictures, but quickly developed as a complex form of writing in which scribes used the end of a wedge-shaped stylus to write on soft clay tablets that were then dried

Question 8

Epic of Gilgamesh

Answer 8

-Circa 2000-1600 BC
-Myth and History
-Uruk
-Gilgamesh
-Life and Death
-Is one of the oldest know works in human history, and it provides insight into some of the basic, universal human concerns that have transcended culture and time
~The human need to find meaning in life and to confront the reality of death
-The epic goes back thousand of years and it may be based in reality
~Suggest suggest that it is based on the legends surrounding the fifth king of the city of Uruk
-As the legend gradually merged with myths, they were written down by a broad succession of Mesopotamian civilizations
-Historians and literary scholars have pieced the epic together from tablets
-Due to each civilization developed their own version of the story, and because the tablets are in fragmentary each version of the epic is somewhat different based on which elements individual scholars include in the text

Question 9

Myth

Answer 9

-Storied that are not just intended for entertainment, they provide an explanation of natural forces by giving them a personality and turning them into representatives of divine forces
~Natural forces thus become the sign of divine intervention in human affairs, and as a result they satisfy a human need to explain the seemingly random workings of the natural world
-Were originally oral stories that were passed from storyteller to storyteller, but eventually written down and incorporated into larger works that developed into larger cycles of stories and legends

Question 10

Uruk

Answer 10

• Fifth king built the walls of the city in the early 2000s BCE

Question 11

Who is Gilgamesh?

Answer 11

-According to the epic he is the original hero that is two-third god and one-third man
-He is brave, but vainglorious and boastful
-His main effort until the end were seemingly designed to burnish his own fame, and for the most part he is self-centered
-Gives little thought to the ordinary men and women of whom he rules, and his sexual rapaciousness is well known
-At the begging of the poem the people of Uruk are complaining to the gods that he is forcing women to have sex with him on their wedding nights
-Despite the fact that he is part god and he is famous, he still has to inevitability face death
~He becomes aware of this when his friend, Enkidu, who was created by the gods to teach Gilgamesh some humility, dies after he and Gilgamesh are cursed by the gods for killing the Bull of Heaven
-From Utnapishtim that he learns the history of humans, who were almost destroyed by the gods in a great flood
~Gilgamesh fails his quest for immortality
-After the failure he learns a great lesson
~Death is inevitable part of creation
*Result he resolves to be a better person and devotes himself to his people

Question 12

Code of Hammurabi

Answer 12

-Hammurabi
-Judgments
-Stele
-Equality in Justice
-As early as 2800 BCE conflicts between Mesopotamian city-states often lead to war as ambitious kings sought punishment or conquer their neighbor
-Most complete surviving legal text of Mesopotamia
-While the code is usually described as being a set of laws, that is not the case
~It is actually a collection of judgments made by Hammurabi on a variety of matters
-The judgments were collected and written down in order to guide judges in future cases
~In the case of the code, the laws were written on steles
-The “laws” helped shaped western culture showing that punishment should fit the crime.

Question 13

Hammurabi

Answer 13

-Ruled what known as the kingdom of Babylonia in the early 1700 BCE
-Called himself the King of Justice
-Historical legacy is a rigorous system of justice-known as the Code of Hammurabi

Question 14

Stele

Answer 14

-A large stone monument

Question 15

Canaan

Answer 15

-Modern Israel, Lebanon, Syria
-1900-1200 BC
-Timber and trade
-Phoenicians
-The region prospered due to logging and lumber due to the thick forests in the region during that time
-To expand the region they learned about ships and stated to sail the Mediterranean sea
-By 1200 BCE, they developed major trading cities along the coast and started to export ships, lumber, and other good to the settled societies around the region
-They traveled throughout the Mediterranean, they established colonies in modern Spain, France, and North Africa, where the great city of Carthage eventually rose to dominate the western Mediterranean

Question 16

Alphabet

Answer 16

-Circa 1050 BC
-Canaanites took cuneiform and other writing systems and transformed them into a simpler, more useful script that they could use to keep records
-Developed a phonetic script in which each symbol or letter, stands for a single sound
-Was passed to other societies and became the foundation for modern western alphabets as well as Arabic script
-Canaanites are also know a Phoenicians
~Phoenicians derived from Greek means purple referring to the purple dye that they extracted from mollusk shells

Question 17

The Hebrews

Answer 17

-Movement to the Highlands (circa 1200 BC)
-Kingdom of Israel (circa 1000-930 BC)
-David
-Solomon
-Probably started as groups of Canaanites who began to move from the coastal trading cities up into the highlands of the interior
~Once they moved; they began to develop their own communities and traditions, separate from the Canaanites living along the coast
-They may have been joined by migrants from Egypt and Mesopotamia at some point
~There is no strong archeological evidence of that type of blending
-They seemed to have started to develop more complex political structures until around years 1000
~When they developed into a Monarchy
-During the reign on King David and his sone Solomon that the kingdom of Israel develops and prospers centered on the city of Jerusalem
~Solomon seems to have expanded the territorial control in the Kingdom by collecting taxes more efficiently and creating alliances with surrounding communities
*Tradition associates Solomon with building a major temple in Jerusalem in order to house religious objects, and during his reign the city turned into a cosmopolitan center with trade links to Arabia and East Africa

Question 18

Split

Answer 18

-Circa 930 BC
-Kingdom of Israel (circa 930-722 BC)
-Kingdom of Judah (circa 930-586 BC)
-After the death of Solomon the kingdom split into two
~The northern Kingdom of Israel
~The southern Kingdom of Judah
-This seemed to be the result of tribal tension that were exacerbated by Solomon’s policies supporting the southern tribes over the north
-While both kingdoms prospered for a few centuries, they slowly declined
~This is were archeological records and the historical records are demonstrated by Egyptians and Mesopotamia states
-Israel and Judah appear in the Assyrian Empire
~Exceptionally powerful and militaristic state that developed in Northern Mesopotamia
-As Assyrians extended control over Canaan, they allowed local people to continue their traditional beliefs and customs as long as they paid enormous amounts tribute and taxes
-722 BC, Israel refused to pay the Assyrians invaded, conquered the kingdom, and deported its inhabitants who were never heard form again in the historical record
-This was a standard Assyrian policy for
treating those who rebelled and it was a reasonably common occurrence in the ancient world
-Judah managed to survive for a few more years, but in the early 500s BC, the kingdom’s luck ran out
-598 BC the people of Judah rebelled against their new overloads, the Neo-Babylonian Empire
~While the rebellion was decisively defeated, they were allowed to remain in the region, and the population rebelled again ten years later
*This time when the Babylonians put down the rebellion in 586, the leveled Jerusalem, completely destroying the city, and they shipped the majority of the population into captivity in Mesopotamia
**Unlike the people of the Kingdom of Israel , the people of Judah preserved their literature and historical memories
**They survived this period of captivity, and they eventually emerged as the Jewish people whose literature and religious beliefs have survived to this day

Question 19

Religious Beliefs

Answer 19

-Monotheism
-Canaanite Tradition
-El and Baal
-Yahweh
-Syncretism
-Henotheism
-We associate the Hebrew, Israel and Judaism with monotheism
~The belief that there is only one god who has created all thing
*These people were part of the religiously and economically cosmopolitan world of the Canaanites
-In the early years they practiced traditional Canaanites religious traditions, probably worshiping variety of traditional Canaanites deities such as El and Baal
-The Canaanites seemed to have worshiped at various shrines and alters
-As some point they were introduced to, or began to include, an additional god into their traditional beliefs Yahweh
~They began to blend traditional ideas about El and Baal with new ideas about Yahweh in order to create a syncretic tradition
-As the Hebrews blended traditional myths and stories with the new worship Yahweh, they gradually began to believe that they had an exclusive argument with Yahweh
~As a result they seem to have developed a form of henotheism, from there they eventually developed into monotheism

Question 20

Syncretism and syncretic

Answer 20

-Refers to the idea that cultures and religions do not emerge from the vacuum, but instead are the results of
the blending of different cultural and religious ideals

Question 21

Henotheism

Answer 21

-The belief that there are multiple gods in the universe, but you only need to honor one of the gods

Question 22

The Hebrew Bible (The Old Testament)

Answer 22

-The Torah
-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy
-The Prophets
-The writings
-Is divided into three main parts
~The Torah
*The first five books
**Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy
-Genesis provides a historical narrative starting with the creation world
~Main focus is on the lives of the ancestors of the ancient Hebrews
*It tells us about the migrations of Abraham from Mesopotamia to Canaan and the history of his descendants and their migration to Egypt
-Exodus provides the history of their enslavement in Egypt and eventual liberation by Moses
-The last three books provide a collection of hundreds of divinely given laws
-The second section is the Prophets
~These books provide a history of the Kingdom of Israel its eventually split, and the destruction of Judah
*Its known as the Prophets because it is focused around the lives and writings of prophets in these kingdoms
-The third section is known as the writings
~This is a collection of texts that includes poetry, historical writings, and various stories

Question 23

Who wrote these works?

Answer 23

-Scholarly Analysis
-Doublets
-Genesis 1-2:4 and Genesis 2:4
-Given that the text appears to be a uniform work that is broken up into chapters it is very easy to assume that there was a single author to the texts, or that it was written in or about the same time period
-In the Middle ages people often believed that Moses was the author of the Torah
~Most of these texts were originally written or composed by anonymous authors and story tellers
As the Hebrews came into contact with surrounding people, particularly the ancient Greeks, who valued knowing who had authored texts, they began to suggest that Moses was the author of the Torah
-Starting in the 1600s, scholars began to ask questions about the authorship and production of these works in particular, they pointed out that even a cursory skim of Genesis will result in a reader noticed places where the storied repeat themselves
~Example
There appears to be two distinct creation stories
**Genesis 1-2:3 we see a creation story which God creates the world in six days
**Animals are created first, then humans, both men and women, are created
**Genesis 2:4 there is a second creation story
**In this version, God creates Adam first, then the animals, and Eve later
**There are two distinct stories that appear here
**There are similar repetitions in the story of Noah, but here the multiple stories have been edited together to the point where it can be difficult to see the distinctions
-How many animals does Noah bring on the ark?
~In Genesis 6:19, he is told to take two of each animal
~In Genesis 7:2 he is told to take two each plus seven pairs of clean animals
*Noah and his family enters the ark on two separate occasions and the exact description of the flood varies here as well
**The repetition are known as Doublets, and they are found throughout the Torah
-There are other differences as well, some places, God is referred as Yahweh and others as El or Elohim; in some places God is describes in very human terms, walking, smelling, and talking while in others God is portrayed as an almighty figure who is above such human terms

Question 24

Evolution of the Hebrew Bible

Answer 24

-Circa 1000-200 BC
-“J” (Yahwehist Source)
-circa 1000 BC
-Anthropomorphic Yahweh
-“E” (Elohis Source)
-Circa 900 BC
-El/Elohim
-“D” (Deuteronomist Source)
-Circa 640 BC
-“P” (Priestly Source)
-Circa 600-400s BC
-El/Elohim
-Scholars began to analyze the text and developed an explanation that has lasted more or less intact since the early twentieth century
~According to academics, Genesis and other works probably consist of at least four separate sources
-The earliest of these is known as the “J” source
~It may have originated as early as 1000 BC
*Known as “J” because this source refers to God as Yahweh
**German scholar who first identified this source spelled Yahweh with a J thus the “J” source
-Second source is known as the “E” because it refers to God as El/Elohim and might have originated around the same time period
~These two early sources appear to be heavily indebted to traditional Canaanite traditions
In “J”, Yahweh is described in very human terms in the same way that Canaanites and Mesopotamians talked about their Gods
**This is the god that walked in the Garden , breathes, talks, smells, and shut the door on Noah’s ark
**The second creation story in Genesis 2:4 is very representative of this source (important to keep in mind that these early sources were probably not written by a single author and some distinct historical moment)
**They represent oral traditions and stories that have been passed down for generations
**These traditions and stories undoubtedly developed alongside one another and some scholars have wondered if they represent a single tradition rather than two truly separate sources
-The third source is known as “D” because it primarily consists of the book of Deuteronomy
~The source was probably composed sometime in the 600 BC
-Finally, “P” or Priestly source is the later tradition
~It uses Elohim to refer to God and it describes God as a truly transcendent and all powerful being
The first creation story in Genesis 1-2:3 is a piece of the Priestly source
**Unknown when this source developed but it probably emerged during the period after 586 BC by priests living in captivity in Babylon
**These authors began to rewrite older traditions about creation and floods into new stories that highlighted the omnipotence of God and his connection to the Hebrew people

Question 25

The Hebrew Bible as an Argument for Monotheism

Answer 25

-Canaanite Traditions
-Prophets (800-700s BC)
-Deuteronomy
-Josiah and Judah (Circa 641-609 BC)
-The earliest Hebrews were probably Canaanites who worshiped in the same way as Canaanites
~We can see evidence of that belief in Genesis
*The story of the Flood is undoubtedly influenced by the earlier Mesopotamian flood story that appears in works such as The Epic of Gilgamesh
~In addition descriptions of Yahweh in the Torah are heavily influenced by the way in which the Canaanites referred to gods such as El and Baal
*The anthromorphic god who appears in “J” seems to represent these older traditions in many ways
-After the Kingdom of Israel split in two the political and social situations started to deteriorate
~We start to see prophets and religious figures argue that the political situation was the result of the people being disloyal of Yahweh by worshiping other gods
*These figures began to argue that history could be seen as a cycle Yahweh and his people make an agreement known as a covenant and his people start to disobey, God punish them, and then God forgives them and creates a new covenant is created
This is seen in the cycle with Noah
The people stray and become wicked, God punishes humanity with a flood, and in Genesis 9 a new covenant is created
****God promises to never again flood the earth something we are reminded of every time we see a rainbow in the sky
-According to these prophets, political and social problems of the 800s and 700s BC
~Example
The oppression of the Assyrian Empire, were God’s punishment for the disobedience of the people
**Reform to the sole worship of Yahweh was the only solution
**These calls of reform accelerated the aftermath of the destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722
****These reforms seem to have reached a pitch during the reign of Josiah of Judah in the 640 BC
**Probably during his reign that Deuteronomy was written
-In order to reform and reinvigorate Judah, Josiah destroyed idols and local shrines-sites like the horned alter
-In order to control worship of Yahweh, he centralized worship in the city of Jerusalem
~Deuteronomy follows along with the reforms by the repeatedly condemning traditional Canaanite worship and calling for reform
-The program of reform can be seen in Deuteronomy 12
~The chapter focuses on the need to destroy the alters, pillars, and poles where the local people worshiped
The text puts this into distant historical past by suggesting that the Hebrew people have yet to conquer the regions where worshiping is occurring in actuality, the destruction that the text calls for was being called out for by Josiah
**Instead of local shrines, the chapter argues that worship need to be centralized in a single location, “the place that the LORD your God will chose” (Deuteronomy 12:11 (Jerusalem))
**This central location is the only place where sacrifices can be made so that priests can monitor worship and rituals
**It is important to note that all animal slaughter, even just for eating meat took place at a local alter
**This requirement was problematic for people who lived far from the central location; to help alleviate this, Deuteronomy 12:20-25 creates some leeway, allowing people to slaughter animals when they want to eat meat
***Other chapters repeat these bans and suggest dire consequences for those who turn away from God; by banning the worship of other gods and focusing on Yahweh, Josiah helped turn the Hebrews onto a henotheistic track that they took with them to Mesopotamia in 500 BC
-In Mesopotamia, the survivors of Judah began to encounter new religious traditions, as a result the priestly authors of “P” who began to articulate a strongly monotheistic idea
~They argued that not only should the Hebrew people only worship Yahweh, but that Yahweh was the only deity in existence
-In 586 BC, the Babylonian Captivity ended and the survivors of Judah and their families were able to return to Jerusalem
~It was at that point that all of these sources began to be edited together
*The leaders of this community wanted to create a single work that could help unite the people, and as a result they blended traditional stories, the call for centralized Deuteronomy, with the new monotheistic ideas to help create the Torah as we see it today