That Old Time Religion

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The great German writer Thomas Mann began his biblical trilogy, Joseph and His Brothers, with the comment, “Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it unfathomable?” Mann plumbed the depths of the past with his brilliant literary imagination. The historian also gazes into the well of the past, which seems to recede endlessly. Each moment of the past has its own history, which leads to earlier historical antecedents, and so on, in a near-infinite regression. There are no solid points of beginning, because each beginning is part of a chain of earlier events and circumstances. The past goes all the way down.

When teaching about biblical religion or ancient Israelite religion (the terms are not entirely synonymous, since the Bible is a collection of interpretations or perspectives on ancient Israelite religion), I always wonder where to begin. Should I start with the Israelite settlement? With the era of Moses or the Patriarchs? With the period when our main biblical texts were written? Each of these possible beginnings is fraught with problems and uncertainties, and each raises other debated historical questions. More importantly, each has significant historical antecedents. So where to begin is always a problem.

Why not begin even further back? Our written sources come from the Iron Age (1200–586 B.C.E.), and the traditions of Moses and the Patriarchs have features that go back to the Bronze Age. What goes further back than that? I would suggest that some important features of Israelite religion go back to the Stone Age. So let’s begin there. Let’s imagine the religion of an ancient Fred Flintstone and his family and friends, living in the Negev or Jericho or some other ancient site.

At least three distinctive features of biblical religion are as old as the Stone Age—altars, standing stones and circumcision. Here are the clues that point in this direction:

Altars. In Exodus and Deuteronomy, the Israelites are commanded to make altars only of unhewn stones. “You shall not build them of hewn stones” (Exodus 20:25) and “You shall not wield iron on them” (Deuteronomy 27:5). Why? The Exodus text says that “the knife you wield defiles it.” But how does a metal tool defile stone? It is possible that the operative idea is that holy things must be as “natural” as possible so that they are not defiled by human culture.¹ (Remember how Moses is instructed to take off his sandals when approaching the burning bush.) Or it may be that unworked stones were regarded as more “whole” and unblemished and therefore holy enough for altars.² (Note that the priests and the sacrificial animals also had to be “whole” and unblemished in order to be part of the altar ceremonies.) I would suggest a complementary idea: that the stone altar’s holiness is very ancient, antedating the use of metal tools. If the form of the altar goes back to Stone Age times, it is understandable why cutting it with metal tools would be forbidden. Sacred traditions and ritual objects are often very resistant to change and as a result often preserve very archaic features. Altars of unhewn stones would have been normal in the Stone Age, and their unhewn form probably became a distinctive part of their construction in later times. (To slightly complicate the picture, archaeologists have found both hewn and unhewn stone altars at ancient Israelite sites, so the old custom was not universally followed.)

Standing Stones. The use of standing stones (matsevot) to mark sacred sites is common in the Bible. For example, Jacob sets one up at Bethel (Genesis 28:18), Moses sets up twelve at Sinai (Exodus 24:4), and Joshua sets up one at Shechem (Joshua 24:26). Standing stones were prominent markers at local shrines throughout Israel, as archaeological excavations attest. These standing stones, which often stood next to altars, were usually made of unhewn stone. Archaeologists have also found numerous standing stones at Stone Age sites.³ This is a clear example of a religious practice in the Bible that has direct Stone Age roots. (I should mention that Stonehenge and related European sites are farther flung examples of the use of standing stones at Stone Age sacred sites, though we don’t know whether this custom was borrowed or independently invented.)

Circumcision. The clue to the antiquity of circumcision is the use of flint knives for the ceremony. Moses’ wife Zipporah “took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin” (Exodus 4:25). Later God commands Joshua to “make flint knives and remove the foreskins of the children of Israel” (Joshua 5:2). Why flint knives? Because this was the type of knife used in the Stone Age and later times, prior to the widespread use of bronze and iron. Circumcision is an old ritual, as we know from human statuettes from the Early Bronze Age (c. 3200 B.C.E.).⁴ At that time flint knives were used, and this part of the circumcision ceremony must have become fixed and formalized. To use flint knives 058when iron ones were available is explicable as a frozen archaic trait, a part of the ancient ritual that resisted change and took on the aura of sacred tradition.

Our ancient Near Eastern Flintstones would recognize the unhewn stone altars and standing stones at sacred sites and the flint knives used in circumcision ceremonies. These conspicuous elements of Israelite religion are best explained as traces of an ancient past that persisted in their traditional form. Other aspects of Israelite religion—such as animal sacrifice—are no doubt also quite old, but we can’t specify which details of the rituals remained unchanged. With altars, standing stones, and circumcision, we catch glimpses of the ancient rites that retained their holiness all the way into biblical times. These are the Stone Age features of biblical religion, drawn from the deep well of the past.

The great German writer Thomas Mann began his biblical trilogy, Joseph and His Brothers, with the comment, “Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it unfathomable?” Mann plumbed the depths of the past with his brilliant literary imagination. The historian also gazes into the well of the past, which seems to recede endlessly. Each moment of the past has its own history, which leads to earlier historical antecedents, and so on, in a near-infinite regression. There are no solid points of beginning, because each beginning is part of a chain of earlier events and circumstances. […]