 OK, so the title of this presentation is World View Bias and the Origins of Hebrew Worship. Many scholars have noted that the worship practices of Israel share in common with the nations around them, elements such as sacrificial system, sanctuary, priests, et cetera, leading some secular scholars in particular to include that the worship practices of ancient Israel arose merely as evolutionary developments of the pagan nations around them. Unfortunately, even some evangelicals suggest a similar sort of thought by arguing that these similarities reveal that when God instituted the forms of worship for Israel, he quote unquote contextualized worship from the cultural forms and practices that they would understand. So for example, Andrew Hill, who's an evangelical scholar, argues that the institution of sacrifices quote, demonstrates God's willingness to accommodate his revelation to cultural conventions. Human sacrifice was practiced in ancient Mesopotamia, and Abraham was no doubt familiar with the rituals since he came from Ur of the Calvaries. And so his argument is that even though he not, he affirms that God revealed himself, which of course secular scholars would not. Nevertheless, God accommodated himself to the cultural conventions with which Abraham would have already been familiar. And it's based on the same kinds of things that we'll look at in this presentation. So in this paper, I'll focus primarily on one line of argumentation used to conclude that Israel's monotheism evolved naturally from polytheism. I'll begin with an explanation of the problems of similarity between the worship of Israel and his pagan neighbors. I then survey common answers to the question of similarities. How do we account for this? I conclude by arguing that worldview bias plays a significant role in the conclusions drawn from the available data. And I observed that non-feasts who discredit the veracity of the biblical record by appealing to historical accuracy do so only on the basis of the biblical worldview that they repudiated. So what I want to show is that they're actually inconsistent in their criticism or in their argument that Israel evolved from pagan polytheism. OK, so first I want to sort of explore the challenge. The Old Testament, of course, claims that Israel's monotheistic worship appeared early in their history, that is key, as a direct result of revelation from God. That's the plain reading of scripture. According to many non-feasts, quote, there is not a shred of evidence outside the Bible to corroborate these claims. Further, they argue that historical evidence actually contradicts the biblical account and proves that it is palatious. They draw attention to the multiple similarities between Hebrew worship and that of their Canaanite neighbors, leading to theories of the origin of Hebrew worship that contradict the biblical account. So that's the problem. So what are these similarities? Well, non-theists claim that similarities between Israel's worship, as described in the Old Testament, and worship of other nations, as discovered through archaeology, prove that Israel's worship finds its roots in the religion of its neighbors rather than from divine revelation as the Bible asserts. One of the most significant archaeological discoveries concerns documents uncovered in 1929 from the Syrian coastal town of Ugarit, dating from 1300 to 1200 B.C. Scholars believe that this group of people are the biblical Canaanites, and thus study of the discoveries of this people provides a wealth of information about the Israel's neighbors. Really, it was a remarkable discovery. Documents discovered include literary ritual and liturgical texts, several of which non-theists used to prove that Israel's worship was essentially Canaanite in origin. Comparison of the Bible's description of Israel's worship with that of the Ugaritic people uncovers remarkable similarities. And they fall into several categories. So I want to go through some of these. You can't deny these similarities. So that's the problem, the challenge. First, names for deity overlap. For example, Ugarit documents reveal that the Canaanite name for the highest deity of the Pantheon was El, a title used throughout the Pentateuch for Israel's god as well. Many times when Israel referred to their god, they referred him as El. Indeed, even Israel's name contains this reference to deity. And in a particularly poignant passage, Exodus chapter 6, God himself tells Moses this. I am the Lord, and that's Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, El Shaddai. But by my name, the Lord, Yahweh, I did not make myself known to them. So that's often a passage that I'll point out. Second, some argue that internal evidence within the Bible itself supports the claim that early Israel was polytheistic. For example, citing Genesis 6, 1 through 4, which refers to the sons of God. Do you recall that passage? Christopher Walston argues that the Hebrew term is semantically and etymologically cognate to the euguritic term bin ilm, as well as the various terms in Akkadian, and refers to Israel's early belief in a pantheon of gods. So they use the same terminology in Genesis, sons of God, same basic terms that the eugurit referred to for their pantheon of gods. Third, some claim that later, Israelites understood a hierarchy within the pantheon. The Canaanites believed in an assembled body of gods who operated under El's rule. So El was the main god of the pantheon, sort of a hierarchy. Ralston uses Job 1.6 to argue that Israel, like its neighbors, believed that Yahweh was the head of the pantheon. Remember, the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, Job says, and he would argue, see Israel believed in this sort of pantheon as well. Yahweh, they believed was the top god, but they believed in other gods that were part of this pantheon. Fourth, the worship systems of Israel and her neighbors are remarkably similar. The temples of Israel and of other religions often had comparable structures and purpose. Not only did most nations share in common the practice of sacrificial rites, Canaanite religion even shared even essentially identical rituals, such as the scapegoat and other purification rituals. Finally, some argue direct borrowing from Israelite worship materials and their neighbors. For example, Psalm 104 appears to evidence very close parallels with the euguritic Baal cycle, and line for line almost, you can see parallelism. Even more significantly, some scholars have argued that Psalm 29 is actually directly borrowed from euguritic poetry. The couple words changed. So from this data, based on these similarities between Israel's worship and the worship of its neighbors, non-theists claim that the correspondences point to a larger religious tradition shared broadly by West Semitic peoples, including the Israelites. And therefore, the worship of Israel, a nation that they would argue emerged relatively late, must have evolved from the worship of other older nations. They say to claim that religion during the period of the state of Judah is accurately reflected in the final form of the text can be dismissed as naive. So how the Bible portrays Israel's religion is naive. That's not how it really occurred. Now, how do they explain this? Well, most secular, unfortunately, and some Christian Old Testament scholars advocate a version of what's called the Documentary Hypothesis of the composition of the Pentateuch in Art of the Old Testament. It was popularized in 1895 by Julius Wellhausen, and it argues that the Pentateuch, so this is the Documentary Hypothesis, the Pentateuch was composed, as we have in the first Bible to the Bible, by a group of editors who compiled a bunch of diverse collections of writings and none of which dates before 900 BC. So very, very late. They base their argument primarily on internal evidence demonstrating different names used to describe the Israel's God, which they believe implies multiple authorship. So because some parts of the Pentateuch prefer them as El, some as Yahweh, and various other names. They say, see, it's really just a compilation of multiple authors that later was compiled into the five books after return from exile. But more, some believe that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch as the traditional conservative understanding. And as the Bible itself claims, the text of scripture say, Moses wrote this, and he couldn't have since, quote, the art of writing was virtually unknown in Israel prior to the establishment of the Davidic monarchy, they are. Therefore there could have been no written records going back to the time of Moses. So, talked about this in a moment, but that's sort of rooted in an evolutionary understanding of the development of mankind, that writing didn't exist until at least the time of David. So this leads to a theory suggesting that a group of Hebrew editors composed the Pentateuch after the return of Israel from exile out of a desire to unify the struggling nation around the common religious heritage, most of which is fabricated from myths and legends. So I'll read you one summary of this. Diane McCander Edelman states, it is important to realize that the text of the Hebrew Bible is the product of a long editorial process. Its final shapers were monotheistic and they wanted the inherited traditions to reflect their own religious beliefs in a single creator deity, Yahweh, who had at his command various lesser divine beings who also populated the heavens, the angels. So these religious leaders after the exile were monotheists and they wanted to make it seem like we've always been monotheists as a way to unite the country. This reasoning leads to certain conclusions among scholars that with some variation generally agree in their chronology and the evolution of Hebrew worship. They would argue Israel's worship was initially polytheistic, although once Israel was established in the land, Yahweh became considered a national deity. Later Yahweh in their thinking becomes the head of the Israelite pantheon, but without a denial of the existence of other deities. Israel believed that, quote, Yahweh was the king of a whole heavenly host that included lesser deities who did his bidding, having various degrees of autonomy depending upon their status within the larger hierarchy. It's only later then, according to this argument, that Israelite religion affirms the veracity of monotheism with Yahweh as the sole deity and with explicit denials of the existence of other deities and that comes rather late. If Israel's worship was not as the biblical record asserts formed by direct revelation from the one true and living God but rather was the result of natural religious evolution that in many nontheist minds, this is strong evidence that the Old Testament God does not exist, which is, of course, the reason for this argument. Okay, so how do we deal with the issues? There are undeniable parallels and similarities, so how can we explain these things? Conservative Bible scholars have attempted to solve the problem of similarities between the worship of Israel and its neighbors in at least one of two ways. I say conservative Bible scholars, but I do wanna mention how liberal Old Testament scholars dealt with it. I'm gonna just mention that first. So this is an answer to these issues from the field of higher criticism. One of the earliest answers to the logic presented above came from higher critics who attempted to quote de-mythologize scripture by extracting what they called the biblical narrative from a historical event. So they separate the actual historical truth from the ideas that the Bible is trying to communicate, and they think those ideas are more significant than the actual historical accuracy. They accept a post-exilic date for the composition of most of the Old Testament like the Documentary Hypothesis. They claim that the Old Testament's historical genre is firmly rooted in the worldview of its time, in other words, mythology. And they conclude that biblical events are culturally descriptive rather than reveal truth. So they essentially buy into what the secular scholars argue, although they would still believe in God and say that there's a message here that we all can, that will benefit us. This attempt to explain similarities between Israelite and Canaanite worship by separating historical facts in scripture from a spiritual significant though, I would argue is problematic, since the theology of scripture is presented as though it is an extrapolation from the experience of Israel in the church. In other words, the theology of scripture is rooted in the historical events. And so if you try to divide the two, you actually undermine the theology. As I'll argue below, the worship of Israel and then later Christianity is predicated upon the historical veracity of scripture to deny that biblical events occurred exactly as recorded is to question the very validity of biblical religion. So I'm arguing, you can't even accept this explanation. But there are two other explanations that traditionally conservative Christians have used and I'm gonna alter, offer a third one as well. The first is to answer the challenge from highlighting differences between Hebrew and pagan worship. The first answer is to identify differences between Israel's worship and other ancient Near Eastern nations and to argue that differences are far more fundamental than surface level similarities. This approach is epitomized by John Oswald who wrote a great little book called The Bible Among the Myths. He insists that the similarities between the Bible and the rest of the literature of the ancient Near East are superficial, all the differences are essential. So let's look at some of these. First, the Old Testament's conception of God and that of other ancient Near East religions is starkly different. While the Old Testament God had no beginning, Michael's clear on that, Psalm 92, for example, Oswald points out that the mythology of both Mesopotamia and Egypt makes clear that God's had origins. In other words, all the pagan religions believe that their God actually had an origin. Furthermore, the gods were not really omnipotent as the God of the Bible is, but were restricted in power for the capacity of natural elements they personify. Really, pagan religion is naturalistic, whereas biblical religion is transcendent. The God of the Bible is above creation. Pagan gods were part of the natural world, not above it. They were manifest in that element of the cosmos which was they were associated and they had some jurisdiction there. So you have the God of the seas and the God of the clouds and they're limited to those particular areas of nature. In contrast, so great was the God of Israel, according to the Old Testament, that the Israelites acknowledged his lordship over every phenomenon that his experience encountered. God was not part of nature as the pagan gods. He is over nature. That's a significant essential difference. This leads to another significant difference. While the deities of other nations were manifested in nature itself, the God of the Old Testament revealed himself not in nature primarily but through his works. God's character was manifested through what he did. Therefore, as Wright notes, the basis of biblical liturgy was history, not nature, because the God of Israel was first of all a lord of history who used nature to accomplish his purposes in history. History is very important for the biblical God. History has no importance really for the pagan religions. The record and study of history is far more significant for Israel and for any other ancient Near Eastern nation because, and this is a quote from Oswald again, if human experience is to be correctly understood, it is human behavior in creation in relation to God that must be studied and not the relations of gods among themselves in prime legal time. So if you look at any of the mythology of ancient pagan religions, it's all about how the gods are interacting with one another sort of in the cosmos. Whereas the Bible is about how God is interacting with man in history. And that's a, no other religion, no other ancient religion has that sort of thing. While pagan worship had no central moral standards, Israel believed in moral absolutes, rooted in God and revealed to them his law. Israel's God, in contrast to the depraved perverted manner of pagan gods, is reliable and trustworthy. And think about the Roman Greek gods. They're all spiteful and they're, you know, doing things against each other they're playing tricks on humanity, there's no moral center. That's starkly different from the God of the Bible. In fact, Oswald notes that the word Hesed, which is the covenant faithfulness, steadfast love, often transitive in the Old Testament, is the word not attested outside Hebrew. It comes to be used as a descriptor par excellence of God in the Old Testament. That's why it is defining characteristics that is true of no other God in any religion, that he is faithful. No other God could be described that way. Fourth, Israel's monotheism stands in stark contrast to the polytheism of other nations. So this is the fact of the monotheism. So think about this, even if one were to concede that monotheism emerged late in Israel's history, which is what they argue. The fact of Israel's monotheisms still remains unprecedented. If monotheism were merely the natural evolution of religion from its earlier polytheism, one wonders why no other nation in the ancient Near East evolved into monotheism. I mean, there is really only one monotheism that has developed in the history of mankind, which then split into three monotheisms. You have Old Testament monotheism, which then split into Christianity, a continuation of Judaism, and Islam. But none of the other nations of the ancient Near East evolved into monotheism. One would wonder why, if, as these scholars argue, it was a natural evolution. Fifth, although Israel shares with its neighbors similar worship places and rituals, each of these functions in often radically different ways. For example, unlike pagan sanctuaries, Israel's temple was not God's palace where his human servants supplied his physical needs like other religions, but it was the bearer of his name. Furthermore, pagan worship was initiated by the worshipper who desired to attract God's attention and earn his favor, while Israel's God initiated the worship, and the worshippers simply responded to what God has already done for them. When comparing the psalms of Israel with those of the Euridic people, important distinctions emerge as well. So for instance, according to Walton, the category of declarative praise is unique to Israel. You don't find that in the literature of the Euridic people. Oswald argues that although Psalm 29, they resemble Euridic references to Baal as the God of thunderstorms, nowhere in the psalm is Yahweh identified with the thunderstorm. So that's one of the parallels that they'll try to draw. Baal is called the God of thunderstorm. Yahweh is called the God of thunderstorm. See, it's a borrowing. The difference is Baal is part of the thunderstorm. Yahweh sits above. So each of these differences reveal an even more really essential distinction between the worship of Israel and the other ancient, nearing Eastern nations. And this is really where I'm headed and that is a difference of the world view. Oswald in his book, which is very helpful, thoroughly demonstrates that the beliefs and practices of other nations are rooted in a world view of what he calls continuity. Religious beliefs of the Canaanites flowed out of the principle that all things that exist are physically and spiritually part of one another because they believe that the gods are part of nature, so are we, we're all part of the same system. That's continuity. They believe that the gods themselves were created out of eternal preexisting matter and thus the gods are part of the nature rather than above it. Israel's world view, on the other hand, was characterized by what Oswald calls transcendence, the belief that the creator of the universe is radically other than his creation. Israel's God created all things from nothing and remains above all things as a supreme ruler. All of humankind's existence then is interpreted in light of their relationship to the creator God. Because of these different conceptions of deity that flow from fundamentally opposing world views, here's another significant difference. The literary genre of historical record differed for Israel than for other nations. So here's Oswald again. Whatever the biblical narratives are, they are in a different category all together than any of the other writings of pagan nations. Walton agrees, noting that historiography in Israel was driven by covenant, not by the king. So even in the rest of ancient Near Eastern historiography, the historical records had the function of promoting and legitimizing the king. While old tests and authors knew nothing of the sort of journalistic historical record of today, the Israelites gave much more attention to their history than other nations because that is where God is known in history and the human historical world of ethical choices. Likewise, John Curran, another good book against the gods, observes that even the writing style of the cosmological texts from the ancient Near East is best described as mythic narrative. While the biblical record bears all the marks of Hebrew historic narratives. So even the narratives differ in form. This is an important reason that biblical record really has no parallel in ancient Near Eastern literature. You won't find that kind of historical record. And thus cannot be interpreted by direct comparison with pagan mythology. Biblical history and pagan myth have very different purposes, function and literary forms, and therefore must not be interpreted in the same manner. That's basically Oswald's thesis. They're not the same genre. Okay, so that's a way to answer the problem by highlighting differences. But also a second way to defend the Old Testament claims that Israel's worship came by direct revelation from God is to explain reasons for the similarities consistent with the biblical record and actually argue for the truth of scripture from the similarities. Well, some will say the similarities actually prove the truth and the rest of scripture. This is the method employed by John Currid and against the gods, who argues, quote, many of the parallels between the ancient Near Eastern literature and the Old Testament may be properly and fully understood only through the right use of polemical theology. In other words, he argues these parallels were on purpose and they were employed by the Old Testament authors as a way to argue for the truthfulness of their religion in comparison to the pagan religions. He demonstrates that every significant correspondence between, for instance, the Ugarit literature and the Old Testament can be explained as biblical authors borrowing for the purpose of taunting. Even more significantly, unquestionable similarities between many significant characteristics of Hebrew worship in other nations could be evidence, not for the fact that Israel's worship evolved from the other nations, but rather that the worship of other nations evolved from elements of worship that existed all the way back at creation. If one posits the truthfulness of the Old Testament, then it would make sense for all nations to share similar conceptions of deity and of the way to approach deity and worship, including similar language. The key elements of worship that appear in most religions are instituted in the first few chapters of Genesis. God places Adam and Eve in a sanctuary as priests who serve him and commune with him after they disobey him. God institutes the idea of substitutionary sacrifice and atonement, establishing a covenant with them. Each of these elements characterizes the worship of all religions since they are part of the religious heritage of all children of Adam. As Rodriguez notes, those religious expressions belong to the common human experience of God. So this is not an issue of Israel borrowing from the pagans, it's of the pagans borrowing from the elements God has already established. Romans chapter one, 19 and 20 testifies to this when it says that God has revealed himself to all people through the things that he has made. It is the pagans then who already operate on the basis of God's revelation and this is further proven by the fact that all religions of the world, not just those of the ancient Near East, shared many of the essential similarities discussed above. This really some of the similarities that they point out between Israel and the ancient Near Eastern context proves too much because the ancient religions of Asia also have the same similarities and no one would argue that Israel evolved from the religions of Asia, right? All religions around the world share these similarities of sacrifice, priest, temple and these sorts of things. As Walton summarizes, this reflects the common nature of humanity, not literary dependence. Thus, similarities between worship practices of various nations actually provide proof for the God of Scripture. So those are the two most common answers to the challenge. I want to offer a third way to explain these things that I think is even more fundamental. A final perhaps more fundamental defense of biblical origins for Hebrew worship emerges from this study which reveals two distinct and contradictory worldview biases implicit in the interpretation of historical data by non-theists. What I'm suggesting is that when non-theists look at the archeological and historical data and they draw their conclusions, they're actually revealing by doing that two contradictory worldview biases. And when viewed in this way, I'm gonna argue that the non-theists argument collapses under its own weight. Non-theists scholars argue that when the narratives of the Old Testament are measured against modern methods of historical analysis, they prove to be factually unreliable. Yet, no archeological discoveries or ancient texts explicitly state the conclusions that these scholars claim with authority. It's not that this is explicit, they're interpreting the data and they're saying it's clearly, if you compare it to our historical standards today, clearly the Old Testament is historically inaccurate. Non-theists arrive at their conclusion because of the naturalist and Darwinian presuppositions that underlie their interpretation of data. They look at the data and from the context of their presuppositions which are naturalistic and Darwinian, they draw conclusions. As a Christian archeologist, Eugene Merrill notes, no fragment of information, literary or otherwise, is self-interpreting. It always calls for outside help to give it meaning. In other words, archeology is hardly an exact science but is fraught with methodological difficulties for the silent archeological evidence may always be interpreted in more ways than one. You've got the data, but your presuppositions will influence how you interpret that data. Conservative Christians and non-theists possess the same data, both biblical and extra biblical. You have to take the Old Testament into account as well. That's historical evidence, even if you deny that it's from God. So they have the same data. Differences in their interpretation of that data emerge from their distinct starting presuppositions. Conservative Christians presuppose the existence of God and the veracity of the biblical record while non-theists presuppose naturalist assumptions. Therefore, each of the similarities cited earlier find rational explanation when one posits that what the Bible records really did happen as it says it did. If you assume that, then it all makes sense. But perhaps even more damaging to the non-theist argument is the fact that the appeal to scientific accuracy and historical veracity itself, so even their appeal to those things. When we compare the Old Testament to our scientific method or when we compare the Old Testament to our methodology of historical accuracy, it doesn't work. Even that desire is itself predicated upon a transcendent and thus biblical worldview. Let me explain what I mean. Paul Davies explains this. He says, science began as an outgrowth of theology. That's true. And all scientists, whether atheists or theists, accept an essentially theological worldview. It's a desire to understand the cosmos. Diligent study of the cosmos makes no sense in a worldview of continuity. It was motivation to understand what God has made that fueled the 17th century scientific revolution. So he's arguing, I think, successfully that the whole idea of wanting to study scientifically the cosmos flowed out of a desire to want to know what God had made. Before the dominance of Christianity and Western civilization, people didn't care. Likewise, a desire to discover what really happened historically, historical inquiry, makes sense only within a worldview of transcendence. A consistent naturalist has no reason to assume that human choices are important or have consequences. And Oswald develops that argument. Nobody with a naturalistic worldview historically was really concerned with historical records. Nor does a naturalist have any philosophical basis for insisting upon this scientifically accurate historical record. It is only a worldview of transcendence of which the biblical worldview is the only one that has any cause for interest in history. What's very interesting is that Oswald knows that Augustine's city of God is arguably the first expression of a philosophy of history to be found in the world. Peggans have never really been concerned about history. Oswald argues that such an interest in history on a broad scale is possible only in a civilization in which biblical values were what were taking root. He explains that human experience is moving toward a goal through a series of linked causes and effects in the visible world's history, that there is linear progression to new causes and effects with measurable progress towards a goal, and that there is real human choice and concomitant human responsibility, which is what history is, the purpose of history, historical record. These ideas find their origin in the Bible and are brought to systematic expression with the aid of Greek thought. Thus, the idea that the Bible is not historical is something of an oxymoron, because even the desire to be historical is rooted in biblical worldview. Thus, non-theists, I'm suggesting, have no basis within their own naturalist worldview to argue against the veracity of scripture on scientific or historical standards. Oswald, his book, even argues that as we move more towards naturalism in our world, and especially Western civilization, he argues that one of the effects of that we're gonna be less and less concerned about history, or at least being concerned about cause and effects and that choice of consequences, and do we see that not already today? He says it's only a biblical worldview that really has a concern for history. So, here's my conclusion. And then we'll have a little time for some questions in the discussion. Conservative Christians and ethnic minorities surrounding the origin of Hebrew worship, I would suggest fairly simple. We can direct attention to clear, fundamental differences between Israel's worship and that of her neighbors. I think there are some key ones. We can explain the similarities in terms of theological polemics. In other words, the similarities exist on purpose. And we can demonstrate that similarities result from a more basic form of borrowing, that is pagan nations borrowing from God's reality, things that he had established all of that creation and really had embedded into humanity. But my contribution here to this subject is that I think the most potent defense against charges that the Old Testament record of God revealing himself to Israel is historically inaccurate. That charge, the way to defend against that charge is to reveal the naturalist and Darwinist presuppositions that lie beneath non-theist interpretation of the archeological and historical data, show those presuppositions, and reveal the biblical foundation upon which any appealed historical accuracy must be made in the first place. Only a worldview of transcendence, the biblical worldview, can account for interest in history and thus the Bible's historical veracity concerning the origin of Hebrew worship really is self-authenticating.