Abstract
Having fleshed out the politics of water in contemporary Detroit with a thick layering of historical memory rooted in pre-colonial and colonial struggles at the Strait, augmenting indigenous Native approaches with diasporan African wisdom and older Celtic vision, Chapter 6 “crosses back” from these traditions to the biblical corpus. Here the task is one of re-tracing Israelite monotheism back into its older and more indigenous Canaanite ancestry, tracking the way Baal-traditions of a Storm-God battle with a Sea-Serpent broadly fund representations of Yahweh-Elohim’s potency as a Mountain Deity wielding Thunder-Weaponry and Rain-Fecundity as hallmarks of divine rule. Reading the Baal myth in its concourse from Sea Battle, through Mountain “Palace” construction, to Seasonal Struggle with Drought and Death, will open toward a question of the meteorological memory so codified—perhaps dating to climate change in the Younger Dryas period, or perhaps marking the advent of agriculture as a new lifeway in the Fertile Crescent.
The original version of this chapter was revised: Post-publication corrections have been incorporated. The correction to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14998-7_10
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02 June 2019
The coupling of water politics with water spirituality will be sharpened in Chapter 4 by recounting continuing efforts of Ojibwe “Water Walking” Women to recover older indigenous practice in attending to the water “herself” as living Spirit, before moving into a consideration of the spiritual force of White “Biopolitics” and Christian “Domination” under the rubric of Pauline notions of “Principalities and Powers” and Potawatomi ideas of the “Windigo” phenomenon. Robin Kimmerer’s invocation of Nanabozho and unpacking of the Seven Fires Prophecy will open the discussion toward a more indigenous comprehension of Great Lakes dwelling and struggle.
Notes
- 1.
On-going research is even beginning to suggest that such a capacity is constitutive of human brain-function. Neurotransmitters are apparently molecules “designed” or “evolved” to hover in the brain in a “superposition state,” in “two places at once,” ready to jump “with maximal ease” between two very different shapes or conformations in a way that makes no sense to our intuitions that are attuned to macroscopic reality”—offering their un-reliability (as both “this” and “that”) as their potent gift in developing mental acuity (Mitteldorf 2018).
- 2.
Andrew Schmookler’s The Parable of the Tribe: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution details the seeming intractableness of the logic (Schmookler 1995).
- 3.
Though discovered only after the first book draft was completed, it is worth noting the work of economist-historian Michael Hudson, outlining the way Mesopotamian states from 3200 to 1200 BCE remained largely constrained by concerns to keep their social orders free of escalating debt bondage and thus martially viable by typically proclaiming jubilee-releases of accumulating obligations on each new ruler’s succession to power—a stage of oppressive state-formation nonetheless still economically in touch with earlier traditions of natural rhythms and limitations, before being eclipsed by oligarchic ruthlessness after about 700 BCE (Hudson 1995).
- 4.
Gottwald will actually denote the emergence of early Israel as primarily articulating a “fundamental breach within Canaanite society” itself, encompassing an “eclectic formation of marginal and depressed Canaanite people, including ‘feudalized’ peasants (hupshu), ‘apiru mercenaries and adventurers, transhumant pastoralists, tribally organized farmers and pastoral nomads (shoshu), and probably also itinerant craftsmen and disaffected priests” (Gottwald, xxiii).
- 5.
Smith summarizes research culling some 557 theophoric proper names referencing Yahweh (“Yah”), 77 combining with a form of El, a handful with Baal, and none with Anat or Asherah, though the influence of the latter shows up in other quite specific ways (Smith, 35, 49–51). And he notes the import of Hos. 2:14 to the effect that even in Hosea’s time, “My ba‘al” remains a title of address for Yahweh, at least in the north (Smith, 73).
- 6.
It is interesting that Rabinowitz notes traditions of both Glooscap (a Micmac version of Nanabozho) and the Haitian rainbow serpent, Damballah, in his exploration of the way Canaanite water myths inform biblical witness (Rabinowitz, 37, 101).
- 7.
The theme of a “Rebellious Sea,” though having obvious resonance with the Enuma Elish traditions of Marduk’s struggle with Tiamat, is more likely Mediterranean in provenience than Mesopotamian where the sea is relatively removed to the south and sweet-water marshes and spring runoff seasonally “dance” with salt-water tidal pulses in a rhythm hardly “war-like” (Day 11; Scott, 47–50, 66–67, 260).
- 8.
Who may well have given rise to the biblical monster, Behemoth (Day, 80–86, 182).
- 9.
In previous scholarship, both here and in Gen. 1, the invocation was thought to reflect Enuma Elish influence from Marduk’s battle with the sea goddess, Tiamat; in overall assessment today, however, the consensus leans to the Ugaritic root for “the Depths,” thm (Day, 7, 11, 50).
- 10.
Day delineates it as “a sort of technical term for divine conflict with the sea” (Day, 127).
- 11.
Although the degree to which the Ugaritic nomenclature associated with Baal may exhibit pastoral nomad Amorite influence from the past is impossible to assess with confidence, debate remains on-going about the possibility of Amorite transmission of sea-conflict traditions from the Mediterranean to Babylon, and the likelihood of a common substrate of Amorite tradition (Day, 11–12; Smith, 97 ft. 122, 125; Scott, 215).
- 12.
Though carrying resonances of perceptible and even loud clarity, the word also invokes the world of sorcerous incantation—exorcistic rumbles, destructive noise, magical roaring, thunderous bellowing, or guttural rebuke (Ford, 140–143).
- 13.
Day will infer that Habakkuk here has effectively demoted the Canaanite plague-god Resheph —part of the Ugaritic cast of chaoskampf combatants working for Baal—to a warrior-demon in the service of Yahweh’s entourage (Day, 105–106). Rabinowitz describes the imagery as a paradigmatic “Baal apocalypse” (Rabinowitz, 52).
- 14.
Though it is also the case that Baal—as Baal Hadad—is also spoken of as presiding over the flood like a shepherd (Day, 59, 163)
- 15.
It is crucial to note that the Hebrew ruah —as in many other languages around the world—carries a triple meaning of Wind/Breath/Spirit. And it is no accident that this air-phenomenon is then associated with winged bird-life—the exact creature whose body is the exquisite articulation of the ever-shifting nuances of that medium (Abram, 149, 188–191).
- 16.
And in the I Enoch 6–16 elaboration of the bene elohim in Gen. 6:1–4 as “Watcher-Powers,” spawning Nephilim-Giants.
- 17.
It is interesting in this regard that Behemoth’s bones are described in Job 40:19 as made of copper or bronze (Day, 80).
- 18.
The mountainous “pillars of heaven” marking the extremities or “ends” of the earth (Day, 28).
- 19.
Outside of our focus here on water, but of interest in likely referencing a nomadic herder practice further back in time, is the ascription of bull imagery to Yahweh (Smith, 83–85).
- 20.
Day discusses at length the impossibility of an “east wind” around Mt. Zion “shattering the ships of Tarshish” as Psalm 48 asserts, though renown of Baal Zaphon as a ship-shatterer could well reflect offshore storms on the coast where Zaphon is located (Day, 127–129, 138). And Mt. Hermon also carries repute as “mountain of the gods” in Canaanite thought, the site of the bene elohim council consulted by El, as well as hosting the headwaters of the Jordan at its base, marked by a local Baal shrine (Day, 117–119).
- 21.
We might even think here toward Jesus’ supposition, in the Gospel of Mark, about “binding the strong man” (Mark 3: 27).
- 22.
Which will haunt the gospel texts of Jesus’ baptism and his march on the Temple in John’s gospel, as we shall see below (Mk. 1: 11; Jh. 12:27–31).
- 23.
Day will even note that the Suffering Servant theme of Isaiah and Suffering King idea of Zechariah may find their taproots here in the seasonal suffering of Baal (Day, 123–124, discussing Pss. 18 and 144).
- 24.
Smith parallels Baal’s speech to Anat, in particular, with Hosea’s “call/response” oracle, in which Yahweh answers the heavens, the heavens answer the earth, with the earth answering with grain, wine and oil, themselves answered by “Jezreel” (“Almighty sows”) (Smith, 75).
- 25.
Albeit with continuing prophetic resistance—already in response to David’s impulse to build Yahweh a Canaanite-like “house-temple,” Nathan asserting that Yahweh had ever been a tent-dwelling deity, presiding like a “Bedouin-chief” for the escaped slaves, content to find honor in a nomad-shrine, with no hint of hankering for a house of cedar ever expressed to the leaders “shepherding” the people. (2 Sam. 7:4–7; Smith and Coogan, 103–104; Rabinowitz, 14, 17, 19, 23). Nevertheless, once Solomon has the divine palace built, he consecrates it with a Baal-like prayer for rain (1 Kgs. 8:36).
- 26.
Rabinowitz interestingly ferrets out an uncommon Baal-like verb for “destroy” deployed twice in Isaiah’s visionary promise to the poor and the people (25:7–8), in which Yahweh does billa to maweth (a Mot-cognate for “Death”).
- 27.
Indeed, it is interesting that Samuel will summon, as witness against this collective pressure to reorganize tribal Israel as a monarchy, a storm of thunder and rain during the wheat harvest—“disorderly” rain, seemingly “out of time” (1 Sam. 12:16–18).
- 28.
There are interesting parallels in this motif of primordial struggle to the Thunderbird/Sky-Powers battle with Mishipeshu/Mishiginebig Water-Monsters in Ojibwe myths (mentioned in Chapter 4).
- 29.
Tracing the “storm-god versus rebellious chaos-ocean” motif across traditions, Rabinowitz asserts at one point that the “images of lightning and flood are all but fused into a single kratophanous explosion,” an “uproar of fire and water,” a “single combustive act” (e.g. Ps. 97:1–6; Rabinowitz, 46).
- 30.
For instance, Eisenberg will hypothesize the Canaanites as likely “autochthonous” offspring of the first proto-farmers of the Levant (the Natufians) and propose that “the seeds of the myths that bloomed in late Bronze-Age Ugarit may have been planted by farmers of the late Stone Age” (Eisenberg, 75).
- 31.
“Baal” here is shapeshifting in a manner typical of myth, going from Storm God to Seed-at-the-Mercy-of-Death, plowed under, dying in Earth’s bowels, to be resurrected in Harvest (Coogan and Smith, 141, 147; Eisenberg, 74–75).
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Perkinson, J.W. (2019). Water Combat on The Coast: Canaanite Storm-Gods and Israelite Wind-Spirits. In: Political Spirituality for a Century of Water Wars. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14998-7_6
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