The Hebrew God – POrtrait of an Ancient Deity Hardcover – 1 Feb. 2002

In his preface, the author claims to produce "a comprehensive and convincing account of the Hebrew God" which, he says, previous scholars have failed to produce. He says that he was inspired by Georges Dumézil's "La religion romaine archaïque" (English translation 1970), which provided a "trifunctional" analysis of the nature of gods as Lords of Wisdom, Lords of War and Lords of Prosperity, reflecting the social divisions of ancient societies into priests, warriors and food producers. Lang has subdivided the last of these three functions into Lords of Animals, Lords of the Individual (gods having a relationship not only with the communities but with the individuals that worship them) and Lords of the Harvest (also weather gods). The enthronement of kings in the ancient world were accompanied by rituals symbolizing that wisdom, victory, and prosperity had been bestowed upon them by the gods or God. (There is nearly as much about kings in this book as there is about gods.)(It seems to me that there is also the function of the Lord of Judgement - at least in the Hebrew Bible and not quite the same as the Lord of Wisdom. In this book God as Judge is treated as an aspect of the Lord of War in chapter 8, but as an aspect of the Lord of Wisdom in chapter 20.)The neighbouring societies of the Hebrews separated these functions among many deities; in the course of their development towards monotheism - via monolatry (Lang suggests that this was initially temporary, making sure in times of battle of the support of the Lord of War) - the Hebrews gave all these functions to a single God, though the Bible still incorporates some fragments showing that the Hebrews, too, had once been polytheists.These are scarcely innovative insights! What, then, are the contributions made by this book? It is, essentially, a compilation of material from the religions of the Middle East (and indeed farther afield - India, England, Uganda and the Arctic regions figure occasionally) to illustrate these archetypal attributes of gods and rulers. The notion of God as the Lord of the Animals is perhaps often overlooked, and Lang draws attention to several passages in the Hebrew and Christian Bible which he then links with gods with animal features in the earlier surrounding cultures. It is the gods or God who give permission to humans to hunt and kill animals for food, and their entrails were offered to God, originally as a kind of acknowledgment of this.While I learnt a little about his "relatives" in the neigbouring cultures, there was hardly anything new in this "Portrait of an Ancient Deity" (the book's subtitle) about the Hebrew God himself. Jack Miles' brilliant "God - A Biography" was far more stimulating.

What more can I say than I have done? I bought it.