It would be misleading to claim that all the civilizations of the ancient Near East as well as the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome had identical beliefs or worldviews. Nor can we suppose that a single nation always maintained identical beliefs; the most basic lesson of history is that societies change over time. Even ancient Egypt, which made every effort to maintain the appearance of constancy and changelessness, underwent many changes over its remarkable four-thousand-year history. One way in which change occurred was when societies borrowed ideas, technologies, and practices from neighboring civilizations, adopting and adapting them to their own needs and way of life. In this way, the various ancient peoples of the Mediterranean world and surrounding areas came to share many cultural traits. The next three chapters will outline a number of similarities that were common to various ancient societies but stand in stark contrast to modern views and practices. To help the reader to more fully understand the nature of sacral historiography and how it differs from modern notions of history, I will sketch a few common characteristics found among archaic sacral societies. It is also important to recognize that although many of these traits apply most directly to the polytheistic societies of Mesopotamia and Egypt rather than to the unique monotheistic Israelites, the gap between them was not as great as is often supposed. As Jon D. Levenson has noted, “The Near Eastern approach [to biblical studies] has developed parallels to almost every aspect of Israel’s culture.”[1]

It is important to observe that while the excessive use of intercultural parallelism has at times been a problem in studies of the ancient Near East, genuine similarities should not be downplayed or ignored for fear of being accused of “parallelomania.” While due caution is appropriate, Nicolas Wyatt has argued that often “beneath the evident differences between [apparent parallels] lie undercurrents of similarity of type. . . . Thus, the ‘subtext’ of religions apparently quite dissimilar is a basic similarity of deep structure.”[2]

The Nature of the Gods

Each city in the ancient world had its patron deity. Athens’ patron, of course, was Athena; the god of Corinth was Poseidon; Rome’s patron was Jupiter Optimus Maximus (Jupiter Best and Greatest). The god of the Mesopotamian city Babylon was Marduk; of Memphis in Egypt, Ptah; of the Phoenician city Sidon, Astarte. Hence, worship of the gods was intimately connected with the politics of the city or state. To engage in the routine worship of the patron god or goddess of one’s town was simply part and parcel of being a resident of that city or state. It was an expectation made of all citizens, hardly different in some respects from standing at attention to show respect for the flag of one’s country in the modern world.[3] However, worship was by no means limited to the god or goddess of one’s city. A person might have relationships with numerous deities.

Ancient deities were conceived of somewhat differently from modern understandings. When most modern Westerners use the term God, whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jew or atheist, they have roughly the same idea: a sole, utterly unique being who completely transcends the physical cosmos and who created this universe out of nothing—an entity that is in essence an omniscient, all-encompassing, disembodied mind of infinite power, who created the world and all that it contains and who watches over the well-being of all his creation. In contrast, most ancient peoples believed in multiple gods and goddesses; for each ancient civilization (with the obvious exception of the Israelites) the total number of deities could add up to many hundreds. Major deities typically had an intimate association with some specific aspect of nature or the cosmos, such as the sun, moon, sky, earth, underworld, or one of the planets. As for lesser deities, many societies had gods and spirits associated with seemingly trivial aspects of life: for example, the Sumerians had gods related to such things as the pickax, brick mold, dikes, and ditches; the Romans had Janus, the two-faced god that related to doorways—indeed, there were in fact two Januses, one who oversaw the opening of doors (Janus Patulcius) and one their closing (Janus Clusivius).

However, it would be a mistake to identify the gods too closely with specific natural phenomena. Rather, deities were thought of as independent, intelligent beings who presided over certain aspects of nature but whose oversight often transcended those particular phenomena. For example, the Egyptian god Thoth was associated with the moon but was also the god of writing, associated with the invention of the sacred hieroglyphics.[4] The Mesopotamian Shamash was god not only of the sun but also of justice and divination.[5] Sometimes more than one deity could be associated with the same phenomenon.

Egyptologist Jan Assmann describes the complex roles and relationships of deities in the Egyptian pantheon as follows:

The cosmic dimension of the divine was not confined to the sheer materiality of cosmic elements such as earth, air, water, and so forth, or to celestial bodies such as the sun and the moon, but rather . . . referred to specific complexes of actions, traits, attitudes, and qualities that were interpreted as cosmic phenomena “in action.” . . . . Nut [Egyptian goddess of the sky] was not so much the sky as what the sky did, giving birth to the heavenly bodies and hiding them within herself, not so much the goddess of the sky as mother goddess and goddess of the dead. Hathor, the other goddess of the sky, embodied its heavenly splendor and was the goddess of love, beauty, and the intoxication that could transcend the mundane. Re, the sun god, was the god of kingship.[6]

Above all, gods and goddesses of the antique world are best conceived of as transcendent powers. That is, while they were believed to share many traits with humans—they had bodies, consciousness, intelligence, emotions—their key characteristic distinguishing them from humankind was their immeasurable power that was most clearly manifest in one or more aspects of nature.[7] Even the Greeks, who viewed their deities as more humanlike than their neighbors to the east, saw power as the key difference:

Gods and men are both children of Earth, and fashioned, as it were, in the same mould, but between them lies an immeasurable difference of power. The distinguishing quality of the gods is, above everything, power.[8]

The Israelite God Yahweh of course differed dramatically from the multiple gods of the neighboring peoples, and those differences played a profound role in the history of the ancient world and thereafter. Yet at the same time the differences should not be exaggerated. Apart from Yahweh’s status as a sole deity, it is often stated that he was “transcendent,” while pagan deities were conceived of as “immanent.” The latter term derives from the Latin verb immanēre, which means “to dwell within” and is usually interpreted to mean that a deity was believed to be present in the world and in nature. Yahweh, by contrast, was supposedly conceived as transcending the world or somehow standing outside the natural world. This is a useful distinction, but only if taken in a relative, not an absolute, sense.

Clearly, Yahweh was not identified with any specific phenomenon of nature, such as the sun, moon, sky, or earth.[9] He created all of nature and was supreme in the universe in a way that no Egyptian or Babylonian god was, even one deemed to be creator of the world. At the same time, we have seen that even the pagan deities transcended nature in a more limited fashion and should not be conceived of as mere “nature deities,” as though the goddess of the moon was identified with the moon and nothing more.[10] On the other side, it is incorrect to think of the Hebrew God as “wholly other,” as he is often described. The God of the Old Testament was quite different from the much later development of the Christian God into a kind of philosophical deity, an abstract and remote God that is “pure being,” so distant that he cannot even be described. Yahweh possessed a body, in the image of which man was formed, and was intimately involved in the lives of his people. The Apostle Paul, a well-trained Pharisee, described him as “not far from each one of us,” whose offspring we all are (Acts 17:26).[11]

The Gods and Humankind

How did ancient peoples view the relationship between themselves and their gods? Because the gods were perceived to be intimately involved with all aspects of nature, it was important for every person, family, city, and state to nurture a relationship with a variety of deities. Just like modern human beings, archaic men and women were interested primarily in surviving and prospering, in achieving happiness and success. At the most basic level, they hoped to avoid starvation and fatal disease—dangers that were, and are, more imminent in less technologically advanced societies. Beyond mere survival, they also hoped to prosper in all aspects of their lives. They wished for the success of their crops. They hoped for a reasonable degree of happiness in their family life and marital relations and in the rearing of their children.[12]

Yet although their general desires were comparable to those of their modern counterparts, the assumptions involved in their thinking about how to achieve such things differed drastically. The modern attitude goes back to the early modern era, specifically to the time of the teachings of the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626). Bacon taught that nature was subject to human mastery and could be manipulated for human benefit by the application of rationality. Before Bacon, however, it had scarcely occurred to anyone that nature—life—was controllable except in a most limited sense. Growing crops, of course, required human activity, namely sowing, watering, harvesting, and so forth. But the power to make the crops grow so that a family, village, or state did not starve in a given growing season was in the control of the gods, not humankind. Similarly, the propagation of the family—human fertility—was a blessing from deity, and the goodwill of the relevant powers needed to be cultivated.

The Greek historian Polybius argued that we should seek help from the gods regarding only those aspects of life that are beyond our ability to understand and control.

Those things of which it is impossible or difficult for a mere man to ascertain the causes, such as a continuous fall of rains and unseasonable wet, or, on the contrary, droughts and frosts, one may reasonably impute to God and Fortune, in default of any other explanation; and from them come destruction of fruits, as well as long-continued epidemics, and other similar things, of which it is not easy to find the cause. On such matters then, we, in default of a better, follow the prevailing opinions of the multitude, attempting by supplications and sacrifices to appease the wrath of heaven, and sending to ask the gods by what words or actions on our part a change for the better may be brought about, and a respite be obtained for the evils which are afflicting us. But those things, of which it is possible to find the origin and cause of their occurrence, I do not think we should refer to the gods.[13]

One of the main principles common to many ancient religions is often described as do ut des, a Latin phrase meaning “I give so that you may give”—that is, I give (e.g., make a sacrifice) in order that you (the god) may bless me in return.” This phrase is not a wholly inaccurate way of viewing the common practice of offering sacrifice, but it is often misinterpreted and viewed in a cynical light, as implying that a relationship with the gods was merely one of barter or commerce. But this was hardly the case.[14] The ancients nearly always thought in terms of establishing a meaningful relationship with deity, and this relationship could be expressed in terms of respect, affection, friendship, and occasionally even in terms of love.

The Egyptians in particular expressed their relationship with the gods in terms of affection. From the Ramesside period (later Bronze Age) one finds formulas such as “Ptah loves those who love him.”[15] According to the celebrated Egyptologist Erik Hornung, “A god may be sensed and seen not only in his attributes of fragrance, radiance and power, but also and more forcefully in the way he affects men’s hearts—in the love, fear, terror, respectful awe, and other feelings that his presence evokes.”[16]

There is much less of this kind of sentiment in Mesopotamian writings. According to the standard creation myth, the gods created humanity primarily to labor and to serve them, and consequently their relationship with the gods was somewhat colder than in Egypt. Nevertheless, the gods often express a kind of love for the king. For instance, it was said of Shulgi, a Sumerian king of the Third Dynasty of Ur: “Your father Enlil loves you greatly. He has made your heroism known among the people.”[17]

In Greece there was less of a sense of oriental humility toward the gods, and it was even possible for men and women to have something resembling friendship with the gods:

To the Greeks the gods were real persons, with whom they could enter into a special intimacy. Yet in these relations there is no self-abasement or conscious humility. The glorious splendor of the gods is indeed recognized and respected, but their human companions are not afraid of speaking freely and frankly to them. Even at this level the rules of Greek friendship are at work, and insuperable differences of station do not affect the need for complete sincerity and candor.[18]

Yet this spirit of openness should never be interpreted as a sense of equality between humankind and the gods. Classicist Josine Blok describes the inherently unequal relationship between the ancient Greeks and their deities as an “insurmountable hierarchy.” This belief is reflected in the offering of sacrifices (ta hiera), which were

human gifts to the gods in a chain of gratitude and obligation, engendering charis in the divine recipients toward the human givers. Humans toiled to achieve what they wanted, but they needed the divine powers (fertility, courage, justice, victory) to make their efforts effective. For their contributions the gods expected fitting honours, gratitude and rewards, in the form of gifts, and of the effort necessary to produce them. Most scholars characterize the relationship between ancient Greeks and their gods as ‘reciprocity,’ because the same sense of well-being, grace and gratitude (charis) that ideally ensured human reciprocity as the outcome of gift exchange characterised the relations between humans and the gods. Yet, not only were the gods immortal and humans mortal, but the gifts of the gods were inevitably much greater than humans could ever return; their relationship was thus infinitely more unequal than between any human parties. Given this insurmountable hierarchy between gods and humans, we find expressions of deep gratitude toward the gods as well as of a sense of debt.[19]

Prayer and sacrifice were the principal means of establishing and maintaining such a relationship. What was their purpose? In the first place, it was clear to everyone that the gods could not be compelled to grant blessings, merely entreated. Prayer and sacrifice could never be practiced with the assumption that a positive response from the gods was somehow inevitable if one recited the proper words or carried out the proper actions. The goal, rather, was to somehow gain the gods’ goodwill by showing one’s own goodwill and devotion. The Romans called this attitude pietas, a term that stresses one’s attitude of devotion to the gods—and to the family and the state as well. The goal was to obtain pax deorum—the peace of the gods. The classicist Robert Ogilvie has said concerning the Romans:

The sacrifice is made as a free-will offering without any attempt to blackmail the god into acceding to the prayer. There is no suggestion of a threat, “you had better listen to me because I am giving you these presents.” It is at once a dignified and a trusting relationship. A god, because he is a god, is entitled to the best that man can offer and a man can only do his duty and hope for divine favour.[20]

But the ritual of sacrifice, like all ritual among the Romans, had to be carried out with exacting precision. One slip of a word in the prayer made by the presiding priest and the whole rite (not only the prayer!) had to be started over from the beginning.

Behind all this ritualism lay a profound anxiety to establish communication with the gods, which recognized that the gods were not easy to approach but that human happiness depended upon their cooperation. The Romans would never have gone to such detailed trouble if they had not believed that the form of prayer which they had evolved worked and, in that they believed that it worked, it did work. But they did not rely simply on the natural benevolence of the gods to grant their prayers as an act of grace. In so far as it was possible for human beings to do anything which would merit divine gratitude, the Romans tried to earn the benevolence of the gods.[21]

Egyptologist Byron Shafer points out that the Egyptians were not oblivious to the reality that the gods had blessed them long before they sought any additional blessings through prayer. Rather than I give so that you may give (in the future), it was more a case of

“I give because you have given” . . . [and so that you] may continue to give. The god’s gifts included life, breath, light, air, nourishment, succor, freedom, security, and life in the next world. Compared to these, any human offering of gratitude, no matter how grand, was small indeed; yet the king and Egypt desired that their gifts should bring god happiness and encourage god’s continuing benevolence. The latter desire, of course, moved the wheel of motivation from thanksgiving to petition.[22]

In other words, it was not just a question of bribing the gods in advance—or of placating angry gods. Rather, it was gift giving out of a genuine sense of gratitude and regard. Marcel Mauss has noted that “to give something is to give a part of oneself. . . . [O]ne gives away what is in reality a part of one’s nature and substance.”[23] Still, the hope was to persuade the gods to “show their gracious side” and to protect oneself against their more threatening side.[24] Prayers commonly sought for mercy and compassion from the gods, who were described, for example, as “one who knows compassion, who hearkens to him who calls.”[25]

In Israel such divine qualities were even more pronounced, although Yahweh had his threatening side as well. Through the prophet Hosea, the Lord says of the nation of Israel:

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks. . . .
How can I give you up, Ephraim? . . .
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my fierce anger . . .
for I am God and no mortal. (Hosea 11:3–4, 8–9 NRSV)[26]

Despite this love, God’s anger is also declared in no uncertain terms:

Soon now I will pour out my wrath upon you;
I will spend my anger against you.
I will judge you according to your ways,
and punish you for all your abominations.
My eye will not spare; I will have no pity.
I will punish you according to your ways,
while your abominations are among you.
Then you shall know that it is I the Lord who strike. (Ezekiel 7:8–9)

Yet even in the case of God’s fierce wrath, his motive is always based in love and concern for his people and even for other nations (see, e.g., Amos 9:7; Jonah 4:11). Unlike the Mesopotamian gods, he typically makes clear the reasons for his anger, giving them ample opportunity to repent of specific wrongs, and does not leave his people wondering what brought their suffering about.

Chaos versus Order

One fundamental element of the ancient sacral worldview that contrasts with modern theologies is the notion of chaos versus cosmos or disorder versus order. In contrast to most modern-day monotheisms, which imagine God as creating the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing, a large number of ancient Near Eastern creation accounts, or cosmogonies, refer to the organization of a preexisting chaos—in essence, a divine imposing of order on a preexisting chaos.

The term chaos in this sense comes originally from Greek myth. In Hesiod’s Theogony, chaos is a kind of emptiness, a void or chasm, before anything had been differentiated. The Roman Ovid, writing many centuries later, described it, somewhat differently, as “a huge shapeless mass, unformed and without order.”[27]

But chaos should not be thought of narrowly in impersonal, scientific terms as mere “stuff” or “primordial matter” that a divine craftsman would have to shape like clay. Instead, one should try to imagine a world in which there are no “landmarks” of any kind—no markers to set anything apart from anything else, nothing to allow one to distinguish what was what or who was who. In a sense, it would almost be like being adrift in the open seas—with no compass, no stars by which to orient oneself, nothing but water, water everywhere. Or, better, it would be like being submerged in the ocean—unable to tell if one were upright or upside down, there being no up, down, right, left, north, south, east, or west. Water is a common metaphor for chaos; the notion that the world emerged from a primeval ocean has been held by a wide variety of peoples of different times and places.[28] Such a scenario would be completely disorienting—even terrifying. The creation of order, then, amounted to the establishment of landmarks of different kinds, allowing one to distinguish one thing from another and thereby to orient oneself.

In many ancient traditions, chaos is depicted metaphorically (i.e., mythically) as a kind of monster that has to be overcome by the creator god.[29] The act of creation was a matter of creating order and meaning out of an undifferentiated substance that, to a greater or lesser extent, resisted the intent of the Creator. The best-known Mesopotamian account of creation is known as Enuma Elish, the central event of which is a divine conflict (or war in heaven) between the god Marduk and the two preexisting entities known as Ti’amat and Apsu. Ti’amat (female) and Apsu (male) represent, respectively, salt water and fresh water, and water is the preeminent symbol for chaos—indistinct, unorganized matter. Marduk ends up defeating them and proceeds to bring about an organized cosmos with a variety of distinct elements.[30]

In Egypt the view of creation did not involve war, but it did entail the creator god imposing order on undifferentiated chaos, the primordial ocean.[31] The book of Genesis also alludes to creation by God out of preexisting matter, which is described again as a kind of watery chaos, “a formless void and darkness” (Genesis 1:1; Heb. tohu wabohu).[32]

For the ancients, then, creation was not first and foremost a material event of bringing an object physically into existence, and existence was not primarily conceived of as an ontological reality. Rather, it was a process of differentiation, of identification, and of providing meaning and purpose. Cosmos, the new organized reality after chaos is overcome, is now made up of a variety of separate, distinct entities, each of which bears its own name. The process of naming is key to understanding the idea of creation, which creates order by identifying, separating one entity from another. For all intents, when an entity has no identity and no purpose, it does not exist.[33] Thus, in the opening lines of Enuma Elish, the period of chaos is described as follows:

When on high the heavens had not (yet) been named,
And below the name of firm ground had not (yet) been thought of . . .[34]

The ancient Egyptians also linked primordial chaos with an absence of names. Nun was the primeval flood, and the world at that time was totally dark and opaque, and “there was not announced the name of anything.”[35] The same idea of naming is key in Genesis. Not only does God create by separating and ordering the various entities and elements of the world, such as light, the earth, and the sky, but he assigns names: he calls the light Day, the darkness Night, the dome (or firmament) Sky, the water under the dome Seas, and so on. Later on he gives to Adam the right and power to name “every animal of the field and every bird of the air” (Genesis 2:19–20), as well as his helper and partner, Eve (3:20).[36]

In the modern world, a name is little more than a series of sounds that serves as a label for an object or a person but has little inherent meaning. In the sacral world, however, a name was more than a mere label, and the act of naming was a key element of the creative process, involving separating, differentiating, and identifying that constituted the bringing of something into being.[37] Further, names were thought of as closely connected to a person’s character and essence. When God repeatedly renames individuals in the Old Testament (e.g., Abram as Abraham and Jacob as Israel), it was almost an equivalent to rebirth—that is, a re-creation. The individual whom God renamed became a new person.[38]

The ritual use of names is also prominent in the speech of King Benjamin, where he repeatedly refers to a ritual practice of conferring a new name on his people:

I shall give this people a name, that thereby they may be distinguished above all the people which the Lord God hath brought out of the land of Jerusalem. . . . And I give unto them a name that never shall be blotted out, except it be through transgression. (Mosiah 1:11–12)

And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you. (5:7)

This is the name that I said I should give unto you that never should be blotted out, except it be through transgression. (5:11)

The name of God in the Old Testament had a particular significance. When God asks Jacob his name and then renames him Israel, Jacob asks God to reveal his name. Yet God, surprisingly, refuses, apparently because the possession of a name would give one power over that person. That is to say, since the name is the being of the person, control of the name equated with control of the person.[39] Indeed, in the Old Testament the name of God takes on almost a substantive existence, often substituting for God himself. In the Deuteronomic writings, in particular, the temple is described not as the dwelling place of God but as the place where his name dwells.[40]

This usage of God’s name as possessing almost a separate identity from God himself is found in the New Testament, especially in the Johannine writings (e.g., John 1:12; 2:23; 3:18; 12:28; 1 John 3:23; 5:13), but is more common in the Old Testament and almost ubiquitous in the Book of Mormon. For example, in 1 Nephi, the Lord says that “I will not suffer my name to be polluted (1 Nephi 20:11); Jacob refers to glorifying not God himself but rather the name of God (2 Nephi 6:4). Similarly, frequently one is told not to believe in God or to have faith in the Lord but to believe and have faith on his name (e.g., 2 Nephi 25:14; Mosiah 3:21; Alma 5:48; 9:27; 11:40; 34:15; Helaman 14:2). Examples of this emphasis on the name of God or the name of Christ are far too numerous to detail here.

Moral Order

Archaic notions of creation entailed not only calling the cosmos into existence and naming its constituent parts but also establishing a moral order—a world of value, meaning, and purpose. For example, in Genesis 1, God does not simply bring light into existence, but he creates light that is good, and similarly with the land, the seas, and many other entities. Meanwhile, the sun and moon and stars are not merely created but created for specific purposes—such as to give light upon the earth and to rule over the day and over the night (Genesis 1:16–18).

The Egyptians seem to have given the idea of a moral order its fullest development. They called this order maat.[41] Maat is a concept that can most concisely be defined as the fundamental principle of universal cosmic order, but it comprehends such notions as justice, truth, law, righteousness, correctness, and harmony. When the creator god Atum-Re emerged from Nun on the “first occasion,” virtually the first thing he did was to establish maat, the proper, perfect order of the world. In fact, the creation (i.e., ordering) of the world is almost synonymous with establishing maat.

Rudolf Anthes has provided a particularly expansive definition of maat:

Maat holds this small world together and makes it into a constitutive part of world order. She is the bringing home of the harvest; she is human integrity in thought, word, and deed; she is the loyal leadership of government; she is the prayer and offering of the king to the god. Maat encompasses all of creation, human beings, the king, the god; she permeates the economy, the administration, religious services, the law. All flows together in a single point of convergence: the king. He lives Maat and passes her on, not only to the sun god but also to his subjects below.[42]

The fact that maat had been divinely created at the foundation of the world did not mean that it could be passively maintained thereafter. On the contrary, it required constant effort on the part of human beings to uphold and preserve it.

If the rites were not performed properly, rebellion and internecine strife would break out, solidarity and justice among men would wither, the gods would turn away from human offerings. It is humans who bear the responsibility for maintaining the connectivity that binds them to one another and to the gods.[43]

In fact, maat in its “original plenitude of meaning” did not currently exist on the earth. Society (and, by extension, the natural world) had become estranged from the order of maat in its pristine purity as originally established by Re.

The difference manifests itself in the phenomenon of Isfet, “lack.” Sickness, death, scarcity, injustice, falsehood, theft, violence, war, enmity—all these are manifestations of lack in a world that has fallen into disorder through loss of its original plenitude of meaning. The meaning of creation lies in its plenitude, which yields order and justice. Where all are cared for, no one is oppressed, no one commits deeds of violence against others, no one need suffer. Suffering, scarcity, injustice, crime, rebellion, war, and so forth, had no meaning for the Egyptians. They were symptoms of an emptying or estrangement of meaning from the world, which had distanced itself from its origin in the course of history.[44]

Mesopotamian civilization had a rather more complex means of describing the order of the universe and the underlying realities of life. The early Sumerian term me has been described as “mysterious” and is extremely difficult to translate precisely, but is most readily understood as “a set of ‘universal laws’ governing all existence,” cosmic principles perhaps decreed by the gods but more likely preexisting the gods themselves, and embracing all the arts of civilization.[45] One Sumerian writing includes a list of more than one hundred elements of me, among them such institutions as kingship, godhood, ladyship, art, music, power, wisdom, enmity, peace, and victory.[46] The gods had fixed or decreed the role or function of every entity in the cosmos, and it was the responsibility of each man or woman to live according to those divine designs.[47]

In addition to the Egyptian maat and the Mesopotamian me, one can also compare the concept of ṛta in Vedic Hinduism, which has been defined as “‘cosmic order,’ ‘law,’ ‘truth,’ or ‘reality’: it is both the ordered universe as it is in itself and the order that pervades it; and this order is as applicable to the moral conduct of men as it is to the macrocosm of heaven and earth.”[48]

The claim is often made that ancient paganism was concerned only with ritual piety, not morality. As we have just seen, there is some truth in this, but only some. All ancient societies had a concept of sin, though with none was it so highly developed as among the Israelites.

Sin was anything that displeased or angered the gods, though mercy and forgiveness could be sought after. In the following prayer to the Babylonian god Marduk, the author acknowledges his sinfulness and seeks forgiveness:

Warrior, Marduk—he whose anger is a deluge,
(But) his forgiveness is (that of) a merciful father. . . .
O great Lord, Marduk, the merciful god . . .
Who could not be remiss? Which one could not transgress? . . .
I am your servant, I did commit a sin,
The border of the god (i.e., the limits set by the god) I did trespass.
Those things from the days of childhood, (which I have done) knowingly or unknowingly,
please forget,
And listen to (the prayer), so that in your heart it would not beat, clear away my sin, cancel my punishment.[49]

The key question, of course, is, what type of behavior was considered to be sinful? Was it limited to errors of cultic worship or failure to give the gods their due? Or did it also include violations of basic moral principles? As can be noticed in the preceding quotation, in some cases one might be at a loss to know what sin one had committed. The gods in Mesopotamia were often so unpredictable—vindictive one minute, kind and merciful the next—that the general sentiment prevailed that one could not know what acts would result in punishment; one could only be sure that when one was suffering (being punished), it must be because one had sinned. Forgiveness must therefore be sought, even if the exact nature of the sin was not known. Hence the emphasis on generic “sin” without specifying its nature.[50]

But other texts indicate a connection between the will of the gods and basic morality such as honoring one’s parents and not committing homicide, theft, or bearing false witness.[51] In a hymn to the sun god Shamash, the beginning of the extant portion condemns adultery:

A man who covets his neighbor’s wife
will [perish?] before his appointed day.
A fiery demon and [. . . ] is prepared for him,
Your weapon will strike at him, and there will be none to save.

The same text condemns the merchant who practices trickery with the balance and praises the honest merchant who “holds the balances and gives good weight.” A judge who accepts a bribe and lets justice miscarry will be punished, while “he who receives no bribe but takes the part of the weak” is pleasing to the god, who will lengthen his life.[52] In the didactic poem known as “Man and His God,” a man is told by his personal god that he should manifest his gratitude for his own recovery from suffering by giving assistance to the hungry and thirsty.

In future days you must not forget your god
your creator, now that you are happy again.
“I am your god, your creator, and your comfort
I assigned alert watchmen to you, they are strong.
The field will open up [for you] its vegetation,
I will provide you with life forever.
As for you, do not tarry to anoint the parched one,
feed the hungry one, give the thirsty one water to drink;
may he who sits down with feverish eyes
see your food, suckle, receive it and be pleased with you.”[53]

Egypt had a much stronger sense of positive morality than the Mesopotamians did, and morality was clearly part of the gods’ concerns. Maat, the basis for a moral life for the Egyptians, was a broad concept that encompassed justice, truth, law, righteousness, and right order. But maat was also a goddess herself (Maat), representing and personifying the fundamental order of the cosmos established by the gods at the time of creation. The kings of Egypt had a key responsibility to follow maat and attempt to restore that pristine order during their reign. But the rest of the people as well had a duty to “do” and to “speak” maat. Officials, not only the king, had a duty to protect the socially underprivileged, to give “bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, a ferry to those who had no boat.” It was a cosmic and religious sense of order, but also a social order.[54]

The Egyptians had a greater sense of individual responsibility than did their neighbors in Mesopotamia, who were more fatalistic about accepting whatever the inscrutable gods decreed. In large part, their own happiness and success in life depended on their own willingness to live their lives in accordance with the principles of happiness. “Before life could be good, it had to be ordered, it had to be lived within the confines of those principles which could insure goodness and happiness.”[55]

Indeed, the gods required such individual conformity the principles of truth. This is made clear in section 125 of the Book of the Dead, where, at the judgment scene, the deceased proclaims his innocence of a whole litany of sins. Although the recitation contains many examples of ritual behavior (“I have not lessened the food-offerings in the temples, I have not destroyed the loaves of the gods”), a large proportion of the transgressions are best classified as moral in nature.

Behold, I have come to you, I have brought you truth, I have repelled falsehood for you. I have not done falsehood against men, I have not impoverished my associates, I have done no wrong in the Place of Truth, I have not learnt that which is not, I have done no evil, . . . I have not deprived the orphan of his property, I have not done what the gods detest, I have not calumniated a servant to his master, I have not caused pain, I have not made hungry, I have not made to weep, I have not killed, I have not commanded to kill, I have not made suffering for anyone. . . . I am pure, pure, pure, pure! My purity is the purity of that great phoenix which is in Heracleopolis.[56]

Eternal existence after death was granted only to those who had lived a life that was “orderly, free from chaos and from the evil which was the contrary of what Ma’at demanded. In a word, immortality depended on morality.” Since the deceased would be entering a realm of perfection, without evil and disorder, anyone who had not been “vindicated and justified would not be able to find a place there, for his nature would have made him unsuitable for such an existence.”[57]

The Israelites, above all other people, saw righteousness as absolutely fundamental to pleasing God, and God left them in no doubt as to what kind of behavior he demanded of them. While other people had a general understanding of basic moral principles, the Torah as revealed through the unique principle of prophecy laid out in minute detail the divine expectations. The Ten Commandments represent a goodly sampling of the Jewish understanding of God’s expectations. While the last six commandments deal with fundamental morality—honoring parents, refraining from adultery, and bearing false witness—the first four are somewhat more “ritual” in nature—for example, not misusing the name of God, not making idols, and so on. Explicit rules for carrying out sacrificial rituals are found in magnificent detail in the book of Leviticus. Yet the later prophets emphasized the divine requirements of morality to such a degree that they occasionally denounced the very act of offering sacrifices and even prayers.

I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats. . . . .
When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:11, 15–17)[58]

Thus, despite many general similarities between the attitudes of Israel and its pagan neighbors, it is correct to see Yahweh as holding his people to a higher, stricter level of morality. The writings of the prophet Amos are particularly revealing. The Lord declares that he has condemned many of Israel’s neighbors, among them the great city of Tyre, for their cruel behavior toward other peoples:

Thus says the Lord:
For three transgressions of Tyre,
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they delivered entire communities over to Edom,
and did not remember the covenant of kinship.
So I will send a fire on the wall of Tyre,
fire that shall devour its strongholds.

Here Yahweh is declaring as immoral and worthy of punishment behavior that was considered standard procedure in that age—actions that no pagan god would criticize. He then turns his attention toward the nation of Israel and condemns its treatment not of neighboring populations but of its own people:

Thus says the Lord:
For three transgressions of Israel, and for four,
I will not revoke the punishment;
because they sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals –
they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,
and push the afflicted out of the way;
father and son go in to the same girl,
so that my holy name is profaned . . . .

Therefore because you trample on the poor
and take from them levies of grain,
you have built houses of hewn stone,
but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards,
but you shall not drink their wine. . . .
Hate evil and love good,
and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts,
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. (Amos 1:9–10; 2:6–7; 5:11, 15)

Nature Affected by Sin

Perhaps one of the most peculiar aspects (from a modern perspective) of ancient sacral thought is the correlation between the behavior of humankind and nature. In the modern view of the world, nature functions more or less mechanically, in strict accordance with the objective laws of natural science, and is entirely unrelated to notions of evil or sin. In the ancient world, with its more holistic ideas of reality, and because nature was part of the moral order of things, there was a broad sense that a kind of general sympathy existed among all parts of the cosmos and that the natural world suffers when humans sin or misbehave and prospers when they do what is right and just.

In the poem “Man and His God” quoted above, there is an implied link between the obligation to “feed the hungry one, give the thirsty one water to drink” and the land’s “open[ing] up its vegetation.” We will see in the next chapter that for both the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, the king bore a grave responsibility for establishing (or reestablishing) order in the world, and the prosperity of the nation was directly linked to the king’s properly carrying his duties. At the coronation of the pharaoh Merneptah, it was proclaimed that reestablishing maat would render not only society happy but nature as well. “Goodly times” would come about, the moon would rise normally, and most importantly the Nile would “lift high.”[59]

The prophet Hosea proclaims a direct correlation between sin and the suffering of the land:

Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel;
for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or loyalty,
and no knowledge of God in the land.
Swearing, lying, and murder,
and stealing and adultery break out;
bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Therefore the land mourns,
and all who live in it languish;
together with the wild animals
and the birds of the air,
even the fish of the sea are perishing. (Hosea 4:1–3; compare 2:18)[60]

The same cause-and-effect principle is described by Isaiah:

The earth dries up and withers,
the world languishes and withers;
the heavens languish together with the earth.
The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore a curse devours the earth,
and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;
therefore the inhabitants of the earth dwindled,
and few people are left. (Isaiah 24:4–6)[61]

This sense of sin disrupting the harmony of nature (and vice versa) is particularly prominent in the Book of Mormon and one of the strongest demonstrations of the book’s archaic worldview. It is at the heart of the ubiquitous teaching that keeping the commandments results in prosperity. The most common phrasing refers to prospering in the land, referring, in large part, to the land itself prospering because of the people’s righteousness (Mosiah 9:9; 27:7; Alma 34:24, 50:18; Helaman 11:20, etc.). It is also portrayed dramatically in Mormon’s account of the massive destructions in the land that occurred before the appearance of Christ to the Nephites (3 Nephi 8:5–9:12) It might be supposed that these destructions were simply the dramatic means that the Lord used to destroy the wicked. But note that the Nephites (and the voice of Christ) do not merely blame the massive upheavals in nature on the wicked who were destroyed. While the destructions were in part directed toward certain groups who were destroyed because of their great wickedness (e.g., the cities of Moronihah, Jacobugath), the people as a whole, even those who survived the destructions, were also responsible for the violent disruptions of nature and needed to repent (3 Nephi 9:12–14; 8:24–25). In other words, the upheavals of nature were the direct result of their sinfulness. This view is supported by the prophecy of Zenos quoted by Nephi regarding the three days of darkness at the time of the Crucifixion. Those who are not righteous, he says, will be visited by

the thunderings and lightnings of his power, by tempest, by fire, and by smoke, and vapor of darkness, and by the opening of the earth, and by the mountains which shall be carried up. And all these things must surely come, saith the prophet Zenos. And the rocks of the earth must rend; and because of the groanings of the earth, many of the kings of the sea shall be wrought upon by the Spirit of God, to exclaim: The God of nature suffers. (1 Nephi 19:11–12)

The discussion here does not, as we might expect, refer to great destructions being brought upon the wicked as a means of punishment; instead, the emphasis is placed on the suffering brought inevitably upon the earth by their sins. Moroni also tells of prophets who declared that “the wickedness and idolatry of the people was bringing a curse upon the land,” and, as a result, “they should be destroyed if they did not repent” (Ether 7:23). Later in the book of Ether he again states that “there began to be a great curse upon the land because of the iniquity of the people” (Ether 14:1; compare Mormon 1:17–18; Helaman 13:18, 23, 36). We should also take note of Mormon’s description of the land to the north known as Desolation, which was the former land of the Jaredites. Although we are never told specifically that the destruction of the land included the devastation of nature (in contrast to the destruction of the people and their cities), this conclusion is strongly implied by the dramatic contrast between the land Desolation and the neighboring land called Bountiful. Mormon tells us that the latter was “the wilderness which is filled with all manner of wild animals of every kind, a part of which had come from the land northward for food” (see Alma 22:30–31). Apparently vegetation was scarce in the land northward, compelling the animal population to migrate southward. Taken in context, Mormon’s clear implication is that the utter desolation of the land was the direct result of the wickedness of its former inhabitants (Mosiah 8:8, 12; 21:26). Indeed, we are reminded of Jeremiah’s vivid depiction of the fate of Jerusalem:

Disaster overtakes disaster, the whole land is laid waste. . . .
I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void. . . .
I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
and all the birds of the air had fled.
I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins
before the Lord, before his fierce anger.
For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation;
yet I will not make a full end. (Jeremiah 4:20, 23, 25, 26–27; see Isaiah 33:8–9)

Notes

[1] Jon D. Levenson, Sinai & Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (New York: Harper Collins, 1987), 10.

[2] Nicolas Wyatt, Space and Time in the Religious Life of the Near East (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 28. On the issue of achieving an appropriate balance in comparative studies, see John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 29–40; and Levenson, Sinai & Zion, 113–14. On the use of parallels in Latter-day Saint scholarship, see Douglas F. Salmon, “Parallelomania and the Study of Latter-day Saint Scripture: Confirmation, Coincidence, or the Collective Unconscious?,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 33, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 130–35.

[3] See R. M. Ogilvie, The Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 10–15.

[4] See Assmann, Search for God, 80–82; see also Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 32; Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought, 88–89; Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, vol. 16 of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, 2nd ed. (Provo, UT: FARMS; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 420–23; and Hornung, Conceptions of God, 68.

[5] See Dominique Charpin, “‘I Am the Sun of Babylon’: Solar Aspects of Royal Power in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia,” in Experiencing Power, Generating Authority: Cosmos, Politics, and the Ideology of Kingship in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, ed. Jane A. Hill, Philip Jones, and Antonio J. Morales (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2013), 65–96, especially 68.

[6] Assmann, Search for God, 81.

[7] See Pinch, Egyptian Myth, 39.

[8] C. M. Bowra, The Greek Experience (London: Orion, 1994), 46.

[9] See 1 Kings 8:27; 19:11–12.

[10] “Every [Egyptian] god is ‘transcendent’ in the sense that his being reaches beyond that of this world and its norms; in the richness of his nature and in his range of activity he is always vastly superior to human beings. Simply because the locus of being and action of Egyptian gods is not on earth, they must be ‘transcendent.’ But in Egypt one cannot speak of a true transcendence that would raise a deity above space, time, and fate and extend his being into the realms of the absolute and limitless” (Hornung, Conceptions of God, 191). Yet Assmann goes even further, describing the dwelling place of the gods as “a distant, otherworldly realm, in a certain sense transcendent, and accessible to humankind only through the mediation of symbols” (Search for God, 53). Compare Françoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 41. Note that Jean Bottéro, in Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 38, 40, refers to the Mesopotamian gods as “transcendent,” while Thorkild Jacobsen, in The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 5–6, describes them as immanent “in some specific feature of the confrontation [with mankind], rather than as all transcendent” (emphasis added).

[11] See the discussion by William A. Irwin on Hebrew thought in Henri Frankfort et al., The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay of Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), especially 230–33, 255–63, on mankind’s place in God’s economy as being “only a little lower than God.” This discussion is much more accurate than Henri Frankfort’s statement in Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 343: “The absolute transcendence of God is the foundation of Hebrew religious thought. God is absolute, unqualified, ineffable, transcending every phenomenon” (emphasis added). For bibliography on the Israelite God’s possession of a body in human form, see Gregory Steven Dundas, Explaining Mormonism: A Believing Skeptic’s Guide to the Latter-day Saint Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2022), 124n69. On the contrast between the Hebrew “God of the philosophers vs. the God of the Bible,” see Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, ed. Wayne A. Meeks (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1987), 86–87.

[12] Henri and H. A. Frankfort point out that while modern humans seek for understanding of impersonal, general laws that always hold true under the same circumstances, the ancients would be dissatisfied with such explanations because of their inability to explain why this particular man or woman should die at this particular moment. See their introduction titled “Myth and Reality” in Frankfort et al., Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, 16. In the modern world, of course, we attribute such incidents merely to bad luck.

[13] Polybius, Histories 37.9, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (London: Macmillan, 1889; repr., Bloomington, 1962).

[14] See Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 89; and Vincent A. Tobin, Theological Principles of Egyptian Religion (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 31.

[15] Hornung, Conceptions of God, 202.

[16] Hornung, Conceptions of God, 134; see 201–5.

[17] Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, “An adab (?) to Nergal for Šulgi (?) (Šulgi U),” c.2.4.2.21, https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk.

[18] Bowra, Greek Experience, 49–50.

[19] Josine Blok, Citizenship in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 59–60 (emphasis added). Note that charis is the Greek word typically translated as “grace” in the New Testament. Brent J. Schmidt has argued persuasively that this notion of grace should be interpreted in this sense of a mutual relationship rather than as a one-way gift from God with little or nothing expected in return, that is, “free grace.” Relational Grace: The Reciprocal and Binding Covenant of Charis (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2015).

[20] Ogilvie, Romans and Their Gods, 37.

[21] Ogilvie, Romans and Their Gods, 36.

[22] Byron E. Shafer, “Temples, Priests, and Rituals: An Overview,” in Temples of Ancient Egypt, ed. Bryon E. Shafer (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 23 (emphasis added); see also Hornung, Conceptions of God, 201–5.

[23] Marcel Mauss, quoted in Shafer, “Temples, Priests, and Rituals,” 24.

[24] Hornung, Conceptions of God, 205.

[25] Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought, 111.

[26] Except where otherwise noted, all biblical quotations herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, 1989. See William A. Irwin’s section titled “The Hebrews” in Frankfort et al., Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, 229–30.

[27] rudis et indigesta moles. See Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.6–25. See discussion in Karen Sonik, “From Hesiod’s Abyss to Ovid’s rudis ingestaque moles: Chaos and Cosmos in the Babylonian ‘Epic of Creation,’” in Creation and Chaos: A Reconsideration of Hermann Gunkel’s Chaoskampf Hypothesis, ed. JoAnn Scurlock and Richard H. Beal (University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 10.

[28] See Frankfort, Kingship, 233.

[29] This tradition regarding a “battle” against chaos is often referred to as Chaoskampf, based on the work of Hermann Gunkel. There has been considerable controversy over whether the Israelites in any way viewed creation as involving such a struggle. See Rebecca S. Watson, Chaos Uncreated: A Reassessment of the Theme of “Chaos” in the Hebrew Bible (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005); David Tsumura, Creation and Destruction: A Reappraisal of the Chaoskampf Theory in the Old Testament (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005); and Scurlock and Beal, Creation and Chaos.

[30] See Frankfort, Kingship, 232–36.

[31] The details depend on the particular tradition one is following, each with its own tradition of metaphor and symbolism. In one tradition, the creator (Atum or Re) inexplicably “manifested himself” in the midst of Nun, the ocean, on the “first occasion.” In another mythic tradition, chaos was viewed as four sets of male-female pairs of deities known as Nun and Naunet, the primordial water; Heh and Hauhet, infinity in spatial terms; Kek and Kauket, darkness; and Niau and Niaut, who represent the void. See Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men, 49; compare Frankfort, Kingship, 155.

[32] See E. A. Speiser, Genesis: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries Series (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963).

[33] See John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (University Park, PA: Eisenbrawns, 2011), 34.

[34] Frankfort, Kingship, 233; see Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought, 184–96.

[35] See Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God, 172–85; and Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought, 184–96.

[36] For an interesting discussion of the significance and power of names in the Hebrew tradition, see Truman G. Madsen, “‘Putting on the Names’: A Jewish-Christian Legacy,” in John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks, eds., By Study and Also by Faith: Essays in Honor of Hugh W. Nibley, vol. 1 (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 458–81.

[37] A very thorough discussion of the significance of names in the ancient world is found in Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1967), 5:242–81.

[38] See J. D. Douglas, ed., The New Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1962), 862; and Genesis 17:1–8; 32:27–29.

[39] Thus, in ritual contexts, knowledge of secret names was often a key. See Nibley, Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, 233–34; and John Gee, “The Keeper of the Gate,” in Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks, eds., The Temple in Time and Eternity, vol. 2, Temples through the Ages (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999), 233–73.

[40] See, for example, Deuteronomy 12:5, 11; 16:2, 6, 11; 2 Samuel 7:13. When King Solomon builds the temple, we are told that “the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord,” and Solomon declared, “I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.” Yet a few lines later he cites the words of the Lord in which he repeatedly describes the temple as “a house for my name” (see 1 Kings 8:10–13, 16–20).

[41] For excellent discussions, see Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 144–52; and C. J. Bleeker, “L’idée de l’ordre cosmique dans l’ancienne Egypte,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses 42, no. 2 (1962): 193–200.

[42] Quoted in Erik Hornung, Idea into Image: Essays on Ancient Egyptian Thought, trans. Elizabeth Bredeck (n.p., Timken, 1992), 135–41.

[43] Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 170–71.

[44] Assmann, Search for God, 3.

[45] Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, 94. See Samuel Noah Kramer, Cradle of Civilization (New York: Time, 1967), 102; and Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology, 46–54.

[46] See Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 116.

[47] See Wilfred G. Lambert, “Destiny and Divine Intervention in Babylon and Israel,” in M. A. Beek et al., The Witness of Tradition: Papers Read at the Joint British-Dutch Old Testament Conference Held at Woudschoten, 1970, ed. A. S. Woude, vol. 17, Oudtestamentische Studiën (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 65–72; see also Stefan Maul, “Die altorientalische Hauptstadt—Abbild und Nabel der Welt,” in Die Orientalische Stadt: Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch, ed. G. Wilhelm (Halle/Saale: 1997), 110. English translation available under the title “The Ancient Middle Eastern Capital City: Reflection and Navel of the World,” trans. Thomas Lampert, at https://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/religion/ancientcapitals.htm.

[48] R. C. Zaehner, Hinduism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 31; see Bleeker, “L’idée de l’ordre cosmique.”

[49] Takayoshi Oshima, Babylonian Prayers to Marduk (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 349.

[50] See Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought, 145.

[51] See K. van der Toorn, Sin and Sanction in Israel and Mesopotamia: A Comparative Study (Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1985), 13–21.

[52] D. Winton Thomas, ed., Documents from Old Testament Times (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005), 108–110; see Clifton Daggett Gray, The Samas Religious Texts Classified in the British Museum Catalogue as Hymns, Prayers, and Incantations, with Twenty Plates of Texts Hitherto Unpublished, and a Transliteration and Translation of K.3182 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1901).

[53] Quoted in Karel van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of Religious Life, vol. 7, Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 107.

[54] Hornung, Idea into Image, 131–45. See Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion, trans. Ann E. Keep (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), 114–17. Assmann calls maat “connective justice” and describes it as “the principle that forms individuals into communities and that gives their actions meaning and direction by ensuring that good is rewarded and evil punished.” Mind of Egypt, 128.

[55] Tobin, Theological Principles of Egyptian Religion, 178.

[56] The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, ed. Carol Andrews, trans. Raymond O. Faulkner (London: British Museum Publications, 1985), 30–31. Compare the Mesopotamian Šurpu incantation tablets, in which the subject seeks absolution for a long list of sins, attempting to be comprehensive in mentioning all the sins he might have been guilty of, so as not to leave out anything he actually committed. For example: “He entered his neighbor’s house, had intercourse with his neighbor’s wife, shed his neighbor’s blood, put on his neighbor’s clothes, did not clothe a young man when he was naked.” See Erica Reiner, Šurpu: A Collection of Sumerian and Akkadian Incantations, vol. 11 Archiv für Orientforschung: Beiheft (Graz, Austria: Im Selbstverlage des Herausgebers, 1958), 13–18.

[57] Tobin, Theological Principles of Egyptian Religion, 145.

[58] See Jeremiah 6:20; Amos 5:21–23.

[59] James Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 378.

[60] On the subject of the connection between human behavior and nature in Israelite thought, see Raphael Patai, “The ‘Control of Rain’ in Ancient Palestine: A Study in Comparative Religion,” Hebrew Union College Annual 14 (1939): 251–86; and Raphael Patai, Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1947), 140–71.

[61] For further development of this theme in the Old Testament, see Robert Murray, The Cosmic Covenant: Biblical Themes of Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation (London: Sheed & Ward Limited, 1992), 14–26, 44–67.