Deuteronomy and the Politics of Post-Mortem Existence

Author(s): Joseph Blenkinsopp

Source: Vetus Testamentum , Jan., 1995, Vol. 45, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 1-16
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1535182

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 DEUTERONOMY AND THE POLITICS OF
POST-MORTEM EXISTENCE

by

JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP
Notre Dame, Indiana

In this article I will argue that opposition to the cult of dead kin
in Israel, and especially the legislation directed against it in
Deuteronomy read as an official state document, was motivated by
the need for the state to transfer allegiance from the kinship net-
work to itself. Since ancestor cult was an essential integrative ele-
ment of a social system based on lineage, it was opposed in the
name of a centralized state cult which claimed the exclusive
allegiance of those living within the confines of the state. The
concerning death rites and forbidding commerce with the dead
Deuteronomy were therefore part of a broader strategy of und
mining the lineage system to which the individual household
'db) belonged.
The presentation of the argument does not involve displaying
new data. The aim is rather to highlight a neglected aspect of
Deuteronomic political and social ideology by trying to get at the
intent behind several of the laws including, and especially, those
forbidding certain mortuary practices and interaction with the
dead. An incidental contribution may also be made to our under-
standing of the social as opposed to the psychological and religious
aspects of beliefs about death and post-mortem existence in Israel
during the biblical period.
Since we now have competent recent studies of death cults and
ancestor cults in Iron Age Israel,1 it will not be necessary to spend

1 Klaus Spronk, Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East
(Kevelaer and Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1986); Theodore J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in
Ancient Israel and Ugarit (Atlanta, 1989); George C. Heider, The Cult of Molek. A
Reassessment (Sheffield, 1985), pp. 383-400.

? E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1995 Vetus Testamentum XLV, 1

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2 JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP

much time in establishing their existence. However scholars have

from time to time denied that ancestor cults were practiced in
Israel,2 so it may be as well to clarify what I take the term "ancestor
cult" to mean. A basic distinction is that between cultic acts carried
out in connection with the disposal of the dead (death cults), or
designed to perpetuate their memory, and acts inspired by the
belief that the dead, and specifically dead kin, live on in some way
and are in a position to influence the living for good or ill-e.g. by
healing, providing information otherwise unavailable, especially
about the future course of events, or haunting.3 If this much is
accepted, the further question arises whether the dead were merely
honored, placated or consulted according to the circumstances, or
whether cult in the narrower sense, i.e., defined as a complex of
religious acts directed to divine beings, or beings thought to be in
some way in the sphere of the divine, was offered to them.4 In
Ugarit, for example, the status of the recently dead (mlkm) was dis-
tinguished from that of the long dead (rp'm; cf. the biblical
Rephaim) who were closer to, if not within, the realm of divinity,
and in both Ugarit and Israel the dead, or some of the dead, could
be referred to as lIhym, divine beings.5 In this connection it should
be borne in mind that in popular religion in Israel as elsewhere in
antiquity the border between the human and the divine spheres was
fluid and permeable, and some texts give the impression that the
dead constituted something of a buffer zone between the two. At

2 E.g. Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel from its Beginnings to the Babylo-
nian Exile (trans. and abridged by Moshe Greenberg; New York, 1972), pp. 311-
16; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel. Its Life and Institutions (London, 1961), pp. 56-
61 = Les institutions de l'Ancien Testament I (Paris, 1958), pp. 93-100.
3 In making these distinctions I have been helped by Sally Humphreys, The
Family, Women and Death (London, 1983), pp. 151-64.
4 Whether in fact cult should be so defined is, of course, a moot point. In
Roman Catholicism, for example, a traditional distinction is made between latreia,
cult offered to God, and douleia, the cult of the saints.
5 The relevant biblical texts are 1 Sam. xxviii 13 and Isa. viii 19; perhaps also
Ps. cvi 28 (zibhe metim); cf. Num. xxv 2 (zibhe' elohehen). T.J. Lewis, "The
Ancestral Estate (NHLT )ELHYM) in 2 Samuel 14:16", JBL 110 (1991), pp.
597-612, has made out a good case for the same usage at 2 Sam. xiv 16. On
Ugaritic usage see Lewis (n. 1 above) pp. 47-51, 115-16, and note also the
parallelism between "my gods" (ildnzya) and "my dead" (meteya) in one of the
Akkadian texts from Emar, on which seeJ. Huehnergard, "Biblical notes on some
new Akkadian texts from Emar", CBQ 47 (1985), p. 430. For the Nuzi tablets
Anne E. Draffkor, ")Ilani/Elohim",JBL 76 (1957), pp. 216-24, is useful though
somewhat out of date.

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 DEUTERONOMY AND POST-MORTEM EXISTENCE 3

any rate, I assume in what follows that in ancient

believed that the dead, including dead ancestors, liv
capacity, that the living could, given certain condit
with them, that such interaction constituted an important
integrative element of the social, religious and emotional bond of
kinship, and that it took the form of cultic acts offered to them or
on their behalf.6
Recent writing on death cults and ancestor cults in Israel,
including the present article, represent a revival of a classic theme
from the early days of Religionsgeschichte in the later 19th century,
a theme associated with the names of such viri illustres as Numa
Fustel de Coulanges, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, Sir James Frazer
and William Robertson Smith. Interest in post-mortem existence,
which reached an all-time high in the late Victorian period, also the
heyday of spiritualism, declined rapidly thereafter. This was due in
part to the erosion of the social situations, especially in the Far East,
which tended to generate ancestor cults, but we must also reckon
with exaggerated claims made for such beliefs. N.D. Fustel de
Coulanges (La Cite Antique, [Paris, 1864]), to take a notable exam-
ple, traced religion and culture in general, and private property in
particular, to the cult of the dead, and similar claims were made by
Herbert Spencer who argued that ancestor worship was the root of
all religion.7 It would be safe to say that to this day the subject is
of theoretical interest to some anthropologists and fewer biblical
scholars, but hardly at all to philosophers and theologians.

II

As Max Weber noted long ago,8 the gradual consolidation of a

civil and religious bureaucracy, accompanied by the concentration

6 From the most familiar example of interaction between the living and the
dead, the conjuring up of Samuel from the underworld (1 Sam. xxviii), we see that
the dead Samuel could still communicate in Hebrew and had knowledge at least
of the imminent future. Sadly, it seems that his ideas about morality were
unchanged (e.g. on what to do about the Amalekites) and we note no change in
his general disposition either.
7 See A.D. Momigliano, "La citta antica di Fustel de Coulanges", Rivista
storica italiana 87 (1970), pp. 81-98, and the remarks of the same author in Hum-
phreys (n. 3), pp. 131-6; also W. Crooke, "Ancestor-Worship and Cult of the
Dead", inJ. Hastings (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics I (1910), pp. 427-8.
8 Economy and Society 1 (Berkeley, 1978; trans. of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grun-
driss der verstehenden Soziologie [4th edn, Tiibingen, 1956]), pp. 370-84; Ancient
Judaism (New York, 1952 [1917-91919), pp. 61-70.

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4 JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP

of power and wealth in cities and the growth of international trade,

inevitably combine to diminish the social significance of a descent
system and undermine its ethos. The state's need for land as a
source of income and to reward or placate retainers will often be
satisfied at the expense of patrimonial domain. Large estates can be
exploited more easily than individual household plots on which the
survival of the smallest kinship unit depended. Taxation places a
severe burden on a subsistence agrarian economy, leading very
easily to insolvency and the breakup of households. The creation of
a centralized judiciary impinges on traditional patterns of social life
and restricts the authority of the local paterfamilias. To judge by
protest directed against the state and its functionaries by the 8th-
century prophets, this process was by then well underway in both
kingdoms and affected the basic lineage structure as a whole. But
for obvious reasons state representatives would take aim at the
middle-range unit, i.e., the clan (mispd4ha), as the focus of collective
lineage loyalty and potentially of opposition to state encroachment.
Many of the stipulations in the D code read as a state document
can be interpreted within this context. The establishment of a state-
appointed local and central judiciary (xvi 18-20, xvii 8-13)
necessarily restricted the authority and jurisdiction of heads of
households and tribal elders (zqenim) as a collectivity. The
"officers" (soterim), mentioned here and elsewhere alongside
magistrates or judges (sopetzlm), have a broad supervisory function
and serve in addition as military commissars to keep the peasant
army in line.9 State-appointed magistrates supervise village elders
in the investigation of a homicide the perpetrator of which is
undetected (xxi 1-9), they must be present when corporal punish-
ment is inflicted (xxv 1-3), and cases of false witnessing are reserved
to the central judiciary (xix 15-21).
The exercise of authority at the household level is restricted in
other ways, e.g., the manner in which the paterfamilias disposes of
his estate (xxi 15-17) and deals with the recalcitrant behavior of a
younger adult member of the household (xxi 18-21). The practice
of blood vengeance, an essential and traditional component of
tribal justice, is phased out in favor of a state-mandated law of sanc-

9 Num. xi 16; Deut. i 15, xvi 18, xxxi 28; Josh. viii 33, xxiii 2, xxiv 1. In Ex.
v 6, 10, 14-15, 19 siterim supervise forced labor gangs in Egypt, and they are
assigned a military role in Deut. xx 5, 8-9 and Josh. i 10, iii 2.

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 DEUTERONOMY AND POST-MORTEM EXISTENCE 5

tuary (xix 1-13). Combing through the D legislatio

variety of less direct though not necessarily very
which those who drafted the laws sought to undermi
the kinship group and transfer allegiance to the state
ment that a member of a houshold advocating non-Ya
(which presumably could include the cult of the dead)
despatched by his immediate kin (xiii 7-12) can be rea
attempt to sabotage the solidarity of the basic kin
prohibition of returning runaway slaves to their mas
16), a remarkable departure from legal practice in
(cf. the Code of Hammurapi, paragraphs 15-20), w
undermine the property and labor base of the mo
households. Even the statement rejecting the tradi
inter-generational accountability (xxiv 16) can be s
in the same direction.
It has also been observed that a state bureaucracy will attempt,
especially in its inchoate stage of formation or when its existence is
threatened, to strengthen the individual spousal bond while work-
ing to undermine the larger-scale configurations of the lineage
system.10 The representatives of the state will therefore tend to act
on the tacit assumption that the strength of the bond between
spouses is in inverse proportion to the strength of attachments to
their respective families of origin.lI This may help to explain the
death penalty for adultery (xxii 22) and other sexual offences (xxii
23-9), as also the law governing palingamy (remarriage), designed
either to discourage divorce or protect the second marriage, more
likely the latter (xxiv 1-4). The liberal policy of a year's exemption
from the military draft for newly-wedded husbands (xx 7, xxiv 5)
could also be seen in the same light.12

10 Y.A. Cohen, "Ends and Means in Political Control: State Organisation and
the Punishment of Adultery, Incest, and Violation of Celibacy", American
Anthropologist 71 (1969), pp. 658-87.
n See the interesting article by William J. Goode, "The Theoretical Impor-
tance of Love", American Sociological Review 24 (1959), pp. 38-47.
12 Two commendable recent studies are those of Naomi Steinberg, "The
Deuteronomic law code and the politics of state centralization", in D. Jobling et
al. (ed.), The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis (Cleveland, 1991), pp. 161-70, and
Louis Stulman, "Sex and Familial Crimes in the D Code: a Witness to Mores in
Transition", JSOT 53 (1992), pp. 47-64. On Deut. xxiv 1-4 see, in addition to
the commentaries, R. Yaron, "The Restoration of Marriage", JJS 17 (1966), pp.
1-11, and a response by GJ. Wenham, "The Restoration of Marriage Recon-
sidered", JSS 30 (1979), pp. 36-40.

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6 JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP

III

Of special significance in this connection is the cult centralization

policy announced at the beginning of the D code. I do not propose
to enter into a thorough discussion of this topic, much less attempt
to provide adequate documentation. It is, however, of some impor-
tance for the argument being advanced to note that the requirement
pertains to sacrifice; the D code itself says nothing about closing
down regional sanctuaries.'3 Five times it is stipulated that the
Israelite and the members of his household ('attem zibdttekem, xii 7)
must sacrifice, partake of the sacrificial meal and eat tithed food
only at the central sanctuary (xii 5-7, 11-12, 14, 17-18., 26-7), a
requirement which entailed the need to desacralize the butchering
of animals at the regional level (xii 15-16, 20-5). At the end of the
D code the offering of the firstfruits (xxvi 1-15) forms an inclusio
with this centralization passage at the beginning. It concludes with
what appears to be a fivefold declaration, a negative confession or
Beichtspiegel, in which the Israelite householder asserts, inter alia,
that he has not eaten any of the sacred portion while in mourning,
that he has not removed any of it in a state of uncleanness, and that
he has not given any of it to (or perhaps, for) a dead person. 4 This
way of bracketing the entire law collection with a positive command
addressed to households to partake of sacrificial meals only at the
central sanctuary and a prohibition of meals which formed part of
a mortuary ritual in which the dead were thought to participate
provides, it seems to me, an important and neglected clue to the
intentions and agenda of those who drafted the laws.
Pointing in the same direction is the requirement, coming at the
end of the festival calendar, that adult males present themselves
three times a year at the national sanctuary (xvi 16). A similar
prescription occurs in the so-called Covenant Code (Ex. xxiii 17;

13 N. Lohfink, "Zur deuteronomischen Zentralisationsformel", Bib 65 (1984),

pp. 297-329; "Opfer und Sikularisierung im Deuteronomium", in A. Schenker
(ed.), Studien zu Opfer und Kult im Alten Testament (Tiibingen, 1992), pp. 15-43.
14 Cf. Hos. ix 4 which speaks of "mourners' bread" (lehem 'onim) which defiles,
and Ps. cvi 28 referring to sacrifices offered to the dead (zibhe metlm). For early
interpretations of Deut. xxvi 14 (lo#-natatti mimmennu lemet) see S.R. Driver, A.
Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (3rd edn, Edinburgh, 1901), pp.
291-2; more recently Lewis (n. 1), pp. 102-4. Henri Gazelles, "Sur un rituel du
Deuteronome (Deut. XXVI 14)", RB 55 (1948), pp. 54-71, and Le Deuteronome
(Paris, 1958), p. 106, understands met to refer to Baal as vegetation deity.

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 DEUTERONOMY AND POST-MORTEM EXISTENCE 7

cf. xxxiv 23), but without the codicil that this must b
sanctuary. The significance of sacrifice as emblem
affiliation and unity and the importance of contro
ticipates in it are well attested in ancient societies, as
tional societies which have survived into the mod
Rome, for example, one's membership in a particu
gentilitas, was demonstrated by participation in the an
tilicia. The point may be exemplified by the great fuss
when the Transjordanian tribes built their own altar
34). It is described as an act of treachery and rebellio
and all-out war was averted only when they assured t
perhaps disingenuously, that they had never intended
it.

It is arguable that the Deuteronomic requirement (xvi 16) is

aimed directly at the annual clan sacrificial meal participation in
which defined membership in the mispadha. Such occasions are
widely attested, their purpose being to legitimate and sustain a
social order based on patrilineal descent, provide a positive and
observable verification of membership in the clan, and confirm the
hierarchy of social status by the distribution of portions or cuts of
the sacrificial animal.15 Given what we know of familial and tribal
cults and the kind of thinking which informed them, we would con-
clude that the ancestors of the kinship group, those who had already
been "gathered to their people",16 were also thought to participate.
It is true, as Robertson Smith noted long ago, that the existence of
such festivals in ancient Israel comparable to the Roman sacra gen-
tilicia is a matter of inference rather than direct evidence-not sur-
prisingly given the religious point of view governing the selection
and presentation of the biblical material-but it can be reasonably

15 The remarks on this subject of W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites
(2nd edn, London, 1894), pp. 275-7, can still be read with profit. See also Antonin
Causse, "La crise de la solidarite de famille et de clan dans l'ancien Israel",
RHPR 10 (1930), pp. 24-60; Herbert Brichto, "Kin, Cult, Land and Afterlife-A
Biblical Complex", HUCA 44 (1973), pp. 1-54; Nancy Jay, "Sacrifice, descent
and the patriarchs", VT 38 (1988), pp. 52-70; Throughout your generations forever.
Sacrifice, Religion and Paternity (Chicago, 1992).
16 Or "to their fathers"; on these expressions see A. Alfrink, "L'expression
sdkab cim 'abotdyw", OTS 2 (1943), pp. 106-18; "L'expression ne'esap el-
cammdyw", OTS 5 (1948), pp. 118-31; G.R. Driver, "Plurima Mortis Imago", in
Meir Ben-Horin et al. (ed.), Studies and Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman
(Leiden, 1962), pp. 128-43.

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8 JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP

affirmed nonetheless. The clearest example is the zebah hayydmim in

Bethlehem at which David's presence was required by his brothers,
i.e., the fellow members of his mispdah (1 Sam. xx 5-6, 28-9). It
coincided with the new moon (hodes), lasted at least two days, and
involved a sacrifice and meal. Saul's anger on being told that David
had skipped attendance at the court to be present at this festival (vss
30-4) was no doubt fuelled by the knowledge that these "gatherings
of the clans" were occasions for venting discontent and fomenting
revolt. We might compare Absalom raising the standard of
rebellion in his own town, Hebron, to which he had gone with
David's permission in order to sacrifice (2 Sam. xv 7-12).
The picture is considerably less clear with respect to the annual
sacrifice at Shiloh. This too is described as zebah hayydmim (1 Sam.
i 21, ii 19; cf. hag-yhwh beilo miyydmim ydmimd, Judg. xxi 19) in
which Elkanah and all his household participate, portions are given
to immediate kin, and considerable imbibing is expected (1 Sam.
i 12-16; cf., again, the orgiastic or at least high-spirited goings on,
also at Shiloh, in Judg. xxi 16-24). Another instance of kinship
sacrifice and meal is recorded as taking place on a bdma (1 Sam. ix
11-14, 22-6),'7 but we are not told that it was an annual sacrifice.
In none of these instances is there any mention of dead members
of the kin group as participants, or of cult being offerent to them,
or of their being given food and drink. But this is hardly surprising
given the historian's rejection of the cult of the dead in any shape
or form. We can only claim, on the basis of numerous analogies,
that solidarity between the living and the dead is what we expect
in societies organized by patrilineal descent, and we have no reason
to believe that the situation was different in Israel. We note too that
the social life of the kinship group (including its assemblies) and its
persistence through time were inextricably bound up with owner-
ship of a parcel of land which also served as a burial plot. We recall
Naboth's perhaps ill-advised and in the event fatal refusal to trade
in his ancestral plot (nahalat 'ab6tay, 1 Kgs xxi 3). The wise woman
of Tekoa fears that both she and her son will be cut off from the

17 We should leave aside as not proven W.F. Albright's ingeniously argued

thesis that the bdma served as a mortuary shrine or funerary installation com-
parable to the Arabic weli; see his article "The high place in Ancient Palestine",
SVT4 (1957), pp. 242-58, and the critical assessment by W. Boyd Barrick, "Th
funerary character of 'High Places' in ancient Palestine: a reassessment", VT 2
(1975), pp. 565-95.

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 DEUTERONOMY AND POST-MORTEM EXISTENCE 9

"heritage of God" (nahilat 'elohim, 2 Sam. xiv 16), a

which may have the same meaning.18 The old proph
predicts that his prophetic colleague from Judah will no
in the burial plot of his ancestors (qeber 'abotekd, 1 Kg
grim outcome indeed for a man of God. This connec
land ownership, burial and the perpetuation of the sib
particularly in evidence in the narrative cycle abo
ancestors, beginning with Abraham's purchase of a bur
Hebron and the burial in it of himself, his wife, and t
dants (Gen. xxiii 1-20, xxv 8-10, xxxv 29, Ixix 33, 1
Before taking a closer look at the explicit references
rites and communication with the dead in Deuterono
point may be made with respect to the central sanctuar
tion of the name of YHWH. In view of the acknowle
tion between the centralization formula occurring redu
Deuteronomy xii and the similar formulation in the al
so-called Covenant Code ("in every place where I cau
to be remembered/invoked [Pazkir]", Ex. xx 24),19 it is
that Deuteronomy speaks of the name being placed (sw
xiv 24) or dwelling (skn, xii 11, xivv 23, xvi 2, 6, 11, x
central sanctuary but not of it being remember
memorialized there (zkr Hi.) The invocation of the
forebears was an important aspect of mortuary cults th
Near East, whether in the Mesopotamian kispu fest
Ugarit,21 or in Syria.22 In Israel, too, the dead were

18 H.O. Forshey, "The Construct Chain nahalat YHWHI'lo6im

(1975), pp. 51-4, together with several of the commentators took
the political and religious community. Lewis (n. 5), pp. 597-61
elo6him to be a synonym for 'dbdt, ancestors. The woman fears, th
a result of blood vendetta she will have no son to see to her burial on the
patrimonial domain of her family and that the family name will not be
perpetuated.
19 On which see especially Lohfink (n. 13), pp. 297-329.
20 See M. Bayliss, "The Cult of the Dead Kin in Assyrian and in Babylonia"
Iraq 35 (1973), pp. 115-25, and, in general, Bendt Alster (ed.), Death i
Mesopotamia (Copenhagen, 1990).
21 Marvin Pope, "The Cult of the Dead at Ugarit", in G.D. Young (ed.),
Ugarit in Retrospect (Winona Lake, 1981), pp. 159-79; Lewis (n. 1), pp. 5-98.
22 E.g., the expression wyzkr 'sm hdd on the Panammu stele (cf. Akk. sum
zakdru), on which see H. Donner and W. R6llig, Kanaandische und aramdisch
Inschriften (Wiesbaden, 1962-4), 214.16 (cf. 21); J.C. Greenfield, "Un rite
religieux arameen et ses paralleles", RB 80 (1973), pp. 46-52. See also J
Huehnergard, "Biblical Notes on some new Akkadian texts from Emar", CBQ
(1985), p. 430.

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10 JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP

and memorialized (zkr Hi.) by commemorative celebration and the

erection of a mortuary stele. Thus, Absalom lamented not having
a surviving son to keep his name in remembrance (hazkir) and
therefore erected for himself a stele (masseba) in the King's Valley
(2 Sam. xviii 18).23 The avoidance of hazkir in the Deuteronomic
formulation may therefore have been dictated by the urge to
dissociate the national cult of YHWH as completely as possible
from one of the most important traditional religious practices of the
household and the clan.

IV

We now turn to what the D code has to say explicitly about

funerary rites and commerce with the dead. The prohibition of self-
laceration and shaving of head hair comes early in the collection
(xiv 1) and also occurs, in somewhat different form, in the so-called
Holiness Code (Lev. xix 28, xxi 5). There is ample attestation,
however, that these expressions of mourning for the dead were nor-
mal practice in both kingdoms, as they were elsewhere in the Near
East and the Levant.24 It is worth noting that the two apodictic
commands couched in the plural-"you shall not lacerate
yourselves", "you shall not shave the hair on your forehead
(literally: make a baldness between your eyes) for the dead"-are
introduced by a declarative statement intended to explain the pro-
hibitions and motivate the hearer or reader to observe them: "you
are the sons of YHWH your God" (bdnim 'attem layhwh 16lohkem).
As was noted by von Rad, and passed over by most other commen-
tators,25 this expression occurs nowhere else in Deuteronomy or,
for that matter, in the Old Testament, and the order of words is
intended to emphasize that the relationship is indeed filial. A con-

23 Cf. Ruth iv 10 for the importance of preserving the name of the deceased,
a duty normally encumbent on a surviving son; on which see M. Fortes, "Pietas
in ancestor worship", Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and
Ireland 91 (1961), pp. 166-91; in Ugarit see J.F. Healey, "The Pietas of an Ideal
Son in Ugarit", UF 11 (1979), pp. 353-6; Lewis (n. 1), pp. 53-71.
24 E.g. Isa. xv 2, xxii 12; Jer. xvi 6, lxi 5, xlvii 5, xlviii 37; Amos viii 10; Mic.
iv 14. For Ugarit see Lewis (n. 1), pp. 100-1; for similar practices in ancient
Greece and Solon's laws restricting private funerary rites see Humphreys (n. 3),
pp. 14, 83-6, 88-9.
25 G. von Rad, Deuteronomy. A Commentary (London, 1966), p. 101 = Dasfinfte
Buxh Mose Deuteronomium (G6ttingen, 1964), p. 72.

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 DEUTERONOMY AND POST-MORTEM EXISTENCE 11

trast is thus set up between prohibited acts perform

behalf of deceased kin, and cult appropriate for the n
YHWH. I suggest that this reflects an overall aim
allegiance and the emotional focus of the religious life
towards the national cult and away from the line
including both living and dead. The strategy entailed
the social practices-rituals of re-enactment, com
ceremonies, funerary practices and the like-which
kinship system.26 The divine promise to the ancest
nent in Deuteronomy as a promise of land, could a
stood as the acceptable form of continuity with the p
to ancestor cult.

The prohibitions are not, however, restricted to death rites.

Deut. xviii 9-14 lists eight religiously abhorrent practices (to'ebot,
vss 9, 12) which are represented as foreign and are contrasted with
prophecy as the form of mediation proper and unique to Israel.
They are therefore presented under the rubric of mediation with the
other world-the world of the gods, spirits and the dead-as is
apparent from the verbs of asking, inquiring, heeding, (slI, drs, smc
used throughout. The first, making a son or daughter pass through
the fire, refers to the cult of Molek which has undoubted associa-
tions with the cult of the dead.27 Both here and elsewhere (Lev. xx
1-6; 2 Kgs xvii 17, xxi 6; Ezek. xx 31) it is mentioned in the same
context with divinatory and necromantic practices, but the nature
of the connection is no longer clear. While all eight are represented
as foreign imports, all were in fact practiced in Israel and five out
of the eight have to do either exclusively or principally with interac-
tion between the living and the dead. This can be shown by a brief
look at usage for each of these designations excluding the first; note,
however, that English equivalents are generally no more than
approximations.
(1) qosem qesa-mim (diviner): neighboring lands, including
Philistia, Ammon and wherever Balaam came from have their
qesamim (Num. xxii 7, xxiii 23; Josh. xiii 22; 1 Sam. vi 2; Jer. xxvii
9; Ezek. xxi 34), but Israel does also (1 Sam. xv 23, xxviii 8; 2 Kgs

26 On the societal role of such non-inscribed acts see Paul Connerton, How
Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989).
27 Heider (n. 1), pp. 383-400; John Day, Molech. A God of Human Sacrifice in the
Old Testament (Cambridge, 1989), passim.

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12 JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP

xvii 17; Isa. iii 2; Jer. xiv 14, xxix 8; Ezek. xiii 6, 9, 23; Mic. iii
6-7, 11; Zech. x 2). One form of divination, in Israel as elsewhere,
was obtained mediumistically through contact with the dead and,
though dead kin (ancestors) are not explicitly mentioned, it is to
their own departed kin that the common people would turn in the
first place. The elite had other options, as Saul who consulted a
medium to conjure up the ghost of Samuel (see below). According
to Ezek. xxi 26 one of the forms of divination practiced by
Nebuchadnezzar, definitely a member of the elite, was by terdpim.
The meaning of this term has been much discussed; and while it
may have meant different things at different times, it is generally
agreed that it can refer to a physical representation of an ancestor
which could be used for oracular purposes, to receive a communica-
tion from the world of the dead which they inhabit.28 That
divinatory communications were sought through contact with the
dead is also attested in the story of Saul and the witch of Endor (1
Sam. xxviii 3-25). The woman is not called a qosemet, but Saul asks
her to divine (qsm) for him by means of a spirit or ghost, which she
does.

(2) me'Cnen (soothsayer); this too was a religious specialization

familiar in Israel (Lev. xix 26; Judg. ix 37; 2 Kgs xxi 6; Isa. ii 6;
Mic. v 11) as in other lands (Isa. ii 6; Jer. xxvii 9). If me'onen is a
participial form in the Pocel from the verbal stem Cnn with the
meaning "cause to appear", a connection with conjuring up and
communicating with the spirits of the dead would be indicated; but
we know that such conclusions are notoriously speculative. We are
on firmer ground with the description of the sorceress (Conena) and
her offspring in Isa. lvii 3-10, reminiscent of the "outsider woman"
('issa zaralnokriyyd) in Prov. i-ix. It is not difficult to detect in the
depiction of both women a conflation of sexual and mortuary
imagery, and the transgressive activities of a sexual nature in which
the oneind engages have indubitable connections with the cult of the
dead.29 It would be interesting but untimely to speculate on the

28 Among the more recent studies see H. Rouillard and J. Tropper, "Trpym,
rituels de guerison et culte des ancetres d'apres 1 Samuel xix 11-17 et les textes
parallels d'Assur et de Nuzi", VT 37 (1987), pp. 340-61; Karel van der Toorn,
"The nature of the biblical teraphim in the light of the cuneiform evidence", CBQ
52 (1990), pp. 203-22; 0. Loretz, "Die Teraphim als 'Ahnen-G6tter-Figur(in)en'
im Lichte der Texte aus Nuzi, Emar und Ugarit", UF 24 (1992), pp. 133-78.
29 On the parallelism between the Coneind and the issfd zdrd and the associated
death cult imagery see my article "The Social Context of the 'Outsider Woman'

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 DEUTERONOMY AND POST-MORTEM EXISTENCE 13

association between death and sexuality which

feature of Isa. Ivii 3-10 and the related passages
(3-5) menahes, mekassep, hober heber (augur, sorc
spells): the first of these is attested in foreign land
lxiv 5, 15; Num. xxiii 23, xxiv 1; 1 Kgs xx 33) an
and therefore presumably practiced in Israel (Le
xvii 17, xxi 6). Sorcery was also a familiar reco
Mic. v 11; Mal. iii 5), generally associated with f
personifications (2 kgs ix 22; Isa. xlvii 9, 12; Na
was predominantly a female specialization is sugges
penalty on the mekassepa (cf. Akk. kassaptu) in the
nant Code (Ex. xxii 17). Apart from an allusion
snake charming, the last of these designations is fo
reference to Babylon (Isa. xlvii 9, 12). None of th
have anything to do with necromancy.
(6) so'el o6b weyidde'oni (one who consults a ghost
the way this designation is formulated, we see that
human medium and the 'ob and yidde'oni are the n
human agents consulted. If, as seems likely, the lat
ydC, these spirits would be "knowing ones" consult
tion unavailable to human beings, especially inform
future. In any case, theyidde'oni is always paired w
of the contexts in which the latter occurs obliges u
scope of the term to the human agent. The so-calle
prohibits having recourse to an d6b oryidde6onz or

in Prov. 1-9", Bib 72 (1991), pp. 457-73. The death cult ima
is discussed in detail by Lewis (n. 1), pp. 143-58. Several o
obscure phrases in the passage are referred to mortuary imag
4a is explained with reference to a Ugaritic passage (CTA 5
prepares to devour Baal, which is ingenious but does not make a
the context; vs. 5 hanne.dmim bdaelim is translated "comfortin
dead spirits", reading the first word as a Ni. participle > nhm
which has some support from the LXX (7rapaxaXo0uvTg; &it sa &
elsewhere nhm takes the preposition Cal not b; Lewis follow
Smooth Stones of the Wadi'? Isaiah 57,6", CBQ 29 (196
translating halqe-nahal "the dead/departed of the wadi" (cf.
Akk. 4aldqu), a meaning otherwise unattested in Biblical Hebrew
vs. 7 to be a double entendre, referring to the bed or couch o
makes love and the grave or tomb, as in vs. 2; finally, he fo
p. 381, in translating the difficult qibbuisayik vs. 13 as "your
reference to the ingathered dead (cf. CTA 15.3.3-4, 14-15 whe
qbs). Several of these suggestions call for further scrutiny, bu
notations in the passage can hardly be doubted.

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14 JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP

them-another illustration of the sex-death cult connection (Lev.

xix 31, xx 6). Another stipulation in the same collection (Lev. xx
27) prescribes the death penalty for anyone, man or woman, who
has in them a ghost or a spirit, in other words, who is regarded as
possessed and in touch with the dead (Revised Standard Version "a
man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard" is therefore inex-
act). The situation is somewhat different with the witch of Endor
who is described as bacalat 'ob, i.e., a woman who commands the
spirits, a female shaman. The comment that Saul had "put aside
(hesir) or "cut off" (hikrit) the 'obot andyidde'Conm from the land (1
Sam. xxviii 3, 9) does not oblige us to identify those expelled as wit-
ches and warlocks. We are told that one of the bad things that
Manasseh did was to make )obot andyidde'onfm (2 Kgs xxi 6), which
suggests objects representing the spirits of the ancestral dead.
(Here, too, the RSV "he ... dealt with mediums and wizards"
makes an unnecessary adjustment.) Josiah, like Saul, got rid of the
'obot and yidde'onim, but also of the terdpim and assorted idolatrous
cult objects (2 Kgs xxiii 24). 1 Sam. xxviii 3, 9, presumably from
the same author or editor as 2 Kgs xxiii 24, wishes us therefore to
understand that, initially obedient to the Deuteronomic-Mosaic
law, Saul either got rid of steles, statues, etc. representing the dead
or engaged in a thorough but impermanent spirit-cleansing opera-
tion, by what means we are not told. The inclusion of this story in
the history, which many have found surprising, illustrates the bad
consequences of violating the law in Deut. xviii 9-14 but does not
question the efficacy of the desperate measures to which Saul had
recourse.

Speculation about the etymology of '6b h

discussion significantly. The only viable option
idea of a ritual pit from which the spirit w
municate, a theory which goes back to Van Ho
end of the last century, or take it to be a var
course would favor the association with ancestor cults. Neither
option is free of difficulties.30 Some few additional pieces of infor-

30 On the ritual pit theory see Albin Van Hoonacker, "Divination by the 'Ob
among the Ancient Hebrews", ExpT 9 (1897/1898), pp. 157-60; H.A. Hoffner,
"'bh", TWAT I, cols 141-6 = E. tr. TDOT 1, pp. 130-4; J. Ebach and U.
Riitersw6rdern, "Unterweltbeschworung im Alten Testament. Untersuchungen
zur Begriffs- und Religionsgeschichte des 'ob", UF9 (1977), pp. 57-70; 12 (1980),
pp. 205-20. In favor of 'ob > 'db are J. Lust, "On wizards and prophets", SVT
26 (1974), pp. 133-42; Spronk (n. 1), p. 252.

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 DEUTERONOMY AND POST-MORTEM EXISTENCE 15

mation come to us from a prophetic source unsympat

expressions of popular religion. In Isa. viii 19 t
opponents, probably during the Syro-Ephraimite war
'dbot and yidde'onim who chirp and mutter with decea
here referred to as 'elohim, from whom oracles ca
With this we may compare the trope in the Arie
speaks of the whispering and muttering of the dead
municate from the underworld ('eres, Isa. xxix 4).
(7) doresg 'el-hammetim (necromancer): this last des
not occur elsewhere, though Isa. viii 19 speaks of
dead on behalf of the living. It seems not to represen
tion distinct from the preceding.

My purpose in this article has been to propose a r

D code in its pre-exilic from as a Judean state docu
undermining the ethos and practices of the lineage sy
veneration of ancestors which formed the religious a
core of that system. It seems to be structurally signi
compilation of laws is bracketed by the limitatio
sacrificial meals and the consumption of the tithe to
tuary at the beginning and the prohibition of mortuar
end (xxvi 14). Moreover, the prohibition of any form
with the dead and the recommendation of prophec
table alternative in xviii 9-22 are located exactly at
of the code. The conclusions proposed are not read
with the often touted traditionalism of Deuteronomy
me that the drafters of the code and its homiletic framework used
tradition for their own purpose, which was to establish an
orthodoxy and orthopraxy controlled by a centralized civil and
religious bureaucracy. If they were responsive to prophetic protest,
it was within limits dictated by this primary aim, which also led to
a redefinition of the prophet as the proclaimer and custodian of the
(Deuteronomic) law.31 In this connection it is also worth recalling
that the accounts of reforms throughout the history of Judah nar-
rated by the D historian deal exclusively with the removal of cultic

31 See my Prophecy and Canon (Notre Dame, 1977), pp. 39-53.

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16 JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP

abuses, never with the kind of social ab

century prophets. By the same toke
national disaster exclusively to what h
practices, among which death cults and
tion with the dead had a prominent p

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