Israelite Religion and
Cosmology
- The Lord -
- The Priesthood -
Prior to the Exodus, the head of each Israelite family administered the functions of the priesthood. During the Exodus, the Lord chose the Levite tribe (both Moses and Aaron were Levites) to be his emissaries and to preside over his rituals. The majority of the Levites were servants, musicians, attendants, teachers, and other support staff; the actual priests of the Temple were a subset of the Levites: descendants of Aaron called Kohanim. (After the division of Israel and Judah, the northern priesthood was opened up to members of other tribes). The Levites received no allotment of territory in the Promised Land, as they were all to serve the Lord, either in communities within the territories of other tribes (where they provided spiritual instruction and leadership) or in the Temple in Jerusalem. They owned no personal real estate or farmland, receiving one-tenth of the nation’s cattle and produce of other tribes through tithes.
They maintained the tabernacle and later the Temple, and administered religious ceremonies, sacrifices, and festivals. They also oversaw the six cities of refuge (see p. 161).
Though the Lord values peace above war, and the Levites were exempted from military service, the Levites were not pacifists; when foreign deities intruded into Israel or when the Israelites were seduced into worshiping heathen idols, it was the duty of the Levites to smite the faithless and cast down their idols and other symbols of pagan faiths.
While officiating, Levite priests wore garments of linen (which is washed by being put in boiling water and which can be gotten far cleaner than cotton or wool) and went barefoot. The high priest wore eight garments: a golden breastplate set with jewels inscribed with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel; a linen apron embroidered with gold, blue, purple, and scarlet; a tunic of blue linen with gold bells and ornaments in the shape of pomegranates alternating on its hem; a linen stole; a linen miter; a linen belt embroidered with the same bright colors; a crown with a plate of gold engraved “Holiness to the Lord” tied with a blue lace headband; and linen breeches. To this was added a fringed shawl when officiating by day, and leather phylacteries on his forehead and hand when officiating on non-holidays.
Ordinary Levite priests wore only the white linen tunic, breeches, miter, and girdle (which could be made of mixed wool and linen, a fiber blend normally forbidden to Israelites) when officiating. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the high priest wore only the garments of an ordinary Levite priest, except that his girdle was of pure linen. Levite priests wore no special costume when not officiating at sacrifices or other priestly rituals. A priest sent out to accompany or lead troops in battle wore his priestly vestments.
As most priestly duties required a man’s full strength, Levites did not enter the priesthood before the age of 25, and usually retired from service at age 50.
- The Sacred Law -
The laws of the god of Israel were very strict. They included the Ten Commandments, as well as dietary and sexual laws (in many cases reactions against the practices of the Canaanites the Israelites lived alongside), instructions concerning charity, business practices, and the treatment of slaves, etc. Scholars taught that the Lord had given the Israelites 613 religious laws, all but three of which (those against murder, adultery, and idolatry) could be superseded by the need to save human life. Along with laws concerning social behavior (like honoring your parents), there were laws on architecture (putting a railing on your roof so you won’t fall off), diet (not eating crawling insects, pigs, vultures,
etc.), clothing (not mixing linen and wool), agriculture (not yoking a
horse and an ox together, leaving the corners of fields unharvested for the poor to glean) and other aspects of daily life.
Before performing a positive commandment, observant Jews said a blessing for the opportunity the Lord had given them to be holier than the members of other nations, who received fewer commandments from the Lord (see Noahic Commandments), all but one of them negative.
The Ten Commandments
1. “I am the Lord, your god, who has taken you out of the land of Egypt,from the house of slavery.”
2. “You shall have no other gods but me. You shall not make idols in the form of anything in heavens above or the earth below or the waters under the earth or earth or in the waters.”
3. “You shall not take the name of your Lord in vain” (by invoking his name idly, swearing a false oath, or involving his name in any sinful act).
4. “You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy” (by not doing any work on that day).
5. “Honor your father and your mother.”
6. “You shall not murder” (but not ruling out capital punishment, killing someone to prevent a murder, killing in war, etc.).
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7. “You shall not commit adultery” (during the age when a man was permitted to have several wives, this did not forbid him having sex with a woman other than his wife as long as she wasn’t married to someone else).
8. “You shall not steal” (sometimes interpreted as a commandment against kidnapping).
9. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (in a court of law).
10. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his bull, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s” (“covet” meaning jealousy more than merely desire for these things).
The Noahic
Commandments
As all people on Earth were believed to be descended from Noah, the commandments the Lord gave to Noah were believed to be intended for all mankind (with the Israelites being expected to obey those laws as well as the additional commandments that the god of Israel intended only for them). The commandments for non-Israelites required setting up law courts, and forbade idolatry, taking the Lord’s name in vain, theft, sexual immorality (interpreted as incest and adultery), bearing false witness (in a law court), and drinking blood (and by extension eating a living animal or meat cut from a living animal).
The Dietary Laws
The Israelites were forbidden to eat many foods popular among other cultures in the area:
• Land creatures could be eaten if their hooves were cloven in two and they chewed cud, permitting antelope, sheep, cows, and goats, but not horses, pigs, camels, rabbits, and all carnivores and omnivores. • Air creatures could be eaten if they weren’t scavengers (like
vultures). Locusts could be eaten; bees could not (although eating honey was permitted).
• Water creatures could be eaten if they had both fins and scales, thus ruling out creatures like octopuses, shrimp, crabs, clams, and eels. • All vegetables and fruit could be eaten.
• Crawling creatures (insects and bugs) were forbidden.
• Eating living animals or flesh cut off living animals was forbidden, as was drinking their blood. This was later extended to require that a land animal be killed by a single stroke from a butcher trained in following the dietary laws, so animals killed by a hunter were forbidden. • The commandment not to eat a goat kid cooked in its mother’s milk
was eventually interpreted as requiring that dairy products and meat (but not fish) not be eaten at the same meal. At about the same time it became forbidden for a Jew to drink wine handled by a non-Jew, for fear that it might have been used for a libation to a foreign god. • During Passover week, it was forbidden to have anything leavened
with yeast in the house or to consume any such food or drink. Special wine was prepared for the period, but grain-based drinks (like beer) were forbidden during Passover.
- The Temple of the -
iraelites
Prior to the Exodus from Egypt, the Lord was worshiped at altars erected at sites of holy significance: where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac, or where Jacob wrestled with the angel.
After the Exodus, a single place of worship was instituted: at first wherever the Tabernacle Sanctuary was located (although there were sometimes rival cult centers), and from the reign of King Solomon on the Temple in Jerusalem. After the division of the kingdom into Israel and Judah, two sanctuaries were set up in Bethel and Dan with golden calf idols to represent the Lord, but offerings at these temples were not acceptable to the god of Israel.
The three most important Israelite national pilgrimage festivals (Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot) required a special liturgy performed at the Temple, as did the high holy days of Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. Other feasts could be celebrated locally, but these five required that all male Israelites who could afford the trip travel to Jerusalem (only once out of every three years for the first three) and celebrate at the Temple.
The Tabernacle
Sanctuary
The most cherished religious artifacts of the Israelites, until the founding of the Temple, were kept in the Tabernacle sanctuary. This was a great tent, cared for and set up by the Levites.
The Tabernacle, also called the Tent of Meeting, was surrounded by a rectangular court that measured about 150 ft. x 75 ft., and was screened by 8-ft.-high curtains of fine cotton embroidered with patterns in blue, purple, and scarlet. Fifty-six bronze pillars capped in silver supported the curtain. Behind this curtain rested the altar of burnt offerings, 8 ft. square and 5 ft. tall, on which all sacrifices took place. The altar was made from acacia wood, hollowed and overlaid with plates of brass, and adorned
with raised points on each corner, the “horns” of the altar. Ashes from the sacrifices were used by the priests to cleanse defilement from their bodies. Also within the courtyard was the brass washing basin made by the women of Israel from mirrors they’d brought out of Egypt. The priests used this bowl to wash their hands and feet before they entered the tabernacle.
Interior Layout
The tabernacle proper measured 48 ft. x 16 ft., and was divided into two sections: the Holy Place, which contained the altar of incense, the golden lampstand, and a table for 12 loaves of bread (one for each tribe) to be eaten by the priests after a sacrifice of incense; and the Holy of Holies, which contained the Ark of the Covenant. These sections were respectively 32 and 16 ft. long.
The altar of incense (“the golden altar”) was similar to the altar of burnt offerings, but only 2 ft. square and 4 ft. tall. and plated with gold instead of brass. It was maintained with a continuously burning supply of incense, and the priests conducted services every morning and evening at this altar.
Opposite the altar of incense was the only light source in the Holy Place beside the fire of the altar of incense: seven oil lamps set in a golden lampstand 5 ft. in height. These lamps were refilled each evening by the high priest and burned continuously.
The Veil, a beaded curtain dyed in blue, purple, and scarlet, covered the entrance to the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies, a place filled with the presence of the Lord, could only be visited by the high priest, and even then only once each year, on Yom Kippur. The only object in the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant (see p. 113).
The Ark was sometimes carried along with troops into battle to reinforce the Lord’s blessings on the Israelites. When it was transported, it was wrapped so securely that even the Levites who carried it couldn’t get a glance at it.
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The First Temple
When David began to consolidate Israel into a larger kingdom, the need for a central temple became obvious. Unfortunately, David had shed innocent blood and the Lord forbade him from constructing a temple, instead charging David’s son Solomon with the task. The Temple was constructed on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem at a spot indicated by the Lord (according to tradition, the place where Abraham had attempted to sacrifice Isaac to the Lord). The building was constructed by the men of Israel under the direction of the best Phoenician engineers, taking seven years to complete.
The Temple was a reconstruction of the tabernacle, but twice as large in every dimension. Its doors were constructed of olivewood. Its walls were made from red sandstone, which was polished fine as marble, covered in cedar boards, and supported by bronze pillars. The Temple interior was plated in silver and gold; invaders would strip its walls of precious metals, as would the kings of Judah when forced to pay a ransom to foreign invaders.
The Temple was the highest of many buildings constructed by King Solomon, and a set of triple gates separated the Temple from his palace compound.
The Second Temple
The Temple was destroyed when the Babylonians took Jerusalem in 586 BCE. When the Jews returned to Judea beginning in 539 BCE they began construction of a Second Temple. It was completed in 517 BCE, after a number of hardships and at the urging of a number of prophets. The Second Temple was less grand than Solomon’s Temple, but the Temple grounds would be expanded on by the Hasmonean kings in 141 BCE and then nearly doubled by Herod the Great in 37-34 BCE.
The first services at the rededicated altar in Jerusalem were performed by the son of the last high priest to serve in the Temple before the Exile.
- Religious Symbols -
and Artifacts
Certain objects and symbols had special significance to the Israelites. These objects have no inherent magic properties, but have enormous religious significance. These items include:
Mezuzah: This scroll case is fixed to the doorpost of Israelite homes. Within
the scroll is a hand-written passage from the Bible that commands Israelites to remember the word of the Lord, to love him with all their hearts, all their souls, and all their might, and to teach this to their children. Every time an Israelite passed through a door with a mezuzah on it, he was supposed to touch it, then kiss the fingers that touched it. (See p. 112 for an optional magical version of this item.)
Tefillin: These are a pair of sacred phylacteries, each of them being a
small box containing scrolls inscribed with the same Biblical verses
as are found in a mezuzah. One box is tied around the upper arm with leather straps and worn on the biceps (left arm of right- handed men, and vice versa), while the second is tied around the head and worn on the forehead. These phylacteries aren’t intended to be magical charms; rather they’re meant to remind the wearer of the importance of loving and obeying the Lord. (See p. 112 for an optional magical version of this item.)
Menorah: This lampstand held seven oil lamps that were kept
perpetually lit in the Holy Place of the Temple. The nine-branched menorah later became a symbol of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival celebrating the rededication of the Temple after it was defiled by the Seleucid kings.
- Israelite Magic -
and Cosmology
Magic
The Israelites felt that arcane magic was an attempt by foreign sorcerers to imitate the divine miracles of the Lord. The only sort of wonderworking permitted to the Israelites was divine magic received from their god through prayer.
Death and Resurrection
Resurrection and raise dead miracles are not trivial events in the Israelite
mythos; death was an omnipresent and an absolute concept to the Israelites, and only the greatest of prophets were allowed to bring the dead back to life (see p. 23).
The Planes
In Israelite cosmology, there are three planes: Heaven, Gehenna, and Earth. Heaven is the place where the Lord abides. It is inhabited by the souls of the good people of all nations, as well as by the Lord and those of his angels not assigned to tasks on Earth.
The worshipers of the Lord before the Exodus believed that the dead went to Sheol (“the grave”), a place of nonexistence similar to the Canaanite Eresh. Most later Israelites believed that souls went to Gehenna, where their
sins were cleansed in eternal fire, with all but the worst of sinners purified in a year (and thus able to ascend to Heaven), although the Sadducees continued to believe that there was no life after death.
In late periods, some Jews (but not the Sadducees) believed that eventually an anointed king of the House of David would reclaim the throne of Israel and all the other nations would join the Jews in worshiping the Lord. At that time, all those in Heaven would return to live immortally on Earth.
The Hidden World
There are angels, demons, and devils who walk the world of mortals unseen; these spirits are treated as Hidden. This is more than invisibility or etherealness; it’s a state of divine grace (or infernal power) that hides them from humanity, unless called upon to intervene in our world. Angels can view the world and can interactwith it when sent by the Lord, while demons and devils can view it at any time, or interact with it when summoned (sometimes unwittingly) by mortals or at the command of the Lord.
Unless otherwise stated, a Hidden creature can only use non-physical powers (e.g., spells and spell-like abilities) to affect someone on the mortal plane. Angels and devils have to manifest themselves on the mortal plane before they can use their (un)holy swords.
Conversely, mortals can only see the Hidden world by using powerful divine magic.
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A Town By the Jordan
The city of Jericho was surrounded by a stone wall 13 ft. thick and 10 ft. tall, protecting a population of about 2,000 people. The center of the city was a stone tower 30 ft. in height, accessible by a spiral staircase. Within the city were shrines dedicated to a mother goddess, who blessed the grain that the people harvested. When the people of Jericho died, their dead were buried, with solemn ceremony, in a cemetery outside of the city. The year was 7000 BCE. The Ice Age had ended a mere 3,000 years before. Pottery and the wheel would not be invented for another 3,000 years, but already the Levant, a strip of land between Anatolia and Egypt, was becoming a place people wanted to inhabit. No one is quite certain what these people looked like or what language they spoke, but they became the world’s first known agrarian society.
But agrarian doesn’t mean peaceful. Jericho’s third defensive wall was built on the ruins of the first two around 6500 BCE. And around 5,000 BCE some disaster befell the lands of the Levant, possibly a terrible climactic shift (this was the time when the Sahara prairie was becoming desert), and the fledgling Jericho civilization vanished; Canaan would be