The Yahwist's Landscape: Nature And Religion In Early Israel

The Yahwist's Landscape This page intentionally left blank The Yahwist's Landscape Nature and Religion in Early Israel Theodore Hiebert New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1996 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1996 by Theodore Hiebert Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hiebert, Theodore. The Yahwist's landscape : nature and religion in early Israel / Theodore Hiebert. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-509205-8 1. J document (Biblical criticism) 2. Nature—Biblical teaching. I. Title. BS1181.4.H54 1995 222'.106—dc20 95-11578 135798642 Printed in the U n i t e d States of America on acid-free paper To my parents, Rachel Wiebe Hiebert and Waldo Daniel Hiebert, who gave me an appreciation for the Bible; and to our children, Nicholas Sharps and Mary Claire, who will inherit the world we leave to them. This page intentionally left blank Preface This study of the role of nature in biblical religion is motivated by two developments. One of these is the new interest in nature and the human place within it in Western religious traditions, prompted by the environmental crisis. Historians, ethicists, and theologians have begun to uncover the intellectual legacy of Western culture regarding nature and to assess its strengths and weaknesses as a resource for an enlightened ecological ethic. Since the Bible stands at the origin of Western traditions, its perspectives on the natural world have been subjected to close scrutiny by environmentalists and biblical scholars alike, who are often rather quick to blame or defend biblical points of view. This study is intended as a contribution to the ongoing task of uncovering, and making available to its heirs, the biblical legacy regarding the natural world and its significance in religious thought. The other development that motivated this study is a growing personal dissatisfaction with the traditional approach to nature in biblical scholarship. This uneasiness first arose out of my dissertation work on Habakkuk 3, an elaborate account of God's appearance in the form and phenomena of the thunderstorm. How was one to account for such a vivid presentation of nature as a medium of revelation within a religion, so I had been taught, that embraced history and rejected nature as the realm of divine activity? As an aberration? A vestige of nonbiblical thought? This dissatisfaction grew as I realized that the results of modern biblical scholarship, to which those with a renewed interest in nature in the West's religious traditions would turn for information, were based on a prohistory, antinature presentation of biblical religion, which did not consider texts like Habakkuk 3 of crucial significance. When one turns to scholarship on na- viii Preface ture in biblical religion, one invariably confronts two widespread assumptions: ancient Israel originated in the desert, and its religion was stamped with an historical consciousness that marginalized the world of nature. Often, these two assumptions have been regarded as interrelated, and almost always they have shaped the content of exegetical and theologica