Israelite Traditions

Abstract Ancient Israelite ideas about the heavenly realms developed within the context of other ancient Near Eastern cultures. Thus, ancient Israel’s notions about the sky and the realm of the gods have many parallels among Israel’s neighbors. This chapter examines the Israelite materials to determine how the ancient Israelites imagined the heavenly realms. I use the term Israelite to identify both peoples of ancient Israel—the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The religious ideology promoted in a majority of the texts that now form the Hebrew Bible represent the beliefs of only a small portion of the ancient Israelite community; the late Judean individuals who collected, edited, and transmitted the biblical materials were, for the most part, members of a religious tradition centered in Jerusalem that worshipped the god Yahweh exclusively.1 The Bible is thus a curated artifact—it contains a selective account of history and a biased religious perspective. Here we will look at the biblical materials afresh in order to portray ancient Israelite views of the heavenly realm. In addition to the Bible itself, there are numerous extrabiblical texts, inscriptions and archaeological artifacts that will contribute to a more complete perspective on these beliefs. Since this evidence does not come to us through the hands of the biblical editors, it sheds additional, and in some ways undistorted, light on what the ancient Israelites actually believed. The goal here is more than simply recreating the “biblical” depiction of the heavenly realms; rather, I hope to represent the ideas of a larger segment of Israelite society in what may be termed the Israelite depictions of the heavenly realms.