**2. Defining Terms, and Some Caveats**

"Religion" is notoriously difficult to define; but, for the purposes of discussion, we shall regard religion here as:

A structured set of beliefs, values, symbols, and ritual practices that strives to relate the individual and society to the numinous, or the realm of the gods, perceived as the ultimate reality and authority.

A further distinction can be made, if only for heuristic reasons. The phenomenon of religion, whatever the individual peculiarities, can be analyzed by separating (1) belief and (2) practice. Such a separation has been criticized in principle, but its usefulness cannot be denied.

The former, or belief, is often systematized as theology, being usually enshrined in sacred texts, or Scripture, and overseen by clerics. This more abstract but institutionalized aspect of religion is sometimes described as "orthodoxy", presumably in contrast to more popular "folk" religion, as practiced by the majority (Ackerman 1992, pp. 1–2). The formal and institutionalized expression of religion has also been aptly characterized as "book religion" (Van der Toorn 1996, passim).

This is the "religion" of the Hebrew Bible—the ideal, never the reality throughout the Iron Age. It is the vision that is exalted of the handful of elites who wrote the Hebrew Bible. They sought to shape not only theology, but also the cult. Yet, "cult" is practice, what the majority of the population was actually doing. The real religion(s) of ancient Israel largely consisted of everything that the biblical writers condemned.

In recent discussions of the topic here, the latter, or "folk religion", is usually termed "family" or "household" religion, the focus being on what archaeology is best equipped to observe: the actual, widespread practice of religion at the household level.

Van der Toorn seems to be the first to have advanced the term "family religion" (Van der Toorn 1996). However, Berlinerblau, along with others, had already questioned such dichotomies as "popular" vs. "official" (Berlinerblau 1996). Earlier Holladay had coined the term "non-conformist" (Holladay 1987), but it did not find any support.

Not all the widespread practices of religion can be subsumed under the rubric of "family/household religion". What these practices have in common is that they are "non-orthodox", that is, not in conformity with what we shall call here "book religion" (following van der Toorn). Thus, Holladay's suggestion has some merit.

Now, there are a number of synthetic works employing the rubric of "family religion", (see Bodel and Olyan 2008; Albertz and Schmitt 2012; Dever 2017; and, especially many of the essays in Albertz 2014).

As we shall see, the archaeological evidence at our disposal rarely adds anything relevant to orthodox theology, except to describe in passing the historical and socio-cultural context in which the canonical texts may have first taken shape. None of that contextual information, however comprehensive, can explain or legitimize what becomes the official religion. Even that minimal contribution is only possible if the religion in question is (or claims to be) "historical". Archaeology can deal quite well with material culture remains—the physical—but by definition it cannot deal with metaphysical phenomena. Therefore, archaeology cannot comment on early Islam, because, despite the claims of traditional, non-critical Muslim historiographers, there is no known historical context of Muhammed's early life, or the composition of the Koran, or the initial spread of Islam. In contrast, since the mid-19 cent., Judaism and Christianity—both claiming to be "historical religions"—have been subjected to rigorous critical scrutiny with regard to their Scriptures. However, Islam has escaped any such scrutiny, so hoping to excavate the Qibla in Mecca, or "Muhammed's birthplace", would be irrelevant. There are some archaeological commentaries on early Judaism and Christianity, but they are beyond our purview here.

Religion, in whatever form it takes, largely deals with the metaphysical, while archaeology deals specifically with the physical world. To be sure, we assume that the things humans make and use faithfully embody their behavior, and therefore reflect their thoughts. Nevertheless, such data can only be inferred, and in any case remain speculative. As Binford reminded us, archaeologists are poorly equipped to be paleo-psychologists (Binford 1982, pp. 162–63).

Here, we shall employ a phenomenological approach that is sometimes called "functionalism", because it focuses more on what societies actually *do* than upon larger social theories.

Let us specify further what we mean by a "phenomenological" or "functionalist" approach. Such an approach operates, as follows:


## **3. Previous Scholarship**

Israelite religion, like Christianity, is usually considered to be "historical", that is, rooted not in moral philosophy, or merely a sociological construct, but is instead derived from an empirically documented historical context. In our case, that would be the Iron Age in the southern Levant

ca. 1200–600 BCE, specifically the area that is now occupied by the modern state of Israel plus the West Bank.

Despite some skeptical voices, the political, socio-economic, and cultural history of a real-life "ancient Israel" in the Iron Age in this region can now be written with some confidence—especially when the archaeological data, not the biblical texts, are taken as the primary evidence. The texts then become secondary, of limited value.

Yet, history-writing in biblical studies has not flourished in many years. That is due to the "literary turn" in biblical studies—that is, a turn away from history-writing—which has been heavily influenced by postmodernism (Dever 2001a, pp. 1–52; see also state-of-the art treatments in Barr 2000; Collins 2005). However, we now have the first archaeologically-based history of ancient Israel, with full references to earlier literature (Dever 2017).

Ever since the beginning of modern biblical scholarship in the mid-19th century, scholars of the Hebrew Bible have assumed that the goal was first a comparative critical understanding of the text; then, based on that achievement, a more accurate history of ancient Israel; and, finally, an authoritative portrait of what was considered to be the final, enduring contribution of the Hebrew Bible: its religion. This was clearly a project of the Enlightenment, which was an essential part of the foundations of the "Western cultural tradition" (now much maligned; cf. Tarnas 1991; Gress 1998).

Not surprisingly, from the mid-19th cent. onward, numerous ambitious "histories of ancient Israelite religion" appeared. However, until the early 20th cent., none had the advantage of possessing the only possible external evidence, which was increasingly supplied by archaeology as it came of age. Most of these works were little better than paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible and thus largely useless. More lamentable still, many were Christian "Old Testament theologies"—modern dogmatic constructs read back into the Hebrew Bible.

With no new data, works of the Religions geschicte school and of various theological and sociological approaches eventually ran out of steam. Not until recently has archaeology inspired a revival of interest in ancient Israelite religion. Even so, up to now, only a few works on Israelite religion have attempted to synthesize the burgeoning archaeological data. Among the first was Zevit's The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Parallactic Approach (Zevit 2001); and, Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Dever 2005). These were followed in 2012 by the collaboration of two German biblicists, Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant, a remarkably thorough work by non-specialists in archaeology.

There are also now a few other works on specific topics, as well as some brief surveys here and there. Curiously, there are no significant publications by Israeli archaeologists, although they are the closest to the data, but the reasons are beyond our purview here. Israeli archaeologists, almost all secularists, are no doubt negatively influenced by the hostility of the Orthodox toward them and their work. Thus, they tend to avoid the subject of religion altogether.
