**4. Religion**

Durkheim, in *The Elementary Forms of Religious Life* (Durkheim [1912] 1995), made important contributions to how symbols and their relative objectivity, once lifted out of the ebb and flow of life, represent social relations. Nevertheless, two mistakes were made in that work. The first was the incorrect assumption that what he thought was true of Australian totemism, namely, that religion was the worship of society, was characteristic of religion, qua religion. This functionalist assumption was incorrect because, as noted, the central feature of the axial age monotheistic religions is the tension between the reality of this world and the ideal of another world; that is, the axial age religions stand in judgment of mundane relations, including the nation. Thus, while the axial age religions, as bearers of morality, may function as support for the stability of the attachments necessary for a society to exist, they also may be disruptive of those attachments, as is clear with prophecy and the eschatological expectations of all of the monotheistic religions. The second mistake, often ignored or even shared by many scholars, was to view the forms of Australian totemism as being applicable to all of the pre-axial age religions of antiquity. Those historically early religions were not uniform. There were not only di fferences between them; but, as we shall see, there were also conceptual tensions within them. What both mistakes have in common is an overly simplistic view of religion through an elimination of anything distinctive to it as a category of human thought, attachment, and action.

It is the case that in ancient Egypt and throughout the history of Japan we find divine kinship. The Egyptian pharaoh and the Japanese emperor were considered to be divine. Thus, the existence

and fate of the distinctive territorial kinship of, respectively, the ancient Egyptians and Japanese, was grounded in the order of the universe, as the representatives of that kinship—respectively, the pharaoh and the emperor—were thought to be divine. Here, there is merit to the functionalist analyses of religion, because the worship of these rulers, since they represent their respective societies, function as the worship of those societies.

In the long history of the ancient Near East, we also find divine kinship. During the reign of Naram-Sin (2254–2218 BC), grandson of Sargon of Akkad, Naram-Sin was described as a god. His deification is conveyed in this inscription (Chavalas 2006, pp. 20–21).

Naram-Sin, the mighty one, king of Akkad: when the four regions of the world revolted against him, because of the love which Ishtar showed him, he was victorious in nine battles in one year ... Because he fortified the foundations of his city during this time of distress, (the residents of) his city asked of Ishtar in Eanna, of Enlil in Nippur ... that he be the god of their city, Akkad, and they built his temple within Akkad.

However, there are complications to be found in di fferent accounts of Naram-Sin. These complications should be pondered for the sake of achieving an analytical clarity of pre-axial age religion.

The deification of Naram-Sin was, in fact, unusual for the religion of the ancient Near East, as we generally do not find divine kinship throughout the history of the ancient Near East. It is noteworthy that in the so-called *Cutha Legend* (Chavalas 2006, pp. 36–40) Naram-Sin is described as transgressing the will of the gods in his desire to go to war with the "raven-faced" people of the mountains, presumably the Gutians.

I summoned the diviners ... I inquired of the grea<sup>t</sup> gods [but] the key of the grea<sup>t</sup> gods did not permit me to go [to war], nor did a divine communication in my dream ... I said to myself let me ... follow the counsel of my own heart. Let me disregard (the counsel) of the god; let me take responsibility for myself.

We subsequently learn in the *Cutha Legend* that because of Naram-Sin's disobedience to the divine will, as interpreted by the priests, his troops su ffer defeat. Only then does he conclude that he must act with the approval of the gods, that is, when that approval is known through priestly divination—through extispicy and interpretation of dreams. Thus, in the accounts of Naram-Sin and his reign, we find not one but two, di fferent pre-axial age religious conceptions: where Naram-Sin is a god; and where he is not only di fferent from the gods but is also subject to their judgment, indeed, punishment for not following their divine will as interpreted by the priests. While certainly those priests do not form an organizational locus for theological generalization as with the religious intellectuals of the axial age, we nonetheless find throughout the history of the ancient Near East an institutional di fferentiation between king and priest which, as such, provided the basis for this second religious conception even within the pre-axial age religions. What is the significance of that institutional di fferentiation?

At this point in our analysis, we must proceed with considerable care. The rationalization of religion which took place with the axial age, as described in the previous section, with its institutional corollary of the emergence of the "clerics" as a distinct profession, is not denied. The clerics of the axial age, monotheistic religions do not examine a sheep's entrails or its liver in order to ascertain the communication from the gods. Nonetheless, also not to be denied is the distinction, found in the pre-axial age religions, between this world and the world of the gods, even if that distinction lacks the heightened tension of the axial age's distinction between the two realms. After all, the gods, qua gods, of the pre-axial age religions dwelled in heaven. Thus, one must not overlook the significance of what appears to have been the corollary of the other-worldly existence of the pre-axial age gods: the institutional di fferentiation between king and priest found throughout the pre-axial age religions. Only those with special qualifications, the priests, could interpret the will, and, hence, speak on behalf of, the gods.

Recognition of the other-worldly existence of the gods of the pre-axial age religions was not merely or primarily a result of their symbolic representation of the social relations constitutive of their respective societies, as Durkheim and the functionalists seem to have thought. The belief in their other-worldly existence signified much more, as it conveyed an understanding that the fate of the individual and of society was beyond human understanding and control. This was Naram-Sin's lesson, as described in the *Cutha Legend*. He learned the danger of the hubris in defying the divine, the proper understanding of which was beyond his knowledge. True enough, in contrast to the dogma and its theological development of the axial age religions, the divine of the pre-axial age religions was interpreted by priestly diviners. But that di fference between, on the one hand, the coherence of theological doctrine and, on the other, mythological ritual, important though it is, does not mean that we do not find similarities in both pre-axial and axial age religions. It does not mean that we do not find, for example, in the pre-axial age conceptions of a degree of ethical generalization. Recall, for example, the conceptions of a future brotherhood and justice, characteristic of the axial age religions, from the quotation previously cited from the pre-axial age "Marduk Prophecy", when there will be a time when "wickedness will be rectified and brother will have consideration for brother as there will always be consideration among the people."

We may justifiably extend the lesson of Naram-Sin beyond the danger of his arrogance in acting as if he were a god to the recognition that the individual will never be certain of his or her place in the world, he or she will never be at ease and at home in this world. This latter recognition is well attested in the pre-axial age literature of the ancient Near East. It is found, for example, in the so-called "Poem of a Righteous Su fferer" (Foster 1995, pp. 300–13) with its statements, "I wish I knew that these things (reverence, worship, sacrifices) were pleasing to a god", and "I have pondered these things (the changes in human fortune); but I have made no sense of them." And it is found in the so-called "Babylon Theodicy" (Foster 1995, pp. 316–24), with its rhetorical observations, "Can a happy life be a certainty? I wish I knew how that might come about!" and "Divine purpose is as remote as innermost heaven, it is di fficult to understand, people cannot understand it." The problems recognized here involve the vicissitudes of life in this world. The axial age response to these vicissitudes is the deliverance from them in heaven or in an eschatologically transformed future. However, it is a response, not a solution. It represents a theological rationalization in the face of what would otherwise be the seemingly meaningless course of human events; but one based on an assumption, namely, that sorrow and death may be defeated through the belief in an other-worldly or future existence for the individual.

What is important here for our analysis of religion is that the realistic recognitions of both the limitation of human knowledge and the inability of the individual to feel at ease are to be found in the pre-axial age, even if not formulated in scriptures; they are central to all religions, qua religion. The category of religion—for both the pre-axial and axial ages—represents the configuration of thought, variously developed, and conduct in response to the problem of the ordeal of human consciousness about the mystery of the universe, specifically, whether or not there is meaning to its order, and the place of both the individual and his or her society within it. It is the categorial distinctiveness of that response, although variable, for example, monolatry and monotheism, that accounts for why religion is an independent factor in a comparative analysis of its relation to another, di fferent orientation: the significance human consciousness accords to the generation and transmission of life, as represented by di fferent forms of kinship, including the territorial kinship of the nation.

Here, now, is the pressing theoretical problem, namely, the distinctiveness of the orientation of the human mind that we designate by the term "religion." As noted, that distinctiveness is suggested by: one, the historically perennial and ubiquitous institutional di fferentiation between priest and king; and two, that the deities of the pre-axial age religions, while some may be associated with natural phenomena, dwell in heaven, that is, beyond human existence, understanding, and control, even though attempts, through both ritual and ethical behavior, are made to propitiate them. The character of religion—the positing of an other-worldly realm with an evidently attendant institutional di fferentiation—indicates that it is a distinctive orientation of human consciousness, that is, it is not derivative of another orientation. It is a response to the distinctive problems of the lack of human knowledge about one's place and the place of one's society in the universe.

We are with good reason accustomed to concentrate our attention on the di fferences between pre-axial age and axial age religions, between polytheism, on the one hand, and monotheism, on the other. Irrespective of the obvious merit of recognizing those di fferences, we ought to pay more attention to what those historically di fferent religions have in common so that we are better able to ascertain both the distinctiveness of the religious orientation in contrast to the other orientations of the human mind, and the variable contours of the relation of one orientation to another, specifically, religion and nationality.

Recall that we face the conundrum of the re-appearance or perhaps continuation of monolatry within monotheism, hence, a de facto or implicit monolatry. Is the answer to this conundrum that the significance accorded to the relations arising from the generation and transmission of life, that is, di fferent forms of kinship, has been frustrated by a rigorously consistent monotheism? Is it because of the persistence of that significance that monotheism has had to accommodate itself to kinship, whether manifested through the family or the nation? And is monolatry an example of that accommodation, as these di fferent orientations cohere into a never uniform unity?
