Question: The henotheistic Israelis likely saw their "King of Kings & Lord of Lords" as some sort of divine judiciary the region. If this were in fact mythically true, how would it affect the lives of the various pantheons of the fertile crescent (Moloch as a kind of divine criminal, Baal's right to rule, etc.)?
This is a really interesting question, because it involves a bunch of different concepts and religions interacting - henotheism versus polytheism, Justice as a purview and a concept, Virtues and so on. There's a whole lot to dive into!
To start with, the Israeli people definitely did think of Yahweh as a divine judiciary; his word, however humanity got it, was law, and his rulings on what was or was not morally okay absolute. You'll see this illustrated time and time again in the Old Testament, when those who deviate from the religiously mandated set of morals are usually brutally punished as an example to others. For the Israelites, obedience to the divine laws of Yahweh is neither negotiable nor questionable; it's as much a part of the foundation of the universe as gravity.
But, at the same time, this is a henotheistic religion, which means that the ancient Israelites acknowledged that there were not only other gods, but that they had powers and spheres of influence themselves. Yahweh was their god, but not everyone's god; he was with absolute and utter certainty in charge of them, but not necessarily of other groups of people who "belonged" to other gods, and probably not of those other gods at all. It can be tricky to talk about this, because Judaism is a continuum that started as henotheism and eventually made a transition to monolatrism, which is the point at which the Israelite banner god becomes considered by them preeminent over other gods as well as over humanity, and the Bible is usually not polite enough to tell you when that evolution is happening exactly.
For example, consider the story of the Golden Calf (incidentally, possibly a representation of Moloch, who is also associated with cattle and flame, or some other local Canaanite god), which the Israelites built and worshiped while the prophet Moses was off communing with the burning shrubbery in search of legal enlightenment. The problem that so upsets both Moses and Yahweh here is not that there's a foreign god stealing his thunder; it's that the traitorous Israelites are worshiping him, rather than adhering only to their totem god the way they're supposed to. The idol is destroyed and the people punished (like, seriously, via mass murder), and Yahweh goes back to being the top dog. Nobody conceives of him fighting with the other god or anything like that; it's a problem of the mortals misbehaving, and it's the mortals he has power over to correct the issue.
This is why, despite the fact that the Israelites eventually settle down in Canaan and incorporate many of the local beliefs into their own religion, we never consider Yahweh part of the Canaanite pantheon. He simply isn't; he never interacts with the Canaanite gods and is quite ferocious about being a pantheon of one, in fact. All the mentions in the Old Testament of Yahweh being a "jealous god", not to mention the first commandment that the people have no other gods before him, are not examples of the Israelites believing that Yahweh could dominate all other gods, at least not yet. They're just expressions of henotheism's basic tenet: yeah, there are other gods, and yeah, they can do powerful and cool stuff, but we only worship this one. Don't worship the other ones. Stop it.
So, in this religious and political climate, we're looking at a god who can (and will, and does, with extreme prejudice) punish the living shit out of humans who break his divine laws... but who doesn't actually have any interaction with other gods at all. Unless Baal shows up in person and steals the Ark of the Covenant or something - and he does not, nor do any other foreign gods actually make personal appearances in Israelite literature of the time - he's not the person "doing wrong" if people run off to go worship him instead. That's those peoples' fault. The closest you ever see to direct conflict is always through a human vessel, such as when Moses matches powers with the Egyptian sorcerers. Much later in the religion, the Jewish people will extrapolate on the idea of other gods never directly challenging Yahweh to claim that there are no other gods, becoming true monotheists.
So, at any rate, back to the Scion framework. Yahweh, if you play him as a god of equal Legend to the other pantheons rather than a Titan or some other weird thing, is most definitely a god with a giant serving of Justice powers, but he probably can't use them on the other gods much, if at all. Also really important to this discussion is the ancient Fertile Crescent's idea of city-states with a totem god and sovereign power over their own areas, which occurred all across Mesopotamia and the Levant as well as making forays west into Greece; each city, while recognizing that there were other gods that were powerful and worthy of worship, still had its own totem god, which was all-important within that city and the ultimate authority over a given set of people. The Israelites are wanderers without any city of their own, so while they have Yahweh as their totem god, they don't have an area in which they make the laws; they have to actually go out and start stealing other peoples' cities, at which point they fall under Yahweh's jurisdiction. Yahweh can't march into Ugarit and start smiting Baal with Justice for daring to rival him as king - because Ugarit belongs to Baal and there Baal is king and the highest authority, and Justice would simply not work.
It's the eternal conundrum of a Justice god: your Justice powers are absolute and irresistible, but they will never help you break the law yourself, so if you go somewhere the law isn't in your favor, you're completely SOL.
This is one of the reasons that the eternal battling of the Israelites to take the Promised Land of Canaan away from its native inhabitants is so incredibly important and all-encompassing during the Old Testament, stretching on for years and years and years of pitched battle. Gods in this region do everything through the proxies of their cities and people (which, not coincidentally, is what the Canaanite PSP of Malak is all about!), so before Yahweh can exercise any control over Jericho, Yarikh has to be ousted by the Israelites conquering the place, and before he can extend his religious law to apply to Rabbah, the worshipers of Moloch have to be toppled from power. It's a fundamental difference in how ancient middle eastern cultures conceived of their gods interacting with the world; the deities of Greece or Mexico or China were thought of as actually visiting the world and doing things in it by their own power, but the gods of the Crescent, although they could empower the people or cause natural disasters with their far-off heavenly doings, never did. Some of that is probably holdover from the original Mesopotamian religions, in which the gods were considered so incredibly powerful and unquestionably more important than mortals that the idea of them ever having any reason to descend down into the gutter where humans lived was laughable.
So, in most cases, Yahweh's prodigious command over the powers of judgment and law do not help him against the Elohim, who not only have several gods who can match him there pound for pound but who have their own claim and estates in the area as well. He'll never be using those powers to restrict or punish Baal and Moloch, because they're all using human proxies and it's unlikely that they'll ever actually personally do anything to one another that might break a rule, or indeed meet in person at all; and he also can't necessarily smite mortals who work for gods he doesn't approve of (i.e., everyone), unless they are subject to the laws of his land. Essentially, once the Israelites conquer a place, he can smite the shit out of it and usually does, but he generally won't just set cities aflame from a distance, and he certainly won't walk up to Dagon and send him to the Star Chamber for crimes against Judaism.
If you read the Bible, you can actually watch the change in the religion and therefore Yahweh's treatment as a giver of law and judgment as you go. Early in the Old Testament, the Hebrews are henotheists and Yahweh is their god and rules their lives, but they are also wanderers in the wilderness and have no power over other peoples or deities. Later in the Old Testament, they become monolatrists, and their rhetoric changes from "this is our peoples' god and therefore the most important to us" to "this is the most important god and other gods can't compete with him", which happens about when they've managed to conquer most of Canaan and are no longer nomadic herders but now the legal power in the region. And finally, in the New Testament, they become true monotheists and move to a model in which there are no other gods and everyone else is stupid and worshiping idols or (if something actually appears they can't explain) demons, which occurs about when they lose power again thanks to the incursions of Babylon and Rome, and have to find a new way to explain their god's power and importance outside the context of him granting victory to his people. As henotheists, they knew Yahweh as their god who protected and supported them if they followed his rules; as monolatrists, they knew him as the most potent god in the region who could conquer any other religion and bring them to supreme power; and as monotheists, they knew him as the only god in existence, whose powers and intentions were too far above them to be understood by the human mind.
This has been a very long post, which always seems to happen when monotheism comes up.
This is the most fascinating JSR post on monotheism yet, in my opinion. It really does bring the Bible into Scion's world, even if the modern Judeo-Christian God doesn't necessarily fit anymore. Almost gives credit to the idea of just having Yahweh as a Legend 12 God of considerable power, with a massive cult following that has evolved over the years but isn't quite the same as it originally was, much like the Trimurti.
ReplyDeleteMalak always DID give me a very Biblical feel after all! (but that's, of course, intentional.)
I'd be surprised if Malak didn't taste a little biblical - many of the cities owned by the Elohim actually do show up in the Bible. :)
DeleteThe problem with Yahweh as a Legend 12 god is, as always, why his Legends (being all-powerful and mono-existent) aren't true when all other myths in Scion are. But if you can come up with a plot reason you like and run with it, you can always give it a shot!
I'm usually one for avoiding the topic of modern day monotheism in Scion for that reason, this is just the first post to make me think 'hey maybe it's possible.' And my reasoning is that the MODERN DAY religion says that he's monotheistic, the one God, nobody else exists...but that's not how it is in the original stories. Other Gods exist, Yahweh just smacks them down again and again. And modern day Hinduism with its male and female single gods branched out into many figures isn't exactly the same as ancient Hinduism either.
DeleteI'm just looking, for instance, at the Exodus myth. Where Yahweh goes up against the Netjer (not directly but through Moses against the Priests.) I used to use Exodus as a good example of Aten vs. the Pesedjet back in the dark ages of Scion. If Yahweh were to be a Legend 12 God, you could easily place Moses as being a Scion himself (he does have a VERY Scion-ish origin story after all.) In which case, Moses, with his Relic Staff, is going up against Priests who, if not just mortals using religious rituals, might be bestowed with the 'Grant Akh' boon from one of the Netjer.
And Scions trump Legendary Mortals always.
Now, again, when Yahweh was Aten, I always made Moses a Scion of Horus corrupted by Aten. Even though Moses has a very Scion-ish origin story, I feel weird calling him that when Jesus is so very clearly emphasized as being Scion's ONLY Scion, with the others all just being priests and prophets.
I guess this is why Judeo-Christianity will never work with Scion. :/ (I still use Jesus as a classic example of a Scion, even if his OVERARCHING religion doesn't fit into the game. He uses lots of boons, epic attributes, and even virtue extremities from time to time.)
by 'Scion's only Scion' I meant to say Jesus is Yahweh's only Scion. He's obviously not the only Scion period! (outside of Christianity)
DeleteI totally agree, actually. The longer a religion lives, the more likely it is that it will evolve into something that doesn't fit Scion's framework anymore - Scion's just a game, after all, trying to cover a massively complex subject in a simple and direct way for its players, so there's no way it can handle all of this without massive legwork on the part of the Storyteller. Hindu branches like Vaishnavism are already trending toward monotheism and will probably arrive there in the next century or so, and many native American religions have gone monotheistic in the wake of European beliefs changing how they thought about their traditional practices. I don't want to get into the whole messy thing, but there's a strong branch of religious sociology that suggests that monotheism is a later step in a religion's evolution, which usually looks like this: basic spiritualism > totemic and shamanic religion > polytheism > henotheism > monotheism > universal spirituality/atheism. (Obviously, plenty of folks from different religions would dispute that, though - it's the sociology viewpoint, not a religious one.)
DeleteI think that saying, "Once a religion hits monotheism we ignore its shenanigans," is a valid way of approaching things in Scion; it lets you keep the polytheistic setting and all the mythology of that religion prior to the monotheistic point, and "Because otherwise the game breaks" is a perfectly valid reason to make that call. If you do that, there's no reason you can't play Yahweh as an ancient Hebrew storm-god with a bad attitude and a bevy of Scions - in fact, biblical myth is begging for you to do so.
The kind of land warring you depict also has some interesting implications, because it points out that Justice is the only purview that gains power the more worshipers you have. In the sense that they can go forth and expand your dominion.
ReplyDeleteBut it also brings up an important Justice question! At what point do the Justice laws in a land swap from those issues by one god to those issued by another god?
What about being an individual person? Yahweh is pretty specific about who qualifies under Justice, but what if you want to convert from one god to another? At what point are you ever safe from your old Justice god and now subject to the laws of your new Justice god?
But aren't the laws of justice the laws of the land? The only reason the above situation exists is because the law of the land in the Fertile Crescent back then was 'Whatever says'. The whole USA could convert to ancient Judaism, and Yahweh would not be able to get any new mileage out of Justice, because by the laws of the land, only Parliament can make laws, and Justice will only enforce THOSE laws. Sure, he could use Divine Enforcement, or Code of Heaven, but he could have done those anyway.
DeleteI do not know how it works in your country (genuinely ignorant on the subject), but in the United States the majority religion tends to have some pretty dramatic impacts upon matters of state and what laws do or do not get passed.
DeleteWe have a statement called "Separation of Church and State", but in practice it rarely works out that way. It's still illegal in several states to appoint an atheist to public office for example.
For good or ill, massive conversion can have some pretty profound influence on the laws a government creates or allows to continue.
Trust me, we have quite enough of religious pandering in India's Parliament. I understand your point, and I wasn't disagreeing with your first paragraph. I was trying to answer the questions you posed in your second and third paragraphs.
DeleteNamely, that Justice laws swap from one God's decree to another God's when Parliament says so. Of course, if they're all devotees of Yahweh, the passing of the law is a formality BUT it's a formality that must be observed.
And secondly, conversion does not matter. If Parliament passes a law saying that eating pork is illegal, it doesn't matter if I convert from Judaism to Hinduism I'm still committing a crime by eating pork, irrespective of what my new religion says.
To clarify on that last paragraph, the question of being safe from a particular Justice God never arises. Only safety from a particular law. It does not matter if I, a Hindu, believe that pork is delicious. If I'm in a country following Sharia law, I can't eat it. A justice God of my OWN Pantheon, and in fact, ANY Pantheon, could send me to Psychic Prison for it, and I would have no defence.
DeleteThis thread is full of super awesome conversation and valid points. You're both saying neat stuff and I love it.
DeleteA lot like our Justice/jurisdiction post a while ago, followers of a god flipping religions falls under the law of the land. If a Hebrew decided to declare himself a devout worshiper of Moloch in the middle of Jerusalem, he's totally smiteable - that's Yahweh's turf and the laws here clearly state that Moloch is not okay. Even if he runs away to Rabbah, where Moloch is the patron god and worship of him is perfectly legal and encouraged, he can get his ass kicked because he broke the rule of the place he was in. (Unless someone over there Pardons him.)
But, if he decided to go on a pilgrimage into the wilderness to sort out his spiritual thoughts, decided that he was going with Moloch and moved into Rabbah, then he's Justice-immune. He hasn't broken any rules by switching allegiances, because he wasn't somewhere where Moloch-worship was banned when he did so.
Which doesn't mean that people (or gods) can't come after him with non-Justice means, of course - they probably will. Gods in this area are extremely touchy about the poaching of their followers, which is why they're rocking Piety and Vengeance and their cities are constantly waging war on one another. Most of the time in the Bible, the Hebrews just attack and raze the offending place and people, and justice is served - in their opinion - with no boons needed. (And in the style of the region, since Yahweh himself seldom rolls in to lay waste to a city.)
However, I think making non-location-specific laws is the perfect place for the Arbiter to start wrecking things. Normally, Justice can't do things like saying, "It's illegal for any Hebrew person anywhere to worship Moloch," because the Justice god in question doesn't control the laws in those places. But the Arbiter is a purview Avatar... so that's the kind of thing it might be able to do, which leads to all kinds of potentially complex divine legal proceedings.
DeleteI picture the Arbiter quickly turning into an Alice in Wonderland type trial on crack. Whatever you did is illegal because I hate you. Queen of Hearts, rocking the Justice.
DeleteSome Follow-up questions.
ReplyDelete1. In the context of scion what are the 12 Plagues of Egypt? (i.e Yahweh using the arbiter to enforce a "No Hebrew slaves" law, fate supporting Yahweh because it wants to Hebrews to be free, a simple plot device engineered to give a reason to the Hebrews to get out of Egypt etc.)
2. What sort of boons would best represent Yahweh's non-justice related feats?(parting the red sea, taking Elijah to heaven, etc.)
3. Since Yahweh can't have scions what would (Not-prophet/Non-King) heroes like Samson, Israel, and Jesus be?
There are really a lot of things that the plagues could be. Various godly powers could pull off many of those effects, and because it's set in Egypt there are a lot of gods in play who could be involved in some way (not just Yahweh but all of the Pesedjet and Elohim, too, and potentially other nearby pantheons). I don't think the Arbiter works here, because it's not that the law ends up being changed but just that it becomes not worth it for the Egyptians to hang on to the Hebrews, but I think there's a great deal of mileage you could get out of deciding who wanted the Hebrews out of Egypt (Fate? Yahweh? The Netjer? Other forces?) and why (they wanted to save them? get rid of them? deprive an enemy of their services?).
DeleteParting the Red Sea is a pretty clear use of Water boons - depending on how much space you think was being cleared, Water Mastery or Tsunami could both do it, or of course The Flood can do whatever it wants there. You could also play with other effects - Sky boons that parted the waters, maybe? although he'd have to be pretty great at them not to blow the people away, too? or maybe something like Avoid a Fate? - to try to explain it, although Water's definitely the easiest. Taking Elijah to heaven is pretty clear Psychopompery - anyone with Overworld Portal and Come Along could do that, or Storm the Gates and a convenient Axis Mundi.
You know, those kinds of heroes are all what we would call Scions in other cultures, easily. Jesus outright is the son of a god, Israel wrestled with angels and/or Yahweh himself and was moderately successful, and Samson knocked down an entire temple, killing all the enemies inside, and has what looks like an obvious relic feature (his hair). You could decide that they were Scions of some other gods, who for one reason or another were hanging out helping the Israelites; or, if you want to treat Yahweh as a Legend 12 god and put your hands over your ears whenever monotheism comes up, they could all be his personal Scions. Samson I think could also be set as a Legendary Mortal, which is a nice catch-all category for people who do crazy shit that is still mayyyyybe within the realm of possibility for a mortal favored by Fate.
Especially if you're pursuing the idea of Yahweh as a Titan or a nonexistent entity, lesser immortals or Titanspawn might also be candidates for these heroes. After all, every villain is the hero if you ask him, and many of them directly fight the forces of evil (i.e., the other pantheons and their religions).
Parting the Red Sea could also be an example of The Way, which dovetails nicely into taking various people up to heaven and using Hand Off in a few instances as well.
DeleteOh, this is a great point, too. And Yahweh being heavily Psychopomp-centric brings him closer to the Islamic Allah as well, who has his roots in a connection/unity/message-bearing Arab deity.
DeleteYou could run Yahwweh as all powerful the same way you run legends of Ra as all powerful but still legend twelve. Hype from his worshipers. After all, Yahweh seems no more powerful than you're average god in his earliest stories, and his reputation as all powerful seems to grow along with the Jew's power base.
ReplyDeleteIf the religion weren't now actually totally monotheistic, I'd agree with that approach. The problem is that because Judaism (and Christianity, and Islam) very firmly associate their God with being literally the only one in existence, that particular myth is irreconcilable with the existence of other gods, which hits paradox.
DeleteBut, I totally would not tell a Storyteller they couldn't just say that monotheism is the one myth in Scion that isn't true and continue on. We just prefer to avoid the whole minefield altogether most of the time.
Follow-up question: if you do play Yahweh as a Legend 12 god, is he the same person as the Christian god? How about the Islamic Allah, who is in name based on a legit pre-Islamic Arab god but is heavily influenced by Judaism as well?
Not so much a paradox if you run that Yahweh (or his worshippers) were such dicks about him being the only god, and the other gods lack of interference and presence combined to convince mortals that there was only one god. You said it yourself that the middle eastern gods have a tradition of not coming down and revealing themselves, and by the time monotheism reached the wider world the gods had mostly withdrawn from mortal affairs and didn't bother to help their people when the monotheists were curbstomping which makes them dicks, but that the gods for you. As to you're question about level twelve Yahweh, I tend to go one of two ways. The way a friend of mine and I went of having Yahweh go insane from bad fatebonds and have him out of the picture while his Scion Jesus runs things, or have their be different gods claiming to be the same god, a trinity or perhaps a duality considering the similarity between Islam and Judaism. I would go with a duality, one being the "father" the scion Jesus being the "son" and the other being the "holy spirit" Probably the Jewish Yahweh would be the father and and Allah would be the holy spirit.
DeleteThat's the thing, though - it is paradox, because if all myths are true, it must be true. You can absolutely say it isn't true, and furthermore that Yahweh or his worshipers or Titans or anyone else did X, Y and Z to make everyone think it is, but that still makes it the only thing in the setting that actually isn't true. It's the same problem the original line ran into with the Order of the Divine Glory - they went for an, "Okay, this myth isn't true," approach because there was nothing else to do, short of making the monotheistic God the most powerful being in the whole game.
DeleteBut that's okay, because the great thing about paradox is you can totally ignore it and that's not a problem. If you want to run Yahweh as a god, or a Titan, and monotheism as any number of things in the setting, you absolutely can. The background paradox doesn't hurt a thing and will never come up if you don't bring it up, so Storytellers can do whatever they want. Which is awesome.
I think that's a pretty common way of handling Yahweh, as someone who has gotten so insanely Fatebound that weird things have started happening - definitely as good an approach as any. :) Your idea about outside trinity gods coopting his role smells like a Trimurti plot to me...
I totally understand not using monotheistic myths, but monotheism doesn't create any more of a paradox than the fact that each culture thinks their gods created the world. Even without taking Christian, Jewish or Muslim myths into account, plenty of myths from different cultures claim their gods did something that another culture claims their gods did, so you either say they both are right (paradox), one is wrong (not all myths are true) or both are kind of right but people got some stuff wrong or exaggerated stuff, which always seems like the best bet for me at least.
ReplyDeleteI would disagree - it is more of a paradox, because when a culture says a god "created the world", they don't necessarily mean the entire planet, which they didn't even know existed at the time. Different creator gods could have created different "worlds" easily, with only comparatively modern man aware that they are all part of the same large overall world. The same goes for things like sun gods who drive the sun across the sky - if they do that in their area of influence, it's no mythical paradox if another god does it somewhere else. Ancient peoples often thought of their gods' influence ending when they went into a different peoples' territory, where it was understood that their gods would hold sway. Polytheistic thought has a lot of give-room for this kind of thing, because it was invented by people who believed in other gods and beliefs and, in many cases, respected that they could be equally as true as their own.
DeleteMonotheism, on the other hand, has no wiggle room at all: one god exists, period. It's hard to work with. But you're right, you can always just go with "but some people are wrong," and then do whatever you want, and your game will be just fine doing so. We mostly ignore monotheism so we don't have to map out all the ways its mess would affect the rest of the game, but that doesn't mean everybody has to do it that way!
I’d argue that even though Yahweh is viewed as the only god, I’d guess that most Abrahamic traditions don’t actually view him as being the singular supernatural being in existence, what with the hierarchies of angels and saints and demons and all that. As you said above, everyone else being stupid and worshipping idols is just the justification for why they’re right and everyone else is wrong, no differently than the Devas and Yazatas’ demonization of one another or the Romans’ conquest of the Gauls. As Firefirght says, everyone’s myth says that their top guy is better than everyone else’s top guy – Zeus was all-powerful to the Greeks, Ra was all-powerful to the Egyptians, and Yahweh was all-powerful to the Hebrews. As Anon says, not everyone can have created the world.
ReplyDeleteBesides, it seems as though every pantheon apart from the Theoi has some kind of hang-up that throws a monkeywrench into the entire Scion model’s game mechanics and cosmology. The Aesir get old and die if they don’t eat Idun’s apples. Some of the Teotl Underworlds are actually in their Overworld. The Alilah don’t have an Underworld at all. The Deva each have as many aspects and alternate identities as there are days in the year. The Shen regularly deify mortals to the point where we have to assume that they were all somebody’s Scion in order to fit them into the system. So, why can’t the mechanical hang-up that the Hebrew god has simply be that his religion is convinced that he’s the only god and everyone else is a fake, a servant of his, or a demon?
Here’s how I’d run it: Yahweh is the chief god of the Hebrew pantheon the same as Huitzilopochtli is the chief god of the Aztec pantheon and Zeus is the chief god of the Greek pantheon…it just happens that Yahweh is the only Legend 12 deity in his pantheon – in fact, since the Jews and Christians are so heavily monotheistic, he’s the only deity in his pantheon at all. Everyone else, whether they’re an archangel, a forgotten Hebrew tribal god, a Semitic household deity, or a Scion, is Legend 8 or below. Just as the Egyptian belief that the sun travels through the Underworld in a boat doesn’t affect Huitzilopochtli’s nightly battles with the tzitzimitl, the Hebrew belief in monotheism doesn’t affect anyone’s pantheon but their own.
Like you're points uncreative.
DeleteThe big difference for me is in the quality of that label "all-powerful". People like Ra and Zeus aren't the same all-powerful that Yahweh is - they make mistakes, are beaten by other gods, have flaws. Yahweh has none of those problems; he is literally omnipotent. A better comparison might be to Ahura Mazda, but even he has an opposite number to struggle with (Yahweh gets one in Christianity, technically, but the Devil's a late and obviously not-same-level-power introduction).
DeleteI definitely think you can run Yahweh as Legend 12, and should if it floats your boat, but there's too much conflict from that monotheistic idea of actual omnipotence for me to want to go for it.
Hmm, you make a good point about how omnipotence is played differently between the Hebrews and between the polytheistic faiths. It's one thing to have good press from your worshippers, it's another thing entirely to actually not have any stories documenting your defeats/humiliations. I'm not sure how to answer that. I'd like to say that his indefatigability is just more pantheon-specific good press - but unlike most other instances that I can think of in Scion, he actually has interactions with other pantheons in which he comes out on top (using the golden calf thing with Moloch as an example of a contest by proxy).
DeleteThen again - the very idea of monotheism defeats the entire premise that the game is built on, so we find ourselves back in the same dilemma this topic invariably leads to - either the Big G needs to make some concessions somewhere if he's going to play with the rest of us and the ST makes a decision about what to do with him, or we sweep him under the rug and hope that none of our players ask about it.
So, he's a supreme deity who has never been defeated, has no worthy rival built into his cosmology, whose people have conquered a larger chunk of the globe than any other pantheon in history, and who cannot really be presented with any meaningful challenge to his authority - so from a Storytelling perspective, the issue appears not to be that Yahweh is too powerful for Scion, but rather too boring - either that, or a creature of such power is only suitable to be an antagonist to oppose our worthy heroes.
There are some myths of the Canaanite gods interacting with mortals. Anat, et al. with Aqhat and Danel (and Pughat) leaps to mind, so the Elohim were not as "hands off" as they are being portrayed. In addition, there is some definite evidence that Yahweh was directly associated with other Canaanite deities: Inscriptions to "Yahweh and his Asherah" (another Yahweh and El overlap), a really cool looking multi-tiered temple lamp with each tier representing a different Canaanite god - El, Asherah, Yahweh from the top down (and a few more I forget).
DeletePoint being, I see no problem just shoehorning him in as a member of the Elohim. I'm not worried about "one god per city" as the cities seem pretty ecumenical. Baal is THE God of Ugarit.... except that a lot of the tablets of Ugarit state that Dagon was the chief god of the city and the Gate of Dagan was the most prominent gate of the city, etc. Anat, El, Asherah don't really heave cities either. Yahweh does outright destroy Sodom and Gommorah, which weren't Hebrew cities, so, by rights, should have belonged to some other gods.
As to why Yahweh isn't a member in good standing of the Elohim... I'm guessing (from a Scion point of view) that there is probably a Titan involved. Sedeq or some other Titan analogous to Justice seems like a good idea. Going overboard on ONE TRUTH seems perfect for "Justice gone Mad".
I'm glad you brought up Yahweh and Asherah, because it's one of the neatest syncretic places in ancient Jewish lit. :) There are a lot of scholars arguing over what exactly it means - those who prefer to uphold Yahweh as always being exclusively monotheistic like to claim that asherah is a term for a religious place or item of worship so they can divorce him from the idea of other gods, but most others think it's pretty clear that they're talking about a consort figure.
DeleteThe thing is, Asherah is El's consort in the Canaanite pantheon, and since Yahweh was heavily, heavily syncretized with El by Hebrews who wanted to borrow El's powerful father-god connotations, his attachment to Asherah is likely to be a branch from that process. Either someone was talking about El and used Yahweh's name - possible on both sides - or someone was talking about Yahweh and ascribing him Asherah as a wife, similar to how they ascribed him various other attributes and even names (El-Elyon is the most obvious!) from the Canaanite god.
In light of that, I would totally hesitate to make Yahweh a separate god involved with Asherah... but I could see other Storytellers going another way with it. And, as we suggested in our Canaanite supplement, there are pretty good odds that you could always play Yahweh as an alternate persona or front for El himself, who is a pretty manipulative old bastard when it comes to maintaining control over his fractious offspring. If El and Yahweh are the same guy, he'd be playing a giant shell game against his own pantheon as well as the rest of the world, and Asherah is of course his consort in either guise.
I agree. It's confusing/interesting. Specifically the image that keeps recurring in my mind is a cave painting of Yahweh (whoops! guess it predates the whole taboo against that) with Asherah ID'd as his staff. Then you get a backlash against "Asherah poles" being located IN THE SHRINE as the Hebrews edge closer and closer to monotheism. But it seems like Asherah is so closely tied to Yawheh that, even when "other gods [are not being] held before [him]" Asherah, in one form, is still allowed in the holy of holies (e.g. past the two pillars). Which is just dead wrong from the usual take on the status of other gods Old Testament- style.
DeleteI'm not sure I feel like totally syncretizing El and Yaweh. It seems off. Like syncretizing Asherah and Astarte. Sure, it's a whole lot easier to write up the Elohim If you do. They have SOOOOO much in common. But it's pretty much 100% certain that they are separate back in the old Ugarit/Baal Cycle as defined through linguistics. The initial sound of Asherah's oldest name and Astarte's oldest name just can't be two versions of the same thing. I see Yawheh and El the same way, only more so. Sure, the two got syncretized later (like Astarte and Asherah), but, back when the mythology is the juiciest, El just isn't Yahweh. Yahweh, for example, would never get beaten up by a girl.
Plus there is a little niggling thing where Yahweh may be related somehow to Yam. El calls Yam, "Yah" before he awards him the title "Beloved of El", mostly, once again, to keep from getting beaten up. Yam is definitely the bully of the pantheon. (He actually seems to be something very Titan-like in the need for him to be defeated to make the world safe). Seems like Yahweh, who is also something of a bully.
I dunno. I might actually interpolate Yahweh as a son of Yam based on the above, with a bit of a mad-on for the Elohim due to the destruction of his dad.
Of course, that doesn't take into account all the "Yahweh as dragon fighter" stuff you can find in the Psalms and the Book of Job. Where Yahweh seems more like Baal (horror of horror considering how the Old Testament potrays Baal worshippers) or Marduk (to step outside Canaan). (Of course this ignores that the big monster hunter of the Elohim is Anat. It seems like she may be responsible for offing some of the critters that Baal gets credit for as well of a few gods that were favored by El. Then she beats him up.)
Slight aside (to this thread, not to the topic). Yahweh better hope he never encounters another god who can pull Arbiter on him in his own domain for the crap he pulled on Job. Bad worshippers can be smited, yes, but Job was a good worshipper and he received a ton of smiting just to settle a bet between Yahweh and Satan.
Oh, I totally agree - Yahweh and El definitely are not the same dude in Canaanite or Hebrew religion, just borrowing some imagery the way any religions that rub elbows do. I just meant that it's one of the neater suggestions to go with within the frame of Scion itself, but it's obviously not the only one. (Totally with you, by the way, on Asherah, Anat and Astarte as different figures. That's a whole book on what's going on with those three.)
DeleteI've seen the Yawheh/Yam linguistic connection, but frankly I don't put a lot of stock in it. It comes from a single possible nomenclature issue, but that could just as easily be an unrelated word or title, and Yawheh much more often appropriates Baal's imagery (including in the kicking of dragony ass) than he does anything that would seem to link him to Yam. It's always seemed to me like one of those places in Canaanite/Biblical studies where too many scholars have had too little source material to theorize over for too long. :)
Ha, I love the idea of Yahweh as a child of Yam, because I was just going to ask if you like the theory that Yam is a child of Yahweh (also, lemme segue off your mention of Job)! The passage in Job 38 where Yahweh describes clothing and penning the sea - yam - when it "burst from the womb" has been interpreted by some as suggesting that he is Yam's parent present at his birth, especially the line where he "swaddles" him. This is probably just line-blurring between him and El again (or just poetically talking about creating the ocean and not Yam as a deity), since El is also clearly Yam's father in the Ugaritic texts, but it's still an interesting place to fiddle with if you're inclined.
We definitely considered Yam as a Titan as well as a playable deity back when we were setting the Elohim up. We ended up being a little too in love with the sky-sea-underworld triad of him with Baal and Mot, and he was clearly part of the same echelon of deities and led astray by some pretty suspect advice from El and Asherah that gave us more of a bad-boy-of-patheon vibe than great-opposition-to-the-gods one. But I could definitely see running him as a Titan, or at least Titan-leaning-sympathizer.
Overall, agreed. I didn't see the Yahweh-as-Yam's father angle. I still see Yam as closer to an ally/Avatar of the Titans. Not that there aren't a few of those in most pantheons when seen through a Scion lens. Condering the way you two put together Malak, do you have some city you can associate with Yam?
DeleteAside to that, I have been working on and off on my own Elohim for quite awhile, but I think I am just going to use yours. I'm tacitly using it already, with a slight amendment to Malak. The NPC demigod daughter of Baal has defined her "city" as a multi-national corporation with the CEO as "king". I will move on to other things, like, say, the Hittites... :-)
I also see having the sea/earth(underworld)/sky trinity. Especially since some of the extant source material is Hellenistic and makes those explicit comparisons. You even get the whole sky brother as younger/disfavored feel from the Baal Cycle. Though Yam is definitely a naughtier version of the sea brother compared to Poseidon.
So far this issue is not in play in my recently started Hero game. In past Scion games, I have had Yahweh be a wayward son of El who was the primary Avatar of the Titan of Truth. I mixed in some issues with Aten and had the whole thing tied to the Order of Divine Glory. I might shift gears this time and have the Titan of Truth (Justice) not be so bad this time around (a la the really brief Logos comment in God). Yahweh might be a non-issue. Then again, he probably won't be. I still have some Yahweh tricks I never got around to using.
I am sometimes glad those bored scholars get so wordy. They give us a lot of material to work with. Enough to even create a pantheon where we have no real mythology to go with (vide Nemetondevos). Also, I was dangerously close to being one of those scholars, so they hit a soft spot in my heart.
Citation on the Anat/Asherah/Astarte book? Sounds like some fun reading.
We usually associate Yam with Tyre for purposes of Malak. Most of his cult was centered around sailors and traders for obvious reasons, making it a lot less handy for centralized city-state worship, but all the mentions of the city as belonging to the heart of yam/the sea in Ezekiel made it poetically apt. Pre-Alexander, it was an island with more than the usual dependence on oceanic issues. There's also some grammatical hooey going on in Isaiah that suggests that Yam is envisioned as the "father" of Tyre in the prophecy of its downfall, which certainly helps the image along.
DeleteHa, I love the modern idea of corporation-as-city. Neat way of updating a very ancient idea. :)
Hah, I just meant that arguing about whether those three ladies are the same or different could fill a book - it seems like every scholar has a different opinion on it. (Asherah and Astarte are the same person! No, Astarte and Anat are the same person! No, they're all the same person! No, they're all different! No, Anat is a cow and Asherah is a stick!)
Short one this time. (I have got to get an ID compatible for this site.)
DeleteReason for my question: I couldn't find any evidence Yam was actually worshipped. A few statutes, but no evidence of an actual cult. It seemed from my research that Melqart was pretty much 100% a lock on being the tutelary god of Tyre. (And was probably Moloch as well... if Moloch wasn't Baal... or Mot... or just the name for a type of sacrifice, like Tophet). I didn't catch the Ezekiel reference but there is so much about Melqart = Heracles, the ancient temple of Heracles in Tyre, etc.
Thanks for the corporate city. She keeps sitting in on all their meetings with CEO and no PC has asked who she is or what she's doing there. In fact, every time she's around, it seems pretty equivocal as to who was in charge before they entered the room...
Melqart is definitely a big deal in Tyre. We've always played him as sub-Legend-12 but still a major force in the pantheon (if possibly not an overly bright one). I know of at least one other Storyteller who just decided to go with "eff it, he's just Heracles' Phoenician persona", but it's another case of syncretism on top of two originally different figures.
DeleteYou know, Yam-worship is definitely a really weird area, because it's hard to tell if so many mentions of the word meant the deity or just the sea itself (it would be nice if they would have used articles a little more often, huh?). Are people saying "Hey, don't let me get killed by the ocean today" or "Hey, Yam, please don't kill me" when they're performing protective rituals? I think he probably must have had at least a little cult presence, but thanks to being an antagonist deity/patron of a scary element, he might be one of those Set-esque gods that people acknowledge but don't go out of their way to celebrate all that much.
Yam's not personally mentioned much, but there's a lot of good stuff about sea-worship as well as worship of various other patron gods among Phoenician seafarers in Adrian Brody's Each Man Cried Out to His God that I really enjoyed, if you're in the mood for some seafaring. :)
Agreed about Yam. I guess he could be the Elohim Avatar of whatever-you-want-to-call-the-Water-Titan-so-long-as-it-isn't-the-Drowned-Road, but I think not breaking the Yam/Mot/Hadad triad is probably the way to go. Meaning Yam gets some cred as a god instead of Avatar.
DeleteI am not sure I agree with either take on Melqart. He is so definitely identified with Tyre. When the Greek questioners in Tyre talked to the priests of the temple of Heracles, it's pretty obvious that this isn't THEIR Heracles from the factoids they picked up. Plus Melqart is pretty important to the Phoenician diaspora across the Mediterranean - He is big in Carthage. He's big in pre-Roman Spain. He's big with the Barca family. That just doesn't seem like a sub-12 god. That's why I was in favor of the Melqart/Moloch association. It also plays into the Tophet as offered in Carthage. Child-sacrifice is given unto Moloch. Child-sacrifice to Melqart (e.g. the tophet) is given unto Melqart (et al.) at Carthage.
It may be the absence from the Ras Shamra texts that makes it hard for me to envision Melqart as Legend 12? (But then again, I envision Moloch as Legend 12 and he isn't in them, either, so clearly there is always personal bias involved.) I definitely think he should be involved in Elohim business, but I've always thought of him as more of a "gateway god", someone up and coming PCs could interact with on a more even footing than some of the big dogs. But hey, that's really just ST preference at that point.
DeleteI've personally never been a fan of the etymological identification of Moloch and Melqart - it seems sketchy to me. But then, this area is all kind of about deciding which sketchy theory you like best. :)