Terror, Awe, Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in the Old Testament

Yahweh was originally a storm, mountain, and war god. Sometimes portrayed with a cock’s head, coiling serpent legs, and a lightning bolt, at other times, he was shown in his aspects of a ram or bull. Also called Yod-He-Vau-He (YHWH) or Ja-Ho-Vah, he is the original “Jehovah.” Balaam was an early Semitic god-form that pre-dated Yahweh. Also known as “Bal,” “Bel,” or “Beli,” Balaam was an indigenous god, the male aspect of the Tree of Life, revered in the settled agricultural lands invaded by Early Hebrew nomadic pastoralist tribesmen. He and his divine consort, the feminine aspect of the Tree of Life, Asherah (also known as Astarte, Ashtoreth, and Ishtar as well as by many other names), were labeled “abomination” by the invaders, and their assignment of spiritual “pollution” justified the “cleansing” of the area by genocide, sack, seizure and rapine. The notion that it is acceptable for ranking, raiding and invading males to stockpile — to “kill more than you can eat” — resulted in the institutionalization of war as a means to raid, loot, rape, abduct “virgins,” pillage, seize property and dominate others’ territory in the name of the local tribal god.

This kind of belief system is called a “cattle cult” in cultural-anthropological terms (McCorriston, Harrower, Martin and Oches, 2012). In it, theft and rapine are not “sins” and don’t confer blood guilt or “pollution” if waged against the “Alien Other” or “Stranger”: “This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not…