The house of Saul and its deities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54260/eb.v37i144.202Keywords:
Benjamin’s Plateau, deities, Saul, iconography, onomasticsAbstract
The region and period generally associated with King Saul, i.e., the plateau of Benjamin in the Early Iron I-IIA Period (c. 1125-875 B.C.E.), has been the subject of intense debate over the past fifteen years. While European, North American, and Israeli archaeological and exegetical studies have remained restricted to socio-demographic and political discussion of the region, the religious beliefs and practices of the region's inhabitants have been neglected. In contrast to this strand, the present study examines the archaeological, epigraphic, and biblical sources of the period to identify the deities supposedly worshipped by the house of Saul. Such a task, described as impossible by prominent scholars in recent years, is made possible by the conceptual framework entitled "magical-mythic networks," which observes religion through a communicological perspective and by integrating data from visual culture neglected by these scholars. In order to identify the deities worshiped in the region, the artistic traces are analyzed materially and iconographically, and then compared to the names of known individuals (anthroponyms) and places (toponyms) to see the possible designations of the deities. Thus, by using the social organization and data from multiple sources, the article proposes two levels of deities that were likely part of the inhabitants' religious experience, as well as their possible identification.
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