Джеймс Миченер - The Source

But the erection of a monument to an alien god, and in the high place of Baal, was an infraction which he could not tolerate. Summoning his guard he went forth with Zadok to inspect the heresy, and when the two leaders had climbed the spiral path to the sacred place, they viewed with equal disgust the new monolith dedicated to El-Shaddai, Uriel was appalled because he had to trust in the supremacy of Baal, whom he knew to be a jealous god. Zadok was outraged because the supposition that El-Shaddai was no more than another Canaanite god to be represented with a stone was a degradation of the Hebrew god. To Uriel’s surprise, the old patriarch was as eager as he to throw down the intruding rock, so after men of the guard had used their spears to loosen the earth about the new monolith, they toppled the offensive stone and sent it clattering down the side of the mountain.

The soldiers withdrew, leaving Uriel and Zadok alone on the high place to discuss the matter, and as the thoughtful old Hebrew talked with the tough-minded younger man, the fundamental differences between them were for the first time openly exhibited.

ZADOK You must never again permit my Hebrews to visit your sacred prostitutes.

URIEL; One day we shall be one people, living together in harmony, worshiping the same gods.

ZADOK I will oppose such integration.

URIEL: Do you believe that our two peoples can exist side by side with no give and take?

ZADOK I believe that you must follow your gods, and we must follow El-Shaddai.

URIEL But you just helped me destroy the monument to your god.

ZADOK Why do you think I did it?

URIEL Out of respect for Baal, who rules this town.

ZADOK I am amazed. Did you not understand that I threw down the lifeless rock because it was an insult to the one god who requires no earthly home?

URIEL Are you suggesting that your god is greater than Baal?

ZADOK I respect Baal … out of the respect I feel for you. I respect him as I do an old woman with nineteen grandsons. But no more. Baal must one day perish, for he is only a thing. El-Shaddai will live forever because he is not a thing.

URIEL Then you believe that your god must triumph?

ZADOK Of course!

URIEL And you expect to live in those fields over there … for endless generations. With your god at enmity with mine?

ZADOK The enmity will not continue long. Your people will soon join mine in acknowledging the one god. And we shall live in peace.

URIEL In the meantime, you refuse to permit your people to worship Baal and Astarte? You refuse to let them mix with us in all common ways?

ZADOK I refuse to countenance abominations.

URIEL You dare to call Baal and Astarte …

ZADOK For your people they are righteous gods. You are entitled to worship them as you have in the past. But for my people their rites are an abomination.

URIEL That is a harsh word.

ZADOK Abomination.

The two men remained in the high place in the shadow of Baal, each trying so desperately to understand and to convert the other to logic, and there was fear between them, for absolute differences had been identified; but below them stretched some of the finest fields in Canaan and one of the best-governed towns. Surely, with good will these two virile peoples could make of this enclave a small paradise, and each man recognized that fact. Zadok spoke first. “The fields are very rich,” he said quietly. “In the fields we passed no olive trees bore fruit like yours.”

“Your people are industrious,” Uriel said, eager to draw back from the ugly confrontation that had developed.

“Of all the land we saw,” Zadok continued, “this is the best. We hope to stay here for many generations.”

It was a gesture of true conciliation, and Uriel responded with the classic words of compromise: “I am sure that between us something can be worked out.”

On the surface he was right. Canaanites and Hebrews had started their national histories sharing the same god, El, who represented an unseen power, but even in the first moments of sharing they had treated El in contrasting ways, for the Canaanites had consistently diminished his universal qualities. Being townspeople, they captured El and made him a prisoner inside their walls; they fragmented him into Baal and Astarte and a host of lesser gods. They seemed determined to drag him down to their level, where they could know him personally and give him specific jobs to do until he dissipated his force. The Hebrews, on the other hand, beginning with the same god having the same attributes, had freed him of limiting characteristics, launching a process that would ultimately transform him into an infinite god of infinite power. Each modification the Hebrews introduced in the desert years intensified the abstract powers of El. They called him Elohim, all the gods; or Ely on, the most high; or El-Shaddai, the god almighty. And soon they would end by dropping the El altogether and calling him by no name at all, representing him only by the mysterious, unpronounceable letters YHWH, whereupon his transformation would be complete. But later generations would back away from the austere Hebrew apotheosis and would once more give him a name: God.

Thus it was the tragedy of Canaan that it encountered the Hebrews when the two peoples were at a mighty crossroads: the Canaanites were degrading the concept of god while the Hebrews were elevating it. The conflict between these two philosophies would continue for more than a thousand years and there would be many times when it would seem that Baal of the Canaanites had triumphed.

Zadok accepted Governor Uriel’s gesture of compromise. “We will respect Baal,” he agreed, “but you must warn your temple prostitutes not to welcome our people again.”

“I will tell them,” Uriel promised, “but you must remember that this is a custom which has produced the prosperity you see down there. When your men understand farming a little better they’ll appreciate the priestesses and insist upon worshiping with them.”

There was the serpent! There was the wound that would not heal—this constant encroachment of the town upon the ways of the desert. Since Uriel the Canaanite was a man devoted to the town, when he looked down at Makor he saw clearly that most of man’s progress up to now had come when he lived in towns and worshiped gods that had developed from towns. Only inside a wall would men dare to build a temple, only within that safety could a library accumulate texts written on clay. In a thousand years men who roamed deserts had accomplished nothing: they built no roads, invented no new method of erecting homes; they had discovered neither pottery wheels nor silos for conserving grain. Only in a town like Makor could men prosper and make those material advances which when added together would be termed civilization. The history of this mound below us, Governor Uriel thought, is the history of men learning to live together in a town, faithful to the gods of town life, and that is the only history in the world that matters.

Zadok the Hebrew looked down upon the town and weighed it in different scales. As a free man of the desert he could not escape viewing Makor as the breeding place of contamination. In the desert a lusty man might rape a nubile woman and this was understandable. Zadok himself had taken his second wife in this manner, but when the rape was completed a strict code required the pair to marry and lend dignity to the process. In the desert a system of sacred prostitution would be impossible. The cleanliness of the rocks would fight against it, for prostitution of this sort could only be a product of the town. In open country a woman like Jael might prove unfaithful to her husband, but to this there was a sudden, blinding solution—death; it took the town to recognize such a woman as a heroine and to offer her sanctuary. The town was filled with men who had never worked in open areas tending sheep and discovering for themselves the actuality of their god; these men sat cramped before a wheel making pottery. They wrote on clay which they did not dig and sold wine which they had not pressed. Their values were warped and their gods were of a trivial dimension. As Zadok looked at the frightening town he remembered the instructive history of two former members of his clan and he could hear his father Zebul telling their story: “Your ancestor Cain was a man of the town and when he brought his gift to El-Shaddai, the god despised it, but your ancestor Abel lived in the open as we do, and when he brought his gift El-Shaddai was pleased, for our god has always preferred honest people who live outdoors above crafty ones who live in towns. This rejection angered Cain and he slew Abel, and from that time there has been enmity between town and desert.” But to Zadok the critical matter was still the uncertainty that had kept him in the desert for six full years after El-Shaddai himself had told the Hebrews to move into the town: he still wondered if men could live in a contaminating place like Makor and yet know their god as his Hebrews had known him in the desert. But as he drew back, afraid of the days ahead, he remembered the reassuring words of El-Shaddai: “Inside the walls it will not be easy for me to speak with you, but I shall be there.” He looked at the townsman who stood beside him and thought: If we can co-operate with any Canaanite it must be with Governor Uriel, for he is a man of integrity.