For a few decades in the beginning-to-middle of the 20th century, a very interesting approach to looking at the Psalms of the Old Testament was launched, especially in Europe. This approach, unfortunately, has fallen somewhat out of favor, and perhaps never fully caught on here in the U.S. The approach I am referring to is the “form-critical” and “ritual” view of the Psalms commenced by Hermann Gunkel and refined by Sigmund Mowinckel and other (mostly Scandinavian) scholars.
While the purpose of this post is not to give a fully history, or even a summary, of their view, I wanted to at least highlight the work of Danish scholar Aage Bentzen on this topic. Essentially, this post will contain a few passages from his book King and Messiah, first translated into English in 1955 by The Lutterworth Press.
In this thin volume, Bentzen does a stellar job of summarizing the work of the great scholars before him and presents an overview of the arguments surrounding the meaning of the so-called “ascension,” ”enthronement,” and “royal” psalms that had been identified. From these psalms, and by comparison with their knowledge of ancient Near Eastern rituals (based on Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and then newly discovered Canaanite texts), scholars believed they could reconstruct a hypothetical Israelite ritual that was central to First Temple religion. The ritual that emerged was seen as “The Festival of Yahweh’s Ascension to his Throne on New Year’s Day,” a “ritual drama” that could be seen through a trained reading of these psalms. This ritual had the Creation of the world as its central theme–an event that included Yahweh’s fight against the powers of Chaos (Sea, Flood, Dragon, Rahab), his victory, and subsequent creation of the world, along with his enthronement in his new temple. This event was re-created in the Israelite New Year festival, where the Israelite King represented Yahweh in the ritual drama.
I add to this very brief summary some of Bentzen’s comments on this topic, starting in Chapter 2 of his book.
Looking at Psalm 2, he explains:
The…interpretation of the psalm…suggests that it is an oracle on the day of the king’s ascension to his throne…The presupposition is that the Day of the Ascension to the Throne is no common day of the year. The kings of Babylon and Assyria do not ascend the throne de jure, until the New Year’s Day following the death of their predecessor; and in Egypt the coronation of the king takes place in connection with the beginning of the rule of the gods.1
The enthronement of a king is always a repetition of a primeval act. It is a repetition of the enthronement of the first king in the days of the beginning, the primeval age. The first king is the patriarch of the Royal House, identical with the patriarch of mankind. Hammurabi says in the introduction to his great collection of Babylonian Laws that he got his “name” from teh great Creators Anu and Enlil, when they created the World; i.e. that he was elected king at the creation2 . The same is said in Israel of the Messiah in Micah 5:1, where his epiphany is compared with the sunrise…And so we get a significant and powerful pun between the two meanings of the word mikkedem: “His uprising is from the East”, the latter word (mikkedem) being interpreted in its other sense through mime ‘olam, “from the Days of Old”, the beginning of time. The Messianic poem in Micah 5, like the parallesl in Isaiah 9 and 11, is a typical Royal Psalm. This conception of the primeval election and birth of the king is also preserved in the ancient versions of Psalm 110:3 (cf. LXX, Syr. and also Vulg.) Probably this same idea is behind the name of the Messiah in Isaiah 9:5, when he is called not only “God Almighty”, but also ‘abi-’ad, “Father from Eternity”, i.e. “primeval patriarch”.
The king, then, is Primeval Man. The first man of Genesis 1:26–28 is desribed as the first ruler of the world. In the first Creation Story, the “gospel” of the New Year, we hear the blessing spoken by God at the enthonement of the first Royal Couple of the world. Man is to “rule” over all living creatures. Man and Woman, like the Babyloian kings, are “images of God”, i.e. the Royal Couple is Divine, as in the famous apostrophe to the king in the oracle for the Royal wedding (Psalm 45:7). The same idea is developed in Psalm 8, in the description of the “Son of Man”, who is “little lower than God”, “nearly a God”. This “Son of Man”, according to the evident dependence of the psalm on the ideas behind the first chapter of Genesis, is the First Man and the First King…[I]n the Creation story of Genesis 2:4ff…we are told that the First Man gave the animals their names and that none of them was his equal…the Israelite prince in Psalm 110 is enthroned at the right hand of God, on Zion, his holy mountain (Psalm 2)…He has enthroned his King in the Sanctuary of Jerusalem, which is also from the Days of Old (cf. e.g. Jeremiah 17:12). This king and saviour, who (like all ancient kings) is also his prophet, now pronounces the will of God…
The king, as in Mesopotamia, is Son of God by adoption…we have no right at all to doubt that in principle the king of Israel was considered an ‘elohim…But the king is thought of as the divine-human bearer of salvation, the guarantor of the victory of God. He is not so absolutely a god as in Egypt.
It is certainly singificant, too, that in Psalm 2 the enemies asre described as “terrestrial” (“kings of the earth”, v. 2). These earthly beings are emphatically confronted with “Him that sits in the heavens” and we find the king on his side through the divine act of adoption. Through the ceremony of anointing, and through the enthronement mentioned in v. 6, he has been made “celestial”. He is now, through God’s decree, “a new creature”, made unconquerable by his holy strength.
All this is made clear to the people in the Song of the King, in which he proclaims his election on the enthronement festival. He has received the divine oracle…which he now proclaims to the people. The Psalm is phenomenologically a parallel and type of the Christmas Gospel: The Saviour has been born! Isaiah 9:1–6 belongs to the same literary type. This is, moreover, significant not only for religious phenomenology, but also for Christian theology.3
To be continued…I want to share next Bentzen’s presentation of what the New Year enthronement ritual actually entailed, including enthronement, investiture, and ordination as priest. I believe this is important for LDS, as it is key to understanding the Old Testament, the New Testament, including early Christian understanding of Jesus as Messiah (and simultaneously prophet, priest and king), and also the LDS Temple rituals.
6 Comments
David:
As usual, just a fantastic post! Great Insight!
Thanks,
Littlefield
Thanks, David! I’m glad you liked it. I hope to post more on this soon!
David: I always enjoy your posts. I’ve been in the question regarding the Myth and Ritual School since the mid-1970s when I first encountered it. The reading of the Psalms makes a good deal of sense. However, the central thesis of a yearly enthronement ceremony seems to lack crucial evidence. Perhaps Mowinckel et al. would have been better served to claim that these rites took place only during enthronement of the Israelite king — a thesis which strikes me as eminently defensible.
Thank you, Blake, for visiting and for your insightful comment. While systematic theology is not really my forte, I am a big fan of your work (I recently reviewed your theories on the Godhead for a paper I wrote for a systematic theology class). I appreciate your input on this topic of the enthronement ritual. I would agree that there isn’t much evidence in the OT for a New Year festival involving enthronement. I would ask you, however, if there isn’t sufficient evidence that such a festival occurred in other Near Eastern cultures? As you have looked at this for so long, you are likely much more familiar with the available literature on this than I am. A second question: do you think it plausible that there could have been a New Year festival re-enacting the Creation, but without the enthronement? It seems to me that if the Creation was re-enacted, the enthronement of Yahweh (represented by the King) would be a natural part of that drama. Of course, one must wonder why the king would need to be re-enthroned every year. It would seem logical that the actual enthronement of the king, after the death of the previous monarch, would be represented in a way distinct from the annual ritual. My exposure to this idea has all been positive in favor of it, so I would need to look at some of the arguments against it. If you know of any good articles or monographs, off hand, that argue against the Myth and Ritual School, I would be interested in taking a look at them.
Again, thanks for the comment. Please feel free to add your thoughts any time–they will be most welcome!
David
David: It appears to be virtually certain that there was a yearly Akitu festival in Babylon. Whether there were pre-existing festival structures in Ugarit and other Near Eastern locations is uncertain, but quite probable.
I believe that Israel may have had a yearly festival, but on the return from the exile the Jews broke up the yearly enthronement/creation festival into the various festivals of Matzot, Shavuot, Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot — with Sabbat acting as a weekly creation-recreation celebration. However, based on the Psalms I believe that we can point to “Royal” Psalms (almost certainly pre-exlic) that were authored precisely for the event of transition to a new king and enthronement. Isaiah 6 is almost certainly a ritual ascension and vision of the heavenly counsel at the event of such an enthronement.
I agree with your assessment that after the exile the yearly festival was broken up into some of the various other holy festivals of the Jewish calendar. I believe this process may have been underway as early as the reigns of kings Hezekiah and Josiah–under their religious reforms.
I also agree with the idea that Isa 6 could be seen as a similar enthronement ritual–it is interesting that this was not something that was just for kings–or, in other words, prophets, kings, and also priests would all have gone through similar rites. We know that in the Melchizedek Priesthood, all three offices are combined in one.