The Case of the Teraphim
The chapter of Family Affairs showed in what way a group of people can change its ethnicity, if reaching a situation which causes such a change.
The statement above relates to the practice of marriages and education of children of the family of the Patriarchs, and to most of other groups of people who reached foreign countries, either as conquerors or humble immigrants, without wives and children and became assimilated to the conquered or the host people in a few short generations. There were a number of examples which illustrated the thesis: the Vikings in Normandie, the Normans in England, the Bulgars on the Balkans, etc.
This chapter modifies the general law as it was developed in the Family Affairs. It was stated that since education of children is usually the task of the mothers, and the mothers are from the conquered or the host people, the children will speak the language of the mothers and will probably follow the religion of the mother too. That general law needs a modification and that modification is going to be explained in detail in this chapter. The modification states that despite the elementary education of language, religion and other social subjects, which are transmitted by the mothers and which can change the ethnic belonging in a few short generation, there will always be social elements transmitted by the fathers, and those elements will probably remain active long after the ethnic conversion is completed.
It is sufficient to bring one example. Bulgarians are accepted as a Slavic people; their language is Slavic and their religion is Greek Orthodox. They feel affinity to other Slavic peoples, and their connection to the big brother of all Slavic people, the Russians, is well known. They liberated them from the Turks and they are thankful for it. Still, it is well known that the Bulgarians came to the Balkans in the Middle Ages as a raiding Turkish war party. The descendants of the people from whom the marauding band of Bulgarians separated themselves are still living in European Russia, in Bashkiria. The Bulgarians who reached the Balkans, became Slavs the same way as the Patriarchs became Semitic.
When another Turkish tribe, the Ottomans, reached the Balkans, the Bulgarians saw in them oppressors and jealously kept their Slavic identity. The enmity to the Turks remained even after receiving independence. In the second half of the twentieth century, they expelled most of those Bulgars who during the occupation became Turks, in name and in religion.
Despite all that, there are common lines between them and the Turks that go back to their common origin. The Turks are known as experts in the sport of wrestling and weight lifting. The Bulgars, alone among the Slavic peoples, are also experts in the same sports. It is an obvious common element, after 1400 years of separate existence. There might be others too. The explanation is obvious. Sports of wrestling and weightlifting is something fathers teach their sons, so they remained untouched.
The subject of this chapter is about the teraphim; an object that was extremely important in the environment where the Patriarchs originated, but unknown among the Semites to whom the Patriarchs have devolved. Despite that, there are signs that the subject of the teraphim became active among the descendants of the Patriarchs, at least among a part of them.
The story started with the return of Jacob and his family to Canaan, from Padan-Aram where he was in service to Laban. When he loaded his camels with his family and goods, it happened that:
"…and Laban went to shear his sheep; and Rachel had stolen the images that were her father's". (Gen.31.19).
When Laban returned and found that Jacob has fled, taking with him his images, he decided to pursue them. When he found them, he searched for the images in their tents, saying to Jacob: "Wherefore hast thou stolen my gods? (Gen. 31.30),
However, Rachel has hidden them among the saddles of the camels and sat on them. When Laban came to her tent to search for the images, Rachel said:
"Let it not displease my lord that I cannot rise up before thee; for the custom of women is upon me. And he searched, but found not the images."
Finally, not having found the images, Laban has built a pillar on a heap of stones, on which they both declared that the pillar will be a border between them and neither of them will cross it. At the end, Laban added that:v
"The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge betwixt us." (Gen.31:53)
This is the story of the images, what is called the 'teraphim'. What exactly were those 'teraphim' and what was their importance so that Laban had to pursue Jacob for three days, and Rachel saw them important enough to steal and hide them.
There are a number of possible explanations. One of the explanations is that of Cassuto, who wrote commentaries to the Old Testament. According to his commentary the 'teraphim' were household idols, also used as oracular statues. Rachel has stolen them because she wanted to prevent her father to follow false gods. This explanation is not realistic. Rachel has grown up with those household gods; it is doubtful that she saw in them false gods. In the same line of thought, it would be more realistic to claim that she stole them because she did not want to part with them.
There is a second explanation, which is more pragmatic. According to a judgment found among the tablets of Nuzi, the possession of the household gods, the 'teraphim', implied leadership of the family, and in the case of a married daughter assured the right of her husband to the property of her father.It is possible that Laban was thinking along the same lines. That was the reason why he built the pillar and let Jacob swear that he will not cross that pillar again. He assumed that the images were somewhere in Jacob's camp and eventually they will be used to claim the property of the family. It is doubtful that Jacob would agree to do so. Laban had sons and they were with their father. Jacob had one set of enemies at home, Esau and his sons, and it is doubtful that he was keen on having another set of enemies. But Jacob was not involved in Rachel's secret, and when he learned about it, he was quick to get rid of them.
There is another explanation, but before examining why Rachel has taken the 'teraphim', the meaning of that expression should be examined. It is obvious that to Laban they were extremely important; otherwise the haste by which he chased after Jacob cannot be understood. Moreover, he called the 'teraphim' – my gods'.
In the chapter of Family Affairs, it was shown that the Indo-Europeans in general had a religion of worship of ancestors. Fustel de Coulanges wrote:
"This religion of the dead appears to be the oldest that has existed among this race of men. Before men had any notion of Indra or Zeus, they adored the dead; they feared them and addressed them prayers. It seems that the religious sentiment commenced on this way. It was perhaps by looking upon the dead that man first conceived the idea of the supernatural, and began to have a hope beyond what he saw. Death was the first mystery and it placed man on the track of other mysteries."1
The worship of the dead was, therefore, the first and primary religion, especially of those from the Indo-Europeans. According to this belief, the dead remained part of the family, physically existing in their graves. The living members of the family had to worship them and supply their needs; even when those needs were symbolic. That was the reason why Abraham wanted to adopt a son when losing hope that he will ever have a son from his marriage. Continuation of the family was a religious duty, only a son who was born of a sacred marriage or adopted with all necessary rites, could be the inheritor. That was the reason why marriages with Indo-Europeans were sacred and could not be sundered, except in the case of the wife being barren. That was also the reason why in some Greek cities to remain single was a criminal offence, punishable by the polis.
The worship of the dead was a family religion, meaning that only members of the family could participate in the rites. Each family had its own rites and prayers, and only the members of the family knew them. No one could belong to two religions, wives had to leave their own religion and be accepted into the religion of the husband. The custom of carrying the wife through the threshold in the arms of the husband symbolizes that the wife was forcibly taken from one family to another so the family gods of her previous family should not harm her because of her infidelity.
Their common belief was that the dead had to be buried near the living members of the family; they sometimes went to extraordinary lengths to ensure a proper burial. During the Peloponnesian war, there was a naval battle between the Athenians and the Spartans near the Asiatic shore. The Athenians won the battle but because of stormy weather the commanders of the Athenian navy did not collect the dead Athenians from the water. The commanders were put on trial as Athenian citizens could not receive proper burials because of their negligence. They were found guilty and executed because of impious behavior. That was the time when the Parthenon and the temples of the Olympian gods were built, and Socrates and Plato were developing the principles of rational thinking. The old religion was still stronger.
It was so not only then; it is so even today, without most of the people knowing the reasons. Thirty years after the Vietnam War, Americans are still searching for those missing in action, in order to bring them to proper burial. Furthermore, each country belonging to western civilization, has at least one public monument, 'The Grave of the Unknown Soldier' which is the substitute of modern society for the old religious law. These monuments are also accompanied with an 'eternal fire' which is another of the symbols of the old religion, the family hearth. The duty of maintaining the eternal fire was performed in Rome by the Vestal Virgins. The same task is performed now by mechanical means, but the principles are the same.
The Greek called the human souls, deified by death, demons or heroes. The Latins gave them the name of Lares, Manes or genii. The graves were temples, where sacrifices were made, just like before the temples of the gods.2 The differences between the two were that the rites and prayers of the cult of the dead, were individual to each family, and only members of the family could participate in them. In Rome each grave had the inscription: Dis Manibus – (dedicated) to the gods Manes.
There is no way of knowing what were the names of the dead spirits among those peoples the patriarchs came from. It might have been 'teraphim' or something else. It is possible that the expression 'teraphim' was the name of the physical appearance of the dead ancestors, just as in Italy and Greece the concept of the dead ancestors, and their physical representation was identical.
It should be noted that despite the use of the word 'teraphim' in the Bible, it is not a Hebrew word. It was definitely borrowed from an Indo-European language. The Hebrew commentators to the Bible explain the meaning of the word as 'idols' and according to Jewish principles it certainly was so. The English cognate of the word 'teraphim' is 'trophy'. The present meaning of the word 'trophy' is something that one receives by winning a competition, so there are trophies for sport competitions, and there are trophies for hunting and fishing. A copper cup one receives for winning a bridge tournement is a 'trophy' and so is the head of a deer, prepared by a taxidermist, hanging over a mantelpiece. In the sense of the second example, a scalp taken by an Indian from his slain enemey was a trophy and so was the head taken in a fight by a Sarmatian or Scythian warrior. Herodotus reported that Sarmatian warriors fashioned a drinking cup out their enemies' skull. So, it was a common practice among the original Indo-European tribes.
It seems that the this was the origin of the word from which the 'teraphim' of the Bible was taken. The original Indo-Europeans worshiped their ancestors and the 'teraphim' were their earthy remains. In this respect the Egyptian mummies were also 'teraphim' and the Indo-European teraphim were probably similar to the Egyptian mummies, at least in principle. It is possible that in later, more civilized ages, the teraphim were deadmasks of the ancestors. This is the impression one gets from reading the Latin classics. In earlier ages, the teraphim were probably the mummified heads of the ancestors. The original Indo-European tribes lacked the knowledge to mummify the whole body, but probably had the experience to mummify the heads. Even if they could mummify the whole body, it would not have been a practical proposition for pastoral people, forever on the move. Judging from later commentators, it seems that the meaning of 'teraphim' mentioned in the Bible is the original type: mummified heads of the late ancestors.
If the teraphim were identical to the Greek demons and the Latin manes, then there are a number of questions that must be posed. In what way were the teraphim unique, what were they in the context of Laban and Jacob, and what was their size?
Laban has pursued Jacob and his family, looking for the stolen teraphim. He met up with them and accosted Jacob with a question:
"Wherefore hast thou stolen my gods?"
And Jacob has answered that he has not done so, but if he finds that someone from his camp did it, then:
"With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live." (Gen. 31:32)
These are strong words, and they prove a number of points:
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There were more than one of the teraphim stolen by Rachel. In the chapter there are always references to gods and not to god.
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Jacob recognized the values of the teraphim, otherwise he would not offer a penalty of dead, if Laban could prove that someone from his camp stole them.
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The teraphim were irreplacable. If they would have been ordinary idols, then Laban could have gone to the nearest shop and replace them. In modern Catholic homes there are small statues of Jesus, or Mary, or the Saints. Nobody would assign those statues more than possible sentimental value.
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There is another meaningful paragraph in this chapter. When Laban saw that he could not find the teraphim, he set up a pillar on a heap of stones and he swore an oath, and made Jacon swear it too. The wording of the oath is very curious:
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"The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge betwixt us."
This sentence can be understood that there were three gods involved here; the God of Abraham, the God of Nahor, and the God of Terach, who was the father of both of them. This is also the understanding of Cassuto, the commentator of the Old Testament.
Abraham and Nahor, both were Terach's sons. Laban was the grandson of Terach, and Jacob his great-grandson. According to our understanding they were one family. It was not so according to theirs, as the previous sentence had so eloquently proven.
Abraham had left the family, and chosen a new country and a new God. By moving away from the family, he had chosen a new religion. If the story is put into a proper, contemporary frame, then Abraham has left his ancestors back in Haran, while Nahor, Laban and their family kept the family hearth burning and worshiped the family ancestors. It is doubtful that Laban saw in the stealing of the teraphim an attempt to inherit the family property, but an attempt to acquire legitimacy to that branch of the family that left the old homestead and moved to Canaan.
The teraphim that Laban kept and wanted to return were probably the death masks, or the mummified heads, of Nahor, Terach and probably previous generations too. If one looks at the generations from the point of view of the religion of the worship of ancestors, then the huge lifetimes, both in the Book of the Genesis, and in the Sumerian List of Kings, receive a different meaning.
What Rachel wanted to achieve and Laban wanted to prevent, was not a question of property, but a wish to establish the legitimacy of the family in Canaan. This also explains Jacob's reaction when he found out that the teraphim were all along in his camp. He buried them under an oak in Schechem3 , set up an altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel. He realized that the old religion cannot give answers to splits in the family, as happened among the children of Terach, and undoubtedly in many more families like the Patriarchs, and the worship of the ancestors should be replaced by something which is more general, and wider than the scope of a single family.
The teraphim were, therefore, the effigies of the ancestors. It was so in India, Greece and Italy, and probably everywhere the Indo-Europeans established their rule, and their religious and social customs. They were thought to be the effigies of the ancestors, who were in a form of semi-existence, kept alive by caring for their tombs and worshiping them with prayers. A family, which remained without a male heir, was destined to die out in the future, and wiped out in the past too.
It is difficult to realize in our cynical age, but even in classical times, when the old religion remained mainly the prerogative of old aristocratic families, that the rites concerning the effigies were very much alive. When Julius Caesar made his triumph in Rome after the victory in Gallia, his family has joined his triumphal march, as it was customary. He led the march, standing in his chariot, with a slave holding the laurel crown over his head and whispering in his ears, that he shouldn't forget that despite everything, he remained mortal.
The chariots of his family followed him, both the living part of the family and the effigies of his ancestors. Caesar was an aristocrat, the bluest of the blue, so his ancestors went back a very long time, even back to Venus. It was reported that there were dozens of carriages for the 'teraphim' of his family.
This example puts a new light on the case of Rachel and the teraphim. If Laban was indeed the keeper of the effigies of the ancestors, then he must have had a long list of teraphim, probably from Noach, or even earlier. So many teraphim raise immediately the question of their size, as it would be impossible to hide so many man-size effigies among the saddles of the camels.
In Greece, Roman and India, and probably in the whole Indo-European world at that time, the effigies were probably life-size or at least the sizes of a human head, as they were death masks4 made immediately after the death. This was what made them unique. One can make or buy a new idol but one cannot make a new death mask if the original was stolen or lost.
There are different views about the size of the teraphim. Some accepted the classical Roman scholars who opted for life-sized statues with death masks for faces, like the mask of Agamemnon from Mycaenae. Others thought differently. Robert Graves5 quoted Elias Levita, a 15th century Hebrew commentator, who recorded a tradition that the teraphim, which Rachel stole from Laban, were mummified oracle heads of the ancestors and the head of Adam amongst them. Judging from the English cognate of the word, 'trophy', it seems that Levita's comments were correct.
There is a chapter in the Old Testament from which one can learn about the size of the teraphim. The chapter tells about the first conflict between Saul and David, when Saul sent assassins to murder David. Michal had the ingenuity to hide David and spirit him away from the palace. The Old Testament told the story how Michal succeeded of doing it:
"…Michal took an image, and laid it on the bed, and put a pillow of goat's hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth. And when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said: He is sick." (I Samuel,19:13-14)
One can understand from this sentence that the head of the teraphim was life-size, which fits with the theory that they were dead masks, or mummified heads, while the size of the body was bolstered by a pillow. Bolstering means enhancing or increasing, but not replacing. So the head was life-size but the body was smaller. It is a possibility, after all the important part was the effigy itself. It is also possible that there were different developments among those who directly continued the tradition, like the Indians, Greeks and Latins , and others who practiced the tradition, without really understanding its meaning. Between the period of the Patriarchs, and Saul and David, there was at least one millennium. During that time they became completely Semites, while keeping a number of traditions without knowing their origins.
The first mention of the teraphim in the Old Testament is in the story of Rachael and Laban. The last mention, chronologically, is that of the prophet Hosea, who named them as articles of false worship:
"…the children of Israel will abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod and without teraphim." (Hosea 3:4)
False or not, in the time of Hosea, in the 8th century BC, 1200 years after Jacob buried them in Schechem, the teraphim were well known in Israel. It is assumed that Hosea used examples, which he was certain that his listeners would understand. So were they in the period of Saul and David. Michal did not have to search for something to put on the bed to fool would-be assassins; she took one of the teraphim. It was also common at the time of the Judges6 when one from the tribe of Dan decided to build a temple, putting in it ephods and teraphim. After the destruction of Samaria and Jerusalem they are not heard from any more. Still, it was about 1500 years that the subject of teraphim occasionally surfaced in the writings.
The story of the teraphim, as it was told here, is one more example of the route the cattle-nomad tribes were taking, in their progress from a nomadic pastoral existence to expansion and eventual settled life, as lords of the manor over agricultural serfs. Until, they lived in their old surroundings, they could keep their traditions. Even, after their transplantation to settled existence, there might have been special cases and special periods, which allowed them to keep the old customs, but eventually there were objective factors, mainly of demographic nature, which brought the inevitable change.
Even in special places, where the invading cattle-nomads assimilated the existing population, like in Rome or Sparta, the old religion had to be replaced. There was a long fight over it, in Rome between Patricians and Plebeians, and in Sparta between citizens and helots, but eventually demography was victorious. The old religion of the dead ancestors, with its center in the families, with the family hearth and the faith that the dead ancestors are physically present in their effigies, carrying the dead masks or the mummified heads of the deceased, could not overcome the demographic explosion. The old religion had to change and change it did. Cremation replaced burial, and central permanent fire, carefully maintained by special bodies, like the Vestal Virgins, replaced the family hearth.
There are a number of vestigial appearances that remained from the old religion. The grave of the Unknown Soldier, which is a permanent fixture in every western country, with its eternal flame, is one of the vestiges. So is the All-Saint day, when the cemeteries are full of visitors and uncounted candles are burning as burial offerings. There is also a never ceasing effort to bring the dead to a proper burial. People may not identify their wish to bring their loved ones to proper burial with the case of the Athenian citizens who tried their admirals for leaving the casualties of the naval battle in the sea, but both have identical roots.
The endless military cemeteries and the monuments recording the names of those who died for the community in special circumstances, are all round western Civilization. From the Black Wall in Washington with the names of those killed in the Vietnam War to the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem, with the names of those killed in the Holocaust.
This chapter showed the mechanism of a very interesting historical process. An extended family, or a clan, has split from his tribe and wandered to find a new home. They were not alone. At about the same time, there might have been thousands of similar clans, doing a similar journey. This particular clan traveled from the upper reaches of the Euphrates to Canaan; others might have moved from Southern Russia to Armenia and Iran; yet others west to Europe, or east to India, or even to China. These wandering clans had to cope with similar problems provided of course that they succeeded in their task. There is no doubt that there were many who failed. Abraham came to Canaan, accompanied by Lot, but Lot seems to have failed. He has disappeared from history.
We look upon those times and wanderings as a long period of turbulence, when whole peoples invaded territories and established their rule over the serfs as an invasion of organized entities. When we think about the invasion of India by the Indo-Aryans we see an organized people destroying their enemies and changing the color on the map of India. It seems that the process was much more like it was described in the Book of Genesis. Single clans or even tribes detached themselves from that cauldron of people somewhere in southern Russia – central Asia, and set out to some direction from where there was news that the land was ready for the taking. That was the method of the Vikings, who after all were the last wave of the Indo-European flood that probably started much before Abraham. There was a never-ending flow of people, always with different names, but with identical religion and customs. The names were unimportant; they might have been called Scythians, Celts, Italian, Greeks, Tocharians, Phrygians and Illyrians, or any other names. It made no difference.
The result of the process of expansion was usually the same; if the warbands had women and children with them, the conquered people assimilated to them. If they came alone, only with retainers and herdsmen, as Abraham did, then they were assimilated to the host people. Thus, Abraham and all other clans, who came after him, became assimilated to the Semites. In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC most of the rulers of the city-states of Syria and the Levant had Indo-European sounding names, and all became Semites in due course. Maybe in the future it will be possible to make general DNA tests and establish the possible ethnic mixture, but even then it will impossible to measure cultural mixture. One can only examine the customs and habits, and attempt to establish their roots.
The story of the teraphim showed that the Patriarchs probably originated from a people in whose culture there was a religion of ancestor worship. Judging from occasional outcropping of the same worship in the Jewish people from the period of the Patriarchs until the destruction of the archaic form of Judaism, e.g. until the destruction of the first Temple and the exile of the people, the ancestor worship was solidly rooted, if not in the official religion, but certainly in the cultural and social spheres.
Judging from the present practices, it can be said that the residual customs, whose origins are in the old religion of ancestor worship, are most stronger among the Jews than they are among the Europeans, or other peoples of Indo-European origin. Of course, they are much different in these respects from the people of the Middle East, with a possible exception of the Iranians, who despite being Muslims have many cultural traits common with the Europeans.
The Jews are much stricter in their customs with regard to the dead than the Europeans. They share the same habit of days of remembrances, the same eternal fire, and the search for missing persons, but in certain subjects they saved the old customs much more than the Europeans and their descendants around the world, kept theirs. Europeans and Indians cremate their dead, it would be unthinkable for Jews. The resting-place of the dead has such a sanctity that it is not rare to hear stories of redirected highways because ancient graves were discovered during the building. All these are residual memories of an ancient religion, jealously kept by modern Israelis.
One can put a valid question. The Jews lived in Europe for the last 2000 years. They could have learned the customs from their host people during those 2000 years, so what puts them aside from their neighbors was learnt during those 2000 years and not before. It is a valid question, and it has valid answers too.
First, the sanctity of graves and the special mourning procedures that the Jews follow now, were the same two millennia ago too. So, there is a mourning period of seven days, then a special day of remembrance after thirty days and finally a day of remembrance every year, with special prayers and lighting of votive candles. And shades of the old religion, the special prayer for the dead can only be said by a direct male descendants.
Second, there are Jews who never lived in Europe, but in the Middle East, North Africa and even in Africa. The funeral customs, which are vestigial remains of the ancestral religion, are identical for all of them.
There is no wonder that Jews kept the ancient customs more than the Indo-Europeans. People who were independents, as the Indo-Europeans were, had to adapt themselves to changing conditions. People, who lived in the last two millennia as a barely tolerated minority, could keep its identity only by jealously guarding their customs.
Notes
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Fustel de Coulanges, op.cit., pp.24 – 25
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| 2. |
Virgil, Aeneas IV.34; Aulus Gellius, X. 18, Suetonius , Nero 50
Euripides, Troades 96, Electra, 513
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| 3. |
Merrill F, Unger, op.cit., p.127
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| 4. |
Charles Pellegrino, op.cit., p.297 shows the famous death mask of Agamemnon
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Robert Graves, The White Goddess, op.cit.,p.164
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| 6. |
Judges 17 – 18, the story of the Danites and their temple with graven images and teraphim
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