IV. RITE DE PASSAGE AND SPATIALITY
4.1.3 Israelite Cosmography and the World's Fringes
Based on the creation narratives and many scattered biblical references we know that the Hebrews, much like their immediate neighbors, posited that the earth was a flat disc. This disc was surrounded on its plane by an ocean, and this whole construct was
249 E.g., Abraham's journey to Egypt, the Exodus cycle, Jacob's journey towards the land of the "sons of the east" (Gen 29:1).
250 See Appendix A for a brief discussion of a few selected examples from Hebrew and cognate literatures.
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surrounded by a cosmic ocean, held back from crashing upon earth by the "firmament" of heaven (rāqîaʿ, Gen 1:6-8).251 This primordial ocean was chaos, held in check only by God's deliberate creation of the firmament and ordering of the universe into separate and, for all practical purposes, impenetrable sections. This model was based, in large part, by the natural conditions of the Israelite homeland itself, though it was also influenced to a degree by Mesopotamian cosmology. Rain and dew, which were necessary components of the agricultural cycle, were held to be the result of God allowing water from the supercaelian ocean through the rāqîaʿ.252 Thus life itself depended on the correct
functioning of this order to supply rains, and, conversely, destructive storms like the one in the Jonah story may also be divinely controlled.
This cosmological framework was supplemented by a new idea, realized in the years following the establishment of the first Jerusalem temple, that Jerusalem is at the world's center. The temple, in particular, is regarded as the seat of God's presence in the human world (2:5, 2:8), a construct also referred to as the Shekhinah.253 This biblical conception is similar to the phenomenon of the axis mundi known from other cultures.254 The axis mundi is the earth's "navel," the point from which creation and cosmic order radiated outwards.255 Thus, the further one goes from that place, the further one would
251 For more on this tripartite division of the cosmos in biblical and other Northwest Semitic sources, see Gregorio del Olmo Lete, "Cosmologie et anthropologie religieuses," in Mythologie et religion des Sémites Occidentaux, vol. II (ed. Gregorio del Olmo Lete; Leuven: Peeters, 2008), 243-250; see also Ps 69:35 and Exod 20:11.
252 See David Neiman, "The Supercaelian Sea," JNES 28 no.4 (1969): 243-249.
253 See also Isa 6:1, Isa 56:7, Jer 17:12.
254 For a classic summary of the axis mundi see Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, 12-17.
255 Among his many examples of the axis mundi, Eliade argues that Mt. Gerizim is referred to as the "navel of the land" (ṭabbūr ʾereṣ; cf. Mt. Tabor) in Judg 9:37. Mountains very frequently are regarded as a divine
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get from contact with God and closer to the world's fringes, represented by chaos, death, or darkness. As deity worship in the ancient Near East was usually centered around certain shrines or cities, the Jonah narrative asserts a powerful theological message in its depiction of God's autonomy over the nether regions of creation.256
The idea that the fringes of the world were wild and mysterious was a pervasive one, and this was in some respects only reinforced by the centralization of the Yahwistic cult to Jerusalem. The "founded" (to borrow Eliade's word) world of human beings contrasts sharply with the dangerous "no man's land" surrounding them. "The desert or wilderness is a place of strange, demonic, secret powers. It is a sacred land, a holy land in that it is a demonic realm; but it is not a place for ordinary men. It is not a place which is a homeland, where men may dwell."257 This imagery is appropriated in Hebrew texts for figurative purposes as well, as in the case of Isaiah 34, which anticipates Edom as a dilapidated scrubland for jackals and demons: "It shall be called 'no-kingdom-there!'" (Isa 34:12).
The Jonah story operates within a cognitive world in which such depictions of physical space and geography are highly significant. Understanding the story relies in large measure on ascertaining what each physical setting that Jonah moves through means for his characterization. His successive proximity to (and distance from) his center represents his transformation, and though all of these places are real in the
locus because heaven and earth literally meet at their summit. In Mesopotamia, ziggurats were built as artificial mountains for religious purposes. Ibid., 13.
256 That is to say that multiple gods and goddesses could coexist and that deities held dominion only over their particular areas whereas other deities controlled areas closer to their home base. This is expressed, for example, by the many bĕʿālîm which populate Israel and neighboring lands (1 Kgs 18:18).
257 Jonathan Z. Smith, Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 109.
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categorical sense the narrative's manner of depicting them does not emphasize reality but only helps to underscore Jonah's warped development. What follows is a concise discussion of each place visited by Jonah in that sequence.258 Each of these sites was chosen for inclusion in the story because of their position (actual and symbolic) in relation to the Israelites and to one another.