part0070

The Myth: And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padanaram, and blessed him. And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name; and he called his name Israel. (Gen. 35:9–10)

The Reality: Genesis gives two different accounts of how Jacob came to be called Israel, reflecting the views of two rival factions in the kingdom of Israel.

In the previous myth, we saw that when Jacob wrestled a stranger, the stranger blessed him by changing his name from Jacob to Israel. This event occurred at the site of Penuel. Although Jacob believed that he had looked on the face of God (the stranger), we know that couldn’t be the case because in the Book of Exodus, when Moses asked to see God’s face the deity replied, “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live” (Exod. 33:20). So, according to that story at least, God couldn’t have been the one who changed Jacob’s name, because Jacob, as a human, couldn’t look on the face of God and live. Additionally, in the discussion of Myth #57 we saw that the stranger was actually Esau.

However, the Bible has a second story about Jacob’s change of name. In this account, occurring some time after the reunion with Esau, God directed Jacob to go to Bethel, the place where he dreamed of the ladder. At Bethel, God directly told Jacob that henceforth his name would be Israel and then renewed his covenant to give Canaan to Israel and his descendants.

These two stories show how rival factions attempted to change incidents in biblical history to suit their own purposes. Here, we have one story claiming a name change in Penuel and another saying Bethel. The histories of these two cities provide clues as to why two different stories came about.

When King Solomon died, Jeroboam led a revolt against Solomon’s heir to the throne, and split off the Kingdom of Israel from Judah. Jeroboam established two major cult centers, one on the southern border at Bethel and one at the northern border in Dan. He also built one of his chief cities at Penuel, an administrative center for the government.

Initially, Jeroboam had the support of the Shiloh priesthood, which thought that breaking away from the Jerusalem-dominated priesthood would enhance their own power and prestige. But Jeroboam didn’t believe in formal priesthoods and declared that anyone who wanted to be a priest could be. This caused a split between him and the Shiloh priests.

Since the northern kingdom was called Israel, it had a special interest in explaining how the name Israel came to be associated with the northern territories. Since Jeroboam and the Shilohite priests were in political conflict with each other, each faction came up with its own version of how the name Israel originated.The Jeroboam faction associated the name with Penuel, his administrative center. The Shiloh priesthood associated the name with Bethel, the southern cult center that competed with Jerusalem.

It’s interesting to note that in the Penuel story, the role of religion is downplayed. In that story Jacob received his new name because he was a prince of power, who prevailed against God himself. Jeroboam’s primary interest was military defense, not religion.

The Shiloh priesthood, on the other hand, in order to compete with Jerusalem for the religious loyalty of the Israelites, used the Bethel naming story to invoke a connection between the covenant with Israel and the cult status of Bethel.