Angels at the Gate (47 page)

I have had neither safety nor happiness at the hands of Lot.

Beneath the thick coverings, Nami licks my hand. I turn, looking back and down over the smoking ruin of Sodom, the burned city, its streets and buildings partially eaten now by a growing black stain. Will it indeed consume all of Sodom, leaving nothing of witness to the city that once stood here?

Down in the rocky plain, Mot's Tongues spout flames, their fury burning, and fire engulfs most of the city. Closer, below me, the sea strokes the cliff's edge, leaving crusts of salt. In the distance, I can see smoke rising from Gomorrah as well. Perhaps El has chosen to destroy these cities, these people who follow the goddess's way. Perhaps, he wishes to leave Baal in the clutches of Mot and claim Asherah as his own queen.
Or perhaps Mika is right, and this devastation has nothing to do with the gods. But in the wake of the fury below me, such would be difficult to believe.

Truly, it does not matter what I believe. The story will be told as it will be told. I lift my face into the wind that blows from the north, a wind clear of the stench of Sodom, perhaps blown from a distant land of flowing streams and green grass.

And then I turn onto the path that leads to the overhang and the cave where Mika waits. No doubt my life will be forgotten on the lips of those who speak of what happened here—nothing more than a pillar of salt—but I am again who I am, a daughter of the wind.

T.K. Thorne is a retired police captain in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. She holds a master's degree in clinical social work from the University of Alabama and currently works as the executive director of the business improvement district in downtown Birmingham. Her writing has won awards for poetry, fiction, and screenplays.
Noah's Wife
is her award-winning debut novel. T.K. describes herself as a writer, humanist, dog-mom, horse-servant, and cat-slave.

The author invites you to her website for behind-the-scenes information about the writing of
Angels at the Gate
, book club questions, and to sign up for her private newsletter list. If you enjoyed this novel, please write a review or post it on your social media and share!

www.TKThorne.com

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W
HAT IS
T
HIS
S
TORY
?

An assortment of oral and written comments and stories accompany both Jewish and Islamic tradition and their primary source texts, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the Koran. In Judaism, those commentaries are known collectively as
midrashim
. As with my previous novel,
Noah's Wife
, this story is “my
midrash
,” my commentary—my imagination layered on a foundation of archeology, historical theories, and ancient writings. For ease of reading, I chose to quote Biblical text primarily from the New Living Translation. On occasion, I used brackets for clarification or to substitute a word or phrase from the Chabad.org translation of the Tanakh.

U
NRAVELING THE
K
NOT OF
“W
HEN
?”

In a historical novel, the first challenge is to determine when the narrative takes place. According to the Bible, Lot was the nephew of Abraham (Abram), which sets the story “in the time of Abraham,” but controversy swirls around Abraham himself. Was he a mythological figure or a real historical figure, or some mixture? The three major religions of the Middle Eastern and Western civilizations trace their roots to this one man. Scholars also disagree about his era, which likely occurred in the Middle Bronze Age, spanning 2100–1500 BCE. The Elba tablets (discovered in Syria in 1976) mention a city called
Sadam
, which some believe was Sodom, and that would place the era of Abraham between 2950-2000 BCE—but this is hotly debated.

Based on David Rosenberg's research in his book
Abraham: The First Historical Biography
, I placed Abraham at approximately the time of Samsu-iluna (1749–1712 BCE), the king of Babylonia and son of the famed Hammurabi. Samsu-iluna's kingdom fell to invasion
by peoples living on his eastern border, who attacked Babylonia from the mountains in two-horse chariots.

The Babylon of the period in which
Angels at the Gate
is set has not been excavated. Therefore, we cannot know its architecture or way of life, but we have detailed descriptions of the city in 300–400 BCE. We also have clear descriptions of earlier Sumerian cities based on archeological findings and writings of the day. One of the more emotional moments in my travels came when I stumbled upon several of the beautiful blue-tile segments of Babylon's wall in an Istanbul museum. The famed glazed walls date from King Nebuchadnezzar's day (605–562 BCE), much later than this story; however, he may have modeled them after existing walls and art, as the ziggurats and other structures of his city were built on earlier Sumerian designs.

W
HAT
W
AS THE
R
ELIGION IN
A
BRAHAM'S
T
IME
?

The second major research challenge to writing
Angels at the Gate
was determining the religion actually practiced by Abraham, the population of Sodom, and the desert nomads. As Raphael Patai states in his book
The Hebrew Goddess
, “The average layman, whether Jew or Gentile, still believes that the official Hebrew religion was a strict monotheism beginning with God's revelation of Himself to Abraham. [But] scholars date the origin of Hebrew monotheism a few centuries later, during the days of the great prophets.” Archeological sites provide increasing evidence of this. The earliest Hebrews took ideas about deities from their native land—Canaan and Mesopotamia. For this reason, I have used the small case for “god” throughout.

I also chose to name the earliest Hebrew tribal god “El,” rather than “Yahweh,” as there is evidence the name Yahweh developed later. El is the word contained in the Hebrew word, “elohim.” Elohim is a plural word in Hebrew; possibly it originally meant God, the Most High, or God the Highest [of the gods]. The “watchword” of Judaism is the phrase, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The word “one” (
echad
) in that phrase can mean “one” as in “there is only one,” which is the common interpretation; but it can also mean “first.” This would make the interpretation read as “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is first among the gods.” This echoes, “Who is like you, Yahweh, among the gods?” (Exodus 15:11).

The first commandment is “I am the Lord, thy God who brought thee out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” It is interesting that the text says, “I am the Lord thy God,” not “I am the Lord, God,” as if identification is necessary. The rest of the commandment reads, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Does this mean no gods should be placed above God, or no additional gods should be worshipped? Either way, the question does not seem to be whether other gods exist, but rather, which one is to be primary and worshipped by the Hebrew people.

The roots of El are to be found in the land where the Hebrews arrived or arose—Canaan. Writings discovered in the city of Ugarit (Syria) and dated around 1300–1400 BCE name El as the chief and creator god. He was the consort of the goddess Asherah, the mother of gods. The city-states of Canaan acknowledged the pantheon, but each city had their own special god (also true in Mesopotamia), usually the husband/companion of the goddess.

In later times, Hebrews came to call their god Yahweh, rather than El, and El was used as a more general term for god or God. For example Israe-el (land of God), Anan-iel and Rapha-el, (angels), etc. Canaanites believed that Baal overthrew his father El and became the consort of his mother, Asherah. There is scholarly thought that the Hebrews believed the same thing, only Yahweh (not Baal) became the highest god (the Elohim) and took Asherah as
his
queen. Artifacts from 700–800 BCE bear inscriptions that read “Yahweh and his Asherah.” The terminology becomes even more confusing. Some think Baal and Yahweh originally may have been the same god. In any case, over time, “Baal” in Akkadian came to mean simply “master” or “lord.” In
Angels at the Gate
, I chose to have Baal and Asherah as the deities worshipped in the city of Sodom, to reflect a tension between the nomadic Hebrew tribes and the Canaanites in the cities.

W
HAT
A
BOUT THE
G
ODDESS
?

Just as there were many gods in Israel's Bronze Age, the goddesses were many, or at least had many names and forms across the Middle East and across time—Asherah, Anat, Anath, Astarte, Ashtoreth, Ishtar, Isis, and Athirau-Yammi, or Yam Nahar. For thousands of years, prior to the emergence of the Hebrews, the goddess reigned in
Anatolia (Turkey) and across the Middle East. In fact, the old name for Turkey, Anatolia, means “Land of Mothers.” Even in much later times, the feminine remained an entwined and yet mysteriously distinct part of the Hebrew God, known as the
Shekinah
, the holy spirit or presence of God.

Asherah was also known as the goddess of healing. She was represented by a tree or pole. (Perhaps that is the origin of the spring Maypole rites.) Snakes, symbolizing wisdom and renewal, were often associated with her and other goddesses. Moses and Aaron carried staffs (poles) as symbols of power, and the concept of snakes and staffs—later associated with the Greek god Asclepius and the Hebrew Essene priests—became the symbol of healing, as it still is today.

After the first destruction of the Temple and the Babylonian exile, Biblical prophets (and/or Biblical authors) made great efforts to separate the Hebrew religion from the Canaanite religion, and the goddess was “demonized.” Perhaps this is why Eve, a woman, was blamed for listening to the snake who offered the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

The concept of a personal god (as opposed to a city god) probably originated in Mesopotamia—in the Sumerian kingdom, of which Ur was the primary city. According to Genesis, Abraham came from Ur. In Sumer, there were “high” gods, as well as family gods who interceded with the high gods for the people. We know this from the many cuneiform writings uncovered there. In
Angels at the Gate
, Abraham brought this concept to his tribe, but modified it so that his personal god became a personal god of his tribe, a god that did not reside in one place or in a statue, but existed wherever his people were. It was a tremendous leap in the concept of the nature of the divine.

W
HO
W
ERE THE
A
NGELS
?

Perhaps the greatest challenge in writing this story was the question—Who were the angels? Angels in the Hebrew Bible weave in and out of the narrative as God or sons of God or messengers of God. They usually appear as men. “The
Lord
appeared again to Abraham near the oak grove belonging to Mamre. One day Abraham was
sitting at the entrance to his tent during the hottest part of the day. He looked up and noticed three
men
standing nearby. My
lord
,” he said, “if it pleases you, stop here for a while.” (Genesis 18:1; italics mine.)

Some scholars believe the Hebrew phrase “sons of God” (
bēnê elîm
) is related to a phrase from a Ugarit (Canaanite) text for the sons of El and Asherah (
bn il
). Some biblical translations have used “angels” in place of “sons of God.” The Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees both refer to the “Watchers” as “sons of God.”

The English word, “angel” is used for the Hebrew word
mal'ā
h
, which simply translates as “messenger.” Sometimes the phrase
mal'ā
‘al'ā
hîm
appears or
mal'ā
YHWH
, which have been interpreted as “messenger(s) from God, an aspect of God, or God himself as messenger.”