Avodah Zarah 041

1:
It is well-known that most of the pagan deities were imagined as residing on mountain tops. Probably the most familiar example is the idea that the deities of the Greeks resided on the summit of Mount Olympus, where Zeus and his family and attendant deities held court. But this idea was true of most other pagan religions too. The Canaanites, for example, believed that their chief deity El (who was afterwards superceded by Ba'al) held court on Mount Tzafon, 'somewhere in the north'. When the prophet Isaiah pours out his sarcasm on the Canaanite god he mocks:

And when the psalmist wants to exalt the city of Jerusalem as the abode of God he offers a simile borrowed from Canaanite myth:

And the Assyrians and Babylonians, who lived in a very flat land, built ziggurats for their deities, to represent mountains.

2:
The prophet Jeremiah angrily attests to the hold that such worship had on the Israelite people too. In a scathing attack on his people he hurls his accusations:

This is a reference to the Canaanite goddess Astarte (Assyro-Babylonian Ishtar (Esther), Greek Aphrodite). Among the Canaanites (and their Israelite imitators) her place of worship was beside a wooden post which was, more often than not, set up beneath a verdant tree. (It is possible that the spreading branches of the tree are understood to represent the pudenda of the goddess or her female worshippers. The prophet says:

3:
The mention of children in the above verse is not gratuitous, for the worship of this godess seems to have been a family affair:

And even after the catastrophe had hit the people, Jerusalem captured, the temple destroyed and the elite of the people exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar the people who survived in Judah remonstrate with Jeremiah:

4:
The views of three sages are presented in our present mishnah: Tanna Kamma, Rabbi Yosé ha-Gelili and Rabbi Akiva. The teaching of Rabbi Akiva is a riposte to what Rabbi Yosé ha-Gelili has said.

5:
Tanna Kamma bases his teaching on a verse in the book of Deuteronomy [7:25].

Non-Jews worship their gods on mountains and hills. A Jew is not forbidden to derive material benefit from those mountains and hills because they are innocuous in themselves and a Jew may till the land and reap the fruits of the earth. What is forbidden to a Jew is to derive material benefit from the precious metals that adorn the posts and images.

6:
However, in the Gemara [AZ 45a] the sages seem to have completely misunderstood the words ofTanna Kamma and understand the word 'them' (in the phrase 'silver and gold on them') as referring to the hills themselves! Apparently they thought that in days of yore the pagans would cover their holy mountains with precious metals. Firstly the Amora of Eretz-Israel, Resh Lakish, opines that the difference betweenTanna Kamma and Rabbi Yosé ha-Gelili is as follows:

The Babylonian Amora, Rav Sheshet, tries to make better sense of the passage [AZ 45b]:

That this is not the substance of a difference of opinion between the two sages will soon become apparent.

To be continued.