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Those lines are strange. The rest of the words make more sense but some of them are a little odd, too, if you think about them. What kinds of swords loose lightning? How long does one store grapes before trampling them?

Google didn't find any explanation of the lyrics for me, other than a couple of sources quoting Howe's account of how they came to her. Somebody suggested that she should try to compose some better words to the tune of "John Brown's Body", and the next morning they just came to her as she was waking. The earliest recorded version had "whiteness of the lilies" instead of beauty but Howe revised this before publication.

I guess those lines just made sense to Howe at the time, half asleep, and I reckon that by verse five of that song most people are just going with it.

huckelberry wrote:fetchface. I was not trying to contradict the picture of a polytheistic past developing in stages to a monotheist view. On the other hand if one reviews the important festivals and sacrifices which compose the ancient bedrock of the belief I think you will find they are agricultural not war celebrations.

Are they? Which ones are you referring to?

huckelberry wrote:fetchface. I was not trying to contradict the picture of a polytheistic past developing in stages to a monotheist view. On the other hand if one reviews the important festivals and sacrifices which compose the ancient bedrock of the belief I think you will find they are agricultural not war celebrations.

To a hunter/gatherer/nomadic culture, is there a difference when the agriculture-based culture moves into the neighborhood?

Agriculture brings a lot of things with it that change the dynamics between interacting cultures. Agriculture requires land, it leads to population expansions that put pressures on adjacent groups to move away or defend themselves, and it upends the local ecology's natural dynamics. War-culture and agriculture tend to go hand-in-hand historically. We moderns tend to look on agriculture as genteel and peaceful because the farmers are considered of a different class than the warrior classes. We forget that this class-structure is part of the package compared to the hunter/gatherer cultures it supplants where the warriors/hunters are providers first rather than warriors first.

fetchface wrote:

huckelberry wrote:fetchface. I was not trying to contradict the picture of a polytheistic past developing in stages to a monotheist view. On the other hand if one reviews the important festivals and sacrifices which compose the ancient bedrock of the belief I think you will find they are agricultural not war celebrations.

Are they? Which ones are you referring to?

https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passage ... eronomy-16
fetchface,
Because we do not have anything describing the origins of festivals and sacrifices of early Israelites there is always a danger of reading some assumption into them. I have read a few observations that because such events are culturally conservative and are not described as orginating they are likely to be to a significant degree continuation (with possible change) from Canaanite past.

This linked article , one of the first Google found which wasn't a projection of Jesus onto the sacrifices, points out changes at time of Josiah. There are a number of things about Josiah reform which suggest an increased emphasis on the God of War dimension of how they saw God. That would hardly mean there was not always a combination of war and nurturing protector (rain, harvests keeping enemies at bay protector of the widows and defenseless etc)

I am not sure which material you may be thinking of as the oldest. Praise to God who threw the horse and rider into the sea, Song of Moses is the oldest or one of the oldest pieces. It is role of protector .