In the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh’s sanctuary is permeated by luxurious and exotic aromas. The sanctuary and its priests are scented with the “sacred anointing-oil” (Exodus 30:22-33) and the anteroom of the sanctuary is enveloped in smoke from the incense offerings (Exodus 30:7-9). Both the incense and the anointing-oil mark out Yahweh’s cult place as a fragrant sphere and in this way the Hebrew Bible’s description of Yahweh’s sanctuary corresponds with other Ancient Near Eastern and ancient Greek texts, where both the deities and their temples are said to emanate a lovely smell.
There are particularly two spheres in Hebrew Bible texts, where luxurious scents and exotic aromas are described in detail; one is in descriptions of the cult as mentioned above and the other is in texts that focus on sexual attraction and seduction, such as the Song of Songs and the Book of Esther. These texts make it clear that enticing scents and fragrances are an important component in the construction of sex appeal in the Hebrew Bible.
In Hebrew Bible scholarship, these two scent-related spheres, the cultic and the erotic, are consistently treated separately, either as a means of categorization or because these two spheres are seen as incompatible. However, the Hebrew Bible’s non-cultic use of scents may in fact inform our understanding of Yahweh as a fragrant god.
This paper argues that the luxurious scents in the Hebrew Bible’s olfactory cultic theology overlap not only with the erotic sphere but also to a very large extent with the sphere of masculinity and kingship and that Yahweh’s fragrant cult corresponds with Yahweh’s supreme majesty. Therefore we should understand the scented symbolism of the Hebrew Bible’s description of cult as expressing something about Yahweh as the highest king and alpha-male as well as expressing divine presence and divine ontology.
The paper is held by Professor Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo.