Hist1121Judaism

Ancient Judaism as a Basis for Europe

Outline of Lecture

1. Introduction: Revelation made the Difference
2. Frame of Reference
3. Revelation and the Covenant
4. Revelation, the Covenant, and the Social Order
5. Revelation, the Covenant and the Good Life
6. Revelation, History, and Time
7. Summary

Introduction

The Judaic achievement was the proclamation of a transcendent deity who was working out his ethical purposes in history in the career of his chosen people Israel. As God demonstrated his ultimate plans through controlling historical events he revealed his character and purpose to men. The Judaic attempts to comprehend that revelation made the basic differences between their own culture and the cultures of other ancient peoples: revelation, not the rhythms of nature, became the standard for evaluating all of life. Jews, or as they were first called, Hebrews became the first ancient people to be historical-minded, to subject their ideas and values to continual searching and questioning in response to the revelation of God through history.

For one who wants to understand ancient Israel, however, the idea of revelation itself is at once a problem and the key to the Hebraic achievement. It is a problem because the Judaeo-Christian tradition is living; one cannot be dispassionate and totally objective about a living religion which has shaped one's culture. Yet the truth revelation offers cannot be objectively verified. The historian has to put his private faith, or lack of it, aside and focus instead on the consequences of the idea of revelation. Still, even seen in such natural, causal terms, the idea of revelation made the Hebrew achievement possible and makes it intelligible today. Ancient Israel which had little influence on its contemporaries has had an enduring influence on Europe because the searching and questioning stimulated by the belief in revelation gave Hebrew culture the capacity for change, adaptation, and transmission across the centuries. What follows next is only an outline, but it indicates how inseparable the ideas and values of Israel are from its history.

? I have just made the statement that one has to put his faith, or lack of it, aside when thinking about the Hebrews. Do you agree? Why, or why not?

Frame of Reference

Most of what we know about the important events in Israel's history is preserved in the Bible in narratives composed by Hebrews themselves. Scholars have disagreed about the authenticity of parts of the record and have found additional information in other sources. Still, the basis for the history of Israel is what Hebrews themselves remembered and recorded.

They were keenly aware of their nomadic beginnings under the patriarch Abraham (Deuteronomy 26:5). The Genesis account (chaps. 12-50) describing the lives of Abraham, his son, Isaac, and his grandson Jacob, or Israel is supported by extra-biblical sources which relate the Hebrews to wanderers known as Hapiru. About 2000 B.C. these peoples began to enter the Fertile Crescent which stretched from Egypt's Nile valley up the Canaan coast and down into the Mesopotamian flood plain. Speaking a Semitic tongue, they migrated in patriarchally organized families which were political as well as social and economic units, supporting themselves by their flocks and by specialized skills. Even the idea of a special exclusive relationship between a god and a particular family or tribe would seem to have been common to many of these nomadic peoples. What the Hebrews made of the covenant, as we shall see later, was quite different. (Deut. 29-30; Exodus 20; Joshua 1: 1-11).

The Egyptian experience of Abraham's descendants is not documented outside the Bible. According to the account the Israelites entered Egypt to escape famine in Canaan and spent several generations in servitude. They seemed to value nothing of their experience with Egyptian culture except the deep hatred of it. Under one of their own, a leader named Moses, they escaped from Egypt in such unusual circumstances that they ascribed the feat to their god. This deity they learned from Moses to know as YHWH (pronounced Yahweh). The Exodus was the first step in the Hebrews widening understanding of God. In this event Israel became a nation, the first nation to think of its origins as a historical act. The new people are bound together in a covenant of special ethical and ritual obligations to Yahweh. Their identity thereafter remained essentially this common commitment to God and to the memory of its beginnings.

Around 1200 B.C. the Israelites under leaders called judges began to conquer parts of Canaan and to take up many Canaanite ways, including the language which became biblical Hebrew, farming, and town life. Most serious of all the challenges to their identity was that of Canaanite religion. Canaanites had derived their gods from the Mesopotamian models discussed in the preceding chapter and from the mythopoeic impulse to regard as divine the great forces and rhythms of nature. This was a religion perfectly suited to agrarianism. Farming made men dependent on the gods for favorable conditions. But what if the gods should choose to be willful or for various reasons should fail? One did not simply hope for the best. There were rituals, including sexual intercourse and human sacrifice, to reenact the ancient and perennial events to make sure that they happened (mythopoeic thinking being that ritual and reality were essentially the same). Many Israelites succumbed to the worship of Baal, the god of rain or the life-giving deity, perhaps thinking it a good idea to hedge on Yahweh worship. Others refused to do so, insisting on total exclusive commitment to Yahweh. The tension between these two points of view about the meaning of the covenant between Israel and Yahweh lasted down to the Exile.

Another persistent conflict in the history of biblical Israel was that between the advocates of tribal government and the national monarchy. The conflict arose because of the Philistines who had invaded the coast of Canaan about the time the Hebrews were entering the eastern part. When the two collided, the Philistines badly mauled the Israelites because they were better organized and equipped with iron weapons while the Israelites had only a loose tribal alliance and lacked iron. One party in Israel thought the solution was a monarchy. Traditionalists, led by the judge Samuel, disagreed. Their objections were based on religious and political grounds, as Samuel expressed them (e. g., I Samuel 8 ). A monarch, he said, would tend to be autocratic and to interfere with the covenant between Yahweh and Israel. The traditionalists could not know it but they were laying the groundwork for later European theories of limited government and the precedence of higher ethical principles to the state. The monarchists won, although the principle that the monarchy was man-made was clearly marked in Israel's interpretation of the state. An imposing chieftain, Saul (c. 1020-1005 B.C.). was chosen by the people and anointed by Samuel as a sign of Yahweh's acquiescence in the matter (the monarchy being a human expedient instead of a direct gift or command of Yahweh). Saul had a difficult time of it with the Philistines to the front and his traditionalist critics to the rear undercutting his authority. Although he won some victories over the Philistines, he died in battle having done little to make the monarchy stable.

David (c. 1005-965), more personable and capable than Saul, rallied the Israelites and induced them to support a national monarchy. He defeated the Philistines and reduced them to their original cities on the coast. Only the Phoenician coastal cities of the old Canaanite civilization were permitted to maintain their independence--in return for technical skills and resources. Other peoples to the west and south David forced to acknowledge his kingship or to pay tribute. Shrewdly he chose as his capital Jerusalem, a city which he had recently captured. Outside the traditional tribal areas, it was independent of any authority except the king's and thus was a national symbol. David probably had in mind the goal of strengthening royal authority when he made Jerusalem the center of Yahweh worship. Politically this was ancient Israel's zenith. The major powers in Mesopotamia and Egypt had declined in the twelfth century into weak local authorities allowing Israel to fill a power vacuum in the eastern Mediterranean coastal area. It was a relatively brief period between the imperialism of the great powers but under David and his son Solomon (c.965-925) Israel enjoyed power and influence.

Solomon's memory in Israel's history is mixed. He is remembered for his magnificence; for the industrial and commercial enterprises by which his influence spread throughout the Near East; for the royal buildings he constructed for himself and for his bureaucracy; for his patronage of literature and the arts; and above all for the lavish Temple to Yahweh. But the biblical writers also noted other things. The king built many temples for foreign gods, trying to be tolerant of the religions of the many royal wives and the foreigners who came into Israel in connection with commercial enterprises. This tolerance violated the principle of the covenant. Also, Solomon's splendid style of life cost the people heavily in taxes and forced labor and gave rise to serious resentments. On Solomon's death these tensions soon divided Israel into two separate kingdoms. The northern one called Israel centered on Samaria; the southern one known as Judah maintained its capital in Jerusalem.

Political glory had passed. Neither of the kingdoms during its history had much influence on the Near East. But the Hebrews entered upon a period of spiritual and intellectual creativity even greater than the earlier mosaic one in which they had come to know Yahweh. In response to their historical misfortune Hebrews, led by the prophets, began to think of Yahweh as the God of all the universe and to propound the implications of that belief.

Israel, although larger and wealthier than its rival, was politically unstable. In 878 Omri, one of the strongest kings, did pacify the kingdom and insure the succession of his son Ahab. The Omride dynasty was exterminated in 802 by Jehu whose own line came to a violent end about 700. There were other tensions. Close relations with Phoenicia during the Omride dynasty (Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, was a Phoenician princess) and the expansionism of Jeroboam II of the Jehu dynasty were accompanied by a gradual rise in prosperity which benefited mainly the wealthy instead of the lower classes. Also there was the conflict between the believers in exclusive Yahweh worship and the followers of Baal and Astarte whose worship Jezebel brought from Phoenicia.

These conditions formed the setting for the Prophets--laymen who felt so intensely the transcendent ethical character of God that they attacked the social and religious behavior of the wealthy and powerful at the risk of their lives. Although Elijah in the ninth century was clearly in the prophetic tradition as he denounced Ahab and Jezebel for their polytheism and for murdering Naboth and stealing his land, Amos in the mid-eighth century was the first of the great writing prophets and the first to couple God's ethical requirements in the covenant with the threat of God's punishment on the whole people. Like all other prophets who pronounced upon Israel (Hosea, Micah, Isaiah), Amos proclaimed that God demanded more of his followers than correct practice of Temple worship and keeping the law of Moses. God also required social justice growing out of inner purity. Even the king, said Amos, had ethical responsibilities imposed by the covenant; so did those who were wealthy and powerful enough to take advantage of their poorer countrymen. All were bound together in the exclusive relationship with God--what each did to the other affected the relationship with God. Amos promised that other peoples would suffer God's judgment too, but for Israelites the punishment would be greater because they alone had known what God expected and had deliberately disobeyed him.

No one heeded Amos' pronouncements, but his insights into the fate of Israel were keener than those of his hearers. In 722 the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom and deported many of the people. In Amos the prophetic movement had produced the essence of the concept that God was transcendent and universally powerful; in his writings were explored the personal and social implications of that concept, as well as some of the historical implications. During the career of Judah later prophets refined what Amos had begun.

Judah survived Israel by a century and a half. The conditions of Judah's history, however, were not unlike those which had stirred the prophets to condemn Israel. Although economically and politically weaker than Israel, Judah too had periods of expansion and prosperity in the early ninth century under Asa and Jehoshaphat and in the early eighth century under Uzziah. Social tensions ensued as in Israel. Towards the end of the eighth century, after Israel had fallen, Judah also was invaded by Assyria. For much of the seventh century its kings paid tribute to Assyria and championed the worship of the fertility gods, Baal and Astarte, and the Assyrian god of war, Assur. Late in the century Josiah used his royal power to eliminate the alien religions and undertook the rejuvenation and reformation of Temple worship. He unwisely tried to restore Judah's independence and to act as a power in the struggles following Assyria's destruction in 612. This policy led to Josiah's own death and eventually to disaster for Judah. In 586 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, carried off most of Judah's elite. This Babylonian Exile, as biblical writers recorded it, lasted over forty years until the Persians overthrew Babylon in 539 and created a new subordinate province in Palestine for the exiles who wanted to return. Thereafter Judah was ruled, while the Persian Empire stood, by a Persian administrator and by the High Priest of the rebuilt Temple (c. 516 B.C.) and the priesthood. The Torah or Mosaic Law, revised and edited, became the basis for the organization of daily life.

Among all the ancient deported peoples of the Near East only the Jews (as they are called after the Exile) maintained their identity. They did so mainly because of the prophets who tried to prepare them for disaster and then gave them hope when it happened. Isaiah and Micah, who were younger contemporaries of Amos, took up his themes late in the eighth century. Both condemned Israel before it fell to the Assyrians. They made the same indictment of Judah and predicted its destruction. Isaiah, the more prolific of the two, dwelt at great length on the emptiness of worship without pure motives and justice:

Even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
Your hands are full of blood
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
cease to do evil,
learn to do good:
seek justice,
correct oppression;
defend the fatherless
plead for the widow.
(Isaiah 1:15-17)

After the Babylonian conquest the prophets focused on the future restoration and exhorted the people to prepare themselves for it, for a new beginning with God, and a new purpose as a people. Perhaps the greatest of these prophets was anonymous, known only as the Second Isaiah since his writings were added on to the older work of Isaiah (chapters 40-66). Writing just before the fall of Babylon in 539, the Second Isaiah brought consolation from God and hope (chap. 40:1-2). Repeatedly the prophet assured his readers that the God who had punished would also restore his people and would use them as a revelation of himself.

And I will make an everlasting
covenant with them.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
All who see them shall acknowledge
them,
that they are a people whom the
Lord has blessed.
(Isaiah 61:8-9)

What was the basis for this startling message? God had willed it and directed history to bring it about, the Second Isaiah declared. As often as he affirmed the promise of God, he also declared, more emphatically than any other prophet, that God was the absolute master of creation.

The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the
earth.
He does not faint or grow weary
his understanding is unsearchable.
(Isaiah 40:28)

On this high plateau the great prophetic voices in Judaism ended. The primary force in Judaism after the Exile was the Law, especially in maintaining Jewish distinctiveness and preventing assimilation into the cultures of the great empires of the ancient world. However, even the ethical and social standards of Jewish law were molded by the prophetic movement which was Judaism's most creative inspiration.

Revelation and the Covenant

Even a sketch of ancient Israel's history clearly demonstrates that Hebrews regarded their deity as qualitatively different from other gods. Whether as a tribal deity or the ruler of the universe, God was not a nature god. He was essentially other than nature or man--perfect and holy. All else was inferior. At the same time he was not abstract, remote, and indifferent but a personality of ethical perfection who was prompted to intervene in the human and natural realm. As God chose to intervene he made himself and his purpose for mankind known. He did not stand forth completely revealed, however, since man would have to be divine himself to understand God fully. God was always more than any of his manifestations so that one who truly sought to know him had to remain open to his future disclosures instead of focusing on the past ones.

?
1. How does someone first conceive of a God who is perfect and holy? Was Moses or whoever first thought of God in those terms a spiritual and intellectual genius? What accounts for the idea of revelation? Environment again?
2. Am I wrong-headed to ask the question?
3. Do you agree with my thesis that revelation made the difference in shaping Hebrew or Judaic culture?

The Hebrew attitude towards revelation as the standard meant something vastly different from the mythopoeic revelation of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods. God as an ethical personality showed himself primarily in a program of ethical behavior, not in nature. (The British writer, G.K. Chesterton, put it inimitably: ". . . Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.") Revelation was open and historical, not private and mystical. It was not to be interpreted by an elite priesthood or royal figure who would pass it on to the masses of people. It was for all because all the people had to understand something of God's purpose for mankind and join in it.

Among all the ancient Near Eastern peoples only the Hebrews rejected all forms of idolatry, believing they had been commanded by God not to make idols. (This helps explain why Hebrews produced no distinctive art.) Even so, how does one make an image of something which has no earthly or human counterpart? Any image diminishes and sullies God; it also draws men away from him. When the author of Psalm 19:1 declared "the heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork," he was saying (unlike the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Canaanite poets) that God remained beyond and behind all that pointed to him. God was God; his works were his works, showing his greatness and divinity. But they were not divine and they were not to be worshiped. It was even difficult to name God. In its original meaning, a name was an essential part of a person; it stood for him. If one knew and used the name he had power over the person. But God was transcendent and so unnamable. From the Mosaic period until the Jewish scholars known as the Masoretes (sixth to ninth centuries A.D.) officially substituted names meaning Lord or God, the divine name was simply four consonants YHWH pronounced Yahweh which signified God's presence and activity in history.

Inexplicably, however, God who remained transcendent, unrestricted by anyone or anything else, put limits on himself by choosing the children of Israel and making a covenant with them. We can be reasonably certain that the earliest understanding of this thought was not what the prophets later made of it. From the beginning, however, it seemed clear that God expected a great deal. Even the personal covenants which the patriarchs made required exclusive worship (See Abraham's covenant with God in Genesis 15). God's demands in that regard were more explicit in the national covenant of Moses' time (Exodus 20:3-5). Moses vividly demonstrated the obligations of this covenant during the Exodus (described in (Exodus 24: 1 - 8), when he "took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, 'All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.' Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, 'See the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.'" What was this "book of the covenant?” We do not know. But it undoubtedly included the Ten Commandments and perhaps the basic rituals prescribing the duties and worship which Israelites were to follow. (For a view of Mount Sinai, the traditional place for the giving of the Ten Commandments, see this site). Other laws later developed under the influence of Canaanite and Mesopotamian law codes. The core, however, was distinctively Hebrew.

?
1. It doesn't make sense that a God who was transcendent would limit Himself, does it? Why did Hebrews believe this?
2. "Nature is not our mother, but our sister." Think about the implications of that. Created, like everything else, by God, but not a model for human conduct.

3. In a press release dated April 6, 2007, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House said “In this Holy Week, we are reminded of these words in the Old Testament: ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’ We must move quickly to honor God’s creation by reducing greenhouse gas pollution in the United States and around the world.” Where in the Old Testament did Mrs. Pelosi find this passage? (If you can find the passage, you get 100 bonus points.) Is there anything about preserving the environment in the Bible?

The core of Israel's law code was the commandment to worship God unreservedly (Deuteronomy 6: 4-15. Also see Isaiah 45: 5.). A tradition in Hebrew culture always insisted that when Israelites conquered Canaan and settled down they could not adopt the gods of these people. God would not permit it; he would punish his people and perhaps reject them. When the monarchists wanted to put a king over Israel, the anti-monarchists objected that a king would tend to threaten the covenant by coming between God and the people. And the prophets appealed to the covenant as the basis for their pronouncements.

In truth, the prophets surely made more of the covenant than it had been understood to be in the beginning. But the idea was capable of being given new and deeper meaning. The prophets called for social justice and high ethical conduct which were implied, even if not spelled out, in the patriarchal and Mosaic covenants. As God was righteousness, purity, and love, so must his chosen people be also. To the prophets the covenant meant not just following the rules, not just proper behavior in an outward manner, but inner and genuine piety. Hebrews had to worship God in the Temple according to the proper rituals and mean it in their hearts and practice what they believed in everyday life. They could not, therefore, keep the covenant and at the same time mistreat each other. All Israelites were bound together with responsibilities to each other as well as to God. Micah 6:8 summed it up perfectly:

He has showed you, O man, what is
good;
and what does the LORD require
of you
but to do justice, and to love
kindness,
and to walk humbly with your
God?

Micah was almost quoting an earlier work, Deuteronomy 10: 12-22, which summed up the essence of the Law in words so very similar. Again, the Covenant was not a set of laws, but a way of life, for Micah and, indeed, for all the prophets.

The implications of revelation and the covenant reached into every area of Hebrew life: into the shaping of social institutions; into thinking about the "good life" for the individual; and into Israel's most serious thought about the meaning of time and history.

Revelation, the Covenant, and the Social Order

Although the mythopoeic approach stressed the divine and ideal nature of the social order (a view resulting in the acceptance of a rigid and unchanging theocratic absolutism), Hebrews developed basically an “instrumental theory” of the social order. They came to this understanding as they pondered the meaning of revelation and the covenant and Israel's history, although they did not go on to develop the theory systematically. It was clear to the biblical writers that the social order was not divine or ideal. Only God was holy and perfect. And thus, social institutions, political procedures and leaders were “instruments” or means to a higher end: God's purpose and the Hebrews' participation in it. God should rule Israel and Israel should obey. If institutions and leaders served that end they fulfilled their proper functions; if not, they were hindering God's purpose and stood under his judgment. The hallmark of society should be justice because God himself was righteous and expected the same of his chosen people. And so men themselves had a major responsibility for the welfare of society. Ultimately the social order rested upon God (I Samuel 2:2-8), but individuals as well as leaders had higher ethical obligations which, if met, produced a just society and if not, led to disorder and disaster.

?
The instrumental theory of the state has a long and significant history for us. What difference does it make whether the state is an end, or the ruler is an end, rather than a means to an end? Think about it. Can you resist something that is an end? What can you do except obey?

Centuries after the nomadic origins of the Hebrews, the prophets and priestly leaders of Yahweh worship looked back upon the tribal society before the monarchy as the nearest approximation to an ideal society. Perhaps it was because this was the social setting for the first revelation of God and thus seemed more nearly ideal. Another reason is that these later thinkers believed that there existed then a simple equality and equity in social relations and a sense of community and mutual loyalty. In such conditions Hebrews were not so likely to be unfaithful to the covenant. God ruled Israel directly without the interference of any ruler or institution.

The important principles of earliest tribal unity were patriarchal authority and the personal covenant between the patriarch and God. In this earliest period the patriarch's large family of several generations of descendants looked to him as the final authority within customary limits. The succession to his authority went to the eldest son or eldest male within the family. The family was also an economic unit in that it lived off its herds and the skill of its members and owned communally any land on which it settled or within which it roamed.

Moses transformed the Israelites from Egyptian captives with memories of their patriarchal ancestors into a new nation centered on the worship of Yahweh and loosely bound together by the law. Still, Moses always stressed the need for unity because of a higher end. The law and the simple confederation of tribes around the law were not ends in themselves; they were instruments. Only by unifying could Israel conquer Canaan and keep the covenant with Yahweh. The law or Torah which formalized the covenant gave Israelites day to day guidance in organizing social life and was the basis on which the state stood. While tradition assigns all the laws of the first five books to Moses, modern scholarship generally has been able to agree only that the core is from the mosaic period. Parts show the influence of other peoples' law codes, particularly those dealing with civil matters. But the central portion, the ritual laws including the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), is clearly Israelite.

The complexities of settled life in Canaan, however, were more than the simple tribal government and legal system could cope with. Private property ownership began to replace communal rights; class distinctions arose in place of simple equality as Hebrews turned to farming, industry, crafts and to a village and town-centered life. To some Israelites the solution seemed to demand a central authority, monarchy. A stronger, more immediate motive for monarchy was the Philistine threat which also appeared to require that Israel submit to a unifying authority. There was opposition to this view, however, and it survived to influence prophets and priests later.

Despite Samuel's warnings, Israelites elected Saul king. David was also popularly chosen. But under David and Solomon the monarchy shaped Hebrew society in such a way as to destroy many of the remaining tribal ways. Royal bureaucracy replaced the traditional councils of elders in administering justice and in taking care of local administration. David and Solomon introduced taxation and forced labor to construct buildings and fortifications. Solomon himself managed the important commercial and industrial enterprises. Significantly, Solomon and his successors, both the northern and southern dynasties, did not rest their claims to the throne on popular election. Israelite kingship thus moved steadily towards the model of Near Eastern despotism, perhaps even theocratic absolutism considering that Solomon centralized Yahweh worship in Jerusalem in the Temple and presided over it.

Whether Hebrew kingship would have finally become totally absolutist, with the king responsible only to God, and himself the final judge of God's wishes, is a moot question. It might have happened in time. But Israelites would have had to forget the historical origins of kingship and especially the principle of democratic selection. And they would have had to accept a new understanding of the covenant. More important, the prophets and priestly leaders would have to have been silenced.

From the beginning of the monarchy opposition to its ways existed. Samuel not only warned Israelites that kings tended to become tyrants, but he worried and hectored Saul. Many other monarchs knew what it meant to rule with opposition. David was denounced to his face by Nathan for adultery and murder; Solomon faced secessionist attempts because of his heavy handed rule. No other Near Eastern monarchs had that experience since kingship elsewhere was a gift of the gods and the kings themselves were either divine or the confidants and intermediaries of the gods. To the prophets and the priests who had a hand in compiling and editing the historical accounts in the Old Testament kingship was an obligation to service. The king existed to serve those he ruled, not to be served. He was not above the law, whether man-made or divine law.

Deuteronomy 17: 14-20 describes the limitations on the king’s authority:

When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,” be sure to appoint over you the king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

2 Samuel 5: 1-3 also needs mentioning here because these passages illustrate that the king’s elevation as king occurred only after he agreed to a covenant with his people. Notice the sequence:

All the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, "We are your own flesh and blood. In the past, while Saul was king over us, you were the one who led Israel on their military campaigns. And the LORD said to you, 'You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler.' "

When all the elders of Israel had come to King David at Hebron, the king made a compact with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel.

Those rulers with bad names were not those who were least successful politically and militarily, but those who were unjust and unrighteous, who acted as though they were responsible only to themselves. The king was God's shepherd; the flock, Israel, belonged to God, not to the king. The responsibilities of the wealthy and powerful were similar. Wealth and status were not to be used oppressively; those who possessed them had an obligation to care for their poorer brethren. Vividly picturing this principle is the Year of Jubilee described in Leviticus 25: "Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan." Think about it. Restoring property, land and human as well. Rights of redemption to land lost in bad times. If carried out as described, Jubilee was an economic and social leveling unknown anywhere else in the ancient world.

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1. How important is the tradition that even the king is subject to the law and to ethical and moral standards? What modern legal principle can be traced back to that tradition?
2. Lord Acton said in the 19th century "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Would the Old Testament writers agree?

3. Doing good or doing well: which is the responsibility of those holding power?
4. The Old Testament prophets seemed to have a bias against the kings and wealthy, didn't they? Why? Do you agree that those with power over others have special responsibilities with that power?
5. Leviticus 25:10 contains the words on the American Liberty Bell: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants." Political freedom is part of the Judaic heritage too, isn't it?

After the destruction of the kingdoms the major ruling force which remained in Jewish life was the Torah. The whole people were the custodians of the law, as well as the other writings which made up the Old Testament. The sacred writings belonged not to priests, or later rabbis, but to the whole people. In everyday matters the Jewish communities which formed again in Judah and elsewhere in the ancient world held on to the earliest tradition that local popular assemblies and councils of elders would decide on community issues. In this fashion even dispersed Jewish colonies adapted and survived, keeping alive Judaism to the present day.

Revelation, the Covenant, and the Good Life

As different as the Hebrews' thinking about the social order was from the ancient Near Eastern pattern, their conclusions about human nature and the good life were perhaps even more radical. Their keen sense of what was divine and what was not led them sharply to define man as a human being; their conviction that God was ethical helped form the view that man was an individual with unique, personal obligations to God. In Hebrew culture man stood only a little lower than God himself, although he always fell short of God's expectations and had to rely on God's love and forgiveness. And he played a role of cosmic significance as an aide and instrument in God's final purpose.

Hebrews held to the idea of man's basic goodness. In the Mesopotamian creation myths man came last, almost as an afterthought, to relieve the gods of all work. These were hardly the beginnings of a dignified important creature. However, the Hebrew creation accounts told of God's making man in His own image, shaping him with His own hands, breathing into him the breath of life, and finally pronouncing pleasure with this last and finest creature. Man partook of even the dignity of God as the master of all other created things. Far from being a slave, he had been set over creation to subdue and enjoy it as an exalted representative of God. It was astonishing. Why, asked the psalmist, should God bother about man? "Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor?" (Psalms 8:5). The Hebrews were mindful, however, that man received all his dignity and worth from God and did not possess them apart from his creator (Psalms 139). And thus the paradox in Hebrew thought about human nature: although little less than God, man is still not God and therefore sinful. God transcends all else and alone is holy. Compared to Him, the Second Isaiah said, all men are worthless (Isaiah 64:6).

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1. How can man be both little lower than God and yet sinful? Basically good, yet evil?

2. What do you make of the following three passages about God's knowledge of the individual: Jeremiah 1:5: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;" and Psalm 139:16: "You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed." Isaiah 49: 1: “The Lord called me before my birth; from within the womb he called me by name.”

The Creation accounts leave no doubt that sin did not come from any evil quality of the physical or material world. All creation was good since God had made it. So man was not a dual personality--a heavenly spirit trapped in an evil, fleshly body and sinning because flesh overcame the spirit. He was a single unified personality which made the problem of sin more difficult to explain than would have a theory of dual elements striving within man. Characteristically, Hebrew thinkers continued to be vexed by the origin and root of sin. Their conclusion in general was that the source lay in the freedom of man to choose goals. To be sure, God was ultimately the master of history and intervened to bring about his goals. But man was no robot. He was free within the larger limitations of God's intentions. Able to know good and evil, man was responsible for his own actions and could choose ends even though he could not reach them.

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Do you agree with the statement that it is man's freedom to choose that makes him sinful?

A rich and unique tradition of biography in Hebrew writing grew out of this view of man. Since sin sprang from human motivation and the whole of man's personality, Old Testament writers probed beyond the simpler public images of the major figures in Israel's history. What they recorded about the official or public acts of these men and women is remarkable in its own way, considering the absence of such reporting among other ancient Near Eastern peoples. Even more important is that Hebrew heroes have inner dimensions. Abraham, Moses, Saul, Samuel, David, even the wicked Jezebel--all stand out sharply as human figures. Not even Greek writers had a clearer view of man as man.

Because they believed man to be basically good (albeit a sinner), Hebrews took delight in the good things of life. The “good life” was preeminently an ethical and religious life, but that did not preclude the enjoyment of all that God had made for man's use and pleasure. Family, food, possessions, property: all these were prized, especially marriage and many children. God had commanded man to be fruitful and multiply. Celibacy, far from being the spiritual ideal it later became in early Christianity, violated God's will according to ancient Hebrews. Continuing the family line assumed added importance because Hebrews conceived of the good life in earthly, this-worldly terms. Little thought apparently was given to the individual's existence beyond this life until just before the Christian era.

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1. Many biblical scholars believe that one finds the first "sense of the self" in King David, in the Psalms. David uses "I" freely in his poetry, naturally, as a modern would. Significance?
2. Are you surprised that Hebrews did not think about an afterlife until late in their history?
3. Can one lead a moral life without believing in an afterlife?

In the highest sense, however, the good life meant meeting one's individual and corporate ethical responsibilities to God and to other men. It meant making a reality of Micah 6:8--doing justice, showing love and obeying God. Micah's classic summary came late in the history of Judaism, but it only expanded the spirit of the earlier Mosaic rituals and laws. Even the prophets assumed that formal worship and the detailed regulations for daily living had to be observed, but they stressed inner purity more, as a prerequisite to rituals and laws. If one was not sincere, then following the rituals and laws did not mean anything. This was the individual responsibility of each Hebrew.

Corporate ethical responsibilities grew out of individual ones. The well-being and destiny of society were inseparable from those of the individual and vice versa. Hebrews, as we have seen earlier, had to create and maintain a just society as the outward sign of the covenant between themselves and God. The good life, moreover, had cosmic dimensions since God had chosen the Hebrews for a special blessing and for the purpose of helping to bring all creation into harmony with God.

Under the terms of the covenant Hebrews had the terrifying responsibility of partnership with God and of conducting themselves so as to match the transcendent ethics of God himself (Leviticus 11:44-45). How could they do these things? Between God's requirements and man's own frailties and sins was an infinite gap. They knew well man's limitations. Yet they believed that God expected love, mercy and obedience, and consequently they struggled under a heavy psychological burden unlike their contemporaries in the ancient Near East. They could not have carried it if they had not had the reassurance of God's mercy and love. This did not relieve them of their obligation to act justly, show love and obey God; but it did give them hope and strength to go on. The Hebraic conception of the good life for man went against all the principles commonly accepted in the ancient Near East: polytheism, fertility rites, human sacrifice and the infallibility of kings and priests. For the first time men chose unreachable ideals and persisted in trying to reach them nonetheless. In the process they came to a new understanding of human life as a constant moral struggle and to a deeper ethical awareness than the ancient Near East would see again until Christianity.

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1. Think about the last three sentences in the paragraph above. Do you agree with them? Why? Why not?

Revelation, History and Time

Theories of history and time arose from the efforts of Hebrews to understand revelation and the covenant. For the Egyptians and Mesopotamian peoples single happenings, changes, the acts of individual rulers and humans had no permanent meaning. They thought only the constant and repetitious were worthy of attention. Nothing of fundamental importance had changed since creation, the ideal and perfect beginning. Divine nature did not change except in recurring patterns. So mythopoeic man regarded time as a cyclical process--an eternal return to the past. The Israelites, however, were the first to credit any basic importance to specific events and to human actions, to place any value on trying to understand change and to think of time as a series of unique occurrences leading somewhere. They were the first to think of a future that would be different from the present and to hope for it. From these earliest theories Europe has derived much of its own understanding of the importance of human events and “linear” time with its implication of progress.

History and time began with the creation and reached to a finite end, the triumph of God's moral purpose. The idea of a beginning did not make the Hebrew scheme any different from the mythopoeic one. But the concept of an end did. This implied that what happened from the beginning to the end would not be repetitious, but unique and, therefore, individually important events. Specific peoples would act in these events and a special people, Israel, would play a central role. Time came into being as the interval between beginning and end and the stage on which God with his chosen people acted. History was the drama itself. God elevated and assigned value to time and history by having chosen them as the sphere in which to reveal himself. Henceforth one who wanted to understand God would have to try to discern him in the changes of the world and mark the forward movement of unrepeatable events. It became important to remember how specific unique things fit into God's universal scheme as promised in the covenant. In other words it became imperative to write history and learn from it. And Hebrews did. As time passed they believed ever more confidently in the final outcome and felt that they understood more clearly God's own nature. To the writers it seemed evident that God demanded and expected of His people ethical living which would be an example to all other peoples.

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We are sitting in this class doing history because of the Hebrews. Agree?

Israel's whole national life was historically oriented. Indeed, the existence of Israel as a nation began with the most important historical event, the Exodus. In the Passover Israelites commemorated the event annually. However, the Passover was a reminder, not a recreation of that experience. (For a link to a site about the Passover, click here.) Hebrews valued the Exodus not because it was ideal and perfect but because it was the first of the continuing acts God had promised in the covenant and it pointed towards His goal. They also remembered the historical circumstances of the giving of the law of Moses, the conquest of Canaan, and the creation of the monarchy. As historians the Hebrew writers do not satisfy modern historians who want to know more about economic and social forces and much else which did not seem to matter to those earlier writers. Hebrews were not discriminating enough in their use of sources and in separating the supernatural from the natural elements to meet modern historians' standards. In the analysis of individual historical characters, however, there is not much even the most exacting modern historian could add. And overall the Hebrew achievement is amazing, considering that no other ancient people did as well.

If any one phrase characterizes the Hebrew philosophy of history it is a belief in progress. They clung unshakably to the belief that God would eventually triumph. What would be the nature of his victory? Isaiah (the Second Isaiah) characterized it as a glorious new creation (chapter 65). "I am about to create new heavens and a new earth...I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight." Gone would be disease and early death; God's people would enjoy all the good things of life in abundance and security. And they would live in perfect harmony with God: "Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear." And then at the end of the chapter, the timeless and classic promise of God quoted afterwards by all those who have envisioned a future heaven on earth: "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust!" On the way to this perfect day, individuals and whole peoples might resist God. Many would not even be aware of the roles they played in God's acts. God's will would even be temporarily thwarted. As He acted God did not arrange things so that the path from creation to His goal was a straight one. To watch history was to follow a twisting course. Men had free wills to choose their own goals. But the movement was a forward one, each event leading closer to that final purpose. The future would see the culmination of all this activity. Hebrews believed in the myth of the future as Christians later and eventually Europeans were to believe: the future will be better for man than the present which itself is better than the past. Man had little to do with this, Hebrews thought, although they believed themselves to be participants with God. It was rather by God's doing that history was a story of Progress.

A Graphic View of Linear History and Time

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Do you believe the future is going to be better than the present or past? Why? Why not?

Summary

Fundamental elements of ancient Hebrew culture were prominent later among the values, beliefs, ideas and norms of Europe. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern peoples, Hebrews believed that one discovered fundamental truths by remembering and trying to understand historical events. God revealed Himself in them. They pointed to the future as the culmination of God's purpose and the final revelation of His nature. Hebrews affirmed the same deity Europeans would worship --a transcendent God who was yet a personality of ethical perfection and holiness. The natural world lost much of the fearsomeness and awesomeness it had held for mythopoeic man. It was not divine, but a creation of God to be subdued and used by man. Its order and purpose, as they were apparent to Hebrews, came from God the creator and master, not from any impersonal natural law. Thus the standard by which social institutions were to be measured was not nature but God who stood behind the natural world. Social injustice and political tyranny offended God. Hebrew culture did not sanction revolt against established authority. But on the other hand it did not idealize the status quo and conformity to existing institutions. The social structure, rather, was a means to the end of God's sovereignty over Israel. The European reform tradition and the instrumental theory of the state rest on these early social principles. Finally, Hebrews asserted the dignity and worth of man. If God had chosen man as His instrument to help achieve His purpose and made high demands on him, this meant that man was indeed little lower than God Himself. In the past there has been a tendency to minimize and obscure Hebrew culture's contributions to Europe by saying that these passed on through Christianity. Today these achievements are being recognized as distinctive as those of Greek culture to which we now turn.

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1. Am I making too much of the Hebrew achievement?
2. I have had students say that I talk too much about religion in this course. Are they right? Or is this necessary if you are to understand the roots of your culture?

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