The Urantia Book
PAPER 96
YAHWEH -- GOD OF THE HEBREWS
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
96:0.1 IN CONCEIVING of Deity, man first
includes all gods, then subordinates all foreign gods to his
tribal deity, and finally excludes all but the one God of final
and supreme value. The Jews synthesized all gods into their more
sublime concept of the Lord God of Israel. The Hindus likewise
combined their multifarious deities into the "one spirituality
of the gods" portrayed in the Rig-Veda, while the Mesopotamians
reduced their gods to the more centralized concept of
Bel-Marduk. These ideas of monotheism matured all over the world
not long after the appearance of Machiventa Melchizedek at Salem
in Palestine. But the Melchizedek concept of Deity was unlike
that of the evolutionary philosophy of inclusion, subordination,
and exclusion; it was based exclusively on creative power
and very soon influenced the highest deity concepts of
Mesopotamia, India, and Egypt.
96:0.2 The Salem religion was revered as a
tradition by the Kenites and several other Canaanite tribes. And
this was one of the purposes of Melchizedek's incarnation: That
a religion of one God should be so fostered as to prepare the
way for the earth bestowal of a Son of that one God. Michael
could hardly come to Urantia until there existed a people
believing in the Universal Father among whom he could appear.
96:0.3 The Salem religion persisted among the
Kenites in Palestine as their creed, and this religion as it was
later adopted by the Hebrews was influenced, first, by Egyptian
moral teachings; later, by Babylonian theologic thought; and
lastly, by Iranian conceptions of good and evil. Factually the
Hebrew religion is predicated upon the covenant between Abraham
and Machiventa Melchizedek, evolutionally it is the outgrowth of
many unique situational circumstances, but culturally it has
borrowed freely from the religion, morality, and philosophy of
the entire Levant. It is through the Hebrew religion that much
of the morality and religious thought of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and
Iran was transmitted to the Occidental peoples.
1. DEITY CONCEPTS AMONG THE SEMITES
96:1.1 The early Semites regarded everything
as being indwelt by a spirit. There were spirits of the animal
and vegetable worlds; annual spirits, the lord of progeny;
spirits of fire, water, and air; a veritable pantheon of spirits
to be feared and worshiped. And the teaching of Melchizedek
regarding a Universal Creator never fully destroyed the belief
in these subordinate spirits or nature gods.
96:1.2 The progress of the Hebrews from
polytheism through henotheism to monotheism was not an unbroken
and continuous conceptual development. They experienced many
retrogressions in the evolution of their Deity concepts, while
during any one epoch there existed varying ideas of God among
different groups of Semite believers. From time to time numerous
terms were applied to their concepts of God, and in order to
prevent confusion these various Deity titles will be defined as
they pertain to the evolution of Jewish theology:
96:1.3 1. Yahweh was the god of the
southern Palestinian tribes, who associated this concept of
deity with Mount Horeb, the Sinai volcano. Yahweh was merely one
of the hundreds and thousands of nature gods which held the
attention and claimed the worship of the Semitic tribes and
peoples.
96:1.4 2. El Elyon. For centuries after
Melchizedek's sojourn at Salem his doctrine of Deity persisted
in various versions but was generally connoted by the term El
Elyon, the Most High God of heaven. Many Semites, including the
immediate descendants of Abraham, at various times worshiped
both Yahweh and El Elyon.
96:1.5 3. El Shaddai. It is difficult
to explain what El Shaddai stood for. This idea of God was a
composite derived from the teachings of Amenemope's Book of
Wisdom modified by Ikhnaton's doctrine of Aton and further
influenced by Melchizedek's teachings embodied in the concept of
El Elyon. But as the concept of El Shaddai permeated the Hebrew
mind, it became thoroughly colored with the Yahweh beliefs of
the desert.
96:1.6 One of the dominant ideas of the
religion of this era was the Egyptian concept of divine
Providence, the teaching that material prosperity was a reward
for serving El Shaddai.
96:1.7 4. El. Amid all this confusion
of terminology and haziness of concept, many devout believers
sincerely endeavored to worship all of these evolving ideas of
divinity, and there grew up the practice of referring to this
composite Deity as El. And this term included still other of the
Bedouin nature gods.
96:1.8 5. Elohim. In Kish and Ur there
long persisted Sumerian-Chaldean groups who taught a
three-in-one God concept founded on the traditions of the days
of Adam and Melchizedek. This doctrine was carried to Egypt,
where this Trinity was worshiped under the name of Elohim, or in
the singular as Eloah. The philosophic circles of Egypt and
later Alexandrian teachers of Hebraic extraction taught this
unity of pluralistic Gods, and many of Moses' advisers at the
time of the exodus believed in this Trinity. But the concept of
the trinitarian Elohim never became a real part of Hebrew
theology until after they had come under the political influence
of the Babylonians.
96:1.9 6. Sundry names. The Semites
disliked to speak the name of their Deity, and they therefore
resorted to numerous appellations from time to time, such as:
The Spirit of God, The Lord, The Angel of the Lord, The
Almighty, The Holy One, The Most High, Adonai, The Ancient of
Days, The Lord God of Israel, The Creator of Heaven and Earth,
Kyrios, Jah, The Lord of Hosts, and The Father in Heaven.
96:1.10 Jehovah is a term which in
recent times has been employed to designate the completed
concept of Yahweh which finally evolved in the long Hebrew
experience. But the name Jehovah did not come into use until
fifteen hundred years after the times of Jesus.
96:1.11 Up to about 2000 B.C., Mount Sinai was
intermittently active as a volcano, occasional eruptions
occurring as late as the time of the sojourn of the Israelites
in this region. The fire and smoke, together with the thunderous
detonations associated with the eruptions of this volcanic
mountain, all impressed and awed the Bedouins of the surrounding
regions and caused them greatly to fear Yahweh. This spirit of
Mount Horeb later became the god of the Hebrew Semites, and they
eventually believed him to be supreme over all other gods.
96:1.12 The Canaanites had long revered
Yahweh, and although many of the Kenites believed more or less
in El Elyon, the supergod of the Salem religion, a majority of
the Canaanites held loosely to the worship of the old tribal
deities. They were hardly willing to abandon their national
deities in favor of an international, not to say an
interplanetary, God. They were not universal-deity minded, and
therefore these tribes continued to worship their tribal
deities, including Yahweh and the silver and golden calves which
symbolized the Bedouin herders' concept of the spirit of the
Sinai volcano.
96:1.13 The Syrians, while worshiping their
gods, also believed in Yahweh of the Hebrews, for their prophets
said to the Syrian king: "Their gods are gods of the hills;
therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against
them on the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they."
96:1.14 As man advances in culture, the lesser
gods are subordinated to a supreme deity; the great Jove
persists only as an exclamation. The monotheists keep their
subordinate gods as spirits, demons, fates, Nereids, fairies,
brownies, dwarfs, banshees, and the evil eye. The Hebrews passed
through henotheism and long believed in the existence of gods
other than Yahweh, but they increasingly held that these foreign
deities were subordinate to Yahweh. They conceded the actuality
of Chemosh, god of the Amorites, but maintained that he was
subordinate to Yahweh.
96:1.15 The idea of Yahweh has undergone the
most extensive development of all the mortal theories of God.
Its progressive evolution can only be compared with the
metamorphosis of the Buddha concept in Asia, which in the end
led to the concept of the Universal Absolute even as the Yahweh
concept finally led to the idea of the Universal Father. But as
a matter of historic fact, it should be understood that, while
the Jews thus changed their views of Deity from the tribal god
of Mount Horeb to the loving and merciful Creator Father of
later times, they did not change his name; they continued all
the way along to call this evolving concept of Deity, Yahweh.
2. THE SEMITIC PEOPLES
96:2.1
The Semites of the East were well-organized and well-led
horsemen who invaded the eastern regions of the fertile crescent
and there united with the Babylonians. The Chaldeans near Ur
were among the most advanced of the eastern Semites. The
Phoenicians were a superior and well-organized group of mixed
Semites who held the western section of Palestine, along the
Mediterranean coast. Racially the Semites were among the most
blended of Urantia peoples, containing hereditary factors from
almost all of the nine world races.
96:2.2 Again and again the Arabian Semites
fought their way into the northern Promised Land, the land that
"flowed with milk and honey," but just as often were they
ejected by the better-organized and more highly civilized
northern Semites and Hittites. Later, during an unusually severe
famine, these roving Bedouins entered Egypt in large numbers as
contract laborers on the Egyptian public works, only to find
themselves undergoing the bitter experience of enslavement at
the hard daily toil of the common and downtrodden laborers of
the Nile valley.
96:2.3 It was only after the days of
Machiventa Melchizedek and Abraham that certain tribes of
Semites, because of their peculiar religious beliefs, were
called the children of Israel and later on Hebrews, Jews, and
the "chosen people." Abraham was not the racial father of all
the Hebrews; he was not even the progenitor of all the Bedouin
Semites who were held captive in Egypt. True, his offspring,
coming up out of Egypt, did form the nucleus of the later Jewish
people, but the vast majority of the men and women who became
incorporated into the clans of Israel had never sojourned in
Egypt. They were merely fellow nomads who chose to follow the
leadership of Moses as the children of Abraham and their Semite
associates from Egypt journeyed through northern Arabia.
96:2.4 The Melchizedek teaching concerning El
Elyon, the Most High, and the covenant of divine favor through
faith, had been largely forgotten by the time of the Egyptian
enslavement of the Semite peoples who were shortly to form the
Hebrew nation. But throughout this period of captivity these
Arabian nomads maintained a lingering traditional belief in
Yahweh as their racial deity.
96:2.5 Yahweh was worshiped by more than one
hundred separate Arabian tribes, and except for the tinge of the
El Elyon concept of Melchizedek which persisted among the more
educated classes of Egypt, including the mixed Hebrew and
Egyptian stocks, the religion of the rank and file of the Hebrew
captive slaves was a modified version of the old Yahweh ritual
of magic and sacrifice.
3. THE MATCHLESS MOSES
96:3.1 The beginning of the evolution of the
Hebraic concepts and ideals of a Supreme Creator dates from the
departure of the Semites from Egypt under that great leader,
teacher, and organizer, Moses. His mother was of the royal
family of Egypt; his father was a Semitic liaison officer
between the government and the Bedouin captives. Moses thus
possessed qualities derived from superior racial sources; his
ancestry was so highly blended that it is impossible to classify
him in any one racial group. Had he not been of this mixed type,
he would never have displayed that unusual versatility and
adaptability which enabled him to manage the diversified horde
which eventually became associated with those Bedouin Semites
who fled from Egypt to the Arabian desert under his leadership.
96:3.2 Despite the enticements of the culture
of the Nile kingdom, Moses elected to cast his lot with the
people of his father. At the time this great organizer was
formulating his plans for the eventual freeing of his father's
people, the Bedouin captives hardly had a religion worthy of the
name; they were virtually without a true concept of God and
without hope in the world.
96:3.3 No leader ever undertook to reform and
uplift a more forlorn, downcast, dejected, and ignorant group of
human beings. But these slaves carried latent possibilities of
development in their hereditary strains, and there were a
sufficient number of educated leaders who had been coached by
Moses in preparation for the day of revolt and the strike for
liberty to constitute a corps of efficient organizers. These
superior men had been employed as native overseers of their
people; they had received some education because of Moses'
influence with the Egyptian rulers.
96:3.4 Moses endeavored to negotiate
diplomatically for the freedom of his fellow Semites. He and his
brother entered into a compact with the king of Egypt whereby
they were granted permission peaceably to leave the valley of
the Nile for the Arabian Desert. They were to receive a modest
payment of money and goods in token of their long service in
Egypt. The Hebrews for their part entered into an agreement to
maintain friendly relations with the Pharaohs and not to join in
any alliance against Egypt. But the king later saw fit to
repudiate this treaty, giving as his reason the excuse that his
spies had discovered disloyalty among the Bedouin slaves. He
claimed they sought freedom for the purpose of going into the
desert to organize the nomads against Egypt.
96:3.5 But Moses was not discouraged; he bided
his time, and in less than a year, when the Egyptian military
forces were fully occupied in resisting the simultaneous
onslaughts of a strong Libyan thrust from the south and a Greek
naval invasion from the north, this intrepid organizer led his
compatriots out of Egypt in a spectacular night flight. This
dash for liberty was carefully planned and skillfully executed.
And they were successful, notwithstanding that they were hotly
pursued by Pharaoh and a small body of Egyptians, who all fell
before the fugitives' defense, yielding much booty, all of which
was augmented by the loot of the advancing host of escaping
slaves as they marched on toward their ancestral desert home.
4. THE PROCLAMATION OF YAHWEH
96:4.1 The evolution and elevation of the
Mosaic teaching has influenced almost one half of all the world,
and still does even in the twentieth century. While Moses
comprehended the more advanced Egyptian religious philosophy,
the Bedouin slaves knew little about such teachings, but they
had never entirely forgotten the god of Mount Horeb, whom their
ancestors had called Yahweh.
96:4.2 Moses had heard of the teachings of
Machiventa Melchizedek from both his father and his mother,
their commonness of religious belief being the explanation for
the unusual union between a woman of royal blood and a man from
a captive race. Moses' father-in-law was a Kenite worshiper of
El Elyon, but the emancipator's parents were believers in El
Shaddai. Moses thus was educated an El Shaddaist; through the
influence of his father-in-law he became an El Elyonist; and by
the time of the Hebrew encampment about Mount Sinai after the
flight from Egypt, he had formulated a new and enlarged concept
of Deity (derived from all his former beliefs), which he wisely
decided to proclaim to his people as an expanded concept of
their olden tribal god, Yahweh.
96:4.3 Moses had endeavored to teach these
Bedouins the idea of El Elyon, but before leaving Egypt, he had
become convinced they would never fully comprehend this
doctrine. Therefore he deliberately determined upon the
compromise adoption of their tribal god of the desert as the one
and only god of his followers. Moses did not specifically teach
that other peoples and nations might not have other gods, but he
did resolutely maintain that Yahweh was over and above all,
especially to the Hebrews. But always was he plagued by the
awkward predicament of trying to present his new and higher idea
of Deity to these ignorant slaves under the guise of the ancient
term Yahweh, which had always been symbolized by the golden calf
of the Bedouin tribes.
96:4.4 The fact that Yahweh was the god of the
fleeing Hebrews explains why they tarried so long before the
holy mountain of Sinai, and why they there received the ten
commandments which Moses promulgated in the name of Yahweh, the
god of Horeb. During this lengthy sojourn before Sinai the
religious ceremonials of the newly evolving Hebrew worship were
further perfected.
96:4.5 It does not appear that Moses would
ever have succeeded in the establishment of his somewhat
advanced ceremonial worship and in keeping his followers intact
for a quarter of a century had it not been for the violent
eruption of Horeb during the third week of their worshipful
sojourn at its base. "The mountain of Yahweh was consumed in
fire, and the smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and
the whole mountain quaked greatly." In view of this cataclysm it
is not surprising that Moses could impress upon his brethren the
teaching that their God was "mighty, terrible, a devouring fire,
fearful, and all-powerful."
96:4.6 Moses proclaimed that Yahweh was the
Lord God of Israel, who had singled out the Hebrews as his
chosen people; he was building a new nation, and he wisely
nationalized his religious teachings, telling his followers that
Yahweh was a hard taskmaster, a "jealous God." But none the less
he sought to enlarge their concept of divinity when he taught
them that Yahweh was the "God of the spirits of all flesh," and
when he said, "The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath
are the everlasting arms." Moses taught that Yahweh was a
covenant-keeping God; that he "will not forsake you, neither
destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers because the
Lord loves you and will not forget the oath by which he swore to
your fathers."
96:4.7 Moses made a heroic effort to uplift
Yahweh to the dignity of a supreme Deity when he presented him
as the "God of truth and without iniquity, just and right in all
his ways." And yet, despite this exalted teaching, the limited
understanding of his followers made it necessary to speak of God
as being in man's image, as being subject to fits of anger,
wrath, and severity, even that he was vengeful and easily
influenced by man's conduct.
96:4.8 Under the teachings of Moses this
tribal nature god, Yahweh, became the Lord God of Israel, who
followed them through the wilderness and even into exile, where
he presently was conceived of as the God of all peoples. The
later captivity that enslaved the Jews in Babylon finally
liberated the evolving concept of Yahweh to assume the
monotheistic role of the God of all nations.
96:4.9 The most unique and amazing feature of
the religious history of the Hebrews concerns this continuous
evolution of the concept of Deity from the primitive god of
Mount Horeb up through the teachings of their successive
spiritual leaders to the high level of development depicted in
the Deity doctrines of the Isaiahs, who proclaimed that
magnificent concept of the loving and merciful Creator Father.
5. THE TEACHINGS OF MOSES
96:5.1 Moses was an extraordinary combination
of military leader, social organizer, and religious teacher. He
was the most important individual world teacher and leader
between the times of Machiventa and Jesus. Moses attempted to
introduce many reforms in Israel of which there is no record. In
the space of one man's life he led the polyglot horde of
so-called Hebrews out of slavery and uncivilized roaming while
he laid the foundation for the subsequent birth of a nation and
the perpetuation of a race.
96:5.2 There is so little on record of the
great work of Moses because the Hebrews had no written language
at the time of the exodus. The record of the times and doings of
Moses was derived from the traditions extant more than one
thousand years after the death of the great leader.
96:5.3 Many of the advances which Moses made
over and above the religion of the Egyptians and the surrounding
Levantine tribes were due to the Kenite traditions of the time
of Melchizedek. Without the teaching of Machiventa to Abraham
and his contemporaries, the Hebrews would have come out of Egypt
in hopeless darkness. Moses and his father-in-law, Jethro,
gathered up the residue of the traditions of the days of
Melchizedek, and these teachings, joined to the learning of the
Egyptians, guided Moses in the creation of the improved religion
and ritual of the Israelites. Moses was an organizer; he
selected the best in the religion and mores of Egypt and
Palestine and, associating these practices with the traditions
of the Melchizedek teachings, organized the Hebrew ceremonial
system of worship.
96:5.4
Moses was a believer in Providence; he had become thoroughly
tainted with the doctrines of Egypt concerning the supernatural
control of the Nile and the other elements of nature. He had a
great vision of God, but he was thoroughly sincere when he
taught the Hebrews that, if they would obey God, "He will love
you, bless you, and multiply you. He will multiply the fruit of
your womb and the fruit of your land -- the corn, wine, oil, and
your flocks. You shall be prospered above all people, and the
Lord your God will take away from you all sickness and will put
none of the evil diseases of Egypt upon you." He even said:
"Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the
power to get wealth." "You shall lend to many nations, but you
shall not borrow. You shall reign over many nations, but they
shall not reign over you."
96:5.5 But it was truly pitiful to watch this
great mind of Moses trying to adapt his sublime concept of El
Elyon, the Most High, to the comprehension of the ignorant and
illiterate Hebrews. To his assembled leaders he thundered, "The
Lord your God is one God; there is none beside him"; while to
the mixed multitude he declared, "Who is like your God among all
the gods?" Moses made a brave and partly successful stand
against fetishes and idolatry, declaring, "You saw no similitude
on the day that your God spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst
of the fire." He also forbade the making of images of any sort.
96:5.6 Moses feared to proclaim the mercy of
Yahweh, preferring to awe his people with the fear of the
justice of God, saying: "The Lord your God is God of Gods, and
Lord of Lords, a great God, a mighty and terrible God, who
regards not man." Again he sought to control the turbulent clans
when he declared that "your God kills when you disobey him; he
heals and gives life when you obey him." But Moses taught these
tribes that they would become the chosen people of God only on
condition that they "kept all his commandments and obeyed all
his statutes."
96:5.7 Little of the mercy of God was taught
the Hebrews during these early times. They learned of God as
"the Almighty; the Lord is a man of war, God of battles,
glorious in power, who dashes in pieces his enemies." "The Lord
your God walks in the midst of the camp to deliver you." The
Israelites thought of their God as one who loved them, but who
also "hardened Pharaoh's heart" and "cursed their enemies."
96:5.8 While Moses presented fleeting glimpses
of a universal and beneficent Deity to the children of Israel,
on the whole, their day-by-day concept of Yahweh was that of a
God but little better than the tribal gods of the surrounding
peoples. Their concept of God was primitive, crude, and
anthropomorphic; when Moses passed on, these Bedouin tribes
quickly reverted to the semibarbaric ideas of their olden gods
of Horeb and the desert. The enlarged and more sublime vision of
God which Moses every now and then presented to his leaders was
soon lost to view, while most of the people turned to the
worship of their fetish golden calves, the Palestinian
herdsman's symbol of Yahweh.
96:5.9 When Moses turned over the command of
the Hebrews to Joshua, he had already gathered up thousands of
the collateral descendants of Abraham, Nahor, Lot, and other of
the related tribes and had whipped them into a self-sustaining
and partially self-regulating nation of pastoral warriors.
6. THE GOD CONCEPT AFTER MOSES' DEATH
96:6.1 Upon the death of Moses his lofty
concept of Yahweh rapidly deteriorated. Joshua and the leaders
of Israel continued to harbor the Mosaic traditions of the
all-wise, beneficent, and almighty God, but the common people
rapidly reverted to the older desert idea of Yahweh. And this
backward drift of the concept of Deity continued increasingly
under the successive rule of the various tribal sheiks, the
so-called Judges.
96:6.2 The spell of the extraordinary
personality of Moses had kept alive in the hearts of his
followers the inspiration of an increasingly enlarged concept of
God; but when they once reached the fertile lands of Palestine,
they quickly evolved from nomadic herders into settled and
somewhat sedate farmers. And this evolution of life practices
and change of religious viewpoint demanded a more or less
complete change in the character of their conception of the
nature of their God, Yahweh. During the times of the beginning
of the transmutation of the austere, crude, exacting, and
thunderous desert god of Sinai into the later appearing concept
of a God of love, justice, and mercy, the Hebrews almost lost
sight of Moses' lofty teachings. They came near losing all
concept of monotheism; they nearly lost their opportunity of
becoming the people who would serve as a vital link in the
spiritual evolution of Urantia, the group who would conserve the
Melchizedek teaching of one God until the times of the
incarnation of a bestowal Son of that Father of all.
96:6.3 Desperately Joshua sought to hold the
concept of a supreme Yahweh in the minds of the tribesmen,
causing it to be proclaimed: "As I was with Moses, so will I be
with you; I will not fail you nor forsake you." Joshua found it
necessary to preach a stern gospel to his disbelieving people,
people all too willing to believe their old and native religion
but unwilling to go forward in the religion of faith and
righteousness. The burden of Joshua's teaching became: "Yahweh
is a holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your
transgressions nor your sins." The highest concept of this age
pictured Yahweh as a "God of power, judgment, and justice."
96:6.4 But even in this dark age, every now
and then a solitary teacher would arise proclaiming the Mosaic
concept of divinity: "You children of wickedness cannot serve
the Lord, for he is a holy God." "Shall mortal man be more just
than God? shall a man be more pure than his Maker?" "Can you by
searching find out God? Can you find out the Almighty to
perfection? Behold, God is great and we know him not. Touching
the Almighty, we cannot find him out."
7. PSALMS AND THE BOOK OF JOB
96:7.1 Under the leadership of their sheiks
and priests the Hebrews became loosely established in Palestine.
But they soon drifted back into the benighted beliefs of the
desert and became contaminated with the less advanced Canaanite
religious practices. They became idolatrous and licentious, and
their idea of Deity fell far below the Egyptian and Mesopotamian
concepts of God that were maintained by certain surviving Salem
groups, and which are recorded in some of the Psalms and in the
so-called Book of Job.
96:7.2 The Psalms are the work of a score or
more of authors; many were written by Egyptian and Mesopotamian
teachers. During these times when the Levant worshiped nature
gods, there were still a goodly number who believed in the
supremacy of El Elyon, the Most High.
96:7.3 No collection of religious writings
gives expression to such a wealth of devotion and inspirational
ideas of God as the Book of Psalms. And it would be very helpful
if, in the perusal of this wonderful collection of worshipful
literature, consideration could be given to the source and
chronology of each separate hymn of praise and adoration,
bearing in mind that no other single collection covers such a
great range of time. This Book of Psalms is the record of the
varying concepts of God entertained by the believers of the
Salem religion throughout the Levant and embraces the entire
period from Amenemope to Isaiah. In the Psalms God is depicted
in all phases of conception, from the crude idea of a tribal
deity to the vastly expanded ideal of the later Hebrews, wherein
Yahweh is pictured as a loving ruler and merciful Father.
96:7.4 And when thus regarded, this group of
Psalms constitutes the most valuable and helpful assortment of
devotional sentiments ever assembled by man up to the times of
the twentieth century. The worshipful spirit of this collection
of hymns transcends that of all other sacred books of the world.
96:7.5 The variegated picture of Deity
presented in the Book of Job was the product of more than a
score of Mesopotamian religious teachers extending over a period
of almost three hundred years. And when you read the lofty
concept of divinity found in this compilation of Mesopotamian
beliefs, you will recognize that it was in the neighborhood of
Ur of Chaldea that the idea of a real God was best preserved
during the dark days in Palestine.
96:7.6 In Palestine the wisdom and
all-pervasiveness of God was often grasped but seldom his love
and mercy. The Yahweh of these times "sends evil spirits to
dominate the souls of his enemies"; he prospers his own and
obedient children, while he curses and visits dire judgments
upon all others. "He disappoints the devices of the crafty; he
takes the wise in their own deceit."
96:7.7 Only at Ur did a voice arise to cry out
the mercy of God, saying: "He shall pray to God and shall find
favor with him and shall see his face with joy, for God will
give to man divine righteousness." Thus from Ur there is
preached salvation, divine favor, by faith: "He is gracious to
the repentant and says, `Deliver him from going down in the pit,
for I have found a ransom.' If any say, `I have sinned and
perverted that which was right, and it profited me not,' God
will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and he shall see
the light." Not since the times of Melchizedek had the Levantine
world heard such a ringing and cheering message of human
salvation as this extraordinary teaching of Elihu, the prophet
of Ur and priest of the Salem believers, that is, the remnant of
the onetime Melchizedek colony in Mesopotamia.
96:7.8 And thus did the remnants of the Salem
missionaries in Mesopotamia maintain the light of truth during
the period of the disorganization of the Hebrew peoples until
the appearance of the first of that long line of the teachers of
Israel who never stopped as they built, concept upon concept,
until they had achieved the realization of the ideal of the
Universal and Creator Father of all, the acme of the evolution
of the Yahweh concept.
96:7.9
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
