The Urantia Book
PAPER 97
EVOLUTION OF THE GOD CONCEPT AMONG
THE HEBREWS
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
97:0.1 THE spiritual leaders of the Hebrews
did what no others before them had ever succeeded in doing --
they deanthropomorphized their God concept without converting it
into an abstraction of Deity comprehensible only to
philosophers. Even common people were able to regard the matured
concept of Yahweh as a Father, if not of the individual, at
least of the race.
97:0.2 The concept of the personality of God,
while clearly taught at Salem in the days of Melchizedek, was
vague and hazy at the time of the flight from Egypt and only
gradually evolved in the Hebraic mind from generation to
generation in response to the teaching of the spiritual leaders.
The perception of Yahweh's personality was much more continuous
in its progressive evolution than was that of many other of the
Deity attributes. From Moses to Malachi there occurred an almost
unbroken ideational growth of the personality of God in the
Hebrew mind, and this concept was eventually heightened and
glorified by the teachings of Jesus about the Father in heaven.
1. SAMUEL -- FIRST OF THE HEBREW PROPHETS
97:1.1 Hostile pressure of the surrounding
peoples in Palestine soon taught the Hebrew sheiks they could
not hope to survive unless they confederated their tribal
organizations into a centralized government. And this
centralization of administrative authority afforded a better
opportunity for Samuel to function as a teacher and reformer.
97:1.2 Samuel sprang from a long line of the
Salem teachers who had persisted in maintaining the truths of
Melchizedek as a part of their worship forms. This teacher was a
virile and resolute man. Only his great devotion, coupled with
his extraordinary determination, enabled him to withstand the
almost universal opposition which he encountered when he started
out to turn all Israel back to the worship of the supreme Yahweh
of Mosaic times. And even then he was only partially successful;
he won back to the service of the higher concept of Yahweh only
the more intelligent half of the Hebrews; the other half
continued in the worship of the tribal gods of the country and
in the baser conception of Yahweh.
97:1.3 Samuel was a rough-and-ready type of
man, a practical reformer who could go out in one day with his
associates and overthrow a score of Baal sites. The progress he
made was by sheer force of compulsion; he did little preaching,
less teaching, but he did act. One day he was mocking the priest
of Baal; the next, chopping in pieces a captive king. He
devotedly believed in the one God, and he had a clear concept of
that one God as creator of heaven and earth: "The pillars of the
earth are the Lord's, and he has set the world upon them."
97:1.4 But the great contribution which Samuel
made to the development of the concept of Deity was his ringing
pronouncement that Yahweh was changeless, forever the same
embodiment of unerring perfection and divinity. In these times
Yahweh was conceived to be a fitful God of jealous whims, always
regretting that he had done thus and so; but now, for the first
time since the Hebrews sallied forth from Egypt, they heard
these startling words, "The Strength of Israel will not lie nor
repent, for he is not a man, that he should repent." Stability
in dealing with Divinity was proclaimed. Samuel reiterated the
Melchizedek covenant with Abraham and declared that the Lord God
of Israel was the source of all truth, stability, and constancy.
Always had the Hebrews looked upon their God as a man, a
superman, an exalted spirit of unknown origin; but now they
heard the onetime spirit of Horeb exalted as an unchanging God
of creator perfection. Samuel was aiding the evolving God
concept to ascend to heights above the changing state of men's
minds and the vicissitudes of mortal existence. Under his
teaching, the God of the Hebrews was beginning the ascent from
an idea on the order of the tribal gods to the ideal of an
all-powerful and changeless Creator and Supervisor of all
creation.
97:1.5 And he preached anew the story of God's
sincerity, his covenant-keeping reliability. Said Samuel: "The
Lord will not forsake his people." "He has made with us an
everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure." And so,
throughout all Palestine there sounded the call back to the
worship of the supreme Yahweh. Ever this energetic teacher
proclaimed, "You are great, O Lord God, for there is none like
you, neither is there any God beside you."
97:1.6 Theretofore the Hebrews had regarded
the favor of Yahweh mainly in terms of material prosperity. It
was a great shock to Israel, and almost cost Samuel his life,
when he dared to proclaim: "The Lord enriches and impoverishes;
he debases and exalts. He raises the poor out of the dust and
lifts up the beggars to set them among princes to make them
inherit the throne of glory." Not since Moses had such
comforting promises for the humble and the less fortunate been
proclaimed, and thousands of despairing among the poor began to
take hope that they could improve their spiritual status.
97:1.7 But Samuel did not progress very far
beyond the concept of a tribal god. He proclaimed a Yahweh who
made all men but was occupied chiefly with the Hebrews, his
chosen people. Even so, as in the days of Moses, once more the
God concept portrayed a Deity who is holy and upright. "There is
none as holy as the Lord. Who can be compared to this holy Lord
God?"
97:1.8 As the years passed, the grizzled old
leader progressed in the understanding of God, for he declared:
"The Lord is a God of knowledge, and actions are weighed by him.
The Lord will judge the ends of the earth, showing mercy to the
merciful, and with the upright man he will also be upright."
Even here is the dawn of mercy, albeit it is limited to those
who are merciful. Later he went one step further when, in their
adversity, he exhorted his people: "Let us fall now into the
hands of the Lord, for his mercies are great." "There is no
restraint upon the Lord to save many or few."
97:1.9 And this gradual development of the
concept of the character of Yahweh continued under the ministry
of Samuel's successors. They attempted to present Yahweh as a
covenant-keeping God but hardly maintained the pace set by
Samuel; they failed to develop the idea of the mercy of God as
Samuel had later conceived it. There was a steady drift back
toward the recognition of other gods, despite the maintenance
that Yahweh was above all. "Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and
you are exalted as head above all."
97:1.10 The keynote of this era was divine
power; the prophets of this age preached a religion designed to
foster the king upon the Hebrew throne. "Yours, O Lord, is the
greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the
majesty. In your hand is power and might, and you are able to
make great and to give strength to all." And this was the status
of the God concept during the time of Samuel and his immediate
successors.
2. ELIJAH AND ELISHA
97:2.1 In the tenth century before Christ the
Hebrew nation became divided into two kingdoms. In both of these
political divisions many truth teachers endeavored to stem the
reactionary tide of spiritual decadence that had set in, and
which continued disastrously after the war of separation. But
these efforts to advance the Hebraic religion did not prosper
until that determined and fearless warrior for righteousness,
Elijah, began his teaching. Elijah restored to the northern
kingdom a concept of God comparable with that held in the days
of Samuel. Elijah had little opportunity to present an advanced
concept of God; he was kept busy, as Samuel had been before him,
overthrowing the altars of Baal and demolishing the idols of
false gods. And he carried forward his reforms in the face of
the opposition of an idolatrous monarch; his task was even more
gigantic and difficult than that which Samuel had faced.
97:2.2 When Elijah was called away, Elisha,
his faithful associate, took up his work and, with the
invaluable assistance of the little-known Micaiah, kept the
light of truth alive in Palestine.
97:2.3 But these were not times of progress in
the concept of Deity. Not yet had the Hebrews ascended even to
the Mosaic ideal. The era of Elijah and Elisha closed with the
better classes returning to the worship of the supreme Yahweh
and witnessed the restoration of the idea of the Universal
Creator to about that place where Samuel had left it.
3. YAHWEH AND BAAL
97:3.1 The long-drawn-out controversy between
the believers in Yahweh and the followers of Baal was a
socioeconomic clash of ideologies rather than a difference in
religious beliefs.
97:3.2 The inhabitants of Palestine differed
in their attitude toward private ownership of land. The southern
or wandering Arabian tribes (the Yahwehites) looked upon land as
an inalienable -- as a gift of Deity to the clan. They held that
land could not be sold or mortgaged. "Yahweh spoke, saying, `The
land shall not be sold, for the land is mine.'"
97:3.3 The northern and more settled
Canaanites (the Baalites) freely bought, sold, and mortgaged
their lands. The word Baal means owner. The Baal cult was
founded on two major doctrines: First, the validation of
property exchange, contracts, and covenants -- the right to buy
and sell land. Second, Baal was supposed to send rain -- he was
a god of fertility of the soil. Good crops depended on the favor
of Baal. The cult was largely concerned with land, its
ownership and fertility.
97:3.4 In general, the Baalites owned houses,
lands, and slaves. They were the aristocratic landlords and
lived in the cities. Each Baal had a sacred place, a priesthood,
and the "holy women," the ritual prostitutes.
97:3.5 Out of this basic difference in the
regard for land, there evolved the bitter antagonisms of social,
economic, moral, and religious attitudes exhibited by the
Canaanites and the Hebrews. This socioeconomic controversy did
not become a definite religious issue until the times of Elijah.
From the days of this aggressive prophet the issue was fought
out on more strictly religious lines -- Yahweh vs. Baal -- and
it ended in the triumph of Yahweh and the subsequent drive
toward monotheism.
97:3.6 Elijah shifted the Yahweh-Baal
controversy from the land issue to the religious aspect of
Hebrew and Canaanite ideologies. When Ahab murdered the Naboths
in the intrigue to get possession of their land, Elijah made a
moral issue out of the olden land mores and launched his
vigorous campaign against the Baalites. This was also a fight of
the country folk against domination by the cities. It was
chiefly under Elijah that Yahweh became Elohim. The prophet
began as an agrarian reformer and ended up by exalting Deity.
Baals were many, Yahweh was one -- monotheism won over
polytheism.
4. AMOS AND HOSEA
97:4.1 A great step in the transition of the
tribal god -- the god who had so long been served with
sacrifices and ceremonies, the Yahweh of the earlier Hebrews --
to a God who would punish crime and immorality among even his
own people, was taken by Amos, who appeared from among the
southern hills to denounce the criminality, drunkenness,
oppression, and immorality of the northern tribes. Not since the
times of Moses had such ringing truths been proclaimed in
Palestine.
97:4.2 Amos was not merely a restorer or
reformer; he was a discoverer of new concepts of Deity. He
proclaimed much about God that had been announced by his
predecessors and courageously attacked the belief in a Divine
Being who would countenance sin among his so-called chosen
people. For the first time since the days of Melchizedek the
ears of man heard the denunciation of the double standard of
national justice and morality. For the first time in their
history Hebrew ears heard that their own God, Yahweh, would no
more tolerate crime and sin in their lives than he would among
any other people. Amos envisioned the stern and just God of
Samuel and Elijah, but he also saw a God who thought no
differently of the Hebrews than of any other nation when it came
to the punishment of wrongdoing. This was a direct attack on the
egoistic doctrine of the "chosen people," and many Hebrews of
those days bitterly resented it.
97:4.3 Said Amos: "He who formed the mountains
and created the wind, seek him who formed the seven stars and
Orion, who turns the shadow of death into the morning and makes
the day dark as night." And in denouncing his half-religious,
timeserving, and sometimes immoral fellows, he sought to portray
the inexorable justice of an unchanging Yahweh when he said of
the evildoers: "Though they dig into hell, thence shall I take
them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them
down." "And though they go into captivity before their enemies,
thence will I direct the sword of justice, and it shall slay
them." Amos further startled his hearers when, pointing a
reproving and accusing finger at them, he declared in the name
of Yahweh: "Surely I will never forget any of your works." "And
I will sift the house of Israel among all nations as wheat is
sifted in a sieve."
97:4.4 Amos proclaimed Yahweh the "God of all
nations" and warned the Israelites that ritual must not take the
place of righteousness. And before this courageous teacher was
stoned to death, he had spread enough leaven of truth to save
the doctrine of the supreme Yahweh; he had insured the further
evolution of the Melchizedek revelation.
97:4.5 Hosea followed Amos and his doctrine of
a universal God of justice by the resurrection of the Mosaic
concept of a God of love. Hosea preached forgiveness through
repentance, not by sacrifice. He proclaimed a gospel of
loving-kindness and divine mercy, saying: "I will betroth you to
me forever; yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and
judgment and in loving-kindness and in mercies. I will even
betroth you to me in faithfulness." "I will love them freely,
for my anger is turned away."
97:4.6 Hosea faithfully continued the moral
warnings of Amos, saying of God, "It is my desire that I
chastise them." But the Israelites regarded it as cruelty
bordering on treason when he said: "I will say to those who were
not my people, `you are my people'; and they will say, `you are
our God.'" He continued to preach repentance and forgiveness,
saying, "I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely,
for my anger is turned away." Always Hosea proclaimed hope and
forgiveness. The burden of his message ever was: "I will have
mercy upon my people. They shall know no God but me, for there
is no savior beside me."
97:4.7 Amos quickened the national conscience
of the Hebrews to the recognition that Yahweh would not condone
crime and sin among them because they were supposedly the chosen
people, while Hosea struck the opening notes in the later
merciful chords of divine compassion and loving-kindness which
were so exquisitely sung by Isaiah and his associates.
5. THE FIRST ISAIAH
97:5.1 These were the times when some were
proclaiming threatenings of punishment against personal sins and
national crime among the northern clans while others predicted
calamity in retribution for the transgressions of the southern
kingdom. It was in the wake of this arousal of conscience and
consciousness in the Hebrew nations that the first Isaiah made
his appearance.
97:5.2 Isaiah went on to preach the eternal
nature of God, his infinite wisdom, his unchanging perfection of
reliability. He represented the God of Israel as saying:
"Judgment also will I lay to the line and righteousness to the
plummet." "The Lord will give you rest from your sorrow and from
your fear and from the hard bondage wherein man has been made to
serve." "And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying,
`this is the way, walk in it.'" "Behold God is my salvation; I
will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord is my strength and my
song." "`Come now and let us reason together,' says the Lord,
`though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like the crimson, they shall be as wool.'"
97:5.3 Speaking to the fear-ridden and
soul-hungry Hebrews, this prophet said: "Arise and shine, for
your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon
you." "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed
me to preach good tidings to the meek; he has sent me to bind up
the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the
opening of the prison to those who are bound." "I will greatly
rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God, for he
has clothed me with the garments of salvation and has covered me
with his robe of righteousness." "In all their afflictions he
was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his
love and in his pity he redeemed them."
97:5.4 This Isaiah was followed by Micah and
Obadiah, who confirmed and embellished his soul-satisfying
gospel. And these two brave messengers boldly denounced the
priest-ridden ritual of the Hebrews and fearlessly attacked the
whole sacrificial system.
97:5.5 Micah denounced "the rulers who judge
for reward and the priests who teach for hire and the prophets
who divine for money." He taught of a day of freedom from
superstition and priestcraft, saying: "But every man shall sit
under his own vine, and no one shall make him afraid, for all
people will live, each one according to his understanding of
God."
97:5.6 Ever the burden of Micah's message was:
"Shall I come before God with burnt offerings? Will the Lord be
pleased with a thousand rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my
body for the sin of my soul? He has shown me, O man, what is
good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly and
to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." And it was a
great age; these were indeed stirring times when mortal man
heard, and some even believed, such emancipating messages more
than two and a half millenniums ago. And but for the stubborn
resistance of the priests, these teachers would have overthrown
the whole bloody ceremonial of the Hebrew ritual of worship.
6. JEREMIAH THE FEARLESS
97:6.1 While several teachers continued to
expound the gospel of Isaiah, it remained for Jeremiah to take
the next bold step in the internationalization of Yahweh, God of
the Hebrews.
97:6.2 Jeremiah fearlessly declared that
Yahweh was not on the side of the Hebrews in their military
struggles with other nations. He asserted that Yahweh was God of
all the earth, of all nations and of all peoples. Jeremiah's
teaching was the crescendo of the rising wave of the
internationalization of the God of Israel; finally and forever
did this intrepid preacher proclaim that Yahweh was God of all
nations, and that there was no Osiris for the Egyptians, Bel for
the Babylonians, Ashur for the Assyrians, or Dagon for the
Philistines. And thus did the religion of the Hebrews share in
that renaissance of monotheism throughout the world at about and
following this time; at last the concept of Yahweh had ascended
to a Deity level of planetary and even cosmic dignity. But many
of Jeremiah's associates found it difficult to conceive of
Yahweh apart from the Hebrew nation.
97:6.3 Jeremiah also preached of the just and
loving God described by Isaiah, declaring: "Yes, I have loved
you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness
have I drawn you." "For he does not afflict willingly the
children of men."
97:6.4 Said this fearless prophet: "Righteous
is our Lord, great in counsel and mighty in work. His eyes are
open upon all the ways of all the sons of men, to give every one
according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings."
But it was considered blasphemous treason when, during the siege
of Jerusalem, he said: "And now have I given these lands into
the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant."
And when Jeremiah counseled the surrender of the city, the
priests and civil rulers cast him into the miry pit of a dismal
dungeon.
7. THE SECOND ISAIAH
97:7.1 The destruction of the Hebrew nation
and their captivity in Mesopotamia would have proved of great
benefit to their expanding theology had it not been for the
determined action of their priesthood. Their nation had fallen
before the armies of Babylon, and their nationalistic Yahweh had
suffered from the international preachments of the spiritual
leaders. It was resentment of the loss of their national god
that led the Jewish priests to go to such lengths in the
invention of fables and the multiplication of miraculous
appearing events in Hebrew history in an effort to restore the
Jews as the chosen people of even the new and expanded idea of
an internationalized God of all nations.
97:7.2 During the captivity the Jews were much
influenced by Babylonian traditions and legends, although it
should be noted that they unfailingly improved the moral tone
and spiritual significance of the Chaldean stories which they
adopted, notwithstanding that they invariably distorted these
legends to reflect honor and glory upon the ancestry and history
of Israel.
97:7.3 These Hebrew priests and scribes had a
single idea in their minds, and that was the rehabilitation of
the Jewish nation, the glorification of Hebrew traditions, and
the exaltation of their racial history. If there is resentment
of the fact that these priests have fastened their erroneous
ideas upon such a large part of the Occidental world, it should
be remembered that they did not intentionally do this; they did
not claim to be writing by inspiration; they made no profession
to be writing a sacred book. They were merely preparing a
textbook designed to bolster up the dwindling courage of their
fellows in captivity. They were definitely aiming at improving
the national spirit and morale of their compatriots. It remained
for later-day men to assemble these and other writings into a
guide book of supposedly infallible teachings.
97:7.4 The Jewish priesthood made liberal use
of these writings subsequent to the captivity, but they were
greatly hindered in their influence over their fellow captives
by the presence of a young and indomitable prophet, Isaiah the
second, who was a full convert to the elder Isaiah's God of
justice, love, righteousness, and mercy. He also believed with
Jeremiah that Yahweh had become the God of all nations. He
preached these theories of the nature of God with such telling
effect that he made converts equally among the Jews and their
captors. And this young preacher left on record his teachings,
which the hostile and unforgiving priests sought to divorce from
all association with him, although sheer respect for their
beauty and grandeur led to their incorporation among the
writings of the earlier Isaiah. And thus may be found the
writings of this second Isaiah in the book of that name,
embracing chapters forty to fifty-five inclusive.
97:7.5 No prophet or religious teacher from
Machiventa to the time of Jesus attained the high concept of God
that Isaiah the second proclaimed during these days of the
captivity. It was no small, anthropomorphic, man-made God that
this spiritual leader proclaimed. "Behold he takes up the isles
as a very little thing." "And as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts
higher than your thoughts."
97:7.6 At last Machiventa Melchizedek beheld
human teachers proclaiming a real God to mortal man. Like Isaiah
the first, this leader preached a God of universal creation and
upholding. "I have made the earth and put man upon it. I have
created it not in vain; I formed it to be inhabited." "I am the
first and the last; there is no God beside me." Speaking for the
Lord God of Israel, this new prophet said: "The heavens may
vanish and the earth wax old, but my righteousness shall endure
forever and my salvation from generation to generation." "Fear
you not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God."
"There is no God beside me -- a just God and a Savior."
97:7.7 And it comforted the Jewish captives,
as it has thousands upon thousands ever since, to hear such
words as: "Thus says the Lord, `I have created you, I have
redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are mine.'"
"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you since you
are precious in my sight." "Can a woman forget her suckling
child that she should not have compassion on her son? Yes, she
may forget, yet will I not forget my children, for behold I have
graven them upon the palms of my hands; I have even covered them
with the shadow of my hands." "Let the wicked forsake his ways
and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the
Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he
will abundantly pardon."
97:7.8 Listen again to the gospel of this new
revelation of the God of Salem: "He shall feed his flock like a
shepherd; he shall gather the lambs in his arms and carry them
in his bosom. He gives power to the faint, and to those who have
no might he increases strength. Those who wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as
eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not
faint."
97:7.9 This Isaiah conducted a far-flung
propaganda of the gospel of the enlarging concept of a supreme
Yahweh. He vied with Moses in the eloquence with which he
portrayed the Lord God of Israel as the Universal Creator. He
was poetic in his portrayal of the infinite attributes of the
Universal Father. No more beautiful pronouncements about the
heavenly Father have ever been made. Like the Psalms, the
writings of Isaiah are among the most sublime and true
presentations of the spiritual concept of God ever to greet the
ears of mortal man prior to the arrival of Michael on Urantia.
Listen to his portrayal of Deity: "I am the high and lofty one
who inhabits eternity." "I am the first and the last, and beside
me there is no other God." "And the Lord's hand is not shortened
that it cannot save, neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear."
And it was a new doctrine in Jewry when this benign but
commanding prophet persisted in the preachment of divine
constancy, God's faithfulness. He declared that "God would not
forget, would not forsake."
97:7.10 This daring teacher proclaimed that
man was very closely related to God, saying: "Every one who is
called by my name I have created for my glory, and they shall
show forth my praise. I, even I, am he who blots out their
transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember their
sins."
97:7.11 Hear this great Hebrew demolish the
concept of a national God while in glory he proclaims the
divinity of the Universal Father, of whom he says, "The heavens
are my throne, and the earth is my footstool." And Isaiah's God
was none the less holy, majestic, just, and unsearchable. The
concept of the angry, vengeful, and jealous Yahweh of the desert
Bedouins has almost vanished. A new concept of the supreme and
universal Yahweh has appeared in the mind of mortal man, never
to be lost to human view. The realization of divine justice has
begun the destruction of primitive magic and biologic fear. At
last, man is introduced to a universe of law and order and to a
universal God of dependable and final attributes.
97:7.12 And this preacher of a supernal God
never ceased to proclaim this God of love. "I dwell in
the high and holy place, also with him who is of a contrite and
humble spirit." And still further words of comfort did this
great teacher speak to his contemporaries: "And the Lord will
guide you continually and satisfy your soul. You shall be like a
watered garden and like a spring whose waters fail not. And if
the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord
will lift up a defense against him." And once again did the
fear-destroying gospel of Melchizedek and the trust-breeding
religion of Salem shine forth for the blessing of mankind.
97:7.13 The farseeing and courageous Isaiah
effectively eclipsed the nationalistic Yahweh by his sublime
portraiture of the majesty and universal omnipotence of the
supreme Yahweh, God of love, ruler of the universe, and
affectionate Father of all mankind. Ever since those eventful
days the highest God concept in the Occident has embraced
universal justice, divine mercy, and eternal righteousness. In
superb language and with matchless grace this great teacher
portrayed the all-powerful Creator as the all-loving Father.
97:7.14 This prophet of the captivity preached
to his people and to those of many nations as they listened by
the river in Babylon. And this second Isaiah did much to
counteract the many wrong and racially egoistic concepts of the
mission of the promised Messiah. But in this effort he was not
wholly successful. Had the priests not dedicated themselves to
the work of building up a misconceived nationalism, the
teachings of the two Isaiahs would have prepared the way for the
recognition and reception of the promised Messiah.
8. SACRED AND PROFANE HISTORY
97:8.1 The custom of looking upon the record
of the experiences of the Hebrews as sacred history and upon the
transactions of the rest of the world as profane history is
responsible for much of the confusion existing in the human mind
as to the interpretation of history. And this difficulty arises
because there is no secular history of the Jews. After the
priests of the Babylonian exile had prepared their new record of
God's supposedly miraculous dealings with the Hebrews, the
sacred history of Israel as portrayed in the Old Testament, they
carefully and completely destroyed the existing records of
Hebrew affairs -- such books as "The Doings of the Kings of
Israel" and "The Doings of the Kings of Judah," together with
several other more or less accurate records of Hebrew history.
97:8.2 In order to understand how the
devastating pressure and the inescapable coercion of secular
history so terrorized the captive and alien-ruled Jews that they
attempted the complete rewriting and recasting of their history,
we should briefly survey the record of their perplexing national
experience. It must be remembered that the Jews failed to evolve
an adequate nontheologic philosophy of life. They struggled with
their original and Egyptian concept of divine rewards for
righteousness coupled with dire punishments for sin. The drama
of Job was something of a protest against this erroneous
philosophy. The frank pessimism of Ecclesiastes was a worldly
wise reaction to these overoptimistic beliefs in Providence.
97:8.3 But five hundred years of the
overlordship of alien rulers was too much for even the patient
and long-suffering Jews. The prophets and priests began to cry:
"How long, O Lord, how long?" As the honest Jew searched the
Scriptures, his confusion became worse confounded. An olden seer
promised that God would protect and deliver his "chosen people."
Amos had threatened that God would abandon Israel unless they
re-established their standards of national righteousness. The
scribe of Deuteronomy had portrayed the Great Choice -- as
between the good and the evil, the blessing and the curse.
Isaiah the first had preached a beneficent king-deliverer.
Jeremiah had proclaimed an era of inner righteousness -- the
covenant written on the tablets of the heart. The second Isaiah
talked about salvation by sacrifice and redemption. Ezekiel
proclaimed deliverance through the service of devotion, and Ezra
promised prosperity by adherence to the law. But in spite of all
this they lingered on in bondage, and deliverance was deferred.
Then Daniel presented the drama of the impending "crisis" -- the
smiting of the great image and the immediate establishment of
the everlasting reign of righteousness, the Messianic kingdom.
97:8.4 And all of this false hope led to such
a degree of racial disappointment and frustration that the
leaders of the Jews were so confused they failed to recognize
and accept the mission and ministry of a divine Son of Paradise
when he presently came to them in the likeness of mortal flesh
-- incarnated as the Son of Man.
97:8.5 All modern religions have seriously
blundered in the attempt to put a miraculous interpretation on
certain epochs of human history. While it is true that God has
many times thrust a Father's hand of providential intervention
into the stream of human affairs, it is a mistake to regard
theologic dogmas and religious superstition as a supernatural
sedimentation appearing by miraculous action in this stream of
human history. The fact that the "Most Highs rule in the
kingdoms of men" does not convert secular history into so-called
sacred history.
97:8.6 New Testament authors and later
Christian writers further complicated the distortion of Hebrew
history by their well-meant attempts to transcendentalize the
Jewish prophets. Thus has Hebrew history been disastrously
exploited by both Jewish and Christian writers. Secular Hebrew
history has been thoroughly dogmatized. It has been converted
into a fiction of sacred history and has become inextricably
bound up with the moral concepts and religious teachings of the
so-called Christian nations.
97:8.7 A brief recital of the high points in
Hebrew history will illustrate how the facts of the record were
so altered in Babylon by the Jewish priests as to turn the
everyday secular history of their people into a fictitious and
sacred history.
9. HEBREW HISTORY
97:9.1 There never were twelve tribes of the
Israelites -- only three or four tribes settled in Palestine.
The Hebrew nation came into being as the result of the union of
the so-called Israelites and the Canaanites. "And the children
of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites. And they took their
daughters to be their wives and gave their daughters to the sons
of the Canaanites." The Hebrews never drove the Canaanites out
of Palestine, notwithstanding that the priests' record of these
things unhesitatingly declared that they did.
97:9.2 The Israelitish consciousness took
origin in the hill country of Ephraim; the later Jewish
consciousness originated in the southern clan of Judah. The Jews
(Judahites) always sought to defame and blacken the record of
the northern Israelites (Ephraimites).
97:9.3 Pretentious Hebrew history begins with
Saul's rallying the northern clans to withstand an attack by the
Ammonites upon their fellow tribesmen -- the Gileadites -- east
of the Jordan. With an army of a little more than three thousand
he defeated the enemy, and it was this exploit that led the hill
tribes to make him king. When the exiled priests rewrote this
story, they raised Saul's army to 330,000 and added "Judah" to
the list of tribes participating in the battle.
97:9.4 Immediately following the defeat of the
Ammonites, Saul was made king by popular election by his troops.
No priest or prophet participated in this affair. But the
priests later on put it in the record that Saul was crowned king
by the prophet Samuel in accordance with divine directions. This
they did in order to establish a "divine line of descent" for
David's Judahite kingship.
97:9.5 The greatest of all distortions of
Jewish history had to do with David. After Saul's victory over
the Ammonites (which he ascribed to Yahweh) the Philistines
became alarmed and began attacks on the northern clans. David
and Saul never could agree. David with six hundred men entered
into a Philistine alliance and marched up the coast to
Esdraelon. At Gath the Philistines ordered David off the field;
they feared he might go over to Saul. David retired; the
Philistines attacked and defeated Saul. They could not have done
this had David been loyal to Israel. David's army was a polyglot
assortment of malcontents, being for the most part made up of
social misfits and fugitives from justice.
97:9.6 Saul's tragic defeat at Gilboa by the
Philistines brought Yahweh to a low point among the gods in the
eyes of the surrounding Canaanites. Ordinarily, Saul's defeat
would have been ascribed to apostasy from Yahweh, but this time
the Judahite editors attributed it to ritual errors. They
required the tradition of Saul and Samuel as a background for
the kingship of David.
97:9.7 David with his small army made his
headquarters at the non-Hebrew city of Hebron. Presently his
compatriots proclaimed him king of the new kingdom of Judah.
Judah was made up mostly of non-Hebrew elements -- Kenites,
Calebites, Jebusites, and other Canaanites. They were nomads --
herders -- and so were devoted to the Hebrew idea of land
ownership. They held the ideologies of the desert clans.
97:9.8 The difference between sacred and
profane history is well illustrated by the two differing stories
concerning making David king as they are found in the Old
Testament. A part of the secular story of how his immediate
followers (his army) made him king was inadvertently left in the
record by the priests who subsequently prepared the lengthy and
prosaic account of the sacred history wherein is depicted how
the prophet Samuel, by divine direction, selected David from
among his brethren and proceeded formally and by elaborate and
solemn ceremonies to anoint him king over the Hebrews and then
to proclaim him Saul's successor.
97:9.9 So many times did the priests, after
preparing their fictitious narratives of God's miraculous
dealings with Israel, fail fully to delete the plain and
matter-of-fact statements which already rested in the records.
97:9.10 David sought to build himself up
politically by first marrying Saul's daughter, then the widow of
Nabal the rich Edomite, and then the daughter of Talmai, the
king of Geshur. He took six wives from the women of Jebus, not
to mention Bathsheba, the wife of the Hittite.
97:9.11 And it was by such methods and out of
such people that David built up the fiction of a divine kingdom
of Judah as the successor of the heritage and traditions of the
vanishing northern kingdom of Ephraimite Israel. David's
cosmopolitan tribe of Judah was more gentile than Jewish;
nevertheless the oppressed elders of Ephraim came down and
"anointed him king of Israel." After a military threat, David
then made a compact with the Jebusites and established his
capital of the united kingdom at Jebus (Jerusalem), which was a
strong-walled city midway between Judah and Israel. The
Philistines were aroused and soon attacked David. After a fierce
battle they were defeated, and once more Yahweh was established
as "The Lord God of Hosts."
97:9.12 But Yahweh must, perforce, share some
of this glory with the Canaanite gods, for the bulk of David's
army was non-Hebrew. And so there appears in your record
(overlooked by the Judahite editors) this telltale statement:
"Yahweh has broken my enemies before me. Therefore he called the
name of the place Baal-Perazim." And they did this because
eighty per cent of David's soldiers were Baalites.
97:9.13 David explained Saul's defeat at
Gilboa by pointing out that Saul had attacked a Canaanite city,
Gibeon, whose people had a peace treaty with the Ephraimites.
Because of this, Yahweh forsook him. Even in Saul's time David
had defended the Canaanite city of Keilah against the
Philistines, and then he located his capital in a Canaanite
city. In keeping with the policy of compromise with the
Canaanites, David turned seven of Saul's descendants over to the
Gibeonites to be hanged.
97:9.14 After the defeat of the Philistines,
David gained possession of the "ark of Yahweh," brought it to
Jerusalem, and made the worship of Yahweh official for his
kingdom. He next laid heavy tribute on the neighboring tribes --
the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and Syrians.
97:9.15 David's corrupt political machine
began to get personal possession of land in the north in
violation of the Hebrew mores and presently gained control of
the caravan tariffs formerly collected by the Philistines. And
then came a series of atrocities climaxed by the murder of
Uriah. All judicial appeals were adjudicated at Jerusalem; no
longer could "the elders" mete out justice. No wonder rebellion
broke out. Today, Absalom might be called a demagogue; his
mother was a Canaanite. There were a half dozen contenders for
the throne besides the son of Bathsheba -- Solomon.
97:9.16 After David's death Solomon purged the
political machine of all northern influences but continued all
of the tyranny and taxation of his father's regime. Solomon
bankrupted the nation by his lavish court and by his elaborate
building program: There was the house of Lebanon, the palace of
Pharaoh's daughter, the temple of Yahweh, the king's palace, and
the restoration of the walls of many cities. Solomon created a
vast Hebrew navy, operated by Syrian sailors and trading with
all the world. His harem numbered almost one thousand.
97:9.17 By this time Yahweh's temple at Shiloh
was discredited, and all the worship of the nation was centered
at Jebus in the gorgeous royal chapel. The northern kingdom
returned more to the worship of Elohim. They enjoyed the favor
of the Pharaohs, who later enslaved Judah, putting the southern
kingdom under tribute.
97:9.18 There were ups and downs -- wars
between Israel and Judah. After four years of civil war and
three dynasties, Israel fell under the rule of city despots who
began to trade in land. Even King Omri attempted to buy Shemer's
estate. But the end drew on apace when Shalmaneser III decided
to control the Mediterranean coast. King Ahab of Ephraim
gathered ten other groups and resisted at Karkar; the battle was
a draw. The Assyrian was stopped but the allies were decimated.
This great fight is not even mentioned in the Old Testament.
97:9.19 New trouble started when King Ahab
tried to buy land from Naboth. His Phoenician wife forged Ahab's
name to papers directing that Naboth's land be confiscated on
the charge that he had blasphemed the names of "Elohim and the
king." He and his sons were promptly executed. The vigorous
Elijah appeared on the scene denouncing Ahab for the murder of
the Naboths. Thus Elijah, one of the greatest of the prophets,
began his teaching as a defender of the old land mores as
against the land-selling attitude of the Baalim, against the
attempt of the cities to dominate the country. But the reform
did not succeed until the country landlord Jehu joined forces
with the gypsy chieftain Jehonadab to destroy the prophets (real
estate agents) of Baal at Samaria.
97:9.20 New life appeared as Jehoash and his
son Jeroboam delivered Israel from its enemies. But by this time
there ruled in Samaria a gangster-nobility whose depredations
rivaled those of the Davidic dynasty of olden days. State and
church went along hand in hand. The attempt to suppress freedom
of speech led Elijah, Amos, and Hosea to begin their secret
writing, and this was the real beginning of the Jewish and
Christian Bibles.
97:9.21 But the northern kingdom did not
vanish from history until the king of Israel conspired with the
king of Egypt and refused to pay further tribute to Assyria.
Then began the three years' siege followed by the total
dispersion of the northern kingdom. Ephraim (Israel) thus
vanished. Judah -- the Jews, the "remnant of Israel" -- had
begun the concentration of land in the hands of the few, as
Isaiah said, "Adding house to house and field to field."
Presently there was in Jerusalem a temple of Baal alongside the
temple of Yahweh. This reign of terror was ended by a
monotheistic revolt led by the boy king Joash, who crusaded for
Yahweh for thirty-five years.
97:9.22 The next king, Amaziah, had trouble
with the revolting tax-paying Edomites and their neighbors.
After a signal victory he turned to attack his northern
neighbors and was just as signally defeated. Then the rural folk
revolted; they assassinated the king and put his
sixteen-year-old son on the throne. This was Azariah, called
Uzziah by Isaiah. After Uzziah, things went from bad to worse,
and Judah existed for a hundred years by paying tribute to the
kings of Assyria. Isaiah the first told them that Jerusalem,
being the city of Yahweh, would never fall. But Jeremiah did not
hesitate to proclaim its downfall.
97:9.23 The real undoing of Judah was effected
by a corrupt and rich ring of politicians operating under the
rule of a boy king, Manasseh. The changing economy favored the
return of the worship of Baal, whose private land dealings were
against the ideology of Yahweh. The fall of Assyria and the
ascendency of Egypt brought deliverance to Judah for a time, and
the country folk took over. Under Josiah they destroyed the
Jerusalem ring of corrupt politicians.
97:9.24 But this era came to a tragic end when
Josiah presumed to go out to intercept Necho's mighty army as it
moved up the coast from Egypt for the aid of Assyria against
Babylon. He was wiped out, and Judah went under tribute to
Egypt. The Baal political party returned to power in Jerusalem,
and thus began the real Egyptian bondage. Then ensued a
period in which the Baalim politicians controlled both the
courts and the priesthood. Baal worship was an economic and
social system dealing with property rights as well as having to
do with soil fertility.
97:9.25 With the overthrow of Necho by
Nebuchadnezzar, Judah fell under the rule of Babylon and was
given ten years of grace, but soon rebelled. When Nebuchadnezzar
came against them, the Judahites started social reforms, such as
releasing slaves, to influence Yahweh. When the Babylonian army
temporarily withdrew, the Hebrews rejoiced that their magic of
reform had delivered them. It was during this period that
Jeremiah told them of the impending doom, and presently
Nebuchadnezzar returned.
97:9.26 And so the end of Judah came suddenly.
The city was destroyed, and the people were carried away into
Babylon. The Yahweh-Baal struggle ended with the captivity. And
the captivity shocked the remnant of Israel into monotheism.
97:9.27 In Babylon the Jews arrived at the
conclusion that they could not exist as a small group in
Palestine, having their own peculiar social and economic
customs, and that, if their ideologies were to prevail, they
must convert the gentiles. Thus originated their new concept of
destiny -- the idea that the Jews must become the chosen
servants of Yahweh. The Jewish religion of the Old Testament
really evolved in Babylon during the captivity.
97:9.28 The doctrine of immortality also took
form at Babylon. The Jews had thought that the idea of the
future life detracted from the emphasis of their gospel of
social justice. Now for the first time theology displaced
sociology and economics. Religion was taking shape as a system
of human thought and conduct more and more to be separated from
politics, sociology, and economics.
97:9.29 And so does the truth about the Jewish
people disclose that much which has been regarded as sacred
history turns out to be little more than the chronicle of
ordinary profane history. Judaism was the soil out of which
Christianity grew, but the Jews were not a miraculous people.
10. THE HEBREW RELIGION
97:10.1 Their leaders had taught the
Israelites that they were a chosen people, not for special
indulgence and monopoly of divine favor, but for the special
service of carrying the truth of the one God over all to every
nation. And they had promised the Jews that, if they would
fulfill this destiny, they would become the spiritual leaders of
all peoples, and that the coming Messiah would reign over them
and all the world as the Prince of Peace.
97:10.2 When the Jews had been freed by the
Persians, they returned to Palestine only to fall into bondage
to their own priest-ridden code of laws, sacrifices, and
rituals. And as the Hebrew clans rejected the wonderful story of
God presented in the farewell oration of Moses for the rituals
of sacrifice and penance, so did these remnants of the Hebrew
nation reject the magnificent concept of the second Isaiah for
the rules, regulations, and rituals of their growing priesthood.
97:10.3 National egotism, false faith in a
misconceived promised Messiah, and the increasing bondage and
tyranny of the priesthood forever silenced the voices of the
spiritual leaders (excepting Daniel, Ezekiel, Haggai, and
Malachi); and from that day to the time of John the Baptist all
Israel experienced an increasing spiritual retrogression. But
the Jews never lost the concept of the Universal Father; even to
the twentieth century after Christ they have continued to follow
this Deity conception.
97:10.4 From Moses to John the Baptist there
extended an unbroken line of faithful teachers who passed the
monotheistic torch of light from one generation to another while
they unceasingly rebuked unscrupulous rulers, denounced
commercializing priests, and ever exhorted the people to adhere
to the worship of the supreme Yahweh, the Lord God of Israel.
97:10.5 As a nation the Jews eventually lost
their political identity, but the Hebrew religion of sincere
belief in the one and universal God continues to live in the
hearts of the scattered exiles. And this religion survives
because it has effectively functioned to conserve the highest
values of its followers. The Jewish religion did preserve the
ideals of a people, but it failed to foster progress and
encourage philosophic creative discovery in the realms of truth.
The Jewish religion had many faults -- it was deficient in
philosophy and almost devoid of aesthetic qualities -- but it
did conserve moral values; therefore it persisted. The supreme
Yahweh, as compared with other concepts of Deity, was clear-cut,
vivid, personal, and moral.
97:10.6 The Jews loved justice, wisdom, truth,
and righteousness as have few peoples, but they contributed
least of all peoples to the intellectual comprehension and to
the spiritual understanding of these divine qualities. Though
Hebrew theology refused to expand, it played an important part
in the development of two other world religions, Christianity
and Mohammedanism.
97:10.7 The Jewish religion persisted also
because of its institutions. It is difficult for religion to
survive as the private practice of isolated individuals. This
has ever been the error of the religious leaders: Seeing the
evils of institutionalized religion, they seek to destroy the
technique of group functioning. In place of destroying all
ritual, they would do better to reform it. In this respect
Ezekiel was wiser than his contemporaries; though he joined with
them in insisting on personal moral responsibility, he also set
about to establish the faithful observance of a superior and
purified ritual.
97:10.8 And thus the successive teachers of
Israel accomplished the greatest feat in the evolution of
religion ever to be effected on Urantia: the gradual but
continuous transformation of the barbaric concept of the savage
demon Yahweh, the jealous and cruel spirit god of the
fulminating Sinai volcano, to the later exalted and supernal
concept of the supreme Yahweh, creator of all things and the
loving and merciful Father of all mankind. And this Hebraic
concept of God was the highest human visualization of the
Universal Father up to that time when it was further enlarged
and so exquisitely amplified by the personal teachings and life
example of his Son, Michael of Nebadon.
97:10.9
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
