Evolution of the God Concept Among the Hebrews

97:10.1Their 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.

97:10.2When 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.

97:10.3Na­tional 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.

97:10.4From 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.

97:10.5As 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.

97:10.6The 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.

97:10.7The 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.

97:10.8And 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.]