Evolution of the God Concept Among the Hebrews

97:8.1The 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.

97:8.2In 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.

97:8.3But 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.

97:8.4And 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.

97:8.5All 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.

97:8.6New 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.

97:8.7A 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.