Babylonian captivity

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.

95:1.2But the cus­tom of the early Adamite peo­ples in hon­or­ing the sev­enth day of the week never com­pletely dis­ap­peared in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Only, dur­ing the Mel­chiz­e­dek era, the sev­enth day was re­garded as the worst of bad luck. It was taboo-rid­den; it was un­law­ful to go on a jour­ney, cook food, or make a fire on the evil sev­enth day. The Jews car­ried back to Pales­tine many of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian taboos which they had found rest­ing on the Baby­lo­nian ob­ser­vance of the sev­enth day, the Sha­bat­tum.

97:7.1The 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.

97:7.2Dur­ing 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.

97:7.3These 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.

93:9.9The na­tional ego of the Jews was tremen­dously de­pressed by the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. In their re­ac­tion against na­tional in­fe­ri­or­ity they swung to the other ex­treme of na­tional and racial ego­tism, in which they dis­torted and per­verted their tra­di­tions with the view of ex­alt­ing them­selves above all races as the cho­sen peo­ple of God; and hence they care­fully edited all their rec­ords for the pur­pose of rais­ing Abra­ham and their other na­tional lead­ers high up above all other per­sons, not ex­cept­ing Mel­chiz­e­dek him­self. The He­brew scribes there­fore de­stroyed ev­ery rec­ord of these mo­men­tous times which they could find, pre­serv­ing only the nar­ra­tive of the meet­ing of Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek af­ter the bat­tle of Sid­dim, which they deemed re­flected great honor upon Abra­ham.

96:4.8Un­der 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.

97:9.24But 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.

97:9.25With 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.

97:9.26And 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.

97:9.27In 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.

97:9.28The 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.

93:9.6The teach­ing of Mel­chiz­e­dek was full and re­plete, but the rec­ords of these days seemed im­pos­si­ble and fan­tas­tic to the later He­brew priests, al­though many had some un­der­stand­ing of these trans­ac­tions, at least up to the times of the en masse edit­ing of the Old Tes­ta­ment rec­ords in Baby­lon.

93:9.7What the Old Tes­ta­ment rec­ords de­scribe as con­ver­sa­tions be­tween Abra­ham and God were in re­al­ity con­fer­ences be­tween Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek. Later scribes re­garded the term Mel­chiz­e­dek as syn­ony­mous with God. The rec­ord of so many con­tacts of Abra­ham and Sarah with “the an­gel of the Lord” refers to their nu­mer­ous vis­its with Mel­chiz­e­dek.

93:9.8The He­brew nar­ra­tives of Isaac, Ja­cob, and Joseph are far more re­li­able than those about Abra­ham, al­though they also con­tain many di­ver­sions from the facts, al­ter­ations made in­ten­tion­ally and un­in­ten­tion­ally at the time of the com­pi­la­tion of these rec­ords by the He­brew priests dur­ing the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. Ke­tu­rah was not a wife of Abra­ham; like Ha­gar, she was merely a con­cu­bine. All of Abra­ham’s prop­erty went to Isaac, the son of Sarah, the sta­tus wife. Abra­ham was not so old as the rec­ords in­di­cate, and his wife was much younger. These ages were de­lib­er­ately al­tered in or­der to pro­vide for the sub­se­quent al­leged mirac­u­lous birth of Isaac.

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.

97:8.1The 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.

74:8.9The He­brews had no writ­ten lan­guage in gen­eral us­age for a long time af­ter they reached Pales­tine. They learned the use of an al­pha­bet from the neigh­bor­ing Phil­is­tines, who were po­lit­i­cal refugees from the higher civ­i­liza­tion of Crete. The He­brews did lit­tle writ­ing un­til about 900 B.C., and hav­ing no writ­ten lan­guage un­til such a late date, they had sev­eral dif­fer­ent sto­ries of cre­ation in cir­cu­la­tion, but af­ter the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity they in­clined more to­ward ac­cept­ing a mod­i­fied Mes­o­po­ta­mian ver­sion.

74:8.10Jew­ish tra­di­tion be­came crys­tal­lized about Moses, and be­cause he en­deav­ored to trace the lin­eage of Abra­ham back to Adam, the Jews as­sumed that Adam was the first of all man­kind. Yah­weh was the cre­ator, and since Adam was sup­posed to be the first man, he must have made the world just prior to mak­ing Adam. And then the tra­di­tion of Adam’s six days got wo­ven into the story, with the re­sult that al­most a thou­sand years af­ter Moses’ so­journ on earth the tra­di­tion of cre­ation in six days was writ­ten out and sub­se­quently cred­ited to him.

74:8.11When the Jew­ish priests re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, they had al­ready com­pleted the writ­ing of their nar­ra­tive of the be­gin­ning of things. Soon they made claims that this recital was a re­cently dis­cov­ered story of cre­ation writ­ten by Moses. But the con­tem­po­rary He­brews of around 500 B.C. did not con­sider these writ­ings to be di­vine rev­e­la­tions; they looked upon them much as later peo­ples re­gard mytho­log­i­cal nar­ra­tives.

78:7.3Al­most five thou­sand years later, as the He­brew priests in Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity sought to trace the Jew­ish peo­ple back to Adam, they found great dif­fi­culty in piec­ing the story to­gether; and it oc­curred to one of them to aban­don the ef­fort, to let the whole world drown in its wicked­ness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to trace Abra­ham right back to one of the three sur­viv­ing sons of Noah.

143:4.1For more than six hun­dred years the Jews of Judea, and later on those of Gal­i­lee also, had been at en­mity with the Samar­i­tans. This ill feel­ing be­tween the Jews and the Samar­i­tans came about in this way: About seven hun­dred years B.C., Sar­gon, king of As­syria, in sub­du­ing a re­volt in cen­tral Pales­tine, car­ried away and into cap­tiv­ity over twenty-five thou­sand Jews of the north­ern king­dom of Is­rael and in­stalled in their place an al­most equal num­ber of the de­scen­dants of the Cuthites, Sepharvites, and the Hamath­ites. Later on, Ashur­ba­n­i­pal sent still other colonies to dwell in Samaria.

143:4.2The re­li­gious en­mity be­tween the Jews and the Samar­i­tans dated from the re­turn of the for­mer from the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity, when the Samar­i­tans worked to pre­vent the re­build­ing of Je­ru­sa­lem. Later they of­fended the Jews by ex­tend­ing friendly as­sis­tance to the armies of Alexan­der. In re­turn for their friend­ship Alexan­der gave the Samar­i­tans per­mis­sion to build a tem­ple on Mount Ger­izim, where they wor­shiped Yah­weh and their tribal gods and of­fered sac­ri­fices much af­ter the or­der of the tem­ple ser­vices at Je­ru­sa­lem. At least they con­tin­ued this wor­ship up to the time of the Mac­cabees, when John Hyr­canus de­stroyed their tem­ple on Mount Ger­izim. The Apos­tle Philip, in his labors for the Samar­i­tans af­ter the death of Je­sus, held many meet­ings on the site of this old Samar­i­tan tem­ple.