Yahweh

97:3.1The 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.

97:3.2The 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.’”

97:3.3The 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.

97:3.4In 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.

97:3.5Out 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.

97:3.6Eli­jah 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.

94:11.12While this idea of Ab­so­lute De­ity never found great pop­u­lar fa­vor with the peo­ples of Asia, it did en­able the in­tel­lec­tu­als of these lands to unify their phi­los­o­phy and to har­mo­nize their cos­mol­ogy. The con­cept of the Bud­dha Ab­so­lute is at times quasi-per­sonal, at times wholly im­per­sonal—even an in­fi­nite cre­ative force. Such con­cepts, though help­ful to phi­los­o­phy, are not vi­tal to re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment. Even an an­thro­po­mor­phic Yah­weh is of greater re­li­gious value than an in­finitely re­mote Ab­so­lute of Bud­dhism or Brah­man­ism.

142:3.9Never be­fore had the apos­tles been so shocked as they were upon hear­ing this re­count­ing of the growth of the con­cept of God in the Jew­ish minds of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions; they were too be­wil­dered to ask ques­tions. As they sat be­fore Je­sus in si­lence, the Mas­ter con­tin­ued: “And you would have known these truths had you read the Scrip­tures. Have you not read in Samuel where it says: ‘And the anger of the Lord was kin­dled against Is­rael, so much so that he moved David against them, say­ing, go num­ber Is­rael and Ju­dah’? And this was not strange be­cause in the days of Samuel the chil­dren of Abra­ham re­ally be­lieved that Yah­weh cre­ated both good and evil. But when a later writer nar­rated these events, sub­se­quent to the en­large­ment of the Jew­ish con­cept of the na­ture of God, he did not dare at­trib­ute evil to Yah­weh; there­fore he said: ‘And Sa­tan stood up against Is­rael and pro­voked David to num­ber Is­rael.’ Can­not you dis­cern that such rec­ords in the Scrip­tures clearly show how the con­cept of the na­ture of God con­tin­ued to grow from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other?

96:1.11Up 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.

96:4.3Moses 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.

159:4.5“Na­than­iel, never per­mit your­self for one mo­ment to be­lieve the Scrip­ture rec­ords which tell you that the God of love di­rected your fore­fa­thers to go forth in bat­tle to slay all their en­e­mies—men, women, and chil­dren. Such rec­ords are the words of men, not very holy men, and they are not the word of God. The Scrip­tures al­ways have, and al­ways will, re­flect the in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and spir­i­tual sta­tus of those who cre­ate them. Have you not noted that the con­cepts of Yah­weh grow in beauty and glory as the proph­ets make their rec­ords from Samuel to Isa­iah? And you should re­mem­ber that the Scrip­tures are in­tended for re­li­gious in­struc­tion and spir­i­tual guid­ance. They are not the works of ei­ther his­to­ri­ans or philoso­phers.

96:1.10Je­ho­vah 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.

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.

169:4.5Ex­cept when quot­ing the He­brew scrip­tures, Je­sus re­ferred to De­ity by only two names: God and Fa­ther. And when the Mas­ter made ref­er­ence to his Fa­ther as God, he usu­ally em­ployed the He­brew word sig­ni­fy­ing the plu­ral God (the Trin­ity) and not the word Yah­weh, which stood for the pro­gres­sive con­cep­tion of the tribal God of the Jews.

96:1.15The 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.

97:9.14Af­ter 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.

96:4.2Moses 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.

97:1.4But 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.

142:3.75. The Su­preme Yah­weh. By the times of Isa­iah these be­liefs about God had ex­panded into the con­cept of a Uni­ver­sal Cre­ator who was si­mul­ta­ne­ously all-pow­er­ful and all-mer­ci­ful. And this evolv­ing and en­larg­ing con­cept of God vir­tu­ally sup­planted all pre­vi­ous ideas of De­ity in our fa­thers’ re­li­gion.

96:1.13The 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.”

96:1.31. 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.

96:4.1The 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.

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.

142:3.31. Yah­weh—the god of the Sinai clans. This was the prim­i­tive con­cept of De­ity which Moses ex­alted to the higher level of the Lord God of Is­rael. The Fa­ther in heaven never fails to ac­cept the sin­cere wor­ship of his chil­dren on earth, no mat­ter how crude their con­cept of De­ity or by what name they sym­bol­ize his di­vine na­ture.

96:2.5Yah­weh 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.