37:0. Yahweh -- God of the Hebrews
P1052:1, 96:0.1 In conceiving of Deity, man first includes all
gods, then subordinates all foreign gods to his tribal deity, and finally
excludes all but the one God of final and supreme value. The Jews synthesized
all gods into their more sublime concept of the Lord God of Israel. The Hindus
likewise combined their multifarious deities into the "one spirituality of
the gods" portrayed in the Rig-Veda, while the Mesopotamians reduced their
gods to the more centralized concept of Bel-Marduk. These ideas of monotheism
matured all over the world not long after the appearance of Machiventa
Melchizedek at Salem in Palestine. But the Melchizedek concept of Deity was
unlike that of the evolutionary philosophy of inclusion, subordination, and
exclusion; it was based exclusively on creative power and very soon
influenced the highest deity concepts of Mesopotamia, India, and Egypt.
P1052:2, 96:0.2 The Salem religion was revered as a tradition by the Kenites and several other Canaanite tribes.
P1052:3, 96:0.3 The Salem religion persisted among the Kenites in Palestine as their creed, and this religion as it was later adopted by the Hebrews was influenced, first, by Egyptian moral teachings; later, by Babylonian theological thought; and lastly, by Iranian conceptions of good and evil. Factually the Hebrew religion is predicated upon the covenant between Abraham and Machiventa Melchizedek, evolutionally it is the outgrowth of many unique situational circumstances, but culturally it has borrowed freely from the religion, morality, and philosophy of the entire Levant. It is through the Hebrew religion that much of the morality and religious thought of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Iran was transmitted to the Occidental peoples.
P1052:4, 96:1.1 The early Semites regarded everything as being
indwelt by a spirit. There were spirits of the animal and vegetable worlds;
annual spirits, the lord of progeny; spirits of fire, water, and air; a
veritable pantheon of spirits to be feared and worshiped. And the teaching of
Melchizedek regarding a Universal Creator never fully destroyed the belief in
these subordinate spirits or nature gods.
P1052:5, 96:1.2 The progress of the Hebrews from polytheism
through henotheism to monotheism was not an unbroken and continuous conceptual
development. They experienced many retrogressions in the evolution of their
Deity concepts, while during any one epoch there existed varying ideas of God
among different groups of Semite believers. From time to time numerous terms
were applied to their concepts of God, and in order to prevent confusion these
various Deity titles will be defined as they pertain to the evolution of Jewish
theology:
P1053:1, 96:1.3 1. 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.
P1053:2, 96:1.4 2. El Elyon. For centuries after Melchizedek's sojourn at Salem his doctrine of Deity persisted in various versions but was generally connoted by the term El Elyon, the Most High God of heaven. Many Semites, including the immediate descendants of Abraham, at various times worshiped both Yahweh and El Elyon.
P1053:3, 96:1.5 3. El Shaddai. It is difficult to explain
what El Shaddai stood for. This idea of God was a composite derived from the
teachings of Amenemope's Book of Wisdom modified by Ikhnaton's doctrine of Aton
and further influenced by Melchizedek's teachings embodied in the concept of El
Elyon. But as the concept of El Shaddai permeated the Hebrew mind, it became
thoroughly colored with the Yahweh beliefs of the desert.
P1053:4, 96:1.6 One of the dominant ideas of the religion of
this era was the Egyptian concept of divine Providence, the teaching that
material prosperity was a reward for serving El Shaddai.
P1053:5, 96:1.7 4. El. Amid all this confusion of terminology and haziness of concept, many devout believers sincerely endeavored to worship all of these evolving ideas of divinity, and there grew up the practice of referring to this composite Deity as El. And this term included still other of the Bedouin nature gods.
P1053:6, 96:1.8 5. Elohim. In Kish and Ur there long persisted Sumerian-Chaldean groups who taught a three-in-one God concept founded on the traditions of the days of Adam and Melchizedek. This doctrine was carried to Egypt, where this Trinity was worshiped under the name of Elohim, or in the singular as Eloah. The philosophic circles of Egypt and later Alexandrian teachers of Hebraic extraction taught this unity of pluralistic Gods, and many of Moses' advisers at the time of the exodus believed in this Trinity. But the concept of the trinitarian Elohim never became a real part of Hebrew theology until after they had come under the political influence of the Babylonians.
P1053:7, 96:1.9 6. Sundry names. The Semites disliked to speak the name of their Deity, and they therefore resorted to numerous appellations from time to time, such as: The Spirit of God, The Lord, The Angel of the Lord, The Almighty, The Holy One, The Most High, Adonai, The Ancient of Days, The Lord God of Israel, The Creator of Heaven and Earth, Kyrios, Jah, The Lord of Hosts, and The Father in Heaven.
P1053:8, 96:1.10 Jehovah 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.
P1054:1, 96:1.11 Up 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.
P1054:2, 96:1.12 The Canaanites had long revered Yahweh, and
although many of the Kenites believed more or less in El Elyon, the super-god of
the Salem religion, a majority of the Canaanites held loosely to the worship of
the old tribal deities. They were hardly willing to abandon their national
deities in favor of an international, not to say an interplanetary, God. They
were not universal-deity minded, and therefore these tribes continued to worship
their tribal deities, including Yahweh and the silver and golden calves which
symbolized the Bedouin herders' concept of the spirit of the Sinai volcano.
P1054:3, 96:1.13 The 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."
P1054:4, 96:1.14 As man advances in culture, the lesser gods are
subordinated to a supreme deity; the great Jove persists only as an exclamation.
The monotheists keep their subordinate gods as spirits, demons, fates, Nereids,
fairies, brownies, dwarfs, banshees, and the evil eye. The Hebrews passed
through henotheism and long believed in the existence of gods other than Yahweh,
but they increasingly held that these foreign deities were subordinate to
Yahweh. They conceded the actuality of Chemosh, god of the Amorites, but
maintained that he was subordinate to Yahweh.
P1054:6, 96:2.1 The Semites of the East were well-organized and
well-led horsemen who invaded the eastern regions of the fertile crescent and
there united with the Babylonians. The Chaldeans near Ur were among the most
advanced of the eastern Semites. The Phoenicians were a superior and
well-organized group of mixed Semites who held the western section of Palestine,
along the Mediterranean coast. Racially the Semites were among the most blended
of peoples, containing hereditary factors from almost all of the nine world
races.
P1054:7, 96:2.2 Again and again the Arabian Semites fought their
way into the northern Promised Land, the land that "flowed with milk and
honey," but just as often were they ejected by the better-organized and
more highly civilized northern Semites and Hittites. Later, during an unusually
severe famine, these roving Bedouins entered Egypt in large numbers as contract
laborers on the Egyptian public works, only to find themselves undergoing the
bitter experience of enslavement at the hard daily toil of the common and
downtrodden laborers of the Nile valley.
P1055:1, 96:2.3 It was only after the days of Machiventa
Melchizedek and Abraham that certain tribes of Semites, because of their
peculiar religious beliefs, were called the children of Israel and later on
Hebrews, Jews, and the "chosen people." Abraham was not the racial
father of all the Hebrews; he was not even the progenitor of all the Bedouin
Semites who were held captive in Egypt. True, his offspring, coming up out of
Egypt, did form the nucleus of the later Jewish people, but the vast majority of
the men and women who became incorporated into the clans of Israel had never
sojourned in Egypt. They were merely fellow nomads who chose to follow the
leadership of Moses as the children of Abraham and their Semite associates from
Egypt journeyed through northern Arabia.
P1055:2, 96:2.4 The Melchizedek teaching concerning El Elyon,
the Most High, and the covenant of divine favor through faith, had been largely
forgotten by the time of the Egyptian enslavement of the Semite peoples who were
shortly to form the Hebrew nation. But throughout this period of captivity these
Arabian nomads maintained a lingering traditional belief in Yahweh as their
racial deity.
P1055:4, 96:3.1 The beginning of the evolution of the Hebraic
concepts and ideals of a Supreme Creator dates from the departure of the Semites
from Egypt under that great leader, teacher, and organizer, Moses. His mother
was of the royal family of Egypt; his father was a Semitic liaison officer
between the government and the Bedouin captives. Moses thus possessed qualities
derived from superior racial sources; his ancestry was so highly blended that it
is impossible to classify him in any one racial group. Had he not been of this
mixed type, he would never have displayed that unusual versatility and
adaptability which enabled him to manage the diversified horde which eventually
became associated with those Bedouin Semites who fled from Egypt to the Arabian
desert under his leadership.
P1055:6, 96:3.3 No leader ever undertook to reform and uplift a
more forlorn, downcast, dejected, and ignorant group of human beings. But these
slaves carried latent possibilities of development in their hereditary strains,
and there were a sufficient number of educated leaders who had been coached by
Moses in preparation for the day of revolt and the strike for liberty to
constitute a corps of efficient organizers. These superior men had been employed
as native overseers of their people; they had received some education because of
Moses' influence with the Egyptian rulers.
P1056:2, 96:3.5 But Moses was not discouraged; he bided his time, and in less than a year, when the Egyptian military forces were fully occupied in resisting the simultaneous onslaughts of a strong Libyan thrust from the south and a Greek naval invasion from the north, this intrepid organizer led his compatriots out of Egypt in a spectacular night flight. This dash for liberty was carefully planned and skillfully executed. And they were successful, notwithstanding that they were hotly pursued by Pharaoh and a small body of Egyptians, who all fell before the fugitives' defense, yielding much booty, all of which was augmented by the loot of the advancing host of escaping slaves as they marched on toward their ancestral desert home.
P1056:3, 96:4.1 The evolution and elevation of the Mosaic
teaching has influenced almost one half of all the world, and still does even in
the twenty-first 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.
P1056:4, 96:4.2 Moses 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.
P1056:5, 96:4.3 Moses 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.
P1056:6, 96:4.4 The fact that Yahweh was the god of the fleeing
Hebrews explains why they tarried so long before the holy mountain of Sinai, and
why they there received the Ten Commandments which Moses promulgated in the name
of Yahweh, the god of Horeb. During this lengthy sojourn before Sinai the
religious ceremonials of the newly evolving Hebrew worship were further
perfected.
P1057:1, 96:4.5 It does not appear that Moses would ever have
succeeded in the establishment of his somewhat advanced ceremonial worship and
in keeping his followers intact for a quarter of a century had it not been for
the violent eruption of Horeb during the third week of their worshipful sojourn
at its base. "The mountain of Yahweh was consumed in fire, and the smoke
ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked
greatly." In view of this cataclysm it is not surprising that Moses could
impress upon his brethren the teaching that their God was "mighty,
terrible, a devouring fire, fearful, and all-powerful."
P1057:2, 96:4.6 Moses proclaimed that Yahweh was the Lord
God of Israel, who had singled out the Hebrews as his chosen people; he was
building a new nation, and he wisely nationalized his religious teachings,
telling his followers that Yahweh was a hard taskmaster, a "jealous
God." But nonetheless he sought to enlarge their concept of divinity when
he taught them that Yahweh was the "God of the spirits of all flesh,"
and when he said, "The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the
everlasting arms." Moses taught that Yahweh was a covenant-keeping God;
that he "will not forsake you, neither destroy you, nor forget the covenant
of your fathers because the Lord loves you and will not forget the oath by which
he swore to your fathers."
P1057:3, 96:4.7 Moses made a heroic effort to uplift Yahweh to
the dignity of a supreme Deity when he presented him as the "God of truth
and without iniquity, just and right in all his ways." And yet, despite
this exalted teaching, the limited understanding of his followers made it
necessary to speak of God as being in man's image, as being subject to fits of
anger, wrath, and severity, even that he was vengeful and easily influenced by
man's conduct.
P1057:4, 96:4.8 Under 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.
P1057:5, 96:4.9 The most unique and amazing feature of the
religious history of the Hebrews concerns this continuous evolution of the
concept of Deity from the primitive god of Mount Horeb up through the teachings
of their successive spiritual leaders to the high level of development depicted
in the Deity doctrines of the Isaiahs, who proclaimed that magnificent concept
of the loving and merciful Creator Father.
P1057:6, 96:5.1 Moses was an extraordinary combination of
military leader, social organizer, and religious teacher. He was the most
important individual world teacher and leader between the times of Machiventa
and Jesus. Moses attempted to introduce many reforms in Israel of which there is
no record. In the space of one man's life he led the polyglot horde of so-called
Hebrews out of slavery and uncivilized roaming while he laid the foundation for
the subsequent birth of a nation and the perpetuation of a race.
P1057:7, 96:5.2 There is so little on record of the great work
of Moses because the Hebrews had no written language at the time of the exodus.
The record of the times and doings of Moses was derived from the traditions
extant more than one thousand years after the death of the great leader.
P1058:1, 96:5.3 Many of the advances which Moses made over and
above the religion of the Egyptians and the surrounding Levantine tribes were
due to the Kenite traditions of the time of Melchizedek. Without the teaching of
Machiventa to Abraham and his contemporaries, the Hebrews would have come out of
Egypt in hopeless darkness. Moses and his father-in-law, Jethro, gathered up the
residue of the traditions of the days of Melchizedek, and these teachings,
joined to the learning of the Egyptians, guided Moses in the creation of the
improved religion and ritual of the Israelites. Moses was an organizer; he
selected the best in the religion and mores of Egypt and Palestine and,
associating these practices with the traditions of the Melchizedek teachings,
organized the Hebrew ceremonial system of worship.
P1058:2, 96:5.4 Moses was a believer in Providence; he had become thoroughly tainted with the doctrines of Egypt concerning the supernatural control of the Nile and the other elements of nature. He had a great vision of God, but he was thoroughly sincere when he taught the Hebrews that, if they would obey God, "He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will multiply the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land -- the corn, wine, oil, and your flocks. You shall be prospered above all people, and the Lord your God will take away from you all sickness and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt upon you." He even said: "Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth." "You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. You shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you."
P1058:3, 96:5.5 But it was truly pitiful to watch this great
mind of Moses trying to adapt his sublime concept of El Elyon, the Most High, to
the comprehension of the ignorant and illiterate Hebrews. To his assembled
leaders he thundered, "The Lord your God is one God; there is none beside
him"; while to the mixed multitude he declared, "Who is like your God
among all the gods?" Moses made a brave and partly successful stand against
fetishes and idolatry, declaring, "You saw no similitude on the day that
your God spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire." He also
forbade the making of images of any sort.
P1058:4, 96:5.6 Moses feared to proclaim the mercy of Yahweh,
preferring to awe his people with the fear of the justice of God, saying:
"The Lord your God is God of Gods, and Lord of Lords, a great God, a mighty
and terrible God, who regards not man." Again he sought to control the
turbulent clans when he declared that "your God kills when you disobey him;
he heals and gives life when you obey him." But Moses taught these tribes
that they would become the chosen people of God only on condition that they
"kept all his commandments and obeyed all his statutes."
P1058:5, 96:5.7 Little of the mercy of God was taught the
Hebrews during these early times. They learned of God as "the Almighty; the
Lord is a man of war, God of battles, glorious in power, who dashes in pieces
his enemies." "The Lord your God walks in the midst of the camp to
deliver you." The Israelites thought of their God as one who loved them,
but who also "hardened Pharaoh's heart" and "cursed their
enemies."
P1058:6, 96:5.8 While Moses presented fleeting glimpses of a
universal and beneficent Deity to the children of Israel, on the whole, their
day-by-day concept of Yahweh was that of a God but little better than the tribal
gods of the surrounding peoples. Their concept of God was primitive, crude, and
anthropomorphic; when Moses passed on, these Bedouin tribes quickly reverted to
the semi-barbaric ideas of their olden gods of Horeb and the desert. The
enlarged and more sublime vision of God which Moses every now and then presented
to his leaders was soon lost to view, while most of the people turned to the
worship of their fetish golden calves, the Palestinian herdsman's symbol of
Yahweh.
P1059:1, 96:5.9 When Moses turned over the command of the Hebrews to Joshua, he had already gathered up thousands of the collateral descendants of Abraham, Nahor, Lot, and other of the related tribes and had whipped them into a self-sustaining and partially self-regulating nation of pastoral warriors.
P1059:2, 96:6.1 Upon the death of Moses his lofty concept of
Yahweh rapidly deteriorated. Joshua and the leaders of Israel continued to
harbor the Mosaic traditions of the all-wise, beneficent, and almighty God, but
the common people rapidly reverted to the older desert idea of Yahweh. And this
backward drift of the concept of Deity continued increasingly under the
successive rule of the various tribal sheiks, the so-called Judges.
P1059:3, 96:6.2 The spell of the extraordinary personality of
Moses had kept alive in the hearts of his followers the inspiration of an
increasingly enlarged concept of God; but when they once reached the fertile
lands of Palestine, they quickly evolved from nomadic herders into settled and
somewhat sedate farmers. And this evolution of life practices and change of
religious viewpoint demanded a more or less complete change in the character of
their conception of the nature of their God, Yahweh. During the times of the
beginning of the transmutation of the austere, crude, exacting, and thunderous
desert god of Sinai into the later appearing concept of a God of love, justice,
and mercy, the Hebrews almost lost sight of Moses’ lofty teachings. They came
near losing all concept of monotheism; they nearly lost their opportunity of
becoming the people who would serve as a vital link in the spiritual evolution
of Earth, the group who would conserve the Melchizedek teaching of one God.
P1059:4, 96:6.3 Desperately Joshua sought to hold the concept of
a supreme Yahweh in the minds of the tribesmen, causing it to be proclaimed:
“As I was with Moses, so will I be with you; I will not fail you nor forsake
you.” Joshua found it necessary to preach a stern gospel to his disbelieving
people, people all too willing to believe their old and native religion but
unwilling to go forward in the religion of faith and righteousness. The burden
of Joshua’s teaching became: “Yahweh is a holy God; he is a jealous God; he
will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins.” The highest concept of
this age pictured Yahweh as a “God of power, judgment, and justice.”
P1059:5, 96:6.4 But even in this dark age, every now and then a
solitary teacher would arise proclaiming the Mosaic concept of divinity: “You
children of wickedness cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.” “Shall
mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his Maker?”
“Can you by searching find out God? Can you find out the Almighty to
perfection? Behold, God is great and we know him not. Touching the Almighty, we
cannot find him out.”
P1060:1, 96:7.1 Under the leadership of their sheiks and priests the Hebrews became loosely established in Palestine. But they soon drifted back into the benighted beliefs of the desert and became contaminated with the less advanced Canaanite religious practices. They became idolatrous and licentious, and their idea of Deity fell far below the Egyptian and Mesopotamian concepts of God that were maintained by certain surviving Salem groups, and which are recorded in some of the Psalms and in the so-called Book of Job.
P1060:2, 96:7.2 The Psalms are the work of a score or more of
authors; many were written by Egyptian and Mesopotamian teachers. During these
times when the Levant worshiped nature gods, there were still a goodly number
who believed in the supremacy of El Elyon, the Most High.
P1060:3, 96:7.3 No collection of religious writings gives
expression to such a wealth of devotion and inspirational ideas of God as the
Book of Psalms. And it would be very helpful if, in the perusal of this
wonderful collection of worshipful literature, consideration could be given to
the source and chronology of each separate hymn of praise and adoration, bearing
in mind that no other single collection covers such a great range of time. This
Book of Psalms is the record of the varying concepts of God entertained by the
believers of the Salem religion throughout the Levant and embraces the entire
period from Amenemope to Isaiah. In the Psalms God is depicted in all phases of
conception, from the crude idea of a tribal deity to the vastly expanded ideal
of the later Hebrews, wherein Yahweh is pictured as a loving ruler and merciful
Father.
P1060:4, 96:7.4 And when thus regarded, this group of Psalms
constitutes the most valuable and helpful assortment of devotional sentiments
ever assembled by man up to the times of the twentieth century. The worshipful
spirit of this collection of hymns transcends that of all other sacred books of
the world.
P1060:5, 96:7.5 The variegated picture of Deity presented in the
Book of Job was the product of more than a score of Mesopotamian religious
teachers extending over a period of almost three hundred years. And when you
read the lofty concept of divinity found in this compilation of Mesopotamian
beliefs, you will recognize that it was in the neighborhood of Ur of Chaldea
that the idea of a real God was best preserved during the dark days in
Palestine.
P1060:6, 96:7.6 In Palestine the wisdom and all- pervasiveness
of God was often grasped but seldom his love and mercy. The Yahweh of these
times "sends evil spirits to dominate the souls of his enemies"; he
prospers his own and obedient children, while he curses and visits dire
judgments upon all others. "He disappoints the devices of the crafty; he
takes the wise in their own deceit."
P1060:7, 96:7.7 Only at Ur did a voice arise to cry out the
mercy of God, saying: "He shall pray to God and shall find favor with him
and shall see his face with joy, for God will give to man divine
righteousness." Thus from Ur there is preached salvation, divine favor, by
faith: "He is gracious to the repentant and says, `Deliver him from going
down in the pit, for I have found a ransom.' If any say, `I have sinned and
perverted that which was right, and it profited me not,' God will deliver his
soul from going into the pit, and he shall see the light." Not since the
times of Melchizedek had the Levantine world heard such a ringing and cheering
message of human salvation as this extraordinary teaching of Elihu, the prophet
of Ur and priest of the Salem believers, that is, the remnant of the onetime
Melchizedek colony in Mesopotamia.
P1061:1, 96:7.8 And thus did the remnants of the Salem
missionaries in Mesopotamia maintain the light of truth during the period of the
disorganization of the Hebrew peoples until the appearance of the first of that
long line of the teachers of Israel who never stopped as they built, concept
upon concept, until they had achieved the realization of the ideal of the
Universal and Creator Father of all, the acme of the evolution of the Yahweh
concept.