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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 97
EVOLUTION OF THE GOD CONCEPT AMONG THE HEBREWS
97:0.1
THE spiritual leaders of the Hebrews did what no others
before them had ever succeeded in doing -- they
deanthropomorphized their God concept without converting
it into an abstraction of Deity comprehensible only to
philosophers. Even common people were able to regard the
matured concept of Yahweh as a Father, if not of the
individual, at least of the race.
97:0.2
The concept of the personality of God, while clearly
taught at Salem in the days of Melchizedek, was vague
and hazy at the time of the flight from Egypt and only
gradually evolved in the Hebraic mind from generation to
generation in response to the teaching of the spiritual
leaders. The perception of Yahweh's personality was much
more continuous in its progressive evolution than was
that of many other of the Deity attributes. From Moses
to Malachi there occurred an almost unbroken ideational
growth of the personality of God in the Hebrew mind, and
this concept was eventually heightened and glorified by
the teachings of Jesus about the Father in heaven.
1. SAMUEL -- FIRST OF THE HEBREW PROPHETS
97:1.1
Hostile pressure of the surrounding peoples in Palestine
soon taught the Hebrew sheiks they could not hope to
survive unless they confederated their tribal
organizations into a centralized government. And this
centralization of administrative authority afforded a
better opportunity for Samuel to function as a teacher
and reformer.
97:1.2
Samuel sprang from a long line of the Salem teachers who
had persisted in maintaining the truths of Melchizedek
as a part of their worship forms. This teacher was a
virile and resolute man. Only his great devotion,
coupled with his extraordinary determination, enabled
him to withstand the almost universal opposition which
he encountered when he started out to turn all Israel
back to the worship of the supreme Yahweh of Mosaic
times. And even then he was only partially successful;
he won back to the service of the higher concept of
Yahweh only the more intelligent half of the Hebrews;
the other half continued in the worship of the tribal
gods of the country and in the baser conception of
Yahweh.
97:1.3
Samuel was a rough-and-ready type of man, a practical
reformer who could go out in one day with his associates
and overthrow a score of Baal sites. The progress he
made was by sheer force of compulsion; he did little
preaching, less teaching, but he did act. One day he was
mocking the priest of Baal; the next, chopping in pieces
a captive king. He devotedly believed in the one God,
and he had a clear concept of that one God as creator of
heaven and earth: "The pillars of the earth are the
Lord's, and he has set the world upon them."
97:1.4
But 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.
97:1.5
And he preached anew the story of God's sincerity, his
covenant-keeping reliability. Said Samuel: "The Lord
will not forsake his people." "He has made with us an
everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure."
And so, throughout all Palestine there sounded the call
back to the worship of the supreme Yahweh. Ever this
energetic teacher proclaimed, "You are great, O Lord
God, for there is none like you, neither is there any
God beside you."
97:1.6
Theretofore the Hebrews had regarded the favor of Yahweh
mainly in terms of material prosperity. It was a great
shock to Israel, and almost cost Samuel his life, when
he dared to proclaim: "The Lord enriches and
impoverishes; he debases and exalts. He raises the poor
out of the dust and lifts up the beggars to set them
among princes to make them inherit the throne of glory."
Not since Moses had such comforting promises for the
humble and the less fortunate been proclaimed, and
thousands of despairing among the poor began to take
hope that they could improve their spiritual status.
97:1.7
But Samuel did not progress very far beyond the concept
of a tribal god. He proclaimed a Yahweh who made all men
but was occupied chiefly with the Hebrews, his chosen
people. Even so, as in the days of Moses, once more the
God concept portrayed a Deity who is holy and upright.
"There is none as holy as the Lord. Who can be compared
to this holy Lord God?"
97:1.8
As the years passed, the grizzled old leader progressed
in the understanding of God, for he declared: "The Lord
is a God of knowledge, and actions are weighed by him.
The Lord will judge the ends of the earth, showing mercy
to the merciful, and with the upright man he will also
be upright." Even here is the dawn of mercy, albeit it
is limited to those who are merciful. Later he went one
step further when, in their adversity, he exhorted his
people: "Let us fall now into the hands of the Lord, for
his mercies are great." "There is no restraint upon the
Lord to save many or few."
97:1.9
And this gradual development of the concept of the
character of Yahweh continued under the ministry of
Samuel's successors. They attempted to present Yahweh as
a covenant-keeping God but hardly maintained the pace
set by Samuel; they failed to develop the idea of the
mercy of God as Samuel had later conceived it. There was
a steady drift back toward the recognition of other
gods, despite the maintenance that Yahweh was above all.
"Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as
head above all."
97:1.10
The keynote of this era was divine power; the prophets
of this age preached a religion designed to foster the
king upon the Hebrew throne. "Yours, O Lord, is the
greatness and the power and the glory and the victory
and the majesty. In your hand is power and might, and
you are able to make great and to give strength to all."
And this was the status of the God concept during the
time of Samuel and his immediate successors.
2. ELIJAH AND ELISHA
97:2.1
In the tenth century before Christ the Hebrew nation
became divided into two kingdoms. In both of these
political divisions many truth teachers endeavored to
stem the reactionary tide of spiritual decadence that
had set in, and which continued disastrously after the
war of separation. But these efforts to advance the
Hebraic religion did not prosper until that determined
and fearless warrior for righteousness, Elijah, began
his teaching. Elijah restored to the northern kingdom a
concept of God comparable with that held in the days of
Samuel. Elijah had little opportunity to present an
advanced concept of God; he was kept busy, as Samuel had
been before him, overthrowing the altars of Baal and
demolishing the idols of false gods. And he carried
forward his reforms in the face of the opposition of an
idolatrous monarch; his task was even more gigantic and
difficult than that which Samuel had faced.
97:2.2
When Elijah was called away, Elisha, his faithful
associate, took up his work and, with the invaluable
assistance of the little-known Micaiah, kept the light
of truth alive in Palestine.
97:2.3
But these were not times of progress in the concept of
Deity. Not yet had the Hebrews ascended even to the
Mosaic ideal. The era of Elijah and Elisha closed with
the better classes returning to the worship of the
supreme Yahweh and witnessed the restoration of the idea
of the Universal Creator to about that place where
Samuel had left it.
3. YAHWEH AND BAAL
97:3.1
The 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.
97:3.2
The 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.'"
97:3.3
The 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.
97:3.4
In 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.
97:3.5
Out 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.
97:3.6
Elijah 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.
4. AMOS AND HOSEA
97:4.1
A great step in the transition of the tribal god -- the
god who had so long been served with sacrifices and
ceremonies, the Yahweh of the earlier Hebrews -- to a
God who would punish crime and immorality among even his
own people, was taken by Amos, who appeared from among
the southern hills to denounce the criminality,
drunkenness, oppression, and immorality of the northern
tribes. Not since the times of Moses had such ringing
truths been proclaimed in Palestine.
97:4.2
Amos was not merely a restorer or reformer; he was a
discoverer of new concepts of Deity. He proclaimed much
about God that had been announced by his predecessors
and courageously attacked the belief in a Divine Being
who would countenance sin among his so-called chosen
people. For the first time since the days of Melchizedek
the ears of man heard the denunciation of the double
standard of national justice and morality. For the first
time in their history Hebrew ears heard that their own
God, Yahweh, would no more tolerate crime and sin in
their lives than he would among any other people. Amos
envisioned the stern and just God of Samuel and Elijah,
but he also saw a God who thought no differently of the
Hebrews than of any other nation when it came to the
punishment of wrongdoing. This was a direct attack on
the egoistic doctrine of the "chosen people," and many
Hebrews of those days bitterly resented it.
97:4.3
Said Amos: "He who formed the mountains and created the
wind, seek him who formed the seven stars and Orion, who
turns the shadow of death into the morning and makes the
day dark as night." And in denouncing his
half-religious, timeserving, and sometimes immoral
fellows, he sought to portray the inexorable justice of
an unchanging Yahweh when he said of the evildoers:
"Though they dig into hell, thence shall I take them;
though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them
down." "And though they go into captivity before their
enemies, thence will I direct the sword of justice, and
it shall slay them." Amos further startled his hearers
when, pointing a reproving and accusing finger at them,
he declared in the name of Yahweh: "Surely I will never
forget any of your works." "And I will sift the house of
Israel among all nations as wheat is sifted in a sieve."
97:4.4
Amos proclaimed Yahweh the "God of all nations" and
warned the Israelites that ritual must not take the
place of righteousness. And before this courageous
teacher was stoned to death, he had spread enough leaven
of truth to save the doctrine of the supreme Yahweh; he
had insured the further evolution of the Melchizedek
revelation.
97:4.5
Hosea followed Amos and his doctrine of a universal God
of justice by the resurrection of the Mosaic concept of
a God of love. Hosea preached forgiveness through
repentance, not by sacrifice. He proclaimed a gospel of
loving-kindness and divine mercy, saying: "I will
betroth you to me forever; yes, I will betroth you to me
in righteousness and judgment and in loving-kindness and
in mercies. I will even betroth you to me in
faithfulness." "I will love them freely, for my anger is
turned away."
97:4.6
Hosea faithfully continued the moral warnings of Amos,
saying of God, "It is my desire that I chastise them."
But the Israelites regarded it as cruelty bordering on
treason when he said: "I will say to those who were not
my people, `you are my people'; and they will say, `you
are our God.'" He continued to preach repentance and
forgiveness, saying, "I will heal their backsliding; I
will love them freely, for my anger is turned away."
Always Hosea proclaimed hope and forgiveness. The burden
of his message ever was: "I will have mercy upon my
people. They shall know no God but me, for there is no
savior beside me."
97:4.7
Amos quickened the national conscience of the Hebrews to
the recognition that Yahweh would not condone crime and
sin among them because they were supposedly the chosen
people, while Hosea struck the opening notes in the
later merciful chords of divine compassion and
loving-kindness which were so exquisitely sung by Isaiah
and his associates.
5. THE FIRST ISAIAH
97:5.1
These were the times when some were proclaiming
threatenings of punishment against personal sins and
national crime among the northern clans while others
predicted calamity in retribution for the transgressions
of the southern kingdom. It was in the wake of this
arousal of conscience and consciousness in the Hebrew
nations that the first Isaiah made his appearance.
97:5.2
Isaiah went on to preach the eternal nature of God, his
infinite wisdom, his unchanging perfection of
reliability. He represented the God of Israel as saying:
"Judgment also will I lay to the line and righteousness
to the plummet." "The Lord will give you rest from your
sorrow and from your fear and from the hard bondage
wherein man has been made to serve." "And your ears
shall hear a word behind you, saying, `this is the way,
walk in it.'" "Behold God is my salvation; I will trust
and not be afraid, for the Lord is my strength and my
song." "`Come now and let us reason together,' says the
Lord, `though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as
white as snow; though they be red like the crimson, they
shall be as wool.'"
97:5.3
Speaking to the fear-ridden and soul-hungry Hebrews,
this prophet said: "Arise and shine, for your light has
come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you."
"The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has
anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he has
sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim
liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to
those who are bound." "I will greatly rejoice in the
Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God, for he has
clothed me with the garments of salvation and has
covered me with his robe of righteousness." "In all
their afflictions he was afflicted, and the angel of his
presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he
redeemed them."
97:5.4
This Isaiah was followed by Micah and Obadiah, who
confirmed and embellished his soul-satisfying gospel.
And these two brave messengers boldly denounced the
priest-ridden ritual of the Hebrews and fearlessly
attacked the whole sacrificial system.
97:5.5
Micah denounced "the rulers who judge for reward and the
priests who teach for hire and the prophets who divine
for money." He taught of a day of freedom from
superstition and priestcraft, saying: "But every man
shall sit under his own vine, and no one shall make him
afraid, for all people will live, each one according to
his understanding of God."
97:5.6
Ever the burden of Micah's message was: "Shall I come
before God with burnt offerings? Will the Lord be
pleased with a thousand rams or with ten thousand rivers
of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has
shown me, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord
require of you but to do justly and to love mercy and to
walk humbly with your God." And it was a great age;
these were indeed stirring times when mortal man heard,
and some even believed, such emancipating messages more
than two and a half millenniums ago. And but for the
stubborn resistance of the priests, these teachers would
have overthrown the whole bloody ceremonial of the
Hebrew ritual of worship.
6. JEREMIAH THE FEARLESS
97:6.1
While several teachers continued to expound the gospel
of Isaiah, it remained for Jeremiah to take the next
bold step in the internationalization of Yahweh, God of
the Hebrews.
97:6.2
Jeremiah fearlessly declared that Yahweh was not on the
side of the Hebrews in their military struggles with
other nations. He asserted that Yahweh was God of all
the earth, of all nations and of all peoples. Jeremiah's
teaching was the crescendo of the rising wave of the
internationalization of the God of Israel; finally and
forever did this intrepid preacher proclaim that Yahweh
was God of all nations, and that there was no Osiris for
the Egyptians, Bel for the Babylonians, Ashur for the
Assyrians, or Dagon for the Philistines. And thus did
the religion of the Hebrews share in that renaissance of
monotheism throughout the world at about and following
this time; at last the concept of Yahweh had ascended to
a Deity level of planetary and even cosmic dignity. But
many of Jeremiah's associates found it difficult to
conceive of Yahweh apart from the Hebrew nation.
97:6.3
Jeremiah also preached of the just and loving God
described by Isaiah, declaring: "Yes, I have loved you
with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness
have I drawn you." "For he does not afflict willingly
the children of men."
97:6.4
Said this fearless prophet: "Righteous is our Lord,
great in counsel and mighty in work. His eyes are open
upon all the ways of all the sons of men, to give every
one according to his ways and according to the fruit of
his doings." But it was considered blasphemous treason
when, during the siege of Jerusalem, he said: "And now
have I given these lands into the hand of
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant." And
when Jeremiah counseled the surrender of the city, the
priests and civil rulers cast him into the miry pit of a
dismal dungeon.
7. THE SECOND ISAIAH
97:7.1
The 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.
97:7.2
During 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.
97:7.3
These 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.
97:7.4
The Jewish priesthood made liberal use of these writings
subsequent to the captivity, but they were greatly
hindered in their influence over their fellow captives
by the presence of a young and indomitable prophet,
Isaiah the second, who was a full convert to the elder
Isaiah's God of justice, love, righteousness, and mercy.
He also believed with Jeremiah that Yahweh had become
the God of all nations. He preached these theories of
the nature of God with such telling effect that he made
converts equally among the Jews and their captors. And
this young preacher left on record his teachings, which
the hostile and unforgiving priests sought to divorce
from all association with him, although sheer respect
for their beauty and grandeur led to their incorporation
among the writings of the earlier Isaiah. And thus may
be found the writings of this second Isaiah in the book
of that name, embracing chapters forty to fifty-five
inclusive.
97:7.5
No prophet or religious teacher from Machiventa to the
time of Jesus attained the high concept of God that
Isaiah the second proclaimed during these days of the
captivity. It was no small, anthropomorphic, man-made
God that this spiritual leader proclaimed. "Behold he
takes up the isles as a very little thing." "And as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways and my thoughts higher than your
thoughts."
97:7.6
At last Machiventa Melchizedek beheld human teachers
proclaiming a real God to mortal man. Like Isaiah the
first, this leader preached a God of universal creation
and upholding. "I have made the earth and put man upon
it. I have created it not in vain; I formed it to be
inhabited." "I am the first and the last; there is no
God beside me." Speaking for the Lord God of Israel,
this new prophet said: "The heavens may vanish and the
earth wax old, but my righteousness shall endure forever
and my salvation from generation to generation." "Fear
you not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am
your God." "There is no God beside me -- a just God and
a Savior."
97:7.7
And it comforted the Jewish captives, as it has
thousands upon thousands ever since, to hear such words
as: "Thus says the Lord, `I have created you, I have
redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are
mine.'" "When you pass through the waters, I will be
with you since you are precious in my sight." "Can a
woman forget her suckling child that she should not have
compassion on her son? Yes, she may forget, yet will I
not forget my children, for behold I have graven them
upon the palms of my hands; I have even covered them
with the shadow of my hands." "Let the wicked forsake
his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let
him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."
97:7.8
Listen again to the gospel of this new revelation of the
God of Salem: "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd;
he shall gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in
his bosom. He gives power to the faint, and to those who
have no might he increases strength. Those who wait upon
the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up
with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint."
97:7.9
This Isaiah conducted a far-flung propaganda of the
gospel of the enlarging concept of a supreme Yahweh. He
vied with Moses in the eloquence with which he portrayed
the Lord God of Israel as the Universal Creator. He was
poetic in his portrayal of the infinite attributes of
the Universal Father. No more beautiful pronouncements
about the heavenly Father have ever been made. Like the
Psalms, the writings of Isaiah are among the most
sublime and true presentations of the spiritual concept
of God ever to greet the ears of mortal man prior to the
arrival of Michael on Urantia. Listen to his portrayal
of Deity: "I am the high and lofty one who inhabits
eternity." "I am the first and the last, and beside me
there is no other God." "And the Lord's hand is not
shortened that it cannot save, neither his ear heavy
that it cannot hear." And it was a new doctrine in Jewry
when this benign but commanding prophet persisted in the
preachment of divine constancy, God's faithfulness. He
declared that "God would not forget, would not forsake."
97:7.10
This daring teacher proclaimed that man was very closely
related to God, saying: "Every one who is called by my
name I have created for my glory, and they shall show
forth my praise. I, even I, am he who blots out their
transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember
their sins."
97:7.11
Hear this great Hebrew demolish the concept of a
national God while in glory he proclaims the divinity of
the Universal Father, of whom he says, "The heavens are
my throne, and the earth is my footstool." And Isaiah's
God was none the less holy, majestic, just, and
unsearchable. The concept of the angry, vengeful, and
jealous Yahweh of the desert Bedouins has almost
vanished. A new concept of the supreme and universal
Yahweh has appeared in the mind of mortal man, never to
be lost to human view. The realization of divine justice
has begun the destruction of primitive magic and
biologic fear. At last, man is introduced to a universe
of law and order and to a universal God of dependable
and final attributes.
97:7.12
And this preacher of a supernal God never ceased to
proclaim this God
of love. "I dwell in the high and holy place, also
with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit." And
still further words of comfort did this great teacher
speak to his contemporaries: "And the Lord will guide
you continually and satisfy your soul. You shall be like
a watered garden and like a spring whose waters fail
not. And if the enemy shall come in like a flood, the
spirit of the Lord will lift up a defense against him."
And once again did the fear-destroying gospel of
Melchizedek and the trust-breeding religion of Salem
shine forth for the blessing of mankind.
97:7.13
The farseeing and courageous Isaiah effectively eclipsed
the nationalistic Yahweh by his sublime portraiture of
the majesty and universal omnipotence of the supreme
Yahweh, God of love, ruler of the universe, and
affectionate Father of all mankind. Ever since those
eventful days the highest God concept in the Occident
has embraced universal justice, divine mercy, and
eternal righteousness. In superb language and with
matchless grace this great teacher portrayed the
all-powerful Creator as the all-loving Father.
97:7.14
This prophet of the captivity preached to his people and
to those of many nations as they listened by the river
in Babylon. And this second Isaiah did much to
counteract the many wrong and racially egoistic concepts
of the mission of the promised Messiah. But in this
effort he was not wholly successful. Had the priests not
dedicated themselves to the work of building up a
misconceived nationalism, the teachings of the two
Isaiahs would have prepared the way for the recognition
and reception of the promised Messiah.
8. SACRED AND PROFANE HISTORY
97:8.1
The 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.
97:8.2
In 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.
97:8.3
But 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.
97:8.4
And 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.
97:8.5
All 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.
97:8.6
New 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.
97:8.7
A 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.
9. HEBREW HISTORY
97:9.1
There never were twelve tribes of the Israelites -- only
three or four tribes settled in Palestine. The Hebrew
nation came into being as the result of the union of the
so-called Israelites and the Canaanites. "And the
children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites. And they
took their daughters to be their wives and gave their
daughters to the sons of the Canaanites." The Hebrews
never drove the Canaanites out of Palestine,
notwithstanding that the priests' record of these things
unhesitatingly declared that they did.
97:9.2
The Israelitish consciousness took origin in the hill
country of Ephraim; the later Jewish consciousness
originated in the southern clan of Judah. The Jews
(Judahites) always sought to defame and blacken the
record of the northern Israelites (Ephraimites).
97:9.3
Pretentious Hebrew history begins with Saul's rallying
the northern clans to withstand an attack by the
Ammonites upon their fellow tribesmen -- the Gileadites
-- east of the Jordan. With an army of a little more
than three thousand he defeated the enemy, and it was
this exploit that led the hill tribes to make him king.
When the exiled priests rewrote this story, they raised
Saul's army to 330,000 and added "Judah" to the list of
tribes participating in the battle.
97:9.4
Immediately following the defeat of the Ammonites, Saul
was made king by popular election by his troops. No
priest or prophet participated in this affair. But the
priests later on put it in the record that Saul was
crowned king by the prophet Samuel in accordance with
divine directions. This they did in order to establish a
"divine line of descent" for David's Judahite kingship.
97:9.5
The greatest of all distortions of Jewish history had to
do with David. After Saul's victory over the Ammonites
(which he ascribed to Yahweh) the Philistines became
alarmed and began attacks on the northern clans. David
and Saul never could agree. David with six hundred men
entered into a Philistine alliance and marched up the
coast to Esdraelon. At Gath the Philistines ordered
David off the field; they feared he might go over to
Saul. David retired; the Philistines attacked and
defeated Saul. They could not have done this had David
been loyal to Israel. David's army was a polyglot
assortment of malcontents, being for the most part made
up of social misfits and fugitives from justice.
97:9.6
Saul's tragic defeat at Gilboa by the Philistines
brought Yahweh to a low point among the gods in the eyes
of the surrounding Canaanites. Ordinarily, Saul's defeat
would have been ascribed to apostasy from Yahweh, but
this time the Judahite editors attributed it to ritual
errors. They required the tradition of Saul and Samuel
as a background for the kingship of David.
97:9.7
David with his small army made his headquarters at the
non-Hebrew city of Hebron. Presently his compatriots
proclaimed him king of the new kingdom of Judah. Judah
was made up mostly of non-Hebrew elements -- Kenites,
Calebites, Jebusites, and other Canaanites. They were
nomads -- herders -- and so were devoted to the Hebrew
idea of land ownership. They held the ideologies of the
desert clans.
97:9.8
The difference between sacred and profane history is
well illustrated by the two differing stories concerning
making David king as they are found in the Old
Testament. A part of the secular story of how his
immediate followers (his army) made him king was
inadvertently left in the record by the priests who
subsequently prepared the lengthy and prosaic account of
the sacred history wherein is depicted how the prophet
Samuel, by divine direction, selected David from among
his brethren and proceeded formally and by elaborate and
solemn ceremonies to anoint him king over the Hebrews
and then to proclaim him Saul's successor.
97:9.9
So many times did the priests, after preparing their
fictitious narratives of God's miraculous dealings with
Israel, fail fully to delete the plain and
matter-of-fact statements which already rested in the
records.
97:9.10
David sought to build himself up politically by first
marrying Saul's daughter, then the widow of Nabal the
rich Edomite, and then the daughter of Talmai, the king
of Geshur. He took six wives from the women of Jebus,
not to mention Bathsheba, the wife of the Hittite.
97:9.11
And it was by such methods and out of such people that
David built up the fiction of a divine kingdom of Judah
as the successor of the heritage and traditions of the
vanishing northern kingdom of Ephraimite Israel. David's
cosmopolitan tribe of Judah was more gentile than
Jewish; nevertheless the oppressed elders of Ephraim
came down and "anointed him king of Israel." After a
military threat, David then made a compact with the
Jebusites and established his capital of the united
kingdom at Jebus (Jerusalem), which was a strong-walled
city midway between Judah and Israel. The Philistines
were aroused and soon attacked David. After a fierce
battle they were defeated, and once more Yahweh was
established as "The Lord God of Hosts."
97:9.12
But Yahweh must, perforce, share some of this glory with
the Canaanite gods, for the bulk of David's army was
non-Hebrew. And so there appears in your record
(overlooked by the Judahite editors) this telltale
statement: "Yahweh has broken my enemies before me.
Therefore he called the name of the place Baal-Perazim."
And they did this because eighty per cent of David's
soldiers were Baalites.
97:9.13
David explained Saul's defeat at Gilboa by pointing out
that Saul had attacked a Canaanite city, Gibeon, whose
people had a peace treaty with the Ephraimites. Because
of this, Yahweh forsook him. Even in Saul's time David
had defended the Canaanite city of Keilah against the
Philistines, and then he located his capital in a
Canaanite city. In keeping with the policy of compromise
with the Canaanites, David turned seven of Saul's
descendants over to the Gibeonites to be hanged.
97:9.14
After 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.
97:9.15
David's corrupt political machine began to get personal
possession of land in the north in violation of the
Hebrew mores and presently gained control of the caravan
tariffs formerly collected by the Philistines. And then
came a series of atrocities climaxed by the murder of
Uriah. All judicial appeals were adjudicated at
Jerusalem; no longer could "the elders" mete out
justice. No wonder rebellion broke out. Today, Absalom
might be called a demagogue; his mother was a Canaanite.
There were a half dozen contenders for the throne
besides the son of Bathsheba -- Solomon.
97:9.16
After David's death Solomon purged the political machine
of all northern influences but continued all of the
tyranny and taxation of his father's regime. Solomon
bankrupted the nation by his lavish court and by his
elaborate building program: There was the house of
Lebanon, the palace of Pharaoh's daughter, the temple of
Yahweh, the king's palace, and the restoration of the
walls of many cities. Solomon created a vast Hebrew
navy, operated by Syrian sailors and trading with all
the world. His harem numbered almost one thousand.
97:9.17
By this time Yahweh's temple at Shiloh was discredited,
and all the worship of the nation was centered at Jebus
in the gorgeous royal chapel. The northern kingdom
returned more to the worship of Elohim. They enjoyed the
favor of the Pharaohs, who later enslaved Judah, putting
the southern kingdom under tribute.
97:9.18
There were ups and downs -- wars between Israel and
Judah. After four years of civil war and three
dynasties, Israel fell under the rule of city despots
who began to trade in land. Even King Omri attempted to
buy Shemer's estate. But the end drew on apace when
Shalmaneser III decided to control the Mediterranean
coast. King Ahab of Ephraim gathered ten other groups
and resisted at Karkar; the battle was a draw. The
Assyrian was stopped but the allies were decimated. This
great fight is not even mentioned in the Old Testament.
97:9.19
New trouble started when King Ahab tried to buy land
from Naboth. His Phoenician wife forged Ahab's name to
papers directing that Naboth's land be confiscated on
the charge that he had blasphemed the names of "Elohim
and the king." He and his sons were promptly executed.
The vigorous Elijah appeared on the scene denouncing
Ahab for the murder of the Naboths. Thus Elijah, one of
the greatest of the prophets, began his teaching as a
defender of the old land mores as against the
land-selling attitude of the Baalim, against the attempt
of the cities to dominate the country. But the reform
did not succeed until the country landlord Jehu joined
forces with the gypsy chieftain Jehonadab to destroy the
prophets (real estate agents) of Baal at Samaria.
97:9.20
New life appeared as Jehoash and his son Jeroboam
delivered Israel from its enemies. But by this time
there ruled in Samaria a gangster-nobility whose
depredations rivaled those of the Davidic dynasty of
olden days. State and church went along hand in hand.
The attempt to suppress freedom of speech led Elijah,
Amos, and Hosea to begin their secret writing, and this
was the real beginning of the Jewish and Christian
Bibles.
97:9.21
But the northern kingdom did not vanish from history
until the king of Israel conspired with the king of
Egypt and refused to pay further tribute to Assyria.
Then began the three years' siege followed by the total
dispersion of the northern kingdom. Ephraim (Israel)
thus vanished. Judah -- the Jews, the "remnant of
Israel" -- had begun the concentration of land in the
hands of the few, as Isaiah said, "Adding house to house
and field to field." Presently there was in Jerusalem a
temple of Baal alongside the temple of Yahweh. This
reign of terror was ended by a monotheistic revolt led
by the boy king Joash, who crusaded for Yahweh for
thirty-five years.
97:9.22
The next king, Amaziah, had trouble with the revolting
tax-paying Edomites and their neighbors. After a signal
victory he turned to attack his northern neighbors and
was just as signally defeated. Then the rural folk
revolted; they assassinated the king and put his
sixteen-year-old son on the throne. This was Azariah,
called Uzziah by Isaiah. After Uzziah, things went from
bad to worse, and Judah existed for a hundred years by
paying tribute to the kings of Assyria. Isaiah the first
told them that Jerusalem, being the city of Yahweh,
would never fall. But Jeremiah did not hesitate to
proclaim its downfall.
97:9.23
The real undoing of Judah was effected by a corrupt and
rich ring of politicians operating under the rule of a
boy king, Manasseh. The changing economy favored the
return of the worship of Baal, whose private land
dealings were against the ideology of Yahweh. The fall
of Assyria and the ascendency of Egypt brought
deliverance to Judah for a time, and the country folk
took over. Under Josiah they destroyed the Jerusalem
ring of corrupt politicians.
97:9.24
But 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.
97:9.25
With 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.
97:9.26
And 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.
97:9.27
In 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.
97:9.28
The 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.
97:9.29
And so does the truth about the Jewish people disclose
that much which has been regarded as sacred history
turns out to be little more than the chronicle of
ordinary profane history. Judaism was the soil out of
which Christianity grew, but the Jews were not a
miraculous people.
10. THE HEBREW RELIGION
97:10.1
Their 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.
97:10.2
When 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.
97:10.3
National 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.
97:10.4
From 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.
97:10.5
As 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.
97:10.6
The 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.
97:10.7
The 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.
97:10.8
And 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.
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