History
- Evolution of Judaism - Prophetic Revolution
Wearied from over two
centuries of sporadic conflict with indigenous peoples, broken by a
ruinous civil war, and constantly threatened on all sides, the disparate
Hebrew settlers of Palestine began to long for a unified state under a
single monarch. Such a state would provide the organization and the
military to fend off the war-like peoples surrounding them. Their
desire, however, would provoke the first major crisis in the Hebrew
world view: the formation of the Hebrew monarchy.
In the Hebrew account of their own history, the children of Israel who
settled Palestine between 1250 and 1050 BC, believed Yahweh to be their
king and Yahweh's laws to be their laws (whether or not this is
historically true is controversial). In desiring to have a king, the
tribes of Israel were committing a grave act of disobedience towards
Yahweh, for they were choosing a human being and human laws of Yahweh
and Yahweh's laws. In the account of the formation of the monarchy, in
the books of Samuel , the prophet of Yahweh, Samuel, tells the
Israelites that they are committing an act of disobedience that they
will dearly pay for. Heedless of Samuel's warnings, they push ahead with
the monarchy. The very first monarch, Saul, sets the pattern for the
rest; disobedient towards Yahweh's commands, Saul falls out with both
Samuel and Yahweh and gradually slips into arbitrary despotism. This
pattern—the conflict between Yahweh and the kings of Israel and
Judah—becomes the historical pattern in the Hebrew stories of the
prophetic revolution.
Whatever the causes, a group of religious leaders during the eighth and
seventh centuries BC responded to the crisis created by the institution
of the monarchy by reinventing and reorienting the Yahweh religion. In
Hebrew, these religious reformers were called "nivea," or "prophets."
The most important of these prophets were Amos, Hosea, Isaiah (who is
actually three people: Isaiah and "Second Isaiah" [Deutero-Isaiah], and
a third, post-exilic Isaiah), and Micah. These four, and a number of
lesser prophets, are as important to the Hebrew religion as Moses.
The innovations of the prophets can be grouped into three large
categories:
Monotheism
Whatever the character of Mosaic religion during the occupation and the
early monarchy, the prophets unambiguously made Yahweh the one and only
one god of the universe. Earlier, Hebrews acknowledged and even
worshipped foreign gods; the prophets, however, asserted that Yahweh
ruled the entire universe and all the peoples in it, whether or not they
recognized and worshipped Yahweh or not. The Yahweh religion as a
monotheistic religion can really be dated no earlier than the prophetic
revolution.
Righteousness
While Yahweh is subject to anger, capriciousness, and outright injustice
in the earlier Mosaic religion, the Yahweh of the prophets can do
nothing but good and right and justice. Yahweh becomes in the prophetic
revolution a "god of righteousness"; historical events, no matter how
arbitrary or unjust they may seem, represent the justice of Yahweh. The
good and the just are always rewarded, and the evil are always punished.
If there is any evil in the world it is through the actions of men and
women, not through the actions of Yahweh, that it is committed.
Ethics
While the Mosaic religion was overwhelmingly concerned with the cultic
rules to be followed by the Israelites, the prophets re-centered the
religion around ethics. Ritual practices, in fact, become unimportant
next to ethical demands that Yahweh imposes on humans: the necessity of
doing right, showing mercy, punishing evil, and doing justice.
There still, however, is no afterlife of rewards and punishments in the
prophets, but a kind of House of Dust, called Sheol, to which all souls
go after their death to abide for a time before disappearing from
existence forever. There is no salvation, only the injunctions to do
justice and right in order to produce a just and harmonious society.
The historical origins of these innovations are important to understand.
The monarchy brought with it all the evils of a centralized state:
arbitrary power, vast inequality of wealth, poverty in the midst of
plenty, heavy taxation, slavery, bribery, and fear. The prophets were
specifically addressing these corrupt and fearsome aspects of the Jewish
state. They believed, however, that they were addressing these problems
by returning to the Mosaic religion; in reality, they created a brand
new religion, a monotheistic religion not about cultic practices, but
about right and wrong.
From:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/HEBREWS/HEBREWS.HTM
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