Texts, one of two final assignments for "Intro to Religion".

One of two final assignments for Intro to Religion. I only became more focused towards the idea of exploring the development of texts in the Hebrew Religion at the end of the assignment's due date. I took what I had already accumulated and just shaped it in the direction of what I thought I wanted. Grade and professor's comments at the end. 

 
 

The evolution of religious texts in Judaism reflects a common trend that occurs in many other religions. This trend always begins with some form of creation system and then proceeds to immortalize important people whose lives embody the value system. The stories that comprise the Hebrew Canon reflect an ongoing and developing value system. This value system evolves and adapts over time due to the trials and ordeals that its people face in the name of their god. The literature reflects the failures and successes of its people to record the personality of the people who have followed this faith in the past, and serves as a guide and an admonition for the people who would come after them.      

“The ancient religion of Syria and Palestine, and no doubt of the earliest Hebrews, was related to that of the major Semitic civilization, the Mesopotamian. These peoples were all Semitic (except the Sumerians) and believed in common deities, like the Great Mother Ashtoreth (Ishtar) and the dying-rising vegetation god Tammuz or Baal. The account in the Book of Genesis tells us that Abraham, father of the Hebrews, came out of Ur in the Valley of the Two Rivers, affirming still more strongly the common cultural background of the groups that populated this area. This is reinforced by many passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, from the obvious parallels between the flood story featuring Noah in Genesis.” (pg.253)

The birth of religious texts in the Jewish faith began in a land called Ur, which today is known as Iraq.

“Each monotheistic religion, then, traces itself back to a historical founder, such as Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, or farther East, Zoroaster and Nanak. Monotheism is never a continuation of something growing out of a timeless past, as we saw for example in Hinduism. The idea of a special revelation through a known historical figure, who at a known point in time gave an authoritative word from the one personal God, which the monotheistic faith proclaims, seems to be inseparable from monotheistic expression. (pg. 243)”. The founder appears and begins to record his special revelations from an unknown being that is called a god.   

            “Thus monotheism generally has strong roots in the teaching of great individuals. It tends to stress intense individual commitment and emphasis on verbal expression. This means that the written word, scripture, is of great importance in monotheistic religion. While other religions have also studied and chanted scriptures, in the monotheistic religions, scriptures (characteristically short and clear-cut compared with Vedas or Sutras) are especially decisive statements of law and belief, as well as mystical hymns, monastic rules, and philosophy. They are to be proclaimed universally and are given through the founder, or at least are fruits of a process started by him, at the pivotal moment. (pg. 243)” This literature is born from the need of humanity to organize and regulate itself. The religion begins to categorize and organize itself for various functions that it hopes to serve.

“Jews have been exceptions from the beginning of the tradition among the Israelites of the Hebrew Scriptures (which the Christians call the Old Testament). They were developing toward the monotheism of a personal God.” (pg. 252) A religion focused around one god is much more easily relatable to the follower and the religion is more immediate to the follower. One can interact with the god on one’s level, through rituals and rules on another, and participate with others on a third level.

“That the shepard, like Abraham, sets up an altar and worships the same God in many different places, wherever his wanderings take him, implies that his God is universal, not tied to place or nature like an agricultural deity” (pg. 252)

The shepard becomes the Jewish ideal and metaphor for being assigned by their god as a caretaker of his flock. This becomes the ideal and metaphor for which every man should live in the Hebrew religion.

“The traditional Jewish interpretation is simply that God himself, for reasons of his own, selected this people and made himself known to them.” (pg. 252). God introduces himself and convinces you that his worship is necessary.

            “He established a covenant, or agreement, with them that they would worship him, follow his Law, and be faithful to him” (pg. 252). The god passes on the rules through humans by which the majority should live their life.

“This faith has not been centered on belief in an afterlife, or an experience of salvation in personal or mystical terms, or a philosophy, or a technique of meditation, or even a set of doctrines. It has been centered on awareness of this unique relationship with God, but it has taken different forms at different times”. (pg. 252)

A construction of fear and terror of the afterlife must be made to enforce the rules of the religion. There must be some reward or punishment for obeying or not obeying the rules of the religion in this lifetime. The people must be made self aware that their actions carry consequences in both this life and in the next.

“But there were always those, led by prophets, who contended that the Hebrews should continue to worship Yahweh even in the new way of life. This was because Yahweh was particularly connected with the basic rules of their nation, the Law of Moses, and with inspiration (originally more or less shamanistic in type) that seized the non priestly spiritual leaders called prophets. Because they harkened back to the nomadic period with its simpler ways, the parties favoring continuing loyalty to Yahweh had a rigid, conservative appearance and the other side doubtless a suggestion of judicious flexibility”. (pg. 253)

            The spectrum of the concept of the Hebrew god adapted to the peoples and the circumstances of the times through the writings of prophets.

            “Ironically the faith in Yahweh had far more future to it and apparently far more potential for adjusting to various cultural levels, from planting to modern industrial life, than Baal. The desert god of the Hebrews lives today, while the Semitic agricultural religion, which seemed the height of sophistication in 800 B.C.E., did not outlive the cultural level it served”. 253

            The god that becomes mobile survives longer, and the Jewish people coming from a background of being nomadic people, knew that a moveable god is a god that survives the rigors and vicissitudes of time.

            “A fundamental feature of the Hebrew Scriptures is what we have spoken of as a historical or linear concept of time, in which God himself imparts new revelations in history. A picture steadily emerges of the relation between God himself imparts new revelations in history. A picture steadily emerges of the relation between god and the children of Abraham as a dialogue in which God’s faithfulness is constant, but as his people are more or less loyal to their pledge, the situation takes different forms: reward for obedience and punishment for disobedience. It is a history in which God is himself acting and revealing more of himself. The books of Deuteronomy and Chronicles in particular interpret the history of Israel in these terms, as do the prophets regarding the events of their day. One can think of it as a “graph,” with the high peaks representing the moments when Israel was seen as close to God and the low points the periods of apostasy”. (pg. 253)

            God comes and goes through people to update the religion.

            The new literature of the Hebrew Canon tells a story of the Jewish people falling into the bondage of slavery of four hundred years to then be freed by their savior Moses. Moses is the Hebrew god’s chosen one to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt after their god reveals himself to the subjugator of the Jewish people, the Pharaoh, Egypt’s version of a god-king. The Jewish people successfully flee the attempted pursuits of the Pharaoh only to wander the desert for forty years. God reveals himself again to Moses at the end of these forty years to give him the Ten Commandments and the rest of the law, known as the “Torah” by which the Jewish people should live their faith and serve their god. After many ordeals the Jewish people were able to finally able to settle in the land that their god has promised them, the land known as Israel.

            The literature goes on to record the happenings in Israel under the kings, leaders and judges of the people. The laws by which they enforce the rule of law are the laws of the god passed on to man by prophets.

“The prophets were apparently originally members of a class of seers who entered into some sort of visionary, divinatory trance, not wholly unlike a shaman’s, and there gave out the direct word of God for a situation.” (pg. 256) These “seers” produce an accumulation of beliefs that becomes the society’s law, its ongoing and developing value system and culture.

The texts of made the god universal, but more importantly moveable, mobile, transferrable (while the gods of a particular place was destroyed or assimilated. The characters acted as a fleshing out of the value/belief system in the story, value/belief system. There was a reaffirmation of the values embodied in the story through the tales of the characters successes and failures. The successes and the failures of the Jewish people were a reflection of their god that they created.  

Works Cited:

Ellwood, Robert S., McGraw, Barbara A. Many Peoples, Many Faiths Pearson Education, 2009

Texts: 80

Develop the thesis more clearly - the essay is a summary of Judaism and its textual traditions; what points can you make about it? Much of the essay are lengthy quotes from Ellwood with a statement or two about their relevance - this resembles a draft and could benefit from rewriting much of it in your own words, using the quotes sparingly to make your points.