Session
21
At a
rather late stage in the history of the people of Israel the technology of memory
through writing attained progressive production of written documents. The compilations that came to text from 760 BCE
to perhaps150 BCE represent a water-shed for the Jewish people. It was guided
by a scribal motive of teaching the values of the community using editorial
license to combine a variety of writing genres.
The body of great oral traditions of the prehistoric past were
creatively and imaginatively retold to inform the people of Israel about how and why they came to be who they were at
the times of writing. The writing goal
might be said to deal with this community formative principle: Hear O Israel,
the Lord your God is One. In one theory
of composition the Torah or first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures include
the combination of four different sources at four different times plus a final
redactor or editor who put the sources together in a final form. The sources are given letter abbreviations: J
or Yahwists, E or Elohists, P or Priestly and D or Deuteronomist. Each of these sources represents a different
age and school of thought and different priorities in recounting their
traditions. Some scholars think that it
could be the scribe Ezra in 458 BCE who was the final editor of the Torah. Imagine the literary class of Jews in Exiles
for 49 years in the Babylonian Captivity and when Babylon was captured by the
Persians, the Persians allowed a trickle of Jews to return to Jerusalem and
eventually begin to rebuild the Temple.
The Temple was destroyed in 586 by the Babylonians and rebuilt in by 515
BCE. Imagine the effort that had to be made by the
community with over 100 years of lost contact with the homeland. Some determined not be assimilated into their
captors life style. They had to try to
maintain their religious and ethnic identities and their emotional connection
with their homeland. Many were never
able to return. You can see how the
writing became an interior topographical homeland in maintaining their very
identity as Jews.
In
the J, E, D P, writers the pre-historic and semi-historic memories were retold
as undeveloped archetypal situations that were developed in the actual priest
led liturgy and worship that came to be practiced. So, for example the pre-historic oral
tradition of God resting the seventh day became in the practice of the later
community, a Sabbath day of religious observance. The appeal to the antiquity of a practice has
the effect of conferring authority for the practice.
Imagine
a people who had been carried off in exile and who had been given permission by
their captors to maintain religious, social and ethnic identity. The leaders of
a community exile would be responsible teaching that identity and they would
have write about what had been lost by the community. And what had been lost? Their homeland and their temple. Without a Temple, the priests had no place to
offer the sacrifices. Scribes and sages
became the leader of the gatherings. People in exile would have to be taught
the meaning and value of their homeland.
They would have to be taught about its origins and its history. It would also be taught as an idealized
place. Absence makes heart grow fonder. The writing was also a preparation of people
to return to their homeland and beginning afresh when the Temple had been
rebuilt.
Their
questions arose: How did we get to where we are? How did the land of Israel come to be and how
did it come to be lost? Creation stories
and pre-history would need to be told with an outcome in mind. Ancient nations such as Persia had divine
right of king as part of their legitimation propaganda. Ancient Persia was a place of exile for the
people of Israel and it was impossible to avoid influences from the lands of
their exile.
We
know the profound phenomenon of patriotism; but when a land and a religion are
linked the effervescence is intensified.
The task included finding the destiny Israel and Jerusalem in a direct
link with creation of the world by God.
A view of history was told showing how God’s plan culminated in what
came to happen in Israel. The story was
told as a parallel dynamic in heaven and on earth. As the God El was ascending in heaven in the
council of the other gods, so the story of Israel on earth was unfolded in
poly-theistic lands of Israel’s neighbors.
The success of Israel in battle mirrored the heavenly success of the One
God. Israel’s success was understood to
be because of a special covenant between the One God and Israel. In our own country we have the manifest
destiny behavior of Europeans justifying conquests of the native populace under
this doctrine of America being a Promised Land for Christian people from
Europe. A covenant with God can be the
justification for a “might makes” right practice. The ancient people of Israel in understanding
themselves understood themselves as a people of destiny and a presumption of
being special in God’s plan. Patriotism
always involves presumption regarding the specialness of the homeland. If we judge this notion harshly, one could
respond that every ancient people had the right to claim their own manifest
destiny and write a history of their own specialness. It just so happened that one people did this
in a way that has been remembered in the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures.
What
does the creation story teach? The divine
designation of humanity to have dominion in the created world. How?
By being created in the image of this one God who was unseen but had a
emanating creating Spirit. How is
humanity made? Part earth and part spirit.
Why are we moral beings? There
was a prehistoric moral test that was given, since if human beings were created
only to do good in innocence, their choice would be mechanical and not
valuable. The forbidden fruit story
attempts to be a commentary upon the value and freedom of our choice. Why is the world in disharmony? Why is there antagonism among created order? The serpent tricked naïve human beings but
their freedom was made authentic. The
end result: expulsion from innocent ideal place. Imperfect people cannot dwell in a perfect
world. How is humanity expelled from
perfect environment to be related to God?
By covenant? In pre-history
covenants were made with patriarchs who stood as archetypes in the teaching of
progressive covenants that would reach their summit in the covenant given to
Moses on Mount Sinai. The covenant to
Adam was to “dominate or be in charge of the earth” but in failure part of the
covenant was the curse of an unruly earth, painful childbirth and death. Other patriarchs had covenants; Noah was
given the covenant that the earth would never be destroyed by God. The rainbow was the sign of this covenant. There were flood stories in ancient
cultures. When cities located on great
rivers floods, an entire flooded river valley made it seem as the entire known
world was being destroyed for people who spent most of their lives very close
to home. Why is there more than one
language on the earth? It seems
inconvenient but the tower of Babel story tells the divine origin of many
languages. God confused the language because people with just one language
became too proud of their accomplishments.
In
the Patriarchs of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the pre-historic stories began to
become more developed because there is more specificity for the set up for the
great event of the covenant, the giving of the Law to Moses.
Exercise:
Read
Genesis 1:1-until Genesis 2:4. Note the
Translators in Genesis 2:4 begins to use the word LORD God (Yahweh Elohim) when
in the first chapter of Genesis the translator only uses the word God
(Elohim). So scholars believe different writers were involved because two different names for God were
used. Also the second chapter of Genesis
is a retelling of the creation story in a different way using the two names Yahweh Elohim for God. So scholars call the writer who used Elohim,
writer E and the writer who used Yahweh Elohim, writer J, since Yahweh was
transliterated into English often as Jehovah.
Father
Phil
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