United States or Afghanistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Jews had neither science nor logic; they had no intelligent induction as to nature, hence they never got beyond the idea of supernatural intervention. Apparently they never challenged and sifted their fundamental ideas, never raised the question as to the actual existence of Yahveh.
One of the daughters of Tusratta, Tadu-khipa, was indeed married to Amenophis, but she did not rank as chief queen. In the reign of Meneptah of the nineteenth dynasty the vizier was a native of Bashan, Ben-Mazana by name, whose father was called Yu the elder. Yua may therefore be a word of Amorite origin; and a connection has been suggested between it and the Hebrew Yahveh.
They rallied round Yahveh and Moses, and in the struggle that ensued the forces on the side of the national God proved the stronger. The Midianitish faction was annihilated, its leaders put to death, and the Midianites themselves attacked and despoiled. Among the slain was the seer of Pethor, Balaam the son of Beor. The Moabites must have hailed the Israelites as saviours.
The prophets spoke out of an exaltation of which no other account was given than it was the inspiration of Yahveh, "Thus saith the Lord!" They did not argue, they asserted with a passion that bred conviction, or at least fear and respect. It is here that the distinction between the Greek and the Hebrew method is most marked. Socrates, for example, called himself the midwife of men's thoughts.
They saw and felt the incongruities of the world as a moral administration, and sometimes pressed the inquiry, as in Job, Why does Yahveh thus? But the denial of any ruling personal Will, as by Lucretius, was impossible to them. They were imaginative, intense, and their imagination got the saving ethical impress especially from the prophets.
The gods of monotheism will join the gods of polytheism and Yahveh and his associates will occupy in the minds of men the position now held by the gods of Olympus. To our ancestors Jupiter and Yahveh will have the same significance. "In a little time the cathedrals and churches will have taken upon themselves the proud, poetical glamour of abandoned temples.
The Hebrews had as one of their gods, Yahveh, whom they endowed with their qualities; qualities inherent in a primitive people: jealousy and might, trickery and fickleness. They evolved a worship that contained in a modified form many of the ceremonials that they witnessed when they came into contact with the Babylonians and Phoenicians.
Midianite hosts had overrun the land of Moab as at a later time they overran the land of Israel, and the Israelites had forsaken Yahveh for the worship of the Midianite Baal-Peor. This was the result of intermarriage; the Israelites had taken Midianite wives and conformed to the licentious rites of a Midianite god. Israel, however, was saved by its Levite priests.
Abiathar, the son of the murdered high-priest, alone escaped to David to tell the tale. He carried with him the sacred ephod through which the will of Yahveh was made known, and from henceforth the influence of the priesthood was thrown against the king.
There was no body of priests to preserve the memory of the Mosaic Law and insist upon its observance, and the prophets who took their place protested in vain against the national apostasy. Alliance with the neighbouring kingdom of Phoenicia brought with it the worship of the Phoenician Baal, and Yahveh was forsaken for a foreign god.
Word Of The Day