The Bible Says So! by Freed Edwin D.;Roberts Jane F.;

Author:Freed, Edwin D.;Roberts, Jane F.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Summary

How shall we understand what the Bible says about various deities? Biblical writers wrote down their ideas of the deities long after the Hebrews/Israelites had come into contact with the gods of the polytheistic world. It seems plausible that during the time of the patriarchs (second millennium BCE) the Hebrews were polytheistic. They observed the worship of many gods, found it convenient to worship at Canaanite shrines, and adopted pagan gods, most importantly El. Eventually the Israelites came to believe in a God of their own that they called Yahweh. During the time of the Judges and Kings of Israel and Judah (1200-586 BCE), the Israelites were probably a henotheistic people. As the peculiar God of Israel, Yahweh was worshiped by devotees who did not deny the existence of other gods.

During the time of the Babylonian Exile (sixth/fifth centuries BCE), the Israelites became a monotheistic people. The Second Isaiah was probably the first Israelite to proclaim Yahweh as the only God in existence, and that name was sometimes combined with Elohim to become “the Lord God.” The gods of the pagans were only manufactured objects of wood or stone, not living gods. The highest attribute ascribed to Yahweh was holiness, and the holy God demanded ritual and ethical/moral holiness on the part of all who believed in and worshiped him.

The unique aspect of the Israelite/Jewish religion was its ethical monotheism, which set the standard of morality/ethics for much of the Western and some of the Eastern world for centuries. Any discussion that overlooks that point ignores what most distinguished the Hebrew/Israelite religion, with its deity or deities – female, male, or without gender – from those of the paganistic world in which it originated. As we turn our attention now to the NT, the influence of the Israelite/Jewish religion will continue to be very clear. Indeed, many authors of the NT wrote about Jesus and the early church in an effort to show how the prophecies of the OT were fulfilled through Jesus as Messiah, his followers, and the religion that developed, and eventually separated, from its roots in Judaism.

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