Israel and Humanity - Egyptians and Hebrews

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FIRST PART

GOD

CHAPTER 1

THE IDEA OF GOD IN ISRAEL

THE ONE GOD

I.

Hebrews and Egyptians

The Hebraism ('), like all other religions Pautiquitê, 8 ~ adre' t it just the people who professed it well, except for a unique and wonderful, embrusaitil in her cunt. Exception nun entire human race This is a plremiêre, a question we must ask, is the problem that forms the entire subject of our work and that no "have àexaminer first studying Idea jadaîsme knew that God made. This idea of God living Judaism r6pon4 it than that? It the right to expect of a religion trends universalistest We would observe before any little thing Imports critical rationalist, in his research on the formation of Jewish dogma, then it goes back to the concept relatively r6celite of God, as it existed as it has always existed we believe in Israel. The findings do most radical one.

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could in no way diminish the role that Judaism plays in the religious history of mankind. Whatever the time he reached his full development, one can not deny that he has given birth to religions that currently share the civilized world, it is equally certain that it is still one of the most important religious doctrines and believe it can legitimately be called upon to play a role in the future, when it comes to choosing a new religion. For this option might be done knowingly, it is essential that the various existing religions are exactly appreciated and we wonder whether Judaism has been so far. Should we see him as a national religion and dissociate herself from the rest of humanity can it compete with religions from him and aspire, more openly than he apparently universal domination? That is the careful study of the idea of God in the Hebrew religion we will, we hope to clarify.

We have said that the critical issue here was of secondary importance. She is not negligible, since everything tends to doubt the divine origin of Judaism at the same time obviously compromises the rights he may have to the religious leadership of humanity and, consequently, those religions which he gave birth. But to refute what we think is wrong with the work of modern criticism, it was not deemed necessary to undertake a demonstration rule the authenticity of the Bible, the antiquity of its doctrines, the historical truth of his stories. Whatever the date more or less distant texts that we have to mention, they have such an agreement between them and they show such high concepts about the nature of God and His relationship with the world, that it is very difficult do not see something more than the normal development of the faculties of the human spirit.

But next to thoroughly discuss the critical sense of value and timing of submissions to get to deny Jewish monotheism, we encounter those who oppose us in the name of philosophy or science and foremost consideration, certain preconceptions, certain indisputable principles they claim, but nevertheless, because they take no account of the experience, must be rejected as arbitrary and contrary to all true science. What we demand , in fact, is to admit a priori the impossibility of any extraordinary phenomenon, in short, everything that called, quite wrongly in our view, the supernatural

Under this principle, the Hebrews have been polytheistic necessarily if the other Semites have been, or there can be, we are told, fundamental differences in religious views of people who have a common origin, speaking the same language and live in the same country. And to support this assertion more easily, it is careful not to mention the undeniable evidence of monotheism as historical science finds more and more among the Gentiles. In addition, it completely overlooks a fact not less incontestable: the emergence, over the ages, individuals and even races that have preferred if very high above their contemporaries that they were unusually far more ahead of the march slow progress in general. If this is only a relative superiority in most cases, are we not entitled to assert, by analogy, it could sometimes be absolute, that is to say that such men, such people have obtained in a certain area, the highest degree of perfection to which humanity as a whole should reach until much later? So to claim that a bias to religion, the law of progress, which requires a gradual evolution of ideas has never been departed from.

Regarding monotheism, rationalists would agree that there is strong evidence that it existed in early Judaism, since they find traces among peoples with whom the Hebrews had long relationships, in especially among the Egyptians. "Since the earliest times to the hermetic books," said Renan, Egypt proclaimed a God only living substance, causing its like forever, god double and single at the same time " Christian Church, p. 64 . It seems that the belief in the unity of God was to be placed among loans made by Jews, as a result of their contact with the ancient Egyptians. To this it was objected that it is inadmissible that the Israelites had adopted the beliefs of a people under the yoke which they were oppressed However, given that it is monotheism among both the Egyptians and the Mosaic, we have to choose one of two possibilities: either monotheism is unique to Israel, although it is be seen as a belief that they have borrowed from the Egyptians.

This latter assumption is not so improbable as it seems at first because it is no doubt that the Hebrews endured without much reluctance the yoke of Egypt, and thus they could not have been entirely hostile to their civilization. Indeed, we see rain once in Egypt to revolt against their liberator. The same scene was repeated again at the edge of the Red Sea, when they burst into reproaches against Moses: "What have you done taking us out of Egypt? Is this not what we said to you in Egypt: Let us serve the Egyptians, because we would rather serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert ". They are so few enemies of slavery that they regretted the land of bondage, because at least they had plenty of every . So Moses said he does not they voluntarily left the land of Pharaoh, but that it drove them away . And Jeremiah made the exodus from Egypt proof of love given by Israel to its God The exodus of the Hebrews seems rather to have been an act of obedience to the divine order that a revival of the spirit of independence.

On the other hand, do not we see that the Israelites left lead to idolatry to the example of their masters, which proves they did not escape 1'assimilation? But they retained their superstitions offered the Egyptian religion, it is difficult to admit they have remained refractory to that religion could be more noble and higher. For us who believe monotheism as well that Israel had its own, we do not deny that for these loans that seem so likely. We believe that the Hebrews have the Egyptians made a few grains of truth may be theological or scientific form, some symbols, some accessory or something purely aesthetic, like what Christianity, we are told, later borrowed from Greek philosophy. As for the doctrines themselves hidden in the symbolism, we must have forgotten that they were not the heritage of all, but rather the privilege of a few insiders. That is, we must admit, a very serious problem if one persists in seeing the loans it is something other than assimilation taking place naturally between ideas that are certain affinities between essential and which penetrate each other, so that we can not determine which doctrine becomes dependent on the other. In fact, if the Hebrews had received Egyptians, not only some truths of detail, but monotheism itself, it must be accepted that Moses, in violation of strict laws that governed the initiation would have pulled the Egyptian sanctuary and disclosing among its big brothers the dogma of the unity of God. This dogma reserved for Egyptians and few fans would become the faith of Israel and the last of his slaves, treated with the smallest on the Pharaohs as pack animals, would have known, in religion as much as the high priest of the mysteries of Isis and Osiris. If rationalists see no reason why things happened the way we ask them to at least admire the ability of these truly extraordinary Hebrew tribes to capture what was most sublime in the Egyptian theology and what remained completely unknown to the vast majority of the people among whom they lived.

As for us, because monotheism was the Egyptians that the privilege of a few scientists, we believe more logical to argue that it can not be seen, in Judaism, as a doctrine of Egyptian imports, and Moses, by teaching to the Hebrews, has echoed the patriarchal tradition, which explains the ease with which he was listening.

Let us now our subject proper by examining what the God of Israel, whose distinctive, admittedly, is unity. This unit should be considered in two aspects: first in the divine nature itself is the point of purely metaphysical, and then, as opposed to polytheism, it the doctrine constitutes a universal religion. In other words, we study successively the belief in one God and belief in one God according to Judaism,