Welcome to our third PowerPoint presentation. Here, I will lecture about the most important Hebrew innovation, that is, the development of the belief in a single god. This innovation is the Hebrew's most influential offering to world history, particularly the history of the West, since Western Civilization from Imperial Rome to the present has embraced the Hebrew god as its own divinity. As we will see, Hebrew monotheism evolved over time. In the next slides, I will tell you about the major concepts and tenets of Jewish monotheism, as well as about its historical development and ultimate significance to world history.
Before we begin the lecture proper, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the terminology I will be using throughout the presentation. You see, when talking about the Hebrews, there are two terms that can be used. The first is "Hebrew"; the second one is "Jew" or "Jewish". In some cases, these terms can be used interchangeably, particularly when talking about the earliest history of the Hebrews, since their political and religious history went almost hand in hand. However, to be accurate, it is important to know the difference between these two terms: "Hebrew" is the name given to the people and their culture. The term comes from their language, ancient Hebrew. In contrast, "Jew" or "Jewish person" is the term used to refer to the followers of Judaism, the religion originally developed by the Hebrews. In the modern world, not all Hebrews are Jewish, and not all Jews are Hebrew. However, in the ancient world, for the most part, all Hebrews were Jewish, and all Jews were Hebrew. For this reason, I used the terms interchangeably in this PowerPoint. Still, you should remember the difference between the terms and use the correct one according to the context in which you are using it.
Now on to the lecture proper. Let me here start by defining the term monotheism. The best way to understand this term is to divide it in half: "mono" and "theism". The first root word, "mono", literally means "one". The second root term, "theism", means "belief in god". Thus, when you put the two together, of course, you get "the belief in one god". This is in contrast to "polytheism", or the belief in many gods (from "poly", which means "many", and "theism", "the belief in god"). The Hebrew innovation, then, was the development of the belief in a single god. This one god had a particular name; his name was Yahweh. In fact, his name still is Yahweh, since Jewish monotheism is still alive and "kicking" today. In order to really understand monotheism as it developed in antiquity, we need to understand the way in which the Hebrews envisioned this single god. There are three words that describe the god of the Hebrews: he is believed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Omnipotent means "all powerful; omniscient means "all knowing"; and omnipresent means both "always present" and "in everything". Now, think about this, we are talking here about a single god, not many gods each in charge of a particular part of nature, like the god of thunder, or the god of rain, or the god of the rivers, each in charge of a particular natural phenomenon. Instead, the Hebrews envisioned a single god so powerful that he controls and is in charge of everything. He is all powerful, in control of everything, but also with the power to create and destroy. He is also omniscient because he knows everything, since everything comes from him. Interestingly, His omniscience includes also knowledge of your being. He knows you; he knows what you think. Finally, he is everywhere throughout time. This one god is not really controlled by our sense of temporal development. Instead, he has always existed and will always exist. He is the only thing that is truly universal and "all over". This god, this Yahweh, is not only the creator and destructor, but also the judge of mankind. In fact, according to the Jews, this god is a particularly harsh judge. The implication of that is two-fold: first, Jewish monotheistic believers think that Yahweh has made us in order to test us. This is the only reason we're on earth. In order to test us, Yahweh created a particularly harsh set of rules we must follow. If we fail to follow these rules, we are denied the ultimate greatness, which is to know god intimately, in a way we cannot know him now. However, this harsh god is also believed to be a loving and forgiving god. If you fail his expectations, yet turn to him in your failure and seek his forgiveness, He will grant it. Based on this double understanding of god, the greatest implication of monotheism, generally speaking, is that it changed the way in which people interact with their god. If you think of the Mesopotamian gods, for example, about whom you'll read tomorrow, you might remember that they interact physically with humans. Or, if you think of the Greek gods instead, gods who might be more familiar to you, you might remember that they were believed to "hang out" with people. You will see this clearly when you read The Odyssey for this class. This sort of physical, close interaction is no longer possible with a god who is so powerful and so busy. This is a god who will not appear to you and spend time with you in your home, as other gods were believed to do. Yet, because he knows you intimately, Yahweh is at the same time as close to you as is possible to be. Interestingly, you can speak to this god, and he will hear you, even if you can never really be sure that he has listened. One last thing to remember about this god is that you are suppoed to "fear" him. This is not to say that you should literally be afraid of him as you would of something scary; rather, you are supposed to respect Yahweh in a way gods in polytheistic religions were not respected. As you will see, gods in polytheism are as weak and have as many failings as humans do. The single god of the Hebrews, in contrast, is perfect; he has no failings and is greater than anything else you could imagine. For this reason, if no other, he deserves our fearful respect.
On what exactly did the Hebrews base their beliefs in Yahweh? And, how is it that we know so much about the earliest development of Jewish monotheism so many thousands of years after the fact? The answer is pretty simple: Judaism is what is known as a "religion of the book". This means that they have one main historico-religious source, a book that according to them is actually, and literally, the word of God. The earliest set of books on which Judaism was based is the Old Testament. The Old Testament is thought to have been written between 1250 and 150 B.C.E. Notice that this means that the Old Testament was a continually growing text, made up of thirty-nine books written over about a thousand years. In these thirty-nine books we are given the story of Yahweh's creation of the world, as well as of Yahweh's interactions with mankind. Within the Old Testament we are also given the basic rules and regulations, the laws, of Judaism. Equally important, the Old Testament offers also offers the most comprehensive history of the people of Yahweh. This last point raises an important question: if the bible is both history and a theological/religious text, then how much of it can we take to be factual, to be true? To a certain degree, this is almost an irrelevant question, in that we have to look not so much at what actually happened as much as at what Jewish people believe happened. This might be a difficult concept, particularly for those of you not used to the study of history. Be reassured: there are some ways in which we can double check the historical accuracy of the bible. We can compare its stories to other surviving sources which record the history of the Jews. Still, I re-iterate, we have to look at the Old Testament as a history not so much of what happened, but as a history of what the Jews believed happened. In itself this will help us understand the way in which they thought about the world and about themselves, the core job of the historian. To finish up this slide, I want also to mention the fact that at the core of Judaism is the belief that there is a special link between Yahweh and his people, the Jews. This link is dependent on the laws and regulations of Yahweh, as well as on how well his people follow those rules and regulations. Since the relationship is dependent on the law, then the law held a special place in the history of the Jews.
According to the Old Testament, the Hebrews came to their conception of their one god through revelation. This means that they were given by God himself a complete knowledge of his nature. This revelation was given onto man by Yahweh both in tangible and extra sensory ways. That is, in some cases Yahweh spoke to specific men, like Noah or Moses for example, to whom he spoke in dreams. In other cases, Yahweh gave this knowledge directly onto men's minds, without visual or auditory contact. However, it is important to understand that Judaism developed over time; it did not "appear" in the ancient world suddenly and fully formed as a religious tradition or faith. Rather, the religion of the Hebrews went through a series of stages of evolution. This means is that Judaism is not monolithic; it did not remain the same throughout all of antiquity. There were in fact five distinct, major phases in the development of ancient Hebrew monotheism. The first of these stages is known as the Pre-Mosaic period, which lasted from roughly 2000 to 1250 B.C.E. The name itself should give you a sense of this period's temporal limits, since the word literally means "of the time before Moses," that is, prior to the time when the Hebrews were liberated by Moses from their captivity in Egypt. According to scholars, during this period the Hebrew tribes were still semi-nomadic and closely dependent on hunting and gathering. In this earliest stage of their religious development, the Hebrews were not yet monotheistic. Rather, they practiced animism, which is the revering of spirits that dwell in nature, in trees, rocks, sacred places, etc. As the period progressed, however, the Hebrews slowly moved away from this animism, developing instead an anthropomorphic understanding of the divine. That is, gods began to be understood as having human shape, and as looking and sounding - and even behaving - in the ways humans do. This highlights how the Hebrews attempted to better understand the gods in terms that made sense to them. Even if they couldn't see the gods, Hebrews envisioned them in human form. Note here that we are still talking about multiple gods; in this pre-Mosaic period, strict monotheism had not yet developed. However, towards the end of this pre-Mosaic period the Hebrews developed the belief in a main god among the many others in nature, a principal god whose name was El. It was from this god that the figure of Yahweh later developed. As an aside, I want to make sure that you have all read your textbook, in which the political history of the Hebrews is told. The concept and history of twelve Hebrew tribes should sound familiar to you, especially because they are mentioned in the book. As a recap, remember that, after Abraham moved to Palestine from Ur, and after the Hebrew population grew in numbers, they organized themselves into twelve tribes that later become the kingdoms of Judah (made up by ten of the tribes) and Israel (made up of the remaining two tribes). The second stage in the development of ancient Judaism is known as the period of Henotheism, and is dated from roughly 1250 to roughly 800 B.C.E. This third stage was characterized by a deep transformation of the religion under the leadership of Moses and his successors. At the core of this change was the worshipping of a single god exclusively, although still acknowledging that other gods existed. Although this means that the Hebrews were in this stage not yet fully monotheistic, nevertheless this was an important development towards the brand of monotheism that deeply influenced world historical developments to follow. In effect, as this period progressed, the concept of Yahweh as the only god started to take place, as can be noted in the fact that the Hebrews started to think of him as the most important god and as not anthropomorphic. During this period, that is, Yahweh was not only given that name, which literally means "I am what I am", but also came to be conceived as outside and above nature; not part of it but its creator. The third phase in the development of ancient Judaism is known as the Prophetic Stage, and is dated between roughly 800 and 600 B.C.E. During this time, the tribes' political disunity and the conquest of Israel, about which you may learn more from your textbook, led to an outpouring of religious reform. In effect, the setbacks and misfortunes that the Hebrews faced, particularly their conquest and exile by powerful outsiders, made Hebrew leaders very concerned by what seemed at the time the likely destruction of their religion. Most importantly, during this period you have the rise of the Prophets, teachers like Jeremiah, Hosea, and Isaiah who were thought to have received divine revelation. It was the prophets who first introduced the concept of strict monotheism and explained how and why misfortune had stricken the Hebrews. At the core of their explanation was the belief that the Hebrews needed to be better peoples of Yahweh, following his laws and cleaving onto him. If that were the case, Yahweh would save the Hebrews as his chosen people.