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A HISTORY of GOD by Karen Armstrong
They started my Thinking Agenda for Faith Leaving Alexandria Bad Christian Manifesto The Sin of Certainty The Lost Message of Jesus Creative Faith Peace through Victory or Justice The Last Week Emergent Theology God - An Anatomy Carry your own Cross A History of God Kissing Fish Blog notes Lost Certainties The Book of Micah A new Christianity The Fourth Gospel
The common scholarly opinion is that the final text of the Bible was not written
until many years, sometimes centuries, after the events described.
The Final Text of Exodus was edited in 5th century.
CHAPTER 1 : IN THE BEGINNING CHAPTER 1 : IN THE BEGINNING
THE BEGINNING OF GOD
In the beginning, Gods abounded and took the form of super-humans,
though unbounded by time or space. They interacted with mankind as other men.
The death of a God and subsequent search of a goddess were repeated themes
Abraham left Ur to eventually settle in Canaan in the 20th or 19th century.
He was probably chieftain of a nomadic tribe, part of the Westward drift of population.
They served as mercenaries or employees of the more settled tribes as they went,
but there were frequent conflicts.
It seems that there were three main waves.
1. Associated with Abraham and Hebron about 1850
2. Associated with Jacob (Israel), which settled in Shechem but then emigrated to Egypt.
3. In about 1200BC, tribes arrived from Egypt, following A leader called Moses and a God called Jahweh
The biblical acoount was written centuries later in the 8th century, based on ancient legends.
It is thought that there are 4 different sources for the first 5 books which were later collated.
Two are J and E (calling God Jahweh and Elohim),
The other two were D (deuteronomist) and P (priestly)
P wrote the first chapter of Genesis in the 6th century, when such ideas became of interest.
Unlike most pagan Gods, Yahweh was involved in the everyday life of man, rather than only in ritual and myth.
It is dubious whether Jahweh, the God of Moses, was the same as the God of Abraham
(he was probably El, the high-god of Cannan), but, by the time of writing Yahweh was the God of Israel.
However, in those days, people did not believe in just one God, even if they only followed one.
Maybe the prime difference between Yahweh and El (and other gods) was that he created awe (as on Sinai).
Other gods might be met without a great fanfare (as Abraham meets the three strangers).
The closeness of God to man in such El encounters as Jacob's (eg wrestling with God)
would be seen as blasphemous in later Yahweh religion.
Yahweh, the God of Exodus, was cruel and violent - a tribal god of armies
and the inspration of narrow fundamentalist religions, yet also on the side of the oppressed.
The God who shared a meal with Abraham is clearly a very different from the one
who met Moses at the burning bush - or raged in fire and smoke on Sinai.
THE EXODUS
To help the escape from Egypt, God releases a horrible plague
and then drowns the pursuing Egyptian army, mercilessly.
This is not a God of love and compassion!
He later orders the annihilation of the Canaanites.
He is passionate and partisan, a tribal deity.
There is, however, little attempt at realism here.
It could be the report of a successful peasant's revolt.
The myth of a Chosen People and divine election
can still promote a narrow and tribal theology,
even amongst Christian denominations.
Yet he is a God of revolution and supporting the underdog
though most religious organisations are tempted
to promote Him as the God of the status quo.
MOUNT SINAI
Yahweh sets hinself apart. The people may not approach the mountain.
The people stood back and Yahweh descended in fire and cloud.
The Law is now handed down fromm on high and delivered to Moses.
This has become a written thing rather than the ways of nature.
The Law assumes the existence of other Gods,
but the Israelites promise to follow only Yahweh.
However Yahweh was a God of war and not attuned to fertility and a settled life.
The Israelites were often tempted towards Gods that seemed more attuned to to current needs.
until many years, sometimes centuries, after the events described.
The Final Text of Exodus was edited in 5th century.
CHAPTER 1 : IN THE BEGINNING CHAPTER 1 : IN THE BEGINNING
THE BEGINNING OF GOD
In the beginning, Gods abounded and took the form of super-humans,
though unbounded by time or space. They interacted with mankind as other men.
The death of a God and subsequent search of a goddess were repeated themes
Abraham left Ur to eventually settle in Canaan in the 20th or 19th century.
He was probably chieftain of a nomadic tribe, part of the Westward drift of population.
They served as mercenaries or employees of the more settled tribes as they went,
but there were frequent conflicts.
It seems that there were three main waves.
1. Associated with Abraham and Hebron about 1850
2. Associated with Jacob (Israel), which settled in Shechem but then emigrated to Egypt.
3. In about 1200BC, tribes arrived from Egypt, following A leader called Moses and a God called Jahweh
The biblical acoount was written centuries later in the 8th century, based on ancient legends.
It is thought that there are 4 different sources for the first 5 books which were later collated.
Two are J and E (calling God Jahweh and Elohim),
The other two were D (deuteronomist) and P (priestly)
P wrote the first chapter of Genesis in the 6th century, when such ideas became of interest.
Unlike most pagan Gods, Yahweh was involved in the everyday life of man, rather than only in ritual and myth.
It is dubious whether Jahweh, the God of Moses, was the same as the God of Abraham
(he was probably El, the high-god of Cannan), but, by the time of writing Yahweh was the God of Israel.
However, in those days, people did not believe in just one God, even if they only followed one.
Maybe the prime difference between Yahweh and El (and other gods) was that he created awe (as on Sinai).
Other gods might be met without a great fanfare (as Abraham meets the three strangers).
The closeness of God to man in such El encounters as Jacob's (eg wrestling with God)
would be seen as blasphemous in later Yahweh religion.
Yahweh, the God of Exodus, was cruel and violent - a tribal god of armies
and the inspration of narrow fundamentalist religions, yet also on the side of the oppressed.
The God who shared a meal with Abraham is clearly a very different from the one
who met Moses at the burning bush - or raged in fire and smoke on Sinai.
THE EXODUS
To help the escape from Egypt, God releases a horrible plague
and then drowns the pursuing Egyptian army, mercilessly.
This is not a God of love and compassion!
He later orders the annihilation of the Canaanites.
He is passionate and partisan, a tribal deity.
There is, however, little attempt at realism here.
It could be the report of a successful peasant's revolt.
The myth of a Chosen People and divine election
can still promote a narrow and tribal theology,
even amongst Christian denominations.
Yet he is a God of revolution and supporting the underdog
though most religious organisations are tempted
to promote Him as the God of the status quo.
MOUNT SINAI
Yahweh sets hinself apart. The people may not approach the mountain.
The people stood back and Yahweh descended in fire and cloud.
The Law is now handed down fromm on high and delivered to Moses.
This has become a written thing rather than the ways of nature.
The Law assumes the existence of other Gods,
but the Israelites promise to follow only Yahweh.
However Yahweh was a God of war and not attuned to fertility and a settled life.
The Israelites were often tempted towards Gods that seemed more attuned to to current needs.
CHAPTER 2: ONE GOD
CHAPTER 2: ONE GOD
The word commonly translated as "holy" really means "separated".
Isaiah's vision (Isaiah 6:3) is of a God who is radically separate from man.
Overcome by his vision of God, Isaiah was only aware of his own inadequacy and impurity.
Yet he describes a conversation with God, which would be seen as impossible in many religions.
He attempted to describe the indescribable.
In common with other prophets of the Axial age, Isaiah can see the enemies of Israel, as God's agents,
rather than perceiving Godly action as limited to Israel, and God as always on Israel's side.
The prophets tried to force Israel to look at current events and take corrective action.
This seems so similar to the situation today, when the prophets are pointing to environmental disaster,
the people continue with their present behaviour and the priests ignore the situation.
The prophets insisted that the test of religious authenticity
was that its experience was integrated with ordinary life.
The convert must return to the marketplace!
It was a message not welcomed by the priestly class.
In this view, to follow Yahweh is to be on the side of the oppressed, whoever they are.
However the people preferred a less demanding religion, that focussed on myth and cultic observance.
Is it not the same today, in most religions on earth, even in Christianity despite what Jesus taught?
Israel (maybe like the church?) had misunderstood God's message and His covenant,
which meant special responsibilities, not priviledges.
The prophets exhibited a superior attitude to, and contempt for, gentile Gods,
which did not match up to the glory and wonder of Yahweh.
Such an attitude is still prevalent, sadly, for we too have created a God in our own image,
made of silver and gold, without hearing ears or seeing eyes.
Yahweh managed to take over the functions of most of the pagan Gods,
but found this difficult with the Goddesses, whose role became sublimated
leading to a subjugation of females in the city cultures that followed the Axial age.
In the 620s during the reign of King Josiah, a scroll was "discovered",
during a time of reform, that purported to be the last sermon given by Moses.
It became the book of Deuteronomy and brought about a stricter adherence to the Law,
and a stricter adherence to the worship of Yahweh alone, amongst many other Gods.
The message was that,only if Israel obeyed God's Law, would they prosper.
In a time of extreme political insecurity, the fundamentalist message had a major impact.
The Temple was cleansed and the people repented. The ancient books were revised to fit the new theology.
As in more modern times, God was used to justify and endorse our hatreds and excesses,
rather than to challenge our shortcomings. (Other religions have followed a similar pattern.)
Even so, 30 years or so later, the Babylonian King destroyed The Temple and exiled its leaders.
One result of this was the realisation that the external trappings of religion were not crucial;
another was that Israel had only itself to blame for the tragedy;
a third was the widening of Jewish perspective from contact with the outside world.
When the Persians conquered the Babylonian empire in 539, there came a change of policy.
Conquered people were returned to their origins and local religions were permitted.
A proportion of the exiles returned home and imposed their revised religion
(the "Priestly tradition" (P) devise and documented during the exile).
This included new books (Numbers and Leviticus) and adjusted others.
The first chapter of Genesis was added as a new account of Creation.
The Sabbath became a holy day, rather than just a day of rest.
Wisdom literature surfaced in the second century BC,
and featured the main division between the Greek understanding of God
as separate from the world and revealed through reason
and the God of the Jews as involved in the world
and revealed through revelation.
By the first century AD, Jews had a favoured place in the Roman world,
despite the rebellious nature of the Palestinian zealots,
which led to reprisals and the destruction of the Temple.
However sects such as the Essenes did not favour Temple worship.
They believed in a Temple of the Spirit
and in self-purification rather than animal sacrifice.
They had already withdrawn to separate communitiesin the desert.
The Pharisees were the most progressive of the Palestinian Jews,
though they are given a bad name by the authors of the Gospels,
due to the conflict which caused Christians to be barred from the synagogue.
In fact, the ideas of Jesus and the Pharisees had a lot in common
and much of his teaching was based on that of Pharisaic masters.
It was the Pharisees who taught that the Temple was not essential to Jewish worship
and that God was not a Being as humans were beings; had no material form.
They taught that serving another human being was to serve God,
since we are all made in His image.
To humilitate, or hurt, another human was sacrilege.
The word commonly translated as "holy" really means "separated".
Isaiah's vision (Isaiah 6:3) is of a God who is radically separate from man.
Overcome by his vision of God, Isaiah was only aware of his own inadequacy and impurity.
Yet he describes a conversation with God, which would be seen as impossible in many religions.
He attempted to describe the indescribable.
In common with other prophets of the Axial age, Isaiah can see the enemies of Israel, as God's agents,
rather than perceiving Godly action as limited to Israel, and God as always on Israel's side.
The prophets tried to force Israel to look at current events and take corrective action.
This seems so similar to the situation today, when the prophets are pointing to environmental disaster,
the people continue with their present behaviour and the priests ignore the situation.
The prophets insisted that the test of religious authenticity
was that its experience was integrated with ordinary life.
The convert must return to the marketplace!
It was a message not welcomed by the priestly class.
In this view, to follow Yahweh is to be on the side of the oppressed, whoever they are.
However the people preferred a less demanding religion, that focussed on myth and cultic observance.
Is it not the same today, in most religions on earth, even in Christianity despite what Jesus taught?
Israel (maybe like the church?) had misunderstood God's message and His covenant,
which meant special responsibilities, not priviledges.
The prophets exhibited a superior attitude to, and contempt for, gentile Gods,
which did not match up to the glory and wonder of Yahweh.
Such an attitude is still prevalent, sadly, for we too have created a God in our own image,
made of silver and gold, without hearing ears or seeing eyes.
Yahweh managed to take over the functions of most of the pagan Gods,
but found this difficult with the Goddesses, whose role became sublimated
leading to a subjugation of females in the city cultures that followed the Axial age.
In the 620s during the reign of King Josiah, a scroll was "discovered",
during a time of reform, that purported to be the last sermon given by Moses.
It became the book of Deuteronomy and brought about a stricter adherence to the Law,
and a stricter adherence to the worship of Yahweh alone, amongst many other Gods.
The message was that,only if Israel obeyed God's Law, would they prosper.
In a time of extreme political insecurity, the fundamentalist message had a major impact.
The Temple was cleansed and the people repented. The ancient books were revised to fit the new theology.
As in more modern times, God was used to justify and endorse our hatreds and excesses,
rather than to challenge our shortcomings. (Other religions have followed a similar pattern.)
Even so, 30 years or so later, the Babylonian King destroyed The Temple and exiled its leaders.
One result of this was the realisation that the external trappings of religion were not crucial;
another was that Israel had only itself to blame for the tragedy;
a third was the widening of Jewish perspective from contact with the outside world.
When the Persians conquered the Babylonian empire in 539, there came a change of policy.
Conquered people were returned to their origins and local religions were permitted.
A proportion of the exiles returned home and imposed their revised religion
(the "Priestly tradition" (P) devise and documented during the exile).
This included new books (Numbers and Leviticus) and adjusted others.
The first chapter of Genesis was added as a new account of Creation.
The Sabbath became a holy day, rather than just a day of rest.
Wisdom literature surfaced in the second century BC,
and featured the main division between the Greek understanding of God
as separate from the world and revealed through reason
and the God of the Jews as involved in the world
and revealed through revelation.
By the first century AD, Jews had a favoured place in the Roman world,
despite the rebellious nature of the Palestinian zealots,
which led to reprisals and the destruction of the Temple.
However sects such as the Essenes did not favour Temple worship.
They believed in a Temple of the Spirit
and in self-purification rather than animal sacrifice.
They had already withdrawn to separate communitiesin the desert.
The Pharisees were the most progressive of the Palestinian Jews,
though they are given a bad name by the authors of the Gospels,
due to the conflict which caused Christians to be barred from the synagogue.
In fact, the ideas of Jesus and the Pharisees had a lot in common
and much of his teaching was based on that of Pharisaic masters.
It was the Pharisees who taught that the Temple was not essential to Jewish worship
and that God was not a Being as humans were beings; had no material form.
They taught that serving another human being was to serve God,
since we are all made in His image.
To humilitate, or hurt, another human was sacrilege.
CHAPTER 3: A LIGHT TO THE GENTILES
CHAPTER 3: A LIGHT TO THE GENTILES
By the year 70, when Mark's Gospel was written, fact had been overlaid with myth.
We actually know very little about the life of Jesus.
Mark's Gospel presents Jesus as a normal man,
with brothers, sisters and a family.
He may, originally, been a disciple of his cousin, John,
and, from him, gleaned his foundational message of repentance,
though his proclamation of the Kingdom of God followed 30 days later.
We know little about the actual nature of the mission of Jesus.
His reported words have been affected by later developments in the church,
and the extensive letters written by St Paul.
Faith healers were familiar religious figures at the time.
Like Jesus, they attracted a lot of female followers.
Jesus may even have been a Pharises, in the Hillel tradition,
preaching "do unto others as you would have them do to you".
His violent diatribes against the Pharisees in Matthew's Gospel
are almost certainly inauthentic and a product of later sectarian division.
The growth of the belief that Jesus was divine is complex.
Throughout he did promise that, through faith, all could share his power,
but his divinity was only a late-comer, in common with the pattern of others religions,
which sought a being to worship through some anointed teacher.
Buddhism followed a similar pattern, over a longer Period,
as did Hinduism, even creating its own Trinity in
Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva.
People need a God to worship and that is more accessible
though a human, or semi-human, person.
The New Testament writers never attempted to explain what they experienced,
but felt that, somehow, they were "in Christ", who became a mediator between man and God.
It took four centuries for him to become God, in the eyes of the Christian church.
Roman society was firmly resistant to change,
but contact with a wider world had brought a religious restlessness.
Their home-oriented Gods seemed petty in a global context.
During the first century, there was a growth of interest
in the mystery religions of the East.
However, nobody expected religion to be a challenge
and to demand a complete change of life-style, commitment.
Such ideas were the province of the philosophers:
Plato, Pythagoras, Epictetus.
This is much the same today, where people attend church for a sense of security,
rather than expecting any new ideas or challenge - change.
New ideas are for university scholars,
Conformity is for the pulpit!
The Christians found the need to explain their faith
through both the eyes of philosophy and religion.
This resulted in a rash of fresh ideas
from the mystery religions of gnosis
to being a branch of Platoism.
Paul of SamosataBishop of Antioch from 260-272 proposed that Jesus was just a man,
in whom the presence and wisdom of God had dwelt as a temple,but this was condemned at a synod in 264.
The search for an acceptable doctrine continued with Origen who devised a form of Platonic Christianity.
Plotinus (205-270), another Platonist, was not a Christian, yet he influenced all of the monotheist religions.
He saw human beings as all aware of their own faults and disorder
but constantly trying to sort order out of the chaos of their lives.
To find the underlying truth of reality, the soul must reorganise
with a time of purification and contemplation, probing the deepest receses of the mind.
The ultimate reality was "the One" who could not be described and is distinct from all things.
The process of creation is likened to circles emanating from a single point.
The farther one drifts from the centre, the weaker is the centre's influence, but the stronger the desire to return.
A new prophet, Montanus, preached a fierce form of Christianity, demanding self-sacrifice as the route to heaven.
It swept through Western Christianity, particularly North Africa where it absorbed the theologian Tertullian.
By the year 70, when Mark's Gospel was written, fact had been overlaid with myth.
We actually know very little about the life of Jesus.
Mark's Gospel presents Jesus as a normal man,
with brothers, sisters and a family.
He may, originally, been a disciple of his cousin, John,
and, from him, gleaned his foundational message of repentance,
though his proclamation of the Kingdom of God followed 30 days later.
We know little about the actual nature of the mission of Jesus.
His reported words have been affected by later developments in the church,
and the extensive letters written by St Paul.
Faith healers were familiar religious figures at the time.
Like Jesus, they attracted a lot of female followers.
Jesus may even have been a Pharises, in the Hillel tradition,
preaching "do unto others as you would have them do to you".
His violent diatribes against the Pharisees in Matthew's Gospel
are almost certainly inauthentic and a product of later sectarian division.
The growth of the belief that Jesus was divine is complex.
Throughout he did promise that, through faith, all could share his power,
but his divinity was only a late-comer, in common with the pattern of others religions,
which sought a being to worship through some anointed teacher.
Buddhism followed a similar pattern, over a longer Period,
as did Hinduism, even creating its own Trinity in
Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva.
People need a God to worship and that is more accessible
though a human, or semi-human, person.
The New Testament writers never attempted to explain what they experienced,
but felt that, somehow, they were "in Christ", who became a mediator between man and God.
It took four centuries for him to become God, in the eyes of the Christian church.
Roman society was firmly resistant to change,
but contact with a wider world had brought a religious restlessness.
Their home-oriented Gods seemed petty in a global context.
During the first century, there was a growth of interest
in the mystery religions of the East.
However, nobody expected religion to be a challenge
and to demand a complete change of life-style, commitment.
Such ideas were the province of the philosophers:
Plato, Pythagoras, Epictetus.
This is much the same today, where people attend church for a sense of security,
rather than expecting any new ideas or challenge - change.
New ideas are for university scholars,
Conformity is for the pulpit!
The Christians found the need to explain their faith
through both the eyes of philosophy and religion.
This resulted in a rash of fresh ideas
from the mystery religions of gnosis
to being a branch of Platoism.
Paul of SamosataBishop of Antioch from 260-272 proposed that Jesus was just a man,
in whom the presence and wisdom of God had dwelt as a temple,but this was condemned at a synod in 264.
The search for an acceptable doctrine continued with Origen who devised a form of Platonic Christianity.
Plotinus (205-270), another Platonist, was not a Christian, yet he influenced all of the monotheist religions.
He saw human beings as all aware of their own faults and disorder
but constantly trying to sort order out of the chaos of their lives.
To find the underlying truth of reality, the soul must reorganise
with a time of purification and contemplation, probing the deepest receses of the mind.
The ultimate reality was "the One" who could not be described and is distinct from all things.
The process of creation is likened to circles emanating from a single point.
The farther one drifts from the centre, the weaker is the centre's influence, but the stronger the desire to return.
A new prophet, Montanus, preached a fierce form of Christianity, demanding self-sacrifice as the route to heaven.
It swept through Western Christianity, particularly North Africa where it absorbed the theologian Tertullian.
CHAPTER 4: TRINITY, THE CHRISTIAN GOD
CHAPTER 4: TRINITY, THE CHRISTIAN GOD
In about 320, common man seemed to take an intense interest in theology.
Arius taught that the Son was subordinate to the Father (as had Origen).
His Bishop, Alexander, and assistant, Athanasius saw this as heresy.
In the last hundred years, Christian ideas had changed. Arius was out of date.
The new ideas of creation had adopted the gnostic view of creation from nothing,
rather than the concept, in Genesis, that it was a stabilisation of primorial chaos.
There was no longer a line of intermediaries between God and man, but a great divide.
The question posed by Arius was on which side, of that divide, was Christ.
Was he a man like ourselves?
Arius pronounced that If Jesus was not man, if he was in fact God all the time,
his life had no point, was no example for us and produced no saving action.
Ananthasius, on the other hand, saw Man as inherently fragile
and unable to work out his own salvation.
Only by God becoming Man could man be elevated to divinity.
To resolve this dispute a church council was called at Nicea, Anathasius got his way,
and creation from nothing became official Christian doctrine for the first time.
Even so, the Arian controversy continued for another sixty years,
dividing and diverting the leaders of the churcgh.
Bishop Basil and the Cappadocians developed the idea of a secret dogma
that exited behind the liturigal symbols and lucide teachings of Christ.
In about 320, common man seemed to take an intense interest in theology.
Arius taught that the Son was subordinate to the Father (as had Origen).
His Bishop, Alexander, and assistant, Athanasius saw this as heresy.
In the last hundred years, Christian ideas had changed. Arius was out of date.
The new ideas of creation had adopted the gnostic view of creation from nothing,
rather than the concept, in Genesis, that it was a stabilisation of primorial chaos.
There was no longer a line of intermediaries between God and man, but a great divide.
The question posed by Arius was on which side, of that divide, was Christ.
Was he a man like ourselves?
Arius pronounced that If Jesus was not man, if he was in fact God all the time,
his life had no point, was no example for us and produced no saving action.
Ananthasius, on the other hand, saw Man as inherently fragile
and unable to work out his own salvation.
Only by God becoming Man could man be elevated to divinity.
To resolve this dispute a church council was called at Nicea, Anathasius got his way,
and creation from nothing became official Christian doctrine for the first time.
Even so, the Arian controversy continued for another sixty years,
dividing and diverting the leaders of the churcgh.
Bishop Basil and the Cappadocians developed the idea of a secret dogma
that exited behind the liturigal symbols and lucide teachings of Christ.