This essay was submitted on December 10, 2021 as part of a final assignment for my World Religions and The Cultures They Create course.
The covenant that appeared in the book of Deuteronomy was key for a new society to be formed in Ancient Israel, one built on a relationship between Yahweh and the Israelites. Prior to the Deuteronomic Revolution it was royal theology that was the predominant belief system in Israel. This elevated kings to be closer to the divine, necessarily mediating between God and lay people. However, prophets from this time spoke about Yahweh’s condemnation of a monarchical society, instead “describing a personal relation between Yahweh and the children of Israel” (Bellah 301). The people of Israel were growing dependent on a king of flesh and blood, rather than relying on the divine king, Yahweh. The counter-cultural Yahweh-alone movement that was fueled by the words of the prophets became the centre of Deuteronomic faith.
The emergence of Deuteronomy was during the conquest of the Assyrian Empire that caused terror, violence, and turmoil in all Levantine states including Israel and Judah. Consequently, the Yahweh-alone movement gained traction as a means to combat Assyrian rule; “Religious resistance to Assyria took the form of an exclusive reliance on Yahweh” (Bellah 307). The pressure from Assyria was not only for Israelites to recognize the Assyrian king as their ruler, but also to recognize the primacy of the Assyrian god of king and empire, Aššur. Despite the fact the kings of Israel and Judah had submitted to the reign of the Assyrian Empire, prophets insisted that Yahweh was not subordinate to Aššur. To the prophets, “the covenant that counted was the covenant between Yahweh and the Children of Israel, and it was the betrayal of that covenant by the Israelites that gave them into the power of the Assyrians, who could only act in accord with the will of Yahweh” (Bellah 309).
The story of Moses and the employment of the covenant was used by the prophets to help people understand the revolutionary vision of a society ruled by God. Moses served as an antitype for both the Assyrian kings and the Israelite kings, who led the Israelites as a mere prophet rather than a divine king (Bellah 310). The covenant promised a relationship between Yahweh and the Children of Israel that did not need a king to mediate, “constitutive of a new understanding of self and world” (Bellah 314). Yahweh imploring a relationship with both Israel as a people and with each individual Israelite illustrates a god that is both transcendent and concerned for his followers, promising to never abandon his love for Israel.
Work Cited
Religion in Human Evolution: From Paleolithic to the Axial Age by Robert N. Bellah (Belknap Press, 2011).
Yorumlar