What has Hume to do with the Bible?
As I mentioned in the article on Malaysia I purchased Karen Armstrong’s: A history of God from an Airport Bookshop there. In the first two chapters Armstrong takes the reader on a trip through the Old Testament through the eyes of its several identifiable authors and editors. In opening my Bible from my late teens I was surprised to see that I had also annotated or underlined a number of the same passages to which Armstrong refers.
The Bible is in stark contrast to modern scientific or philosophical analysis. It is not an accurate historical record or literal description. In Hebrew it is poetic like the Koran; it is written to be recited or sung and a great deal of refinement has been expended on the poetry. Like the parables of the New Testament factual accuracy is not as important as the message they are intended to convey, the events on which it is based are a metaphor for deeper spiritual meaning.
Thus as children we were taught Dorothea Mackellar's poem My Country
| The love of field and coppice, Of green and shaded lanes. Of ordered woods and gardens Is running in your veins, Strong love of grey-blue distance Brown streams and soft dim skies I know but cannot share it, My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country, |
She goes on to extol Australia as a land of stark beauty that, implicitly, builds character through adversity: per ardua ad alta.
| An opal-hearted country, A wilful, lavish land - All you who have not loved her, You will not understand - Though earth holds many splendours, Wherever I may die, I know to what brown country My homing thoughts will fly. |
This stands in contrast to that other strand of Australian cultural memory of the mother country; Shakespeare's:
| This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,-- This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. |
Each poetic account has a strong element of myth; and even mystery. Emotion overwhelms reality; everyday experience; truth.
A rational scientific description of both countries can be found in any encyclopaedia but if one is seeking to inspire nationalism or foster a religious experience, the poetic and metaphorical is the description of choice.
Yet as Armstrong demonstrates the Bible does provide a very compelling history of the development of religious thought from polytheism to monotheism and on into Christianity; the Trinity and the Communion of Saints. Out of Byzantine Christianity and Judaism Islam was born.
We learn of the raiding warlike Hebrew Tribes which, led by Abraham, settled in Canaan (modern Israel) in about 1850 BCE. But due to a famine a significant number soon left for Egypt where they became second class citizens (or slaves). At this time their God, El, was still a tribal deity.
Other tribes had their own deities that protected their specific interests and in addition there were specialist deities that managed such things as fertility. In the earliest books Abraham’s God, El, appears in human form and ‘drops in’ one day as a visitor. El was initially a mountain or high god of war and destruction.
About 650 years later in around 1200 BCE a group of decedents of the enslaved Hebrews left Egypt led by Moses, allegedly perused by Pharaoh’s armies. Egyptian records confirm that there were indeed roaming bands of warlike Hebrew but there is absolutely no record of the other details in the Biblical story relating to Egypt. This is discussed further in the article on Egypt on this website.
With the support of the Hebrews that had remained there the new arrivals gained control over Canaan. By now Abraham’s God had become a jealous God who could not be looked upon; and his name was revealed to be Yahweh. He was no longer happy to coexist with the other gods of the region: Baal, Marduk and Dagon and the Yahweh supporters who had become Israelites set about destroying the temples and idols of these other gods.
In due course this lack of multiculturalism led to a new misfortune to befall the Israelites.
In 627 BCE the Assyrian Empire fell into disarray with the death of King Ashurbanipal. Canaan was already in political and religious turmoil and ripe for taking by the Babylonians.
By 605 BCE the entire territory from the Tigris to the Red Sea had been taken by Babylon; and the Egyptian army had been pushed back to a new defensible border at the battle of Carchemish. A period of great Babylonian wealth and legendary cultural flowering followed; evidence of which can still be found.
Their second great king, Nebuchadnezzar II, was supported in these achievements by his God, Nabu; after whom he was named. Nabu is the son of the god Marduk and the Babylonian deity of wisdom.
In a contemporary inscription, Nebuchadnezzar styles himself as Nabu's “beloved” and “favourite”. Needless to say he was less than impressed by argumentative Israelites claiming that there was but one true god who favoured them. He expelled them from Canaan and re-settled them outside Babylon in 587 BCE.
But instead of relenting the Israelite prophets interpreted this to be evidence of God’s anger against those whose faith had lapsed and had led them to false worship and idolatry. Yahweh had become truly distant and transcendental; now using the success of unwitting Babylonians as a tool for the instruction of his people. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
As Jews were subsequently dispersed across the ancient world their one God belief blended with the increasingly transcendental view of all deities evident in Plato and the blossoming of Greek thought and culture. This transcendentness matured through the Romans to Byzantine Christianity and then to Islam.