Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Leitmotiv: Gott als goel - Erlöser Israels; Schöpfung -Heil; Exil, Kyros

Kurzinhalt: the creation of the world is continued into the creation of salvation; why should the liberation be experienced as an epoch in world-history? The new Israel is the covenant and light to the nations

Textausschnitt: (1) The dominant motif of the work is the revelation of God as the goel of Israel, as the Redeemer (Isa. 41:14; 43:14; 44:6, 24; 48:17; 49:7; 54:5). The revelation marks so decisive an epoch in history that the whole past moves into the category of the "former things" to which now the "new things" can be opposed (43:16-19): (502; Fs)
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With a recall of the toldoth of heaven and earth (Gen. 2:4 ff.), the creation of the world is continued into the creation of salvation. To the three phases of world-history in the pregnant sense, then, correspond the names of God as the bore, the Creator of the world (40:28), of Israel (4315), and of salvation (45:8). In this last capacity God also is the Redeemer (goel), the Holy One, and the King of Israel (43:14-15). (503; Fs) (notabene)
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Such admonitions would surely become more convincing when the oppressive flesh of Babylon showed symptoms of withering like the grass. The appearance of Cyrus must have been a relief beyond our full comprehension, not because of the political liberation, but because it proved the reality of God and his power over the flesh. One can still sense this relief in 45:1:
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137/13 In his pride of empire man apes God. This part of the truth contained in the Sinaitic revelation had remained veiled as long as the Chosen People under God was surrounded by longeval, politically and militarily effective empires. The fall of Assyria, Lydia, and Babylon within less than a century had brought it home that all flesh indeed withered like grass. And from the succession of imperial disasters, from the empirical crumbling of cosmic-divine order, emerged the insight that above the vicissitudes of empire "the word of our God shall stand forever" (40:8). This insight, however, establishes indeed a new aeon of history. For the God who has revealed himself as the first and the last, by blowing his breath on the flesh, is now revealed as the God of all mankind. The flesh that has aped God and withered for its guilt is the same flesh that now will see the kabhod of Yahweh revealed (40:5). Moreover, Israel as a concrete society in pragmatic history has perished together with the empires. Hence, the Israel that rises from the storm that has blown over all of mankind is no longer the self-contained Chosen People but the people to whom the revelation has come first to be communicated to the nations. It has to emigrate from its own concrete order just as the empire peoples had to emigrate from theirs. The new Israel is the covenant and light to the nations (49:6), the Servant of Yahweh through whom God will make his salvation reach to the end of the earth (49:6). (506; Fs) (notabene)