Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Abraham, Melchisedek; Identifikation des Gottes Melchisedeks mit Jahwe; Durchbruch zum Seinssprung (leap of being); Bund-Erfahrung

Kurzinhalt: The order in which Abram truly lives from now on has been transformed from the Canaan of the Baal to the domain of Yahweh. The symbol of bondage has become the symbol of freedom.

Textausschnitt: 12/7 The story thus partly indicates explicitly, partly implies, an intricate system of relations between the various political groups of Canaan which can hardly function properly without divine sanctions accepted in common by the groups of the region. The assumption of a common divinity as the guardian of political compacts, a baal berith in Hebrew, will perhaps explain the appearance of the priest-king of Jerusalem, after the battle. He is introduced as bringing forth bread and wine in his capacity as "priest of El Elyon." And he extends his blessing to Abram in the following verses: (191; Fs)
Blessed be Abram by El Elyon,
The maker of the heavens and the earth!
And blessed be El Elyon,
Who delivered your enemies into your hands!

13/7 The god invoked by Melchizedek is distinguished by his name from the Israelite Yahweh or Elohim; but otherwise we receive no information about his nature. The English translations as "the highest God," while correct, are equally uninformative.1 But here again the Ugaritic discoveries come to our aid. The Canaanites had indeed a highest god, the storm-god Hadad, briefly referred to as the Baal, the king or lord of the gods; and one of the standard epithets of this Baal was Al'iyan, "the One who Prevails." The supremacy of the Baal as the highest divinity in the Canaanite pantheon was established very early, at the latest in the fifteenth century B.C.2 This Baal must be the El Elyon of the temple-state of Jerusalem who, through his priest-king Melchizedek, extends blessings and, for his service of delivering enemies into the hands of the people who recognize him, receives tithes after a successful war. (191f; Fs)

14/7 Among those who recognize the Canaanite Baal is Abram. Nevertheless, while ready to let the Baal have his share of the war loot, Abram reserves his allegiance beyond this point. Subsequent to the Melchizedek episode (Gen.14:18-20) the King of Sodom offers to share the loot with Abram (21); but Abram rejects the offer, which must be supposed to have been generous, in violent, almost insulting language: (192; Fs)

I raise my hand to Yahweh, El Elyon,
the maker of the heavens and the earth:
If from a thread to a shoe-lace, if I take aught that is yours. [...]!
You shall not say: "I have made Abram rich."
Not for me -
Only what the young men have eaten,
and the portion of the men who went with me, Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre, -
Let them take their portion.

15/7 It is a dramatic speech; an outburst, holding back on the verge of a betrayal, lapsing into silences to cover what already has been half said. It reveals more than the resentment of a proud nomad of being made rich by the generosity of a king-if this feeling plays an important role at all. For behind the overt rejection of the King's offer there lies the rejection of Melchizedek and his El Elyon. When Abram raises his hand to Yahweh, he pointedly arrogates the Baal's epithet for his own God. By Yahweh he swears his unfinished oath not to take anything of the King's possessions. His professed unwillingness to be made rich by the King, is in reality an indignant refusal to be made rich by the King's Baal. Yahweh is the god who delivers enemies into Abram's hands, not the god of Melchizedek; Yahweh blesses Abram, not the Baal of Jerusalem; and not to the El Elyon who watches over the relations between political allies in Canaan will Abram owe his prosperity, but to Yahweh alone. Hence, Abram reduces the King's offer to the payment of an ascetic expense account. (192; Fs) (notabene)

16/7 Any doubt about the intention of the story will be dispelled by a glance at its context. When Abram indignantly refuses to become rich with the blessing of the Baal, we may justly wonder how he ever will prosper in a political order under the protection of El Elyon. The concern will dissolve when we read the opening verse of Genesis 15: (192; Fs)
After what just has been related, the word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision:
Fear not, Abram,
I am your shield,
Your reward shall be rich. (193; Fs)

17/7 In the further course of the chapter Yahweh makes a berith with Abram (15:18), promising the dominion of Canaan for his descendants (15: 18-21) when the guilt of the Amorites is full (15:16). The meaning of Genesis 14 is clarified by this sequel beyond a doubt. Abram is in the difficult situation of the Exodus. Pragmatically he has left the former home in Chaldea, but in Canaan he has settled in an environment whose understanding of human and social order does not substantially differ from the Mesopotamian. He is still a foreigner, dependent for his status on his berith-masters, the Amorites, whose principal occupation in the spiritual order of things seems to be the accumulation of guilt, and he must accept the system of order under the Baal after a fashion. Spiritually he is profoundly disturbed. The Exodus from Chaldea shows that he no longer can live contentedly in the world of cosmological experiences and symbols, but his movements in the new world that opened to him when his soul opened toward God lack yet in assurance. On the one hand, he makes concessions to the Baal-and he must, if he wants to survive; on the other hand, the new God has taken possession of him strongly enough to strain his soul and to cause, in a critical situation, the outburst of Genesis 14:22-24. The tension between god and God is severe indeed, especially since the nature of the new God and the strength of his assistance are not certain at all. The transfer of the El Elyon from the Baal of Jerusalem to Yahweh leaves in doubt whether Yahweh is God or only a highest god in rivalry with others. Moreover, while Abram rejects riches that come to him under the sanction of the Baal, he is not averse to prosperity; he does not want to be ruined for Yahweh. Hence, he must have gone home from the dramatic scene full of sorrows. He certainly has not made friends by his outburst. Will Yahweh now protect him against the possible consequences? And will he compensate him for the riches renounced? In this critical hour of his life the "word of Yahweh" comes to him with comfort for every disquieting aspect of the situation: (1) The generally assuaging "Fear not"; (2) the "I am your shield" in political difficulties; and (3) the promise "Your reward shall be rich" in compensation for the economic loss. (193; Fs) (notabene)

18/7 The comforts and promises of Genesis 15 subtly dissolve the tenseness of Genesis 14. A masterpiece is the transformation of the berith symbol. In Genesis 14 Abram is in bondage through his involvement in the Canaanite system of political compacts. He lives under baals both human and divine: the Amorites are his berith-masters (baal berith)[eg: Gen. 14:13] in political relations, and the Baal of Jerusalem is the guardian of the political berith. In Genesis 15 the decisive step of liberation occurs, when Yahweh makes his berith with Abram. The worldly situation, to be sure, remains what it is for the time being; but spiritually the bondage is broken with the change of berith-masters. The order in which Abram truly lives from now on has been transformed from the Canaan of the Baal to the domain of Yahweh. The symbol of bondage has become the symbol of freedom. On this occasion, furthermore, the peculiar nature of a berith with Yahweh reveals itself. In the mundane situation of Abram, as we said, nothing has changed. The new domain of Yahweh is not yet the political order of a people in Canaan; at the moment it does not extend beyond the soul of Abram. It is an order that originates in a man through the inrush of divine reality into his soul and from this point of origin expands into a social body in history.3 At the time of its inception it is no more than the life of a man who trusts in God; but this new existence, founded on the leap in being, is pregnant with future. In the case of Abram's experience this "future" is not yet understood as the eternity under whose judgment man exists in his present. To be sure, Yahweh's berith is already the flash of eternity into time; but the true nature of this "future" as transcendence is still veiled by the sensuous analogues of a glorious future in historical time. Abram receives the promises of numerous descendants and their political success in the dominion of Canaan. In this sense the experience of Abram is "futuristic." It is a component in the berith which lasts throughout Israelite into Judaic history and issues into the apocalypses. Nevertheless, the lack of differentiation must not be seen as an imperfection only. For, as has been discussed previously, compact experiences contain the bond of compactness that holds the undifferentiated elements togetherthe bond that all too frequently is lost in the process of differentiation. While the promises of the berith still veil the meaning of transcendence, they at least preserve the awareness that eternity reaches indeed into the process of history, even though the operation of transcendent perfection through the mundane process is a paradox that cannot be solved through Canaans or Utopias of one kind or another. (194f; Fs) (notabene)

19/7 Genesis 14 and 15 together are a precious document. They describe the situation in which the berith experience originates in opposition to the cosmological order of Canaanite civilization, as well as the content of the experience itself. The philological and archaeological questions of trustworthiness and date of the story will now appear in a different light. For clearly we are not interested in either the date of literary fixation or the reliability of the story, but in the authenticity of the experience that is communicated by means of the story, as well as in the probable date of the situation in which the experience originated. As far as the authenticity is concerned, the problem is not too difficult, for nobody can describe an experience unless he has had it, either originally or through imaginative re-enactment. The writers to whom we owe the literary fixation certainly had the experience through re-enactment; and the masterly articulation of its meaning through the dramatic high points of the story proves that they were intimately familiar with it. The answer to the question of who had the experience originally will have to rely on the common-sense argument that religious personalities who have such experiences, and are able to submit to their authority, do not grow on trees. The spiritual sensitiveness of the man who opened his soul to the word of Yahweh, the trust and fortitude required to make this word the order of existence in opposition to the world, and the creative imagination used in transforming the symbol of civilizational bondage into the symbol of divine liberation-that combination is one of the great and rare events in the history of mankind. And this event bears the name of Abram. As far as the date of the event is concerned we have nothing to rely on but the Biblical tradition which places it in the pre-Egyptian period of Hebrew settlements in Canaan, that is, in the second millennium B.C. The date, therefore, must be accepted. (195; Fs)