Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Israel: historischer Realismus, Philosophie; Elohim -> Gemeinschaft mit Jahwe; Erlöser, redeemer

Kurzinhalt: ... it favored the advance of historical realism. On the other hand, it prevented the development of philosophy; die Idee des Erlösers

Textausschnitt: 31/8 The state of suspension in which the issue of the soul remained in Israelite history had curious consequences in the realm of symbols. On the one hand, it favored the advance of historical realism. On the other hand, it prevented the development of philosophy. (236f; Fs) (notabene)
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32/8 With regard to historical realism, the suppression of the ghost-elohim eliminated the ancestor myth as a constitutive form from the public sphere. This, to be sure, does not mean that ancestor-worship or even hero-worship were unknown to the Hebrew tribes. A sufficient number of traces of such cults have survived in the Bible (and been confirmed by archaeological discoveries) to prove that the Hebrew clans, before they came within the range of Yahwist religiousness, were constituted by their ancestor cults just as any Hellenic genos. (...) Nevertheless, while the ancestors and heroes were elohim on the popular level of Israelite religion, they never became mythological figures on the Yahwist level on which the narrative moves. On the contrary, those who had already disappeared behind the veil of the myth in pre-Mosaic times, such as the Jacob-el, or Joseph-el, of the Egyptian lists of Canaanite place names, were recovered as historical figures. Certainly Jacob, perhaps Joseph, and probably others of whom no records are preserved were transfigured from historical chieftains into mythical ancestors and then restored to their former status much in the manner in which a modern, critical historian recaptures pragmatic events from the myth. As a result, the Israelites developed a symbolic form without parallel in other civilizations, that is, the
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34/8 On the lower, popular level, however, the community of the living with the dead, that is, the substance of continuous social order among men, was maintained through the cults of clan ancestors and national heroes, as well as by the faith in their help as advisers and avengers. Though the historians did their best to erase all traditions of this faith, numerous passages have escaped which manifest the belief in the "fathers" or the "people" to whom in death a man is gathered. From this popular, living experience a prophetic spirit could break through to the insight that the community of the elohim to whom man was assembled in death was the community with the divine father himself. While dodging the issue of the ancestral elohim and their status, a prayer of Trito-Isaiah transferred their function in the human community to God in person (Isa. 63:16): (238; Fs) (notabene)
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35/8 Yahweh in this prayer takes the place of the redeemer-that is, of the goel, the close relative and avenger under clan law-since the function no longer is fulfilled by the elohim of Abraham and Jacob. And Yahweh can help, as he did in the days of Moses, through the presence of his roach, his spirit, with the shepherds of his people. Searchingly the prophet asks (Isa. 63:11 ff.): (238; Fs)
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36/8 One senses the animosity against the ancestral elohim of the pre-Mosaic age. The author of the prayer struggled to escape from their atmosphere and to understand the presence of the one and only Elohim through his roach, in history. And, partially at least, his endeavors were successful. To be sure, Yahweh was still the God of Israel, not of mankind; and the issue of the soul was not clarified at all; but at least the questions had been sharpened in such a manner that from an apparently desperate situation emerged the vision of a solution. Opinion is divided whether the prayer was written immediately after the return to Jerusalem in 538 or during the conflict with the Persians in the fourth century B.C. At any rate, Israel was in a politically difficult time. No help was to be expected from man, either from men in this world or from men gathered to their fathers. Moreover, the feeling still prevailed that divine help had to come to society in its worldly existence; only help to the people in its historical straits was of interest, not help to the individual soul. From such negations, shutting out the conceivable alternatives, arose the idea of the God who would return as our Redeemer into history in order to rectify a condition of man beyond hope. (239; Fs) (notabene)