Inadequate exposition of the matured convictions of Scripture is also necessarily involved in the purpose and method of this book. Some of the major characteristics of Yahweh, the mountain god of Sinai, stand out plainly in the narrative. The origins of the sacrificial system in Israel, as elsewhere, imply this physical realism in the thought of deity.
In this lies one of the main elements of uniqueness in the Old Testament’s developing idea of God. The alternative to it was not theoretical atheism but belief in the reality and power of the gods of victorious Babylon. This, however, is to fly in the face of the evidence and to set up a false antithesis.
He was in the lineal succession of the great prophets -- Hosea, Jeremiah, the Isaiah of the Exile. It was because of his morally majestic idea of God that the trivial legalisms of the Pharisees seemed intolerable. The center of the New Testament’s interest is not so much an idea as a deed.
Paul says, "The earnest expectation of creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.".
A Guide to Understanding the Bible by Harry Emerson Fosdick
The Idea of Man
This submergence of the individual in the social group has been called ‘corporate personality’ and the name accurately indicates the nature of the fact. This early absorption of the individual in the social group is made clear in the Old Testament by the. At the beginning of the development of the Old Testament, therefore, individual personality was largely submerged in the social mass.
One of the most evident forces working to this end was the growth of moral and religious. And if salvation was to come, the only hope of it lay in the interior cleansing of the people’s spirit. One of the most interesting consequences of this is seen in the expanding meaning of one supremely important Hebrew word, ruach.
To watch this word grow from meaning. wind’ to meaning ‘holy Spirit’ is to watch one of the most significant developments in the Old Testament. Nowhere is our dependence on the Old Testament for the understanding of the New more evident than in this realm.
The Idea of Right and Wrong
Far from being a minor matter, therefore, slavery was one of the dominant facts in the social situation that the prophets faced. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, for example, was a Hebrew book written in the second century B.C., and was probably known to Jesus. The overpassing of the limitation of externality in early Hebrew morals involved not only the.
It was taken for granted in Palestine, as in the entire ancient world, as a natural part of the social structure. This represents the New Testament’s greatest single contribution to the solution of the problem of slavery. In this regard Jesus was in the great succession of the Hebrew prophets at their best.
Nevertheless, there is no mistaking the clear emergence of the ethic of love as the dominant and unique principle of conduct in the ideals of the New Testament. Moreover, the ethical teaching of the New Testament faced antagonistic elements not only in its religious tradition but, as well, in the current situation. This increasing universality in the ethics of the Old Testament was closely associated with the development of monotheism.
That there was an irreconcilable conflict between the practices of war and the developing humaneness of the. There was a bitter controversy over the universalizing of the Christian movement, but in the end the larger outlook was victorious. In the self-same moment he both annulled Judaism as the life-force of the Jewish nation, and also the nation itself as a nation.
Nevertheless, there is no mistaking the conscious conflict in the morals of the New Testament between the ethic of love on one. side and bloody violence on the other. Inwardness, humaneness, and universality are thus the three major goals of ethical development in the thought of the Bible. For far from being Johannine, apocalypticism was fairly well read out of the record in the Fourth Gospel.
The Idea of Suffering
In the outcome, therefore, the higher levels of the Old Testament rejected the formula that all personal suffering is personal punishment. One of the major reasons for the emergence of the hope of resurrection in the Old Testament was its necessity as a fulfillment to the course of thinking we have been tracing. As a result of this development, a large area of earthly suffering was withdrawn from the application of the old formula.
To be sure, the explanation of trouhle as punishment held the center of the field. 34;the noblest creation of Old Testament religion." (H. Wheeler Robinson: The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament, p. 179). Accordingly, in none of the great passages where the Old Testament wrestles with the problem of.
In the drama this attitude is educed by a vision of the natural universe - - immense, orderly, mysterious, magnificent -- before which Job is humbled. The Old Testament’s conviction that the ultimate issue of the human drama would be ethically. The early Christians did not suppose the cross, for example, to be the end of the matter.
To be sure, some students of the New Testament have been so completely commandeered by. Once more we run upon the characteristic mood of the New Testament in dealing with suffering. In this is revealed one of the most important of all developments in the conception of religion’s meaning.
His vocation in the light of this supremely suggestive prophecy." (James Moffatt: The Theology of the Gospels, p. At any rate, a redemptive idea of suffering, which had begun as an individual intuition centuries before, became in the New Testament the organizing center of the gospel. Suffering, sacrificially assumed for the sake of saving and serving others, has in the New Testament become an attribute of the divine nature itself.
The Idea of Fellowship with God
There is no mistaking the flavor of the old word ‘holy’ in the writer’s insistence on correctness of ritual in approaching Yahweh. Commonly the old connotations clung to the concept of the holy, whether in gross or attenuated forms. Indeed, to the very last, the old associations of the word were retained in the architecture of the temple.
From the inception of the enterprise in the decree of Darius, "Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, let the house be builded,. Yet the latter especially was one of the most notable exemplars of personal prayer in the Old Testament. See Juius A. Bewer: The Literature of the Old Testament in its Historical Development, pp. 371ff.).
As quoted by George Foot More: Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Vol. II, p. 218). As quoted by George Foot Moore: Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Vol. II, pp. So in the Epistle to Titus and in the Epistles to Timothy faith is primarily intellectual assent to the standard convictions of the church.
Even when the petitions of the Old Testament concerning public matters are not vindictive, they are. In this realm of confessional prayer, however, the New Testament still needs the supplementation of the Old. With these progressive tendencies toward increased magnanimity, inclusiveness, and humility in prayer went a deepening spirituality in the content of the petitions.
If the New Testament contains less of such petition than the Old, an important part of the explanation lies in the difference of circumstance. The liturgical heritage of Judaism, the psychological and practical needs of the worshiping group, and the inexorable pressure of ideas and customs in the. How specifically influential the mystery religions were in the. formulation of the consequence is a moot matter.
The Idea of Immortality
Adolphe Lods: Israel from its Beginnings to the Middle of the Eighth Century, translated by S.H. Hooke, p. 229; cf. As for the dwelling-place of the rephaim, the Old Testament leaves us in no uncertainty. The dreariest words in the vocabulary were used about the dwelling of the dead and its inhabitants.
Commonly in ancient mythologies, the gods of the nether world were not the gods of the earth’s surface. Apparently it was the demand of the individual for justice that pushed this issue to the fore. It is in the Book of Job, therefore, that we find what has been called "the first tentative demand for a life beyond death." (H. Wheeler Robinson: The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament, p. 94).
The intimations of faith in the. resurrection of the dead are few in number and late in date. Of heathen oppressors it is said, "They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise." (Isaiah 26:14) Thus even in the latest documents of the Old Testament the expectation of. As we have seen, consultation with the dead, placation of the dead, and accompanying practices of necromancy and necrolatry were firmly intrenched in the early traditions of the Hebrews.
Belief in the geographical reality of Sheol, as a definite place in the underground portions of the earth, worked to this end. Moreover, the fact that in Hebrew thought the body was regarded as the essential constituent of the man worked to the same end. This way of thinking held firm from the beginning to the end of the Old Testament and long afterward.
As translated by George Foot Moore: Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Vol. II, p. 215, q.v.). A further difficulty lay in the fact that the early traditions of the Semitic race were negative about return from Sheol. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
