Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Just when ecstatic prophecy began in Israel is uncertain. Moses not only talked to God and performed miracles, but he carried out magic – rods were turned into snakes, for example. The earliest prophets wore magicians’ clothes – we read of ‘charismatic mantles’ worn by Elijah (‘the greatest wonder-worker since Moses’) and inherited by Elisha.⁷⁶ According to the book of Kings (1 Kings 18:19ff), prophecy was a practice common among the Canaanites, so the Israelites probably borrowed the idea from them.⁷⁷ The central – the dominating – role in Israelite prophecy was an insistence on the ‘interior spirit’ of religion. ‘What gives Israelite prophetism its distinctly moral tone almost if not quite from the very beginning, is the distinctly moral character of Israelitic religion. The prophets stand out in history because Israel stands out in history . . . Religion is by nature moral only if the gods are deemed moral, and this was hardly the rule among the ancients. The difference was made in Israel by the moral nature of the God who had revealed himself.’⁷⁸ The prophets also introduced a degree of rationalism into religion. As Paul Johnson has pointed out, if there is a supernatural power, why should it be confined only to certain sacred rocks, or rivers, or planets, or animals? Why should this power be expressed only in an arbitrary array of gods? Isn’t the idea of a god of limited power a contradiction in terms? ‘God is not just bigger, but infinitely bigger and therefore the idea of representing him is absurd, and to try to make an image of him is insulting.’⁷⁹

Although the prophets differed greatly in character and background, they were united in their condemnation of what they saw as the moral corruption of Israel, its turning away from Yahweh, its overzealous love of empty sacrifice, especially on the part of the priesthood. They were agreed that a time of punishment was coming, due to the widespread corruption, but that Israel would eventually be saved by a ‘remnant’ which would survive. Almost certainly, this reflected a period of great social and political change, when Israel was transformed from a tribal society to a state with a powerful king and court, where the priests were salaried and therefore dependent on the royal house, and where a new breed of wealthy merchant was emerging, keen and able to buy privileges for itself and its offspring and for whom, in all probability, religion took second place. All this at a time when the threat from outside was especially difficult.

The first prophets, Elijah and Elisha, introduced the idea of the individual conscience. Elijah was critical of the royal household because some of its members were corrupt and worshipped Baal.⁸⁰ God spoke to him, he famously said, in ‘a still, small voice’. Amos was appalled at the bribery he saw around him, and at temple prostitution, a relic of ancient fertility rites.⁸¹ It was he who developed the concept of ‘election’, that Israel had been selected by Yahweh, to be his chosen people, that he would protect them provided they abided by their covenant with him, to worship him and only him (but see here). For Amos, if Israel failed in this sacred marriage with Yahweh, Yahweh would intervene in history and ‘settle accounts’.⁸² Hosea refined the covenant still further. He believed in a Yahweh who was master of all history, who had ‘irresistible designs’ for all the world. He too opposed corrupt kingship and the cult of the temple, expressly branding as idolatry the worship of the golden bulls which had been instituted in the royal sanctuaries (1 Kings 12:25–30); he also conceived the idea of a messiah who would redeem Israel.⁸³ It was Hosea who first introduced a religion of the heart, divorced from place. This was reinforced when Jerusalem survived a siege by the Assyrian King Sennacherib, in 701 BC. The Israelites triumphed thanks to bubonic plague, transmitted by mice, but to them this only confirmed that their fate was linked to Yahweh and their own moral behaviour.⁸⁴