The Hebrews—Small States and Big Ideas

After the Egyptians and Hittites exhausted themselves, and before other large, powerful states emerged, there was a brief period of importance for some small states and peoples. Sea peoples, most famously the Philistines, attacked along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean after about 1200 B.C.

The Phoenicians managed to avoid conquest. They were Canaanites who spoke a Semitic language and who had been present in the region of what is today coastal Syria and Lebanon for centuries. After about 900, they created one of the first great commercial empires the world had seen, anticipating the Athenians, Venetians, and Dutch. Creating colonies all over the Mediterranean, including at Carthage and Massilia, the Phoenicians played a role in spreading Mesopotamian culture and in beginning the creation of a Mediterranean cultural network. By 600 B.C., they had almost certainly circumnavigated Africa and, by about 450, they had reached Britain.

The other significate people who emerged in this big-power pause were the Hebrews. Again, much of the Hebrews’ history is shrouded in legend. A pastoralist, Abraham, who has been dated between 2000 and 1550 B.C., was the leader of a people who were on the outs with the settled city-dwellers and grain farmers of Sumer. Abraham and his God made a pact, and Abraham was told to leave Ur for the land of Canaan/Palestine. For some centuries, Abraham’s descendants farmed the land, quarreled among themselves, and tried to ward off enemies.

Eventually, they were swept up in the struggles between the Egyptians and Hittites. The familiar story says that the Hebrews were carried off in bondage to Egypt. Some probably were prisoners of war, but others doubtless migrated there voluntarily because the area was more peaceful and prosperous. Moses arose as a leader who forged a people during the Exodus, a long process of departing from Egypt and reentering the “promised land.”

For a time, the Hebrews lived under numerous independent judges, but the threat of the sea peoples, chiefly the Philistines, induced them to choose kings, first Saul, then David, and Solomon. Under Solomon, the kingdom reached its high point, and considerable commercial wealth flowed in. But a distaste for strong central authority led to a division of the kingdom into Israel in the north, with its capital at Samaria, and Judah in the south, with its capital at Jerusalem. Eventually, these small kingdoms were conquered by more powerful neighbors: Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 and Judah, to the Neo-Babylonians in 586. The Assyrians in particular physically dispersed the Hebrews all over the Near East: the “Exile.

Never has a people been so politically insignificant, yet culturally so critical in the history of Western civilization. It is the religion of the Hebrews that has left so deep an imprint. Our knowledge of the beliefs of the Hebrews comes from a collection of writings that in some ways cover the period from about 2000 to 200 B.C., but that were mostly written down after 1000 B.C. These writings are properly called the Hebrew Bible, or the Hebrew Scriptures. To Christians, these materials are the Old Testament. The Hebrew Bible consists of three major kinds of materials:

The Torah: The first five books, sometimes called the “Books of Moses.” The name means “the teaching,” and these books contain the prescriptions that governed the life of the Hebrews.

The Prophets: This group of books contains both historical books, such as Kings, Samuel, and Chronicles, that reveal God’s unfolding relationship with His people, and the more obviously prophetic books of the “Greater Prophets,” such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the “Lesser Prophets,” such as Amos and Micah.

The Writings: This is a catchall designation for the poetic material, such as the Psalms and Canticles, and for the beautiful and moving advice literature, such as Proverbs and Wisdom. Three central religious ideas contained in the Hebrew Bible, taken together, constitute the key foundations of Western civilization.

The idea of the covenant was created between Yahweh and Abraham— between God and a tribe—and renewed between Yahweh and Moses— between God and a people. It was redefined by the Prophet Ezra during the Exile—between God and a people adhering to the Torah. The unique notion of reciprocity appears here for the first time. The covenant also embodies the unique notion of a chosen people: One God for one people, not a god for a place or a state.

The idea of exclusive monotheism has a long evolution, from henotheism, still present in the time of Moses, to monotheism in the time of Isaiah. This occasioned a profound tension between the idea that Yahweh was the only God and the God of the Hebrews, and the possibility of universalism. The idea is seen most vividly in the Book of Jonah.

The idea of ethical monotheism is the profound sense of social justice that runs through the prophetic books is unprecedented in the previous religious experience of known peoples. God demanded a particular kind of behavior as a guarantee of his continuing benevolence. This idea is seen in the Decalogue and Shema, in Micah.

Philosophers and theologians have long acknowledged the importance of monotheism for everything from natural philosophy to political ideology. Numerous peoples in the West have called themselves a “New Israel” as a way of claiming a unique, chosen relationship with providence. Historically, social justice has sometimes been a secular concern, but much more often, one with religious roots. Western literature is unimaginable without its fundamental, formative text: the Bible.