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July 28, 2006
Deuteronomy
The temple in Jerusalem was being renovated during the reign of Josiah (639-609 BCE) -- who is treated with as much respect as any king in the Hebrew Bible -- and during the renovations the high priest "discovered" a "lost" text. That, most scholars agree, was an early version of Deuteronomy, which settled as the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible -- the last in the Torah or the books of Moses.
It is not hard to read this text as a justification for Josiah's attempt to consolidate the religion and the kingdom by cracking down on any forms of worship -- foreign, idolatrous, pantheistic, even Jewish -- besides those in the temple in Jerusalem. Monotheism was sharpened, if not invented, in the process:
The Lord alone is God; there is none beside Him.
Weren't too many religions in the 7th century BCE devoting themselves to morality. But Deuteronomy takes some significant steps beyond "thou shall not kill":
I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kinsman in your land.
Still, the intolerance for other religions in this text is total:
Tear down their alters, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire, and cut down the images of their gods, obliterating their name from the site.
And the treatment the Lord orders for local conquered nations is, even by contemporary standards, extreme:
You shall not let a soul remain alive.
Maybe we shouldn't be that surprised by what currently goes on in this area between peoples who profess to revere such texts.
Posted by Mitchell Stephens at July 28, 2006 1:16 AM
Comments
It's not talking about intolerance for other religions, it's talking about intolerance for idol worship. There were no other religions. The Bible teaches about the only God who sent his son to die for us. No other "religion" has a God who sacrifices himself for his friends.
Let's not confuse "religion" with Biblical teaching and content.
Posted by: walleye at August 25, 2006 2:04 PM
