In giving the above brief sketch of the known universe my object was to
suggest that the Creator of a universe of such scope and grandeur must
be a Being of vast power and the loftiest dignity.
Now, the Christians claim that their God created this universe--not the
universe He is described, in His own inspired word, as creating, but the
universe revealed by science; the universe of twenty millions of suns.
And the Christians claim that this God is a God of love, a God
omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. And the Christians claim that this
great God, the Creator of our wonderful universe, is the God revealed to
us in the Bible.
Let us, then, go to the Bible, and find out for ourselves whether the
God therein revealed is any more like the ideal Christian God than the
universe therein revealed is like the universe since discovered by man
without the aid of divine inspiration.
As for the biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to show
from the Bible itself that He was not all-wise, nor all-powerful,
nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on the
contrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonourable, immoral, vindictive,
barbarous, and cruel.
Neither was He, in any sense of the words, great nor good. But, in fact,
He was a tribal god, an idol, made by man; and, as the idol of a savage
and ignorant tribe, was Himself a savage and ignorant monster.
First then, as to my claim that Jahweh, or Jehovah, was a tribal god. I
shall begin by quoting from _Shall We Understand the Bible?_ by the Rev.
T. Rhondda Williams:
The theology of the Jahwist is very childish and elementary,
though it is not all on the same level. He thinks of God very
much as in human form, holding intercourse with men almost
as one of themselves. His document begins with Genesis ii. 4,
and its first portion continues, without break, to the end of
chapter iv. This portion contains the story of Eden. Here
Jahweh _moulds_ dust into human form, and _breathes_ into it;
_plants_ a garden, and puts the man in it. Jahweh comes to the
man in his sleep, and takes part of his body to make a woman,
and so skilfully, apparently, that the man never wakes under
the operation. Jahweh _walks_ in the garden like a man in the
cool of the day. He even _makes coats_ for Adam and Eve.
Further on the Jahwist has a flood story, in which Jahweh _repents_
that he had made man, and decides to drown him, saving only
one family. When all is over, and Noah sacrifices on his new
altar, Jahweh _smells_ a sweet savour, just as a hungry man
smells welcome food. When men build the Tower of Babel,
Jahweh _comes down_ to see it--he cannot see it from where he
is. In Genesis xviii. the Jahwist tells a story of three men
coming to Abraham's tent. Abraham gives them water to wash
their feet, and bread to eat, and Sarah makes cakes for them,
and "they did eat"; altogether, they seemed to have had a nice
time. As the story goes on, he leaves you to infer that one
of these was Jahweh himself. It is J. who describes the story
of Jacob _wrestling_ with some mysterious person, who, by inference,
is Jahweh. He tells a very strange story in Exodus iv. 24, that
when Moses was returning into Egypt, at Jahweh's own request,
Jahweh met him at a lodging-place, and sought to kill him. In
Exodus xiv. 15 it is said Jahweh took the wheels off the chariots
of the Egyptians. If we wanted to believe that such statements
were true at all, we should resort to the device of saying they
were figurative. But J. meant them literally. The Jahwist
would have no difficulty in thinking of God in this way. The
story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah belongs to this
same document, in which, you remember, Jahweh says: "I will go
down now, and see whether they have done altogether according
to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know"
(Gen. xviii. 21). That God was omniscient and omnipresent had
never occurred to the Jahwist. Jahweh, like a man, had to go and
see if he wanted to know. There is, however, some compensation
in the fact that he can move about without difficulty--he can
come down and go up. One might say, perhaps, that in J., though
Jahweh cannot _be_ everywhere, he can go to almost any place.
All this is just like a child's thought. The child, at Christmas,
can believe that, though Santa Claus cannot be everywhere, he
can move about with wonderful facility, and, though he is a man,
he is rather mysterious. The Jahwist's thought of God represents
the childhood stage of the national life.
Later, Mr. Williams writes:
All this shows that at one time Jahweh was one of many gods;
other gods were real gods. The Israelites themselves believed,
for example, that Chemosh was as truly the god of the Moabites
as Jahweh was theirs, and they speak of Chemosh giving territory
to his people to inherit, just as Jahweh had given them territory
(Judges xi. 24).
Just as a King of Israel would speak of Jahweh, the King of
Moab speaks of Chemosh. His god sends him to battle. If he
is defeated, the god is angry; if he succeeds, the god is
favourable. And we have seen that there was a time when the
Israelite believed Chemosh to be as real for Moab as Jahweh
for himself. You find the same thing everywhere. The old
Assyrian kings said exactly the same thing of the god Assur.
Assur sent them to battle, gave defeat or victory, as he thought
fit. The history, however, is very obscure up to the time of
Samuel, and uncertain for some time after. Samuel organised
a Jahweh party. David worshipped Jahweh only, though he
regards it as possible to be driven out of Jahweh's inheritance
into that of other gods (1 Sam. xxvi. 19). Solomon was not
exclusively devoted to Jahweh, for he built places of worship
for other deities as well.
In the chapter on "Different Conceptions of Providence in the Bible,"
Mr. Williams says:
I have asked you to read Judges iii. 15-30, iv. 17-24, v. 24-31.
The first is the story of Ehud getting at Eglon, Israel's enemy,
by deceit, and killing him--an act followed by a great slaughter
of Moabites. The second is the story of Jael pretending to play
the friend to Sisera, and then murdering him. The third is the
eulogy of Jael for doing so, as "blessed above women," in the
so-called Song of Deborah. Here, you see, Providence is only
concerned with the fortunes of Israel; any deceit and any
cruelty is right which brings success to this people. Providence
is not concerned with morality; nor is it concerned with individuals,
except as the individual serves or opposes Israel.
In these two chapters Mr. Williams shows that the early conception of
God was a very low one, and that it underwent considerable change. In
fact, he says, with great candour and courage, that the early Bible
conception of God is one which we cannot now accept.
With this I entirely agree. We cannot accept as the God of Creation
this savage idol of an obscure tribe, and we have renounced Him, and are
ashamed of Him, not because of any later divine revelation, but because
mankind have become too enlightened, too humane, and too honourable to
tolerate Jehovah.
And yet the Christian religion adopted Jehovah, and called upon its
followers to worship and believe Him, on pain of torture, or death, or
excommunication in this world, and of hell-fire in the world to come. It
is astounding.
But lest the evidence offered by Mr. Williams should not be considered
sufficient, I shall quote from another very useful book, _The Evolution
of the Idea of God_, by the late Grant Allen. In this book Mr. Allen
clearly traces the origins of the various ideas of God, and we hear of
Jehovah again, as a kind of tribal stone idol, carried about in a box or
ark. I will quote as fully as space permits:
But Jahweh was an object of portable size, for, omitting for
the present the descriptions in the Pentateuch--which seem
likely to be of later date, and not too trustworthy, through
their strenuous Jehovistic editing--he was carried from Shiloh
in his ark to the front during the great battle with the
Philistines at Ebenezer; and the Philistines were afraid, for
they said, "A god is come into the camp." But when the Philistines
captured the ark, the rival god, Dagon, fell down and broke in
pieces--so Hebrew legend declared--before the face of Jahweh.
After the Philistines restored the sacred object, it rested for
a time at Kirjath-jearim till David, on the capture of Jerusalem
from the Jebusites, went down to that place to bring up from
thence the ark of the god; and as it went, on a new cart, they
"played before Jahweh on all manner of instruments," and David
himself "danced before Jahweh."... The children of Israel in
early times carried about with them a tribal god, Jahweh, whose
presence in their midst was intimately connected with a certain
ark or chest containing a stone object or objects. This chest
was readily portable, and could be carried to the front in case
of warfare. They did not know the origin of the object in the
ark with certainty; but they regarded it emphatically as "Jahweh
their god, which led them out of the land of Egypt."...
I do not see, therefore, how we can easily avoid the obvious
inference that Jahweh the god of the Hebrews, who later became
sublimated and etherealised into the God of Christianity, was,
in his origin, nothing more nor less than the ancestral sacred
stone of the people of Israel, however sculptured, and, perhaps,
in the very last resort of all, the unhewn monumental pillar of
some early Semitic sheikh or chieftain.
It was, indeed, as the Rev. C. E. Beeby says, in his book _Creed and
Life_, a sad mistake of St. Augustine to tack this tribal fetish in his
box on to the Christian religion as the All-Father, and Creator of the
Universe. For Jehovah was a savage war-god, and, as such, was impotent
to save the tribe who worshipped him.
But let us look further into the accounts of this original God of
the Christians, and see how he comported himself, and let us put our
examples under separate heads; thus: