Christianity has spread throughout the world to all different cultures. It is presented as the one true religion that everyone should follow regardless of where they live, their race, culture, or whatever. It says everyone is God’s children and they all should follow Christianity. But what about before Jesus? The impression I have of the Old Testament was that it was a collection of Jewish writings really meant for the Jews. At the time, was it viewed that God was the God of the Jews and everyone else did not matter? Or was everyone free to follow God and the Old Testament and they would then be considered God’s children. If some other culture, like the Vikings, started following those teachings, would they then be considered proper followers of God? Or would the Jews think that those Vikings were outsiders and not really God’s children no matter how much they believed and followed the Old Testament?
The Tanakh was just for the priests in Judaism. Yahweh was a tribal deity of the Jewish people. The Hebrews were a caste based Semitic people. A viking could not have been a jew unless some jews moved to Norway and became vikings. Years ago I read the memoir of a form Red Guard in China’s Cultural Revolution. His home village in northern China had native jews. They were Han ethnically. The village also had a native Muslim population. Both the Jews and the Muslims worshiped together at the village mosque. The other people in the village didn’t know who was who, but collectively referred to them as the people that don’t eat pork.
This wasn’t a case of some Han deciding to convert to Judaism, but rather of Jewish merchants settling in this village and marrying into the local population.
Well it’s not before Jesus, as Jesus was with God ‘in the beginning’, but before the birth of Jesus to Mary and His ministry. It is more with Jesus that we get the relationship of we are God’s children.
Good ol’ old testament Jews - had/has a deal with God, a contractional relationship with Him, they have a set of laws established by God and God watches over them, protects, guides and blesses them.
Others don’t have that deal, so not required to follow the law, or for that matter God, and can follow other gods. As such that God was sometimes referred to as God of the Jews by others, though sometimes non-Jews realizes this one true God also.
So it seems like the God of the OT was really just for people who were linked to genetically Jewish people. So then were other cultures and genetic backgrounds locked out from God’s benefits until Jesus was born? If some other BC culture wanted the benefits of following God as stated in the OT, would they have that option? Or were the benefits of following OT God only for Jews? Consider this passage from Deuteronomy 11:
If the Vikings were having terrible crop yields, could they have decided to eschew their own gods and instead worship God to get the benefits He promises to bring to His worshipers? Or were those benefits only eligible to people who have a genetic link to the Jewish people? And likewise, were God’s punishments for non-worship only applicable to the Jews? If the Vikings were not getting rain and had terrible crop yields, was that just random luck or was God smiting them?
You sort of have to preface your question with the time period that you are looking at.
L0k1’s point is true at some period, but it is less true in other periods. At the earliest stage, the Torah, (Law, first five books), and the associated texts in Joshua and Judges was written by and for the Jewish people. Later, particularly Prophet Amos and in the second and third sections from the Prophet Isaiah, Judaism, itself, was regarded as a “beacon” to the world to lead everyone to God.
At this point, there are different passages in different books (written over hundreds of years) that seem to indicate that Judaism was henotheistic: Our God is the best god in the world although there might be others). Other passages were written as monotheism: Our God is the only God and all the others are false. Large books have been written arguing over which of those views was the “real” position of Jewish theologians. Henotheism has long since been discarded as a Jewish belief.
As to who the book was “for,” the earlier passages were clearly intended for the Jewish people. After Deutero- (second) and Trito- (third) Isaiah, there are probably different thoughts on who the book is “for.” However, regardless of the book, Jews believe that there is one God and God has set out instructions that all humans must follow. These are found in the seven Noahide Laws, laws promulgated after the flood in the time of Noah, (since, following the flood, Noah is the ancestor of all humans.) This strongly suggests that Judaism did not regard the bible to have been written for all people.
(I have used Judaism throughout the above text on the grounds that it might be confusing to swap back and forth between “Jews” and “Hebrews” and “Israelites” although Judaism developed later in history.)
The period indicated by your question and quotation are probably form a henotheistic mindset. It was not a question of non-Jews being omitted from God’s blessings but simply that those people had their own gods who were responsible for handing out their own blessings. Later thoughts would have involved a more universal attitude. The thoughts and theology that we know as Judaism developed over a few thousand years and asking “What did they believe?” has to be framed by time period: WHEN did they believe something.
With the info of New Testament, we see that this is not the case even back then. That the way to God is Jesus who preexisted before the world. And Jesus is the only way to God. Yes people can find Jesus even back then, which allows them to have the relationship with God.
Your Deut 11 quote has to do with blessings in this life, not eternal treasures.
For people who had the henotheistic mindset, were their gods only for their own people? Were the gods for Romans, Jews, and Vikings just for those respective people? If someone from one culture wanted to cross over, would he be welcomed to worship? Or would he be rejected and told to pray to his own god?
At the time of that Deuteronomy passage, imagine that a Viking traveled to Israel and was impressed with the great crop yields and productive farmland. When he asks the Jewish farmer how his farm is so productive, the farmer shows him the Deuteronomy writings and says that God gives him that bounty. If the Viking then said “I have seen the light. I will dedicate my life to following this God so that I may also have these benefits.”, how would the Jewish farmer have responded? Would he have said “Great! Welcome to our religion!” or would he have said “Are you crazy? You are a Viking and cannot follow our God.”
I have to question what’s in bold. Sure, the Jews are “God’s chosen people” but you have to ask "chosen for what?". Or, as Teyve the Milkman asks “Could you chose someone else once in awhile?”
Please do not rely on kanicbird’s interpretation here. He is not a Jew and he interprets everything through his own religion’s filter.
Judaism allows converts, it just doesn’t seek or encourage them. In theory a Viking or even a group of Vikings could convert… but they’d have to give up quite a bit of their native culture to do so.
tomndebb’s posts are much more on the mark as answer to the OP’s question.
The Romans were very ecumenical in their approach to other deities. They figured that everyone pretty much worshiped the same gods, they just had different names in different languages. Thus when in northern Europe the Romans would rebuild a temple to Wotan as a temple to Jupiter-Wotan. If they encountered a deity that they couldn’t easily fit into their pantheon, they’d add a new deity. We tend to say that the Romans and Greeks had the same pantheon, but really the Romans were just totally OK with accepting Greek mythology as being stories about Roman gods.
He’d say, “Great! You’re perfectly welcome to worship God. But you don’t have to do the whole Kosher think, and you can keep your dick on one piece - those are our obligations, not yours. You should probably find your own path.”
Jews worship the way they do not because it’s the right way to worship, but because it’s their job.
Now Judaism allows converts, but could a 2nd century BCE gentile who was enslaved by a jew convert to Judaism to get out of working on the sabbath?
Check out the book of Ruth. Not only did she cross over, but she was the ancestor of King David, no small thing. That also demonstrates that Judaism was not exclusively genetic.
As for how many gods there are, that changed over time. “You shall have no other gods before me” is different from there is only one god.
Not to mention that neither Israel nor Judah had the clout or the chutzpah to tell the nations surrounding them that their gods were phonies.
I don’t think the Jews would have forced their slaves/servants to work on the sabbath, whether they were gentiles or not.
Realistically speaking, by this point in time, everyone on Earth has some Jewish blood in them excepting perhaps a few uncontacted tribes in the jungle and groups of that leaning.
Ignoring that, though, at best the OT encourages people to become Jews and provides various mechanisms by which they can do so. Occasionally, it is friendly towards non-Jewish people, but that seems to be pretty tightly correlated to the political/military strategic position of the Jewish kingdom at that moment in time.
To take an example, we know from the Zakkur Stele and the Tel Dan Stele that the Aramean king, Hazael, worshipped Baal Hadad.
But then, of course, we have that scene in Kings where the prophet, Elijah, goes to Damascus to annoint Hazael the king of Aram.
At that moment in time, the two tribes were allies. Later they weren’t. Hadad went from being a deity that was the same as or friendly to Yahweh to being a misleading demon.
Ultimately, the OT itself isn’t even consistent in its beliefs - as they fluctuate by the political necessities of their time.
But, I would say, it’s reasonably clear that St. Paul and the early Roman church had to do a lot of work to paste themselves into the Bible and minus a whole lot of handwaving, out-of-context quotation, historical ignorance, and “Look, Superman!” it’s very clear that everything about St. Paul’s religion conflicts with every part of the OT. Plausibly and quite likely, Jesus’ religion was more comfortable with the Jewish texts, though it’s hard to know exactly how well that really fit in either given that we only have second-hand sources as to what that was.
Already answered, but a bit more on this Jews could only be servants to other Jews till a 7 year cycle then they had to be released. But non Jews would not be released. Duet 15
So there is a reason to want to convert in that circumstance.
If Herodotus is to be trusted the Greeks brought the same attitude regarding deities of their neighbors - Egypt, Canaanites, Persia, etc.
~Max
Good point. My Greek history is pretty lax. I was sorely disappointed with The Peloponnesian War, and switched to Roman instead. GoT could end today and it would be more satisfying than that book.
Very early Christian churches had a big argument over whether it was possible to convert to Christianity or whether you had to convert to Judaism first. Jewish Christians and Pauline Christians coexisted into the fifth century AD. Apparently circumcision was the biggest roadblock to pagan conversion and Paul didn’t see why that should get in the way.
note that the Ethiopian eunuch that Phillip converted was already familiar with OT, and there is long history of Ethiopian Judaism (which is why Israel rescued them). Remember that Abraham was not circumcised until later in process.