Paper 96 Overview: Yahweh—God of the Hebrews

This paper delineates the evolutionary trajectory of the Hebrew concept of Deity, from the primitive tribal god Yahweh to the more sublime idea of a universal Creator and loving Father. Beginning with Melchizedek's influence and culminating in the progressive revelations found in the Psalms and the Book of Job, it traces how the concept of the volcano god of Mount Horeb was gradually transformed through the teachings of spiritual leaders, particularly Moses. Hebrew religious development was marked by cycles of advancement and regression, shaped by the interaction between Melchizedek’s monotheistic revelation and existing beliefs as well as cultural influences from Egypt, Babylon, and Persia.

The narrative highlights the pivotal role of Moses in establishing Yahweh as the sole deity of the Hebrews, though his broader understanding of El Elyon was necessarily tempered to meet the limited spiritual capacity of his followers. After Moses’ death, the concept of God suffered a notable decline before being revitalized through spiritual movements and prophetic voices that preserved key elements of Melchizedek’s teachings. Despite its inconsistencies and limitations, Jewish religious evolution ultimately provided the conceptual groundwork for receiving Michael’s bestowal, fostering belief in one supreme God who embodied not only power and judgment but also mercy and love.

In the conceptual development of Deity, human understanding progressed through three distinct phases: initially incorporating all gods, then subordinating foreign deities to a tribal god, and finally recognizing the supremacy of a single God. This evolution was exemplified by the Jews, who synthesized their understanding into the sublime concept of the Lord God of Israel, paralleling similar monotheistic developments among the Hindus with their "one spirituality of the gods" and the Mesopotamians with their centralized concept of Bel-Marduk. These monotheistic currents emerged globally following Machiventa Melchizedek's appearance at Salem in Palestine, though his concept of Deity fundamentally differed from evolutionary monotheism by emphasizing creative power rather than a philosophy of inclusion, subordination, and exclusion.

The Salem religion, preserved by the Kenites and other Canaanite tribes, fulfilled Melchizedek's incarnation purpose of fostering belief in one God as preparation for the eventual bestowal of a Son of that one God, since Michael could not appear until humanity had developed belief in the Universal Father. The Salem creed, initially maintained by the Kenites and later adopted by the Hebrews, underwent successive influences from Egyptian moral teachings, Babylonian theological concepts, and Iranian dualistic philosophy. Hebrew religion thus emerged as a product of the covenant between Abraham and Machiventa Melchizedek, evolving through unique historical circumstances while culturally assimilating religious, moral, and philosophical elements from throughout the Levant.

The early Semites maintained an animistic worldview, attributing indwelling spirits to every aspect of the natural world—animals, vegetation, celestial bodies, and elemental forces—creating a complex pantheon demanding reverence and worship. Melchizedek's teaching of a Universal Creator, while influential, never completely displaced their belief in these subordinate spirits and nature gods, which persisted throughout Hebrew religious development. The progression of Hebrew theology from polytheism through henotheism to monotheism was characterized by numerous conceptual reversals and inconsistencies, with varying understandings of Deity existing simultaneously among different Semitic communities. To prevent confusion in tracing this theological evolution, the paper provides a comprehensive classification of the various divine designations employed throughout Hebrew history.

These terms included: Yahweh, originally a nature deity associated with Mount Horeb (Sinai volcano) and one among countless gods worshiped by Semitic tribes; El Elyon, the Most High God of heaven, preserving Melchizedek's concept of Deity; El Shaddai, a composite divine concept influenced by Egyptian wisdom literature, Ikhnaton's Aton doctrine, and Melchizedek's teachings; El, a term encompassing attempts to worship multiple evolving divine concepts including Bedouin nature deities; Elohim, reflecting a Sumerian-Chaldean trinitarian concept that persisted in certain philosophical circles but never became fully integrated into Hebrew theology; and numerous other appellations including "The Spirit of God," "The Angel of the Lord," and "The Father in Heaven." The name Jehovah, representing the culmination of Yahweh's conceptual evolution, only emerged approximately fifteen hundred years after Jesus' time.

The eastern Semites constituted well-organized and effectively led horsemen who invaded the eastern fertile crescent and assimilated with the Babylonian civilization, with the Chaldeans near Ur representing the most advanced of these eastern Semitic groups. The Phoenicians formed a superior and well-organized mixed Semitic population that controlled the western Palestinian coastal region along the Mediterranean. Racially, the Semites exhibited unprecedented genetic diversity on Urantia, incorporating hereditary elements from virtually all nine of the world's original races, creating a remarkably heterogeneous ethnic foundation for their cultural and religious developments.

The Arabian Semites repeatedly attempted military incursions into the northern Promised Land, a region of abundance "flowing with milk and honey," but were consistently expelled by the more sophisticated and technologically advanced northern Semites and Hittites. During an exceptionally severe famine, large numbers of these nomadic Bedouins entered Egypt as contractual laborers on public works projects, only to find themselves subjected to harsh enslavement among the common laborers of the Nile valley. Only after Machiventa Melchizedek and Abraham's time were certain Semitic tribes, because of their distinctive religious convictions, designated as the children of Israel and subsequently Hebrews and Jews. Significantly, Abraham was not the genetic progenitor of all Hebrews, nor even of the majority of the Bedouin Semites held captive in Egypt. His descendants, emerging from Egypt, formed only the nucleus of the later Jewish people, while most individuals incorporated into the Israeli tribal structure had never experienced Egyptian captivity but were fellow nomads who chose to follow Moses's leadership.

The progressive evolution of Hebrew concepts regarding a Supreme Creator commenced with their exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, whose extraordinary lineage, a mother from Egypt's royal dynasty and a father serving as a Semitic liaison officer between the government and Bedouin captives, endowed him with exceptional qualities derived from superior racial sources. His highly blended ancestry defied classification within any single racial category and bestowed upon him remarkable versatility and adaptability, qualities essential for managing the diverse multitude that eventually united under his leadership when the Bedouin Semites fled Egyptian captivity for the Arabian Desert.

Despite the cultural and intellectual attractions of Egyptian civilization, Moses deliberately chose to align himself with his father's people, who at that time barely possessed a religious system worthy of recognition and existed with minimal conceptual understanding of God and little hope for their future. No leader had ever attempted to reform and elevate a more forsaken, dejected, and ignorant collection of human beings, yet these enslaved people carried latent developmental potential in their hereditary composition. Moses strategically prepared educated leaders to serve as native supervisors of their people, providing the organizational framework for their eventual rebellion.

After a diplomatic attempt to negotiate their peaceful departure from Egypt was betrayed, Moses demonstrated remarkable patience and tactical acumen, orchestrating a brilliantly executed nighttime escape during a period when Egyptian military forces were fully engaged with simultaneous conflicts on multiple fronts. The fleeing Hebrews successfully repelled their pursuers, capturing significant spoils that augmented the possessions of the escaping host as they journeyed toward their ancestral desert homeland.

The evolutionary development and spiritual elevation of Mosaic teaching have exerted a profound influence over nearly half the world's population and continue to shape religious thought even into the twentieth century. While Moses himself comprehended the sophisticated religious philosophy of Egypt, the Bedouin slaves possessed minimal understanding of such advanced concepts, though they maintained a cultural memory of their ancestral deity from Mount Horeb, whom their forebears had called Yahweh. Moses had absorbed Melchizedek's teachings through both his father and mother, their shared religious convictions explaining their unusual union across social barriers, while his father-in-law practiced Kenite worship of El Elyon. Consequently, Moses received early education as an El Shaddaist, later embraced El Elyonist beliefs through his father-in-law's influence, and ultimately formulated a more comprehensive and expanded concept of Deity by the time the Hebrews encamped at Mount Sinai following their flight from Egypt.

Moses attempted to teach the Bedouins about El Elyon but recognized before departing Egypt that they would never fully comprehend this doctrine. He therefore made a strategic compromise by adopting their tribal desert god as the exclusive deity of his followers. Moses did not explicitly deny the existence of other gods for other peoples, but he resolutely maintained Yahweh's supremacy specifically for the Hebrews. This theological approach created an ongoing challenge for Moses, who struggled to present his advanced concept of Deity through the archaic terminology of Yahweh, a name traditionally associated with the golden calf symbol of the Bedouin tribes.

This religious compromise proved effective during their extended encampment before Mount Sinai, where the ceremonial practices of the emerging Hebrew worship were further refined and codified. The dramatic volcanic eruption of Horeb during their third week at its base provided powerful reinforcement for Moses's religious authority, enabling him to characterize their God as "mighty, terrible, a devouring fire, fearful, and all-powerful."

Moses embodied an extraordinary synthesis of military leadership, social organization, and religious instruction, representing the most significant individual world teacher in the period between Machiventa and Jesus. He implemented numerous reforms in Israel, many of which remain unrecorded, and within a single lifetime, led the diverse aggregation of Hebrew peoples from conditions of slavery and nomadic wandering to establish the foundations for national identity and racial continuity. The limited historical documentation of Moses's accomplishments stems from the absence of a written Hebrew language during the exodus period, with accounts of his achievements deriving from oral traditions that were preserved and transcribed more than a millennium after his death.

Many of Moses's religious innovations that transcended Egyptian and Levantine practices originated in the Kenite traditions dating from Melchizedek's era. Without Machiventa's teachings to Abraham and his contemporaries, the Hebrews would have emerged from Egyptian bondage in profound spiritual darkness. Moses and his father-in-law Jethro preserved these Melchizedek traditions and integrated them with Egyptian learning to develop an enhanced religious and ceremonial system for the Israelites. Moses embraced the concept of Providence, having been significantly influenced by Egyptian doctrines concerning supernatural control of natural phenomena.

He articulated a compelling vision of divine relationship, teaching the Hebrews that obedience to God would result in divine love, blessings, multiplication, and prosperity, though Moses himself faced the poignant challenge of adapting his sublime understanding of El Elyon to the limited comprehension of his illiterate followers. To his assembled leaders, he proclaimed the absolute oneness of God, while to the general populace, he acknowledged their polytheistic framework while asserting Yahweh's superiority among gods. Despite his efforts to restrict fetishism and idolatry, Moses emphasized divine justice more than mercy, teaching that the Hebrews would become God's chosen people only through adherence to divine commandments and statutes.

Following Moses's death, his elevated concept of Yahweh rapidly deteriorated. While Joshua and Israel's leadership maintained the Mosaic tradition of an all-wise, beneficent, and almighty God, the common people swiftly reverted to more primitive desert conceptions of Yahweh. The extraordinary force of Moses's personality had sustained a progressively expanding understanding of God among his followers, but after reaching Palestine, the Hebrews transitioned from nomadic herding to settled agriculture, necessitating a corresponding evolution in their religious perspectives. This period of transformation—from the austere, demanding, and thunderous desert god of Sinai to the later concept of a God of love, justice, and mercy—nearly obliterated Moses's lofty teachings in the collective consciousness of the Hebrew people.

The Hebrews approached cultural regression to the point of losing all monotheistic understanding, jeopardizing their historical role as the preservers of Melchizedek's teaching of one God until the incarnation of a bestowal Son of the Universal Father. Joshua desperately attempted to maintain the concept of a supreme Yahweh in the tribal consciousness, proclaiming, "As I was with Moses, so will I be with you; I will not fail you nor forsake you." He found it necessary to promote a stern gospel to his skeptical people, who readily embraced their traditional religious practices but resisted the progressive religion of faith and righteousness. The prevailing theological concept of this era characterized Yahweh as a "God of power, judgment, and justice." Nevertheless, isolated teachers periodically emerged who proclaimed the more sublime Mosaic understanding of divinity, challenging their contemporaries with profound questions about the nature and comprehensibility of God, though their influence remained limited during this period of spiritual decline.

Under the leadership of tribal sheiks and priests, the Hebrews established a tenuous presence in Palestine but rapidly regressed to primitive desert beliefs and assimilated the less spiritually advanced Canaanite religious practices. Their religious life degenerated into idolatry and licentiousness, while their conceptualization of Deity fell below the theological standards maintained in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, certain Salem groups preserved more elevated concepts of God, which are documented in particular Psalms and in the philosophical dialogues of the Book of Job, which offered spiritual illumination during this period of widespread theological confusion and moral decline.

The Psalms represent the collaborative wisdom of approximately twenty authors, many of whom were Egyptian and Mesopotamian teachers who maintained belief in the supremacy of El Elyon, the Most High God. No other collection of religious literature expresses such profound devotion and inspirational ideas of God as the Book of Psalms, which, when properly contextualized chronologically, reveals the evolving conception of God from a tribal deity to a loving ruler and merciful Father throughout the Levant, spanning the period from Amenemope to Isaiah. The Book of Job was composed by more than twenty Mesopotamian religious teachers over nearly three centuries and represents the most faithful preservation of an authentic concept of God during Palestine's darkest spiritual period.

From Ur arose the distinctive voice of Elihu, proclaiming divine grace through faith: "He shall pray to God and shall find favor with him and shall see his face with joy, for God will give to man divine righteousness." Elihu taught salvation through divine favor and sincere faith, declaring that God "is gracious to the repentant" and delivers those who acknowledge their sins, an encouraging message of human salvation in this era. Thus, while the Hebrew nation experienced periods of spiritual regression, the Salem missionaries in Mesopotamia maintained the light of truth until the emergence of Israel's prophetic tradition, which progressively developed the concept of the Universal and Creator Father.