The Bible reveals a God who sets himself apart from all other gods and all other religious paths (“no one comes to the Father except through me”) and at the same time reveals himself to have been at work within many of these other cults and religions from the very beginning. The burgeoning multicultural awareness that has taken hold of academic scholarship and popular culture since approximately the 1960s has brought with it a growing awareness of the perennial aspects of world religions – the observation that within their diversity they also converge on remarkably similar descriptions of the nature of the divine. Although some viewpoints from liberal Christian scholarship beg to differ, the proper understanding of this situation according to Christian scripture seems to be that God is preparing the “Gentile” world of non-Christian believers for his eventual revelation to them.
If we look at the story of the first Gentile convert, Cornelius, as related in Acts we see that this is basically exactly what happened. Yahweh recognised perennial aspects of Cornelius’s religion such as devotion to God through prayer and a giving heart, recognised he was ready for conversion, and then directly convicted him through the mystical vision of the angel. The exclusiveness of Yahweh’s relationship with the Israelites was ultimately for the sake of all people: what was first revealed to one group would ultimately be brought to all people (and infact the Gentiles would take to the full revelation, through the form of Christ, more rapidly and readily than the Jews.)
Yet long before Acts, and further still before the rise of the religious pluralism of the second half of the twentieth century, Yahweh was at work among the non-Israelite tribes and Kingdoms of the ancient Near East. At work that is, not just in the lineage of Abraham to whom he revealed himself most fully, but among all of the people of the region, with seemingly equal care and concern. In the early days of Genesis there was God alone. By at least the time of Rachael and Laban in Genesis 31, we know that other gods were worshipped. What is more of a surprise to many is that Yahweh did not abandon those who worshipped other gods but continued to work within them in subtle ways, using them for his purposes, directing their behaviour, and even taking over their religious practices and re-emerging from within their own native religious frameworks in fuller ways.
Revelation of God evolves
The polytheistic and henotheistic understandings of God suggested in Genesis gradually gave way to the early monotheistic understandings of God. The God of all time and space who created the world began to differentiate himself from the lower understandings of deities localised in particular areas of time and space or limited in provision over particular areas of life, eventually revealing himself to Moses as pure existence, pure being, in which all created things dwell – the God of I AM in Exodus 3:14.
As recorded in Exodus, Yahweh burst forth to Moses, introduced himself, and explained that the earlier conceptions of God the Israelites had formed were him all along, though revealed less fully: “I am YHWH. I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as El Shaddai, but by My name YHWH I made Me not known to them.” (Exodus 6:3). The God revealed to Moses was qualitatively different to the God of the patriarchs, bringing with it dramatic salvific acts which went far beyond the guidance and blessings of El Shaddai.
It is further explained in Exodus that the project begun with the early relationships with this less revealed God will be completed: “And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession” (Exodus 6:8). The Yahweh who reveals himself in the early chapters of Exodus is the same being who earlier interacted with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
It is possible to acknowledge the reality of the gods of other religions, and also to hold with Isaiah that “I am the first and the last, there is no God but me.” The incomplete revelations of other religions are nonetheless attempts to know, understand, and represent the one God to whom all good religions are responses. Moreover these religions may at times at least have been direct, though incomplete, revelations from Yahweh and not mere attempts by man alone to create an image of deity. Hebrew inscriptions depict a partial revelation of Yahweh as an anthropomorphised deity married to Asherah. There is also evidence that Yahweh was sometimes worshipped in the form of a golden calf.
These revelations appear to have been tolerated in the beginning as a form of co-worship, as the ways of Yahweh co-mingled with the ways of worship of other gods, at the same time that the revelation of Yahweh as Yahweh was being refined. It was not until the time of Joshua (24:14) when the command is given to abandon these other gods and focus on the now sufficiently revealed form of Yahweh: “Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve Yahweh.” Anyone not willing to do this was free to continue the worship of the other gods: “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.” The ways of Yahweh had now been sufficiently differentiated from the gods of Canaan and Egypt which were picked up during the captivity and exodus, and the Mesopotamian deities which predated captivity, for choice to be necessary.
The tone of early Genesis was one of overarching concern from God for all humans on the earth, without any favouritism. In Genesis 12, a new revelation begins to emerge, through God’s personal interaction with Abram. The tone for God’s method of revelation is set here: taking one person and showing them something more, which they then bring to the wider group.
The name Yahweh is used in Genesis, but only when the editor of Genesis is looking backwards. When God speaks in the present it is through the name of the Mesopotamian high god, El, or with El and Yahweh compounded. The editor of Genesis seems to have exactly the understanding described: God as encountered in the present in the Genesis narrative is El Shaddai, thus honouring the understanding of God that was held at the time of the patriarchs; but when viewed from the editor’s perspective he is known to be the Yahweh revealed in Exodus, thus honouring the idea of the evolution of El Shaddai into Yahweh which was documented in Exodus.
God leads all nations
The Half Tribe of Manasseh were so named because they formed one half of the tribe of Manasseh, a people divided by the Jordan River. As related in First Chronicles, the God of Israel stirred up the Spirit of Pul, King of Assyria, to deal with the troublesome half tribe and send them into exile. It is one of many clear Old Testament examples in which Yahweh uses people from outside of the tribes of Israel to accomplish his purposes.
There is debate as to what extent the people of the ancient near East created their God’s after their own image. Whether Yahweh really punished tribes and nations for their transgressions by sending one against the other, or whether tribes and nations rationalised their own secular conflicts through their fledgling relationships with deity and thereby created their gods in the image of themselves, depends on which version of Christian theology we subscribe to.
What is more relevant from the present perspective is the interest and active guiding role that Yahweh took in the affairs of non-Israelite people. As well as using them for his purposes Yahweh also had great concern for the non-Israelite tribes, and appears to have been active in their histories, just as he was in Israel’s. As related in Amos, Yahweh had protective inclinations over the enemies of the Israelites as well as the Israelites:
“Are not you Israelites
the same to me as the Cushites?”
declares the Lord.
“Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt,
the Philistines from Caphtor
and the Arameans from Kir?”
(Amos 9:7-8)
We know that events described in this passage are real historical events with archaeological evidence. The Philistines migrated from Caphtor (likely Crete or a similar Aegean island) around 1100 to 1200 BC, and gradually assimilated into the Canaanite culture, establishing a permanent in-land home. Similarly the Arameans dissipated from Kir in Mesopotamia into present day Syria and Northern Israel setting up dynastic strongholds such as Damascus. Their journeys are captured in archaeological evidence and in Egyptian historical chronicles. Yahweh was at work in these migrations in the same way that he was at work in the migration of the Israelites.
While Yahweh was at work within other groups, the Israelites were undeniably selected as special. They were special because they were the vehicle through which Yahweh would reveal himself to all people, and not because they were the only people who Yahweh was interested in:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
(Isaiah 49:6)
The plan was always much more expansive and inclusive than a relationship between Yahweh and one particular group. The plan was always universal in nature: Yahweh chose to reveal himself to the Israelites for the sake of ALL people.
Religion and ethics
The ethical principles of a society have always been closely intertwined with the ethical principles of its dominant religion. Idolatry and injustice are found together as much today as they were in the ancient Near East. The social oppressions which become engrained are the ones which have been allowed or encouraged by the sponsoring religion of the society in question. Yahweh’s nations, Israel and Judah, were set apart from those around them by their ethics. Ethics were one of the standout features of the Yahwehism that was revealed across the Old Testament. Israel and Judah under Yahweh were differentiated from their neighbours by the structure of their society. When the Israelites fell away from Yahweh and towards other gods, the ethical structure of their society crumbled.
Yahwehism involved an inseparable expression of both duty to Yahweh and duty to other members of society. The two could not be separated and each was absolutely crucial to the fulfilment of the other. Across the Old Testament falling away from a single focus on Yahweh was always accompanied by a falling away of moral standards. Likewise, to fall away from moral standards led to the withdrawal of Yahweh’s presence, and to correction. The aim of the correction was to draw the societies of Israel and Judah into a higher moral standard, as summed up in the warnings contained in passages such as these from Jeremiah:
“Administer justice every morning, rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed, or my wrath will break out and burn like fire because of the evil you have done – burn with no one to quench it” (Jer 21:12)
“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his own people work for nothing, not paying them for their labor.” (Jer 22:13)
Jeremiah identifies the measure of knowing Yahweh directly with the degree to which we will fight for betterment of those in need:
“He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?”
declares the Lord.” (Jer 22:15-16)
These four lines capture so much of the essence of Yahweh’s project with the Israelites: Help others, and things will go well for you – to help others is to have understood me.
The entire situation was carried forward and represented still more succinctly by Jesus in the New Testament, when he distilled the entirety of the revelation and participation in Yahweh’s religion to just two commandments: love God, and love one another.
Paul’s insight in Romans
Yet these passages, and there are certainly other similar ones, are hidden within the great swathe of Biblical text which focusses on Yahweh’s relationship with the “chosen” people of Israel and Judah. Chosen and set aside they may well have been, but from the early beginnings of the stage-like revelation of Yahweh through the Old Testament from Genesis through to Jeremiah, the purpose for which the Israelites were set aside is not perfectly clear. In fact, it does not become fully clear until Paul sat down one day in the first years of the first century AD, and began to write his letter to the Romans. Suddenly the entire project of Yahweh seemed to flash forth and crystalise as he pondered events across chapters 8-11. The Israelites were chosen as the vehicle through which Yahweh’s purposes would be established, but they themselves would be put on hold in the final analysis only for the Gentiles to take up the torch, and once full revelation had been made to the “full number of the Gentiles”, and only once this was done, would Yahweh turn his attention back to Israel.
A more polished account of the ideas is given in Ephesians:
“Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.”
The purposes of Yahweh have been to guide all people to the point where they can understand the plan that was initially revealed only to the Jews. But in a mystery that even the Jews did not fully grasp, their purpose would be greater than they initially realised: they were being used ultimately as a vehicle of revelation to both themselves AND the Gentiles. All along, the destiny of the chosen people was as vehicles of revelation of a truth that would reach far beyond them, and stand all on an equal footing. Moreover, once fully revealed, the majority of Jews would reject the revelation of which they had been the bearer, while the Gentiles would understand the mystery readily. The Jews own understanding would be delayed until “the full number of the Gentiles had come in” – whenever we start to think that we are special in the eyes of God he humbles us, and so it was for Israel. The great plan, from the very beginning, was larger than Israel has imagined, larger than anyone had imagined.
The last book and beyond
The vision is completed in Revelations:
“a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” ”
From the very beginning, the plan of Yahweh had been the restoration of all tribes, all nations, all people. The outward arc that began with the fall would proceed back with progressive revelations of Yahweh to different groups in less and more complete forms. While remaining active in other religions and among other peoples, Yahweh focussed on Israel as the vehicle of revelation. But the religion that was ultimately revealed was for all people: the Israelites were chosen for the benefit of all. By the Apostolic age they were no longer the primary people through which the message would take hold, spread, and flourish.
The image from Revelations makes clear that people from all nations and races can and will come into relationship with God. There are hints elsewhere in the Bible of a further stage still, the so called Apokatastasis (Acts 3:21), in which not only people from all nations and races are reconciled with God, but all people from all nations and races, and indeed all beings, and all objects are reconciled with God. As Ephesians 1:20 says: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Proponents of this approach would appeal to this as the fulmination of the Biblical principle given in Ecclesiastes that “the end of a matter is better than its beginning.” For others, we can conclude nothing further than the invitation given in Revelation 22:17: all people are invited, but whether or not they come is a choice that remains open in either direction, and an invitation they can ultimately and tragically refuse.
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Articles in Christianity series:
Religious pluralism and monotheism in the Bible: From Genesis to Jesus