By The Waters Of Babylon

Right, so, last time I was talking about Michael, and how Angels don’t show up much in the Bible during the First Temple period. But, then, along comes the Babylonian Captivity, when at least a large percentage of the Israeli-Judah elite are transported to Babylon.

Now, envision what these people...the deported Jewish elite...are going through. They are literate, thoughtful, cultured individuals. They are aristocrats, priests, scribes, squires and land-owners, artisans, merchants, former members of the royal court, and perhaps even nobility. Maybe there are princes and princesses among them.

But, over night, they have gone from being at the top of their society to being strangers in a strange land. Everything familiar is gone. For them, it must have been like being on another planet.

Yet...yet...somehow, somewhere, somebody or somebodies...there in that alien world...had a moment of genius.

About the image: A modern St. Michael. Here’s “ St Michael's victory over the Devil by Sir Jacob Epstein (1958) on the wall of Coventry Cathedral.” This photo is by DeFacto is presented with the following Creative Common license: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. The file may be found here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/St_Michael%27s_victory_over_the_Devil_by_Sir_Jacob_Epstein%2C_Coventry_Cathedral.jpg

For more on Jacob Epstein, see his Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Epstein

Or, if you prefer, say Divine Inspiration. Whatever, while in exile, while at the very lowest point of their lives...they invented a new concept.

What if...they said...what if their god *was* God? What if Ba’al and Hadad weren’t just lesser gods? Or alien gods? Or even evil gods? What if they didn’t exist at all? What if there was only one God, and he was shared by all living beings?

Whoa. That was a major innovation. It was unlike anything anyone anywhere had posited before. Some other religious traditions had gotten close...Zoroasterism, the religion of Ancient Persia, was well on its way to something like monotheism by this time, and around 1350 BC, the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten tried to introduce a quasi-monotheistic religion based on the worship of Aten, a solar deity...but never before had there been a single people who announced that, by George! their god was the only one that mattered, and open to worship for everyone.

On some level, it was amazingly arrogant. How could this tiny, pathetic, defeated people somehow assume they had a direct connection with the infinite? But, by like token, it was breathtaking. It was one of those intellectual leaps that makes you stand and stare in pure awe. And say what you like about it (and many an atheist I know has expressed some hard feelings on the subject), it was an astonishing innovation, and its long-term success can be judged by the fact that all the dominant religions of the West -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- operate from exactly the same premise.

So...

Okay, great. We now have true monotheism. But...there’s the catch. Monotheism generates problems of its own. For instance, if there is only one creator God, does that mean he created Evil, too? If so, why?

Before, you could blame death and destruction on other, foreign gods fighting your own. Or on gods who just happened to be mean. But if other gods don’t exist...well, how do you square that with a benign creator?

And another thing...if God is running the whole dang universe...keeping track of everything from natural disasters to the Lillies Of The Field...well, that’s one busy deity, isn’t it? How is He going to find the time to be everywhere?

Oh, and there’s a little class issue here, too. Is this God going to talk to every Tom, Dick, and Elijah who happens to come along? Don’t think so. He’s going to reserve his time for chats for People Of Real Importance. Like, you know, priests...and scribes...and intellectuals who are sitting in Babylon working out the details of monotheism.

So, something needed to be added to the mix.

And, again, somewhere, somehow, somebody figured out the missing ingredient. Remember how way back in the happy days of henotheism Yahweh presided over a council of lesser gods? Well, suppose they weren’t gods. Suppose they were...messengers...Angels? Who flitted about doing God’s will and relaying his wisdom.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

And, there you have it. We’ve finally got angels ...as we know them...becoming an important concept, and having a real role in the religion, as opposed to being simply a faceless non-entity who shows up now and then for a non-speaking cameo with Abraham or whoever.

Thus, Michael...as we know him...is one step closer to making an entrance.

But...first...we have to get to his brother.

The Morning Star.

I provide these blog postings for free. That’s fine and I’m happy to do so. But, long ago and far away, I was told that if you give away your material, that means you don’t really think it has any value.

So, to get beyond that, I’ve decided to make it possible for you to leave me a “tip” for my posts.

If you like what I write or the videos I produce, and feel you could make a small contribution to support my efforts, please go here:

https://michaeljaytucker.gumroad.com/l/lzumj

That will take you to a Gumroad page where you’ll have the option of leaving me a few pence by way of encouragement.

Again, I don’t mind if you don’t. I just want to provide you with the option so that I won’t feel quite so much like I’m just tossing my works into the wind.

Either way, thanks hugely for dropping by the blog :-)

~mjt

#StampOutEnnui #MichaelJayTucker #MarthaTucker #MarthaAndMichaelChronicles #StompEnnuiLikeItWasABug #explosive_cargo #Xcargo #StampOutEnnui #MichaelJayTucker #MarthaTucker #MarthaAndMichaelChronicles #StompEnnuiLikeItWasABug #explosive_cargo #Xcargo #Saint_Michael #Michael_The_Archangel #Angels #The_Bible #Bible #Biblical_Archaeology #Book_of_Daniel #Angelology #Apocalyptic_Literature #Ancient_Religion #Ancient_Israel #Israelite_Religion #Religion #Church_History #Religious_History #Folk_Religion #Popular_Religion #Archangel #Archangels #Christianity #Judaism #Jewish_History #Theology #Resheph