Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Defining Time and Space
- 2 Early Inklings
- 3 Gods, Gods, Gods
- 4 Cities, States, and Gods
- 5 The Lure of Egypt, 4000–1400 BCE
- 6 The Gods of Egypt
- 7 The Akhenaten Dream, 1350–1300 BCE
- 8 Practice in Egypt
- 9 The International Age, 1400–1000 BCE
- 10 Gods and People
- 11 The Lord Is One – Israel in Its Environment
- 12 The Turning
- 13 The Good God and the Bad God
- 14 The Lands of Baal
- 15 Greece, Etruria, Rome, and Conveying Traditions
- 16 The Dead Hand of the Past and the Living God
- 17 Experiencing Ancient Near Eastern Religion
- References
- Index
12 - The Turning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Defining Time and Space
- 2 Early Inklings
- 3 Gods, Gods, Gods
- 4 Cities, States, and Gods
- 5 The Lure of Egypt, 4000–1400 BCE
- 6 The Gods of Egypt
- 7 The Akhenaten Dream, 1350–1300 BCE
- 8 Practice in Egypt
- 9 The International Age, 1400–1000 BCE
- 10 Gods and People
- 11 The Lord Is One – Israel in Its Environment
- 12 The Turning
- 13 The Good God and the Bad God
- 14 The Lands of Baal
- 15 Greece, Etruria, Rome, and Conveying Traditions
- 16 The Dead Hand of the Past and the Living God
- 17 Experiencing Ancient Near Eastern Religion
- References
- Index
Summary
Reflective explanations always have something lacking when we try to apply our timid procedures of analysis to the revolutions of creative periods which decided the fate of humanity.
– Ernest Renan, Vie de Jesus, 139Everyone knows about the foolishness of those kind of people – yelling, actually yelling at the priest. How do they get away with making that kind of scene? And to say that the old sacrifices were not working, why that was almost a sin in itself, wasn't it? Who is to say the old sacrifices aren't perfectly good? Certainly from ancient days our ancestors have managed our activities in these ways. The big ceremonies, did they not seem to connect to the needs and wants of the divine? In the past, they seemed to.
It is true that we live in unusual times, times in which the bloody Assyrians do tend to come over the hill to take people away to who knows where. But to say that God does not want sacrifice is just not warranted. What would God want if not what He has always wanted? What is all this about justice, anyway? The poor are always with us, and there's not much we can do about it, is there?
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- Chapter
- Information
- Religions of the Ancient Near East , pp. 115 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010