Hebrew Religion
 
From a political and military point of view, the Hebrews were not very important historically. The high point of their power was reached and passed under the reign of Solomon (961-922 B.C.) early in their history. But in terms of their impact on the cultural history of the West, the Hebrews may be the most important people discussed so far. The great Hebrew achievement was their contribution to the development of religious ideas.
Like most nomadic peoples. the early Hebrews were animists. But, Hebrew patriarchs would often identify their family with some particular deity. The members of the family might believe in many gods, but they would look to one special god as the god of their family. In some cases as early as 2000 B. C., we have evidence that some Semites believed in a kind of contract between a particular family and a god. The founder of a new family would freely choose one god to be the chief deity for his people. He would recognize and follow the god, and the god would take care of him and his family. The family god is thought of as being a family member himself.
This pattern, which is attested among other Semites, is not unlike what we see in the earliest part of the Old Testament. According to Hebrew tradition, successive generations of the Hebrew family leaders made a personal contract or covenant with one god. They worshiped that god, and he protected them against outsiders while trying to keep peace among the family members in their desert wandering. This god was referred to by various names, but he was most frequently thought of as a storm god who lived on the mountaintops.
Just before the Hebrews began to leave the desert and to invade Palestine (1300-1200 B.C.), the early desert religion of the fathers seems to have undergone important changes which we must now consider. The Hebrews attributed these changes to the teaching of their great leader Moses. At one time scholars tended to doubt that they were the work of one man, but more recently the traditional view has begun to win favor again. Let us look at these changes now. As a result of Moses’ teaching, the tribal god of the Hebrews acquired a new permanent name. He was called Yahweh, which means “I am that I am,” or rather, “I cause to be what is.” In other words, Yahweh is the “creator.”
Yahweh was  a storm god associated with mountain tops. In his teaching, Moses heavily emphasized the covenant or contract which existed between the Hebrews and Yahweh. The Hebrews as a nation were his people, and Yahweh was their god. Yahweh promised to take care of the Hebrews by providing them with land and helping them to destroy their enemies. As a storm god, Yahweh was also associated with war. In return, the Hebrews were to recognize Yahweh as their god, to follow his orders, and to ignore any other gods.
One of the things that distinguished the teachings of Moses from earlier contractual religions is that the Hebrews, for their part in the Covenant, were required to live ethical lives as set down in the Ten Commandments. Most ancient religions had rules of some sort, but these rules largely concerned ceremony and ritual. The rules of Yahweh also regulated the relations of men to men. They had to follow the Ten Commandments. Now, I must emphasize that this contract applied only to Hebrews; only they were to follow the rules of the covenant. And their reward was Yahweh’s help in solving the problems of this world – particularly in overcoming their enemies. It is often said that Moses was a monotheist, but this is not clear. He was concerned only with how the Hebrews acted toward Yahweh, so whether other gods were real never came up.
Some scholars believe that many of the ideas taken up by Moses were drawn from notions in Egypt, but this too is in dispute. Some Hebrews had been in Egypt probably before their wanderings, and the name “Moses” is itself an Egyptian name. There were movements in Egypt toward monotheism and toward ethical religious rules during the New Kingdom. But the ethics of the Egyptians were not well-developed or strongly imbued with religious significance. Moreover, it is unclear whether Moses believed in other gods or not.
The real contribution of the Hebrews to World History was not political, but rather religious – it lay in the creation of the first real system of ethical monotheism. Starting as a political religion which identified people living under a particular set of political institutions, it gradually grew into a whole way of life which distinguished its adherents from all other peoples around them. You must remember that Judaism never became a universal religion. It was intended and is intended only for Jews, for members of a particular national and cultural group. But the Laws and rules that Hebrews had to follow became so pervasive in their lives that it required them to endure as a distinctive movement and people long after the Hebrew states had themselves disappeared.