Whence monotheism? Unamuno, Life 8.3
Unamuno
continues to sketch the historical apprehension of divinity that
culminates in Christian monotheism. Ancient gods are immortal
humanoid figures whose society produces kings like Zeus or Jupiter or
Yahweh, divine monarchs whose most immediate presence among humans
occurs in battle-camps ruled by commanders with authority that no
mere individual can bear. The Roman consul, the Greek strategos, the
Israelite judge or king: each bears militant authority too great to
be simply human. Over time, spokespersons (prophets, from the
Greek προφήτης) for the divinity felt here create an
expectation or apprehension that extends the war-god's power beyond
the battle-camp into every corner of the world, with personal
apprehension and adjustment that the original conception did not
have. In time, God appears: a personification of all divinity in one
personage, with attention for each and every individual, in all walks
of life and every conceivable moment of existence. Believers (like
Unamuno, perhaps) will say that this God was always there, but our
historical apprehension could not see him all at once; it had to go
through some process of discovery like the one we find in history.
En
lo que propiamente se distinguían los dioses de los hombres, era en
que aquéllos eran inmortales. Un dios venía a ser un hombre
inmortal, y divinizar a un hombre, considerarle como a un Dios, era
estimar que, en rigor, al morirse no había muerto. De ciertos héroes
se creía que fueron vivos al reino de los muertos. Y este es un
punto importantísimo para estimar el valor de lo divino.
En
aquellas repúblicas de dioses había siempre algún dios máximo,
algún verdadero monarca. La monarquía divina fué la que, por el
monocultismo llevó a los pueblos al monoteísmo. Monarquía y
monoteísmo son, pues, cosas gemelas. Zeus, Júpiter, iba en camino
de convertirse en dios único, como en dios único, primero del
pueblo de Israel, después de la humanidad y, por último, del
universo todo, se convirtió Jahvé, que empezó siendo uno de entre
tantos dioses.
Como
la monarquía, tuvo el monoteísmo un origen guerrero. «Es en la
marcha y en tiempo de guerra —dice Robertson Smith,
The
Prophets of Israel,
lect. I— cuando un pueblo nómada siente la instante necesidad de
una autoridad central, y así ocurrió que, en los primeros comienzos
de la organización nacional en torno al santuario del arca, Israel
se creyó la hueste de Jehová. El nombre mismo de Israel es marcial
y significa Dios pelea, y Jehová es en el Viejo Testamento Iahwé
Zebahât, el Jehová de los ejércitos de Israel. Era en el campo de
batalla donde se sentía más claramente la presencia de Jehová;
pero en las naciones primitivas, el caudillo de tiempo de guerra es
también el juez natural en tiempo de paz.»
Dios,
el Dios único, surgió, pues, del sentimiento de divinidad en el
hombre como Dios guerrero, monárquico y social. Se reveló al
pueblo, no a cada individuo. Fué el Dios de un pueblo y exigía
celoso se le rindiese culto a él solo, y de este monocultismo se
pasó al monoteísmo, en gran parte por la acción individual, más
filosófica acaso que teológica, de los profetas. Fué, en efecto,
la actividad individual de los profetas lo que individualizó la
divinidad. Sobre todo al hacerla ética.
The
proper distinction between gods and men, in olden time, was that the
former happened to be immortal. Gods evolved into immortal men, and
divinizing a man, treating him as we would a god, amounted to judging
that death had never properly taken him, that he never really died.
Certain heroes were thought to remain alive in the realm of the dead.
This is a critically important point for us to consider as we attempt
to assess the worth of the divine.
In
the ancient republics of the gods, there was always some greatest
god, a true monarch. Divine monarchy was the thing that led the
nations to monotheism, which they approached through monocult, the
unified worship of one greatest god. Monarchy and monotheism are thus
twins, two formal expressions of the same unifying instinct. Zeus or
Jupiter was always treading the road toward becoming the only god,
even as Yahweh, who began as one god among many, the first and only
god dedicated particularly to the people of Israel, and became later
the god of all humanity, and finally of the entire universe.
Like
monarchy, monotheism arose from war. “'Tis in the march and time of
war,” says Robertson Smith in his first lecture on The Prophets
of Israel (†),
“that a nomadic people feels the pressing need for a central
authority, and thus it came about that Israel formed her first
national organization as the host of Jehovah, round the sacred
precinct of the ark. The
very name Israel is
martial, indicating that God fights,
and Jehovah in the Old Testament is Yahweh Sabaoth,
the Lord of the Hosts of Israel. It was in the battle-camp that the
presence of Jehovah was most clearly felt. But in primitive nations,
the war-chief is also a natural judge in time of peace.”
Thus
God, the one and only, arose from mankind's apprehension of divinity
in the human battle-leader, a monarch ruling over militant society.
This divinity was revealed initially to the people, not to each
individual. He was the god of a people, demanding jealously that cult
be rendered to him, and him alone. From this monocult came
monotheism, the latter arising in great measure from the individual
actions, perhaps more philosophical than theological, of prophets. It
was the individual character of prophetic actions that individualized
divinity, construing God as someone who knows us personally. And
above all else, investing Him with ethical commitments.
---
(†)
William Robertson Smith
(1846-1894) was a Scottish scholar and minister whose career took him
from pastoring in Keig and Tough to membership in the Royal Society
of Edinburgh, fellowship at Cambridge, and a position as editor of
the Encyclopedia Brittanica. He did not read the Old Testament as
literally true, & this led to him being condemned as a heretic in
1878. Shortly thereafter, he began publishing books on his approach
to ancient scripture, among them the volume cited by Unamuno (pub.
1882, second ed. 1895).