God & History

[Terrance]

What  Mircea Eliade contends, is that there was revolt
against "Archaic Religion" by  Judaism and Christianity. So,
he argues first, that almost everywhere in archaic and
civilized ancient cultures,  the problem of history was
central, and the solution, the escape, was found in some
form of the myth of eternal return. The pattern is so
widespread, says Eliade, that only in one place---among the
Hebrews of ancient Palestine---can something different be
found. It is in ancient Israel that, for the first time on
the world scene, a new religious outlook makes its
appearance. While
not entirely rejecting the idea of a mythical return to
beginnings, Judaism
proclaims that the sacred can be found in history as well as
outside of it.
With this, the whole equation of archaic religion is
significantly altered. In
Judaism, and later in Christianity, which derives from it,
the idea of the
meaningless cycles of nature is pushed into the background,
while human
events come to center stage, where they take shape along the
line of a meaningful story--a history--with the sacred, in
the form of the God of Israel, a
participant in its scenes. In place of endless, pointless
world cycles, Judaism
asserts a meaningful sequence of sacred historical events.
This striking innovation was fashioned chiefly by the great
prophets of Israel (Isaiah and Jeremiah, and others). When
disasters fell on their people, they presented these
troubles not as miseries to be escaped but as punishments to
be endured (in history) because they came from the very hand
of God. In their oracles and speeches, says Eliade, the
prophets affirmed the idea
that historical events have a value in themselves, insofar
as they are determined by the will of God. This God of the
Jewish people is no longer an Oriental divinity, creator of
archetypal gestures, but a personality who ceaselessly
intervenes in history , who reveals his will through events
(invasions, sieges, battles, and so on). Historical facts
thus become "situations" (bloody situations Stencil!)  of
man
in respect to God, and as such they acquire a religious
value that nothing had
previously been able to confer upon them.