Abraham
I googled for the actual source of this, and I think it's from a talk given by a rabbi sometime. Interesting thoughts as we finished up Galatians and as I'm back in Genesis in my own reading.
"Out of Sumer, civilized repository of the predictable, comes a man who does not know where he is going but goes forth into the unknown wilderness under the prompting of his god. Out of Mesopotamia, home of canny, self-serving merchants who use their gods to ensure prosperity and favor, comes a wealthy caravan with no material goal. Out of ancient humanity, which from the dim beginnings of its consciousness has read its eternal verities in the stars, comes a party traveling by no known compass. Out of the human race, which knows in its bones that all its striving must end in death, comes a leader who says he has been given an impossible promise. Out of mortal imagination comes a dream of something new, something better, something yet to happen, something - in the future."
"We may begin to suspect that this benighted troupe of wanderers has been taken in by the force of Avram's personality and that Avram has been sent on a wild goose chase at the prompting of his own disordered brain."
"This is becoming, however incredibly, the story of an interpersonal relationship."
"We can be certain that Avraham began, like all Sumerians, like all human beings before him (and virtually all after him), as a polytheist, a believer in many (and conflicting) gods and godlets - bad-tempered forces of nature and the cosmos who could be temporarily appeased by just the right rites and rigmarole. It is highly unlikely that Avraham became during the course of his life a strict monotheist, but what we can say is that Avraham's relationship to God became the matrix of his life, the great shaping experience. From voice to vision to august potentate, Avraham's understanding of God grew ever larger.... For the God who calls Avraham to the Mountain Experience must no longer be seen merely as the "Mountain God". He is the opposite of the Sumerian gods with their patently human motivations. He is the God beyond the mountain, even beyond the sky, the unknowable God, whose purposes are hidden from human intelligence, who cannot be manipulated."
Can we open ourselves to the God who cannot be understood, who is beyond all our amulets and scheming, the God who rains on picnics, the God who allows human beings to be inhuman, who has sentenced us all to death? All the other gods are figments, sorry projections of human desires. Only this God is worth my life (and yours and Isaak's). For "there is no other."
"Out of Sumer, civilized repository of the predictable, comes a man who does not know where he is going but goes forth into the unknown wilderness under the prompting of his god. Out of Mesopotamia, home of canny, self-serving merchants who use their gods to ensure prosperity and favor, comes a wealthy caravan with no material goal. Out of ancient humanity, which from the dim beginnings of its consciousness has read its eternal verities in the stars, comes a party traveling by no known compass. Out of the human race, which knows in its bones that all its striving must end in death, comes a leader who says he has been given an impossible promise. Out of mortal imagination comes a dream of something new, something better, something yet to happen, something - in the future."
"We may begin to suspect that this benighted troupe of wanderers has been taken in by the force of Avram's personality and that Avram has been sent on a wild goose chase at the prompting of his own disordered brain."
"This is becoming, however incredibly, the story of an interpersonal relationship."
"We can be certain that Avraham began, like all Sumerians, like all human beings before him (and virtually all after him), as a polytheist, a believer in many (and conflicting) gods and godlets - bad-tempered forces of nature and the cosmos who could be temporarily appeased by just the right rites and rigmarole. It is highly unlikely that Avraham became during the course of his life a strict monotheist, but what we can say is that Avraham's relationship to God became the matrix of his life, the great shaping experience. From voice to vision to august potentate, Avraham's understanding of God grew ever larger.... For the God who calls Avraham to the Mountain Experience must no longer be seen merely as the "Mountain God". He is the opposite of the Sumerian gods with their patently human motivations. He is the God beyond the mountain, even beyond the sky, the unknowable God, whose purposes are hidden from human intelligence, who cannot be manipulated."
Can we open ourselves to the God who cannot be understood, who is beyond all our amulets and scheming, the God who rains on picnics, the God who allows human beings to be inhuman, who has sentenced us all to death? All the other gods are figments, sorry projections of human desires. Only this God is worth my life (and yours and Isaak's). For "there is no other."