W. O. E. Oesterly (1866–1950)

The quality of this book goes up and down like the bloody Assyrian empire.

The opening section, written by Oesterley, is deeply fascinating. He uses comparative religion and tiny clues in the Biblical text to reconstruct the possible religious beliefs of the pre-Israelite Israelites. A little while ago I read SH Hooke’s book In the Beginning where he puts forward the theory that the murder of Abel describes a human sacrifice. I find the theory convincing. There’s quite a lengthy discussion of that here and lots more besides. This part, though, is not without it’s problems. Oesterley thinks of culture as a series of discrete progressive stages with Animism and taboo at the bottom and Anglicanism at the top. The closer you come to Anglicanism the more culture and the better culture you have. I tend to think of culture as something subject to change with new cultural practices marking a difference, and not good or bad so much as more or less pleasing. Oesterley also grades people by the same scale, with “the savage races” at the bottom and the English at the top. This position leads him into some difficulties. Despite Judaism having some well developed and very famous taboos, Oesterley feels compelled to describe them as vestiges of a former religion because, by his scale, an Israelite is a less savage race than an Animist. If his world view were not in error then we should be able to verify it empirically. Anglicanism, as the perfect culture, should show no signs of taboo and the English, as the perfect race, should not observe any. Yet the English have a strong taboo on the horse; a taboo so pervasive no specific law is required to enforce it. So it all needs to be read critically. In Oesterly’s defence, his crystal prose and clear arguments make it easy to do so. It’s also excellently referenced and he always gives references to books with counter-arguments.

The second section, written by Robinson, deals with Moses and the early prophets. At his best he has an easy conversational style and can be very interesting. I bet he was a brilliant lecturer. At his worst his paragraphs can be somewhat confused and I did wonder at one point if there were something wrong with him. He runs into problems early on with his discussion of Moses. He says “the historicity of Moses and his work has never been seriously doubted” and then goes not to justify this preposterous statement in a lengthy footnote. Surely the historicity of Moses is the second serious doubt to occur to anyone reading the Bible, right after “Does God exist?”. Robinson spends his time on the subject muttering about earthquakes and tidal waves. He runs into similar problems when discussing Elijah. This story is prime material for telling us about the religious beliefs of the people who wrote it down, but Robinson discounts all elements which are physically impossible as “embellishment” and recounts the remainder as history. The problem with this approach is that the line between the possible and the impossible was obviously in a different place for the writer than it is for us. Who is to say that that he has embellished only those parts that we think impossible. It would suggest that the writer knew exactly where that line would be in the mind of a reader who would not be born for a further twenty-five hundred years. Obviously, a book on the origin and development of Hebrew religion that fails to properly discuss these two personages is fundamentally flawed. If this entire section were excised the book would be the better for it.

Oesterley does come back in and save the day and the remainder of the book is parcelled out between them. There plenty more interesting stuff, especially about Zoroastrian influence on Jewish eschatology. So, always readable and worth it for the information, but must be read critically.… (mehr)

Though written by Christian theologists and from a Christian standpoint, this remains a useful and exhaustive survey of the origins and development of Hebrew (Judaic) beliefs and practice, except that it stops quite early in the Christian era and makes no mention of the Jewish enlightenment, the development of liberal and reform judaism and the consequent development of ultra-orthodox branches, all of which are more important in understanding the position of Judaism today than its early origins. The Christian perspective also throws useful light on how the New Testament might best be read and interpreted, giving examples of what Jesus leaves unsaid because - for his Jewish followers in a Jewish social and religious context - not only did it not need saying, to say it would have appeared foolish and perhaps have undermined the force of his own, different and in some cases startling, interpretations of 'the law and the prophets'.… (mehr)