WORLDVIEWS BEFORE THE RISE OF GREEK THOUGHT
In this chapter we look at two ancient worldviews, the Hebrew and the Hindu. Both were strongly God-centered.
People have always had beliefs. Generally, we may guess, their beliefs fitted together to make up some sort of worldview or philosophy. For the most part they shared these beliefs and worldview with others in their community or culture and passed them on from one generation to the next. Probably these sets of beliefs developed and changed only slowly. Every now and then someone would come up with a new idea, but even then it would be fairly safe to assume that it would have taken some time for anything new to be generally accepted and absorbed into the overall worldview of the community. So, for the most part, sets of beliefs would have been handed down without a great deal of change from one generation to another.
The most common way for a philosophy or set of beliefs to be abandoned or changed radically was defeat in war. One community, with its beliefs, would be overwhelmed by another with a different set of beliefs. Perhaps the conquerors would force their views on the conquered. But, additionally, the conquered might readily choose to change their beliefs. After all, the conquerors' beliefs or worldview had shown themselves to be superior in that they had won the battle.
Many of the earliest philosophies or worldviews have been lost or have come down to us in a very limited or fragmented form. So we have no means of discovering the beliefs of many of the earliest communities and civilizations. There are, for example, virtually no records of the cultures and beliefs of Africa south of the Sahara until comparatively recent times. At best we can make a few guesses about them. But it is important to accept that guesses are only guesses. The very limited information we have is always open to more than one interpretation.
The earliest collection of material that can justifiably be called a coherent worldview is that of the ancient Hebrews. Other cultures and civilizations pre-dated them, but we know little about their worldview compared with that expressed in the earliest parts of the Old Testament.
Writing was in use in the Middle East from before 3000 B.C., and something of these other cultures can be gleaned from very early inscriptions and from other archaeological discoveries. Perhaps the earliest writings so far discovered that might be called philosophical date back to about 1500 B.C. These are the religious and mythological texts from Ugarit (Ras Shamra) in north Syria. Ugaritic is a language cognate to ancient Hebrew, and the texts have parallels with Hebrew poetry, some of which could well date from the same era. At about the same time, religious poems were being composed further east in India. These were handed down orally for a thousand years and formed the basis for the various schools of what we now call Hindu thought.
The fact that these Middle Eastern and Indian poems were basically religious and were for the most part orally transmitted may suggest that they are irrelevant to philosophy or that they are an unreliable guide to what people actually believed. But almost all early philosophy was essentially religious. Indeed, as we shall see, almost all philosophy until the last couple of centuries has been essentially religious. And oral transmission of poetry in an age when few people could write was in fact tremendously reliable. This was especially so where that poetry was used in ritual and worship, as appears to be the case with the Ras Shamra texts, the Hebrew Psalms and other poetry, and the Indian Vedas. There is little reason to doubt that at least some of the Hebrew oral tradition goes back to the era of Ras Shamra and even earlier to the patriarchal period before the eighteenth century B.C. Similarly, in the Hindu tradition, although it lacks the anchor points in historical figures and events that the Hebrew tradition has, there is no reason to doubt that the oral tradition could go back to about 1500 B.C. In each case, despite the skepticism of some scholars, it seems reasonable to assume that the tradition they embody is reliable.
We start our survey of the story of philosophy with a look at these two great worldviews, each of which has had a profound effect on the development of subsequent thought. This means we will not explore the rather tenuous speculations of those who have tried to piece together the philosophies of earlier cultures, whose influence has been less marked, such as those of ancient Egypt and Babylonia and the Minoan civilization of Crete, except to say that religion played a major part in their worldviews, which were essentially polytheistic but with a tendency to make one god supreme.
TO THINK THROUGH
Until fairly recently it was standard to assume that early beliefs and worldviews were necessarily false, or, at the very least, very inferior to our contemporary way of seeing things. Commentators used words like "primitive" to imply that the beliefs of these early worldviews were crude, poorly thought out, illogical, and not worthy of our attention. Perhaps this tells us more about the attitude of the commentators than about the worldviews. Why do you think commentators adopted this attitude? Why do people still tend to assume the latest ideas are necessarily better than the earlier ones?
THE HEBREW WORLDVIEW
About 300 B.C. Theophrastus, a disciple of Aristotle, wrote of the Jews that "being philosophers by race, they converse with each other about 'the Divine.'" Though the Old Testament is rightly looked on as a collection of religious writings, it also provides us with the earliest, most detailed, and most complete worldview or set of philosophical beliefs we possess.
How old is old? The dating of Old Testament material has been a matter of vigorous debate between scholars. Some are prepared to accept the early Hebrew writings more or less at their face value and believe, for example, that the material preserved in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, goes back to the time of Moses in the thirteenth century B.C., and that a substantial amount of the poetic and Wisdom literature was in circulation by the time of David (about 1000 B.C.). Others seek to date the material a lot later. Many would compromise and suggest that the documents as we have them may be as late as, say, the fifth century B.C., but they are based on documents or oral tradition that go back much earlier.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that differing presuppositions have had considerable influence on the way differing scholars approach and interpret the evidence. In particular, those who believe that anything as "advanced" as the worldview they contain can't have arisen early, feel it necessary to seek to date the material as late as possible. It is worth noting, however, that even the most skeptical of scholars has to admit that a substantial amount of the early Old Testament material we now have reached the form in which we have it well before the time of Plato.
My own view is that the basic principles of the Hebrew worldview, such as the nature of God and its implications, go back a very long way, through a variety of written forms, often to earlier oral forms. Skeptical presuppositions apart, there are no compelling reasons to reject the historicity of Moses or, indeed, of Abraham, some seven hundred years earlier, or to question the basic worldview and beliefs attributed to them, even though, inevitably, Jewish thought developed substantially in detail in the two millennia between Abraham and Christ.
Moses. Egypt (thirteenth century B.C.). Brought up in the court of the pharaoh of Egypt, Moses was "educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts 7:22), not least in their philosophy and religion. After murdering an Egyptian and fleeing to Midian, he was met by God, who called him to lead the captive Israelites out of Egypt. This entailed considerable confrontation with Pharaoh (probably Rameses II). The people escaped through the miraculous parting of the sea of reeds. God met with Moses on Sinai and gave him the Ten Commandments and the terms of the covenant, outlining the basis of the relationship between God and his people. Instead of traveling straight to Canaan, the Promised Land, the people rebelled, and Moses led them in forty years of wilderness wanderings before dying just before the people entered Canaan.
Though widely viewed as the most significant person in the development of Hebrew thought and culture, Moses is in fact presented in the Old Testament as a paradoxical figure. On the one hand, he was chosen and protected by God at birth. He led the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, received the covenant of God on Sinai, and led them through the desert. He was rewarded with the verdict "No prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.... No one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel" (Deut. 34:10-12). Yet Moses started his mission with a disastrous murder and then ran and hid. He virtually refused to respond to God's call. And he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land because of his disobedience. The Old Testament accounts are less interested in focusing attention on Moses than on the God who is speaking and working through Moses.
Poetry and Wisdom literature. In the days before books, even uneducated people were able to remember and pass on to subsequent generations large quantities of material they had learned by heart. The accuracy of such oral transmission was very high, especially when the material had been widely disseminated and frequently used, as, for instance, with the Psalms. The poetic form of the five Hebrew books Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs made them all the easier to learn by heart and pass on accurately. Thus it is very possible that though the written form of these books may be later, much of the content goes back at least to the time of David and Solomon, perhaps half a millennium before Zarathustra, Buddha, Confucius, and the earliest Greek philosophers.
The poetry and Wisdom literature of the Old Testament provide a rich source of the early Hebrew worldview in action. They show us people worshiping and praying, struggling with the problems of life, celebrating the good things of life, and expressing the accumulated wisdom of their community on how we should live. Though it is important to remember that poetry and hymns and even the generalized sayings of the wise are not primarily designed to give us philosophical truths, we still can use them to help build up our understanding of the worldview of the early Hebrews and supplement the other Old Testament writings. Indeed, such poetry and hymns make up the only sources of information we have about the teaching of Zarathustra, Buddha, Confucius, and several of the early Greek philosophers. Thus we can find in the Psalms, for example, clear indications about the nature of God or the centrality of our personal relationship with him and our dependence on him. In the book of Job we are faced with the agonizing issues of the problem of evil. And in Proverbs we see again and again the inseparability of the three key features-a right relationship with God, true wisdom, and right living.
The nature of God. Theophrastus was right. At the heart of the ancient Hebrews' philosophy is a radical concept of God. Every other part of the Hebrew worldview derives from this. Perhaps there are five main elements in their concept of God.
God is one (monotheism). There are other supernatural beings, both good and evil, but Yahweh alone is the one true God and alone is to be worshiped.
God is Creator. The world had a beginning; it was planned and called into being by God's powerful creative word. Everything depends on him for its continuing existence. All powerful, he rules over everything.
God relates to his creation. Not only does he hold everything in being; he communicates with and acts in the world. He reveals his name and his nature; he calls people to worship him and join in covenant relationship with him. He shows compassion, grace, and love; he cares for his creation and for his people and demonstrates his goodness and love to them. He is a protector and a savior. Both individuals and God's people as a whole can experience a relationship with him, expressed in worship, prayer, obedience, love, and right living.
God is holy. His moral standards and demands are the highest, high enough to terrify those who do wrong. Because he is holy, he is also judge. His judgments are universal, extending to those who do not acknowledge him, but always just and with the goal of eliminating evil and establishing goodness on the earth.
God is true. He is faithful, dependable. What he says can be trusted. All that he does is fair and just.
The world. The world is God's creation and can be understood only in relationship to him. He made it in the first place, and he holds it in being; without his power it would cease to exist. His power is sovereign over nature and all the creatures he has made. The act of creation and his continuing involvement with the world is planned and meaningful; there is a divine purpose in all things.
Meaning. A key saying of the wise is "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 1:7). To understand anything in the world we need to start with God. Apart from God there is only chaos and meaninglessness. Wisdom isn't just cerebral; it is right living, and right living is living according to the revelations and character of God. Understanding, similarly, is more than cognitive; it is putting into practice what we have apprehended.
Truth. Again, truth is an essentially God-centered concept. Truth exists because God is true. What he says is true; in his nature he is dependable; his
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