has pointed out, if there is a supernatural power, why should it be confined only to certain sacred rocks, or rivers, or planets, or animals? Why should this power be expressed only in an arbitrary array of gods? Isn't the idea of a god of limited power a contradiction in terms? 'God is not just bigger, but infinitely bigger and therefore the idea of representing him is absurd, and to try to make an image of him is insulting.'79 Although the prophets differed greatly in character and background, they were united in their condemnation of what they saw as the moral corruption of Israel, its turning away from Yahweh, its over-zealous love of empty sacrifice, especially on the part of the priesthood. They were agreed that a time of punishment was coming, due to the widespread corruption, but that Israel would eventually be saved by a 'remnant' which would survive. Almost certainly, this reflected a period of great social and political change, when Israel was transformed from a tribal society to a state with a powerful king and court, where the priests were salaried and therefore dependent on the royal house, and where a new breed of wealthy merchant was emerging, keen and able to buy privileges for itself and its offspring and for whom, in all probability, religion took second place. All this at a time when the threat from outside was especially difficult. The first prophets, Elijah and Elisha, introduced the idea of the individual conscience. Elijah was critical of the royal household because some of its members were corrupt and worshipped Baal.80 God spoke to him, he famously said, in 'a still, small voice'. Amos was appalled at the bribery he saw around him, and at temple prostitution, a relic of ancient fertility rites.81 It was he who developed the concept of 'election', that Israel had been selected by Yahweh, to be his chosen people, that he would protect them provided they abided by their covenant with him, to worship him and only him (but see below, page113). For Amos, if Israel failed in this sacred marriage with Yahweh, Yahweh would intervene in history and 'settle accounts'.82 Hosea refined the covenant still further. He believed in a Yahweh who was master of all history, who had 'irresistible designs' for all the world. He too opposed corrupt kingship and the cult of the temple, expressly branding as idolatry the worship of the golden bulls which had been instituted in the royal sanctuaries (1 Kings 12:25-30); he also conceived the idea of a messiah who would redeem Israel.83 It was Hosea who first introduced a religion of the heart, divorced from place. This was reinforced when Jerusalem survived a siege by the Assyrian King Sennacherib, in 701 BC. The Israelites triumphed thanks to bubonic plague, transmitted by mice, but to them this only confirmed that their fate was linked to Yahweh and their own moral behaviour.84 Isaiah, without question the most skilful wordsmith and the most moving writer among the prophets (and indeed of the entire Hebrew canon), began his mission, according to his own account, in the year that King Uzziah died-around 740 BC. By tradition he was the nephew of King Amaziah of Judah and was well-connected to the politicians of his day.85 But he got out among the people and had a sizeable following-a popularity that endured, as may be gauged from the fact that, among the texts found at Qumran after the Second World War was a leather scroll, twenty-three feet long, giving the whole of Isaiah in fifty columns of Hebrew. As a result of his pressure on Hezekiah, the king at the time, the Temple in Jerusalem turned back to Yahweh-worship and the sanctuaries in the provinces were closed and public worship centralised in the capital.86 Isaiah condemned Judah as a land of unbridled, irresponsible luxury, a sensual society without concern for the spirit, divine or human.87 He explicitly singled out for condemnation the monopoly in land that had 'borne such evil fruit in Judah'.88 Isaiah was pushing the Israelite religion to a new spirituality and a new interiority, still more divorced from time and place than Hosea had imagined, more and more a religion of conscience, when men are thrown back on themselves as the only way to achieve social justice. Men and women, he was saying, must turn away from the pursuit of wealth as the chief aim in life. 'Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place.'89 But there was another side to Isaiah, and equally important. In his religion, sacrifice is not enough but repentance is always possible, the Lord is always forgiving and, if enough people repent, he foresees an age of peace, when men and women 'shall beat swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore'. This, as many
scholars have noted, for the first time gives history a linear quality. God gives history a direction and here Isaiah introduces an even more radical idea: 'Behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.' This special son shall advance the age of peace: 'The wolf shall also dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.' But he will also be a great ruler: 'For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.' Christians attach more to this passage than Jews do. Matthew saw this as a prophecy of Jesus; Jews do not interpret Isaiah messianically.90 The book of Isaiah is above all concerned with the individual soul-though that is not the right word. For Isaiah, each of us has the 'still small voice' of conscience, and that marks out Judaism. The Jews had no real belief in the afterlife, so the nearest they could come to a soul was the conscience. In the last days before Jerusalem finally fell, Isaiah was followed by Jeremiah, who could not have been more different. Equally critical of the establishment, equally blunt and perhaps even more acid, Jeremiah became an outcast, forbidden to enter-or even to go near-the Temple. He was probably as unstable as he was unpopular: his family turned against him and no woman would marry him.91 (He did, however, have and keep a secretary. When others went into exile he remained for a while in Mizpah, a modest town north of Jerusalem.) Yet his writings were preserved-for his prophecies of doom came true. In 597 BC and again in 586 BC, the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem, and after the second siege the Temple and the walls of the city were destroyed and most of the rest of the city was set ablaze. Jeremiah was among those who fled but thousands of Israelites were carried off into exile in Babylon. Traumatic as it was, exile would prove invigorating for the transformation of Judaism. The Israelites remained in exile in Babylon from 586 BC to 539 BC. While they were there, they found that their captors practised Zoroastrianism, which was the major belief system in the Middle East before Islam. The origins of this faith are obscure. According to Zoroastrian tradition, Zarathustra made his first conversion '258 years before Alexander', which would put it at 588 BC, and therefore right in the middle of the Axial Age. But this cannot be correct. One reason is that the language of Zoroastrian scriptures, the Gathas, the liturgical hymns which make up the Avesta , the Zoroastrian canon, is very similar to the oldest layer of Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas, the sacred texts of the Hindus (see below, page 115). The two languages are so close that they are 'little more than dialects of one tongue', and not many centuries can have separated them from their common origins.92 Since the Vedas date to between 1900 and 1200 BC, at least, the Gathas cannot be very much younger. However, while the Vedas were still set in the heroic age, with many gods, often acting 'with the same nature as men', and sometimes with great cruelty, Zoroastrianism was very different.93 Zoroastrianism has one origin in the third millennium BC with the migration of the peoples known to archaeologists, pre-historians and philologists as the Indo-Aryans. As was mentioned above, there has been much debate as to where these people originated: from the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea, in the lands around the Oxus river, north of Persia, as Iran then was, the so-called BMAC complex (Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex, essentially northern Afghanistan), even the Indus valley. What seems more certain is that they split into two groups, one-furthereast-giving rise to the Vedic religion, which developed into Hinduism (see below, page 115); and the second, further west, giving rise to Zoroastrianism. Certain aspects of Zoroastrianism appear to have developed from the cult of Mithras. Mithras, said to have been born out of a rock and often associated with bull sacrifice, appears first in the historical record on an inscription found at Boghazkoy in eastern Anatolia, and dating from the fourteenth century BC. The inscription commemorates a treaty between the Hittites (whom we have already encountered, in an earlier chapter) and the Mitanni (a tribe with Aryan chiefs, across the Euphrates from what is now Syria) and mentions a number of deities who later appear in the Rig Veda , the Hindu scriptures. These deities include Mithra, Varuna and Indra.94 Mithra, be it noted, is the old Persian word for contract, which is interesting for at least three reasons. One, and this is speculative, a god of contract recalls the Israelite idea of the