Les Prophètes d'Israël et les religions de l'Orient: essai sur les origines du monothéisme universaliste (1913 Causse), book

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Les Prophètes d'Israël et les religions de l'Orient: essai sur les origines du monothéisme universaliste (1913) is a book by Antonin Causse.

Abstract

As one of the preeminent Old Testament scholars in France during the beginning of the 20th century, Antonin Causse brilliantly carries forward the tradition of French biblical scholarship that had been inaugurated by Ernest Renan. Although this monograph represents one of his earliest works, traces of the way in which Causse would later more fully develop his sociological approach to the study of ancient Israelite religion can already be detected. Influenced by the ethnological and sociological studies of Emile Durkheim and the work of social psychologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Causee begins by demonstrating how similar Israelite religion was to her pagan Semitic neighbors and then proceeds to trace an inner development within the religion, starting with the prophets, whereby the Israelite religion from lower to higher forms, or from a primitive mentality to a more civilized mentality. This process culminated in the exilic prophets who moved Yahwism from a national religion to a universal, individualistic, and ethical form of monotheism.

Causse focuses on the rise of monotheism within Israel, yet like his predecessor Renan, he is quick to point out that a primitive form of monotheism was present within all Semitic peoples. For Causee, monotheistic trends in Egypt and Babylon were a part of other religions from the Ancient and New World as well. It was not Israel alone, but the legacy of all the Semitic peoples to gift the modern world the notion of monotheism; indeed, the Semitic race achieved the apex of its development having obtained this notion of the divine. Over time this notion of monotheism further developed into an individualistic form of piety through which each individual soul could access God.

~Deborah Forger

Editions and translations

Published in Paris [France]: E. Nourry, 1913.

Contents

  • Preface
  • 1 - Popular Yahwism
  • 2 - The First Prophets. The Struggle against Syncretism. The Tradition of Moses.
  • 3 - Amos, Hosea
  • 4 - Isaiah & Michael
  • 5 - The Yahwistic Syncretism
  • 6 - Jeremiah
  • 7 - Ezekiel
  • 8 - The Prophet Deutero-Isaiah
  • 9 - Monotheism of the Prophets and Oriental Monotheism
  • Conclusion


English Translation of the Table of Contents Provided by Deborah Forger

External links

  • [ Google Books]
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