Paganisme des Hébreux: jusqu'à la captivité de Babylone (1884 Ferrière), book
Paganisme des Hébreux: jusqu'à la captivité de Babylone (1884) is a book by Émile Ferrière.
Abstract
Swept up in the fervor of Darwinian evolutionary models and the inherent positivism of his day, Ferrière suggests that monotheism did not arise among the Israelite people until the time of the Babylonian exile. As he himself puts it, the goal of his book is to: "Prouver par des faits, conformément à la méthode expérimentale, que le monothéisme primordial des Hébreux est une fiction; que le peuple d Israël a été païen et a partagé toutes les pratiques du paganisme cananéen jusqu à la captivité de Babylone, tel est le but de ce livre (3)." Accordingly, for Ferrière the ancient Israelites were just as polytheistic as their so-called pagan, Ancient Near Eastern neighbors. His thesis is largely dependent upon the work of contemporary, Julius Wellhausen, who advocated for a later dating of the Pentateuch whereby four principle sources (J, E, P, D) were combined by priestly, exilic writers to compose the Mosaic Torah, and not Moses himself. ~Deborah Forger
Editions and translations
Published in Paris [France]: F. Alcan, 1884.
Contents
- Preface