FREE ESSAY ON MONOTHEISM

MONOTHEISM

Part A 10-30-99
In Hebrew history, there are many instances that show there is only one true God that the
Hebrews worship. The worship of only one God is called Monotheism. Judaism is regarded by
most to be the founding religion of God. A sign of monotheism is that Jews believed in a
single, transcendent God who created the universe and continues to govern it. The same
God who created the world revealed himself to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. When Moses
went to talk to God on Mount Sinai, God had talked to the Israelites. He had told them
that he was the God that had given them freedom from Egypt. God also gave Moses the Ten
Commandments. The Israelites were about to enter the Promise land but before they could,
the Israelites had to make a covenant with God. The Covenant was that they would only
believe in God and no other gods. The Jewish people then would acknowledge God, agreeing
to obey his laws; God, in turn, would acknowledge Israel as his particular people. The
people had sealed the covenant by making an ark. This ark consisted of cherubs on top of
ark with a sitting place between all the cherubs for God. Inside the ark would consist
the Ten Commandments. The reason God had given the Israelites the Ten Commandments
because the Canaanites had worshiped in false gods and God did not want the Israelites to
fall into that trap. This was also to show how strongly the Israelites had believed in
God. If you had broken any commandment, God punished you unless you had repented your sin
or sins. God forgave people know matter what you did if you had asked for forgiveness
from him. People had assumed that this God was the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Joseph. The Israelites would go into battle carrying the Ark of the Covenant because they
felt it was that God was with them and nothing could be done then to destroy them. One
thing about the covenant, no one was allowed to touch it because touching the covenant
meant seeing God and no man has seen God and lived. As time went one and the Israelites
had finally settled in the Promise land, Canaanites had taught the Israelites how the
farm. This was not good because they had started to establish techniques from the
Canaanites. As time went by, the Israelites had started to worship the Canaanite gods.
This was a big mistake on the part of the Israelites because it is like disowning God.
God had already told the Israelites not to worship false gods, but they had gone and
started to do this. In 850 BC, prophets started to preach against Canaanite gods and were
insisting in exclusive worship of only one God. This was found in Deuteronomy. The main
purpose of Deuteronomy is to enforce exclusive worship of Yahweh. This is what the
prophets had preached. Deuteronomy also commands the extermination of the Canaanites.
This was referred to as the ban. The ban stated that had to eliminate all Canaanites and
Canaanite beliefs. After some time of destroying the Canaanites, the Israelites were able
to continue live a normal lifestyle without any pressure to worship other gods.
Israelites had gone to worship in temples after everything had settled down. One day, the
book of Deuteronomy was found when renovating the temple. Josiah had read this book and
found that one of the laws was being broken. The Israelites had been worshiping in old
Canaanites temples. This was considered wrong because they had the presence of false
gods. So Josiah ordered that all the temples outside of Jerusalem had to be destroyed. So
it was done and the only temple that remained was the temple in Jerusalem. The reason for
this was because the temple was in the main city and could be easily overlooked and
controlled, rather than having temples all over the place and not being able to control
them as easily. These two examples show that the Hebrews did always believe in one God,
even though at times they were persuaded to worship other gods. When it came down to it,
Yahweh was the true God for the Hebrews.