GREAT SHIFT: Encountering God in Biblical Times

"The Lord said unto Moses": these familiar words from the Old Testament describe a relationship in which the prophet Moses seems to converse as an equal with an unseen God who is encountered in dreamlike circumstances. Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis are expelled from the Garden of Eden by an irate Deity who tells them in no uncertain terms that they have disobeyed his instructions and are doomed to be homeless from now on. Jonah embarks on his ill-fated journey in order to escape God's wrath, only to find that the Whale is in wait for him. A characteristic of all these encounters is that God's voice may be heard in a dream, and is not immediately identifiable. But according to the author these early stories are at the centre of an enormous cultural shift that took place in biblical times. Following the giving of the Ten Commandments and the codification of the Law contained in the books of the Torah, the author argues that people's understanding of themselves and their relation to God underwent a profound change, culminating a thousand years later in the reassertion of nationhood that came with the Exile in Babylon. The later books of the Old Testament are full of laments that there are no more prophets and that God's word is no longer clearly heard. In spite of this, the dream context for the appearance of angels is once more in evidence in the birth narratives of the New Testament. With an impressive breadth of scholarship and knowledge of contemporary neurological theories of consciousness, the author examines a shift in understanding that affected the whole of the civilised world and is also seen in works such as Homer's Iliad. 476pp, paperback, extensive notes and bibliography.