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So this rejection of the cult depends, of course, on a caricature of cultic and ritual
performance. The prophets caricature it as meaningless. They caricature it as unconcerned
with ethics or with the ideals of justice and righteousness. But internal cultural conflicts
often do involve the caricaturing or the ridiculing of an opponent's beliefs or practices. But
for some of the prophets rejection of the cult was quite radical. That is an idea that
is not yet really fully formed in Amos. We are going to see, again, that some of the
prophets will reject the cult of the nation, not just the cult of the wicked, but everyone.
Even if performed properly and by righteous persons, there will be one or two prophets
who believe the cult has no inherent value or no absolute value for God.
In some sense, this is a view that we have already encountered in sources devoted to
the cult even in a source like P, the Priestly material. The Priestly material is already
moving towards the idea, or establishing the idea, that the cult is an expression of divine
favor rather than divine need. It doesn't really have an actual value necessarily for
God. It doesn't really affect his vitality. It is given to humans as a ritual conduit,
as a way to attract and maintain God's presence within the community, or to procure atonement
for deeds or impurities that might temporarily separate one from God. So already in the Priestly
source, we have a very complicated notion of the function of the [cult] for society
and humanity. So the prophetic doctrine of the primacy of morality seems to be a reaction
against other views of cultic practice; perhaps there were popular assumptions about the automatic
efficacy of the cult and its rites. But Yehezkel Kaufman has been joined by many
other scholars who argue that the prophets raised morality to the level of an absolute
religious value, and they did so because they saw morality as essentially divine [Kaufman
1972, 367]. The essence of God is his moral nature. Moral attributes are the essence of
God himself. So Kaufman notes that he who requires justice and righteousness and compassion
from human beings is himself just and righteous and compassionate. This is the prophetic view.
The moral person can metaphorically be said to share in divinity. This is the kind of
apotheosis that you find then in the prophetic writings, not the idea of a transformation
into a divine being in life or even after death, but the idea that one strives to be
god-like by imitating his moral actions, the idea again of imitatio dei.
A third feature of the prophetic writings, this is again underscored by Kaufman, but
also many other scholars, and that is the prophets' view of history, their particular
view of history, their interpretation of the catastrophic events of 722 and 586 BCE. It
is an interpretation that centers on their elevation of morality, because the prophets
insisted that morality was a decisive, if not the decisive factor, in the nation's history.
Israel's acceptance of God's Sinaitic (Mosaic) covenant placed certain religious and moral
demands on her [Kaufman 1972, 365]. Now in the Deuteronomistic view that we have talked
about, one sin is singled out as being historically decisive for the nation. Other sins are punished,
absolutely. But only one is singled out as being historically decisive for the nation,
and that is the sin of idolatry, particularly the idolatry of the royal house.