Now, the Christians claim that their God created this universe—not the universe He is described, in His own inspired word, as creating, but the universe revealed by science; the universe of twenty millions of suns.
And the Christians claim that this God is a God of love, a God omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. And the Christians claim that this great God, the Creator of our wonderful universe, is the God revealed to us in the Bible.
Let us, then, go to the Bible, and find out for ourselves whether the God therein revealed is any more like the ideal Christian God than the universe therein revealed is like the universe since discovered by man without the aid of divine inspiration.
As for the biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to show from the Bible itself that He was not all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on the contrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonourable, immoral, vindictive, barbarous, and cruel.
Neither was He, in any sense of the words, great nor good. But, in fact, He was a tribal god, an idol, made by man; and, as the idol of a savage and ignorant tribe, was Himself a savage and ignorant monster.
First then, as to my claim that Jahweh, or Jehovah, was a tribal god. I shall begin by quoting from Shall We Understand the Bible? by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams:
The theology of the Jahwist is very childish and elementary,
though it is not all on the same level. He thinks of God very
much as in human form, holding intercourse with men almost
as one of themselves. His document begins with Genesis ii. 4,
and its first portion continues, without break, to the end of
chapter iv. This portion contains the story of Eden. Here
Jahweh moulds dust into human form, and breathes into it;
plants a garden, and puts the man in it. Jahweh comes to the
man in his sleep, and takes part of his body to make a woman,
and so skilfully, apparently, that the man never wakes under
the operation. Jahweh walks in the garden like a man in the
cool of the day. He even makes coats for Adam and Eve.
Further on the Jahwist has a flood story, in which Jahweh repents that he had made man, and decides to drown him, saving only
one family. When all is over, and Noah sacrifices on his new
altar, Jahweh smells a sweet savour, just as a hungry man
smells welcome food. When men build the Tower of Babel,
Jahweh comes down to see it—he cannot see it from where he
is. In Genesis xviii. the Jahwist tells a story of three men
coming to Abraham's tent. Abraham gives them water to wash
their feet, and bread to eat, and Sarah makes cakes for them,
and "they did eat"; altogether, they seemed to have had a nice
time. As the story goes on, he leaves you to infer that one
of these was Jahweh himself. It is J. who describes the story
of Jacob wrestling with some mysterious person, who, by inference,
is Jahweh. He tells a very strange story in Exodus iv. 24, that
when Moses was returning into Egypt, at Jahweh's own request,
Jahweh met him at a lodging-place, and sought to kill him. In
Exodus xiv. 15 it is said Jahweh took the wheels off the chariots
of the Egyptians. If we wanted to believe that such statements
were true at all, we should resort to the device of saying they
were figurative. But J. meant them literally. The Jahwist
would have no difficulty in thinking of God in this way. The
story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah belongs to this
same document, in which, you remember, Jahweh says: "I will go
down now, and see whether they have done altogether according
to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know"
(Gen. xviii. 21). That God was omniscient and omnipresent had
never occurred to the Jahwist. Jahweh, like a man, had to go and
see if he wanted to know. There is, however, some compensation
in the fact that he can move about without difficulty—he can
come down and go up. One might say, perhaps, that in J., though
Jahweh cannot be everywhere, he can go to almost any place.
All this is just like a child's thought. The child, at Christmas,
can believe that, though Santa Claus cannot be everywhere, he
can move about with wonderful facility, and, though he is a man,
he is rather mysterious. The Jahwist's thought of God represents
the childhood stage of the national life.
Later, Mr. Williams writes:
All this shows that at one time Jahweh was one of many gods;
other gods were real gods. The Israelites themselves believed,
for example, that Chemosh was as truly the god of the Moabites
as Jahweh was theirs, and they speak of Chemosh giving territory
to his people to inherit, just as Jahweh had given them territory
(Judges xi. 24).
Just as a King of Israel would speak of Jahweh, the King of
Moab speaks of Chemosh. His god sends him to battle. If he
is defeated, the god is angry; if he succeeds, the god is
favourable. And we have seen that there was a time when the
Israelite believed Chemosh to be as real for Moab as Jahweh
for himself. You find the same thing everywhere. The old
Assyrian kings said exactly the same thing of the god Assur.
Assur sent them to battle, gave defeat or victory, as he thought
fit. The history, however, is very obscure up to the time of
Samuel, and uncertain for some time after. Samuel organised
a Jahweh party. David worshipped Jahweh only, though he
regards it as possible to be driven out of Jahweh's inheritance
into that of other gods (1 Sam. xxvi. 19). Solomon was not
exclusively devoted to Jahweh, for he built places of worship
for other deities as well.
In the chapter on "Different Conceptions of Providence in the Bible," Mr. Williams says: