RBIS October 5, 1999: Adam and the Universalism of the Hebrew Bible (Part One)

(excerpted from "Die Religioese Situation der Zeit: Das Judentum", Piper GmbH, Munich, 1991. "Judaism", the English translation by John Bowden, published by Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1992) reprinted with permission of the author

by Rev. Prof. Dr. Hans Kung Professor fuer Oekumenische Theologie; Direktor, Institut fuer Oekumenische Forschung der Universitaet Tuebingen; Member, International Council, Root & Branch Association, Ltd.

TUEBINGEN, Yom Shlishi (Third Day - "Tuesday"), 25 Tishri, 5760 (October 5, 1999), Root & Branch:

Granted, fanaticism and intolerance have been and very often are associated with belief in the one God. And whereas the mystical religions of India, orientated on the oneness of all things, attempt more just to absorb other religions, relativizing them as preliminary stages and including them as aspects of the one and only truth (inclusivism), Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as prophetic religions which believe in the one God, tend almost naturally to exclude other religions from the start (exclusivism), to fight them, indeed to destroy them.

Here the slogan is not community, but separation and conquest. Instaed of the unity of humankind there is division. As we have just seen, this dangerously destructive tendency already has its foundations in the Hebrew Bible: the concentration on the one God often manifests itself not only as confrontation with the other religions, but at the same time also as excommunication, indeed -- through "holy wars" -- ultimately as the destruction of those of other faiths.

But must that be? Must monotheism necessarily be fanaticism? It has rightly been observed that around the middle of the first millennium B.C.E., not only in Israel but also in Greece (the pre-Socratic philosophers), in Persia (Zarathustra), in India (Buddha) and in China (Confucius), reform movements against polytheism can be observed. These tend towards a single principle of the world, a single first and last reality, however it might be named.

Thus Karl Jaspers called the period between the sixth and the fourth centuries B.C.E. an 'axial period', an 'age of great personalities' (1). Concentration of faith on the one God by no means necessarily excludes all-embracing breadth, but rather can be the foundation for it.

In the Hebrew Bible, strikingly it was the strictly monotheistic Priestly tradition which attached the greatest importance to the UNIVERSAL HORIZON of Israelite faith. We have already heard how the Abraham story, which leads into the history of Israel, was from the beginning connected to the story of the prehistory and universal history of humankind generally -- told from the creation of the world and the first human beings to the story of the tower of Babel. This universal horizon becomes abundantly clear precisely from the account of these beginnings. But the beginnings could have been given quite a different form.

One need only consider three questions:

1. For the Hebrew Bible, is not the first human being as a matter of course a Jew? Not at all.

2. Was not the covenant with Abraham (of which we heard above) the first covenant, excluding the rest of the human race? Not at all.

3. Does not belief in one God at any rate represent a narrowing in comparison with polytheism, which is very much more tolerant? Not at all.

These answers need at least a brief explanation. So first of all the questions of the first human being.

'Adam' is very often understood simply as the proper name of the first human being. But 'Adam' is identical with the Hebrew word for human being (adam = 'human being'): 'The name of the genus becomes the proper name, because Genesis wanted to typify the whole genus in the first human being' (2). In fact the so-called 'creation story' in Genesis 2-4 is not a fairy-tale account of a first human being in the garden of paradise. It is concerned to define the human situation; it is about the adam who is the prototype of all human beings.

And that also means:

A) The first human being is not a Jew (the history of Israel begins only after the creation stories and the stories of the patriarchs);

B) Nor is the first human being a Christian (as a typological-allegorical Christian exegesis sometimes suggests);

C) Nor is the first human being a Muslim (at least not unless Muslim is understood simplistically as monotheist); Rather, Adam is simply the human being (adam): EVERY human being is THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF GOD! (3)

Here, right from the beginning, we can see the universal horizon of the Hebrew Bible. The mysterious Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High (4) -- later the model for the Hasmonaen priest-kings and [from a Christian perspective] the prototype of Jesus Christ -- is not a Jew nor a Christian either. The concern is with the one God, beside whom there is none other, and therefore also with the human being, ANY human being: not just, say, with a single people, but with humankind as a WHOLE.

This will immediately be confirmed from a wider perspective when I go into the second question.

Was not the covenant with Abraham the first covenant, excluding the rest of the human race? Not at all.

For before Abraham there was Noah and the covenant with him.

Shalom from Tuebingen,

Prof. Dr. Hans Kung

NOTES:

(1) Karl Jaspers, "Die grossen Philosophen", I, Munich, 1957, 68.

(2) H. Renckens, 'Adam', in "Bibellexikon". (

3) Genesis 1:26-28.

(4) Genesis 14:18-20.